Pub Date : 2022-09-22DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2121389
Francesco Buscemi
ABSTRACT This article analyzes the ways in which processes of weapons acquisition and armed collectives formation contribute to shape rebel polities – with their populations and attendant political geographies – in frontier spaces. It argues that the acquisition of weapons and the formation of an armed ensemble are shaped by political rationalities and techniques of governing the entanglements between humans and weapons that are diffused throughout society as a whole. Drawing on biopolitical governmentality, I also show that by governing weapons acquisition and the formation of an armed force rebel movements shape the rebel polity’s collective identity and political geographies of ‘vital’ space in frontiers. Harnessing fieldwork-based research to study Ta’ang rebel movements in Myanmar, I find that weapons acquisition and the formation of an armed ensembles have been inflected by govern-mentalities of narcotics eradication and ethnonationality. The article concludes that some forms of rebel rule at the edge of the state in Myanmar can be qualified as ‘blunt’ following work by anthropologist Elliott Prasse-Freeman. That is to say, rebel rule lacking the governmental apparatuses to intensively know and promote life at aggregate scales still operates massifications and divisions of biological populations and political space via the formation and governing of armed ensembles.
{"title":"‘Blunt’ biopolitical rebel rule: on weapons and political geography at the edge of the state","authors":"Francesco Buscemi","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2121389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2121389","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyzes the ways in which processes of weapons acquisition and armed collectives formation contribute to shape rebel polities – with their populations and attendant political geographies – in frontier spaces. It argues that the acquisition of weapons and the formation of an armed ensemble are shaped by political rationalities and techniques of governing the entanglements between humans and weapons that are diffused throughout society as a whole. Drawing on biopolitical governmentality, I also show that by governing weapons acquisition and the formation of an armed force rebel movements shape the rebel polity’s collective identity and political geographies of ‘vital’ space in frontiers. Harnessing fieldwork-based research to study Ta’ang rebel movements in Myanmar, I find that weapons acquisition and the formation of an armed ensembles have been inflected by govern-mentalities of narcotics eradication and ethnonationality. The article concludes that some forms of rebel rule at the edge of the state in Myanmar can be qualified as ‘blunt’ following work by anthropologist Elliott Prasse-Freeman. That is to say, rebel rule lacking the governmental apparatuses to intensively know and promote life at aggregate scales still operates massifications and divisions of biological populations and political space via the formation and governing of armed ensembles.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45045378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-20DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2113691
Maria Ketzmerick
ABSTRACT After years of peaceful demonstrations, the Cameroonian Anglophone conflict escalated in 2017. Since the outbreak, over 3,000 people have died and a further thousand Anglophones fled from clashes between state forces and separatist fighters. While activists in the diaspora bid for international support, organizational belonging on the ground changes quickly. The paper investigates the transnationalization of the conflict by looking at the complex set of actors involved. Overall, it is interested in the political sociology of transnational rebel governance. The paper highlights the effects of transnational conflict dynamics on the unity and fragmentation of the self-determination movement and its relation to violence.
{"title":"The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon: local conflict, global competition, and transnational rebel governance","authors":"Maria Ketzmerick","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2113691","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2113691","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT After years of peaceful demonstrations, the Cameroonian Anglophone conflict escalated in 2017. Since the outbreak, over 3,000 people have died and a further thousand Anglophones fled from clashes between state forces and separatist fighters. While activists in the diaspora bid for international support, organizational belonging on the ground changes quickly. The paper investigates the transnationalization of the conflict by looking at the complex set of actors involved. Overall, it is interested in the political sociology of transnational rebel governance. The paper highlights the effects of transnational conflict dynamics on the unity and fragmentation of the self-determination movement and its relation to violence.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45557658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2125224
W. Holden
{"title":"Bullets not ballots: success in counterinsurgency warfare","authors":"W. Holden","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2125224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2125224","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45399124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-13DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2116182
Matthew Bamber-Zryd
ABSTRACT The rise and decline of the Islamic State’s (IS) caliphate between 2014 and 2018 have garnered significant policy and academic attention. Explanations for the group’s territorial demise have focussed on its internal group dynamics and external conflict processes. Although both explanations are valid, I adopt a historical approach to show that IS’s caliphate was just one cycle in a two-decade history of governance activity. IS has undertaken three governance cycles composed of phases of insurgency, gaining territory, establishing institutions, and losing territory. After each governance cycle, IS engaged in a process of critical self-reflection and adapted its governance strategy significantly. This resulted in a progressive history in which, with each cycle, IS governed greater amounts of territory, through more complex institutions, for a longer period of time. This article is based on fieldwork interviews conducted with both IS members and civilians who lived under IS control in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, as well as archival research on IS historical and contemporary governing documents.
