From Freedom Fighters to Jihadists: Human Resources of Non State Armed GroupsHuman Resources of Non State Armed Groups
Abstract
This book examines the internal organization of armed groups, particularly their human resource practices. The authors look at the rebel armed groups through the prism of a labor market theory. In the Syrian civil war, extreme Islamist groups were able to siphon fighters off from moderate groups because they had better internal organization, took better care of fighters (physically and monetarily), and experienced less internal corruption. This book is based on more than six hundred survey-interviews with local civilians and fighters on the frontline in Syria (including members of al-Nusra and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS]) and a dataset of human resource policies from forty armed groups based on qualitative interviews with group leaders. In addition, active and former foreign fighters with ISIS and Jubhat al-Nusra were interviewed in Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, and Central Asia (where many former ISIS foreign fighters were hiding). In search of deeper answers on ideological issues, the author also penetrated an ultra-radical sect of former ISIS fighters known as chain takfiris who had abandoned ISIS because its ideology was not religiously radical enough. The author interviewed members of this extreme sect and studied their books, lectures, forums, and closed channels on social media. The author also conducted extensive ethnographic research in 2016 and 2017 while embedded with Iraqi Special Operations Forces during the Mosul operation. This allowed her to observe the behavior of ISIS members in the field and collect valuable information from the group’s internal documentation and from fighters’ personal notebooks.
... posture, as extremism allows them to overcome collective action, principal agent, and commitment problems (Mironova 2019;Walter 2017a). Moreover, religious groups are likely to face strong incentives to 'outbid' contenders in order to maintain material support from sympathetic states abroad, as religious groups operating in the same conflict often compete over the same transnational networks of provision (Breslawski and Ives 2019). ...
... Groups materially endowed such as the Al-Farouq Brigades often refused to cooperate with others on the battlefield and were frequently involved in violent clashes against rivals (International Crisis Group 2013;Holliday 2012). A high fluidity of fighters among insurgent organizations likely increased the incentives to target contenders in Syria, as it was easy for the winning side to integrate its combatants and therefore grow in power (Hiltermann 2018;Mironova 2019). The rebels' presence within predominantly Sunni Muslim areas -the same primary identity as most insurgents 23 -also likely created incentives promoting strategic inter-rebel violence, as it was easier for successful groups to later implement among local constituencies with which they shared identity bonds (Al-Hawat and Elhamoui 2015). ...
... Several of such organizations were formed by radical leaders liberated from regime prisons at the beginning of the civil war to divide the rebellion (Lister 2016). Throughout the conflict, these groups have had a reputation for being more disciplined and cohesive on the battlefield (Mironova 2019). They had 'strict recruitment procedures and rigorous political education and socialization,' which have allowed them to avoid discipline issues frequently associated with nonreligious factions (Mosinger 2017, 433). ...
How does external support to insurgents influence the likelihood that the latter will get involved in violent clashes against other rebel groups? In this article, we outline a theoretical framework which contends that, in multiparty civil wars, rebels sponsored by foreign states are more likely to participate in high-intensity inter-rebel conflicts than rebels receiving no support from external states. We argue that this is because external support creates strategic incentives for insurgent leaders to target other rebel contenders in order to signal resolve to their sponsors and to crowd out the battlefield ahead of the post-conflict period. External support, moreover, tends to activate potent socio-psychological mechanisms among rank-and-file combatants that may remove restraints on the use of violence against other rebel fighters. Using data on inter-rebel conflicts from 1989 to 2018, we test these hypotheses with a set of large-N regressions and find strong support for our theory. Further analyzes inductively reveal that our statistical results are likely, to some extent, to be driven by the prevalence of religious insurgencies in contemporary conflicts. Religious insurgencies display organizational features that could reinforce vertical strategic incentives and horizontal socio-psychological dynamics, thereby increasing their involvement in inter-rebel fighting. To further probe the ‘meso-foundations’ of inter-rebel fighting following rebel sponsorship, we then provide qualitative evidence on the Syrian Civil War. Our article contributes to scholarship by highlighting the consequences of external support on conflict processes beyond the insurgent-incumbent dyad.
¿De qué manera el apoyo externo a los insurgentes influye en la probabilidad de que se involucren en enfrentamientos violentos contra otros grupos rebeldes? En este artículo, exponemos un marco teórico que sostiene que, en las guerras civiles en las que hay varias partes involucradas, los rebeldes financiados por estados extranjeros tienen más probabilidades de participar en conflictos de gran intensidad entre grupos rebeldes que los que no reciben apoyo de estados externos. Sostenemos que esto se debe a que el apoyo externo crea incentivos estratégicos para que los líderes insurgentes apunten a otros rivales rebeldes con la finalidad de dar una señal de resolución a sus financiadores y atestar el campo de batalla para tener una ventaja en el período posterior al conflicto. Además, el apoyo externo tiende a activar potentes mecanismos sociopsicológicos entre los combatientes de base que pueden eliminar las restricciones sobre el uso de violencia contra otros combatientes rebeldes. Mediante el uso de datos sobre conflictos entre rebeldes de 1989 a 2018, probamos estas hipótesis con un conjunto de regresiones de N grandes y descubrimos que nuestra teoría tiene un gran sustento. Análisis adicionales revelan por inducción que nuestros resultados estadísticos probablemente, en cierta medida, estén impulsados por la prevalencia de insurgencias religiosas en los conflictos contemporáneos. Las insurgencias religiosas muestran rasgos organizativos que podrían reforzar los incentivos estratégicos verticales y las dinámicas sociopsicológicas horizontales y, por consiguiente, aumentar su implicación en peleas entre rebeldes. Para indagar más las “bases a nivel meso” de las peleas entre rebeldes a consecuencia de la financiación, podemos proporcionar pruebas cualitativas de la guerra civil siria. Nuestro artículo contribuye a la investigación mediante el énfasis en las consecuencias del apoyo externo en los procesos de conflicto más allá de la díada formada por los insurgentes.
