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.     

暴力方式与民心向背：寻找治理族群叛乱的条件组合

治理族群叛乱的目标既包括土地的控制，也包括人的控制，这是治理族群叛乱区别于其他形式叛乱的特点之一。人的控制实际包含两个内容，既包括人心向背，也包括人员数量的控制。人心向背关乎民众支持，而争取民众支持的必要性在于，虽然拥有民众支持并不必然导致叛乱的平息，但是没有民众支持是不能平息叛乱的。在族群叛乱已经发生的情况下，国家政府只有赢得更多当地民众的支持，才能成功治理叛乱。根据冲突各方的暴力行为方式及其对当地民众支持的影响，成功平息叛乱应具备国家政府有区别使用暴力、叛乱组织无区别使用暴力、当地温和派主导平叛行动等三个必要条件，以争取更多民众支持。这三个条件构成的条件组合，可以有效控制和减少叛乱组织能够招募到的人员数量，只要国家政府的平叛战略能够有效控制叛乱组织所招募的叛乱人员数量，叛乱组织就将走向衰败并最终消亡，也就是说这一条件组合能够成为国家政府成功平叛的一个充分条件。通过对结合俄罗斯、印度和西班牙等国家治理族群叛乱的经验和教训的分析，进一步证实了以上观点。     

Beyond FATA: Exploring the Punjabi Militant Threat to Pakistan

Pakistan has a long history of patronizing militant proxies, and in recent years it has become a victim as well as a supporter of terrorism. The evolution of the jihadist insurgency in Pakistan's Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pashtun militants leading it, efforts to counter the insurgency, and the overall strategic threats to the state have merited significant study. With some notable exceptions, less attention has been paid to the role Punjabi militant organizations and their splinters have played in bringing the insurgency to Pakistan's heartland. The involvement of these actors in the revolutionary jihad against the state gives the FATA-based actors leading this insurgency power projection capabilities throughout the country. This article helps to fill that knowledge gap by bringing a more detailed level of analysis to the understanding of how anti-state Punjabi militant networks function at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. In doing so, it illustrates that the introduction of new loci of jihad at the macro-level, simultaneous integration and atomization among militant groups at the meso-level, and greater portability of fighters at the micro-level impedes covert control by Pakistani intelligence services and decreases the utility of even sincere counterterrorism efforts by the Pakistani state.     

Battlefield Outcomes and Rebel Cohesion: Lessons From the Eritrean Independence War

This article uses data from the Eritrean war for independence to refine existing theories of rebel fragmentation. The author argues organizational performance affects the emergence of factional infighting within rebel organizations in unique and novel ways. While battlefield losses increase the likelihood of internal fragmentation, so do battlefield gains. The implication is battlefield stalemates possess unique properties that promote organizational cohesion in war, a relationship this study refers to as “cohesive stalemates.” The article extends an emerging literature on the internal politics of insurgent groups that has linked the coherence of rebel organizations to rebel losses.     

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.     

How Can Weak Insurgent Groups Grow? Insights From Nepal

How can insurgent groups that are militarily far weaker than the state survive and grow? Influential accounts drawing on Kalyvas' “control-collaboration” model argue that limited state reach can make this possible by allowing rebel groups to carve out pockets of control where they can elicit collaboration. I suggest that this account is inadequate. Even states with limited reach are likely to transfer sufficient forces to rebel-affected areas to establish at least partial control. Weak rebels therefore often face the challenge of building capacity without local control to begin with. I identify two broad factors that can make this feasible: first, strong pre-existing rebel networks, which facilitate collaboration through solidarity, norms of reciprocity, and social incentives; and second, counterinsurgency policies and practices that fail to exploit the opportunities that control offers for incentivizing collaboration and shaping political preferences. These arguments are grounded in a fieldwork-based case study of insurgency processes in a hamlet of Rolpa, Nepal.     

Turkey’s struggle with the PKK and civilian control over the Turkish Armed Forces

Although most scholars of Turkey’s civil-military relations argue that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency has led to a decrease in civilian control over the Turkish military from the 1980s onwards, this has not always been the case. This article argues that the presence or the degree of the PKK threat is not sufficient to explain the civil-military balance of power in Turkey throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. Instead, the article shows that in the face of the PKK threat, three major factors have influenced the behaviours of both civilian and military policy-makers in Turkey and shaped the level of civilian control. These factors are first, the Turkish political leaders’ control over their political parties and these parties’ control of a majority of seats in the parliament; second, how negatively or positively the military perceives the political leadership; and third, European Union pressures for democratisation.     

Representative Democracy and Fighting Domestic Terrorism

Does more representative government improve states' ability to fight domestic terrorism? In prior work, democracies are seen as more susceptible to terrorism because their respect for human rights prevents them from fully eliminating terrorist groups. However, such extrajudicial aggression could also alienate large portions of the population and create the ideal conditions for an insurgency. I argue that since terrorism is the lowest-capacity form of political violence, it is natural that states that do best at deterring political violence experience the most terrorism. While representative democracies should see terrorist groups initiate spells of attacks at a greater frequency, full political representation should also galvanize major political actors to unite and eliminate terrorist threats. I test this assertion through statistical models that treat the process of terrorist group initiation and its duration and intensity separately. Results not only show that less consolidated democracies and autocracies experience longer and more intense terrorist campaigns, but that, in support of the theory's mechanisms, groups are more likely to shift to terrorism from insurgency when their political base gains more political representation. The results call the division among research programs of various political violence types into question.     

Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?

ABSTRACT

The military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 was portrayed as a fight to oust the extremist Taliban. But the Taliban have long been regaining influence, with the military victory of the Afghan government and its foreign allies now seeming less likely than ever. In light of these developments, this article investigates what the affected people – rather than the foreign interveners – think about the Taliban, and whether they perceive them as coercive or legitimate. Building on a conceptual understanding of legitimacy that has been adjusted to the dynamics of conflict-torn spaces, the article suggests that people judge the Taliban on the basis of how their day-to-day behaviour is perceived. While the Taliban are a coercive threat in urban centres and other areas where they launch attacks, they nonetheless manage to construct legitimacy in some of the places which they control or can access easily. A major source of their legitimacy in these areas is the way in which they provide services – such as conflict resolution – which some people consider to be faster and fairer than the state’s practices.     

Inter-Rebel Alliances in the Shadow of Foreign Sponsors

From the Patriotic Front struggle against the minority rule in Rhodesia to the seven-party mujaheddin alliance in Afghanistan, inter-rebel alliances make the armed opposition more resilient and successful in the face of government repression. Why then do some rebel groups cooperate with each other while others do not? Drawing on the principal-agent theory, I argue that the presence of foreign sponsors is likely to encourage alliance formation in civil wars especially when two rebel outfits share a state sponsor. Shared sponsors may demand cooperation between their agents and credibly threaten to punish them for non-compliance. They may also insist on the establishment of umbrella institutions to improve their monitoring and sanctioning capacity, and to increase the legitimacy of their agents. I test this argument using the UCDP Actor dataset with new data on alliances between rebel groups. I find strong evidence that shared sponsors increase the probability of inter-rebel alliance.