Monday, March 31, 2008
WARLORDISM IN IRAQ
The period of the 1920s and 1930s in China is often called "the Warlord Period" because the reality on the ground in the country was a patchwork of zones under more or less firm control of local armed strongmen. The Guomindang government fought some, and made alliances or absorbed others, so that, at any one time, it was difficult to tell who was in charge where, and how.
This eye-witness account of the fighting in Basra last week reminds me of the Chinese warlords. The analogy is definitely imperfect, though, because with few exceptions, there was no ideological or religious element to the power of the warlords. They were just gang leaders, really; usually dolled up in Gilbert and Sullivan uniforms. In Iraq, there's obviously another dimension, since at least some of the warlords claim divine support for their power. But within the internecine conflict among the Shiite gangs, the dynamic is similar. This includes the "national" government's role as primer inter pares among the warlords, and the internal diplomacy of shifting alliance between the national gang and local gangs.
It was a miserable time in China, and the warlord period in Iraq is similarly miserable. The big losers are the people who just want to live their lives. But the basic logic of "nation-building" in the modern era may well be fundamentally tied up with this phenomenon. The simple logic of "pre-political" power combined with the technology of modern small arms may well dictate that something like a "warlord period" is all but inevitable in the process of national transformation in "low-trust societies" like China and Iraq.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:11 AM
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