Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / This thesis examines the role of paramilitary forces in the counterinsurgency operations being launched by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People's Army (NPA). The Philippine government and the AFP firmly believe that the present Civilian Armed Force Geographical Unit Active Auxiliary (CAA) is an essential component of the AFP's Operational clear-hold-support methodology. Many scholars have argued that separating the Communist guerrillas from the populace is an important element in winning the counterinsurgency campaign. Isolating the Communist insurgents is done through the creation of local militia. However, some authors contend it would be dangerous for any government to train paramilitary forces because, in the long term, the governments are unsure of the future loyalties of these paramilitary forces. They may currently be working for the government, but as they work and gain skills, these paramilitary forces could use these same skills against the government in the future. Thus, it is quite dangerous to train paramilitary forces. The Philippine paramilitaries are good examples of paramilitary forces being used effectively for counterinsurgency. Their primary task of protecting the communities and the people from the coercive and abusive acts of the Communist insurgents are achieved. They are an effective counterinsurgency force because of proper training as well as command and control. This thesis concludes that the Philippine government and the AFP are headed in the right operational direction for utilizing paramilitary forces for village defense and as the protectors of the people. The paramilitary forces in the Philippines need the proper training as well as command and control in order to make these paramilitary forces effective counterinsurgency forces. / Colonel, Philippine Army

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Ethnicity, sectarianism and economic instability are fundamental variables of internal security threats to Pakistan. Religious extremism has created an unenviable image of Pakistan in the eyes of the rest of the world and has affected the country adversely. At the same time inter-provincial grievances could potentially cause serious damage to the federation. Despite recent economic recovery and sound macro policies, the absence of genuine socio-economic development has provided ethno-sectarian elements and regional forces grounds to exploit and weaken Pakistan internally. This paper argues that ethno-sectarian problems are major security threats to Pakistan and will remain a huge impediment to the goals of economic prosperity. Interdependence of these multifaceted threats and their overall impact on internal security is the focus of this analysis. Pakistan needs to address these national security threats and find a viable solution in a reasonable timeframe to find its rightful place in the community of modern nations. The immediate requirement is to introduce political, economic and education reforms and take bold initiatives to obviate present and future threats. This paper recommends three-pronged strategy to counter ethnosectarian threats to Pakistan: halt then reverse present trends, enforce rule of law and lastly introduce fresh incentives for socio-economic development. / Lieutenant Colonel, Pakistan Army

The denial of defeat, the harsh Versailles Treaty and unsuccessful attempts by paramilitary units to recover losses in the Baltic produced in post-war Germany an anti-Bolshevik, anti-Entente, radical right-wing cabal of officers with General Ludendorff and Colonel Bauer at its core. Mistakenly citing a lack of breadth as one of the reason for the failure of their amateurishly executed Hohenzollern restoration and Kapp Putsch schemes, Bauer and co-conspirator Ignatius Trebitsch-Lincoln devised the highly ambitious White International plot. It sought to form a transnational league of Bavaria, Austria and Hungary to force the annulment of the Paris Treaties by the coordinated use of paramilitary units from the war vanquished nations. It set as its goals the destruction of Bolshevism in all its guises throughout Europe, the restoration of the monarchy in Russia, the systematic elimination of all Entente-sponsored Successor States and the declaration of war on the Entente. Archival documents, memoirs and other sources expose the underlying flaw in the plot: individual national priorities would always override transnational cooperation. Bavaria and Hungary were already seeking treaty revision through a rapprochement with the Entente; White Russian forces had turned from German support in favour of the French; and finally - as pointed out by their own leaders - the member states' paramilitary units were either untested or wholly ineffective, and thus would be no match for the national armies of the Successor States and the Entente.

