Scholarly Works, School of Public and International Affairs
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Browsing Scholarly Works, School of Public and International Affairs by Author "Ahram, Ariel I."
Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- Armed Non-State Actors and the Challenge of the 21st-Century State BuildingAhram, Ariel I. (2019-09-01)State building has become a 21st-century mantra, imperative for world peace and global prosperity. The intellectual foundation of the idea rests on a definition offered by sociologist Max Weber a century ago: a state is an entity that successfully “claims the monopoly over the legitimate use of force within a given territory.” When states are absent, many presume the result to be a grim anarchy, with rebels, criminals, bandits, and terrorists throttling economic development and spoiling political conciliation. The breakdown of states spawns refugee outflows, civil wars, and mass killings that destabilize entire regions. The task for the international community, therefore, is to enhance state effectiveness, eliminate armed rivals, and make room for “normal” politics to take root. This essay contends, however, that this approach is frequently misguided. States often cooperate with mercenaries, warlords, strongmen, religious or tribal leaders, mafias, or others who retain private armed retinues. The relationships with armed nonstate actors (ANSAs) are not contrary to political order; rather, they are fundamentally constitutive of that order. Furthermore, in many circumstances, strong states are unlikely to replace ANSAs. Instead of seeking to eliminate or marginalize ANSAs, the international community must learn to accommodate non-state actors and engage those groups that have already established themselves on the ground. This may mean accepting forms of non-state governance that are merely “good enough.”5 ANSAs rarely provide a political order as robust or conducive to human flourishing as strong, capable states would. Still, engaging nonstate actors is often better than waiting in vain for a strong state to arrive.
- Comparative Area Studies and the Study of the Global SouthSil, R.; Ahram, Ariel I. (RUDN University, 2020-06)Comparative Area Studies (CAS) offers a template to bring the Global South back into the foreground of social science inquiry. CAS urges researchers to grapple directly with empirical variations derived from across the seemingly different global regions. CAS offers three comparative modes: intra-regional, cross-regional, and transregional. A number of scholars have used CAS’s comparative rubrics, even without knowing about the wider CAS agenda and program. CAS unsettles assumptions about discrete, fixed “regional” or civilizational blocks as well as about nomothetic theory-building aimed at universal or general laws. At the same time, CAS engages in the idea of mediumrange theory-building, focusing empirical rigor and induction in order to create concepts and analyses that are portable yet contextualized. These macro-historical theories must be attentive to spatial and temporal variation in the social world. Claims of universalism are suspect. For the study of the Global South, in particular, CAS provides a path for aggregating and leveraging the wide range of observations and interpretations area specialists have to offer on regions as diverse as South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. CAS thus changes the division of labor within social science to allow greater input for scholarship derived from and originating in the developing world.
- In Search of a Middle East and North Africa Peace SystemAhram, Ariel I. (SAGE Publications, 2024-04-11)This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of the peace system in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It views peace not merely as the absence of direct violence but as the result of institutions and systems that mitigate, defuse, and diminish conflict. The peace system of MENA operates at multiple scales and deals with multiple kinds of violent conflict. Different system components produce different forms of positive and negative peace through both formal and informal institutional channels. Consequently, peace in MENA is often uneven and unstable, with progress in one dimension coming at the expense of another. Understanding the gaps and inconsistencies within the MENA peace system can help devise a more realistic and feasible approach to conflict resolution rather than abstract and ultimately impractical ideals. The article identifies shortcomings in the current explanations for the frequency of war, explores the idea of a regional peace system that operates in regional and domestic arenas both formally and informally, and examines policy measures that might bolster or undercut the MENA peace system.
- In the Middle East, Separatists Are the New SpoilersAhram, Ariel I. (2019-11-13)There is an end in sight for the wars that wracked the Middle East for much of the decade, even as the fighting drags on. The U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other outside powers have found a general formula for conflict resolution that combines state-building with power-sharing. Central states would be empowered to defeat terrorists and take control over otherwise ungoverned territory while former belligerents would be enticed into the fold of the state. This two-pronged formula, however, is ill-suited for dealing with separatists that seek to carve out states of their own with new international boundaries. Separatist forces played a critical role in sustaining local orders as national politics descended into chaos after 2011. They appealed to the global community to grant them self-determination. Inhabiting far-off border regions where state control was minimal, they were foot soldiers in the coalitions that defeated ISIS and other radical Islamist terrorists. But separatists’ demands for recognition of national rights are typically ignored in peace processes that remain focused on elites inhabiting state capitals. Separatists are thus poised to be the region’s next spoilers, wrecking efforts that seek peace and stability through the rehabilitation of existing states.
