The Challenge of Urban "Stateless" Regions
By Douglas Farah
Today's Washington Post has an interesting look at one of the growing challenges of statelessness and where much of the world is heading. It also has stark implications for terrorist organizations and their ability to operate.
The story looks at police attempts to take over the Santa Marta favela in Rio de Janeiro, where drug dealers have long been the primary, if not sole, source of authority.
Using tactics similar to the U.S. "surge" strategy in Iraq, police are seeking to build permanent bases among the population, fix broken services, gather intelligence, and stick around so the drug traffickers lose their operational freedom. The story showed that there was much to be done to allay the fears of the civilian population and win them over in some fashion.
What is striking is that, while we often look at ungoverned spaces (generally a misleading term because, while the state does not govern there, some person, criminal organization or militia almost certainly does), we view them as vast swaths of territory with little population and empty territory where one could hide.
In reality, many of the "stateless" areas are in the rapidly-growing mega-urban centers that are growing up around the world. See National Geographic map for a fascinating and terrifying graphic of the trends.
In these urban settings, there are densely-populated sectors where the state has no presence or power. These areas offer an entirely different set of challenges from stateless territories that are both larger and much less densely populated. My full blog is here.
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