ABSTRACT

Since 2011, the Sahel has been bedevilled by insecurity spawned by communal strife, social fragmentation, and religious extremism. Some of the security conundrums in the region are perpetrated by some pastoralists who have turned criminals and established strong ties with terrorist groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Boko Haram. Whilst the reasons for the emergence of militant jihadism have been largely explored in the vast corpus on terrorism, less attention has been devoted to understanding-cum-explaining the reasons pastoralists take up arms and join terrorist groups. The few scholarly publications on the problematic posit that the reasons for pastoralists’ resort to terrorism in the region lie in political ecology and pastoralist populism. In this article, I contend that these dominant explanations sidestep the socioeconomic context within which pastoralists struggle to eke out a bare existence as well as the varied everyday abuses perpetrated by state and non-state actors against pastoralists. Drawing on the relative deprivation conceptual framework advanced by the American political scientist Ted Gurr, I argue that pastoralists join terrorist groups because they perceive discrepancies between their past and present socioeconomic condition but also as a consequence of marginalisation and everyday abuses against pastoralists. I illustrate the pastoralism-terrorism nexus with the crucial case of Nigeria―Africa’s most populous state and largest economy.

摘要

自 2011 年以来，萨赫勒地区一直被社区冲突、社会分裂和宗教极端主义所引发的不安全所困扰。该地区的一些安全难题是由一些已经变成罪犯并与恐怖组织建立牢固联系的牧民所犯下的，这些恐怖组织如 Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM)、大撒哈拉伊斯兰国 (ISGS)、伊斯兰国西非省 (ISWAP) 和博科圣地。虽然在大量关于恐怖主义的语料库中已经大量探讨了激进圣战主义出现的原因，但很少关注理解并解释牧民拿起武器并加入恐怖组织的原因。关于这个问题的少数学术出版物认为，该地区牧民诉诸恐怖主义的原因在于政治生态和牧民民粹主义。在本文中，我认为这些占主导地位的解释回避了牧民努力维持生计的社会经济背景，以及国家和非国家行为者对牧民实施的各种日常虐待。借鉴美国政治学家泰德·古尔（Ted Gurr）提出的相对剥夺概念框架，我认为牧民加入恐怖组织是因为他们认为他们过去和现在的社会经济状况之间存在差异，但也是边缘化和日常虐待牧民的结果。