Self-defence militias occupy a growing place in the security landscapes of West Africa, from the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea. Hunters\u2019 groups, vigilance committees, \u201cvolunteers\u201d or community militias: these local armed formations are multiplying and changing. Their rise does not stem from a single cause, but from a set of security, political, economic and social dynamics.<\/p>\n
The stakes are all the higher because these groups can both help protect populations and fuel new violence, including between communities. Understanding why they are multiplying is a basic condition for analysing conflict trajectories and the room for manoeuvre of states and their partners.<\/p>\n
The first dynamic, widely documented by academic work and by reports from international organisations, is the crisis of public security in many rural and peripheral areas.<\/p>\n
In several Sahelian countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger) and, increasingly, in certain areas of northern Benin, Togo or C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, the presence of the state is weak or irregular. The security forces are limited in number, often concentrated in capitals or along major roads, and sometimes perceived as distant, predatory or partial. Response times in the event of an attack are long, or non-existent.<\/p>\n
In this context, many communities feel they cannot count on the state for protection. The logic of self-defence \u2013 \u201cprotecting ourselves because no one else will\u201d \u2013 then becomes a pragmatic response to a sense of abandonment. This dynamic is regularly mentioned in field analyses of the Dozo hunters\u2019 groups, the Koglweogo in Burkina Faso or vigilance committees in some regions of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The proliferation of self-defence militias is thus an indicator of state fragility: the more confidence in the state\u2019s capacity to protect declines, the more local actors seek to take charge of their own security.<\/p>\n
The expansion of the activities of jihadist groups and other non-state armed formations plays a central role. In Liptako-Gourma (the Mali\u2013Burkina Faso\u2013Niger border area), but also in several regions of Nigeria or north-western Benin, populations face attacks, extortion, kidnappings and multiple pressures.<\/p>\n
Faced with this threat, rural communities are caught in the crossfire of several actors:<\/p>\n
In many cases, self-defence militias emerge as a direct reaction to attacks or cycles of reprisals. Targeted or particularly vulnerable communities (sedentary farmers, herders, local minorities) organise themselves to watch over villages, control roads, screen arrivals or escort movements. Field research shows that these groups can form very quickly after episodes of acute violence.<\/p>\n
This dynamic is reinforced by the intensification of land and pastoral conflicts. Where tensions over land, water or transhumance corridors were already high, the arrival of armed groups and the increased circulation of small arms encourage communities to arm themselves, often under the banner of \u201cself-defence\u201d.<\/p>\n
Self-defence militias do not emerge from a vacuum. In several countries, they are rooted in older traditions of community security: hunters\u2019 societies, customary guards, groups of young people responsible for night-time surveillance, etc.<\/p>\n
These organisations, some of them long-established, performed functions of rural policing, mediation or social regulation. With the rise of insecurity, they are revived, strengthened or transformed into structured armed groups. In some cases, they retain a customary foundation and strong local legitimacy; in others, they become militarised and politicised and move away from the traditional norms that governed their action.<\/p>\n
This historical continuity explains why self-defence militias can enjoy broad local support, at least at first. They are seen as \u201cour children\u201d, \u201cour hunters\u201d, an extension of community institutions rather than an outside actor.<\/p>\n
Beyond the response to insecurity, many studies highlight the role of political dynamics in the proliferation of self-defence militias. These groups can be encouraged, tolerated or instrumentalised by various actors:<\/p>\n
In Burkina Faso, for example, the creation of a legal framework for the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDP) institutionalised the involvement of armed civilians in the fight against jihadist groups. In other contexts, as in Nigeria, community defence groups have played a role in the fight against Boko Haram, while being at the centre of controversies over abuses and politicisation.<\/p>\n
This instrumentalisation can accelerate the proliferation of militias: as soon as a community armed group benefits from resources, weapons, recognition or political protection, other communities may seek to create their own formation so as not to be left in a position of weakness.<\/p>\n
The economic dimension is also decisive. In contexts marked by poverty, youth unemployment and weak economic prospects, joining a self-defence militia can offer:<\/p>\n
