Protecting Civilians as Strategy: Supporting a Conflict Sensitive Response to the Strategic Challenge of ‘Jihadist’ Armed Groups in the Wider Sahel

This briefing is based on findings from a three-year British Academy-funded research project on the security crises in the wider Sahel . Comprising 11 political scientists and historians based in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, the UK, Italy and Kuwait , the project team examined the Lake Chad and Central Sahel crises from both historical and contemporary social science perspectives. In addition to archival research and an extensive survey of both academic and ‘grey’ literature, the research involved over 100 interviews in Mali, Nigeria, Niger and Senegal, as well as in Brussels and Paris. The core goal of this project is to support the conflict sensitivity of local and extra-regional actors who intervene in these conflicts by comparatively assessing the respective historical, local and transnational influences on ‘jihadist’ groups and those that resist them.