‘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 Millenials’ war: dilemmas of network dependency in today’s military

This work is about how the United States military has become dependent on networked technology. As arguably the largest contributor to national security, it has become so dependent that its chief doctrine integrates networked technology into nearly every specialty, with particularly intense focus on Network Centric Warfare. As the military’s old guard is replaced by the highly technical Millenial Generation, there is cause to pause when assuming this techno-acuity brings nothing but advantage and success. Vulnerabilities stemming from such extensive dependence offer opportunities for exploitation that have not gone unnoticed. The first step to moving forward from this point is to fully understand the extent to which the military has become dependent on computer networks. It might be the Millenials’ war today, but it would be quite unwise for the United States military to think about it and fight it in a purely Millenial way.     

‘What is in a Name?’: The Role of (Different) Identities in the Multiple Proxy Wars in Syria

Abstract

Post-uprisings Middle East politics is frequently described as a ‘regional cold war’ involving proxy warfare that emphasises the role of shared identities linking external and local actors. But does the ‘content’ of identities impact proxy war dynamics? This article considers the present ‘battle for Syria’, a local conflict that became a theatre for multiple proxy wars involving actors emphasising identities on various levels, most notably national, religious/ sect and ethnic. It suggests that identity content does matter, with global powers more reluctant than regional players to back groups identifying at sub-national level, while foreign non-state actors are enthusiastic backers of sub-national identity.     

The Weight of the Past(s): The Impact of the Bundeswehr’s Use of Historical Experience on Strategy-Making in Afghanistan

This article seeks to explain the basic dynamics of the development of the German military approach in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2010 by looking at the impact of the Bundeswehr’s established uses of historical experience. First, the German military approach in Afghanistan has slowly evolved from a peacebuilding and mediation mission towards a full-fledged combat deployment. Second, the Bundeswehr’s exclusive focus on the World War II experience has contributed to the emergence of the Balkans experience as a formative experience that shaped initial operational thinking in Afghanistan. Third, because a thorough debate on the historical foundation of counterinsurgency remained absent, the operational shift in 2009 was perceived as a return to ‘classical’ military tasks and thus led to an almost exclusive focus on training for combat.     

‘Masters of today’: military intelligence and counterinsurgency in Colombia, 1990–2009

Military intelligence forms a vital element of counter-insurgency operations. When the Colombian military suffered setbacks at the hands of the FARC in the 1990s, military intelligence received much of the blame. It was also accused of human rights violations. With the help of US. financed Plan Colombia, military intelligence has been reorganized, expanded, strengthened with upgraded technical capabilities, constrained to operate within defined legal boundaries, and refocused to match the government's strategic priorities. Human intelligence has laid the groundwork for impressive tactical and operational results since 2006. Nevertheless, like all intelligence services, that of the Colombian military continues to experience problems of structure and political outlook.     

From Rebel to Quasi-State: Governance,Diplomacy and Legitimacy in the Midst of Afghanistan’s Wars (1979–2001)

Abstract

How do warlords build their legitimacy and eventually exert authority? The case of Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud demonstrates that warlords do not only build legitimacy through the internal provision of goods and services to the population under their control, but also build their legitimacy by projecting authority externally, through the development of their own form of diplomacy. In this article, I show that warlords develop complex and complementary legitimisation strategies that extend beyond their territorial realms to include consequential relationships with foreign actors.     

Reclaiming the Party’s Control of the Gun: Bringing Civilian Authority Back in China’s Civil-Military Relations

ABSTRACT

Since emerging as China’s top leader following the 18th Party Congress, Xi Jinping has moved swiftly to consolidate his formal authority as Central Military Commission chairman over the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In redressing the civil-military imbalance wrought by Dengist economic reforms, the commander-in-chief has combined institutional mechanisms with the use of fear to impose authoritative civilian control over the military. This paper proposes that a combination of changes to the Chinese strategic environment has contributed to Xi’s utility of the anti-corruption campaign to purge the regime’s coercive forces of its previous underpinnings, and advances that the war on military malfeasance has given rise to a new set of dynamics in civil-military relations in post-Reform China.     

Soldiers contra diplomats: Britain’s role in the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia ceasefire (1979–1980) reconsidered

Abstract

This article re-examines part of the literature on Britain’s role in the December 1979 to March 1980 Zimbabwe/Rhodesia ceasefire. The ceasefire ushered in an era of peace after a protracted internal war and it was an integral part of the transition from colonial white minority rule, towards black majority independence. Scholars present Britain’s success in brokering and monitoring the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia ceasefire as the result of its judicious and accordant management of the road to peace. However, this article argues that in fact deep internal divisions plagued the British managers of the ceasefire. Internal divisions centred on authority struggles between diplomats and military actors, conflicting personalities, discordant approaches to and goals in the ceasefire, and inter-institutional rivalry between the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. The article concludes that Britain only managed the ceasefire effectively because its military’s independence, political nous, and competence ultimately prevailed over the injudicious views and machinations of diplomats.     

