Source: Getty

Hybridizing Security: Armies and Militias in Fractured Arab States

The hybridization of security governance in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen leaves them with forms of sovereignty that are both constrained and constantly contested.

by Yezid Sayigh and Eleonora Ardemagni
published by
Italian Institute for International Political Studies
 on October 30, 2018

Source: Italian Institute for International Political Studies

Defense and security sectors in the Arab states have been undergoing significant, and sometimes radical, transformation as a result of local rebellions and civil wars, state crisis and fracturing, and external intervention since the start of the 21st century. In Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, unfamiliar and fluid coalitions of national armed forces (or their remnants) and armed non-state actors are increasingly engaged in complex patterns of de-confliction, coexistence, and cooperation embedded within a wider context of persistent competition among them and of geopolitical rivalry between an array of external backers. A joint effort of the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) and the Program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS) of the Carnegie Middle East Center, this dossier explores how the resulting hybridization of security governance in these countries leaves them with forms of sovereignty that are both constrained and constantly contested.

Hybridizing Security: Armies, Militias and Constrained Sovereignty, Yezid Sayigh, Carnegie Middle East Center

The Lebanese Armed Forces and Hezbollah: Military Dualism in Post-War Lebanon, Aram Nerguizian, Carnegie Middle East Center

Legacies of Survival: Syria's Uncomfortable Security Hybridity, Abdulla M. Erfan, Geneva Centre for Security Policy

The Osmotic Path: The PMU and The Iraqi State, Riccardo Redaelli, Catholic University of Milan

Patchwork Security: The New Face of Yemen’s Hybridity, Eleonora Ardemagni, ISPI

Armies, Militias and (Re)-Integration in Fractured States, Frederic Wehrey, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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