COSMO, Nicola Di, FASSIN, Didier, PINAUD, Clémence (Ed.) Rebel Economies - Warlords, Insurgents, Humanitarians (2021)

Rebel Economies
Rebel Economies
Warlords, Insurgents,
Humanitarians
Edited by
Nicola Di Cosmo, Didier Fassin,
and Clémence Pinaud
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Names: Di Cosmo, Nicola, 1957- editor. | Fassin, Didier, editor. | Pinaud, Clémence,
1985- editor.
Title: Rebel economies : warlords, insurgents, humanitarians / edited by Nicola Di
Cosmo, Didier Fassin, and Clémence Pinaud.
Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010512 (print) | LCCN 2021010513 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781793635198 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781793635204 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: War—Economic aspects. | Regional economics. | Non-state actors
(International relations) | War and society.
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Contents
Acknowledgmentsvii
Introduction: Revisiting Non-States War Economies 1

Nicola Di Cosmo, Didier Fassin, and Clémence Pinaud
PART I: FRAMEWORKS 17
1 What Are Non-State War Economies? Prefatory Remarks 19
Didier Fassin
2 War Economies and War Economics 35
Christopher Cramer
3 War Economies and Humanitarian Action 59
Gilles Carbonnier
4 Rebel Taxation: Between the Moral and Market Economy 77
Zachariah Mampilly
PART II: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 101

5 The War Economy of Nomadic Empires 103
Nicola Di Cosmo
6 Non-State War Economy in Renaissance Italy 127
William Caferro
7 The Economy of Warlordism in Early Twentieth-Century China 149
Edward A. McCord
v
vi Contents
PART III: CONTEMPORARY WORLDS 179

8 Friend, Foe, or in Between? Humanitarian Action
and the Soviet–Afghan War 181
Jonathan Benthall
9 War Economy, Warlordism, and Social Class Formation
in South Sudan 205
Clémence Pinaud
10 Resource Wars, Oil, and the Islamic State 225
Philippe Le Billon
Conclusion: New Perspectives on Warring Societies 257
Nicola Di Cosmo, Didier Fassin, and Clémence Pinaud
Index261
About the Contributors 279
Acknowledgments
The present volume is the result of a workshop held in Princeton at the

Institute for Advanced Study and convened jointly by the School of Historical
Studies and the School of Social Science. We want to thank all its partici-
pants, including those who are not part of the present volume. We also are
grateful to Laura McCune for her kind assistance in the organization of the
event and to Munirah Bishop for her remarkable contribution to the prepara-
tion of the manuscript.
vii
Introduction
Revisiting Non-States War Economies
Non-state war economies are a pervasive phenomenon in today’s world. The

Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
Boko Haram in Nigeria and Cameroon, the various branches of al-Qaeda
in the Sahelian region, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka
are only a sample in a much longer list of non-state forces that have been
the protagonists of recent conflicts, all of which involved complex economic
dimensions. Contrary to conventional wars among opposing states—the two
world wars being typical examples—these conflicts mobilize instead armed
groups, often the expression of distinct ethnic and political entities, that rebel
against states, fight against each other, or combat invading powers. Whatever
the means or goals of their fight, they require human, material, technological,
and financial resources. In other words, such wars rely on an economy. This
is certainly the case also for conflicts between states, but while states legally
levy taxes and have national budgets, non-state actors must create their own
economy. The various forms of these economies are the object of the present
volume.
Often non-state entities are regarded as either the peculiar product of
so-called failed states or the breakup of former nation-states within a given
geopolitical context and are analyzed from the viewpoint of local politics or
regional affairs. While these are valuable perspectives, they tend to limit the
phenomenon to a specific range of actors, be it the expression of religious
fundamentalism, ethnic strife, or national and liberation struggles. Thus, they
erase those commonalities that, in our view, make non-state war economies
a specific and pervasive phenomenon, often transcending not just cultural
and political boundaries but also historical ones, whereby morphological
differences are in fact essential to the identification of similarities. Thus, to
1
2 Nicola Di Cosmo et al.
investigate non-state war economies as a unified, congruent phenomenon—

yet extremely varied in its manifestations—we expand the disciplinary palette
and present in this book economic, historical, anthropological, sociological,
and political approaches, so as to explore, in the past and present, and across
three continents, the nexuses between economy, war, social transformation,
and state-building.
The principal goal of the book is twofold. First, it aims to rethink much of the
debate around non-state war economies by critically evaluating the contribu-
tions that past studies have made. Second, it proposes to expand the conver-
sation by consciously treating non-state war economies as a far broader and
more conspicuous aspect of both economy and war than the focus on present-
day insurgent, rebel, and generally anti-state warfare (often reduced to social,
political, and religious elements) tends to privilege.
The migration of concepts such as the theory of the generative function
of war in state-building by Charles Tilly (a historian) or the theory of the
“stationary bandit” in war taxation from Mancur Olson (an economist) into
the analyses of political scientists is an example of concepts that have influ-
enced the thinking of a variety of analysts without the benefit of a proper
cross-disciplinary evaluation of their applicability. By presenting not just
different concepts and approaches but different ways to conceptualize and
problematize the issues related to non-war economies, the chapters included
in this volume serve the additional purpose of reflecting on the genesis of cur-
rent theories while expanding their empirical range and setting side by side
historical and contemporary case studies.
This is not just a different approach but a fundamental departure from how
current debates on non-state war economies, which have informed research
orientations over several decades, typically frame the question. In the 1990s,
the academic scene was divided between those who believed that “greed”
motivated people to take up arms, and those who argued that neither the pur-
suit of gain nor other economic opportunities could explain why insurgents
fight states, and focused instead on “grievances.” This scientific dispute had
important political implications.
The “greed” camp, led by Paul Collier, who was director of the World
Bank’s Development Research Group, was influenced by neoliberal
approaches to war and state-building (Collier, Hoeffler, and Sambanis 2005;
Collier 2008, 2009). Its main premise, that the rebels had no legitimate
political demands but were solely motivated by gain, implied that the state
had to be protected and strengthened, thus delegitimizing political protests
(Keen 2012a). This approach privileged “motive” over means, and while it
also served to find out the means by which greedy rebels accessed wealth
through war, its main line of argument was not about the construction of a
Introduction 3
war economy by non-state entities (regardless of motive) but about the goal
itself of the armed struggle. This approach and its attending interpretations
supported the view that “weak” states needed to be assisted economically
and politically and legitimized foreign military intervention. State-building
processes were mostly technical and justified by the purported goal of
promoting global stability through peace (Duffield 2001: 12). The “false
grievances” of enemies of the state (such as armed insurgents) were to be
ignored.
This school of thought was countered by researchers who were critical
of poorly designed quantitative methods that informed these studies (Keen
2012a: 761–62). Their approach was based on fieldwork in war-torn areas,
which produced compelling narratives through investigative analysis of
the local conditions. While these studies established the close relationship
between armed rebellions and political grievances, they also subordinated
the question of a non-state war economy to social and political instances that
intersect but do not explain economic processes.
Whereas, in the academic sphere, the inquiry into the complexities of the
relationship between war and economy, as well as the causes of war and its
effects, moved the debate onto a level more sophisticated than the simplistic
“grievance versus greed” dichotomy, greed advocates continued to prevail in
policy circles, remaining alive and well in the World Bank and the agencies
of the United Nations, even though there existed some agreement that griev-
ances, too, should be considered reasons for conflicts (Keen 2012a: 765). The
representation of illegitimate rebels in search of material gain and personal
enrichment continued to obscure or even erase the political aspects of con-
flicts, thereby favoring the argument that states, and the elites that controlled
them, were to be supported as a matter of legal and moral right. While eventu-
ally the “grievances” camp mostly won in the intellectual arena, the economic
questions did not rise to the level of an independent object of investigation as
the “greed” side reduced it to a rational actor approach with little interest in
the specific contexts and complex logics, and this is, in a nutshell, our specific
contribution to the debate, in addition to an expansion of the landscape of
manifestations of the phenomenon into past instances and across the planet.
The changing nature of both agents and economies requires to step back
from such stark and reductionist dichotomies as well as from the “now and
there” and seek instead parameters that go beyond specific theaters and lim-
ited variables, typically informed by international economic policy and for-
eign affairs debates. As relevant as these debates are, academic involvement
is vitally important not just to take a critical stance from the more politically
laden positions but also to lead the way toward a more theoretically and
empirically rich discussion, which is transformative of these debates and
opens new avenues to analysis and interpretation. Especially crucial in this
respect is a confrontation between different academic fields. This is where we

would like to position this volume.
While every collection of chapters as interdisciplinary as this one lends
itself to a degree of subjectivity in its organization, we have opted for group-
ing the chapters into three parts on the basis of their coherence and affinity
with respect to the overarching themes of the book. The volume begins with
theoretical and empirical frameworks and definitions that critically appraise
the notion of a “non-state war economy” from a variety of standpoints, while
reviewing the evolution of the debate over the past several decades. The sec-
ond section extends the chronological range of the investigation to historical
cases, which contribute to our understanding of non-state war economy by
examining the economic logic of nomadic conquerors, mercenary armies,
and warlordism, and investigating, within different time frames and scales,
the links between state and non-state war economies and their connections
to state formation, more specifically in China and Italy. Finally, the third
section includes three cases that, with distinct configurations, illustrate
contemporary realities of war economies, focusing on war-generated social
changes in South Sudan, the Iraq-Syrian oil fields exploited by the Islamic
State, and the economic intervention in Afghanistan. These studies tackle
critical aspects of war economics, such as the role of natural resources, the
resort to humanitarian action, and the making of social differentiation in
warfare, explaining in the process the complex relationship between war,
social dynamics, and economic goals. By privileging methodological clus-
ters rather that other types of connections based on regional, chronological
or other features, the volume, taken as a whole, puts front and center the
study of “non-state war economy” as a conscious analytical effort to expand
traditional boundaries (in every discipline involved) and show the benefits
of adopting a more expansive (not just comparative) and more critical (not
merely descriptive) approach.
In other words, we aim to intervene in the current debate by extending the
range of questions inherent to the study of the relationship between resources
and conflicts and by offering broader perspectives, inclusive of both contem-
porary and historical cases. At the same time, conscious of extant differences
and opposing interpretations at the intellectual level and their reverberations
at the policy level, our contributions open new avenues of research, especially
in terms of intellectual frameworks and fundamental questions. What all
authors have in common is a reflection on these socioeconomic structures that
cause war, sustain it, and create long-lasting political and social crises that
can reignite it as well as on the multiple economies generated by warfare. In
this sense, they consider wars to be economically destructive and productive.
Moreover, exploring war economies controlled by non-state actors inevitably
results in questioning the origin and perimeter of the state, the definition and
Introduction 5
delimitation of war and peace, and the continuation of war economies beyond
the official peace.
In this spirit, we focus more on similarities than differences between
state and non-state war economies. Adopting a long temporal framework
and diverse geographical contexts, we show that the distinction between
state and non-state actors, and between state and non-state war economies,
is in large part elusive. The methods of wealth accumulation and their
social impact, once seen across time and in multiple cultural contexts, bear
surprising resemblances. War economies in Asian nomadic steppe empires
and in rebel South Sudan similarly consist of large-scale raids, racketeering
money, international trade, and tax collection, which contribute to devel-
oping the premises of a state bureaucracy. Thus, the focus on the actors’
motivations is partly displaced by putting greater emphasis on the economic
requirements of state-building and on the effects of such requirements on
the creation or transformation of social and political structures. Both Nicola
Di Cosmo and Zachariah Mampilly show the political and symbolic func-
tions of wartime taxation, and challenge Mancur Olson’s view that taxation
is mostly an economic tool allowing for the transition of “roving bandits”
into “stationary” ones. In the same vein, studying the role played by oil in
the conflict involving the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Philippe Le Billon
establishes that it is valued for all parties involved and that it provides
minimal public services to the population, thus avoiding the simplification
of mere greed.
While such discussions have somewhat abated in the last ten years, and
the number of books published on the topic of war economies has declined,
progress has been made on a few fronts. The most important contributions,
of late, can be found in studies such as David Keen’s Useful Enemies, which
looks at the multiple benefits that some political actors obtain from wag-
ing indefinite wars that are not meant to be won (Keen 2012b). Another
notable contribution has been Philippe Le Billon’s Wars of Plunder, which
examines differences among various resource sectors related to war, and
shows how they were related to conflict (Le Billon 2012). In Inequality,
Grievances and Civil War, Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch,
and Halvard Buhaug reopened the debate by quantifying grievances related to
horizontal inequalities, that is, disparities between groups, in the emergence
of conflicts. Relying on the same quantitative methods adopted by “greed”
champions, they reached diametrically different conclusions (Cederman,
Skrede Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013). More recently, Gilles Carbonnier, in
Humanitarian Economics, extended his predecessors’ work on the relation-
ship between humanitarian aid and war economies, arguing for a new field
of inquiry that explores the linkages between humanitarian action and war
economies (Carbonnier 2015).
Non-state armed actors and their social impact through the war economy
also share many commonalities over time. For instance, Clémence Pinaud’s
South Sudanese warlords resemble those of Edward McCord’s nineteenth-
century China, who deploy the same techniques of tax evasion as William
Caferro’s businessmen of war and mercenaries from Renaissance Italy. In
these cases, much like in contemporary Mozambique analyzed by Christopher
Cramer, control over war economy is what drives social and cultural trans-
formations. In particular, it generates social differentiation, consolidating
warriors’ ascendency and cultural innovations, with displays of militarized
distinction. Thus, the multidisciplinary approach of this volume illuminates
the numerous facets and ways in which non-state war economies are actively
and directly implicated in the making of new polities and societies, from
steppe empires to guerilla proto-states.
Such transformations also involve a moral dimension, of which humanitar-
ian actors are emblematic. They have become part and parcel of contemporary
war economies, as Gilles Carbonnier demonstrates through various examples,
from the ransoming and kidnapping of humanitarian staff to the effects of
economic sanctions on countries at war. Yet, morality and politics are often
inseparable, and Jonathan Benthall analyzes the ties between charities and
diplomatic, financial and military support for the mujahideen of 1980s and
1990s Afghanistan. This dual dimension goes beyond the sole humanitarian
world, and includes the construction of the image of wars as just or unjust and
the differentiation of groups with a legitimate, that is, soldiers, or illegitimate,
that is, civilians, reason to kill, which leads Didier Fassin to plead for a better
connection between the political economy and the moral economy of warfare.
In an initial attempt to reflect on the conceptual framework of the vol-

ume, Didier Fassin problematizes the three terms that inform the object
of our investigation. First, while wars can be declared by the various bel-
ligerents, more often than not, their very status is controversial. It may be
acknowledged by one side only, as was the case for the Algerian War of
Independence, which was not recognized as such by the French government
despite its more than 300,000 deaths. At times, the boundary between war and
peace may become blurred, as is the case in the Palestinian Territories, whose
inhabitants do not speak of their situation in terms of war and peace but of
unending occupation of their land, which has caused the exodus of five mil-
lion refugees. Who is entitled to define a situation of conflict as a war? What
is a war, such as that on terror, which has not for enemy a state or a group
but an abstract reality like the war on terror? What are the consequences of
labeling a given conflict in terms of the differentiation between soldiers and
civilians? These questions have important concrete implications. Second,
the term non-state meets several obstacles as one tries to apply it to political
Introduction 7
entities, which is partly exemplified in Le Billon’s taxonomy, inclusive of

“proto-state” and “near-states” entities. Typically seen as non-state agents,
for instance, the self-styled Islamic State presents certain characteristics of
statehood, whereas the militant group Hezbollah is a political party whose
members sit in the Lebanese parliament and government. Moreover, non-
state agents often have ties to their national state or foreign states, which
support them with funds and weapons. Even their connection with warfare
can be relatively loose as some are more involved in banditry or mafias than
armed insurgency. Moreover, besides warlords, rebels and revolutionaries of
various kinds, contemporary battlefields have seen the participation of new
actors, in particular humanitarian organizations. Third, the notion of economy
is subject to multiple interpretations, from the calculation of the economic
impact of war to the game theory construction of war waging. Broadening
its meaning can be useful to connect the political economy of war, that is,
the production, circulation, and appropriation of goods and services, notably
through taxing and looting, and the moral economy of war, that is, the pro-
duction and circulation of values and affects, which determine what is good
and bad, fair and unfair, while mobilizing indignation or compassion, hatred
or disgust. War involves not only rationalities but also norms and emotions.
In line with this critical perspective, Christopher Cramer proposes to
review the main trends in the field of war economics by examining numer-
ous cases across the planet. He explores the intellectual history of econo-
mists’ approaches to war economies, from liberal interpretations of war to
neoclassical economic domination. The liberal interpretations of war regard
warfare as destructive, and therefore negative from an economic viewpoint.
War has a cost, which can be measured, and therefore waging a war can be
modelled, according to rational choice theory. This approach considers the
costs of recruitment rebel soldiers and the opportunity costs of the rebel-
lion itself, and infers that the lower they are, the more likely war will be.
However, this approach, long supported by the World Bank, ignores the fact
that ideas, social bonds, and national identities play a major role in conflicts.
Economic interests can provide incentives, but ideological elements, whether
religious or political, are often even more prominent. War is not only about
greed, it is also a matter of grievances. Yet, beyond their differences, all
these neoclassical theories hold that warfare is detrimental to the economy
and that, in the context of the Global South, it is contrary to development.
Alternative perspectives argue that wars are not simply destructive; they are
also transformative. In Afghanistan, the war against the Soviet Union has led
to strengthening peripheral territories of the country and to shifting the tradi-
tional economy of wheat cultivation and livestock exportation to a more prof-
itable economy of poppy cultivation and opium exportation. Interestingly,
war economics has recently moved beyond the economies of war strictly
speaking, focusing on conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction,

thus pushing the temporality of warfare to the phases preceding and following
the actual conflict. It has also expanded spatially, either regionally or glob-
ally. The civil wars in Colombia and Syria are incomprehensible unless we
take into account, respectively, the trafficking of cocaine in the United States
and the massive displacement of the Syrian population to Turkey, Lebanon,
Jordan, and Europe. Finally, it is remarkable that higher-income countries’
war economies increasingly resemble lower-income countries’ non-state war
economies.
As Zachariah Mampilly observes, the most significant element of non-state
war economies is taxation. Because the collection of revenues is supposed to
be the exclusive prerogative of the state, when a non-state group begins to tax
the citizens living on territories nominally under a state’s sovereignty, such
an action is regarded by most analysts as both illegal and illegitimate, that
is, mere extortion. Rebels practicing this form of racketeering are criminals
seeking profit rather than pursuing the objectives of liberation that they pro-
claim. Those who defend this viewpoint are influenced by Mancur Olson’s
views but disregard the fact that contemporary African and Latin American
national contexts are completely different from those pertaining to the forma-
tion of European states. Against such anachronistic approaches, it is neces-
sary to account for practices of taxation from the agents’ perspective, rooted
in a specific reality. Thus, the Colombian guerrilla cannot be reduced to a
form of banditry. Its Marxist-Leninist ideology implied a political project
with a form of governance combining social control over, and public services
for, the population of the areas where they claimed authority. More generally,
in contexts of civil war, taxation may achieve several goals. It manifests an
aspiration to sovereignty; it tests the legitimacy of the rebels and the loyalty
of the population; it establishes the foundations of a state bureaucracy by
building the accounting and levying apparatus; and, finally, it generates rev-
enues that can be used to consolidate the insurgency. Rebel taxation is thus
about much more than generating revenue. It is a highly symbolic and politi-
cal technology of governance, which exceeds its economic benefits.
One aspect that has long been neglected in non-state war economies is the
presence, in the context of contemporary wars, of agents that are not wag-
ing war. This is the case of the humanitarian agencies discussed by Gilles
Carbonnier. They have been extremely successful at fundraising, reaching a
global budget that, according to official data, has grown by a factor of twenty-
two in the past quarter century, if one combines public and private sources.
Relief organizations intervene either on the ground, after agreements have
been reached with the various military parties, as in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, or, if security cannot be guaranteed, by remote control, that is,
from a site distant from the theater of war, as in Syria. In some cases, the
Introduction 9
presence of humanitarian agencies requires paying taxes to factions that are

supposed to guarantee their protection; this is what happens with the Taliban
in Afghanistan and Al-Shabaab in Somalia. In other cases, humanitarian
workers have been taken hostage by local groups, for instance, in Chechnya.
This practice has proven particularly effective not only for the abductors, who
request high ransoms to free captives, but also for the insurance companies
which have developed a lucrative business by proposing the reimbursement,
in case of kidnapping, of the ransom as well as the fees for the intermediar-
ies. Beyond the growing concerns regarding the security of their personnel,
relief organizations are confronted with complex situations in which their
resources, including food and drugs, can be appropriated by the most power-
ful local agents. This is particularly the case when international sanctions are
imposed on a country, with the aid agencies being caught between a rock and
a hard place since both donors and local actors vie to control the aid distribu-
tion, often to the detriment of those in need. The emergence of humanitarian
assistance in today’s war economies thus poses unprecedented problems and
adds a new dimension to the actions of warring parties.
Moving to a historical perspective, Nicola Di Cosmo examines the links
between state and non-state war economies, and their connections to state
formation. The Eurasian nomadic empires that developed over a period of
2,000 years are a case in point. Indeed, steppe nomads, in some instances,
transcended their territorial and organizational limits to create empires, some
ephemeral, others long-lasting. Tracing the history of these empires from the
Xiongnu, which appeared at the end of the third century BCE, to the Qing
dynasty founded by the Manchus (1644–1911), it is possible to bring out,
beyond the multiple differences between them, a series of common elements
that define the economic requirements for the constitution of new and expan-
sive polities through warfare. Due to the limitations of their pastoral economy
and ecology, steppe nomads required external resources to support the politi-
cal and military requirements of large political formations: such resources
could only be acquired through war. To raise an army and to ensure the loy-
alty of the elite, which were two essential conditions to remain in power and
maintain the state’s stability, the steppe ruler needed to wage wars. Against
the threat of centrifugal forces exerted by tribal leaders and members of the
aristocracy, the economy of war and the means of revenue extraction associ-
ated with it were indispensable to the survival of a unified and centralized
political system. The political economy of steppe empires involved four strat-
egies. Raiding and pillaging carried out by huge armies allowed for a redis-
tribution of the spoils among the aristocracy as well as the soldiers. Tribute
extorted in exchange for peace through treaties had the advantage over loot-
ing of being more sustainable in the long run. Trade became increasingly
important and lucrative as the silk road and long-distance trade developed,
facilitating the development of market towns, merchant networks, and the

beginnings of transnational commerce to which nomads also contributed by
providing military protection. Finally, taxation of conquered populations was
probably the most effective since it did not deplete the local economies and
relied on a bureaucracy and other civil institutions that contributed to the for-
mation and consolidation of state structures. Nomadic empires thus confirm
Charles Tilly’s famous adage about European history according to which war
made the state and the state made war, but they push it into an extreme, in
the form of a vicious circle in which only by making war can states secure
their existence.
On a different temporal and spatial scale, William Caferro explores non-
state wars in Italian cities of the Renaissance. The conflicts between these
small entities are especially revealing because they call into question the very
definition of non-state wars. On the one hand, powerful Italian cities such as
Venice or Genoa can be assimilated to states, since their military included
local soldiers and foreign mercenaries. On the other hand, the permanent situ-
ation of conflict between and within Italian cities blurred the line between war
and peace and even rendered the notion of warfare an inappropriate descrip-
tor. Moreover, understanding the economic dimension of war-ridden northern
Italy requires that the broader social context of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries be taken into account. This is a time characterized by recurrent
plague epidemics and famines that imposed a heavy burden on the demog-
raphy and finances of the competing states. In this context, the phenomenon
of mercenary armies hired by the various cities is economically and socially
significant because it made war a major drain on resources as well as a sig-
nificant element of social change as people were forced to move frequently.
Raids on villages and sacks of cities by armed parties caused substantial
displacements of populations, including the skilled workers necessary to the
flourishing of the local industries, who were fleeing not only the scourges of
plague and war but also the swelling taxes imposed by governments to pay
mercenary armies. Considering the cost of maintaining armies to protect the
cities, leagues were often formed to join their military efforts, such as one
that saw the union of Florence, Verona, Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and Naples
in the fourteenth century. Rather than creating new states, wars had the effect
of consolidating alliances between cities incapable of paying by themselves
for the military protection they needed. The effects of having foreign soldiers,
mainly from Germany and England, in the employment of Italian cities,
especially in the fourteenth century, had significant economic implications.
One of the most relevant was the transfer of wealth from Italy to northern
countries, as the proceeds of military wages and other forms of income were
invested, via the developed Italian banking system, to the places of origin of
the military commanders. This led to the depletion of local economies. Only
Introduction 11
in the fifteenth century did armies begin to be mostly composed of native

soldiers, who spent the money earned in conspicuous consumption, a feature
of the Italian Renaissance. In sum, the connection between non-state wars
and the formation of states in northern Italy is far from a linear one, since
conflicts often contributed to economic exhaustion and political weakening.
Moreover, the lines between state and non-state war economies were blurred
as states had to raise financial resources through public fiscal extraction to
fund non-state military actors. Fiscal and social consequences, compounded
with political ones, made war and its economy a central transformative ele-
ment in late medieval and early modern Italy.
Returning to China, but this time in the much more condensed period of
the early twentieth century, Edward McCord analyses how the phenomenon
of warlordism in China displayed special characteristics, in that it was con-
nected closely with the preexisting state apparatus, which allowed military
leaders to raise taxes and maintain a bureaucracy. Moreover, with the devel-
opment of Chinese nationalism, regional military commanders did not aspire
to build independent states but kept a formal allegiance to a unified and
sovereign China. Rather, their power was derived from official functions of
governorship in the name of the central state, whose fiscal and military func-
tions they appropriated. The relationship between politics and militarization
is remarkable, since the rise of warlordism resulted from a dual phenomenon
of politicization of the military, as young officers became involved in the
debates of their time, and of militarization of politics, as the political arena
was dominated by opposing regional armies. The stability of the system
depended upon two types of constraints: the loyalty of the officers and their
men, and the warlords’ own allegiance to the two nominal central govern-
ments, whether located in Beijing or Canton. It was also predicated on the
financial capacity to support and even expand modern professional armies.
Levying land taxes had long been the most effective way of supplying the
necessary funds, but the increasing budgetary demands led to the diversifi-
cation and proliferation of taxes increasingly drawn from the urban popula-
tion, which made the occupation of cities especially profitable. There were,
however, limits to how many taxes could be extracted, and other sources of
revenue were used, including loans from foreign banks and manipulation of
currency. Such a multiplicity of interests and financial dealings made the
quality of the warlords’ economic power not just regional but nodal. Whereas
the personal wealth accumulated by many warlords can be assimilated to a
form of predation, some of them also used these resources to develop wel-
fare programs and modernization projects in the regions they controlled.
But the general economic outcome of warlordism in these decades seems to
be largely negative with the destruction of properties, the loss of lives, the
interruption of agricultural cycles, and the impoverishment due to rapacious
taxation. Beyond the economic consequences, an assessment of warlordism

in modern China must take into account the political transformations that
it produced, and in particular the emergence of a revolutionary movement
mainly opposed to warlordism. Most significantly, the case of warlordism in
China blurs the lines between state and non-state military actors, and, within
the particular context of nationalist China, the behavior of various warlords
does not conform to a single pattern.
Opening the section on contemporary wars, Jonathan Benthall examines
the increasingly important economic role of charities, starting with the war
fought from 1979 to 1989 between the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
supported by the Soviet Union and Afghan mujahideen backed by Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, and the United States, a war that caused half a million deaths.
The anti-Soviet alliance proved decisive not only to bolster the resistance of
the mujahideen, and defeat the loyalist and Soviet troops, but also to gener-
ate the Islamic fundamentalist groups, including the Taliban. This war was
also a foundational and formative experience for the recently created Doctors
Without Borders. Contravening the humanitarian principle of neutrality,
the organization sided with the mujahideen, and its director even visited
the United States to plead for its military support. In fact, humanitarian and
military efforts went hand-in-hand, since both Christian and Muslim charities
were mobilized to assist the mujahideen and benefited from tax exemption in
the United States for their war effort. While the Soviet Union denounced this
practice as one that supported international terrorism, it was only after the
9/11 attacks that the White House decided to blacklist and criminalize a num-
ber of Islamic charities which, ironically, had been used earlier to achieve
military objectives in Afghanistan. Any support to these organizations,
henceforth classified as terrorist by Western powers, was condemned and
prosecuted even if it concerned a branch exclusively involved in medical aid
or welfare programs such as the social services wing of Hamas. The history
of the relationships of religious and secular charities with the United States
and its allies in the Middle East thus reveals the ambiguities and even con-
tradictions in the involvement of these non-state actors that mix a discourse
of neutrality with a practice of partisanship, and are alternatively encouraged
and sanctioned by Western powers. Whereas charities are definitely engaged
in relief efforts to assist conflict victims, it would be naïve not to see the more
complex and perplexing picture of their engagement in warfare and of their
relationship with states.
It is also a change in perspective in the way a non-state actor is repre-
sented in the international public sphere that draws the attention of Clémence
Pinaud as she considers how the image of the SPLA changed over time,
depending on international politics. Until December 2013 and the new civil
war, this organization was perceived as a political movement with legitimate
Introduction 13
grievances because it suited the foreign policy goals of Western countries and
particularly the United States. Western powers supported the rebels against
the Sudanese government accused of ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and
al-Qaeda. Cleverly orchestrated by its leader, the portrayal of the SPLA
allowed international advocates to turn a blind eye to the predatory violence
against local populations it claimed to liberate in the South. In fact, the orga-
nization of the war economy in SPLA-controlled areas, which depended on
the building of a predatory state supported by the international community,
induced transformations of the Sudanese society. Wartime predation initiated
a process of new social class formation characterized by extractive and sexual
violence. This process was controlled by the military aristocracy as a domi-
nant class rather than a nobility. War-torn South Sudan shared many charac-
teristics with the feudal societies described by Marc Bloch, characterized by
economic exploitation and relationships of vassalage. The military aristocrats
established long-term social, political, and military dominance through the
reinvestment of their wealth into large-scale polygamy. They also created
a lower stratum through gifts of women and bridewealth, thus developing
networks of courtiers. To consolidate their dominant-class ascendency, they
defended their interests by controlling markets and yielding as much surplus
value as possible. Their strategies in defending their class interests and in
consolidating their status resulted in a form of wealth hyper-concentration,
which contributed to shape a patrimonial capitalist system, compounded
by their dominant position on the marriage market. In using marriage as a
tool of social differentiation and class consolidation, the military aristocracy
devised extreme inequalities. In this case, if wars make states, war economies
also make social classes and highly unequal societies, in which women are
commodified.
Just as interpreting non-state wars in terms of grievances is reductive,
Philippe Le Billon argues that the invocation of greed often appears to be a
simplification. While archeologists and evolutionary biologists relate early
warfare to the control of subsistence resources, political science and econom-
ics often consider that, in the absence of foreign support and ideological moti-
vation after the end of the Cold War, states and non-states of the Global South
have made the competition for the exploitation of natural resources one of the
main causes of contemporary wars. But the very idea of resource-based wars
brings with it the automatic delegitimation of the rebels as political actors and
their criminalization, thus drawing attention away from the political roots of
the conflict. Recent reassessments of these wars have emphasized a series of
factors that need to be considered for a more nuanced analysis. Among these,
the following are especially relevant. To begin with, the resources at stake are
extremely diverse, from gemstones to wildlife products, and often circulate
between states and non-states agents by means of corruption or co-optation.
Moreover, a wide range of actors are involved, including civilians, and these
resources provide means of survival to certain populations. Various resources
can affect the shape and duration of warfare, and the stakes they represent
exist in both war and peace. To comprehend the nature of so-called resource
wars, the case of the Islamic State is of particular interest as it reveals how the
usual representation of its actions utterly simplifies what is in fact a complex
picture. For instance, while oil was a substantial source of revenue during the
four years when the Islamic State controlled a significant part of the Syrian
and Iraqi territories, it is difficult to deny that its rationale was ideological and
its project political, as specified in the very words of its name. In the short
term, oil production certainly contributed to the consolidation of the Islamic
State not only from a financial perspective but also for what it meant by way
of negotiations with local actors, maintenance of the infrastructure, and dis-
tribution of the proceeds of sales. The links between oil and warfare were, in
this case, multiple. More than access to the resource per se as a mere source
of enrichment for the rebels—as some have argued—the takeover of oil fields
mainly served to ensure the functioning and the expansion of the Caliphate.
Yet, the Islamic proto-state faced many challenges in the exploitation of
the oil fields due to the bombings by Western powers, the lack of technical
experts, the pressures exerted on intermediaries, and, at some point, the sharp
decline of the international price. Within a few years, from being an asset, oil
became a liability.
As in the previous case studies developed in the book, both historical and
contemporary, only a thorough empirical examination of a given conflict
and its specific context can make non-state war economies more intelligible
beyond simple dichotomic explanations and mere ideological judgments.
REFERENCES
Carbonnier, Gilles. 2015. Humanitarian Economics: War, Disaster and the Global
Aid Market. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cederman, Lars-Erik, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug. 2013.
Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Collier, Paul. 2008. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and
What Can Be Done About It. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2009. Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. New York:
Harper Collins.
Collier, Paul, Anke Hoeffler, and Nicholas Sambanis. 2005. “The Collier-Hoeffler
Model of Civil War Onset and the Case Study Project Research Design.” In
Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis, pp. 1–33. Edited by Paul Collier
and Nicholas Sabanis. Vol. 1—Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Introduction 15
Duffield, Mark R. 2001. Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of
Development and Security. London and New York: Zed Books.
Keen, David. 2012a. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” International Affairs 88
(4): 757–77.
———. 2012b. Useful Enemies: When Waging Wars Is More Important Than
Winning Them. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Le Billon, Philippe. 2012. Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of
Resources. London: Hurst & Company.
Tilly, Charles. 1985. “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.” In
Bringing the State Back In, pp. 169–91. Edited by Peter B. Evans, Dietrich
Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Part I
FRAMEWORKS
Chapter 1
What Are Non-State War Economies?

Prefatory Remarks
Didier Fassin
“War made the state, and the state made war,” Charles Tilly (1975: 42)
famously wrote, his statement having become the motto of the so-called bel-
licist theory of state-making. But more than the obvious military connection
between war and the state—the state needs an army to wage a war, and this
army reciprocally allows the state to consolidate its existence against its ene-
mies in wartime—the economic dimension was for him crucial to the relation-
ship between the two entities. “Taxes, conscription, requisitions, and more,”
which aimed at building strong armed forces, ultimately served to “deliver
resources to the government for other purposes,” therefore becoming tools for
the strengthening of political institutions. One could therefore go as far as say-
ing that, in Tilly’s view of the formation of European polities—and only those
polities, as he straightforwardly argued that “Europe will not occur again”—
this predatory economy represents the link between war and the state. It does
so in two symmetrical ways. On the one hand, the state extorts levies from its
population to wage wars. On the other hand, it legitimizes itself by assuring
the protection of its population against potential internal or external enemies.
While this theory has been quite influential in political history and political sci-
ence, it is in fact part of a broader approach to state-making and war making in
these disciplines, which has been systematized via statistical data and enriched
to take into account national identification (Wimmer 2013). In this approach,
war is a conflict between states and states are the products of wars.
This traditional state-centered understanding of wars is reflected in the
elaboration of the important Correlates of War Project, which consists in
collecting for statistical purposes exhaustive information about warfare over
the past two centuries, using for definition conflicts between participants with
armed forces having caused more than 1,000 battle-related fatalities among
combatants, this figure having later been specified as a yearly minimum. For
19
20 Didier Fassin
those who imagined the project in 1963, the “primary interest was in develop-
ing a typology” that was “based on war participants,” and therefore “on states,
which by definition had to have the means of exerting their independence and
playing a role in international relations” (Sarkees 2007). It took the authors
of the project more than thirty years to begin revising their typology so as
to include non-states as agents involved in conflicts both national and inter-
national. Such a late integration shows how much the ideas of war and state
are inseparable not only for common sense but also in the academia. Until
recently, non-state wars seemed to be, for many, unidentified political objects.
The awareness of the existence of non-state wars and of the urgency to
study them is often said to be related to the 9/11 events, as if the attacks on
New York’s Twin Towers and the call for the war on terror had generated
awareness about the fact that militant groups could be part of armed conflicts.
This certainly betrayed a dominant presentist and Western-centered view that
was ignorant of the reality of non-state wars in the past and present. Indeed,
historians have for a long time written about warlords in various parts of the
world, notably China, anthropologists have dedicated studies to contempo-
rary ethnic wars also across the planet, especially on the African continent,
and the parallels between the Chinese past and the African present have even
appeared to be heuristic as in the Chadian case (Charlton and May 1989). The
observers’ blindness was even more troubling—and yet less surprising—when
one considers that the majority of the victims of militias, insurgents, radical
factions and criminal gangs live in the so-called Global South. Indeed, more
than to the states’ security, which is generally invoked as being at stake, it is
to the security of local communities that these various groups pose a threat:
they are those who pay the highest price (Engelhart 2016: 171). Typically, the
Islamic State has been responsible for far more casualties in the Middle East,
particularly among the Yazidi population, than in Europe and North America,
via its attacks. Among the first twenty-five countries appearing on the global
terrorism index, only one is situated in the Western world, the others being
in Asia and Africa (Statista 2020). Thus, in 2017, it is Afghanistan and Iraq
that have suffered the most fatalities from these attacks, followed by Nigeria
and Somalia. In sum, the late consciousness of the significance of non-state
armed groups in contemporary warfare came with the perception of the threat
posed by terrorism to the West, although these regions were far less affected
than the rest of the world.
In this post-9/11 context, the economic dimension of these conflicts resur-
faced. But it mainly did so in a specific way. Early reports mostly assessed the
consequences of the new risk on insurance coverage and premiums, transpor-
tation and trade costs, and security spending, with relatively optimistic pre-
dictions in terms of financial stability and economic growth (Lenain, Bonturi
and Koen 2002). Again, the viewpoint was that of the state, more specifically
What Are Non-State War Economies? 21
those of Western countries. Yet, when considering the economic impact of

terrorism in terms of direct and indirect costs due to deaths and injuries as
well as property destruction, the ten countries that suffer most economic
losses in proportion of their GDP are in the Middle East and Africa (Institute
for Economics and Peace 2017). Besides, such analyses, like most of those
conducted in recent years, were essentially limited to what was categorized as
terrorist attacks. However, in Iraq, which is the country most affected by such
acts, the number of fatalities they caused between 2000 and 2016 amounted
to 9,765, while, according to the conservative assessment of the Iraq Family
Health Survey Study Group (2008), the number of violent deaths related to
the war conducted by the United States and its allies against local belligerents
is estimated at a minimum of 151,000 for the sole period from March 2003
through June 2006. Terrorism, even in the Global South, is only a small part
of the death toll of, and price paid by, populations where non-state wars occur.
Finally, it should be added that analyzing the economy of conflicts only in
terms of impact and costs is legitimate but restrictive. If wars have conse-
quences, they also have causes. And these causes are in part economic. By
focusing on the economic effects of war, one misses the crucial point of the
economic logics of the production and perpetuation of warfare, in particular,
albeit not only, the economic logics of the agents involved, whether they have
to do with the conquest of territories, the access to natural resources, the appro-
priation and distribution of riches, the levying of taxes and raising of an army.
Thus, with few notable exceptions, non-state war economies have not
received the attention they deserve and, when they have, it has been through
presentist and Western-centered lenses, more concerned with terrorism in the
North than conflicts in the South and with consequences than causes. Examining
afresh non-state war economies therefore provides an opportunity to open less
often addressed issues. But do we even have a clear idea of what is meant by
non-state war economies, and are there not a series of questions to answer in
the first place? Are we sure that there is a consensual definition of war? Are we
certain of how to characterize a non-state actor involved in a conflict? Are we
confident in our understanding of what the boundary of the economic domain
is? In this chapter, I want to reflect critically on the three elements that compose
the object of our collective inquiry in order to enlighten and perhaps complicate
its contents and contours. To address the theoretical questions each of them
pose, I will limit my empirical cases to contemporary situations.
WAR
Prima facie, what a war is seems to pose little problem; Famously, Carl von
Clausewitz (1976: 75) presented it as “an act of force to compel our enemy
22 Didier Fassin
to do our will.” Dictionaries define it as a state of armed conflict between

countries or between groups within a country. In certain cases, things are
clear: there is a declaration of war. For instance, the Congress of the United
States has approved eleven resolutions declaring war with various countries,
from Great Britain in 1812 to Axis-allied Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania in
1942. But since then, none of the military interventions of the United States
in Korea, Lebanon, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya, among others, have
been preceded by a declaration of war. Most significantly, there is no official
war between the United States and Yemen, where 329 strikes have been
responsible for more than 1,000 deaths since 2002, or Pakistan, where 430
strikes have killed more than 2,500 people since 2004. So, how do we know
that a given armed conflict is a war—and who decides?
For more than four decades, the Algerian War of Independence was offi-
cially referred to in France as les événements d’Algérie, the events of Algeria,
since the official position of the French government when it started was to
deem Algeria a part of France and therefore the rebellion of the Algerians a
mere internal public disorder (République française 1962). Only in 1999 did
the French president Jacques Chirac acknowledge that the conflict between
France and the National Liberation Front, which had caused the death of
23,000 French and more than 300,000 Algerians, was indeed a war. In con-
trast, on the other side, the official designation was “Algerian Revolution.” It
should, however, be noted that for ordinary people things were much more
straightforward: in France, people spoke of la guerre d’Algérie, the Algerian
war, while in Algeria, they simply talked about la guerre, the war. Thus, for
the colonial state, the deadly war was downgraded to mere unrest and treated
as a policing issue, whereas for the non-state belligerent it was elevated to the
status of an act of emancipation of an oppressed people. On both sides, the
language of war was considered to be irrelevant—except for distant specta-
tors and local victims.
Three days after the November 13, 2015, attacks in which 130 people
were killed in Paris and for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility,
the French president François Hollande convened the French parliament
and solemnly started his speech with the sentence: “France is at war” (Sénat
2015). The nine perpetrators, who were almost all French and Belgian citi-
zens trained in Syria, were depicted as “a jihadist army.” For the head of state,
this declaration of war justified the heavy bombing, the night before, of the
Syrian city of Raqqa, the stronghold of the Islamic State, and the objective
of the “destruction” of the Salafi militant group. Yet, contrary to what these
statements implied, Operation Chammal mobilizing French troops as part the
international coalition against the Islamic State had begun one year earlier.
But there was no question of war then; the term used was frappes aériennes,
airstrikes. French people did not think of their country as being at war. The
perception was undoubtedly different for people living under the bombs in
Syria. The attacks in Paris could thus be described by the French govern-
ment as the triggering factor of what became officially designated as a war
of self-defense, whereas the Islamic State presented their attacks in Paris as a
retaliation for Operation Chammal which had already caused numerous casu-
alties in their ranks. Thus, for France, choosing the right moment to declare
the war served to overlook the previous military involvement and justify
the amplification of the airstrikes as a just response, while for the Islamic
State, speaking of reprisal for bombings which had killed militants as well
as civilians permitted to authenticate the ongoing warfare and legitimize the
attacks in Paris. On both sides, the language of war was strategic—but for
symmetrical reasons.
From this parallel between a war that is not named as such by the bel-
ligerents and a war that is acknowledged as such by them yet at different
moments, what lessons can we draw? Is a war only a war when it has been
recognized as such—and by whom? What interest does one have in declaring
a war—or instead in denying it? Whereas the question of whether there was
a time when the definition and delimitation of war was undisputed remains
open—one could think of wars between states starting with a proclamation
and ending with an armistice or a surrender—it is clear that it is not the case
anymore. Think of Palestine where Palestinians do not see their condition as
one of warfare, although it is punctuated with Palestinian uprisings and Israeli
deadly military interventions, but as one of unending occupation which started
with the Nakba in 1948; “Occupied Palestinian Territories” is in fact the offi-
cial expression used by many international organizations, as the conflict has
caused the death of more than 10,000 people and the exile of almost 5 million
refugees among the Palestinians. Think also of Colombia, where Colombians
have experienced one of the longest situations of warfare of the twentieth
century involving the national army, paramilitary groups, and several guer-
rilla organizations; the term La Violencia initially used in 1948 has been the
common way of referring to the conflict, as it is estimated that more than
200,000 people have died and more than 5 million have been internally dis-
placed. In the Palestinian case, the enemy is the occupier, like Germany was
for France during the Second World War. In the Colombian case, the enemy
is within, like in the United States at the time of the Civil War. But in both
cases, despite the militarization of the conflict and the number of casualties,
the everlasting context of threat and violence makes the unnamed warfare the
rule, and the elusive peace the exception. For those living in these contexts,
the boundary between war and peace is obscured. In the Occupied Palestinian
Territories still today, people know that they can be shot, arrested or dispos-
sessed of their land almost at any moment. In large areas of Colombia until
recently, people knew that they could be kidnapped, killed, or chased from
24 Didier Fassin
their home at almost any time; and in fact, even the signing of the peace
agreement has not changed that situation for many. For Palestinians living in
Occupied Territories that are constantly reduced by settlers’ colonization and
for Colombians living in unsafe zones where paramilitaries and militants still
operate, war is a form of life. It is part of their ordinary existence. A sort of
silent warfare seems normalized to the point that it is no more recognized as
such. In fact, it is probable that it has long been the case in many parts of the
world, when insecurity was the norm, when the state was almost inexistent,
and when non-state armed agents were the main players.
The relatively indistinct character of many contemporary wars—whether
they are not named or acknowledged as such, whether they are not well defined
or clearly delimited in time or space—is indeed in part the consequence of the
involvement of non-state agents. Declaring the “war on terror,” as George W.
Bush did in September 2001, was more a rhetorical gesture than a diplomatic
statement. The enemy was not clearly designated, even if in the context of the
9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda was the main target. In fact, his successor in the White
House, Barack Obama, stated in May 2013 that the United States should not
be involved in a “boundless global war on terror” but instead in “targeted
efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists,” thus renouncing
the lexicon of both war and terror (Obama 2013). In the meantime, however,
the United States had declared two wars which presented most characteristics
of usual conflicts between states—against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in
2003, bombing and invading both countries. Thus, while it is true that non-
state wars often involve specific forms of warfare, such as guerilla combat
or suicide bombing, they have not abandoned traditional forms, with their
battlefields, fronts and seizing of cities, the main difference residing then in
the contrast between the sophistication of the states’ military equipment and
the often limited and aging weaponry of the non-state actors. The support
of international powers on both sides tends nevertheless to reduce the gap
between them as does the dissemination of weaponry in the aftermath of the
fall of a regime, like in Libya in 2011 when al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
took hold of Muammar Gaddafi’s armament, or as a result of the debacle of a
national army, as was the case in 2014 when the Iraqi army was defeated by
the Islamic State in Mosul. For these various reasons, the specificity of wars
involving non-state actors should therefore not be overstated.
There is, however, a singularity of this form of warfare: the confusion
between civilians and combatants, or better said, the blurring of the line
between the two. On the one hand, under occupation, civilians can become
militants to defend their country, while militants can hide in plain-clothes
to perpetrate an attack. The distinction between the two can even become
meaningless as the passage from one status to the other may be unpredictable
and reversible, often the consequence of particular circumstances. On the
other hand, in such scenario, the occupying army becomes suspicious of the
entire local population, distrust and doubt causing the killing of individuals
without any evidence of their involvement in an armed group. Indeed, faced
with the potential risk for their life of an error of judgment, soldiers consider
them combatants until proven civilians. This confusion has produced both a
considerable number of unjustified deaths and a series of heated controversies
about the counting of casualties in Afghanistan and even more Iraq. Indeed,
under the law of war, specified in modern times as International Humanitarian
Law, the distinction between civilians and combatants is crucial. In drone
attacks conducted by the United States against the Taliban, the killing of
civilians who happened to be close to the supposed combatant being targeted
is deemed the inevitable cost of a necessary operation. But in the bombing
by Israel of Gazan civilian edifices such as schools, the argument is reversed
as the combatants are accused of using the population as human shields. In
these cases, a justification for the killing of civilians still seems needed for
the states fighting non-state actors so as to legitimize their action. However,
in most cases, non-state actors do not even feel bound by international laws,
and the Shining Path in Peru, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, and
the Islamic State in Syria do not bother with the weak distinction between
civilians and combatants: they indiscriminately massacre the peasants from
villages suspected of collaboration with the enemy. In fact, the armies of the
respective states often do not act otherwise—which certainly calls for a closer
examination of the differences and relationships between state and non-state.
NON-STATE
The negative designation of entities as what they are not is always problem-
atic. First, it supposes that what they are not is itself indisputably defined and
delimited—in that case, the state, about which so many theories, debates, and
disputes have been generated. Second, it implies that there is some empirical
homogeneity or at least theoretical coherence in gathering them under the
same label—yet, militant groups, nongovernmental organizations, and mul-
tinational corporations have little in common (National Intelligence Council
2007). So, what are non-state actors, and in which way do they intervene in
warfare?
While this is not the place to ask what a state is, it may still be relevant
to observe via concrete cases how perplexing the description of an actor as
non-state can be. Let us consider three emblematic cases in the Middle East.
The Islamic State is a self-denominated state created in 2014 but deemed by
the other nations of the planet a non-state actor, alternatively designated as
a militant group, a terrorist organization, and a crime syndicate. Albeit not
26 Didier Fassin
recognized as a state, it presents—or at least has presented during a certain

period of time—various signs supposed to be characteristic of statehood, such
as sovereignty over a territory, levying of taxes, policing of its population,
and provision of social and health services, among others. The Palestinian
Authority, by contrast, is since the 1995 Oslo Accords the legal government
of the Occupied Territories, but it has no effective sovereignty over its ter-
ritory—although the state of Palestine is recognized by a majority of the
members of the United Nations. This government is the emanation of the
Palestine Liberation Organization, which is a liberation movement long con-
sidered to be a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States as well
as a confederation of political parties in exile historically dominated by the
Fatah. Finally, the Hezbollah is a political party and militant group that was
formed by the reunion of Shi’a militias in 1982 to fight the Israeli occupation
of South Lebanon. Regarded as a resistance movement in part of the Arab
world and as a terrorist organization in most Western countries, it has rep-
resentatives elected in the Lebanese parliament and ministers in the govern-
ment. In a nutshell, these non-state actors, which are viewed as liberation or
resistance movements by some and terrorist or criminal groups by others, can
be self-designated as states (Islamic State), appear as the backbone of a quasi-
state (Palestine Liberation Organization) or participate in the institutions of a
fully instituted state (Hezbollah). Considering their functional and structural
role in their respective state, it is easy to see that the label “non-state actor”
is profoundly deceptive for these three entities. In fact, all have been making
states by making war, each in their own way, and all are crucial to the exis-
tence and viability of these states.
The Middle East is certainly no exception in this respect. In South
Africa, the Umkhonto weSizwe, the armed branch of the African National
Congress cofounded by Nelson Mandela fought against the apartheid regime
by resorting to guerrilla warfare, bombing, and sabotage; it was declared
a terrorist organization by the South African government as well as the
United States; and it eventually gave the country the first three presidents
of its democratic era after 1994. In Uruguay, the Movimiento de Liberación
Nacional-Tupamaros, a political organization which turned into a guerrilla
group, robbing banks to distribute their booty to the poor, and kidnapping
of high-profile politicians, was severely repressed under the dictatorship; it
joined the political coalition Frente Ámplio after the return of the democracy
in 1984, one of its members later becoming president. In northern Syria, the
Democratic Union Party, narrowly connected with the Kurdistan Worker’s
Party of Turkey which is designated as a terrorist organization by most
Western countries but not by the United Nations, has created in 2012 an
autonomous region that it administrates as a quasi-state. These various exam-
ples show how the boundary between non-state actors and states is tenuous
and porous as militant organizations once called terrorist may form the basis
of, or provide significant contributions to, the state.
But there is another way in which opposing states and non-state actors can
be misleading. Although a common representation shows them at war against
each other—the state against the guerrilla or terrorist groups—the relations
and complicities between them are much more complex. Examples abound,
with the support and financing of the premises of al-Qaeda by Saudi Arabia,
of Hezbollah by Iran, and of the Taliban by the United Arab Emirates and
probably at some point by the United States themselves. Such connections
form part of the complex geopolitics involving, in each conflict, great powers
as well as regional governments, and they contribute to fueling conspiracy
theories as was the case in the aftermath of 9/11. Most of the time, the laby-
rinthine circuits involved in these transactions remain hidden. In some cases,
the support to combatants is overtly discussed. In 2011 and 2012, during
the early years of the Syrian civil war, several Western countries, including
France, were willing to provide weapons to rebel groups that fought against
the Assad regime, although they were concerned that this armament could fall
into the hands of what might turn out to be terrorist organizations. In other
cases, states even use militias for their own bellicose purpose. From 2003
to 2006, the Sudanese government armed the Janjaweed groups to combat
the secessionist insurgency of the Sudan Liberation Army in Darfur, these
dreaded warriors causing the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
These forms of passage and links between states and non-states actors
suggest that, paradoxically, to understand non-state actors, one has to bring
the state back in (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985). When studying
non-state wars, one should not forget that the states are never far away as
major players.
Until now, these entities have implicitly been presented as combat-
ant organizations involved in conflicts to liberate their country from an
oppressor or an occupier, to disseminate their religion or their ideology,
or to expand their territory. Whatever one thinks of the goal they pursue,
such representations tend to ennoble their action as if it were purely politi-
cally motivated. But the boundary between militancy and banditry is often
porous. Not only are looting, trafficking, and racketeering frequent means
to support the war effort of these organizations, but they can also be ends
as such. The most obvious cases are the Italian mafia, the Colombian drug
cartels and the Chadian highway robbers, who have various types of con-
nections with local authorities but do not have a political agenda beyond
the support of politicians whom they can corrupt. But other configurations
offer less clear-cuts. The civil war in the Central African Republic is an
illustration of the confusion between warfare and brigandry. The mostly
Christian anti-Balaka militias were initially local vigilante groups created
28 Didier Fassin
to protect villages from highwaymen, poachers, and cattle-raiders, but were

later used by the putschist president François Bozizé to combat the pre-
dominantly Muslim Séléka rebels. In an endless conflict transformed into a
series of religious pogroms, both groups, often joined by opportunists and
mercenaries, committed exactions and massacres while practicing extortion
and looting.
But non-state actors involved in warfare also belong to an entirely different
world: that of humanitarianism (Carbonnier 2016; Fassin 2012). Whereas the
creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross dates back to the
second half of the nineteenth century, with the Red Crescent Societies being
added to the movement after the First World War, humanitarianism has had a
rapid expansion at the end of the twentieth century, initially with the birth of
nongovernmental organizations such as Doctors Without Borders in 1971 and
later with the adoption of its language and project by states and international
agencies culminating in the Responsibility to Protect doctrine voted for by
the United Nations in 2005. Today, the presence of humanitarian workers in
contexts of warfare is inescapable with their medical teams, their aid con-
voys, their food programs, their logisticians and their epidemiologists, their
tents and their camps. The humanitarian marketplace of philanthropic dona-
tions by individuals and corporations and public subsidies from states and
international agencies today represents one-eighth of the global development
assistance. Again, while many organizations have indisputably strict assis-
tance-oriented activities, the boundaries delimiting the humanitarian world
are not always evident. On the one hand, certain charities collaborate with
the intelligence services of their country’s government. The Humanitarian
International Services Group, which was celebrated by the president of the
United States, George W. Bush, for its work with disaster victims, was thus
heavily funded by the Pentagon through a highly classified program (Cole
2015). It was used by the Defense Department in an espionage operation in
North Korea, where its Christian evangelical founder was able to introduce
various military equipment and radio beacons. On the other hand, certain
militant organizations develop important aid activities for their population.
Hamas, the Palestinian resistance organization listed as terrorist by most
Western countries and some of their Arab allies, has had affiliations—varying
at times between definite and moot—with welfare and health programs that
have contributed to humanitarian relief in the Occupied Territories (Benthall
2016). These programs have been deprived of international funding via char-
ity trusts and individual donations since such support is criminalized.
Non-state actors are therefore not only diverse in their relation to warfare
(from combatants to bandits, from resistance fighters to humanitarian work-
ers, and one should add political movements such as the neoconservatives in
the United States, religious groups be they evangelical, Jewish or Muslim,
multinational corporations whether they are involved in the extraction of

natural resources or the sale of weaponry, and even medias with the extreme
case of Radio Mille-Collines in Rwanda) but also multifaceted in their proj-
ects and actions (the line between these apparently exclusive or contradictory
categories being partially blurred and their connections not easily penetrable).
These multiple actors and their respective activities form part of an economy
that mobilizes all sorts of items.
ECONOMY
The economics of warfare is a field of research in its own right, but one not
entirely pacified. Debates regard the question of what is to be analyzed as
well as, more broadly, what economics is about. Some are interested in the
consequences of wars; others in their causes. Some proceed by accounting
methods; others provide theoretical models. Some use rational choice theory
and propose a political psychology; others rely on history and develop a
political economy. So, what do economists have to say about war economies?
A first approach, especially relevant to governments and international
agencies, concerns consequences in terms of the impact and the cost of war
(Edwards 2010 and Watson Institute 2019). It is fundamentally an accounting
approach. It implies complex decisions about what to include: destructions of
properties and shortfalls in revenue, military expenses and veteran benefits,
productivity loss due to deaths and medical provisions for the injured, and so
on. Whereas it may seem a pure arithmetic exercise, it involves philosophical
questions with financial repercussions, such as that of the value of life (Fassin
2018). However, many of these analyses are asymmetrical, being essentially
attentive to the Western side of impact and cost. While evaluations of the
economic consequences for the United States of the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq are thoroughly well assessed, little is known about these consequences
for the latter two countries. An indication of this asymmetry is that the num-
ber of dead soldiers is known down to the unit level for the U.S. army, but
the number of casualties among combatants and civilians in Afghanistan and
Iraq is estimated with a margin of error of several hundreds of thousands
depending on the sources. However imperfect it is, the accounting approach
is always implicitly characterized by its negative perspective: it explores the
ravages of war. Yet, not only has war politically positive consequences such
as state-building, as evoked earlier, but it also has economically positive
effects, notably on the military-industrial complex, which benefits from it
directly, through the expansion of the national defense budget—that of the
United States represents more than one-third of the total worldwide—and
indirectly, via the thriving of arms trade—the United States has more than
30 Didier Fassin
one-third of the global sales of weaponry (Sipri 2017). Needless to say, the
terms negative and positive do not presuppose a judgment regarding the evil
or good dimension of war. They simply indicate a factual analysis of what is
lost and gained, the argument being that it is not possible to understand the
logics of wars if one does not take into account their economic benefits for
certain social agents.
A second approach, which has undergone a spectacular development
in past decades, is that of rational choice theory (Fearon 1995). It focuses
on the causes of war and bases its analysis on the supposed psychology
of actors. Game theory is its privileged method as it reveals the presumed
reasoning behind the preferences expressed through the decision to wage
war. Fundamentally, the point is to understand why there is war when it
has such negative consequences. To do so, these economists or political
scientists imagine scenarios in which two actors assess the potential costs
and potential payoffs of a military contest as well as their probability to win
it, compared to alternative options, such as negotiating with the adversary.
Resulting calculations are meant to represent, or at least simulate, the way of
thinking of agents, either states or non-state actors. And indeed, to give an
appearance of realism to these analyses, actual cases are provided to illustrate
how politicians purportedly evaluate risks and benefits before deciding to
engage in a conflict, for instance, German leaders when they declared war in
1914, or Saddam Hussein when he resolved to invade Kuwait in 1990. These
examples rely on the hypothetical understanding of the psychology of these
characters and via the bold projection of their mode of reasoning—without
any empirical evidence of neither one of them. Besides, they convey the
idea that the decision is a pure exercise in rationality without any role of the
social and political forces at work—as if methodological individualism could
replace the thorough analysis of the historical context and of the tortuous
logics at stakes. However, this simple one-on-one game eludes the complex
power game involving an intricate network of national and international
actors. Aware of the issue, some economists have introduced so-called costs
of coordination, regarded as transactions costs, in their mathematical models.
Thus, to predict whether a rebel group will decide to embark in civil war, they
calculate what they designate as rebel utility, based on the size of the popula-
tion, the costs of coordination, the per capita income, the taxable capacity of
the economy, the expected duration of warfare, the probability of rebel vic-
tory, the gain conditional upon victory, and even the discount rate (Collier
and Hoeffler 1998). Analyzing on this basis why the African continent had
more civil wars than the rest of the world since 1960, these economists only
take into account these internal variables, while overlooking the weight of
colonial history, which precisely ended at that time, and the role of the great
powers, which were then involved in the Cold War.
A third approach is that of political economy. It corrects the limitations of

the accounting model by analyzing both positive and negative dimensions
of war, and it addresses the flaws of rational choice theory model by substi-
tuting history for mathematics (Cramer 2002; Le Billon 2004). It inscribes
military conflicts, whether between states or with militant groups, in their
context, both national and international, even sometimes local, identifying
the interests of the social agents at play, whether armed or not. They often
use the wealth of archives and sometimes the refinement of ethnography to
recount complex narratives that are not reducible to a series of variables to
be included into a linear equation. Monographs thus allow for a thickening
of specific conjunctures instead of providing the thin generalizations relying
on questionable statistics. They show that, in Colombia, the war has been
perpetuated for decades because military, paramilitary, and narco-traffickers
built alliances based on shared economic interests that also benefited the
upper class, while guerrilla groups often received the support of local peas-
ant communities, which they protected from the aggressive practices of rich
landowners and to which they provided minimal welfare services in the stead
of the absent state. Similarly, they demonstrate that, in Afghanistan, in the
context of the end of the Cold War, the withdrawal of the Soviet army has led
to the drying out of its subsidies to the regime in power as well as the end of
the support of the United States to the rebels, thus generating needs for new
economic resources that were filled by poppy cultivation and opium exporta-
tion, while less lucrative wheat cultivation and livestock exportation waned.
And they establish that in South Sudan, the civil war has been fueled by a
system of predation that facilitated the formation of a military elite which
could affirm its power through clientelism and nepotism as well as forms of
distinction via the display of signs of wealth, including large-scale polygamy
(Richani 1997; Goodhand 2002; Pinaud 2014). Each of these cases reveals
the uniqueness of the historical contexts and cultural backgrounds, and there-
fore the limits of mere accounting and mathematical models.
However different these various approaches are, they have in common
to approach economy as the production, circulation, appropriation, con-
sumption, and destruction of goods and services, whether natural resources,
taxation money, compensation benefits, military industry, health care, or
international subsidies—with certain similarities as well as major differences
between countries or between state and non-state actors. This corresponds to
the classic understanding of what economy is about, with the singularity that
it is applied in the present case to war, and more specifically to atypical sorts
of war. But economy can be viewed otherwise. Instead of goods and services,
one can consider values and affects that agents have regarding the conflict,
the protagonists and their actions, the treatment of material commodities and
the population involved, and so on. If some wars can be deemed just and
32 Didier Fassin
others unjust—and not everyone agrees, of course, on the criteria to estab-

lish such distinction—it means that a certain moral dimension is engaged in
warfare (Walzer 2015). Morality should be understood here as combining a
moral sense and moral sentiments, in other words, norms about what is good
or bad, fair and unfair, as well as a range of emotions, from indignation to
compassion, from fervor to dismay. It is of major import to apprehend this
dual dimension of war—normative and emotional—since this endeavor often
renders intelligible ways of acting which would otherwise remain incom-
prehensible or would merely be seen as irrational. For instance, insurgents
discredited as criminal groups may rebel against the injustice and autocracy
of the regime in place, and the levying of taxes depicted as financial extortion
can also be deemed a source of revenue to provide services to the popula-
tion, as was the case for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka
(Mampilly 2011). Such reading does not mean the legitimation of the agents’
moral justifications, and analysts should avoid adding their own moral judg-
ment to that of the protagonists. Thus, seeing warfare as a marketplace of
loyalties does not imply an approval of the alliances made between African
warlords, but the recognition that they obey a certain moral logic (De Waal
2009). But in a more obvious way, the moral world of contemporary war
also includes, as mentioned earlier, the expanding domain of humanitarian-
ism, which brings together, in often conflictive ways, states, international
agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. One can therefore speak of
the moral economy of warfare to designate the production, circulation, and
appropriation of values and affects related to war and its actors (Fassin 2009).
It is essential to integrate it in the inquiry into non-state war economies,
which are not only about goods and services, and could not be understood
without taking into account norms and emotions.
CONCLUSION
The critical approach to the three terms that compose the object of our col-
lective endeavor is neither a rhetorical exercise nor a relativist stance. It
does not suggest that wars are an elusive reality because their definition and
delimitation are problematic, that the existence of authentic non-state actors
is deceptive because they have obscure connections with states, and that the
economy of non-state wars is too complex to be seized because they involve
not only material but also moral dimensions. It simply invites us not to take
for granted these seemingly so self-evident words and the facts that they are
supposed to represent.
Such complexification has for consequence that the study of non-state
war economies gains from being a multidisciplinary endeavor, associating
historians, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as political scientists

and legal scholars with economists. Paraphrasing Georges Clémenceau, the
French prime minister during the First World War, we could say that non-
state war economies are too serious a matter to entrust to economists.
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Chapter 2
War Economies and War Economics

Christopher Cramer
What we think a war economy is, where it comes from, what its longer-term
implications are—these depend on the kind of economic analysis applied.
There is a spectrum of perspectives on war economies. From one end, a clear
view reveals a panorama of utter devastation. From the other, change and
regeneration out of the charred stumps of violent conflict come into view as
well.
The differences between these perspectives are of more than intellectual
interest. They matter not only for how most accurately we understand the fea-
tures and dynamics of war economies, historically and nowadays, but also for
the policies advocated to prevent violent conflicts and for those promoted to
stabilize postwar economies and to encourage longer-term postwar recovery,
reconstruction, and development.
In this chapter, I trace the key differences between these economic perspec-
tives on war economies and highlight their significance. I also try to put these
views within some historical context, showing how the fortunes of different
ideas have shifted over time. Perhaps the neatest example of this is how
economic historians have thought about the American Civil War. A long and
complex debate has veered between the view of the Beards (Beard and Beard
1927) and later summarized by Hacker (1940: 373) that the war’s “striking
achievement was the triumph of industrial capitalism,” to the view that late
nineteenth-century U.S. economic expansion evolved despite the civil war,
or even that, in Cochran’s (1961) view, the war positively slowed industrial
expansion.1
The angle of the latter view is that of neoclassical economics. It took
shape long ago in what came to be called the liberal interpretation of war.
That interpretation, one that claims that all war is negative in all its effects,
continues to generate a rich form of analysis of the costs of war (and other
35
36 Christopher Cramer
forms of violence). But it is also linked (especially since the Cold War) to
rational choice, neoclassical economic explanations of war. The first view—
at its extremes a Heraclitan argument that “war is the father of everything”—
encompasses a range of approaches: those that argue that war may create
conditions that underpin longer-term economic development and structural
change; and those that focus more on the technical and distributional impli-
cations of how resources are mobilized to sustain war—they range from the
Marxist to the Keynesian. In between the two sharp angles, the light thrown
on war economies leads to combinations of assumptions and analyses.
Along another axis, there are different shifts in perspective on war econo-
mies. For some, the most appropriate or even only relevant view is that of
the local dimensions—the interaction of economic actors within the most
immediate locus of violent conflict, in South Sudan or Syria, in eastern DRC
or in Colombia. But for others, this is only a part of the picture, whose whole
frame includes a broader, global set of interactions, including the ramifica-
tions of global trade in commodities and international financial flows. From
one viewpoint, the appropriate unit of analysis is the nation (failed) state.
Methodological nationalism like this is underpinned by large datasets like
the Correlates of War or the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme (UCDP).
These enable statistical analyses of patterns of war onset, longevity and so
on. But from a radically different stance, playing havoc with the coding rules
of large-N datasets, it has been argued that we all live, in the early twenty-
first century, in a single, global civil war, in which war has been raised to an
ontological level. A global civil war means a global war economy.2
Below I summarize the liberal interpretation of war. I trace development
from its original version, which focused on the effects of war and war econo-
mies, to its kindred, the application of rational choice neoclassical economic
analysis to assessing the features of war economies and the economic causes
of war. Next, I look at analyses that claim to offer a more complex and mixed
analysis of war economies. If the neoclassical economics of war emphasizes
incentives faced by individuals, other economic approaches emphasize rela-
tions between groups and they focus more on institutional change and the dis-
tributional consequences of different policies to mobilize for and reproduce
war. I draw briefly on case study material from Mozambique, Afghanistan,
and El Salvador.
As well as drawing out the main features of different approaches to war
economics, this chapter hopes to show the continued relevance of war econo-
mies and war economics in three areas. The literature on conflict prevention
depends on ways of thinking about war economies. Mostly, this literature has
been shaped by cost of war economics. It has been poor at accommodating
more heterodox and interdisciplinary political economy. Postwar reconstruc-
tion—and war to peace transition—literature has also increasingly recognized
War Economies and War Economics 37
the relevance of war economies and war economics after and beyond wars
themselves. The varied ways in which societies and governments (with and
without international support) have paid for peace, produced peace, and
worked for peace are still under-researched. And war economies, and war
economics, are also central to understanding the global interdependencies
between societies that are fuelled by and regulated by violence.
The chapter separates out strands of economic thinking about war and war
economies, but should not be taken to imply that all economists neatly fit
just one of these types. Just as war economies typically involve combinations
of the factors highlighted by different economists, so economists working
within particular traditions are not always bound by a single idea or line of
analysis.
THE UNDOING PROJECT:3 THE LIBERAL

