On Responsibility for the Security of Others: An Ethnographic Case Study of Civilian Joint Task Force Insurgent Peace in Borno State, North-Eastern Region of Nigeria

The introduction of ‘responsibility to protect’ into Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) (in the Kanuri dialect) has realised a civilian collaborative strategy called the ‘Kato da Gora’ group (in Hausa) or Durza Ka (in the Kanuri dialect). Insurgent peace presents conceptual and political challenges to CJTF’s responsibility in local governance. While scholarly literature and research on responsibility to protect has focused on militarisation, its relationship with local security in the context of CJTF insurgent peace is underexplored. Therefore, the study interrogates that connection critically with the aim to prove that responsibility to protect is obstructing local security. A survey of CJTF policy frameworks highlights the simultaneous emergence of responsibility to protect and clear expressions of local security. The study then draws on fieldwork in Borno State to illustrate how responsibility to protect is displacing local security in the practices and scripts of CJTF’s insurgent peace. Accordingly, the study argues that the politics of responsibility to protect poses impediments to the forms of local security entailed in the insurgent peace strategy. It is at odds with and risks jeopardising the notable local security potential of CJTF’s insurgent peace plan.