Search

Many ceasefire and peace agreements stipulate the disarmament and demobilization of pro-state armed groups involved in the conflict, yet few of these groups ever completely demobilize. This study seeks to explain the process of incomplete demobilization by advancing a theoretical argument that pro-state armed groups are least likely to disarm and demobilize when the monopoly on violence is fragmented, and when there is relative balance of capabilities and interests between the government and pro-state armed groups. Under these circumstances, both governments and pro-state armed groups may favor incomplete demobilization enabling them to pursue their strategic objectives. We draw on unique interview data with pro-state paramilitaries from Ukraine to empirically illustrate our theoretical expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The militia as an informal pro-government irregular force helps government forces through a range of asymmetric security threats. Since 9/11, the employment of militia forces has been on the rise. Although the informal Pro-Government Militias (PGMs) operate in juxtaposition with the regular land forces, they are loosely aligned with them. Given the nativity of its members to the battlefield, a militia is best suited to comprehend the operational and tactical situation and, making itself a viable option for state-led forces both from the perspective of low-cost force or its flexibility to deal with irregular threats. Most informal PGMs maintain a stronger ideological and political base, they do not often care about the limitation of their sponsoring state's sovereignty and the legitimacy of their actions. They may even develop linkages with the terrorist outfits for their immediate goals. This puts national security in grave danger. Given the risks, weaker states become vulnerable at the hands of their sponsored militants. Still, the state-led forces will remain inclined to exploit such paramilitary forces to let them shoulder the burden of national security against asymmetric threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the study is to carry out a meaningful comparison that demonstrates the similarities and differences of various conflict theatres where proxy forces were employed. The analyses of the discussed cases focused on different aspects of the conflict and nature of the proxy use. The analyses presented on the following pages were conducted on the basis of the literature on the subject, governmental research and reports, and supporting sources reporting recent developments that complemented academic sources. Various non-state actors such as ethnic militias, paramilitary units, and private military companies have become more and more visible on contemporary battlegrounds. Modern states employ those actors to further their objectives, as this limits their own political and financial costs. This increasingly visible phenomenon points to an emerging new model of warfare where state actors are relying ever more on proxies of various character and nature. It is highly likely that any future conflict will be characterised by a proxy-based model of warfare, which will consist of a limited footprint made by regular forces (or none at all) and, consequently, the extended use of proxies supported by special forces. Because such an approach is less costly, proxies will be more often employed by low-budget states, previously reluctant to carry out such costly military endeavours. Denying the actions and affiliations of these proxies will inevitably follow and, in turn, a lack of political accountability and responsibility for the conflict's outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historiography of the Greek civil war has made significant progress during the past decade, but the origins, role and activities of paramilitaries remain under-researched. Most studies have focused on the period of the 'white terror' and explored the collusion between the state and the paramilitary groups. Although such studies have advanced our understanding of this turbulent period, they have not discussed important issues such as the motivation of the rank and file members, the sociopolitical networks used to recruit and mobilize support and the diverse conditions under which militias emerge. The article will address this lacuna and provide new insights into the origins, development and legacies of paramilitarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During and after Ukraine's celebrated Euromaydan (literally: European Square) Revolution of 2013-2014, a whole number of novel Ukrainian political and societal phenomena emerged. One of the most intriguing was the relatively spontaneous and government-supported emergence of volunteer armed units from late spring 2014 onwards, in connection with the start of Russia's covert paramilitary intervention in Eastern Ukraine. Among the most widely noted of these initially irregular detachments was the "Azov" battalion or regiment, named after the Azov Sea, created, in May 2014, by an obscure lunatic fringe group of racist activists. This paper briefly sketches the origins of Azov, biographies of some of its founders, and particulars of its creation, without touching upon such issues as Azov's military performance, later integration into the National Guard under Ukraine's Ministry of Interior, and political development after 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the core of waging war and strategy is the creation, control and use of force. This article investigates the volunteer battalions that mobilized in Ukraine during the spring of 2014. It contextualizes the volunteer phenomenon and focuses on the state strategies to establish control over these militias. As ambiguous entities arising from a situation characterized by rapid social change - revolution and war - the volunteer battalions threatened existing hierarchies and questioned state authority. The situation was exacerbated by the war, which deviated from the expectations of Ukrainian combatants and Western military observers alike. The state nevertheless enjoyed a modicum of success in reining in the militias through four strategies of undermining, co-option, incorporation and coercion. While predominantly integrated into a more rigid category of paramilitary forces, the volunteers continue to play a role in both the Ukrainian society and security sector to the unforeseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the well-established presentation within conflict studies of paramilitary organizations as state-manipulated