Tuesday, 6 January: Civil Wars—Introduction
Intro with the ambiguities of La Barbie (Sinaloa cartel): Is he a criminal gang boss or a rebel
leader?
I. Civil War Trends:
(1) Civil war violence peaked & is declining?
(Halvard Buhuag, et al., Global Trends in Armed Conflict, CSCW/PRIO, 2014)
(2) Civil war violence is increasing?
(Uppsala University, Department of Peace & Conflict Research, 2014)
II. What counts as a “civil war”?
Stathis Kalyvas, “Civil Wars,” in Carles Boix & Susan Stokes, eds., Oxford Handbook of
Comparative Politics, (NY: OUP, 2007), 416-34.
“Civil wars” involve semantic confusion. SK’s definition: “armed conflicts taking place
within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties subject to a
common authority at the outset of hostilities” (page 417).
Distinct approaches to the study of civil wars:
1. Development economists look at civil wars as impediments to development & often
emphasize the role of resources.
2. Some scholars focus on the replacement of interstate wars with internal wars. Our Mary
Kaldor textbook provides an example of this approach
3. Student of ethnicity focus on the state and state-society relations. They are concerned
about the impact of social divisions / differences and how political choices shape these.
Problems of studying civil wars:
1. Definition problems: How is civil war different from crime or terrorism? What about
Mexico’s drug lords and violence? Is Mexico experiencing a civil war? (Here is a study
of the scope of violence in Mexico: June Beittel, Mexico’s Drug Trafficking
Organizations, CRS, 2013)
2. Multi-causal: Are resources (aggregated and disaggregated), diasporas, past conflict
incidence, bad neighbors, terrain, geography, infant mortality, regime type, social
heterogeneity… Is everyone chasing a different beast?
3. Endogenous interactions. Is there a single cause of civil war if using violence changes
the key actors and feeds into their interactions?
His recommendation: Look at specific societal characteristics. In the past, rural
economies and social systems gave rebels refuge and rebel governance was easier in rural
areas. How has urbanization changed warfare?
Study social, political and military dynamics. Process is more important than causality.
Look for categories. Who are the primary actors? What are their goal and ideas? What is
the master cleavage? He says that there is a major distinction between periphery
challenge conflicts and state implosion conflicts. Look at the nature of recruitment,
organization, governance, rebel and government alike, and disaggregate cases. He
stresses micro-foundations of civil wars.
Thursday, 8 January: New & Old Wars
(Getting settled with a Russian perspective)
Mary Kaldor, “Introduction” & “Old Wars” in New and Old Wars
Has the logic of violence changed since the middle of the 20th century?
Is the attack on the journal Charlie Hebdo part of a “war” or is it a crime? Was the attack
political? How do we distinguish between war and criminal violence?
I. What is “new” about New Wars?
1. Change in social relationships: Global actors – NGOs, international organizations, media,
diasporas, new commercial networks.
2. Change in purpose: No longer about ideology or big programs (to which anyone can
subscribe). The focus is more exclusionary (identity of “ethnic” politics).
3. Change in mode: From competition to govern the people and building up administrations,
to strategies of destabilization and disorganization.
4. Change in resourcing: War economies are more globalized and incorporate new, often
criminal actors.
II. The connection between new wars and failed states
(Fund for Peace, Fragile State Index):
Do new kids of states, i.e., failed states, create new wars or are new wars generators of
failed states?
.
III. Old Wars and the states that wage(d) it
1. Armed organizations are extensions of the states or of states-in-waiting
2. States are the dominant actors in old wars, subordinating other actors in negotiations and
settlements.
3. Old wars are regulated under Laws of War.
Saddam’s lesson about old and new wars.
Is ISIS fighting a new or old war?
Areas under ISIS control (New York Times)
Report on ISIS administration (Jake Shapiro, et al., Managing a Transnational
Insurgency, Combating Terrorism Center, West Point) and more on ISIS from CTC.
