The Evolution of the Technologies of Warfare in Guinea-Bissau's Conflict (original) (raw)
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Africa, 2008
This article aims at contributing to our understanding of violence and warfare in contemporary West Africa by adopting a bi-focal analysis that looks both at power struggles within the urban elite and at the grassroots multi-ethnic setting in southern Guinea-Bissau. I pay close attention to the social dynamics of rural peoples' perspectives, coping strategies and inter-ethnic conflicts. Local conflicts are elucidated as an ongoing process that traverses times of war and peace. Although they are subject to manipulation by urban actors, local conflicts are also a matter of continuous negotiation and partial consensus at the grassroots. In stark contrast to this, the struggles in the ruling group are characterized by an escalating spiral of factionalism, diminishing compromises and elimination of rivals. By analysing the relationship between urban and rural actors and the role of cosmology, the article also aims to shed new light on the multiple shapes patron–client relations can a...
2015
The greed-and-grievance debate has been one of the major focuses of interest in the study of civil wars, but many pitfalls have arisen from the limitations of a highly ‘economics-driven’ model. Departing from a critique of this literature, this study revisits the debate on security-driven analysis of civil war dynamics. It does so by looking at the process of the outbreak of armed violence within a state and calling upon a cornerstone theoretical landmark: the security dilemma. The argument engages concurring explanations for civil wars, trying to uncover whether (in)security begets dynamics that are present in, or are part of other previously highlighted mechanisms. It departs from a specific concept of anarchy emergence — state shattering/implosion (or colonial retreat) — and focuses on evaluating the performance of the security dilemma logic as an explanation for the outbreak and dynamics of violence in each situation. After presenting the theoretical considerations, I discuss some preliminary empirical evidence from a plausibility probe, analysing the outbreak of armed conflict that followed the decolonisation process in Angola between 1974 and 1976.
Unimagined States. A structural history of warfare in Chad (1968-1990), por Stephen Reyna. (2003)
Revista de Antropología y Sociología Virajes (RASV), 2003
This article, using the case of Chad, and placing it in comparative context, suggests that Third World militarism has not been fully imagined. Specifically, it will argue that a process which constitutes violent institutions has escaped the notice of students of militarism. Further, it will suggest that this process, called that of dispersion of violent force, has placed a number of Third World states under siege, occasionally provoking their descent into anarchy. The existence of such processes raises the question of whether Third World states are undergoing a structural history that is fundamentally different from that which characterized the evolution of the modern great powers. This investigation is made using a structural history approach.
Journal of Central and Eastern European African Studies, 2022
Before the 1990s, the practice of post-conflict management mainly focused on military and law-enforcement priorities. Since then, a development-oriented approach has evolved by making a greater sense of the better addressing of the root causes and characteristics of conflicts, as well as the needs and motivations of actors and individuals. In the same vein, critical approaches to the traditionally „minimalist” approach suggested a relatively new, community-based practice that may help to better understand the complex political, psychological and economic situation in local terms to enhance the efficiency of reintegration of former combatants and make them socially and politically represented after conflicts end.At the same time, according to Mary Kaldor’s theory, we have witnessed meaningful qualitative changes regarding the nature of armed conflicts which pose vital challenges to the Westphalian international system as they reshape the concept of sovereignty and question the state monopoly on violence. Proponents of the “new war” thesis argue that such qualitative changes in wars also necessitate a fundamental shift from the traditional peacebuilding approaches. In Kaldor’s view, as a consequence of the rapid globalisation during the 1990s and the never-ending erosion of state sovereignty a fundamentally new theoretical framework is needed in the course of peace operations which is entirely different from the former so-called „liberal peace”. Thus, the new characteristics of wars pointed out by Kaldor may have a great significance in how peacebuilding and DDR programmes should be planned and implemented in post-conflict settlements.In this analysis the question is how the failure of traditional disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes and the prospective new generation of them reflect to „new wars” theories, particularly to Kaldor’s thesis, so what connections they may have, if any. The author makes this search through a Liberian case study. The focal points of the analysis include: actors (1); motivations and goals (2); brutality and the victimisation of the civilians (3); and economic and financial characteristics (4).