death squads or self-defence groups, and argues that some present-day militias extend their functions well beyond the role of shadowy pro-regime enforcers. Drawing its empirical insights from Ukrainian pro-government volunteer battalions and supporting its findings with empirical observations from other parts of the world, the article posits that the rise of powerful militia organizations acting in parallel with the state makes it imperative to revisit the theory and typology of paramilitary violence. The key theoretical argument of the article is that ‘state-parallel’ militias differ qualitatively from the ‘state-manipulated’ paramilitaries that are typical of the Cold War period. The article shows that although ‘state-parallel’ paramilitaries are not a new phenomenon, they have thus far remained critically understudied and undertheorized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common theme in historical and contemporary warfare is the role of militias. Militias, both pro-government and rebel, act beyond their sponsors or else they would be understood as part of the armies that go to war. We think of militias as paramilitaries, approximate but not collocated with the military. Paramilitaries are ordinarily recruited and resourced differently. They are also ordinarily tactically different, playing a role in front line warfare where the intensity may be high, but where the position is fast changing or distributed in local areas. As the conflict literature will show, militias, or paramilitaries, are a common feature of any conflict and thus it is no surprise that we see their use in Ukraine. For the conflict in Ukraine, we use the term paramilitaries to indicate those forces that are fighting at the front line for both the Kyiv government and rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, with these being considered ‘pro-Russian’ and even include Russian citizens. Relying on the pro-government militias literature, we show how militias on both sides play an important role in the conflict but also pose the biggest threat to a sustainable peace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Militias are an empirical phenomenon that has been overlooked by current research on civil war. Yet, it is a phenomenon that is crucial for understanding political violence, civil war, post-conflict politics, and authoritarianism. Militias or paramilitaries are armed groups that operate alongside regular security forces or work independently of the state to shield the local population from insurgents. We review existing uses of the term, explore the range of empirical manifestations of militias, and highlight recent findings, including those supplied by the articles in this special issue. We focus on areas where the recognition of the importance of militias challenges and complements current theories of civil war. We conclude by introducing a research agenda advocating the integrated study of militias and rebel groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the effect that leveraging civilian defense force militias has on the dynamics of violence in civil war. We argue that the delegation of security and combat roles to local civilians shifts the primary targets of insurgent violence toward civilians, in an attempt to deter future defections, and re-establish control over the local population. This argument is assessed through an analysis of the Sunni Awakening and ancillary Sons of Iraq paramilitary program. The results suggest that at least in the Al-Anbar province of Iraq, the utilization of the civilian population in counterinsurgent roles had significant implications for the targets of insurgent violence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Shia militia has emerged as one of the most powerful and important actors in the Middle East security environment. Despite this trend, they remain poorly understood by scholars and policymakers alike. This article seeks to expand our understanding of the militia as a type of non-state armed group through an examination of Shia militia movements in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. More than simply warlords, paramilitaries, or foreign proxies, Shia militias in Iraq enjoyed substantial popular legitimacy, pursued a broad social and political agenda, and participated actively in the formal institutions of the state. Understanding the triangular relationship between the militia, the state, and the population is essential in explaining the rise and fall of the Shia militias during the US occupation as well as in developing strategies to deal with their most recent resurgence [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explains how and why armed, non-state actors collaborate with states to inflict massive levels of violence. Regime type and state capacity interact to provide state elites a menu of repertoires for implementing violence, some emphasizing direct state action, others emphasizing cooperation and alliance between state and armed, non-state actors. Rather than struggling in vain to build strong states to eliminate armed non-state actors and establish a monopoly over the use of force, averting genocide might necessitate recruiting and strengthening the power of indigenous, armed non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization's "interconnecting" effects have blended with an ethos of instability to create an extraordinarily complex global security environment. Though the number of armed conflicts worldwide has declined since the early 1990s, the character of those conflicts has evolved in some troubling ways. Conventional inter-state wars are less common, but they have been displaced by a proliferation of smaller scale, asymmetric, diffuse and episodic struggles: What Trinquier calls "subversive warfare or revolutionary warfare." The participants in these conflicts are not limited to national military forces, but include a range of non-state actors, including militias, ethnic groups, illicit transnational networks, informal paramilitary organizations, and violent extremists. Many of today's most vexing global threats, including those that affect the United States' national security interests, emanate from terrorist networks, transnational criminal organizations, rogue states, and the intersection of activities and shared objectives among malicious actors operating from frontiers or "ungoverned spaces." Special Operations Forces (SOF) have had an essential, but evolving, role in countering those threats. The articles assembled in this issue of Journal of Strategic Security