La place de la violence dans l'histoire du XX° siècle est l'objet de nombreuses études depuis la publication des ouvrages de l'historien américain George L. Mosse. Si cet intérêt s'est longtemps concentré sur l'étude des mouvements d'extrême-droite, depuis une décennie la recherche historique se penche sur l'étude des relations qu'entretient le communisme, avec la violence. C'est dans cet environnement historiographique que notre étude vise à éclairer la place tenue par la violence dans la vie du PCF de sa naissance, en 1920, à son interdiction en septembre 1939. Dans un premier temps, après avoir analysé la place de la violence dans le mouvement socialiste et ouvrier avant 1914, il s'agit de percevoir la nouveauté introduite par l'idéologie bolchevique dans cette relation au moment où la société française est confrontée à la Grande Guerre et ses séquelles et de déterminer le rôle de la violence dans la naissance du PCF et dans son développement jusqu'à la fin des années 1920. Nous analysons ensuite la période « classe contre classe » où le PC développe pleinement les potentialités contenues dans la culture de guerre civile qu'il cultive depuis sa naissance. Il essaye alors d'inscrire cette guerre civile dans la réalité française. Le discours qui s'appuie sur la simplification de la perception des réalités politiques, économiques et sociales, décryptée au prisme de la culture de la guerre civile se durcit pour marquer l'imminence de la parousie révolutionnaire. Le PCF prône alors la confrontation directe avec les forces de l'ordre dans le but de conquérir la rue tout en essayant de mettre sur pied une force paramilitaire. L'abandon de l'activisme violent à la fin de 1931 entraîne une période d'hésitation sur la place de la violence dans la stratégie communiste, hésitation qui prend fin à partir de 1934 avec le tournant vers le Front populaire qui fait l'objet de notre troisième et dernière partie. La culture de guerre civile, que porte en lui le communisme, s'intègre alors à la culture républicaine sous le signe de l'antifascisme. Ce processus, qui participe aux succès que connaissent alors les communistes, entraîne une atténuation de la place de la violence dans la politique du PCF, mais non sa disparition. Sa trace se retrouve dans la politique interne de vigilance révolutionnaire, l'usage de la force contre les fascistes et les renégats et le rôle des communistes français sur le front espagnol durant la guerre civile. / The place of violence in history of XX ° century is the object of many studies since the studies of the American historian George L. Mosse. If this interest has concentrated for a long time on the study of the far-right movements, for decade historical research leans over the study of relations communism, with violence. It's in this historiographic environment that our study aims at lighting the place held by violence in the life of PCF since its birth, in 1920 to its ban in September, 1939. At first, having analysed the place of violence in socialist and working movement before 1914 and the novelty introduced by the bolchevik ideology in this relation at the time when the French society is confronted with First World War and its consequences to determine the role of violence in the birth of PCF and in its development during 1920s. We analyse the period «class against class» where the PC develops entirely potentialities contained in the culture of civil war which it cultivates since its birth. He tries to register this civil war in French reality. The speech which leans on the simplification of the perception of political, economic and social realities, having read in prism of the culture of civil war to mark the imminence of the revolutionary parousie. PCF search direct confrontation with police force in the intention of winning the street, while trying to set up a paramilitary force. The end of violent activism at the end of 1931 draws away a period of hesitancy on the place of violence in communist strategy, hesitancy which comes to end from 1934 with turn towards the Popular Front which makes the object of our third and last part. The culture of civil war, that hits in him communism, integrates then with republican culture under the sign of antifascism. This process, which participates in the successes which know then the communists, draws away an alleviation of the place of violence in the policy of PCF, but not its disappearance. Its trace is in the internal policy of revolutionary alertness, the usage of force against the fascists and the renegades and the role of the French communists on the Spanish front during civil war.

In response to the conflict in eastern Ukraine that began in April 2014, thousands of Ukrainians voluntarily enrolled to various paramilitary battalions. Except the Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps, all battalions have been incorporated into official defense and security structures. This study investigates why some combatants choose to serve in the paramilitary Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps rather than join the state-sanctioned military, and specifically how this choice is influenced by uncertainty. This multisite case study is conducted with volunteer fighters in the regions of Odesa and Donetsk, using data collected through interviews, observations and through the review of documents. The study applies uncertainty-identity theory, which explores how uncertainty in an individual’s own life, or their environment can prompt them to seek structure through belonging to a group or ascribing to an ideology. This theory is applied to understand how participants’ identification with the paramilitary Volunteer Ukrainian Corps might influence their feelings of self-uncertainty. The data led to six themes: Russian aggression; patriots and opportunists; enemies among us; trust, confidence and cohesion; sworn brothers; and construction of uncertainty. These themes help to understand the motivations of participants, but also how uncertainty is constructed through the membership in the Right Sector’ s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps. The findings of this study give a holistic account about participants’ feelings of self-uncertainty through their multifaceted and complex experiences. Analysis of the data revealed that the clear group prototype and the high entitativity of the Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps increased participants’ self-confidence, which inspired their continued identification with the group.

The denial of defeat, the harsh Versailles Treaty and unsuccessful attempts by paramilitary units to recover losses in the Baltic produced in post-war Germany an anti-Bolshevik, anti-Entente, radical right-wing cabal of officers with General Ludendorff and Colonel Bauer at its core. Mistakenly citing a lack of breadth as one of the reason for the failure of their amateurishly executed Hohenzollern restoration and Kapp Putsch schemes, Bauer and co-conspirator Ignatius Trebitsch-Lincoln devised the highly ambitious White International plot. It sought to form a transnational league of Bavaria, Austria and Hungary to force the annulment of the Paris Treaties by the coordinated use of paramilitary units from the war vanquished nations. It set as its goals the destruction of Bolshevism in all its guises throughout Europe, the restoration of the monarchy in Russia, the systematic elimination of all Entente-sponsored Successor States and the declaration of war on the Entente. Archival documents, memoirs and other sources expose the underlying flaw in the plot: individual national priorities would always override transnational cooperation. Bavaria and Hungary were already seeking treaty revision through a rapprochement with the Entente; White Russian forces had turned from German support in favour of the French; and finally¿as pointed out by their own leaders¿the member states¿ paramilitary units were either untested or wholly ineffective, and thus would be no match for the national armies of the Successor States and the Entente.

