Description
Key words: Urban Warfare, Insurrectionary Warfare, Hybrid Warfare, Political Mobilization, Guerrilla Warfare
Traditionally, theorists in the field of Urban Warfare, particularly in the early 20th century, have tended to reduce Urban environments in warfare to the category of terrain. Further theoretical and doctrinal developments have attempted to characterize Urban Armed Conflicts as existing in a multidimensional or multidomain space, incorporating telecommunications, civilian dynamics, and/or urban planning. In particular, modern commentators have focused on the capability for small groups of people, generally terrorists, to paralyze entire cities or societies with well coordinated attacks. However, these have not fundamentally avoided the conception of all non-military elements as essentially passive or environmental, rather than political subjects capable of being mobilized and even of acting independently. In this paper, we will attempt to develop an analysis of Urban Armed Conflicts (Armed Conflicts occurring in Urban Areas) which incorporates the critical perspective of urban geography as power-structure rather than strictly terrain or environment, illustrating how both historical and modern examples actively engage with these elements to decisively increase their military power, in particular in asymmetric conflicts. In Sub Saharan African countries like Nigeria or Ethiopia, rapid urban growth and urbanization as well as uneven economic development and political fragility contribute decisively to the emergence and prolongation of conflicts in urban areas. Furthermore, as areas of decreasing State influence, explored by the concept of Feral Cities, urban areas serve as staging grounds and origin of groups that seek to challenge State power. An understanding that blends and synthesizes the political and security understandings of the urban as terrain and power-structure is essential both from a perspective of decreasing State fragility as well as providing tools for liberation.