examine SOF's role in the global, joint force of the future. Through a military-academic partnership between U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the University of South Florida, five papers have been selected for the purpose of further developing dialogue on issues related to SOF's pivot toward partnership-driven, indirect action. Some common themes emerge in these works: a view that future security rests in partnerships, and an acknowledgement that the threats, constraints, and realities of the current strategic environment demand applications of "smart power" to assure collective security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Basij militia is a central component of Iran's clerical regime and a supporter of hard-line conservative interests. It is a security organization that also engages in social and political activism. This study focuses on the group's rank-and-file members and looks at the organization's mechanisms for recruitment, participation, and training. Based in part on interviews with current and former Basij members, the article concludes with general observations about the organization and its internal practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Basij, a massive Iranian paramilitary organization, has played a crucial role in the country’s politics, economy, and society at large for the past two decades. While the Basij’s increased formal involvement in the Iranian economy was initially meant to guarantee the welfare of its personnel, the Basij has since extended its influence to every sector of the economy, from construction and real estate to the stock market. The expansion of its economic activity has enhanced the Basij’s control over society and its influence on domestic politics. This article investigates the history, justifications, and consequences of Basij engagement in business and the economy in postrevolutionary Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores the links between land ownership contention, private violence and the state. Colombia presents a context where criminal actors participate in the regular functioning of public institutions. The study rejects normative conceptions about the link between criminal actors and the state. Crime and violence are not considered as extraneous factors, separated from the political game; they are analyzed as constitutive of logics of competition, accumulation and economic development, ultimately, elements in the process of state formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a sequential mixed method approach to examine the origins and persistence of paramilitaries and state-sponsored militias in the developing world. Combining comparative case studies of Southeast Asia and the Middle East with statistical analysis, it shows that revolutionary decolonization produces more decentralized and localized force structures, while direct inheritance of colonial armies leads to more conventional force structures. Subsequently, the level of competition within the regional system influences whether a state can persist in the use of paramilitaries or must transition to a more centralized, conventional force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a new policy framework for dealing with weak and frail states by encouraging the formation of local militias and paramilitary forces. The international community's responses to state failure have been premised on false assumptions about the historical process of state-building. Neglecting the historical lessons of state formation contributes to interventions marred by moral hazards, unintended consequences, and ultimate futility. Instead of seeking to rebuild state capacity, the international community should consider replacing dysfunctional states by devolving power directly to other systems of local protection. While the devolution of violence has significant drawbacks, it is often the only way to enhance human security and ensure global stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which looks into the multiple forms of violence practiced and sustained by young Lebanese men during the Lebanese civil war. It investigates how violence intersect with the masculinity and sexuality of the young men while living through a war that is controlled and manipulated by militia fighting. It also determines the extent of trauma for the Lebanese people on the killings, kidnappings, and destruction of cities and villages. It contends that the young Lebanese men go through a structured process of violence in order to stay alive.

The armed groups have implemented strategies to get involved in the comunity. The armed groups, "Paramilitares" or "Milicias" have regulated socide relationships, implanting "authoritarian, intrusive and restrictive systems". They imposed orders to require the submission, "they get accustomed or they adapt to live within them". Due to such situation, good part of the autonomy obtained in the use of the daily territories is lost. It is necessary to emphasize that the implications in the life, organization and family life/display changes and permanence during the process of the armed conflict. As much in the district, the communitarian organizations and the family, one of the most important implications is forced displacement between cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Militias in Iraq were not effectively demobilised or disarmed because the American occupation forces did not apply lessons from previous experience. The United States did not develop a comprehensive plan for addressing all armed groups, but tried to disarm groups before a full political settlement was reached and accepted, and did not include a neutral arbiter such as the United Nations. Militia disarmament thus failed in Iraq. The failure to apply lessons from the past was compounded by the fact that demobilisation was attempted in a situation where no group fully accepted either the occupation government or the nascent Iraqi state. This failure allowed Iraqi security institutions to be infected by paramilitary groups, heightening the extent of civil conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the formation of offensively trained civilian militias in East Germany under the aegis of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Citizen members are expected to devote their free time to the military drill at the cost of leisure time and recreation, and possibly of health and manpower. The groups stem from a July 1952 militarization initiative by SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht.