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Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in Pakistan and India

Yelena Biberman offers a new framework for understanding why and how states ‘outsource’ war to local non-state actors despite the risks of forfeiting the state’s monopoly over violence. Specifically, she explores state and non-state alliances in counter-insurgencies in India and Pakistan. Taking a qualitative approach, Biberman argues that ‘state-nonstate alliances are balance-of-interests bargains’ wherein the ‘state seeking to shift the local balance of power in its favor may enlist activists if it can cultivate social or ideological ties with them’ (p. 12). She finds that non-state actors who are ‘opportunists are more likely to serve as balance tippers’ in a conflict (p. 12). Biberman provides a useful approach for scholars to understand the ‘outsourcing of violence’, by drawing on a range of primary source material and field research, including over 200 interviews, news media, memoirs, and official government records. The book is divided into three sections. The first explores the theoretical framework and situates the study within current scholarship. Biberman details how the research design employs process tracing to understand how the insurgencies unfolded and defines key terms, such as the different types of key actors as ‘activists’ or ‘opportunists’. The activists’ interests are in ideological goals, whereas the ‘opportunists are largely transactional, characterized by pragmatic quid-pro-quo agreements’ (p. 26). Incorporating neoclassical realism from international relations theory, Biberman connects neo-realism’s focus ‘on the structuring role of relative power distribution in an anarchic system with classical realism’s appreciation of actors’ divergent interests and agency’ (p. 29). In the much lengthier second part, Biberman provides empirical analyses of four different case studies. She begins by exploring Pakistan’s need to reach out to local populations in 1971 to fight against the escalating insurgency in East Pakistan. Examining the Islamist ‘volunteers’ – some who joined willingly due to religious or material appeals, and others who were coerced through violence – she finds Pakistan’s plausible deniability was lacking ‘because (1) it was too militarily weak to attract opportunists, and (2) it had not yet built the socio-ideological links needed to attract activists’ (p. 63). Moving to India’s counterinsurgency in Kashmir from 1988 to 2003, Biberman explores India’s efforts to gain local allies which proved more successful after the balance of power in the conflict tipped in the government’s Strategic Analysis, 2020 Vol. 44, No. 2, 153–155, https://doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2020.1726621