Insurgent Nations by Paula Cristina Roque is poised to earn a prominent place in the literature on rebel governance, a sub-field of International Relations which has developed strongly in the last two decades. The book presents a comparison between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) and the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), based on a broad review of the available literature and a substantial body of sources collected on the field. These solid empirical foundations give credibility to the author’s analysis and lead her to very insightful conclusions.

Research on rebel governance is driven by the need to understand why rebel movements permanently occupy territory and establish a system of governance. A second set of questions pertains to the features of these ‘parallel states’, an expression that needs to be understood as a general term indicating an ‘exercise of institution-building, social engineering and creating symbolism of counter-sovereignty’ (p. 18). The third, and sometimes overlooked, aspect deals with the consequences of rebel rule on the reconfigurations of governance in post-conflict settings. Roque manages to tackle all these aspects and frames them in a historical context, covering the whole life span of the SPLM/A and UNITA up to now.

The comparison between the SPLM/A and UNITA seems well-founded in many respects. Though the Angolan insurgency is older than its Sudanese counterpart, both fought prolonged struggles in roughly the same period, pursuing a long-term reformist agenda. Led by charismatic personalities who acted both as commander-in-chief and political leader, they were first and foremost formidable military machines able to occupy sizeable portions of their respective countries for several years. The need to establish a civil administration did not emerge by default from the enlargement of ‘liberated areas’, however, but was the result of deliberate choices taken following critical junctures faced by both movements.

Roque emphasises the different aspects of rebels’ agency, countering a common narrative seeing insurgent groups as puppets manipulated by great powers or proxies for regional rivalries. At the same time, agency emerges in her account as a relational condition, permanently negotiated with multiple actors at different scales, be them local chiefs or international NGOs. Overall, what emerges from Insurgent Nations is that both movements under examination faced several constraints in structuring civil institutions, but the choices taken by their leadership resulted in starkly different outcomes in terms of effectiveness of governance, legitimacy and sustainability of their political vision in the long term.

John Garang and his comrades in the SPLM/A initially invested heavily in the establishment of a powerful army. They began building a political movement and a civil administration after more than a decade of war. Garang’s call for a united ‘New Sudan’ was feeble as a mobilising ideology, being out of tune with the independentist feeling of the majority of South Sudanese. To lend legitimacy into its civil administration, the SPLM/A co-opted local chiefs while still subjecting them to military oversight. Service delivery was sub-contracted to UN agencies and NGOs. Overall, it was a decentralised system without a prior concentration of political authority, compensated only by military coercion. After Garang’s unexpected death following the peace agreement, the SPLM/A’s weak political legitimacy and haphazard institutionalisation became serious liabilities for South Sudan’s state-building efforts, contributing – among other factors – to its failure.

Born out of a more ideologized struggle for independence, UNITA developed a more articulate political discourse. Unlike the SPLM/A, Angolan rebels held multiple congresses over the years to define their ideological stance and political strategy. Roque devotes several pages to analysing the story of Jamba, a city built by UNITA in one of Angola’s most remote regions. More than just a headquarters, Jamba was a socio-political experiment designed to embody an alternative governance model. Propaganda and mass political indoctrination went hand-in-hand with service delivery, giving concrete shape to Savimbi’s vision even as war raged on.

The SPLM/A nearly won the war and secured independence but tragically lost the peace soon thereafter. UNITA, in disarray following Savimbi’s killing in 2002, surrendered to the government. However, its strong political identity enabled it to reinvent itself as a legitimate opposition party and gradually rebuild its popular consensus.

What emerges from Insurgent Nations is a call to take seriously the political discourse and governance experiments of rebel movements. Though they may seem irrelevant or merely instrumental amid military operations, they are crucial in shaping the long-term outcomes of insurgencies. Today’s gains, when achieved solely through the barrel of a gun, may become tomorrow’s pains if not accompanied by functioning institutions, schools and roads.