Here are some more maps related to conflict in Iraq.
IV. “‘New’ & ‘Old’ Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?” (Kalyvas)
1. Did the Cold War cloud our capacity to see the ‘new’ features in old wars? (NYRB
review of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin)
2. Can we really discern motives of combatants? Do motives matter?
Tuesday, 13 January: The New Wars Concept
Kaldor’s argument is about how change in the global political economy changes how
civil wars are fought.
Globalization  Pressures on weak states  States fail  Fragmentation of the exercise
of violence  Violent groups build their own links to global economy  These groups’
uses of violence shape their goals and other people’s goals and uses of violence.
I. The Failing State Syndrome
The background condition: Did states fail back in the 1950s and 1960s? Do more states
fail these days?
“Globalization” = Opportunity for the strong that can manage negative effects
[USA, China, India, Singapore, etc.]
“Globalization” = Dangers for the weak that lack the capacity to manage negative effects
[Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, South Sudan]
Taking down states?: Critical junctures can force states to expose their societies more
directly to global ideas, opportunities, and practices.
Return to a fragile / failed states index: This time the Business Insider list. What do these
states have in common?
Is Greece a “fragile state?” Here is a Vice News view. Controversial views: Who is
responsible? EU bankers? Immigrants? Consider differentials in EU youth
unemployment rates.
End products: Entrepreneurs without states, the creation of a new social structure

Syrian refugee entrepreneurs in the shadow of war

Global Nomads (last week in Paris—biographies of the attackers)

Local Bandits: those who do well, or at least OK with violence
II. The Fragmentation of the Exercise of Violence (bringing in the the ICG report on
Mexico)
The time before: 71 years of single party dominance to 2000: There was collusion
between the political establishment, drug traffickers, and security forces. Why
relatively little violence?
The time after: here is still collusion, but much more violence. What caused this
change to occur?
III. States that “privatize” their own security forces
Libya: Qaddafi “privatized” elaborate state subsidy system to local politicians. They
distributed goods to supporters & set up pro-regime “vigilante” forces, etc. Qaddafi
was careful to ensure a clan basis so they couldn’t team up against him.
This creates a neo-tribal framework of armed groups. They switch sides (as Kaldor
notes) when regime weakens. But logic remains clan-based.
BBC Guide to Libya Militias
Kaldor’s approach leads one to questions such as:

What is the militia’s reach in terms of financing and recruitment?

How should one understand members’ motivations for joining, and how do
motivations matter / not matter?

Are there elements of the old regime that join it?

What are the Diaspora links?
Thursday, 15 January: War Economies
I. Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity?
Why is it so hard to organize grievance-based protest?
Predation and attendant payoffs sustain rebellions financially. Collier’s findings: (1) crime in
rich societies does not evolve into rebellion, (2) natural resource exports are associated with
increased probabilities of civil conflict, and (3) rebellion surely involves group grievances,
even if they are not caused by them.
“The rebel leader will only establish an organization if it can survive in the face of
government forces and make a profit. If rebellion is viable, its size will depend on the
endowment of natural resources, the size of the government army, and the social
constraints on rebel recruitment” (p.846).
If wars are resource-driven, why are so many of them “ethnic”?
Armed groups have a comparative advantage if (1) income is from criminal activities, (2)
service as a proxy for a foreign state, and (3) contributions from diasporas. “This suggests
that grievance and greed may have a symbiotic relationship in rebellion: to get started,
rebellion needs grievance, whereas to be sustained, it needs greed” (p.852).
Are rebel leaders inherently criminal? What roles do “new economies” and state policies
play in shaping the “criminal” components of warfare.
“Criminal” armed groups: Just rebels? University of Mannheim project on PGMs
The biography of Zeljko Raznatovic - alias Arkan
II. What Do We Know about Natural Resources and Civil War?
Ross finds econometric studies produce ambiguous findings concerning the relationships
between natural resources and internal wars. Political violence may kill off certain
economic activities, which will enhance the fraction of GDP accounted for by resource
exports. Thus the causal relationship may be reversed.
