Trans-Saharan Challenges: Smuggling, Terrorism, and the Struggle for a State (Part 1)

A while back I had to write a term paper for one of my history classes. I really wanted to do a cross-historical comparison between the Trans-Saharan trade routes of the past and the modern smuggling routes used by drug traffickers and terrorists. One of the limitations of academia (or strength depending on your perspective) is that there is this strange gap where political science, history, and journalism do not quite merry up with each other.

Journalism doesn’t care about history very much. Political Science often ignores historical precedents and anecdotal evidence on the ground, and history is by its nature going to be 20 years or more behind the power curve because someone has to write white papers and PhD dissertations before the information can be cited as a source.