THE STRUCTURE OF VIOLENCE: STATES, OFFICIAL MILITARIES, PARAMILITARIES,AND NON-STATE MILITIAS IN THE NORTHERN HORN OF AFRICA

[Deeq A.]

In Sudan and Ethiopia, official militaries are currently fighting against paramilitaries and non-state militias that, previously, had been important battlefield allies. The ongoing violence does not reflect a breakdown in the political order. Rather, these conflicts are the direct result of the persistence of a centuries-old regional military-political system created by unstable states with incomplete control over their official militaries.

Since its origins in the nineteenth century, this system has been perpetuated by violence. The right to rule was largely created through campaigns of conquest, policing patrols, armed resistance movements, and anti-insurgency military operations. As a result, the institutions of political authority have been intimately tied to the instruments of war, even though both official and unofficial armed groups have had a large degree of independence from the state.

This has not always been the case. The creation of this system required the dismantling of an older, traditional regional order in which well-defined social hierarchies ensured that actual fighting was rare. Under this older system, the primary goal of conflict was to force the weaker party to submit to integration within the hierarchy in a subordinate position. Mustering a sufficiently large force was generally enough to achieve this goal. As a result, violence was often unnecessary. Read more here

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