Transnationally entangled (in)securities: The UAE, Turkey, and the Saharan political economy of danger

Abstract

Contemporary security interventions in Africa are characterized by an increasing pluralization of external actors, bringing with them new security rationalities, practices, and technologies, sometimes with profound influences on local security dynamics. While studies have focused empirically on East and South Africa, this article explores the roles of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey in the Sahel region of West Africa. To make sense of their engagement, we develop the notion of ‘transnational security entanglements’ by bringing the literature on (in)security assemblages into productive dialogue with scholarship on transnational entanglements in the fields of global history and law. Both literatures depart from relational ontologies, eschew methodological nationalism, and emphasize the interplay between the human and the non-human in the making of the social world. At the same time, we argue, the focus on entanglements adds a specific analytic of South–South connections and transregional circulations to extant scholarship on (in)security assemblages. To illustrate the importance of these transregional connections beyond the North Atlantic, we draw on interviews and media reports about the myriad ways in which connections between the UAE and Turkey with various actors in the Sahel shape current transformations of political orders in the region.