Currently Reading: AK-47, The Weapon That Changed The Face of War. This charts the social, political and economic impact of a cheap, reliable small arms weapon on the world. Kahaner writes that the AK47 has become so ubiquitous:

In Somalia, as in many areas of the world, the price of an AK can be an indication of social stability. In a sign of optimism, the price of an AK dropped from $700 to between $300 and $400 after the Somali parliament elected Ahmed President.

Kahaner notes that the price rose again after Ahmed and his government remained in exile in Kenya and the need for individuals to defend themselves from gangs, thugs and political groups rose again.

Highly recommend this book. It is a good sociological study of how a new, cheap, democratized technology can have far-reaching effects in the nature of social instability.

As in Africa, after the US invasion of Iraq the market price of an AK47 became a good mechanism to determine confidence in social order. Kahaner writes:

As we've seen in many other countries, the street price of an AK is an accurate indicator of the degree of social order and citizen anxiety. In the months prior to the invasion [of Iraq] the price of an AK varied but stayed within the range of $150 to $300 ... During the worst disorder just after the fall of Baghdad in March and April 2003, prices plummeted as military inventories flooded the market.

About six months after the invasion the price of AK reverted to its pre-war amount. Apparently demand went up again once militia violence increased amongst the different sects and provinces. AKs from Iran and Syria started being imported to meet the pressure from buyers.

Liberia is an African nation that was established in the 19thC as a colony by former American slaves. It was relatively stable, though impoverished until 1980 when Samuel Doe gained power through a coup and ruled tyrannically. In 1989 Charles Taylor, with approximately one hundred rebels, invaded Liberia seeing opportunity under the increasing social instability of Doe's government.

Taylor added an innovation to modern civil warfare, Kahaner writes:

With Taylor, the world saw a different kind of warfare emerge. It consisted of paramilitary combatants, armed with light, cheap weapons, whose long term goal was not only to topple a government but to attack civilians en-masse along the way. These soldiers were permitted, even encouraged, to engage in any atrocity, including rape and ethnic slaughter, to terrorize the population and gain control.

Taylor recruited combatants by giving anyone who would swear allegiance to him a cheap automatic rifle and then allow them to use that new form of violence to plunder whatever they could from whomever they killed. This was not limited to enemy soldiers, it included civilians who would be terrorized, looted, pillaged, raped, mutilated, tortured; whatever took the thugs and gang's fancy. It is one of the repugnant areas of African geopolitics that the sheer inhumanity of man as an animal is so fervently on display.

Taylor's other innovation was to put cheap arms in the hands of children, often war orphans, who he dubbed his Small Boy Units. These children often manned checkpoints or would raid villages on the assumption they would receive cars, computers, and toys in return. Kahaner writes:

In a perverted context, child soldiers fit Taylor's needs perfectly. They were easy to recruit, naive enough to stay within the fold, and armed with an AK47, they were as lethal as an adult. ... Psychologically, child soldiers held other advantages. Youth made them feel invulnerable. Coupled with natural teen bravado and an undeveloped conscience, children offered a deadly combination in a guerilla fighter.

Western soldiers initially would refuse to shoot at children even though they were armed, until a group of Irish soldiers from a UN detachment were captured and held. From that point on Western soldiers have been indoctrinated to shoot at armed children during combat situations.

Taylor's innovation of armed children gangs ha spread to other parts of Africa with Sierra Leone being the poster child. During its civil war approximately 80% of the combatants were between the ages of seven and fourteen.

Violence has been a perennial issue in human history, but the weakening of the nation-state, or inversely its strength, has led to the state on state violence through an accepted form of moral code has gone from modern political warfare. Liberia offers examples of one of the most repugnant forms of civil and political violence.