While research increasingly recognizes the importance of civilian agency and strategies in influencing conflict dynamics and reducing civilian victimization in the context of armed conflict, research has until now not investigated whether civilians also have the capacity to limit organized criminal violence. This study thus aims to answer under which conditions civilians can protect themselves from and influence levels of organized criminal violence and draws on the literatures on civilian self-protection and autonomy strategies in the context of armed conflict, as well as on organized criminal governance and violence. I argue that civilian communities with high levels of social organization will experience lower levels of violence, as they are more likely to mount successful collective strategies that influence costs and benefits for organized crime groups to use violence. Using the method of structured focused comparison, this hypothesis is tested on the Colombian municipalities San Juan de Arama, Vistahermosa and Granada. The results show some support for the theorized relationship. In general, municipalities with higher levels of social organization experienced lower levels of organized criminal violence, but this relationship appears to be moderated by levels of civil war violence. Due to the explorative character of this study, more research is warranted.

This study examines how borders are socially produced and deconstructed in “post-conflict” North Belfast. Twenty years after the signing of the historic Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, a peace model lauded for the resolution of conflicts worldwide, Belfast today remains a highly divided city with the existence of numerous segregation barriers, among them so-called peace walls, physically separating Protestant from Catholic neighbourhoods. Indicating a failure to achieve social accommodation, this thesis seeks to examine how people in North Belfast understand, negotiate, and experience space and borders around them. In particular, it illuminates the processes and agents involved in modifying and transforming borders, as well as the resistance engendered in doing so amidst considerable intra-community debate and competition over place identities and their attendant narratives. Placed firmly within the anthropological study of borders and space, it shows how borders and their regimes are socially constructed and should be understood as practices and imaginations rather than simply as inert objects which render individuals as passive “victims” of their urban environs. It furthermore seeks to challenge prevailing cognitive and analytical constructs of borders and border crossing. Based on ten weeks of fieldwork in Belfast by the author, this study employs extensive participant observation and semi-structured interviews.

From the deployment of Roger's Rangers in the Seven Years War to the Sunni Awakening in the Second Gulf War, indigenous force cooperation has been a hallmark of significant armed conflicts in modern history. Indigenous forces are, by definition, recruited locally and are paramilitary in nature, as, for the most part, are their activities. They are not regular police, gendarme, or military forces. Rather, they represent a subset of a broader category of force that includes paramilitaries, unconventional forces, guerrillas, some militias, and auxiliaries. The focus of this dissertation is indigenous force cooperation. Indigenous force cooperation occurs when a metropolitan power (be it imperial or expeditionary) collaborates with one or more indigenous forces. Despite recurring employment, indigenous force cooperation remains largely ignored in historical literature and there has been no comprehensive study of the nature, structure, function, or experience of these forces. Using comparative case studies of indigenous force cooperation in Palestine Mandate and Ethiopia during the Second World War, this project seeks to identify whether successful indigenous force cooperation in war exists as a unified historical phenomenon and whether it was instrumental to theatres of operation in which it took place. The research supporting this dissertation includes personally conducted interviews with veterans of the indigenous forces and examinations of recently declassified documents. The comparative framework allows the project to determine what, if any, underlying patterns connect cases of indigenous force employment and govern the success or failure of cooperation. This dissertation consists of a comparative examination of four questions: why cooperation occurred, how cooperation was structured, what happened during cooperation, and whether cooperation was effective. Each chapter of this dissertation addresses one of the questions. Answering these questions will support a number of areas of study, including imperial history and contemporary strategic studies, by providing a theoretical framework by which to understand other cases of indigenous force cooperation.

Based on Hobsbawm’s notion of “invented traditions,” this thesis argues that the Serbian warrior tradition, the hajduk, was formalised from the folk oral epic tradition into official state practices. Using reports from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, military histories of Yugoslavia’s Second World War, and case files from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), this thesis shows how the hajduk epics were used to articulate war programs and formations, to construct perpetrator and victim identities, and to help encourage and justify the levels of violence during the Yugoslav wars of succession, 1991-1995. The thesis shows how the formalising of the invented hajduk tradition made the epics an important part of political and military mobilisation for at least the last two centuries. During Serbia’s modernisation campaign in the nineteenth century, the epic hajduk traditions were codified by Serbian intellectuals and fashioned into national stories of heroism. While cleansing territories of undesirable populations during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, the hajduks were portrayed in the tradition of nation builders by the Kingdom of Serbia. The hajduk tradition was also mobilised as Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, with both Draža Mihailović’s Četniks and Tito’s Partisans appropriating the historic guerrilla tradition. During the “re-traditionalisation” period under Slobodan Milošević in the 1980s, the invented hajduk tradition was again mobilised in the service of war. As Bosnian Muslim bodies were flung from the Mehmed Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad in 1992, the Serbian perpetrators dreamed of themselves as avenging hajduks thus justifying a modern ethnic cleansing. / Graduate