Insurgent Nations

Description

Over two separate twelve-year periods, two opposing ‘states’ governed in parallel in Angola (1979–1991) and Sudan (1990–2002), each with competing conceptions of society, history and national identity. Deeply dividing communities with their counter-nationalist programmes, rebel parties UNITA in Angola and the SPLM/A in Sudan, which had fought Africa’s longest and bloodiest civil wars, built political and military enterprises in opposition to the established governments.

Insurgent Nations unpacks the complexities of these movements, exploring the charisma of their leaders, the ruthlessness of their military operations, their political manoeuvrings, and their multiple transformations in war and peace. Using first-hand, unpublished accounts from their leaders and cadres, Paula Cristina Roque provides unique insight into UNITA and the SPLM/A’s governing strategies. She details the ‘nations’, ‘states’ and ‘societies’ that were forged by the parties’ ideologies, sub-nationalist concerns and interactions with the population. While UNITA’s political project in the Free Lands of Angola was centrally controlled and totalitarian, the SPLM/A’s New Sudan was decentralised and minimalist, built from the bottom up.

This is the first volume to compare the policies and perspectives of UNITA and the SPLM/A, offering a new understanding of territory-governing insurgencies. Ultimately, both rebel states were exercises in survival, resilience and adaptation.

Reviews

‘A leading expert in African liberation movements, Roque has the outstanding analytical ability to unpack the complexity of insurgencies’ ethnic politics, rebel leadership and liberation power dynamics. This is a work of an accomplished hand in the field of African liberation politics.’ — Dr John Gai Yoh, former Minister of Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of South Sudan

‘Based on remarkable in-depth field research, this is a timely, solid and well-informed book. An important contribution to the current literature on rebel governance and to the history of the Cold War in Africa.’ — Didier Péclard, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva, and co-editor of Negotiating Statehood: Dynamics of Power and Domination in Africa

‘A provocative, vital addition to comparative work on rebel governance. It places a hard won, deeply researched account of rebel agency at the heart of its analysis, offering us fresh understandings of the distinctive governing projects and legacies of the SPLM/A and UNITA.’ — Jocelyn Alexander, Professor of Commonwealth Studies, University of Oxford

‘In a comparative study of Angola’s UNITA and South Sudan’s SPLM/A, Roque deploys fine-grained evidence based on assiduous fieldwork to address the question of when and why non-state armed groups start to act like states.’ — Justin Pearce, Senior Lecturer in History, Stellenbosch University, and author of Political Identity and Conflict in Central Angola, 1975-2002

‘Insurgent Nations offers valuable new insights that advance our understanding of “parallel states”. Roque is right on target in posing the central question for all studies of rebel governance, one that some overlook: how is force converted into authority? A significant contribution.’ — Nelson Kasfir, Emeritus Professor of Government, Dartmouth College, and editor of Civil Society and Democracy in Africa: Critical Perspectives

Author(s)

Paula Cristina Roque PhD is Executive Director of Intelwatch, and has worked for the Crisis Management Initiative, the International Crisis Group, and the Institute for Security Studies. She is a founding member of the South Sudan Center for Strategic and Policy Studies, and author of Governing in the Shadows: Angola's Securitised State, also published by Hurst.