INTERPRETATION OF WAR
Perhaps the longest-running economic analysis of wars has held that, and
quantified the extent to which, war is always negative in all its consequences.
What Milward (1984) called the classical liberal interpretation of war led to
the concentration of economists’ efforts on enumerating the costs of war.
Such an approach had—still has—several uses. It helps in assessing the likely
cost of reconstruction after a war. It helps in showing how the economic cost
of war rises far above the relatively straightforward costing of direct war
damage (to bridges, roads, health posts, ports, roads, schools, housing stock).
It helps in building arguments against war and in favor of conflict prevention
(since it may readily be argued that the cost of prevention is very low com-
pared to the likely direct and indirect cost of any war).4
From assessments of the cost of the First World War, through Goldin
and Lewis (1975, 1978) estimating the cost of the American Civil War and
a number of exercises to pin down the cost of U.S. intervention in wars in
Central America and southern Africa during the Cold War (Greene 1994;
Stewart 1993), to the Bilmes and Stiglitz (2008) estimate of a $3 trillion (and
rising) war waged by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, cost of war
exercises have formalized and extended Samuel Johnson’s argument in 1749
that “Reason frowns on War’s unequal Game/Where wasted Nations raise
a single Name/And mortgag’d States their Grandsires Wreaths regret/From
Age to Age in everlasting Debt.”5
War has often spurred shifts within economics. In trying to sum up aggre-
gate estimates of the cost of the First World War, for example, economists
tried to weigh the comparative cost to the United Kingdom and to other coun-
tries, including Germany. One basis for doing this might involve weighing
up the difference in lost economic contribution for a British versus a German

casualty and this led economists to develop the notion of human capital. A
dead American soldier “was a much greater loss to the economy than a dead
Serbian solder, since not only was he a piece of human capital who had been
much more expensive to educate and train to the moment of his death, but
his subsequent productive capacity, had he not died, would have been much
greater” (Milward 1984: 12/13).
It is precisely where wars, by this kind of measure, are “cheap” that some
economists came to think the statistical probability of “civil wars” is high-
est. Reason, here, would lead richer countries, in particular richer individu-
als, to realize the high opportunity cost of war and to choose to avoid war.
And reason, the pursuit of individual self-interest and utility maximization
through rational choice, may in low-income countries crack a smile on war’s
game. This was a big shift and one that came for a while to have a substantial
influence on thinking in aid agencies and international financial institutions
about civil war or internal wars in developing countries after the end of the
Cold War. Rather than just assessing the effects or cost of war, this approach
looked closer at the agency of destruction: a war economy was to be seen
through the micro-economics of individual material choices to indulge in
violence and to loot. The next step was to see a war economy as a set of
“revealed preferences” that indicated the source, origin, and opportunity for
or indeed cause of wars.
This was also another way in which war pushed the boundaries of eco-
nomics. One of the leading economists shaping this “economic perspective”
on war (and later on terrorism) was Jack Hirshleifer. An unapologetic (and
witty) advocate of “economics imperialism,” the view that rational choice
economic theory is a superior social science that can explain all social phe-
nomena, Hirshleifer developed his wider ideas through modelling conflict. He
argued (Hirshleifer 1994) that economists had gone soft, focusing exclusively
on “the way of Coase” (where economic agents would not willingly pass up
opportunities to cooperate and to manage transaction costs) and forgetting
the “way of Macchiavelli” (where actors would not willingly pass up the
chance to exploit and extort one another). Reintroducing “the dark side of the
force” by applying economic analysis to war and other conflicts would make
economics whole. Landing on the unexplored terrain of conflict, economists
would discover backward tribes (anthropologists, sociologists, etc.) and
would need to educate them. They would find some of these folks rather
bright but in such cases they inchoate economists.
And one of the key things involved in doing economics is applying the
concept of opportunity cost. This led Hirshliefer to argue that effectively
the poor have a comparative advantage in violence. With little invested in
their “human capital,” they would have few economic opportunities and little
prospect of earning significant returns on their meagre outlays on education

and health. So the prospect of earning a buck on the back of a rebellion or
counterinsurgency recruitment drive may be appealing, even rational. It
took others to try to put some empirical flesh on the theoretical bones of this
approach. One of the more influential for a while was Collier, whose string
of models (1999, 2000, 2004, 2009, etc.), combined with a post as head of
the World Bank’s research department, helped make the idea widely known.
And at its most basic, the idea was that individual greed was a better predictor
of civil war than social grievance. Grievances are real and widespread, but
they do not clear the market because of the presence of collective action prob-
lems. Only where recruitment costs for rebellion are low, and the opportunity
costs of violence low, perhaps where the attraction of lootable resources and
goods is also strong, will people overcome the fear of free riders and other
constraints on collective action, and take up arms.
This Yahoo theory of war (Cramer 2006) spawned a debate and a substan-
tial critical literature.6 Much of the criticism came from precisely the back-
ward tribes Hirshleifer predicted economists would need to educate, and they
proved more resilient and sophisticated, dare one say civilized, than antici-
pated (Wood 2003; Gutiérrez-Sanin 2009; Nathan 2003). But the criticism
also came from political economists (Cramer 2002, 2006). Horror of horrors,
mainstream economists eventually ripped into at least the cruder versions of
this approach. Part of the Deaton report, an assessment of research carried out
at the World Bank between 1999 and 2005, focused on the work on conflict
and rated it very poorly (Acemoglu 2005): the work regressed endogenous
variables on endogenous variables, failed in Acemoglu’s view to incorporate
any theoretical advances in economics during the previous twenty-five years,
and came to conclusions unsupported by the evidence presented.
Some highlighted the failure of neoclassical economic approaches to take
seriously enough the “noneconomic,” for example, the possibility that people
may engage in collective violent action despite its likely high costs and often
low returns, despite evidence that many people joining insurgencies were
previously employed and even at above average wages, and that they may do
so driven by socially shaped norms and values. One unusual piece of research
with much wider plausibility showed how elites (not the poor) participated
directly in and led civil war violence in Colombia (Gutiérrez-Sanin 2017).
Others challenged the theoretical grounds and the evidence used or argued,
as did Acemoglu, that often these models performed poorly empirically. The
World Bank, which had celebrated these crude neoclassical models in its
“Breaking the Conflict Trap” (Collier 2003) report, increasingly distanced
itself from such an approach. In the World Development Report 2012 (on
violence) and that of 2017 (on governance), flagship Bank reports revived
the significance of social and political grievances in the causation of conflict.
And the 2018 Pathways to Peace (UN/World Bank 2018: 109) emphatically
notes that many of “today’s conflicts relate to group-based grievances,” draw-
ing on literature including Cederman et al. (2013) and Stewart (2011) as well
as drawing on a wider disciplinary base.
If homo economicus was badly wounded in these intellectual skirmishes,
the creature survived and came to be rehabilitated, no longer quite the clunky
avatar of 1990s economics imperialism but an upgraded version. The new
model “representative agent” was sent out to account for terrorism, and it
seemed to correct for a number of bugs. In many versions of the “economic
perspective” on terrorism, homo economicus was now a more social creature,
took norms and even religious values seriously, maximized utility through
social bonds, and was overall a more rounded psychological being.7 On the
one hand, the economic approach to terrorism represented a more advanced
economics that acknowledged some criticisms and adapted to take account of
insights from other sciences (a more even relationship than for Hirshleifer’s
economics conquistadores) while remaining fundamentally a neoclassical
economic approach; on the other hand, at best, the analysis was no longer
strictly speaking economics.” At worst, critics suggested the model still could
not fully account for terrorist activity as it remained too attached to its funda-
mental assumptions (Cramer 2010).
The economic explanation of civil wars took inspiration from the same
classical liberal interpretation of war that has underpinned cost of war exer-
cises. It also drew on the equally old ideas of the liberal theory of peace. The
World Bank’s (2003) statement that “war is development in reverse,” that
“war retards development and development retards war,” captured perfectly
the stew of ideas that lay behind the “invention of peace” (Howard 2000). A
war economy, this view suggested, was an unravelling, an undoing of “devel-
opment.” First, the violence of war causes destruction of physical capital
stock and human capital losses. Second, it erodes the efficiency of public
spending (rerouting spending to violence rather than production), weakens
property rights, and raises transaction and contract enforcement costs (Collier
1999). Third, people respond to a worsening economic environment by dis-
saving, and they engage in portfolio substitution—above all, there is flight
of capital and labor out of the country: an “exodus of factor endowments”
(Collier 1999: 170). Feeding expected changes in factor endowments into a
standard Cobb-Douglas function, the go-to (but contested) basis for neoclas-
sical economic growth and productivity analysis, leads to an expectation of
weaker returns.
Brück’s (1997) analysis of the Mozambican war economy constructs a neo-
classical growth model in which, among other assumptions, there are perfectly
competitive markets and war acts as an exogenous shock, and then maps the
model onto an economy for which war economy effects are captured through
a range of proxies, “due to the deficiencies of the data in Mozambique”

(Brück 1997: 35). One may be skeptical about an analysis combining an
unrealistic (if mathematically tractable) model with very poor evidence. But
the analysis tried to draw on what data it could and generated some interesting
impressions. One of these, to which we return later, is the idea of a retreat into
subsistence. Many people were forced into “extreme forms of self-reliance”;
subsistence agriculture was an “enforced alternative for previously fortunate
producers of cash crops, a deliberate choice of survival activity for some peas-
ants, and an unattainable means of survival” for others (Brück 1997: 38). The
outcome of a war shock may in rural areas involve an unravelling of Adam
Smith’s evolution of the extent of the market and the division of labor. “The
war induced isolation of households in rural Mozambique implied that most
households were nearly self-sufficient in most commodities” (Brück 2004: 7).
This kind of analysis then easily supports the idea that a postwar economy
is rendered by war a “blank slate” institutional vacuum.8 That has in the
past been convenient as a launch for arguments in favor of radical and rapid
economic reform in the wake of peace settlements, to take advantage of a
presumed “institutional vacuum” (see below).
TRANSFORMERS: WAR ECONOMIES

AND SOCIOECONOMIC CHANGE
For neoclassical economics, war economies typically depart from optimal

(competitive market) conditions: war “ distorts” prices, raises barriers to
entry, stretches risks and returns, and interrupts the flow of information.
Since economic development from this perspective involves moving closer
to perfectly competitive market conditions (with full and evenly available
information) by “getting prices right,” naturally, war economies are anti-
developmental, development in reverse. If some individuals do well out of
war, they are profiteers—especially traders who take advantage of shortages
and interrupted (high-risk) supply routes and raise their profit margins. A
profiteer is a special class of rentier, capturing the profits over and above what
would be possible in a (hypothetical) perfectly competitive market.
A different approach eschews methodological individualism and ratio-
nal choice economics. A richer political economy may be less amenable to
formal modelling, but it is also less beholden to restrictive assumptions and
misleadingly limited axioms of behavior. What is common to many other
approaches is the observation of war economies as transformative, not merely
destructive.
These other approaches may more clearly distinguish, for example,
between the combat, shadow, and coping or survival economies and the way
that interaction among these dimensions of a wartime economy may change

“actually existing development, leading to the transformation of social and
economic relations” (Goodhand 2004: 155). Goodhand’s analysis draws
on field research in Afghanistan. He argues that wars have always been the
“defining moments of change” in the protracted, ongoing, and unsettled
relationship between the central state, such as it has been, and peripheries.
Afghan wars have also tended to “empower borderlands,” reproducing over
time a fraught and contested process of state formation, interrupted. The
combat economy includes the activities around the production and reproduc-
tion of violent conflict: both destructive activity and active mobilization of
resources. But there are also entrepreneurs who are not immediately part of
the combat economy but who trade (literally) on the limited reach of state
regulation and the market conditions created by armed conflict. Then there
is the coping and surviving economy where people either just about hold
onto their asset base and income levels or survive but only be depleting their
assets (e.g., by distress sales of land or livestock). The distinctions between
the parts of Goodhand’s war economy are in reality blurred and the combat
economy is likely only to be reproducible so long as the other dimensions do
not break down.
In Afghanistan, opium has become a significant part of these overlapping
dimensions of the war economy. Rather than reading back from a resource
with high rents derived from illegality and deriving a revealed preference that
somehow explains the cause of war, close observers of Afghanistan empha-
size how conflict encouraged the narco-economy. Indeed, the opium econ-
omy has at various times helped underpin political stability in Afghanistan,
whereas eradication programs have done more to fuel conflict (Goodhand
2008; Mansfield 2016). Opium production under wartime conditions is a
good illustration of how war economies involve socioeconomic change as
much as simple destruction and loss. For the cultivation (and processing,
trade, and logistics) of opium, poppy has accelerated socioeconomic differ-
entiation in rural areas, as some lease out land to opium producers and accu-
mulate on the back of initial land and capital assets, while others are pushed
further into debt and/or wage employment.
As with the opium economy and other parts of the Afghan war economy,
a kind of “indigenous capitalism” evolved in the “central margins” of the
eastern DRC war economy (Raeymaekers 2014). It evolved over a long time
before the wars of the 1990s and 2000s, during Mobutu’s rule of Zaire, but
took new shape during war—though arguably the distinction between “war”
economy and the economy of Mobutu’s Zaire is a very weak one. In east-
ern Congo, during the 1990s, new forms of governance evolved: Peace—of
sorts—did not unravel wartime accumulation patterns and networks but led
to their integration into formal domains of state power.
Wood’s (2003) fieldwork in El Salvador also led to an emphasis on

transformation, but at the same time stressed the variations in the forms this
took across different rural research sites. In many parts of El Salvador, this
involved a reconfiguration of land ownership—through wartime occupation
of estates by campesinos—and production. But it also involved completely
new forms of participation in political life that had been impossible before.
“Thus de facto agrarian property rights, land use and civil society had been
transformed in some areas. Yet in other areas, continuity rather than change
was the dominant pattern” (Wood 2003: 52).
And research on Mozambique’s war economy also shows that there was
far more to it than a retreat into subsistence, development in reverse, or the
creation of a vacuum. Indeed, the evidence suggests that war accelerated
socioeconomic differentiation and created new patterns of accumulation, the
very features that historically have been central to capitalist development.
“Far from retreating into a subsistence economy, therefore, the war and crisis
heightened the need for the poorer peasantry to sell their labour to obtain
cash to buy food and other rural wage goods” (Wuyts 2003: 147). And a
range of actors—state farms, the odd multinational hanging onto land through
war, and emerging private landholders (wartime accumulators)—mobilized
resources to meet demand. As one researcher put it: “the war resolved their
labour recruitment problems” (O’Laughlin 1996: 32). The dynamics of war,
proletarianization, and accumulation in Mozambique, as in Afghanistan,
the eastern DRC, and elsewhere, had a regional dimension. Many rural
Mozambicans fled from violence across the border into South Africa, among
them many women who, as illegal immigrants, ended up a conveniently doc-
ile source of wage labor in large, high-value agricultural exporting firms in
the northeast of South Africa.9
And as in rural Mozambique, so in Nepal, the transformations of a war
economy had significant gendered effects.10 Menon and Rodgers (2015)
found that war increased the likelihood that Nepalese women would enter
wage labor markets. Here, the destructive side of war—the “weakening
of social fabric” as households struggled to survive—and the structurally
transformative, women’s entry into wage employment are very clearly and
directly bound together.11
There is no linear, law-like trajectory of outcomes from war economies.
The combination of shifting and varied reallocation of violence rights, the
varying ability of particular organizations to effectively mobilize resources
to war ends (and even a varying interest in doing so), the varied interactions
between prewar patterns of development and accumulation and wartime pos-
sibilities, the interactions between utter destruction, organizational change,
technical and institutional change, and new or accelerated trajectories of
accumulation: all these and other variables influence outcomes. The binary
opposition between war as state-making (Tilly 1992) and war as utterly

destructive is too stark.12 In between is a realm of unclear outcomes. There
is no knowing what the political and economic consequences of the huge
Syrian, regional and global trade in the illicit drug captagon will be, for
example, though one analysis suggests the dynamics are both destructive
and at the same time reproductive of the organization of power and political
economy in Syria (Dent 2017).
If war economies in developing countries do not follow uniform trajecto-
ries, the same is true of war economies in advanced capitalist economies with
strong states. In the Second World War, very different societies—the United
Kingdom and the United States, Germany, the Soviet Union—converged on
forms of économie mobilisée with a large role for planning. But they did so
to varying degrees of commitment and with large variations in effectiveness.
During the war, for example, the prevailing idea in the United Kingdom was
that the German state was running a “total war” economy. It turned out, when
the Allies later carried out detailed research into why Germany had lost the
war, that the German war economy fell far short of its “war potential”: “the
picture of the German war effort which dominated Allied imagination was
very largely a false one” (Kaldor 1945–46: 33). Everything was on paper
controlled, but in reality controls were clumsy; there were too many conflicts
between parts of government, few clear distinctions between responsibilities
of different agencies, and a strong tendency for the politicization of policy
by the Nazi party.
Meanwhile, war often also plays havoc with commitments to liberal ide-
ology—as it does with other ideologies. So in the Second World War, the
Soviet Union withdrew from purist commitment to central planning and in
some cases actively encouraged free markets, while in the United Kingdom
there was a shift toward centralized control of food production and trade.
It is misleading to claim that wars between advanced countries may lead
to some forms of economic development but that wars within developing
countries only lead to development in reverse. It may also be mislead-
ing to imagine that “state” war economies are categorically different from
“non-state” war economies. This means there is a connection between, for
example, the transformations through war economies in El Salvador or
Mozambique and the shifts in business practice through war economies in,
for instance, the United Kingdom during the First and Second World Wars.
There are compelling reasons to believe that the United Kingdom adopted
a far more “corporatist” embrace of big business and a closer link between
the state and capitalist firms through the experiences of war in the twentieth
century.13 But there were deeper shifts in British political economy through
war too. For example, although Churchill had been reluctant early on in the
Second World War to interfere with people’s freedoms, the government
quickly realized it had to—both to preserve the war effort and to ensure the
legitimacy of that war effort, through a (relatively) egalitarian food rationing
system (Collingham 2012). “No one would want to sing the praises of war”
(Cairncross 1995). “But it has its uses . . . Above all, it [the Second World
War in the United Kingdom] demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone,
except possibly Professor von Hayek, that in some circumstances market
forces simply will not do the trick or will not do it fast enough, and have to
give way, as they do in the individual enterprise, to managerial direction and
coordination” (Cairncross 1995: 36). The transformations within low-income
developing economy civil war economies are different. But across the range,
war can clearly wreak deep structural changes. These changes may unfold
within the formal, state mobilization of economies for war (in Ethiopia or
apartheid South Africa, for example) and within the “non-state” war econo-
mies of parts of Afghanistan or El Salvador.
WAR ECONOMIES BEYOND WARS: CONFLICT

PREVENTION, POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION,
AND GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF VIOLENCE
The study of war economies extends in three main directions beyond the
economies of specific countries at war. War economics has been drafted
into thinking about conflict prevention. How we understand war economies
affects planning for postwar reconstruction and development. And the closer
we look at war economies, the more difficult it is to restrict the analysis to
the parameters of discrete nation-states. The differences between analytical
approaches to war economies play out unevenly across these three fields.
Neoclassical economic, and broadly liberal interpretation of war, perspec-
tives have held sway over the conflict prevention literature and have tended
to have a stronger influence on the policy world concerned with postconflict
transitions, though the broader research literature on these transitions is more
varied and pluralist. By contrast, the more non-mainstream perspectives have
tended to lead the literature on, first, the regional dimensions of violent con-
flicts and, then, the broader global political economy of violence.
Conflict Prevention
Brück et al. (2012: 252) are quite wrong to claim that the “estimation of the
economic costs of conflict is a relatively new field of research.” This approach
is more than a century in the making and has been an important, for a long
time perhaps the main, way of thinking about the economics of wartime. But
war costing has evolved. It has become increasingly refined and sensitive to
a greater range of direct and indirect, at times difficult to measure, costs. One
example is Plümper and Neumayer’s (2006) estimate that the greater cost of
war is borne by women, based on the way that the gender gap in life expec-
tancy shrinks or is reversed during and after many “civil” wars.
Estimating the economic costs of violent conflict has long been central to
anti-war arguments. During the latter part of the Cold War, cost of war exer-
cises formed an important part of a growing criticism of international stoking
of violent conflict in lower-income countries (Green 1994; Fitzgerald 1987;
Hanlon 1986). More recently, war costing has become a key component of
arguments in favor of greater resource allocation to conflict prevention. The
conflict prevention literature almost entirely ignores the “transformative”
political economy of conflict.
A succession of attempts have been made since the end of the Cold
War to shore up the case for conflict prevention on specifically economic
grounds. They argue that spending money to prevent large-scale violence
is an economy; it is far cheaper than the huge costs of warfare. The back
of the envelope idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
evolved into the more precise (though it was false precision) idea that each
pound (sterling) spent on prevention by the U.K. government would save £4
on the costs of conflict resolution and peacebuilding that would be incurred
by having to intervene in distant wars (Chalmers 2007). The “Spending to
Save” methodology combined a model of the probability of violent conflict
with a somewhat sketchy idea of the possible costs of wars and intervening
in them. The predictive conflict model was based on the Collier approach to
the causes of (or correlates of) civil war that, as discussed above, has come to
be rejected by many people. The analysis largely dismissed the counterfactual
problem—if money is spent on conflict prevention and there is no war, how
can we be sure that the prevention is why there was no war?—that has dogged
the conflict prevention literature (Brown and Rosecrance 1999; Cramer
2010).14 Neither the counterfactual problem nor the fundamental method-
ological difficulties have prevented the case being made in largely the same
way over time. The most recent illustration is the joint UN and World Bank
“Pathways to Peace” report, for whose authors the Carnegie Commission
report (1997), Brown and Rosecrance (1999), the U.K. “Spending to Save”
report (Chalmers 2007) and others provides “evidence that the prevention of
violent conflict is associated with enormous returns in terms of cost avoid-
ance” (UN/World Bank 2018: 2).
The methodological problems of cost of war estimates are legion and have
been elaborated since the early twentieth century. They typically require
heroic leaps to overcome the debilitating lack of reliable data. Distributional
arguments typically make sweeping generalizations (retreat into subsistence,
etc.). Counterfactual projections are made about the trajectory of political
economies had they not experienced violent conflict. These and other prob-
lems apply in different ways to whatever approach is taken to assessing the
costs of war. There is, as Hillier (2007) noted, “no standardised methodol-
ogy to calculate the cost of conflict.” The more sophisticated approaches
acknowledge the implications of the profound uncertainty affecting all meth-
ods: “When we take into account the fundamental uncertainty associated
with models of growth, we are unable to draw clear conclusions” (Imai and
Weinstein 2000: 20).
These cost of war and cost-effectiveness of conflict prevention exercises all
indulge in a very poor form of cost-benefit analysis. They completely ignore
the possibility of what Gutiérrez-Sanin (2009) calls “anti-intuitive externali-
ties.” “The theoretical possibility that the benefits of war may outweigh the
costs must still inform our analysis of the costs of violence” (Gutiérrez-Sanin
2009: 22). To do that would involve drawing on the large recent research lit-
erature on the complex political economies of war across a range of countries.
Neither Pathways to Peace, nor the earlier big conflict prevention reports,
pays adequate attention to this literature.
Post-Conflict Reconstruction
For the UN and World Bank jointly to point out that “economic develop-
ment alone is not a guarantee of peace” (UN/World Bank 2018: 1), that
(p. 8) group-based “grievances . . . are an important precursor to collective
mobilization to violence,” and that these grievances, “arising from inequal-
ity, exclusion and feelings of injustice” (p. 109) need to be tackled head-on
represents an important shift. Elsewhere, an evaluation of World Bank opera-
tions in situations affected by violence captured the growing awareness in the
“development community” that violent conflict is not simply a feature and
function of low-income status, since organized violence incidence in middle-
income countries has come to exceed that in low-income countries (World
Bank 2016). Economic growth and development may not only have weak
prophylactic powers against violence, but also it is difficult to avoid the idea
that some forms of development may be active ingredients in the causal swirl
generating violent conflict. The idea that war retards development and that
development retards war had become a rhetorical commonplace in the 2000s.
The rhetoric has a puncture now, but the idea is not yet quite reduced to the
historical curiosity that Albert Hirschman thought it was when he wrote The
Passions and the Interests.
For the underlying idea that capitalist development is a powerful force for
enduring peace has continued to be hugely influential in global policy inter-
ventions during war to peace transitions. The influence crystallized into the
“liberal peace thesis.” Again drawing on very old ideas (Howard 2000) and
reviving them in very new ways, this thesis pulls together an array of intel-
lectual ideas, political interests, and development agency practices with the
common threads suggesting that democracy (political liberalization), security
sector reform (liberal governance, accountability, and transparency), and eco-
nomic liberalization (privatization, market deregulation, trade and financial
market liberalization) would each and jointly underpin lasting peace. From
this perspective, Collier et al. (2008) could argue that a rapid rate of economic
growth (presumed to follow from a package of “good policy”) was the single
most important variable affecting the statistical likelihood of a return to war
within a few years of the signing of a peace agreement. The statistical claim
was supported by a hunch that growth would “work” through the employment
mechanism, raising the costs of recruitment for potential rebels. War econom-
ics influenced post-conflict reconstruction thinking in two main ways. First,
the cost of war approach formed a basis for assessing the reconstruction bill
and identifying postwar needs. Second, the neoclassical economics of war
economies stressed the damage and undoing done by war and highlighted the
role in this of exaggerated market imperfections. War had made prices even
more “wrong” than they are typically reckoned to be in low-income econo-
mies. Hence the case for a particularly determined effort to free up markets in
the interests of rapid movement toward “getting prices right.” As Collier and
Pradhan (1994: 133) put it: “The period of transition to peace is a particularly
suitable time for radical policy reform.”
From this perspective, a huge number of interventions were launched and
programs of policy advice promoted, all encouraging market liberalization
in the cause of growth and peace. At their most gung-ho, these drew on
arguments that conflict produced a blank slate on which it would be easier
to sketch out radical market reforms because of an “institutional vacuum”
(Haughton 1998).
But the broader political economy of war began to filter into develop-
ment agencies. So too did a creeping awareness of the limitations of all-out
economic liberalization as a base for economic development, let alone last-
ing peace. “Since economic growth and large-scale aid are not necessary
preconditions for post-war peace, aid strategies that prioritize economic
growth in the post-war decade may well be inappropriate if the primary
objective is to stabilize and sustain the peace” (Suhrke and Buckmaster 2005:
22). Meanwhile, there was a broader shift away from the extremes of the
Washington Consensus.15 In its place came a greater commitment to the quest
for “inclusive” postwar development rather than the “narrow” development
encouraged before (Addison et al. 2001; Stewart 2005).
At the fringes of international financial institution and development agency
thinking, there was also some greater attention to the work on war to peace
transitions and the way that the characteristics of war economies carry over
into peace economies (Cramer 2005; Goodhand 2004). Criminalized war

economies often become criminalized peace economies. Pugh (2005) details
this for Bosnia. SIGAR (2016) highlights the astonishing corrupt capture of
U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. The difficulty is that donors have
not yet found effective and coherent ways of reconciling peace and patronage
(Smoke and Talercio 2007).
Linking the concerns of recent work on the political economy of war to
peace transitions to the developments within economics during wartime
in advanced industrialized societies, it is possible to take inspiration from
Keynes. Keynes (1940) and Kaldor (see King 2007), among others, under-
stood the U.K. war economy during the Second World War as a challenge
to do more than merely find the simplest way to finance the war effort. First,
partly for reasons of political legitimacy, it was important to find a distribu-
tionally progressive way to pay for the war. Second, they both understood
that the productive energies of mobilizing for war might be turned to create
longer-term economic advantages. Keynes (1940: iii) sought to “snatch from
the exigency of war positive social improvements.” For example, forced
savings imposed on wartime factory workers might generate social welfare
payments after the war. There have been other ways too, in which wartime
labor has been repaid with peace dividends that have helped to assuage post-
war political instability, for example, through the U.S. GI Bill. Of course,
contexts differ, but this experience of advanced capitalist war economies
(and war economics) may be relevant to the analysis of and policy think-
ing about war, and war to peace transitions, in lower-income war-affected
economies.
Drawing on this intellectual and policy history, there is a triple policy prob-
lem for postwar reconstruction and development: how to pay for the peace
(which, at the same time, is a question of who ends up paying for peace, how
the cost of peace is distributed); how to produce peace; and how to work
for peace.16 The question is how to encourage production that helps pay for
peace, by generating foreign exchange and tax revenues; and how to encour-
age production that draws in labor to higher productivity and better-remu-
nerated work. These are not technical but deeply political challenges. For
example, policy officials would want to attract savings accumulated during
war into investment in activities that generate employment, foreign exchange,
and fiscal contributions. That is likely to involve doing deals to manage the
politics of a postwar centralization and reallocation of violence rights while
asserting some authority over property rights and income streams. Boyce
and O’Donnell (2007) are among the very few who have addressed some
of these issues directly, emphasizing the importance of fiscal settlements in
war to peace transitions and mindful of the carry-over of war economies into
peacetime. Such an approach also raises the question of how to find ways to
mobilize resources—for reconstruction and development—from the gains of

global war “profiteers.”
Beyond Methodological Nationalism:

Inside Out and Outside In
Different approaches to the economics of war economies converge on the
realization that war economy dynamics cannot be contained within nation-
state borders. Borders and borderlands, indeed, are often exactly where
the political economies of war unfold in most intriguing ways (Goodhand
2005). The “relatively invisible . . . ultra-mobile” (Collier 1994) forms in
which wartime accumulators may prefer to hold wealth are commonly spir-
ited across borders: war wealth then either pays for imported means of vio-
lence and other goods needed to reproduce war or it is stored overseas. One
of the first signs of recognition in the post–Cold War economy economics
was the emergence of the idea of “regional conflict complexes.” This then
broadened to the international market and institutional features of “conflict
commodities.” In an analysis based on a decade or more of humanitarian
practice and academic research in DRC, Seymour (forthcoming) argues
that we “can no longer deny our interconnection to lives lived and violence
experienced in the DRC” because of the violent regulation of production
of so many materials used in everyday consumption—cobalt, columbine
tantalite, and more.
Analysis of the cross-border idiosyncrasies of war economies and the
spillovers—of refugees, goods, capital, arms, and violence—may be seen as
the “inside out” perspective on the regionalization and broader internation-
alization of war economies. A different perspective is more “outside in” and
focuses on the global political economy of war, conflict management, and
security. The concerns here range from the implications of global efforts to
arrogate violence rights to a specific set of actors, to the huge array of inter-
ests thriving on global military expenditure. Global interests and institutions
are not so much noises off as a fundamental element of the reproduction
of war economies. Dent (2017), for example, suggests that Swiss banking
regulations allow for a globalized set of transactions facilitating the circula-
tion of capital and reproduction of power in Syria, partly through the financ-
ing of (and investments out of profits from) the captagon trade. Another
“outside in” example might be the intersection of the U.S. opioid epidemic,
North American porous borders, the Global War on Terror, and the Afghan
opium trade. In a presentation in London, the Special Inspector General for
Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko, spoke of how an estimated
1–2 percent of opium consumed in the United States comes directly from
Afghanistan; but an estimated 80 percent of opium entering Canada comes
from Afghanistan, and there is a “pretty porous border” between Canada and
the United States.17
It may deprive the field of analytical traction to think of the United States/
Canada border as a war economy borderland (an extension of the porous
borders immediately surrounding Afghanistan) or to reach for ideas like that
of a “global civil war.” But it is important to identify the global ramifica-
tions (inside out) of violent conflicts concentrated in Afghanistan, Colombia,
the DRC, or Syria and the international political and material interests in
advanced economies (outside in) that both reproduce and regulate violent
conflict around the world. War economies are globalized. And “violent con-
flict is an integral part of the world economic structure” (UN/World Bank
2018: 33). Work at this level nicely brings together some of the strands that
at times seem set against one another in war economics. Thus, some of the
formal analysis of neoclassical war economics can help identify some of the
features of markets and commodities that tend to characterize war econo-
mies and their regional and international spillovers. Cost of war exercises
increasingly look not just at the costs within a specific country and during
the obvious coding-rule parameters of “civil war onset” and formal victory
or peace settlement but also at regional costs, longer-term costs to health and
education and economic development, and at international costs of interven-
tion, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding. And the more extended versions
of cost of war accounting start to merge also with the perspectives of political
economy to identify not only the costs but also the transformative dimensions
of conflicts, the ways that war economies can shift the structure and relations
of production and material interests.
War economies can reorder as well as undo societies, political orders,
and dynamics of economic change. A globalized war economy also breaks
down in yet another way the distinction between rich and poor country war
economy analysis (and that between state and non-state war economies). A
sharp example is Bilmes’s (2017) idea of the U.S. “credit card wars.”18 This
analysis goes far beyond the sheer immensity of U.S. war expenditure. It has
echoes of earlier anxieties about a “permanent war economy” (Melman 1985)
and Eisenhower’s fears of the power of the military-industrial complex.
Bilmes points out that all previous U.S. wars, before 9/11 and the Global
War on Terror, were financed through the budget and so involved trade-offs
and committee scrutiny, as well as being at least in part funded by hikes in
taxes on the wealthy. But since 9/11, the United States has fought long and
hugely expensive wars globally through supplementary appropriations and
through debt, while taxes on the wealthy have been reduced. Fewer and fewer
Americans are actually fighting in these wars. So they are politically easy to
fight: few are fighting and nobody is paying, for now. These wars fought on
tick recall Keynes’s (1940) criticism of the “false remedies” of paying for war
by inflation or debt. Wars fought by few and on the never-never are also unac-
countable. In these ways, they come to resemble more and more the features
of war economies in lower-income countries. And they resemble the features
of non-state war economies as much as state-mobilized war economies.
CONCLUSION
There are varieties of war economy and of war economics. War economies
range from those dominated by an effective state that mobilizes resources to
the war end and is strengthened by war, to those that are desperate improvisa-
tions by non-state (or delicate state) organizations, many of which are further
weakened by violent conflict. This may suggest a sharp distinction between
the war economy of an advanced capitalist economy (like the United States
or United Kingdom in the twentieth-century world wars) and that of a low-
income country (like Mozambique in the Cold War or Afghanistan in the
twenty-first century). But this chapter has argued that the distinction is over-
drawn and misleading. There are features that both types (archetypes even) of
war economy have in common. A contest over violence rights comes to regu-
late markets and reorient incentives in ways that depart dramatically from the
benchmarks of perfect competition conditions often dominating the minds of
orthodox economists. War rents play significant roles in both, and may have
longer-term consequences for patterns of accumulation. Transparency and
accountability go missing in action. Most importantly, war can reorder societ-
ies, polities, and economies in lasting ways. Finally, in contemporary wars,
one of the things that draws low- and middle-income war economies closer
to the economies of advanced economies (with their own violence economies
and interests) is the interaction between them that war produces: “violence
without borders has emerged” (UN and World Bank 2018: 49).
The development of war economics also may be accelerated by paying
closer attention than is normal to the differences—in assumption, method,
and typical argument—between contrasting economic perspectives. I have
highlighted three main approaches. Most of the time, these three varieties of
war economics ignore one another. There is surely greater scope to put them
in dialogue directly with each other, even to combine some of their elements,
just as war economics also needs—as in this volume—to be put in dialogue
with (rather than dominate) other disciplines.
NOTES
1. For an overview of the historiography of the economics of the American Civil

War, see Ransom (2001).
2. The genealogy of the term global civil war includes the work of Carl Schmitt,
as well as more recent elaborations by Agamben (2005) and Hardt and Negri (2004).
Duffield (2008) sees global civil war in terms of a conflict between the insured and
the uninsured, manifest in struggles around the efficacy of “containment,” restricting
the flow of the uninsured to the domain of the insured.
3. With due apologies to Michael Lewis (2016).
4. Chalmers (2007). For a critique of the methodology of cost of war exercises
see Cramer (2010).
5. Quoted in Milward (1984: 10).
6. In Gulliver’s Travels (Swift 1995), the Houyhnhnms explain to Gulliver that
the fiercest fights between the hirsute creatures that the reader realizes are all too
human take place when they squabble over bright shiny stones in the ground.
7. See Frey (2004); Llusa and Tavares (2007); Wintrobe (2003, 2006).
8. See Cramer (2006: 255–56).
9. See also Nordstrom (2010).
10. On the intersections of gender, war economies, and class formation in Sudan
see Pinaud (2016).
11. Meanwhile, Pivovarova and Swee (2015) found that despite “the widely held
view that war is detrimental to human capital formation,” the data show no effect of
war intensity on schooling attainment.
12. A more nuanced analysis disaggregating the pathways through which war may
affect economic change, institutional change, and “ideas of the state,” applied to the
civil war in Yemen in the 1960s, is Rogers (2018).
13. See Coleman (2006) on ICI.
14. Let alone the possibility that preventive interventions might aggravate conflict
dynamics.
15. The Washington Consensus captured the essence of the heyday of
International Financial Institution policy pressure on developing countries to priva-
tize, deregulate, and liberalize their domestic markets and their trade with the rest
of the world.
16. This would be an alternative to the “triple transition” (political liberaliza-
tion, market liberalization, and security sector governance reforms) summarized in
Ottaway (2002).
17. John F. Sopko, during presentation “Afghanistan Reconstruction: Lessons
from the USA,” Chatham House, London, December 6, 2017 (https:chathamhouse
.org/events/all/members-event/afghanistan-reconstruction-lessons-us-experience).
18. Bilmes (2017).
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Chapter 3
War Economies and

Humanitarian Action
Gilles Carbonnier
Since the end of the Cold War, the international humanitarian market has
boomed from $1.2 billion in 1990 to $27.3 billion in 2016 (Development
Initiatives 2017).1 The number and variety of donors have multiplied, with
Gulf States and Turkey as major players while over a quarter of total funding
accrues from private sources (individuals, foundations, corporations, etc.).
The number and variety of aid suppliers have skyrocketed as well.
Despite all this hype humanitarianism, as translated into operational real-
ity in armed conflict, is in crisis. The number and intensity of war crimes
have risen, as illustrated by indiscriminate attacks on civilians as well as
the deliberate targeting of medical personnel and facilities in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Humanitarian organizations often do not have direct
access where it matters most, that is, in the midst of war, leaving millions of
people largely unassisted and unprotected, as recently witnessed in rebel-held
enclaves in Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta in Syria or in Mosul in neighboring
Iraq. At times, aid becomes yet another resource fuelling war economies.
Worse, humanitarian workers themselves have become a valuable resource
in a vibrant kidnap-and-ransom market. No doubt, humanitarian action is part
and parcel of contemporary war economies.
Economic analysis can greatly help better understand the complex dynamics
at play and devise innovative responses. Since the mid-1990s, an increasing
number of economists turned to the study of armed conflict, looking in par-
ticular at war costs and benefits, rebel finance including drugs trade, diaspora
remittances, and the economic agendas pursued by warlords and transnational
criminal organizations. The economic profession (re)discovered that combat-
ants can make more than a “decent” living by looting, kidnapping, racketeer-
ing, exploiting, enslaving, and taxing. It has turned to the whole spectrum
from the micro-determinants of rebellion and suicide bombing to the role of
59
60 Gilles Carbonnier
aid and natural resources in armed conflict, or the study of vulnerability and
coping mechanisms in protracted conflicts. Such analysis helps to uncover how
humanitarian assistance risks becoming—inadvertently or not—a resource-
fuelling conflict, and how to better deal with that risk. Drawing on rational
choice and emphasizing costs and benefits, or interests and leverage points,
economic analysis provides relevant insights for humanitarian negotiations
with warring parties, for example, when it comes to influence combatant behav-
ior toward greater compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
When analyzing the behavior and decisions of armed groups, it has become
critical to consider issues such as territorial control, conflict finance, includ-
ing access to valuable resources and trading routes, as well as mobilization
and opportunity costs. Analyzing economic agendas in war shows that the
boundaries between organized political and criminal groups are increasingly
blurred. This, in turn, provides a wealth of insights not only on the functions
of—and rationale for—violence but also on the potential incentives, levers,
and entry points in humanitarian negotiations. It further contributes to identi-
fying aid diversion and security risks and redesigning aid delivery modes and
supply chains accordingly.
Against this background, this chapter introduces humanitarian econom-
ics as an emerging field of study and practice that deals with the economic
dimensions and the political economy dynamics of armed conflict and
humanitarian action. Humanitarian economics offers a largely untapped
potential to connect conflict economics with humanitarian dilemmas and out-
comes.2 The next section illustrates this by focusing on selected interactions
between war economies and humanitarian action, be it in relation to conflict
finance, to kidnap and ransom and the treatment of prisoners, or in the case
of economic sanctions.
WAR ECONOMIES AND HUMANITARIAN ACTION
War economies feature as a key topic under humanitarian economics, a

field of study that deals with the economics and political economy of armed
conflict and humanitarian action. Foreign aid is not treated as an exogenous
reaction to adverse shocks. Instead, humanitarian economics considers aid as
part and parcel of contemporary war economies. While it draws on different
subfields such as development economics and war economics, humanitarian
economics presents a set of distinctive features. From a normative viewpoint,
it is driven by a deep concern for humanitarian outcomes, which influences
the research agenda and ethics.
In common parlance, the notion of a war economy often equates with the
generation, mobilization, and allocation of resources to sustain a war effort.
War Economies and Humanitarian Action 61
Yet, this is artificially dissociated from economic activities undertaken by

civilians who attempt to survive in the midst of wars and by relief agencies
striving to assist them. This is a category of prime interest to humanitarian
agencies: survival activities are undertaken by people seeking to preserve
their livelihoods.
This is the case of countless informal miners digging for gold and coltan
in eastern DRC, or of farmers growing poppies in Afghanistan, where the
opium economy generates not only huge profits, but also employment and
income for tens of thousands of rural Afghans. As such, poppy production
or informal and artisanal mining represent vital income sources for vulner-
able households in Afghanistan and the DRC. Cracking down on these
activities might push them into destitution, thus creating greater needs for
external assistance. The contribution of Congolese miners or Afghan farm-
ers to the war economy may be voluntary or coerced. In return, they usually
benefit from an income and some degree of protection granted by those who
thrive on their work. Virtually all profits accrue to armed groups, transna-
tional criminal organizations, government officials, and others who have a
vested interest in the perpetuation of wars that instil a climate of impunity
propitious to illegal activities. But these miners and farmers also face a
greater risk of attack by opponents who wish to curtail the funding sources
of the enemy or win an elusive war on drugs. Such issues should be taken
into account when designing humanitarian operations aimed at protecting
civilians.
Humanitarian action may be primarily geared toward supporting coping
mechanisms and survival strategies, or substituting for them when they fail.
Yet, part of the resources brought to the field may end up benefiting war-
ring parties, including human resources, as the kidnap-and-ransom industry
illustrates. Thus, war economy comprises four categories that overlap and
interact with each other: (i) conflict finance, or activities to fund and sustain
the war effort; (ii) survival activities associated with coping mechanisms
and strategies to avoid destitution; (iii) criminal and informal activities that
flourish under a general climate of impunity generated by the war; and (iv)
international trade and financial relations connecting the above three catego-
ries to the global marketplace. While humanitarian actors tend to be narrowly
interested in the second category, that is, to what extent and how do civilians
survive in the midst of war, the other categories should also be factored into
the analysis. This is paramount not only because the three other war economy
categories have a direct bearing on the needs for humanitarian assistance and
protection, but even more because bringing humanitarian assistance in a war
economy will have an impact not only on the vulnerable striving to make a
living, but also on the political and military actors involved in the other cat-
egories of activities typically embedded in war economies.
Against this background, abrupt commodity price shocks on world mar-

kets can have a dire impact on specific conflict zones. The link between the
Dot-Com Bubble, the boom and bust of coltan prices, and the attendant risk
of a cholera outbreak in Kisangani provides a telling case in point. Since the
mid-1990s, the DRC has been a significant producer of columbo-tantalite, a
metallic ore known as coltan. The price of this mineral mined in the eastern
DRC followed a trajectory similar to that of the NASDAQ Composite index
of high-tech firms in New York. During the NASDAQ bubble at the turn of
the millennium, coltan price multiplied tenfold from $30 per pound in 1999
to $300 per pound by the end of 2000. A swift tenfold coltan price crash fol-
lowed in 2001 as the NASDAQ bubble burst.
The coltan fever took place in the midst of the Second Congo War (1998–
2003) where nine African countries sent troops to the DRC or supported dif-
ferent Congolese armed factions. As coltan prices skyrocketed, many farmers
in North Kivu moved into mining. As demand from mining areas increased
while agricultural production declined, food prices reached new heights and
food security deteriorated in the region (Jackson 2003: 16). The commercial-
ization of coltan became a highly lucrative venture for armed groups who
fought over the control of mining sites and trading routes. These included
militias backed by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, such as Bemba’s
Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo (MLC) and the Rassemblement
Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD). The latter attempted to concentrate
all coltan purchases under the Société Minière des Grands Lacs (SOMIGL)
while processing and commercialization were allegedly in Rwandan hands.
The 2001 coltan price drop put stress on RCD’s finances and the armed
groups turned to alternative funding sources with hardly any concern for the
humanitarian consequences.
At the same time, the UN Security Council mandated a “panel of experts”
to examine how mining in particular contributed to funding various armed
groups that committed war crimes in the region. In its final report to the UN
Security Council of October 2002, the panel of experts noted:
Another strategy for raising revenue is to use RCD-Goma’s public sector façade
to requisition funds from public enterprises. On 21 November 2001 [just when
coltan prices crashed], the Secretary General of RCD-Goma requisitioned by
decree all revenues generated by public utilities and parastatals. On the following
day the Secretary General annulled all existing collective agreements for workers
in those enterprises. The decrees were applicable to all public enterprises, includ-
ing the water utility, the airport authorities, the electricity utility . . . . Within a
month, the water utility lacked sufficient funds to purchase water purification
chemicals in Kisangani and Bukavu and power stations stopped functioning for
lack of necessary repairs. The International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC]
has stepped in to provide 60 tons of chemicals for water purification and has
financed costly repairs at Tshopo power station to avert a discontinuation of
water supply in Kisangani and avert a cholera outbreak. (UNSC 2002)
As militias preyed on public utilities to make up for the losses ensuing from
the collapse of global coltan prices, a humanitarian organization managed
to keep Kisangani’s water treatment plant operational. If the ICRC had not
stepped in, much of the city’s 600,000 inhabitants would likely have lost
access to safe drinking water, increasing the risk of renewed cholera out-
breaks. The question is the role of humanitarians to step in and provide the
chemicals together with the repair and maintenance services to avert a cholera
crisis, or whether their role should not be restricted to insist that the looting
of public utilities does not materialize in the first place.
CONFLICT FINANCE AND

HUMANITARIAN NEGOTIATIONS
For aid practitioners, it is generally easier to deal with highly structured

armed groups involved in conventional warfare than with loose networks of
fragmented groups involved in hit-and-run and criminal operations. The way
armed groups finance themselves or seek to extract profits from war has a
bearing not only on how the conflict evolves, but also on how warring par-
ties behave vis-à-vis local communities and relief organizations. Why would
a warring party change its behavior or grant unimpeded access in response
to humanitarian organizations’ requests? Why, for instance, do some non-
state armed groups agree to sign the Deeds of Commitment of the nonprofit
organization Geneva Call whereby they commit to avoiding the use of anti-
personnel mines, sexual violence, or violence against children?
An armed group’s inclination to grant access to humanitarian agencies
or to uphold IHL norms often depends on a cost-benefit calculus involving
military, economic, and political considerations. Valuating techniques associ-
ated with calculating the costs of war, and in particular the costs of lives lost
and impaired, raise tough ethical issues and methodological questions when
it comes to establishing the value of a statistical life (VSL)3 for people bereft
of solvent demand. Existing VSL valuation techniques provide an estimation
of nearly zero the killing of thousands of civilians and combatants in poorer
countries, while the life of a single U.S. or NATO soldier is routinely valued
well above a million USD. In the long run, greater financial inclusion and
insurance penetration may alter this equation.
There are obviously many variables beyond economic ones that explain the
behavior of combatants, such as an armed group’s identity, ideology, political
agenda, positioning, and communication. Advances in behavioral economics

provide powerful insights on the role of shifting social norms and preestab-
lished mental models with important insights for international assistance
program, as illustrated through practical examples drawn from development
cooperation in the World Bank’s World Development Report 2015 entitled
Mind, Society, and Behavior (World Bank 2014). There remains much to
gain from deeper scrutiny into the changing role of social norms and mental
models in the context of armed conflict (Carbonnier 2015).
That said, looking more narrowly at the economic agendas of armed
groups helps grasp the cost-benefit constraints of warring parties that have to
generate sufficient resources to cover the costs of mobilizing and maintaining
their fighting capacity in relation to the relative strength of the enemy (see,
e.g., Wennmann 2009). Non-state armed groups typically receive funding
from voluntary or coerced contributions from diasporas and domestic con-
stituents—depending on the extent of territorial control—and from foreign
allies. An armed group will adapt its behavior with regard to its current
financial situation and future funding prospects. To the extent that external
funding is sufficient, the armed group does not need to extract more resources
locally. This can have a direct impact on the capacity of humanitarian actors
to influence the behavior of combatants toward greater respect of IHL, as
some scholars find that armed groups that do not depend on the backing of
the local population tend to turn more indiscriminately violent (see, e.g.,
Weinstein 2006; Khalivas 2006).
In other words, humanitarian negotiators may have little leverage on an
armed group that is financially self-sufficient, unless a powerful external
sponsor agrees to push for behavioral change, for example, by threatening
to cut down its support in the case of renewed mass atrocities. When an
armed group gets poorer or fears for its future financial viability, it may be
more prone to engage humanitarian organizations in order to gain broader
support and legitimacy vis-à-vis local communities and external backers.
Conversely, however, as it becomes cash strapped, an armed group may turn
against civilians and relief organizations to extract resources required for its
military and political survival. The history of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) illustrates how the situation can rapidly evolve in this regard.
Once Indian support waned after the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by
a Tamil suicide bomber, the LTTE relied increasingly on taxes levied among
diaspora communities and in LTTE-controlled territory. Diaspora networks
such as the Sri Lankan Tamil emigrants are usually too dispersed, divided,
and weak to be mobilized by humanitarian organizations hoping to wield
influence on rebels.
More generally, as an armed group gains effective control over a terri-
tory and its population, it may shift from ad hoc predatory attacks involving
looting and kidnapping to more permanent methods of extraction combined

with a greater role in the local economy and stronger trade and financial rela-
tions. Full territorial control often leads to an armed group exercising de facto
governmental functions, which include permanent taxation and the provision
of security and quasi-public services (Olson 1993). If the rebels originate
from that territory, they may display a greater interest in basic service deliv-
ery to the communities with whom they are closely related, and may enjoy
greater political support from the host population. Strangers may have more
incentives to exert violence as a way to spread fear among the population
while striking selective deals with local criminal groups and political leaders.
In many instances, war offers vast opportunities for illegal economic
activities carried out in impunity. The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia (FARC) developed ties with coca producers in the areas under their
control as early as the 1980s but did not take an active role in the narcotics
business (beyond taxing it) until the 1990s, when some elements of the armed
group engaged in production and trade. Together with kidnap-and-ransom
activities developed at a quasi-industrial scale, it managed to secure a com-
fortable annual income in the 2000s. The FARC has been considered to be
largely self-sufficient financially, which meant that humanitarian organiza-
tions had less leverage through third parties, but also that the FARC had an
interest in mustering support from host communities through a combination
of welfare provision and restraint in the exercise of violence, which aligned
well with the objectives and services provided by humanitarian organizations.
In Afghanistan, warring parties thrive notably on the drugs business as well
as on the foreign aid enterprise. For example, the Taliban have been known
to levy a 10 percent tax on poppy production, as well as taxes on drug traf-
fickers and protection rackets or “protection services” more or less forcibly
sold to international organizations and their Afghan partners (UNODC 2013).
“Taxing” humanitarian operations is a well-documented source of conflict
finance. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have often resorted to a protection racket,
that is, selling “protection services” more or less forcibly to international
organizations and their Afghan partners (UNODC 2013). In Somalia during
the 2011–2012 famine, Al-Shabaab, a Somali rebel group with alleged ties to
al-Qaeda, appointed local humanitarian coordination officers whose task was
to regulate and monitor the activities of aid agencies. This included taxation:
the group argued that being the de facto government in the areas of operations
of humanitarian agencies, it was responsible for the security of aid workers.
This, in turn, required financial support from the humanitarians who “required
protection.” Initial registration fees could be as high as $10,000, followed by
taxes on individual projects and on staff income (Jackson and Aynte 2013).4
In this context, it is critical for humanitarian agencies to weigh the effec-
tive humanitarian outcomes that can be attributed to their operations against
the risk of fuelling the conflict via aid taxation and diversion. Besides, they
should consider how a protection racket and extortion affect civilian welfare
among host communities. While ad hoc extraction—for instance, in the form
of forced labor—primarily has a negative impact on households, more regular
and institutionalized extraction seemed to have improved the welfare of “tax
payers” in some cases but not in Somalia, where multiple forms of taxation
imposed by Al-Shabaab has weakened traditional redistribution channels and
solidarity networks (Maxwell and Majid 2014). This, in turn, erodes the cop-
ing mechanisms of affected communities and enhances their vulnerability,
which may in turn call for increased humanitarian assistance.
PRISONERS OF WAR AND

KIDNAPPING FOR RANSOM
Protecting detainees in war is one of the long-standing objectives pursued by

IHL. Since ancient times, preserving the life and dignity of prisoners of war
has been addressed by various normative frameworks. The age of chivalry in
medieval Europe has been hailed as a time when the lot of the vanquished
improved. Social scientists have highlighted the role of knightly values that
glorified acts of mercy in war, with an emphasis on warriors’ concern for
reputation and inner emotions of pride, guilt, and shame. Economists have
emphasized the changing costs and benefits of keeping prisoners alive: grant-
ing captors property rights over their prisoners raised the incentive to keep
them alive, at least those prisoners expected to be ransomed for a good price.
A monarch with limited resources to pay for the war had an interest in grant-
ing each soldier the rights to their own spoils of war. Battles pitting man
against man made it possible to clearly identify who was made prisoner by
whom and to assign property rights accordingly. Under these circumstances,
[A soldier] acts rationally when he decides either to kill or to spare a defeated

enemy. If he kills him he eliminates any risk of the defeated soldier striking
back. The advantage of sparing a defeated enemy, on the other hand, is the
monetary benefit of selling him at a price determined by the prisoner himself,
his family, or whoever else is interested in his release . . . . The (net) value of
a defeated enemy thus depends on a number of empirically observable factors
influencing benefits and costs, given the particular form of property rights. (Frey
and Buhofer 1988: 21)
During the Hundred Years’ War, Henry V departed from the prevailing nor-
mative system of chivalry that favored sparing the vanquished. The English
king, victorious over the French in Agincourt in 1415, ordered the execution
of all the prisoners including “the flower of French nobility and chivalry”
(Meron 1999). The English knights refused to execute the order not only
because they repudiated such an unchivalrous task, but also to preserve
the benefit of later ransoming “their” prisoners. King Henry V hence then
ordered his archers to do the dirty work. The massacre was later explained, if
not justified, on grounds of necessity: the sheer number of French prisoners
made it too costly to keep them alive in the event of another French assault.
Guarding the prisoners to prevent them from taking up arms would have
diverted English forces away from combat.
The rise of nation-states, forced conscription, and new military technol-
ogy altered incentives to take part in war. The adoption of the first Geneva
Convention in 1864 coincided with the final transfer of property rights over
prisoners from individual combatants to states. Aware of the budgetary con-
straints to pay for modern warfare, Henry Dunant, the founding father of the
Red Cross and promoter of the Convention, drew attention to the benefits of
effective sanitary services for the wounded in his Memory of Solferino: “by
reducing the number of cripples, a saving would be effected in the expenses of
a Government which has to provide pensions for disabled soldiers” (Dunant
1862/1959: 122). Since then, however, millions of detainees have continued
to suffer from massive, repeated violations of basic rules and principles of
IHL. This hints to the fact that it is far from easy to transit from material
incentives to legal norms and, up to this day, cost-benefit analysis can help
understand and influence armed groups’ behavior. As recently witnessed in
Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere, humanitarian actors can alter the captors’
cost-benefit calculus in favor of sparing the prisoners by contributing to the
orderly transfer of the vanquished away from the war zone.
Kidnapping has become one of the biggest threats to humanitarian workers:
the number of aid workers kidnapped (and not killed thereafter) multiplied
by eighteen in just a decade (Humanitarian Outcomes 2014). This involves a
fluid mix of economically and politically motivated kidnappings. Syria is a
case in point. By December 2014, the Islamic State (IS) was believed to hold
at least twenty-two foreign nationals captive in Aleppo in northern Syria.
Negotiations were especially difficult because they involved a diverse range
of home states and employers, each following different principles, policies,
and practices. IS had kidnapped some of the hostages directly, while it had
bought or acquired others by force from other warring groups. The group had
both political and financial demands, such as releasing prisoners in France
and the United Kingdom and ransom payments. In Somalia, too, aid workers
and business employees kidnapped by Al-Shabaab affiliates have been sold
to other groups, including organized criminal groups.
Kidnap and ransom (K&R) is a low-cost tactic that can yield substantial
financial return, in particular in the case of expatriates whose value tends to
be much higher than national aid workers. The latter may thus face a greater
probability of being killed rather than kidnapped (Fassin 2012). Negotiated
release may imply the direct or indirect payment of a ransom by the employer,
the family, or the home government of the victim. If no ransoms were paid
and no concessions granted, the market would dry up. Yet, given the human
and political costs, most policymakers in democracies are not ready to imple-
ment such a policy. The United States and the United Kingdom may be
exceptions, but also enjoy a greater capacity to set up covert rescue opera-
tions. In a mediatized case, a Swiss court ordered Doctors Without Borders
(MSF) to reimburse part of the ransom paid by the Dutch government for the
release of an MSF employee, setting a worrying precedent for humanitar-
ian organizations.5 Besides, it is not easy for a state to prevent a family or a
private company from paying a ransom for the release of a loved one or an
employee, which may be all the more tempting when costs are covered by
an ad hoc insurance policy. A whole industry has developed with special-
ized consultancy firms providing comprehensive service packages that range
from risk monitoring to managing K&R crises, including handling relations
between the hostage’s family, the kidnappers, and potential intermediaries.
The insurance industry has also become an important actor on the market,
whereby insurance companies do not directly pay ransoms but typically reim-
burse the insured party for any ransom paid, as well as all the other related
expenses, including fees paid to consultancy firms contracted to help manage
the crisis.
K&R insurance is a surrealistic business filled with contradictions. First, an
insured employee should not be informed about the insurance policy because
of a moral hazard. The insured could arguably behave in a riskier manner
once aware of the coverage. Worse, the insured could co-organize his or her
own kidnapping in order to get a share of the ransom when reimbursed by the
insurance. Second, kidnappers typically ask that no one be informed of the
kidnapping except the employer or the family members to be extorted. Hence,
informing the insurance company about the incident can put the hostage’s
life in danger. But the insurance company can turn down later reimbursement
requests if it was not informed about the kidnapping event in a timely fashion.
Third, selling K&R insurance goes against the stated policy of the United
States and many other Western countries and international organizations not
to pay ransom fees to any designated terrorist organization.
This booming K&R market has dramatic consequences for those humani-
tarian organizations, which has no alternative beyond ceaselessly striving to
open up and preserve a space for strictly impartial, neutral, and independent
humanitarian action with field access tolerated by all warring groups, includ-
ing those designated as terrorists. Beyond long-lasting trauma on the victims
and their families, kidnapping incidents also gravely affect the operational
capacity of relief organizations. Cases of kidnappings have repeatedly led

humanitarian agencies to withdraw from a region or a whole country alto-
gether. More importantly, perhaps, it is not only the resources brought in war
zones by humanitarian organizations that may end up fuelling war economies
but it is also the humanitarian workers themselves that are regarded as a valu-
able, tradable asset.
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS
Relief organizations increasingly operate in contexts where part of the ter-

ritory is under the control of groups and individuals designated as terrorist
by the United Nations and major aid donors such as the United States and
the EU. Economic sanctions against designated terrorist organizations can
have dire humanitarian consequences for the population under the control of
those organizations. Sanctions can further entail criminogenic effects in that
criminal networks flourish by investing in the lucrative business of circum-
venting the sanctions and other measures designed to counter the financing
of terrorism.
Imposing sanctions has been considered as an alternative to going to war,
or as an option among a range of actions that can be taken against armed
groups and belligerent countries. Sanctions aim to signal the disapproval of
the countries imposing the sanctions, to push for behavioral change, or simply
to constrain and limit the target’s agency. Evidence on the effectiveness of
targeted sanctions highlights that sanction regimes have been successful in
coercing change in a very limited number of cases (about 10 percent). They
have been slightly more successful in signaling discontent and constraining
behavior with a success rate of 27 percent (Biersteker, Eckert, and Tourinho
2015). The impact of sanctions is particularly weak when it comes to autocra-
cies with limited trade and financial relations with sender countries anyway.
Just like foreign aid, sanctions are fungible. The sanctioned elite can trans-
fer the burden onto weaker segments of society, for example, by reducing
social expenditures or preying on civilians to compensate for losses. Except
for very specific sanctions such as individual travel bans and asset freezes,
the eventual cost of targeted sanctions can be transferred onto the vulner-
able. The negative humanitarian impact of sanctions has been emphasized
in several studies, most notably in the case of the UN sanctions imposed on
Iraq from 1990 to 2003. The impact on public health has been found to be
negative and substantial. Since the end of the 1990s, humanitarian exemp-
tions have become standard practice in UN Security Council resolutions
imposing sanctions. Despite such exemptions, which allow trade in essential
goods and services, the long-term impact of sanctions on the health of the
target country’s population has often been significant. Financial sanctions,

in particular, disrupt the inflow of remittances and cash assistance, which is
compounded by the withdrawal of development assistance and the gradual
deterioration of healthcare education and knowledge as a consequence of
long-term sanctions.
On the other hand, economic sanctions tend to have strong criminalizing
effects, boosting the economic and political power of sanctions busters who
circumvent trade and financial bans, as illustrated by the much-publicized
UN oil-for-food scandal in the case of Iraq. The U.S. Congress estimated
that Iraqis with close ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime earned more than $10
billion illegally from smuggling oil and extorting kickbacks from firms trad-
ing through the UN’s oil-for-food program between 1997 and 2002 (Andreas
2005). These criminal networks do not “evaporate” once the sanction regimes
are lifted but continue to operate in the post-sanction period, adversely
impacting peacebuilding, state-building, and reconstruction. A decade later,
when IS gained full territorial control over parts of Northern Iraq and adja-
cent Syria, long-established oil smuggling circuits facilitated the illegal sales
of oil that boosted the terrorist organization’s war chest. IS gained control
of a majority of oilfields in Syria and a few small fields in Iraq, giving it
an estimated production capacity of up to 80,000 barrels of crude a day in
2014, some of which processed in bootleg refineries. The group sold oil at a
discounted price—allegedly between $25 and $40 a barrel, while the interna-
tional price was above $100. The middlemen included Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish,
and Iranian “entrepreneurs” who had grown rich, connected, and powerful
during the earlier UN embargo against Iraq, and have revived their networks.
Sender countries have become aware of (some of) these pitfalls. They have
inserted humanitarian exemptions into sanction regimes and counterterrorism
legislation. At times, they have supported relief organizations precisely with
the aim of cushioning civilians from the most severe humanitarian conse-
quences of the sanctions, being concerned to render sanctions more accept-
able to their own domestic constituencies. Yet, the same sender countries
have made the effective cushioning of civilians from the humanitarian conse-
quences of sanctions much harder through the enactment of counterterrorist
legislation. Donor countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, and Australia have adopted a battery of administrative, civil, and
criminal laws to ensure that no taxpayer money ends up in the hands of des-
ignated terrorist groups. Humanitarian organizations risk being fined or work-
ers imprisoned for the inadvertent transfer of resources to terrorist actors,
even if they had no intention whatsoever of supporting terrorist acts. This
reinforces risk aversion at the expense of striving to assist those most in need.
In addition, donors have pushed for the inclusion of counterterrorism-
related clauses in funding contracts. These require humanitarian organizations
to exert due diligence, for example, through careful screening of their staff
and of implementing partner organizations against dozens of lists linking
individuals and groups to terrorism suspects. Expanded due diligence may
even require the screening of aid beneficiaries. Principled humanitarian orga-
nizations resist screening ultimate beneficiaries or denying them the right to
assistance on the basis of potential sympathy for, or ties with, listed terror-
ist groups, which would go against the essential principle of impartiality.
Finally, the withdrawal of medical assistance to individuals requiring health-
care on the basis of alleged ties to designated groups would violate medical
ethics. A way to change the equation is to rely more on carrots and less on
sticks and using foreign aid—together with other measures to reduce people’s
grievances—with a view to making peaceful alternatives more attractive to
potential terrorist recruits, increasing the opportunity cost of joining or sup-
porting terrorist organizations. That said, political motivations grounded in
specific historical and institutional circumstances cannot be understated and
must be factored into the equation as well.
CONCLUSION
Linking theory and practice, the chapter illustrates how economic agendas
and financing of non-state armed groups have a direct bearing on humani-
tarian negotiations and outcomes. Highlighting the scope and relevance of
humanitarian economics, it further examines the implications of economic
sanctions on war economies as well as the treatment of detainees and the
booming kidnap-and-ransom market.
The costs of mobilizing and maintaining fighting capacity determine the
number of resources that an armed group must be able to generate to pay for
the war. On that basis, three key variables related to conflict finance appear to
exert a significant influence on the behavior of armed groups with regard to
humanitarian concerns and actors. First, the armed group’s economic agendas
beyond the sole objective to pay for the war, and the extent to which armed
violence serves the purpose of maintaining a climate of impunity propitious
to illegal activities. Second, the extent of an armed group’s territorial con-
trol over people and resources, and in particular over natural resources that
it can extract, trade, and/or tax. And third, the type and amount of external
resources that a warring party is able to command through foreign aid, third-
party state support, diaspora networks, and the likes.
Whether economic activity is a means to support an armed struggle or is
an end in itself can make a big difference in the conduct of hostilities, even
if the boundary between these two scenarios is often blurred. When war
spoils become the aim and violence is perpetuated to sustain profit rather
than to challenge the political status quo, a non-state armed group may have
less interest in adapting its behavior to the laws of war, especially if the
prime objective of violence is to maintain a climate of impunity for criminal
activities to flourish. Calling on strictly profit-driven armed groups to respect
human rights and IHL may seem a priori pointless. In this context, humani-
tarian economics emerges as largely untapped field dealing with the economic
and political economy dynamics of armed conflict and humanitarian action.
Many studies on war economies adopt an anti-rebel bias. There are many
risks involved in the tendency to dismiss non-state armed groups as mere
criminals while possibly condoning repressive regimes prone to deny non-
state armed actors any right and protection that they would be entitled to
as party to a non-international armed conflict. Designating and labeling an
armed group as “criminal” or “terrorist” may further erode any concern it
may have with regard to its reputation and international legitimacy. Under the
cost-benefit analysis, stigmatization and international blacklisting reduces the
opportunity cost of radicalization; a stigmatized armed group may feel that
it has more to lose than to gain by engaging humanitarian organizations and
more to gain than to lose by rejecting or grossly exploiting them.
Further research is needed on several fronts, all the more that relief
approaches are evolving fast. Smart cards, mobile money, biometric rec-
ognition, and other technological innovations lead to expanding cash-based
assistance in crisis, including in remote areas where it was previously simply
not feasible. The economic literature raises many arguments in support of
cash-based programing and a few against it. Cash aid gives beneficiaries a
greater say over how to allocate aid according to their needs. Multi-sector
cash assistance allows beneficiaries to pay not only for food, but also to
cover housing, education, transport, heating, water, and other requirements.
It generally cuts down transaction costs compared to in-kind distribution and
reduces ensuing grievances. But in some instances, bringing trucks and mov-
ing goods into remote areas is important to open up enclaves and reinforce
passive protection of conflict-affected communities through greater physical
presence. In conflict-ridden areas, research on cash-based assistance could
expand beyond cost-benefit analysis and consider the symbolic dimension
of heavy logistics and physical field presence of humanitarian agencies via
warehouses, distribution sites, local offices and the likes. Further research is
required to understand how this shift toward cash-based assistance plays out
within specific war economies, and the extent to which the transaction saved
are reinvested in effective protection work or result in affected communities
being assisted from afar and left unprotected.
We need to better understand the complex dynamics on the humanitarian
market itself, shedding light on instances where competition between relief
organizations stimulates enhanced humanitarian impact and others where it
produces adverse outcomes. Fierce competition in the humanitarian market-

place may stimulate greater and better aid delivery. But it also weakens the
sector’s position vis-à-vis warring parties, donors, and other key stakehold-
ers. Coordinated humanitarian response remains illusory even in instances
where stakes are particularly high for the humanitarian sector as a whole, as
is the case of stringent counterterrorist provisions that jeopardize the exer-
cise of impartial humanitarian action. More research is needed to gauge the
humanitarian impact of trade and financial sanctions–including “smart” ones.
Their long-term criminogenic influence on war economies deserves further
scrutiny as it can have a significant bearing on the transition from war to
peace.
NOTES
1. Development Initiatives adopts the standard definition of humanitarian action,

shared by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),
whereby its objective is to “save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain human dignity
during and after man-made crises and disasters caused by natural hazards, as well as
to prevent and strengthen preparedness for when such situations occur,” following
the principles of: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence (see http://
devinit.org/defining-humanitarian-assistance/# <last accessed on March 15, 2018>.
The data comes primarily from the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee
(DAC) and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)’s
Financial Tracking Service (FTS).
2. To address these issues in this chapter, I draw from various chapters of my 2016
book entitled Humanitarian Economics: War, Disaster and the Global Aid Market
(Carbonnier 2016).
3. See, for example, Viscusi, Kip, and Joseph Aldy, “The Value of a Statistical
Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the World,” Journal of Risk
and Uncertainty 27, no. 1 (2003), pp. 5–76.
4. It seems that food and nonfood items were subject to greater duties than medical
assistance, food being more valuable and fungible in general than drugs and medical
devices. Al-Shabaab drew additional revenue from property rentals, logistics, and
transport. The diversion of food aid by Al-Shabaab was at times quite significant
(Ashley and Aynte 2013: 18).
5. See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/aug/01/internationalaidanddeve
lopment.netherlands.
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Chapter 4
Rebel Taxation
Between the Moral and Market Economy
Zachariah Mampilly
Can a non-state armed group ever engage in taxation? Or, as a non-state

actor, is it axiomatically engaged in extortion? Among the more enduring
tropes in literature on organized violence is that taxation by a rebel group is
no different than a protection racket. Consider these statements on the Islamic
State’s finances by CNN: “The main reason ISIS is still making billions is
taxes. The Islamic State’s extortion of the people living inside its territory in
Iraq and Syria has skyrocketed from $360 million in 2014 to $800 million
in 2015 (emphasis mine)” (Pagliery 2016). The reporter slips easily between
taxation and extortion, suggesting that taxation by rebels is by definition a
criminal act. Academic studies of the subject frequently rely on a similar
slippage. For example, a 2014 study in the influential Journal of Conflict
Resolution is titled, “Extortion with Protection: Understanding the Effect of
Rebel Taxation on Civilian Welfare in Burundi” (emphasis mine) (Sabates-
Wheeler and Verwimp 2014).
Two core assumptions undergird this paradigm. First is the belief that
rebels only engage in taxation to generate revenue. Second is that while such
groups might offer protection in exchange for payment, the rebellion is the
source of the threat. Hence rebel taxation is a form of racketeering in which
an actor demands payment for protection from itself, in other words, a pro-
tection racket. But if so, why apply the term “tax” to non-state armed groups
at all?
In this chapter, I argue that such economic instrumentalism is inadequate
for understanding the logic of rebel taxation. Of course, taxation is always
concerned with revenue generation. But rebel taxation is also overlaid with
political and social valences that rarely draw mention from scholars, in con-
trast to studies of state taxation where such logics are often foregrounded. I
review recent studies of rebel taxation and show that authors dwell on the
77
78 Zachariah Mampilly
economic logic of taxation while ignoring its political dimensions. Studies

of rebel taxation would benefit from a closer understanding of the literatures
on rebel governance as well as on studies of state taxation practices which
can provide insights into the political motivations for taxation that commonly
elude analyses of rebel behavior. Building from these literatures, I introduce
several potential noneconomic logics for rebel taxation. Some of these have
no direct economic benefit, while others are secondary to the economic ratio-
nale. I illustrate these dynamics drawing on examples from recent conflicts. I
conclude that rebel taxation should be understood as a technology of gover-
nance, potentially even more so than its immediate economic purpose.
ECONOMIC INSTRUMENTALISM AND THE

