The Saharan city of El-Ayoun, located on the Atlantic coast and the Saguia el-Hamra River, is the traditional hub of the Reguibat tribe and more recently the administrative and political center of the disputed Western Sahara. Founded in 1938 under Spanish colonialism, El-Ayoun has grown tremendously under Moroccan administration since 1975. The demographics of the city have shifted over time as more non-Sahrawi Moroccans have moved into the region hoping to benefit from expansion of commerce and government incentives to initiate enterprise and benefit from the lower cost of utilities. With a total population of over 200,000, Moroccans of Arab and Berber descent now outnumber the indigenous, Hassaniya-speaking population of Sahrawis in El-Ayoun, and usage of the Hassaniya dialect of Arabic has become increasingly marginalized by the rising dominance of Colloquial Moroccan Arabic in public spaces. Tensions between inhabitants remain palpable as an increasing influx of Moroccan settlers from the North disrupts the ambitions of Sahrawi activists who support the Polisario Front and government-in-exile of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in refugee camps based in Algeria. Polisario supporters have staged several key protests in the city over the past decade, and Morocco renders access to the territory difficult for foreigners, especially human rights monitoring groups and journalists. This paper considers the historical development of El-Ayoun from a mobile pastoralist center to a modern North African city and traces the intersection of urban development with the politics of the ongoing Western Sahara territorial dispute. We argue that the Moroccan state has employed policies of urbanism as a strategy to claim Saharan space and enforce systems of administrative control. This political change has indelibly shifted an area known historically for the fluidity of the desert environment and cultural hybridity established through the dynamic interchange of tribal inhabitation, networks of commerce through caravan trading, and mixing of Arab, Berber and sub-Saharan African populations in the region. While El-Ayoun is often held up as a successful example of urban development in Morocco, we interrogate the ways in which the state narrative of integration is challenged by ongoing ethnic and political tensions surrounding the protracted forty-year territorial conflict.

Five years have passed since the 2011 events that profoundly have impacted Libya’s political developments, triggering the demise of the Jamahiriyya and the death of its leader, Mu’ammar Qadhdhafi. Yet, the country remains trapped in a spiral of violence and lawlessness that erupted in 2011.Drawing from an extensive collection of oral histories (more than 60) that were carried out during doctoral dissertation fieldwork, this paper analyses the diverse, and at times opposing, constructions of meaning that Libyans attribute to the events of 2011, ranging from maskhara (bullshit) to thwara (revolution). Inspired by the work of political anthropologists (Hammoudi, 1997; Hertzfeld, 1992; Navaro Yashin, 2002; Portelli, 1981, 1997; Weeden, 1999), the paper offers a multifaceted picture of the ‘revolution’ and challenges the mainstream Western notion of ‘Arab Spring’ in Libya. At the same time, by navigating through those narratives—ranging from conspiracy theories to rejection and hope, the paper also sheds light on ‘fantasies of the good life’ (Berlant, 2011; Povinelli, 2011) that emerged during these extensive interviews. In other words, it unpacks the ways Libyans imagined their country would be before the events in 2011. It provides challenging interpretations among Libyans in relation to what happened during 2011 and how they imagine what could happen, i.e., what they aspire as their country’s political future. These oral histories also offer an important lens for understanding Libyan perceptions of how the NATO military intervention disrupted the existing conditions of power, and they help us to comprehend how the elaboration of both the past and future serves to provide meaning for the present situation in the country. The whole paper relies heavily on an analysis of recurrent collective narratives that blur the lines of rumour, gossip (Stewart & Strathern, 2004), political jokes (Mbembe, 1991; Scott, 1990) and everyday experiences in terms of how Libyans process their recent history (Al-Ali, 2007;; Los, 1995; Olick 1997, 2011).

