" a city broken into segments, each of them ruthlessly controlled by an alliance of militias”—then Kingston had evolved into something that could scarcely be called a city at all: from a distance, it might look like a single contiguous stretch of urban terrain, but in fact it was a balkanized patchwork of entrenched strongholds perpetually at war with each other. Within each stronghold the formal institutions of the Jamaican state were almost entirely absent, but nonstate armed groups (initially licensed by the dominant political party, but increasingly independent over time) exercised informal governance responsibilities, including law and order. "

― David Kilcullen , Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla