What can and should we do about warlords in the modern world? This paper from the International Development Department of the University of Birmingham argues that adopting a different mindset is the first step to finding a solution. Warlords are not a new phenomenon. Furthermore, they are primarily responses to instability. They respond to the fraying of state power to the point where the central state begins losing control. Ultimately they should be seen as embryonic governments.
‘Warlord’ has become an ugly, detrimental expression; evoking ideas of brutality, racketeering and terrorism. The modern day warlord has risen in a variety of situations, but has been invariably categorised by these same factors. The rise of ‘grey’ as well as legitimate international trade, the existence of primitive accumulation and the collapse of central authority have all occurred in areas dominated by warlords. Where there is collapse of state control, warlords represent an attempt to re-establish stability. All warlords are to an extent rebuilding patronage networks and the means to enforce contracts.
A realistic analysis of history shows that warlords are in fact embryonic governments. They do not need anarchy; rather they require stability to sustain their economic systems. They gain access to international capital purely because they can provide stability in specific areas. The use of violence is a necessary element of establishing control and enforcing contracts, and therefore maintaining stability, as is the development of patronage systems based on feudal relationships and primitive accumulation.
This has profound implications for international organisations working to establish peace in areas dominated by warlords. Warlords tend to control the economic resources, the arms and the manpower to build quasi-states, certainly at the top of the warlord hierarchy.
- Warlords may represent a basis on which the colonial borders in Africa could be re-examined along more realistic lines such as identity, resources and control.
- The tendency to revert to labels such as ‘tribalism’ and ‘ethnicity’, characterising warlords as being outside formal international relations systems, has led to an unsophisticated discussion of the dynamics of these conflicts and their importance.
- Development practitioners usually see conflict as a disruption in the normal process of ‘development’, viewing it as temporary and a universally bad thing for all involved.
- In a world where several conflicts have been maintained for the benefit of those involved, and where conflict is more the norm than the exception, this analysis finishes in a cul-de-sac.
Warlords force us to re-examine the structure and the nature of states that could provide long-term stability both economically and politically.
- Warlords offer security, rewards and stability (at least in the short term) at a local level, but may not (indeed, historically do not) offer long-term stability beyond the life of the individual warlord.
- The current set of national boundaries, based on colonial settlements and ideas of nation-states, contain states that are invariably bankrupt and frequently corrupt.
- Furthermore, they provide little economic hope for their inhabitants, certainly in Africa.
- Warlords offer a logical alternative way out.
- Whether they are motivated by greed or by grievance, or by both, is irrelevant. For many people living in these areas, there are currently no alternatives.