Ross pegs oil as a cause (since it activates separatists) and ‘lootable’ commodities like drugs
and gems help lengthen conflicts.
Is oil different? Oil (and gas) is more likely than other resources to be an incentive for
separatist conflict. It is physically concentrated. It can be exploited only by foreign firms (or
with their help). Thus, unlike portable and easily exploited resources like diamonds, one
needs to claim the prerogatives of sovereignty to do business with these firms. Otherwise, as
with diamonds, one could back a warlord instead. Maybe capital intensive oil exploitation
enhances local perceptions of marginalization, especially when they see the revenues of this
go into distant government coffers (or pockets of officials).
What is special about drugs and diamonds? Why are drugs not associated with the initiation
of conflicts?
A report of the West Africa Commission on Drugs, Not Just in Transit: Drugs, the State
and Society in West Africa, June, 2014.
Policy implications: Manage conflicts by targeting commercial networks? Activities of
Global Witness and United Nations Security Council panels
III. The globalized war economy
Kaldor: As states get weaker, armies disintegrate into militias and unemployed young men
join. These militias lack hierarchies but collaborate across horizontal connections, including
commercial. In spite of identity politics, inter-ethnic alliances appear. But they are based
upon self-interest and expediency in war economies, not political commitment.
Ideology does not play a significant role? Political control occurs not through recruitment to
an idea but through attachment to a label. “Instead of creating a favorable environment for
the guerrilla, the new warfare aims to create an unfavorable environment for all those people
it cannot control.” (p.98).
How do we interpret this in light of the ISIS Caveat?
A problem for conventional categories:
“Modern distinctions between the political and the economic, the public and the private,
the military and the civil are breaking down. Political control is required to embed the
new coercive forms of exchange, which in turn are required to provide a viable financial
basis for the new gangsters/power-holders in the context of state disintegration and
economic marginalization. A new set of social relationships is being established in which
economics and violence are deeply intertwined within the shared framework of identity
politics.” (106-07)
Tuesday, 21 January: Violence as a tool to reshape social structures and
economies.
[Here is some’s Afghanistan War]
A key point: This is a distinctive kind of political economy of warfare rather than an
aberration or just something that’s messed up [though it can be that too].
I. King’s dilemma for the analyst: He says that violence in the first instance is like pulling a
lid off. There are multiple paths that this could take.
Consider the 2014 Fergusson, MO affair. What agenda: Ethnic riot, class revolt, personal
greed?
Consider existing social networks and associations (Varshney in King’s article) and
histories of previous events (Beissinger in King). Why does LA get framed as a riot and
how?
King (Varshney) on master narratives and how these are shaped.

Instrumental, as in elites can use labels as tools – Milosevic in Kaldor’s book.

But there are limits: Some communities resist or shape violence in other ways.
II. elite networks to understand the purposes to which violence is put and intensities in civil
wars. Consider elite collusion with local rebels on the Af-Pak border.
King makes the important point that a bunch of people getting along in a diverse
community isn’t enough to protect that community from the spread of civil war violence.
How are elites and regular people different? Is it that regular people are easily duped and
that elites (or someone else) know better?
III. Snyder & Jervis: “A security dilemma is a situation in which each party’s efforts to
increase its own security reduces the security of the others” (p.15).
Prisoner’s Dilemma. Here is an interactive PD game. See how a low-status person who
is as aware and informed as a member of the elite is liable to choose to respond to
violence in ways that harm long-term interests?
One has to be predatory in behavior to protect interests? This will be perceived by
observers as aggressive and will invite a counter-response of defense—that the other will
see as aggressive & so forth. Thus “Group identity can then be a consequence of conflict
as much as a cause of it and can be fuelled by security concerns.” (p.22). Here is where
ethnic militias can find their place, using violence to create the security dilemma.
