Rebels of the frontier: origins,organization, and recruitment of the Pakistani Taliban

The Pakistani Taliban, factionalized into some 40 groups, form a decentralized insurgent movement, often characterized by infighting, divergent motivations, and a shifting web of alliances. The Pakistani Taliban remain little understood because most scholars have avoided a serious treatment of the insurgent movement and instead focused on analyzing the geopolitics of the region and Pakistan's ‘double game’. This article seeks to fill this gap by dissecting the movement through selected theories of organization and mobilization. First, I explain the various dimensions of the conflict and the origins of the insurgency. Next, I discuss the Pakistani Taliban's political organization, categorizing it as composed of various warlord regimes. I further list the Taliban's component groups and numerical strength and chart the leadership structure. Lastly, I analyze insurgent recruitment strategies, accounting for the role of selective incentives, coercion, and genuine grievances.     

The Islamic insurgency in the Philippines

The Moro insurgency in the Philippines represents an interesting case of Islamically‐based insurgency with very differing roots and developments from the more widely studied Islamic movements in the Middle East. The Moro groups in the Philippines have displayed the difficulties in combining ethnic and religiously based ideologies of insurgencies. The insurgent groups have been marked by considerable factionalism and defections, but the government's counterinsurgency operations have been largely ineffective. Although neither the government nor the insurgent groups have ‘won’ the war, the Moros have gained significant autonomy from government control.     

Counterinsurgency and the limits of state-building: An analysis of Colombia's policy of territorial consolidation, 2006–2012

Since 2002 the Colombian government has been implementing a series of policy initiatives that have sought to coordinate state resources in a neo-classical counterinsurgency approach to fight the country's main insurgent group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and recover and consolidate the territory. Despite impressive operational successes against the insurgency and other illegal groups, the government has been unable to reassert its control and build legitimacy via the state-building effort known as ‘Consolidación’, in some of the most recalcitrant areas of the country. This article examines two areas where government efforts at consolidation appear to be failing to discuss the limits of COIN theory and practice.     

Forces of heresy versus forces of conservation: making sense of Hezb-e Islami-ye Afghanistan’s and the Taleban’s positions in the Afghan insurgency

Ethnicity and ideology are frequently used to determine whether an armed group is hostile or friendly vis-à-vis the state. By contrast, I argue that the social structure of insurgent movements holds more explanatory power for their respective positions than ethnicity or ideology. To illustrate this, I apply Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a contest between forces of ‘conservation’ and forces of ‘heresy’ to the current Afghanistan war. I demonstrate that the social structure of the Taleban renders them prone to ‘heresy’, while the formerly second biggest insurgent group, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party, has rather been an impeded force of ‘conservation.’     

Trading coups for civil war

This paper investigates civil conflict as a product of the survival strategies of African leaders. Specifically, the paper offers a theory of risk substitution that predicts coup-fearing leaders will undermine the military effectiveness of the state when making an effort to extend their own tenure. While ‘coup-proofing’ practices have often been noted as contributors to political survival, considerably less attention has been paid to the influence of these strategies on other forms of conflict. Utilising data from a number of cross-national datasets, the analyses show that having a higher number of ‘coup-proofing’ counterweights significantly worsens a state's civil conflict prospects. A brief consideration of multiple episodes of conflict further suggests that in addition to coup-proofing undermining the counterinsurgency capacity of the state, some leaders are simply indifferent to – or can even potentially benefit from – the existence of an insurgency.     

Controlling the Sunni Insurgency in Iraq: ‘Political’ and ‘Military’ Strategies from Successful Counterinsurgency in Punjab – India

This article examines the ‘political’ and ‘military’ strategies used by the Indian state successfully to quell the Sikh insurgency in Punjab, and applies these lessons to controlling the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. At a conceptual level, this article argues that insurgencies are both a ‘military’ and ‘political’ phenomenon, and that ways to quell them can be either ‘military’ or ‘political,’ or a combination thereof. At the empirical level, this article argues that stability cannot be restored to Iraq until Sunni political actors are effectively brought into the mainstream political process through either ‘military’ or ‘political’ means, or a combination thereof. The analysis in this article provides substantive depth and detail to these otherwise seemingly straightforward propositions.     