{"title":"Cyclical jihadist governance: the Islamic State governance cycle in Iraq and Syria","authors":"Matthew Bamber-Zryd","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2116182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2116182","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The rise and decline of the Islamic State’s (IS) caliphate between 2014 and 2018 have garnered significant policy and academic attention. Explanations for the group’s territorial demise have focussed on its internal group dynamics and external conflict processes. Although both explanations are valid, I adopt a historical approach to show that IS’s caliphate was just one cycle in a two-decade history of governance activity. IS has undertaken three governance cycles composed of phases of insurgency, gaining territory, establishing institutions, and losing territory. After each governance cycle, IS engaged in a process of critical self-reflection and adapted its governance strategy significantly. This resulted in a progressive history in which, with each cycle, IS governed greater amounts of territory, through more complex institutions, for a longer period of time. This article is based on fieldwork interviews conducted with both IS members and civilians who lived under IS control in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, as well as archival research on IS historical and contemporary governing documents.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49578540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-09DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2122278
Borys Kormych, Tetyana Malyarenko
ABSTRACT A gray zone conflict that emerged after the Russian annexation of Crimea was an element of the Russian strategy of establishing and consolidating a new and more favourable internationally recognized maritime order in the Black Sea, Kerch Strait, and the Sea of Azov. Empirical data shows that Russian superiority over Ukraine and inferiority vis-a-vis the West shaped a double asymmetry of its tactics of projecting power against Ukraine while avoiding confrontation with the West. Eventually, Moscow reached a point where the gray zone tactics could not secure its objectives. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 signalled the exhausting coercive potential of a gray zone conflict. Although, despite of transition to conventional warfare, we found continuity of ‘gray zone’ tactics of double asymmetry and denying responsibility in the Russian playbook. Hence, a possible de-escalation of the Russia – Ukraine war may likely return to a gray zone conflict.
{"title":"From gray zone to conventional warfare: the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the Black Sea","authors":"Borys Kormych, Tetyana Malyarenko","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2122278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2122278","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A gray zone conflict that emerged after the Russian annexation of Crimea was an element of the Russian strategy of establishing and consolidating a new and more favourable internationally recognized maritime order in the Black Sea, Kerch Strait, and the Sea of Azov. Empirical data shows that Russian superiority over Ukraine and inferiority vis-a-vis the West shaped a double asymmetry of its tactics of projecting power against Ukraine while avoiding confrontation with the West. Eventually, Moscow reached a point where the gray zone tactics could not secure its objectives. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 signalled the exhausting coercive potential of a gray zone conflict. Although, despite of transition to conventional warfare, we found continuity of ‘gray zone’ tactics of double asymmetry and denying responsibility in the Russian playbook. Hence, a possible de-escalation of the Russia – Ukraine war may likely return to a gray zone conflict.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45008430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-08DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2120324
A. Waterman
ABSTRACT This article leverages data from an oft-overlooked case of rebel governance – India’s United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) – to demonstrate the importance of de-centring territorial control as a prerequisite for rebel governance. ULFA neither controlled territory nor developed formalised bureaucratic institutions, yet its ‘parallel government’ held considerable sway over Assamese public life during 1985–1990, underpinned by its social embeddedness, influence upon media discourse and crucially its subversion of state structures, until its ability to limit state repression collapsed. The rise and fall of ULFA’s rebel governance illustrates the hybrid socio-political terrain upon which rebel governance is often laid.
{"title":"The shadow of ‘the boys:’ rebel governance without territorial control in Assam’s ULFA insurgency","authors":"A. Waterman","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2120324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2120324","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article leverages data from an oft-overlooked case of rebel governance – India’s United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) – to demonstrate the importance of de-centring territorial control as a prerequisite for rebel governance. ULFA neither controlled territory nor developed formalised bureaucratic institutions, yet its ‘parallel government’ held considerable sway over Assamese public life during 1985–1990, underpinned by its social embeddedness, influence upon media discourse and crucially its subversion of state structures, until its ability to limit state repression collapsed. The rise and fall of ULFA’s rebel governance illustrates the hybrid socio-political terrain upon which rebel governance is often laid.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44205951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-08DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2118416
Bianca Berman
ABSTRACT This article examines the subversion of the hero soldier figure in three Vietnam War films from three different nations that faced defeat in Vietnam: Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Schoendoerffer’s Dien Bien Phu, and Jeong Ji-yeong’s White Badge. A close analysis reveals that all three films undermine the image of the virtuous and powerful hero soldier through recurring stylistic elements. Apocalypse Now, through the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ helicopter sequence – as well as the opening and ending sequences – portrays the American soldier as a barbaric aggressor. Dien Bien Phu, meanwhile, visually undermines the image of the powerful hero soldier through cinematographic techniques which portray the French soldiers in the field as small and powerless. Finally, White Badge – which, unlike the two other films, takes place in the post-war period – subverts the image of the hero soldier through its use of auditory and visual elements to portray the Korean soldier as aggressor and, first and foremost, victim. The article concludes with a discussion of how the three films influence audiences’ perceptions of those who fought in Vietnam.
