Browse

While Buddhists all over the world were celebrating 2,500 years of Gautama Buddha’s passing in 1956, Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was called then) was sowing the seeds of an ethnic conflict. To begin with, language became the source of conflict between the Sinhalese majority and the minority Tamils, until violence itself became the language of discourse between the two ethnic groups. After the Fall shows how Sri Lanka’s post-independence exercise in nation formation was beset with using language domination as an instrument of partisan power and racial memories as the way to define nationhood. That resulted in an escalating conflict through half a century of ethnic violence—giving rise to one of the world’s most fearsome militant movements and the cult of the suicide bomber. It analyzes how Eelam war four (2006–9), which came like a tornado crashing through all the red-lines of a war (even a guerrilla war), succeeded—and at what cost and consequences. The book argues how the ‘success’ of this war, in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed, was the product of a unique combination of domestic and international factors. And why it cannot be replicated elsewhere as an example of fighting the ‘war against terror’.

On 16 June 2011, three days before his sixtieth birthday, Ayman al-Zawahiri was declared the new leader of Al-Qaeda, replacing the fallen Osama bin Laden. The veteran Egyptian jihadist had little of his predecessor's charisma and enjoyed much less popularity, respect and celebrity. Yet, as scores of jihadi commanders from different organizations have succumbed to their enemies' missiles, bombs and bullets, Zawahiri has soldiered on. His tenure as Al-Qaeda's leader has been marked by some of its darkest and most challenging moments, which have threatened the viability and future of Al-Qaeda's central leadership. The gravest such development has been the emergence of Islamic State as a separate and rival jihadist entity. The best way to gauge Zawahiri's response to these threats is by studying the official statements and public communiqués that he has issued since taking the reins. This book provides the reader with professional translations of Zawahiri's key statements during his first five years as leader of Al-Qaeda. These official communications are introduced and contextualized to provide the reader with a comprehensive sourcebook, outlining the Al-Qaeda leadership's stance on the challenges to its existence since the death of bin Laden.

Paramilitary or irregular units have been involved in practically every case of identity-based mass violence in the modern world, but detailed analysis of these dynamics is rare. Exploring the case of former Yugoslavia, Kate Ferguson exposes the relationships between paramilitaries, state commands, local communities, and organised crime present in modern mass atrocities, from Rwanda and Darfur to Syria and Myanmar. Visible paramilitary participation masks the continued dominance of the state in violent crises. Political elites benefit from using unconventional forces to fulfil ambitions that violate international law—and international policy responses are hindered when responsibility for violence is ambiguous. Ferguson’s inquiry into these overlooked dynamics of mass violence unveils substantial loopholes in current atrocity prevention architecture.

This collection seeks to advance our understanding of intra-Islamic identity conflict during a period of upheaval in the Middle East. Instead of treating distinctions between and within Sunni and Shia Islam as primordial and immutable, it examines how political economy, geopolitics, domestic governance, social media, non- and sub-state groups, and clerical elites have affected the transformation and diffusion of sectarian identities. Particular attention is paid to how conflicts over distribution of political and economic power have taken on a sectarian quality, and how a variety of actors have instrumentalized sectarianism. The volume, covering Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Iran, and Egypt, includes contributors from a broad array of disciplines including political science, history, sociology, and Islamic studies. Beyond Sunni and Shia draws on extensive fieldwork and primary sources to offer insights that are empirically rich and theoretically grounded, but also accessible for policy audiences and the informed public.

Since it erupted onto the world stage in 2009, people have asked, what is Boko Haram, and what does it stand for? Is there a coherent vision or set of beliefs behind it? Despite the growing literature about the group, few if any attempts have been made to answer these questions, even though Boko Haram is but the latest in a long line of millenarian Muslim reform groups to emerge in Northern Nigeria over the last two centuries. The Boko Haram Reader offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group's origins, history, and evolution. Its editors, two Nigerian scholars, reveal how Boko Haram's leaders manipulate Islamic theology for the legitimization, radicalization, indoctrination and dissemination of their ideas across West Africa. Mandatory reading for anyone wishing to grasp the underpinnings of Boko Haram's insurgency, particularly how the group strives to delegitimize its rivals and establish its beliefs as a dominant strand of Islamic thought in West Africa's religious marketplace.

