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Group Characteristics of Militias

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The Global Challenge of Militias and Paramilitary Violence

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Abstract

This chapter covers the characteristics that make militia a unique type of violent non-state group. The differing relationships militias have with the state, the ways that militias recruit members, the areas where they operate, their organizational strength, community-militia relations, the scope and scale of paramilitary violence along with the effects militias have on state institutions and civil society are all ways that militia characteristics show that this type of armed group is dynamic and adaptive.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shane Joshua Barter, “State Proxy,” 79.

  2. 2.

    Erica DeBruin, “War and Coup Prevention in Developing States,” PhD dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT 2014, 3–4.

  3. 3.

    Brandon Bolte, “Pro-Government Militias and the Institutionalized Enemy,” unpublished paper, Department of Political Science Truman State University, DATE?, 22.

  4. 4.

    Lee J.M. Seymour, “Why Factions Switch Sides in Civil Wars,” International Security 39, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 92–131.

  5. 5.

    Said Golkar, “Paramilitarization of the Economy: The Case of Iran’s Basij Militia,” Armed Forces and Society 38, no. 4 (2012): 625–648.

  6. 6.

    Thijs Jeursen and Chris van der Burgh, “Security Provision after Regime Change: Local Militias and Political Entities in Post-Qaddafi Tripoli,” Journal of Intervention and State-Building 8, nos. 2–3 (2014): 173–191.

  7. 7.

    Tomas Smid and Miroslav Mares, “‘Kadyrovtsy’: Russia’s Counterinsurgency Strategy and the Wars of Paramilitary Clans,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 5 (2015): 650–677.

  8. 8.

    Noel Stringham and Jonathan Forney, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Militia: Local Politics, the Nuer White Army and South Sudan’s Civil Wars,” Journal of Modern African Studies 55, no. 2 (2017): 179.

  9. 9.

    Mancur Olson, “Dictatorship, Democracy and Development,” American Political Science Review (September 1993), 568.

  10. 10.

    Jonathan Filip Forney, “Who Can We Trust with a Gun? Information Networks and adverse Selection in Militia Recruitment,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015), 836.

  11. 11.

    Jeb Sprague, “Paramilitaries in Haiti,” Monthly Review 64, no. 4 (2012), 24.

  12. 12.

    Stringham and Forney, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Militia,” 178.

  13. 13.

    Brandon Bolte, “Pro-Government Militias,” 25.

  14. 14.

    Nidhal al-Laithi, “Factions Vie for Oil Deals to Finance Activities, Azzaman, November 3, 2007.

  15. 15.

    James Glanz and Robert Worth, “Attacks on Iraq Oil Industry Aid Vast Smuggling Scheme,” New York Times, June 4, 2006. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/world/middleeast/04smuggle.html (accessed March 5, 2018).

  16. 16.

    Peter Thompson, Armed Groups, 114.

  17. 17.

    Amre Sarhan, “1,000,000 Volunteer Fighters back Army Forces in fight against ISIS, says Iraqi PM,” Iraqi News, November 3, 2014. URL: https://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/1000000-volunteer-fighters-back-army-forces-war-isis-says-iraqi-pm/.

  18. 18.

    Jentzsch, Kalyvas and Schubinger, 758.

  19. 19.

    Philippe Le Billon, “Fueling War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflict,” Adelphi Paper 373 (London: Routledge, 2005), 46.

  20. 20.

    Francisco Gutierrez Sanin, “Telling the Difference: Guerrillas and Paramil-itaries in the Colombian War,” Politics and Society 36, no. 1 (2008), 15.

  21. 21.

    Lee J.M. Seymour, “Why Factions Switch Sides in Civil Wars: Rivalry, Patronage and Realignment in Sudan,” International Security 39, no. 2 (2014): 92–131.

  22. 22.

    Francisco Gutierrez Sanin, “Telling the Difference,” 5.

  23. 23.

    Sabine Carey, Michael Colaresi, and Neil Mitchell, “Governments, Informal Links to Militias and Accountability,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015): 850–876.

  24. 24.

    John Mueller, Remnants, 92–93.

  25. 25.

    Joanne Richards, “Forced, Coerced and Voluntary Recruitment into Rebel and Militia Groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Journal of Modern African Studies 52, no. 2 (2014), 316.

  26. 26.

    Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Hurray for Militias? Not so fast: Lessons from the Afghan Local Police experience,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, 27, no. 2 (2016), 270.

  27. 27.

    Dara Kay Cohen and Ragnhild Nordas, “Do States Delegate Shameful Violence to Militias? Patterns of Sexual Violence in Recent Armed Conflicts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015): 877–898.

  28. 28.

    Jessica A. Stanton, “Regulating Militias: Governments, Militias and Civilian Targeting in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015), 901.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 905.

  30. 30.

    Richards, “Forced, Coerced and Voluntary Recruitment,” 309.

  31. 31.

    Schneckener, 814.

  32. 32.

    Stanton, “Regulating Militias,” 914. The same linkage is reflected in the practice of sexual violence, see Cohen and Nordas, Do States Delegate Shameful Violence to Militias?,” 888.

  33. 33.

    Amnesty International, “Sudan: At the Mercy of Killers—Destruction of Villages in Darfur,” Amnesty International Report, July 2004.

  34. 34.

    Moises Naim, The End of Power (New York: Basic Books, 2013).

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 51.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., 52.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Security Studies, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA, USA

    Paul Rexton Kan

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Kan, P.R. (2019). Group Characteristics of Militias. In: The Global Challenge of Militias and Paramilitary Violence. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13016-9_2

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