REPORT: STICKS AND STONES

Soob has a great new post detailing the devolution of the Kenyan conflict into tribal warfare, complete with bows and arrows. John Robb has also posted. There are very scary parallels to Rwanda, and one hopes that something can be done to stabilize the situation. That being said, Kenya's troubles do not amount purely to tribal competition. Economic discrimination and class resentment also motivates a great deal of the violence directed against the majority tribe. None of this is also exclusive to Third World or developing nations.

Even the most advanced societies can degenerate into mass violence--take the 1992 Rodney King riots  for example. Robert Young Pelton writes in his World's Most Dangerous Places (a great and hilarious guide to war zone travel writing) that the city resembled 80's Beirut--plumes of smoke rising, men on the rooftops with heavy firepower, and marauding bands of young men searching for things (and people) to smash. Police and emergency response personnel were unprepared to stem the tide.

Firefighters were fired on. LAPD tactical units that engaged rioters were targeted by gunmen. One account of the incident, Lou Cannon's Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed the LAPD and Los Angeles quotes a SWAT officer noting that they expended more ammunition in one small engagement of the riot than they did in the 1979 Symbionese Liberation Army shootout (the first major test of LAPD SWAT).

Given the reversion to local militia-style security (Korean-American store owners armed with Uzis in Rodney King), it's not difficult to imagine that the next major Rodney-King style urban blowup will involve great deal of tactical private security units. After all, everyone's favorite PMC whipping boy Blackwater was putting "boots on the ground" in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans while local and federal emergency response agencies struggled to respond. While the show of force was presumably enough to scare off whatever looters might have been present, it's not certain by any means that the mere capability to do harm will be enough in the future.

Comments

[deichmans]

"...while FEMA floundered," or "...while FEMA waited for State-granted authority to proceed"?

I don't hold FEMA nearly as responsible for the failure of early relief efforts as I do Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin.

Effective response and mitigation begins with the community, not the feds.

[A.E.]

Point taken and corrected.

[subadei]

Weird. My earlier comment is apparently floating out there in cyber Jimmy Hoffa land.

At any rate, isn't FEMA's lead time something like 72 hours?

Amazing how fast a social structure can collapse, isn't it?

BTW, your link to John actually goes to Soob.

[Account Deleted]

"Even the most advanced societies can degenerate into mass violence--take the 1992 Rodney King riots for example. "

Why would you consider ghettos in general, or South-Central Los Angeles in particular, to be an instance of "the most advanced societies"?

[A.E.]

Even though South-Central (it's now called "South Los Angeles" to be more politically correct) is a part of the "gap," it's still a sub-set of a first world country.

[Account Deleted]

"Even though South-Central (it's now called "South Los Angeles" to be more politically correct) is a part of the "gap," it's still a sub-set of a first world country."

So what? You're mixing levels of analysis.

You write about 'the most sophisticated societies' degenerating into mass violence. That's exaggerating the length of the trip of the then-SCLA.

One might as well write that 'the most Islamic societies can spontaneously develop a globalized multi-party democracy,' and use Israel as an example because of its geographic neighbors.

If you're point is that already broken mini-Gaps can degenerate into mass violence, write that. If you're point is that areas like SCLA got a bad rap, or not mini Gaps, and still degenerated, write that instead.

But don't assert something that doesn't make sense, like: "Even the most advanced societies can degenerate into mass violence--take the 1992 Rodney King riots for example."

[A.E.]

I feel I may have failed to explain myself properly, so here goes.

For one, its reductive to say the riot merely South Central Los Angeles, many other areas, especially the center of the city (Mid-Wilshire), were hit hard by the violence. Even outside the city (LA County in a general sense) there was violence. The totality of the city as a system broke down, with police units overtaxed and wealthier and ethnic areas reverting back to privatized forms of security.

Additionally, the comparison between SCLA-LA and Israel-Mideast is overwrought.