To understand the reasons for jihad in Mali, we must take into account its multiple origins and anchored in the complex history of the country.
Few people know it, but the center of Mali is marked by a political and religious history of major importance. It is in this region that the last independent pre-colonial states - the Islamic State of Hamdallahi, then those of Ségou and Bandiagara - imposed themselves through two successive jihads in the XNUMXth century.e century. It is also an ecologically rich and contrasting area of almost 80 km2, where some 2,8 million inhabitants live - Dogons, Peuls, Bozos, Bambaras, Songhays, etc. - which together constitute a mosaic of interdependent socio-professional communities.
In a context where stories overlap, natural resources are shared and cultures embedded, there are multiple sources of conflict. The region is seen from Bamako as "the north": for the inhabitants of an aboveground capital, preserved from the throes of conflicts, all that is beyond the region of Ségou (located about 200 km from Bamako) is perceived as such, ie linguistically and culturally different and potentially "rebellious".
Politically marginalized since colonial times and under-administered, the area has experienced profound upheavals that have impacted social structures, but also, more specifically, the modes of regulation between communities. Colonization, abolition of slavery, independence, droughts, democracy, decentralization, demographic growth, development policies which struggle to combine agriculture and livestock: all factors which destabilize inter-community relations. To this is added the conflict that erupted in the north of the country in 2012, where the defeat of the Malian army symbolically marked the end of the state's legitimate monopoly on violence.
Interpretation by jihad: the limits of expertise and category analysis
From the 2000s, Mali was the subject of particular attention due to the establishment of a katiba (Arab military term designating a brigade or a company) of the Algerian GSPC in the northeast and the kidnapping of Westerners. Numerous reports and studies are commissioned by institutional players, mainly foreigners, who offer so many grids for reflection on conflict dynamics and model solutions.
On the side of France, the main Western actor involved, the analyzes reflect a security vision, often imported from other contexts: Mali was first included in a " Crisis arc Which covered a large part of the Muslim world, before being described as " Failed state "And to become the theater of" war on terror »Led by France.
These reading grids by the top, which hardly question the “jihadist” postulate, have been called into question in favor of approaches based on local and not necessarily religious factors, in particular following what has been called the “slide” of jihad towards the center. from 2015. In 2012, international attention was indeed focused on jihadist groups operating in the northern regions of the country. From 2015, the presence of jihadist groups intensified in the center, which was presented as a "spread", a "contagion" from the north.
Among these approaches, the hypothesis of inter-community conflict has been proposed, especially with the appearance of katiba macina directed by Hamadoun Koufa. Initially referred to by the media as the “Macina Liberation Front”, this group affiliated with the Ansâr ed-Dîn organization appeared in early 2015 and claimed responsibility for several attacks, in particular the one targeting the Radisson hotel in Bamako in November 2015. Fulani populations, or identified as such because they are Fulani languages - according to the criteria of filiation assigned by the Fulani of free status, not all Fulaphonic groups are considered to be Fulani stricto sensu; this is particularly the case of slaves - are accused of making a pact with jihadist groups, leading in reaction to the formation of self-defense groups (Dogons, Bambaras, but also Fulani depending on the region) on community bases.
This point of view has been criticized for its ethnicizing approach and its bias, with self-defense groups being seen as indigenous and, for some, pro-government, where the Fulani were collectively seen as allochthonous and jihadists. Therefore, another hypothesis has emerged more recently: that of a crisis of production methods and pastoralism which would explain the pauperization and marginalization of pastoralists.
While these analyzes are not without relevance, they are not without flaws either, especially when they are based on pre-constructed categories which label the actors (terrorist groups, self-defense militias, etc.).
Beyond this methodological bias, the work of categorization also has consequences when it is necessary to conceive of a way out of conflict: on the one hand, we do not (or with difficulty) conclude peace with terrorists, and on the other hand , categorization often results in the non-contextualized importation of external solutions, the limits of which can be seen here as elsewhere: DDR process (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration), community reconciliation initiatives, deradicalization ...
Finally, these readings by category have a corollary: the context analysis. This must of course be taken into account, but the bias of this approach quite specific to the expertise market is to consider the socio-historical dimension as one factor among others of the context, in favor of a short-termist analysis which reifies situations. .