Strategic violence: an Iraqi television message, and another. What are the targets of these
attacks?
IV. How to solve this security dilemma:
(1) Establish a single authority as quickly as possible,
(2) Make contending groups more compact geographically, monitor them, and even their
balance of power [to minimize incentives for preemptive attack], and
(3) Lock contenders into a shared institutional framework that requires mutual
commitment. These usually requires a powerful outsider to intervene to provide
guarantees of compliance
Respond to the “solutions” in turn:
(1) Iraqi and Syrian civil wars?
(2) Segregate groups? Unpleasant to some? Israeli—Palestinian separation. NATO did
it too, in Former Yugoslavia, partitioning Kosovo and defending enclaves. You can
think of other example. Does partition reward divisive wartime politics?
(3) How easy is it to lock former combatants into a “shared institutional framework?”
Does this require continued occupation / control?
What do you propose as alternatives?
Tuesday, 27 January: Inside Civil War: War Machines and Multiple Plateaus
Key points: Sierra Leone’s civil war is a “new war” by virtue of the networked rather than
hierarchical nature of armed groups (including “government” forces). It is contemporary,
even forward-looking, rather than primitive or backward. This civil war reflects changes in
the global political economy
I. Basic concepts
What is a War Machine”?
What are Nomads? (Here’s one from Daphne, Alabama!) What are Global Nomads?
What are Key Masters?
II. Plateaus: This refers to contingent and flexible action at different levels of the Rabbit
Hole Matrix. Hoffman’s first plateau is where “War machines make previously
unheard of or unthinkable connections” (9).
The first plateau as a war against the state that has failed: Fighters think about their own
visions of political order and problem solving. Take popular culture seriously when
thinking about fighting back.
How do states fight fighters that are flexible and adaptive?
III. Warfare in Sierra Leone (1991-2001): Symmetrical irregular warfare
Hoffman notes a “state security force best described as a network of semi-independent
operators rather than a highly structured and centralized fighting force.” (35)
How do you tell who is on what side? Are there “sides” in this kind of war? Libya and
the problem of symmetrical irregular warfare
IV. The Second Plateau: Institutionalization in the failed state
Youthful fighters connect with the incumbent political structures
(1) Failed state political parties
(2) Community ethnic associations and other defensive forces
(3) The politics of patronage
Thursday, 29 January: The Civil Defense Forces & Patronage Networks
I. The Process of Institutionalization: Patronage Networks
Kaldor: “While the small-scale character of the fighting units has much in common with
those involved in guerrilla warfare, they lack the hierarchy, order and vertical command
systems that have been typical of guerrilla forces and that were borrowed from modern
warfare.” (101).
Hoffman’s Big Men, Small Boys (Chapter 4) in which General Joe Nunie uses
uncertainty to make himself a “general” He distributed DDR resources to clients. Being a
war commander gives individuals opportunities to become patrons in other ways. “Rather
than a military organization, the CDF is better thought of as the militarization of that
dominant logic, or the militarization of a particular set of social networks” (134).
Mohammed Maada Gleh lost out. He demonstrates how the patronage logic of this war
explains side switching that Kaldor refers to & others find confusing in “new wars”. Gleh
is stuck in a particular plateau. Nunie has more power because he can straddle and switch
plateaus (key master) and he used violence for social mobility.
 Hoffman’s explanation can be used to understand why child soldiers are so prevalent.
The aftermath: Report of violations of human rights by child combatants (p.18). Are
child soldiers really “children” or are they young clients seeking protection?
What are the implications of prosecuting CDF leaders for crimes against humanity?
II. Fluid Populations: Violent Laborers & the Barracks
Kaldor: “[G]lobalization is associated with… flexible specialization, or the new
economy.’ (75)
The barracks are another plateau. They are the locus of labor defined through violence.
