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-citizenship as an alternative to rebellion to the actor–network assemblages that seek to metabolise land and labour to produce commodities and feed the metabolism of uneven development conditioned by certain interests, groups, and logics. In so doing, the earth echoes the biological, existential, and political meaning of the term insurgent described by James Holston ( 1999 ), Leonie
7 The anatomy of an insurgency The world is nothing more than a market, an immense fairground. (Jules Verne, Paris in the Twentieth Century) Making of an insurgent Walter Wriston was nothing like a typical 1940s banker. In that decade, bankers were easy-going, faithfully following the ‘3–6–3 rule’: paying 3 per cent interest on deposits, lending money at 6 per cent, and teeing off at the golf course by 3 p.m. By contrast, Wriston was never going to settle for a comfortable, albeit dull, career. His natural inclination was to overturn the existing order, and his
. While he refused to concede the essential inferiority that accompanied the status of the colonial subject, he shrank also from the provinciality of the independent nation-state. The loyal subject of the empire thus lived in a permanent state of insurgency. Ambivalent political affiliations were ubiquitous and perhaps inevitable in an era when English-educated Indians became increasingly radicalized in their attitudes towards British rule. Partha Chatterjee has suggested that in the decades before independence, a
republican-minded insurgents who could help the IRB liberate Ireland from British control. Beyond any romantic notions of sharing a love of freedom, for Stephens the acquisition of these allies was a matter of pragmatic necessity. Many IRB members were working class, poor and, with a few notable exceptions, lacking in military experience and access to arms. This last issue was of particular importance for Stephens, who, in a manner different to Orsini, Ishutin and Nechaev, still believed that open conflict rather than
-organised police forces, in certain circumstances, to exercise credible police functions in the face of substantial popular indifference, or even disaffection or hostility. Insurgency, or systematic political violence, imposes the severest strain on any police force, but it cannot be a foregone conclusion that an insurgent movement, once established, will undermine and overcome the civil police, or necessarily
enemy. 6 Though rarely stated so bluntly, relief to Christians became a practical expression of support for the Balkan insurgents, or at the very least a show of solidarity with the ‘oppressed’. Many such agencies proclaimed strict impartiality in the provision of relief – and congratulated themselves on a magnanimity
humanitarian independence is not a complete fiction either. An accurate portrait is drawn in Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed , a book published by MSF-CRASH some years ago. Its authors argued that relief groups could be thought of as ‘unreliable friends’, constantly bargaining with donors (not to mention governments and insurgent groups in the countries in which they do their work). An important problem relief agencies face today, which is almost certain to grow worse in the coming decade, is that their success in negotiations can be in vain if donors
the Red Cross , 93 : 884 , 1085 – 105 , doi: 10.1017/S181638311200032X . Rietjens , S. J. H. ( 2008 ), Civil-Military Cooperation in Response to a Complex Emergency: Just Another Drill? ( Leiden : Brill ). Rietjens , S. , Soeters , J. and van Fenema , P. C. ( 2013 ), ‘Learning from Afghanistan: Towards a Compass for Civil–Military Coordination’ Small Wars & Insurgencies , 24 : 2 , 257 – 77 , doi: 10.1080/09592318.2013.778027 . Svoboda , E. ( 2014 ), ‘The Interaction between Humanitarian and Military Actors: Where Do We Go from
) . Magee , H. ( 2018 ), Faking It: Fake News and How It Impacts the Charity Sector ( London : International Broadcasting Trust ). Mamdani , M. ( 2007 ), ‘ The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency ’, London Review of Books , 29 : 5 , 5 – 8 . McIntyre , L. ( 2018 ), Post-Truth ( Cambridge, MA : MIT Press ). Mill , J. S. ( 1859 ), On Liberty ( London : Penguin Classics , 1974 ). Milton , J
‘hearts and minds’ and gather information on the Taliban. NGOs vehemently criticised this classic counter-insurgency strategy, accusing the PRTs of compromising their neutrality by ‘blurring the line between humanitarian activity and military operations’ and endangering them. Without a doubt, that dividing line – if it exists – was blurred in Afghanistan, but at a much deeper level than this superficial one. The entire international aid system, including the NGOs, was working