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The articles of this Special Issue show how theoretical perspectives, normative frames, discursive strategies and conceptual issues shape, and are shaped by, intervention practices and the dynamics of peace and security in West Africa. As they construe and construct understandings of West African conflicts, they impact and justify conflict management practices. Put another way, how one defines the region called West Africa is not disassociated from one’s understanding of peace and security. The concepts are mutually constitutive. The increasing significance awarded to ‘radicalisation’ and ‘terrorism’ said to be coming from the Sahel suggests how practices of security do not simply respond to ‘threats’ somehow, somewhere, in ‘West Africa’. As the focus on international intervention moves north toward the Sahel, it transforms the meaning and formation of West African states and the West African region as it connects them to the extra-regional dynamics from the ‘Sahel’ and ‘North Africa’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the effects of UN peacekeeping and international counterterrorism operations upon the possibilities of peace in Mali. Following the January 2013 French operation Serval, the international intervention was divided between two military missions: UN peacekeeping in Mali and French-led counterterrorism. The article explores what it means to distinguish between peacekeeping and counterterrorism for international conflict management and Malian conflict resolution dynamics. It is argued that the binaries of war and peace, and of intervention and sovereignty, are no longer opposites, but blurred into an emerging ‘new normal’ of permanent military intervention. The construction of a regional counterterrorism governance or militarisation is shown to circumvent the fundamental questions about Malian peace, state sovereignty, and nationhood. The article points to how the international ‘division of labour’ between peacekeeping and counterterrorism defines the possibilities of peace in Mali in relation to the perceived necessities of the ‘global war on terror’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the theme of the issue, regional dynamics of peace and security in West Africa.