Tribal militias and political legitimacy in British India and Pakistan

Akins, Harrison

doi:10.1080/14799855.2019.1672662

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Akins argues that states incorporate local tribes into their counterinsurgency strategy, because they possess greater knowledge of the conflict environment, enabling them to be more effective at counterinsurgency. 40 Many of my interviewees repeated an old Arabic proverb -(Ahl Makka adra bi-shi'abiha) 'Mecca people know the trails' -asserting that local tribes know their own area best and so they were able to guide the Syrian army to the active zones of the Syrian opposition in the rural areas of Aleppo. Secondly, the al-Baggara tribe presented a 'readily available and organic social structure ideal for mobilisation'.…”

Section: Al-baqqer Brigade In Combatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tribal mobilisation during the Syrian civil war: the case of al-Baqqer brigade

Dukhan

2022

Small Wars & Insurgencies

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As a result of the debilitating situation that the Syrian state reached during the Syrian Civil War, the government relies heavily on paramilitary groups to confront security challenges. Existing studies imply that all the paramilitary groups in Syria were formed in a largely top-down process. Focusing on the rise of al-Baqqer Brigade in Syria and relying on a series of in-depth interviews with members of the al-Baggara tribe who make up most of this militia, this paper challenges that assumption. The paper shows that the emergence of tribal militias is principally a grassroots phenomenon stemming from competition over local resources. It argues that the Syrian state has seized this opportunity and outsourced some of its security and counterinsurgency tasks to the group.

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Section: Al-baqqer Brigade In Combatmentioning

confidence: 99%