The Fire Within: Naxalite Insurgency Violence in India

India is at a crossroads today. While it is fast emerging as a global power with a vibrant democratic polity, a robust economy and a nuclear-weapons capable military, the country is also witnessing a growing polarisation between the rich and poor and between urban and rural areas, a rise in communal tensions, large numbers of suicides by impoverished and indebted farmers and a spurt in terrorist activities and attacks by various disgruntled organisations and groups. Of these various challenges, as attested to by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself, the most dangerous threat to India's territorial integrity, prosperity and wellbeing has come from the Naxalite insurgency or ‘people's war’ that is manifest in large areas of eastern, central and southern India. But what factors account for the formation and persistence of Naxalite insurgency in India? What are the key objectives of the Naxalites and why is violence directed against the Indian State? And how has the Indian State (both central and state governments) responded to the Naxalite insurgency and with what effect? These are the main research questions that we attempt to answer in this paper. We put forward two broad arguments. First, the Naxalite insurgency in India is the latest manifestation of peasant struggles caused by grinding poverty, exploitation and inequality that have prevailed in rural areas for centuries. What sustains these struggles to this day is the fact that socio-economic conditions in rural areas have changed little and the policies followed by the post-independent Indian State have generally failed to mitigate rural problems. Second, the Naxalite insurgency has emerged as the most dangerous threat mainly due to the movement's spatial spread, growing support base in tribal and backward areas and enhanced fighting capabilities. The Indian State has viewed the movement as a ‘law and order’ problem and responded with force. But a ‘law and order’ approach to the Naxalite insurgency is unlikely to produce a lasting resolution of the problem, since it would not effectively redress deep-rooted grievances felt by a majority of India's rural poor for decades.     

Understanding women at war: a mixed-methods exploration of leadership in non-state armed groups

ABSTRACT

Recent efforts aimed at understanding women’s contributions to nonstate armed groups have produced large-scale data sets on female combatants (Wood and Thomas 2017) and more limited data on women’s roles as supporters and leaders in armed groups (Henshaw 2016; 2017, Loken 2018). The present study aims to build on this literature by providing new data on the scope of women’s leadership in insurgent groups. While existing quantitative literature has focused mostly on the experience of female combatants, we argue that the presence of women in leadership roles is crucial to understanding how gender might influence the outcomes of insurgency. We introduce new data on over 200 insurgent groups active since World War II. While our analysis confirms earlier small-sample work demonstrating women’s presence in leadership roles, a qualitative analysis reveals that leadership is often gendered–revealing patterns of tokenization and tracking women to low-prestige leadership roles. At the same time, our findings challenge past research on jihadist organizations, showing limited expansion in the authority of women.     

Counterinsurgency and Operational Art

Addressing insurgency requires the same application of operational art as utilized in conventional warfare planning. Counterinsurgency strategy will be driven by the nature of the insurgent movement, with campaigns constructed to use tactics appropriately so that key facets of the insurgent campaign are neutralized. It is especially important to determine whether terror is used as a tactic (a method of action) by an insurgency or as a stand-alone strategy (a logic of action) by a challenger divorced from a mass base. Insurgencies, in turn, will normally emphasize strategically either winning allegiance of the target population or using violence as a substitute for other methods. Each of these approaches requires the weighting of the appropriate campaign elements of the counterinsurgency strategy. Sri Lanka, having faced both approaches, is an especially useful case study.     

Clash of counterterrorism-assistance-seeking states and their super power sponsors: Implications on the war against Boko Haram

ABSTRACT

Decade-long security cooperation and counterterrorism engagements in Nigeria have failed to bring down Boko Haram or at least weaken its terrorist structures and transnational spread. I argue that disconnects between counterterrorism-assistance seeking states and their superpower sponsors are implicated in the intractability of Boko Haram's insurgency in Nigeria. Why is the U.S. counterterrorism intervention to individual MNJTF countries (i.e. troop contribution, military funding and intelligence support) ‘lopsided’, ‘fragmented’ and ‘unevenly distributed;’ and how are these implicated in the fight against Boko Haram terrorism? This has impacted negatively on MNJTF countries – lack of cooperation, divisiveness and individualism in coordinating and forging offensives against Boko Haram. These concerns interface several blind spots in the picture of external influences on military’s approach to Boko Haram. I elicit primary data from top military officers. I conclude by predicting the implications and consequences of these counterterrorism complexities, and their potency to defeat or encourage Boko Haram terror.     

Evaluating insurgent/counterinsurgent performance

Evaluating Insurgent/Counterinsurgent Performance ‘starts on the streets’, so to speak. Specifically, the five rules of assessment are common sense: (1) become familiar with the area in question; (2) slice up the analytical target into manageable slices; (3) carry out longitudinal studies; (4) look at the role played by ideas in this political warfare; and (5) assess the relationship between structural and purposive elements. Though various efforts have been made to quantify outcome, these have not been particularly successful and encourage emphasis upon process at the expense of analysis. The most common flaw in assessments is to view insurgency in static perspective. Societal causes are a necessary but not sufficient factor in upheaval. Once the insurgency becomes a going concern, organizational dynamics become important. Similar factors obtain on the counter‐insurgent side. In the end, both compete for domination of human terrain.     

The Kennedy Administration,US Foreign Internal Security Assistance and the Challenge of ‘Subterranean War’, 1961–63

US foreign internal security assistance, that is, support to ‘Free World’ governments threatened by subversion, terrorism, and insurgency, formed a central part of the Kennedy administration's strategy for defeating ‘wars of national liberation’. As part of the administration's counterinsurgency policy, support to police and paramilitary forces abroad was intended to improve the ability of friendly governments to identify and root our perceived threats to the states. Under the tenets of modernization theory embraced by administration officials, strong internal security forces were expected to contribute to nation-building by protecting the fragile development process underway in the developing world. However, in attempting to export the American police model, policymakers failed to consider whether US notions about internal security were appropriate for fractious and unstable regions of the world.     