The rise of the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria has ushered to the forefront the issue of territories governed by militant Islamist (“jihadi”) groups. Informed by a growing conflict studies literature on rebel governance, this paper offers an overview of previous and current “jihadi proto-states”, discusses their characteristics and common features, and explores ways of understanding the logic of their inner workings. Although attempts to form proto-states have been a constant feature of contemporary jihadism, in the post-2011 Middle East, such attempts have multiplied. Apart from Da'esh, whose territorial expansion has been most remarkable, militant jihadi rebels have also seized and controlled territories for protracted periods of time in Yemen, Libya, and northern Mali, in addition to territories in conflict zones outside the Middle East. Each of these proto-states varies significantly, especially with regards to civilian administration in their area of control. However, they share at least four distinct characteristics: they are intensely ideological, internationalist, territorially expansive, and irredentist. They also devote significant resources to effective, if harsh, governance. The paradoxes of jihadi state building are evident in a number of ways. Jihadi ideology negates virtually all aspects of the Westphalian world order, including even the very names of existing states and their boundaries. Lacking international recognition and state support, such proto-states have poor chances of success, and their aggressive behavior vis-à-vis the outside world is seemingly in contradiction with their goal of consolidating territorial control “under Shariatic rule”. Why do jihadis jeopardize their hard-won territories by a highly aggressive policy vis-à-vis the outside world? This paper argues that forming proto-states represents a bid for increased power and influence vis-à-vis rival Islamist groups. By demonstrating a high commitment to ideological purity, jihadi proto-states seek to outbid rivals in the competition for support from external (“global jihadi”) constituencies. The paper is part of the author’s ongoing research project at the University of Oslo on jihadism and rebel governance, based on a vast compilation of primary sources (in Arabic and other languages) collected over the past fifteen years. The significance of studying “jihadi proto-states” from the perspective of rebel governance and conflict studies is beyond doubt, given the unfortunate prominence of this phenomenon in contemporary Middle East. This paper also contributes to the rebel governance literature, whose case studies rarely have been drawn from the Middle East.

Based on fieldwork conducted between November 2012 and July 2013, this paper investigates mechanisms and practices of governing populations in contexts of protracted violent conflict and limited state authority. Focusing on the nascent justice sector in rebel-held areas in northern Syria, the paper presents empirical evidence of bottom-up, community-based initiatives mobilising local community actors independent of both the Syrian regime as well as rebel militias. The paper traces the emergence and eventual failure of the United Judicial Council (UJC), a judicial entity founded in 2012 to “establish justice”, provide “law and order”, and limit vigilante violence and looting as rebel brigades overran regime forces in Aleppo, Iblib and their environs. Empirical date presented in this paper shows that, the UJC, comprising of self-appointed preachers, legal practitioners and local community activists, adopted the codified, Sharia-inspired United Arab Criminal Code and established regularised/standardised court systems and legal procedures in an attempt to govern everyday life in the absence of state authority in rebel-held territories. The paper argues that, in the context of protracted civil conflict, insurgents’ ability to establish effective and durable administrative structures in the Syrian insurgency depends on their ability to mobilise local community actors and, thus, capitalise on social capital, autonomous organisation and networks developed in the pre-insurgency context. The case study presented in this paper also shows that nascent rebel administrations failed to provide a viable alternative to the embattled Syrian state due to (1) their inability to subjugate rebel militias to their authority, (2) encroachments by more organised rebel groups including the Islamic State, (3) regime advances in rebel-held territories, and (3) interventions by international ‘experts’ and organisations (‘track-two actors’).

This paper focuses on the exclusionary practices of nationalism. In particular, it focuses on Iraqi nationalistic practices and policies such as the Simele Massacre of 1933, the Al-Anfal Campaign (1986-1989), and most recently, the driving out and killing of Assyrians and Yazidis by the Islamic State. In this paper, I argue that nationalism is inherently violent and intrinsically exclusionary by defining its nationalist identity against its ‘Others’ who do not share the same interests or values (Chatterjee 1999, Biswas 2002, Chowdhry and Nair 2002, Krishna 2002). The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I analyze the policies and practices of the Ba’ath period that strived to establish a predominately Arab Iraq. Second, I examine the implications of this on the Assyrian indigenous peoples and the exclusion of their nationality from Iraq’s political structure. Through this, Assyrians, similar to other ethnic-religious minorities, must negotiate, relinquish, or resist the nation-building project in order to maintain their identity. In analyzing the violence associated with nationalism, I draw on Postcolonial literature, (Bhabha 1994), (Chatterjee 1993), and (Fanon 1963) to demonstrate how nationalism is embedded within practices that erase other identities, reducing the plurality of a state to one homogenous nationality. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the literature by elaborating on this critique and arguing that nationalism is exclusionary and violent whether it is neoliberal nationalism or Third World nationalism.