Description
The withdrawal of the French military operation Barkhane from Mali in 2022 was driven by strong anti-French sentiments in the Sahel. France’s military interventions in the Sahel have sparked significant debates and scrutiny within the discipline, in particular looking at the regional response to armed conflict, organized crimes, and terrorism in conjunction with African partners (FCG5S). However the underlying colonialities that shape such operations, in particular the construction of the ‘outside’ space(s) and the everyday-militarisation remain overlooked. Of significance, at a micro-level, France’s interventions and counterterrorism strategies in the Sahel operated and translated into the everyday and continuous militarisation of space(s). By scrutinising historical and contemporary contexts around military powers and interventions in space(s), the paper explores the intricate linkages between France’s colonial past, neo-colonial structures, colonial legacies and the present-day with Barkhane and Serval military interventions. Conceptualising the ‘coloniality of space’ following a decolonial approach, the paper argues for a rethinking and deconstruction of France’s military interventions. The concepts of colonial continuities and patterns of continuities have been largely under-explored vis-à-vis France’s intervention in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger and Mauritania (Chafer et al., 2020) as a denial. It questions, therefore, how space(s) are (re)produced and (re)constructed by the French counterterrorism strategy to build the ‘Françafrique’ and the quadrillage de l’espace. The paper critically examine the role of France in the Sahel, with a specific emphasis on unveiling colonialities of power and space(s) questioning the vernacular military interventions and French military involvement in a complex security challenges zone