CRIMINALIZATION OF REBEL GROUPS
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a new research paradigm on the politi-
cal economy of war spread through the halls of academia before spilling
over into the policy and cultural realms. Shaped by the ideas of the Oxford
economist Paul Collier and various collaborators, these studies argued that
insurgent organizations were not motivated by injustice or other political
grievances (Collier and Hoeffler 1998). Instead, armed groups should be
understood as profit-seeking firms whose true motivation could be discerned
by applying sophisticated statistical analyses to their finances. In this view,
rebellion was the product not of politics but rather rational cost-benefit analy-
ses by profit-seeking individuals who create armed organizations to pursue
their economic objectives.
This conception of rebellion as a “quasi-criminal” (Collier 2000) activ-
ity led directly to influential policy interventions as the World Bank
embraced these ideas, even commissioning a widely circulated study by
Collier and several collaborators in 2003 (Collier et al. 2003). The Kimberly
Process Certification Scheme endorsed by United Nations General Assembly
Resolution 55/56 in 2004, for example, was designed to regulate the sale of
so-called conflict diamonds based on their perceived role in fueling a civil
war. Treating rebels as criminals even crossed into popular culture with the
release of the song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” by Kanye West in 2005
and the film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio in 2006.
Comparing rebellion to a criminal enterprise reached its apogee in 2009
when the Stanford political scientist and former Obama State Department
official, Jeremy Weinstein (2009), wrote in Foreign Policy that “initiat-
ing a rebellion may be easier than starting a business” and that to prevent
people from rebelling against their government, “War must be made more
expensive.” That same year, Sam Brownback, a conservative senator from
Rebel Taxation 79
Kansas, introduced the Congo Conflict Minerals Act, showing the para-
digm’s bipartisan appeal. Though the legislation initially died in committee,
in 2010, Obama signed into law the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act” which included a specific section that adopted
Brownback’s legislation and sought to regulate so-called conflict miner-
als that were claimed to “finance conflict” producing “extreme levels of
violence.”
What is striking is how few rebel groups actually adhered to the “rebel-
lion as criminality” model in the real world. In Africa in the mid-2000s, the
focus of Weinstein’s polemic, older groups with clear political objectives
like the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) were still active while
newer groups such as the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan
Liberation Army were emerging in response to the political conflict in Darfur.
In Somalia, the Islamic Courts Union was dominant until its defeat in 2006,
which eventually produced Al-Shabaab. Boko Haram was founded in Nigeria
in 2002 and turned to violent insurgency in 2009, the same year Weinstein’s
op-ed appeared. Though not a comprehensive list, these were among the most
prominent insurgencies operating in the African context during that time.
None fit the mold of apolitical profit-seeking criminal enterprises.
Of course, certain groups do appear to function as criminal enterprises,
at least during different phases of their lifecycle. The Revolutionary United
Front in Sierra Leone and Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front in Liberia
during the 1990s are often presented as paradigmatic, though even here,
extractive logics coexisted alongside and were shaped by deeper political
dynamics (Reno 2015). Today, numerous militias that plague the Democratic
Republic of Congo (hereafter Congo) are commonly framed as mafias. Yet
even as certain small militias which control the informal mining sector may
be productively viewed as criminal (Sanchez de la Sierra, Unpublished
manuscript), it is much harder to suggest that more prominent groups like the
FDLR, M-23, or the CNDP were primarily motivated by profit.
Numerous critiques of the rebellion as criminality paradigm have been
put forth, pointing out both the conceptual weakness and political naivety
inherent to this approach (McGovern 2011). Mkandawire’s (2002: 185)
prescient takedown suggests that its bipartisan appeal lay in its ability to
offer relatively painless policy responses: “The view of some policy-oriented
researchers seems to be that if the nature of the conflict were posed in an
understandable (read “rational”) way, potential for its rational resolution
would elicit international support because the cause-effect nexus would
be obvious.” Since rebels were economic not political actors, reducing the
profitability of conflict minerals would remove the underlying motivation for
insurgency itself. Contrasted against the messy, large-scale nation-building
efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq unfolding at the same time as the paradigm’s
emergence, placing sanctions on conflict minerals was a much easier pill to

swallow for neo-cons and liberal internationalists alike.
Despite the failure of the policy interventions that emerged out of the
war as criminality paradigm (Seay 2012), it still casts a large shadow.
Many studies continue to assume that the point of rebellion remains profit-
seeking, as I discuss below. These studies have moved away from the model
of apolitical, greed-based rebellions advanced by Collier and his followers.
Yet they still treat taxation by rebels as a form of extortion, though now
emphasizing an earlier sociological lineage derived from the theoretical and
empirical work of Charles Tilly (1985) and especially Mancur Olson (1993)
instead.
Tilly and Olson were concerned not with groups violently challenging
state authority per se but rather the protogenitors of the modern state. Both
focus on the emergence of the state system in Western Europe, emphasizing
its origins among the banditry that characterized the medieval period. In this
view, bandits engaged in looting eventually embraced regularized taxation as
a more reliable method for extracting revenue. As rational actors, violence is
deployed as a mechanism to facilitate extraction, but only to the point that it
does not undermine revenue generation. As groups face structural logics that
curtail their deployment of violence, they unintentionally initiate a process of
state formation. In other words, rather than turning rebels in to profit-seeking
criminal enterprises, Tilly and Olson were concerned with the “criminal” log-
ics that undergird processes of modern state formation. They challenged the
liberal understandings of state construction, emphasizing instead the ways in
which legitimacy is derived from violence and economic need. Neither Tilly
nor Olson understood their work as applying to contemporary conflict pro-
cesses, yet their ideas have remained foundational in shaping how scholars
understand rebel taxation.
STATE FORMATION, TIME HORIZONS, AND

THE SHADOW OF MANCUR OLSON
Applied to a civil war, Olson’s argument seems to provide a clear logic for
why some armed groups seek to engage in an exchange relationship with
the local population. But often overlooked is Olson’s emphasis on the time
horizons that shaped his predictions. A core assumption is that bandits face
severe constraints on their financing. They only have two options to raise
funds, either pillaging or consensual taxation, which is determined by their
time horizon. Rulers with short-term horizons possess incentive structures
similar to that of roving bandits:
Rebel Taxation 81
suppose that an autocrat is only concerned about getting through the next year.
He will then gain by expropriating any convenient capital asset whose tax yield
over the year is less than its total value. He will also gain from forgetting about
the enforcement of long-term contracts, from repudiating his debts, and from
coining or printing new money that he can spend even though this ultimately
brings inflation. At the limit, when an autocrat has no reason to consider the
future output of the society at all, his incentives are those of a roving bandit and
that is what he becomes. (578)
In contrast, in the long run, Olson argues that that taxation is better than vio-
lent predation both for the ruler and the ruled. He suggests that “the rational
stationary bandit will take only a part of income in taxes, because he will be
able to exact a larger total amount of income from his subjects if he leaves
them with an incentive to generate income that he can tax.” For Olson, a
rational autocrat will provide public goods when it is in their economic inter-
est to do so: “Since the warlord takes a part of total production in the form
of tax theft, it will also pay him to provide other public goods whenever the
provision of these goods increases taxable income sufficiently” (568).
According to Olson, would-be rulers without prospects of establishing a
long-term durable social order, one capable of engaging in regularized taxa-
tion, have no incentive to become stationary bandits and will remain roving
bandits. The transformation from warlord to state formation via taxation is a
long-term process. The question is how long? Unfortunately, Olson’s work
is unclear when describing the difference between short- and long-term time
horizons. While short term seems to imply less than a year, as the quote
above makes clear, he portrays the stationary bandit variously as “taking a
long view” or that “they have an indefinitely long planning horizon” and that
the process of state formation he describes unfolds in the “long run” (571).
At a minimum, a long run time horizon in Olsonian terms seems to refer to
an individual concerned about the well-being of his or her future generations:
“If the king anticipates and values dynastic succession, that further lengthens
the planning horizon and is good for his subjects” (571).
Do leaders of rebel groups calculate over the “long term” and determine
their taxation strategy accordingly? While Olson does not specify the actual
length, it is clear from the above passages that he is thinking in terms of
decades rather than weeks or months. Tilly is similarly vague on the time
horizon by which states gain legitimacy, but makes it clear that it took a “long
time” for these processes to play out (1985: 173). While many armed groups
profess their interests over the long run, even the most durable forms of rebel
rule are characterized by shifting and fragmentary forms of control (Kalyvas
2006). If rebels do express intergenerational aspirations, it is likely to refer
to vague hopes for their children’s futures more than a specific ambition to
ensure their family wealth through favorable taxation policies in the manner
of Olson’s rational autocrat. Raeymaekers (2010: 575), for example, quotes
an official from a Congolese armed group that typifies the short termism
inherent in rebel fiscal strategies: “We didn’t have any budget, so the money
earned from tax duties was immediately used.” Indeed, it would be irrational
for armed groups to behave as if territorial control can ever be stable over
the long run. As Mao made clear, territorial control must be understood as a
contingent strategy, and any armed group with long-term aspirations must be
willing to cede control over territory as necessitated by the military struggle.
A second concern is drawn from studies of state taxation practices. Olson’s
framework presumes that the logic that shapes bargaining between the ruler
and the ruled over taxation can be discerned in both the short and long run.
A rational autocrat will set tax rates at the maximum possible level with-
out introducing disincentives that reduce income generation and hence the
amount of tax collected: “the rational self-interested autocrat chooses the
revenue maximizing tax rate” (570). Civilians, in exchange, receive public
goods up to the point where a dollar invested in welfare benefits by the ratio-
nal autocrat increases his share of income by more than a dollar. However,
most studies of actual state taxation practices emphasize that while “tax
bargaining” is inevitable, the results are rarely apparent in the short term
or even easily discernable in the long run. For example, Prichard (2015: 2)
writes, “explicit tax bargaining . . . speaks to the potential for conflict over
taxation to spur broader governance gains.” But he warns “the connections
between taxation, responsiveness and accountability have been compara-
tively implicit, indirect and long-term.” At best, it is unclear whether armed
groups would ever meet Olson’s criterion for long-term horizons that is at the
heart of his thinking, or that such long-term planning is even possible in the
context of violent conflict.
A third concern is that lacking any sort of international recognition of their
territorial claims, rebel leaders differ markedly from leaders of recognized
state sovereigns, even where the latter may be unable to exercise their full
claim. For both Tilly and Olson, a core feature of the world they imagine is
its anarchic structure, a reality that requires armed groups to emphasize their
coercive abilities. In their conception, there is no difference between the
recognized sovereign and challengers to its authority. But is this an accurate
description of the world in which civil wars unfold today? Governance by
armed groups is predicated on control of territory, a phenomenon determined
primarily by the military strength of the combatants, though reinforced by the
strategic needs of the incumbent. Lacking a basis in international law for their
status, armed groups’ territorial claims mean little without empirical control
(Mampilly 2011). This is in contrast to recognized state authorities who
benefit from juridical recognition even when their empirical abilities lag. In
Rebel Taxation 83
other words, even where rebels and states may possess equivalent empirical
control, it is incorrect to assume that their logics of rule and taxation would be
the same as incumbents who benefit from the juridical status granted to them
by international law. Put simply, even in weak states, governments might
possess long-term time horizons simply because international law grants
them this privilege in ways armed groups can never enjoy.
In contrast, for rebels, lacking any juridical standing, their sole nonmilitary
claim to territory is defined by their socially constructed relationship to a
distinct civilian constituency. As such, their ability to tax civilians is far more
precarious than incumbent governments. From the perspective of civilians,
the fact that states enjoy juridical recognition even where they lack empiri-
cal control means that they are obliged to pay taxes to the incumbent even if
they are victims of government coercion. Indeed, not paying taxes is widely
considered an acceptable basis for punitive measures by the state. In contrast,
rebel organizations that impose punishments on civilians for not paying taxes
face the dual risk of civilian defections and condemnation by the international
community for engaging in “extortion.” Few analyses of rebel taxation fail
to consider these limitations of applying the Olsonian framework in their
analysis.
REBEL TAXATION: A BRIEF EXAMINATION

OF THE LITERATURE
Much like Olson’s rational autocrat, studies treat rebel taxation as a top-down
dynamic with rebels offering public goods in exchange for payments with
civilians grateful to receive such offerings rather than facing more coercive
options.1 Such a top-down approach to taxation is surprising, considering
most scholars of state taxation have long argued that the payment of taxes
is a key mechanism that civilians deploy to articulate demands on their gov-
ernment. Yet, almost no studies of rebel taxation address civilian agency in
their analyses. The question is: how does such “tax bargaining”—often pro-
longed, usually interactive, and rarely direct—shape rebel taxation practices?
I suggest that both rebels and civilians are participants in a specific wartime
political and economic order that can reinforce, and potentially legitimize
(or delegitimize), rebel rule. In this view, beyond its immediate economic
benefits, taxation is a technology of governance that rebels deploy to resolve
a variety of political, economic, and organizational challenges.
Existing studies treat rebel taxation as a revenue generation mechanism
enforced through the superior coercive capacity of the armed group, in
Tillyan terms, a protection racket. In this conception, rebel taxation is always
extortion. It is essential to delineate the particular incentives and constraints
that shape rebel taxation practices rather than relying on an outdated eco-
nomic determinism. Yet, few studies apply insights regarding how taxation
mediates the relationship between rulers and the ruled to the study of rebel
taxation. They also do little to examine the highly constrained space in which
rebel institutional development takes place.
Writing about the FARC in Colombia, Weinstein’s political economy of
rebellion provides a paradigmatic example: “The FARC took up the charge of
policing criminal and delinquent activity in an attempt to minimize the nega-
tive ramifications of the drug trade. To pay for these services on behalf of the
peasantry [emphasis mine], the FARC implemented a system of taxation that
became increasingly formalized and wide-ranging over time” (2006: 291)
Considering the central role revenue generation plays in shaping organiza-
tional behavior in his model, the application of an explicit logic of economic
exchange to taxation is unsurprising.
Yet, even scholars who do not rely on the model of a criminal enterprise
for comprehending rebel behavior revert to an Olsonian framework to com-
prehend taxation. For example, when writing about “security governance”
in eastern Congo, Garrett et al. (2009: 14) provide the following description
of why armed groups provide security: “The relatively secure environment
allows for the concentration on more productive work on the side of the min-
ers and traders, instead of being permanently on guard against existential
threats. The growing productivity leads to a higher income in tax collection
for the armed group.” Sabates-Wheeler and Verwimp (2014: 1475) provide
a similar logic in a study of rebel taxation in Burundi: “payments to power-
ful groups—government forces, rebels, militia, and mafia—can be extorted
or given over voluntarily in exchange for protection, or insurance, against a
range of negative outcomes, including death.”
Even where studies situate taxation within a broader political competi-
tion, they fail to extend this logic to rebel groups. For example, in a study of
the Colombian civil war, Rodriguez-Franco identifies a core political logic
of taxation, showing how conflict can “stimulate patriotism among elites,”
thereby leading to increased taxation (2015: 5). In this conception, building
on the work of Margaret Levi (1988), conflict leads to increased identification
with, and trust in, state institutions, thereby increasing taxation. However,
while she suggests that “insurgents share similar consequences for state
taxation: they compete with the state for the taxable resources of elites,” she
does not apply the same logic to insurgent taxation. Yet, insurgents similarly
engage in taxation to enhance civilian trust in their governance institutions.
By performing a core routine associated with the state—taxation—insurgents
promote a sense of “state-ness” among civilians, fostering a sense of identifi-
cation with the nascent rebel authority. For example, the NSCN (I-M) claim
that “paying tax to NSCN is in itself a political demonstration of indicating
Rebel Taxation 85
that Naga people pay tax to Naga government and not the occupying force”
(The Morunga Express 2016).
Each of these studies treats the payment of taxes as a revenue generation
mechanism, enforced through the threat of coercion. Taxation allows rebel
groups to generate popular support, or at least to prevent defection, through
the provision of a broad array of public and private goods. In other words,
taxation is a function of a rebel organization’s ability to wield violence, while
simultaneously reducing the insurgency’s need to rely on coercion. Taxation
is treated as part of a purely exchange relationship, comparable to other
market transactions, though with the threat of force favoring the rebels in the
imagined negotiation. Such an approach ignores the importance of popular
support in the construction of a legitimate authority, the essential point of
distinction between taxation and mere extortion, a point I will return in the
next section. As a result, they provide little context for the political bargain-
ing inherent in any form of taxation and say little about civilians’ capacity to
shape their relationship to armed groups in meaningful ways.
Most studies of rebel taxation also suffer from a significant empirical
blind spot, that is, focusing on only the most visible cases of payment to the
rebel authority and eliding payments, including nonpecuniary forms, made
by rural farmers, small traders, and ordinary civilians. In their search for an
Olsonian mechanism, most studies only examine specific economic classes
capable of making meaningful payments, usually traders or business elites
rooted to specific territorial concerns. Matsuzaki (2019) explains the logic
that undergirds this bias: “it is easier to collect taxes on goods and activities
that are geographically concentrated or must be transported through a limited
number of access points, such as ports and highway toll stations”—activi-
ties primarily engaged in by traders and business elites operating in dense,
urban environments. Sabates-Wheeler and Verwimp’s (2014: 1476) findings
wherein taxation only follows an instrumental logic when considering the
class position of the contributor is exemplary: “persons owning an enterprise
are more likely to make cash contributions to rebel groups. This means that
rebels know whom to target, or in alternative wording, persons with this pro-
file know that they have to contribute.” Rodriguez-Franco (2016) similarly
emphasizes elite loyalties in her analysis of Colombia as does Sanchez de la
Sierra (unpublished) in his work on informal miners in Congo.
Titeca’s (2011: 56) study of the FAPC in Congo relies on a similar focus
on a specific class, arguing that protection was only offered to elite traders
but not to smaller traders: “The result of this militarized and brutal means
of conflict resolution was that the major traders felt they were operating in a
(more or less) secure economic environment, while the smaller traders lived in
fear.” FAPC territory was particularly well suited for trade, located as it was
on the Ugandan border where a robust Nande trading community had long
dominated transborder commerce. But even here where conditions produced

a high degree of symbiosis between trading elites and the rebel leadership that
might support a purely exchange logic, the FAPC demonstrated substantial
concern for public welfare building a football stadium, co-funding a university
and creating a local development fund that demonstrate a more political pur-
pose than a purely exchange dynamic might suggest (Reyntjens 2014: 533).
A similar narrow focus characterizes Aisha Ahmad’s (2014/15) work on the
relationship of the business community to Islamist armed groups in Somalia.
Ahmad’s study correctly links the logic of Olson and Tilly with the ideas of Paul
Collier. Her focus on the lower rate of taxation offered by the Union of Islamic
Courts as the reason why the business community chose to support the rebels is
convincing as compared to explanations that emphasize Islamist- or clan-based
identities. But it also raises a basic question regarding all such studies that focus
on the relationship of elite traders with armed actors: How else would we expect
a community defined by its pursuit of economic profits to behave?
Innate to this approach is a focus on visible types of taxation, particularly
those related to large-scale resource extraction and/or cross-border trade.
While framed as studies of rebel taxation generally, they rarely address contri-
butions from low-income groups. Sabates-Wheeler and Verwimp’s inclusion
of coerced labor as a form of taxation is an exception and raises an additional
concern. Rebels frequently do not take pecuniary contributions but rely on
in-kind donations whether labor, food, or some other nonmonetary good. As
Che Guevara prescribed in his manual on how to fight a guerrilla war (1968:
76): “Taxes may be collected in money in some cases, or in the form of a part
of the harvest.” A whole range of in-kind contributions including agricultural
products, food and shelter, various forms of labor including sex acts, as well as,
more dramatically, offerings of individual family members should be included
in our understanding of rebel tax practices, especially in a context where those
with fiscal means often are the first to flee a rebel-controlled territory.
Such forms of tax payments can be especially hard to observe and quan-
tify, leading analysts to ignore them altogether. Yet by ignoring nonpecuni-
ary forms of taxation that remain outside our view, whether due to their low
potential to generate revenue or the difficulty of quantifying their value,
scholars reinforce the biased understanding of rebel taxation that prevails. In
particular, this approach positions the relationship between rebels and civil-
ians as dominated by an elite trading and business class. Unintentionally, this
suggests that individuals with little wealth, despite their prevalence within
rebel-controlled territories, have no mechanisms through which to influence
the behavior of armed groups. More problematically, it ignores the actual
empirical evidence that “token” or “head” taxes on low-income groups by
rebels are surprisingly commonplace. For example, in India, the NSCN-IM
Rebel Taxation 87
imposes a Rs. 100 tax (approximately US$1.25–1.50) on all villagers, an

amount unlikely to cover the costs of collection (Santoshini 2016). Similarly,
in South Sudan, rebels imposed a symbolic tax on market women that was
openly acknowledged by rebel administrators as bringing in little to no rev-
enue (Mampilly 2011).
Beyond Economic Instrumentalism

If we return to the example of the FARC, we can see some of these noneco-
nomic dynamics at work. A quote from a FARC leader regarding the rebel-
lion’s “war tax” seems to offer support for taxation as a revenue generation
mechanism: “We didn’t do this before because we needed to eat. And this
isn’t a matter of feeding one or two people. There are thousands of guerrillas
who need food, clothing, and everything that you need to live day to day”
(Hernández 2016.)
However, both economic and political logics are necessary to understand
FARC taxation practices. Consistent with its Marxist ideological orientation,
the organization focused its taxation efforts on large-scale coca growers,
landowners, and industrial interests (Cala 2000: 59). At one level, these
actors are most likely to possess economic resources that can be taxed—justi-
fication for the focus on them in the studies cited above. But at another level,
it is impossible to disentangle the targeting of elites from the rebellion’s
ideological position. Targeting a specific class of actors explicitly reinforced
the organization’s redistributive message, a point frequently invoked in its
ideological appeals. This logic is clear in the directive the group released
announcing its tax policy in 2000, “Ley 002: Sobre la Tributación.” Framing
their policy as a response to the behavior of the Colombian government,
which had recently received an infusion of cash from its U.S. government
patron through “Plan Colombia,” the document makes clear that taxation
was simultaneously part of its perceived struggle against the Colombian
state, U.S. imperialism, and global capitalism. Toward this end, the “Peace
Tax” (el impuesto para la paz) would only be levied on those whose wealth
exceeded US$1 million.2
The FARC was not unique in its approach to taxation as an expression of
its ideological position. Other Marxist groups have long paid close attention
to the class dimensions of their tax policies in order to reinforce their ideo-
logical agenda. Guevara (1968: 104) articulated this logic most clearly: “If
conditions continue to improve, taxes can be established; these should be as
light as possible; above all for the small producer. It is important to pay atten-
tion to every detail of relations between the peasant class and the guerrilla
army, which is an emanation of that class.”
Taxation must also be understood as a mechanism of social control. While

initially the FARC limited its taxes to “owners of large extensions of land,
merchants, and large companies,” over time they extended this practice to
“peasants who owned small farms” (Arjona 2016: 182–83). Did taxing peas-
ants really increase revenue for the organization? It is unclear whether the
revenue generated offset the costs of collecting taxes. A different explana-
tion is that the extension of taxation was a product of the competition the
organization faced from paramilitary groups. These paramilitaries “taxed
every worker in town; from those selling coffee in carts on the street to taxi
drivers to shop owners—all had to pay” (Arjona 2016: 183). Taxation may
not merely be about raising revenue nor simply an expression of ideological
positioning. Instead, it is also an important site in the contest for civilian loy-
alty and a claim to legitimacy by both sides.
Few studies have attempted to break out of the Olsonian box and situ-
ate rebel taxation in relation to broader social and wartime contexts. One
exception is a recent study by Mara Revkin, who demonstrates that purely
economistic approaches cannot account for how rebel organizations devise
their taxation practices. Drawing on a unique dataset of taxation in ISIS-
controlled territories of Iraq, she shows that rather than varying by the
potential revenues the organization could have generated within specific
provinces, the insurgents impose standardized taxation practices even in
those provinces where such taxation might have a negative impact on
the fiscal situation. She suggests that taxation must then be motivated by
something more than the material payoff, suggesting “that the tax policies
imposed by insurgent groups may promote state-building through three
non-economic mechanisms: social control, collective identity formation,
and demographic engineering” (Revkin Forthcoming).
Ultimately, a purely Olsonian approach cannot fully account for the nature
and range of rebel taxation practices. The lack of empirical evidence provides
some justification for the limited attention to taxation’s broader registers. But
at the core, reducing rebel taxation to a purely economic bargaining logic fails
to situate it within the broader social and political contexts that many scholars
of taxation and state power emphasize. These include taxation as a symbolic
component of stateness, the role it plays in reinforcing the rebel’s ideological
position, its capacity to define a particular social constituency, as well as its
regulatory dimensions, all essential concerns for any political authority seek-
ing legitimacy.
Taxation and Rebel Governance

By reexamining existing studies, we can identify places in which the regu-
latory and ideological dimensions of rebel taxation appear even when not
Rebel Taxation 89
explicitly theorized. I argue that understanding the fiscal relationship between

rebel rulers and their civilian subjects is essential to grasp the nature of rebel
governance and the broader wartime order they put in place. In other words,
understanding rebel taxation as a technology of rebel governance can tell us
much about the authority relationship between a rebel regime and its subjects.
Rebel governance refers to the development of institutions and practices
of rule to regulate the social and political life of civilians by an armed
group. Such rebel “governments” commonly come to attention for engaging
in the provision of public goods, including things like health and educa-
tional systems, a system of food distribution, and so on. But governance
extends beyond an explicit exchange relationship. It includes regulatory
activities such as land-use policies, issuing of permits and licenses to com-
mercial and nonprofit actors, and social and moral prohibitions. In addition,
armed groups often devise symbolic practices, such as the adoption of flags
and anthems in order to lend the rebel government an air of legitimacy
(Mampilly 2015).
Assessing rebel governance then is no simple task. One approach is to
think of rebel governance as a basket of goods that can be enumerated and
measured. Armed groups are commonly treated as providing such goods in
exchange for material and other support, a quasi-social contract consistent
with the Olsonian logic described above. But this assumes that the quality of
rebel governance is merely a function of the degree of governance. In other
words, the more governance, the better.3
Beyond things that can be enumerated, assessing rebel governance entails
the more challenging task of teasing out the texture of the rebel/civilian rela-
tionship, in other words, the way in which civilians feel about their system
of rule. Put differently, governance is an innately intersubjective process, one
that can only be understood as contingent and dependent on the social rela-
tionship between a political authority and its constituency.
Understanding rebel governance then necessarily entails examining
whether civilians accept the legitimacy of the rebel political authority, by
which I am referring to how civilians react to the wartime political order
established by the would-be rebel rulers. Taxation provides one opportunity
to do this. While taxation does provide material resources to a rebellion, this
is not the only purpose it serves. I suggest that in order to understand rebel
taxation, it is necessary to comprehend it as both a mechanism for raising
revenue and equally as an expression of the sovereign aspirations of the rebel
governance system. In addition to its fiscal functions, taxation is a regulatory
technology deployed to delimit, control, and sustain a subject population as
well as an ideological tool designed to facilitate order by promoting identifi-
cation and adherence to the rebellion’s political project. As such, alongside
violence and ideology and interrelated with both, taxation is an integral field
of struggle within the broader competition over civilian (and other) loyalties
between belligerents.
In the next section, I discuss three separate dimensions of rebel taxation
that go beyond economic instrumentalism. These include political logics
that have to do with a rebellion’s attempt to construct a legitimate authority,
organizational dimensions that have to do with strengthening the rebel orga-
nization, and economic dimensions that go beyond the simple exchange logic
of most extant studies.
Political Dimensions
Many studies of taxation by armed groups do not discriminate between dif-
ferent forms of payments to rebel groups nor the different types of actors
involved in such activities. Only rarely do scholars attempt to draw a line
between political and economic activities, thereby reducing rebel taxation to
other forms of criminal extortion and hence comprehensible through Olson’s
instrumental logic. Is it possible to draw a line between extortion and taxation
in the context of armed groups? While there is no accepted approach, one
way to separate extortion from taxation is to ask: from whom is the payer
being protected? Protection from the payee can be appropriately described as
extortion, while protection from a generalized system of disorder might more
accurately be described as taxation (c.f. Tilly 1985).
Thus, a starting point for any inquiry must recognize that rebel taxation
is always situated within a broader wartime social context. It is always a
political as well as economic process and should not be reduced to mere
criminality. In order to do this, it is first necessary to distinguish between
taxation by armed groups that seek to tax as part of a broader effort to
govern territory from those that deploy it for purely extractive purposes.
We can then identify several potential mechanisms that link taxation with
the construction and expression of political authority. These operate at
multiple levels within the organization and are targeted toward different
categories of actors. What they share is their systemic relationship to
bolstering the wartime political order constructed by the rebel group. In
other words, rather than simply a revenue generation mechanism, taxation
serves multiple noneconomic functions that may even surpass its fiscal
effects.
Scholars have long noted the role that taxation plays in identifying and
surveilling a domestic population. Among other things, tax agencies collect
data on an individual’s work, professional abilities, place of residence, mari-
tal status, gender and sexuality, number of children and other dependents,
religious views, ideological beliefs (through donations to charitable organiza-
tions) and even whether one is engaged in an extramarital affair (if it involves
Rebel Taxation 91
any regular payment to the unrecognized partner) (Hatfield 2015). Indeed,

tax agencies are often privy to more information about a larger portion of the
population than agencies explicitly designed to engage in surveillance.
This is not merely an offshoot of taxation but central to it. A political
authority cannot engage in effective taxation without extensive demographic
information regarding the population it seeks to tax. Civilians wary of the
encroaching power of a political authority may choose to shirk or deceive
such efforts requiring the authority to increase their monitoring capacity
in order to define a tax-paying public. Such efforts may require extensive
collaboration with civilians and their various representatives to identify
would-be absconders. Put differently, effective taxation requires a would-be
political authority to make legible the civilian population, itself a barometer
of government strength.
Taxation is also an expression of the ideological orientation of a regime.
A core debate that divides political parties in democracies is the level of
“appropriate” taxation. Agreement on the level of taxation often unites
political parties that may feature considerable internal disagreement around
almost every other issue. Similarly, a politician’s position on taxation is
arguably the strongest indicator of their ideological position. Even auto-
cratic regimes often decide on taxation levels based not on economic but
political factors, with many levying suboptimal rates (i.e., rates below
what the population could afford and below what a government might need
without turning to external loans) in a tacit exchange for political support
(Ross 2012).
How a regime chooses to levy taxes—on whom, at what rates, in what
manner—often reflects political as much as economic choices. In other words,
while all regimes may prefer to maximize their revenues from taxes, these
choices do not occur in a politically neutral vacuum but rather reflect central
ideological and normative preferences of the regime itself. Historically, in
many Islamic polities, taxes called jizya were levied on nonbelievers for the
privilege of living within the realm, for example. ISIS was reported to offer
Christian residents of Mosul the opportunity to pay the tax in order to remain
in the city (Reuters 2014). In a related fashion, regimes use taxation as a
mechanism to sort who should receive social welfare benefits.4
Scholars of state taxation position it as a mechanism through which a gov-
ernment seeks to create reciprocal bonds that tie it to a civilian constituency.
From the perspective of civilians, paying taxes is often understood as an
indicator of their support for a regime. Even where they may disagree with a
specific level, tax compliance is often understood by both the regime and its
constituents as an indicator of the legitimacy of the regime itself. Leaders of
the NSCN (I-M) in India have suggested that “taxation is imposed to show
loyalty to the outfit’s authority and legitimacy” (The Telegraph 2013).
In a context of internal war, in which sovereignty itself is contested, fos-

tering such identification with the local authority is a crucial component of
the struggle for dominance. Rebel theorists have long noted how civilians’
feelings about different taxations can shape the conflict in determinative
ways. For example, Amilcar Cabral suggested that “the colonial authorities
have to tolerate this refusal to pay tax from fear that enforcement will cause
the populations to flee into our liberated areas or into neighbouring coun-
tries” (Quoted in Davidson 2017: 101). In this way, rebels may use taxes
not to generate resources but rather to reenforce existing social norms that
can ideally increase identification with the local community. Governments
frequently levy such “vice” or “sin” taxes to discourage activities deemed at
odds with community standards, such as drinking or gambling (Kim 2020).
If effective, the purpose of such taxes is not to increase revenue, but ideally,
to cancel out a specific revenue source by making it prohibitively expensive.
In Colombia, for example, rebels levied sin taxes on beer to discourage alco-
hol consumption that was claimed to lead to increased episodes of domestic
violence.
Organizational Dimensions
Scholars of state formation have long examined the interrelationship between
development and taxation. Taxation requires that a political authority develop
a bureaucratic capacity both to monitor the population and enforce punitive
measures for nonpayment. While some taxes are relatively easy to imple-
ment—such as custom duties and sales taxes or the imposition of commercial
licenses—others require more complex structures. Income taxes require some
basic knowledge of individual’s earning potential forcing a political authority
to develop expertise in labor economics. Taxes on productive assets such as
land require the capacity to do land surveys. The presence of both are gen-
erally understood as indicators of the bureaucratic strength of a governing
authority (Matsuzaki 2019).
In these ways, taxation can serve as a mechanism for building organiza-
tional capacity and relatedly, ensuring organizational discipline. Formalizing
a taxation regime can minimize graft by developing specialized structures
within a rebel organization to solicit resources from civilians in regularized
fashion. It transforms petty graft, a common struggle for most armed groups,
into a disciplinary infraction with important implications for popular sup-
port. The need to crack down on petty bribery and graft by members of the
organization emerges frequently in conversations with both leaders of armed
groups and members of the civilian community. Perceptions that a group
lacks internal discipline or that it intentionally facilitates the taking of bribes
or other forms of corruption among its cadre can fundamentally undermine
Rebel Taxation 93
faith in the rebel political project. Rebel groups, whose leaders are perceived
as cracking down on cadre indiscipline and extortion benefit from the percep-
tion that they are fair governors, are unafraid to deploy coercive measures
against their own for infractions of shared rebel-civilian norms. These are old
admonitions first articulated by both Mao and Che in their seminal guerrilla
manuals. Rebel taxation provides a bureaucratic solution to the challenge of
cadre indiscipline by demanding the establishment of internal organizational
structures or regulations capable of ensuring economic discipline throughout
the organization.
Taxation may also serve as a mechanism that links local leaders with a
national cleavage. In Kalyvas’s influential account of the local/national or
micro/macro split inherent in civil wars, violence is the primary mecha-
nism that connect local actors with national leaders leading to the “joint
production of violence” (2006). But taxation can also be used to resolve
the tensions between the two levels. Leaders at the national level may
empower local leaders with the authority to tax civilians as a mechanism
through which to bring in alignment the often private agendas of local
leaders with the interests of leaders at the national level. In this way,
the power to delegate who can engage in taxation is a key mechanism
that may further the alliance between rebel leaders focused on a national
struggle and local elites. Many groups including the SPLA relied on
traditional leaders to collect taxes on its behalf, thereby ensuring a privi-
leged position for a potential source of opposition. Yet, this strategy may
have its own risks as empowering traditional leaders to raise revenues
might allow them to raise their own militias that ultimately challenge the
domination of the rebel group itself, a frequent occurrence in South Sudan
during the war.
Economic Dimensions
Taxation is obviously concerned with revenue generation, but its economic
effects require a more nuanced understanding than normal market transac-
tions, especially when considering non-state actors. A core assumption for
both Olson and Tilly is that the spending of rulers is constrained by their
capacity to generate revenue through taxation. But is this true? Perhaps it
was during the period of European state formation in the early seventeenth
century that Tilly focuses on. But as Miguel Centeno (2002) has shown in
Latin America, by the nineteenth century, elites could turn to easy financing
from the nascent transnational banking sector to borrow money that would
allow them to spend beyond their short-term capacity to generate revenue.
It is true that borrowing is not an efficient strategy in the long run as lend-
ers will eventually seek to collect their debts. However, there are important
exceptions. First, Michael Ross (2012) demonstrates that resource-rich coun-

tries can indefinitely avoid this logic by subsidizing their spending with non-
tax revenues. And second, some sources of lending may not be driven by a
desire to earn interest but rather by a part of a strategy for a country to gain
political influence or leverage over another. Or because such support might
lead to mutually beneficial gains, either political or economic, that is, money
is given with no expectation of economic gains on an investment.
Does their ability to tax constrain the spending of armed groups? There is
little reason to think that it does. Rebels can avail numerous sources for fund-
ing their activities beyond taxation in ways that most scholars acknowledge
including “voluntary or forced contributions from civilians; racketeering,
kidnapping, and/or looting of local businesses and civilians; payoffs from
multinational corporations; diversion of humanitarian aid from international
agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); patronage from for-
eign governments; aid provided by international solidarity organizations;
contributions from diasporic communities; the sale of drugs and other illicit
goods; systematic mineral expropriation; and revenue from controlling key
customs checkpoints” (Mampilly 2011: 14).
Even where their fiscal activities resemble state taxation, it is doubtful
whether they are similarly constrained. While rebels frequently receive
financing from external sources, there is little to no expectation that this
money will be returned to the primary state patrons who provide it. Instead,
states understand their “investment” in rebellion primarily as a means of
engaging in political conflict without direct confrontation and can avail of
the significantly lower costs, both financially and reputationally, compared to
direct military action. Even where the money is derived from private sources
with an explicit expectation of a return on their investment, any investor
putting money into a rebellion must calculate the significantly higher prob-
ability of default even compared to the riskiest investment in the government
of the weakest state. In other words, rebels are more likely to treat taxation
in the manner of resource-rich autocrats rather than resource-constrained
democracies.
If taxation is not simply about revenue generation, what are the other
economic-related uses for which it can be productively deployed by rebels?
Some rebel groups use taxation as a mechanism for ensuring the provision
of basic goods and building trust in the rebel authority. In this way, rebel
taxation might be more productively understood as part of a moral economy
built on notions of trust, fairness, justice, and collective survival in contrast
to the market economy’s focus on free-market competition, individual risk
and profit.
Populations living within war zones require basic goods such as food and
fuel for survival. Failing to ensure the provision of basic goods may lead to
Rebel Taxation 95
substantive consequences in regards to civilian support. Carolyn Nordstrom

(2004: 92) shows how the trade in such goods is a constant concern in areas
outside the control of the state. Rather than an anarchic free for all, she sug-
gests that a cohesive network built on trust and involving a wide variety of
actors move goods from legal to illegal and back again (See also Meagher
2014). Rebel organizations are an essential node within this network and
must work with a variety of actors, including state forces and other non-state
groups, to ensure the flow of goods or face civilian discontent. Each actor
within the network plays a specific role, and control over taxation is the
central mechanism through which rebel organizations link to this broader
network. On the other side, local government representatives, both from
neighboring states and the incumbent regime, must be sated to facilitate coop-
eration. All kinds of novel taxation arrangements emerge as a result.
In South Sudan, an interview with a founder of the SPLA customs author-
ity revealed that the primary concern for adopting specific taxation policies
during the second civil war was to ensure that basic goods like butter and salt
were available to the civilian population. The goal was to reassure traders that
they could sell their goods without harassment from the multiplicity of actors
that often proliferate in the context of state withdrawal. Traders are anxious
about entering rebel-controlled spaces due to a reasonable assumption of
anarchy. But the rebels sought to mitigate this anxiety by building a bureau-
cratic system that provided a degree of certainty. For the SPLA, the task was
to ensure that traders only pay customs duties one time upon entering rebel
territory so as to ensure the collective survival of their civilian constituents.
Over time, the establishment of regularized system of taxation may even
build affection for the rebel regime and translate into political support. The
FAPC in Congo seems to have benefited from this dynamic. Returning
to Titeca’s study, he suggests that the political value of taxation extended
beyond the specific class of traders who benefited from direct rebel protec-
tion. Instead, it was also a method for the armed group to build trust with
other social groups that did not pay taxes by demonstrating the fairness of the
rebel regime: “This did not mean that the major traders were protected at all
costs. Smaller traders perceived Jérôme’s regime to be relatively fair because
any misbehaviour by the major traders was also punished.”
Even where taxation serves more overt revenue generation functions, the
relationship may not be as direct as commonly portrayed. Adopting a particular
approach to taxation can be a signal to an external audience, which is trying
to slot an organization into various categories based on their perceived fealty
to broader ideological concerns. Successfully wooing external actors, whether
nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, multinational
corporations and, of course, potential state sponsors, can produce substantive
revenue benefits for an armed group. For example, in South Sudan, numerous
informants confirmed that the original impetus for initiating a system of

taxation came not from any ambitions to generate revenues internally. Rather,
following the fall of the Marxist Dergue regime in neighboring Ethiopia, the
rebellion’s original sponsor, the SPLA, was left searching for a new partner to
fund the rebellion. The U.S. government stepped into this void offering to serve
as the rebellion’s new patron, if rebel leaders were willing to shift their rhetoric
from socialism to free-market capitalism. As part of this reorientation, the reb-
els were provided technical expertise and the necessary materials to establish a
customs authority, the first step toward establishing a market economy.
Finally, taxation can serve as a mechanism to ensure diasporic support
and engagement. According to leaders of the NSCN (I-M), taxation helps “to
mobilise support across the world” (The Telegraph 2013). Cut off from the
immediate costs of the war, many members of the diaspora seek ways to proffer
their support to violent movements in their homeland. Often, providing support
to the governance activities of armed groups with the intention of supporting
kith and kin left behind is the only way for diasporic members to contribute to
the struggle in the homeland. In this way, taxation is a “commitment mecha-
nism” that allows members of the diaspora to demonstrate their support for the
cause and their concern for those left behind. For the armed group, collecting
taxes from the diaspora brings representatives in close contact with civilians
who are outside of their direct military control. This requires them to deploy
other, nonmilitary appeals that emphasize the political objectives of the group.5
But diasporic support is not simply political. Many who have fled their
homelands seek to retain direct material ties to the land they left behind. As
the sovereign power within these territories, rebel organizations may seek to
reassure diaspora members (and internally displaced populations) that their
private material interests will be protected by the group during the conflict.
For example, the LTTE allowed diaspora members to register property claims
in specially created “land courts.” Members of the diaspora were then allowed
to pay land taxes to ensure that their ownership claims were protected during
the conflict and that they would be allowed to reclaim their lands following
the end of the fighting. In short, both private and public logics motivated indi-
vidual civilian behavior in ways that demonstrate the importance of civilian
agency in shaping rebel tax practices.
CONCLUSION
Much more needs to be said about taxation in relation to the broader dynam-
ics of rebel governance, particularly its ideological and regulatory dimen-
sions. Taxation by rebels should not be understood solely as an instrumental
fiscal concern but rather as part of the larger political project of gaining
Rebel Taxation 97
popular support and controlling the civilian population. Taxation policies in

a contested environment reflect the broader struggle for authority between
the state and non-state actors. This can produce countervailing logics, such
as establishing a taxation apparatus that does little to bring in revenue and
more to resolve challenges inherent in the rebel/civilian relationship by sym-
bolically reinforcing an armed group’s claim to authority. In other words,
whether or not it provides substantive resources, the fact that civilians and
businesses are willing to pay a tax is an important indicator of their willing-
ness to accept the sovereign claim of the armed group. By rejecting a narrow
economic instrumentalism as the sole logic driving rebel decisions to impose
taxes, scholars can open up the possibility of numerous political logics that
more accurately account for the behavior of violent groups.
NOTES
1. A similar logic of “competitive state-building” also undergirds much of the

thinking on counterinsurgency with states encouraged to build school and hospitals
or otherwise provides services in order to compete or outadminister rebel governance
provision.
2. FARC-EP. 2000. “Ley 002: Sobre La Tributación.”
3. As we know, there are both normative and political reasons why this assump-
tion rarely holds true in the real world. Politically, a more expansive state apparatus
is also likely to be less efficient, a key concern for many in regard to how they assess
governance performance. Normatively, many resent governments that are seen as too
expansive and hence capable of interfering too much in private life.
4. In the United States, for example, resident aliens who pay social security
taxes are eligible for the benefits as citizens as long as they remain in the country.
However, if they choose to retire abroad, they are subject to a complex set of require-
ments that their citizen counterparts living abroad are not required to meet. See, for
example, “Social Security Payment Requirements for Most North, Central And South
American Citizens Living Outside The United States.” https://www.ssa.gov/interna-
tional/61-011.pdf
5. Certainly, armed groups may occasionally reinforce this with force but this is
more challenging in foreign countries where the groups lack military power.
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Part II
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 5
The War Economy of

Nomadic Empires
Nicola Di Cosmo
INTRODUCTION
The history of Eurasia, from antiquity to the modern era, would be inconceiv-
able without the inclusion of nomadic peoples, whose migrations, conquests,
and interactions with every major civilization transformed cultures, societ-
ies, and ecologies. Yet, the basic mechanisms through which steppe nomads
achieved historical prominence have not been sufficiently understood, or
even investigated. Most often they are represented as cyclical occurrences
caused by events such as climatic crises that pushed nomads out of their
natural environment, or the appearance on the scene of a charismatic leader
who unified various ethnic and political groups and, on the strength of that
unity, embarked on campaigns to raid, invade, and conquer other peoples. In
fact, steppe nomads were only occasionally able to transcend the limitations
of their economy and environment, and the empires they formed were all dif-
ferent from one another: some were limited in scope and duration, some more
eventful and consequential.
One question that seems to be at the heart of the formation of nomadic
empires is that each one of them was born in war and nourished by war, first
of all among the nomads themselves (Di Cosmo 2002). But intra-nomadic
warfare by itself surely cannot account for the upward trajectory that took
such nomadic formations to a level of supremacy and complexity that chal-
lenged the richest and greatest of coeval powers. To grasp how nomads
managed to undertake political and social transformations on their path to
statehood, the economic aspects appear both crucial and elusive (Di Cosmo
1999).
The term state, one should note from the start, here simply means a political
structure inclusive of a body of “subjects” that recognizes a central sovereign
103
104 Nicola Di Cosmo
authority and is, in different degrees, dependent upon the gradual institutional-
ization of certain government functions, such as judicial, fiscal, and administra-
tive tasks. More specifically, gradual institutionalization and bureaucratization
of a steppe empire always found their roots in a war economy that had to sup-
ply the means to sustain the territorial and demographic expansion of the state
as well as its increasing complexity while continuing to maintain an efficient
army and reward a sprawling aristocracy. It is therefore essential, in order to
understand the historical import of steppe nomads, to consider how their war
economy was able to supply the means to make a “state” possible. With that
overarching goal in mind, this chapter aims to describe the ways in which
nomadic empires could only be sustained by seeking to procure resources from
outside their original productive basis (pastoralism) and how their war economy
was, at different stages of the empires’ life, inextricably linked to their growth
and success. War economy was, in fact, one of the key drivers of political and
social transformations that allowed nomadic rulers to hold together a diverse
population, retain a highly centralized leadership, and overcome the centrifugal
tendencies typical of societies based on tight kinship and territorial bonds.
A NOTE ON METHOD
A methodological point is in order. Only in a few cases we gain a glimpse

of how nomadic empires (or “polities”) came into being, and any attempt
to hypothesize a pathway to state-building common to all nomadic empires
depends upon a combination of data from scant textual sources, uneven
archaeological finds, as well as, on a more removed evidential plane, paleo-
climatic, genetic, and other scientific data. Moreover, we need to consider
that, while it has long been assumed that nomadic empires constitute a
separate category of empires, it is unclear why that should be the case, that
is, what makes them into a separate category of historical analysis. To wit,
the fact itself that discrete nomadic empires have been treated as isolated
instances, which lacked continuity and only entered history episodically,
militates against a holistic view of the “nomadic empire” as a distinct “his-
torical type.” And yet, when historians look for state formations that may
be analogous or comparable with that, for instance, of the Mongol Empire
(c. 1206–1368), they are far more likely to consider the Xiongnu Empire,
established in the third century BCE, than coeval medieval empires such
as the Byzantine, Holy Roman, or Mamluk. The reasons why Inner Asian
empires are so often placed in a single basket is only one, namely, that they
were created by steppe nomads, and therefore are presumed to belong to the
same political species, based mainly on shared economic practices—that is,
pastoral production—and forms of social organization.1
The War Economy of Nomadic Empires 105
While such, mainly anthropological, perspectives can be useful to question

our sources, if taken as the predominant interpretive strategy they can also
introduce analytical biases. One of these biases, for instance, is that these
empires ipso facto share not just economic and social traits but also politi-
cal features and traditions that come “with the territory” of being a nomadic
empire. The notion that nomads have their own ways, and are, as such,
incommensurable with other political formations, if taken as an axiom, ren-
ders opaque if not invisible aspects of governance and institutions that may
be shared with or borrowed from outside a nomadic milieu. Such approaches
also tend to produce circular arguments, to the extent that nomadic traditions
are then established on the basis of the very similarities attributed to them.
In reality, it is the variety, dynamism, and flexibility of these empires that is
most interesting when studying them as expressions of a special type or his-
torical manifestation and human experience, rather than the ageless and static
attributes they seem to share.
With that caveat in mind, we can nonetheless readily see that, even in cases
in which two nomadic empires behave and evolve in profoundly different
ways, their genesis remains remarkably similar and is rooted in a particular
type of process that transforms endemic low-grade violence into gradually
more organized violence, whereby the whole of society becomes increasingly
more militarized, armies grow in size, and war becomes the chief means of
transformation of the social and political order. Such turning points in steppe
history are generally shrouded in mystery and can be perceived only through
faint signs left in the sources of literate neighbors or in the writings (includ-
ing myths and epics) written down after they attained a mature imperial
condition.
A VERY BRIEF SURVEY OF NOMADIC EMPIRES
Notorious for their destructiveness, nomads were structured, from the

time of Herodotus down to the dawn of the modern age, in ethno-political
groups, defined sometime as nations or tribes. At times they were uni-
fied under a single ruler that engaged in long-range predatory raids, ter-
ritorial expansion, conquest, and, in the most successful cases, formed
massive empires and lasting dynasties.2 Their political culture left deep,
if often unacknowledged, grooves in the organization and culture of sed-
entary empires, from China (Ming and Qing dynasties) to Central Asia
(Timurids), India (Mughals), and the near east (Ottomans). Moreover, the
empires they founded were transnational, multicultural, polyglot, and able
to organize commercial and cultural exchanges over long distances. As
such, they also played a significant role in premodern transnational and
106 Nicola Di Cosmo
“trans-civilizational” connectivity, and have been regarded as predecessors

of modern phenomena of “globalization.”
How they achieved such heights of sway and power is a matter of debate,
but a critical and thus far unanswered question surely regards the economic
sphere, and more precisely the resource basis that permitted the “quantum
leap” from a state of political fragmentation to one of political centraliza-
tion, based on top-heavy command structure, permanent army, and incipient
bureaucracy. The starting point of the investigation, however, is quite clear.
Empires started in wars whose “economy” can be reasonably assumed to
have been the key mechanism that ignited the systemic transformations lead-
ing to state formation—whether we call the resulting product a “state,” an
empire, or a “supercomplex chiefdom” (Kradin 2004).
When nomads formed their first large political unions and polities has not
been determined. The first historically documented nomads are the Scythians
found in Greek sources from the fifth century BCE, but how “imperial” they
were is unclear. Surely archaeology bears witness to the power and prowess
of their aristocracy, but we do not have a record of an “empire” that could be
regarded as comparable to that created by later nomads. The information in
the sources is more ethnographic than political: various Scythian groups are
documented, but their structure is rather loose, and it appears that they were
not unified politically. On the other hand, their large burials and rich material
culture seem to indicate an abundance of wealth and power that belies politi-
cal complexity.
It is on the other side of Eurasia, in China, that we find the first full-fledged
description of a nomadic empire, that of the Xiongnu (or “Asiatic Huns”),
which emerged around the end of the third century BCE. Taking this as a
departure point is a useful device, even though we must assume that the
foundations of their political culture were laid long before. The Xiongnu are
described by the Chinese historian par excellence, Sima Qian, with many
details that allow us to follow their trajectory from a state of disunity and
crisis to the achievement of imperial status, massive territorial expansion, and
superior status in foreign relations with the Chinese empire.
The weakening and demise of the Xiongnu Empire around the first to
second centuries CE were followed by an extraordinary period of change
and transformation on the northern frontier of China, which made several
nomadic groups prominent politically. Their dynasties, established in areas
straddling the steppes of Mongolia and Manchuria, and the agricultural areas
of northern China, were politically hybrid, but also transformative of both the
Inner Asian and the Chinese previous traditions. The Northern Wei dynasty
(386–534 CE) claimed nomadic origins but transitioned toward more Sinitic
forms of political and administrative organization, while the nomadic Rouran
became masters of the steppe region, from the fourth to the early sixth century.
The political dynamism of the steppe was heightened in the sixth century,
when the early Türk Empire emerged as a phenomenon that encompassed
East and West, expanding to the point of reaching Byzantium and Iran, and
thus playing an unprecedented role in commercial and diplomatic relations
across Eurasia. Their expansion in also connected to expansion of the Avars,
a steppe people who attacked the Byzantine Empire. Their empire had roots
that have been traced back to the aforementioned Rouran who, defeated by
the Türks, migrated westward. Migration, like conquest, is the result of politi-
cal events that are difficult if not impossible to detect with the diagnostics
instruments currently available to historians—perhaps genetics will one day
offer better tools—and therefore we are often compelled to resort to specula-
tive hypotheses. However, there is no doubt that intra-nomadic wars played
a large role in causing the political instability behind migrations and regime
changes. Surely the events leading to the fall of the Second Türk Empire in
the eighth century, and eventually to the rise of the Uighur Empire (744–840
CE), were the result of internecine wars among nomadic groups, whose
power bases were in Mongolia.
Mongolia and Manchuria remain for the following centuries the places that
generate a succession of increasingly more articulate and expansive empires,
long characterized in historical writing as “conquest dynasties” because they
ruled over parts of China, where they established their own ruling dynasties,
and because to a degree they fashioned themselves as Chinese dynasties, and
were regarded as such in Chinese historiography. The Khitan and Jurchen
peoples established respectively the Liao and the Jin dynasties, both nomadic,
quite different from each other, and pitched against the native Chinese
dynasty of Song. These, too, emerged from times of violent struggles within
an Inner Asian milieu, and the Jin itself successfully defeated the Liao, thus
once again emerging after a period of intra-nomadic power struggle.
The “apotheosis” of nomadic power was reached by the subsequent Mongol
conquest and empire (c. 1206–1368), encompassing most of Eurasia, which
established Mongol rule over China, Russia, Iran, and Central Asia. Here we
are not interested specifically in what made the Mongols successful, but we
should note that, once again, the Mongol conquest was preceded by much
political turmoil and thirty years of tough, merciless wars within Mongolia,
which transformed the political landscape. The unprecedented success of the
Mongols may have been the result of special circumstances, but the manner
in which it emerged and evolved is consistent with the experience of other
empires, namely, after a long period of internal nomadic wars.
Finally, the last dynasty in China (Qing 1644–1911) was created by the
Manchus, another Inner Asian people whose rise to glory and construction of
a state able to challenge the Chinese empire, and then conquer it, is the prod-
uct of approximately fifty years (1580s to the early 1630s) of wars against
108 Nicola Di Cosmo
Inner Asian foes, both Manchu and Mongol ones. The creation of a Manchu
state, and its conquest of China, show in sharp detail the connections between
economy and warfare and the efforts made by its leaders to transcend the
limits of their economic basis as a key feature of their military success and
state-building.
What emerges from such a cursory survey is that, while these empires
were all very different in terms of ethnic makeup, territorial extension, politi-
cal structure, and international relations, an investigation of the role of their
“pre-state” war economy can focus on one remarkably similar and in my
view truly comparable feature. This feature can be described as the economic
requirements generated by the inter-nomadic wars in order to establish and
maintain a new political order, which is predicated upon union and central-
ized rule.
WAR IN THE RISE OF A NOMADIC EMPIRE
To my knowledge, the only specific study on the war economy of nomadic

empires is by two economic scholars, Ronald Findlay and Mats Lundhal
(Findlay and Lundhal 2006). Their work contains many important insights,
especially in relation to the formalization of the relationship between labor
force, wages, taxes, and nomadic conquests. The connection between the
size of territory conquered and the fiscal yield, as well as the economic “pro-
ductivity” of the army by increasing the territorial extension of the empire,
are questions that historians need to pay close attention to, and Findlay and
Lundhal ought to be praised for singling out economic mechanisms that
would be invisible to anthropologists and historians. However, the study
also raises questions. For instance, several assumptions are not examined in
a long-term historical context. The assertions that “no artisan activities could
be developed on a large scale in nomadic societies” or that “trade could not
yield such benefits as plunder” (26) are generic and not grounded in a his-
torical context. What “large scale” means should be related to the size of a
society and its needs, and steppe archaeology shows considerable variety and
“scale.” Likewise, the profits yielded by trade vis-à-vis plunder, while hard
to quantify, also depend on the historical period in question. It is exceedingly
difficult to say, for instance, that in the relations between the Ming dynasty
and the Mongols trade was less profitable than plunder.3 Going from generic
assumption about the nomadic economy to the economics of the Mongol
conquest, the authors essentially bypass the long history of state and empire
building of nomadic empires, missing, in my view, the political dimension
of the climactic transformation from a series of small polities into a large
“imperial” polity. The notion that “the steppe empire was the creation of its
emperor, not the other way around, and when he died, his successor would
have to create his own structures and allegiances—again on a completely
personal basis” (28) is a generalization that finds little historical support.
But it is true and worth reflecting on the conditions that made each steppe
empire a new “creation.” Even if this was the product of a “singular figure”
(28)—a statement that most historians of Inner Asia would dispute—the
resulting political structure would have requirements that far exceeded those
of smaller, regional polities.
Indeed, a highly centralized political structure under a single overarching
authority is far from being the most common condition for pastoral nomads,
whose environment and mobile activities favor fragmentation, with relatively
small social units dispersed over a large territory. This lifestyle is often
subject to internal feuds and endemic low-intensity violence, although this
rarely rises to the level of large-scale conflicts. Under certain circumstances,
however, the level of violence can increase dramatically, as can, with it, the
size of armies and the degree of militarization. Once the political landscape
begins to change from a balance of power among internally cohesive groups
to a state of war that gradually envelops the whole society, a situation of
“warlordism” emerges. Successful military leaders are compelled by the logic
of competition to increase their armies or risk destruction.
War, in the case of nomadic empires, was not just critical to their formation
but seems to be a sine qua non of their very existence. On the economic side,
running a nomadic empire was more expensive than the nomadic economy
could pay for, no matter how much wealth was extracted from the common
members of society, because the cost of the state apparatus far outstripped the
productive base. On the political side, the legitimacy of a steppe ruler was
not based on the prestige of the office (such as a divine right to rule) but on
personal charisma and on a logic of redistribution of wealth throughout the
body politic. Both charisma and the acquisition of wealth were inseparably
tied to attaining success in war. In other words, war provided the only means
through which the ruler could keep whatever “state” was being built both fis-
cally viable and politically stable. In-built centrifugal pressures made war not
just a choice but a necessity, because the nomadic empire was born hungry
and required a constant influx of resources—riches, land, and people. In sum,
war was key to supporting the army, keeping the loyalty and privileges of an
expanding elite, and protecting the leadership of the khan from internal chal-
lenges; and while most premodern empires are created by conquest and war,
nomadic empires have in war the only safe way to arise and survive.
The causes that ignited the intra-nomadic wars, that often led to the forma-
tion of empires, are difficult to identify and surely cannot be reduced to one
single factor, but have been mostly discussed in terms of widespread crises
linked to pressures from foreign invaders, or environmental breakdowns,
110 Nicola Di Cosmo
such as droughts. Speaking of environmental hazards, contemporary ethnog-

raphy has demonstrated the high degree of vulnerability of economies based
on rangelands, in particular in Mongolia and semiarid zones where animal
husbandry is the chief form of production, to environmental changes. In
nomadic economy, an optimal equilibrium between land resources and ani-
mal resources is, under normal circumstance, extremely difficult to achieve
(Vetter 2005). For instance, if the herds exceed the carrying capacity of the
land, overgrazing can deplete the supply of grass, and require changes in the
exploitation of pastures. Climatic variability and sudden disasters can affect
the mortality rate of animals, and reduce, sometimes dramatically, the food
supply for human beings, inducing social crises due to famine and migrations.
It, therefore, cannot be excluded that the vulnerability of the nomadic econ-
omy may be at the root of periodic crises that ignited conflicts over access to
resources, be these pastures, animals, trade routes, or people. However, such
vulnerability is not, per se, the cause that pushes nomads beyond the steppes.
This needs to be searched for, rather, in the new political order that protracted
warfare created.
Whatever small or indirect information we have about the period that
preceded the formation of nomadic empires, there seems to be a constant pat-
tern. In each case, society is stressed by longer conflicts, and conflicts involve
increasingly larger armies. It is not an extraordinary stretch of the imagina-
tion to say that at such times both the destructive effects of war and its under-
lying causes (especially in the case of environmental crises) severely reduced
production, whose downward trajectory in turn intensified competition over
dwindling resources. This cycle of increasing violence for the control of
diminishing resources can be identified, possibly, as key toward the creation
of unified polities, whereby small groups faced extinction unless their leaders
allied themselves with larger groups and subordinated their status as minor
aristocrats to the fortunes of a more powerful leader. As time went on, and the
vicissitudes of war pruned the pool of contestants, the various groups were
reduced to a few warring parties and competing leaders.
Eventually, a single leader emerged as victorious and obtained the surren-
der or alliance of the others. In the process, however, the political establish-
ment was turned into a much more vertical structure in which key positions
were occupied by members of the royal family and also members of aristo-
cratic lineages who typically rose through the military ranks, by forging a
personal bond of fealty with the sovereign. Land and privileges were con-
ceded to them, but the central power claimed a monopoly over resources, the
right to go to war, and to conduct the foreign policy of the state. Arguably,
such a “state” came into existence out of two concurrent mechanisms. The
first was the assimilation of conquered tribes, whose members could be
either recruited or enslaved after their leaders had been defeated. The second
was a voluntary act by lesser aristocrats and local commanders to lead their
people and join the camp of the “unifier-to-be.” In either case, these people
would have had to undergo a process of redefinition of their social status,
which could be severely decreased in the first case, or stay the same and even
increased in the second. The main trade-off of this arrangement was that it
protected society as a whole from a cycle of unending violence that threat-
ened everyone’s livelihood.
However, a major change occurred in the distribution of economic
resources. The old tribal aristocracy relied on the surplus production of their
immediate subjects, which was occasionally taxed, to retain its position of
privilege. On the contrary, the new leadership regarded the state, and the
people, as personal patrimony and thus acquired a “redistributive” role so that
positions, honors, rewards, and land grants all flowed from a single center.
Such an arrangement was usually consolidated during the initial “civil war”
period, when the warring groups raided each other’s camps, and appropriated
the enemy’s livestock, people, and whatever valuables. To the extent that the
rival parties had access to trade, wars were also fought over access to com-
mercial centers. All of this could not but cause the relentless militarization
of society, which also meant subtracting producers from the economic base.
As we see from a number of cases, and possibly most clearly in the case of
the early Mongol Empire, at the moment of “confederation,” the size of the
army increased dramatically, as did the court apparatus, even as economic
resources most likely dwindled. How could the army and court be supported?
What I argue here is that the new political order came with a steep “sticker
price” which the nomads simply could not afford with the economic resources
at their disposal. The threat that such a bitterly fought over new order might
rapidly collapse was real. In order to prevent that the well-known centrifugal
tendencies of nomadic politics might be reignited, the “supratribal” leader—
the political unifier, the khan, the sovereign—could not establish a firm
control on the army and government without finding ways to pay for them.
Supporting a large personal army, rewarding loyal commanders, preserving
the loyalty of family members, developing new institutions (judicial, fiscal,
and administrative) and financing state-building projects such as sponsoring
religious clergy, expanding handicraft production (i.e., metallurgy for mili-
tary supplies) and increasing the general pastoral and agricultural productiv-
ity required people (slaves), and revenues from outside the steppe economy.
Hence, the process of state-building had to rely on strategies for raising
revenues from outside the nomadic society. Note that this is not a general
requirement of the pastoral economic, but rather a special requirement that
stems from political, rather than merely economic, conditions.
The extraction of resources was based on various methods that changed
over time, and depend on the nomads’ ability to modify their state-building
112 Nicola Di Cosmo
process by deploying increasingly more sophisticated economic strategies.

