The post-cold war era has seen an unmistakable trend toward the proliferation of violent non-state groups-variously labeled terrorists, rebels, paramilitaries, gangs, and criminals-near borders in unstable regions especially. In Borderland Battles, Annette Idler examines the micro-dynamics among violent non-state groups and finds striking patterns: borderland spaces consistently intensify the security impacts of how these groups compete for territorial control, cooperate in illicit cross-border activities, and replace the state in exerting governance functions. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with more than 600 interviews in and on the shared borderlands of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, where conflict is ripe and crime thriving, Idler reveals how dynamic interactions among violent non-state groups produce a complex security landscape with ramifications for order and governance, both locally and beyond. A deep examination of how violent non-state groups actually operate with and against one another on the ground, Borderland Battles will be essential reading for anyone involved in reducing organized crime and armed conflict-some of our era's most pressing and seemingly intractable problems.

"provides an intriguing combination of political science analysis and ethnographic research, merging multisite participative observation and theoretically informed models of sociopolitical governance, and mobilizing an impressive deal of documental, archival, statistical, and oral information ... Idler's intellectual contribution is undisputable. Borderland Battles should be commended for the vast amount of material and the multidisciplinary strategies pursued in amassing a vivid image of borderland regions and, despite the label, their centrality for understanding core dynamics and developments." - Javier Puente, H-Borderlands

"Unlike much political science and mainstream media narratives that show us a Colombian state struggling to regain security and overcome criminality in its margins, Idler's book shows us how it is relationships between guerrillas, paramilitaries and criminal gangs in the "marginal" borderlands - which truly compose the core regions of an informal, transnational, non-state governance system - that is a missing key to understanding the totality of security in Colombia." - Charles Beach, Border Criminologies