This fits a global breakdown of distinctions between state and private, global and local,
peace and war. Hoffman’s observation is that postwar social networks and their
militarization are like wartime processes, only continued. Patronage within the barracks
is a nodal point for engagement with the world economy.
The fighters are the population flottante that has exercised authorities since colonial
times, people who are more “fluid” between city and bush, etc. One can imagine a
criminal who is also a student, a youth radical who serves a politician.
Barracks  Blurred boundaries between war & other activities. Kenya’s youth &
political violence and the gangs of Eastleigh: What will this battle become; ethnic,
religious, criminal war?
III. Hoffman Travels Beyond Sierra Leone
1. The nature of future wars
Will future wars be Sierra Leone-type wars as the global economy grinds up institutions
and barriers? Sudden global economic shifts can bring serious disorder and disaffection,
especially in relatively weak and vulnerable states.
Consider the nature of warfare in the rise of ISIS (PBS Frontline). Think about ISIS as an
ideological organization that holds territory, yet embedded in elements of “new wars”.
2. Thinking about how to fight in new wars
Hoffman noted that the Israeli Defense Force thinks about social spaces and networks
in war. Eyal Weizman writes about this (and has a book on the subject).
Is the US preparing for old wars, not the wars of the future? Donald Rumsfeld’s emphasis
on networks and flexibility was forward looking?
3. New wars and US strategies
Blurring divides between war and peace, using proxies, outsourcing and making forces
invisible, as the best way to fight wars. Does this explain why the Bush Administration
dropped adherence to some international agreements, as institutions that inhibit
flexibility?
But the US and other armies are tied to state partners overseas. Hoffman says that as the
US military cultivates proxy forces, the US helps undermine states.
4. A closer look at how some conduct counterinsurgency warfare
Field Manuel 3-24; How US officials think the relationship of territory and networks in
warfare. Dynamic Planning for COIN in Afghanistan
Thursday, 5 February: Territorial Control and the Cognitive Battlespace
I. Territory & Control
1. Identification: The incumbent is easy to see and the enemy can hide among the people.
The insurgent is a “chameleon” but also subject to denunciations.
2. Support: (a measure of behavior, not attitude). Most people want to survive. Look in
terms of diverse personal motives. It is easy to attach these to whoever is strongest.
Defy the strongest & risk shot to the head. Lichbach’s “five percent rule” –
the
militant supporters are few. The rest are fence-sitters; opportunists and survivors.
Violence can dissuade locals from supporting one’s adversaries. How do changes in global
norms affect the capacities of incumbents to apply violence instrumentally? Do human rights
norms advantage insurgents over states?
3. Collaboration and Defection: Here are some calculations; (a) compliance [can be hidden],
(b) informing [hidden], (c) switching sides [public act].
II. Collection of information (“Snitches”)
1. Militias [state]: This is a way to tap into private information through recruitment.
Collaborators can use acquired power for personal ends and this misuse of power
alienates others from the incumbent’s cause. But as rebels are targeted, the militia
member’s option to switch is reduced.
2. Local Committees [rebels]: Deputies of the rebels-maintaining control
III. How does a force prevent switching and promote accurate denunciations?
Control: The more control, the more collaboration. Support and control are mutually
reinforcing. People side with the most feared, not the most loved. (Bing West, The
Strongest Tribe – How do we fight?)
How does suicide bombing influence this dynamic?
Effective threats  degree of control Cautious collaborators gauge their “protector’s”
control. Forces can relocate people to “protect” them through separating the people from
the rebels.
High level of control  lowers costs of collaboration (through reducing risks of
reprisals). Kalyvas: “The higher the level of control exercised by a political actor in an
area, the higher the level of civil collaboration with this political actor will be.” (p 111)
Cities and main transportation corridors will be harder for rebels to subvert.
Does propaganda conveying control influence people? Iraq Special Forces commercial
and conveyance of control Recall the security dilemmas’ effects on perceptions.
