SECURITY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Since the late 1980s, Niger has experienced significant political changes, beginning with the crumbling of the military-controlled one-party system and the downfall of President Seyni Kountché. Under the pressure of structural adjustment programmes, Kountché's successor, Ali Saïbou, paved the way for democratisation and cut down on social services, student bursaries, and spending on equipment for public services, in order to balance the national budget (Gazibo Reference Gazibo2005: 75; Gervais Reference Gervais1995: 33; Graybeal & Picard Reference Graybeal and Picard1991: 298). Civil servants, teachers, students and trades unions, who had been particularly affected by these cuts, organised and dominated proceedings at the National Conference held in 1991, the key moment in the country's democratisation. They managed to mobilise and maintain opposition to negotiations with the International Monetary Fund until 1994, so that Niger was more or less cut off from external financial flows (Gazibo Reference Gazibo2005: 79; Gervais Reference Gervais1995: 37–9). In addition, it suffered from high inflation and from the fall in demand for uranium, the country's main raw material export, particularly after Chernobyl and the end of the Cold War (Gazibo Reference Gazibo2005: 82; Gervais Reference Gervais1995: 40; Graybeal & Picard Reference Graybeal and Picard1991: 294).

This was the context in which a number of changes in the security setting took place. Most importantly, the disintegration of Kountché's military regime, hand in hand with internal financial bankruptcy, made Ali Saïbou, who was obliged to balance the national budget, cut down on police and military expenses. As a result, Kountché's powerful secret police (La Coordination) was suppressed, police patrols and raids that had previously evacuated homeless labourers and beggars from the cities to their home villages were largely trimmed back, as were road blocks throughout the country (Gilliard & Pédenon Reference Gilliard and Pédenon1996: 53; Idrissa Reference Idrissa and Idrissa2008: 177). In addition, after long years of military rule, the absence of pluralist expression and the citizens’ diffuse fear vis-à-vis ‘un État extrêmement policier [an extremely policed state]’ (Idrissa Reference Idrissa and Idrissa2008: 199), the police were largely discredited and kept a low profile, especially following the National Conference in 1991 (Lund Reference Lund2001: 859–60). Whether due to institutional changes, budgetary cut-backs, or the low-profile of police, the period of democratic transition resulted in the retreat of the police state. One consequence was an apparent rise in petty crime, especially in the rapidly growing urban centres such as Niamey, Zinder and Maradi (see Motcho Reference Motcho2004).Footnote ²

The decreasing intensity of the police state and the rise in crime led to the emergence of several new actors, groups and institutions active in the security setting. The first newcomer was a private security enterprise, GED Services (Gardiennage, Entretien, Désinsectisation), founded in 1988, which was followed by many more. Today more than forty security enterprises exist in Niger, the great majority active in Niamey. GED Services was founded by an ex-police officer, employing mostly ex-police and ex-military personnel. Currently, the organisation employs 2,000 security agents, 1,600 in Niamey alone (Issifi Alzouma 2008 int.; Tahirou Issaka 2008 int.). Security agents are uniformed and equipped with truncheons, pepper spray, boots, knives and walkie-talkies, depending on the client's demands and willingness to pay. Security companies are primarily contracted by NGOs or private enterprises, and only seldom by private households, who usually employ non-contracted watchmen. In order to operate they need licences issued by several ministries (Commerce; Civil Service and Labour; Interior), and to ensure that the police check the criminal records of all potential security agents; their bosses remain in close contact with old acquaintances in the state security apparatus, which helps them, amongst others, to obtain these licences (Boubacar Gandah 2008 int.). They often contract state security personnel outside Niamey to work for them as regional supervisors of the firm's security agents (Gendarme A 2009 int.).