Comment le soutien extérieur aux insurgés influence-t-il la probabilité que ces derniers s’impliquent dans des affrontements violents contre d’autres groupes rebelles ? Dans cet article, nous présentons un cadre théorique qui affirme que, dans les guerres civiles multipartites, les rebelles soutenus par des États étrangers sont davantage susceptibles de participer à des conflits entre rebelles de forte intensité que les rebelles ne bénéficiant d’aucun soutien d’États extérieurs. Nous affirmons que cela est dû au fait que le soutien extérieur donne lieu à des incitations stratégiques motivant les chefs insurgés à cibler des groupes rebelles concurrents afin de signaler leur détermination aux acteurs qui les soutiennent et d’évincer ces groupes concurrents du champ de bataille avant la période post-conflit. De plus, le soutien extérieur tend à activer des mécanismes socio-psychologiques puissants pouvant éliminer la retenue des combattants de base à recourir à la violence contre d’autres combattants rebelles. Nous nous sommes appuyés sur des données sur les conflits entre rebelles entre 1989 et 2018 pour vérifier ces hypothèses à l’aide d’un ensemble de régressions à grande échelle, et nous avons constaté que notre théorie était solidement étayée. D’autres analyses inductives ont révélé que nos résultats statistiques étaient susceptibles, dans une certaine mesure, d’être déterminés par la prévalence des insurrections religieuses dans les conflits contemporains. Les insurrections religieuses présentent des caractéristiques organisationnelles pouvant potentiellement renforcer les incitations stratégiques verticales et les dynamiques socio-psychologiques horizontales, ce qui peut accroître l’implication des insurgés dans des combats entre rebelles. Nous proposons ensuite des preuves qualitatives issues de la guerre civile syrienne pour explorer encore davantage les « bases au niveau méso » des combats entre rebelles qui interviennent suite au soutien aux rebelles. Notre article contribue aux recherches en soulignant les conséquences du soutien extérieur sur les processus de conflit au-delà de la dyade insurgés-pouvoir en place.
... Forced recruitment can consist of methods of overt violence, e.g., the kidnapping or abduction of persons to fight, or more subtle forms of persuasion, including psychological terror or threats of violence (Gates 2017). Good recruits, or those with strong fighting capabilities and shared ideological and tactical preferences with rebel group leaders, are critical to rebel group success (Beber and Blattman 2013;Eck 2014;Haer and Tobias 2017;Mironova 2019;Shapiro 2013). For example, recruits with too strong a taste for violence undermine the credibility of rebel organizations when they inflict harm on civilians (Shapiro 2013). ...
... first, to ensure they support the group and are not only fighting to benefit from the material spoils of war (Mironova 2019). These screening mechanisms increase the chance of the group's success when they make costly decisions to join violent organizations and force new recruits to signal their loyalty and shared goals (Mironova 2019). ...
... first, to ensure they support the group and are not only fighting to benefit from the material spoils of war (Mironova 2019). These screening mechanisms increase the chance of the group's success when they make costly decisions to join violent organizations and force new recruits to signal their loyalty and shared goals (Mironova 2019). This literature highlights the drawbacks of relying on forced recruits, who are almost certainly less committed to the group's cause since they did not join the group on their own volition. ...
While the conflict literature has examined the use of forced recruitment in conflict, the question remains why groups would choose to do so when forced recruits require expensive coercion and time intensive socialization processes. The prevailing wisdom in the literature is that forced recruitment is a tactic of the weak; yet empirically, we often observe relatively strong rebel groups employing forced recruitment. In this paper, we argue that credible threats of punishment for desertion are a prerequisite to successful coercive recruitment. Thus, stronger rebels, those that are able to credibly threaten punishment, are more likely to engage in forced recruitment than are weaker rebels. Forced recruitment is not a tactic of last resort but a human rights abuse frequently exploited by already advantaged rebel groups. We find strong support for our argument quantitatively and qualitatively using cross-national data on rebel recruitment practices and case illustrations of the contras in Nicaragua and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador. The results speak to the growing literature emphasizing the importance of integrating individual and group level processes both theoretically and empirically.
... For instance, financing their efforts is paramount, but nonstate armed groups can obtain this financial support in a variety of ways. They may do so through a more limited system in which a system of taxation is implemented in exchange for the provision of security, or gain 12 WARTIME GOVERNANCE IN THE SYRIAN CIVIL WAR 277 backing through the provision of public goods and services, or they may obtain what they need by pure force (Mironova 2019). ...
... In the Syrian Civil War, the absence of a unified opposition has meant that a variety of non-state armed groups shift between cooperation and competition, resulting in an inability to establish a durable system of governance to compete with the state (Pedersen and Walther 2018). Non-state armed groups have been more or less successful, in part due to the capacity to adopt policies that include public goods and services provision (Mironova 2019). In establishing systems of governance, non-state armed groups coordinated and competed with the local communities to varying extents. ...
The insight that the economy is made of social practices, institutionally framed and culturally dependent, arises mostly from the domains of economic sociology, anthropology, and institutional economics. Despite the evident connections among these areas, each one emerges out of remarkably distinctive methodologies, theories, and epistemological premises. This trend has not disengaged scholars such as Elinor Ostrom and Viviana Zelizer who demonstrated how interdisciplinary studies come in favor of the advancement of economics in an enlarged manner. With the support of fieldwork, these authors inaugurated novel interpretations on collective governance, bottom-up arrangements, and the moralities of monetary and non-monetary exchange widely cited in various disciplines. This article aims at: a) exploring examples of what constitutes an ethnographic study on economic lives, b) showing how the meaning making of economic transactions relates to institutional norms present in those works, and c) scrutinizing its connections with institutional economics, mostly in relation to the framework developed by Ostrom on the commons. As the paper argues, much of the fieldwork-based observations present in these studies show deep connections with key elements of institutional analyses as the rules-in-use often relate to the access to resources, knowledge as commons, path dependency, and analyses on the economic incentives. This effort does not aim at producing re-interpretations, but rather wishes to surpass the boundaries between these domains and encourage future scholars to build up on the fertile intersections. The expected contribution of this article is to continue the interdisciplinary path undertaken by Ostrom and Zelizer with a focus on ethnography as seen through the lenses of economics.
