Will Sahel-Maghreb instability eclipse Western Sahara?
In their latest book chapter, “Beyond Western Sahara, the Sahel-Maghreb Axis looms large” Senior Researcher at DIIS, Rasmus Alenius Boserup, and Research Director at Sciences PO (Paris), Luis Martinez, analyze the recent transformation of regional security in the Maghreb and in the Sahel. In the chapter they argue that the collapse of Gaddafi’s Libya in 2011 combined with the subsequent refusal of Algeria to act as a regional hegemon in the Sahel has produced a new conjuncture of intensified security interdependence between the Sahel and the Maghreb. According to Boserup and Martinez this intensified security interdependence has eclipsed the Western Sahara conflict as the most important regional security dynamic capable of shaping present domestic and regional security politics in the two regions.
The book chapter is published in Ojeda-Garcia et al (eds): “Global, Regional and Local Dimensions of Western Sahara’s Protracted Decolonization” (Palgrave, 2017).
During 2017, Boserup and Martinez co-direct the DIIS-hosted Sahel-Maghreb Research Platform which is funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