Jihad or the rhetoric of the fight against the "exploiters"
In fact, in this region which makes the link between north and south, power struggles aimed at social stratification and chiefdom are at the heart of the conflict and have paved the way for "jihadist" push. THE'call for jihad launched in 2015 by Hamadoun Koufa illustrates this situation well: his anti-establishment rhetoric against the elites - both political and traditional - meets the attention of part of the Fulani populations, mainly nomadic pastoralists and descendants of slaves.
From this observation emerges a hypothesis little put forward, but which sheds new light on the violence of groups claiming to be jihadist, and more generally the conflictuality in central Mali: the fragmentation of the legitimate monopoly of violence by the State has revealed unresolved antagonisms and allowed social groups to be dominated or downgraded to operate a sort of return to history, in the form of settling scores of regimes of social and political domination that have been maintained over the ages.
A stakeholder in the Fulani world and embodying the poetic ideal of the Sahelian nomad following his flock, the grievances of certain nomadic pastoralists are directed against the lineages holding the rights of access to pastures since the XNUMXth century.e century - the Jooro'en -, which for several decades have imposed disproportionate taxes with the complicity of certain officials of the administration.
In the Inner Niger Delta and as far as Hombori, pastors have thus formed or rallied katibas who target the aristocracy and community elites, in the name of what they consider to be a struggle for liberation.
In Guimbala (Niafunké region), pastors rather serve as auxiliaries in the service of the katibas and are responsible for taking the zakat, the religious tax, on the herds of the owners. Other actors are involved in this jihad economy, including cattle thieves - the earth -, who are familiar with parallel commercial circuits and ensure the sale of the animals collected.
In addition to nomadic pastoralists, the katibas recruit from a community linked to the Fulani world, but historically marked by its slave economy. These are the Riimaybe, a term that has become an ethnic one, but which literally means "those who were not born" as opposed to rimbe, "Those who are born". This is a quasi-structural opposition between the individual who belongs to another and who was therefore born of no one except his master, and the individual who is of free status because it is part of a proven Fulani lineage (lineage, clan and tribe).
These communities of servile origin have become economically autonomous and have opted overwhelmingly for the education of children. Yet the Riimaybe retain a kind of stigma of servitude in the eyes of the old masters, which socially downgrades them and pushes them away from power. These descendants of slaves formed the basis of a second movement of struggle in central Mali.
In Sanari (Djenné region) and Macina (Mopti region), others Riimaybe have forged alliances with non-Fulani self-defense groups that claim to belong to the brotherhood of traditional hunters donso, presenting itself as a bulwark against the “slave Peuls”.
The need for protection appears here as the primary motivation for rallying together with armed groups which locally exercise a monopoly on violence. But in the areas of Nantaka and Koubi, north of Mopti, it is the arbitration of the jihadists who is sought to resolve land disputes.
Beyond the logic of protection and arbitration, the various remedies are always local and opportunistic, testifying to a conflictuality linked to social mobility.
The violence of jihadist groups refers to struggles for emancipation within the Fulani world itself: statutory and political in the case of Riimaybe, economical for that of nomadic pastoralists. These struggles always target those who are seen as "exploiters", whether they are former masters or whether they exercise undue rights over the pastures.
If this hypothesis is admissible, we must then question the historical genesis of this violence and its specificity. The sources of conflict in central Mali bring into play official alliances, implicit pacts and parallel histories that are poorly known or neglected by context studies, while they induce a fragmentation of the balance of power.
Jihad or the story of the Islamic State that does not pass
These stories are rooted in the jihad led by Islamic State of Hamdallahi - Enemy in the Fulani language -, which upset the XIXe century and is still today the historical benchmark of the Fulani community, but also of other communities in the region, for whom the time was particularly hard.
However, this sometimes traumatic memory is due less to the religious and political dimensions of the Islamic State than to the forced socio-economic reconfiguration that it carried out by sedentarizing the Fulani population on the one hand, and by setting up an administration of bondage on the other hand.
The policy of sedentarization concerned all the Fulani clans who were forced to form localities - the wuro - and to promote a terroir including communities of subject farmers and Riimaybe.