... One prominent feature of the contemporary wave of insurgencies is the interconnectedness among groups within them ( Mironova 2019 ). The strategic interactions between insurgent groups constitute their relational dynamics and can either be marked by cooperation, partnerships, and interdependence, or by rivalries and competition ( Moghadam 2017 ;Asal, Phillips, and Rethemeyer 2022 ). ...
Modern-day insurgencies are adaptive, enduring, and increasingly intertwined with criminal elements, and therefore pose serious threats to regional and global security. In response, counterinsurgency strategies have become more diversified. One of the strategies that states can employ toward insurgencies is the use of domestic law enforcement, which includes operations by police and intelligence agencies. Given the predominant focus on military approaches, however, there is little empirical work that examines the use of domestic law enforcement in counterinsurgencies. To address this, we investigate the underlying reasons behind a government’s decision to deploy domestic law enforcement against insurgencies. We argue that specific attributes of insurgent groups significantly shape this decision. Using the BAADI2 dataset, our analysis shows that insurgent groups that participate in cooperative alliances and engage in criminal activities are most likely to motivate a state’s decision to deploy domestic law enforcement as a counterinsurgency strategy against them.
... In practice, the main features of Jihadi insurgencies is their revolutionary and transnational nature. 22 Jihadi insurgencies attract cadres mobilized around their political projects, 23 are efficient managers of human resources, 24 and use extreme ideologies to achieve success. 25 Jihadis have been particularly adroit at recruiting across domestic divides, 26 which is partially explained by the specificity of their support structure underpinning their resilience. ...
The role of ideology in civil wars is particularly contentious, especially when it comes to Jihadi insurgents. Ideology is one of these groups’ defining characteristic, which questions what happens when Jihadis’ ideological commitments contradicts their strategic interests. This article explores these tensions with a particular focus on the issue of foreign support for the Syrian insurgency after 2011. The article argues that ideology matters and has contributed to division and infighting between Syrian insurgents for most of the conflict. But this research also contends that armed groups – including Jihadis – can adapt their ideological positions in line with their strategic interests as long as they manage to implement such changes without jeopardizing their internal cohesion. This careful balance explains the operational strategies of numerous armed groups in competitive environments such as Syria’s. The article draws on extensive interviews with Syrian insurgents over the past few years, including leaders and commanders of Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra as it transformed into HTS.
... Second, it is not uncommon to see insurgents providing 'public services' to the locals in their competition for power and legitimacy (Arjona, 2015;Asal et al., 2022;Förster, 2015;Furlan, 2020;Mironova, 2019;Shortland and Varese, 2016;Stewart, 2016). This may encompass various aspects of social life such as security, dispute resolution, healthcare, transportation, education and religious practices, where kidnapping can be useful as an extra-legal form of coercive 'policing' tactics. ...
Despite the common perception viewing kidnappings as means to generate ransom income and to obtain political concessions, it remains unclear why kidnappings are disproportionately employed by some violent insurgent groups but not by the others. Combining data from the Global Terrorism Database and the Big Allied and Dangerous Insurgency Dataset, we empirically examined this question with a theoretical focus on the possible role of insurgents’ performance of state-like functions, which may necessitate the use of kidnappings as an illicit form of ‘policing’ and punishment for social control. Our analyses mainly focused on three aspects of quasi-state activities: extraction; provision of public services; and warring activities. A series of negative binomial regressions were conducted to examine the effects of insurgents’ quasi-state activities on their kidnapping activities over a base model with only group capacity and resource factors. We found that the initial effects of territory-control and membership size disappeared when variables measuring quasi-state activities were included into the model. This suggests that the influence of group capacity and resources on kidnappings may be an indirect one via insurgents’ strategic need for coercive control when contending for quasi-state status.
... They typically constitute dedicated combatants that often fight until their death. [29] While some may constitute experienced and highly skilled fighters, others may be used as suicide bombers, precisely due to their lack of experience. Still, both types of foreign fighters can be useful for jihadist affiliate groups. ...
To this date, there are no instances of peace agreements signed by armed groups affiliated with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS). Previous research has highlighted their transnational demands and their integration into a transnational organization as major obstacles. Yet, these groups are also deeply embedded within local conflict configurations. This article posits that to explore prospects for future negotiations with these groups, one must obtain a better understanding of how they function on the ground. A descriptive empirical analysis is provided of two dimensions of 'transnationalization' that should both have an impact on jihadist affiliate groups' willingness to enter negotiations: transnational operations and transnational recruitment. The analysis of a sample of twenty jihadist affiliate groups in the period 2018-2020 reveals substantial variation regarding both variables. The results should have relevance for both researchers and policymakers seeking to identify nonviolent containment strategies in armed conflicts with rebel groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and IS.
... Hanson 2021 argues that high-risk environments such as government crackdowns help leaders identify committed recruits. On recruitment context and different types of recruits, see also Weinstein 2007 andMironova 2019. 48. ...