摘要：本文考察了三部越战电影中的英雄战士形象的颠覆，这三部电影分别来自三个在越南战败的国家：科波拉的《现代启示录》、谢菲尔德的《奠边府》和郑智英的《白徽章》。仔细分析发现，这三部电影都通过反复出现的风格元素破坏了善良而强大的英雄战士的形象。《现代启示录》通过“女武神之旅”直升机序列——以及开头和结尾序列——将这位美国士兵描绘成一个野蛮的侵略者。与此同时，Dien Bien Phu通过电影技术在视觉上破坏了这位强大的英雄士兵的形象，将战场上的法国士兵描绘成弱小无力的人。最后，《白徽章》与其他两部电影不同，它发生在战后时期，通过使用听觉和视觉元素将韩国士兵描绘成侵略者，首先是受害者，颠覆了英雄士兵的形象。文章最后讨论了这三部电影如何影响观众对那些在越南作战的人的看法。
{"title":"The soldier as victim and aggressor: subverting the hero soldier in Apocalypse Now, Dien Bien Phu, and White Badge","authors":"Bianca Berman","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2118416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2118416","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the subversion of the hero soldier figure in three Vietnam War films from three different nations that faced defeat in Vietnam: Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Schoendoerffer’s Dien Bien Phu, and Jeong Ji-yeong’s White Badge. A close analysis reveals that all three films undermine the image of the virtuous and powerful hero soldier through recurring stylistic elements. Apocalypse Now, through the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ helicopter sequence – as well as the opening and ending sequences – portrays the American soldier as a barbaric aggressor. Dien Bien Phu, meanwhile, visually undermines the image of the powerful hero soldier through cinematographic techniques which portray the French soldiers in the field as small and powerless. Finally, White Badge – which, unlike the two other films, takes place in the post-war period – subverts the image of the hero soldier through its use of auditory and visual elements to portray the Korean soldier as aggressor and, first and foremost, victim. The article concludes with a discussion of how the three films influence audiences’ perceptions of those who fought in Vietnam.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44716285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-06DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2120306
Carter Malkasian
ABSTRACT At the end of 2021, the US Army published Modern War in an Ancient Land: The United States Army in Afghanistan, 2001–2014. It is a major two-volume history of the US Army in the war in Afghanistan. The primary authors are E.J. Degen, Director of the Army's Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Study Group, and Mark Reardon, a senior civilian historian at US Army Center of Military History. The work has 836 total pages of text and covers most intense period of US combat operations of the war. It is the closest thing that we have yet to an official history of the war and is likely to remain the closest thing for some time. The work contains valuable insights into counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. The authors see the concept as an effective tactical approach if properly aligned with strategy.
{"title":"Modern war in an Ancient Land: a counterinsurgency review","authors":"Carter Malkasian","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2120306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2120306","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT At the end of 2021, the US Army published Modern War in an Ancient Land: The United States Army in Afghanistan, 2001–2014. It is a major two-volume history of the US Army in the war in Afghanistan. The primary authors are E.J. Degen, Director of the Army's Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Study Group, and Mark Reardon, a senior civilian historian at US Army Center of Military History. The work has 836 total pages of text and covers most intense period of US combat operations of the war. It is the closest thing that we have yet to an official history of the war and is likely to remain the closest thing for some time. The work contains valuable insights into counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. The authors see the concept as an effective tactical approach if properly aligned with strategy.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48182050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2114244
Juan Albarracín, J. Corredor-Garcia, Juan Pablo Milanese, I. H. Valencia, Jonas Wolff
ABSTRACT Violence in post-conflict settings is often attributed to a post-war boom in organized crime, facilitated by the demobilization of armed groups and the persisting weakness of the state. The article argues that this is only one pathway of post-conflict violence. A second causal pathway emerges from the challenges that peace processes can constitute for entrenched local political orders. By fostering political inclusion, the implementation of peace agreements may threaten subnational political elites that have used the context of armed conflict to ally with armed non-state actors. Violence is then used as a means to preserve such de facto authoritarian local orders. We start from the assumption that these two explanations are not exclusive or competing, but grasp different causal processes that may well both be at work behind the assassination of social leaders (líderes sociales) in Colombia since the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla. We argue that this specific type of targeted violence can, in fact, be attributed to different, locally specific configurations that resemble the two pathways. The article combines fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis with the case studies of the municipalities of Sardinata and Suárez to empirically establish and illustrate the two pathways.
