Nonconventional Logistics: Rebellion, Resources and Rationalities in eastern Congo

Abstract

Research on war economies is dominated by positivist paradigms of rationality and epistemic assumptions of alterity. Such frames misread how rebellions pursue strategies of revenue generation. Entrepreneurial activity in conflict and its impact on political order oscillates between ideology and pragmatism. In the context of the Congolese wars – currently involving over 100 armed groups – belligerents weigh between opportunity and need, leading to contextual and diverse forms of rationality. In so doing, they combine subsistence with revenue-maximising accumulation. Coined by one peculiar armed group in eastern Congo, the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), the notion of ‘nonconventional logistics’ (LNC) has come to be a euphemistic moniker for revenue generation. In a nutshell, LNC describes insurgents’ attempts to inscribe political governance and economic need into strategies of unmaking authority, including techniques of resource extraction, population control, territorial aspirations and the production of political order amidst insecurity. Revisiting contemporary political economies of conflict, this paper investigates LNC as a specific emic category of belligerent entrepreneurship. Based on long-term ethnography and archival research, the paper demonstrates the imbricated relationships between violence, business and political order amidst protracted war to develop a novel, evidence-based critique of dominant theories about the nexus between resources and conflict.