What effect does state violence have on the cohesiveness and fragmentation of insurgent organizations? This article develops a theory of how state violence against civilians affects insurgent cohesion and fragmentation in civil war. It argues that the state-led collective targeting of an armed group's alleged civilian constituency increases the probability of insurgent fragmentation, defined as the process through which insurgent organizations split into distinct entities, each with its own social composition, goals, and leadership. This effect is driven by the interaction of several mechanisms at the individual, group, and organizational levels: state-led collective targeting enlarges the supply of fresh recruits, strengthens the bonds between immediate group members (interpersonal cohesion), and disrupts intra-organizational coordination, strategic unity, and institutional arrangements that underpin the commitment of individual fighters to the organization as a whole (ideological cohesion). The implications of this argument are empirically tested in an analysis of armed groups fighting against their governments between 1946 and 2008. The results suggest that campaigns of massive state violence directed against the civilian constituency of rebel groups increase the overall risk of insurgent fragmentation, a finding that has important implications for the duration and escalation of civil wars.
... Intense anger among militant groups is a common phenomenon, such as among Northern Ugandan former LRA fighters (Liebmann, 2014), jihadists and Syrian fighters (Mironova, 2019), and U.S. military who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan (Shea et al., 2018). Such levels of anger, left untreated properly, are associated with long-term mental health and physical health risks, including substance abuse, addiction, unhealthy relations, spousal abuse, depression, self-harm, and suicide (Naifeh et al., 2021;Shea et al., 2018). ...
The 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused millions of Ukrainians to flee. Yet most citizens continue to reside in the country, playing critical roles in the Ukrainian resistance. Today the Ukrainian fighting force includes trained military and police as well as citizens who either were conscripted or volunteered to take part in national war efforts. This mixed-method study conducted in Spring 2022 presents data collected from 79 respondents in a semistructured survey, using snowball sampling. Data analysis examined individual self-reported motivations, attitudes toward the conflict, resilience, quality-of-life hardships, and scaled perceived stress. Results indicated that Ukrainian resistance members face extreme physical threats, are displaced, separated from family, and experience high levels of stress, especially anxiety, sadness, and anger. Yet individuals tend to experience significantly less overall Perceived Symptoms Scale symptoms if they have intrinsic motivations linked to patriotic ideologies, altruism, and preventing genocide. Bootstrap regression modeling indicates that familial relationship with their nation reduces symptoms by approximately 13%. Comparatively, being extensively separated from family is linked to 21% higher stress. These motivations appear to provide a sense of purpose and source of resiliency despite the health risks associated with resisting a full-scale foreign invasion. My purpose with this article is to represent respondents’ motivations and experiences during the war and to help inform future public health policy and program services that many Ukrainians may need to recover.
... Adopting a more extreme ideology is in line with the logic of outbidding, which is well established in the study of terrorism and ethnic violence ( Kaufman 1996 ;Bloom 2005 ;Kydd and Walter 2006 ). Adopting a more extreme religious ideology enables group leaders to overcome three types of ubiquitous organizational problems: collective action, principal-agent, and commitment problems ( Walter 2017 ;Mironova 2019 ). However, there are also disadvantages associated with an extreme ideology. ...
How do rebel groups survive and thrive in multiparty civil wars where numerous groups not only fight against a common enemy but also compete with each other for support, recruits, and resources? Literature on the internal dynamics of civil wars has mostly focused on violence as the negative side of inter-rebel competition. The aim of this paper is threefold: First, it aims at explaining when armed groups attempt to use ideological differentiation instead of violence against rivals. Second, it analyzes when this strategy will succeed, and third, it demonstrates what successful differentiation means. The argument is probed by analyzing the puzzling case of Ahrar al-Sham in the Syrian war that emerged as both winner and loser of intra-jihadist competition with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra/Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Next to offering a new and original analysis of one of the most important Syrian insurgent groups based on interviews and primary documents, the article studies an under-researched rebel strategy whose use is relevant not only for armed groups themselves but also for local civilians, prospective recruits, and external supporters.
... Intense anger among militant groups is a common phenomenon, such as among Northern Ugandan former LRA fighters (Liebmann, 2014), jihadists and Syrian fighters (Mironova, 2019), and U.S. military who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan (Shea et al., 2018). Such levels of anger, left untreated properly, are associated with long-term mental health and physical health risks, including substance abuse, addiction, unhealthy relations, spousal abuse, depression, self-harm, and suicide (Naifeh et al., 2021;Shea et al., 2018). ...
The 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused millions of Ukrainians to flee. Yet most citizens
continue to reside in the country, playing critical roles in the Ukrainian resistance. Today the Ukrainian
fighting force includes trained military and police as well as citizens who either were conscripted or
volunteered to take part in national war efforts. This mixed-method study conducted in Spring 2022 presents
data collected from 79 respondents in a semistructured survey, using snowball sampling. Data analysis
examined individual self-reported motivations, attitudes toward the conflict, resilience, quality-of-life
hardships, and scaled perceived stress. Results indicated that Ukrainian resistance members face extreme
physical threats, are displaced, separated from family, and experience high levels of stress, especially anxiety,
sadness, and anger. Yet individuals tend to experience significantly less overall Perceived Symptoms Scale
symptoms if they have intrinsic motivations linked to patriotic ideologies, altruism, and preventing genocide.
Bootstrap regression modeling indicates that familial relationship with their nation reduces symptoms by
approximately 13%. Comparatively, being extensively separated from family is linked to 21% higher stress.
These motivations appear to provide a sense of purpose and source of resiliency despite the health risks
associated with resisting a full-scale foreign invasion. My purpose with this article is to represent respondents’
motivations and experiences during the war and to help inform future public health policy and program
services that many Ukrainians may need to recover.
... While government targeted killing programs have continued, there is an active scholarly debate about whether or how much these programs destabilize rebel groups. Jordan finds that leadership decapitation is not particularly effective at eliminating terrorist groups (Jordan 2009;2014;2019). ...
I propose a novel theoretical framework and examine whether leadership change can affect the behavior of rebel groups using updated original data on assassination attempts of rebel leaders during the Syrian civil war. The relationship between rebel leaders and insurgent group violence is tested on 15 of the largest rebel groups in Syria’s civil war using a quantitative design that leverages variation in insurgent group violence, as well as leadership transitions within insurgent groups. I exploit the inherent randomness of the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify the causal effect of rebel leadership removal on insurgent group violence. I find that successful assassination attempts reduce rebel group violence, but only when senior leaders are targeted, not mid-level officials. Importantly, successful attempts degrade groups, but do not reduce overall levels of violence in the conflict. This points to defection as an understudied mechanism in conflict with multiple armed groups.
... A common source of concern is the persistence of their ideological commitments, as if these groups' ideologies necessarily explain their behavior and as if their behavior could not change without ideological revisions. 8 There is growing research on armed groups' ideologies and cross-factional competition Hafez, 2019), effectiveness at war (Ahmad, 2016;Walter, 2017), mobilization (Wood, 2003) and recruitment (Kalyvas, 2018;Mironova, 2019), normative change (Ahmad, 2019), organizational survival (e.g., della Porta, 2013), support structure (Toft & Zhukov, 2015), ties to the business community (Ahmad, 2017), and resort to repertoires of violence such as suicide bombing (Moghadam, 2008). 9 Despite a growing consensus that ideology guides and restrains armed groups' choices (Sanin & Wood, 2014), more research on how these groups institutionalize their ideologies and its impact on their longterm trajectories is still lacking. ...
Institutionalizing Violence offers a detailed focus on the two most influential Egyptian jihadi groups—al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad. From the killing of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 to their partial association with al-Qaeda in the 1990s, the two groups illustrate the range of choices that jihadis make overtime including creating political parties. Jerome Drevon argues that these groups’ comparative trajectories show that jihadis embracing the same ideology can make very different strategic decisions in similar environments. Drevon’s analysis of these groups’ histories over the past four decades illustrates the evolution of jihadism in Egypt and beyond. Institutionalizing Violence develops an institutional approach to radicalization to compare the two Egyptian groups’ trajectories based on ethnographic field research and hundreds of interviews with jihadi leaders and militants in Egypt. Drevon provides a unique perspective on how jihadi groups make and implement new strategic decisions in changing environments, as well as the evolution of their approaches to violence and non-violence.
... Again, Rich and Conduit 28 noted that the extreme believes of jihadist foreign fighters both in Chechnya and Syria have increased the level of fear among civilian population. Similarly, Mironova (2019) argue that one of the cons of the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq was connected with the relations with the local population 29 . ...
Interactions between foreign combatants and local populations during civil wars are often conflictual. Existing research underscores how trans-national insurgents typically behave more violently than domestic fighters toward civilians. Nevertheless, most research has focused on relations between local rebels and civilians, showing how the type of endowments that rebels exhibit determines the pattern of behavior toward civilian populations. Only recently has the impact of foreign fighters caught the attention of scholars. The consensus in the existing literature is that trans-national insurgents are typically more violent toward civilians than local rebels: they have neither ethnic nor linguistic kinships, there is no mechanism of accountability on foreign fighters, and, usually, they have more extreme religious or ideological beliefs compared to locals. Contrary to the general view, the Kurdish YPG/YPJ appears as a deviant case since it has exhibited low levels of civilian victimization. The presence of foreign fighters in its ranks seems not to affect this trend. Relying on primary and secondary sources, the article argues that the YPG/YPJ’s inclusive ideology, daily practices, and the organizational measures that the Kurdish leadership has adopted in dealing with foreign combatants in the ranks have resulted in lower levels of violence toward civilians.
... That may sound far-fetched, but the first signs of this have already taken place. Additionally, experts have shown that this kind of conflict is increasingly the norm throughout the world (see Miranova 2018). ...
... However, the published research in any one of these areas is insufficient. The majority of these studies have focused on a select number of countries only 3 , most likely corresponding to the presence of social/political psychologists based there and the differential emphasis on basic research of multiple different academic systems and languages (e.g., American, French). 2 A significant number of these papers have been authored by scholars from fields outside of psychology, particularly political science (e.g., Jamal & Tessler, 2008), and/or work on topics related to the field, such as military psychology (e.g., Mironova, 2019). 3 The PsycInfo review mentioned above shows that most research has been conducted in the Levant (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq), and English publications were especially concentrated in Lebanon (see also, Saab et al., 2020). ...
This chapter examines the history, challenges, and future of political psychology research in the Arab region, and argues that lack of attention to such regions is detrimental not only for these regions, but also for Western research and for the discipline as a whole.
This chapter examines how the process of radicalization impacts the perceptions of individuals who adopted extremist beliefs to use political violence. The chapter seeks to determine if cognitive or religious imperatives occupy a central place in the motivation of individuals who become terrorists. The chapter theorizes these issues in the context of a field study that includes conducting in-person interviews with former foreign fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, indicating that their motivation to exercise violence has been a product of premeditated, rational choice that combines political with religious motivation.
What explains cooperation between armed groups? Challenging existing literature that assumes armed groups must be similar or not cooperate at all, I argue that explicit differences are key to some cooperation. Comparative advantage explains why rebels and criminals—organizations that typically eschew collaboration—cooperate to produce violence. This article introduces “black market white labeling”—cooperation that emerges when one actor buys an illicit good or service from another and re-brands it as their own. To demonstrate this phenomenon and the conditions under which it occurs, I focus on kidnapping, an underexplored but common form of armed group violence. Drawing on 113 interviews with Colombian kidnappers and hostage recovery personnel from Colombia and the United States, I theorize the conditions under which rebels “outsource” violence to criminal gangs or produce it “in house.” This article explains the organizational dynamics of rebel-criminal cooperation that perpetuate violence against civilians.
