55

Since the beginning of the Mali conflict in 2012 and the French military intervention against the jihadists, Sahelian populations have endured a constant deterioration of their security. This violence is fueled in particular by self-defense groups, paradoxically seen as a stabilizing force by the central states who support them. These groups increase and create a “protection market” in a context of armed conflicts, transnational circulation of practices, and increasing international interventions. Taking part in the co-production of violence, self-defense groups struggle in order to have a monopoly of collaboration with national states and their partners. These processes are associated with the growing militarization of those self-defense groups, particularly through the work of political entrepreneurs. Those actors who live by the gun and shape mobilization “from below” are trying to provoke interventions from above. This “milicianization of the war on terror” and the political competition that results from it further polarize Sahelian societies and extend violence.