These strategies or revenue extraction can be grouped in four categories,
some of which appeared at an earlier historical stage, while others developed
later: raiding, tribute, trade, and taxes. Their historical evolution bespeaks
not only of the diversified nature of imperial nomadic economies, but also
of changes in their political culture. Indeed, the transition from the direct
application of violence to more complex forms of extraction marks the par-
ticular and essential dynamism of nomadic empires and their main forms of
economic and political interaction with sedentary societies.
ECONOMIC STRATEGIES
Raiding and Pillaging

The primary form of subsidy for the newly minted leader and his court and
military apparatus consisted of booty from incursions and raids into sedentary
areas. The central principle of this strategy was simple, and consisted of using
the military superiority of nomads as a predatory mechanism. When we speak
of raids by a centralized army, we should clarify that these are not small war
parties but rather expeditionary armies numbering in the tens of thousands,
which had the potential to devastate a large territory, assault border towns,
and occupy a given region for months. The raids by Xiongnu or Türk armies
into Chinese territory could easily number more than 30,000 soldiers, while
Khitan and Mongol armies were even larger. The collection of booty was
centrally organized, and the spoils were redistributed both among the aristoc-
racy and to the rank-and-file soldiers in the form of “rewards” that included
slaves, livestock, and various commodities. The border defenses of agrarian
states, even those as rich and powerful as China, were typically no match for
nomadic warriors, hardened by a lifetime of battles, highly mobile, and orga-
nized into an effective and highly disciplined fighting force.
Over time, however, counting exclusively on looting could prove unsus-
tainable. Spoliation of the frontier regions through repeated pillaging had two
effects. On the one hand, the constant threat of raids could cause the gradual
abandonment of the frontier by settlers, resulting in depopulation and impov-
erishment. On the other hand, if more muscular policies prevailed among the
victims of nomadic raids, the latter might proceed to step up their defenses,
leading to the progressive militarization of the frontier. For instance, during
the Former Han dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE), the Chinese authorities progres-
sively built defenses and moved armies to the frontier for the protection of
those border regions that were exposed to attacks by the Xiongnu. These
developments meant that the “booty economy” of the nomads produced
diminishing returns, while becoming costlier. As a source of state financing,

a strategy based on predation was eventually bound to fail or at the very least
to produce extremely unreliable results.
More critically, from the point of view of the preservation of the ruling
elite, in the long run this strategy could produce destabilizing political effects.
The sovereign, while theoretically in charge of the whole army, could not
prevent his own commanders and aristocrats from engaging in raiding for
their own personal gain, in order to strengthen their own position within the
state, potentially mount a challenge to the authority of the ruler, or constitute
an alternative center of power.4 The existence of a “supratribal” leadership
required that profits from booty were theoretically controlled solely by the
ruler, and indiscriminate pillaging damaged his authority as well as the eco-
nomic foundations of the empire. Therefore, already with the first historical
nomadic empire (the aforementioned Xiongnu), raiding was in part replaced
by the exaction of a “tribute” paid through treaties and official agreements
negotiated directly by the ruler and backed by his military power.
Tribute
Tribute is to be understood as a payment extorted in exchange for peace, that
is, essentially, protection money. Compared to a purely predatory strategy,
tribute obtained by diplomatic means had the advantage of replacing irregular
spoils of war with regular yearly collections. It consisted of various forms of
wealth, mostly luxuries and precious materials such as silk, gold, silver—
that is, commodities that could also be monetized. The nomadic leader both
negotiated and monopolized the tribute subsidies, which could be invested in
consolidating his power, strengthening the army, and expanding the empire’s
influence and territory. The amount of tribute was fixed by treaties negotiated
between rulers, which were periodically renewed either when a new ruler
succeeded to the throne or after a war disrupted the agreement and required
a renegotiation.
Even in a treaty regime, conflicts may erupt either because nomads wanted
to increase the payment or because the party that paid tribute wanted to sever
that obligation. If we take into consideration the empires that most consis-
tently relied on tribute—the Xiongnu, the Türks, and the Liao dynasty—we
see that treaties were periodically disrupted, although they may also pro-
duce fairly long spells of peaceful relations. By monopolizing the collec-
tion of tribute, the “khan” was able to maintain his redistributive role, pay
for the government and personal army, and keep the loyalty of the military
aristocracy.
In Chinese history, the first sustained economic strategy that relied on the
extraction of tribute for the financing of a nomadic empire was promoted by
114 Nicola Di Cosmo
the Xiongnu Empire in the second century BCE. The threat of violence was
initially sufficient to persuade China to pay, but eventually China turned to a
more offensive stance, based on ceasing the payment of tribute, deploying a
larger and more effective military force, and pursuing a shrewd “divide and
rule” policy aimed to incite internal divisions in the nomadic camp. Civil war,
the lack of revenues, and rivalries in the succession to the throne weakened
and eventually destroyed the Xiongnu as a unified polity.
The Xiongnu also present the opportunity to examine in depth the failure
of treaty relations because of the debates that accompanied the Chinese deci-
sion to cease the payment of tribute and embark in a long and expensive war.
In a nutshell, the Chinese decision was not simply caused by the humiliation
of paying a tribute to barbarians, or by the excessive economic burden it
constituted. Rather, paying tribute did not guarantee peace because the sov-
ereignty of the nomadic ruler was not sufficient to guarantee that the terms of
the treaty would be respected. If some of his generals still engaged in raids
and predation, then paying a tribute did not guarantee peace. In fact, from a
Chinese point of view, the tribute might have had a more positive effect, had
it consolidated and strengthened the position of the nomadic ruler as the sole
sovereign. As this was not the case, the requests of tribute increased, the bur-
den grew, and to keep paying the tribute became politically and economically
unsustainable (Di Cosmo 2002: 209–27). The Xiongnu, for their part, found
it difficult to overcome one of the major pitfalls of their political culture, viz.,
the inherent weakness of the ruler relative to the military aristocracy.
The Türk Empire, established in the sixth century CE, in its initial phase
also extracted a large tribute mostly in silk from the short-lived Western Wei
and Northern Zhou Chinese dynasties, before China was reunified under the
Sui and Tang dynasties. Shortly after the Tang came to power (618 CE),
the Chinese emperor ceased paying tribute to the nomads, and responded
militarily to the threat posed by the eastern Türk Empire. In a few years, the
empire collapsed. Although there were various reasons that accelerated the
crisis, the lack of revenues was a key factor leading to its collapse. Without
external revenues the Türk qaghan was left with very limited options, when
his economic basis was ravaged by a climatic crisis, famine spread across his
lands, his commanders defected, and other subject peoples also refused to pay
tribute (Graff 2002; Di Cosmo et al. 2017).
More successful was the treaty negotiated between the Liao and the Song
dynasty in 1004–1005—the Treaty of Shanyuan—which included, together
with a host of other provisions, a hefty annual payment to the Liao. This
treaty marked a turning point in Liao-Song relations, which had been until
then especially bellicose. The Treaty of Shanyuan provided a framework
for peaceful relations, but above all provided the Liao with a steady stream
of revenues. As Twitchett and Tietze pointed out, the subsidies paid by
the Song in silk and silver constituted a small amount for the very wealthy
Chinese dynasty, but were a substantial sum for the Khitan, “whose revenues
were comparatively meager” and “used the silk for their own major internal
expenses, for instance, in building the new Central Capital immediately after
the treaty”; in addition, the “Khitan acquired a steady source of additional
revenue and were able to reduce their southern border defenses to some
degree and to concentrate on internal developments” (Twitchett and Tietze
1994: 110). The effects of the revenues provided by the treaty were especially
significant in stabilizing the central leadership, and, in the case of the Liao,
also providing a precious commodity, silk, that could be traded to other peo-
ple, thus stretching further the financial significance of the payment (Twtchett
and Tietze 1994: 110). The success of the treaty relationship between Liao
and Song, and the relative importance of the tribute that nomads were cashing
in, must be placed in a context in which additional forms of income were also
being pursued, such as trade and taxation, as we shall see below.
On the contrary, in cases such as the Xiongnu and the Türk, who operated
under different historical circumstances, tribute relations had pitfalls that
undermined its usefulness. While the extortion of tribute might have seemed
an efficient way to procure the revenues needed to feed the empire, ultimately
it was a strategy based on a delicate balance that could be easily disrupted if
the tribute’s amount exceeded the ability of the payee to satisfy the request,
or if it did not preserve peace and security on the frontier. The pressures on
the nomadic leaders to request increasingly greater payments came from
the proliferation of aristocratic privileges and growth of the army, which
are physiological processes in a nomadic empire, whose political survival is
predicated on the preservation of aristocratic entitlements and constant mili-
tary success. Such a parasitic strategy could be acceptable to the payer only
as long as it did not threaten its survival. Once the price of peace exceeded
that limit, nonpayment, even at the risk of war, became a preferable option.
Note that an excessive economic dependency on tribute also exposed the
nomadic leader to various perils. While military pressure could be applied to
enforce payment, and looting also could be resorted to, the success of such
tactics depended upon the relative strength of the nomads, whose military
superiority was only assured as long as they remained united. China indeed
resorted to threats and blandishments of its own, offering political alliances
and economic inducements to subordinate leaders in order to break the unity
of the nomadic leadership. Special rewards, protection, and land deals were
given to tribal leaders that turned against the “khan” in exchange for submis-
sion and loyal service. In Chinese, this strategy was often referred to as yi yi
zhi yi “using the barbarians to rule the barbarians.”
Because the redistribution mechanisms were not straightforward, and the
sovereignty of the “khan” was above all linked to the charismatic nature of
116 Nicola Di Cosmo
his power, the treaties could be easily challenged by other members of the
aristocracy, who could resort to “private” pillaging of the sedentary areas in
case of disaffection, just as in the case of a policy based exclusively on preda-
tion. The ruler’s inability to preserve peace or the hostile party’s inability or
unwillingness to pay indefinitely eventually resulted in a breakdown of the
treaty system, and resumption of war at times when the nomads, because of
internal crises, could ill afford it, causing in most cases its demise.
While the “supratribal” sovereign could revert to a policy of pillaging
to maintain its government financially viable, for the reasons mentioned
above, this strategy would eventually become unsustainable, and the central-
ized state would eventually crumble under internal and external pressures.
Under such circumstances, defecting nomadic chieftains might seek refuge
and protection in China, and accept Chinese terms of surrender according to
which they would be relocated along the frontier and employed as a military
resource to protect China’s borders. Eventually, the military machine of the
nomads would no longer exist and its unified leadership would vanish.
Trade
A very important economic instrument that could guarantee long-term support
for the nomadic aristocracy was trade. The nomads’ control of long-distance
overland trade routes allowed them to capitalize on the exchange of goods
that, from the early centuries of the Common Era, began to circulate across
Eurasia, among which silk was especially relevant, as both commodity and
currency. Controlling these routes meant controlling international trade. By
forming partnerships with merchants, the nomadic aristocracy could rely on
a regular income and at the same time acquire goods that were prized within
their own society, and could be used as means of exchange or to store value.
What nomads brought to the table was political weight and military
muscle. In order to flourish, ancient trade required a secure, low-risk envi-
ronment, which could be guaranteed by the military power of the nomads.
Politically and diplomatically, strong steppe leaders could use the threat of
war to pry open trade routes and markets with agricultural regions. For the
nomadic ruler, the ability to monopolize the profits and redistribute them to
the aristocracy helped increase his charisma, political clout, and wealth. More
importantly, trade had a transformative effect on nomadic society, far more
so than pillage and tribute, since trade is not just exchange of goods. Not
only were commercial networks created, but market towns flourished on the
margins of the steppes and even within it, and merchant communities were
allowed to reside safely in nomadic territory.
Probably from the fifth or sixth century CE, with the development of long-
distance trade across Eurasia, this new revenue stream could be accessed and
integrated in the economy of the nomadic militarized and centralized state, as

the aristocracy forged special ties with the commercial houses that controlled
transnational trade. The first instance of a clear engagement of nomads with
international commerce was with the Türks, who inserted themselves in the
silk trade between China and Byzantium. However, their diplomatic over-
tures did not lead to concrete results (Stark 2016).
The successor to the Türks, the Uighur Empire—established by the
Uighurs in 744 CE—made explicitly trade the mainstay of its economy.
Ordo Baliq (or Karabalghasun), the capital of the Uighur Empire, was
located in the heart of Mongolia, and included markets, temples, govern-
ment buildings, workshops, and agricultural fields. The court resided there
at times but remained, in nomadic fashion, an itinerant one. Key to the
Uighurs’ engagement with trade was their positioning themselves between
China and Central Asia. The steppe economy produced a surplus of horses,
which cost them very little but which China needed for military purposes,
and China produced a surplus of silk, which the Uighur coveted for internal
consumption but also for sale throughout Eurasia, via the commercial net-
works of Central Asian merchant houses. The partnership between nomads
and merchants allowed the silk exchanged for horses to be resold or used
as currency in transactions across Asia (Beckwith 1991). Flowing into the
networks of international trade controlled by Sogdian merchants, silk sales
generated revenues that would be shared between the political (Uighur) and
the commercial (Sogdian) elites. This system required a centralized govern-
ment and a court that functioned as a hub for collecting horses, redistribut-
ing silk, and conducting political relations with China. Such a symbiotic
relationship between Uighur rulers and Sogdian merchants favored not just
trade but also peace between the nomads and China, so that the last forty
years of the Uighur Empire were remarkably free from military ventures
(Kovalev 2016).
Was trade part of the nomadic “war economy”? In the Uighur Empire,
trade was connected to war in two specific ways, quite different from previ-
ous nomadic empires. First, military force was necessary to protect trade
routes and to compete over trade routes against other empires, states, and
so on. Without a centralized military force, trade revenues could not be
guaranteed, given that commercial relations could only flourish under condi-
tions of reduced risk, secure roads, and reliable access to markets. Second,
the military power of the Uighurs was used as a mercenary army to protect
China against other external enemies, such as the Tibetans, who had repeat-
edly invaded and threatened Tang territory, including the imperial capital
Chang’an. The “payment” for these mercenary services was the horses-for-
silk trade that guaranteed a regular supply of silks to the Uighur Kaghan and
the commercial elites associated with the Uighur court. There is, therefore, a
118 Nicola Di Cosmo
clear and direct connection between the upkeep of a centralized army by the
Uighurs and commerce with China and internationally.
What is also remarkable is that the “tribute” mechanism with China that
prevailed with the Xiongnu and Türk Empires was transformed under the
Uighurs into a system of forced political trade. The silk obtained by such
means would then flow into the networks of international trade controlled by
Sogdian merchants, generating revenues that would be shared between politi-
cal (Uighur) and commercial (Sogdian) elites. This system required a central-
ized government and a court that functioned as a hub for collecting horses,
redistributing silk, and conducting political relations with China, and contin-
ued to function as long as the Uighur army was able to maintain its strength.
Once it was attacked and destroyed by a hostile force, not just the Uighur
Empire collapsed, but also trade, as the two systems were codependent.
Commerce, markets, and urbanism are trademarks of the relationship
between the nomadic Khitan and the Song dynasty, too. Once a comprehen-
sive peace treaty was signed between the two powers in 1005, commerce
developed on a grand scale and contributed to the flourishing of an urban
culture, exotic taste, and a general openness to foreign goods in Chinese cit-
ies. In their empire, the Khitan established multiple capital cities and a stable
administration (Shiba 1983; Wright 1998).
It is with the Mongol conquest, however, that vast, comprehensive,
transnational Eurasian trade networks achieved their maximum premodern
expansion. Judged in terms of commercial prowess, the Mongols were by
far the most successful nomadic conquerors. Trade developed in the wake
of massive territorial conquest and of the imposition of Mongol rule over a
myriad different people. It may be intriguing to speculate that the success of
the Mongols may stem in part from their inability, for three generations (the
reigns of Chinggis, his son Ögödei, and the grandsons Güyük and Möngke),
to move from a state of war to a state of peace (Allsen 2004). The Mongol
juggernaut barreled on for six decades, notwithstanding internal conflicts,
and expanded far beyond the Mongols’ ability to maintain a unified empire.
Such an expansion could not be sustained without the adoption of a variety of
economic strategies, of which trade was the most successful exactly because
they could unify so many regions into a single trading system.
Under the Mongols the routes of continental Asia joined the other large
world market, Europe, through the hub of the Black Sea, where ships and
caravans met. The role of the Mongols as active trading agents and not just
as “facilitators” of commercial connections between faraway markets was
critical. Circulation and redistribution of goods reached unprecedented pro-
portions because the Mongols enabled the link between the continental Asian
trade routes and the Mediterranean seafaring traffic by establishing rela-
tions with maritime powers, such as Genoa and Venice. The convergence of
commercial interests between Mongol rulers and European merchants made

the fourteenth century the most “networked” system that had ever existed till
then.
The opening of the Mongols to commerce and the inauguration of a period
of peace sometime referred to as pax mongolica was based at least in part
on institutions that were developed during the conquest, such as the postal
stations that allowed for the rapid spread of information and communication
throughout the empire. Financial innovations adopted by the Mongols, albeit
with mixed success, such as new coinages and the issuance of paper money,
were aimed to facilitate commercial transactions. Formal treaties with foreign
merchants stipulated low tariffs and opened new markets. The formalization
of a system of partnership between merchants and members of the Mongol
aristocracy generated demand for luxury goods and increased the volume of
commercial activities (Allsen 1989). All these policies functioned as incen-
tives and accelerators of trade, and, by and large, dissuaded the Mongol rulers
from engaging in military activities that would have kept merchants away.
The significantly interconnected Eurasian space that trade created was key
to stopping or at least scaling down wars, limiting further territorial conquests,
and transitioning to regimes that were able to support themselves with a com-
bination of fiscal and commercial policies, but commercial revenues were
sought long before peace was established. The very beginning of the Mongol
expansion into Central Asia, which posed the foundations for the later waves
of conquests of Russia and Iran, was caused by a crime committed against the
Mongols in the Muslim empire of Khwarazm, which included the whole of
Iran and Central Asia. As Chinggis Khan was expanding his military opera-
tions in northern China, it is understandable that international trade could be
seen as a means to gather additional revenues. It is in this context of seeking
commercial openings that we need to see the merchant caravan that reached
the frontier city of Otrar in 1218 (May 2016: 35–36, 219–20). The massacre
of the merchants by the governor of Otrar precipitated the Mongol invasion
of Central Asia, and can be seen as a catalyst of war. Behind the Mongol
retaliation for the “insult” of killing Mongol envoys, we can see the desire to
insert themselves into international trade as one of the objectives of Chinggis
Khan, and the reason why a diplomatic and commercial embassy was sent to
the Khwarezmian Empire in the first place.
Finally, we should stress that an excessive dependence on trade as a main
source of revenue also had drawbacks. Throughout the history of China-Inner
Asian relations, the closure of border markets was used whenever possible
by the Chinese authorities as an economic weapon to weaken the power
of the nomadic ruler. Reliance on trade and markets was also open to the
vagaries of prices, climate (which may affect both travel and production) and
the willingness of the various parties to accept risks that at times of political
120 Nicola Di Cosmo
instability were quite high. Trade also required a specialized knowledge that
was often foreign to the nomads themselves, and, therefore, depended on
the intermediation of a class of merchants that was not (as far we can tell)
fully integrated with the nomadic elites—with the possible exception of the
Uighur Empire—and whose interests may not be fully aligned with those of
the nomadic elites.
Taxation
Ultimately, it was only with territorial conquest and the direct extraction of
wealth from the subjects by fiscal means that nomads developed as a more
stable and regular revenue stream. One of the most successful and important
strategies for a nomadic empire to acquire economic viability was through
the development of institutions that provided a regular fiscal extraction. Such
institutions required the expansion, and in many cases the creation tout court,
of a civilian bureaucracy. This included a daunting series of innovations, such
as the adoption or invention of scripts that could be used to carry out govern-
ment functions. A natural choice in this direction was to acquire the tools
of written administrative records from the more literate countries that were
conquered, whose elites were co-opted into the government apparatus with a
variety of roles, but especially to discharge administrative functions, such as
population censuses, public works and especially tax collection.
According to an established, if outdated, historiography, the first actual
conquest (and occupation) of a settled population by nomads can be dated to
the Khitan’s Liao dynasty (907–1125) who ruled over the northern “Sixteen
Prefectures” that had been part of China since olden times (Wittfogel and
Feng 1949: 2–20). They also ruled over a large number of settled people in
the northeast of China and Korea. The expansion of nomadic rule over a large
sedentary population marked a giant leap from a largely military and nomadic
sociopolitical organization to one that required a civilian government able
to take care of the administration of the sedentary population, and above all
to collect taxes for the central treasury, of course controlled by the nomadic
ruler and aristocracy.
The Liao dynasty can be regarded as the first fully nomadic “steppe” empire
that developed a state organization expressly meant to extract resources from
an agrarian population, and to have coined a model of rulership that, at least
in East Asia, was followed (with variations) by all other three dynasties
that originated in an Inner Asian context, namely the Jurchen, 1115–1234,
Mongol (1206–1368), and Manchu (1644–1911) all of which established
dynasties in China (respectively Jin, Yuan, and Qing). Each of them relied
to an even greater extent on direct taxation and forms of extraction of wealth
typical of Chinese governments.
The Liao government was split into two branches, a northern govern-
ment in charge of nomadic affairs, where the imperial military force was
concentrated, and a southern government in charge of agricultural regions,
and included a system of multiple capitals, with different sets of offices with
specialized functions depending on the type of people that inhabited a given
region. The Liao continued to rely, as we have mentioned before, on tribute
and trade, but were able to add significant layers of complexity to their socio-
political organization, including a trained bureaucracy. The Liao attempts to
create their own written languages were however not sufficient to replace the
language of the dominant cultural power, China. The diversification of the
streams of revenues contributed to stabilize the empire and to weather the
various crises that periodically shook the leadership.
Seen from a larger perspective, the advantages of conquering areas whose
subjects can be taxed offers obvious advantages. While predatory practices
depleted the local economy, reduced the producers into extreme poverty, or
forced them to flee, taxes generated a regular income. A convenient way to
express the shift from a predatory to a fiscal collection is by reference to the
distinction between the “roving bandit” and the “stationary bandit” in Mancur
Olson’s well-known theory: the roving bandit was only interested in theft and
destruction, which left the country devastated, while the stationary bandit was
interested in preserving and exploiting the local economy (Olson 1993). The
roving nomad plunders without regard to the welfare of the people, while the
stationary nomad establishes a government that can foster local production
and, in this way, obtains the surplus that ensures long-term stability. The dif-
ference between a nomadic “bandit” and a regular bandit is, however, that
a nomadic stationary government, in order to control and foster production
among a sedentary population, must acquire the cultural means that make it
possible.
Nomads, as a rule, had little knowledge of the technical requirements of
fiscal administration, from fixing rates to collecting revenues and maintain-
ing bureaucratic agencies. A successful transition, therefore, required not
just a change in the way revenues were acquired, but also the incorporation
of new classes of people within the state machinery, which in turn generated
civilian elites alien to the nomadic body politic. The introduction of foreign
bureaucracies and administrative cadres created cultural and political ten-
sions that often endangered the very existence of the state. A constant theme
in the history of steppe empires is, the opposition between groups defined
sometimes as “nativists” and the need to rely on an “intelligentsia” able to
fill the ranks of the civil administration. This tension was especially visible,
of course, in the dynasties that pursued the most wide-ranging programs of
“modernization.” The nativists came, typically, from the ranks of the military
aristocracy, including the royal clan, who wanted to stay loyal to ancestral
122 Nicola Di Cosmo
traditions and opposed the corrupting influence of foreign cultures.5 Nomadic

emperors often accessed tools of government deriving from multiple tradi-
tions of statecraft to suit the governance needs of empires that had grown to
be multinational, multiethnic, and multilingual. The degree to which nomadic
states were able and willing to accept large doses of Chinese institutional cul-
ture—what is often mistaken for Sinicization—complicated internal nomadic
politics. Cultural changes within nomadic empires must be related to the
fundamental question of economic changes that are part of a long history of
searching for solutions to the chronic deficiency of revenues to sustain large
political and military establishment and gradually more complex and sophis-
ticated forms of governance.
CONCLUSION
Machiavelli paid some attention to war practiced by Central Asian nomads,

which he identified by the generic and archaizing name of Scythians, but did
not investigate the type of war they practiced or its economic foundations.
What may nonetheless be relevant is what Machiavelli says about the rela-
tionship between money and war, and in particular his claim that money was
not the nervus belli, that is, the muscle (or sinews, or nerve) of war. Instead,
he claimed that the loyalty of the troops was far more important, because
loyal troops enable the collection of booty while disloyal troops may cost
more than they were able to rake in (Tilly 1979). In sum, the quality of the
soldiers and the relationship between the prince and the army is more impor-
tant than the money that needed to be raised for war. If we were to indulge in
historical playfulness, we might surmise that Machiavelli would have found
a sympathetic audience in Chinggis Khan, or some Türk qaghan, since loy-
alty was highly prized in a nomadic setting. However, the close connection
between money and war would not have been lost on nomads. On the one
hand, it is true that pillage and the “spoils of war” might buy the loyalty of
soldiers, provided that the leader has the proper virtues, such as the ability to
win battles and fairness in the allocation of booty. On the other hand, in intra-
nomadic wars, the amount of booty likely to be acquired, mainly cattle and
slaves, was only barely sufficient to keep the loyalty of retainers, and utterly
insufficient to finance a “supratribal” state.
The periodic emergence of large nomadic polities under a single authority
out of relatively sparse social groups bound by ethnic, kinship, and territo-
rial bonds, is grounded in a dynamic of expanding militarization. The causes
for the increase in violence are difficult to locate exactly and require a case-
by-case study. The most probable causes are, however, a depletion of the
environment that forced competition over scarce resources, or some external
stimulus that altered the existing political equilibrium. In any case, a spiral of
increasing violence was ignited, and overtime it further eroded the wealth of
the people and the natural resources, while, on the political level, it created
the conditions for the emergence of a centralized political power.
The end result was, occasionally and each time in a different form, the
formation of a militarized, vertically organized, centrally ruled political struc-
ture that relied heavily on war or the threat of it to access and appropriate
resources without which the new regime would not be able to maintain itself.
Hence, several modes of extraction were devised by the nomadic leadership,
attaining even more sophisticated levels of government, social organization,
economic and commercial management, and diplomatic activity. Over the
course of approximately 2,000 years (200 BCE–1800 CE), the tradition of
nomadic rulership evolved in the direction of creating more stable structures
that would support a centralized power, and counter the centrifugal tenden-
cies inherent to steppe politics.
The primary objective of the “war economy” was, therefore, to feed and
stabilize the overextended military apparatus that had come into existence dur-
ing the “crisis” that generates the new order. The territorial expansion in which
many nomadic empires engaged also responded to the need to increase rev-
enues. The vicious circle of having to increase revenues further and further in
order to support an ever-growing military apparatus could only be broken once
the economic basis of the empire allowed for an accumulation of resources
equal to the needs of the court and army. Since such a balance was almost
always impossible to achieve, nomadic regimes were plagued by chronic
instability. Only a deep transformation from a mostly military to a mostly
civilian administration could eventually break the vicious circle by guarantee-
ing a steady stream of resources and by curtailing the continuous growth of a
no longer functional and largely parasitic military class. The empires that were
able to survive the longest were those that tried to find ways to overcome a
state of permanent war. The more farsighted rulers were conscious of the fact
that survival required more than war, and I would contend that the evolution of
steppe political culture revolves around a central problem: how to stop war and
move to peace without committing political suicide in the process. Many of the
political innovations developed by nomadic rulers can be seen as attempts to
resolve this conundrum, and in the process transformed not only their societ-
ies, but also those of the people with which they interacted, across Eurasia.
NOTES
1. The question of social organization, and especially of the “tribe,” in an Inner

Asian context has been a hotly contested topic. The discussion around David Sneath’s
124 Nicola Di Cosmo
The Headless State (Sneath 2007) has been especially useful in clarifying the terms
of the debate. For various interventions, including by Sneath himself, see Ab Imperio
4(2009): 80–175.
2. One of the most popular books in this mode remains Grousset (1970) (originally
published in French on 1941 as L’empire des steppes).
3. There is a vast literature on nomadic trade and its economic and political impli-
cations. See, for instance, Serruys (1975), Jagchid and Van Symons (1989). The rela-
tionship between war and trade on the Chinese frontier is often established in binary
terms, and for this reason theories based on an assumed single overarching factor
(the chronic non-sufficiency of the nomadic economy) suffer from different degrees
of underdetermination, since they tend to focus exclusively on economic exchange
between “steppe and sown” and to underplay internal steppe political and economic
dynamics, so that causation for war and trade is attributed to a range of factors that is
most likely too narrow.
4. The most critical moment in the political life of a nomadic empire was that of
succession to the throne, which was often contested. Possible candidates, in order to
succeed, needed their own economic basis to be viable candidates (Fletcher 1979).
5. On “nativist” political factions under the Liao see Twitchett and Tietze, 114–32.
On political struggles in the Liao and Jin dynasties see (Tao 1976: 63–83; Chan 1984).
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Chapter 6
Non-State War Economy

in Renaissance Italy
William Caferro
Renaissance Italy offers a unique historical vantage from which to examine

non-state war economy. The peninsula was the site of perpetual conflict,
famously associated with the activities of mercenary soldiers. According to
Machiavelli’s enduring interpretation, Italian states abandoned native martial
spirit in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in favor of using “greedy,” “dis-
loyal,” and ultimately ineffective mercenaries, who formed the core of local
armies.1 The great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) depicted
the mercenaries, or condottieri as he called them, as the embodiment of
“individualism” and “unbridled egotism” that defined the Italian Renaissance
and reflected a “modern political spirit” (Burckhardt 1860). The powerful
construct placed mercenaries at the center of discussion of the meaning and
political developments of the era, while at the same time removing them and
the wars they fought in from any worthwhile economic analysis.2 Scholars
know precious little about the financial implications of the use of private,
professional soldiers, a lacuna that stands in sharp contrast with the overall
study of the economy of the era, which is voluminous. As David Parrott
has recently argued, the lack of scholarly study is not restricted to Italy.
Preoccupation with early modern European “military revolutions” and the
“evolution of state control of coercion” has obscured the overwhelming evi-
dence that the predominant form of warfare throughout the period involved
the use of private military entrepreneurs. As a result, premodern mercenar-
ies have been consigned to the “dead-end” historical category of “popular
history” (Parrott 2012). The consensus is particularly unfortunate given the
modern-day parallels with the use of mercenaries and private companies in
south-central Africa and in Afghanistan and Iraq (Kinsay 2006; Percy 2007).
A workable methodology to study the economy of Renaissance Italian war
must take into account several basic features of the Italian situation.3 First,
127
128 William Caferro
Italy is and was geographically small, and consisted in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries of numerous independent and economically potent city-
states in close proximity to each other, particularly in the northern and central
regions associated with the Renaissance. These “capital-intensive” entities,
to use the language of Charles Tilly, fought each other frequently, indeed
so frequently that it is difficult to separate one conflict from another (Tilly
1992). Inter-state wars were accompanied by infra-state conflicts between
cities and independent rural magnates, who populated the Italian countryside.
These contests, wholly overlooked in the Anglophone scholarship, rendered
war more pervasive, and more problematic as an object of study owing to the
inconsistent contemporary language that alternately describes them as guerre
(wars) and cavalcate (police actions). The line between “civil” and external
war is blurred. And at the end of conflicts, soldiers often banded together and
harassed the countryside and extorted bribes from towns with which they had
no ostensible quarrel.
In any case, the geographic constraints of the peninsula meant that conflict
in one place necessarily affected another place, whether or not a state was
directly involved. Italian communes were thus always on a defensive foot-
ing and always had, despite Machiavelli’s statements (and those of modern
scholars) to the contrary, men-at-arms on their payrolls. Wars meant the real-
location of economic resources within the peninsula, which stood at the root
cause of the wars in the first place. This was reflected in the mode of fighting,
which was primarily in the nature of raids aimed at wearing down opponents
financially, interrupting trade and stealing livestock, burning structures rather
than pitched battles in the field. Success and failure of Italian city-states were
therefore intrinsically linked (Caferro 2008).
In this respect, the Italian experience differed fundamentally from that of
nomadic empires like the Mongols, outlined by Professor Di Cosmo, which
expanded externally. It differed also from Italy’s ancient Roman past, which
Machiavelli pointedly compares to his own day. The Romans expanded
beyond the peninsula; Italian communes built territorial states within the
peninsular boundaries. Venice and Genoa, perpetual adversaries, appear at
first glance as exceptions, with their contests on the seas and protectorates in
the East. But the latter development dated to the thirteenth century; Genoa
was always involved in internal conflicts within Italy, and Venice turned
forcefully inward in the fifteenth century. Italy was more acted upon from the
outside than vice versa. The papacy, an international entity with its own terri-
torial state in central Italy, and the German Holy Roman emperors, who held
legal claims to northern Italy, were two uniquely destabilizing entities. Their
long-standing opposition to each other stood at the root of the famous Guelf
and Ghibelline contest that has defined Italian political rivalries in the popu-
lar imagination. The pope’s “exile” in Avignon (1309–1378) and the Great
Non-State War Economy in Renaissance Italy 129
Schism (1378–1415) exacerbated violence in the already fractious papal

state. Meanwhile, Holy Roman Emperors routinely descended upon Italy to
bestow titles (for fees) on political leaders and legitimate political authority
in return for cash payments, which served only to intensify antagonisms. In
the process, the papacy and empire both injected and extracted enormous
sums of money from the peninsula, much of it in turn used to hire mercenary
soldiers to fight wars. The papacy lacked sufficient recruiting grounds in
his small Italian state and relied by necessity on such soldiers. The German
emperors physically brought with them men-at-arms, who stayed in Italy and
hired themselves out as mercenaries, often to the papacy and other entities
that they had initially opposed.
The last point underscores the diversity of mercenary service in Italy. It
involved both local soldiers and foreigners from outside the peninsula, com-
plicating still further the distinction between state and non-state economy.
Foreign or ultramontane soldiers (as they were known) were especially
numerous in the fourteenth century and were wholly non-state actors, accru-
ing, where possible, personal fortunes, much of which was sent back home.
Native mercenaries, who became more prominent in the fifteenth century,
served one state as an outsider, but often seized by force the lordship of
another state. They were thus non-state economic actors in one place and state
players—the state itself—in another. The careers of the Italian mercenaries
Braccio da Montone (1368–1421) and Sigismondo Malatesta (1417–1468)
are instructive in this regard. The former fought as a mercenary captain for
Florence and the Kingdom of Naples before ultimately taking over his native
city of Perugia. The latter fought for the papacy, Venice and Florence before
installing himself as lord of Rimini. Their success and earnings as condot-
tieri allowed them to establish rule in these places, where they also became
patrons of Renaissance art (Philip Jones 1974). The investment of their war
profits into art, architecture, and “conspicuous display” (as recent scholars
call it) adds an economic/material aspect to Burckhardt’s otherwise political
and psychological interpretation of such men. It raises the intriguing question
of whether the famous cultural developments associated with a “Renaissance
spirit” were more a matter of private, non-state wealth derived from a military
context than public state wealth, as is currently believed, and that the distinc-
tion itself is problematic.
CRISES, TAXATION, AND INEQUALITY
The economy of Italian war, therefore, presents varied and often contradic-
tory patterns that require careful future study. The vast quantity of surviving
archival material—far more than for any other topic of inquiry—has rendered
130 William Caferro
analysis more difficult. Armed conflict coincided with the well-known cycle
of plague and famine, from the mid-fourteenth (Black Death 1348) to the
mid-fifteenth century, whose effects economic historians have treated in
great detail, but in isolation. The phenomena must necessarily be integrated.
Indeed, the pace of conflict increased during the crises, suggesting that states
sought to take advantage of them to press their own causes. The movement
of armies meanwhile helped spread disease. And there may have been, as I
have argued elsewhere, a causal link between plague and war. Plague reduced
land values and increased the cost of labor on it, which struck hard at aris-
tocrats, who owned land and for whom war, notably cavalry service, was a
class-bound obligation. They may have turned to war to bolster both their
flagging profits and social status. War was by its very nature an ennobling
activity. The thesis may explain the large presence in Italy in the middle years
and later years of the fourteenth century of foreign mercenaries—German,
English, Burgundians, and Hungarians in origin—who came to the peninsula
in search of profits, but largely disappear by the middle of the next century,
when the crises subsided (Caferro 2008).
The point need not be extended too far. It minimizes the importance of con-
current political events—the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War between
England and France and the ongoing civil war in Naples involving Hungarian
kings—which brought foreign men-at-arms. In addition, little is known—and
likely will ever be known—about the actual backgrounds of the soldiers, who
are steadfastly described by contemporaries, angered by their inconstancy
and marauding ways, as the “dregs of society.” What is abundantly clear,
however, is that war was expensive. Communal budgets show that 70–80 per-
cent of revenue was devoted to the pay of soldiers, a percentage that declined
only slightly in periods of ostensible peace.
The papacy deserves especial attention in our analysis. It was not a “state”
in the manner of its Italian counterparts. It was an international entity that
brought in tax revenue from throughout Europe and from the Italian states
with which it fought on the peninsula. The papacy assessed a variety of
imposts on Christendom, including the clerical tenth (on annual income of
a benefice or religious house), annates (on the first fruits of ecclesiastical
holdings), tithes, and others that became more regularized in the fourteenth
century. The papacy also possessed the unique spiritual weapon of excom-
munication, which it leveled against those who did not pay taxes and adver-
saries who opposed them on the battlefield. The English scholar Norman
Housley has estimated that during the tenure of the first legate, Betrand du
Poujet, to the papal state in Italy, the pontiff spent from July 1324 to July
1327 1,164,363 florins on mercenaries for its local wars (N. J. Housley 1982).
The average was roughly 388,000 florins a year and exceeded the ordinary
revenue of most Italian states at the time. Florentine revenue in the middle
years of the century has been estimated at between 250 and 350,000 florins;
Siena and Pisa raised 80–100,000 florins a year, respectively, and Lucca took
in 60,000–75,000 florins a year. The small town of Bagnacavallo, on the edge
of the papal state in the Romagna, earned a mere 5,000 florins a year (Vaini
1966; Molho 1971; Partner 1972; Meek 1978; Caferro 2008).
Raising large sums of money fell hard on fiscal bureaucracies. Italian
states relied on a combination of interest-bearing loans and indirect taxes
known as gabelles (on consumption and services) to meet the burden. The
two were intrinsically linked in that revenue from the latter was used to pay
back money for the former. Italian public finance has been the subject of dis-
tinguished scholarly study, particularly for the cities of Venice, Genoa, and
Florence and their use of public-funded debts, which are treated as precocious
instances of economic modernity (Sieveking 1905; Luzzatto 1963; Molho
1971). But war, which was responsible for the establishment of public debts
in the first place, exposes the ad hoc and decidedly non-modern aspects of
Italian finance. Fiscal apparati were inherently ill-suited to the speedy collec-
tion of large sums of money necessitated by war. Requests for loans required
an alliramento or assessment of wealth, which was often a protracted process,
rendered more problematic by plague which famously rearranged financial
portfolios. Meanwhile, war itself interfered with collection of taxes and
inhibited movement of goods through town gates, a major source of revenue,
and damaged fields, which affected revenue from gabelle on wine, another
lucrative source of revenue.
It is important to understand that taxation did not affect all citizens the
same way. There was an inherent bias in Italian public finance favoring
wealthier elements over middle- and lower-level ones. The recourse to loans
and potential returns on investments was generally restricted to well-to-do
citizens, who could provide the money. Each request for loans necessarily
involved a rise in gabelle rates, the revenue used to repay the loans. Gabelles
were regressive taxes on consumption and service that burdened those of
lesser means, who could not avoid them. At the approach of an enemy army,
states usually undertook as a first step to double gabelle rates across the
board. Charles M. de La Roncière has shown how gabelles increased five
to ten times in Florence from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the
end (Charles M. de La Roncière 1968; Ryder 1977). Studies elsewhere in
Italy reveal similar trends and a conscious policy of sustained taxation on
consumption and steadfast avoidance of direct tax on capital (Barbieri 1938;
Knapton 1985). Elites were not only able to gain return on their tax invest-
ments, but also had access to lucrative tax farms that increased remuneration.
International merchants who worked abroad were notoriously successful at
hiding their assets from tax officials and avoiding taxation altogether (Caferro
1995).
132 William Caferro
A comprehensive analysis of Italian taxation is muddied, as Patrizia

Mainoni notes, by wide-ranging inconsistencies in assessment among states
(Mainoni 1997). Scholars must also take into account the economic effects of
plague, which, according to the classic formulation, was a boon to the sala-
ried sector of society, particularly those who sold their labor.4 The relentless
nature of war, however, and the relentless taxation that accompanied it, ren-
ders problematic any roseate portrait of a “golden age” for working classes.
Indeed, the reduction of the tax base attendant the plague alone made wars
more burdensome for surviving citizens and compelled states to expand their
tax bases, which in turn gave impetus to war. The establishment by wealthier
communes such as Milan, Florence, and Venice of territorial states is an
egregious example of this. On the more local level, states expanded their tax
bases by including outgroups such as Jews, who appear more prominently in
economic registers in the later fourteenth century. Officials allowed Jews to
settle in towns by means of formal contracts known as condotte, which obli-
gated Jews to provide money to the state in times of need, such as war. The
appeal for the state was that Jews could be more forcibly coerced and offered
inferior terms than their Christian counterparts (Toaff 1975; Boesch-Gajano
1983; Muzzarelli 1984; Luzzati and Veronese 1993; Pini 1996).
The bias inherent in Italian tax policy resembles in general outline that
which Christopher Friedrichs described for German towns during the Thirty
Years’ War (Friedrichs 1980). Fiscal systems created a “spiraling upward” of
money in favor of wealthier citizens, which ran counter to the well-known
“downward movement” of wealth in favor of the lower classes that resulted
from plague. War created profits for wealthy merchant bankers, who served
as intermediaries in hiring troops and issued bills of exchange to transfer
money to diverse regions to pay soldiers. To be sure, merchants often com-
plained that their assessments cut into profits and that loans went unpaid.
And, indeed, many merchants suffered damage, and rarely welcomed war.
But the decision by states to tax consumption rather than capital was delib-
erate. The Milanese ruler, Bernabò Visconti of Milan (1323–1385), openly
stated that hikes in gabelles and indirect taxes would raise less meaningful
opposition than the alternative. Studies of the Tuscan countryside reveal
that the fiscal burdens of war increased the indebtedness of rural dwellers to
urban lenders, resulting in an increase in urban ownership of rural land. Large
Florentine banking houses often filled the void, collecting interest from their
loans to rural communities.
The peasant in the field suffered the most from war. In addition to taxes,
he stood directly in the path of the raids that characterized contemporary war.
The rules of chivalry—which were operative even in Italy—favored capture
and ransom of equals in the field, but did not apply to social inferiors in the
countryside.
MIGRATION AND ABANDONMENT OF VILLAGES
The plight of peasants is clear from copious archival evidence showing that,
in the face of armed threat, they abandoned their homes and fled elsewhere.
The evidence is overwhelming and highlights a crucial and overlooked
aspect of the economy of Renaissance warfare: the migration of people and
transfer of human capital. In the case of Italy, we see, again, a reallocation
of resources within the peninsula. One commune’s loss was another’s gain.
Indeed, given the heavy tax burdens, migration did not only involve the
farmer in the field but also skilled urban workers, who sought relief from
imposts. The archives contain numerous petitions from workers seeking tax
relief in order to remain home. In a time of demographic crisis, government
officials were willing to negotiate to preserve their most precious commodity,
the tax payer. The desertion of only a handful of people in rural towns left the
remaining residents to make up tax shortfalls, which increased the likelihood
that they too would move elsewhere.5
It is important to stress the role of migration in understanding the economy
of Renaissance Italian warfare. The migrations have largely passed under
the scholarly radar on account of a teleological tendency, particularly in the
Anglophone academy, to minimize the effects of warfare on the country-
side, which has been viewed anachronistically as lacking sufficient capital
investment to constitute a major economic factor (Goldthwaite 1995). But
enemy armies stole cattle and animals and burned houses and barns, which
constituted substantial investment for locals. Studies of contemporary France
during the Hundred Years’ War show that the burning of farms and the
stealing of livestock had lasting economic effects on the countryside. Robert
Boutruche argued forcefully against those who would compare the costly
reconstruction of rural lands in France after the First World War with the
seemingly “sluggish” measures taken by the French crown to repair damage
in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. He noted that the economic impact
of the two were proportionate and thus equally devastating. The government
in the medieval instance lacked both the funds and the will to ameliorate the
situation (Boutruche 1947). Rural devastation was, in any case, not all the
same. Fields trampled by armies could be replanted, but vines took much
longer to regrow. And the sale and taxation of wine was a leading source of
revenue for Italian states.
The copious evidence of migration warrants more detailed study by
scholars. The war between Milan and Florence in 1369–1370 was limited in
comparison to the more famous and dramatic contests between the two states
at the end of the century. But it caused a great many residents, particularly
from the town of San Miniato, a key strategic outpost for Florence, to flee.
The town became nearly deserted. After peace was made, mercenary soldiers,
134 William Caferro
freed from service, banded together and undertook raids in the region,
leading to migrations from numerous small towns in the environs of Pisa,
Florence, and Siena. Siena, with its ample hinterlands and proximity to the
via Francigena, a major medieval highway that connected Rome to Avignon
(and upon which lay San Miniato), proved a frequent target of raid by “free”
companies. In 1398, the Sienese city council complained of forty years of
ravages by soldiers such that the Maremma region, an important source of
grain, had become “sterile,” production reduced by 80 percent. To solve the
problem, the Sienese government passed legislation offering settlers grants of
tax immunity for five years (Archivio di Stato di Siena, Consiglio Generale
180 fol. 88v; Consiglio Generale 181 fol. 46v).
This was a standard response among Italian states, which appear to have
competed with each other to attract villagers displaced by war and/or over-
burdened by taxation related to it (Caferro 1998, 2006, 2008). What is not
clear, however, is precisely who left the towns and where they went. Robert
Fossier, in his studies of abandoned villages in Normandy and Champagne
during the Hundred Years’ War, showed that the emigres were mostly young
people between the ages of twenty and thirty, leaving behind an older, less
productive, populace, which slowed recovery in those regions (Fossier 1964).
There is evidence for Italy that skilled laborers left their homes and attempted
to negotiate their tax burdens. This may be because such people are more
visible in the sources. But the most notable example is the flight of silk work-
ers from Lucca in 1314 on account of the sack and seizure of the city by the
mercenary captain Uguccione della Faggiola (d. 1319). The Lucchese silk
industry was a lucrative business and had helped propel the small Tuscan
city into the forefront of luxury production in late thirteenth century Italy.
In 1314, the workers dispersed, seeking peace and better financial terms in
other urban centers, particularly Florence, Bologna, and Venice, who actively
sought their services (Molà 1994; Louis Green 1986, 1995).
The impact of the workers on Venice is well known. They have been
credited with helping establish the high-end craft in that city. But the flow of
skilled workers was, as Louis Green and others have shown, more continu-
ous (Louis Green 1995; Stuard 2006). Silk workers continued to leave during
the lordship of Uguccione’s violent successor, Castruccio Castracane (1316–
1328), who terrorized much of Tuscany and central Italy. Florentine raids in
the region in 1329 led to the departure of Lucchese goldsmiths. The nineteen
goldsmith shops in the city in 1329 fell to just six in 1330. In 1336, the city
of Pisa tried to profit from the war between Florence and Mastino dell Scala
of Verona by offering Lucchese workers a five-year moratorium on taxes to
settle there. On the eve of war with Milan in 1351, Florence offered tax relief
for the inhabitants of the town of Scarperia, which lay on a vital trade route
through the Apennines, to ensure that the locals would remain in the fortified
village, which was also important for the defense of the northern part of the
Florentine state. During the War of Eight Saints (1375–1378), when Milan,
Florence, and much of Umbria fought against the papacy, Lucca offered
skilled foreign workers five years of tax exemption to settle there, while Pisa
offered skilled workers ten years (Silva 1912; Caferro 1998).
City officials were well aware of the stakes. They passed legislation
prohibiting the movement of skilled workers, while at the same time dem-
onstrating a willingness to negotiate tax burdens. The surviving evidence,
admittedly still sketchy at this point, suggests that wealthier cities such as
Bologna, Venice, Florence, and Milan were able to offer better deals to
emigres, giving the cities an edge in the competitive market in human beings
and human capital. Adding to this subterranean contest was the founding and
refurbishing of local universities, which aimed to attract students and their
money to cities, with the intention of helping the local economy and improv-
ing human capital. This was in fact the stated aim of the Florentine studio,
founded just after the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348. The city sought
to bring in students to mitigate the losses attendant the contagion. Officials
even appealed to its exiled native son, Francesco Petrarca, to take up a posi-
tion at the institution to attract attention to it. Petrarch ultimately declined.
Neighboring Siena, whose university dates back to the thirteenth century,
responded by appropriating more money to spruce it up and improve the
faculty with similar economic goals in mind. Meanwhile, the cities of Pavia
(1361), Turin (1411), and Ferrara (1442) established new universities, as did
numerous cities in German lands.
WARS AND STATE-MAKING: BALIE

AND TAGLIE (CITY-LEAGUES)
The general trend thus far is that wealthier states held the advantage over
poorer ones. They were better able to attract migrating workers by offering
more favorable terms. In addition, they possessed the economic wherewithal
to hire larger armies, more successful and desirable mercenary captains,
whom they gave longer, more lucrative contracts, not only improving the
quality of forces, but reducing the risk of betrayal and with it the recourse
to looting, which was pure loss economically. The most obvious evidence of
this was the formation by the leading cities of territorial states and the subju-
gation by them of formerly independent neighboring cities. The portrait lends
support to Charles Tilly’s notion of the advantages of “capital-intensive”
states. But his conclusion that “war makes states” is not applicable to the
Italian context. Any direct connection is rendered problematic from a bureau-
cratic/institutional perspective. Close examination of the structures shows
136 William Caferro
that they were porous, personal, and inchoate (Caferro 2018). Few states were
more “capital intensive” than Republican Florence, which created a territorial
state and whose bureaucracy and division of powers has been compared by
Guido Pampaloni to that of a modern democracy (Pampaloni 1953). But in
times of war, Florence, like other republics, resorted to balie, ad hoc com-
mittees of prominent citizens with short-term executive powers, to direct
the military effort. The balie allowed the city to make quick decisions and
quick appropriation of funds to avoid the usual ponderous political and delib-
erative machinery of the state. As a consequence, the machinery remained
unchanged, intentionally protected from the mutative effects of war. But
balie did not protect the financial apparatus of state, which lay exposed. As
we have seen, the mechanism of assessment, collection, and payment of taxes
was cumbersome even in the best of times. War confounded the system,
exposed the limits of the coercive power of states, and rendered the fisc still
more confused. The recurrent plague exacerbated the problem. Innovations of
the traditional structures were in fact rare (Petralia 2009).
The point bears emphasis, as the scholarship has steadfastly searched for
the genesis of the “modern state” and the development of Weberian ratio-
nal, impersonal bureaucratic forms in Renaissance Italy. Participants in the
discussion reflexively stress the nexus between military spending and state-
building, assuming the alteration of one entailed an adjustment of the other.
Marvin Becker argued that military expenditure directly transformed political
institutions throughout Italy, an interpretation that still hovers over the field
(Becker 1970). While it is true that the office of balie ultimately became a
more permanent one in Florence and elsewhere by the latter fifteenth century,
changes in political power were primarily the result of usurpation by power-
ful individuals—who, as Burckhardt stressed, were often mercenaries and
thus non-state actors.
Concurrent statist notions of “a growing monopoly of coercive force”
are equally problematic in the Italian context. The frequency of wars and
persistent threat of violence throughout the peninsula led states to form
city leagues, known as taglie, for mutual defense. Taglia referred to the cut
(taglia) or share of troops that each participating city provided for a fixed
number of years for a joint army. The leagues have received little attention
in the discourse on war and states, in large part because nineteenth-century
Italian military historians (Ercole Ricotti and Giuseppe Canestrini) treated
them as “proto-national” organizations that augured the nineteenth-century
Risorgimento and reunification of Italy. More recent scholarship has viewed
them as a principal cause of the recourse to mercenary soldiers, who staffed
league armies, and were an egregious symptom of decay of native Italian
military militias and, indeed, the very antithesis of them (Mallett 1974; Waley
1968).
From the perspective of state and non-state economies, the taglie are
critical, however, because they make clear that Italian communes perceived
defense against enemies as a joint venture not an individual one. And the
league tradition ran deep on the peninsula, back to the famous “Lombard”
league of 1167 and its subsequent incarnations that opposed the German
emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (d. 1190) (Bordone 1987; Raccagni 2010).
The arrival in Italy of the Frenchman Charles of Anjou (brother of the king of
France) as king of Sicily in 1266 inaugurated a tradition of “Guelf” leagues
based primarily in Tuscany among city-states there. The regional associations
meant that armies were not the domain of individual cities. Indeed, Daniel
Waley argued that Florence’s involvement in leagues during the second half
of the thirteenth century was so frequent that it is difficult to “identify a
specifically Florentine army.” He saw local forces as less “the expression of
the city’s power” and more part of the “wide framework of regional military
policy” (Waley 1968).
The same is true of the subsequent period. Giuseppe Canestrini described
the leagues of the fourteenth century as “partial,” “insincere,” and infrequent
(and thus unable to unify Italy). But they were in fact just as common as
earlier, and no more or less effective. Florence joined at least twenty leagues
during the years from 1330 to 1400 (ASF, Capitoli, 27 fols. 101r–107r;
136r–138r). The taglie were typically contracted for five years among par-
ticipants, but they were often adjusted as political conditions changed on
the peninsula. For example, Florence initially joined a league in 1347 with
Perugia and Siena, which was revised in 1349 to include Arezzo and several
smaller neighboring towns, and revised again in 1351 to include Bologna,
and yet again in 1354 to involve still more allies. The signatories were pri-
marily from Tuscany, but other leagues were more ambitious. The so-called
lega lombarda of 1332 that opposed the entry of the German duke John of
Bavaria’s into Italy included Florence, Verona, Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and
Naples. The league spearheaded by the papacy in 1366 against marauding
bands of mercenaries included kingdom of Naples, Florence, Pisa, Perugia,
Siena, and Arezzo (Bayley 1961).
The key point is that local defense was not perceived as the responsibility
of individual state armies. This is noteworthy because scholars associate the
period with “the flowering of civic life” in Italy and development of civic
patriotism (J. K. Hyde 1973). But “vita civile” and civic patriotism did not
depend on a civic army. The status quo on the Italian peninsula thus stands
in sharp contrast with the trajectory outlined by scholars for elsewhere in
Europe, where patriotism and state formation are intrinsically linked to the
development of state armies and coercive political, institutional power. The
leagues also contradict Machiavelli’s famous indictment of Italy for failure
to unite in the face of foreign military danger. Italian states were clearly
138 William Caferro
accustomed to joining together. It is with the growth of territorial states in

the fifteenth century that the recourse to leagues became less frequent. The
peace of Lodi in 1454 created a more lasting arrangement, until the famous
French invasion in 1494.
The taglie also shed basic light on the economy. They not only distributed
the costs of joint armies, but they included provisions for setting up free trade
zones among their members. They granted exemption from local tolls (ped-
aggi) on goods traded among them and suspension of all reprisals (rappre-
saglie) (Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitoli, registri 12 fol. 105v; Capitoli
registri 27 fols. 71v, 77r). Rappresaglia was the practice of one city holding
another liable for the debts and misdeed of their merchants (Tognetti 2012).
The concession was a major one, as reprisals were a frequent weapon used
during wars to inflict economic damage on an opponent. The policies need
to be studied more closely by scholars alongside concurrent economic fiscal
measures, outlined by Stephan R. Epstein, that promoted greater “market
integration” and, with a nod to Joseph Schumpeter, “creative destruction” in
response to the plague. Epstein’s thesis does not account for the taglie or in
fact for warfare (Stephan Epstein 2000).
It needs be stressed again that scholars must devote greater attention to
the political implications of the leagues and integrate them into the current,
and abundant, literature on territorial states. Henrik Spruyt, who has studied
city leagues in their Italian, German and pan-European context, has argued
that the associations represent the opposite political trajectory from that of
territorial states. “The city league,” he wrote, “lies in starkest contrast to
the territorial state” (Spruyt 1994). But Florence and Milan, which built ter-
ritorial entities, did so while still joining taglie. Meanwhile, D. M. Bueno
de Mesquita portrayed Milan’s involvement in leagues as a cynical device
to gain “a friendly hearing” from states it ultimately sought to conquer and
subjugate—a judgment that contemporaries applied also to Florence (D. M.
Bueno de Mesquita 1941). If, as Giorgio Chittolini argues, territorial states
represent the unique trajectory of state-building in Italy, it appears more use-
ful to treat the taglie as a factor in their formation rather than the opposite of
it (Chittolini 1989). The answer will inevitably be a nuanced and complicated
one, but nevertheless an important corrective to pervasive and overly simple
notion that “wars make states.”
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WEALTH; CONSPICUOUS

CONSUMPTION AND RENAISSANCE
A final tally sheet for the economy of Renaissance Italian is not possible.
Scholars need to examine more closely the effects of war on trade routes
and transaction costs; on the manufacturing and industrial sector; on money

supply and the recycling of wages; and military expenditure back into local
economies. Above all, there is need to look more closely at the mercenaries
themselves, to move beyond moral and psychological issues to careful con-
sideration of questions relating to their organization, financial portfolios, and
spending habits. It is here that we may most readily assess the relationship
between non-state and state economies, private and public wealth (Caferro
2008).
The tendency of mercenaries to coalesce into bands is itself noteworthy.
The so-called companies of adventure (compagnie di ventura) of the four-
teenth century in particular represent an intriguing non-state phenomenon.
Their private nature has led military historians to depict them as the very
antithesis of standing state armies, while their colorful names—the Great
Company, the White Company, the Company of the Star, Company of the
Hat, and the Company of St George—colorful deeds and personnel have
consigned them to David Parrott’s “dead-end” category of popular history.
The novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, relayed the
exploits of the White Company in all their romantic and fictional glory. But
the bands were, in their nonfictional historical context, first and foremost
business ventures. Their structure was corporate in nature and they point-
edly referred to themselves as “societies” (societates), the same term used
by contemporary Italian businesses including cloth and silk firms and banks
(Caferro 1998, 2006). They maintained a hierarchy of officials, including
treasurers to keep accounts and distribute money and notaries to send letters
and to draw up legal documents. The dealings of the societies with states
were legalistic, the distribution of profits from looting was done accord-
ing to contractual agreement, in a manner that evokes Somali pirates of the
present day. The captain of the society/mercenary band was elected by the
rank-and-file soldiery and when he left the band, it retained its “corporate”
name and elected another captain. Comparison between a mercenary captain
and a modern CEO is not off the mark. The Great Company, active during
the mid-fourteenth century, was led respectively by the mercenaries Werner
of Urslingen, Montreal d’Albarno, and Lutz von Landau over a span of more
than twenty years. The Florentine chronicler Matteo Villani described it as
its own species of state, which also included women, who ground grain and
tended domestic chores (Matteo Villani 1846). The financial account books
of the company led by the Italian mercenary captain Micheletto Attendoli
(1424–1448) have survived in the archives of the Fraternità dei laici in
Arezzo and attest to their fiscal and bureaucratic sophistication. They were
kept by Francesco Viviani, a cloth merchant from Arezzo, who joined the
company as treasurer. They employ the complex integrated accounting tech-
nique of the day, with cross-listings to a set of interlocking ledgers.6 There is
140 William Caferro
evidence that the books may be double entry, although not enough of them
survive to be sure.
A fundamental question is then: what do the companies say about state
formation in Renaissance Italy? To the extent that scholars have advanced
beyond popular history, they have viewed the mercantile aspect in opposition
to feudalism, which, according to that line of reasoning, was the basic mili-
tary organization of the day in Europe. The opposition is, however, too facile.
Despite the business features of the bands, their “corporate” names had inten-
tional chivalric/feudal overtones (St George, so often used, was the patron
saint of chivalry). Indeed, feudalism in its characteristic medieval European
form (if indeed it existed there) is notably difficult to find in urbanized Italy.
Moreover, the companies often grouped themselves around nationalities.
The German captain Werner of Urslingen built the original Great Company
around a core of German soldiers. The Italian mercenary Alberigo da
Barbiano relied primarily on Italians for his band in 1379 and the Hungarian
captain John Horvath formed his company around fellow Hungarians in 1380
(Caferro 2006). May we then speak of the associations as species of foreign
states in Italy? If so, however, they did not last and had no fixed territorial
locus. The point here is that definitions are complicated in the Italian context
and “state-making” deserves closer scrutiny with the above-stated variables
taken into account.
The issue of nationalities is also significant from an economic perspective,
and returns our discussion back to where it started. Foreign mercenaries sent
money home, limiting recycling of money on the peninsula. The famous
Englishman John Hawkwood (1320–1394), the most successful and richest
captain in Italy in the fourteenth century, bought landed estates in his native
county of Essex and neighboring villages, sent funds for the construction of
the church of St. Peter’s in Sible Hedingham, his home, and endowed a cha-
pel for himself and his wife. His countryman, John Thornbury, who fought
alongside Hawkwood in the 1370s, invested his Italian profits in estates near
his native village of Little Maldon and, during his service to the papacy,
gained a prebend in the English church for his son Philip that had been
promised John Wycliff. John Beltoft, whose career flourished in the 1380s,
arranged for a lifetime annuity from the pope to be paid directly in England.
German soldiers did likewise. The captains Johann von Rietheim and
Konrad Weitingen purchased lands in their respective native towns of Ulm
and Radolfzell (Seltzer 2001). Huglin von Schöneck sent money home to
Basel, where he subsidized the construction of a chapel in the local church in
his own honor and, with papal consent, sent home a relic of St. Theobald that
he found in Italy (Gessler 1923; Seltzer 2010). The historian Wolfgang von
Stromer has made the provocative argument that German mercenaries also
took home with them knowledge of Italian business methods. Bertold Mönch,
who led Milanese forces in 1372, worked after his service for the Milanese
Del Mayno bank and later set up his own firm on that model in Cologne
(Stromer 1970). Thus, there was also flow of intellectual capital.
Little is known, however, about the financial dealings of Hungarian mer-
cenaries and the vast majority of men-at-arms on the peninsula. If Stephen
Selzer’s estimate of 10,000 German soldiers serving in Italy in the middle
years of the fourteenth century is accurate, however, the flow of money from
Italy from that sector alone was significant. And while mercenaries, espe-
cially those from places close to Italy, likely rode home with their profits,
there is evidence that both English and German mercenaries used the Italian
banking system, the most advanced of the day, to facilitate transfers back
home. Englishmen sent money home via bills of exchange drawn on the
Guinigi merchant bank of Lucca, the largest firm in that city, which had inter-
ests in England dating back to the thirteenth century. German soldiers used
the Del Mayno bank, one of Milan’s most important firms. The recourse to
bills meant earnings for those bankers who dealt in them, providing another
means, as noted above, by which war money returned to the more prosperous
classes.
The evidence calls into question William McNeill’s statement in his syn-
thetic study of war that the use of mercenaries in Renaissance Italy made
warfare “self-sufficing,” as money spent by soldiers was recycled back into
the Italian economy by purchases of good from merchants (McNeill 1982).
At the same time, Fritz Redlich’s famous portrait of mercenary “military
enterprisers” of the Thirty Years’ War, which David Parrott and many schol-
ars use as the standard for the profession, does not quite apply to Italy either
(Redlich 1964). Study of mercenaries in Florentine service has shown that
the salaries of the men were set by state, not by their captains themselves,
and that wages, for all their opportunities of employment elsewhere and sup-
posed greed (see Machiavelli), remained “sticky” over substantial periods
of time (Caferro 2018). Indeed, the Florentine army, portrayed by scholars
as ad hoc and dismissed after campaigns, was in fact surprisingly organized
and continuous, with foreign and Italian mercenaries working faithfully for
the city for long stretches of time (Caferro 2008b). The image of the merce-
nary has been skewed by the examples of famous men who seemingly did as
they wanted. In the world of Italian condottieri, there were, as in the world
of academia, different levels: the star condottiere who set his own terms,
and the lesser lights, the larger group, who have received little attention, but
who stayed with the same employer, married locally, even sought citizenship
where it was available.
Difficulties notwithstanding, it is possible, at least prospectively, to trace
the movement of soldiers’ wages. We have already seen how mercenary
money found its way to Jewish money lenders. In 1364, Pope Urban V
142 William Caferro
issued a degree absolving member of the White Company from obligations

to Jewish lenders in the hope of inducing the men to go on crusade. Papal
budgets in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano show that Jews were involved in
selling goods to armies, including horses, saddles, and even prayer books. An
extant account book of a Jewish banker in the town of Montepulciano from
the first decade of the fifteenth century shows that the majority of clients
were mercenary soldiers, who pawned their equipment and other valuables,
which they bought back later at interest (Carpi 1985). The last example is
evidence, confirmed elsewhere, that states often fell into arrears in their
payment to soldiers, necessitating recourse to lenders. Soldiers in Tuscany
pawned arms to local tavern owners, who then sold them back to the men at
a profit. The Archivio della Fabbrica del Duomo in Milan contains numerous
deeds of loans contracted by German mercenary captains with Milanese and
Bolognese bankers (Archivio della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, Cartelle
62, 82, Eredita 86)
A basic and notable pattern of soldiers’ spending involved “conspicuous”
consumption, a term, as noted above, that has been applied to the Renaissance
itself. This appears to have been true of both successful and unsuccessful
warriors. Nadia Covini has argued that Milanese soldiers patronized the
luxury market even when they lacked basics such as food (Covini 1998). An
extant Perugian inventory of the possessions taken from soldiers captured
during the siege of the city’s citadel in 1375 lists silks, gold, and silver cups
and dishes, ceremonial armor, and enameled barbute (helmets). The English
captain William Gold’s belongings included high-priced silk cloth as well as
rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. The purchases listed in the account books
of Francesco Viviani, treasurer of the company of Micheletto Attendoli show
that the captain and his men bought silver saltcellars, pearls, precious gems,
silks, and other expensive cloths. Micheletto had an ongoing account with
the goldsmith Bernardo dei Bardi (1431–1433) from whom he bought sil-
ver cups, a golden belt with silver buckles, golden rings, and a silver clock.
Viviani himself supplied the band with high-priced cloths made by his own
firm (Archivio di Fraternità dei Laici, Arezzo, Libro di entrata e uscita 3569
fols. 79r–80v; Testatori, 3357). Meanwhile, the battlefield served as a theater
of display. Contemporary accounts of Italy, France, and elsewhere show that
soldiers came festooned with their valuables and dressed in colorful expen-
sive cloths (Wright 1998; Stuard 2006; Caferro 2008)..
It is with respect to conspicuous consumption that state and non-state
economies converge most closely with notions of Renaissance. The use
during the fourteenth century of non-Italian mercenary soldiers limited
the degree of luxury spending within Italy, as foreign soldiers, using the
advanced banking system of Italy, sent money back home. The shift to
mostly native soldiers in the fifteenth century, a phenomenon currently
treated wholly in military terms, enhanced the degree of recycling and con-
spicuous consumption within the peninsula. It is not unreasonable to argue
that where condottieri seized cities and became lords, conspicuous con-
sumption and display became elevated from the personal (non-state) sphere
to a public (state) one (Caferro 2008). Condottieri/rulers like Braccio
da Montone and Sigismondo Malatesta (noted above) and Federico da
Montefeltro (d. 1482), who took over Perugia, Rimini, and Urbino respec-
tively and used their profits and status as state actors to become famous
patrons of art and architecture, securing posthumous status as “Renaissance
men.”
The evidence raises the question of whether Burckhardt’s famous
“Renaissance spirit” derives from the battlefield and economic milieu (a sub-
ject that did not interest Burckhardt at all). It suggests the possibility that the
cultural implications of economy of the Renaissance were as much a matter
of private, non-state wealth as public state wealth, or better, were the result
of non-state acquisition of resources used in the service of states, a hypothesis
that runs counter to current economic interpretations that have stressed the
overall performance of state economy in creating “permissive” conditions for
conspicuous consumption associated with the Renaissance.
NOTES
1. This appears in Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. and ed. David Wooten
(Indianapolis, 1995), pp. 38–45; The Discourses, trans. Leslie J. Walker, ed. Bernard
Crick (New York, 1970), pp. 339–41; Art of War, trans. and ed. Christopher Lynch
(Chicago, 2003), pp. 13–32.
2. The tradition of Italian scholarship on Renaissance war is highly nationalistic in
nature and connected to the Risorgimento, during which academic study first began.
Ercole Ricotti, a professor of Turin, who fought in the First Italian War of Independence
(1848–1849) looked specifically to the political disunity and military devolution of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a “distant mirror” of Italy’s modern-day lack of
military strength. His influence on the field remains surprisingly strong. See William
Caferro, “Individualism and the Separation of Fields of Study” in The Routledge
History of the Renaissance (London and Routledge Press, 2017), pp. 62–74. Ercole
Ricotti, Storia delle compagnie di ventura in Italia, 2 vols. (Turin, 1844–1845);
Giuseppe Canestrini, “Documenti per servire alla storia della milizia italiana dal XIII
secolo al XVI,” Archivio Storico Italiano, Vol. XVI (1851); Piero Pieri, “Alcune ques-
tioni sopra fanterie in Italia nel periodo comunale.” Rivista storica italiana (1933), pp.
561–614 and Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana (Turin, 1952).
3. An attempt at this is in William Caferro, “Warfare and Economy in Renaissance
Italy, 1350–1450,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Autumn,
2008), pp. 167–209.
144 William Caferro
4. A general study of the effects of plague on labor is in Christopher Dyer,

Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, 1200–1320
(New York, 1989). See also Giuliano Pinto, “I livelli di vita dei salariati fiorentini
(1380–1430)” in Toscana medievale (Florence, 1993).
5. For emigration in Tuscany, see Samuel K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine State:
Peasants and Rebellion, 1348–1434 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 35–38, 67–72, 84, 90,
94–95, 108–9, 268; Christine Meek, Lucca, pp. 88–89; William Caferro, “War and
Economy,” p. 187; Gene Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence
(Princeton, 1977), pp. 142, 146, 223–25, 402–3; Charles M. de La Roncière, Prix et
salaries à Florence au xive siècle, 1280–1380, pp. 750–52; Molho, Public Finance,
pp. 37, 40–42. For studies of emigration and war in France during the Hundred Years
War, see G. Fourquin, Le campagnes de la région parisienne à la fin du moyen
âge (Paris, 1964), p. 250; J. Monicat, Les grandes companies en Velay, 1358–1392
(Paris, 1928); Guy Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism: Economy and Society in Eastern
Normandy, 1300–1550 (Cambridge, 1984).
6. Viviani was in the service of the captain for more than twenty years, until
the band was dispersed after the defeat at the battle of Caravaggio in 1448. See A.
Antoniella, L’Archivio della Fraternità dei Laici di Arezzo, vol. 2 (Florence, 1985);
Mario del Treppo, “Gli aspetti organizzativi economici e sociali di una compagnia di
venture italiana,” Rivista Storica Italiano, Vol. 85 (1973), pp. 253–75.
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Chapter 7
The Economy of Warlordism in

Early Twentieth-Century China
Edward A. McCord
The military commanders who rose to power following the collapse of

China’s last imperial dynasty in the early twentieth century are often viewed
as classic warlord prototypes. As seen in the Chinese case, the dominant
defining element that ties warlords together is the importance of the command
of military force as the primary basis of their political power. A less often
noted commonality is how this military base of power is perforce dependent
on access to economic or financial resources. Beyond these basic commonali-
ties, different economic and political conditions and opportunities determine
the particular features of warlordism in specific contexts. Thus, one special
feature of warlords in modern China, not necessarily seen in other cases, is
the extent to which they actively sought, and wielded power through, claims
of political legitimacy, the acquisition of official government positions, and
the control of state resources. As such, the character of Chinese warlords
does not always align consistently with the broader concept of “non-state”
military-political actors under which warlords are often subsumed in contem-
porary literature. The character of Chinese warlords, then, was grounded in
the very specific political and economic conditions that surrounded their rise.
The main event that set the stage for the emergence of warlordism in early
twentieth-century China was an anti-imperial revolution that arose in 1911 to
overthrow the Qing dynasty. The 1911 Revolution did not create a political
vacuum, let alone produce a complete state collapse. Instead, a new, albeit
weak, national government continued to operate after the fall of the Qing
dynasty. Equally important, civil administration did not collapse, and indeed
largely continued to function even amid the ensuing civil wars that facilitated
the transformation of military commanders into warlords. This gave Chinese
warlords resources not always available to non-state military actors in other
contexts. In essence, the control of political offices enhanced the capacity of
149
150 Edward A. McCord
emerging Chinese warlords to gain access to taxes and to provide legitimate

cover for other financial exactions needed to maintain and expand their mili-
tary forces. Insofar as continued access to such resources were necessary to
sustain a warlord’s war-making capacity, this also gave China’s warlords a
stake in the survival of state administrative structures. At the same time, the
linkage of political-administrative centers to highly developed commercial
networks also increased the importance of these centers for resource acquisi-
tion, giving a structure to warlord power that was more nodal than defined by
strictly bounded territories.
Given the nature of warlordism as a form of highly personalized military
rule, the character, abilities, and motivations of warlords as individuals pro-
vide an additional overlay on the social, political, and economic field in which
they operated. Some “predatory warlords” used their increased access to state
resources not just for the maintenance of their military forces but also for per-
sonal enrichment. Even so they had to operate within social and political con-
texts that often constrained their capacity for autonomous action. Thus, some
warlords eventually sought to stabilize their power and legitimacy by seeking
the support of public opinion through the provision of public goods. Attempts
to enhance the economic development of their domains could serve this legiti-
mating purpose even while enhancing their resource base. In the end, then,
warlordism in modern China, despite responding to and fostering a degree
of political fragmentation, was embedded in complex social, economic, and
political networks and relationships that belies any assumption that the war-
lord era was a time of complete political or economic disintegration.
Given the inherently fragmented nature of warlordism, it is hardly surpris-
ing that studies of China’s warlords have often focused on case studies, the
biographies of individual military commanders, or the activities of specific
warlord cliques. Any examination of particular warlord cases, however,
presents a problem for generalization given the different characters of indi-
vidual warlords and the specific contexts in which they operated. To avoid
mistaking unique features for commonalities, this chapter was purposefully
devised as an effort to synthesize, and to draw comparative insights from
both the author’s own research and the best examples of other scholarship to
present more effectively the common features of modern China’s warlordism
as well as the range of behaviors and conditions that could exist within such
commonalities.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHINESE WARLORDISM
Warlordism may be described as a situation where military commanders exert

political authority over a substate region based on their personal control of
The Economy of Warlordism 151
military force. While this definition provides a foundation for comparative

analysis, the specific features of warlordism as it has appeared in particular
areas and periods of time are always grounded in contingent social, eco-
nomic, and political conditions. Warlordism in twentieth-century China thus
adapted to both a highly developed commercial economy and a complex
political environment, including the continuation of systems of local and
central administration and the rise of nationalism. These conditions provided
resources that aided in the establishment of warlord power but also placed
some constraints on their economic and political autonomy in unique ways.
Under these conditions, one distinctive feature of twentieth-century Chinese
warlords, in contrast to the warlords that arose in China following the col-
lapse of previous dynasties, was the absence of attempts to establish indepen-
dent states (which in premodern contexts usually took the form of competing
kingdoms or imperial dynasties). The specific characteristics of Chinese
warlordism in the early twentieth century thus cannot be divorced from the
specific social, political, and economic conditions of this era.
The study of Chinese warlordism has always been strongly framed by
contextual interpretations. One early and still often-cited theory traces the
rise of China’s twentieth-century warlords to changes in military organization
in the mid-nineteenth century when massive popular uprising (such as the
Taiping Rebellion, 1851–1864) forced the Qing dynasty to allow the organi-
zation of “regional” armies led by members of the civil “gentry” elite. These
politically influential regional army leaders, with their strongly personalized
command structures and largely autonomous local financing systems (based
on commercial taxation), bore considerable resemblance, and thus suggested
a causative relationship, to later twentieth-century warlords (Michael 1949).
Such a direct connection between these regional armies and their leaders to
later warlords does not, however, hold up to careful examination. In particu-
lar, this theory largely overlooked the wide-ranging military reforms carried
out by the Qing dynasty at the turn of the century that eliminated most of
the original regional armies, absorbed the taxes that had supported them into
regular state budgets, and replaced them with Western-style and bureaucrati-
cally organized “New Armies” (Liu 1974; MacKinnon 1973). Ironically, it
was these new, and largely professional, military forces that would ultimately
provide the main foundation for warlord power.
A more recent theory links the development of these New Armies to the
origin of warlordism but with a greater focus on fiscal resources than on
military organization. According to Hans van de Ven (1996), the need to
fund massive reform projects, including the New Armies, coincided with a
drastic decline in central financial resources (arising from many factors, but
significantly affected by indemnities imposed on China following military
conflicts with foreign powers). As a result, both the Qing imperial court and
subsequent Republican governments were increasingly forced to devolve

responsibility for reform programs, including the development of modern-
style New Armies, to provincial governments. In essence, van de Ven sees
the origins of warlordism in a fiscal crisis that led to the devolution of power,
including control over military finances, to the provinces.
The decentralization of public finance, and the resulting fragmentation of
military organization, certainly had a major impact on the development of
Chinese warlordism. At the very least, this situation insured that the rise of
military power as a political force took the form of warlordism (with a divi-
sion of power among competing military commanders) instead of a central-
ized military dictatorship. What van de Ven is less able to answer, though,
is why this fiscal devolution necessarily placed political power in the hands
of military men. Explaining this requires an additional understanding of the
political context of the era.
I have argued that the acquisition of political power by military command-
ers was the result of a two-step process: first the politicization of the military
and second the militarization of politics (McCord 1993). The politicization
of the military occurred when educated young officers, primarily in the New
Armies, were drawn into debates over reform or revolution in the last years
of the Qing dynasty. This led directly to military participation in provincial
uprisings that initiated the revolution against the dynasty in 1911. This par-
ticipation, however, was also the first step toward the militarization of poli-
tics. The main context for this development was a lack of political consensus
over the nature of the post-imperial “Republican” government (e.g., whether
to establish a centralized or a federalist state, or a presidential or a parliamen-
tary system of government) and who should hold political power. Lacking a
consensus on how to resolve these issues, all sides turned to military force to
advance their political objectives. In 1913, a small number of “revolutionary”
provinces organized a military revolt against the dictatorial tendencies of the
first president, Yuan Shikai. Yuan then used military force to suppress this
revolt and extend central power more completely over the provinces. When
Yuan attempted to strengthen his power further by restoring the monarchy
in 1915, with himself as emperor, an even larger number of provinces raised
arms against him. Yuan’s death in the middle of this conflict did nothing to
resolve underlying political issues. Rather a series of conflicts continued to
pit Yuan’s former generals in North China with recalcitrant southern prov-
inces seeking to maintain a larger degree of political autonomy.
The militarization of politics that occurred over the course of these
repeated civil wars produced warlordism—that is, a shift of political power
into the hands of military commanders. If nothing else, the very fact that
military force became the main political resource automatically increased the
political influence of these commanders. At the same time, the need to meet
the financial requirements of warfare increased the predilection, as well as

the ability, of military commanders to gain control of political and financial
resources. Thus, to maintain the support of military commanders for their
political causes both Yuan Shikai and his political opponents had little choice
but to award them with administrative positions, such as military or even
civil governorships, that they could use to provide a financial base for their
forces. It is at this point that the decentralization of military finances worked
in favor of the emergence of a fragmented system of warlordism. Meanwhile,
the emergence of warlordism also changed the nature of political conflicts.
Once military commanders gained control over administrative and financial
resources, the maintenance of their own power quickly became their main
priority. The original issues that had given rise to the Republic’s early wars
faded into the background, to be replaced by civil wars that were mainly
warlord struggles for power.
This explanation of the emergence of warlordism as the result of the steady
militarization of politics also challenges another frequent account of the rise
of Chinese warlordism that sees military men as simply filling a political and
administrative vacuum created by the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911.1 As
a matter of fact, civil administration did not simply collapse with the estab-
lishment of the Republic. Indeed, for the most part, local, provincial, and
national administrations, though weakened, continued to function across the
Republican era, including the early period that saw the rise of warlordism.
Officials continued to be appointed; taxes continued to be collected.2 Access
to these administrative and financial resources were precisely why military
commanders sought to gain control of political offices, particularly those with
control over appointments and revenues. Maintaining the financial resources
that could be derived from these positions (which were necessary to support
their armies) also required that these commanders give at least a modicum of
attention to the maintenance of administrative systems.
It is difficult, then, to designate Chinese warlords simply as “non-state
actors” when they universally sought, and commonly held, official positions
such as provincial civil or military governorships. The maintenance of their
power actually required Chinese warlords (at least the successful ones) to act
not only as military commanders but also as state bureaucrats. The main dis-
tinction that needs to be made, though, is that they were not merely function-
aries of a central state but rather local or regional power-holders who gained
control over pieces of the administrative system that had survived from the
imperial state into the Republic.
The political fragmentation and decentralization that accompanied the
emergence of Chinese warlordism often leads to an assumption of politi-
cal autonomy, or even independence, as a key and defining characteristic
of warlordism. Thus, one commonly cited definition of warlordism by
James Sheridan, in his introduction to a study of the Chinese warlord Feng

Yuxiang, notes, “A warlord exercised effective government control over a
fairly well-defined region by means of a military organization that obeyed
no higher authority than himself” [italics added] (Sheridan 1966, 1). More
general definitions of warlordism beyond the Chinese case make the same
characterization. Thus, Antonio Giustozzi (2005, 5) notes that the warlord
“has full and autonomous control over a military force, which he can use at
will.”
Although the potential for autonomous action is an important feature of
warlord power, an examination of the Chinese case also suggests the con-
straints under which many warlords were actually forced to operate. First,
although a warlord depended on his command of a military organization as
the foundation of his power, this command was based in turn on his ability
to maintain the support of his military subordinates. Such support might be
enhanced by a warlord’s personal charisma, but in the end, it mainly derived
from his ability to meet the specific needs of his officers and soldiers—with
military positions, advancement opportunities, and, most importantly, pay.
Control over civil administration also offered warlords the opportunity to
reward followers with lucrative civil office appointments (Kapp 1974, 159–
60). Second, warlords did not exist in isolation but as part of a competitive
warlord system. While certainly free to make independent decisions, most
found security in broader factional alliances. These alliances operated with
a set of rules that constrained warlord actions, which Hsi-sheng Ch’i (1976)
has compared to the working of the international system. Finally, beyond
this warlord system, warlords also had to operate within a broader social and
political milieu, which often forced compromises with civilian elites or even
accommodations with broader popular opinion.
The importance of such constraints is clearly visible in the rise and fall
of the Hubei warlord, Wang Zhanyuan. While originally enjoying strong
support from his officers and men, over time insufficient financial resources,
exacerbated by Wang’s efforts to line his own pockets, led to massive arrears
in troop pay. When Wang sought to disband his oldest and most loyal troops
as a money-saving measure, they mutinied and pillaged Wang’s capital city.
The public outrage over this incident, and other similar mutinies around the
province, led to increased opposition from Hubei’s political elites to Wang’s
continued rule. More importantly, the mutinies suggested to outsiders that
Wang was no longer in full control of his own military forces. This created
concern among Wang’s factional allies that their enemies might seize Wang’s
territory and upset broader power arrangements. To forestall this outcome,
Wang’s putative allies took advantage of the popular outcry against him to
move their own troops into Hubei, deposing Wang and incorporating his
army and his territory into their own (McCord 2014b). Certainly, up to that
point, Wang had been an “autonomous” actor in China’s warlord system; but
that autonomy still operated within numerous constraints.
Among the constraints within which Chinese warlords had to operate was
the survival of central government structures that still retained some authority
and political power. Some recent scholarship on warlordism has argued that
warlords operate “at sub-state level, in regions where state has withdrawn
or has lost monopoly of violence.” As such, warlords are seen as simply
attempting to benefit as much as possible from state disorder (Giustozzi
2005, 5). This reinforces the conceptualization of warlords as non-state actors
pursuing their own interests in opposition, or indifference, to the state. An
investigation of the relationship between Chinese warlords and the Chinese
state, however, suggests a more complicated process at work.
While the Chinese state was clearly weakened following the fall of the
Qing dynasty, and provincial warlords steadily undermined the central gov-
ernment’s monopoly over military force, central authority did not entirely
disappear. At the most basic level, an internationally recognized national
government continued to exist in Beijing over the entire warlord period. More
to the point, this government was not totally without resources. Indeed, the
unwillingness of the foreign powers to see China’s complete collapse ensured
that all customs revenues (after the fulfillment of foreign loan obligations)
were delivered to Beijing. This alone made the Beijing government a prize
to be fought over by competing warlord factions. A more subtle resource
was the central government’s power of appointment that provided political
legitimacy for the control of local and provincial administrations—and the
revenues they generated. As a result, these appointments were highly sought
after. This did not mean that the Chinese state, represented by the govern-
ment in Beijing, was able to exert much direct control over its “appointees.”
For example, central ministers frankly admitted to civilian petitioners calling
for Wang Zhanyuan’s removal that the central government had no effective
means to do this (Liu 1922, 132, 137–40). At the same time, over the term of
his office, Wang Zhanyuan was engaged in a constant dance with the central
government over titles, appointments, and revenues that showed that the cen-
tral state still maintained some minimal leverage.
The nature of central authority in China during the warlord period was
complicated because southern provinces (and their warlord rulers) periodi-
cally denied the authority of the national government in Beijing, controlled as
it was by their main warlord rivals. Nonetheless, in such cases, they usually
collaborated in the recognition of an alternate central government situated
in Canton (sometimes headed by the main revolutionary leader Sun Yat-
sen) that based its authority on earlier constitutions or national assemblies
overthrown by Yuan Shikai or his successors in Beijing. Although never
internationally recognized, these Canton governments performed the same
legitimating function for southern warlords as the Beijing government did

for their northern competitors. None of this denies the substantial political
autonomy enjoyed by China’s warlords in most contexts. But a decentralized
government is hardly the same as the absence of government.
The decisions by warlords, north or south, to offer allegiance, even if
largely nominal, to either the central government in Beijing or to a Canton
challenger were also a response to other international and domestic con-
straints. On the one hand, the decision by the international community to
recognize only the Beijing government inhibited any movement toward more
complete independence by individual warlords (Chong 2009). On the other
hand, and perhaps more importantly, any warlord declaring complete inde-
pendence risked provoking internal patriotic furor. While the direct danger
from popular opposition might be limited, this opposition could provide a
justification for attacks by warlord competitors. As a result, most warlords
at least nominally expressed their support for a unified (or reunified) China
as their ultimate political goal. This then was yet another limitation on full
warlord autonomy.
The main period of warlord ascendency in China was the decade fol-
lowing Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916. In 1926, though, the Nationalist Party
government in Canton launched a military campaign, known as the Northern
Expedition, dedicated to the overthrow of warlordism and the reunification
of the country. The main military resource for this effort was a new profes-
sionalized party army meant to break the power of the warlords and end the
pattern of personalized military command. The success of this expedition,
under the leadership of the commander of this party army, Chiang Kai-shek,
was only possible, though, by carefully balancing the defeat of major warlord
contenders with appeals for support from other lesser warlords for the party’s
nationalist cause. The need to rely on military force to achieve political
“unification” actually worked to preserve the power of military leaders (both
former warlords and new Nationalist Party Army commanders) in the new
political system—with many of these commanders holding the same level of
military-based authority in the provinces as their early Republican warlord
predecessors.3 As a result, James Sheridan characterized these command-
ers in the decade of Nationalist Party rule from its new capital in Nanjing
(1927–1937) as a period of “residual warlordism” (Sheridan 1966, 14–16).
The main difference between this decade and the earlier period of original
warlordism was a slow recovery of central power under the Nanjing govern-
ment, with some increased constraints on warlord autonomy. One main indi-
cator of this change was the near universal recognition by surviving or new
warlords of the ideological legitimacy of the Nationalist Party, to the extent
that some scholars argue they might better be identified as “party” rather than
“residual” warlords (Lary 1974, 130). Nonetheless, these warlords did not
necessarily always recognize the authority of Chiang Kai-shek at the head of

the Nationalist Party government. As a result, recurring civil war remained a
feature of the period, with various military commanders challenging Nanjing
with claims that they were actually more faithful to the ideological aims of
the Nationalist Party. In the end, though, none of these challenges stopped
the growing power of the Nanjing government. So, while both the period fol-
lowing the death of Yuan Shikai and the Nanjing decade may be considered
periods of warlordism, the first period was mainly characterized by struggles
among competing warlords amid declining central power, while the second
period was marked by increasingly defensive actions by residual warlords
against a restrengthened center. In the end, though, the relative autonomy of
warlords in both periods relied mainly on their ability to control the financial
resources necessary to maintain the military forces that were the main foun-
dation of their political influence.
WARLORD FINANCES
The frequency of warfare in the decades following the 1911 Revolution both
reflected and exacerbated the unstable and competitive nature of Chinese
warlordism. One result of this situation was to set a process into motion
whereby the survival of individual warlords ultimately required the constant
expansion of their military forces in order to maintain their competitive edge.
The growth of the number of men under arms in Hubei Province provides a
good example of this military expansion. In the late Qing, Hubei had what
was considered a fairly robust provincial New Army of one division and one
independent brigade (in a military system where divisions were normally
composed of two brigades, with around 10,000 officers and soldiers per
division). By 1920, Hubei’s military forces had grown to five divisions and
nearly a dozen brigades controlled by the province’s main warlord, Wang
Zhanyuan, and other affiliated military commanders, totaling over 100,000
soldiers (McCord 1993, 278–82). The main warlord of Manchuria, Zhang
Zuolin, commanded a single division when he pressured the central govern-
ment to appoint him civil and military governor of Fengtian Province in 1916.
By 1922, after Zhang had expanded his influence over Manchuria’s three
provinces, his command grew to over 100,000 soldiers. Before the end of the
decade, his army had expanded to nearly 300,000 men (Suleski 2002, 8–10).
Likewise, a “party” warlord who ruled over Guangdong Province from 1929
to 1936, Chen Jitang, consolidated his position not only by eliminating mili-
tary competitors but also by increasing his own army from 50,000 to 150,000
men (Lin 2002, 184). These are but several examples of a continuing process
of military growth seen in all areas during China’s warlord era.
This rapid military expansion quickly strained the fiscal resources of the
Chinese state at all levels. At the beginning of the Republic, military units
favored by “national” designations were in theory supposed to be paid
directly by the central government, while other forces were paid through
provincial budgets. Financial weakness, however, quickly made it impossible
for the central government in Beijing to meet its full obligations to national
units, whose commanders then tapped into provincial revenues to meet their
troop payrolls. Thus, by 1920, the contribution of the central government to
Wang Zhanyuan’s “national” division in Hubei was reduced to a dribble,
while his military expenses grew to claim one-half to two-thirds of the prov-
ince’s budget (McCord 2014b, 58–59). Increasing provincial responsibility
for troops payrolls, however, also made the warlords even more reluctant to
forward “national” taxes to the Beijing government (even in the provinces
where its authority was recognized), thus weakening even further the central
government’s ability to exert any control, by fiscal means, over the country’s
growing armies and their commanders.
The ability of Chinese warlords to maintain their military forces, and thus
their capacity to wage war, thus came to depend primarily on their capture
of, or control over, local or provincial state resources. Warlords like Wang
Zhanyuan and Zhang Zuolin sought to obtain official positions precisely
because this gave them operational authority over provincial or local admin-
istrations, and hence over the financial resources of these administrations. To
be more precise, what they sought was not just a specific amount of resources
controlled through these positions, but the authority to increase revenues as
needed to support their growing armies. In a useful summary of warlord eco-
nomic capabilities, Hsi-sheng Ch’i divides these resulting revenue streams
into two broad categories, “regular” sources of income, mainly taxes, and
“special” sources of income including “bonds, loans, currency manipulation,
opium profits, and various forms of emergency exactions” (Ch’i 1976, 151).
For most of Chinese history up to the twentieth-century warlord era, the
most important source of “regular” state income was the land tax. In theory,
all land tax was supposed to be delivered to the central government, making
it the main fiscal foundation of the state. Following the 1911 Revolution,
though, many provinces began to withhold land tax revenues to pay for the
increasing costs of “modern” provincial and local administration. By this
means, the land tax also became an important initial financial resource for
emerging warlords controlling provincial governments. Recognizing the
inability to reverse this devolution of taxing power, the Nationalist govern-
ment established in 1927 ultimately gave up any “central” claim to these
revenues.
For all its importance, the “transaction costs” of the land tax were fairly
high in terms of maintaining land and tax records, collecting the tax itself (in
kind or in cash), and monitoring compliance. Although land taxes could, in

theory, be increased by reassessing land usage and productivity at periodic
intervals, in practice the cost of conducting land surveys for this purpose was
prohibitive relative to expected gains. Generally speaking, then, increases in
land taxes in the warlord era were not pursued by changing base tax rates but
by simply including new “add-on” fees to established tax assessments. By the
end of the era, these fees often exceeded the original land tax itself. Another
means of raising land tax revenues was the advance collection of land taxes
for future years. This was sometimes justified by emergency situations requir-
ing new revenues; but it often occurred when a warlord gained control over
territory previously held by another warlord who had already collected, and
spent, that year’s tax revenues. While in theory advance collections relieved
taxpayers of future obligations, in practice advance collections—in extreme
cases extending more than a decade—simply became additional assessments.4
The traditional importance of the land tax in China as state revenue, includ-
ing initial warlord regimes, has perhaps contributed to an overly “territorial”
notion of the bases of warlord power, grounded on the assumption that war-
lords would focus on accumulating and holding land from which taxes could
be extracted. Simply in terms of reducing transaction costs, though, most
warlords paid more attention to garrisoning administrative nodes through
which land taxes were processed than in patrolling, or fighting over, parcels
of territories on which the land tax was based.
This situation can be seen in the fragmented sub-provincial “garrison area”
system that developed in Sichuan Province in the warlord era. Robert Kapp’s
study of one major garrison area commander, Liu Xiang (who held power in
eastern Sichuan from 1926 to 1937), notes that the exact number of counties
in any one garrison area varied considerably over time, but long-established
county borders continued to serve unchanged within garrison areas boundar-
ies (Kapp 1974, 161). In other words, “territorial” struggles among warlords
did not focus on actual acreage but on county seats that remained the admin-
istrative collection points for county taxes within established boundaries.
Interestingly, in many of Sichuan’s garrison areas, the garrison area com-
manders at the top of the provincial military “food chain” actually yielded the
right to collect local land taxes to their local military subordinates to cover
their own military expenses, thus mirroring to a certain degree the devolution
of land tax revenues from the center to the provinces under the Nationalist
government (Kapp 1974, 162). In the end, Liu Xiang, like many other major
warlords, did not depend primarily on land taxes for their power. As Kapp
notes, Liu Xiang’s control over his garrison area ultimately depended on the
more lucrative resources he gained by establishing his administrative base in
the major Yangzi River port and commercial city of Chongqing in eastern
Sichuan.5
Although the amount of land taxes collected continued to grow, over time
they became less important as a major source of warlord financing. This
was only possible because of the availability of larger and more easily col-
lected revenues. Thus, by the late 1920s, land taxes only accounted for 5–10
percent of the revenues for Chen Jitang’s warlord regime in Guangdong. As
Alfred Lin notes, this situation was made possible by the proliferation of a
large number of miscellaneous taxes, including a gambling tax, that provided
14–20 percent of Chen’s revenues (Lin 2002, 189). Across China, the pro-
liferation of such taxes emerged as a major way in which warlords met their
rising costs. James Sheridan provides a list of seventy miscellaneous taxes
and fees collected in Xiamen (Amoy) in 1924, including a night soil tax, a
lower-class prostitute singing tax, a narcissus bulb tax, and a “superstition
tax” on paper money offerings used in funerals, as well as more mundane
taxes on pigs, flour, tea, cotton yarn, and street lamps (Sheridan 1966, 25).
Simply listing the diversity of taxes that were instituted in the warlord era
in China may, however, again obscure the topography of warlord financing
that was determined by the nature and location of goods that presented the
most lucrative sources for taxation. While nearly any good or service could be
a target for taxation, it was a simple matter of efficiency to focus tax collec-
tion in urban areas where concentrated populations and commercial activity
guaranteed a higher yield. In this context, it is again not surprising that war-
lords focused their main attention “spatially” on the control of cities rather
than on the countryside per se. Cities were not just appealing targets because
they served as administrative centers for taxation systems that extended into
the countryside but also because they were arenas for easy collection of high-
yield commercial taxation. This was especially true for certain high-value
products that could be taxed easily as they passed through cities along major
transportation routes. One prominent example was the importance of taxes on
opium, largely produced in China’s southwest provinces. For warlords along
shipping routes leading out of opium production areas, a simple military
roadblock or a gun emplacement along a riverbank could potentially reap
huge and consistent tax revenues.6 For this reason, roads and commercial
waterways acted as the main sinews connecting the urban nodes of warlord
financial power.
The ability of warlords to collect such a range of taxes (and to raise rates
on these taxes) was ultimately legitimized by the official positions they held.
This did not mean that they were simply able to impose new taxes by fiat.
One reason for seeking the authority of a public office was that it allowed
the warlord to gain some degree of compliance from the population for his
tax assessments—which resulted in lower transaction costs than if funds
were simply collected at the point of a gun.7 At the same time, gaining such
compliance opened the way for some degree of negotiation with taxpayers, or
their representatives, which could also place some limitations on the amount
of taxes that could be raised. For example, Wang Zhanyuan normally sought
the approval of the Hubei Provincial Assembly for tax increases. Although
Wang bribed assemblymen to keep them amenable to his proposals, they
retained enough autonomy if not to refuse then to renegotiate tax hikes in
some cases. Other interest groups, such as chambers of commerce, could also
use their influence to negotiate tax increases downward in exchange for a
guarantee of smooth tax deliveries (McCord 2014b, 59–60).8
In the end, most successful warlords found some way to reach accommo-
dations with merchants and other civil elites to ease their access to needed
financial resources. Thus, Zhang Zuolin developed a special relationship
with one member of the civil elite, Wang Yongjiang, who served as Zhang’s
civil governor. Wang mediated an implicit bargain between Zhang and
Manchuria’s business elites that, for nearly a decade, ensured that Zhang’s
revenue needs for his growing army would always be met, but in a way that
produced the least amount of disruption of the local economy (Suleski 2002,
33–160). Robert Kapp notes that Liu Xiang initially faced some open oppo-
sition to new taxation from Chongqing’s merchant community, including a
merchant strike in 1929. Nonetheless, Liu worked hard to develop personal
relationships with merchant leaders, seeking their advice on financial issues,
and generally winning them over to help him meet his fiscal needs. Kapp
suggests that the merchants’ seeming submission to Liu’s will was paradoxi-
cally due in part to the “investment” the merchant community made to the
consolidation of Liu’s position over time. Working with a known incumbent
was, in the end, less harmful than the prospect of a change in military con-
trol and the warfare that would normally accompany such a transition (Kapp
1974, 157–58).
Given the existence of a tipping point where the transaction costs of raising
taxes could outweigh the additional funds raised, no successful warlord relied
solely on taxation. Most therefore also pursued other “special” revenues from
a variety of sources. In many cases, though, it was still the warlord’s official
position that eased the acquisition of such revenues.
Hubei’s Wang Zhanyuan again provides a good example of the pursuit of
such special revenue sources. Wang was able to use his position as provincial
governor to negotiate official loans, pledged against provincial properties
and future tax revenues, with both foreign and domestic investors. Thus,
he obtained two 1 million yuan loans from Japanese and American bankers
in 1919 and 1920 respectively. Domestically, Wang also reportedly issued
over 2 million yuan in bonds through the Hubei government, none of which
were ever fully redeemed, to meet his military expenses. As willing lenders
became increasingly difficult to find, Wang turned to more forceful means of
exacting “loans” directly from chambers of commerce in the Hubei capital.
Warning that without these funds he could not guarantee the good behavior
of his troops, Wang demanded first a 600,000 yuan loan from the chambers
followed shortly after by another demand for an additional 2 million yuan
(McCord 2014b, 60–61).
Currency manipulation was another popular means of “revenue enhance-
ment.” The location of the Hubei Mint within Wang Zhanyuan’s capital
essentially provided him with opportunities to increase the issue of coins and
to print money to meet deficits in his military payrolls. One estimate was
that banknotes worth over 90 million strings of copper cash were issued by
the Hubei Mint over the course of Wang’s reign. The official status of the
Mint helped to slow, if not prevent, the depreciation in the value of currency
Wang created. Another way Wang sought to avoid depreciation was to hide
the excess issue of unbacked currency through putative “redemptions” of old
banknotes where the new notes significantly exceeded the total value of the
notes redeemed (McCord 2014b, 60).
Although the Hubei Mint gave Wang Zhanyuan a special resource, most
warlords also worked through other official financial institutions, or even pri-
vate banks, to issue supposedly state-backed currency of various types.9 Some
military commanders resorted to the issue of “promissory notes” or special
“military scripts” to meet troop payrolls, requiring merchants to accept these
notes as if they were actual currency. The value of these notes relied on the
threats of angry soldiers, who were paid in these notes, if merchants dared
to reject them. The total value of various financial instruments used to cover
expenses by various warlord regimes often reached astronomical levels.
Thus, Chen Jitang’s government in Guangdong issued over 100 million yuan
through a succession of treasury notes and public bonds from 1929 to 1936.
Meanwhile, over time Liu’s administration also authorized the Provincial
Government Bank to issue nearly 200 million yuan in banknotes, while also
borrowing over 80 million yuan directly from the bank, to cover administra-
tive and military expenses (Lin 2002, 202–3).
In the end, there were still some limits on the extent to which warlords
could simply print money to solve their fiscal problems without leading to
devaluations that would decrease their utility. Kwong Chi Man (2014) has
shown the extreme efforts Zhang Zuolin had to make in Manchuria to main-
tain the stability of the currency issued by his regime, particularly since he
had to compete for public confidence with alternate Russian and Japanese
currencies that circulated in his territory. Beyond the intrinsic market value of
the currency issued, Kwong shows how success or failure in military ventures
(often specifically pursued to acquire additional financial resources, such as
Zhang’s decision to extend his power over Beijing in 1926) could have an
impact on civilian confidence in a warlord’s currency, easing or exacerbating
his fiscal problems.
Although there were many commonalities in warlord finance in early

twentieth-century China, the main one being the constant drive for increased
revenues to meet growing military expenses, there could also be considerable
variation from one warlord to the next as they adapted to and took advantage
of available resources. The competition for these resources also generated
conflicts for the control of more lucrative administrative and commercial cen-
ters and transportation networks. Although the need to maintain the military
foundations of warlord power underlay all such struggles, the possibility of
personal enrichment was an additional factor behind the constant drive for
revenue enhancement. This situation contributed to the particular “predatory”
nature of warlord rule.
PREDATORY WARLORDISM
Although rarely used in Chinese warlord studies, the term predatory rule has
been applied in many other cases to describe the nature of warlord gover-
nance. There is, however, considerable diversity of opinion on how to define
this term.10 In many cases, it seems more deployed for its evocative imagery
(of warlords as predators) than as a clear analytical concept. Margaret Levi
made one of the more widely cited efforts to give this concept greater clar-
ity. She argues that “Rulers are predatory in that they always try to set the
terms of trade that maximize their personal objectives, which . . . require
them to maximize state revenue” (Levi 1988, 10). In attributing the aspira-
tion to maximize revenues to all rulers, with differences in performance only
resulting from various constraints such as transaction costs, Levi would seem,
however, to define most governments as predatory. As such, the term loses
much of its analytical or comparative value. In seeking to provide greater
utility for the application of this concept to warlordism, I have argued for
a more specific focus on the personal objectives of rulers in terms of their
financial policies and actions, proposing that predatory rule be defined as “a
form of governance whereby political position is deployed to maximize the
ruler’s personal power and private wealth to the detriment of the public good”
(McCord 2014b, 51).
Many Chinese warlords in the early twentieth century were notable in the
extent to which they used their positions to acquire considerable personal
wealth, exhibiting the qualities of what might then be called predatory war-
lordism. According to one estimate, the wealth of the Manchurian warlord
Zhang Zuolin in 1925 reached around 18 million yuan, divided between
real estate holdings and cash deposits (Suleski 2002, 10). Wang Zhanyuan’s
wealth at the time of his departure from Hubei in 1920 was estimated at 10
million yuan (Liu 1922, 3). To put this into perspective, the entire annual
official budget for the province of Hubei in this period was approximately the
same amount: 10.8 million yuan (Shibao, August 2, 1920).
Even if numbers can usually only be estimated, the wealth achieved by
many warlords was often easily observable in terms of their acquisition of
land and property.11 Even so, the specific ways in which this wealth was
acquired is sometimes less easy to determine. This is partially true because
many warlords made little distinction between public and private purses.
For this very reason, though, it was also clear that the foundation of warlord
wealth was often, if not always, initially built on the embezzlement of public
funds. It was fairly common, for example, for military officers up the chain of
command in both the late Qing and early Republic to withhold, and transfer
into their own pockets, a portion of the pay supposedly allocated for their
soldiers, or funds for unit expenses. Another method at higher command
levels involved falsely reporting higher than actual troop numbers in order
to pocket the pay of missing soldiers. Wang Zhanyuan turned this technique
into a high art by filling up to 10 percent of the troop rosters in all units under
his command with “empty names” for nonexistent soldiers. By marking these
soldiers as “on assignment” to his office, Wang was able to pocket the pay for
these men without raising too much attention. He also delayed troop pay so
he could use payroll funds for short-term investments. Finally, he regularly
embezzled funds intended for military expenses. His ability to appoint loyal
followers to military and financial offices in charge of such funds allowed
him to obscure the amounts that ultimately ended up in his own accounts
(McCord 2014b, 62–63; Yan 1989).
Wang, who later in life often bragged about his business acumen, did not
simply let these embezzled funds lie fallow. Rather, he invested them in a
wide range of business opportunities, including the purchase of rental proper-
ties and the establishment of, or investment in, a wide range of industries. In
many cases, the manipulation of his official position helped to increase his
profits in these investments. For example, he ordered all Hubei police and
military units to acquire uniforms, bedding, and leather products from com-
panies he established to produce these goods. He was also actively involved
in commerce, taking advantage of official transportation and tax waivers for
the shipment of “military use” goods to increase his profits (McCord 2014b,
63–64; Zheng 1962, 256). Wang accumulated enough wealth by the time of
his fall from power to invest in an even wider range of business opportunities,
expanding his fortune in retirement to an estimated 40 million yuan (Jiang
1983, 27).
Wang Zhanyuan was perhaps one of the most successful of China’s
Republican era warlords in terms of personal wealth accumulation. But
he was not alone. This can be seen in the importance of warlord capital
as a major source for industrial investment in North China in this period
(Zhu 1979). Sichuan warlords likewise found ample opportunities for

investment in real estate, banking, opium trafficking, and a range of other
commercial activities. Their military positions were again often useful in
increasing the profitability of their investments. For example, Liu Xiang
invested in a river steamer to transport opium downriver, using military
flags to avoid customs inspections (Kapp 1974, 159). Likewise, Chen
Jitang generated enormous personal profits from a sugar monopoly created
by his government in Guangdong. Reflecting the extent to which warlords
could intermingle public and private purses, when Chen was forced from
power in 1936, he was able to carry away 7 million yuan and nearly 4
million in Hong Kong dollars from the Guangdong Provincial Bank (Lin
2002, 201–3).
The regularity with which so many warlords parlayed military and politi-
cal power into personal wealth has often led to the inclusion of predatory
rule, even if not using this exact terminology, in the definition of Chinese
warlordism. Nonetheless, Wang Zhanyuan’s case also shows how excessive
attention to personal wealth acquisition could contribute to a loss of military
and civil power. Indeed, Wang’s example was perhaps a cautionary tale about
the trade-off between the pursuit of wealth and the maintenance of political
power. Wang’s personal greed played at least some role in his downfall by
alienating not only public opinion (infuriated by Wang’s continual demands
for more financial resources) but also, and perhaps more importantly, the
loyalty of this own troops, who saw Wang grow rich even as they suffered
repeated delays or cuts in their pay.
Realizing this, many warlords prioritized maintaining power over personal
enrichment (though clearly not ignoring how this power still guaranteed a
certain level of personal wealth).12 Concern for the maintenance of power
then led many warlords to conclude that their political performance in areas
other than military prowess could also be useful in sustaining their positions.
This concern was evident in the varying effects of warlordism on, and of
warlord attention to, the provision of public goods.
WARLORDS AND THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS
In many ways, the 1911 Revolution was the crowning moment of a reform-
ist movement that emerged in the last decades of the Qing dynasty, the
goals of which were not just political change but the transformation and
strengthening of China through increased state attention to the expansion of
education, the growth and reform of the national military, the development
of transportation and communication systems, and the general promotion
of commerce and industry. The immediate impact of the emergence of
warlordism in the early Republican period, though, was a general weaken-

ing, not the increase, of state capacity in these areas, perhaps most obvi-
ously seen in a decline in the provision of public goods. The only goal
that did not seem to suffer was the growth of the Chinese military, though
not necessarily meeting reformist demands for increased military qual-
ity. Military expansion was in turn a major reason for the decline in other
reform projects, as the funding needed for this expansion left far fewer
funds for nonmilitary projects.13
Some warlords such as Wang Zhanyuan would argue that the main public
good they provided, and which they assumed was sufficient to assure them
of public support, was the use of their armies to preserve local order (Liu
1922, 2). This was an increasingly difficult position to maintain, however, in
the context of continual warlord conflicts (or in Wang’s case, the outbreak of
violent and destructive mutinies among his own troops). Wang perhaps stood
at one end of a continuum in openly resisting advice that he build additional
“merit” in the eyes of the public by attention to other activities that would
benefit the people’s livelihood (Zheng 1962, 257). There were other warlords,
however, who actively sought to gain popular support for their regimes by the
provision of public goods, whether in terms of traditionally expected govern-
ment services or in meeting the reformist demands of the modern era.14 And
there is at least some evidence that paying attention to such issues increased
the longevity of particular warlord regimes.
One of the most prominent examples of a warlord who gained a reputa-
tion for his reform and public welfare projects was the warlord of Shanxi
Province, Yan Xishan. Yan was an educated New Army officer who led
Shanxi’s military forces against the Qing dynasty in 1911, resulting in his
appointment as military governor by Yuan Shikai in 1912, beginning a long
rule over the province that lasted, with some ups and downs, until 1949. In
his early years, Yan initiated many programs influenced by late Qing reform
movements, including the suppression of foot-binding, the promotion of lit-
eracy classes and vocational schools for women, the establishment of a medi-
cal school, the expansion of public education (providing four years of public
schooling for all children), the organization of public health campaigns, and
the formation of militia to suppress banditry. To grow his province’s econ-
omy, he set up chambers of commerce, expanded road systems, promoted
reforestation, and established, with varying degrees of success, a variety of
light industries, including flour mills, a cigarette factory, a paper mill, and
a large textile mill. As a result of these efforts, Yan became known as the
“Model Governor” (Gillin 1967).
Warlord promotion of various projects to improve the economies of their
territories and the lives of their inhabitants picked up pace in the period
of residual or party warlordism when legitimation based on adherence to
Nationalist Party principles required at least some attention to the provision

of public goods or, as Alfred Lin describes it, “provincial regeneration” (Lin
2002, 177–80). Lin’s studies of Chen Jitang’s regime in Guangdong provide
a good example of the extensive efforts undertaken toward this end by one
prominent warlord. First, Chen was engaged in an extensive range of public
works, including the building of over 17,000 kilometers of highways. He also
contributed to the development of the province’s economy with the founding
of sugar and cement plants (Lin 2002, 179, 200). Finally, he took a personal
interest in the provision of “social relief work,” organizing a new Social
Welfare Bureau to unify philanthropic activities in the province and, at least
in theory, provide expanded and more efficient services. Among the projects
instituted were free health clinics and public dormitories providing housing
for the poor and indigent (Lin 2004).
Other examples can be found in other warlord regimes in this period.
Liu Xiang’s administration initiated the construction of a network of mod-
ern streets in Chongqing and established a new business district outside
the original walls of the densely packed old city. He also developed part-
nerships with several private companies to advance the development of
commerce and industry. For example, with Liu’s backing, the Minsheng
Company revived Chinese-owned shipping based in Chongqing, and then
branched out into other activities: restoring a defunct coal company, build-
ing a railroad for coal transportation, and establishing a refrigeration plant, a
shipyard, and machine shops, among other industries (Kapp 1974, 149–53).
The main warlord in Hunan during the Nanjing decade, He Jian, also initi-
ated an extensive state-building program to aid in the regeneration of his
province. He was particularly dedicated to the improvement of education,
overseeing the opening of over 5,000 new primary schools. He also quadru-
pled the number of motorized vehicle highways in the province, laid down
extensive telephone and telegraph lines, and saw to the completion of the
last leg of the Beijing-Canton railroad through his province. In a synopsis
of his achievements published after he left office in 1937, he credited his
administration with improving waterways, founding orphanages and hospi-
tals, overseeing disaster relief, and improving local administration (McCord
2014c, 132–34).
Alfred Lin (2002, 178–79) cites a number of other studies that he argues
show “genuine” efforts at provincial regeneration carried out by a large num-
ber of warlords in various areas. One cannot, however, view these efforts in
purely altruistic terms. First, as Lin notes, most of these warlords saw the
success of such regenerative projects as also increasing their regime stability
and legitimacy by appealing to popular opinion. Second, altruism and self-
interest could intermingle, particularly in cases where industrial development
projects also provided opportunities for profit by warlord investors. Finally,
various projects that could serve the public good in various ways were often
still linked to broader revenue maximization goals.
The best example of this last point might be Liu Xiang’s development
of the Minsheng Company to revive Chongqing-based shipping along the
Yangzi River. One of Liu’s stated goals at the time was to eliminate the
privileges of foreign shipping that had been established by unequal treaties
with foreign powers. On one hand, he offered tax relief to the Minsheng
Company to make it more competitive with foreign shipping lines; on the
other hand, he used political pressure and the threat of nationalist boycotts to
convince the foreign companies to relinquish their privileges. Liu’s success
greatly enhanced his popular status by making himself appear as a leader
in an anti-imperialist shipping rights recovery movement, leading Anne
Reinhardt (2008) to use this case as an example of the way that warlords,
mainly known for protecting their political autonomy, could still be effective
in achieving nationalist goals, in this case “decolonization on the periphery.”
But Liu was hardly motivated by patriotism alone. First, as an investor in
the Minsheng Company, Liu had a personal stake in its success. Second, and
more importantly, Reinhardt shows how Liu’s initial motivation was still
more derived from a desire to consolidate his ability to control revenues from
shipping through Chongqing by not only monopolizing Chinese shipping but
also eliminating the treaty-based tax-exempt status of foreign shipping lines
(Reinhardt 2008, 263).
It is important, then, not to rely on an over simplistic understanding of
warlord motivations or actions. While some warlords may have sought to
use their command of military force for personal enrichment, as well as
for the consolidation of political power, others may have also had genuine
interests in using their power for the greater benefit of society, or at least of
the people in their garrison areas. Different warlords were influenced by a
confluence or a combination of motives depending on the contexts in which
they operated, and their personal predilections. None of this, however, could
withstand the underlying logic of warlord power. As Alfred Lin notes,
Notwithstanding differences among warlords, no warlord could have failed to

realize that the very survival of his regime depended on ready access to the
mainstays of war. Thus, a warlord’s primary concern was maximizing revenue
to finance his war machine. Such an overriding focus undercut whatever desires
a warlord might have for the betterment of society. (Lin 2002, 178)
Successful warlords were those who never forgot the priorities forced upon
them by the competitive nature of warlordism, which always made revenue
acquisition to maintain their armies a top priority.
THE EFFECTS OF WARLORDISM
The effects of warlordism on China, and on the Chinese economy, in the early
twentieth century were wide-ranging—and largely negative. The most imme-
diate and obvious of these negative effects was the sheer physical destruction
of property and the loss of life that occurred during the incessant warfare of
the warlord era. Ordinary Chinese, however, often experienced this loss of
life and property not only as a by-product of the battles that raged around
them but also as a result of deliberate violence by ill-disciplined troops who
took advantage of the environment of war, and their access to weapons, to
carry out casual looting, wholesale pillage, murder, and rape. One of the
features of the warlord era, then, was the frequent occurrence of military
atrocities, which in some cases could result in the destruction of entire com-
munities. This violence was such that “military disasters” (bingzai) were
often paired with “natural disasters” (tianzai) as the main afflictions suffered
by the Chinese people in this era (Lary 1985, 71–82, 111; McCord 2015).
In the areas where they occurred, the baneful effects of warlord wars also
reached far beyond immediate destruction of public and private property or
the loss of civilian lives. Battles, or even the passing of combatant forces,
interrupted agricultural cycles. Family livelihoods were disrupted as count-
less civilians were impressed from farms and shops to serve as bearers for
armies on the move. Massive flows of refugees fleeing troop violence dis-
rupted the economies of the communities they fled from as well as those
where they sought refuge. The seizure of rail and water transport for military
use, as well as the general blockage of transportation routes during military
confrontations, disrupted commerce, bankrupted businesses, and created
shortages of food and other necessary goods. Meanwhile, even the threat of
war, let alone the outbreak of actual military conflict, created financial pan-
ics and currency instability. This was particularly true because the expanded
costs of war forced participating warlords to increase their regular financial
exactions. The defeat of a warlord could result in the collapse of the currency
supported by his regime and defaults on the bonds and loans that had aided
in the maintenance of his army. Banditry also flourished as guns discarded by
defeated troops, or the incorporation of these troops themselves, increased the
resources of bandit bands, even as warlords became less amenable to risking
their own soldiers in bandit suppression.15
Beyond the direct and indirect effects of warlord conflicts, there were the
more general economic consequences of warlord financing. Here, some cau-
tion against overgeneralization is perhaps due. The tendency of both contem-
porary and more recent scholarly accounts of Chinese warlordism to focus on
its destructive economic consequences has contributed to negative assump-
tions about the overall weakness of the Republican economy. Contesting such
assumptions, Thomas Rawski has shown that on the balance, and at the macro
level, the Republican period (including the warlord era) was generally a time
of trade expansion and economic growth. More controversially, he has argued
that unlike normal portrayals of excessive financial exactions by warlord
regimes (and the following Nationalist government), the Chinese people were
relatively undertaxed in comparison to other societies in similar stages of
development (Rawski 1989, xix–64). Leaving aside the question of whether
a standard can be set for “over” or “under” taxation, these rosy conclusions
fail to take note of the impact of warlord financing as actually experienced,
albeit subjectively, by the Chinese people.
There is no question that both taxes and other financial exactions rose
exponentially during the warlord era. More important, though, was the way
in which an increasing proportion of state revenues collected by the warlords
was dedicated to military purposes—directly as a result of the competitive
military needs created by warlordism. The issue, then, is not just the eco-
nomic burden imposed on the people by the warlords but the opportunity
costs in terms of how the funds spent on the military might have been put
to more productive use. Aggravating this questionable application of state
funds was the way in which predatory warlords also drained away consider-
able portions of these funds by lining their own pockets. While it might be
argued that corruption was a perennial problem throughout Chinese history,
the power gained by military commanders over public finances during the
warlord period exacerbated the negative effects of this practice.
As seen in this chapter, however, there are also paradoxes in the role that
warlords played in China’s economic development, which go beyond a sim-
plistic portrayal of economic harm. For example, predatory warlords who
accumulated a large amount of capital not surprisingly often ended up as
capitalist investors in major industrial and commercial enterprises. Donald
Gillin has argued that “[a]t least in some instances the division of China into
competing warlord regimes created an environment favorable to economic
growth, since in order to provide their armies with the latest weapons and
other necessities warlords were compelled to build factories and otherwise
develop the productive resources of their domains” (Gillin 1967, 293–94).
There is a hint here of the broader theory of how war, for all its destruc-
tive effects, has often been a force behind processes like state formation and
economic development in many contexts. And not all warlords were equally
predatory in their pursuit of personal wealth. As seen above, many warlords,
particularly in the period of residual warlordism, also deduced that their long-
term survival could be enhanced by attention to the provision of public goods,
and the promotion of economic development. Certainly, the efforts of war-
lords such as Yan Xishan, Chen Jitang, Liu Xiang, or He Jian to strengthen
the economies of their domains may still be seen as primarily driven by
pragmatism—simply another transaction cost for the maintenance of their

power. But variations in levels of support for such activities suggest that
their motivations, while not purely altruistic, point to an internalization of the
values of public service among some warlords in an age of demanding nation-
alism. The point is not to rehabilitate Chinese warlords as positive forces in
China’s modern development but to suggest that the effects of warlordism
were more complicated than conventional negative portrayals would allow.
The effects of Chinese warlordism on Chinese society were not, of course,
limited to financial or economic consequences. There were often also eco-
nomic factors at work below the surface of what might seem primarily politi-
cal or social changes. One example of this is the militarization of the elite in
the Republican period as political and social power shifted increasingly into
military hands. The development of the New Armies in the late Qing began
a process of changing Chinese attitudes toward the status of military service,
not the least because the organization of these New Armies provided attrac-
tive new career options for educated young men (Fung 1980, 62–113). This
attraction only grew stronger with the even greater military expansion of the
warlord era, combined with the greater ability of a military career to open
a pathway toward political power, social status, and personal wealth. At a
personal level, then, economic concerns certainly influenced the flow of men
into military careers, even as the benefits of these careers allowed at least
some warlords to become not just political leaders but also business entrepre-
neurs. Military officers and their families frequently emerged, both in active
service and after retirement, as a distinct, and often dominating, layer of the
social elite in their home communities in terms of both wealth and influence
(McCord 2014a). In some cases, warlord financial policies even played a
direct role in this outcome. For example, in Sichuan, increased land taxes
undermined traditional landlords from the civil elite who then sold their lands
to military officers who were better able to use their influence to negotiate
preferential tax exemptions (Gunde 1976).
The only exception to this picture of social, political, and economic
advancement for military men under warlordism might be common soldiers,
who for the most part were unpaid, ill-treated, and socially disdained (Lary
1985). Even so, the steadily increasing demand for soldiers offered not just a
chance at economic survival but a masculine alternative to the ideal of mar-
ried life for unmarried men at the margins of society (McCord 2015, 224).
Such benefits were strong enough for one local gazetteer to complain about
how even farmers were abandoning their fields in enroll in the army (Liling
xian xiangtu zhi 1920, 15–16).
In the end, it is difficult to confine an investigation of the economic con-
sequences of warlordism to purely economic matters. Economic effects
were nearly always intertwined at every level with other social and political
developments. This is perhaps best shown in the way that some of the eco-
nomic factors discussed here also contributed to the greater political trans-
formations of the era. The popular conception of warlordism as it was
constructed in this era was strongly grounded in a critique of its negative
consequences, which often stressed the harms to the Chinese economy and
the livelihood of the people. Individual differences aside, warlords as a body
were generally defined as corrupt predators. Emphasis was placed on the
destructiveness of warlord wars, the violence of warlord soldiers, and the
burden of warlord financial exactions. Such appraisals became the building
blocks for an anti-warlord political narrative, with political consequences
that began with specific anti-warlord political struggles and ended with the
creation of new revolutionary political movements that made anti-warlordism
a main pillar of their political agendas.16 Thus, it is important to examine not
just the economic consequences of warlordism but also how perceptions of
these consequences had even farther ranging effects.
CONCLUSION
The premise of this chapter is that, beyond the obvious need for control over
military forces, access to economic or financial resources are essential for the
emergence and survival of warlordism in any context. That also means that
the specific character of warlordism in any situation will also be influenced
strongly by the nature of these resources. In the case of China, one key ele-
ment in the ability of emerging warlords to gain access to the funds necessary
to support their military forces was the general survival of administrative
systems, and their capacity for taxation, from the Qing dynasty into the
Republican period. As a result, Chinese warlords did not simply emerge as
“non-state” military actors filling a political vacuum; rather, they turned their
efforts toward acquiring official positions that would legitimate their capture
of portions of the state administrative system. Another advantage for Chinese
warlords was the existence of a highly developed commercial economy. This
gave them access to the resources of a sophisticated financial sector and the
ability to raise additional funds through commercial taxes with only minimal
additional transaction costs. These advantages were also responsible for a
unique nodal structure of warlord power that emphasized the control of urban
administrative and commercial centers and the transportation networks that
connected them.
The diversity of warlord behaviors seen in this chapter should also caution
against a common tendency to tar all warlords with the same, largely pejora-
tive, characterizations. In the Chinese case, a popular anti-warlord narrative
emerged that labeled all warlords as corrupt, conservative, and unpatriotic.
There were certainly predatory warlords like Wang Zhanyuan who turned
corruption into a highly refined skill. But there were other warlords, such
as the “Christian general” Feng Yuxiang, who were known for relatively
upright and honest administrations.17 Likewise, while some warlords were
notable reactionaries, an early path-breaking study by Winston Hsieh
showed that some could also hold relatively progressive and patriotic view-
points (Hsieh 1962). To a certain extent, all Chinese warlords had to operate
within a similar set of opportunities and constraints, but their financial poli-
cies and behaviors could also reflect personal values and strategies. Thus,
while Wang Zhanyuan was particularly adverse to wasting his potential
income on projects that might bring economic benefits to the people, other
warlords such a Yan Xishan and Chen Jitang established their reputations
(and enhanced popular support for their regimes) precisely by the promotion
of such projects.
Finally, this chapter argues that it is important to understand not only the
financial foundations of warlord power but also how the economic exigencies
of warlordism impacted on their societies. Additional complexity is intro-
duced by recognizing how the economic and financial decisions and policies
of individual warlords could have different outcomes based on the mix of
resources available to them and their own strategic calculations. Any conclu-
sions about the economic effects of warlordism should also realize that these
consequences were rarely just economic. Instead, they were often entwined in
social and political conditions and could have broader results.
In the end, then, this chapter, in a very broad sense, seeks to use the case
of Chinese warlordism to challenge comparative generalizations that do not
provide room for the ways in which different contexts shaped the character
of warlordism in different historical and locational settings. At the same time,
any understanding of Chinese warlordism itself must also be able to accom-
modate the impact of local financial contingences and individual warlord
behaviors into its conclusions.
NOTES
1. In one of the clearest expressions of this view, Lucian Pye (1971, 8) states,
“With the Revolution of 1911, the destruction of the formal monolithic structure of
government was complete . . . . Few formally organized groups closely related to
the interests of the total society, or even of particular segments of the society, were
directed to, and capable of, seeking political power to carry out specific policies. The
only organizations that were in any sense able to seek political power were those in
the military field . . . military commanders had control of the means of violence to
achieve political and economic objectives. Political power therefore gravitated to
these men because society was devoid of other groups that could effectively contend
for governmental control.”
2. Winston Hsieh (1975) emphasized the importance of the survival of admin-
istrative systems in the “economics of warlordism.” Robert Kapp (1974, 162–63)
also noted that Sichuan “provincial militarists introduced no radical changes in local
administrative practices,” and that “local institutions generally followed the pattern
laid out in the late Ch’ing [Qing].”
3. Among the most prominent of these warlord holdovers were the members of
the Guangxi warlord clique, best studied by Lary (1974). An example of a “new” war-
lord was He Jian, who ruled Hunan for most of the Nanjing period (McCord 2014c).
4. By the middle of the 1930s, the land taxes in some areas of Sichuan were
reportedly paid up to the 1970s and 1980s! (Kapp 1974, 156).
5. The intense competition by a succession of warlords prior to Liu Xiang’s con-
solidation of his control over the city shows the broader recognition of the importance
of Chongqing’s resources. (Kapp 1974, 146–47, 153).
6. Taxes on opium were initially justified as a means of inhibiting opium traf-
ficking. The profitability of this tax, however, led many warlords to encourage rather
than discourage opium cultivation. In the end, “opium suppression” taxation was
transformed into a military protection racket for the opium trade. Sichuan warlords
particularly benefited from opium taxes because of their control over transportation
routes for Yunnan and Guizhou opium (Kapp 1974, 157). Also see Baumler (2007,
89–110).
7. My understanding of “transaction costs” is adopted from Levi (1988, 23–28).
8. Even brothel owners and prostitutes were able to use a strike to force Wang to
lower proposed increases in brothel taxes (Shibao, January 8 and February 12, 1920).
9. Each garrison area in Sichuan, for example, circulated its own currency (Kapp
1974, 158).
10. A good overview of varying concepts of predatory rule can be found in Alex
Bavister-Gould (2011).
11. One example of such popular awareness is seen in the open criticism directed
against a National Party military commander over the large boatload of building
materials and goods shipped back to his family’s hometown during the Northern
Expedition to expand the family residence (Chen n.d., 6).
12. Even Wang Zhanyuan, who actually grew even wealthier after his fall from
power, spent much of his retirement scheming for ways to regain control over his
army and his original political position (McCord 2014b, 71).
13. From 1912 to 1930, 93 percent of all taxes collected in Guangdong went to pay
for military expenses (Lin 2002, 189). In many areas, education was particularly hard
hit. Hunan, for example, was devastated when an invading northern warlord, Zhang
Jingyao, assumed the post of military governor from 1918 and proceeded to redirect
most public funds for schools to pay for military expenses (Hunan shanhou xiehui
1919, 1: 301–21).
14. Pierre Fuller (2013) argues that many early warlord regimes remained fairly
responsible in the coordination of traditionally expected government services, such as
disaster relief.
15. A detailed discussion of the effects of war as seen in one major case can be
found in Waldron (1995, 119–60)
16. Public responses to warlord exactions and military atrocities resulted in series
of popular protests and specific anti-warlord movements (McCord 2001, 2005,
2014b). Waldron (1995) argues that the unprecedented scale, and consequences, of
the military conflict that broke out in 1924 between the Zhili and Fengtian warlord
factions (usually referred to as the Second Zhili-Fengtian War) helped to create a
nationalist upsurge that opened the way for the success of the Nationalist Party in its
1926 anti-warlord Northern Expedition.
17. Even though Feng participated in an attempted Northern conquest of Hunan
in 1918, the people of the town he garrisoned proposed raising a temple in his honor
in gratitude for the quality of his administration (at least relative to that of other war-
lords) (Shibao, July 15, 1919).
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Floods and Wild Beasts. State University of New York Press.
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Modern China, pp. 110–146. London and New York: Routledge.
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Knew]. Wenshi ziliao xuanji [Selected Historical Materials] 51: 252–68.
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Warlord Investment in Tianjin’s Modern Industry]. Tianjin wenshi ziliao xuanji
[Selected Tianjin Historical Materials] 4: 146–62.
Part III
CONTEMPORARY WORLDS
Chapter 8
Friend, Foe, or in Between?

