Terrorism, Security and the Power of Informal Networks

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Terrorism, Security and the Power of Informal Networks

Terrorism, Security and the Power of Informal Networks Edited by

David Martin Jones Senior Lecturer, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia

Ann Lane Reader in International Politics, King’s College London and Joint Services Command and Staff College, UK Defence Academy

Paul Schulte Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, LSE and the Advanced Research and Assessment Group, UK Defence Academy

Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© David Martin Jones, Ann Lane and Paul Schulte 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2009940734

ISBN 978 1 84720 736 4

02

Printed and bound by MPG Books Group, UK

Contents List of figures, tables and boxes List of contributors

vii ix

Introduction Ann Lane PART I

1

INFORMAL NETWORKS

1

The utility of informal networks to policy-makers Alexander Evans

13

2

Terrorist networks: strengths and weaknesses Peter Wilson

28

PART II 3

REGIONAL NETWORKS

Northern Ireland: communal division and the embedding of paramilitary networks Adrian Guelke

41

4

Informal networks in North Africa George Joffé

63

5

Iran: informal networks and leadership politics Adam Goodman

99

6

How al-Qaeda lost Iraq Andrew Phillips

7

Informal networks in Southeast Asia: the case of Jemaah Islamiah and its affiliates David Martin Jones

PART III 8

133

156

DISRUPTING INFORMAL NETWORKS

Modeling proliferation networks Bruno Gruselle v

185

vi

9

Contents

Small-world networks, violence and global distress Francesc Badia

217

10

Hearts and minds: time to think differently? Steve Tatham

241

11

Producing terror: organizational dynamics of survival Jessica Stern and Amit Modi

257

Index

289

List of figures, tables and boxes FIGURES 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 10.1

Distribution of the functions provided by the Khan network Distribution of functions in a state network Informal structure (simplified) Organization of a network for external suppliers Functional organization of an acquisition network Operating scheme for a bank transfer associated with acquisition of a proliferating good Sensitivity level of financial institutions working for the benefit of a network Paul Baran’s networks Random and scale-free networks The global Salafi network as described by Marc Sageman Terror action feedback loop Cognitive attributes of Arab male audiences

191 192 193 194 201 205 210 226 228 229 235 252

TABLES 4A.1 4A.2 8.1

Foreign fighters in Iraq Internet usage in North Africa Determination of criteria for network models

98 98 200

BOXES 8.1

Laundering and ‘dirtying’ of money in proliferation

vii

196

Contributors Francesc Badia is a social scientist, specializing in culture and international relations. He carried out his doctoral studies on the network society at the Open University of Catalonia, and holds a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Information and Knowledge Society. As an international consultant, he works for think-tanks and public institutions in Spain, including the Catalan government and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has recently served as General Manager at the European Institute of the Mediterranean. Alexander Evans is a Gwilym Gibbon Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and a serving British diplomat currently based in Pakistan. He has also worked at the British High Commission, New Delhi, and as a member of the Policy Planning Staff in London. Prior to joining the Diplomatic Service he was research director at Policy Exchange and an associate fellow at Chatham House. He spent two years as Director of Studies at a financial think-tank and has also worked for the United Nations (UN) in Afghanistan, the Stimson Center, Washington, DC, and the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London. He has been a regular contributor to BBC World TV and CNN, and publishes in a range of journals including Foreign Affairs. Adam Goodman is a specialist on globalization and Middle Eastern politics. He is the author of Asymmetric Strategies in the Middle East (Advanced Research and Assessment Group, Defence Academy of the UK, September 2007). Bruno Gruselle has worked as a military engineer for the French Ministry of Defence to which he was appointed in 1995. In this capacity he has served with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq. In 1998, he joined the policy branch to study issues relating to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. He was appointed to Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS), a French think-tank, in 2005. Bruno Gruselle is now serving as a desk officer for technology assessment in the Ministry of Interior policy branch. Adrian Guelke is Professor of Comparative Politics in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University, ix

