Control in asymmetric conflict: Unpacking the complexities of a concept

Prevailing notions of control, key to the idea of governance, combatant-civilian interactions and a host of other civil war dynamics, have predominantly been understood as a zero-sum game. In this line of thinking, actors are mutually exclusive and the more control one actor has, the less control for the opponent, which has also led to an excessive focus on violence as a means for establishing control. This dominant understanding of control has come under increased scrutiny and questioning over the past few years. Although theoretically plausible, and undoubtedly the situation in some cases - particularly in conventional civil wars, it is far from universal, and the more we gain insights and knowledge of empirical case-studies, the more inadequate it seems to explain a huge number of cases that rarely fit this model, particularly in asymmetric conflicts. More often than not, what we find are messy situations in which control is patchy, uneven and overlapping with that of other actors, together with diffuse and shifting forms of power. In these cases, ad hoc rebel governance practices shape some aspects of societal life while other actors (such as the state) shape others, with the boundaries between these actors often blurred. This workshop and subsequent special issue seek to explicitly unpack and theorise the territorial, social, institutional, gendered, information-based, ideological and agential dimensions of control. Bringing together leading scholars each drawing from their extensive experience in rich, fieldwork-based approaches, we adopt grounded approaches to build concepts to better grasp the messy, multidimensional facets of wartime control.

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