Antonio Giustozzi

In today's dominant discourse of liberal interventionism, the role of coercion and the monopoly of violence have been neglected, argues Antonio Giustozzi, an analyst justly renowned for his research and writing on the Taliban. It is widely assumed that a functional, liberal state can emerge out of a political settlement between warring parties based on political inclusiveness and a social contract, which involves pressuring political actors to reach a deal. But the post-Cold war experience of such deals has been so disappointing that a re-examination of these 'certainties' is warranted. Giustozzi contends that a key source of such flawed analyses is widespread confusion over what state formation and state-building involve. In his view, completely different 'rules of the game' apply to the two. Naked coercion is a key component of state formation, and very few states were formed without recourse to it. In contrast, the history of state consolidation after their initial formation is one of taming violence and creating increasingly sophisticated way of managing it. The Art of Coercion offers a new approach to thinking about the role of security forces, in their broadest sense, in this transition between state formation and state-building. While focussing largely on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Giustozzi discusses coercive power throughout history, from the Carolingian empire to the Boer War, from Zapata's Mexico to China's Warring States. He scrutinises the role of armies, guerrilla bands, mercenaries, police forces and intelligence services, analyses why some coups fail and some succeed, and examines the ways in which the monopoly of violence decays… (plus d'informations)

Announcements of an impending victory over the Taliban have been repeated ad nauseam since the Allied invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, particularly after the Presidential elections of 2004, which were said to have marked the ‘moral and psychological defeat of the Taliban’. In moments of triumphalism, some commentators claimed that ‘reconstruction and development’ had won over the population, despite much criticism of the meagre distribution of aid, the lack of ‘nation-building’ and corruption among Kabul’s élite. In March 2006, both Afghan and American officials were still claiming, just before a series of particularly ferocious clashes, that ‘the Taliban are no longer able to fight large battles’. Later that year, the mood in the mass media had turned to one of defeatism, even of impending catastrophe. In reality, as early as 2003-5 there was a growing body of evidence that cast doubt on the official interpretation of the conflict. Rather than there having been a ‘2006 surprise’, Giustozzi argues that the Neo- Taliban insurgency had put down strong roots in Afghanistan as early as 2003, a phenomenon he investigates in this timely and thought-provoking book.… (plus d'informations)

Warlords, namely charismatic military leaders who exploit the weakness of central authorities to seize control of and autonomously rule a sub-national area, have earned much notoriety in recent years on account of the excesses of civil wars in Liberia, Somalia and Afghanistan. But notwithstanding their bad reputation, warlords have often participated in state formation. In "Empires of Mud" Giustozzi analyses the dynamics of warlordism in Afghanistan within the context of such debates. He approaches this complex task by first analysing aspects of the Afghan environment that might have been conductive to the fragmentation of central authority and the emergence of warlords and then accounts for the emergence of warlordism in the 1980s and subsequently the lion's share of this book consists of an in-depth analysis of the systems of rule - political, economic, military - which developed under Afghanistan's two foremost warlords, Ismail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum, both of whom still wield considerable power even after the intervention of Allied forces in Afghanistan in 2001. Their two systems are compared, highlighting convergences and divergences, in order to explain how warlords administer the areas that they control within so-called 'failed states', in the process challenging much of the received wisdom in scholarly and policy circles about warlordism. The author also discusses Ahmad Shah Massoud, whose 'system' incorporated elements of rule not dissimilar from that of the warlords. Giustozzi concludes that although charismatic leaders play a key role in shaping the specific characteristics of each warlord polity, there are some common elements that underlie the emergence of warlordism. In particular, the role of local military leaders and their gradual acquisition of a form of 'class consciousness' appear to be key processes in allowing the formation of warlord polities, while the latter have repeatedly shown the ability over time to evolve in to more sophisticated, state-like, or political party-like, structures.… (plus d'informations)