Community Policing and the Engagement of Pastoral Terrorism in West Africa

Abstract

Within a changing global consciousness for international guardianship of the targets of terrorism, this article explores the broad narratives, strengths, and limitations of adopting community policing for the control of herdsmen terrorism in West Africa. It follows the search by social engineering and criminal justice practitioners for a relational and experiential agent for social change against destructive terrorist tendencies and its eroding influence on the sensibilities of human civilization. The article frames an approach for creating a social policing environment in rural and poor communities along pastoral transhumance routes in West and Central Africa. The mass murder of indigenous communities by the migratory and transborder terror groups in this region is a crime against humanity. The adoption of the concept of “connected communities” is suggested to create a multilayered and all-involving intelligence community policing shield in individual communities under siege of the pastoralists.