Kleptocracy and Its Warring Contents

Abstract

Abstract This chapter discusses how the heavy reliance on militarism helped expand patronage networks and create even more insecurity and instability in the political system. It argues that such patronage, reflected the emerging link between kleptocracy and the civil war in which the national government and armed factions came to share economic and personal incentives to fight. In this way, the informal economy of armed conflict had become increasingly entwined with the national war economy, as the government used state assets and resources (e.g., oil production) to pay tribal-based militias to fight the opposition. The chapter shall analyze this trend, the dynamics of corruption, the lack of transparency of the oil sector, the leaders’ fateful decision to shut off its oil pipelines, and the impact of targeted sanctions imposed by the United States and the United Nations..