“Proxy War” Armies Of The Middle East? Just A New Way To Say Gangsters And Cartels

-Analysis-

The term “proxy war” is popular among media talking heads and conflict analysts describing the various battles unfolding in the Middle East, from the Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon — and beyond.

But is this the right term for wars in the region? Have we even agreed on its meaning in a context of fast-changing geo-strategic conditions?

Is every conflict, in other words, really just part of a bigger war between major powers, undertaken in these certain cases through “proxies”?

I would say a clear “No,” in part for the emergence of new and possibly more instructive interpretations of the conflicts affecting regional societies. Three books in particular are informative here, helping to illustrate the new thinking on the nature of contemporary conflicts since the turn of the century: Kaldor’s New and Old Wars (2012, Stanford), Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts (2005, Picador), and Collier’s Breaking The Conflict Trap (2003, World Bank), which focuses on Africa.

World political geography

Before describing such conflicts, we may briefly consider some of the fundamental changes that have taken place in the world’s political geography:

1 – The new forms of organized violence are connected to the current globalization process that first began to accelerate in the early 1990s.

2 – In the last decades of the 20th century, Africa and Eastern Europe were the setting of heinous wars that are now echoed in other regions including the Middle East.

3 – In such conflicts, traditionally clearer distinctions between the states of war and peace are blurred and at times barely discernible.

4 – The new conflicts come with systematic and significant rights violations, most notably massacres.

5 – In this perspective, the issue of human rights and its ties to the globalizing process will help explain why new wars are erupting.

6 – The globalization process has broken traditional socio-economic hierarchies, and helped create a global élite with inordinate resources and power that are themselves a factor in provoking conflicts.

New wars have become a breeding ground for kleptocratic oligarchies.

7 – States that initiate the new wars are also inflicting violence, including concealed or indirect violence, on their own populations.

8 – The new wars have become a breeding ground for kleptocratic oligarchies that flourish in tumultuous conditions.

9 – That in turn feeds socio-political corruption, which means that wars today have become a source of corruption.

10 – As systems are corrupted, public participation and social support systems are undermined, widening socio-economic divisions and inequalities.

11 – The deceit and vapidity of systemic and governmental slogans are laid bare, fueling cynicism and distrust of the political system.

12 – With the “masses” of ordinary people pushed toward marginalization and political exclusion, conditions arise for social and civil unrest.

13 – And as conditions become critical, elements inside the excluded populations become willing and available as human “cannon fodder” for those who would use them for violence.

Classic and new wars

With this context in mind, what are the basic differences between classic wars and the new, asymmetrical or irregular conflicts seen in places like the Middle East? A comparative list of traits may give us a general picture.

Conventional wars involve states and their armies and broadly seek to occupy territory. The new wars are more diffuse, involving actors that are neither states nor professional armies. That can include mercenaries, militiamen, pirates or thugs. The states of war and peace were clear and publicly announced, while current conflicts may not respect this dichotomy. Wars were financed by governments with taxes, whereas the monies behind new conflicts are diversely-sourced and often murky.

Conventional wars had a measure of regard for international laws to limit harm to civilians.

Conventional wars had a measure of regard for international laws to limit harm to civilians, while new conflicts often unleash unfettered hatred and terroristic methods intended to subdue by spreading fear among civilians.

Nationalism, political ideologies and state interests were the drivers of past wars. Today identity politics and fears over cultural and ethnic integrity — as the incidental fruits of globalization — are causing a greater share of the violence.

Diplomatic and democractic channels

Wars have always proceeded as a series of battles. Today, they can take multiple forms including kidnapping, rape, sabotage, systems hacking or trafficking. If wars were the clash of two states, the modern conflict is often close to a civil war, more often taking place in weakened or ailing states like Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti or the Sudan.

While wars are broadly reported on and explained by the traditional press, social media are playing a greater role in misreporting and distorting the nature of modern conflicts. Unlike classical wars, 21st-century conflicts tend to resist the legal, diplomatic and democratic channels of resolution.

The picture then is of the diffusion or recomposition of war or organized violence, rather than of standard wars pursued by “proxies” or agents of bigger powers. We might rather see these “proxies” as, simply, criminal and terror networks that operate opportunistically, where an apparent subservience to or fusion with the interests of bigger, state actors, is just a means to an end.

The criminal tag may even give us a better insight into the workings of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis, Taliban or ISIS. Perhaps the best comparison is with those we all recognize as criminals like drug cartels?

It’s worth considering some of the shared traits and methods between gangsters, and militias like those of the Middle East and Africa: competing for resources, trafficking, mining, money-laundering, use of “atypical” violence in the form of massacres and terrorism, and the takeover or destruction of state institutions. The stark difference is in the militants’ political and often totalitarian aspirations, which can take on a life of their own.