Humanitarian Action and
the Soviet–Afghan War
Jonathan Benthall
THE LEGACY OF THE SOVIET–AFGHAN

WAR FOR HUMANITARIANISM
The Soviet–Afghan War (1979–89) was fought between insurgent groups

known as mujahideen, who were backed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the
United States, and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, backed by the
Soviet army. The war was preceded by a coup in 1978 that left the Afghan
Communist Party in power but facing vigorous opposition, till a further coup
by the Soviet army the following year. A conservative estimate of the number
of resulting battle deaths is 500,000 (Lacina and Gleditsch 2005: 154).
The war takes its place in history as one episode in a chain of conflicts and
of faltering efforts made to alleviate the consequent suffering. International
relief aid organized in Europe may be dated back to the period of the
Crusades and the foundation of sovereign orders of knighthood with mixed
military and “hospitaller” aims. One of the Enlightenment’s innovations
was that the suffering of the wounded and defeated in battle (like that of
victims of “natural” disasters) no longer needed to be accepted with fatal-
ism. Humanitarian relief, as a corollary of warfare, may be conceived as an
aspect of war economics in a broad sense. Economics has the highest status
among the social sciences and often aspires to occupy other domains of
knowledge. By contrast, many historians and most sociocultural anthropolo-
gists reject sharp divisions between the economic, the political, the juridical,
and the ideological. A concept of economics that confines itself to mate-
rial resources, ignoring transactions in symbolic goods, will inevitably be
one-dimensional. The various forms of merit aspired to through charitable
and eirenic activities, motivating the supply of goods and services, have an
181
182 Jonathan Benthall
economic aspect. So do governmental decisions to outlaw certain profess-

edly charitable enterprises on political grounds, and permit others to enjoy
the legal privileges of charities even when their activities are overt adjuncts
to military operations.
The instrumentalization of humanitarian action either as an ally or as an
enemy is extremely widespread. Non-state actors are supported by the inter-
vention of states with money and other resources, some armed and some
relying on persuasion by diplomatic or journalistic means; but national gov-
ernments also criminalize aid initiatives without necessarily deferring to the
brittle authority of International Humanitarian Law. At this time of writing,
various interlinked conflicts in the Middle East come specially to mind. But
the conjuncture during the Soviet–Afghan War—of post-colonial superpower
enmity, the waning of communism, religious fundamentalism, guerrilla war-
fare, secret funding, manipulation of charity law, mediatization, and humani-
tarian entrepreneurship—was unique. This chapter will chronicle an intimate
commingling of humanitarian, diplomatic, financial, and military support
for the mujahideen. In the case of the U.S. administration, this mixing was
extensive and sustained; in the case of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, aka
Doctors Without Borders), it was limited to medical provision, advocacy, and
mediatization—since no-one suggests that they actually permitted the smug-
gling of weapons. Much fruitful attention has been given in recent years to
the study of humanitarianism in general (Fassin 2011; Barnett 2011; Donini
2012; Dromi 2020), and much has been written about the Soviet–Afghan
War and its prolonged repercussions for Afghanistan and for the world. This
chapter sets out to ask what specific takeaways can be pulled out from the
story of the war for our understanding of humanitarianism and charity, and
of non-state war economies. A case study from the U.S. criminal justice
system will be adduced to argue that the government’s clamping down on
Islamic charitable activity through statutory measures during the late 1990s,
and especially after 2001, exposed it to the charge of moral equivocation, and
also had negative effects on a whole sector’s evolution. The Islamic tradition
of charity has been able to adapt and flourish elsewhere when freed from
exaggerated political opposition. As for MSF, the war was the culmination of
an until then largely unexamined symbiosis, which soon began to be widely
questioned, between humanitarian entrepreneurship and the media.
We will begin with a flashback to 1983, evoking the debate in Western
“foreign policy” circles at the height of the war. We will single out two par-
ticipants in a U.S. think-tank conference, one Afghan and the other French,
both of whom pressed a strong case for support of the mujahideen. We go
on to trace their respective future activities during the remainder of the war
years. We then consider the war’s repercussions in the humanitarian sphere
after the withdrawal of Soviet forces.
Friend, Foe, or in Between? 183
THE SOVIET–AFGHAN WAR VIEWED

FROM CALIFORNIA IN 1983
In November 1983, some four years after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan
and the installation of a pro-Soviet regime, an international conference on
“Afghan Alternatives” was held at the Monterey Institute of International
Studies, California, under U.S. government auspices. The thirty-five partici-
pants were mainly American or European, with a few Asians. The book based
on the conference (Magnus 1985) provides insight into the state of expert
debate at the height of the Soviet–Afghan War. We know now that Western
support for the Afghan mujahideen provoked a blowback with immense con-
sequences: the fomenting of violent Islamist extremism. The Iranian revolu-
tion of 1979 had come as a surprise to virtually all Western commentators.
Most of the contributors to the book evinced little concern about the risks
of inflaming Islamist militancy in Afghanistan. Admittedly, one think-tank
director did state:
When I hear the term anti-Western materialism, which has been used to describe
the so-called progressive Muslims, I run for cover. . . . [R]ightly or wrongly, this
has come to represent for us a code word for something that goes a good deal
beyond philosophical or cultural differences. . . . I simply want to tell you that
when I hear that they reject Western materialism, my question is: (1) Can we
live with such a regime assuming that it comes to power? and (2) can we even
collaborate with it on its way to power?
And a political scientist, reflecting particularly on the Iranian revolution,

mentioned that “the Soviets apparently perceive Islamic fundamentalism in
the region as no less a threat than Western influence.”1
At the time, U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the Reagan Doctrine,
the rolling back of Soviet-backed governments across the world, in opposi-
tion to the Brezhnev Doctrine, which challenged any regression toward capi-
talism by countries belonging to the socialist family. But the Carter Doctrine
had preceded Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, asserting the U.S.
intention of using military force, if necessary, to defend its national inter-
ests in the Persian Gulf. Covert CIA operations in Afghanistan had begun
in July 1979, under the authority of Carter’s National Security Adviser,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, six months before the Soviet invasion, when uprisings
were already beginning to spread against the Russia-friendly regime of Nur
Muhammad Taraki. (Taraki was killed in 1979 and replaced by Hafizullah
Amin. In the same year, Amin was killed by Soviet forces and replaced
by Babrak Karmal, who was replaced in turn by Mohammad Najibullah in
1986.) “Which was more important in world history?” Brzezinski was to ask
later, in 1998, “the Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? A few overex-
cited Islamists or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold
War?” He even claimed to have lured the Russians into the “Afghan trap.”2
(Most historians today attribute the collapse of the Soviet empire to multiple
causes.)
The contribution of two participants in the Monterey conference and pub-
lication will be analyzed here, and then related to later events in which they
and their associated organizations were prominent. Coming from very dif-
ferent backgrounds, they were united by strong support for the mujahideen.
Sabahuddin Kushkaki was an Afghan politician and journalist with Islamist
sympathies. Claude Malhuret was the French president of MSF.
KUSHKAKI AND MALHURET
Sabahuddin Kushkaki, born in 1933, was the son of a well-known journal-

ist and Islamic scholar, and had taught journalism at Kabul University. He
served briefly as minister of information and culture in 1972 under a reformist
government until the last king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, was
ousted in a coup in 1973. In 1978, after the leftist Saur Revolution, Kushkaki
was imprisoned in the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul, then released
after two years under a surprise political amnesty, after which he fled the
country.3 In the 1985 publication, he is listed as a Fellow at the Woodrow
Wilson Center for International Scholars, Smithsonian Institution. He called
for more military aid for the mujahideen, and advanced a plan for withdrawal
of Soviet troops, joint action by all resistance forces subscribing to Islamic,
anti-atheistic principles, neighborly relations with all countries, and coopera-
tion with all countries that had committed to opposing the Soviet invasion.4
He died in 2000 in the United States.
Claude Malhuret, born in 1950, was director of MSF, the French (later
international) humanitarian agency founded in 1971 in the aftermath of the
Nigerian civil war. While qualifying as a medical doctor, he had expressed
socialist and third worldist sympathies, then took part in a smallpox eradi-
cation program in India with the World Health Organization. After work-
ing with MSF medical teams in refugee camps on the Thai frontier during
1976–1977, he was elected a board member in 1978 and director in 1980,
establishing a practical and financially sound basis for the organization in
succession to the swashbuckling approach of one of MSF’s original found-
ers, Bernard Kouchner. Later, in 1986, Malhuret was appointed secretary of
state for human rights in Jacques Chirac’s center-right government. Between
1989 and 2017, he was the right-wing (Union de la droite) mayor of Vichy
in southern France.
At the conference, Malhuret reported that MSF had twenty-two doctors

working in Afghan provinces: “we are going everywhere we want, provided
we are with the resistance organizations.” He opposed current proposals for
negotiation with the Soviet Union through the United Nations. Malhuret
advocated a three-pronged strategy of direct aid for the mujahideen: humani-
tarian, military, and diplomatic. In doing so, he went beyond the established
MSF policy of témoignage, bearing witness to inhumane behavior. As events
turned out, he was to be proved correct in predicting the fall of the Soviet
Empire, though he also predicted, unsuccessfully, that the then divided
Afghan resistance would eventually unite.5
HUMANITARIAN AND MILITARY AID

DURING THE SOVIET–AFGHAN WAR
The principles of neutrality and independence in humanitarian aid are

always fragile. During the Vietnam War, U.S. ambassador Ellsworth
Bunker warned aid staff against activities that might benefit the Viet Cong:
“If you’re helping the VC, that is treason, and you know the penalty for
treason” (Donini 2012: 46). A journalist pointed out caustically in 1991
that the state secretariat for humanitarian action in Paris “can be seen as the
after-sales service for the gun manufacturers who occupy the neighboring
ministries.”6
In late 1981, Saudi Arabia began to match the CIA dollar for dollar in the
purchase of weapons for the Afghan resistance. In 1984, President Reagan
signed a National Security Council directive calling for efforts to drive out
the Soviet forces from Afghanistan “by all means available.” Congress started
to vote huge sums, and Reagan authorized the delivery of Stinger surface-to-
air missiles. By 1985, annual U.S. military aid to the mujahideen, channeled
through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), operating as a “govern-
ment within a government,” grew to $280 million, with bipartisan political
support (Rasanayagam 2003: 105–6, 116). Mikhail Gorbachev was elected
general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985: in
February 1986, he described Afghanistan as a “bleeding wound.” In February
1988, the Soviets announced that they would pull out troops after one year.
The Geneva Accords were signed in April 1988. Najibullah was installed as
president in 1986 and the Soviets continued to pour in weapons and funds to
shore up his regime until his overthrow in 1992,7 though in 1991 the United
States and the USSR agreed to cut off aid to both sides. By this time, the
country split into small fiefdoms, leading to a civil war in which Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, previously funded by the CIA, enhanced his existing notoriety
for ruthlessness and religious fervor; and then to the rise of the Taliban in
the mid-1990s. After the overthrow of Najibullah, American aid gradually

petered out as the “freedom fighters” began to be redefined as terrorists.
The number of refugees in Pakistan rose to about 3.5 million by the end of
the 1980s. As well as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
and the World Food Program, some 265 NGOs were directly or indirectly
involved in providing aid, first to refugees only and later through cross-border
operations into Afghanistan. The Pakistan government blurred the distinc-
tion between passive refugees and armed resistance fighters, as did many
NGOs, wittingly or unwittingly, so that in practice the aid efforts supported
the mujahideen. As well as Muslim states, almost all the non-Muslim world,
except India but including China, were hostile to the Soviet-backed Afghan
regime (Baitenmann 1990).8 The U.S. government played an important role,
funding numerous Christian and secular “volags” (NGOs), advising them on
their programs and mediating between them and the Pakistan government.
The Soviets made some efforts to win “hearts and minds” through infrastruc-
ture projects and building schools and hospitals, while the position of women
was somewhat improved in the big cities (Steele 2011: 108; Braithwaite
2011: 147–52), but the military behaved with a brutality that the mujahideen
reciprocated.
The U.S. policy was to keep a low American profile, so as not to damage
the credibility of the Afghan resistance as an indigenous struggle for free-
dom, or compromise the reputation of American-affiliated volags. A candid
article in Time magazine in 1984 outlined the pipeline of military and com-
munications equipment sent by the CIA to the mujahideen via Saudi Arabia.
“Politically the CIA’s main challenge has been to avoid linking its operation
to the government of Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq,” which would compro-
mise his peace negotiations through the United Nations and might give the
Soviets a pretext for moving into Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province.
The CIA had also discreetly recruited about 100 Afghan refugees in Europe
and the United States who “seemed thoroughly reliable and unquestionably
pro-mujahidin,” training them in “shipping, running travel agencies and send-
ing large containers overseas.” Land mines were sometimes sent in crates
described as telephone equipment for a religious organization.9
The International Committee of the Red Cross, World Health Organization,
and other international agencies were expelled from Afghanistan in 1979, and
with one or two exceptions the humanitarian NGOs working in Pakistan made
little effort to aid noncombatants living in government-controlled Afghan cit-
ies. Numerous small NGOs were founded, often working secretly and with
strong support from the U.S. government, using the International Rescue
Committee as an intermediary to support European NGOs in cross-border
operations. There were also over seventy “advocacy NGOs” supporting the
military and humanitarian operations, united by anti-communism.
Saudi Arabia responded vigorously to the political signals from Washington

at the height of the war. All analysts agree that the boundaries between
humanitarian assistance, military assistance and da`wa (Islamic missionary
activity) were blurred by the Saudis. Their official humanitarian aid was first
channeled through the Saudi Red Crescent and a campaign coordinated by
the Popular Committee for Fundraising and its chairman Prince (later king)
Salman. Allegedly (and it has not been denied), the Saudi Red Crescent
was co-opted to facilitate the transport of arms within Afghanistan itself,
by providing a channel of finance for various Afghan political parties. After
the mid-1980s, numerous semiofficial Saudi agencies were also active. Two
protagonists in the rise of global jihadism, Abdullah Azzam (1941–1989)
and his onetime disciple Osama bin Laden, had temporary affiliations with
Saudi charities. In 1986, an umbrella body in Peshawar (some 35 miles from
the Afghan border), the Council for Islamic Coordination, was formed by the
Saudi and Kuwaiti Red Crescent societies, the Muslim World League, and a
number of Islamic aid agencies. Azzam was among the rotating presidents
of the council, before his unexplained assassination in 1989. After the with-
drawal of the Russian military from Afghanistan in 1988–1989, Pakistani and
Saudi aid continued until the fall of Najibullah (Hegghammer 2007: 198) but
then gradually dried up.
AFGHAN JEHAD (1987–1992)
Sabahuddin Kushkaki was appointed managing editor of a magazine, Afghan

Jehad, which first appeared in 1987 and was published, monthly in Pashtun
and Dari and quarterly in English, for years, by the Cultural Council of
Afghan Resistance, based in Islamabad, Pakistan.10 He had formerly served
as a full-time consultant to the Voice of America’s Dari and Pashtu broad-
casts. A specimen issue dated April–June 1988 (volume 1, no. 4) was pub-
lished just after the signature of the Geneva Accords in 1988 by the foreign
ministers of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
The Accords called for withdrawal of all Soviet troops within nine months,
noninterference in each other’s affairs by Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the
voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees. It has been suggested11 that the
Ecuadorean diplomat Diego Cordovez, who as a UN under-secretary gen-
eral negotiated the Accords, saw the Afghan crisis more as a proxy conflict
between the superpowers than as one with local political and social origins.
The mujahideen were not seriously involved in the mediation process, and
were not parties to the Geneva Accords, which they refused to accept. As
the April–June 1988 issue was being produced, Soviet forces were begin-
ning to withdraw, and the UN began to raise funds for a recovery program
Figure 8.1 Front cover of Afghan Jehad: Quarterly Magazine of the Cultural Council
of Afghanistan Resistance, vol. 5 no. 2, January–March 1992, published in Islamabad,
Pakistan, with subsidy from the U.S. Government through the National Endowment for
Democracy.
in Afghanistan and aid to the refugees. The two great powers now agreed
informally to a position of “positive symmetry,” whereby they reserved the
right to send arms in response to shipments made by the other side.
Kushkaki now publishes similar views to those he had contributed in
the Monterey meeting. He calls the Geneva Accords a “mockery”; the
mujahideen “have vowed not to stop war until they dismantle the Kabul
puppet regime,” both through military action and through psychological
warfare. Kushkaki praises those mujahideen who ignored the head of the UN
monitoring team’s injunction that they should refrain from attacking depart-
ing Soviet troops—“yet another proof of the partiality of UN mediators.”
Kushkaki rejects the Kremlin’s claims to be trying to achieve a peaceful,
independent, and non-aligned Afghanistan. Disdaining Najibullah’s offer of

a coalition with his opponents—since communists are “to the overwhelming
majority of our people traitors”—Kushkaki calls for the newly formed seven-
party alliance, the Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen, known also as the
Peshawar Seven, to form a credible interim government, and for the return of
seven million refugees. The aim was to establish a “government of God” in
Afghanistan, based on Shariah.12
In retrospect, Afghan Jehad was a tool of the U.S. policy of rejecting
Najibullah’s offer of negotiations, and thus prolonging the war after the
Soviet withdrawal. The senior CIA director of operations in the area, Charles
Cogan, was to admit in a 1997 interview that he now considered this to have
been a mistake. The journalist Jonathan Steele comments: “Had Washington
walked away after 1989, the country might have had a better chance of
resolving its conflicts and starting on reconstruction” (Steele 2011: 136).
The Cultural Council of Afghan Resistance was in fact a mere shell.
Neglected in standard historical coverage of the Soviet–Afghan War is the
use made of the purportedly independent U.S. charity sector as a supplement
to direct government funding. A number of U.S. nonprofits with tax-exempt
status under the Internal Revenue Code (IRC)—technically, 501(c)(3) orga-
nizations—such as American Friends of Afghanistan were formed to channel
funds through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
itself a 501(c)(3) organization though largely government-funded. The sub-
sidy of Afghan Jehad was one of these activities. Others were arranging for
injured mujahideen to be flown to the United States for medical treatment,
training journalists to comment favorably on the mujahideen, and publishing
leaflets for religious scholars.13
CHARITABLE OBJECTS AND MILITARY ACTIVITIES
The U.S. law on charities derives historically from 400-year-old English

common law, but fleshed out by many statutes and precedents. It is applied
both at the federal level via the Internal Revenue Service (under the U.S.
Treasury) and by individual states. It accepts as tax exempt a wide range of
activities conducive to the public good, including religious and educational
programs, and “lessening the burden of government,” but excluding partici-
pation in political campaigns and substantial lobbying activities. The NED,
founded in 1983 and still at the time of this writing active in many countries
and funded as to 98 percent by government agencies,14 has been criticized
on various grounds, but presumably has stayed within the law. Providing
medical assistance is self-evidently charitable, and training of imams and
journalists can no doubt be justified as educational. However, inciting the
mujahideen, as Afghan Jehad did, to oppose the Geneva Accords (to which
the United States was a party) and to violently overthrow the Najibullah gov-
ernment might be accused of having stretched the definition of charity too far.
This could be a naïve conclusion, in that the boundary between chari-
table and noncharitable in Anglo-American law and practice is in practice
more porous than might be assumed. With regard to the Red Cross and Red
Crescent Movement, there is an inherent historical contradiction in that
the National Societies are required to adhere to its fundamental principles,
including independence and neutrality, but also to be auxiliaries to the public
authorities and national armies. In the United States, the Jewish National
Fund has raised no objections today when it has collected tax-exempt funds
for the improvement of military installations in Israel: currently, meeting
points for Israel Defense Force soldiers and their families.15 In Britain, mean-
while, the national law of charities actually specifies:
The armed forces exist for public defence and security. It is charitable to pro-
mote the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown as a means of defending
the country. That includes ensuring that those forces are properly trained and
equipped during times of conflict. It also includes providing facilities and ben-
efits for the armed forces.16
Examples of permissible charitable purposes in Britain with a military con-

tent include technical education for members of the armed services, increas-
ing their physical fitness, supporting officers’ messes, and “encouraging
esprit de corps.” Noraid, or Irish Northern Aid, the New York–based charity
that since 1969 raised funds in the United States for Republican—that is to
say, Catholic—charities in Northern Ireland, was regularly accused of spend-
ing some of the funds on weapons until the Irish Republican Army accepted
the peace process in 1996.
The connection between charity and military activities is closer in the
Islamic tradition. The Islamic lexical field centered on zakat (obligatory
alms), ṣadaqa (optional “good works”), and waqf (analogous to the European
charitable foundation) has overlaps with the Christian principle of “charity”
but is not identical. The difference most relevant here is that one of the eight
categories of permitted beneficiaries of zakat and ṣadaqa specified in the
Qur’an is those “in the way of God” (fī sabīl Allāh), identified with jihad—
the most contentious term in Islamic studies—literally “striving,” but with
the historically dominant meaning of “making war against outsiders.” We
may surmise—since there was no military structure in the years of founda-
tional Islam—that making war came naturally to the Prophet Muhammad’s
tribal contemporaries, and so was taken for granted as an element in what
is now called the “public good.” This heritage remained vivid throughout
the centuries. Liberal Muslim apologists today have revived a strain in the
premodern tradition that elevated spiritual striving, the “greater jihad,” above
war making. A number of prominent Islamic authorities, however, laid down
at the time of the Soviet–Afghan War that Muslims should help the mujahi-
deen in any way possible, including both humanitarian (especially medical)
and military means.17
The outcome was that, though the Euro-American concept of charity with
its Christian overtones might be claimed to be at the polar opposite of mili-
tary force, there was in practice no incompatibility between the U.S. policy
of comprehensive support for the Afghan mujahideen, including use of the
Federal system of tax exemption for nonprofits, and the Islamic principles
of charitable works and jihad that Afghans, Pakistanis, and Saudis had in
common. Only the Russians condemned the U.S. policies as supporting what
they saw as international terrorism (Donini 2004: 121).18 Hegghammer (2020:
198) writes of “the pan-Islamist conviction that aid and jihad are two sides of
the same coin, because both are about helping fellow Muslims in need. We
must also bear in mind that the Afghan jihad was a dirty war with extensive
human rights abuses and neglect of the Geneva conventions on both sides of
the conflict.”
THE CLOUD OVER ISLAMIC CHARITIES SINCE 9/11
Among the consequences of the attacks on the United States on September

11, 2001, was a resolute campaign by the George W. Bush government to
clamp down on Islamic charities, widely held to be conduits for the financ-
ing of terrorism. This may have been preceded however by a report allegedly
prepared by the CIA for the State Department in 1996, completed just as the
Bosnian war was winding down and focused on support for the mujahideen in
Bosnia. It had concluded that of more than thirty Islamic NGOs in existence,
“available information indicates that approximately one-third . . . support
terrorist groups or employ individuals who are suspected of having terrorist
connections.”19 At around the same time, U.S. law enforcement agencies had
been investigating links between certain Islamic charities and Hamas, the
militant Palestinian movement.20 However, the suspicions against Islamic
charities only became a major public issue after the 2001 attacks. Despite
President Obama’s speech entitled “A New Beginning” that he delivered in
Cairo in 2009, U.S. governments continued with the same policies of black-
listing and criminalization.
Care for the poor and disadvantaged has been a central principle or ideal
in the history of Islam. Since the 1970s, two movements—the expansion
of NGOs worldwide, and the Islamic revival—combined to generate the
growth of Islamic charities in the modern sense. During the Soviet–Afghan

War and for some years afterward, they formed a kind of parallel humani-
tarian system, with minimal communication with non-Muslim aid agencies
and minimal recognition in the Western media. In Britain, a combination of
judicious leadership and their sympathetic encouragement by the govern-
ment and its regulator, the Charity Commission, resulted since the 1980s in
continuous growth of a vigorous Islamic charity sector that has won respect
from the non-Muslim humanitarian mainstream. It has nonetheless endured
obstruction up to the time of this writing by obstacles put in its way as a result
of the “global war on terror.” Led by Islamic Relief Worldwide, based in
Birmingham, England (founded in 1983), the leading U.K. Muslim charities
decided to endorse the principles of nondiscrimination and transparency, and
to abstain from all proselytism and “reislamization” (stiffening the religiosity
of Muslim populations), interpreting zakat and ṣadaqa as exclusively aimed
at the relief of suffering and poverty. This has been described as a process of
secularization, following the example of some major Christian agencies such
as Christian Aid. But from another perspective, humanitarian values may be
discerned in all religious traditions and can coexist with secular humanitarian
cultures typified by Oxfam or Médecins Sans Frontières. Ethical values artic-
ulated in a theology may be likened to a system of springs that feed a river.
The upstream system may be studied for its own sake—there is a voluminous
literature on zakat—but the river as it is observed downstream has had its
flow altered by rockfalls. Islamic Relief Worldwide followed a definite logic
in that it brought the Islamic tradition in line with International Humanitarian
Law and with widely accepted codes of conduct for NGOs (Benthall 2016).
Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam cooperated to found the Office
of Services to the Mujahideen (maktab al-khidamāt) in Peshawar in 1984.
An organization known as Al-Kifah (“struggle”) began fundraising in the
United States two or three years later as its U.S. affiliate. Branches opened in
over thirty American cities, as Muslim Americans donated millions of dol-
lars to support the Afghan war. The Al-Kifah Refugee Center was based in
Brooklyn, New York. Azzam made repeated trips to the United States and
other countries, giving religious approval to the anti-Soviet military jihad in
Afghanistan and recruiting hundreds of Muslim fighters (Hegghammer 2020:
258–63). Undoubtedly, these two leaders and some of their associates were
committed to a strategy in which some ostensibly charitable organizations
were made use of for belligerent purposes.21
Following the trauma inflicted on the United States by the 9/11 attacks,
some influential American commentators decided to believe the worst of
all Islamic charities and their supporters. However, it is likely that in some
prominent cases, the problem was due less to warlike intentions at headquar-
ters than to ramshackle administration that had given free rein to some local
individuals to pursue belligerent goals (Bokhari et al. 2014; Benthall 2018).

At the same time, the principle of da`wa, interpreted as the “comprehensive
call to Islam,” held sway in Saudi Arabia and among some other Sunni
Muslim communities, especially those influenced by the Muslim Brothers;
and this interpretation chimed with those ulama who taught that one of
the permissible objects of zakat was support for anti-colonial resistance
movements.
THE MUNTASSER/CARE INTERNATIONAL CASE
The criminal case against a Libyan citizen and permanent U.S. resident,
owner of a chain of furniture stores in the Greater Boston area, illustrates
the contradictory position in which the U.S. government found itself dur-
ing the 1990s. “By 1996,” writes the civil liberties litigator Harvey A.
Silvergate,
when the Taliban took over control of Afghanistan, the CIA and other oriental-
ists in the American foreign policy establishment were recognizing that some of
the American-funded Afghani mujahideen who fought the Soviets were allying
with the radically conservative Taliban and turning on their erstwhile American
sponsors and other Western interests. Suddenly anyone in the United States
who continued to support, among others, the dead and injured fighters became
suspect. (Silvergate 2011: 241)22
Emadeddin Muntasser served as director of the Boston branch of the

Al-Kifah Refugee Center, advertised as a vehicle for the teaching of Sheikh
Abdullah Azzam. In 1993, shortly after the World Trade Center bombing on
February 26, newspaper articles linked the Brooklyn branch of Al-Kifah to
Islamic militant groups. Muntasser dissolved the Boston branch of Al-Kifah,
and he incorporated Care International in Massachusetts as a humanitarian
charity,23 with himself as president until 1996, when he resigned. Its avowed
purpose was to help destitute Muslims in war-torn areas, mainly in Afghanistan
and Bosnia. Its activities during its short lifetime substantially mirrored those
of Al-Kifah’s Boston branch, including the sale of books advocating jihad,
and the publication of a newsletter entitled Al-Hussam (“The Sword”) which
included—together with religious instruction on, for instance, how to observe
correctly the holy month of Ramadan—solicitation of funds to support mujahi-
deen in Bosnia and to sponsor children whose fathers had been martyred in the
cause. Azzam remained after his “martyrdom” a primary religious reference,
and Care published and distributed a translation of his Join the Caravan (1987),
which had enjoined committed Muslims to become mujahideen.
To simplify a rather complex legal case: in 2008, Muntasser was convicted

in a district court in Worcester, Massachusetts, of making a false statement
to the FBI during a formal interview in 2003. He disclosed then that he had
traveled to Pakistan in 1994 or 1995, but denied that he had also traveled
to Afghanistan and met with the Afghan politician and warlord Hekmatyar.
Muntasser was sentenced to twelve months’ incarceration and a fine of
$10,000, but acquitted on two other counts relating to Care’s application to be
registered as a 501(c) (3) nonprofit: scheming to conceal material facts, and
conspiracy to defraud the United States. In 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals,
First Circuit, reviewed the case and, reversing the district court’s decision,
found Muntasser guilty of a conspiracy. The district judge, to whom the case
then reverted in 2012, decided that, though the Justice Department sought a
sentence of five years in prison, it should be viewed narrowly as a tax fraud
and false statement case, with no connections to terrorism. Muntasser was
finally sentenced only to a further six months of home confinement.24
The prosecution refrained from making use of the statutes criminalizing
all forms of “material support” for terrorism, which had been passed in 1994
and 1996 and strengthened in 2001 (Doyle 2010). Muntasser’s defense team
showed that the U.S. government had been engaged in exactly the same
activities promoting jihad in Afghanistan—through such conduits as the NED
and USAID—up to 1992, a year before the formation of Care. “Activities that
were considered charitable in 1985, 1989, 1991, or 1992,” the defense attor-
neys argued, “do not become non-charitable in 1993 because the identity of
the donor changes, or because the United States’ strategic interest in jihad has
lessened”; and they specified the subsidy by the U.S. government of Afghan
Jehad in the 1980s. The prosecution could not claim that any of Care’s activi-
ties were in themselves criminal.
These are the facts of the Muntasser case, but we may speculate as to the
defendant’s motivation. At the final court hearing, he apologized to the court
for the words he had used in promoting Care “as a young unmarried man
who had no responsibilities for a family and the furniture business that he
now has.” He was indeed twenty-eight when he founded Care. The magazine
Al-Hussam was published openly, with plentiful advertisements for local
businesses in the Boston area. It seems likely that he was following what he
took to be legitimate religious leadership, and had no reason to question the
lax practices of charity regulation that prevailed in the United States at that
time, owing to the nation’s strong tradition of freedom of thought and asso-
ciation, guaranteed in the Constitution. We may further surmise that he failed
until his resignation from Care in 1996 to notice the change of U.S. foreign
policy after 1992.25
A similar asynchrony may well have affected the work and lives of some
other Muslim charity organizers, both in the United States and in the Middle
East. The draconian measures taken by the United States since 2001 to
criminalize and severely punish “material support” for terrorism—which can
include even such projects as trying to persuade a paramilitary organization
to drop its arms and embrace the political process—have come to bear hard
on all international NGOs working in conflict zones, but especially on Islamic
charities even when they have taken every step to comply with financial and
other regulations.26
CLAUDE MALHURET AND MSF
In May 1979, four years before the meeting in California in which Malhuret
took part as director of MSF, refugees were already flowing in large numbers
into Pakistan as a result of the uprising against the Kabul regime. Malhuret
sent an MSF emissary to Afghanistan and persuaded his colleagues in Paris to
back a series of clandestine interventions to provide medical aid. Eventually,
more than 450 doctors, nurses, and logisticians are said to have passed
through the dangerous Afghan maquis during the decade of the war (Vallaeys
2004: 429–30). Juliette Fournot, locally known as Djamila, whose father had
been an aid worker and who had spent her teenage years in Kabul, became
the organizer of an elaborate network bringing teams and medical equipment
into distant parts of Afghanistan as far as Badakhshan in the northeast, close
to the Soviet border. She operated from a large rented house in Peshawar
nicknamed the “White House” (Weber 1995: 269, 282–83).
At about the time of the California conference, Malhuret published a less
optimistic prediction in Foreign Affairs as to the future of Afghanistan: “the
Afghan resistance will hold out for a long time, but in the end it will probably
be beaten. . . . It might not be beaten, however, if in the coming years there
is a profound change in the international balance of power and in the reac-
tion of Westerners to Soviet totalitarianism” (Malhuret 1983/1984). Fournot
testified before the U.S. Congress about MSF’s work, arguing that humani-
tarian aid should be given directly to the various resistance networks within
Afghanistan, not to the political parties installed in Peshawar. Politicians
and journalists in Washington expressed keen interest in MSF and offered
her large grants for its work, which she refused, preferring the independence
that has to this day been one of the keystones of MSF’s policies (Weber
1995, 283–84; Vallaeys 2004, 443–44). As a result of two widely publicized
incidents of hostage-taking, Malhuret in an article in Le Monde called for
the evolution of international law to afford more protection for humanitarian
teams and war reporters (Malhuret 1984).
In 1986, an MSF caravan—of 120 horses carrying 5 tons of medicines
and 150,000 vaccines—was intercepted by mujahideen, and 10 French
doctors and nurses were taken hostage; they were freed after one month
(Vallaeys 2004, 450–52). In 1990, a young French logistician, Frédéric
Galland, was murdered by three masked men in a small MSF hospital in
eastern Afghanistan. Rony Brauman, who had been elected president of MSF
in 1982 and who formed a triumvirate with Malhuret and Francis Charron
during the earlier years of the decade, decided in 1990, while not directly in
charge of the program, to terminate their missions to Afghanistan (Vallaeys
2004, 444).27
There had been long-standing debates in the Paris headquarters of MSF
about the cost-effectiveness of the Afghan program. A documentary film En
Plein Air, shot by Juliette Fournot and colleagues in 1986 and edited and
released in 2006, gives the flavor of the work that she coordinated: hair-
raising journeys across rocky cols, the deaths of pack animals en route, then
provision of medical services in a makeshift clinic, including surgical recon-
struction of a young man’s seriously injured face. One of the team was Didier
Lefèvre (1957–2007), a biologist with MSF who later became a photojour-
nalist, and who co-published a three-part book Le Photographe. Powerfully
combining his photographs with cartoons, this recorded his travels through
the mountains with MSF in 1986, including a disastrous solo journey back to
Pakistan as he ran out of film.28
MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES AND THE MEDIA
The rupture with Bernard Kouchner in 1978 was partly due to Kouchner’s
publicity-seeking. He endorsed what he called la loi du tapage (the law of
hype), seeing journalists and humanitarians as locked into an inevitable if
often testing partnership. Malhuret and Brauman shared Kouchner’s com-
bativeness and ambition but were disinclined to court personal publicity as
opposed to a high media profile for MSF. The MSF tradition of témoignage
underpinned their policies. But the cross-border ventures in Afghanistan—
like those of two other French organizations, Médecins du Monde and Aide
Médicale Internationale—were conducted with some discretion, to avoid the
risks of reprisals from the Soviet military and expulsion from Pakistan.
In retrospect, Afghanistan was seen by MSF as “the theater of the craziest
missions in the history of the association.” “Amid the romance of running
clandestine missions,” writes Peter Redfield in his monograph on MSF (2013:
61), “any pretense of adherence to neutrality and discretion vanished.” In
Brauman’s words, it was specially naïve to assume that the war would end
with the departure of the Red Army: “we were thinking of peace, the refugees
returning, mine-clearing, taking the hospitals in hand” (Vallaeys 2004: 397,
454).29
For Malhuret, the “French doctors” and Western war reporters had in com-
mon their exposure to the same dangers of kidnapping or death. The Soviet
strategy of massive reprisals against the population at large “necessitates one
condition, among others, to succeed: secrecy. International public opinion
would never accept such oppression if it was correctly informed about it.
Hence the hermetic closure of the borders to journalists as well as doctors”
(Malhuret 1984).30 One seasoned journalist offered a more jaundiced analysis:
The only way [for Western journalists] to cover the conflict was to endure days
and nights of walking along precarious mountain paths with guerrilla fighters
from mujahedin safe havens in Pakistan. A few stories that appeared in Western
papers via this route were careful and low-key, but many were romantic, self-
promoting accounts of heroic exploits by reporters who donned a shalwar
kameez, the long-tailed shirt, and a pakol, the pie-shaped Afghan woollen hat,
to slip into Afghanistan alongside the men with the guns . . . . Mujahedin groups
encouraged this adventure journalism, uncritical, exaggerating and occasionally
dishonest. . . . Footage of mujahedin crouching behind rocks and firing weapons
was often artificial since there were no Soviet or Afghan Government troops
nearby. But it helped to bring support and funding from Western governments
and sympathetic aid groups. (Steele 2011: 54–55)
The decade of the Soviet–Afghan War happened to coincide with a turning

point in the social sciences, the “crisis of representation,” under the influence
of Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and John Berger, as well
as some feminist writers. Criticism of the entire narrative structure of disaster
relief began to be expressed within some leading NGOs. By the mid-1990s,
a political economy of disaster relief was coming to be recognized: a fairly
stable system whereby representations of misery from the global “South”
are exported northwards, via an oligarchy of news agencies and broadcast-
ing organizations, as consumables which are reciprocated by aid flows. The
assumed heroic role of the Western aid worker came increasingly to be ques-
tioned (Benthall 1993).
It is true that Fournot in her deposition to the U.S. Congress made clear
that the priority was to strengthen the capacity of her Afghan interlocutors to
organize themselves in areas that the Soviets did not control (Vallaeys 2004:
445). But the cover and title of French Doctors: La grande épopée de la
médecine humanitaire (“the great epic of humanitarian medicine”) by Olivier
Weber, himself a grand reporter for Le Point and ally of the mujahideen in
the 1980s, suggests that in 1995, its year of publication, the heroic narrative
was still dominant in some Parisian circles.31 By 2003, when Le Photographe
was published by Guibert, Lefèvre, and Lemercier, the tone has become
ironic, even self-deprecatory.
Since then, MSF has negotiated turbulent times to become genuinely

international rather than predominantly French, inspired by independence
of spirit and a determination not to be co-opted by government interests.
The dilemma of reconciling the ideal of neutrality with the imperative of
témoignage continues to be debated within this unusually self-critical aid
agency.32
CONCLUSION
The unintended long-term outcomes of Western support for militant Islam,

obscured by the imperative to weaken the Soviet Union, have often been
noted. Less often noticed as an indirect consequence—and here the theories
of Mary Douglas on “purity and danger” can shed light (Douglas 1966)33—
is the adoption by the U.S. executive and judiciary of draconian measures
criminalizing material support for any activities deemed to be affiliated to
a terrorist organization, even if these are hospitals or bakeries. It is as if
the slightest pollution by an ideology opposed to U.S. policies is enough
to condemn activities that would otherwise be welcomed as expressions of
common humanity.34 This policy has led to contradictions with International
Humanitarian Law, which (contrary to much popular belief) has no special
standing in domestic law. The guardians in the United States of the purity
of charity have never accepted their share of blame for the muddying of that
purity in the cause of jihad in the 1980s.
As for MSF, while it remained an essentially French institution until the
early 1990s, it successfully propagated a myth of the “aristocracy of risk”
in the words of Kouchner. The 1980s were the high-water mark of this the-
atricalization. Indeed, in retrospect—with its strongly articulated credo, its
foundation myths, and its confrontation with the facts of suffering—MSF
met some of the criteria for a quasi-religious movement stressing the redemp-
tive power of saving lives and alleviating distress. Many of its middle-class
young recruits seem to have undergone conversion experiences on joining it
(Benthall 2008: 96–106). MSF’s later leaders came to reflect on the period
with wry detachment.
Looking back at the Monterey conference in 1983, one must credit the
U.S. government of the day with having convened a wide variety of experts
and published their exchanges. One speaker observed with prescience: “We
certainly would not want to see the Afghanistan suffering today exchanged
for an Afghanistan under the cloud of a civil war.”35 But the religious dimen-
sion was almost obscured by the concern to support those whom a Pakistani
think-tank director called “our brave Afghan brothers, now fighting the battle
of the free world.”36
If Arnold Toynbee, author of the once-celebrated twelve-volume A Study

of History, had not become monumentally unfashionable by the 1980s,
his reflections on the much longer time-scale of the Islamist challenge to
Christian and post-Christian values might have stimulated more circumspec-
tion at Monterey. “Pan-Islamism is dormant,” he wrote in 1946, “yet we have
to reckon with the possibility that the sleeper may awake if ever the cosmo-
politan proletariat of a ‘Westernized’ world revolts against Western domina-
tion and cries out for anti-Western leadership” (Toynbee: 1946: 212). As the
French railway sign warns, “Un train peut en cacher un autre.”37
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Malik Ghachem first drew my attention to Afghan Jehad. Rony Brauman,

Didier Fassin, Emanuel Schaeublin, and Jonathan Steele kindly commented
on drafts of this chapter, but the responsibility for any errors is mine alone.
NOTES
1. Gerard C. Steibel and Marvin G. Weinbaum (Magnus 1985: 197, 115). The
latter added that “[a]t least for the present, even seemingly benign Islamic fundamen-
talism is not likely to be welcomed in Washington.”
2. Interview in Nouvel Observateur, January 15–21, 1998, by Vincent Javert
(Cooley 2000: 20).
3. Fatima Ayub, “Not my grandfather’s country; Afghanistan at the brink,” New
York Times International Edition, November 1, 2008, Opinion, p. 8. Additional infor-
mation from Professor Amin Saikal, pers. comm., September 10, 2017.
4. Magnus 1985: 129–30. See also pp. 48–50, 95–97, 129–30, 141, 167–69,
183–84, 202–3, 210.
5. Magnus 1985: 101–4, 178–82.
6. “Edouard Mir” (Lanfranco Pace), Libération, December 20, 1991. My
translation.
7. He was hanged by the Taliban in 1996.
8. This article by Helga Baitenmann is an indispensable source.
9. Pico Iyer, reported by Dean Brelis, Karachi, Time, June 11, 1984, pp. 38–40.
10. This is to be distinguished from Al-Jihad, a monthly Arabic-language maga-
zine launched by Abdullah Azzam in 1984, which circulated to about fifty coun-
tries and ran to over a hundred issues until closing down in 1995 (Hegghammer
2020: 230).
11. By the Afghan political scientist Amin Saikal, cited in Rasanayagam
2003: 121.
12. Afghan Jehad, 1.4, April–June 1988, 3–6.
13. Sources include:

NED Summary, proposal for Afghanistan Democratic Education Project (6
page typescript, late 1980s, n.d.) https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB78/
propaganda%20145.pdf. Accessed December 27, 2020.
List of four NED grants to American Friends of Afghanistan, 1990–1992,
totaling $207,462, including $118,412 for Afghan Jehad. This list is cited in the court
submission (Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss and Incorporated Memorandum) refer-
enced here in fn.24.
See also “Afghanistan Relief Committee,” Militarist Monitor, updated
December 31, 1990, https://militarist-monitor.org/afghanistan_relief_committee/.
Accessed December 27, 2020.
14. Latest annual report available, for 2014; total revenue $155.6 million.
15. http://www.kkl-jnf.org/people-and-environment/community-development/sol-
dier-family-meeting-points/. Accessed July 20, 2020.
16. Charity Commission Guidance on Charitable Purposes, https://www.gov.uk
/government/publications/charitable-purposes/charitable-purposes. Accessed July
20, 2020.
17. Prominent among these was Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (Bellion-Jourdan 2003: 71).
18. We shall not add here to the extensive literature on the problem of “humani-
tarian intervention” by military means, designed to protect vulnerable populations,
sometimes ironically rephrased as “humanitarian war.”
19. Glenn Simpson, “U.S. Knew of Ties Between Terror, Charities,” Wall Street
Journal, Eastern edition, May 9, 2003. The authenticity of the document that Simpson
refers to has been challenged.
20. For sharply contrasting accounts, see Burr and Collins 2006: 271–76 and de
Goede 2012: 139–45.
21. Hegghammer questions as a “conspiracy theory” the allegation that the U.S.
government orchestrated Azzam’s tours of numerous U.S. cities, but asserts that they
“happened without interference from, and largely under the radar of, domestic US
authorities” (2020: 260–62, 590 n. 103).
22. It may be, however, that opposition to Shi`a Iran impelled the United States to
turn a blind eye to the rise of the Sunni Taliban—funded in part from Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia—until the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
in August 1998, when Washington demanded bin Laden’s extradition by the Taliban
(Saikal 2002: 25, 2004: 223).
23. No connection with the major U.S. charity CARE.
24. Lee Hammel, “6 months of home confinement added to sentence in Muslim
charity tax fraud case,” Telegram and Gazette, Worcester, May 29, 2012, http://www
.telegram.com/article/20120530/NEWS/105309924. Accessed July 20, 2020.
See also U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, USA v. Muhamed
Mubayyid and Emadeddin Z. Muntasser, Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss and
Incorporated Memorandum, October 5, 2006, https://groups.google.com/g/alt.lawyers/c/
GtYFk96SEsk?pli=1. Accessed December 27, 2020; and United States Court of Appeals,
First Circuit, USA v. Mubayyid and Muntasser, and USA v. Al-Monla, decided September
1, 2011, https://casetext.com/case/us-v-mubayyid-5. Accessed December 27, 2020.
See also fn.13.

25. For another analysis of the Muntasser case, stressing the anxiety that such
prosecutions provoked among Muslims, see James 2019: 152–55.
26. For comprehensive coverage see the Charity and Security Network website,
based in Washington, DC: https://charityandsecurity.org.
27. MSF had left an installation in northern Afghanistan in 1985 after being stig-
matized as “Crusaders” by Azzam’s followers (Hegghammer 2020: 190–91). It was
later to return, however, through the days of civil war and Taliban rule—until with-
drawal again in 2004 after the murder of five team members (Redfield 2013: 162–63).
28. This was a collaboration between Lefèvre, Emmanuel Guibert, a cartoonist, and
Frédéric Lemercier, a designer (Guibert, Lefèvre, and Lemercier 2003, 2004, 2006).
Translated into English as The Photographer (Guibert, Lèfevre, and Lemercier 2009).
29. My translation.
30. My translation.
31. The color photograph on the cover shows a handsome young white doctor with
a stethoscope holding a small underfed black female child who gazes into his eyes in
mute gratitude, one hand extended to touch his face.
32. Among many changes in the humanitarian environment since the 1980s,
four stand out. First, it is by no means as clear as it used to be to war reporters and
their managers that publicity given to suffering populations will shock the so-called
International Community into humanitarian action (though underreported wars are
even more catastrophic for those caught up in them). Second, violent attacks on aid
workers and journalists are increasing in frequency. A third change is the dissemina-
tion of new communication technologies barely dreamt of in the 1980s, but arguably
this has not changed the fundamentals of the relationship between donor countries
and the global periphery. A fourth change is the increasing recognition of structural
racism among aid professionals.
33. I have set out elsewhere to analyze the quest for purity in various ideologies of
humanitarianism (Benthall 2016).
34. The contrast between the United States’ clamping down on its Islamic charities
and the softer and more flexible approach of the U.K. Charity Commission has often
been noted. Malick W. Ghachem has argued that the difference is partly due to the
First Amendment culture forbidding “entanglement” by the federal government with
religion, whereas the British state has a tradition of involvement in religious institu-
tions (Ghachem 2010). For a discussion see Chong 2020.
35. Marvin J. Weinbaum (Magnus 1985: 209).
36. Noor A. Husain (Magnus 1985: 194).
37. One train may hide another.
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Chapter 9
War Economy, Warlordism, and Social

Class Formation in South Sudan
Clémence Pinaud
In December 2013, two years after its independence, South Sudan plunged
back into civil war. This was its third since the independence of Sudan in
1956. The country had gone through a first civil war intensifying in the early
1960s until 1972. Yet its longest civil war was its second, lasting for twenty-
two years from 1983 to 2005. Khartoum, dominated by the pro-shari’a law
National Islamic Front (NIF) and then National Congress Party (NCP), vio-
lently tried to assert power by fighting with and fighting through various rebel
groups in the South. In 2005, a peace agreement between the government of
Sudan and the Southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/
Army (SPLM/A) ended Africa’s longest war. The Comprehensive Peace
Agreement (CPA) promoted the SPLM/A to the position of representative of
the Southerners and de facto ruler of the now semi-autonomous South. From
rebels, the SPLA and other factions’ officers became statesmen. In 2011, the
South gained independence through a referendum, and the statesmen offi-
cially emancipated themselves from Khartoum’s tutelage for good.
The SPLM/A, founded in 1983, and supported by communist Ethiopia,
was initially of Marxist-Leninist inclination. In its 1983 manifesto, it insisted
that it was unlike the compromised Southern bourgeoisie who sold the
Southern autonomy to Khartoum after the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement
ending the first civil war. The SPLM/A would fight for a “New Sudan” with
equality secured for all, regardless of the color of their skin, their religion, or
their geographic origin. No non-“Arab” would be considered a second-class
citizen anymore under SPLA rule. Yet, by the end of the second civil war and
the 2005 peace agreement, the SPLA had designed its own system of social
oppression by constituting itself as a dominant class in areas under its con-
trol (Nyaba 1997, 33, 38–39, 49, 53; Horn of Africa 1985; Woodward 1990,
205
206 Clémence Pinaud
162; Johnson 2011, 63–64, 127; “Food and Power in Sudan: A Critique of
Humanitarianism” 1997, 65; Pinaud 2015).
This chapter explains how the SPLA’s control of the war economy and
the rise of warlords resulted in the formation of its own military aristocracy
and in the making of social classes. This led to the subjugation of civilians
in a system of domination that borrowed elements from both the feudal and
slavery systems,1 and I focus here on the feudal elements. Along the making
of social classes, control over the war economy also marked the advent of a
proto-state. Wartime South Sudan displayed processes very reminiscent of
what Charles Tilly and Marc Bloch had observed in early modern Europe—
namely the making of a military aristocracy, and the organization of a war
economy that resulted in social differentiation and state-building (Tilly 1985,
1992; Bloch 1989). At the same time, the South Sudanese case showed
that such processes in a twentieth-century African civil war could not be
adequately understood without considering international factors promoting
the rise of these warlords to the category of so-called warlord democrats (or
statesmen) after the war.2
This chapter investigates the sociopolitical processes occurring in the
context of a war economy. It is based on field research conducted in various
locations across South Sudan between 2009 and 2017. Even if only a few
interviews are cited here, mostly from the towns of Rumbek, Juba, Bentiu,
and Aweil, the conclusions are based on corpus of over 500 interviews with
both female and male fighters, ordinary civilians, aid workers, local politi-
cians, international diplomats and aid workers, on the second and the third
civil wars and the interwar period. I also build my analysis on previous pub-
lications on the making of a military aristocracy and military kinship ties in
South Sudan’s second civil war (Pinaud 2014, 2016).
I first analyze why the SPLA was mostly not depicted in international
policy and academic circles as a “greedy” armed group during the second
civil war (1983–2005) before turning to the making of its military aristocracy
and dominant class through the war economy. I then address the creation
of a lower stratum—intermediaries, or middle-class—of indebted followers
through the patronage of marriage, and how this played out in the aftermath
of the second civil war. Finally, I address the specific example of SPLA war-
lord Paul Malong.
THE WAY WE SEE THE SPLA
The academic literature on South Sudan’s past civil war has highlighted the
importance of the war economy in sustaining all the warring parties (Johnson
2007, 92–93; Nyaba 1997, 129; El-Batahani, Elbadawi, and Gadir Ali 2005,
War Economy, Warlordism, and Social Class Formation 207
193; De Waal 2014; Keen 2008; Walraet 2008a, 2008b; Duffield 2001, 154).
Yet the SPLA was never popularly considered on par with other African
armed groups notorious for their economic activities, such as Sierra Leone’s
RUF or Angola’s UNITA, both involved in the diamond trade. Douglas
Johnson, one of the most reputed historians on South Sudan, noted that the
war in Sudan was not like Angola’s, where both government and rebels had
access to their own exportable mineral resources, or like Sierra Leone’s
where the government, rebels, and individuals each had equal access to a
highly exportable resource like diamonds (Johnson 2007, 154–55). It was
inferred that because the SPLA did not have access to oil resources—like
Khartoum did—or, supposedly, diamonds—the armed group’s emphasis was
less on illicit trade than the RUF or UNITA, and this located the SPLA in a
different category of the armed group.
This analysis was popular given the general state of the field of inquiry
on armed groups. For example, political scientist Jeremy Weinstein, in his
study on insurgent violence, distinguished between the ideologically moti-
vated “activist” groups operating in resource-poor contexts, and having to
strike bargains with the local populations (following Maoist teachings), and
those other “opportunistic” armed groups that were motivated by resource
extraction, and much less in need of popular support. Weinstein argued that
opportunism made a group more likely to violate human rights because it was
less interested in controlling violence (Weinstein 2007, 9–10). Weinstein,
who followed in the footsteps of political scientists in the late 1990s–early
2000s carrying out research for the World Bank (such as Paul Collier) and
subscribing to the thesis that armed actors were motivated by “greed” rather
than “grievances” and driven by the opportunity to rebel depending on their
environment,3 did not specifically study South Sudan. But if one applied
Weinstein and other Collier followers’ analysis to South Sudan, rebel leader
John Garang and his SPLA would allegedly fit into the “grievances” camp
(with strong ideological polarization between North and South Sudan), rather
than into the “greed” camp (even if Collier’s followers argued that a number
of environmental factors still played a part in explaining why people go to
war). Despite acknowledging the SPLA’s predatory behavior, Collier’s fol-
lowers argued that the SPLA “fixed” its predatory ways through the develop-
ment of its administration,4 when in fact and as this chapter shows, the exact
opposite occurred.
Still according to these authors, South Sudan was indeed characterized by
a myriad of splintering armed groups who were “greedy.” They subscribed
to SPLA leader John Garang’s rhetoric and quoted him multiple times as
saying that in the South, it “pays to rebel” (El-Batahani, Elbadawi, and Gadir
Ali 2005, 193, 212). This implied that the SPLA was different. The SPLA
was the armed group fitting best into the “grievances/ideological” category,
mostly because it kept the same leadership throughout the twenty-two-year-

long war. It also retained the same name, unlike the other armed groups. This
gave it a semblance of political consistency, even though Marxist-Leninist
ideology never took hold of its recruits and was largely abandoned after its
1991 split. This image of political consistency, added to the advantage of
not being “Islamist”—unlike its northern adversary—but secular, and with
Christian affinities attracting international sympathy, implied that the SPLA
was a “good”—or at least “better”—armed actor.
But the SPLA complicated the distinction between ideologically and politi-
cally motivated armed actors on the one hand, and “opportunistic” armed
groups on the other, not least because it committed gross human rights viola-
tions. Such distinction omitted other factors such as the war’s length (twenty-
two years), geographical variations in violence and in command and control
over troops, international politics dictating varying support to the SPLA
throughout the war, and politics within the SPLA, especially surrounding the
1991 split of the armed group. All in all, the SPLA’s motives were neither
solely ideological nor just “opportunistic.” They varied with time and with
the composition of the rank and file, and depended on individual command-
ers, most of whom enriched themselves. Recruitment also determined the
SPLA’s attitude toward civilians and the leadership’s motivation to enforce
discipline, and its ability to do so. Finally, the SPLA was involved in min-
ing both gold and diamonds, and it had devised a transportation system and
trade networks. So it did capture lootable and exportable resources, and it
transported them and other comparatively less “exportable” resources such
as looted cattle and teak, in lorries to neighboring countries, using roads
renovated by relief agencies.
In fact, the SPLA displayed its versatility in the ways it adapted to local
contexts wherever its troops were stationed throughout twenty-two years of
armed struggle. As a result, its war economy revolved around diverse com-
modities. From its presence in the Ethiopian refugee camps at the inception
of its struggle to the end of the civil war in 2005, the SPLA traded commodi-
ties it looted and/or taxed off civilians, including cattle, relief items, food
aid, civilians’ crops and other belongings (from clothing to kitchen utensils),
natural resources including minerals such as gold and diamonds, but also teak
and marijuana.5
Therefore, the idea of the SPLA fitting one category of armed groups
(“greedy”) or the other (“ideological/political”) was largely disconnected
from reality on the ground. The idea was in fact mostly informed by poli-
tics. Evidently, until December 2013 and the new civil war, the SPLA was
perceived as a “political” movement because it fit with U.S. foreign policy
goals, as I explain later. After 2014, tongues loosened up as the new state
plunged back into war, which made it somewhat permissible at first, and then
commonplace, to describe the elite as inherently “greedy,” corrupt, and vio-

lent—therefore without “politics,” or “ideology.” Since 2014, little attention
has been paid to “politics.” As of 2018, the political scene of South Sudan is
often described in policy circles as “greedy,” with all rebels taking up arms
to loot and/or bargain for political and military positions, not because they
follow their own political agendas. We have fully tipped over to the other side
of the coin—violent greed.6
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the perception of the SPLA as “ideological/
political” rather than “greedy” was partly informed by the way the SPLA pre-
sented itself. In this regard, Will Reno’s analysis of how armed groups adapt
their political strategies toward outsiders is highly relevant. Paradoxically,
while the “greed” (or “criminal conspiracy”) narrative gained traction in
the late 1990s, the SPLA seemed largely impermeable to it and managed to
uphold what Reno, writing about the depiction of wars in Liberia, Angola, and
Namibia, called a “war of liberation narrative” (Reno 2005, 1800). The SPLA
portrayed itself with a strong ideology of national liberation with Marxist-
Leninist rhetoric, against the exploitative regime in Khartoum. Before 1991,
the SPLA adopted a predatory behavior that was somewhat kept in check by
the fact that it was not split in different factions yet. But it was supported by
communist Ethiopia and therefore denigrated by the United States, who ini-
tially backed Khartoum against the Southern rebels. In 1991, the collapse of
the Soviet block and the fall of the Ethiopian Derg ended a much-needed line
of military supplies to the SPLA. It also coincided with the split of the rebel
group into various factions, which heralded a new phase of increased asset-
stripping raids, violence, and predation in the South. Garang’s admission that
“in the South, it pays to rebel” was meant to explain southern factionalism and
defuse criticism about the SPLA itself, supposedly different from the rest of
the “greedy” factions. Explaining the mushrooming of rival factions by greed
also deflected criticism about the SPLA’s own internal governance issues.
But this did not mean the SPLA was not exploitative either, as I show later.
All in all, after 1991, “greed” could be seen as much more prominent a
feature of the civil war. Resource capture was practiced by more actors, in
more disorganized and violent fashion. Of course, the SPLA’s image of a
“political” rather than “greedy” armed group was not just informed by the
way the SPLA wanted to present itself. It needed purchase, and it catered
to the way outsiders—especially Americans—wanted to see it. From 1991
to 1994, considering the collapse of the Soviet block, and Khartoum’s ties
with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, the United States progressively
changed its stance toward the South and especially the SPLA (Johnson 2007,
80; Patey 2010, 630).
It found a perfect interlocutor in John Garang, the Dinka SPLA leader who
had studied in Iowa for a PhD in agricultural economics, and who was a very
gifted orator when it came to convincing different audiences of different goals.

Some of his political adversaries pointed out he was inconsistent, but to his
interlocutors in Washington, DC, he was an authoritative politician who man-
aged to stay on top of a large rebel formation for twenty-two years, until his
death in 2005 in a helicopter crash. Garang was particularly adept at persuad-
ing his Western foreign friends (especially Americans) of the South’s politi-
cal potential for steering regime change in Khartoum, from an Islamist state
sponsoring terrorism to a Western-allied (and particularly U.S.-allied) secular
state. In response to the West’s concerns about the SPLA human rights record
and institutional strength, Garang ushered what looked like a reform in 1994,
through the SPLM/A National Convention. This reform meant to build the
SPLA administration. International aid in the form of support to institutional
building to the Southern rebels was hoped, as liberal peacemaking thinking
had it (spearheaded by institutions such as the World Bank), to steer the South
toward democratic development (Young 2019, 7). In an opening speech to
National Convention in 1994, SPLA commander Yussif Kuwa described the
pre-1994 period as “childhood,” and what was coming as “manhood” with
“responsibility, seriousness and accountability” (Rolandsen 2005, 112).
But predation and lack of accountability continued, unabated. The few
critical voices arising from human rights organizations denouncing the
SPLA’s exploitative patterns that continued after 1994 were mostly ignored.
De Waal called the international community’s attitude toward relief diversion
“functional ignorance” in one of his reports (De Waal 1995, 7). All in all, as
international aid to the region increased by the mid-1990s, the SPLA rebels
were perceived as mostly “good” rebels.
Yet, institutional building in SPLA-controlled areas only routinized preda-
tion, and increased the enrichment of commanders. Therefore, the most effi-
cient at predation it got, the more support the SPLA received. A former Dinka
child soldier attested: “The 1994 civilian administration was a good way for
the SPLA to continue these (extractive) practices on a larger scale: that’s
when the system of rationed contribution was set up and looting increased,
being systematized” (Former SPLA child soldier 2014).
Many ordinary civilians felt that by the end of the war “most SPLA com-
manders had gone out to Australia and other places. They were gone out of
the frontlines. Very few people in the SPLA were there for political reasons.
Most of them were criminals” (Member of civil society 12 2014). In other
words, there was little doubt to ordinary civilians that the SPLA commanders
were “greedy” rather than “political” by the time they got promoted as future
leaders of the semi-autonomous region in 2005. But the international commu-
nity supported the SPLA rather than any other armed group in South Sudan.
The same civilian explained the stakes for the United States, Norway, and
the United Kingdom, members of the so-called Troika: “For the international
community if the SPLA was defeated, South Sudan was over . . . . The
Comprehensive Peace Agreement was imposed from outside” (Member of
civil society 12 2014).
Western advocacy circles cared more about how “bad” Khartoum was to
the Southerners—especially the Dinka—than about how extractive the SPLA
acted in the South—especially toward the non-Dinka. The irony was that the
Southern rebels were reenacting, in their predatory behavior, century-old pat-
terns of extractive relationship between North and South.
Slavery laid the historical foundation for the predominantly Dinka SPLA’s
ethnically exclusionary predation in areas under its control. Indeed, the very
mode of production through which the predominantly Dinka SPLA elite
accumulated wealth, especially at the expense of other ethnic groups, was
rooted in the Sudanese history of slavery: in a mode of production that was
inherently racist. Even if forced labor in SPLA-held areas was not slavery, it
certainly was reminiscent of its economy. The SPLA also used its court sys-
tem to force civilians with a prison sentence to work in its farms/mines and
earmarked some of the production for the division commanders, much like it
used court fines to collect cattle. This was again a remnant of the organization
of slavery. SPLA-run farms were reminiscent of the system of the zarai’b—
especially prevalent in Bahr El Ghazal during the nineteenth century. There,
female slaves were forced to cultivate too. Besides, because the SPLA was
mostly Dinka but controlled non-Dinka areas (such as Equatoria) that were
key to its war economy, forced labor became ethnically ranked in those areas
as well. Forced labor, ethnic ranking in access to military training, and ethnic
discrimination in access to positions of resource control to the detriment of
the few non-Dinka officers, meant that ethnic ranking and dominant-class
formation resting on predation thus converged. On the whole, this SPLA-
dominant class had very few ethnic outsiders (Pinaud 2021).
But only a few authors focused on describing the processes of violent
exploitation and resource accumulation by the SPLA.7 The “functional igno-
rance” of the international community—diplomats and aid workers—seemed
to permeate academic writings on the SPLA. This meant that little was writ-
ten on the social implications of predation, which I now turn to. Yet predation
and its long-term effects were highly relevant: they structured society during
the war, and for decades to come. In contributing to the making of social
classes, predation also structured the fabric of military power.
THE DOMINANT CLASS AS AN ARISTOCRACY
Throughout the war, the SPLA became the vehicle for resource accumula-
tion. The armed group despoiled civilians’ resources, and funnelled them
into “forced markets” just like the pro-government militias and army did in
areas under Khartoum’s control.8 SPLA cadres constituted themselves into a
military aristocracy, a dominant class (Pinaud 2014). In analyzing this domi-
nant class, I follow Larry Diamond’s definition of a “category encompass-
ing those who have similar economic motivation because they have similar
economic opportunities, even if class consciousness, class solidarity, or class
action do not exist. A class may be considered socially dominant if it owns
or controls the most productive assets, appropriates the bulk of the most val-
ued consumption opportunities, and commands a sufficient monopoly over
the means of coercion and legitimation to sustain politically this cumulative
socio-economic pre-eminence.” With “high degrees of class consciousness
and social coherence—constituting in the Marxian sense a ‘class-for-itself,’”
a dominant class will consolidate, particularly through the transmission of its
status to next generations (Diamond 1987, 569).
When applying this definition to South Sudan, it emerges that wartime
predation—and not political corruption, as advanced by Diamond and others—
initiated a process of dominant-class formation.9 Under these circumstances,
the guerilla group—not the political party—was the instrument of the rise of a
military aristocracy and of its lower strata. This military aristocracy was a dom-
inant class, not a nobility. “Not every dominant class is a nobility,” as stressed
by Marc Bloch in his examination of feudal society (Bloch 1989, II:2). Bloch,
even as he observed that the word noble was used in ninth-century western
Europe to denote both distinction of birth and the measure of wealth, indicated
that what made a nobility was the recognition of both social privileges and
hereditary succession by law—the existence of a social pedigree. Therefore, the
nobility popularly associated with the Ancien Régime appeared relatively late
in western Europe in the twelfth century, taking shape in the thirteenth century
along with the demise of vassalage (Bloch 1989, II:2, 4–5).
Yet the word noble was already by then used loosely for men who gained
prominence in society in the midst of a government breakdown and the need
for protection. The vassals’ role as arms retainers made them look like an
aristocracy. In sum, nobility as a legal class did not exist yet, but this social
class of nobles did. Bloch noted that “it was principally by the nature of its
wealth, by its exercise of authority, and by its social habits that this group
was defined” (Bloch 1989, II: 7). Some of these lords were self-made men.
They derived their wealth from various means including land, tolls, markets
fees, fines. The common denominator was some form of exploitation—
wealth acquired on the labor of another man. Exploitation was justified by
the idea that the noble could only dedicate time to his own function, that of
a warrior.
War-torn South Sudan shared many characteristics with the feudal societies
described by Bloch (Bloch 1989, II: 167). Organized forced labor, the primacy
of kinship ties, the existence of a warrior class, ties of dependency from the top
to the bottom of the social scale between the warlords and their vassals, as well
as state weakness, were key features in South Sudan that were reminiscent of
feudal societies, in addition to features it inherited from slavery. Besides, the
so-called western European “nobles” who predated the thirteenth century were
also the subordinates to superior lords. In South Sudan, even warlords had to
account to higher lords—in the SPLA, to leader John Garang. They were vas-
sals who also thought of themselves as fulfilling their function of warrior. That
function was the highest, and with the SPLA officers thinking of themselves as
“the best,” the dominant class acted like an aristocracy.10
Similarly, to Bloch’s “nobles,” war provided these men with the oppor-
tunity to change their socioeconomic standing and sustain their new ascen-
dency. This applied to the highest levels, including two key SPLA figures, the
SPLA leader John Garang, and his second in command and future president,
Salva Kiir. A former SPLA commander recalled that before the war “Salva
and Garang were very poor, even if Salva’s father was a spear-master. Salva
and Garang enriched themselves to death during the war” (Former SPLA
commander 2014).11 This leaves little doubt about the centrality of the war in
these men’s social trajectory. Yet, the SPLA cadres still came from diverse
social backgrounds.
Some were from chiefly descent, and were selected precisely because of that
social capital. They were rewarded with high-ranking positions for promot-
ing recruitment into the SPLA early on in the war using the chiefs and their
social capital. Others were military career officers from the Sudanese Armed
Forces (like John Garang, Salva Kiir, or Kerubino Kuanyin) and played an
instrumental role in starting the SPLA. One did not exclude the other—as
Salva Kiir combined both a chiefly heritage and a military career. Finally,
another category of cadres fits much more than the category of self-made men
who emerged through this war. “Some people from the cattle camps made it
into the SPLA top leadership,” explained a Dinka civilian. “Peter Gadet, for
example. Paul Malong, who was not educated. He didn’t even get primary
school education. Paul Malong used to assist as a non-trained nurse in Aweil.
Those who joined in the bush and were good, made it to seniority” (Member
of civil society 6 2014). This last type of warriors would especially invest in
long-term kinship expansion strategies.
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, INTERESTS, AND

THE HYPER-CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH
In spite of the warriors’ various social backgrounds, the new military aristoc-
racy acquired an overarching class consciousness. It displayed it in ways of
living and in taste—all elements of “social distinction.” These were all the
more observable in the post-2005 era when this dominant class consolidated
itself through access to oil money. As I explained elsewhere, the dominant
class displayed similar taste in dining, cars, and housing (Pinaud 2014).
But the SPLA aristocrats already acted, in a Marxist sense, as a “class for
itself” during the war. They especially demonstrated their consciousness
when defending their class interests. They violently controlled markets, for
example, banning civilians from trading their own cattle, forcing civilians
to cultivate their farms and to mine for gold, and controlling the price of the
commodities extracted through forced labor (Walraet 2008b, 2008a; Pinaud
2021).
A former SPLA child soldier described how: “The SPLA dominated the
gold trade and prevented people from mining from the rivers. Regional gov-
ernor and commanders were involved. Kuol Manyang was commander in
Kapoeta. Certain people became rich, in gold, teak, cattle” (Former SPLA
child soldier 2014). Another civilian confirmed that “relatives of SPLA big
people managed the extraction of the gold,” which already suggested an
attempt to pass on privileges to other generations. “Junior officers got gold
and gave it to big officers and got their share. The gold was sold to Kenya and
even outside Africa. They traded it for luxurious goods—Hummers and cars
and houses in Nairobi, Uganda. They bought new houses” (Member of civil
society 9 2017). The trades of various commodities, such as gold, cattle, and
relief items, were all intertwined, and the commanders became savvy busi-
nessmen. Speaking of Louis Lobong, a key SPLA figure in Kapoeta (Eastern
Equatoria) at the time, a former SPLA soldier explained how he “made a lot
of money”: “he sold relief food and used that money to buy gold and resell
it in Uganda and Kenya” (sixty-year-old displaced man from Ikotos 2017).
This emerging dominant class made sure to yield a considerable surplus
value in all its economic ventures. “The commanders in Bahr El Ghazal had
a lot of cattle,” continued the former child soldier. “Some of the cattle (maybe
¼ or more) could stay in the hands of the commanders and not ever reach the
movement or soldiers. The same went for what was collected as rations. The
commanders were involved in trades a lot: they took the vehicles captured
from the government and sold them in Uganda” (Former SPLA child soldier
2014).
It is more accurate to analyze the aristocrats’ strategies in defending their
class interests and in consolidating their status, as a form of wealth “hyper-
concentration.”12 Speaking of increased inequalities between this dominant
warrior class and the rest of its soldiers and despoiled civilians does not suf-
fice to describe this process of wealth accumulation and distribution. Wealth
was concentrated at the top by the shrewd commanders, in the SPLA but
also in rival factions. A Nuer civilian remembered how in Unity state, “the
commanders got taxation money—they were the richest, 99% of the money
got to them” (Member of civil society 10 2016). Of course, as I show later,
the warrior aristocracy was careful to trickle down some of its wealth to sol-
diers in order to cement their allegiance and create a lower stratum. But the
aristocrats were first and foremost focused on securing their own ascendency.
SECURING LONG-TERM DOMINANCE

THROUGH LARGE-SCALE POLYGAMY
In accumulating and concentrating wealth—especially in cattle—the military

aristocrats used the surplus value they derived from controlling the war econ-
omy and usurping civilians’ resources toward establishing long-term social
dominance. “What do you do when you have cattle?” asked a Nuer parlia-
mentarian. “You marry!” (Political Representative 4 2014). The military aris-
tocrats dominated the marriage market that rested on a system of bridewealth
exchange, often paid in cattle. In addition to investing newly acquired wealth
into foreign bank accounts, as well as new business companies, they rein-
vested their new wealth into “people” via bridewealth payment.13 Practicing
large-scale polygamy, they considerably expanded their kinship networks,
and their capital in the long run. More women begat more children and future
bridewealth, therefore more wealth in cattle.
These strategies contributed to shape a patrimonial capitalist system: where
capital is owned through wealth inherited by rentiers, and status is con-
solidated through marriage.14 Again, domination of the marriage market and
polygamy by “big men” were also reminiscent of systems of slavery (Cooper
1979, 117; Strobel 1979, 48; Robertson and Klein 1983, 6, 9; Lovejoy 1983).
The Dinka SPLA commander Paul Malong, in the Bahr El Ghazal region,
was certainly the most well-known case of large-scale polygamy in the
SPLA. The exact number of Malong’s wives remained debated, and oscil-
lated between forty and ninety (Member of civil society 8 2015; Member of
civil society 6 2014; Member of civil society 13 2014). Ordinary people esti-
mated Malong’s close relatives numbered between 300 and 500 after the war
(Member of civil society 8 2015; Member of civil society 9 2017; Member
of civil society 23 2014). Of course, they also created a mythology around
Malong’s persona. Some considered he had built an “empire” through large-
scale polygamy (Member of civil society 8 2015). Others contended that after
the war, “Malong had ostriches at home and so his 500 children travelled on
ostriches in the compound. He had 100 wives in the compound” (Member of
civil society 9 2017).
But there were other lower-level and lesser-known cases of SPLA com-
manders practicing large-scale polygamy as well. “The Governor of Lakes
state in 1972 is a good example,” explained a former SPLA commander. “In