Violent Internal Conflict and the African State: Towards a Framework of Analysis
Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 2002
Africa is in a deep and persistent malaise. It is by far the least developed continent economically, and the most conflict-prone politically. In policy-making circles and media characterisations, it is "the hopeless continent" (The Economist May 13-19, 2000). Such pessimism is driven in part by the failure to manage-much less resolve-the destructive consequences of multiple violent conflicts. The ineffectiveness of conflict management efforts by the United Nations, the OAU, sub-regional organisations, or eminent personalities like Nelson Mandela or Jimmy Carter, is itself due in large part to the lack of a conceptual framework for analysing internal turmoil. Without an appropriate diagnosis of the causes of conflict, remedial action becomes a futile, if not dangerous exercise. This article seeks to articulate in preliminary form a framework for understanding and diagnosing the causes of Africa"s multiple internal conflicts. It suggests that these are rooted in the everyday politics and discourses of weak states, rather than in outbreaks of ancient hatreds, the pathology of particular rulers, or the breakdown of normally peaceful domestic systems; and argues that the direction of effective conflict resolution lies in reconfiguring local politics and reconstructing the malformed African state rather than in the "saving failed states" approaches of recent years.
State Formation and Conflict in Africa
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2019
Dominant narratives and theories developed at the turn of the 21st century to account for the links between state formation and civil wars in Africa converged around two main ideas. First was the contention that the increase in civil wars across the continent—like that in many parts of the globe, including South Asia and Central Europe—was linked to state failure or decay. Violent conflict thus came to be seen as the expression of the weakness, disintegration, and collapse of political institutions in the postcolonial world. Second, guerrilla movements, once viewed as the ideological armed wings of Cold War contenders, then came to be seen as roving bandits interested in plundering the spoils left by decaying states, and their motives as primarily, if not only, economic or personal, rather than political. However, recent research has challenged the reductionism that underlay such accounts by looking into the day-to-day politics of civil war, thus moving beyond the search for the motives that bring rebels and rebel movements to wage war against the established order. Drawing on this literature, this article argues that violent conflict is part and parcel of historical processes of state formation. Thus, in order to understand how stable political institutions can be built in the aftermath of civil war, it is essential to study the institutions that regulate political life during conflict. This implies a need not only to look at how (and if) state institutions survive once war has broken out, but also to take into account the institutions put in place in areas beyond the control of the state.
2012
The military coup staged by Guinea-Bissau’s army on the evening of 12 April 2012 was a striking situation in which there seemed not to be any meaningful central grip that resulted from the political processes of the country. Guinea-Bissau’s recent history has four military coups since independence from Portugal in 1974. The latest military coup was the result of the cooperation among military officers, and foreign and local drug barons. For the first time in Africa’s history, and in world history too, a country that was deemed by contemporary theories as a “failed”, a “weak” or a “collapsed” state started to be called a “narco state”. This essay aims at explaining why should the International community recognize Guinea-Bissau’s narco state as a legitimate new form of state.
2007
This paper presents the first phase of a work in progress which aims at building a System Dynamics model around two theories concerning internal conflict. The model will asses the particular case of Colombia, that is characterized by the presence of armed groups that interact strongly with the illicit trade of drugs, the kidnappings and extortion, and have a discourse that places emphasis on political grievances. The different theories around the economics and causes of war can be separated in different trends. This work assess two of them: the first one argues that wars are economically motivated, and that the real objective of armed groups is the quest for money; this theory is characterized under the term greed. On the other side, there are the social, political and historical factors that allow and facilitate the emergence of armed groups (grievances). This investigation aims to develop a better understanding of the complex interactions around the Colombian conflict, considering both theories and seeks to build a better comprehension of this conflict in order to study how to generate development during an internal conflict.