Liquidation of state in the Sahel region: Towards a Regional Security Approach

The Sahel region has witnessed a formidable upsurge in lethal violence among insurgencies, mercenaries or soldiers of fortune and loose fighting groups, which continue to expand their activities across porous borders. The Sahel region mentioned in this article compose of states in the Saharan belt extended from western coast in Africa up to the Horn of Africa. The ethnic groupings of this region have similarities and a culture of solidarity metastasized through proclamation calls (Alfaza’a (الفزع which characterized by foment chaos of raft fighters. They used the tactics of barrage launch with ferocity of fighting, pillaging, carnage, squat building, or arson.
The article examines the links between the fragility of state and the growing security dynamics of the Sahel with the situation in Sudan as a bridging bridge connected the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region. Furthermore, the interlinked between threats demonstrate the possibility of liquidation of state as a functioning entity and the need for a broader approach to minimize such a possibility from being a reality. This possibility needs to be dealt with in a broader regional collective security as the study of individual security to each state cannot be separated from its neighbours given the geographic proximity and the interweave nature of security threats in the region. The article applies the regional security complex of Barry Buzan and Ole Waever (2003) as a framework to study and analyze the security threats and the dynamics of security challenges in this vast and complicated region.