LTC Michael F. Trevett
Microinsurgencies, small-scale armed conflicts over natural resources internal to one country, are not necessarily new. Although such conflicts involving natural resource wealth occurred in ancient times, little seems to have been studied and published about the interaction of these conditions and variables until the late 1900s. For example, the King Scorpion settled and united ancient Egypt in approximately 3150 BC, after centuries of fighting by “dozens of independent chieftains” over control of the Nile River. Whoever controls the Nile still controls the wealth of modern Egypt today. Other examples from the distant past are those of Portugal and Spain with their avarice for gold, silver, precious stones, silks, and spices, even slavery and human trafficking. According to Charles Chasteen, “the Iberian invaders…came to [the Americas] seeking success in the terms dictated by their society: riches, the privilege of being served by others, and a claim to religious righteousness.” Jasper Humphreys offers another example below.
The Portuguese adventurers often faced stiff local opposition to their gathering of the commodities they sought; to deal with this, the Portuguese frequently resorted to the tried-and-tested economics of capturing and ransoming local chiefs and notables. Sometimes these and other people were brought back to Portugal where they could make an economic contribution to the costs of the expedition [and resource exploitation] by being sold.
The article “Scarcity and Abundance Revisited: A Literature Review on Natural Resources and Conflict” explains, since the 1990s, the “body of literature devoted to analyzing the relationship between resources and conflict can be broadly divided into two groups: studies which focus on resource scarcity and conflict and studies that analyze the relationship between resource abundance and conflict.” The resource scarcity and conflict group has many more qualitative works using case studies. The resource abundance and conflict group instead overwhelmingly employs quantitative analysis and studies. Each of these groups has its own proponents and critics, but none identifies the unique category of microinsurgency.
Definitions
Intrastate Conflicts
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