Useful Enemies: When conflict is courted by warmongers

This eye-opening book will change the way you look at conflicts and the humanitarian efforts aimed at alleviating their impact on civilians.

Useful Enemies by David Keen.
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In Useful Enemies, David Keen challenges the widely held notion that the chief objective of war is winning.

He examines scenarios in which the actors involved have a vested interest in seeing the fighting continue indefinitely, pointing to examples including Sri Lanka, Sudan, Colombia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

Keen, a professor of complex emergencies at the London School of Economics, writes: “Powerful state and insurgency actors often are more interested in reaping the economic and political benefits of a conflict than in bringing it to a close.”

This, he says, can take the form of looting, graft, extortion and sexual opportunities.

Other motivations include a desire for control of resource-rich areas; dependence on humanitarian aid, which a country is likely to receive when it is ravaged by conflict; and politicians trying to strengthen their powerbase by defining their opponents as enemies.

This eye-opening book will change the way you look at conflicts and the humanitarian efforts aimed at alleviating their impact on civilians.