The spiralling crisis in Jammu and Kashmir; the Naxalite-Maoist menace that seems to be intensifying with every passing day; the disturbing reach of proxy governments run by militant groups in Manipur and Nagaland – today, a quarter of India is being held hostage by violence and anarchy. What has pushed the country, which has otherwise held together through seemingly insurmountable odds in the past, to the edge? Who and what is responsible for the state of affairs as it stands today? In a series of dispatches from the epicentres of what they call the country’s ‘battle zones’, Neelesh Misra and Rahul Pandita unveil the tensions, frustrations and heartbreaks, and the challenges and justifications, that are everyday realities in these troubled regions. Civil administrators talk about the widespread misappropriation of development funds in tribal and remote areas; security and police personnel describe extreme confrontations in the face of inadequate training and equipment; rebel ranks and former insurgents reveal how unemployment, lack of education and rampant exploitation have fuelled their defiance against the establishment and encouraged secessionist activities; self-styled vigilantes assert their need to provide what they consider ‘security’ and ‘justice’ in areas that have seen little of either. And, at the heart of the on-going turmoil, ordinary people mourn the loss of their loved ones – to starvation, lack of healthcare facilities and militancy – even as they voice their demand to be heard. The stories are many; the cast varied. Yet, collectively, they present an alarming picture of systemic failure on the part of the Indian state. A potent reminder of the mistakes that the government of India cannot afford to repeat, The Absent State is a work of great significance – an essential read for anyone who wants to make sense of the tumult of our times.

In Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in South Asia, ten experts native to South Asia consider the nature of intrastate insurgent movements from a peacebuilding perspective. Case studies on India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka lend new insights into the dynamics of each conflict and how they might be prevented or resolved.

An analysis of insurgent warfare, looking at factors that contribute to insurgency.

Explores current debates around religious extremism as a means to understand and re-think the connections between terrorism, insurgency and state failure. Using case studies of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, she develops a better understanding of the underlying causes and conditions necessary for terrorism and insurgency to occur.

Years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a loosely organized insurgency continues to target American and Coalition soldiers, as well as Iraqi security forces and civilians, with devastating results. In this sobering account of the ongoing violence, Ahmed Hashim, a specialist on Middle Eastern strategic issues and on irregular warfare, reveals the insurgents behind the widespread revolt, their motives, and their tactics. The insurgency, he shows, is not a united movement directed by a leadership with a single ideological vision. Instead, it involves former regime loyalists, Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation, foreign and domestic Islamist extremists, and elements of organized crime. These groups have cooperated with one another in the past and coordinated their attacks; but the alliance between nationalist Iraqi insurgents on the one hand and religious extremists has frayed considerably. The U.S.-led offensive to retake Fallujah in November 2004 and the success of the elections for the Iraqi National Assembly in January 2005 have led more "mainstream" insurgent groups to begin thinking of reinforcing the political arm of their opposition movement and to seek political guarantees for the Sunni Arab community in the new Iraq.Hashim begins by placing the Iraqi revolt in its historical context. He next profiles the various insurgent groups, detailing their origins, aims, and operational and tactical modi operandi. He concludes with an unusually candid assessment of the successes and failures of the Coalition's counter-insurgency campaign. Looking ahead, Hashim warns that ethnic and sectarian groups may soon be pitted against one another in what will be a fiercely contested fight over who gets what in the new Iraq. Evidence that such a conflict is already developing does not augur well for Iraq's future stability. Both Iraq and the United States must work hard to ensure that slow but steady success over the insurgency is not overshadowed by growing ethno-sectarian animosities as various groups fight one another for the biggest slice of the political and economic pie. In place of sensational headlines, official triumphalism, and hand-wringing, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq offers a clear-eyed analysis of the increasingly complex violence that threatens the very future of Iraq.

The result of a multiyear project spearheaded by the late Marianne Heiberg, "Terror, Insurgency, and the State" assembles the findings of more than a dozen scholars who have conducted extensive field research with rebel groups. This comparative analysis documents the aim of longstanding insurgent groups.

The rise and fall of the Cold War coincided with the universalization and consolidation of the modern nation-state as the key unit of the wider international system. A key characteristic of the post-Cold War era, in which the US has emerged as the sole superpower, is the growing number of collapsing or collapsed states. A growing number of states are, or have become, mired in conflict or civil war, the antecedents of which are often to be found in the late-colonial and Cold War era. At the same time, US foreign policy (and the actions of other organizations such as the United Nations) may well be compounding state failure in the context of the post-9/11 Global War on Terror (GWOT) or what is also increasingly referred to as the ‘Long War’. The Long War is often represented as a ‘new’ era in warfare and geopolitics. This book acknowledges that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also emphasizes that the Long War bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency were and continue to be seen primarily in the context of inter-state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are marginalized or neglected. In this context American policy-makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a ‘grand strategy’ that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geo-political thinking rather than engaging with what are a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. This book provides a collection of well-integrated studies that shed light on the history and future of insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states in the context of the Long War. This book was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.