Proxy Warriors The Rise and Fall of State-Sponsored Militias [Hardcover]

In this book, Ariel Ahram offers a new perspective on a growing threat to international and human securitythe reliance of 'weak states' on quasi-official militias, paramilitaries, and warlords.Tracing the history of several high profile paramilitary organizations, including Indonesia's various militia factions, Iraq's tribal awakening, and Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Basij corps, the book shows why and how states co-opt these groups, turning former rebels into state-sponsored militias. Building on an historical and comparative empirical approach that emphasizes decolonization, revolution, and international threat, the author offers a new set of policy prescriptions for addressing this escalating international crisiswith particular attention to strategies for mitigating the impact of this devolution of violence on the internal and international stability of states. Ahram builds and tests a theory to account for variations in the use of state-sponsored militias versus conventional armed forces among late-developing states, and offers a practical set of recommendations that acknowledge the salience of Proxy Warriors in the global security arena. An important read for both scholars and policy-makers. The book explains why some Third World states have centralized, conventional military forces while others rely on militias, paramilitaries, and other non-state actors using detailed case studies of Indonesia, Iraq, and Iran and offers policy recommendations for dealing with weak states based on this analysis. Proxy Warriorsmakes a significant contribution to our understanding of the devolution of state control over violence to non-state actors within the state. It demonstrates that, contrary to received wisdom, decentralization need not undermine a state's internal security or even the ability of a state to guard against external threats. Thus, late-developing states may well have workable alternative institutional arrangement to those of the developed worl£!