State, Secession, and Jihad: The Micropolitical Economy of Conflict in Northern Mali

Abstract

This article explores the nexus between conflicting geopolitical imaginaries and socioeconomic tensions in northern Mali, examining microlevel processes whereby extralegal and criminal economies have reshaped political and armed mobilization, especially among Tuareg who fought to draw the borders of an independent Azawad and jihadists affiliated with the MUJAO Islamist group who sought to abolish all borders. Secessionist, jihadist, and statist political projects must be interpreted in light of the dynamics of armed protection, extraction, and clientelist connivance underlying processes of territorialization and social mobility in a hybrid regional order whose peripheral location no longer serves as a geopolitical insulator.