This \u201csecurity economy\u201d contributes to the perpetuation and proliferation of groups. Once armed and organised, some develop their own interests and may seek to remain in place beyond the initial threat that justified their creation. Field research shows that self-defence militias sometimes turn into actors of predation, of control over local trade or of participation in cross-border trafficking.<\/p>\n
The rise of self-defence militias often overlaps with pre-existing identity divides: ethnic affiliations, lineages, social status, divisions between farmers and herders, etc. When self-defence groups are formed mainly within one community, others may see them as a direct threat.<\/p>\n
In several Sahelian areas, militias drawn from sedentary communities have been accused of targeting pastoral populations, notably Fulani, in the name of the fight against jihadists. Conversely, some jihadist armed groups have recruited by drawing on resentment over abuses by self-defence militias. The result is a tangle of clashes in which the line between \u201ccommunity defence\u201d, \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d and \u201cintercommunal violence\u201d becomes blurred.<\/p>\n
The proliferation of militias, in a context of strong polarisation, then tends to fragment the security landscape further. Each community looks for its own protectors, which can fuel a spiral of mistrust, widespread arming and cycles of reprisals.<\/p>\n
States\u2019 choices regarding the regulation of self-defence militias strongly influence their proliferation. Three broad situations are often found:<\/p>\n
When oversight mechanisms are put in place without sufficient means for training, monitoring and sanctions, the effect can be paradoxical: the legitimisation of certain militias encourages other groups to form, in the hope of eventually obtaining similar recognition. Conversely, brutal repression can push self-defence groups to radicalise or to move closer to criminal or insurgent networks.<\/p>\n
Debate among researchers and practitioners remains lively on the medium-term effects of \u201coutsourcing\u201d security to local armed actors. Some see it as a necessary evil in the face of the security emergency, others stress the risks of a lasting fragmentation of violence and of undermining the monopoly on the legitimate use of force.<\/p>\n
Finally, the proliferation of self-defence militias follows a self-sustaining logic. The more local armed groups there are in a region, the more the perception of insecurity increases, even in the absence of direct attacks by jihadist or criminal groups. Neighbouring communities may then feel they have no choice but to arm themselves in turn.<\/p>\n
This phenomenon of a community \u201carms race\u201d is documented in several rural areas of West Africa. It contributes to the increased circulation of weapons, the normalisation of violence as a way of regulating conflicts and the gradual erosion of the state\u2019s monopoly on coercion.<\/p>\n
The question is therefore not only why self-defence militias appear, but why they persist, change and reproduce. As long as the root causes \u2013 fragile institutions, inequalities, land conflicts, lack of economic prospects, contested governance \u2013 remain largely intact, these groups will continue to be a response, admittedly imperfect and ambivalent, to people\u2019s security needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Self-defence militias occupy a growing place in the security landscapes of West Africa, from the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea. Hunters\u2019 groups, vigilance committees, \u201cvolunteers\u201d or community militias: these local armed formations are multiplying and changing. Their rise does not stem from a single cause, but from a set of security, political, economic and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"acteur":[157,155,158],"niveau":[173],"risque":[170,171,172],"thematique":[159,163,166],"zone":[143,144,145,147,149,150,152],"class_list":["post-77045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","acteur-armed-and-security-forces","acteur-communities-and-civil-society","acteur-non-state-armed-groups","niveau-analytical-level","risque-political-risks","risque-security-risks","risque-social-and-reputational-risks","thematique-armed-conflict-and-terrorism","thematique-governance-and-political-transitions","thematique-society-youth-and-radicalisation","zone-benin","zone-burkina-faso","zone-cote-divoire","zone-mali","zone-niger","zone-nigeria","zone-togo"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"acteur","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/acteur?post=77045"},{"taxonomy":"niveau","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/niveau?post=77045"},{"taxonomy":"risque","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/risque?post=77045"},{"taxonomy":"thematique","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematique?post=77045"},{"taxonomy":"zone","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahel.watch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/zone?post=77045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}