Two decades after the Dayton Peace Agreement came into force, Bosnia is not at war. However, the absence of war is not peace. Bosnia has failed to move on from conflict. Political processes are deadlocked. The country is in a state of political, social and economic paralysis. As the international community has downgraded its presence, conditions have deteriorated, irredentist agendas have resurfaced and the outlook is increasingly negative. War remains a risk because of myriad unresolved issues, zero-sum politics and incompatible positions among rival ethno-national elites. In the face of paralysis, international officials repeat the mantra that there is no alternative to Bosnia’s European path and urge the country’s leaders to see reason, to temper their rhetoric and to carry out internationally approved reforms—to no avail. Despite international reluctance to recognize failure, the day will come when it is impossible to ignore the gravity of the situation. When that day arrives, the international community will have to address the shortcomings of the peace process. This, in turn, will involve opening up the Dayton settlement. Christopher Bennett presents a cautionary political history of Bosnia’s disintegration, war and peace process. He concludes by proposing a paradigm shift aimed at building ethno-national security and making the peace settlement self-sustaining.

What should states do with the bodies of suicide bombers and other jihadists who die while perpetrating terrorist attacks? This original and unsettling book explores the host of ethical and political questions raised by this dilemma, from (non-)legitimization of the "enemy" and their cause to the non-territorial identity of individuals who identified in life with a global community of believers. Because states do not recognize suicide bombers as enemy combatants, governments must decide individually what to do with their remains. Riva Kastoryano offers a window onto this challenging predicament through the responses of the American, Spanish, British and French governments after the Al-Qaeda suicide attacks in New York, Madrid and London, and Islamic State's attacks on Paris in 2015. Interviewing officials, religious and local leaders and jihadists' families, both in their countries of origin and in the target nations, she has traced the terrorists' travel history, discovering unexpected connections between their itineraries and the handling of their burials. This fascinating book reveals how states' approaches to a seemingly practical issue are closely shaped by territory, culture, globalization and identity.

This book examines the disorienting impact on war of the burgeoning connectivity of ideas, people, and things. It argues that the Western perception of warfare has shifted from one of occasional and distant occurrences of well-defined conflicts to a stream of more connected and ill-defined wars and disasters. War in itself has not changed but warfare — “how we fight” — continues to transform. The book focuses on the technological motor of this transformation, of which the putative information age is the latest, aggressive, but not unique phase. The obsessive pursuit by an array of actors in the military and political fields of a “fantasy of war”, seduced by the information technological logics of speed, precision, and absolute victory is the primary source of the diminution of war’s utility. The reality of warfare in the past, today, and over ever-extending horizons is inconclusiveness, uncertainty, and chance.

NATO’s Libya Operation was a first in several ways: the first time the alliance operated in an Arab and African country, the first time Arab partners participated in kinetic missions, the first time it executed a UN mandate designed to protect civilians and the first time the United States were not in the lead. This book is the first one to tell the operation’s story from all sides concerned: spanning the hallways of the United Nations in New York, NATO Headquarters in Brussels and, crucially, the two operational epicenters: the Libyan battlefield, and Joint Force Command Naples, which was in charge of the mission. Weighill and Gaub offer a comprehensive exploration of both the war's progression and the many challenges NATO faced, from its extremely rapid planning and limited understanding of Libya and its forces, to training shortfalls and the absence of post-conflict planning.

Some 250,000 people died in the southern Somalia famine of 2011–12, which also displaced and destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands more. Yet this crisis had been predicted in 2010. The harshest drought in Somalia’s recent history coincided with a global spike in food prices, hitting this arid, import-dependent country hard. The policies of Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamist group that controlled southern Somalia, exacerbated an already difficult situation, barring most humanitarian assistance, while the donors’ counter-terrorism policies criminalized any aid falling into their hands. A major disaster resulted from production and market failures precipitated by the drought and food price crisis, while the famine itself resulted from failure to respond quickly to these events—and was thus largely human-made. This book analyzes the famine: the trade-offs between competing policy priorities that led to it, the collective failure in response, and how those affected by it attempted to protect themselves and their livelihoods. It also examines the humanitarian response, including from actors that had not previously been particularly visible in Somalia—from Turkey, the Middle East, and Islamic charities worldwide.