x

Contributors

Belfast. He is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict. Publications include Terrorism and Global Disorder (London: I.B.Tauris, 2006), Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006, co-edited with Michael Cox and Fiona Stephen). George Joffé is at the Centre of International Studies at the University of Cambridge where he lectures in the postgraduate studies programme. He also holds a visiting fellowship at the Centre of Islamic Studies at Oxford University and a professorial fellowship at the Global Policy Institute at London Metropolitan University. Previously he was Deputy Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is also the founder and co-editor of the Journal of North African Studies. He specializes in the international relations and current affairs of North Africa and the Middle East. David Martin Jones is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Queensland. He has taught at the University of Tasmania and the National University of Singapore. His books include the edited work Globalisation and the New Terror: The Asia Pacific Dimension (London: Edward Elgar, 2006) and ASEAN and East Asian International Relations (London: Edward Elgar, 2006) with Mike Smith. He has written several articles on Islamism and Southeast Asia for, inter alia, Jane’s Defence Weekly, World Today, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and National Interest. Ann Lane is Reader in the Defence Studies Department at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, UK Defence Academy. She was formerly Lecturer in Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her most recent publications include Yugoslavia: When Ideas Collide (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and ‘Modernising the management of British diplomacy’, in Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 20 (1) (2007), 179–93. Amit Modi is a graduate student at Harvard University’s Department of Government. Andrew Phillips is a lecturer in international relations at the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His research interests focus broadly on the evolution of the global state system from 1500 to the present, and concentrate specifically on the challenge that ‘new’ security threats such as religiously motivated terrorism, the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction and state failure pose to

Contributors

xi

the contemporary global state system. His published works include a coauthored article on the relationship between nationalism, tribalism and Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia, as well as an article contrasting the dynamics of transnational religious military mobilization in Reformation Europe and the contemporary Middle East (Review of International Studies, forthcoming). Prior to his postgraduate studies, Andrew worked as a policy adviser in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Paul Schulte is Senior Visiting Fellow in the Advanced Research and Assessment Group of the UK Defence Academy and in the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. His most recent publications are ‘Universal vision or bounded rationality?’, International Affairs, 83 (3) (2007), 501–10 and ‘Just wars of the future?’, RUSI Journal, 153 (4) (August 2008), 18–27. Jessica Stern is Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She is the author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins 2004) and The Ultimate Terrorists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). She served on President Clinton’s National Security Council Staff in 1994–95 and advises a number of government agencies on issues related to terrorism. Steve Tatham is Senior Research Fellow and Director of Media, Communications and Political Inclusion Research, Advanced Research and Assessment Group, UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham. He is the author of Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion (London: Hurst, 2006). Peter Wilson is Director of the Libra Advisory Group and was formerly a strategy consultant at Strategos and previously McKinsey, specializing in multinational business and development. Recent publications include ‘The contribution of the intelligence services to security sector reform’, Conflict, Security and Development, 5 (1) (April 2005) and ‘Private security actors and security sector reform: a donor’s perspective’, in Private Actors and Security Governance, Centre for Democratic Control of the Armed Forces Yearbook 2006.

Introduction* Ann Lane Informal networks have always existed as factors in international affairs. Since the 1970s, however, the information age has enabled dispersed, often small and isolated groups and individuals to connect, coordinate and act conjointly as never before. During the 1990s, prominent scholars in the United States argued that the greatest advantage in world affairs would fall to whoever succeeded in mastering the networked form since the processes of democratization and devolution which have expanded alongside the communications revolution have greatly multiplied the centres of power operating within societies and across them. While it is perhaps too soon to argue that the networked form will replace the traditional hierarchical form of organization in the course of the twenty-first century, the skills of identifying and manipulating informal networks are undoubtedly central to effective policy implementation.1 The informal variant of social networking is probably one of the oldest and most ubiquitous forms of conducting social and business transactions known to humankind. It underpins the ability of societies to trade and develop wealth; it enables societies to structure themselves socially in order to strengthen the society through development of elaborate social ties, and to facilitate the process of complex communications links within government and non-governmental organizations as well as to enable elements within each to evolve means of communication and transaction across institutional and even state boundaries. With growing sophistication, a society tends to formalize its relationships, ultimately eroding the ties of family and generating greater reliance on institutions. However, under the conditions of globalization which have led to a progressive atomization and a sense of anomie within developed societies the emergence of a new forum for generating informal social connections in the shape of the Internet has led to a burgeoning of informal networks, often constructed across vast distances between individuals who never actually meet but who are drawn together in a virtual world of association through often complex webs of shared interests and outlooks defined by contemporary culture.

1

2

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks

In more traditional societies of the industrial age, where elites were closely defined and relatively small as a percentage of the overall population of any given country, informal networks were easier to identify. This was so because they were often rooted in societal, educational and religious networks which could be identified and mapped with relative ease. The concept of the ‘old boy’ network is perhaps the most obvious manifestation of this within established forms of governance and is easy to trace owing to its associations with clearly defined public institutions from which such networks draw their identity. In post-industrial societies which are characterized by a much greater diffusion of power and authority away from traditional institutions of government, the quantity and velocity of the interactions between different entities is significantly greater. Informal networks that operate at the nexus of any given range of interests often overlap and intersect, thereby increasing the difficulty of identifying any one particular network from any of the others. They become embedded in existing structures where the presence of formal hierarchies masks their existence. Such relationships exist between and among what one military scholar-practitioner has termed the ‘iron triangle’ of defence contractors, military establishments and governments, which has burgeoned in the developed world since the Second World War.2 At a more mundane level, anyone who has been recruited into an established organization has experienced the dual (and sometimes countervailing) influences of the official induction process, which is top-down, and the lateral pull of the informal chains of communication through which information about the organization, its leaders and structures and even its objectives is communicated. Informal networks play a significant role in socializing the new recruit into the established organizational culture, or indeed of distorting their view (deliberately or by default) in accordance with whatever counter-culture is prevalent.3 In developed societies informal networks interact with hierarchies and formally organized networks to form a nexus of communications which are a vital mechanism for generating ideas, conducting business transactions and building mostly overt communications channels that provide key enablers in linking sometimes diverse institutions and organizations. The policy think-tanks bridging the practitioner and academic divide provide one notable forum for this form of networking to take place alongside the more formal business of disseminating information and developing ideas.4 Turning to those who live outside society, and specifically those who pursue insurgency campaigns, the informal network is often the means by which such networks are built and sustained, since they offer insurgents and terrorists many advantages over the hierarchical models. The

Introduction

3

leadership of informal networks tends to be diffuse and poorly defined. Aims and objectives are articulated in only the most general terms and are then focused on teleological goals which can be pursued over an almost indefinite timescale. The leadership of al-Qaeda is exemplary of this type of approach, articulating overarching goals while leaving both adherents and adversaries to decide on strategy and tactics. While the central core of al-Qaeda is thought to be tightly focused, top-down and intensely hierarchical, its associates organized in individual cells are allowed considerable autonomy over what is planned, even though they are dependent in practice on al-Qaeda’s wider network to supply the resources. The result is that even within specific regions, an insurgency can be comprised of a variety of groups with no overarching leadership and united only by a general goal. This phenomenon presently exists in Afghanistan where there are said to be a variety of groups involved in the insurgency, unified only in their demand for an immediate end to foreign troop presence in the country.5 When pressured by traditionally organized military force, these networks tend to mutate rather than disintegrate, spawning further cells which in time can link up with the hubs that provide support in terms of resources and personnel. The resilience of these networks is testimony to the innate strength of the informal networked form, which is inherently difficult to disrupt precisely because it fails to dissipate in response to leadership decapitation and is not reliant on the existence of a formal structure for survival.6 Informal networks are characterized and shaped by the centrality given to personal connections. Trust between members is essential to the workings of an informal network and seems to be dependent less on ideological affinities than on more prosaic but deeply seated social ties arising from a shared sense of kinship or tribal loyalty and the attendant notions of belonging or victimhood and social exclusion that variously accompany such identities. These tribal loyalties provide the focal point for political organization and collective self-defence and can be invoked in an instant by appeal to fundamental emotions arising from eschatological fears and anxieties. In the case of criminal networks, the ever present threat of blackmail consequent on the compromising nature of criminal activity conducted by those who participate provides a further means of reinforcing loyalties where these seem doubtful.7 Detection of informal networks by outsiders is habitually difficult, most notably perhaps owing to their tendency to embed themselves within existing structures which not only enhance their potential as centres for the exercise of power, but also conceal their presence from observers. Such networks have proven successful in recent times in generating the impetus

