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David J. Francis, ed. 2005. CIVIL MILITIA: AFRICA'S INTRACTABLE SECURITY MENACE? Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. 300 pp. $99.95 (cloth).
Civil Militia draws in the reader because its dozen contributing authors are nearly all well-placed African scholars. It is a useful addition to a still relatively small library of edited works by African specialists reflecting collectively on a fundamental issue confronting their home region and countries. The editor, David Francis, has done the study of state-rending conflict in Africa an important service in bringing this perspective to bear on a fundamentally important topic. In addition to three overview chapters, the volume includes essays on the phenomena, problems, and portents of militias in countries deeply rent and weakened by armed strife: Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Uganda. It also includes regional perspectives on militias in the Great Lakes, the Horn of Africa, and West Africa.
A central contribution of the volume is the distinction between first-and second-generation militias. The former are citizens who perform occasional obligatory military service, centered on the defense of their governments or communities, who are organized, trained, disciplined, and uniformed in ways analogous to regular professional armies. They are mobilized for short periods of time, and are mobilizable promptly at the call of their commanding officers. Importantly, they were, and are, constituted at the behest of states, and are subject to regulation by them. They have not been constituted to undermine or compete with a state's regular, professional armed forces. While retaining some characteristics analogous to those of...