Although the concept of “state failure” emerged after the Cold War, it gained major prominence after the September 11 attacks with the emerging discourse focusing primarily on the Greater Middle East. This book aims to critically analyse the current definitions and terminology of weak and fragile states, scrutinizing the political implications of the prevailing discourse within the setting of the broader Middle East. It also examines the domestic, regional, and global causes and consequences for the Middle East of the “fragility” of states stretching from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east to Libya in the west. Employing multidisciplinary perspectives, this book studies the causes and implications of conceptual notions of state fragility across the region in relation to areas such as politics and security, economics and natural resources, intra-and inter-state relations, migration and population movements, and the broader regional and global political economies. It shows that not only are several states in the Middle East chronically “weak”, e.g. Lebanon, Yemen, and the Sudan, most others possess inherent structural and institutional features that compromise their capacity, devoid them of legitimacy, and make them prone to weakness.

The Frontlines of Peace tells the stories of the ordinary yet extraordinary individuals and communities that have found effective ways to confront violence. Drawing on twenty years of work in peacebuilding, including in-depth research in twelve conflict zones around the world as well as comparisons with social initiatives in North America and Europe, it shows that peace can grow in the most unlikely circumstances, with the help of the most unlikely heroes. The book opens our eyes to the well-intentioned but systematically flawed peace industry, shedding light on how typical aid interventions have been getting it wrong, and—more importantly—how a few of them have been getting it right. Contrary to what most politicians preach, resolving conflicts doesn’t require billions of dollars in aid or massive international involvement. Real, lasting peace requires giving the power over to ordinary citizens. There have been many successful examples of peacebuilding in the past few years, all involving innovative grassroots initiatives led by local people and at times supported by foreigners, often using methods shunned by the international elite. So, rather than focusing on handshakes between presidents, abstract peace agreements, and endless negotiations between governments and rebel leaders, The Frontlines of Peace details the concrete, everyday actions that make a difference on the ground. The implications are clear: We must radically change our approach if we hope to end violence from war, address conflicts in our communities, and build lasting peace around us—whether we live in Congo, the United States, or elsewhere.

Ethnic and religious identity-markers compete with class and gender as principles shaping the organization and classification of everyday life. But how are an individual's identity-based conflicts transformed and redefined? Identity is a specific form of social capital, hence contexts where multiple identities necessarily come with a hierarchy, with differences, and hence with a certain degree of hostility. It examines the rapid transformation of identity hierarchies affecting Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, a symptom of political fractures, social-economic transformation, and new regimes of subjectification. They focus on the state's role in organizing access to resources, with its institutions often being the main target of demands, rather than competing social groups. Such contexts enable entrepreneurs of collective action to exploit identity differences, which in turn help them to expand the scale of their mobilization and to align local and national conflicts. The authors also examine how identity-based violence may be autonomous in certain contexts, and serve to prime collective action and transform the relations between communities.

Afghanistan’s people have contended with an almost continuous series of foreign interventions in their local affairs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not only have external powers such as British India, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meddled egregiously in local affairs, but so have Afghan governments, including monarchical, Communist, Islamist, and ostensibly democratic ones. While the robust resilience of the Afghan population in the face of external influence is widely recognised, how the local populations have concretely dealt with these interventions and how local politics is structured in Afghanistan still remain somewhat open questions. This book sheds light on this phenomenon as well as illuminating the complexities of local politics in Afghanistan, analysing also how the local social order is disturbed or reinforced by outside intervention. It furthermore advances our understanding of Afghan society by presenting local politics in a way that frees it from the false binary of romanticisation and demonisation. A central theme is understanding how rational objectives play out in local politics and are guided by social factors such as trust, solidarity, reciprocity, and patronage. The book also explores the role jirgas and shuras have played in negotiating between the local and external interventionists.

In almost every military intervention in its history, the US has made cultural mistakes that hindered attainment of its policy goals. From the strategic bombing of Vietnam to the accidental burning of the Koran in Afghanistan, it has blundered around with little consideration of local cultural beliefs and for the long-term effects on the host nation's society. Cultural anthropology -- the so-called "handmaiden of colonialism" -- has historically served as an intellectual bridge between Western powers and local nationals. What light can it shed on the intersection of the US military and foreign societies today? This book tells the story of anthropologists who worked directly for the military, such as Ursula Graham Bower, the only woman to hold a de facto British combat command during WWII. Each faced challenges including the negative outcomes of exporting Western political models and errors of perception. Ranging from the British colonial era in Africa to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Military Anthropology illustrates the conceptual, cultural and practical barriers encountered by military organizations operating in societies vastly different from their own.

Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims have been subject to human rights abuses, been denied citizenship, and most recently, faced ethnic cleansing. Well over half the Rohingya population who use to live in Myanmar have been displaced by violence, with over a million Rohingya refugees now sheltering in Bangladesh. This conflict has become a litmus test for change in Myanmar, a country in transition, and current assessments are far from positive. Whitewashing by the military, and a refusal by Aung San Suu Kyi's government to even use the name 'Rohingya', adds to international skepticism. This book explores this long-running tripartite conflict between the Rohingya, Rakhine and Burman ethnic groups, and offers a new analysis of the complexities of the conflict: the fears and motivations driving it and the competition to control historical representations and collective memory. By exploring these competing narratives in detail and interrogating their historicity, by offering detailed sociopolitical analysis of the conflict dynamics against models of conflict in the literature, and by examining the international dimensions of the conflict, this book offers new insights into what is preventing a peaceful resolution to this intractable conflict.

The “War on Terror” gave rise to stark visions of a Christian West battling a mad mullah from the East over nothing less than the fate of civilization. These baldly Orientalist constructions are only the latest incarnation of an older, deeper relationship between Orientalism and war, one that can be traced as far back as the Greek and Persian wars of antiquity. This volume examines the Orientalist constructs that arise from conflict and military intervention in the non-European world. Rather than simply describing Western representations of the East during times of war, it seeks to place them in motion, looking at the dynamics that ensue when policy is conceived and made in and through Orientalist and colonial discourses. In exploring the fate of Western assumptions of superiority amid war, insights also emerge about how interpretive communities of Orientalists—such as Terrorism experts—shape and inform many of the social and political processes that constitute war. Scholars from a range of disciplines examine these themes across a variety of sites, ranging from French Algeria to Korea to contemporary Afghanistan.

How do strategists decide what they wish to achieve through war, and how they might accomplish it? And why does their understanding of violence regularly turn out to be wrong? In seeking answers, this book draws on the study of psychology to examine strategic behaviour during the Vietnam War. It explores the ways in which cognitive biases distort our sense of our own agency and our decision-making. The Nixon and Johnson administrations both proved susceptible to processes that are familiar to students of modern neuroscience and psychology, but perhaps less appreciated within strategic studies. US strategists in the Vietnam era miscalculated in ways that would surprise rational theorists, but not psychologists: they exaggerated the stakes, embraced risky and overly optimistic solutions, and failed to appreciate the limits of force to shatter the enemy’s resolve. Their concern for reputation led to escalation, based on a flawed conception of what such escalation could achieve.

The atrocities of civil wars present us with many difficult questions. How do seemingly ordinary individuals come to commit such extraordinary acts of cruelty, often against unarmed civilians? Can we ever truly understand such acts of “evil”? Based on a wealth of original interviews with perpetrators of violence in Sierra Leone’s civil war, this book provides a detailed response. Moving beyond the rigid boundaries of political science, the author engages with sociology, psychology and social psychology, to provide a comprehensive picture of the complex individual motives behind seemingly senseless violence in war. Highlighting the inadequacy of current explanations that center on the anarchic nature of brutality, or conversely, its calculated rationality, this book sheds light on the critical but hitherto neglected roles played by the emotions of shame and disgust. Drawing on first-hand accounts of strategies employed by Sierra Leone’s rebel commanders, it documents the manner in which rebel recruits were systematically brutalized and came to perform horrifying acts of cruelty as routine. In so doing, it offers fresh insight into the causes of extreme violence that holds relevance beyond Sierra Leone to the atrocities of contemporary civil wars.

Since 2013, the Middle East has experienced a double trend of chaos and civil war, on the one hand, and the return of authoritarianism, on the other. That convergence has eclipsed the political transitions that occurred in the countries whose regimes were toppled in 2011, as if they were merely footnotes to a narrative that naturally led from an “Arab Spring” to an “Arab Winter”. This volume aims at rehabilitating those transitions, by considering them as expressions of a “revolutionary moment” whose outcome was never pre-determined, but depended on the choices of a large range of actors. It brings together leading scholars of Arab politics to adopt a comparative approach to a few crucial aspects of those transitions: constitutional debates, the question of transitional justice, the evolution of civil-military relations, and the role of specific actors, both domestic and international.