- Rebel Oil Companies and Wartime Economic Governance in MENAAhram, Ariel I. (European University Institute, 2020)Oil smuggling has become a major feature of the war economies across the MENA region but the contest is not just for physical possession of oil through seizure and looting. Equally important is the political, legal and symbolic battle for ownership and authority to manage and dispose. Even as national economies splinter and collapse, the formal institutions of economic governance have unique capabilities and prerogatives and accordingly become focal points of contestation between rebel actors and governments. Rebels in Yemen, Iraq and Libya have launched alternative financial institutions, including national oil companies, central banks and other financial institutions, tied to petroleum sales. Such entities, unlike secretive smugglers, court publicity and tout their legitimacy and legality. This paper argues that these rebel oil companies and the attendant financial institutions are not merely facilitators of fraud but components of rebel governance and diplomatic strategies to enhance the durability of rebel rule. Rebel national oil companies (NOC)s and related institutions serve as points in conflict financing, facilitating the conversion and integration of illicit revenue into streams of normal or licit financial operations. They ease rebels’ linkage into global markets for oil and other natural resources.
- Salafism, Sectarianism, and National Identity in Iraqi KurdistanJalal, Pishtiwan; Ahram, Ariel I. (The Middle East Journal, 2021-11-26)This article examines the history of Salafism within the Kurdistan Region of Iraq using interviews, archives, social media, and an online survey. Despite Salafism and nationalism generally being seen as rival political ideologies, Kurdish Salafis have over the last decade increasingly linked their sectarian struggle to the Kurdish ethno-nationalist cause. Such efforts provide new understandings both of Salafism and of Kurdish nationalism while also potentially destabilizing the alliance between Kurdish nationalist and Shi'i sectarian parties that has governed Iraq since 2003.
- Sovereignty, Responsibility and Reform: Navigating the Complexities of Hybrid Security OrdersAhram, Ariel I.; Alaaldin, Ranj; Cellino, Andrea; Maggi, Roberta (DCAF, 2022-06-01)DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance and Crisis Response Council hosted, on 22 and 23 March 2022, a group of experts for a closed-doors workshop in Geneva, Switzerland. The convened cohort explored important themes related to the complexities and challenges of hybrid security orders. These included managing hybrid actors, the political economy of violence, the role of international actors and the state, and the need to harmonize policy tracks in transitional processes. These themes were explored notably with reference to the Iraqi, Yemeni and Libyan contexts. This post-conference report aims to present some of the key discussion points and summarise recommendations issued during the conference. This post-conference report does not constitute a verbatim rendition of discussions and experts’ opinions, and the opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone.
- Taming the Militias: Building National Guards in Fractured Arab StatesAhram, Ariel I.; Wehrey, Fred (2015-05-05)Since the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011, centralized military power has broken down in North Africa, the Levant, and Yemen, and several weak Arab states have turned to local militias to help defend regimes. While these progovernment militias can play important security roles, they have limited military capacity and reliability. Transitioning militia fighters into national guard forces with formal ties to the national command structure can overcome some of these limitations, but the shift must be accompanied by a wider commitment to security sector reform and political power sharing.
- "There Should Be No Life": Environmental Perspectives on Genocide in Northern IraqAhram, Ariel I. (Routledge, 2023-09-07)This article examines the natural environment during the Kurdish genocide in northern Iraq. The genocide killed between 50,000 and 180,000 people and destroyed some 4,500 Kurdish villages from the 1960s to 1980s, reach peak violence during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). The paper uses American, British, and Iraqi archival documents to analyse how the violence affected the natural landscape and how ecological conditions constrained the violence. Iraqi leaders regarded dams and other modes of environmental engineering as levers to facilitate agricultural modernization and social integration. Protecting and projecting hydraulic power justified greater military exertion. Iraqi leaders, frustrated by the lack of progress in development and hostile to the claims of Kurdish nationalism, resorted to more coercive options to combat guerrillas. But the inadequacies of military exertion prompted the government to redouble efforts to tame unruly nature and those who dwelled in it. This escalation contributed significantly to the lethal violence against rural Kurdish society. At a theoretical level, these findings highlight the troubling ways in which policies aimed to improve environmental conditions fold into campaigns of mass violence. The article also adds to understanding of violence in Iraq, showing how Iraq’s attempts to use environmental engineering for development intersected with security concerns and ethnic marginalization to create more intensive repression.
- When rebels govern oilAhram, Ariel I. (Elsevier, 2022-12)Numerous oil and gas-producing countries have suffered civil war and internal conflict in the last two decades. Such political instability has had significant ramifications for global energy security. The literature addressing the connection between oil production and civil wars focuses on the contest for physical control over fields, pipelines, transport hubs, and other physical infrastructure. This overlooks how rebels make symbolic and legal claims to oil ownership that parallel the physical confrontation. Alternative national oil companies and other quasi-legal entities assert rebels’ authority to manage and dispose of oil. Here, I typologize different forms of rebel oil government and offer empirical examples of each form. I show that rebel oil governance can affect the course of conflicts, helping rebels substantiate internal control and entice international backers. More broadly, these quasi-legal rebel entities disrupt and realign global energy supplies.