4


for political change, as in Serbia in the autumn of 2000 where an essentially ad hoc group of students set out to persuade those around them to force Slobodan Milosevic from office.8 Meanwhile the distributed network of al-Qaeda has been shown to be less than self-sufficient, depending on a range of support networks for access to safe houses, smuggling rings, secured communications and even personnel who can connect individuals to training and other support networks through the interconnected global system.9 Informal networks are seldom complete entities by themselves, being more often developed in response to social needs (which may be positive or negative) arising from the environment within which they operate and exist and from which they derive both meaning and purpose. A volume examining the role and significance of informal networks as a form of organization and an expression of contemporary society is timely because of the importance of such networks to the business of countering insurgency, in which the exercise of influence over the hearts and minds of the population is necessarily central. If winning war requires understanding the terrain, winning counter-insurgency requires understanding the human terrain: the population in all its manifestations. The mobilization of informal networks of individuals, some of whom might represent nodes or hubs of influence in a given locality, is one powerful tool in approaches to counter-insurgency that emphasize soft power, giving the tools of influence and persuasion greater priority over those of force and coercion.10 In order to maximize the potential of civil society networks to offset the challenges of those who live outside society, reliable intelligence is clearly central to the task of both reducing as well as directing the utilization of hard power, and in influencing the population in order to insulate it from the effects of hostile networks while interdicting the efforts of insurgents to recruit supporters. This volume comprises a series of chapters which taken together provide an overview of the present state of knowledge of informal networks within the generic study of terrorism as a subset of the field of security studies. Many of them have been published elsewhere, either as individual essays or as partworks. The objective here was to bring them together as a collection in order to offer some preliminary answers to the following questions: how do informal networks operate? Which combination of factors draws individuals to form such networks? What are their structures and where are the bridges or gaps that connect to other actors? How do informal networks recruit and what is their power of attraction? What are the foundations of trust in such organizations and how is loyalty sustained? Necessarily, the answers contained here are only partial, but they are sufficient to stimulate and encourage further enquiry. Part I considers the place of informal networks in the context of the

Introduction

5

present debates about strategy and security and the relevance of this area for policy-making. In an age when public sector organizations, both national and multinational, are preoccupied with organizational reform, and reform aimed at achieving flexibility and agility in response to security challenges that are inherently unpredictable, the informal network is a vital actor which provides a dynamic with and across organizations and is often overlooked. It is in many senses curious that this area has not attracted greater attention from scholars in the past. Alexander Evans reminds us in Chapter 1 on the utility of informal networks that this form of organization is one manifestation of how society works. Where government is concerned with the arts of persuasion over coercion as a means of gaining the broadest possible support for an international consensus about societal values and legitimate conduct, not only on the part of states but by segments of states, then the need to understand the network in its informal, self-generated variant becomes an imperative for policy-makers. Indeed it is fundamental to the practice of diplomacy, which is necessarily about patient, long-term cultivation of personal connections and the gathering of information through this process in order wherever possible throughout periods of crisis and upheaval to sustain communication and cooperation through peaceful means without the need to resort to force. In Chapter 2, Peter Wilson tackles the issue of utility from a different angle, exploring the problems of harnessing the potential power of such networks from the policy-makers’ perspective. The informal network is by its very nature difficult to manage, being self-generating, illusive, difficult to quantify and define, and prone to a process of constant evolution. In the present age, when government is preoccupied with strategy (defined in the broadest managerial sense), the tendency is to attempt to resolve the difficulties of handling such networks through their incorporation into grand strategic planning. Peter Wilson questions whether this might not be to miss the point, given that the strength of the informal variant of networking lies in its predisposition to metamorphosis, its adaptability to changing circumstances and evolving agendas. The important point is to understand how such networks can be read and manipulated to serve higher purposes than those of purely self-interest that generally cause them to form in the first place. Part II seeks to explore the characteristics and role of informal networks through an examination of their evolution and behavioural characteristics in a series of countries and regions. It begins with Adrian Guelke’s analysis in Chapter 3 of these organizations in Northern Ireland, in which he explores the symbiotic relationship between the paramilitary networks on both sides of the sectarian divide and the communities that gave rise to them. Necessarily, this relationship rendered the networks sensitive

