From Violence to Value: Examining the Structural Dynamics of Conflict-Driven Economies

By Hisham Yousif Abdelrahman
If the “new wars” have redefined the nature of conflict, and proxy wars have reshaped the way conflicts are managed, then the concept of the war economy explains one of the most important reasons why many contemporary conflicts endure. The central question is no longer how wars begin, but rather why they continue, even when the prospects for military victory diminish or opportunities for political settlement emerge.
Traditional strategic thinking has long regarded war as an exceptional condition that ends once its political or military objectives have been achieved. Yet the conflicts witnessed around the world since the end of the Cold War reveal a different pattern—one in which the end of war is not necessarily in the interests of all those involved. In many cases, war gradually ceases to be a means to an end and instead becomes an end in itself, evolving from a temporary event into an economic, political and social system capable of sustaining and reproducing itself.
Among the first scholars to offer an economic explanation for this transformation was Paul Collier. In his studies of civil wars, Collier distinguishes between “grievance”—which may explain the outbreak of conflict—and “greed”, which may explain its continuation. His thesis attracted considerable criticism for appearing to reduce civil wars to simple greed. Collier later clarified that his use of the term greed was not intended as a moral judgement but as an analytical concept referring to the economic incentives generated by a war economy, whereby the continuation of conflict becomes more beneficial to certain actors than its resolution. The concept therefore does not seek to assess motives or moral character; rather, it explains how economic incentive structures can perpetuate conflict long after its original political, social or ethnic causes have emerged.
From this perspective, the continuation of war no longer depends solely on the persistence of grievances, but on the ability of the parallel economy that develops during conflict to finance itself and reproduce its own interests. As these networks expand, war becomes less dependent on conventional sources of funding and increasingly capable of sustaining itself despite changing political and military circumstances.
David Keen takes this analysis a step further by advancing the important argument that violence does not always signify the breakdown of order. It can itself become an economic and political function. Disorder is not invariably the result of state failure; for some actors, it becomes the most advantageous environment for acquiring influence, redistributing resources and creating new centres of power that would be difficult to establish within a stable state.
This represents a fundamental shift in how war is understood. Rather than viewing conflict as an interruption to normal life, war becomes the framework within which the economy itself is reorganised. New financial and commercial activities emerge, while networks of supply, transport, brokerage, smuggling, taxation and informal economic activity develop. As a result, an increasing number of actors become invested not in ending the conflict but in maintaining the conditions that sustain it.
The greatest danger posed by a war economy lies not simply in the amount of money it generates, but in its capacity to create interlocking interests that make ending the conflict more costly for those who benefit from its continuation. Once war reaches this stage, a ceasefire alone is no longer sufficient to achieve peace, as the economic structures created over years of conflict continue to generate new incentives for violence.
The war economy therefore extends well beyond armed groups and direct combatants. Its effects often spread through broader networks where local, regional and international interests intersect, linking natural resources with trade routes, informal markets, financial flows, logistics, contracts and supply chains. The more deeply interconnected these interests become, the less susceptible the conflict is to military resolution, because its continuation depends not upon a single political or military decision but upon an entire system of mutually reinforcing interests.
In this context, Mary Kaldor’s theory of the new wars takes on an additional dimension. She argues that contemporary conflicts are no longer financed in the same manner as traditional interstate wars, but rather through hybrid economies that combine local resources, external support, and transnational networks. In this respect, her analysis converges with those of Collier and Keen on a central point: the continuation of war itself becomes essential to sustaining the economy that has emerged around it.
The impact of a war economy extends beyond financial considerations, reshaping the social and political order. Over time, patterns of production change, centres of influence shift, new interests emerge, and formal state institutions lose authority to more flexible—but less accountable—networks operating outside the rule of law. In such an environment, rebuilding the state becomes significantly more complex, since the challenge extends beyond ending armed conflict to dismantling the economic structures that sustained and prolonged it.
Here, the ideas of Gunnar Myrdal on the “soft state” intersect with Francis Fukuyama’s work on state-building. When formal institutions become unable to perform their basic functions, the space occupied by parallel economic networks expands. Consequently, the state’s ability to regain authority depends not only on restoring security but also on rebuilding its economic, administrative and legal institutions.
This analysis also resonates with Charles Tilly’s argument that states are not built through force alone but through their capacity to organise resources, enforce the rule of law and establish enduring relationships with society. Once resources shift into informal networks and economic authority moves outside state institutions, restoring state legitimacy becomes considerably more difficult—even after military operations have ceased.
From another perspective, Abdel Wahab El-Messiri offers an interpretation that helps explain how disorder can become an environment in which new forms of domination are reproduced—not through direct occupation, but through control over resources, markets, key sectors of the economy and the processes of reconstruction. In certain circumstances, managing disorder may prove more effective than managing stability because it allows power relations to be reshaped through less visible yet more durable means.
In this sense, the war economy is not simply one of the consequences of conflict; it becomes one of the principal factors explaining why conflict persists. The broader the network of interests connected to war becomes, the less likely it is that military solutions alone can bring it to an end. Peace itself becomes an economic and political project requiring the reconstruction of state institutions, the elimination of illicit sources of finance, and the reintegration of the parallel economy into the national economy.
Applied to the Sudanese context, this theoretical framework suggests that the conflict cannot be understood merely as a military confrontation between rival parties. Rather, it is a complex system in which resources, financing networks, geography, and local and regional actors intersect, making economics integral to the explanation rather than merely a consequence of the war. Any serious attempt to understand the conflict—or anticipate its future trajectory—must therefore examine not only the military balance of power but also the economic structures that have emerged during the conflict and the vested interests they have created, interests that cannot easily be dismantled through isolated political or military decisions.
This leads to an equally important question: if wars endure once they generate their own economic systems, why are some states better able to resist this transformation while others descend into a condition in which war becomes embedded within the very structure of the state?
Answering this question leads naturally to the next stage of this analytical framework: the state itself—not merely as an administrative apparatus, but as a system of legitimacy, institutions, society, and the capacity to generate national resilience.
To be continued.

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