Just Who is (not) a Warlord?

But why do we have so many people including experts in the field using the term warlord with a disturbing ease, even casually so? Is it not fair, at the very least to acknowledge that the term warlord is itself deeply problematic? Who are warlords? Are they political party heads, oligarchs (of all sorts), leaders of official and unofficial, legitimate and illegitimate armed groups including criminalized militaries (perhaps all of them or is there an official army in this world that is not in part a criminal enterprise?), conflict and/or violence entrepreneurs, ethnic mobilizers/heads, peace mercenaries etc? Are so called warlords not partly (if not always political), partly (if not always military) who doubles up as economic actors? If this is true, how are not many heads of state, at least, the criminalized ones (if not all) warlords? I would want to see someone argue and reach a valid conclusion why Uganda’s Joseph Kony is a warlord and Yoweri Museveni is not one, or how Afghanistan’s Karzai and not America’s Bush is one etc.