Anarchism is a lot of work negotiating, setting standards and consequences, balancing forces. Constant politics without an overarching state. Any concentration of capability for violence or resource to be shared must be extremely carefully handled.
What you are describing is warlords filling a political vacuum caused by chaos.
Someone has been misrepresenting anarchism to you.
It does seem like a power vacuum if you are fully convinced that power needs to be centralized.
I am reminding the thread that the absence of distributed power is chaos, not anarchism.
Anarchism is anything BUT a power vacuum. All the power is carefully doled out via negotiation and in no way lacking.
Strong propaganda is devoted to supporting your presumption that power only exists when concentrated, so it does feel natural and common sense to say that.