Since it hard to control everywhere, can violence and sanctions replace physical occupation?
 Problem of discrimination: The actor needs to signal to others the degree to which they
act on genuine information.
 Genuine information gives others the impression of actors’ control.
 Threats and punishments need to be: (a) public, (b) persuasive, and (c) personalized.
 Collective punishment is arbitrary and does not give cues to people about how to avoid
it. It devalues collaboration & is worse if opposing force supporters escape punishment.
 High importance of intelligence.
Tuesday, 10 February: Information & Narratives
I. Introduction to the Rabbit Hole Matrix —like Hoffman’s plateaus, up against the more
familiar and comforting reality of JP 1-02
Lubna the nomad
The key master former Baathist Party operative
The three letter guys
The bulk of the population: The difference between collaboration and collusion and how
uses of violence shape the social environment of conflict. Are most people fence sitters?
II. Narratives and soup sandwiches and recruiting accidental guerrillas: Iraq’s particular Sob
Story: Saddam + UN sanctions = criminalized state. A great setting for a new war.
1. Subsidies + patronage create mass dependency and allow the regime to weather the
collapse of state institutions and the economy.
2. Private militias: Saddam’s survival strategy: tame the army and insulate against coups
d’états. Sets the stage for politician collusion with private militias later.
3. “Neo-tribalism” and sectarian divides—Saddam’s cultivation of “creative tension” to
create sectarian security dilemmas.
 The consolidation of Iraq-specific networks and key masters
III. Violent religious regional networks – The new network connects to the narrative
1. Media: One perspective and another perspective. Strategic uses of media
2. “Saudi hypocrites”—Aid to extremists from people who don’t have to live with the
extremists.
3. Wider Diaspora networks. What do you make of this global nomad? How important is
the religious element of his “religious narrative”?
How can one fight a network with good media access? How can a hierarchically
organized “old war” army fight “new war” insurgencies?
Should the population be the focus of strategy? Should networks be the focus of
strategy? Should killing enemy fighters be the focus of strategy?
Thursday, 12 February: The Logic of Violence & Iraq
I. Force as the instrument of control: The Righteous World of Idris (look ahead to Ch 10)
1. Extreme violence pushes fence-sitters (complicity rather than collaboration) off the fence,
versus using protection (the counterinsurgents’ strategy) to push the fence-sitters off the
fence. The people are the center of gravity of fighting.
The Management of Savagery (Abu Bakr Naji, trans. Will McCants) provides an
insurgent account of the strategic role of violence. Also check http://www.jihadica.com/.
Do the counterinsurgents really protect their informants? Why would someone who they
can’t protect denounce the jihadists? Why would “the Genie” (in Chapter 11) consent to
Insaf’s (her daughter’s) denunciation when they know that the jihadists can return to kill
them? What would you do if you were the counterinsurgent?
Would a strategy of protecting the population work the same way in Sierra Leone’s
“new war”?
2. The jihadist use of violence to divide a community on a sectarian basis: the creation of
security dilemmas. Note how the timing of elections in the course of conflicts can make
a situation worse.
The nature of “protection,” i.e., sectarian kidnappings and rule
II. Imperfect protection: Train local forces to protect the people: Iraqi Police are idealized
in one instance, and another view of a frustrated American soldier.
Tuesday, 17 February: New Tactics, Old Rules?
I. Strategy, tactics & human rights: Your world of a JP 1-02 Army can’t use extreme
violence in the same ways that the insurgents can use extreme violence. How do you
resolve this asymmetry?
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and 18 USC §2441 (the world of old
wars) and the Rabbit Hole (the videos not shown – the world of new wars):
1. How can the counterinsurgents fight on the same plateau as the jihadists and not commit
war crimes? Does doing battle in new wars inevitably mean committing war crimes?
Could vendetta be used as a stabilizing force?
2. Becoming the “insurgents behind the insurgents” and dealing with the police when they
appear (Danny Hoffman’s fluidity—but with Geneva Convention rules).
