Africas Insurgents

Download or read book Mobility, Mobilization, and Counter/Insurgency written by Daniel E Agbiboa and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mobility, Mobilization, and Counter/Insurgency, Daniel Agbiboa takes African insurgencies back to their routes by providing a transdisciplinary perspective on the centrality of mobility to the strategies of insurgents, state security forces, and civilian populations caught in conflict. Drawing on one of the world’s deadliest insurgencies, the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, this well-crafted and richly nuanced intervention offers fresh insights into how violent extremist organizations exploit forms of local immobility and border porosity to mobilize new recruits, how the state’s “war on terror” mobilizes against so-called subversive mobilities, and how civilian populations in transit are treated as could-be terrorists and subjected to extortion and state-sanctioned violence en route. The multiple and intersecting flows analyzed here upend Eurocentric representations of movement in Africa as one-sided, anarchic, and dangerous. Instead, this book underscores the contradictions of mobility in conflict zones as simultaneously a resource and a burden. Intellectually rigorous yet clear, engaging, and accessible, Mobility, Mobilization, and Counter/Insurgency is a seminal contribution that lays bare the neglected linkages between conflict and mobility.

Download or read book Africa's Insurgents written by Morten Bøås and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ¿Comprehensive, timely, empirically rich, and conceptually innovative.... sure to pique the interest of a wide range of readers. This is by all accounts the most exhaustive collection of contemporary analyses of this critically important topic.¿ ¿Matthew I. Mitchell, University of Saskatchewan Amid an array of shifting national, regional, and global forces, how have African insurgents managed to adapt and survive? And what differences and similarities can be found, both among the continent¿s diverse rebellions and guerilla movements and between them and movements elsewhere in the world? Addressing these issues, the authors of Africa¿s Insurgents explore how new groups are emerging and existing ones changing in response to an evolving landscape. Morten Bøås is research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Kevin C. Dunn is professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Download or read book Combatants in African Conflicts written by Simon David Taylor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the different types of combatants in conflicts in Africa, exploring the fine lines between what might be classified as a militia in one conflict, a rebel in another, or a terrorist in a third. Drawing on the work of Carl von Clausewitz, this book provides a conceptually stable and analytically sound new typology on combatants. Analysing the relationships between state and society, and drawing on Clausewitz's Trinity of passion, chance, and reason, the book presents a set of five types of armed actors: Professionals, Praetorians, Militias, Insurgents, and Mercenaries. Each type is developed through a close reading of foundational theoretical texts, reviews of contemporary studies, and a historical analysis of their unique characteristics. Unlike a reductionist binary perspective, this typology accounts for the dynamic, complex, and evolving relationships of these actors with the state and society. A typology of combatants in conflicts in Africa can provide avenues for more in-depth analysis of such conflicts and holds implications for Security Sector Reform projects and other peace-building programmes. As such, this book will be an essential reference for scholars and students of African Politics and Military and Security Studies.

Download or read book The Terrorist Album written by Jacob Dlamini and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning historian and journalist tells the very human story of apartheid’s afterlife, tracing the fates of South African insurgents, collaborators, and the security police through the tale of the clandestine photo album used to target apartheid’s enemies. From the 1960s until the early 1990s, the South African security police and counterinsurgency units collected over 7,000 photographs of apartheid’s enemies. The political rogue’s gallery was known as the “terrorist album,” copies of which were distributed covertly to police stations throughout the country. Many who appeared in the album were targeted for surveillance. Sometimes the security police tried to turn them; sometimes the goal was elimination. All of the albums were ordered destroyed when apartheid’s violent collapse began. But three copies survived the memory purge. With full access to one of these surviving albums, award-winning South African historian and journalist Jacob Dlamini investigates the story behind these images: their origins, how they were used, and the lives they changed. Extensive interviews with former targets and their family members testify to the brutal and often careless work of the police. Although the police certainly hunted down resisters, the terrorist album also contains mug shots of bystanders and even regime supporters. Their inclusion is a stark reminder that apartheid’s guardians were not the efficient, if morally compromised, law enforcers of legend but rather blundering agents of racial panic. With particular attentiveness to the afterlife of apartheid, Dlamini uncovers the stories of former insurgents disenchanted with today’s South Africa, former collaborators seeking forgiveness, and former security police reinventing themselves as South Africa’s newest export: “security consultants” serving as mercenaries for Western nations and multinational corporations. The Terrorist Album is a brilliant evocation of apartheid’s tragic caprice, ultimate failure, and grim legacy.

Download or read book Foreign Intervention in Africa written by Elizabeth Schmidt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles foreign political and military interventions in Africa from 1956 to 2010, helping readers understand the historical roots of Africa's problems.

Download or read book Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa written by Michael Woldemariam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-15 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When insurgent organizations factionalize and fragment, it can profoundly shape a civil war: its intensity, outcome, and duration. In this extended treatment of this complex and important phenomenon, Michael Woldemariam examines why rebel organizations fragment through a unique historical analysis of the Horn of Africa's civil wars. Central to his view is that rebel factionalism is conditioned by battlefield developments. While fragmentation is caused by territorial gains and losses, counter-intuitively territorial stalemate tends to promote rebel cohesion and is a critical basis for cooperation in war. As a rare effort to examine these issues in the context of the Horn of Africa region, based upon extensive fieldwork, this book will interest both scholarly and non-scholarly audiences interested in insurgent groups and conflict dynamics.

Download or read book Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias written by Richard H. Shultz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By focusing on four specific hotbeds of instability-Somalia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq-Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Andrea J. Dew carefully analyze tribal culture and clan associations, examine why "traditional" or "tribal" warriors fight, identify how these groups recruit, and where they find sanctuary, and dissect the reasoning behind their strategy. Their new introduction evaluates recent developments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the growing prevalence of Shultz and Dew's conception of irregular warfare, and the Obama Defense Department's approach to fighting insurgents, terrorists, and militias. War in the post-Cold War era cannot be waged through traditional Western methods of combat, especially when friendly states and outside organizations like al-Qaeda serve as powerful allies to the enemy. Bridging two centuries and several continents, Shultz and Dew recommend how conventional militaries can defeat these irregular yet highly effective organizations.