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.’     

Soldiering the terrain of war: Zimbabwean soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2002)

The paper reveals how Zimbabwean soldiers who fought in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2002) were challenged by the terrain of war. While soldiers are trained to live and fight in dreadful wars, I argue that immersing oneself in the war terrain is neither mathematical nor calculative; rather, war tactics to be employed are defined by the context in which soldiers operate in. When soldiers reflect on and about the war, they unconsciously produce accounts that are often not completely heroic, but a life lived in fear as well an issue that they had never anticipated when they set out to war. A main finding of this study is that while these soldiers were deployed to fight against the rebels, they find difficulties in locating physical features from map reading to the ground, distinguishing the enemy from civilian people and deployed for days without eating a proper meal as well as seeing their fellow soldiers dying in the context of war. The paper provides a vantage point in which we can also understand that trained soldiers do not exert total power over war terrains, they are sometimes challenged by the war situation itself.     

Local perceptions of the EU’s role in peacebuilding: The case of security sector reform in Palestine

ABSTRACT

Perception research can make a valuable contribution to the study of the local dimension in EU peacebuilding. The conceptual framework developed in this article distinguishes between perceptions of the “legitimacy,” “effectiveness,” and “credibility” of EU peacebuilding practices, which are crucial factors for successful peacebuilding. Relying on the case of the EU’s support for security sector reform (SSR) in Palestine, this article shows that local stakeholders—which participate in various EU-sponsored training and capacity-building programs—display considerable support for liberal peacebuilding norms. Yet, perceived discrepancies between the EU’s peacebuilding rhetoric and its SSR activities have severely undermined the potential of the EU’s liberal peacebuilding model in the eyes of Palestinian stakeholders. Critical local perceptions are frequently articulated with reference to the EU’s own liberal peacebuilding discourse, pointing to a lack of inclusiveness of the SSR process and deficits in terms of democratic governance and the rule of law.     

Callwell versus Graziani: how the British Army applied ‘small wars’ techniques in major operations in Africa and the Middle East, 1940–41

The period from December 1940 through to the spring of 1941 saw the British Army win a series of rapid and decisive victories over Italian and Vichy French forces in North and East Africa and the Middle East. A key feature of these operations was the extensive British use of fast-moving all-arms mobile formations utilising superior speed and mobility to out-manoeuvre considerably larger Italian formations. A number of reasons have been given for the British Army adopting this mode of warfare, but the paper contends that the best explanation is that they were an organic evolution from methods used by the British Army in ‘small wars’ throughout the early twentieth century, use of mobile ‘frontier columns’ at the operational and tactical level of war being described and recommended by Callwell himself and visible with the Army in practice in operations in India and the Middle East in particular. The inter-war period saw the combination of this model of warfare with post-First World War military technology, notably tanks, close air support and coordination by wireless. Colonial operations in this period also saw some utilisation of what would later be identified as ‘Special Forces’ – also used extensively in the Desert War – the most obvious example being Captain Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads in Palestine in 1938.     

Challenges of institutional coordination in complex defense acquisition programs: the case of the Republic of Korea’s F-X program

Decision-making in defense acquisition programs in the Republic of Korea (ROK) has been problematic, especially in highly advanced complex systems. The highly disputed force modernization program for the ROK Air Force’s fifth-generation fighter, dubbed the Fighter eXperiment, went through extreme turbulence during the type selection phase. The gist of the turbulence became evident through poor institutional coordination within the defense acquisition authorities that eventually forced them to rescind the decision generated from their own yearlong efforts, thus basically shooting themselves on the foot. The paper highlights the background of the program and reviews the institutional elements that influenced the decision-making process, and conclude that the absence of an effective coordination mechanism has made decision-making in complex defense programs even more troublesome.     

Allies at arm’s length: Redefining Egyptian–Soviet relations in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war

This article examines Egyptian–Soviet relations in the run up to the 1967 Arab–Israeli war. It argues that Egypt and the Soviet Union stumbled into brinkmanship with little coordination and no agreement on common objectives or goals. The article demonstrates how frustration and mutual disappointment were recurring features of the interactions between the two allies during the critical weeks prior to the war. In doing so, the article exposes new aspects of how Cairo and Moscow managed their alliance and assesses what that means to our understanding of the origins of this transformative war. These conclusions challenge revisionist accounts that attribute the start of the war to Egyptian–Soviet collusion and some traditional narratives that present the Soviet Union as an enterprising risk-taker invested in regional brinkmanship. The article draws heavily on Egyptian and Arabic language sources to examine Egyptian–Soviet interactions during this key period of Middle Eastern history.     

