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Payments made to non-state armed groups are often treated as predation. But rebel organizations deploy multiple logics when constructing their taxation systems, many of which cannot be reduced to extortion. Rebels also use taxation as a "technology of governance" to resolve a number of social and political challenges related to constructing a wartime order. Drawing on extensive subnational research in four distinct areas of control by a single organization, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah, we argue that two factors, political legitimacy and military control, determine whether taxes are extortive or deployed as a technology of governance. Our controlled comparison shows that rebels frequently implement a wider variety of taxes than commonly presumed and that these different categories of taxation are shaped by the larger social and political context in which the group operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reconstruction of stable political order after violent conflict is a central concern of peacebuilding theory and practice. While much of the literature on this subject is based on cases where there has been state collapse or international intervention, this article draws on a case study from India's northeast, where a long-standing separatist insurgency has given way to a stable and protracted ceasefire. Drawing on fieldwork from Ukhrul district in the India–Myanmar border, the article studies the parallel military structures and civilian governance institutions and the nature of their interaction. In doing so, it evaluates the consequences of the ceasefire political equilibrium in terms of the larger project of conflict resolution and a permanent political resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]