Citation

Niang A. Altern. Global Local Polit. 2015; 39(4): 231-251.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0304375415574451

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Nonstate transnational actors have long played a central role in Sahelian economic structures and geopolitical arrangements because of their capacity to constitute sources of authority and sustenance outside and across state structures. Recently, subversive battalions (qatiba) have resorted to kidnapping, raiding, and ransoming as a means to social justice with a redistributive dimension. Parallels can be drawn with authority structures associated with nineteenth-century privateers and buccaneers, and more recently with pirates operating in the Indian Ocean. The parallel economy of ransoming emerges in a context of critical disruptions of traditional economic and mobility frameworks in the Sahel, the aggressive scramble for resources, and the displacement of the global war on terror in the Sahel. This article examines the legitimation processes used by subversive groups, both ideological and religious; the ethics of ransoming as a form of prosperity endeavor without morality; and an oscillation between cooperation and subversion in the parallel economy of smuggling understood as two aspects of the same strategy of engagement between formal authorities and insubordinate groups in a context of scarcity. It argues that nonconventional forms of ransoming and criminal predation in the Sahel have similarities with practices of states and multinational corporations insofar as these divest ordinary citizens of their ability to become subjects outside the colluding forces of capital, state power, and external interventions.

Language: en