1983 he joined the SPLA and he became a division commander and accumu-
lated a lot of wealth. He has 14 wives and many houses in Juba, Lakes and
upstate Lakes. He eloped most of his wives, paid less than 20 cattle and that’s
it. The women decided to join him, and there was no competition because he
was a commander” (Former SPLA commander 2014).
Besides, both the SPLA aristocrats’ large-scale polygamy and their patron-
age of soldiers’ marriages were mirrored in areas controlled by other rival
Nuer military factions. “The practices of bridewealth payment in both SPLA
and SPLA-Nasir (a Nuer faction) were similar,” explained Nuer civilians.
“What was done here, was done there” (Three members of civil society 1
2015). And Nuer commanders were just as polygamous as the Dinka: “John
Koang, Bol Kong, Peter Gadet, Paulino Matiep (Nuer commanders) accu-
mulated many wives who joined them and had their bridewealth paid for
later—the parents were proud to have their daughters marry a commander”
(Former SPLA commander 2014). The cases of Paulino Matiep and Peter
Gadet, both Nuer, are most illustrious. “Matiep had the most wives, but
still not as much as Paul Malong,” explained a Nuer civilian. “Peter Gadet
had many wives as well. He married mostly from the Nuer—from Lankien,
Akobo, Mayom, etc. He always married on the way, wherever he passed by”
(Member of civil society 2 2015). Nuer civilians estimated that “Peter Gadet
has about 150 boys from 80 wives: he still continues to marry. Everywhere
you go, you marry, you get a wife, and then another, etc. Gadet mentioned
150 boys because it means they will carry his name” (Member of civil society
20 2016). All in all, people disagreed over who had the most wives—Malong,
Matiep, or Gadet. But this was mere bickering.
In hyper-concentrating wealth and women through their control of the
marriage market, both the Dinka and Nuer military aristocrats transformed
the economy and society. Large-scale polygamy was traditionally practiced
by men of chiefly lineage. But large-scale polygamy became the norm rather
than the exception for high-ranking officers in this dominant class. They used
it as a tool of social distinction. Control over women provided long-term
control over future and cumulative wealth, since women “produced” both
immediate and future bridewealth through reproduction. This new dominant
class contributed to increase bridewealth prices and to commodify women
in the long run. It continued to use marriage as a tool of social differentia-
tion, domination, and class consolidation after the war. “Raising bridewealth
prices enables the elite to ban out people with low income,” explained a for-
mer high-ranking Dinka SPLA officer turned government official after 2005
(High-ranking Government Official 1 2014). “A girl is like a cloth in the
market,” said a Dinka cattle-keeper. “I love you but I know I have nothing.
And I compete with the big politicians on high prices of dowry . . . . High
prices practiced by the elite are meant to discourage poor people to marry
into the elite” (Cattle-keeper 2014). By banning ordinary civilians from
entering its class by seizing and concentrating both their resources and secur-
ing privileged access to their women, the dominant class defended its class
interests. It secured long-term wealth but also devised extreme and long-term
inequalities.
In this patrimonial capitalist system, where wealth was hyper-concen-
trated, the only way to achieve social mobility for the non-aristocrats was
through marriage. “Parents gave their daughter for promotion,” explained a
Nuer civilian. “If your daughter has been married by a big person, you can
do whatever you want, you can be protected” (Member of civil society 20
2016). “Political marriage was a way to get a promotion in the SPLA,” cor-
roborated a former Dinka SPLA officer. This would continue “after the war,”
he added: “it became a way into government jobs” (Former SPLA Lieutenant
Colonel 2014).
The expansion of immediate kinship networks via large-scale polygamy
not only secured the social reproduction of the aristocracy, and some ordi-
nary civilians’ social climbing and protection. It also mounted the aristocrats’
military and political power. Indeed, if families marrying “big persons”—or
big men—could be “protected,” the flip side for them was that “if someone
mistreats Peter Gadet you have to go and defend him,” explained a Nuer civil-
ian (Member of civil society 20 2016). Large-scale polygamy also defused
potential opposition. Referring to Paul Malong, who married from different
counties in Northern Bahr El Ghazal, a civilian explained
After all, Malik Abdel Aziz, the King of Saudi Arabia, united the Arab tribes by
marrying from different tribes. Malong married in 4 different communities—all
of them from Northern Bahr El Ghazal. This is a very strategic plan! because
you can’t fight with the husband of your sister. And he used to pay so many
cows! (Member of civil society 13 2014)
Peter Gadet, the Nuer commander mentioned earlier, did exactly the same:
“Gadet married from Bul Nuer and other counties and other states: even 2 to
3 wives from Jonglei (Bor), 4 wives from Leer, and even from Mayendit”
(Member of civil society 20 2016).
Of course, neither Malong, Matiep, nor Gadet fathered all of their chil-
dren. This was not the point. Prolonging their name and expanding their
power was at stake, not securing a supply of women for sex. Accordingly,
they delegated to their soldiers the task of impregnating their wives with
their second child and onwards, just like other Nuer and Dinka “big men”
had in the past—for example, nineteenth-century Nuer prophet Deng Laka
(Johnson 1994, 126). “For Paul Malong, the first children were his, the rest
were (born) because his followers impregnated his wives . . . he married
from different sections . . . . So he built a wide network of connections”
(Two members of civil society 1 2015). Similarly, “Gadet has about 80
wives. He doesn’t know who impregnated which one. He just birthed the
first boy, the rest doesn’t matter,” explained a Nuer civilian. “Even his
soldiers can impregnate them, so long as the child is named after him, he
doesn’t care” (Member of civil society 20 2016). Numerous children guar-
anteed long-lasting military manpower and control over the future state’s
institutions and military apparatus. Consequently, the aristocrats placed
their children at every echelon of the new state after 2005. For example,
“most of Matiep’s children joined the SPLA,” said a Nuer civilian (Member
of civil society 25 2016).
BUILDING MILITARY KINSHIP

TIES AND LOWER STRATA
Yet, looking back, not all SPLA commanders followed the same strategies in
consolidating their status of dominant social class. Speaking of this practice
of large-scale polygamy, a former SPLA commander explained: “That’s what
happened for most commanders, except the educated ones such as Pagan
Amum, Piang Deng, Guer Chang, Oyii Deng Ajak, who did not invest their
wealth in wives but in offshore accounts” (Former SPLA commander 2014).
These “educated ones” chose a type of reinvestment that was essentially
financial, and not kinship-related, and as such military. Given how politics
are played in South Sudan out of the barrel of a gun, this was not a strategic
decision: “What’s valuable in our country is cattle,” explained a Dinka civil-
ian. “Cattle is very important. If you have money, you’re not respected. Those
who have cattle are the most respected” (Cattle keeper 2014). The reason was
simple: wealth in cattle meant wealth in people, and the circle of people—and
military power—expanded.
Indeed, this warrior-dominant class also cared about cementing its base
outside of its immediate kinship circle. The military commanders redistrib-
uted part of their captured wealth to their followers, in gifts of bridewealth
and wives. Assuaging tensions arising from stark inequalities on the marriage
market was a military necessity for the SPLA to continue to function as a
rebel army. These ties reinforced military cohesion within the rebel army,
as other soldiers also participated in the payment of their brother-in-arms’
bridewealth price. But bridewealth payment was also a strategy for the com-
manders, especially after 1991 and increased predation, to cultivate their own
personal base. Again, SPLA and Nuer factions’ commanders practiced the
same patronage of their soldiers’ marriage, as Nuer civilians in Unity state
recalled how Gadet “paid for the dowry of his bodyguards or close friends”
(Member of civil society 20 2016).
Through gifts of bridewealth to their soldiers, commanders substituted
themselves for their soldiers’ fathers (Pinaud 2016). They expanded their
military kinship ties and, therefore, their military base. They weaved ties and
social contracts that were both reminiscent of the feudal ties between lords
and vassals described by Bloch, and broadly illustrative of Marcel Mauss’s
analysis of the social contracts and potlatch as affairs involving feelings too
(Mauss 2011, 18). Through such practices, the SPLA commanders created
lower strata. These lower strata enjoyed some, on a much lower scale, of
the military aristocracy’s privileges. Soldiers of the lower strata had several
wives, and they were above ordinary civilians. A civilian explained, ten
years after the war ended, how in Northern Bahr El Ghazal, “many of Paul
Malong’s followers have become rich now—like Garang Garang, special
guard and then tax collector in Warawar, who brought taxes at the state
houses. He’s from Aweil east” (Member of civil society 13 2014).
Malong’s power epicenter continued to be grounded upcountry in Northern
Bahr El Ghazal for years. Unlike many military aristocrats, he spent the postwar
period of 2005–2013 mostly in his home state as governor. This explains why it
was so easy for him to levy manpower in his home area to form Dinka militias
who would play an instrumental role in the new civil war of December 2013.
The other military aristocrats had settled in the country’s capital with the
2005 peace agreement. The agreement granted the SPLM/A the political
leadership in the South, and ushered in a period of institutional building that
concentrated on the capital Juba. The lower strata created during the war
through gifts of wives and bridewealth provided the military aristocracy
with an entourage. The warlords were “courticized” around the president’s
house in Juba. From “warriors,” they turned “courtiers,” in a process remi-
niscent of Europe’s from the eleventh to the eighteenth century (Elias 2008).
“After 2005, when the commanders came to Juba, each of them had a house
and a commando—especially the big bosses, like Salva, Wani Igga, Wani
Konga, Ismail Kony, and Paulino Matiep,” explained a Nuer parliamentarian
(Political representative 4 2014). “These people retained their own soldiers
and supported them to get married, even after 2005,” he added. The lower
strata thus became part of the warrior’s “courts”: they were “courticized”
too. As such, their main function was to socially—and no longer militarily—
demonstrate the ascendency of the dominant class in the capital Juba. They
were mostly seen as “hanging out” in their warrior’s compounds, at big hotels
and at restaurants by the Nile, parading in new large shiny vehicles, driving
well above the speed limit around Juba, and stopping traffic and roughing
up civilians who had not immediately interrupted their activities as a sign of
deference and submission.
Some of the courticized warriors—those who were not formally educated

and had especially benefited from the war’s social elevator by amassing cattle
and people, such as Matiep—continued to cement their social ascendency by
paying for their followers’ marriages. For others who were left in the coun-
tryside, like Malong, consolidating their social dominance outside Juba’s
scrutiny was even easier (and Matiep died of illness in 2012). Of this type of
warriors, the Nuer parliamentarian said: “In the villages, in Bor or in Bahr El
Ghazal, they have so many cattle kept by their soldiers. Huge camps belong
to one person” (Political representative 4 2014). Therefore, some warlords
never became fully courticized, and the patronage of marriage did not rescind.
Everything could have remained the same indefinitely in Juba, with Nuer
and Dinka warrior-dominant classes and their courts aggregating in Juba in a
typical process of “elite fusion.”15 But these ethnic dominant classes that had
come to coexist in Juba during the CPA period continued to compete. The
SPLA Dinka dominant class won this competition. President Salva Kiir’s fac-
tion sidelined other Dinka competitors from the deceased SPLA leader John
Garang’s faction and other ethnic competitors. This propelled ethnic ranking
within the state.
Meanwhile, some warlords retained their base upcountry, continued to
amass wealth and wealth in people, and were therefore never fully courti-
cized. The dominant class was never fully coalesced. This made the strength
and reach of the state largely dependent on the bargains it could strike with
these warriors. This meant that some of these warlords became particularly
influential in the process of state-building post-2005. The most notable was
Paul Malong, a close ally to President Salva Kiir.
Shortly after the eruption of the third civil war in December 2013, Malong
was promoted to the position of SPLA chief of staff. His promotion to “war-
lord-in-chief” was both a reward for his instrumental support to President Kiir
and an attempt by Kiir to reign him in. Pushed out of his position as SPLA chief
of staff in 2017, Malong reverted to the status of a rebel. He was not able to
fully return to his status of warlord, since he sought to devise a rebellion from
outside the country. Yet the case of Paul Malong illustrated the rise of a feudal-
type warlord through the war economy, parallel to the rise of a proto-state, and
participant to the making of an ethnic dominant class. Such warrior, although
turned statesman, but never fully “courticized,” could easily challenge the state
again if he was not successfully marginalized by the center.
CONCLUSION
All in all, the case in South Sudan shows us the long-lasting sociopolitical
implications of a war economy. The South Sudanese case illustrates how a
rebel group—and not the political party, as commonly accepted by scholars of

African politics—started a process of social class formation that went hand-in-
hand with an exercise of proto-state-building and the development of a patri-
monial capitalist system. This process of social class formation was marked by
ethnically exclusive extractive violence and sexual violence. The hyper-con-
centration of wealth by the dominant class in the making was achieved through
the exploitation of ordinary civilians, particularly ordinary women. They were
commodified in this process of wealth accumulation, and turned into capital.16
Social class formation in SPLA areas was similar to that of other fac-
tions’ Nuer areas. What made the process even more striking in SPLA areas,
and arguably particularly influential after 2005 when SPLA rebels became
statesmen, was that from the mid-1990s onward, the organization of the war
economy in SPLA areas went hand-in-hand with the building of a predatory
state supported by the international community.
In 2005, the CPA comforted the SPLA’s position and consolidated the
social processes at play during the war. Wealth continued to be concentrated,
and civilians continued to experience violence. But the Nuer and Dinka
ethnic dominant classes who came to fusion in Juba after 2005 never fully
aggregated. This was largely due to a process of ethnic ranking in the new
state driven by the Dinka faction behind Salva Kiir, which played a key role
in the resumption of war in December 2013.
NOTES
1. Elements of the colonial system persisted as well. Feudalism was based on

land tenure (fiefs or administrative units) ruled by lords invested with political power
to the service of a military oligarchy, and slavery was founded on the exchange and
commodification of people, both of which—land and people—were forms of capital
(in the case of people, “slave capital”). Different definitions of feudalism and how
they could apply to Africa exist. I borrow from Marc Bloch, Max Weber, and Joseph
Strayer. See Goody 1963, 3; Bloch 1989, II:167. On the relationship between capital-
ism and slavery, see Piketty 2014, 46.
2. I borrow the term of warlord democrat from Anders Themnér (Themnér 2017).
3. For a summary of Collier’s approach and of the debate between the two camps,
see Keen 2012.
4. See the way the SPLA political project and the way it garnered support
amongst non-Dinka is described in El-Batahani, Elbadawi, and Gadir Ali 2005, 200,
203, 204.
5. For a more in-depth exploration of these SPLA trades and networks, see
Pinaud 2021.
6. The Guardian became quite adept at framing the conflict in such terms. For
example, an article read: “Largely lacking any ideological basis, South Sudan’s
conflicts have become a carousel of violence pitting rival elites from different tribes
and political groupings against each other as they compete for power” (Beaumont
2018).
7. Most notably Alex De Waal, Anne Walraet, and Zachariah Mampilly.
8. The concept of “forced market” was forged by David Keen to understand
famine in northern Bahr El Ghazal, whose beneficiaries were above all the army, the
merchants, and elements of the Baqqara (Keen 2008, 109–11).
9. Larry Diamond recognized political corruption as being the “primary mecha-
nism of dominant-class formation” (Diamond 1987, 579).
10. See for the links between aristocracy and nobility, Morsel 2004, 7.
11. All interviews are anonymized to protect the identity of the respondents who
gave informed consent to be interviewed.
12. I borrow from Piketty’s observations of wealth hyperconcentration from the
Ancien Régime to the First World War in Europe. See Piketty 2014, 348–50.
13. The concept of “wealth in people” as used by Bledsoe (Bledsoe 1976).
14. See on the topic of patrimonial capitalism, particularly in nineteenth-century
France and United States, Piketty 2014, 84, 115, 241.
15. Richard Sklar defined the fusion of elites as “a critical process in dominant-
class formation. It identifies diverse elites (. . .) that represent various kinds and
sources of power. Yet they identify with one another more firmly and in more ways
than they do with their respective institutional bases or organisational activities. They
appear to unite and act in concert—consciously so—on the basis of their common
interest in social control, and this may be identified as the wellspring of class forma-
tion” (Sklar 1979, 538).
16. I use Thomas Piketty’s definition of capital: “all forms of wealth that individu-
als (or groups of individuals) can own and that can be transferred or traded through
the market on a permanent basis.” In Piketty’s definition, only in slavery can people
be considered “capital” (Piketty 2014, 46). Slavery is exceptional in the sense that it
is tied both to labor and to the absolute lack of choice on the slave’s part (Lovejoy
1983, 4–5).
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Chapter 10
Resource Wars, Oil, and

the Islamic State
Philippe Le Billon
Natural resources have long attracted attention in the study of conflicts and
war economies. This chapter reviews interpretations of so-called resource
wars and contemporary debates about the significance of natural resources
in “non-state” war economies. Dominated by sociobiological and geopo-
litical explanations of struggles over resources, these debates have recently
benefited from more thorough empirical testing and critical perspectives. If
conventional geopolitics point at major geographical factors and long-term
historical patterns, critical geopolitics perspectives emphasize the framing of
geographical “facts” and biased representations of “resources wars.” While
quantitative studies find broad patterns between resource and conflicts,
political ecology perspectives emphasize their contingency and the value of
local historical context within resource-based political economies. If defense
studies have long emphasized the strategic dimensions of resources, includ-
ing for the conduct of warfare, more recent perspectives have emphasized
the impacts of resource wealth on conflict likelihood and the importance of
resources as a source of funding for both state and non-state armed groups.
By the turn of the century, the narrative of greedy warlords motivated by
resource loot came to dominate the study of “resource wars,” with the idea
that war was a means of enrichment, rather than resources being mobilized
to sustain politically motivated armed struggles. In addition, conflicts in
“resource-rich” countries frequently came to be interpreted as the deadly out-
come of a “resource curse.” This chapter revisits some of the key arguments
around resources wars, then turns to the specific dimensions associated with
“non-state” actors, and finally examines the case of relationships between oil,
conflicts, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
225
226 Philippe Le Billon
RESOURCE WAR STUDIES
Scholarly enquiries about resources and early warfare in pre-agricultural

societies have largely focused on the role of material self-interest, the forms
of conflict, the organization and the sedentarization of social groups, as well
as the relative availability, density, and predictability of resources (Ember
and Ember 1992; Kelly 2000). Ethnographic, archaeological, as well as
evolutionary and comparative social ecology studies associate early warfare
with the territorial control of abundant resources (mostly food) and uncer-
tainty about resource access. The transition to agriculture and exploitation of
resources that reshaped relations between human groups and with the “natural
world” are often understood as one of the main factors in the frequency of
warfare. Contrary to neo-Malthusian narratives associating conflicts with
scarce resources (Le Billon 2015a), evidence points that resource abundance
and higher population densities would bring about territorialization processes
involving conflicts over trespass or intrusion. In contrast, areas with scarce
resources and low population densities would see mutually beneficial coop-
eration rather than conflicts.
In common with the classical period, contemporary Western geopolitical
perspectives on resources have been dominated by the equation of trade,
war, and power (Findlay and O’Rourke 2007). Beyond gold-focused con-
quest, colonial plantation economies of tropical slave-produced commodities
became the core of Western imperial extension. The importance of resource
flows for industrialization and militarization—most notably coal, iron, and
later oil—reinforced an ideology of resource competition among European
powers, found notably in the flurry of studies over access to raw materi-
als distribution during the first half of the twentieth century, and especially
between the two World Wars (Westing 1988). The growing assertiveness
of Third World states during the 1960s–1970s transformed the political
landscape of sovereignty over natural resources and provided a (new) twist
on ideologies of “resource wars,” with, for example, some Arab states lever-
aging their oil production in the form of an export embargo against some
pro-Israeli states. By the 1970s, broader geopolitical conceptualizations
of security-incorporated issues such as population growth, environmental
degradation, and social inequalities in poor countries. The ensuing concept
of “environmental security” came about to reflect ideas of global interdepen-
dence, illustrated through the debates on environmental “limits to growth,”
political instability supposedly caused by environmental scarcity in the
South, and more recently the consequences of climate change. The concept,
however, represented for some a skewed and controversial “securitization” of
environmental issues, calling for “military” and “international development”
solutions, and constructing biased identities and narratives of endangerment
Resource Wars, Oil, and the Islamic State 227
in the Anthropocene that often blamed the poor (Dalby 2009). With the end
of the Cold War, a view emerged that violent scrambles for resources among
state and non-state armed groups were a major feature of contemporary con-
flicts, particularly given the decline of foreign-state sponsorship and ideology
(Weinstein 2006; Le Billon 2013). The idea of economically driven wars in
which looting and other forms of illicit economic gains rose to prominence
(Keen 1997), both as an enabling factor within a rebellion feasibility frame-
work, or as a motivational factor in the “greed versus grievances” framework
(Collier and Hoeffler 1998). Concerns over the supply of strategic raw mate-
rials, but also agricultural land, increased in the context of rising commodity
prices during the first decade of the twenty-first century, and as China chal-
lenged U.S. hegemony and multiplied overseas investments (Le Billon and
Cervantes 2009). Many accounts of “resource wars” thus became associated
with a combination of rapidly increasing demand for raw materials, growing
resource shortages, and contested resource ownership (Klare 2008).
Mainstream accounts of “resource wars” have thus relied on two often-
intertwined explanations. The first set of explanations identifies resources as
crucial factors for the conduct of warfare itself and the prospect of victory. In
this perspective, resources achieve a “strategic” status through their material
properties, but also the financial opportunities associated with their exploi-
tation and control. The second casts resources as a motivational factor for
armed conflicts. Raiding, looting, pillaging, grabbing, capturing, annexing,
and conquering all carry a sense of violent dispossession and appropriation
of resources. Such motivational dimension can be mistaken for the conse-
quences of social behavior during or after the conflict; state-led military
annexation and house looting by individual soldiers being both violent
dispossession, but differing in scale, intentionality, means, and outcomes.
While resource “looting” may frequently happen, this does not automatically
explain the conflict in itself (as a motivational or conditional factor, notably
for its onset). Rather than being a motivating cause of the conflict, resource
looting can be seen as an expression of the opportunities arising from con-
flict and its modus operandi. These two main explanations—often merged
in conceptions of resources as loot or military means—continue to dominate
much of the media, policy, and scholarly literature on resources and human
conflicts. Such perspectives are most notably alive in conventional geopoliti-
cal perspectives defining “resource wars” as armed conflicts revolving around
the control of “critical” or “lucrative” raw materials, which in turn give way
to a narrow and militaristic notion of “resource security.” These interpretive
frameworks have been particulary prevalent for conflicts in Africa (especially
West and Central Africa, see, for example, “The Enough Project”) and in
the Middle East. These perspectives have contributed to popular geopolitics
already portraying war-affected regions through their resources (e.g., Angola,
DR Congo, or the “oil-rich Mideast,” see Le Billon 1999; Le Billon and

Shykora 2020). They have also contributed to reproducing relatively simplis-
tic narratives facilitating the work of journalists and advocacy organizations
(e.g., greed-driven warlords), the apparent “action-ability” of policy options
(e.g., commodity sanctions), and linkages with the audience’s consumerism
and predominant economic mindset (see Le Billon 2006; Autesserre 2012).
Summing up the main theoretical perspectives on resources and wars,
Benedikt Korf (2011) identifies four main perspectives. Perspectives drawing
from Hobbesian arguments conceptualize resource conflicts as rational indi-
vidualism in the absence of authority. Neo-Malthusian perspectives combine
Hobbesian arguments with the anxieties of seeing “modern” progress and
demographic growth (e.g., “surplus population,” “youth bulge”) overtake
nature’s pace and resulting in scarcity-induced resource conflicts. Utilitarian
perspectives deriving in part from rational choice arguments suggest that
opportunities associated with resources—such as the financial benefits of
resource loot—affect conflict feasibility or shape “resource supply security”
approaches. Building on Schmitt, a final set of perspectives suggest that his-
torically complex identity narratives become in part reified through resource
conflicts, which therefore should not be seen in isolation from their broader
historical context. Overall, critical perspectives point out that most accounts
of “resource wars” tend to simplify the causes of war, pathologize conflicts,
politically delegitimate rebellion, criminalize small-scale resource exploita-
tion and livelihood coping mechanisms (Lahiri-Dutt 2006; Le Billon 2013).
Rather than questioning the dominant modes of production that gave way to
conflicts involving resources, such accounts of “resource wars” tend to priori-
tize corporate-led economic growth over local livelihoods and environmental
practices, reflecting broader interests associated with capitalist modes of
production and wealth distribution. As a result, many “post-conflict” policy
framing and “reconstruction” practices reproduce previous exploitative pro-
duction models, facilitate “white-collar” crime such as corruption and tax
evasion, securitize resource sectors through repressive forms of resource
enclosures, and increase socioeconomic inequalities (Le Billon and Levin
2009; Pugh et al. 2016; Le Billon 2014, 2018).
Studies seeking to provide more nuanced and historically grounded
analyses have emphasized the complex power relations around natural
resources, understanding violence “as a site-specific phenomenon rooted
in local histories and social relations yet connected to larger processes of
material transformation and power relations” (Peluso and Watts 2001, 5;
Springer and Le Billon 2016). Political ecology approaches to “resources
wars” have notably made several contributions (Le Billon 2015a). First, by
reconceptualizing scarcity, abundance, and dependence both historically and
spatially, notably by focusing on the influence of social identities and uneven
power relations on resource rights, and by demonstrating how violence—as

an ongoing process involving symbolic, structural, and direct dimensions—
reshapes conditions of access and control over resources, as well as the
distribution of impacts from resource exploitation (Martinez-Alier 2003).
Second, by questioning not only at which location but also at what scales
are conflicts occurring, and recognizing the chronic and multi-scalar char-
acter of many resource-related conflicts (Watts 2004). Third, by engaging
with the material and the discursive dimensions of ecological processes and
resource sectors, thereby enabling an analysis sensitive to the interplay of
evolving biophysical process and historically contingent mechanisms pro-
ducing quasi-hegemonic truth discourses. These “regimes of truth” sustain
and seek to legitimate often environmentally unsustainable and socially
regressive resource-based processes of capitalist accumulation. Fourth, by
accounting for a broader range of violence than geopolitical and political
perspectives, thereby understanding different types of conflicts and mul-
tiple forms of violence. Fifth, by recognizing resources as material objects
influencing socio-material practices, and as social subjects endowed with a
set of character(istics) through “spokespersons” such as campaigners, local
communities or resource companies granting them a “voice”; this combina-
tion of material enablement and social voice constitutes a form of (indirect)
agency—as recognized in the concept of the “actant” coming from an Actor-
Network Theory perspective (see Latour 1987). Sixth, by broadening the
range of connections and actors involved, political ecology approaches allow
for some degree of accountability beyond the immediate perpetrators of
physical violence. Connections between resources and various forms of vio-
lence, in this regard, not only include commodification processes (i.e., how
“things”—or people—become resources or commodities defined by their
use and exchange values), but also fetishization ones (i.e., how imaginative
aspects of resource production and consumption affect power relations and
associated forms of violence).
To sum up, academic perspectives on resources and conflicts, and more
specifically on resources and war economies are diverse yet broadly fall
within two main categories. A mostly positivist one associates conflicts
related to resources with rational competitive behavior linked with the eco-
nomic or subsistence value of resources: people driven by need or greed fight
over resources. A more post-structuralist category associates conflicts with
historically contingent material and discursive practices shaping conflictual
social relations over resources. While the first one often tends to depoliticize
“resource conflicts,” the second one seeks to repoliticize them. As discussed
below, such relative (de)politicization is particularly important with regard
to non-state war economies, as state and corporate actors generally seek to
delegitimize non-state armed groups.
RESOURCES, NON-STATE ARMED

GROUPS, AND WAR ECONOMIES
The conventional geopolitics literature on resource wars has mostly focused

on state actors and the risk of inter-state wars, with non-state armed groups
being generally considered as proxy forces. In contrast, “greed wars” or
“warlords” narratives have specifically examined non-state armed groups
(NSAGs), with for example that argument that some NSAGs pragmatic focus
on the territorial control of resource-rich areas and key transportation routes
but are not interested in formally establishing states as this would result in
fewer relative rewards and bring on more costly responsibilities (see Reno
1999). Some of the main statistical findings in this regard have emphasized the
role that resources can play, first in prolonging hostilities as continued plunder
would take priority over ending conflict through military victory or negotia-
tions and assuming state responsibilities, second in incentivizing recruitment
among materially motivated individuals, and third in lowering economic
dependence on local populations and thus aggravating human rights abuses
against civilians (Weinstein 2006). Studies of the level of resource extraction
by rebel groups have also suggested that NSAGs intensify resource extraction
when they are actively competing with government authorities or other groups
to establish their authority over a given territory (Haass 2020).
Studies on resources and non-state war economies over the past two
decades have brought several insights (Le Billon 2001, 2013; Ross 2004;
Walsh et al. 2018). The first is to demonstrate the broad range of resources
involved, from narcotics to gemstones but also wildlife products, the diverse
methods of access to funding, from direct exploitation to extortion and the
tapping of royalty revenues allocated to municipal budgets, as well as the
many relations involved, including the mobilization of a labor force or coop-
eration with organized crime (Nordstrom 2004; Laudati 2013). Furthermore,
while many of these studies understandably focus on resources, they can do
so at the risk of overstating the relative significance of resources, both in
terms of the revenues generated and the impacts associated with resources
(Autesserre 2012), as well as some of the ideological motivations that could
push NSAGs to tax populations even in the presence of valuable resource
(Revkin 2020).
The second is to point at the effects of resource-based economies on
NSAGs, in terms of funding, recruitment, behavior toward civilians, lon-
gevity, and conflict outcome (Weinstein 2006). Many of these effects relate
to the material and social conditions within local resource areas, but also
the broader political economy of the resources and social relations tied to
resource exploitation. Civil wars involving oil, for example, are more likely
to be prolonged and severe if oil fields are within the conflict zone as rebel
roots and presence in disputed oil fields offer both funding and legitimating
narratives for (secessionist) insurgents (Lujala 2010). Conflicts also tend to
last longer when NSAGs are able to derive revenue from the smuggling of
resources, but not from extortion targeting resource extraction (Conrad et al.
2019). More broadly, resources can also affect the territorial discourses and
practices of NSAGs, with resource wealth motivating rebel territorialization,
but also drawing greater counterinsurgency efforts.
The third is to highlight frequent links between non-state and state armed
groups for the sake of ensuring resource flows within the country and the
broader region (Reno 1999). Even if central state authorities officially seek
to curtail access to resources and associated financial flows, linkages are very
frequent as a result of corruption or co-optation of individual officials or orga-
nizations (from high-level political corruption over resource contracts to petty
bribe payments at checkpoints), as extortion payments to NSAGs are made
by state authorized resource companies, or by local government authori-
ties (e.g., municipalities), as processes of desertion, rebellion, reintegration
through which NSAGs move in and out of the status of state (affiliated)
armed group, notably through bidding processes, as the need to maintain food
or fuel supplies to combat units or civilian populations requires accommoda-
tion between contending parties, and as businesses seek to profit from, and
arrange for resource smuggling and illicit financial flows.
The fourth is that resource-related wartime and peacetime economies
often blend. Temporally, some of the networks involved in the extraction
and trading of “conflict commodities” were established during peacetime,
while some of the wartime networks can survive the transition to peace.
Geographically, areas along the commodity chain are frequently under dif-
ferent levels of hostilities, so that while the point of resource extraction
may be a disputed territory under NSAG control, the point of export may
be firmly under the control of the government and not affected by hostili-
ties. Monetarily, the fungibility of resources often allows for a laundering
of “conflict resources,” so that a “blood tainted” mineral may pass as a
legitimate one further down the value chain. Legally, contractual agreements
either passed prior to, or during the war, as well as related resource produc-
tion and trading activities can often survive, as companies seek to adapt
to the wartime circumstances and seek security agreements with NSAGs.
Institutionally, equity stakes and other forms of interest in resource projects
are often allocated to former senior rebel commanders, including through
ministerial portfolio distribution following peace agreements. Ethically,
widespread postwar “white-collar crime” takes place, including resource-
related corruption, fraud, nepotism, money-laundering, land/resource dis-
possession such as resource-based economic activities of paramilitary
groups (Le Billon 2018). Financially, budgetary allocations by government
and non-state groups can maintain a “warlike” budget following peace

negotiations, including clandestine financial flows and a disproportion-
ate allocation of payroll to (former) soldiers, in effect protracting the war
economy into peacetime. Politically, resource-based transactions, including
the redistribution of proceeds, are constitutive of both wartime and “post-
conflict” political relations. As such, resource sectors and former rebels
should only be considered through the lens of criminality, but be accounted
for as political agents, including through the effects of “corrupt” practices
(Reno 2008, 2009).
The fifth contribution is to highlight the broad range of actors involved
in resource-based war economies, including local civilian populations and
regional migrants involved in resource production/extraction; businesses
funding these activities and trading resources both domestically and inter-
nationally; large companies transforming and distributing these resources;
international organizations operating in conflict-affected countries; consum-
ers purchasing resources; and regulators throughout the commodity chain.
Not all of these actors are aware of their role in a “war economy,” and even
if so, they may not decide to address this contribution unless forced or incen-
tivized to do so as a result of sanctions, certification schemes, or reputational
risks (Sarfaty 2015).
Finally, some of the studies on the role of resources in non-state war
economies have contributed to nuancing the experience of local populations
in relation to NSAGs, in contrast to “greed war” narratives either ignoring
their involvement and the potential benefits derived from resource-based war
economies, or focusing on some of the worst cases of human rights abuses
(e.g., forced labor). Participation in resource economies during period of
recurring hostilities is often risky and indeed rife with human rights abuses.
Yet, such participation offers a means of survival and even successful entre-
preneurship as the conditions of access to resources, and competitiveness
among resource purchasers, can at times be more “open” than during periods
of stable political order, effective enforcement of resource management regu-
lations, and market monopolies (Chingono 2000). Violence against civilians
by armed groups will in part depend on the conditions of access to, and con-
trol of, labor, as well as the level of acceptance of the armed groups among
civilians and livelihood opportunities; with armed groups at times having to
create incentives to attract workforce and investments. The exploitation or
regulation of resources by non-state armed groups can also relatively improve
the living conditions of local populations, including through resources being
made available to local populations and resource revenues sustaining wel-
fare and public services, thereby reinforcing the groups’ relative legitimacy
and consolidating their “proto-state” (Podder 2013; Bojicic-Dzelilovic and
Turkmani 2018).
This brief overview points to several important points for the study of the
war economies of NSAGs. As discussed below, resources need to be given
attention, but their relative significance should not lead to oversimplifying
narratives. Although mostly financial, the significance of resources goes
beyond monetary aspects, and includes livelihoods, control of territories,
and a complex network of participants. Political dimensions also need to be
given attention, in contrast with much of the literature emphasizing greed or
scarcity as driving factors. This, in short, calls for a re-politicization of war
economies, yet one that is not naïve enough to fail considering the economic
incentives of many of the actors involved in resource-based war economies.
The case of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is exemplary in this respect.
Despite the strong ideological dimensions of the armed group, and its strongly
stated desire and many practices demonstrating its commitment to create a
state, many of the discursive and material engagement with oil-related issues
connected with ISIS were dealt with through a depoliticizing lens. Such
depoliticization was in part necessary to address several tensions, including
the historical motive of Western presence in the region, the role of oil-rich
governments and individuals in the conflicts, the ideological discourse of
ISIS and its resonance with some of the earlier criticism by bin Laden and
al-Qaeda of the corrupt and highly unequal regional political economy of oil,
and the complex interplay of allies and enemies in oil smuggling networks.
RECONSIDERING “MIDEAST OIL WARS”: THE CASE

OF THE ISLAMIC STATE IN IRAQ AND SYRIA
On February 15, 2003, millions of people gathered in hundreds of cities

around the world to oppose a U.S. and British-led military invasion of Iraq.
Among their main slogans was “no more blood for oil.” War, early critics
argued, would bring a U.S.-compliant regime and open up Iraq’s massive oil
wealth to U.S. and British companies: the world’s fifth largest oil reserves
at 140 billion barrels, and potentially among the most profitable given their
relatively low technical production costs (Le Billon and El Khatib 2004). Six
years after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. troops in April 2003, American and
British oil companies were indeed signing major oil exploitation contracts
in Iraq for increasing the production of three “super-giant” Iraqi oil fields—
Rumaila, West Qurna, and Majnoon—while junior oil companies had already
taken the opportunity of investing in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq at the invi-
tation of its largely autonomous Regional Government. Concern for a U.S.
“oil grab” was also broadly shared within Iraq, where oil nationalization in
the 1960s remained widely perceived as a proud historical achievement and
a guarantee of future sovereignty.
A foreign takeover of Iraq’s oil wealth and the application of neoliberal

policies—premised on the failure of statist policies, the inefficiency and cor-
ruption of the public sector, and the need for foreign capital—were at the core
of the contested politics of Iraq’s oil wealth (Le Billon 2005; Mahdi 2007;
Muttit 2011). But contestations extend well beyond the role of BP, Exxon,
Shell, or Occidental, and whether the U.S. invasion was indeed an “oil grab.”
Iraq’s vast oil wealth is unevenly distributed across Iraq’s territory, and as
sectarian tensions grew in prominence, so did the politics of revenue distri-
bution between the different regions. The contested politics of oil are often
seen through a simplistic and dangerous narrative associating the largest oil
reserves with Shiite areas of southern Iraq, and to a lesser extent in the bor-
derlands of the Kurdish region, raising concern that Shiites and Kurds would
benefit from Iraq’s dismemberment at the expense of the Sunnis (Le Billon
2015b). Discontent rose among Sunni populations against the inept, corrupt,
and increasingly sectarian rule of the Shiite central government under Prime
Minister Al Maliki from 2006 to 2014. As institutional avenues for greater
federalism were denied, Iraq did become de facto increasingly “dismem-
bered,” with the central government losing control of much of the western
provinces of Anbar and Nineveh to Sunni militias and al-Qaeda outfits. The
conflicts eventually merged with Syria’s civil war against the regime of
Bashar al-Assad through the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daech) as al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq took control of Raqqa
from Jihadi group Al Nusra. The rise of ISIS increased international atten-
tion to the civil war in Syria and its causes, including themes around climate
change-related conflicts, thereby contributing to a dangerous narrative linking
fossil fuels, carbon emissions, droughts, refugee populations, and terrorism
(see Selby et al. 2017).
Although al-Qaeda had by now become a more visibly “oil-funded” terrorist
organized in an “oil cursed” country, some of the arguments about yet another
“oil war” in the Middle East proved more difficult to promote than usual in the
face of ISIS’ strong ideology and its attempts at creating a state rather than profi-
teering from the war (see Le Billon 2020). As discussed below, ISIS thus repre-
sents an important case for the study of oil-related conflicts and war economies.
The following section first briefly describes ISIS’ oil economy and then discusses
the relevance of major mechanisms potentially linking oil and armed conflicts.
ISIS’ OIL ECONOMY
Active in Iraq since at least August 2003, five months after the U.S. invasion of
Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) begun to regularly access oil revenues by 2006 as it
increased its presence on the ground and announced its transformation into the
Islamic State of Iraq (Hamdan 2016). Drawn most notably from the smuggling
of oil products out of the Bayji refinery located half-way between Baghdad and
Mosul, these revenues were notably used to seek a consolidation of ISIS’ pres-
ence in Sunni Arab governorates. The US “surge” and “Awakening movement”
launched in 2007 undermined AQI’s operations, but by 2012 AQI was gain-
ing more widespread support as Sunni protests against Maliki’s government
become more vocal. That same year, ISI officially declared the formation of
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria through a takeover of Jabhat al-Nusra l’Ahl
as Sham, against the will of the local commander. This move greatly increased
access to oil when ISIS seized several of the main Syrian oil fields near Deir
ez-Zor in 2014. At its apex in late 2014 and early 2015, ISIS controlled about
100,000 km2 territories within Iraq and Syria, including oil and gas fields,
pipelines, tankers routes, and refineries (see Engel 2015; Solomon et al. 2015).
ISIS’ “wartime” oil and gas sector represented an attempt to centralize
the control of oil flows and revenues while enrolling a vast and diverse array
of private entrepreneurs as well as some Syrian government power utilities
(Almohamad and Dittmann 2016; Center for the Analysis of Terrorism 2016).
For this, ISIS built previously developed fields and infrastructure, extensive
preexisting oil “smuggling” networks establishing during previous hostilities
and the UN sanctions regime, a militarized control of oil and gas regions, and
both local and regional markets for crude oil, liquid fuels, and natural gas.
Having peaked in June 2014 with a production of about 70,000 barrels per
day, sold at a discounted price of around $30 per barrel (compared to $110/
bbl international spot for Brent/WTI average at times), ISIS’ production then
declined until its shutdown in late 2017 (Philips 2014; Do et al. 2018).
ISIS’ loss of Mosul, Raqqa, and finally Deir ez-Zor in late 2017 confined
much of ISIS to remote rural insurgency in western Syria, and terrorist attacks.
ISIS’ “oil era” in the region thus lasted for about four years with a peak in late
2014, followed by a gradual decline until it reached an end by mid-2017. Not
only did the volume of oil under production under ISIS control declined during
that period, but oil prices at least on external markets had been comparatively
much lower with collapse of global oil prices in 2014. This was compounded
by rising production costs and growing inefficiencies within the sector as infra-
structures were progressively destroyed and replaced by makeshift installations
such as micro-scale refineries, yet partially counterbalanced in terms of rev-
enues by higher local prices due to relative ffuel scarcity. As discussed below,
oil was overall an important component of ISIS’ “rebel economy” yet in more
diverse and financially limited ways than often portrayed.
ISIS’s oil “war economy” required handling some major issues (Enders 2012;
Solomon et al. 2015; Almohamad and Dittmann 2016). First, it entailed taking
control of oil fields from incumbent armed groups, including through turf wars
with local “oil mafia” and arrangements with local tribes, rebuilding and adapting
to aerial bombing, and defending key infrastructures from a takeover by ground

troops, especially from Kurdish and later on Iraqi federal forces, but also Syrian
government forces. Several key fields and infrastructures repeatedly changed
hands, thus requiring the recurrent allocation of fighters to relatively vulnerable
assets. Second, ISIS’ oil economy required the organization of production, refin-
ing and transportation flows, including the recruitment of staff, supply of spare
parts, refining, trucking, and distribution network through ISIS owned and private
fleets, but also crucially through Syrian government pipelines and power plants.
Third, ISIS had to manage the oil sector, including oil prices, with the diverging
aims of increasing revenues while maintaining prices low enough for the popula-
tion (and export markets), but with sufficient profit incentives for private sector
involvement in a context of increased risk and low international prices. Fourth,
ISIS had to address corruption and fraud within the oil sector, including risks
of corruption, nepotism, and embezzlement within its own administration (e.g.,
favoritism toward some private oil traders), as well as cases of fraud on the part
of traders and the need to bribe officials to access foreign markets. Finally, there
were significant socio-environmental impacts of the reshaping of the Syrian oil
economy in the context of the war on ISIS as the unavailability or destruction
of larger-scale refineries had led to the multiplication of artisanal refineries with
high environmental and health impacts.
Oil production in Syria and Iraq under ISIS control accounted for about
50,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the second half of 2014, and around 62,000
bpd in 2015. This compared to about 4 million bpd for Iraqi-controlled gov-
ernment fields, 0.5 million bpd for Iraqi Kurds (KRG), 15,000 bpd for Syrian
Kurds, and 10,000 bpd for the Syrian government in Damascus in mid-2016
(Almohamad and Dittmann 2016). Estimates of ISIS oil revenues have varied
widely over the previous two years, ranging from $300,000 to $3 million per
day. About 80 percent of oil revenues collected at the production stage comes
from the two fields of Tanak and Omar in Deir ez-Zor Governorate in eastern
Syria, which were operated by the Al Furat Petroleum Company (AFPC),
a Shell-led consortium founded in 1985 including the Syrian Petroleum
Company (SPC) and Bergomo (a joint venture between the Oil and Natural
Gas Corporation of India and the China National Petroleum Corporation).1
AFPC was put under sanctions by the EU in December 2011, leading Shell
to leave Syria, but with little consequences for the company as its production
share was only about 13,000 bpd.
Having already lost control of most of the governorate’s countryside, the
Assad government lost control of these oil and gas fields to rebel groups and
local tribe militias in November 2012. Infighting and ad hoc arrangements
then took place between different rebel groups, many of them national army
defectors and militia from local tribes seeking to secure their own fuel sup-
plies and generate some revenues. Local tribal leaders generally claimed oil
fields within their territory (wajeh), sending militias to control individual

wellheads, drill into pipelines for bunkering, and trying to find staff and
equipment to maintain production. Oil was sold to local traders, sometimes
for as low as $5 per barrel, while natural gas was shipped to government
power plant to generate electricity, and much of the liquid petroleum gas was
given as “protection money” to al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Al Nusra, reported
to be the most powerful rebel group in the area at the time (Abdul-Ahad
2013). This period was reported as marked by lawlessness and violent com-
petition between more ideologically driven rebel groups, including ISIS, and
“oil thieves” or local warlords seeking to control oil fields, to tax road trans-
portation and escort oil truckers, and to directly engage in smuggling. Some
official rebel commanders denounced the effects of this new entitlement over
oil wealth, with one arguing by May 2013 that “[i]t is all selfishness. The
revolution vanished in Deir al-Zor since we tasted the oil, it is a curse,” with
another adding that “[t]he rebels do not want to clash with anyone right now.
It is a tribal province and anything could backfire against the rebels—who
themselves are sons of tribes” (Karouny 2013).
This early period saw little effort on the part of foreign powers to intervene.
Having imposed an import embargo on Syrian crude in September 2011,
the EU selectively lifted it in April 2013 by allowing EU importers to buy
crude if authorized by the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) in order for the
EU-recognized group “to take advantage of the oil and gas reserves under
its control” (Pawlak and Croft 2015). Yet the SNC controlled very few oil
fields, many of which were instead under the control of tribal militias and “oil
thieves” with no affiliation with the SNC and who had no financial interest to
give a cut to the SNC unless higher prices for oil could be obtained through
such legalized channels.
By November 2013, al Nusra was reported to have taken more direct con-
trol of much of the oil fields in the province (Enders 2012; Al Jazeera 2013),
while government troops continued to hold major parts of the provincial
capital city. Seemingly losing ground at the time, ISIS launched a series of
offensives against competing rebel groups and local tribes starting with a
briefly successful operation to capture the al-Jafra oil field and Koniko gas
factory on March 27–29, 2014. ISIS was then able to control and hold the
towns of Markadah, Albu Kamal (on the border with Iraq), the al-Kharrat
terminal, and most of the northern part of the province. Reinforced by troops
and weapons seized after the fall of Mosul on June 10–11, 2014, ISIS took
control of nearly all of the province, with al Nusra militants relinquishing
the control of oil fields, including al-Omar, sometimes without any fight.
Several armed factions also pledged alliance to ISIS, significantly bolstering
the movement. Beyond fighting and military intimidation, these territorial
gains had also been facilitated through politically weakening tribal groups,
notably by co-opting “young tribal leaders by offering to share oil and smug-
gling revenues and promising them positions of authority currently held by
their elders” (Weiss and Hassan 2016). Already legitimated among some of
the population through their participation in the fight against Assad, some of
these young leaders became the new relay for ISIS.2
ISIS did face resistance from some tribal groups, and was reported to have
perpetrated a series of massacres against members of the Shaitat tribe—
which had opposed it and reportedly controlled about twenty-one oil wells
(Abdallah 2015). In one of its videos, ISIS explained that it had to fight
against “oil thieves,” whose financial interests were threatened by the group.
By the end of August 2014, ISIS seemed firmly in control of all oil fields in
Deir ez-Zor but for a few minor fields south of the Euphrates controlled by the
government. ISIS then extended its control toward the oil fields of al-Hasaka
Province, located to the north and closer to Kurdish/YPG-controlled areas.
ISIS was able to add about 20,000 barrels per day of oil production through
capturing some of the most province’s southern oil fields (e.g., Margada, Al
Jubaissah, Gouna, Tishreen, and Al Hol fields), several of which were lost
in early 2016. Within Iraq, ISIS took he the Baiji refinery during the second
half of 2014, seized relatively minor oil fields, and established control over
smuggling routes to Jordan.
ISIS sold a large part of the oil it controlled directly to traders coming to
the fields. Those, in turn, sold it to mostly small private refiners, which had
the advantage of increasing civilian presence (and thus limiting air strikes, at
least from a U.S.-led coalition seeking to avoid civilian deaths) and tapping
into existing and new private entrepreneurship while reducing the need for
ISIS to use its own recruits. Refiners then sold part of their refined products
to the ISIS administration. ISIS did maintain some tanker trucks, refineries,
and gas stations, and it taxed the sale of oil at local markets ($0.67/barrel).
Yet, it was generally reported to be almost “completely disengaged from the
trade” of oil across Syria and Iraq (Solomon et al. 2015). In May 2015, the
U.S. military raided the compound of ISIS’ Deir ez-Zor oil manager Ben
Awn al-Murad al Tunisi (“Abu Sayyaf”), killing him and seizing much infor-
mation on his running of the oil sector in eastern Syria (Faucon and Coker
2016). With better knowledge of the working of the sector, the U.S. bombed
facilities at the al-Omar oil fields in October 2015. Many ISIS-controlled oil
fields facilities as well as truck tankers and refineries were targeted by both
U.S.-led and Russian air forces. For a senior state department, the goal was
literally to bomb ISIS’ oil sector into backwardness, “Google Earth is my
friend sometimes, and you can see across territories that a year ago was just
flat desert or flat open area and now [following bombardment] is hundreds if
not thousands of small pits, stills [used to refine crude oil]. And part of that
is moving the [ISIS oil] operation from a 20th-to-21st century operation to a

17th century operation.”3
Bombings increased reliance on makeshift refineries—small kilns heating
crude oil and cooling petrol vapors through iron pipes sunk in small water-
cooled ponds. This highly decentralized system possibly reduced rents for
militias, increased local employment, but had major negative health and
environmental impacts. As succinctly put by a twenty-six-year-old gradu-
ate from al-Furat University in Deir ez-Zor who had already been for a year
and a half at one of the many makeshift oil refineries around Tall Alu, “We
only earn $15 a day but get cancer for free” (Bader 2014). This reshaping of
the oil sector, and in particular the multiplication of micro-scale refining not
only meant that oil was more complicated for ISIS to manage and control,
but that it also gave rise to an independent (under)class of petty entrepreneurs
who were often disgruntled at ISIS. As forcefully explained by a makeshift
refinery owner,
I cover my face [not only because of oil fumes, but also] because of the armed
mercenaries [Islamic rebels]. They can just take you and behead you. They
accuse people of being regime’s Shahiba, Kurdish YPG, or whatever. They have
brought nothing else other than destruction. They behead people like if they
behead chickens. Islamic state or whatever. God shall not help them. We have
nothing that they could come for here. People are starving to death here. . . .
They do not let the people live alone. This is a failed revolution. It should no
longer be called a revolution. It is robbery, larceny and burglary . . . . This is not
life we are living. Why do we have to decay this way? (Ahmad 2015)
Further to the north in Kurdish-controlled areas, the YPG had set margins in
the refining business so as to ensure that much of the activity went to Arab
entrepreneurs and remained profitable, thereby providing a way to “buying
their loyalty” (Bader 2014).
Like many other armed groups, ISIS had also made arrangements with many
actors within the region in order to enable financial and resource flows. ISIS
regularly dealt with the regime in Damascus to deliver oil and gas supplies,
notably to power plants, thereby ensuring the provision of energy to key popu-
lation areas (Kenar and Soylu 2016). As the engineer in charge of the main
gas-processing plant near Deir ez-Zor explained in mid-2013 while al-Nusra
was still in charge of most oil and gas fields, “the regime [in Damascus] wants
production regardless of who is in control. I pump gas to the government and
give the LPG gas to the terrorists” (Abdul-Ahad 2013). Arrangements were
also made to facilitate shipments in the region, including Turkey and Kurdish
areas in Iraq, which mobilized extensive smuggling networks.
Oil smuggling builds upon trading patterns dating back to at least the
Mandate period when local entrepreneurs and members from cross-border
communities sought to evade newly established international boundaries
and high tariffs (Herbert 2014). Goods included commercial products, live-
stock, as well as hashish and opium. Syrian state complicity into smuggling
increased during its twenty-nine-year occupation of Lebanon, and again
during the 1990s to help Iraq bypass UN sanctions, especially with regard
to oil exports and weapons imports, which proved very lucrative for the
government. By late 2011, border control by the Syrian government started
collapsing, especially along the Turkish border with rebel forces and criminal
gangs benefiting from smuggling incomes, including human trafficking, and
easier access to goods and weapons. Oil smuggling intensified and shifted
to mostly crude oil exports rather than simply cheaper refined products. In
late 2013, some former Syrian fighters who had taken refuge in Turkey got
involved in smuggling, an activity that long predated the civil war in Syria.
As one of them argued (cited in Giglio 2014), “You can’t really say that we
are smuggling oil, because we take permission from the Turkish side and
the Syrian side . . . . But since it’s under the table, we call it smuggling.” In
contrast, getting permission from ISIS generally meant pledging allegiance,
and exclusively working under the rules of the organization, with ISIS killing
smugglers secretly continuing activities on their own (Giglio 2014).
Looking more broadly at the effects of oil on governance, Weiss and
Hassan (2016) suggest that “ISIS has wedded its authoritarian governance
to a remarkably successful war economy,” distributing oil revenues to towns
under its control to provide services. ISIS was also reported to fix the price
of refined products, making it (at least initially) more reliable and affordable
for local populations to purchase, and in particular for farmers to run their
tractors and pumps, thereby improving local agricultural production, but only
for Sunni Arab farmers as others either fled or were expelled and their lands
seized and rented (Callimachi 2018). The economic effect of the airstrikes on
ISIS oil revenues is not obvious, since prices increased as production declined
due to a closed market effect. While production was down by an estimated
30 percent, prices doubled, suggesting a possible increase of 40 percent in
revenues for ISIS, though much of this could be accounted for traders and
refiners absorbing the costs of staff killed, assets destroyed, and higher ineffi-
ciencies in the supply chain. Moreover, strikes on oil infrastructure meant that
both higher prices and supply constraints affecting civilian populations could
be blamed on the United States and Russia, rather than on the inability of ISIS
to deliver fuel (Lister 2014). Anecdotally, some ISIS members seem to have
personally benefited, notably by purchasing diesel fuel at one-sixth of the
price for civilians and then running lucrative electricity provision businesses.
By mid-2017, with its territorial losses rapidly increasing, ISIS focused on
drawing out as much revenues from oil fields it still controlled and finding
ways to transfer convertible currency abroad for future actions (Solomon and
Mhidi 2017). By October 2017, ISIS tribal fighters were reported to have
handed Syria’s largest oil field, al-Omar, to the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led
Syrian Democratic Forces, in advance of the Syrian government (Aboufadel
2017; Barnard 2017). This move was notably described by Iranian media as
part of a wider U.S. strategy of resource control in the region (Webb 2018).
Similarly, U.S. media reported on the profit-sharing arrangements made
between the Syrian regime and Russian companies for oil and gas fields
seized from ISIS using contract soldiers (Kramer 2017).
ISIS AND OIL-RELATED CONFLICT MECHANISMS
The case of ISIS can inform studies of oil-related conflicts. Building on the
literature on conflicts and natural resources (Ross 2004; Humphreys 2006; Le
Billon 2013), and specifically oil (Colgan 2013), we briefly sum up findings
relating to key mechanisms identified as linking oil and armed conflicts, for
both state and non-state armed groups (see table 10.1).4
Resource Wars
As mentioned above, both the U.S. and British governments had concerns
over access to Iraqi oil fields in case UN sanctions were to be lifted with
Saddam Hussein still in power. Yet the U.S. invasion of Iraq could not be
resumed to an “oil war” (Meierding 2016), from which ISIS would have
emerged. With regard to ISIS, the militant group did integrate the oil sector
into its short-term tactics and long-term strategic objectives. Yet, ISIS did
not seek to establish a caliphate in order to reap the rewards of a petrostate.
Its discourses point to a vision that does not mobilize the tropes of oil-funded
modernization espoused by many of the previous regional rulers (from the
Shah of Iran to Saddam Hussein and monarchs of Sunni emirates). Although
some testimonies pointed at the relative luxury in which some ISIS elite
members lived (Townsend 2014), the movement seems to have been guided
by a strong integrity agenda and ascetic values.
Petro-Aggression
Given its revolutionary agenda, access to greater oil wealth would have
likely led ISIS to pursue its expansionist agenda over the region, at least for
Sunni areas. ISIS’ initial expansion in 2014, however, did not initially rely
on oil revenues, although it did contribute to consolidating its territorial rule
Table 10.1 Main Mechanisms Associating Oil and Armed Conflicts
Mechanisms Description Findings

Resource war Oil reserves (or perceived oil Yes, especially from the
reserves) raise the payoff to perspective of a large regional
territorial conquest. caliphate, but not from the
perspective of a Sunni Arab area
straddling the relatively oil-poor
Syrian-Iraqi border region.
Petro-aggression Oil reduces the domestic Yes, but there was little
accountability of petrostate accountability toward the
leaders, lowering the risks population and brutality of the
of instigating wars. movement also ensured war
spoils and payment of taxes
across many sectors.
Petro-insurgency Oil income provides finances Yes, but to a lesser extent than
for (foreign) non-state generally argued. Initial territorial
actors to wage war. gains were made without major
oil revenues. Indirect oil income
gained through foreign sponsors.
Greedy rebels Armed groups instrumentalize Yes, through the creation of a
the armed conflict for seceding state, but not from
financial gains, either (a) an ideological perspective and
independently from the general practices within the
state, (b) through capturing movement.
the state, or (c) through a
seceding state.
Oil-related Inequalities in oil revenue Yes, to some extent in relation
grievances distribution and socio- to Shiite-dominated federal
environmental impacts government in Iraq, and to
motivate armed conflict. Western oil interests in the
region.
Weak state Oil wealth and dependence Yes, with regard to the Iraqi
undermines the need for state, but not in the case of
strong institutions, weakens Syria. Oil wealth did not
the taxation-representation reduce ISIS’ extreme form of
nexus, and increases authoritarianism and intrusive
economic shocks and bureaucracies.
corruption.
Sparse trade Oil wealth reduces economic Yes, in the case of Iraq it was
network diversification, trade and aggravated by a decade of
regional interdependence, economic sanctions, less
thereby increasing conflict so in the case of Syria. ISIS
risk. maintained some trade, but
mostly through smuggling
which itself generated conflicts.
Externalization Oil creates conditions for To some extent in the case of Iraq
of civil wars in civil war, which then leads as Sunni Arab populations lost
petro-states to foreign intervention, out of regime change, but even
externalization, or less so in the case Syria.
spillover.
Mechanisms Description Findings

Transit route States’ efforts to secure Possibly, over Iran-Iraq-Syria-
transit routes for oil create Lebanon pipeline route versus
a security dilemma that Qatar-Saudi Arabia-Jordan-
produces or exacerbates Syria-Turkey route.
conflict.
Obstacle to Importers’ efforts to curry Not in the case of ISIS.
multilateralism favor with petrostate
prevent multilateral
cooperation on security
issues.
Sources: Humphreys 2006; Colgan 2013; author.
in 2015. Furthermore, indirect petro-aggression may have been at work as

wealthy donors from the Arabian Peninsula came to support the revolution-
ary movement.
Petro-Insurgency
As explained above, this mechanism was involved very much at work,
although its relative significance was often overstated.5 Overall, oil rev-
enues played a significant role in sustaining ISIS’ war economy and pro-
viding leverage over regional groups in need of fuel for nearly four years.
Yet, as a New York Times investigation into ISIS’ finance concluded, a
key success of the militants was “their diversified revenue stream. The
group drew its income from so many strands of the economy that airstrikes
alone were not enough to cripple it” (Callimachi 2018). Given the size of
the population under control and the scope of military operations, oil was
perhaps more necessary as a source of energy than as a source of finance.
If the end of oil revenues largely coincided with the defeat of ISIS’s ter-
ritorial project, this had more to do with the military action of the U.S.-led
coalition, including Kurdish and Iraqi federal forces, than simply the lack
of access oil.
Greedy Rebels
As mentioned above, greed seems to have been a limited motivation for the
movement in general, and for militants in particular. Although salaries and
advantages such as free housing and access to loot attracted some militants,
many were ideologically driven.6 Some degree of support among local resi-
dents was also obtained through the redistribution of land and assets violently
seized from non-Sunni Arabs populations, but fear toward the movement
remained.
Oil-Related Grievances
Oil has been a major dimension of Iraq’s domestic and international politics.
Most grievances are directed at the unequal distribution of rents and jobs,
rather than at the socio-environmental impacts of oil exploitation. These
grievances are largely the result of clientelism and corruption, but also the
unwillingness or inability of the federal government to fully implement
constitutional rules of revenue distribution (Le Billon 2015b). Still, it is very
unlikely that a Sunni caliphate straddling the Iraq-Syria border would have
yielded more revenues to local populations. As such, ISIS did not seek to
address grievances associated with oil revenues.
Weak State
The weakness of Iraqi, and to a lesser degree Syrian institutions, has been
noted. There is limited evidence that this is a direct result of oil wealth, how-
ever. ISIS did take advantage of the weakness of these institutions, especially
with regard to those of the security apparatus and also more broadly those of
the public service. The lack of channels of influence over federal governance
and, in some domains, over provincial management also promoted some
degree of support for a Sunni insurrection. Yet this weakness had more to do
with the strain of sanctions against the regime of Saddam Hussein, the de-
Baathization of the civil service that following the U.S.-led invasion, and the
neglect of Sunni areas by the mostly Shiite government in Baghdad (partly
the result of insurgency), than directly to Iraq’s petro-dependence at the time
of ISIS’s rise.
Sparse Trade Network

Iraq was doubly affected by a high economic dependence on oil exports and
trade sanctions. As a result, its economy was not as diversified as it could
have been considering its population size as well as educational and income
levels, although sanctions unintendedly incentivized domestic production
of goods and services. Furthermore, much of the remaining trade networks
involved smuggling or corrupt practices. Similarly, ISIS territories were
largely insulated from international trade networks, other than those orga-
nized through smuggling, as well as collusion, cooperation or co-optation
with local tribal militias and other armed groups (Heras et al. 2017). Rather
than entice a rapprochement, many ISIS trade networks attracted military
attacks by third parties and mutual accusations of complicity with terror-
ism, in part with the objective of delegitimizing adversaries. Most notably,
the U.S. government blamed the Assad regime (and Iran) for trading with
ISIS, the Russian authorities blamed NATO-member Turkey, while Turkey

blamed Russia, and Arab newspapers blamed Israel (Tahroor 2015). Political
overtones were particularly blatant when the Russian government very pub-
licly accused Turkey of direct involvement in oil smuggling, including by
business interests close to Turkish president Erdogan, two weeks after the
Turkey air force had downed a Russian bomber-jet along the Syrian-Turkish
border.
Transit Routes
ISIS has been portrayed as a Western/Saudi-Emirati proxy in war against the
Assad regime as part of a competition between a Western-backed gas pipeline
from Bahrain and Qatar having to pass through Syria, and an Iranian-backed
gas pipeline (Engel 2015). Though possibly part of broader motives of oppo-
sition to the Syrian regime, the argument does not stand on its own. Having
represented ISIS and the context of civil war in the region as the result of oil-
motivated interventions to achieve regime change, commentators have nota-
bly hypothesized that “[a]n unintended consequence of the Saudi attempts to
overthrow the government of Syria, may be the overthrow of the government
of Saudi Arabia with its own medicine. Should ISIS be pushed into Saudi
Arabia, expect oil prices to surge” (Austin 2016).
Obstacle to Multilateralism
Although oil probably further consolidated ISIS’ strategy of non-engagement
with the “international community,” it seems clear that this would not have
been the case even without oil. Not only did ISIS have a deep distrust of
other governments (and in its millenarian vision hoped to bring them down to
establish Islamic rule), but it was internationally dealt with as a terrorist group
and much was done to not recognize ISIS as a potential state.
DISCUSSION
ISIS has generally not been portrayed as a “greedy” organization seeking to

control oil for the sake of enriching its members, but rather as one seeking to
access oil to secure a state (the caliphate). Oil has been seen as central to the
finances and strategies of ISIS, with for example reports that the organization
would have in part refocused its territorial strategy from northern Syria to
Eastern Syria and the bordering regions of Iraq in order to control oil rev-
enues—though other factors such as control of the major city of Mosul and
territorial integration of Sunni areas in Iraq were also (if not more) important
factors, and the taxation of populations under its control was widespread,
even in oil-rich areas (Revkin 2020).
The U.S.-led war on ISIS oil sought in this respect not only to prevent ISIS
from consolidating its finances and perhaps most importantly, from the per-
spective of the United States, to undermine ISIS’ “stateness.” As explained by
Amos Hochstein, State Department’s Special Envoy for International Energy
Affairs (cited in, Van Heuvelen 2015), “They want to be seen as a state . . . So
they need energy, not just for profits but also for symbolizing the difference
between them and other terrorist organizations—that they control territory
and provide electricity and fuel. That’s also a vulnerability in their operation.”
This deliberate use of oil-targeting to deny ISIS its potential status as a
state, and confine it to that of a terrorist organization, was part of a broad
consensus among Western politicians, analysts, and commentators, while
attempts to undermine “rebel” governance also extended to the military
campaigns of the Assad regime against other rebel groups (see Martínez and
Eng 2018). Relatively few studies seriously examined the “stateness” of ISIS,
including its sophisticated bureaucratic apparatus (Benraad 2014), despite
the importance of the shift and even schism the prioritization of this goal—
enshrined in the very name of the organization—represented for the Jihadist
movement (Shapiro et al. 2015; see also Al Ahram 2017).
As discussed above, instead of an oil-rich ISIS-ruled caliphate, what
emerged was the challenging reality of squeezing out usable fuel and cash
from a difficult context. ISIS controlled territories with oil fields, but many
of these were already quite depleted and aging, requiring more complex tech-
niques and recurrent investments. Operations also needed technical staff, and
ISIS faced difficulties in (forcedly) recruiting former state-oil company and
foreign employees. Key oil staff were targeted for assassination, including by
the United States, which dispatched on the ground special ops troops to elimi-
nate key militants and collect intelligence. To export oil outside its territory,
ISIS was initially able to tap into long-established oil trading and smuggling
networks. Yet, these came under growing military pressure as the means of
production, refining, and transportation were progressively degraded, notably
through aerial bombardments, leading ISIS and entrepreneurs to adjust to
through stealth and makeshift innovation.
ISIS not only generated revenues from oil, but as mentioned above, also
used oil for tactical and political purposes, in effect constructing a series of
highly politicized oil markets including among its own units, civilian popu-
lations in ISIS strongholds (in both Syria and Iraq), in areas controlled by
Bashar and by other rebel groups, as well as in neighboring countries. Despite
its prominence within ISIS finances, oil revenues remain relatively low, nota-
bly because of the relative paucity of oil fields within ISIS-controlled parts
of Syria and Iraq. As summed by a U.S. Mideast analyst, by taking on the
Table 10.2 Categorization of “Non-state Armed Groups,” Oil Sector Activities and Key Relations
Categories Terrorist Insurgent Warlord Proto-state Near-state

