Defected and loyal? A case study of counter-defection mechanisms inside Chechen paramilitaries

Can former insurgents in the service of counterinsurgent paramilitaries be considered a perfectly loyal force? What mechanisms may help to deter subsequent defections of individuals who have already “betrayed” once? Drawing on a unique set of primary data, this article examines the effective counter-defection practices of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow paramilitaries toward prospective defectors from among ex-insurgents. It explores three interwoven mechanisms employed with various intensities to avert “double defections” at the peak of the locally fought counterinsurgency in Chechnya from 2000 to 2005. These mechanisms are: a) extrajudicial executions of recidivists and their relatives, b) initiation violence targeting insurgents’ relatives, and c) disclosure of the identities of defected insurgents who were responsible for killing insurgents in combat to the families of slain insurgents.     

Terrorism in an Era of Unconventional Warfare

Academic studies of terrorism and mass political violence have developed largely independently of one another. Insurgents, in contrast, have tended to incorporate terrorism tactics along with other types of unconventional warfare in their repertoire of action. This tendency has become more apparent among insurgents engaging in armed confrontations in the twenty-first century. In order to take account of this development, scholars and others interested in contemporary warfare need to incorporate terrorism studies within the broader subject of insurgencies and “small wars”—political violence, in other words.     

阿富汗大变局:地缘政治和安全格局的演变

当前,阿富汗正在经历重大变局.阿富汗塔利班(阿塔)成功卷土重来,并且完成临时政府组建.尽管仍有多重挑战,但阿塔执政已不存在根本性威胁.这引发阿富汗地缘政治格局和地区安全形势的深度调整.在地缘政治格局方面,整体呈现\"美国西方影响力下降,地区国家影响力上升\"这一\"东升西降\"趋势.美国正在从\"局内人\"变为\"局外人\",但仍将发...     

Who Are Pakistan's Militants and Their Families?

This article presents results of a survey of 141 Pakistani families of slain militants. This survey collected data about the militants and their households. While derived from a convenience sample, these data are unprecedented and offer a glimpse into the backgrounds of militants and the families who (mostly) supported their decision to join the jihad. Most militants served and died in Kashmir and seem to be “high quality” militants in that they, like their heads of household, are well educated and not predominantly coming from seminaries, as is often claimed. This analysis suggests that while the militants merit attention, so do the families that produce militants.     

The Evolution of Political Violence: The Case of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab

This research investigates the development and expansion of the al-Shabaab movement in Somalia from 2000 to 2013. Initially a marginal player in Somalia, by 2013 al-Shabaab had transformed into the most formidable armed opposition to challenge the nascent Somali government and its allies. During this time period they administered territory domestically, while expanding their tactical repertoire and geographic scope of attacks. After analyzing the historical conditions (2000–2006) from which al-Shabaab emerged, I explore the evolution of this organization through the use of historical process tracing. This entails looking for critical junctures on a global, national, and local level that had a dramatic impact on the future trajectory of the insurgency. The results show that harsh foreign interventions had many deleterious consequences, acting as an initial impetus for armed resistance, while also acting as a continuous source of controversy which al-Shabaab exploited to gain new recruits. Moreover, irreconcilable intra-organizational schisms also contributed to altering the future organizational decisions made by al-Shabaab. The culmination of these results engage and expand the theory of categorical terrorism, offering observations to help scholars and policy makers alike begin to re-conceptualize ways to study terrorism and political violence.     

“Survival Mode”: Rebel Resilience and the Lord’s Resistance Army

ABSTRACT

To date, scholarly work on armed groups has seldom considered the notion of rebel resilience, or the factors that enable these groups to survive despite time, military pressure, and the myriad contingent events of civil war. In an effort to develop an explanatory framework for resilience as a distinct outcome of civil war and rebellion, this article examines the conditions under which the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has persisted for nearly three decades. Based on fieldwork and original research, the article explains the LRA’s resilience in light of the group’s organizational structure and resource self-sufficiency, which have been well suited for the borderlands of East and Central Africa. The LRA is a key case of rebel resilience. It is important because it sheds light on the organizational foundations of armed groups, the relationship between resources and rebellion, and the broader study of conflict duration and termination. Understanding the sources of the LRA’s resilience can inform efforts to end such insurgencies.     