The security sector and the plunder of Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa alluvial diamonds: the ‘goat mentality’ in practice

While the human rights impact of the deployment of state security agencies in the Chiadzwa diamond fields has been explored, it is important to continue to expose the increasing tendency within the sector to take public resources that should be protected by the state and used for the benefit of the people and channel them for personal gain. The security sector stranglehold of President Robert Mugabe and the ruling political party, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), has facilitated the siphoning of Chiadzwa diamond revenue into the pockets of individual security personnel. The unfolding sociopolitical crisis in Zimbabwe has also meant that these security personnel have been deployed beyond conflict zones and into traditionally civilian domains, with dire consequences for the public purse. With this in mind, it is asserted that these issues have driven state security agencies to enrich themselves through what is termed in this article as a ‘goat mentality’. The article thus explores the ways in which state security agencies have been deployed and gone on to promote personal enrichment in the Chiadzwa diamond fields.     

The rhetoric and practice of the international responsibility to prevent mass atrocities: Reflections on South Africa’s peacebuilding role in South Sudan (2005–2013)

While global consensus on the meaning and application of the responsibility to protect (R2P) principle remains tenuous, there is little contention among major actors that the development of the norm should prioritise the prevention of mass atrocities. In particular, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) – which have a role to play that is vital to the future development of R2P as a global norm but which continue to express reservations about the intent and application of the doctrine – have been strong advocates of the preventive aspects of the principle. This rhetorical consensus, however, belies the conceptual and practical challenges that are associated with the prevention of mass atrocities. In this paper, the example of South Africa’s post-conflict reconstruction and development (PCRD) interventions in South Sudan from 2005 to 2013 is used to reflect on the role of external actors in supporting conflict-affected states to implement the preventive aspects of R2P. It is argued that while South Africa, like other BRICS countries, has used the rhetoric that atrocity prevention should be at the core of R2P to legitimise its opposition to military intervention for humanitarian purposes, it has struggled to back this rhetoric with coherent strategies and concrete actions to prevent mass atrocity crimes within its sphere of influence. The gap between rhetoric and practice in the preventive aspects of R2P is not unique to South Africa, but highlights fundamental difficulties inherent to global efforts to prevent mass atrocities.     

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.     

The Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001): ‘War-Making and State-Making’ as an Insurgency Strategy

This paper examines the institutional and functional aspects of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). The Taliban’s coercive approach and its entire reliance on “war-making” to “state-making” shows the difficulty of the transformation of an insurgent group into a state structure. The Taliban was primarily capable of establishing a two-track system of governance. However, the assessment of the IEA’s institutional and functional capabilities shows that the military–political organization formed by the Taliban lacked statehood in all three areas of legitimacy, authority and capacity.     

The fertile ground of Hell’s carnival: Charles T. R. Bohannan and the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps’ investigations of war criminals,collaborators, and the Huk,in the Philippines 1945–1947

Insurgencies thrive in regions where government legitimacy is absent. In the post-war Philippines, Captain Charles T. R. Bohannan of the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps became actively aware of this dynamic. Bohannan is best known for his later work with Edward Lansdale and Ramon Magsaysay in defeating the Huk Rebellion (1950–1954). Here the author examines Bohannan’s early investigative work against Japanese war criminals, wartime Filipino collaborators, and the rising threat of communist subversion most associated with the Huk. All of these experiences fed into what would be the successful campaign against the Huk, chronicled in his seminal work, Counter Guerrilla Operations: The Philippines Experience, and offers lessons on the investigative (as opposed to tactical or psychological) nature of effective counter-insurgency work, as it relates to both legitimacy in governance and the rise of insurgencies.     

Beginning of the End: ARVN and Vietnamisation (1969–72)

The ‘Nixon Doctrine,’ announced on 25 July 1969, which emphasised the singularity of US interest over all others, was a reflection of US war weariness and the President Richard Nixon's political constraints. The net effect was the unilateral withdrawal of troops in phases and Vietnamisation returning combat responsibilities to the South Vietnamese. Indeed, negotiations and diplomacy fell short of expectations, failing to force the North Vietnamese to abandon their objectives. However, Vietnamisation, the third leg of Nixon's strategy, became the most visible of Nixon's failures. Such was the debacle that Nixon was sorely tempted to simply walk away concluding, ‘Vietnamization has been completed and [South Vietnam President Nguyen Van] Thieu then can do what he likes.’