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Book | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Perilous desert: insecurity in the Sahara |
Editors: | Wehrey, Frederic Boukhars, Anouar |
Year: | 2013 |
Pages: | 213 |
Language: | English |
City of publisher: | Washington, DC |
Publisher: | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace |
ISBN: | 9780870034046; 9780870034039 |
Geographic terms: | Sahara Sahel Algeria Libya Mali Mauritania Western Sahara |
Subjects: | political conditions Islamic movements regional security conflict organized crime |
Abstract: | The States of the broader Sahara region suffer from a storm of afflictions - weak governance, rampant corruption, endemic poverty, ethnic and societal cleavages, and inaccessible terrain - that give room for transnational crime and Islamist militant groups to proliferate and flourish. The region that stretches from Africa's Mediterranean coast through the Sahara Desert to the upper reaches of sub-Saharan Africa and encompasses the Sahel zone has a geopolitical significance that has long been underappreciated. This situation changed in 2012 with a series of high-profile events: a coup in Mali followed by the seizure of the country's north by al-Qaeda and affilitated factions, the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya in Benghazi, the seizure of western hostages in Algeria by multi-national militants, and the French military intervention in Mali. This book provides analyses of the simmering conflicts in the region and assesses the roles of governments, regional heavyweights (particularly Algeria), and Western powers in both combatting the region's unrest and at times exacerbating it. Contributions: The struggle for security in eastern Libya (Frederic Wehrey); Borderline chaos? Stabilizing Libya's periphery (Peter Cole); Organized crime and conflict in the Sahel-Sahara region (Wolfram Lacher); The paranoid neighbor: Algeria and the conflict in Mali (Anouar Boukhars); The drivers of insecurity in Mauritania (Anouar Boukhars); Mauritania's Islamists (Alex Thurston); Simmering discontent in the Western Sahara (Anouar Boukhars and Frederic Wehrey). [ASC Leiden abstract] |