Conceptualizing the Mobility of Space through the Malian Conflict

The ongoing Malian conflict has sparked renewed media and academic interest in the Sahel. This paper shows how the various actors involved in the conflict, including nation-states, Tuareg rebels, and Islamist terrorists have adopted mo- bile strategies, which are not effectively explained using traditional geopolitical analysis. Combining a long-term geographical analysis of the Sahelo-Saharan space and a social network analysis of the main actors involved in the conflict, our objective is to develop an alternative methodological approach based pri- marily on movement. This mobile space approach, we argue, is better suited to grasping the complexity of contemporary conflicts in the Sahel-Sahara than the traditional approach based on territories.