R.J. Godlewski's The Independent Counterterrorist. I, Militia. June ...

ights and the de facto property rights of
slum dwellers who often live off the informal
economy and are typically outside the orbit of
state largesse, if not state control.
• “The spread of geographical and social ‘no go
areas’ where the rule of law no longer extends.” 15
Notions of ungoverned spaces or lawless areas
increasingly have been seen as a dangerous
phenomenon, especially because they provide
safe havens for terrorists. In fact, many of them
are not so much ungoverned as alternatively
governed by groups which act as surrogates for
the state. The “dons” in the slums of Kingston,
Jamaica, for example, are not merely the heads
of drug trafficking organizations; they are also
the social and economic patrons of marginalized
people who have little or no assistance from
the state. As John Rapley has noted, the dons
provide “a rudimentary welfare safety net by
helping locals with school fees, lunch money,
and employment—a function that the Jamaican
government used to perform. But over the last
couple of decades, keen to reduce spending,
it has scaled back many of its operations,
leaving a vacuum. As one kind of authority has
withdrawn, another has advanced.” 16 While
particularly stark in Jamaica, this phenomenon
is also present in many other countries.
• “A growing disarticulation between the
dynamic and technologically innovative north
and the south.” 17 At one level, this observation
is very compelling—and is hard to disagree
with. Yet, within the south, there are varying
degrees of growth and deprivation. Paul Collier,
for example, has noted that there is “a group of
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