Though previous research has recognized that armed groups do not always recruit fighters on a voluntary basis, varieties and determinants of insurgent forced recruitment are still poorly understood. What drives armed groups to employ certain methods of coercive recruitment? This article conceptualizes and studies a particular form of coerced recruitment—insurgent conscription—whereby rebel groups rely on their administrative capacity to compel civilians to fight. Building on scholarship that highlights the impact of state violence on rebel recruitment, I theorize that state violence incentivizes armed groups to employ insurgent conscription. Leveraging a novel, cross-national dataset of insurgent conscription in state-rebel dyads between 1946 and 2008, I find that state targeting of an armed group’s civilian support base increases the likelihood of insurgent conscription. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between state violence and insurgent recruitment, rebel-civilian relationships, and the transformation of institutions and networks in civil wars.
Abstracts
How do rebel groups form in cities? What makes urban-based insurgent organizations effective? Urban armed conflicts have become an important subject of research due to the political, economic, and demographic significance of cities. Yet, we know little about the mechanisms of insurgent group formation and effectiveness in urban contexts. Building on the case of the formation and initial urban campaign of M-19 in Colombia (1973–1980), this article argues that rebel leaders originating from multiple organizations and confronted with intramovement competition have strong motives to employ organizational bricolage to form their organization. Organizational bricolage shapes insurgent effectiveness by producing structures that are fit for achieving certain objectives but not others. M-19’s organizational bricolage combined the armed vanguard, intellectual collective, and populist party forms. This structure was effective to foster public support but ineffective to establish a robust social base and maintain urban operations under repression. The research employs the analysis of organizational repertoires and process tracing to retrace M-19’s formation and initial urban campaign. Empirical material includes an original dataset comprising M-19 founders’ biographical data, archival documents, and interviews with ex-combatants. Studying how rebel leaders employ organizational bricolage sheds light on how insurgent organizations form, behave, and transform after war.
Recent literature on civil war dynamics has strongly focused on rebel infighting as one of the main features of multiparty civil wars and has neglected non-violent strategies that groups pursue to manage competition with rivals. One can expect non-violent strategies to be particularly relevant when groups try to gain legitimacy and support from domestic constituencies, which is a central focus of the rebel governance literature. However, existing research has mostly focused on governance provided by one group. In this chapter, I focus on joint governance efforts by two of the most important Islamist militant groups in Northwestern Syria—Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN)—and the ways these groups have managed the ensuing competition as well as differentiated themselves from their rivals in order to gain legitimacy from their respective target groups. What emerges from the analysis is that both groups put forward quite different models of governance that led to recurring conflicts within the joint governance bodies without erupting into large-scale violence. JN stood for a more hard-line, jihadist approach that neglected local specificities, while Ahrar al-Sham emerged as a more moderate and local alternative. This was likely one of the most important reasons that JN’s successor, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), decided to go against its most important ally and rival in mid-2017.
In contemporary armed conflict, the spatiality of violence and the constellation of actors involved in it change frequently, but how these changes affect one another remains poorly understood. What explains the spatial shift of areas affected by violence in multi-actor conflicts? We argue that the emergence of a new dominant conflict actor facilitates a shift in conflict-related violence. We theorize the causal mechanism as ‘low-risk/high-opportunity attraction’. It exists in territories where these actors can draw on a local support base and enhance capacities to engage in violence. To demonstrate our theory’s validity, we conduct two plausibility probes: on the conflict in Colombia paired with the conflict in the Lake Chad region, and on the conflict in the Afghan–Pakistani borderlands paired with the conflict in Iraq/Syria. We adopt a mixed-methods approach integrating visualizations, spatial analysis, network analysis and process tracing, drawing, inter alia, on interviews from remote regions of war-torn Colombia and Iraq.
Rhetorical contests about how to frame a war run alongside many armed conflicts. With the rise of internet access, social media, and cyber operations, these propaganda battles have a wider audience than ever before. Yet, such framing contests have attracted little attention in scholarly literature. What are the effects of gendered and strategic framing in civil war? How do different types of individuals - victims, combatants, women, commanders - utilize the frames created around them and about them? Who benefits from these contests, and who loses? Following the lives of eleven ex-combatants from non-state armed groups and supplemented by over one hundred interviews conducted across Colombia, Framing a Revolution opens a window into this crucial part of civil war. Their testimonies demonstrate the importance of these contests for combatants' commitments to their armed groups during fighting and the Colombian peace process, while also drawing implications for the concept of civil war worldwide.
