The rise of Islamist violence in North and West Africa in recent years has been the focus of intense international attention, not to mention the cause of enormous human suffering and political instability in the region. Stephen Harmon's book provides a detailed account of the historical and contemporary political, social and economic factors which have contributed to this phenomenon in Mali, with reference to dynamics in the wider region. The book usefully illuminates the inter-connectedness of the broad Sahara–Sahel zone, detailing overlapping geo-political, social, political, economic and ethnic linkages which illustrate the degree to which conflicts in this region are related, while not obscuring the local dynamics and roles of particular groups and elites in shaping the nature and patterns of violent conflict.

Chapters 1 and 2 outline the history of colonisation, state building and political Islam in Mali and Algeria, narrating a process of growing resentment among populations of national regimes, and defined either in terms of regional specificity (such as the Tuareg claims on Northern Mali) or religious adherence (as was increasingly the case in Algeria). Chapter 3 traces the development of the state in post-democracy Mali, with particular emphasis on the corrosive role of entrenched corruption in paving the way for disillusionment with the political process. The same section discusses attempts to resolve conflict in the north of the country through successive agreements and pacts. Chapter 4 provides a brief overview of the Islamist violence in Nigeria; and Chapter 5 considers US security activity in the Sahara–Sahel zone; before the final chapters return to the Malian insurgency and post-insurgency period in further detail.

Throughout the book, the author continually highlights the contradictory nature of the appearance of effective, resilient democracy in Mali, and its underlying lack of legitimacy: in Harmon's words, ‘the showcase proves hollow’ (p. 76). Coupled with the spread of trans-national criminal networks trading in ‘extreme contraband’ (p. 145) these weaknesses fuelled successive waves of conflict and unrest, and served to render military approaches by external actors ‘to what are often political, economic, and social problems' ineffective (p. 141).

Arguably, however, this link may only be apparent in retrospect. Harmon suggests these ‘darker signs … at first either escaped the scrutiny of international observers or were dismissed or minimized by them’ (p. 109). However, as the author notes briefly in conclusion (p. 229), the conditions described – including disillusionment with the political process, widespread corruption, and even sporadic bouts of violence – are not unique to Mali. Moreover, these conditions are not always at odds with the maintenance of relative stability, if not peace. The question of whether conditions in Mali might have been sufficient to anticipate subsequent violence, or instead coalesced in an unpredictable perfect storm, remains. Further attention to this question would be welcome, as observers consider the potential spread of this same form of violence to neighbouring countries in the region. Nevertheless, the process of tracing the precursors and pre-conditions of the 2012–2013 insurgency remains a useful counter-balance to approaches which tend to view the events of that period, and their Islamist components in particular, in historical isolation, rather than intricately connected to long-standing political, historical, social and economic processes in Mali and the wider region.

The book's broad scope, while one of its strengths, is also a potential limitation. The positioning of Nigeria alongside the more clearly interlinked cases of Algeria and Mali is at times an uncomfortable fit – the author himself describes it as ‘the outlier’ of the meta-region (p. 111) – and does not always benefit from the same detail or expertise clearly evident in the rest of the volume. The book's most valuable contribution is in balancing a survey of the history and roots of present violence in Mali, with detailed insights from contemporary sources. The comprehensive research on Mali, accessible writing style, and linking of conclusions to strategic and policy implications in the wider region make the book suitable for both specialist and more general readers alike.