The second group of actors entering the scene are the yan banga, who were first formed in the 1950s in northern Nigeria as organised political party supporters or thugs who protected their politician from the thugs of the rival party, and terrorised the opponent and his supporters (Casey Reference Casey, Pratten and Sen2007: 110; Last Reference Last2008: 55). This is where they got their name, yan banga being a Hausa adoption of the English word ‘vanguards’ (Ya'u Reference Ya'u and Jega2000: 170). In the 1990s, the yan banga were reinvented in Niger, particularly Nigérien Hausaland close to the Nigerian border. The rise in petty crime after the National Conference of 1991 led taxi and lorry owners and other businessmen in Maradi and Zinder to take security into their own hands. They invited some yan banga leaders from northern Nigeria to help them form a local police force. Neither the departmental préfet (prefect) nor the police commissioner gave them written authorisation, though the police commissioner furnished them with torch lights and handcuffs, and merchants provided them with uniforms. These yan banga were mainly young unemployed men, paid with contributions from merchants in the market places and inhabitants of the housing areas they patrolled. They would beat up, humiliate and sometimes kill alleged thieves, which would be ignored by the police (Lund Reference Lund2001: 859–62; Tidjani Alou Reference Tidjani Alou and Idrissa2001: 121). At least in the beginning, the population was largely satisfied with the efficiency of the yan banga. A Zinderois told me that before the arrival of the yan banga there were so many thieves and gangs, people hardly dared sending a child to the market to buy groceries. Usually he would come home without the groceries, without the money, and often with bruises. ‘Mais les yan banga, ils ont mis de l'ordre [But the yan banga instilled order]’ (Gendarme B 2010 int.). In Niamey, the installation of yan banga groups took off in a different manner. They were either created by the chefs de quartier (neighbourhood chiefs) or by a group of initially unorganised young, mostly unemployed men.

The third newcomer on the security scene of Niamey is a movement publicly known as fada. Fada is a Hausa word originally designating a chief's council chamber. Today, the term is applied to any gathering of young men on the street, usually preparing tea, sometimes rice with beans, listening to music and chatting until late at night. Under Kountché's military regime, which was characterised by strict military police patrols in nocturnal Niamey, it was, according to my interlocutors, virtually impossible to sit and chat on the street at night in front of one's house or compound. The place where the youth were to gather was provided by the regime itself. From the late 1970s onwards, Kountché created a tightly woven net of youth centres in the whole of the country, the so-called Samariya.Footnote ³ In the aftermath of developments in the late 1980s and the early 1990s noted above, the de facto curfew after 11 p.m. was lifted and the youth centres were no longer maintained (Olivier de Sardan Reference Olivier de Sardan2011: 41). Moreover, since the economic crisis led to a gradual reduction of jobs in the civil service and difficulties in the private sector, combined with the rapid increase in the urban population, there was and still is a huge number of unemployed youth who, as a Nigérien friend of mine put it, ‘don't have to get up in the morning’.Footnote ⁴ To summarise: today, the streets of nocturnal Niamey are dominated by groups of young men, chatting and preparing tea, in the whole city until about midnight, and in the old neighbourhoods all night long.Footnote ⁵ In the oldest, more popular, neighbourhoods in the centre of Niamey, the density of the fada is at its highest and they play an important role in the maintenance of order in their neighbourhood.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the overall state security establishment in Niger changed significantly. Niger was counted among the ‘frontline states’ in the global war on terrorism (GWOT), together with Chad, Mali and Mauritania (Davis Reference Davis and Davis2007: 1), because they were said to have ‘what it takes to become a terrorist breeding ground’ (Palmer Reference Palmer and Davis2007: 103).Footnote ⁶ From 2002 onwards, Nigérien military and paramilitary forces were targeted by foreign initiatives such as the American-led Pan-Sahel Initiative, which in 2005 turned into the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, mounting joint military operations under US command, financial aid and training from US Special Forces (Ellis Reference Ellis2004: 459).Footnote ⁷ The result in Niger was an increased militarisation with a remarkable rise in military (from 4,000 to 10,000) and paramilitary (from 2,000 to 4,000) personnel until 2006 (Keenan Reference Keenan2006b: 281); the rise still continues with annual recruitments of army soldiers, national guards (until 2010: Forces Nationales d'Intervention et de Sécurité, FNIS), gendarmes and police of about 1,000 elements each. Since 2009, France has taken over the leading security role in the region, particularly in Niger where they aim to secure their country's economic interests in the form of the uranium exploitation in the north of the country, as French diplomats told me (see also Keenan Reference Keenan2009a: 17); when I talked to them in 2009 and 2010, they also seemed to have taken over the GWOT rhetoric, terming the Sahara a ‘second Afghanistan’. Nigérien authorities too adopted this anti-terrorism rhetoric, as Keenan (Reference Keenan2007: 46–7) argues, in order to advance national interests such as strengthening their security establishments (see also Bayart Reference Bayart2010a: 4). Most efforts focus on the training and equipment of military and paramilitary units, and the patrolling of Niamey's streets has also significantly intensified.