A prevailing portrayal of civil war positions civilians as largely ineffectual in their own right, instead situating them as mainly puppets manipulated by armed non-state actors vying for control. This viewpoint stands out particularly so when contrasting conventional from irregular civil wars. This, however, overlooks the role that the civilian population plays in civil war. Opposition groups commonly position themselves to act “as the state” by providing public services in order to gain popular support. In particular, where multiple opposition groups exist, competition for support necessitates the provision of services to the local population as a means of gaining compliance and legitimacy and to stand out among a sea of factions. In the Syrian Civil War, for instance, food distribution, and in particular bread and wheat subsidies, along with other necessities played an important role in opposition group survival. In essence, public goods provision becomes an alternative economic arrangement that facilitates an opposition group’s cause, while allowing civilian life and the local economy to “flourish” (i.e., bakeries are able to operate). Not all opposition groups, however, engage in this type of wartime economic activity at all and not all that do undertake it in a benign manner. Some opposition groups instead are immersed in a racketeering circuit in the grain industry that extorts fees from local bakeries for “protection” from competing opposition groups. Still other groups engage directly in the grain production process. What explains this variation in the wartime public goods provision economy? Why do some groups successfully foster more benign relations with the civilian population and why do other resort to extortion? Why do some groups fail to enter in these relations all together despite the relevance it plays in their survival? Is this just a matter of looking through the opposition group’s calculus or are these relations more social and complex? The foundation of this research draws upon the interdisciplinary work of Elinor Ostrom and Viviana A. Zelizer in the fields of economics, political science, and sociology, in addition to the field of security studies. I begin by exploring the relevance of social relations to the evolution of economic arrangements. I also conduct a survey of the extant literature on the wartime economy during the Syrian Civil War, in addition to theory and evidence on the civilian calculus to remain in conflict zones and the administrative and organization capacity of rebel groups. Further, I draw upon data on territorial control by opposition groups, internal displacement, and the prices of basic commodities in opposition-controlled territories.KeywordsZelizerOstromSyriaCivil War
The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology provides a comprehensive review of the psychology of political behaviour from an international perspective. Its coverage spans from foundational approaches to political psychology, including the evolutionary, personality and developmental roots of political attitudes, to contemporary challenges to governance, including populism, hate speech, conspiracy beliefs, inequality, climate change and cyberterrorism. Each chapter features cutting-edge research from internationally renowned scholars who offer their unique insights into how people think, feel and act in different political contexts. By taking a distinctively international approach, this handbook highlights the nuances of political behaviour across cultures and geographical regions, as well as the truisms of political psychology that transcend context. Academics, graduate students and practitioners alike, as well as those generally interested in politics and human behaviour, will benefit from this definitive overview of how people shape – and are shaped by – their political environment in a rapidly changing twenty-first century.
Many Arab countries have experienced deep social, political, and psychological struggles and transformations, yet political psychological analyses of the region remain scarce. This chapter provides a brief overview of the historical context, present, and future directions of the field. Some challenges are epistemological and theoretical, including culturally decontextualized literature and under-theorised topics. Other challenges lie in research production, with difficulties in acquiring qualified researchers, institutional support, training, representative samples, and elaborate, culturally relevant approaches. The final set of challenges are social, political, and ethical in nature, especially pertinent in unstable and conflict-ridden settings, where sensitive questions may pose risks to the community and researchers, trigger suspicion, and highlight researchers’ positionalities and biases. Despite these challenges, however, growing recognition of critical, indigenous, innovative, and collaborative psychology points to promising signs for the future of political psychology in the Arab region, much like the rest of the Global South.
This paper examines the relationship between prior conflict experience and the impact of foreign fighters on armed groups. This paper addresses the findings in existing research that describes foreign fighters as both assets and liabilities by disaggregating foreign fighters into first-conflict foreign fighters and veteran foreign fighters. While prior experience determines the potential impact of foreign fighters, I introduce the concept of foreign fighter integration to understand how this experience is utilized or leveraged by armed groups. The theory-building framework helps explain why we see certain groups leverage foreign fighters in ways that shape their repertoires of violence, tactics, or even ideology, while, in other instances, the influence of foreign fighters appears to be limited – with any consequent effects restricted to the small factions into which foreign fighters have been assigned. Using this theoretical framework of experience and integration, I re-examine in the cases Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to demonstrate how and where foreign fighters impact armed groups.
This chapter addresses fundamentalism by placing it within international relations broadly and the interactive strategic environment more narrowly. By comparing the role played by fundamentalism within two ethno-nationalist groups and the development of their campaigns, this chapter challenges some of the long running assumptions around the topic of fundamentalism, including the role of religion and the simplistic answers which have been offered on the topic in the past. We present fundamentalism as a strategic choice which brings positive and negative consequences to those who embrace it. Arguing that adopting and maintaining, or eventually abandoning, a fundamentalist position is a strategic choice, we reposition the topic of fundamentalism away from a simplistic label of non-state actors and towards a more nuanced position within the wider strategic environment.
This introductory chapter attempts to make a theoretical contribution and frame the role of Non-State Actors (NSAs) in International Relations (IR) discipline as an under-examined subject-matter. The study situates its argument within the current debate of the increasing power of NSAs in international relations (ir) and what this means for the theory. Building on previous work, it offers a conceptualisation of the non-state entities and provides the ground for the book’s rationale. In specific, the chapter offers a definition as to what non-state actorsNon-state actors (NSAs) are based on a systematic and coherent analysis and creates a typologyTypology (of the nature) of NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs). A table on NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs)’ modus operandi illustrates why this is important but not a criterion of distinction among them. Considering the continuum of NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs), the mainstream literature has mainly separated them according to cases in point. Even though different types of NSAsNon-state actors (NSAs) have been analysed separately, a frame that brings them together is lacking. Therefore, the chapter’s primary objective is to classify them as actors on their own right and justify their existence as intrinsic part of the IR’s ontologyOntology.
Sunni political Islam in Syria has complicated legacies. Its development correlates with the Syrian state’s evolution and changes in the ruling regimes’ policies following the Ottoman state’s collapse and modern days. Although initially perceived as the group whose ideology might help to assert independence from the Ottoman Empire and later the Western colonial powers, political Islam was later treated as a threat by the authoritarian regime of Hafez al-Assad and as an obstacle to the state-driven secularism.
The just-war framework neatly distinguishes between jus ad bellum, the criteria that address political leaders’ decisions for waging war, and jus in bello, the criteria that address soldiers’ conduct during war. Yet developments in the empirical science of civil wars, the U.S. military’s recent preference that ground-level soldiers exercise initiative and autonomy, and the wartime experiences of U.S. soldiers fighting in the twenty-first century converge to reveal an unappreciated overlap between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. I examine three firsthand accounts of service in Iraq and Afghanistan to show how military leaders’ contingent decisions – insofar as they choose whom to marginalize politically, befriend as allies in combat, and oppose as mortal enemies – are susceptible, theoretically if not yet practically, of jus ad bellum critique. Drawing on the work of Avishai Margalit, Michael Walzer, and James Murphy, I then argue that military designations of friend and foe implicate ethicists, political authorities, and military educators in a network of obligations. Ethicists must discern how to evaluate commanders’ political decisions, polities must prepare soldiers for political work, and military educators must teach the relevant scholarship. This argument has significance for regnant conceptions of military expertise and military education.