If these chiefdoms still had herds, they no longer participated in pastoral life. This was the responsibility of a socio-professional group formed by the State, which still today forms a closed and strongly endogamous community, exercising a monopoly on the entrusting of animals. This economic activity consists in entrusting the herds of different owners to a pastor who, in return, is remunerated either in money or in kind (part of the growth of the animals). Although earlier than this time, this system was codified in the XIXe century, by the Islamic State of Hamdallahi.
But in recent decades, marked by the inadequacies of decentralization, these pastors, who have been described as "red Peuls" (Fulbe wodebe) due to the light color of their skin, are under increasing fiscal pressure from the chiefdoms who control the entry of large grasslands, accelerating their impoverishment and social downgrading.
As for the issue of slavery, it is partly the consequence of the needs generated by the Islamic State for its strategic activities which were provided by servile groups: inland waterways, construction of buildings, counting of cowry money ... But it is also linked to the sedentarization and to the agricultural needs of the new Fulani localities, which combine a servile labor force remaining permanently and a mass of slaves "housed" in farming villages.
There are no figures for central Mali, but in the north, the colonial administration estimated that 75% of the population was in servile status at the start of the XNUMXth century.e century. Jean ‑ François Bayart notes the same phenomenon in northern Nigeria, where the descendants of slaves constitute the social base of jihadism.
Within the Fulani world, where the distinction between free and nonfree is almost structural, the issue of slavery by descent is sensitive and has led to conflicts harshly repressed by a Malian state for which slavery simply does not exist. .
In Mali as elsewhere in the Sahel, this phenomenon has a historical depth which sets it aside from the notion of “modern slavery”. It is not in fact a question of the social and economic condition of the exploited person, but of his statut juridique, which makes it a movable property devoid of moral responsibility within the society of masters. However, whatever his social condition - rich or poor, educated or illiterate - his servile status endures regardless of the collective emancipation that took place during the fall of the Islamic State - if he was a state slave. under the public purse, the Beyt el-mal -, or the Ténenkou Agreement of 1903 between masters and Riimaybe.
Jihad and democracy: bullet in the center
By submitting the preconstructed notion of jihad to social complexity and history, we see that the violence and the actors involved are more linked to a logic of revolt than a religious question. This does not mean that jihad is an imported notion or that jihadist groups have nothing to do with Islam.
On the one hand, contemporary jihad is a performative label. On the other hand, the Sahel has seen a series of political formations during the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries which arose in the name of jihad, and whose particularity is to have mobilized among marginalized Fulani populations.
The searcher Christian Coulon recalled that religions can be ideological devices that the lower classes appropriate and adapt to their situation, so that this Islam bears the mark of the dominated. But he added that the Islamic field is not still; it evolves according to the changes within the dominant group and the relations that this one maintains with that of the dominated.
Faced with the radicalization of masters and landowners who do not want to disappear from history, "those who were not born" and those who live in the bush have become radicalized in their turn. But the question is to know what nature is this radicalization, what is its project, and why it is taking place today.
Modibo Galy Cisse reports the words of a civil administrator who explained: “The Islamic-revolutionary ideal […] is in the process of being concretized in the Delta. We took the weak by giving them Kalashnikovs, thus transforming their weakness into strength, and we took the poor by giving them petrodollars, thus transforming their poverty into wealth. We have thus created a new man who is not afraid of anything. "
Many clues tend to show that the ideology of the revolt current in the Fulani world (in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, etc.) is not Islam, even if it is obvious that jihad is helping to mobilize a semantics of liberation.
It allows to animate, to verbalize and finally to arm a struggle for emancipation with regard to history, that of an Islamic State which will have made some, masters and owners, and others, slaves and proletarians. Likewise, the democratic project and its promises of freedom and individuality offer a paradoxical legitimacy to jihad with regard to this semantics of liberation.
From this reading then emerges something revolutionary in the crisis in central Mali, of which we must undoubtedly take the measure: if it is indeed a revolution, and we must then consider it within the Fulani world itself, the process of returning to a situation previous is probably non-negotiable.
This article was written in collaboration with Bokar Sangaré, Malian journalist, collaborator of Jeune Afrique.
Julien antouly, LMI MaCoTer project manager, Research Institute for Development (IRD) et Gilles Holder, Anthropologist, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
This article is republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.