MAPPING SECURITY: COLLECTIVE MODES OF PRODUCING ORDER IN NIAMEY

In this section, I adopt a broad perspective that permits an overview of the security landscape of Niamey. I distinguish four different ideal-type spaces: mythical spaces of evil or disorder; supposedly well-secured neighbourhoods policed by state security forces and private security companies; spaces where yan banga act as the main security providers; and spaces policed by fada, non-organised groups of young men.Footnote ⁸

STATE, SECURITY, SOCIALITY

There has been much discussion in the social and political sciences about the role of the state in the provision of public goods in general and security in particular. A recurrent issue is the state-failure thesis, according to which alternative policing actors fill a security gap created by dysfunctional or absent state police organisations (Baker Reference Baker2002: 30, Reference Baker2006: 56; Harnischfeger Reference Harnischfeger2003: 24; Lock Reference Lock1998: 143; Pérouse de Montclos Reference Pérouse de Montclos2008: 20). On pragmatic grounds this may be persuasive, but it disregards the complex relations between state and alternative modes of policing. I agree with authors who suggest that instead of labelling these processes in negative terms as a retreat, failure or disruption of the state, social scientists should rather conceptualise it as a profound reconception and reconfiguration of the nature of the state (Bayart Reference Bayart2010b: 8; Comaroff & Comaroff Reference Comaroff, Comaroff and Tyler2008: 216; Hibou Reference Hibou1999: 6; Singh Reference Singh2008: 14), or at least counterpoint and complement the police-failure thesis with thick empirical research (Pratten Reference Pratten, Pratten and Sen2007: 178). An intriguing analysis is presented by Olivier de Sardan (Reference Olivier de Sardan2011: 32), who argues that the delivery of public goods such as security is (and has probably always been) the result of complex configurations involving multiple state and non-state actors and institutions.

As demonstrated above, in Niger neither private security enterprises nor the yan banga are beyond state control. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in the social science literature: non-state modes of policing such as these practiced by vigilante organisations or private security enterprises are often tightly intertwined with ideas and structures of the state. Buur (Reference Buur2006: 750) for example shows how vigilante organisations in South Africa draw on the state's procedural and symbolic forms; Ruteere and Pommerolle (Reference Ruteere and Pommerolle2003: 603) argue that it is often close to impossible to draw a clear line between state policing and vigilantism in South Africa and Kenya; Harnischfeger (Reference Harnischfeger2003: 39) and Meagher (Reference Meagher2007: 100) highlight the possibility of vigilante organisations being hijacked by state authorities in Nigeria (see also Adamu Reference Adamu2008), as did Lund (Reference Lund2001: 861) with regard to the yan banga in Zinder; Fleischer (Reference Fleischer2000) and Kyed (Reference Kyed, Pratten and Sen2007) show how the state outsourced policing by domesticating non-state vigilantes and thus turning them into state vigilantes in Tanzania and Mozambique; Dupont (Reference Dupont2006: 181), as well as Shearing and Stenning (Reference Shearing and Stenning1983: 502–3), state that even in Western countries the production of security is dependent on a complex functioning of networks embracing state and non-state security agencies. In short, it has fortunately become common in social science to take into account the ‘twilight character’ (Lund Reference Lund2006: 673) of policing organisations.

It is common to all accounts stated above that they focus on more or less formally organised groups exercising police functions such as state police, private security firms and vigilante groups. With the exception of mob justice (e.g. Baker Reference Baker2005: 35–6, 2006: 69–71), little attention has been devoted to informal policing by the public as described by Shapland and Vagg (Reference Shapland and Vagg1988) and Jensen (Reference Jensen, Pratten and Sen2007). The focus on organised policing implies the misguided assumption that organisations produce security of a more stable and reliable kind than unorganised citizens do (Shapland & Vagg Reference Shapland and Vagg1988: 133). It therefore disregards what, for example, the fada do.

