Abstract
This study deals with the security situation and counter-terrorism initiatives throughout the Sahara/Sahel region. The core of this analysis will be rough examination of several key aspects of this confict.
We will not only deal with short country case studies, but we are going to have a closer look at all the prominent ethnics involved. We will not discuss theoretical approaches of ethnic classifcation, but rather we will show how important in Saharan context is to be part of a certain group, be it family, clan, tribe (as a main political unit, in French tribu, Arabic 'ašíra), or confederation.
Without the proper knowledge of this division, understanding of conficts in this area is inadequate. As we would like to cover as much area as possible, in-depth analysis of certain incidents or details will not be possible.
This paper also many times is going to deal with controversial, yet highly qualifed views and opinions of British social anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. His insights into some events and key players are invaluable, though practically not taken into account outside of English-speaking countries.
This study will roughly cover an area spanning from Mauritania, through southern Algeria, northern Mali, northern Niger, southern Libya and Chad and mostly will focus on the past fve to ten years.