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Azawad: A Parastate Between Nomads and Mujahidins?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2020

Edoardo Baldaro Open the ORCID record for Edoardo Baldaro [Opens in a new window]  and
Luca Raineri
Edoardo Baldaro*
Affiliation:
Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Naples “L’Orientale,” Naples, Italy
Luca Raineri
Affiliation:
Institute of Law, Politics and Development, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy
*
*Corresponding author. Email: ebaldaro@unior.it
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Abstract

As part of the collective work “Inconvenient Realities: Parastates, between Statehood and Frozen Conflict,” this article discusses today’s status of Azawad, a relatively remote parastate occupying the territories of northern Mali, currently entrapped in a low intensity conflict involving non-state actors, local security forces, and external interveners. By retracing the history and the development of Azawad, the article identifies the different and partly contrasting socio-economic and ethnic elements at the basis of Azawadian parastatehood, and it charts the dialectical process of co-construction, which have shaped and inextricably linked together the Azawad and the Malian state. Moreover, it underlines the complex and evolving relations existing between “nationalist” Tuareg rebels and jihadist groups, with the aim to problematize the classical distinction between secessionist and terrorist parastates. By showing the connections between parastatehood, hybrid governance, patronage politics, and statelessness characterizing the situation in the Azawad, the article claims that the current condition of stalled conflict represents a temporary and unstable arrangement, which is paving the way for further parastatehood projects to arise.

Keywords

Azawadinsurgencyparastate(hood)stalled conflictterrorism
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 48 , Special Issue 1: Special Issue on the Emergence and Resilience of Parastates , January 2020 , pp. 100 - 115
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2020

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