For anyone whose family history includes a flight to safety from a suddenly dangerous homeland, the sight of videos showing fleeing refugees can echo hushed conversations at the dinner table or fading photographs in old family albums. Such moments serve as a reminder that the often-abstract debates over conflict resolution involve millions of people whose hopes and aspirations have been shattered by war. Forced displacement of people like these and other Fulani refugees across the Sahel region is often discussed as if it is a force of nature that no one has the power to stop. However different these conflicts might be from one another, the immense suffering they have caused raises the question of whether any external actors can develop effective strategies to prevent such devastating violence in the future. Yet alongside the recent carnage generated by these insurgencies, there are also deep-seated social tensions that have festered for decades, which both the jihadists and other authoritarian demagogues have manipulated to mobilize communities against each other.

Source: The North Africa Journal July 20, 2023 01:17 UTC