Territorial Absent Temporary and heavily Peripheral and Strong but challenged Strong and partially
control disputed chronically disputed and unrecognized recognized
Relations Sabotage, killings, Bunkering, Extortion, bunkering,
Production, Production,
with oil kidnapping, extortion, sabotage, informal contracting international international
companies extortion kidnapping with companies contracting of experts contracting with oil
and smuggling majors and traders
Oil take <10% 10% 20% 30% 50%
Relations Negligible as Minimal and temporary Limited services, Essential services Full-fledged services,
with host members often have services, occasionally basic taxation often (food, fuel, health, extensive tax system
populations clandestine lives predatory resembling predation “justice”), tax system in place
in place
Examples AQIM ELN MEND ISIS KRG
(2014–2015) (pre–2003)
Resource Wars, Oil, and the Islamic State
Source: Author.
247
challenge of becoming a new territorial entity with responsibility over about

8 million people, ISIS had “gone from being the world’s richest terrorist orga-
nization to the world’s poorest state” (Johnson 2014). By early 2016, despite
repeated air strikes and lower international oil prices, ISIS was earning an
estimated $1–1.5 million per day through field-level oil sales. While still
accounting about a quarter of ISIS total revenues, this amount represented
only about $60 per year and per person in its overall area of control.
ISIS did rapidly move up from an insurgent to a proto-state status (see Lia
2015), and was able to operate and control the vast majority of oil fields in
northeastern Syria and taxing most aspects of the oil commodity chain (see
table 10.2). Yet ISIS was only able to attract individual experts rather than
full-fledged companies to develop its oil sector. It also became increasingly
restrained in its export options as well as its refining capacity for local con-
sumption as a result of the sharp decline in international oil prices, destruction
of tankers and key infrastructures, as well as the loss of oil fields to Kurdish
and Iraqi government forces. ISIS’ daily oil revenues peaked in late 2014 and
came to increasingly resemble a coping economy working under severe geo-
logical, economic, and military constraints. By October 2017, ISIS had lost
all its strongholds and its last major oil fields in Deir ez-Zor, leaving the rem-
nants of the group to focus instead on attacks against government pipelines.
In this regard, the U.S. strategy of bombing ISIS’ oil sector was somewhat
effective, but the losses of oil revenues were the result of broader military
pressure and the loss of trade routes to Kurdish forces. Overall, the case of
ISIS confirmed many of the mechanisms generally identified as linking oil
and war, yet most did not play the dominant role that oil was often given in
some of the descriptions of the militant group and the war more broadly.
CONCLUSION
Many studies of resources and conflicts are moving beyond simplistic con-
ceptions of resource scarcity, abundance, and dependence. Rather, they con-
sider how uneven resource entitlements and patterns of resource exploitation
and consumption reflect and exacerbate the antagonizing effects of wars, as
well as inform the types of violence reshaping conditions of access and con-
trol over resources. This suggests mixed methods, including historical and
political economy analyses, as well as field-based studies of narratives and
power relations around resources, including various forms of violence (Le
Billon and Duffy 2018).
This brief study of the case of ISIS demonstrates the variety of “oil wars”
narratives at play, the wide array of actors and processes involved, from out-
right massacres to various forms of accommodation based on the necessity to
generate (or curtail) energy and financial flows in order to maintain, establish,
or deny “stateness.” As such, this study helps nuance some of the now-classic
narratives of “rebel economies” as the result of greedy thugs battling over
resource spoils, and questions some of the simplistic answers that these often
call for. This study also points to the complexity of mechanisms involved.
Among the ten mechanisms examined, nine were relevant, but their applicabil-
ity required caveats and nuances. Perhaps most importantly, when considering
the war economies of non-state actors, this study draws attention to the effects
of war economy narratives and their associated counterinsurgency practices.
Arguably, narratives of an oil-fuelled ISIS helped to depoliticize the group,
by associating it with images of greedy criminals and oil-funded despots. Yet
at the same time, counterinsurgency practices, and most notably the sustained
bombing of oil assets sought to prevent ISIS from becoming a state. As such,
ISIS’ association with oil enabled both a further criminalization of the group
and its purposeful depoliticization. From this perspective, ISIS’ oil territories,
and more broadly its war economy, constituted both an asset and a liability. As
an asset, oil and the control of a large economy enabled it to further pursue its
attempt to establish a de facto state. As a liability, oil created vulnerabilities
for its financial system and exposed it to further delegitimization. Still, in this
regard, ISIS’ main liability was the brutal repression that it exercised in very
public ways against those it considered as “nonbelievers.”
The broad conclusion of this chapter for the study of resources in non-state
armed groups’ war economies is that resources can contribute to shaping the
representations and practices of non-state armed groups as well as those of
their allies and opponents. High-value resources such as oil will often taint
the (perceived) motives of belligerents, guide their strategic and tactical
approaches, and influence their capabilities and behaviors. Yet, to avoid raw
material fetishism and other forms of oversimplification and overstatement
about resources, it is crucial that studies carefully examine the diverse mecha-
nisms potentially at work, and contextualize current resource-related hos-
tilities within multi-scalar and historical perspectives. Interpreting conflicts
through the lens of resource-related factors requires a nuanced and grounded
approach sensitive to the multiplicity of agendas as well as the many motiva-
tions and materialities at work. This undoubtedly constitutes a challenging
task, especially when field investigations are particularly risky, with informa-
tion being derived from remote sensing and a limited range of informants.
NOTES
1. Prior to the Syrian civil war, production for these fields was reported at 75,000
bpd and 50,000 bpd, respectively, and are now assessed at 11,500 bpd and 7,500 bpd
(Shellme n.d.). AFPC’s fields production peaked in 1990 at 400,000 barrels, and were
described by AFPC as “mostly in a very mature stage of development, with some
88% of the 2400 mln bbl that is expected to be recoverable, ‘the easy oil’, already
produced in the last 20 years . . . . Extraction of the remaining 300 mln bbl will take
place over the next 20+ years or so, with production levels expected to decline to
50,000 b/d by 2014” (AFPC n.d.).
2. See “Except for those who repent” video, initially posted but since removed
from (YouTube 2015).
3. See “Background Briefing on ISIL and Oil” (U.S. State Department 2015). By
March 2016, Operation Inherent Resolve had damaged/destroyed 1,272 oil infrastruc-
ture targets (out of a total of 22,779 targets).
4. For an overview of oil-related factors and processes that actually prevent armed
conflicts, such as the diplomatic and military support by the home countries of oil
companies present in a country at risk of war (see Basedau and Lay 2009).
5. For a former chair of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and liaison with the
Iraqi National Police, one has to “think of ISIS as an oil cartel . . . . In the end, money
is the governing rationale. The religious ideology is a tool that inspires its soldiers to
give their lives for an oil cartel” (cited in Kennedy 2016). In a more nuanced way,
and closer to the role of oil in the running the movement and interpersonal relations,
a Kurdish commander denounced attacks by al-Nusra and ISIS on Kurdish villages
in Hasaka Province for aiming at lucrative oil fields and border crossings, and argued
that such moves were “not a political issue. There are divisions even between these
rebel units over oil” (Reuters 2013).
6. As a foreign female supporter wrote in an email back home, “I have an apart-
ment that is fully furnished . . . . I pay no rent nor even electricity or water lol. It’s the
good life!!!” (Callimachi 2018).
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Conclusion
New Perspectives on Warring Societies
Non-state war economies have been an object of major concern for interna-
tional politics as well as the matter of much debate among experts in recent
decades. In this volume, we have sought to address this concern and revisit
this debate. We have done so by critically evaluating past contributions and
expanding our understanding of these economies from an interdisciplinary
perspective. On the one hand, we have reviewed past theories on war econo-
mies—from explanations of conflict in terms of “greed” versus “grievances”
to economic understandings of war, and to theories of state formation based
on war economy—aiming to illustrate various shortcomings, in particular to
separate state from non-state actors, and to assume that state and non-state
war economies are fundamentally different, as discussed by Didier Fassin. On
the other hand, we have expanded the range of cases and the scope of activi-
ties that a theory of non-state war economy should consider and thus have
provided a wider empirical basis on which to develop our critical approaches,
as argued by Christopher Cramer.
While war economy is far from being a zero-sum game, it is often involved
with social and political functions beyond wealth accumulation. Most of
the authors point out that wars are structurally transformative, not merely
destructive. They allow for the performance of new statehood, and for pro-
cesses of social differentiation that shape new societies. Sometimes, they can
become an inconvenience, and Philippe Le Billon shows that it is the case
for the Islamic State’s reliance on oil. “Greed,” often assumed to be the main
driver of non-state war economies, is thus a limited and inadequate analyti-
cal category. The same can be said for the notion of “resource wars” since
resources can turn out to be burdensome. There is no set trajectory for the
use of resources or for the political outcomes of war economies. The main
challenge becomes, then, to realign general assumptions with empirical cases
257
that illustrate both the specificity and the variety of the phenomenon, using
theoretical keys that draw from multiple disciplines.
Several essays engaged with the theories of historian Charles Tilly (“war
makes state”) and economist Mancur Olson (the “stationary bandit”). In
doing so, they appraised these theories’ applicability, but also furthered
our understanding of war economy-driven state-making processes. They
questioned the idea that war makes states. William Caferro challenges the
applicability of Tilly’s theory, by inviting readers to consider other polities-
in-the-making than classical states, such as city-states. Edward McCord’s
study of Chinese warlords demonstrates that warlords are not always strictly
separate from the state, and they do not always attempt to establish separate
independent states. Cramer proposes a third way to think of war economies,
which is neither state-making nor state-destruction. Going beyond economic
instrumentalism, particularly Olson’s oft-cited view that taxation is mostly
an economic tool that allows state-building, Nicola Di Cosmo and Zachariah
Mampilly underscore the political and symbolic functions of fiscal policies
in making the state. Di Cosmo argues that taxes led to state formation and
to the introduction of a new class of people into the state machinery, which
often created political tensions. Mampilly contends that rebel taxation was a
lot more than a protection racket or a criminal activity: rebel taxation was a
technology of governance with political and social valence, which, in build-
ing political legitimacy, actually outdid its fiscal and economic value.
Wars, therefore, fulfill important functions, and indeed enemies can have a
social utility to the extent that wars satisfy important political and economic
goals in a situation of crisis. In some cases, they can be absolutely necessary
for a polity to survive, even though war may create chronic instability. The
problem, then, is how to survive the various transformations associated with,
and propelled by, the necessity of war and reacquire a situation of peace that
transforms the former tensions onto a new order. Non-state war economies
are, in this interpretation, a fundamental step to achieve a new economic
order. Di Cosmo shows that competition for resources drove the creation
of new political orders by unifying polities. Caferro affirms that the wealth
accumulated by non-state actors, that is, the condottieri, in service of the state
greatly influenced the cultural developments of the Renaissance—not the
state. McCord depicts how some warlords had a positive impact in develop-
ing the economy, despite their overall negative impact on Chinese society.
Clémence Pinaud establishes how control over the war economy participated
to a new process of social class formation in South Sudan.
Viewing war as transformative—and in fact, creative—while accepting
that different motivations drive different actors means and of course not mini-
mizing the human costs of the war implies to let go of rational choice theory,
which assumes that all actors want to maximize their gains. A change of
Conclusion 259
optics in this regard is doubtless needed for a critical evaluation of contempo-

rary international approaches to peace and reconstruction, since it questions
the relevance of costly preventative approaches propelled by international
bodies influenced by this camp, that is, the proponents of “greed” rather than
“grievances,” as Cramer points out.
More generally, and significantly, we demonstrate and illustrate the sub-
stantial similarities existing in the war economy patterns observed across
space and time, even if their political outcomes remain unpredictable. The
forms of war economy from the nomadic steppe empires resemble that
of South Sudan’s armed groups, ranging from raiding, tribute, trade, and
taxes. Private military entrepreneurs, that is, mercenaries, also resemble one
another, from Renaissance Italy to contemporary Afghanistan. Processes of
social differentiation also echo one another, from early twentieth-century
China to late twentieth-century South Sudan.
Yet, differences emerge with the introduction of international aid and the
growing inter-connectedness between different types of state and non-state
war economies. Both Gilles Carbonnier and Jonathan Benthall show how
humanitarianism has become part and parcel of contemporary war econo-
mies. Humanitarianism in the Southern Hemisphere is highly connected to
Western government and intergovernmental bodies. But even then, the intro-
duction of humanitarian economies, and the connectedness between different
economies across the world, heighten social processes that were already
observed before. Where foreign interests correspond with those of wealth
accumulators, humanitarian aid accelerates social differentiation.
The real novelty, as stated by Fassin, may lie in the introduction of a global
moral economy of war with its norms, values, and even affects: of what is
legitimate and what is not, of what is wrong and what is right, which has
an incidence on the war economy itself. But our case studies show how this
moral economy is challenged by the political economies of war. Le Billon
notes how resources contribute to shape the representations and practices of
most actors involved in warfare. McCord concurs in showing how the nature
of resources shapes the specific character of warlordism, contesting the sim-
plistic and negative conventional views of warlords’ motivations, and seeking
out the politics in the formation of the anti-warlord narrative. Mampilly also
criticizes the perceptions of rebellion as a source of threat and of rebel taxa-
tion as a criminal activity.
Collectively, the chapters included in this volume show how ideology
drives perceptions of legitimacy, and as such how ideology prompts the
relegation of some activities to the realm of criminality or even terrorism.
Benthall illustrates how the U.S. administration changed its perception of
charities (especially Islamic ones) in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, not based
on their activities but on an ideological shift considering Islamism as the
new pollution after communism. The same shift is noted by Pinaud in South
Sudan, where the SPLA became an armed group the United States supported
once its communist backer (Ethiopia) fell through in 1991, and its northern
foe (the National Islamic Front) became viewed as a state sponsor of terror-
ism. Alternatively, through the Islamic State’s management of oil resources,
Le Billon analyzes how these resources participated in shaping the represen-
tations and practices of non-state armed groups as well as those of their allies
and opponents.
Questioning of moral representations illustrates the necessity to think
beyond several types of dichotomy. One must surpass the division between
state and non-state actors, and not just in terms of other types of polities
(such as city-states): the lines between civil and external (or inter-state)
war, between civilians and combatants, or between war and peace, can also
become blurry. Yet it does not mean, as Fassin points out, that one should
forget the state entirely—indeed, it is never far. Instead, several authors show
that modern war economies are above all networks that involve both states
and non-state actors. Non-state war economies, as per Carbonnier’s analysis,
are a complex set of networks that involve rebel groups that take hostages,
states, international aid organizations, and international insurance companies.
Cramer notes the economic connections between Western countries and war-
torn countries, and the globalization of war economies to the extent that they
have become part of the world economy. As a matter of fact, both state and
non-state war economies share similar features: the violent control over the
market (to the detriment of free competition), the production of war rents, the
lack of transparency and accountability, and a transformational impact over
society and the economy.
In sum, over roughly the last forty years, inequality has increased almost
everywhere, albeit at different speeds. Non-state war economies, connected
to various state actors, are inscribed in the world economy: as such, they are
an inherent part of this drive. Since 2014, non-state conflicts have been on the
rise, a trend only matched by that of the early 1990s. For us, war economies
transform societies’ structures through as well as beyond their destruction,
often to the detriment of ordinary civilians, especially women. Given such
global economic and conflict trends, this field of inquiry remains more cru-
cial than ever to understand how wartime wealth accumulation shapes and
reshapes contemporary societies throughout the world.
Index
Figures and tables are indicated by “f” and “t” following page numbers
respectively. Surnames starting with “al-” are alphabetized by the subsequent
part of the name.
Abu Sayyaf (Ben Awn al-Murad al on (1983), 183–85, 188, 198;

Tunisi), 238 mujahideen refusing to accept
Acemoglu, Daron, 39 Geneva Accords, 187, 190; National
Actor-Network Theory perspective, 229 Security Council directive to expel
Afghanistan: Afghan Communist Party, Soviets from Afghanistan (1981),
181; Care International’s role in, 185; redefinition of “freedom
193–95; change and war economy fighters” as terrorists, 186; U.S.
in, 42; Doctors Without Borders policy during, 186; Western support
terminating missions to, 196, for mujahideen, 12, 183–85, 194, 198
201n27; economy of, 1, 4; Islamic Afghanistan, U.S. war in: corrupt
State and, 20; opium economy in, capture of reconstruction efforts
7, 42, 61, 65. See also Afghanistan, in, 49; economic consequences of,
Soviet war in; Afghanistan, U.S. war 29; fatality count, 25; humanitarian
in; Taliban organizations’ role in, 6, 59, 67;
Afghanistan, Soviet war in, 7, 12, 31, mercenaries, use of, 127, 259; as war
181–201; charitable objects and on terror, 24
military activities in, 189–91; CIA Afghan Jehad (magazine), 187–89, 188f,
operations, 183, 185–86; Doctors 194
Without Borders and, 185, 195, Africa: civil wars, frequency in,
201n27; fatality count, 181; Geneva 30; compared to China’s past,
Accords (1988), 185, 187–88; 20; “The Enough Project,” 227;
humanitarian and military aid mercenaries, use of, 127; “rebellion
during, 186–87, 192; Malhuret’s as criminality” model and, 79. See
views on, 185, 195; media coverage also specific countries
of, 196–98; Monterey Institute of agriculture and agricultural land, 41, 62,
International Studies conference 111, 121, 169, 226–27, 240
261
262 Index
Ahmad, Aisha, 86 Becker, Marvin, 136

Aide Médicale Internationale, 196 Beltoft, John, 140
Ajak, Oyii Deng, 218 Benthall, Jonathan, 6, 12, 181, 259
al-Assad, Bashar, 27, 234, 236, 238, Berger, John, 197
244–46 Bernabò Visconti of Milan, 132
Alberigo da Barbiano, 140 Betrand du Poujet, 130
Al Furat Petroleum Company (AFPC), bin Laden, Osama, 187, 192, 200n22, 233
236, 248n1 Black Death, 10, 130, 135, 136, 138
Algeria: National Liberation Front, 22; Bledsoe, Caroline, 222n13
War of Independence, 6, 22 Bloch, Marc, 13, 206, 212, 219, 221n1
Al-Hussam (newsletter of Care Bologna, 134–35, 137
International), 193–94 Bosnia: Care International’s role in,
Al-Jihad (magazine), 199n10 193; criminalized economies and, 49;
Al-Kifah (Islamic charity), 192; mujahideen at end of Bosnian war
Refugee Center (Brooklyn, New in, 191
York), 192, 193 Boutruche, Robert, 133
al-Maliki, Nouri, 234 Boyce, James K., 49
al-Nusra. See Jabhat al-Nusra Bozizé, François, 28
al-Qaeda, 1, 13, 24, 27, 209, 233 Brauman, Rony, 196
al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), 234–35 “Breaking the Conflict Trap” (World
Al-Shabaab: background of, 79; food Bank), 39
aid diverted by, 73n4; humanitarian Brezhnev Doctrine, 183
organizations’ payments to, 9, Britain. See Hundred Years’ War;
65, 73n4; kidnapping of foreign United Kingdom
nationals by, 67; taxes levied by, Brownback, Sam, 78–79
65–66 Brück, Tilman, 40, 45
al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab, 234 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 183–84
American Friends of Afghanistan, 189 Bueno de Mesquita, D. M., 138
Amin, Hafizullah, 183 Buhaug, Halvard, 5
Amum, Pagan, 218 Bunker, Ellsworth, 185
Ancien Régime, 212 Burckhardt, Jacob, 127, 129, 136, 143
Angola: resource-based war and, 227; bureaucratic dimensions: of Renaissance
UNITA, 207; war of liberation Italy, 136; of steppe empire, 104,
narrative in, 209 106, 121; tax collection, 92–93
anti-Balaka militias, 27 Burundi, taxes as extortion in, 84
Arezzo, 137, 139 Bush, George W., 24, 28, 191
Attendoli, Micheletto, 139, 142 Byzantine Empire, 104, 107, 117
Avars, 107
Avignon, pope’s exile in, 128 Cabral, Amilcar, 92
Azzam, Abdullah, 187, 192–93, 199n10, Caferro, William, 6, 10, 127, 143n3,
200n21 258
Canestrini, Giuseppe, 137
Bagnacavallo, 131 Canton (China), 155–56
Bardi, Bernardo dei, 142 Carbonnier, Gilles, 6, 8, 59, 259, 260;
Barthes, Roland, 197 Humanitarian Economics, 5, 73n2
Index 263
Care International, 193–95 of, 40; global civil war, 36, 53n2;
Carter Doctrine, 183 oil and, 230–31; in Renaissance
Castracane, Castruccio, 134 Italy, 128, 130; taxation’s role in, 8;
Cederman, Lars-Erik, 5 warlordism in China giving rise to,
Centeno, Miguel, 93 153, 157; women’s life expectancy
Central African Republic, 27–28 reduced by, 46. See also non-state
Central Asia: Mongol Empire and, 107, armed groups; specific countries
119; Uighurs’ trade routes, 117–18 Clausewitz, Carl von, 21–22
Chad, 20, 27 Clémenceau, Georges, 33
Chang, Guer, 218 Coase theorem, 38
charitable organizations. See Cobb-Douglas function, 40
humanitarian relief organizations cocaine trafficking, 8
charitable purpose, definition of, 189–91 Cochran, Thomas C., 35
Charles of Anjou, 137 Cogan, Charles, 189
Charron, Francis, 196 Cold War: African civil wars and, 30;
Che Guevara, 86, 93 costs of U.S. intervention in wars
Chen Jitang, 157, 160, 162, 165, 167, during, 37; Reagan Doctrine vs.
170, 173 Brezhnev Doctrine, 183. See also
Chiang Kai-shek, 156–57 Afghanistan, Soviet war in
child soldiers, 210, 214 Collier, Paul, 2, 39, 48, 78, 80, 86, 207,
China: challenging U.S. hegemony, 221n3
227; nationalism in, 11; non-state Colombia: civil war in, 8, 23–24, 84;
war economies in, 4; northern drug cartels in, 27; elites’ loyalties
frontier, nomadic transformation of, in, 85; elites’ participation in civil
106; opposition to Soviet presence war in, 39; FARC (Fuerzas Armadas
in Afghanistan, 186; relationship Revolucionarias de Colombia), 1, 65,
between politics and militarization 84; local perspective on war economy
in, 11; Uighurs’ trade routes, in, 36; Marxist-Leninist ideology in,
117–18. See also nomadic empires; 8; shared economic interests in war
warlordism in China; specific in, 31; “sin” taxes in, 92
dynasties commodification of people, 13, 216–17,
Chinggis Khan, 118, 119, 122 229
Chirac, Jacques, 22, 184 Company of St George, 139, 140
Chittolini, Giorgio, 138 Company of the Hat, 139
cholera, 62–63 Company of the Star, 139
Chongqing (China), 159, 161, 167–68, conflict diamonds, 78–80, 207
174n6 conflict prevention, 8, 36, 45–47, 259
Christian Aid (relief agency), 192 Congo. See Democratic Republic of
Churchill, Winston, 44 Congo
CIA: operations in Afghanistan, 183, Congo Conflict Minerals Act
185–86; report on Islamic NGOs, (proposed), 78–79
191 Cordovez, Diego, 187
civilians as militants, 24–25 Correlates of War, 36
civil war: in developing countries after corruption: Chinese warlord’s
Cold War, 38; economic explanation embezzlement of public funds, 164,
264 Index
170, 172; class formation based on, Deng, Piang, 218

222n9; Iraq government (2006– developing countries: civil war after
2014), 234; ISIS trade networks Cold War in, 38, 46; difference from
and, 244; negative consequences of, war economies in advanced capitalist
92–93; political economy of oil and, economies, 44, 52; socioeconomic
233; post-conflict reconstruction changes of wars in, 45
producing, 228; resource-based Development Initiatives, 73n1
transactions and, 232 De Waal, Alex, 210
costs of peace, 49 Diamond, Larry, 212, 222n9
costs of war, 35–36, 37; conflict diaspora networks, funding from. See
prevention and, 36, 46–47, 259; post- remittances
conflict reconstruction and, 47–50 Di Cosmo, Nicola, 1, 5, 9, 103, 128,
Council for Islamic Coordination, 187 257, 258
Covini, Nadia, 142 Dinka, SPLA’s split and, 209–21. See
Cramer, Christopher, 6, 7, 35, 257–60 also Sudan People’s Liberation
criminal activities: of aid initiatives, Army
182, 198; to circumvent sanctions, disaster relief. See humanitarian relief
70; economic instrumentalism and, organizations
78–80; quasi-criminal, 78; of rebel Doctors Without Borders (Médecins
groups, 61, 71, 210, 259; resource- Sans Frontières), 12, 28, 68, 182,
based transactions as, 232. See 184–85, 192, 195–98, 201n27
also corruption; kidnapping and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
ransoming; smuggling Consumer Protection Act (2010), 79
Crusades, 181 Douglas, Mary, 198
Cultural Council of Afghan Resistance, Doyle, Arthur Conan, 139
187–89, 188f DRC. See Democratic Republic of
Congo
Darfur: Janjaweed groups, 27; Justice Dunant, Henry, 67
and Equality Movement, 79;
secessionist insurgency in, 27 economic sanctions: commodity
Deaton Report, 39 sanctions, 228; EU sanctions on ISIS
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): oil, 236–37; humanitarian agencies,
cholera crisis in, 62–63; coltan effect on, 6, 9, 12, 69–71, 182, 185,
mining in, 61–62; elite traders, 259; Syria helping Iraq to bypass
protection in return for tax payments (1990s), 240; UN sanctions on Iraq
by, 85, 95; FAPC in, 85–86, 95; under Hussein, 241, 244
food insecurity in, 62; humanitarian economy, meaning of term, 7, 29–32
organizations’ role in, 8, 62–63; El Salvador, economic transformation
militias considered as mafias in, 79; through war in, 43
miners as tax payors to rebels in, 85; Enlightenment, 181
resource-based war and, 227–28; En Plein Air (documentary), 196
Second Congo War (1998–2003), environmental security, 226–27
62; security governance in, 84; war Epstein, Stephan R., 138
economy in, 36, 42 Ethiopia: fall of Marxist Dergue regime
Deng Laka, 217 in, 96, 209; refugee camps for
Index 265
Sudanese in, 208; structural change Gadet, Peter, 213, 216–19

due to war in, 45; supporting SPLA Galland, Frédéric, 196
in South Sudan, 205, 209, 260 game theory, 7, 30
excommunication, 130 Gandhi, Rajiv, 64
exodus of capital and labor, 40 Garang, Garang, 219
extortion. See racketeering Garang, John, 207, 209–10, 213, 220
“Extortion with Protection: Garrett, Nicholas, 84
Understanding the Effect of Rebel generative function of war, 2
Taxation on Civilian Welfare in Geneva Call, Deeds of Commitment, 63
Burundi” (Sabates-Wheeler & Geneva Convention (1864), 67
Verwimp), 77 Genoa, 10, 118, 128, 131
German Holy Roman emperors. See
Fassin, Didier, 1, 6, 19, 257, 259, 260 Holy Roman Empire
Fatah, 26 Germany: mercenaries returning from
Fengtian Province (China), 157, 175n16 Italy to, 10, 140–41; World War II
Feng Yuxiang, 154, 173, 175n17 economy in, 44
Ferrara, 10, 135, 137 Ghachem, Malick W., 201n34
feudal societies, 13, 140, 221n1 Gillin, Donald, 170
Findlay, Ronald, 108 Giustozzi, Antonio, 154
Florence, 10, 129–38, 141. See also Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede, 5
Renaissance Italy globalization: nomadic precursors of,
forced labor, 66, 211–14, 222n16 105; of war economies, 36, 260
Foreign Affairs article by Malhuret, 195 Global South, 7, 13, 20, 21
Former Han dynasty, 112 Goldin, Claudia D., 37
Fossier, Robert, 134 Gold, William, 142
Foucault, Michel, 197 Goodhand, Jonathan, 42
Fournot, Juliette “Djamila,” 195–97 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 185
fragmentation, 106, 109, 150, 152–53, Great Company, 139–40
159 Great Schism, 128–29
France: Algerian War of Independence greed: vs. grievances approach, 3, 7,
and, 6, 22; invasion of Italy by 13, 39, 207, 227, 257, 259; ISIS
(1494), 138; Islamic State’s Paris and, 243, 245; as motivation for
attacks (2015), 22–23; Operation insurgency, 2–3, 207, 209–10, 228,
Chammal, 22–23; Syrian civil war 232–33, 257; as predictor of civil
and, 27; World War I reconstruction war, 39
costs of rural areas in, 133. See also Green, Louis, 134
Hundred Years’ War grievances: vs. greed approach, 3,
Fraternità dei laici, 139 7, 13, 39, 207, 227, 257, 259; as
Frederick I Barbarossa (German motivation for insurgency, 2, 3, 244,
emperor), 137 257; today’s conflicts as group-based
French Doctors: La grande épopée de grievances, 40, 47
la médecine humanitaire (Weber), Guangdong Province (China), 157, 160,
197 162, 165, 174n13; Social Welfare
Friedrichs, Christopher, 132 Bureau, 167
Fuller, Pierre, 174n14 Guelf and Ghibelline rivalry, 128, 137
266 Index
Gulliver’s Travels (Swift), 53n6 economy of disaster relief and, 197;

Gutiérrez Sanín, Francisco, 47 research needs on trade and financial
sanctions, 73; role of, 4, 5, 7, 8–9,
Hacker, Louis Morton, 35 28; sanctions against, consequences
Hamas, 12, 28, 191 of, 6, 9, 12, 69–71, 182, 185, 259;
Hassan, Hassan, 240 Soviet–Afghan War and, 12, 182,
Hawkwood, John, 140 186, 189, 192, 195; SPLA and,
Hegghammer, Thomas, 191, 200n21 210; taxing of, 65; technological
He Jian, 167, 170, 174n3 innovations in cash-based assistance
Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 185, 194 of, 72
Henry V (English king), 66–67 humanitarian war, 200n18
Heralitus, 36 human rights violations, 208, 210, 230,
Hezbollah, 7, 26–27 232
Hillier, Debbie, 47 Hundred Years’ War, 66–67, 130, 133,
Hirschman, Albert, 47 134
Hirshleifer, Jack, 38–40 Hungarian kings and mercenaries
Hobbes, Thomas, 228 fighting in Italy, 130, 141
Hochstein, Amos, 246 Hussein, Saddam, 30, 70, 241, 244
Hollande, François, 22
Holy Roman Empire, 104, 128–29 ICRC. See International Committee of
horizontal inequalities, 5 the Red Cross
horse trade, 117 Igga, Wani, 219
Horvath, John, 140 IHL. See International Humanitarian
Housley, Norman, 130 Law
Hsieh, Winston, 173, 174n2 immigration: Chinese refugees fleeing
Hsi-sheng Ch’i, 154, 158 warlords’ troop violence, 169; from
Hubei (China), 154, 157–58, 161–64 frontier regions under constant
Humanitarian International Services threat, 112; from Mozambique
Group, 28 to South Africa, 43; Renaissance
humanitarian relief organizations, 8–9, Italian warfare and, 133–35; as
59–73, 259; competition among, result of political events, 107; Syrian
72–73; cost-benefit calculus to refugees, 8
granting access by armed groups, indefinite wars, 5
63–66, 67; counterterrorism-related India: NSCN-IM, tax imposed by, 84,
clauses in funding contracts, 70–71; 86–87, 91, 96; Soviet-Afghan War
definition of humanitarian action, and, 186
73n1; fundraising by, 8; history Inequality, Grievances and Civil War
of, 28, 59, 181; humanitarian (Cederman, Gleditsch, & Buhaug), 5
economics and war economies, International Committee of the Red
60–63, 73n4; kidnapping and Cross (ICRC), 62–63, 186, 190
ransoming of workers of, 6, 9, 59, International Humanitarian Law (IHL),
66–69, 196; media coverage of, 25, 60, 63, 182, 195, 198; history of,
196–98, 201nn31–32; negotiations 66–67; Islamic Relief Worldwide
organized by, 63–66; payments to and, 192
warring parties, 9, 65, 94; political International Rescue Committee, 186
Index 267
international trade: Chongqing’s oil-related, 244; ideological nature

merchant community paying taxes to of, 233, 241; international coalition
support Liu, 161; development of, 5, against, 22, 238–40, 244–46; jizya on
9–10; imperial expansion and, 226; nonbelievers in Iraq, 91; kidnapping
nomadic empires’ control of, 116– of foreign nationals by, 67; “oil
20, 124n3; plunder considered more era” (2014–2017), 234–41, 248; oil-
profitable in nomadic empires, 108; related conflict mechanisms, 241–45,
in Renaissance Italy, 131; SPLA and, 242–43t; oil revenues and, 5, 14,
95; war economies and, 61 70, 225, 233, 243, 245, 247t, 248,
Iran: Hezbollah and, 27; Mongol 250n5, 260; oil smuggling, 238–40,
Empire and, 107, 119; revolution 244, 246; Paris attacks (November
(1979), 183; Türk Empire and, 107; 13, 2015), 22–23; resistance from
U.S. policy on Sunni and, 200n22 tribal groups, 238; stateness of,
Iraq: Islamic State and, 20, 24; Sunnis 7, 25–26, 245–46, 248; in Syria,
vs. Shiites in, 234; UN oil-for-food 25, 235; taxation by, 77, 246; as
scandal, 70; UN sanctions on (1990– terrorist-designated organization,
2003), 69–70 246, 248; trade network and, 244–45;
Iraq, U.S. war in: economic war economy of, 1, 4; weakness of
consequences of, 29; fatality count, Iraqi and Syrian institutions and,
25; global opposition to, 233; 244; weapons acquisition by, 24; as
humanitarian organizations’ role in, Western/Saudi-Emirati proxy in war
59; mercenaries, use of, 127; viewed against Assad regime, 245
as U.S. “oil grab,” 233–34, 241; as Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen
war on terror, 24 (Peshawar Seven), 189
Irish Northern Aid (Noraid), 190 Israel: Arab states using oil embargo
Irish Republican Army, 190 against pro-Israeli states, 226;
Islamic charitable activities: da`wa civilian fatalities from bombings by,
(missionary activity), 187, 193; jihad 25; Jewish National Fund and, 190;
and, 190–91; military activities and, occupation of South Lebanon by,
190–91; modern growth of, 191–92; 26. See also Occupied Palestinian
Muntasser/Care International case Territories
and, 193–95; post-9/11 negative Italy in Renaissance. See Renaissance
views of, 12, 191–93, 195; ṣadaqa Italy
(optional “good works”), 190, 192–
93; U.S. criminalization of, 182, 191, Jabhat al-Nusra, 235, 237, 239
198, 201n34, 259; waqf (charitable Jewish National Fund, 190
foundation), 190; zakat (obligatory Jews, in Renaissance Italy, 132, 141–42
alms), 190, 192–93 Jin dynasty, 107, 120, 124n5
Islamic Relief Worldwide, 192 John of Bavaria, 137
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Johnson, Douglas, 207
1, 4, 233–56; depolitization vs. Johnson, Samuel, 37
repolitization, 233; evolution Join the Caravan (Azzam), 193
from Islamic State of Iraq to, 235; Jurchen people, 107, 120. See also Jin
fatalities caused by, 20; greed as dynasty
motivation for, 243, 245; grievances, just wars, 6, 31–32
268 Index
Kalyvas, Stathis, 93 liberal interpretation of war, 7, 35–41,

Kapp, Robert, 159, 161, 174n2 45
Karmal, Babrak, 183 liberal theory of peace, 40, 47–48
Keen, David, 5, 222n8 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Keynes, John Maynard, 36, 49 (LTTE), 1, 32, 64, 96
Khitan peoples, 107, 112, 115, 118. See Liberia: National Patriotic Front, 79;
also Liao dynasty war of liberation narrative in, 209
Khwarezmian Empire, 119 Libya, fall of Gaddafi regime in, 24
kidnapping and ransoming of Lin, Alfred, 160, 167–68
humanitarian aid workers, 6, 9, Liu Xiang, 159, 161, 165, 167–68, 170,
59, 66–69; consultancy firms 174n5
providing services for, 68; covert Lobong, Louis, 214
rescue operations, 68; insurance Lombard league (1167), 137
coverage, 9, 68; medical workers looting. See raiding and looting
in Afghanistan, 196–98; as revenue Lucca, 131, 134–35, 141
source, 94 Lundhal, Mats, 108
Kiir, Salva, 213, 219–21
Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, Machiavelli, 38, 122, 127, 128, 137
78 Mainoni, Patrizia, 132
Konga, Wani, 219 Malatesta, Sigismondo, 129, 143
Kony, Ismail, 219 Malhuret, Claude, 184–85, 195–97
Korf, Benedikt, 228 Malik Abdel Aziz (king of Saudi
Kouchner, Bernard, 184, 196, 198 Arabia), 217
Kuanyin, Kerubino, 213 Malong, Paul, 213, 215–20
Kurdistan Worker’s Party of Turkey, 26 Mamluk Empire, 104
Kushkaki, Sabahuddin, 184, 187–89 Mampilly, Zachariah, 5, 8, 77, 258, 259
Kuwait invasion by Iraq (1990), 30 Manchuria, 106–7, 157, 161–62
Kuwa, Yussif, 210 Manchus, 107–8, 120. See also Qing
Kwong Chi Man, 162 dynasty
Mandela, Nelson, 26
Landau, Lutz von, 139 Mantua, 10, 137
La Roncière, Charles M. de, 131 Manyang, Kuol, 214
Lebanon: Israeli occupation of South Mao Zedong, 82, 93, 207
Lebanon, 26. See also Hezbollah marriage. See polygamy; women
Le Billon, Philippe, 5, 7, 13, 225, 257, Marxism or Marxism-Leninism, 8, 36,
260; Wars of Plunder, 5 205, 208–9, 212, 214
Lefèvre, Didier, 196–97 Matiep, Paulino, 216–20
Le Monde article by Malhuret, 195 Matsuzaki, Reo, 85
Le Photographe (Guibert, Lefèvre, & Mauss, Marcel, 219
Lemercier), 196, 197, 200n28 McCord, Edward, 11, 149, 258, 259
Levi, Margaret, 84, 163 McNeill, William, 141
Lewis, Frank D., 37 Médecins du Monde, 196
Liao dynasty, 107, 113–15, 120–21, Médecins Sans Frontières. See Doctors
124n5 Without Borders
Index 269
media coverage of humanitarian aid, NASDAQ bubble burst (2001), 62

196–98, 201nn31–32 National Endowment for Democracy
Memory of Solferino (Dunant), 67 (NED), 189, 194
mercenary armies, 10–11, 28, 117, National Security Council directive
127–30, 133–42, 239, 259 to expel Soviets from Afghanistan
merchants. See international trade (1981), 185
Middle Ages: prisoners of war in, 66– natural resources. See resource-based
67. See also feudal societies wars
Milan, 10, 132–35, 137–38, 141–42 neoclassical economics, 7, 35–36,
militants as civilians, 24–25 39–41, 45, 48
Milward, Alan Steele, 37 neoliberal policies, 2, 234
Ming dynasty, 105, 108 neo-Malthusian narratives, 226, 228
Minsheng Company, 167–68 Nepal, 43
Mkandawire, Thandika, 79 Neumayer, Eric, 46
Mobutu, 42 Nigeria: Boko Haram, 1, 79; Islamic
Mönch, Bertold, 140–41 State and, 20
Mongol Empire, 104, 107, 108, 111–12, 9/11 events: awareness of non-state
118–20, 128 wars and, 19; Bush’s declaration
Mongolia, 106–7, 110 of war on terror in response to,
Montefeltro, Federico da, 143 24; Bush’s restrictions on Islamic
Montepulciano, 142 charities in response to, 191;
Monterey Institute of International conspiracy theories and, 27
Studies conference on “Afghan nomadic empires, 103–25; assimilation
Alternatives” (1983), 183–85, 188, of conquered tribes, 110–11; cycle
198 of increasing violence for control
Montone, Braccio da, 129, 143 of diminishing resources, 110;
Montreal d’Albarno, 139 “divide and rule” policy during,
moral economy, 6, 7, 32, 94 114; economic strategies, 109,
Mozambique, 6, 40–41, 43 112–22; environmental hazards,
MSF. See Doctors Without Borders 109–10, 122–23; fragmentation and,
Mughals, 105 106, 109; khan’s failure to control
mujahideen. See Afghanistan, Soviet his generals, 114; methodological
war in considerations, 104–5; pre-state
multinational corporations as non-state war economies, similarities of, 108;
actors, 29 raiding and pillaging, 112–13, 122;
Muntasser, Emadeddin, 193–95 redistribution of wealth, 109, 122;
Muslim Brotherhood, 13, 193, 209 Sinicization, 122; state formation,
111, 121; survey of, 105–8; tax
Najibullah, Mohammad, 183, 185–87, collection, 120–22; trade, control of,
189–90 116–20; tribute paid to ensure peace,
Namibia, war of liberation narrative in, 113–16; war’s role in rise of, 10,
209 108–12, 122–23
Nanjing decade (China), 156–57, 167 non-state armed groups (NSAGs):
Naples, 10, 129, 130, 137 control of territory as predicate
270 Index
for governance by, 82; Deeds Organization for Economic

of Commitment of Geneva Co-operation and Development
Call, agreement to, 63; de facto (OECD), 73n1
governmental functions performed Otrar massacre of Mongol envoys, 119
by, 65; external funding of, 64, Ottomans, 105
71, 94; illegal activities of, 61, 71; Oxfam, 192
labeling as terrorist, 72, 260; lack
of juridical standing of, 83; oil Pakistan: Afghan refugees in, 195;
sector activities of, 247t; as profit- Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),
seekers, 78–80; as proxy forces, 230; 185; mujahedin safe havens in, 197;
resource-based wars and, 230–33, Office of Services to the Mujahideen
247t; time factors and raising funds, (maktab al-khidamāt), 192; Soviet–
81. See also criminal activities; Afghan War and, 12, 181, 185–87,
resource-based wars; tax collection; 191, 200n22; U.S. air strikes in, 22
terrorism and terrorist organizations Palestine Liberation Organization, 26
non-state war economies: commonalities Palestinian Authority, 26. See also
of, 1–2, 5–6, 259; complex networks Occupied Palestinian Territories
of actors in, 260; globalization of, Pampaloni, Guido, 136
260; links to state formation, 9; pan-Islamism, 189, 199
meaning of term “economy,” 7, papacy, 128–30, 135, 137
29–32; meaning of term “non-state,” Parrott, David, 127, 139, 141
6–7, 25–29; meaning of term “war,” The Passions and the Interests
6, 21–29; Western-centered approach (Hirschman), 47
to, 20, 21 Pathways to Peace (UN/World Bank),
Noraid (Irish Northern Aid), 190 40, 46, 47
Nordstrom, Carolyn, 95 patrimonial capitalism, 222n14
Northern Ireland, 190 Pavia, 135
Northern Wei dynasty, 106 peace of Lodi (1454), 138
Northern Zhou dynasty, 114 Perugia, 129, 137, 142, 143
North Korea, U.S. espionage operation Peru’s Shining Path, 25
in, 28 Peshawar Seven (Islamic Unity of
Norway, SPLA and, 210 Afghan Mujahideen), 189
NSAGs. See non-state armed groups Petrarch (Petrarca), Francesco, 135
Piketty, Thomas, 222n12, 222n16
Obama, Barack, 24, 191 Pinaud, Clémence, 1, 6, 12, 205, 257,
occupation, 6, 23 258, 260
Occupied Palestinian Territories, 6, 23– Pisa, 131, 134–35, 137
24, 26; humanitarian relief in, 28 Pivovarova, Margarita, 53n11
O’Donnell, Madalene, 49 plague. See Black Death
oil. See Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; Plümper, Thomas, 46
resource-based wars political ecology, 228–29
Olson, Mancur, 2, 5, 8, 80–86, 93, 121, political economy: of disaster relief,
258 197; link to moral economy, 6, 32; of
opportunity costs, 7, 38–39, 60, 170 oil, 233; of war, 7, 31, 48
Index 271
polygamy, 13, 215–18, 221 Redfield, Peter, 196

post-conflict reconstruction, 8, 36–37, Redlich, Fritz, 141
47–50 Reinhardt, Anne, 168
post-9/11 policies of United States. religious groups as non-state actors, 28.
See Islamic charitable activities; See also Islamic charitable activities
terrorism and terrorist organizations remittances, 10, 59, 64, 70, 71, 94, 96,
Pradhan, Sanjay, 48 140–42
Prichard, Wilson, 82 Renaissance Italy, 6, 10, 127–47, 258;
prisoners of war, 66–69. See also accounting techniques, 139–40;
kidnapping and ransoming armies of native soldiers, formation
proto-national organizations, 136 of, 11; balie (citizen committees
proto-state status, 6, 7, 232, 248 directing military efforts), 136;
Pugh, Michael, 49 capture and ransom rules, 132; city-
Pye, Lucian, 173n1 leagues (taglie), 10, 135–38, 258;
free trade zones, 138; future research
Qing dynasty, 9, 105, 107, 120, 149, needs, 133, 138–39, 140; gabelles
151–53, 157, 164, 165, 171–72 as regressive taxes on consumption
and service, 131; independent states
racketeering: Al-Shabaab and, 65–66; constituting, 128; inter-state and
rebel taxation as form of, 8, 77, infra-state conflicts, 128; Jews in,
83–84; as revenue source, 5, 27, 94; 132, 141–42; lega lombarda (1332),
Taliban and, 65 137; loans to mercenaries or pawning
Raeymaekers, Timothy, 82 by mercenaries, 142; mercenaries
raiding and looting: by Chinese used for defense in, 10–11, 127–
warlords and their troops, 169; as 30, 133–41, 259; migration and
motivational factor, 227, 231; in abandonment of villages, 133–35;
nomadic empires, 112–13, 122; military spending transforming
prolonging hostilities for, 230; political institutions, 136; nationalistic
redistribution of wealth via, 9; in nature of scholarship on, 143n2;
Renaissance Italy, 128, 134, 135; as natural crises coinciding with armed
revenue source, 5, 27, 94, 227; trade conflict, 10, 129–30, 136; non-state
considered less profitable than, 108; war economies in, 4; ownership of
transition to tax-based revenues, 80 rural land, 132–33; public and private
ransom. See kidnapping and ransoming wealth (conspicuous consumption),
of humanitarian aid workers 11, 129, 138–43; raiding and looting
rational choice theory, 7, 29–31, 36, 41, in, 128, 134, 135; remittances from
60, 229, 258 mercenaries to their home countries,
Rawski, Thomas, 170 10, 140–42; reunification of, 136;
Reagan, Ronald, 185 revenue raising methods, 131–32;
Reagan Doctrine, 183 skilled workers, treatment of, 135;
rebel taxation. See tax collection social transformation during, 11; tax
Red Crescent, 28, 187, 190 immunity for resettlers of abandoned
Red Cross. See International Committee areas, 134; universities refurbished to
of the Red Cross attract students, 135
272 Index
Reno, Will, 209 Salman, Prince (later king), 187

Republican period in China, 164, 166, Sanchez de la Sierra, Raul, 85
170–72. See also warlordism in sanctions. See economic sanctions
China San Miniato, 133–34
resource-based wars, 4, 13–14, 61–63, Saudi Arabia: al-Qaeda and, 27; ISIS
71, 225, 257; Actor-Network and, 245; Soviet–Afghan War and,
Theory perspective and, 229; 12, 181, 185–87, 191, 193, 200n22
conflict diamonds and, 78–80, Saur Revolution (1978), 184
207; depoliticization of, 229, 233; Scala, Mastino dell, 134
financial opportunities associated Scarperia, 134–35
with exploitation and control of Schmitt, Carl, 228
resources, 227; greed and, 227–28, Schöneck, Huglin von, 140
232–33; literature review, 226–29; Schumpeter, Joseph, 138
motivational factor for, 227, 231; non- Scythians, 106, 122
state armed groups and, 230–33, 247t; Seleka rebels, 28
overlap of wartime and peacetime Selzer, Stephen, 141
extraction and trading of commodities, Shanxi Province (China), 166
231; political ecology and, 228–29; Sheridan, James, 154, 156, 160
political economy and, 230; range of Sichuan Province (China), 159, 165,
resources involved, 230; recruitment 171, 174n6, 174n9
and behavior toward civilians, Sicily, Charles of Anjou as king of, 137
230–32; repoliticization of, 229, 232, Siena, 131, 134, 135, 137
233; resource security and, 226–27; Sierra Leone, Revolutionary United
simplification of causes of war and, Front (RUF) in, 79, 207
5, 13, 228, 233, 249; smuggling SIGAR, 49
revenues and, 231; SPLA and, 208, silk trade and workers, 9, 116–17, 134
214; strategic status of resources, Silvergate, Harvey A., 193
227; taxation and, 230; Third World Sima Qian, 106
development and, 226. See also Sklar, Richard, 222n15
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria slavery. See forced labor
Responsibility to Protect doctrine, 28 Smith, Adam, 41
Ricotti, Ercole, 143n2 smuggling, 70, 182, 231, 235, 238–40,
Rietheim, Johann von, 140 244, 246
Rimini, 129, 143 Sneath, David, 123–24n1
Rodriguez-Franco, Diana, 84, 85 social norms, 64, 92
Rouran, 106–7 Sogdian merchants, 117–18
roving bandits, 5, 80–81, 121 Somalia: elite traders in, 86; Islamic
Russia: ISIS and, 238, 240, 244–45; Courts Union, 79, 86; Islamic State
Mongol Empire and, 107, 119; and, 20. See also Al-Shabaab
Turkey and, 245 Song dynasty, 107, 114–15, 118
Rwanda: Radio Mille-Collines, 29; Second South Africa, 26
Congo War, involvement in, 62 South Sudan, 205–24, 260; civil wars
in, 205; feudal elements of, 206,
Sabates-Wheeler, Rachel, 84–86 212; National Congress Party (NCP),
Said, Edward, 197 205; National Islamic Front (NIF),
Index 273
205, 260; polygamy and, 13, 215–18, background of, 205–6; bridewealth
221; social class formation and, 4, payment and patronage of soldiers’
13, 219–21, 222n15, 258; symbolic marriage, 13, 218–19, 221; cattle
tax on market women in, 87; war ownership and, 208, 211, 213–18,
economy of, 1, 4, 31, 36; warlords 220–21; change in image of, 12–13,
in, 6, 206, 219–20. See also Sudan 208–9; child soldiers and, 210, 214;
People’s Liberation Army class consciousness and, 212–13;
Soviet–Afghan War. See Afghanistan, Comprehensive Peace Agreement
Soviet war in (CPA, 2005), 205, 211, 219; control
Soviet Union: World War II economy of war economy, 206; democratic
in, 44. See also Afghanistan, Soviet institutions and, 210; difficulty in
war in classifying as greedy or ideological
SPLA. See Sudan People’s Liberation in nature, 208–9; Dinka elite and
Army dominant class, 211, 220–21;
Spruyt, Henrik, 138 Dinka militias, formation of, 219;
Sri Lanka. See Liberation Tigers of Dinka polygamous commanders
Tamil Eelam and, 216; elite’s accumulation of
state-centered understanding of wars, 19 wealth and, 13, 211–14, 221; farm
state formation, 9, 80–83; Afghan wars system operated by, 211; feudal
and interrupted process of, 42; ISIS, elements of, 206, 212, 221n1; forced
stateness of, 7, 25–26, 245–46, labor and, 211–14; human rights
248; meaning of “non-state,” 6–7, violations by, 208, 210; internal
25–29; meaning of “state,” 103–4; politics and split of factions in,
in nomadic empires, 4, 10, 104–5, 208–9; international community’s
107–12, 119–21, 122–23; promoting attitude toward, 210–11, 221–22n6;
global stability, 3; in Renaissance length of war, 208; military kinship
Italy, 4, 136, 140; time horizons and, ties and, 218–20; polygamy and, 13,
80–83; war economies leading to, 5, 215–18, 221; predatory behavior of,
9–10, 106, 257–58. See also Tilly, 207–11; resource capture by, 208,
Charles 214; SPLM/A National Convention,
stationary bandits, 2, 5, 81, 121 210; support among non-Dinka, 211,
Steele, Jonathan, 189 221n4; trade and customs authority
steppe nomads, 9, 103–4; of, 95
institutionalization and Sui dynasty, 114
bureaucratization of steppe empire, Sun Yatsen, 155
104, 106, 121; social organization of, Swee, Eik Leong, 53n11
123–24n1; successorship of rulers, Swift, Jonathan, 53n6
108–9, 124n4. See also nomadic Syria: Democratic Union Party, 26;
empires French bombing of Raqqa, 22
Strayer, Joseph, 221n1 Syria, civil war in: humanitarian
Stromer, Wolfgang von, 140 organizations’ role in, 8, 59, 67;
A Study of History (Toynbee), 199 illicit drug trade and, 44; ISIS role
Sudan People’s Liberation Army in, 25, 67, 234; local perspective on
(SPLA), 1, 79, 205–24, 260; Addis war economy in, 36; refugees from,
Ababa Agreement (1972), 205; 8; weaponry for rebels in, 27
274 Index
Syrian Democratic Forces, 241 Renaissance Italy and, 130–31;

Syrian National Coalition (SNC), 237 resource-based wars and, 230; “sin”
taxes on gambling and drinking, 92;
taglie. See Renaissance Italy for city- social norms and, 92; social welfare
leagues benefits tied to taxpayors, 91; tax
Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864), 151 bargaining, 82, 83; timeframe as
Taliban: control of Afghanistan factor in, 80–82
(1996), 193; funding by anti-Soviet Taylor, Charles, 79
alliance, 12, 200n22; humanitarian terrorism and terrorist organizations:
organizations’ payments to, 9, 65; blacklisting and sanctions against,
rise of, 1, 185; taxes levied by, 65; 12, 69–71; economic approach to, 40,
United Arab Emirates and, 27; U.S. 259; ISIS designated as, 246; labeling
drone attacks on, 25; U.S. policy as “terrorist,” 12, 72; material support
on Sunni in reaction to Shi`a Iran, for, 194–95, 198; as non-state actors,
200n22 26–27; Soviet condemnation of U.S.
Tamil Tigers. See Liberation Tigers of policies in Afghanistan as, 191; ties
Tamil Eelam to Islamic charities, 191–93; U.S.
Tang dynasty, 114, 117 policy not to pay ransom demands
Taraki, Nur Muhammad, 183 of, 68; war on terror, 6, 12, 24, 192.
tax collection, 5, 77–97, 258; See also Islamic charitable activities;
appropriate level of taxation, specific countries
91; basic goods for populations Themnér, Anders, 221n2
within war zones and, 94–95; Third World development, 226
bureaucratic dimensions, 92–93; Thirty Years’ War, 132, 141
Chinese warlordism and land tax, 11, Thornbury, John, 140
158–60, 171, 172, 174n4; civilian Thornbury, Philip, 140
trust enhanced through, 84, 91, Tibetans, 117
94–95; coerced labor as type of, Tietze, Klaus-Peter, 114–15
86; compared to violent predation, Tilly, Charles, 2, 10, 19, 80–83, 86, 93,
81; data collection by tax agencies, 128, 135, 206, 258
90–91, 120; economic dimensions, Timurids, 105
93–96; evasion of, 6, 228; as Titeca, Kristof, 85, 95
extortion or racketeering, 8, 77, 80, Toynbee, Arnold, 199
83, 259; functions other than revenue transactions costs, 30, 72, 158–59, 161,
generation, 8, 10, 90, 95; future 172, 174n7
research needs, 96–97; gabelles as Treaty of Shanyuan (1004–1005), 114
regressive taxes on consumption and tribute paid to ensure peace, 9, 113–16
service, 131; in-kind contributions Turin, 135
as type of, 86; ISIS revenue stream Türk Empire, 107, 112–15, 117–18
from, 77, 246; Islam’s jizya on Turkish-Russian relations, 245
nonbelievers, 91; literature review, Twitchett, Denis, 114–15
83–87; nomadic empires and,
120–22; from occupation of cities, Uganda: Lord’s Resistance Army, 25;
11; papacy and, 130; popular Second Congo War, involvement in,
support resulting from, 85, 91, 95; 62
Index 275
Uguccione della Faggiola, 134 value of a statistical life (VSL), 63

Uighurs and Uighur Empire, 107, van de Ven, Hans, 151–52
117–18 Venice, 10, 118, 128–29, 131, 132,
Umbria, 135 134–35
UN General Assembly Resolution 55/56 Verona, 10, 137
(2004), 78 Verwimp, Philip, 84–86
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Vietnam War, 185
(UNHCR), 186 Villani, Matteo, 139
United Arab Emirates, 27 violence of war, 40, 93; against
United Kingdom: charities law, 190; civilians, 25, 232
Charity Commission, 192, 201n34; Viviani, Francesco, 139, 142, 144n6
Islamic charity sector in, 192,
201n34; kidnapped citizens, covert Waldron, Arthur, 175nn15–16
rescue of, 68; “Spending to Save” Waley, Daniel, 137
methodology and, 46; SPLA and, Wang Yongjiang, 161
210; World War II economy in, Wang Zhanyuan, 154–55, 157–58,
44–45, 49 161–66, 173, 174n8
United Nations, 3, 26; Soviet-Afghan war: confusion between brigandry and
peace negotiations and, 186–88 warfare, 27–28; declaration of, 22;
United States: charities laws, 189, 259; law of, 25; meaning of term, 6,
Civil War, 35, 37; GI Bill as peace 21–29. See also civil war; non-state
dividend in, 49; kidnapped citizens, armed groups
covert rescue of, 68; national defense war crimes, 59
budget of, 29; resident aliens, taxes war economies and war economics,
on, 97n4; Soviet–Afghan War and, 35–53, 257; as anti-developmental,
12, 181, 187, 189; SPLA and, 210; 41; conflict finance and, 61; conflict
Taliban and, 27; war’s positive prevention and, 36, 45–47, 259;
economic consequences on military- criminal activities and, 61, 71;
industrial complex in, 29. See also exceeding nation-state borders,
Afghanistan, U.S. war in; Iraq, U.S. 50–52; globalization of, 36, 260;
war in human capital formation and, 53n11;
unjust wars, 6, 31–32 humanitarian economics and, 60–63;
UN oil-for-food scandal, 70 international trade and, 61; liberal
UN Security Council on mining as interpretation of war, 35, 36, 37–41;
contributor to DRC armed groups, oversimplification, dangers of,
62–63 260; shift in views about, 35–36;
Uppsala Conflict Data Programme socioeconomic change and, 41–45;
(UCDP), 36 state formation tied to, 5, 9–10, 106,
Urban V (pope), 141–42 257–58; survival activities, 61; as
Urbino, 143 transformative, 41, 258. See also
Uruguay: Frente Ámplio, 26; non-state war economies
Movimiento de Liberación Nacional- warlordism in China (early twentieth-
Tupamaros, 26 century), 11–12, 20, 149–77, 258;
USAID, 189, 194 1911 Revolution setting stage for,
Useful Enemies (Keen), 5 149, 152, 157–58, 165, 173n1;
276 Index
absence of attempts to establish war on drugs, 61

independent states, 151; agricultural war on terror. See terrorism and terrorist
effects of, 169; alliances necessary organizations
to maintain power, 154; anti- Washington Consensus, 48, 53n15
warlord movements, 175n16, 259; weak states: global stability and, 3;
bureaucracy as part of, 153, 154, government’s longevity in, 83
174n2; central national government wealth accumulation: across time and in
for south residing in Canton, 156; multiple cultural contexts, 5; feudal
central national government in approach to, 13. See also greed;
Beijing, effect on northern warlords, Sudan People’s Liberation Army;
155–56; Chiang Kai-shek and, warlordism in China
156–57; civil wars created by, 153; weaponry: in Darfur, 27; non-state
commerce disruptions of, 169; actors acquiring, 24; Saudi Red
constraints on autonomy of, 154–57; Crescent transporting within
crime, increase in, 169; currency Afghanistan, 187; in Syrian civil
manipulation and, 11, 162, 174n9; war, 27; U.S. arms trade, 29–30
distinguished from other non-state Weber, Max, 136, 221n1
military actors, 149, 153, 172; effects Weber, Olivier, 197
of, 11–12, 169–72, 173; emergence Weinstein, Jeremy, 78, 79, 84, 207
of, 109; financial panic caused Weiss, Michael, 240
by, 169; funding sources for, 150, Weitingen, Konrad, 140
157–63, 172; gambling tax and, Werner of Urslingen, 139–40
160; militarization of elite, 171; Western Wei dynasty, 114
militarization of political power, White Company, 139, 142
152–53; motivations of, 11, 259; women: in Afghanistan, 186;
Nationalist Party rule and capital in commodification of, 13, 216–17; life
Nanjing (1927–1937), 156–57, 167; expectancy reduced by civil wars,
nature of post-imperial Republican 46; polygamy practices and, 13,
government and, 152; New Armies 215–18, 221; Yan Xishan’s reforms
and, 151–52, 157, 171; Northern for Chinese women, 166
Expedition launched by Nationalist Wood, Elisabeth Jean, 43
Party government (1926), 156, World Bank, 3, 7, 39, 40, 207; post-
175n16; opium production and tax conflict reconstruction and, 47;
revenues, 160, 165, 174n6; origins SPLA and, 210
of, 151–53; predatory rule and World Development Report (World
accumulation of personal wealth, Bank): 2012, 39; 2015, 64
163–65, 170, 172, 174nn10–11; World Food Program, 186
public support from provision of World Health Organization, 184, 186
public goods, 150, 154, 165–68, 173; World War I, 30, 33, 37–38, 52, 133
Second Zhili-Fengtian War, 175n16; World War II, 1, 23, 44–45, 49, 52
tax collection and, 11, 158–60, 172; Wycliff, John, 140
unified China espoused as goal of,
156 Xiamen (Amoy, China), 160
warlords in South Sudan, 219–20 Xiongnu Empire, 9, 104, 106, 112–15,
War of Eight Saints (1375–1378), 135 118
Index 277
Yan Xishan, 166, 170, 173 Zaire. See Democratic Republic of

Yemen: civil war in, 53n2; U.S. air Congo
strikes in, 22 Zhang Jingyao, 174n13
Yuan dynasty, 120 Zhang Zuolin, 157–58, 161–63
Yuan Shikai, 152–53, 155–57, 166 Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad, 186
About the Contributors
Jonathan Benthall is an honorary research Fellow, Department of

Anthropology, University College London, and director emeritus, Royal
Anthropological Institute. His publications include Disasters, Relief and the
Media (1993, reprinted 2010), The Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the
Muslim World (with J. Bellion-Jourdan, 2003, new edition 2009), and Islamic
Charities and Islamic Humanism in Troubled Times (2016).
Philippe Le Billon is a professor at the University of British Columbia with

the Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global
Affairs. He works on linkages between environment, development, and
security. He is the author of Oil (Polity Press, 2017, with Gavin Bridge)
and Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources (Oxford
University Press, 2013).
William Caferro is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt professor of History and

director of Classical/Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. He stud-
ies the economy of late medieval Italy. His most recent book is Petrarch’s
War: Florence and the Black Death in Context with Cambridge University
Press (2018).
Gilles Carbonnier is a professor of development economics at the Graduate

Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva) and vice presi-
dent of the International Committee of the Red Cross. His research focuses on
the political economy of war and humanitarian action, and on natural resource
governance. His latest book Humanitarian Economics. War, Disaster and the
Global Aid Market was published by Hurst and Oxford University Press in
2016.
279
280 About the Contributors
Nicola Di Cosmo is the Henry Luce Foundation Professor of East Asian

Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. His research interests are in the
history of Chinese and Inner Asian frontiers from the ancient to the modern
periods, with special reference to Xiongnu, Mongol, and Manchu history.
He has written extensively on East Asian military history. His authored and
edited books include Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic
Power in East Asian History, Military Culture in Imperial China, Warfare
in Inner Asian History, and The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth
Century China. He has recently contributed to the Cambridge World History
of Violence, vol. 2 AD 500–AD 1550. His most recent research focuses on the
use of paleoscientific data as historical sources, with special reference to the
history of China, Central Asia, and Mongolia.
Christopher Cramer is a professor of the Political Economy of Development

at SOAS University of London. He works on the political economy of war
and peace in southern Africa and post-conflict reconstruction. He is the
author of Civil War Is Not a Stupid Thing. Accounting for Violence in
Developing Countries (Hurst & Company, 2006) and coauthor of African
Economic Development: Evidence, Theory, Policy (Oxford University Press,
2020).
Didier Fassin is the James D. Wolfensohn professor at the Institute for

Advanced Study, director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales, and annual chair of Public Health at the Collège de
France. He studies political and moral issues in contemporary societies,
particularly inequality, immigration, punishment, and humanitarianism. He
authored fifteen books, among which Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History
of the Present (University of California Press), The Will to Punish (Oxford
University Press), and Life. A Critical User’s Manual (Polity Press). His
current research is on solidarity and repression with regard to migrants and
refugees at the French-Italian border in the Alps.
Zachariah Mampilly is the Marxe Endowed chair of International Affairs at

the City University of New York. He is the author of Rebel Rulers: Insurgent
Governance and Civilian Life during War (Cornell University Press, 2011)
and the coeditor of Rebel Governance in Civil War (Cambridge University
Press, 2015).
Edward A. McCord is a professor emeritus of History and International

Affairs at the George Washington University. His research focuses broadly on
the history of Chinese military-civil relations. He is the author of The Power
of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism (University of
About the Contributors 281
California Press, 1985) and Military Force and Elite Power in the Formation
of Modern China (Routledge, 2014).
Clémence Pinaud is an assistant professor at the Department of International

Studies of Indiana University, Bloomington. She works on the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army’s military history, including its predatory behav-
iors and marital practices. Her book War and Genocide in South Sudan is
forthcoming at Cornell University Press.

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COSMO, Nicola Di, FASSIN, Didier, PINAUD, Clémence (Ed.) Rebel Economies - Warlords, Insurgents, Humanitarians (2021)

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Rebel Economies

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Introduction: Revisiting Non-States War Economies 1

PART II: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 101

PART III: CONTEMPORARY WORLDS 179

The present volume is the result of a workshop held in Princeton at the

Non-state war economies are a pervasive phenomenon in today’s world. The

investigate non-state war economies as a unified, congruent phenomenon—

respect is a confrontation between different academic fields. This is where we

In an initial attempt to reflect on the conceptual framework of the vol-

entities, which is partly exemplified in Le Billon’s taxonomy, inclusive of

speaking, focusing on conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction,

presence of humanitarian agencies requires paying taxes to factions that are

facilitating the development of market towns, merchant networks, and the

in the fifteenth century did armies begin to be mostly composed of native

taxation. Beyond the economic consequences, an assessment of warlordism

What Are Non-State War Economies?

those of Western countries. Yet, when considering the economic impact of

to do our will.” Dictionaries define it as a state of armed conflict between

recognized as a state, it presents—or at least has presented during a certain

to protect villages from highwaymen, poachers, and cattle-raiders, but were

multinational corporations whether they are involved in the extraction of

A third approach is that of political economy. It corrects the limitations of

others unjust—and not everyone agrees, of course, on the criteria to estab-

historians, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as political scientists

Benthall, Jonathan. 2016. Islamic Charities and Islamic Humanism in Troubled

War Economies and War Economics

THE UNDOING PROJECT:3 THE LIBERAL

up the difference in lost economic contribution for a British versus a German

prospect of earning significant returns on their meagre outlays on education

a range of proxies, “due to the deficiencies of the data in Mozambique”

TRANSFORMERS: WAR ECONOMIES

For neoclassical economics, war economies typically depart from optimal

that interaction among these dimensions of a wartime economy may change

Wood’s (2003) fieldwork in El Salvador also led to an emphasis on

opposition between war as state-making (Tilly 1992) and war as utterly

WAR ECONOMIES BEYOND WARS: CONFLICT

into peace economies (Cramer 2005; Goodhand 2004). Criminalized war

mobilize resources—for reconstruction and development—from the gains of

Beyond Methodological Nationalism:

1. For an overview of the historiography of the economics of the American Civil

Acemoglu, Daron. 1998. “Evaluation of World Bank Research.” Angus Deaton

Addison, Tony, and S. Mansoob Murshed. 2001. “From Conflict to Reconstruction:

War Economies and

WAR ECONOMIES AND HUMANITARIAN ACTION

War economies feature as a key topic under humanitarian economics, a

Yet, this is artificially dissociated from economic activities undertaken by

Against this background, abrupt commodity price shocks on world mar-

CONFLICT FINANCE AND

For aid practitioners, it is generally easier to deal with highly structured

agenda, positioning, and communication. Advances in behavioral economics

looting and kidnapping to more permanent methods of extraction combined

PRISONERS OF WAR AND

Protecting detainees in war is one of the long-standing objectives pursued by

[A soldier] acts rationally when he decides either to kill or to spare a defeated

capacity of relief organizations. Cases of kidnappings have repeatedly led

Relief organizations increasingly operate in contexts where part of the ter-