This is the whole idea of a "failed state", no? How reliably have the states of Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, or Haiti been able to do as they please with their "own" people in their "own" territories? Just because our international order assumes the abstraction that every piece of territory belongs to some state with a monopoly on violence within it doesn't make it so. Plenty of places retain pre-state or non-state structures (tribes, clans, gangs, etc) that are more relevant to the individuals living there than the nominal state is. States are an emergent phenomenon, not the ground of political reality.
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This is the whole idea of a "failed state", no? How reliably have the states of Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, or Haiti been able to do as they please with their "own" people in their "own" territories? Just because our international order assumes the abstraction that every piece of territory belongs to some state with a monopoly on violence within it doesn't make it so. Plenty of places retain pre-state or non-state structures (tribes, clans, gangs, etc) that are more relevant to the individuals living there than the nominal state is. States are an emergent phenomenon, not the ground of political reality.
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