The paper explores forms of production, engagement, and subversion of space and territoriality in the Sahel. It examines the ways in which the Tuareg have particularized space in the pursuit of self-governance through a review of the various articulations of the ‘territorial’ in the Tuareg rebellions of the 1960s and 1990s as well as the recent attempt to institute the Tuareg independent state of Azawad in 2012.

Amy Niang is Associate Professor in International Relations at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco. She is the author of The Postcolonial African State in Transition: Stateness and Modes of Sovereignty (2018), the co-editor (with Baz Lecocq) of Identités sahéliennes en temps de crise: histoires, enjeux et perspectives (2019) and of Researching Peacebuilding in Africa: Reflections on Theory, Fieldwork and Context (with Ismail Rashid, 2020).