One of the key assertions of new war theory is that the international context in which conflict takes place

has changed and, moreover, that this affects how wars are financed.

whilst the international context in which conflict takes place is no longer defined by Cold War politics,
other narratives have emerged to take their place.

But there is a lack of agreement on what constitutes a terrorist group. the conclusion is that there is a
lack of empirical evidence supporting the argument that violence in old wars is limited, disciplined or
understandable and that new civil wars are senseless, gratuitous and uncontrolled.

Much of the warfare we see today relates to economic and political exclusion or control over economic
resources.

arriving at a similar conclusion: there has been no exponential or lineal surge in civil war in the post-Cold
War period, and despite a spike in the early 1990s, since 1992 the quantitative incidence of civil war has
declined.

one of the most common being the counting of ‘battlefield deaths’

Building a presence in a particular region also allows warlords to tap into local narratives of identity, and
potentially grievance against the state, in order to recruit followers and establish a power base.
Warlords, then, may act as an alternative form of governance to the state.

Warlords are important within the context of state collapse or degrees of state failure.

How do people analyse conflict

Popular among these is the greed and grievance, or greed versus grievance, hypothesis.

One proponent of grievance as an explanation for conflict is Frances Stewart, who explains that power
differentials between groups and the existence of horizontal inequalities between ethnic, religious
and/or cultural collectivities can be factors for violent conflict.

The poor are no more prone to conflict than anyone else, but are more likely to choose it because they
have a comparative advantage in violence, suggesting it is cheaper for them to do this because they
forego little else in the way of alternatives.

barbarism and tribalism

Kaplan argues that the new barbarism presents the international community with an uncomfortable
realisation: Western civilisation will increasingly be confronted with conflicts that it cannot hope to
prevent or even to understand

Structural and Political Violence

The structural violence thesis provides an explanation for this, based on seeing ethnicity as one factor
within a broader set of issues that are part of social, economic and political structures.
Within this West African conflict, there were echoes of a class war based on the ‘have-nots’ rebelling
against the ‘haves

This was exacerbated by the diamond trade, as the chiefs also controlled access to diamond mines

The structural nature of the war was shown by the pattern of the violence during the conflict

Structural and political violence as an approach to analysing conflict, therefore, requires us to consider
the power relations between groups and any social patterns in inequality.

Structural violence is not always as easy to identify as direct physical violence.

Galtung (1969) suggests that one possible way would be to compare the average life expectancy of
different groups, juxtaposing the ‘real world’ with a ‘potential world’.

Such indicators could include, but are not limited to, income, educational level reached

How do people analyse conflict?

life expectancy, infant mortality rate, and chances of being arrested or imprisoned by state security
forces.

Samuel Huntington and structural violence

The Clash of Civilizations (1996) aimed to try to understand the changes in international power that
came after the Cold War.

The superpower balance of nuclear terror had kept the lid on most social conflicts, but once the Cold
War ended, endemic hostilities and ‘ancient hatreds’ reasserted themselves,

If wars are the result of ancient hatreds, then international intervention cannot stop them.

It implies that culture is important

For Huntington, ‘civilisation’ is culture writ large: ‘It is defined both by common objective elements, such
as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the selfidentification of people’

Of the main cultural factors involved, religion is the central defining element

However, in the West, the relationships between religion and secular authority have implications for
other relationships, including those between the rule of law, social pluralism and democracy.

Whilst the West does not have a monopoly in each of these areas, it is the linkages between them that
create a particular ‘way of doing things’

Refugees and Internal Displacement

Refugees are recognised as those who have crossed an international border and are no longer under the
legal protection of their home country.

Refugees are recognised as those who have crossed an international border and are no longer under the
legal protection of their home countryis a process under which a determination is made of an
individual’s situation to decide whether they are classed as refugees under the terms of international
law, with the rights and protections such a designation entails

They are, therefore, considered legally under the protection of their home state, and national authorities
are responsible for their protection and humanitarian assistance.

IDPs are not granted refugee status, as they have not crossed an international border; however, some of
the approaches which have been developed to care for them, and the agencies involved in doing so, are
similar to those available for refugees.

A third concept has been developed, derived from the practical consequences of forced migration:
statelessness. A stateless person is, by international law, a ‘person who is not considered as a national by
any State under the operation of its law’, a person who does not have any nationality of any country.

Statelessness occurs for several reasons: discrimination against particular ethnic or religious groups, on
the basis of gender, the emergence of new states and territorial transfers between existing states, and
gaps in nationality laws

Conflict and the role of development actors

Development as we tend to think of it has its roots in the reconstruction of countries such as Germany
and Japan after the Second World War. The US-led Marshall Plan envisioned reconstructing Europe and
strengthening the region against communism by promoting stronger economic ties between states. This
use of aid and technical assistance to alter countries’ economies is seen as a forerunner of the
development programmes that were later rolled out to countries leaving colonial rule, though with far
fewer resources being transferred

Dependency theory argued that the development of some states was being limited in order to allow
others to develop.

Drawing on Marxist approaches, this suggested that the less developed states were effectively locked
into a system which benefited rich states to the detriment of poorer ones.

Donor states and international financial institutions have emphasised the need for predictable, enforced
and transparent rule of law to govern economic and other forms of activity in developing states. This
helps to reassure private investors that the capital and funds they invest in developing states, for
example in building up infrastructure or extractive industries, will not be seized by governments or local
strongmen

Theoretically, in a society based on established and wellknown rules and procedures there is less chance
of projects being derailed by unforeseen events such as political unrest, a coup or financial collapse.
For economic development to take place, it is argued, there must be political and social development.

This promotion of neo-liberalism as the basis for reform, development and good governance can be
considered an overarching or ‘macro’ narrative of development.

Three sets of agendas in their diversion and manipulation of aid.

• The first set of agendas pursued by locally powerful groups reflects a desire to demonstrate a bond
between these influential actors and a particular constituency and is manifest by an emphasis on the
need to protect and prioritise resources for an ‘indigenous’ population. This requires the identification of
a deserving population, for whom the group will ostensibly work to secure resources and which they will
portray as being in competition with outsiders, often refugees or displaced groups.

• The second set of agendas is primarily economic. Examples abound of local politicians and powerful
non-state actors confining populations to particular areas to which they control access and aid
distribution – allowing them to appropriate some of the aid for their own purposes, often to sell or to
support their armed factions and core followers.

• The third set highlights the salience of military agendas of locally powerful groups. These may be
difficult to distinguish from the other two agendas, since defining a constituency may allow higher levels
of recruitment to military forces, and diverting aid to sell or manipulate local prices can fund war coffers