Mirco Göpfert

Security in Niamey: an anthropological perspective on policing and an act of terrorism in Niger

The abduction of two Frenchmen in January 2011 in Niameys supposedly most secure neighbourhood has led many to question the functioning of the citys security apparatus. This paper analyses Niameys security landscape, initially from an historical and then from a spatial perspective. It argues that for a comprehensive analysis of security, we must first decentre our perspective on security construction, and thus take informal non-organised modes of policing just as seriously as policing by state and vigilante organisations; and second, take into account the inseparability of sociality and security, a fragile balance of trust and acceptable risk. In conclusion I argue that this focus may be one way of comprehending the kidnapping: how was it possible and what were its implications for Niameys security landscape?

Police violence in West Africa : Perpetrators' and ethnographers' dilemmas

This article explores the use of violence by police officers and gendarmes in Ghana and Niger. We analyse how popular discourses, legal and organizational conditions frame the police use of violence. Acts of violence by police are situated in this inconsistent framework and can be seen as legal and appropriate, despicable and brutal, or as useful and morally legitimate. Thus, every time the police use violence, they face a major dilemma: legally and morally justified violence can be a source of long-term legitimacy; but because of multiple possible readings of a certain situation (according to different, conflicting moral and legal discourses), the very same action has potentially delegitimizing effects. Our own position as participant observers made us aware of these contradictions because, as researchers, we were confronted with a similar dilemma.

Repairing the law: The search for justice in the Nigerien gendarmerie

Sometimes it just seems wrong (or too much work) to enforce the law à la lettre. Then police officers may either turn a blind eye to particular situations or give you a warning instead of a ticket. The gendarmes in Niger do that as well, and they call this in Hausa ‘gyara’, meaning ‘repair’. Taking seriously the gendarmes’ perspective, their search for justice, as well as this notion of repair, I propose a little anthropological twist: it is not the gendarmes’ application of the law that is deficient, but the law itself is. In their search for justice, the gendarmes in Niger repaired a law that they deemed inappropriate for policing the life worlds of the people they were confronted with.