3. “Frenimies”: JB Walker looks at Badr Brigades (and the Islamic Supreme Council of
Iraq) – infiltrate the Ministry of Interior & security services? The narrative of
victimization from a position of power—the “self-perpetuating sob story” (The art of
being rebels from within the state.) Here is a BBC report on militias.
II. New Weapons
1. Suicide bombing as a reaction against occupation? Here is a database of suicide
bombings at University of Chicago’s CPOST: (1) weapon of the weak, (2) most effective
against democracies (R Pape).
Counter-argument: Suicide bombing (and other stuff) as the development of a narrative.
Ground-up attacks (Marc Sageman’s “bunch of guys” theory in his Leaderless Jihad:
Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century) are useful tools in a decentralized model of
insurgency (i.e., ISIS).
The suicide bombers’ tools: (1) the exploitation of uncertainty, (2) the exploitation of
media, and (3), the exploitation of suspicion.
Popular attitudes toward suicide bombing: public opinion polls.
What would fighting new wars be like without committing war crimes? Does one target
a network or does one target an idea? (You might want to read Nicolas Pace’s essay in
SWJ.) The US has a Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. Here is Al
Arabiya’s communication. And one from al Iraqiyya.
.
2. Drones:
Insurgents exploit social and physical spaces (‘fluidity’); drones can follow.
Drones against al Qaeda: Are drones precise? Yes (in a fashion) or no? Are drones legal?
Here is a Stanford Law School critique of the use of drones.
Thursday, 26 February: Networks, Narratives and Battlespace.
I. Networks: Paul Staniland’s social-institutional theory, social structure & relationships
Kaldor: weak state  resources  rebel strategies and organization
Staniland: weak state  rebel strategies and organization  resources
(Visit Paul Staniland’s homepage)
Networks are the social ties of everyday in communities and between communities that
are not built in anticipation of violence but which can become instruments of rebels.
Two categories:
1. Overlapping social base rebels: leaders and recruits come from across a range of
localities and benefit from strong vertical ties to the places from which they come.
2. Divided social base rebels: Weak horizontal ties limit cohesion of leadership and weak
vertical ties inhibit ‘embedded” relations with communities.
What this means in practice:
1. Overlapping: These rebels mobilize existing community networks of trust and
cooperation. They have superior access to flows of information and are better able to
discipline members. Hizbullah Mujahideen
2. Divided: These rebels suffer from feuds and splits. Their ties to communities are
factional. Discipline over fighters and control over recruitment is weak (allowing, for
example, looters to assume the group’s label to exploit the brand). JKLF
What is the appropriate social institutional category to apply to ISIS?
Profile of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from BBC: Here is al-Arabiya’s take on the leadership
structure of ISIS.
What about Libya? ICG has a new report that stresses the intense fragmentation of
armed groups there. What is Libya to ISIS? Here is a Quilliam Foundation report.
II. Narratives: coherence.
Emile Simpson: Why do democratic states have a problem promoting a compelling
counter-narrative to violent religious extremism?
A compelling narrative? Recruitment
You can see al-Baghdadi preach if you want. You can decide if the sermon is compelling.
Tuesday, 3 March: Countering Civil war Violence
I. Mary Kaldor’s proposal for a “cosmopolitan approach” to war termination
-
Politics of inclusion: develop a purposeful strategy of building on local NGOs and other
groups that are inclusive in their aims and purposes.
-
Avoid granting legitimacy to warlords and others who practice a politics of exclusion i.e.,
political entrepreneurs who exploit security dilemmas to gain power).
-
Cosmopolitan enforcement
II. The Desert of the Real: ISIS & targeting of minorities.
Interview with Jürgen Todenhofer (from Dec 2014) – the reality of control on the
ground.
New York Times ISIS page.
III. What are the necessary conditions for a cosmopolitan approach?
Local conditions
International conditios