Can you hear me Major Tom? News,narratives and contemporary military operations: the case of the Italian mission in Afghanistan

This research explores the relationship between public narratives and the Italian military contribution to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan (2001–2014). Despite attracting little attention in the literature, Italy has been one of the most crucial contributors of multilateral military missions around the world in the post-bipolar era. Italy has remained consistently engaged militarily in Afghanistan over the entire period of the ISAF mission. However, the country’s involvement has been characterised by differing and controversial views and perspectives among Italian political actors and the media. This study aims to reconstruct the core features of the strategic narratives and the media frames around the military intervention and it does so through a Qualitative Content Analysis on a collection of almost 200 articles published by four main Italian national newspapers. The goal of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, we systematically retrace the main discursive patterns and frames employed by the newspapers on the ISAF. On the other, we evaluate whether in the case of military interventions, the Italian media unveil critical inconsistencies and competitive arguments or whether they function as a repeater of the dominant political discourse. Thanks to the case study, we find that the Italian media supported the mainstream narratives.     

Just the Two of Us? Civil Conflicts,Pro-State Militants,and the Violence Premium

Quantitative literature discussing violence in civil conflicts tends towards a typical model of engagement between governments and revolutionaries. Whilst recent work has shown the significant impact of multiple anti-government groups, a further feature remains understudied—the role of pro-state militants. This article theorizes a “violence premium” when such groups arise, which leads to all connected groups devoting greater energy to conflict than they would in isolation. Employing duration analysis and data from The Troubles in Northern Ireland, where Republicans act as revolutionary insurgents, Loyalists as pro-state militants, and the British Army as government forces, the violence premium is empirically confirmed. Both Loyalists and Republicans deviate from their underlying strategies to attack more frequently when violence by their rivals increases, with Republicans and the British Army engaging in the same way. An extended analysis, accounting for the status of the victim, shows that the violence premium resulting from interaction between Loyalists and Republicans targeted only the civilian population of Northern Ireland, elucidating the sectarian component of The Troubles. These results show that including all conflict parties and considering how they are linked are important features in studies that aim to determine the net level of violence in civil conflicts.     

Sustaining the Peace: Determinants of Civil War Recurrence

Over half of all civil wars that began and ended between 1944 and 1997 were followed by at least one if not more episodes of civil war. We present a model to explain which characteristics of a civil war and the post-war environment make civil war more or less likely to recur. We test this model with data on civil wars that began and ended between 1944 and 1997. Findings suggest that civil wars are less likely to recur following rebel victories and peace agreements supported by peacekeeping forces. Post-war economic development also reduces the probability of civil war recurrence, and the longer the peace can be sustained, the less likely civil war is to recur. These effects hold regardless of whether the previous war was ethnically based or not, and whether it was secessionist or revolutionary.     

人的安全保护与民主转型 ——基于阿富汗战争的考察

一些国家在由非民主体制向民主体制转型的过程中,往往遭遇各种暴力与冲突。由于人的安全得不到保障,新政府的信誉与合法性因此受到质疑,从而损害了民主转型的前景。阿富汗就是这方面的典型例子,特别是2009年的总统大选表明,恶劣的安全状况已经影响到民主的运作和信誉,这体现了一个困扰许多处于转型过程中的国家的困境：没有人的安全,就没有可靠的民主;转型中的发展中国家很容易在一种失序、动荡的过渡期中反复纠缠,民众的不安全与无效的政府成为一对相互催生的恶瘤。西方的武力干预容易推翻一个旧政权却很难塑造一个强有力的新政权,其造成的权力真空加剧了人的安全与民主转型之间的紧张。民主的价值不容否定,但民主应该在一个稳定的安全基础上去构建,无视人的安全去追求民主,可能反过来有损于真正的民主进程。人的安全视角表明：安全在价值序位上是高于民主的,也是民主生成的前提性条件;有一个能够保证人的安全的有效政府,是国家顺利实现民主转型的关键。     

Measuring Military Effectiveness: Calculating Casualty Loss-Exchange Ratios for Multilateral Wars, 1816–1990

In this article, we introduce and utilize a new dataset that provides battle- and war- level Loss Exchange Ratios (LERs) for combatant states involved in multilateral wars between 1816 and 1990.The battle-level data provide an alternative to the widely used, but problematic, HERO/CDB-90 data set on battle outcomes. To demonstrate the utility of the new data, we weigh in on the debate over democratic military effectiveness arguments by replicating models by Reiter and Stam (2002, 2009) and Downes (2009), finding that, when effectiveness is measured using LERs, democracies do not have an edge over their non-democratic counterparts.