Militias, cartels and hollowing

By Dave Anderson:

Militias in the modern context are a state-weakening and decentralizing force as they are armed formations that are not completely controlled or recruited by the state.  Militias can be allies of the state; a prominent example is the the Colombian right wing militias that have been battling FARC for over a generation.  However the existence of a wide spread militia is a further hollowing of the state as it is a separate pole of power and quasi-legitimacy in coercian. 

Militias are a successful tool of weak central governments in fights against dispersed networks that are deeply embedded in some communities and population sub-groups.  However they come with the cost of continuing weakness in the central government.   They are successful because they can solve the sorting problem of identifying who is a supporter of the government and the militia's opponents due to their own the ground local knowledge.  They counter the insurgent's pervasive intelligence with their own pervasive intelligence collection backed by some of the state's coercive power or at least free from the fetter of attempting to counter or avoid conventional military forces. 

John Robb flags an interesting article on the rise of militias in Brazil as they displace some of the drug gangs in the large slums of the major cities in that country:

Vigilante militias in Rio are displacing the drug gangs -- favelas under the control of militias has grown from 108 in 2005 to 400 in 2008 (out of 965).  Why?  They have a better (albeit parasitic) conflict/business model than the drug gangs since they act as a substitute for missing public goods/services normally supplied by the government.  First, they provide a minimal level of security and conflict adjudication....

Robert Haddick at Small War Journals has been one of the most consistent American trackers of the drug war in Mexico.  Today he highlights three stories on corruption and militia formation in Mexico as the federal government is unable or unwilling to effectively deal with the challenge that the cartels pose.  The most important article is from George Grayson on the rise of militias:

To date, only about a dozen self-defense organizations have gone public. However, their numbers and activities are bound to soar amid rising insecurity. ...

 local cattlemen began to meet with other business community members to discuss creating a self-protection force. The leader of the group spoke cautiously only about the “possibility” of such a vigilante movement.

More outspoken have been members of the self-styled Citizen Command for Juárez (CCJ).....

In an e-mail to the media, this shadowy organization claimed to be funded by local entrepreneurs outraged by kidnappings, murders, and extortion in the sprawling metropolis of 1.4 million people.  The CCJ may have killed and piled up the corpses of six men in their 20s and 30s in October 2008, leaving behind a sign: “Message for all the rats: This will continue.” Early this year, a body was found in the city along with the warning: “This is for those who continue extorting.”

The respected El Universal newspaper reported that on January 15, 2009, the CCJ sent a communication to the media warning that it would kill one criminal every 24 hours.

Militias are filling the void of traditionally state provided services such as basic security.  And as they continue to expand to fill the voids and gaps that are being felt, they will continue to chip away at elite support for the government as the elites are the ones who are funding both groups and they will shift their money to where there is "value" and protection. 

The militias are a threat to the cartels, as John Robb points out, because they have the same on the ground network and they are able to provide both a wider range of security services and they are able to operate on a wider revenue basis as they take over more and more local quasi-governmental operations and taxation. 

Both trends, the growth of cartels and the growth of militias to counter-act the cartels are continuing and accelerating hollowing out of the state. 

Comments

[John Ballard]

Why as I read this do I hear "Afghan tribal leaders...Taliban..." humming low in the background?
Or "Sunni Awakening...AlQaeda..."?

[Ian Welsh]

Good and useful catches. But I wouldn't precisely say militias weaken the central government, rather they arise when the government is week, they fill a void rather than creating it.