If we focus on the actual functioning of different modes of creating order in public space by both organised and non-organised groups of actors, we gain some insight into what security on a local scale is all about (Goldstein Reference Goldstein2010: 488). As Pratten (Reference Pratten2006: 711) argues, security, or more precisely the construction of order, is first and foremost about the definition of boundaries and the ‘protection and care of the community encompassed within these boundaries, and it involves maintaining surveillance and taking action against threats to this community’ – it is about sociality (Pratten Reference Pratten2008: 11).

Police, private security agents, yan banga and fada are all engaged in a practice of filtering out (see Khayat Reference Khayat2002: 288) what they perceive as a potential threat to the neighbourhood they protect – to their community. Police make sure that poor city dwellers don't linger in Niamey's rich neighbourhoods; both yan banga and fada control access and circulation in their respective neighbourhoods. The police, mostly not working in their own residential area, have rather pragmatic aims, namely to obtain some extra money from those they intercept.Footnote ¹⁶ The yan banga mostly have a clear sense of community because they police their own neighbourhood; they are the children of the community. And yet, there is a clear boundary between yan banga – as an organised group with fixed lists of participants and professional cards, which demands contributions from the neighbourhood dwellers – and other members of the community. A boundary always carries with it room for conflict. The community may change because of members moving away and richer people moving in, as in Recasement when it lost its peripheral character; the expectations of yan banga may differ from the expectations of the community up to the point where the yan banga distance themselves from the community in such a way that they themselves become thieves and burglars as in Poudrière.

The fada's case is fundamentally different. The fada I got to know in Lacouroussou and Dar es Salaam were neither organised nor regarded as an organisation. There are no lists of attendance; membership is floating; there are no artefacts designating membership; no fees are paid by residents. There is no formal boundary between the fada and the community; the fada are the community. And as actors being constantly present in public space they are intimately involved in the definition of social order in their neighbourhood (Shapland & Vagg Reference Shapland and Vagg1987: 61). Apart from the degree of organisation, one major difference between police, yan banga and fada is the extent to which they are rooted in the community they protect. It is thus not surprising that the fada are often described as an extremely efficient means of maintaining order: it becomes apparent that security is inseparable from sociality.

This seems to be true not only from the perspective of those engaged in policing, but also from the perspective of those subject to policing. Sometimes I and Ibrahim, a seventeen-year-old youth, took one-hour walks through Niamey. We would leave the compound of LASDEL (Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherches sur les Dynamiques Socials et le Développement Local), the research establishment where I had an office and where his father was employed as a night watchman. It was too late for me to catch a taxi, so I was heading home; Ibrahim was going to visit friends in my neighbourhood. I was amazed by his reluctance to take the tarred road which led almost straight to where we were heading. He preferred to zigzag the narrow and sandy paths right through residential areas (which I found much more exhausting because of the sand). His argument was this: we would only have to cross two large avenues, which meant that we limited the risk of confronting police patrols. A friend of his had already been caught once and since he didn't carry papers with him, he had to spend the night at the police station – an experience he was not keen on repeating. On our route through residential areas, Ibrahim greeted almost all the fada alongside our path. Some responded and wished us a good walk, some invited us to sit and have a glass of tea with them. Probably that is why this thirty-minute path turned into a one-hour walk. Half of the time Ibrahim was concerned with socialising. When I asked him how he knew all those guys sitting in the streets, he responded that he had been walking this route for more than two years, ever since he had been visiting his friends in the quarter where I lived.

For Ibrahim, security is clearly about sociality – a ‘balance of trust and acceptable risk’ (Ericson Reference Ericson1994: 170). Ibrahim is more than merely traversing a given terrain; rather, he is responding to constellations which he cannot manipulate – like the police patrols on the main streets – and creating a terrain of familiarity, by always taking the same route and socialising with the youth and the watchmen on his path. Thereby, if we follow Niklas Luhmann's (Reference Luhmann, Hartmann and Offe2001) terminology, Ibrahim lays the groundwork for confidence (Zuversicht) and trust (Vertrauen), two basic modes of self-assurance, which are pre-conditions for dealing with dangers and risks. By composing a landscape of familiarity, and thus of sociality, he reduces the danger of being caught by the police or being attacked by villains in an unfamiliar and anonymous environment, and thus translates danger into an acceptable risk. Ibrahim is aware of the inseparability of security and sociality and thus creatively keeps trust and acceptable risk balanced.