‘Ser Eleno’: Insurgent identity formation in the ELN

In conflict studies, identity has been posited as an explanatory factor of the resilience of insurgencies. This article focuses on the identity formation of the National Liberation Army (ELN), a leftist insurgency group in Colombia. As a Marxist–Leninist organisation, the ELN aims to overcome capitalism. In their perception, this is possible via the transformation of the individual into a ‘collective personality’. Along the dimensions of ‘content’ and ‘contestation’, we will demonstrate the mechanisms they impose for such identity formation. Identity, as we will argue, is a main factor in explaining why people participate in this insurgency and thereby enhance its resilience.     

The strategic utility of New Zealand Special Forces

In 1955, the New Zealand government authorised the creation of a Special Forces unit to operate with British forces in Malaya to counter a communist-inspired guerrilla insurgency. Drawing upon the operational experiences of the New Zealand SAS largely taken from the Cold War period, and underpinned by Colin Gray's Special Forces essentials of ‘economy of force’ and ‘expansion of choice’, this article will show how New Zealand's SAS is now accepted not only as a respected and relevant part of the nation's military capability, but also empowers its political decision-makers with the confidence to take on significant, and at times difficult, strategic foreign-policy choices.     

Imperial nostalgia,the liberal lie,and the perils of postmodern counterinsurgency

Since 9/11, counterinsurgency is back in fashion; the ‘war on terror’ has even been branded a ‘global counterinsurgency’. However the context within which counterinsurgency originally arose is critical to understanding the prospects for its present success; the radically changed environment in which it is currently being conducted casts into considerable doubt the validity of the doctrine's application by many national militaries currently ‘rediscovering’ this school of military thought today. Above all, classical counterinsurgency was a profoundly imperial, state-centric phenomenon; consequently it only rarely faced the thorny issue of sovereignty and legitimacy which bedevils and may doom these same efforts today.     

Building Legitimacy: Interactional Dynamics and the Popular Evaluation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey

Abstract

Previous research has identified a variety of general mechanisms to explain how insurgents build legitimacy. Yet, there is often a gap between these mechanisms and the interactional dynamics of insurgencies. This article attempts to bridge this gap through a theoretically informed analysis of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) insurgency in Turkey. I show how the PKK’s efforts to cultivate legitimacy, Turkey’s counterinsurgency strategies, and civilian perceptions of the PKK, all mutually influenced one another. Based on this analysis, I argue that the mechanisms that produce popular legitimacy coevolve with insurgents’ behaviors, states’ interventions, and civilians’ perceptions.     

Taking advantage of insurgencies: effective policies of state-sponsorship

Taking insurgency sponsorship as an instrument states have available for achieving foreign policy objectives, I consider how state-sponsors could best manipulate their support to maximize control of the proxy group. Building on research that models the state-sponsor–insurgent relationship using a principal–agent framework, I identify two key vulnerabilities to which the state-sponsor is exposed: adverse selection and agency slack. As an original contribution to the literature on state-sponsorship of insurgency, I articulate reasons why certain forms of support would be most conducive to overcoming these problems and illustrate how South Africa and Iran used those kinds of support to influence the behavior of their proxies, RENAMO and Hezbollah. Additionally, I consider how this principal–agent analysis of insurgency sponsorship also could apply when the principal is an international terrorist organization such as al Qaeda. Finally, I address the relevance of these ideas to two contemporary conflicts taking place in Syria and the Congo.     

Boko Haram insurgency and gendered victimhood: women as corporal victims and objects of war

ABSTRACT

Boko Haram insurgency in North East Nigeria has exposed women (girls, ladies, and mothers) to a complex jeopardy. While some women have suffered untimely widowhood or child-lack as a result of the Boko Haram onslaught, others have suffered death, forced abduction, and allied assaults on the main and side lines of the insurgency. Oftentimes, women have faced direct violence that essentially degrade their humanity. This is evident in the deployment of women as war-front sex slaves, human shields, and suicide bombers by the insurgents. The virtual expendability of women in the context of Boko Haram insurgency has been vividly demonstrated by the gale of female suicide bombings in Nigeria over the recent years. By means of a textual and contextual analysis of library sources and/or documentary data, as well as an adroit application of the theory of objectification, this study posits that, in addition to suffering collateral vulnerabilities, women have equally been instrumentalized as objects of terror in the context of Boko Haram insurgency. The paper further argues that the ‘weaponization’ of women’s bodies as bomb vessels and human shields by the insurgents highlights the height of women’s corporal victimization and objectification in contemporary asymmetric warfare.