■ Simiyu, Robert Romborah, 2008. Militianisation of Resource Conflicts: The Case of Land-Based Conflict in the Mount Elgon Region of Western Kenya. Tshwane (Pretoria): Institute for Security Studies. 80 pp. ISBN 9781920114497
| Published date | 01 July 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433090460040816 |
| Author | Ole Magnus Theisen |
| Date | 01 July 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 46 / number 4 / july 2009
606
that contributed to the conflict. However, factors
such as the proliferation of small arms and the
lack of other means of making a living than agri-
culture are also raised. The case also demonstrates
the negative role of declining state interest in the
region by demonstrating how marginalization
resulted in the lack of state authority and griev-
ances towards the country’s ruling elite. Simiyu
describes how lack of state authority created a
power vacuum, leading to the radicalization of
the insurgents’ objectives, thus increasing the
scope of their actions, which in turn stimulated
the formation of local militias countering the
threat of insurgent soldiers. Thus, the book is also
an interesting case of conflict escalation. It could
have benefited from relating the conflict more to
national politics, which might have revealed some-
thing more general about land-related conflicts in
Kenya. All in all, however, the book should be of
interest to anyone interested in the relationship
between resource scarcity, distribution and con-
flict, or in conflict escalation.
Ole Magnus Theisen
Authors of Book Notes in this issue:
Johan Dittrich Hallberg – PRIO
Helge Holtermann – PRIO
David Isenberg – PRIO
Jørgen Jensehaugen – PRIO
Kjell Erling Kjellman – PRIO
Åshild Kolås – PRIO
Kristoffer Lidén – PRIO
Håvard M. Nygård – PRIO
Øystein H. Rolandsen – PRIO
Farrid Shamsuddin – PRIO
Pinar Tank – PRIO
Ole Magnus Theisen – PRIO
Henrik Urdal – PRIO
of judgement, such as when he joined the Arab
armies in the 1967 war, or when he was unable
to distance himself from Saddam Hussein before
it was too late. His hands were stained by Black
September, and his reputation as a supporter of
democracy is undeserved. Yet, his achievements
are nothing but astounding. His realist vision
and his willingness to time and again cross the
Rubicon by directly speaking to his ‘best of
enemies’, Israel, made him a rare pragmatist in
a conflict that is rooted in emotion. Shlaim has
been able to create a complex picture of an almost
mythical man by applying sharp analysis to an
impressively wide array of sources. It stands not
only as one of the greatest biographies of King
Hussein, but as one of the deepest analyses of the
Israeli–Jordanian–Palestinian triangle of diplo-
macy and conflict.
Jørgen Jensehaugen
Simiyu, Robert Romborah, 2008. Militiani-
sation of Resource Conflicts: The Case of Land-Based
Conflict in the Mount Elgon Region of Western
Kenya. Tshwane (Pretoria): Institute for Security
Studies. 80 pp. ISBN 9781920114497.
This book describes how land conflicts in the
Mount Elgon region in Western Kenya escalated
from clan-based land conflicts to a situation closely
resembling civil war. Viewing the conflict from
an Environmental Security perspective, Simiyu
argues that scarcity and distribution of land lie
at the heart of the conflict. However, he also
argues that this conflict, like most other Kenyan
land conflicts, follows a temporal pattern, imply-
ing that state-level actors are somehow involved in
the conflict or ambivalent about how to solve the
problems. The book illustrates how state resettle-
ment schemes intended to alleviate land scarcity
distorted inter- and intra-ethnic relations and by
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