CONCLUSION: AN ACT OF TERRORISM IN NIAMEY

For a comprehensive analysis of security, we must first decentre our perspective on security construction and thus take non-state modes of policing just as seriously as policing by state police organisations. Second, we must recognise the importance of non-organised modes of policing, like those represented by the fada. State or non-state, organised or non-organised, these institutions, groups and actors should be explored as equal parts in a complex field of security delivery. One way to do so is, I suggest, to acknowledge the inseparability of security and sociality, the fragile balance of trust and acceptable risk.

This is also a way of comprehending acts of terrorism such as the abduction of the two Frenchmen in Niamey. How was the abduction possible? Niamey's security landscape is a complex field consisting of multiple forms of state and non-state everyday policing. Each form of policing targets a specific form of crime or transgression, such as intrusion into one's community in the case of the yan banga and fada, and intrusion into the private property guarded by a watchman. They are not concerned with the form of transgression which occurred in Le Toulousain, the restaurant where the two Frenchmen were kidnapped. The ones who should be, namely state police, were ostensibly unable to effectively target and prevent this transgression. One obvious reason may be the lack of rigour at the police control barrier at the outskirts of Niamey, another the lack of communicative efficiency, as was highlighted by gendarmes whom I talked to after the abduction. These are valid points. Focusing on Niamey's security landscape reveals a much more trivial, yet equally valid, point: the kidnappers were driving white off-road vehicles, a type of car usually used by NGO employees or diplomatic personnel and thus permanently visible in the Plateau. This is why they did not raise the suspicion of state security agents and were consequently not filtered out. The kidnappers, through their appearance, blended into the security landscape. Furthermore, even if alternative policing actors like watchmen and fada, who are much more numerous and closer to the ground than the police, were noticing that an abduction was about to happen, state police organisations could not count on their vigilance and support – simply because ‘there is no global framework overarching the various forms of local co-delivery, no higher instance of coordination’ (Olivier de Sardan Reference Olivier de Sardan2011: 38).

The implications of this kidnapping were twofold. For Western expatriates it was a complete shock. ‘Rien ne sera plus comme avant [Nothing will be as it was before]’, wrote the online edition of the French newspaper Le Monde (12.1.2011), citing French expatriates in Niamey. They felt that the abduction ‘marked a turning point in the mind, something collapsed … Today, it can happen again because it has just happened once.’ France withdrew the vast majority of its development workers from Niger; expatriates from other nationalities were urged not to walk or circulate in public spaces (also in the Plateau) after 8 p.m. and were asked to be at their residence by 10 p.m. at the latest, employees of the German Development Service told me. Nigérien city dwellers experienced different consequences. Since the abduction of the two Frenchmen, state police patrols have been significantly reinforced in the Plateau and other parts of Niamey, and thus so has the risk of being caught by police. For both expatriates and Nigeriéns, the perception of Niamey's security topography, and thus their circulation habits, have considerably changed. The balance of trust and acceptable risk was fundamentally shaken.

Now what constitutes the act of terrorism? If we agree with Baudrillard, the act of terrorism is always one of symbolic violence (2002: 29–30), one that goes beyond the aims and intentions of the terrorists themselves (Butler Reference Butler and Smith2010: 214). It is where myth and reality intertwine (Sluka Reference Sluka2002: 23) in a ‘dynamics of form and formlessness’ (Zulaika & Douglass Reference Zulaika and Douglass1996: 150). On the surface, the kidnappers physically abducted two Frenchmen in order to put pressure on France to withdraw from Afghanistan. Beyond that, they brought mythical places of evil right into the supposedly best-secured diplomatic neighbourhood. They fundamentally shook Niamey's security topography. The landscape has partially lost its form. This, not the abduction as such, was a true act of terrorism. Whether this is only a temporary trembling of Niamey's security topography or has left a permanent imprint on it needs to be subject of further scrutiny.