Special Issue, focusing on the Nexus between Terrorism and Transnational Crime. It is guest-edited by Jorge M. Lasmar and Rashmi Singh who both work in the Department of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas), Brazil. In their Introduction, they explain the conference origins of the articles of this Special Issue and introduce both topics and authors.
What makes a neo-Nazi become a convinced anti-fascist or a radical left-winger become a devout Salafist? How do they manage to fit into their new environment and gain acceptance as a former enemy? The people featured in this book made highly puzzling journeys, first venturing into extremist milieus and then deciding to switch to the opposite side. By using their extraordinary life-stories and their own narratives, this book provides the first in-depth analysis of how and why people move between seemingly opposing extremist environments that can sometimes overlap and influence each other. It aims to understand how these extremists manage to convince their new group that they can be trusted, which also allows us to dive deep into the psychology of extremism and terrorism. This fascinating work will be of immense value to those studying radicalization and counter-radicalization in terrorism studies, social psychology and political science.
This article presents a preliminary set of empirical findings and observations on the current status of Central Asian fighters in Syria and Iraq, with a specific focus on the question of where and how they might be leaving the battlefield after concluding their active fighting roles. Drawing on data collected exclusively from local online sources as well as regional events covering the subject, the article develops common profiles of the known contingent and identifies overall patterns in their movements. In order to help with analysis, the entire contingent is grouped into four distinct categories, or the 4 "Rs": "Remainers", "Repatriates", "Returnees", and "Relocators". This typological framework allows a closer study of the characteristics as well as the impact of each category, which could also be employed when looking at other FTF cohorts.
Why do jihadi foreign fighters leave local insurgencies? While the literature on jihadi foreign fighters has mushroomed over the last decade, it has largely covered the perspective of individual motivations to join jihadi foreign fighter groups. The critical question of why individual jihadi foreign fighters leave local insurgencies, de facto recognizing the failure of their initial motives to join a distant armed conflict, has remained understudied. Drawing on the case study of Russo-Chechen wars, this article shows that a combination of popular hostility, loss of status, and poor living conditions urged jihadi foreign fighters to abandon local armed conflict.
Do foreign fighters increase the prevalence of rebel-inflicted sexual violence? Evidence from recent armed conflicts indicates that this may be the case. However, little is known regarding the generalizability and nature of this relationship. This article argues that foreign fighters present local insurgencies with both strategic benefits—i.e., a reduced dependency on local civilians for material support—and organizational challenges—i.e., threats to intra-group cohesion. In combination, these factors increase local rebel commanders’ willingness to institute policies and oversee practices of sexual violence. I test this theory with a mixed methods research design. In the first stage, I estimate a series of ordinal logistic regression models with a sample of 143 rebel groups active from 1989 to 2011. In the second stage, I investigate further with a case study of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Together, the results demonstrate that when foreign fighters are present in the rank and file, a rebel group is likely to perpetrate more prevalent levels of sexual violence. In addition to explaining group-level differences in rebel-inflicted sexual violence, this study demonstrates how local rebel commanders adjust their internal management strategies to the presence of foreign recruits.
Understanding why and how individuals participate in militant organizations has been the focus of an increasing amount of scholarship. Traditionally, these studies focus at either the individual or organizational level of explanation. This article advances the discussion on individual participation in militant organizations by combining primary and secondary sources at both levels to explain how the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attracted individuals into its organization as either suicide bombers or frontline fighters. First, at the individual level, we analyze a primary source dataset of over 4,000 personnel files from foreign fighters who went to Syria to join ISIS between 2013 and 2014. Second, at the organizational level, we examine trends in Islamic State propaganda and messaging to see how the recruitment of individuals into the organization placed them on certain operational paths. Two specific takeaways emerge. First, foreign fighters in 2013–2014 volunteered to become suicide bombers with relatively less frequency than in past iterations of the conflict in Iraq and Syria. Second, fighters from Western countries and fighters from countries undergoing a civil war were especially less likely to volunteer for a suicide role. More broadly, this analytical essay makes a case for the value of looking inside an organization as well as at individuals to get a more complete picture about group-level behavior.
Jihadist propaganda videos depicting training camps and combat scenes have steadily increased in variety and quality over the years. A small number of these videos attempt to mimic Special Operation Forces (SOF)’s tactics and skills. This subset of jihadist propaganda might go beyond a mere attempt to show prowess and reveal actual operational capabilities. This article analyzes three exemplary jihadist propaganda videos depicting claimed SOF capabilities through expert reviews with active service SOF personnel to assess the actual tactical quality of the content shown. It also discusses the potential reasons for those groups to mimic SOF and implications for counterterrorism.
The literature on foreign fighters devotes considerable attention to the questions of why individuals join armed groups outside of their nation-states and their propensity for engaging in political violence after they return to their home countries. But what happens to those who do not return but go on to join new groups, or even new wars?
This paper examines career foreign fighters who have traversed from one insurgency to another. We present an original dataset of over 50 individuals who served as foreign fighters in multiple insurgencies. More than half of those who could be identified as having served with more than one armed group achieved leadership positions, which is historically atypical for foreign fighters. Some become top leadership while a significant percentage also facilitate terror attacks.
The Syrian conflict has produced a policy debate about whether it is more dangerous to allow foreign fighters to return or to leave them unaccounted. This study provides the first evidence that foreign fighters who survive their first tours accumulate resources, develop skills, and transfer their abilities to new violent actors. Our findings indicate that career foreign fighters pose a greater and broader security threat than returning, one-off foreign fighters.
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