Warlord
[1] The first appearance of the word "warlord" dates to 1856, when used by American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson in a highly critical essay on the aristocracy in England, "Piracy and war gave place to trade, politics and letters; the 'war-lords to the law-lord; the privilege was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it were changed.
[3] In China, Junfa is applied retroactively to describe the leaders of regional armies who threatened or used violence to expand their rule, including those who rose to lead and unify kingdoms.
In his study of warlordism in Georgia and Tajikistan, Driscoll cites "land reform, property ownership and transfers, privatization in non-transparent closed-bid settings, complex credit swaps cemented via marriages, money laundering, price-fixing schemes, and bribery", as principal sources of exchange in redistribution politics.
[7] Noted theorist Max Weber suggested that classic feudalism in pre-modern-state Europe was an example of warlordism, as the state regime was unable to "exercise a monopoly on the use of force within its territory"[8] and the monarch relied on the commitment of loyal knights and other nobility to mobilize their private armies in support of the crown for specific military campaigns.
As noted French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville and political scientists such as E. J. Hobsbawm and Theda Skocpol observed in their analyses of the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution and democratization in Europe, that commitment was contingent upon a bargaining process in which the king or queen had to guarantee additional territory, revenue, status or other privileges,[9][10][11] meaning that these early European states were weak and the relationship between the crown and feudal lords constituted the form of interdependent warlordism known as cooperative warlord politics.
Within political science there is a growing body of research and analysis on warlordism that has emerged within weak states that have gained independence as a result of the collapse of empires.
As political scientist Dr. Ariel Hernandez documented, one example is the Philippines, where successive presidential administrations—at least since Ferdinand Marcos secured power in 1965—have "franchised violence to regional warlords" to counter the inroads of communist insurgents, Islamic rebels and organized criminal gangs.
[16] In exchange for peaceful coexistence, the warlord coalitions are granted special status and privileges, including the right to maintain de facto political rule within the agreed-upon territory, exert force to retain their monopoly over violence and extract rent and resources.
During the state–warlord bargaining phase, warlords in Afghanistan have a high motivation to prolong war to create political instability, expose weakness of the central state, prompt regional criticism against the government and continue economic extraction.
[18] In his study of warlordism in Georgia and Tajikistan, political scientist Jesse Driscoll emphasizes how the collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated the rise of militant, independence-seeking nationalist movements within the republics—particularly within the Central Asian and Caucasus regions—resulting in armed conflict and civil war.
Many strongmen warlords had served in the Soviet military, police units or intelligence services and had experience operating within highly organized bureaucracies.
This opened up Georgia and Tajikistan as states eligible to receive international aid, which thereafter became a major source of "rent" for the warlords, providing them with resources to increase their power and influence over these societies.
The result is a political system in which a dominant coalition of warlords' strips and distributes valuable assets in exchange for bureaucratic services and security from foreign firms.
[24] Pashtuns are the prominent ethnic group in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and the Durand Line served to split their traditional homeland between two nation states.
[33] Beginning in 2008, as it became increasingly evident that the central government in Kabul was incapable of extending its power and control to much of the country, the US military and diplomatic corps began exploring the option of engaging ethnic tribal warlords in negotiations, a strategy that continued through the Obama administration.
The Cossack ataman Semyonov held territories in the Transbaikalia region, and the 'Bloody Baron' Ungern von Sternberg was the dictator of Mongolia for a short time.
Meanwhile, generals such as Kolchak or Denikin are typically not considered warlords as they created more stable military and governing structures that claimed legitimacy from the prewar Tsarist state.
His close friends included the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya; the conservative former ruler of Ivory Coast, Félix Houphouët-Boigny; the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré; and a plethora of businessmen—local and foreign—who were bent on making money in Liberia and disregarded UN disapproval.
[37] Local warlords with their own militias began to emerge in the effort to defeat the Taiping Rebellion of the 1860s[38] as the Manchu bannerman armies faltered and the central authorities lost much of their control.
At the time of disintegration, many warlords tried to enthrone themselves or rule the khanate jointly; however, there had been powerful de facto leaders in all parts of the Mongol Empire before.
Ygo Gales Galama was a famous Frisian warlord, and so was his cousin Pier Gerlofs Donia, who was the leader of the Arumer Zwarte Hoop.
Other warlords could be found in the British Isles during the Middle Ages and up into the Early Modern period; such examples include Brian Boru of Ireland and Guthrum of the Danelaw, who was the commander of the Great Heathen Army and nearly conquered all of England,[41] Alfred of Anglo-Saxon England,[42] first man to unify the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Europe, although it would not be completed until Edward the Elder's reign, in which he conquered the last remnants of the Danelaw.
[43] Other countries and territories with warlords include, Iraq, Myanmar (Wa State), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan (Pashtun Tribal Areas), Syria and Tajikistan (Gorno-Badakhshan).