{"title":"Pathways of post-conflict violence in Colombia","authors":"Juan Albarracín, J. Corredor-Garcia, Juan Pablo Milanese, I. H. Valencia, Jonas Wolff","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2114244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2114244","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Violence in post-conflict settings is often attributed to a post-war boom in organized crime, facilitated by the demobilization of armed groups and the persisting weakness of the state. The article argues that this is only one pathway of post-conflict violence. A second causal pathway emerges from the challenges that peace processes can constitute for entrenched local political orders. By fostering political inclusion, the implementation of peace agreements may threaten subnational political elites that have used the context of armed conflict to ally with armed non-state actors. Violence is then used as a means to preserve such de facto authoritarian local orders. We start from the assumption that these two explanations are not exclusive or competing, but grasp different causal processes that may well both be at work behind the assassination of social leaders (líderes sociales) in Colombia since the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla. We argue that this specific type of targeted violence can, in fact, be attributed to different, locally specific configurations that resemble the two pathways. The article combines fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis with the case studies of the municipalities of Sardinata and Suárez to empirically establish and illustrate the two pathways.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59474438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-05DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2022.2114241
Sameetah Agha
ABSTRACT The North-West Frontier of British India, a semi-independent mountainous borderland, was the site of continuous Pukhtun armed struggle against colonial intrusion throughout the nineteenth century and into the first half of the twentieth. Persistent tribal armed attacks and major rebellions were followed by ‘butcher and bolt’ or ‘burn and scuttle’ British military expeditions, including one of the biggest Victorian small wars–the Tirah Campaign of 1897/98. Two features are particularly distinctive about the Pukhtun insurgencies: 1) The fierce and consistent nature of Pukhtun opposition to the encroaching British military state; 2) The insurgents’ success in warding off annexation and inflicting decisive military defeat time and time again propelled the colonial state into an ongoing reflexive about its failure to ‘pacify’ the region and control the tribes. Focusing on Afridi insurgency in the nineteenth century, this article examines some themes that draw attention to causes, grievances, and toward the insurgent actors. While our fleeting glimpses into insurgents motives and actions come largely from colonial accounts of counter-insurgency operations, by drawing on my extensive archival and field research in the North-West Frontier, including Afridi oral testimonies, this paper focuses its lens on the Pukhtun perspective of the North-West Frontier ‘small wars’.
{"title":"Roots of Afridi Insurgency in British India’s North-West Frontier: 1849-1897","authors":"Sameetah Agha","doi":"10.1080/09592318.2022.2114241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2022.2114241","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The North-West Frontier of British India, a semi-independent mountainous borderland, was the site of continuous Pukhtun armed struggle against colonial intrusion throughout the nineteenth century and into the first half of the twentieth. Persistent tribal armed attacks and major rebellions were followed by ‘butcher and bolt’ or ‘burn and scuttle’ British military expeditions, including one of the biggest Victorian small wars–the Tirah Campaign of 1897/98. Two features are particularly distinctive about the Pukhtun insurgencies: 1) The fierce and consistent nature of Pukhtun opposition to the encroaching British military state; 2) The insurgents’ success in warding off annexation and inflicting decisive military defeat time and time again propelled the colonial state into an ongoing reflexive about its failure to ‘pacify’ the region and control the tribes. Focusing on Afridi insurgency in the nineteenth century, this article examines some themes that draw attention to causes, grievances, and toward the insurgent actors. While our fleeting glimpses into insurgents motives and actions come largely from colonial accounts of counter-insurgency operations, by drawing on my extensive archival and field research in the North-West Frontier, including Afridi oral testimonies, this paper focuses its lens on the Pukhtun perspective of the North-West Frontier ‘small wars’.","PeriodicalId":46215,"journal":{"name":"Small Wars and Insurgencies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48322600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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