My interest in politics and conflict has always come from the margins. I have developed an interest in the periphery, minorities, liberation movements, other actors outside the center, official governance institutions, and national political elites. My work has mainly concentrated on how such actors have sought to influence politics at the national and international level and how questions of identity, perceptions of self and other, and sense of belonging come into play. Geographically, my interest has lied primarily in the Middle East, broadly defined, particularly Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Kurdistan. In recent years, however, I have also developed an interest in East Africa, especially Sudan and South Sudan.
I wrote...
Second-Generation Liberation Wars: Rethinking Colonialism in Iraqi Kurdistan and Southern Sudan
Militias have become an increasingly popular tool at the hands of governments in countering insurgency in their peripheries, and hence, a recurring feature in conflicts. Because of the ad hoc nature of militia recruitment and their irregular form, students of conflict tended to overlook their impact on politics and society, assuming that once conflict subsided, these actors vanished.
Ahram’s work is one of the first to challenge this conception, demonstrating the profound impact that this ‘outsourcing’ of violence from governments to peripheral security providers can have on conflict and the state as a whole. In this respect, Ahram’s book has served as the basis for the constantly growing literature on pro-government militias in conflict.
In this book, Ariel Ahram offers a new perspective on a growing threat to international and human security-the 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 crisis-with particular attention…
Researchers rarely have the opportunity to gain an insight into the inner workings of authoritarian regimes. Opening the Ba‘th Party archives to researchers has been one of these rare opportunities and has resulted in an outburst of fascinating works. Most of these studies, however, have been carried out by historians. Therefore, Blaydes’s research stands out, as it sets an example of how political scientists can benefit from archival sources and historical case studies as labs to challenge conventions in the field, in this case, about the origins of authoritarianism.
Blaydes provides a detailed and nuanced account of Ba‘thist Iraq, from the Kurdish North to the predominantly Shi‘i South, combining chronological and thematic analysis to highlight every aspect of the Ba‘thist state’s repression of the Iraqi population. Blaydes’s findings feed into broader theoretical conclusions about how and why people choose to collaborate with or challenge a dictatorship.
A new account of modern Iraqi politics that overturns the conventional wisdom about its sectarian divisions
How did Iraq become one of the most repressive dictatorships of the late twentieth century? The conventional wisdom about Iraq's modern political history is that the country was doomed by its diverse social fabric. But in State of Repression, Lisa Blaydes challenges this belief by showing that the country's breakdown was far from inevitable. At the same time, she offers a new way of understanding the behavior of other authoritarian regimes and their populations.
Drawing on archival material captured from the headquarters of Saddam…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
More than a decade after the eruption of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ (an objectionable concept that Mabon avoids using) in 2011, these events and their implications continue to fascinate students of the Middle East.
Mabon’s book joins the many works on the subject. However, it offers a unique perspective, one that integrates political theory and is inspired by the works of Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Gilles Deleuze, and Achille Mbembe, among others, as lenses through which to explore the implications of the collapse of sovereign borders and the resurfacing of communal identities, which in turn have led to the rise of protracted conflicts in the region, within, and more recently also between states in the region.
The book’s research is based on fieldwork in countries across the region and multiple interviews with various individuals and stakeholders in these countries. It is an excellent read for anyone wishing to gain empirical knowledge of states and societies in the region, which is also based on sound theoretical foundations.
The events of the Arab Uprisings posed an existential challenge to sovereign power across the Middle East. Whilst popular movements resulted in the toppling of authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, other regimes were able to withstand these pressures. This book questions why some regimes fell whilst others were able to survive.
Drawing on the work of political theorists such as Agamben and Arendt, Mabon explores the ways in which sovereign power is contested, resulting in the fragmentation of political projects across the region. Combining an innovative theoretical approach with interviews with people across the region and beyond, Mabon…
Mukhopadhyay’s book joined an emerging cohort of books that sought to demonstrate that the collapse of the state does not necessarily lead to a vacuum. This is because any vacuum left by the decline of the state is bound to be filled by other forces, be they local or external to the region.
In the case of Afghanistan, Mukhopadhyay shows through the case of Afghanistan, and based on a fieldwork in the country, how the state that was born out of the ousting of the Taliban in 2001 was capable of co-opting local warlords in the remote periphery and integrate them into the emerging order in the country.
Through a close examination and detailed accounts of several case studies from across Afghanistan, Mukhopadhyay offers persuading arguments about what makes warlords and other peripheral actors useful allies to a weak central government.
Warlords have come to represent enemies of peace, security, and 'good governance' in the collective intellectual imagination. This book asserts that not all warlords are created equal. Under certain conditions, some become effective governors on behalf of the state. This provocative argument is based on extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan, where Mukhopadhyay examined warlord-governors who have served as valuable exponents of the Karzai regime in its struggle to assert control over key segments of the countryside. She explores the complex ecosystems that came to constitute provincial political life after 2001 and exposes the rise of 'strongman' governance in two provinces. While…
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
Fragmentation is a natural tendency among humans. Collectives, groups, and organizations face centrifugal tendencies that push for division and fragmentation. Ideological movements, in particular, face this risk, as there will always be members of the group who are dissatisfied with how the collective is progressing toward achieving its goals.
Rebel movements are an excellent example, as such actors constantly fragment, divide, and evolve through years of rebellion. But what factors contribute to or prevent divisions among rebel groups from disintegrating? And not less importantly, what are the implications of fragmentation on civil wars in which the rebel movements participate?
Based on rigorous fieldwork in the Horn of Africa, with particular attention to Eritrea and Ethiopia and an additional outlook into Somalia, Woldemariam offers a convincing theory that addresses these questions by examining such factors as battlefield developments and the nature of control over territory. He does so clearly and eloquently, which makes it easy to understand the multilayered conflicts in the countries he examines.
When insurgent organizations factionalize and fragment, it can profoundly shape a civil war: its intensity, outcome, and duration. In this extended treatment of this complex and important phenomenon, Michael Woldemariam examines why rebel organizations fragment through a unique historical analysis of the Horn of Africa's civil wars. Central to his view is that rebel factionalism is conditioned by battlefield developments. While fragmentation is caused by territorial gains and losses, counter-intuitively territorial stalemate tends to promote rebel cohesion and is a critical basis for cooperation in war. As a rare effort to examine these issues in the context of the Horn…
This book explores the sources of separatist wars in post-colonial spaces, focusing on the Kurdish and Southern liberation movements in Iraq and Sudan. Influenced by role and practice theories in International Relations, the book demonstrates how the first-generation anti-colonial liberation wars between indigenous movements and European empires shaped the second-generation wars between post-colonial governments and marginalized groups in the peripheries of the new states.
Both parties to the post-colonial liberation wars, namely the governments and the rebels, embraced their predecessors’ roles, strategies, perceptions, and discourses. Based on extensive archival work in the South Sudan National Archives and the Ba‘th Party records at the Hoover Institution, the book challenges dominant historiographies of post-colonial liberation wars and perceptions about the factors that shape violence.
Avery Mann, a retired pharmaceuticals executive, is in crisis.
His wife dies of cancer, his son’s marriage is on the rocks, his grandson is having a meltdown, and his good friend is a victim of the robocalls scandal that invades the Canadian federal election. Throw in a reckless fling with…
The Model Spy is based on the true story of Toto Koopman, who spied for the Allies and Italian Resistance during World War II.
Largely unknown today, Toto was arguably the first woman to spy for the British Intelligence Service. Operating in the hotbed of Mussolini's Italy, she courted danger…
