Glocalities of Jihad: AQIM and Postcolonial States Resilience in West Africa

ABSTRACT: How has global jihadi militancy affected the security landscape of West African states? This paper examines this question by considering the cases of Algeria and Mali as they became theaters of Al-Qā’idah in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) jihadi project. This interaction is examined through the perspective of glocalization. It maintains that a global jihadi drive is refracted via the locales it comes to encounter, necessarily becoming embedded in local politics and ecologies, and thereby generating specific glocalities. I describe the emergence of three glocalities: a relatively successful reestablishment of state control in Algeria when it comes to the (core) north of the country, the formation of a space across its southern regions and northern Mali where government control remained feebler, and an embattled Malian theater, where global jihadists found fertile ground to challenge the viability of the state.