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Can focusing on gender help us to better understand the mobilization capacity of jihadi insurgent groups and their social roots in the Sahel? A growing literature has explored the factors that motivate people to join such groups in Africa. The Sahel provides a salient case, but the prevalent focus on agent-based explanations has tended to overlook the role of gender relations and constructions. This article explores the potential of practice theory to shed light on intersubjective rules, roles, and meanings and whether and how gender influences jihadi mobilization in the Sahel. The study contributes to the feminist security studies literature by looking at gender relations and investigating whether it is the reassertion (practice homology) or emerging misalignment (practice hysteresis) of Fulani gender practices that best characterizes the acceptance and/or rejection of jihadi governance by men and women in the Sahel. The article discusses empirical evidence collected during extensive fieldwork in Mali and Niger. We suggest that in strategically choosing to either reproduce or reshape traditional gender practices, jihadi insurgencies linked to Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Fulani milieu of the central Sahel gain popular support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What kind and whose security is the European Union concerned with in its gender practices in countering violent extremism? This article contributes to the scholarship on EU implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda and gender in countering violent extremism, highlighting shortcomings in the conceptualisation and practice of women's participation in the security sphere. Taking Niger as a heuristic case study, the paper explores tensions between local gender norms and EU securitised framing of women's empowerment and gender equality, arguing that women's increased participation in the security field is tacitly understood in terms of use-value. Building on feminist postcolonial scholarship, the analysis uncovers how women are included and what expectations they are deriving from their engagement, exposing the neoliberal and neocolonial framings of EU intervention and the misunderstandings of women's materialities. By ontologically flattening women subjectivities without accounting for their intersectional experiences, both patriarchy and global hierarchies of knowledge production are reiterated. In doing so, the EU co-constructs gendered and racialised subjects, thus reinforcing inequalities, silencing local pluralities, and in many cases, aggravating women's situation of insecurity in Niger. The analysis employs feminist and ethnographic methods, including semi-structured interviews and participant observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where and how are women present in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) in Mali? The article contributes to the scholarship on gender in P/CVE policies by shedding light on the misalignments between societal dynamics and the discursive framework adopted in the security strategies implemented. It investigates how the European Union as a security-oriented actor, (re)produces practices of exclusion rather than inclusion. Relying on a large set of semi-structured interviews gathered during extensive fieldwork, it aims at understanding the conceptualisation – and the gaps therein – of gender mainstreaming by asking: how does the EU translate gender mainstreaming and WPS into practice in the context of P/CVE practice? And, in turn, how do local actors perceive these efforts? The article finds that the implementation of gender mainstreaming has two main sets of limitations which overall reinforce inequalities: first, it homogenises women's identities and fails at meaningfully reaching rural areas; second, while including some gender considerations about restrictions of women's agency, it falls short of achieving its overarching aim, which should be truly empowering women by subverting patriarchal structures and systems of inequal power-sharing. In doing so, this study intends to contribute to feminist security studies literature by exploring centre-periphery gaps and differences in the framing of women's empowerment within P/CVE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While representing a major military threat in Niger and Nigeria, the two branches of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP-Liptako Gourma and ISWAP-Lake Chad) have increasingly sought to win popular support (distinguishing themselves from other groups in the region, especially Boko Haram). Yet, despite some improvements in the recent past, both Niger's and Nigeria's different counterinsurgency practices have not been sufficiently adapted to (and therefore remain strategically misaligned vis-à-vis) ISWAP's more population-centric approach. Strategic rethinking and realignment of the still predominantly enemy-centric approaches of both states are essential so that ISWAP strategy can be countered in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]