Emil Aslan Souleimanov's research while affiliated with Charles University in Prague and other places

Publications (21)

Article
As an embedded sociocultural code, blood revenge is present in many societies where civil wars occur. Whereas evidence from other social sciences attests to its enduring global significance, security studies scholarship has largely neglected the custom of blood revenge. This article is the first to investigate its relevance for understanding the in...
Article
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Why do some countries harbor pro-government militias (PGMs), while others do not? We assert that the deployment of PGMs depends on topographic, social, and political structures within which governments and rebels operate. Drawing on the concept of opportunity structures, we postulate that structural conditions within which governments are embedded...
Article
Drawing on original interviews with ex-insurgents and eyewitnesses of the Second Chechen War (1999–2009), this article develops a theory of “kin killing,” defined as the use of lethal violence against insurgents’ relatives as a deliberate counterinsurgency tactic. Family-based targeting works by coercing insurgents to surrender or defect, deterring...
Article
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, political commentators and students of international relations alike have been puzzled by an increasingly cordial relationship between Israel and Azerbaijan, a Muslim‐majority republic in the South Caucasus. Indeed, the unfolding alliance of the Jewish state and a tiny, energy‐rich, post‐Soviet country sandwi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Drawing on original interviews with ex-insurgents and eyewitnesses of the Second Chechen War (1999-2009), this article develops a theory of “kin killing,” defined as the use of lethal violence against the relatives of insurgents as a deliberate counterinsurgency tactic. Family-based targeting works by coercing insurgents to surrender or defect, det...
Article
The literature on delegated rebellion has treated principals (external states) and their agents (rebel groups) as the main factors in the inception of rebellion. Intriguingly, no attention has been paid to subnational elites as a separate, third actor. This article takes a novel perspective on delegated rebellion by ascribing agency to subnational...
Article
We have limited knowledge of how the insecure environment characteristic of personalist dictatorships affects the behaviour of provincial leaders. In this article, we argue that such provincial leaders face a trade-off: either they can keep a low profile but remain vulnerable to the capriciousness of the ruler (the acquiescent strategy), or they ca...
Article
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This reflection article presents insights on conducting fieldwork during and after COVID-19 from a diverse collection of political scientists—from department heads to graduate students based at public and private universities in the United States and abroad. Many of them contributed to a newly published volume, Stories from the Field: A Guide to Na...
Article
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Islamic law denotes as haram any forbidden behavior, object, beverage, or food. Despite subscribing to a similar Salafi ideology, very few jihadi groups use violence against haram targets (e.g., brothels, casinos, statues, liquor stores, mixed sex schools, and gay clubs). This study argues that haram-centered violence unites ethnically-mixed jihadi...
Article
Disengagement from militant groups has often been explained in individual terms such as battle fatigue or the desire to rejoin family and friends. We seek to examine empirically which other factors, beyond individual-level determinants, have influenced disengagement processes among militants belonging to different types of Chechen militant organisa...
Article
Full-text available
In the second half of the 1990s, the label “asymmetric” conflict rose to prominence among scholars and strategists, as a term for capturing the rising challenge that violent non-state actors posed to the liberal world order. However, the concept soon became a catch-phrase for a range of disparate phenomena, and other buzzwords arose to describe the...
Article
Full-text available
Many scholars have suggested that organized violence in Chechnya has ended, and that Russia’s Chechenization policy and Ramzan Kadyrov’s presidency deserve the credit. We suggest that Putin has created a Frankenstein-like ruler over whom he risks losing control. As a result, the conflict only appears resolved, and we draw attention to both vertical...

Citations

... Security forces experiencing high levels of casualties may act with less restraint due to both psychological processes and political calculations. Motivated by revenge and honor, they are likely to dehumanize large groups as being hostile and exercise disproportionate force to inflict collective punishment ( Souleimanov, Siroky, and Colombo 2023 ). Lagged civilian is about the permissibility of civilian victimization within the timeframe of fighting. ...
... Other scholars seem to agree. For instance, Siroky et al (2022) find that "haram" (locations where certain behaviors are interpreted as being forbidden by Islam) targeting is a mechanism for overcoming collective action problems among mixed-ethnicity Salafists, while enhancing internal cohesion on the basis of the religion as a superordinate guiding force. This is supported by Braun and Genkin's (2014) finding that collectivist culture reduces the cost of suicide bombing. ...
... Reviewing the two politics journals devoted to the FSU area discussed earlier, there are other scholars who stand out: Caress Schenk's recent work on state capacity and immigration control (2021), only possible thanks to ethnographic triangulation in collaboration with local researchers. Laryš and Souleimanov (2022) use an embedded mode of 235 fieldwork to examine the "delegated rebellion" in Donbas. We should also note other ethnographic studies with political topics published in the best-known anglophone area studies journals recently (Hervouet 2021; Morris and Garibyan 2021;Ringel 2021;Yusupova 2022). ...
... Recent literature argues for a different view on the Russian political regime and puts special emphasis on its personalist nature, with the regime stability being closely interlinked with Putin's popularity Elkink 2014, 2016;Smyth 2014;Kendall-Taylor et al. 2017;Frye 2021;Tolstrup and Souleimanov 2022). In these regimes, political institutions can still exist but fail to constrain the rule of the incumbent (Geddes 1999;Geddes et al. 2014). ...
... Not being able to visit China prevents these researchers, including all three of us, from keeping a pulse on urban Chinaa place known for its rapid changes. As noted elsewhere (Krause et al., 2021), the long period of inaccessibility to China has compelled some researchers to pivot to projects that do not require fieldworkwhich might well cover analysis of publicly circulated discourses of the Chinese state that, according to Li (2023: 2), has so far been 'ignored by scholars outside China'. However, this change also means that they could be pivoting away from important questions whose answers can only be found through immersing oneself in particular urban socio-spatial settings or conducting face-to-face interviews with people in dread of online surveillance. ...
... 8), has the potential to sink its roots exceptionally deep into a person's sense of self. Disengaging can therefore present a serious shock to the core of an individual's identity, making for a profoundly destabilizing experience which is perhaps best compared to losing one's moorings (Barrelle, 2014;Kruglanski et al., 2019;Souleimanov & Aliyev, 2020). ...
... Within security studies, asymmetry in armed conflicts has been extensively studied. In this regard, the objective is to understand how the military capabilities of two actors can affect their performance in a violent confrontation (Berglund & Souleimanov, 2020;Tasseron & Lawson, 2022). ...
... As the conflict in Libya evolved, Turkey has offered diplomatic and military support to the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, which is the legitimate authority representing the country in the eyes of the UN, while Russia has decided to back the Libyan warlord Haftar, who is currently controlling a considerable part of Libyan territory. Many analysts indicated that in addition to maintaining its economic interests in Libya, Russia could emerge as a powerbroker in the war-torn country just like it has done so in Syria (Souleimanov, 2019). However, in June 2020, Turkish-backed GNA forces stopped a fourteen-month siege of Haftar forces in Tripoli. ...
... Some authors say that Kadyrov has secured a larger degree of autonomy than the Ichkerian separatists could ever have hoped for (Moore and Tumelty 2009, 86), thus achieving "[the] centuries-old aspiration of the Chechen people for selfdetermination" (Russell 2011b(Russell , 1075. However, the political regime in Chechnya is often seen as unstable due to its violent and personalist nature (Dannreuther and March 2008;Russell 2008;Sakwa 2010a;Souleimanov, Abbasov, and Siroky 2019). Some authors doubt that Ramzan Kadyrov is truly loyal to Moscow (Marten 2012). ...