The concept of colonialism has been extensively revisited in the last decade. Scholars have been moving away from a narrow understanding of it based on the theoretical tool of periodization. The arbitrary divide between what is colonial and what is post-colonial indeed relies on the assumption that both form two different and coherent units of time. These units would be separated by a critical juncture, i.e. independence, starkly altering the evolution of political, social, and economic entities. However, the post-independence period in Africa and in the Middle East, even though glorified by various nationalist movements, did not witness such a paradigm shift. After all, the term post-colonial gained a foothold in our collective psyche, therefore emphasizing the colonial dimension and the self-imagination of newly created states. Yaniv Voller's Second-Generation Liberation Wars is a perfect example thereof. Focusing on secessionist movements in Northern Iraq and Southern Sudan, the book's main argument is that “conflicts that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century between postcolonial secessionist movements and their governments ended up reviving some of the realities of the struggle between national liberation movements and the European empires in the colonies in previous decades” (p. 4).
Secessionism and regionalism in post-colonial states remain a somewhat unexplored area of the social sciences, mainly because, in the so-called Global South, only the political centre has been deemed relevant to study. The uti possidetis principle, adopted by the Organization of African Unity in 1964 and maintaining the sanctity of colonial borders, also seems to have closed various debates on sovereignty. Moreover, conflicts taking place in post-colonial settings have been overwhelmingly analysed through the lenses of identity, economic marginality, and extraversion, but rarely in terms of unfinished ideational struggle about the nature of the colonial state. The book's major contribution is therefore to offer a new structural and global understanding, rooted in ideational history, of already well-known conflicts.
To do so, Voller rightly emphasizes the need to pay more attention to global ideas, discourses, and practices beyond a strictly utilitarian perspective too often assumed in political science (Chapter One). Following a growing trend in international relations to study practices and role conceptions, Second-Generation Liberation Wars offers to treat colonialism and decolonization as sets of practices to explain why post-colonial liberation movements in the 1960s adopted an anti-colonial framework to justify their cause. Voller's argument is based on an already well-developed body of the literature rooted in the nowadays untrendy structuralist tradition. While avoiding any deterministic conclusion, the book indeed insists on how the colonial structure “ended up shaping the identities, policies and strategies of parties to [post-colonial] conflict” (p. 55). By highlighting the importance of tacitly learnt social norms and absorbed practices, one might however regret that the author did not start a more in-depth conversation with the immaterial dimension of structuralism, emphasizing the ideological context within which actors compete with each other. For instance, Bourdieu's notion of habitus, defined as “a set of norms and expectations unconsciously acquired by individuals through experience and socialization”,Footnote 1 could have been usefully mobilized.
Chapter Two lays out the international historical context and the implementation of colonial practices, i.e. the ideational structure of colonialism, which had a long-lasting impact in Sudan and Iraq. It also analyses discourses and practices of what the author called the first-generation anti-colonial movement, fighting against European oppression. While this introduction to Third-Worldism and anti-colonial struggle is important for the non-specialist reader, it will be of limited interest to scholars familiar with imperial history. Similarly, the historical introduction to colonial practices in Sudan and Iraq does not aim to amend the existing literature; its sole purpose is to lay the ground for future developments.
Voller interestingly touches upon the idea of cognitional legacies between political generations, albeit without naming it,. He also emphasizes the importance of the transmission of ideologies between states (Chapter Three). While the post-colonial historiography highlights the heydays of nationalist movements in newly independent states, Voller reminds us that post-colonial elites reproduced the colonial structure of power and hierarchies. Educated elites, argues Voller, absorbed the “developmental state” mentality introduced by colonial institutions, even though the discourses of the elites promised a new era for a new nation. In turn, the excessive use of force, the underrepresentation of marginalized communities, and the hyper-centralization of power by a single party took place in the name of state-building and development. Critiques to such an approach on post-colonial politics would argue that it lacks a longue durée perspective on state formation and that too much weight is given to the colonial administration and to the international context, at the expense of long, local, and historical continuities. However, Voller rightly insists on how particular was the decolonial moment and how the last two decades of the colonial period were crucial to the making of post-colonial elites in Iraq and Sudan.
Post-colonial insurgents framed their rebellion as anti-colonial because “their experiences as part of the struggle against European colonialism taught them that it is by becoming anti-colonial liberation movements that they could be heard and achieve their goals” (p. 140). They subsequently developed anti-colonial discourses and tactics, not only for the sake of public diplomacy, but because insurgents’ actions were anchored within the broader intellectual frameworks of global anti-colonialism and non-alignment. Colonialism had indeed become synonymous with injustice in the so-called Third World. In Chapter Four, Voller describes remarkably how post-colonial liberation movements in Southern Sudan and Northern Iraq used the same norms, values, and guerrilla tactics deployed against the colonial authority to advance their own interests.
However, the anti-colonial strategy used by Kurdish and Southern Sudanese elites did not endure. To survive and prevail, liberation movements had to constantly evolve to fit within a new world order (Chapter Five). Here, Voller offers an interesting explanation for why liberation movements changed strategy at the end of the 1980s. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of Yugoslavia gave more room to negotiate secession and toned down anti-colonial ideas. Moreover, the need to demonstrate a capacity to govern became essential for any liberation movement willing to be supported by the international community. In turn, rather than anti-colonial struggle, liberal state-building became the strategy to adopt in order to achieve liberation. The author's study of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) is, to that end, very revealing. It shows perfectly the efforts of rebel leaders to create a social contract in the territories they control, something anti-colonial movements were not aiming at.
Voller's research demonstrates how fundamentally colonial the post-colonial period in Sudan and Iraq was, and how colonialism represented an important set of norms and practices post-colonial actors were relying on to frame their struggle. The book also emphasizes the relevance of studying generational practices and their impact on state trajectories. Moreover, the author invites the reader to think about going beyond a post-colonial order in African and Middle-Eastern politics, therefore indirectly questioning the assumptions of contemporary post-colonial studies. The 1980s indeed opened a new era for the post-colonial state. New global norms, rooted within post-cold war liberal peace-making, created new patterns of civil conflicts, new roles, and new practices that belligerents referred to. How, then, could one characterize this post-postcolonial period? The author barely touches upon this vast question in the conclusion, though admittedly doing so was certainly not the main purpose of the book.
Second-Generation Liberation Wars will be of interest to comparativists studying post-colonial conflicts, but also to scholars interested in successor states, international relations, and the meaning of liberation politics in the Global South. However, experts working on Southern Sudan and Iraq will find no new historical elements: the book relies mostly on well-known secondary sources, something the author is transparent about in the introduction. Methodologically, the research demonstrates how relevant in-depth case studies are in comparative politics and how in-depth inductive research can generate valid generalizations. To that extent it is surprising to read that the author insists the book is not a comparative project.
