Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the reasons why certain disaffected youth in the Sahel choose to inspire from Western gang culture to express dissent in a context dominated by the rise of Jihadist ideologies.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from early 2000s, the Sahel region experienced a surge of Jihadist insurgencies, including Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its affiliates in Northern Mali, and ISIS in southern Libya. As these movements recruited massively among poor disaffected Muslim youth in the region, many observers view the Sahel's large youth population as easy prey of Jihadist recruitment (Boukhars 2014; Onuoha 2014; Agbibos, E. 2013, Ojochenemi & al. 2015). Some studies draw a direct connection between youth, Islam, poverty, and terrorism, overlooking the overwhelming majority of youth who have resisted and rejected the call for Jihadism.

In Zinder—a poor city, Muslim by more than 95% of its population, and located at the confluence of multiple jihadists' zone of influence—youth have remained largely immune to the jihadist discourse. More striking is that even delinquents and disaffected youths tend to adopt a rather western-style urban violence as opposed to the ever proliferating jihadist mode of operation (Amadou 2014). This raises the question: Why have certain disaffected youth in the Sahel choose to inspire from Western gang culture to express dissent amidst a context dominated by the rise of Jihadist ideologies?

This paper attempts to answer this question by focusing on the specific case of "palais" phenomenon in Zinder. The "palais" refers to specific group of youths who have adopted a distinctive street culture that mimics the American gang culture in terms of names, clothing style, musical tests, drug consumption, sexual assault, and street violence.