6


to the reactions of their constituencies, both strengthening their sense of legitimacy and informing the shape and functioning of their organizations, while constraining their freedom to act. In this they display some similarity with the Egyptian Salafi jihadist organizations discussed in Sageman’s initial study of the networked form of terrorist organization.11 The remainder of Part II examines case studies covering North Africa, the Gulf and Iran, and Southeast Asia. In Chapter 4 George Joffé examines the form as it appears in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, discussing the way in which networks recruit members, or simply acquire them, not through decision-making so much as through a process of absorption and mutual dependency of groups of people brought together by common interests and shared perceptions. Informal networks, he concludes, depend heavily on patronage extended by tightly knit, compact and predominantly urban networks for which Islam provides an ideological framework. Joffé cautions against an overready acceptance of the proposition that such networks should be understood in the context of radical Islam, arguing rather that these networks can be comprehended more accurately as recreations of past insurgencies and criminal networks, as springing therefore from very specific and deeply rooted societal fractures. The implications of this proposition are clear. If such networks are indeed a reflection primarily of cultural anomie, unique to the historical development of each society in question, then this is further testimony to Sageman’s own conclusions that it is social factors that take primacy over ideology in recruiting members of informal networks and sustaining them thereafter.12 More importantly, perhaps, this line of analysis suggests that the means to disruption lie in the contradictions and logical flaws within the narratives that sustain the networks in the first place. Chapters 5 and 6 by Adam Goodman and Andrew Phillips dealing with Iran and Iraq, respectively, are particularly interesting for shedding light on the contrasting nature of the problems that these two quite different countries have presented to the West in their struggle against the rise of international terror networks. In both cases, and despite the deep differences between the two societies, both Goodman and Phillips argue for the potential these contain in reducing the power and influence of hostile spheres of authority. Indeed, it is the very factionalism of Iranian politics that creates the conditions in which the informal network variant can flourish and in this lies the source of greatest optimism for a society in which business is conducted more outside the system than within it. The liberation of Iraq from the grip of Saddam Hussein’s regime as Phillips shows has created similarly fluid if innately less stable circumstances in which patient engagement with informal networks can, in time, create a

Introduction

7

new era of stability in which progress can flourish. The obverse of this also applies, however. If informal networks can be manipulated effectively to re-order an unstable society, or to contain rogue elements within that society, then they are equally valuable as a tool of adversaries who can link essentially localized self-generated networks in the service of a strategic purpose. This is the central theme in Chapter 7 of David Martin Jones’s analysis of the evolution of the Jemaah Islamiah network and the way in which it was able to absorb the philosophy of al-Qaeda while simultaneously retaining its own distinctive character. The fissures in the philosophical underpinnings of such movements hold the key to their potential disruption. Part III is concerned with two questions: (1) the ways in which theoretical constructs can be used to promote understanding of hostile networks through the application of modelling techniques; and (2) how hostile networks can be manipulated and disrupted. Some interesting points emerge. Firstly, that the development of control mechanisms is rarely if ever ahead of the threat these mechanisms are designed to counter. The pace of globalization generates what amounts to a gap between the need to regulate the transit of sensitive materials and the capability to effect such control. In Chapter 8 Bruno Gruselle discusses the way in which supplier and acquisition networks interact in this gap in a cycle of evasion and attempted disruption. Secondly, where formerly informal networks have been poorly understood, often invisible to all bar the most discerning, globalization has raised awareness of this means of operation to the point where networking skills are consciously developed and exercised by almost all technology-literate peoples around the globe. The consequences of this are discussed by Francesc Badia in his discussion of the characteristics of small-world networks (Chapter 9), in which he concludes that the empowerment of this form of organization which has occurred in the context of globalization has both increased such network utility to policy-makers while at the same time making them more intractable, owing to the much greater consciousness of their potential on the part of their members. Being persuasive and credible is to no avail without legitimacy. The need to hold the balance of the moral argument concerning motivations and purpose is surely the most important element in the exercise of soft power that is at the heart of the operation of informal networks. This is Steve Tatham’s point in Chapter 10 which addresses the winning of hearts and minds: the presentation of the argument as a simple matter of being for or against the question is futile because it denies the possibility of choice. People have to be persuaded; they must be appealed to in terms of a common humanity and won over, if whatever order that emerges from

8


the present era of international crisis and transformation is to deliver peace and prosperity in the longer term. A futher point arises from the discussion by Jessica Stern and Amit Modi in Chapter 11 of terrorism as a definable and distinctive product, an output that emerges in effect from the organizational dynamics of the informal approach to networking. Terrorists are engaged in the business of producing a marketable product, which in itself makes such organizations more resilient to disruption efforts largely through the attractiveness of their product and the flexibility of the structures that produce it. The contributors to this volume provide very insightful analyses of the relevance and potential of the informal variant of networking as a source of power in international affairs. By their very nature informal networks make the utilization of traditionally organized, rigidly hierarchical responses to security threats difficult to implement, and for this reason they have enabled the insurgents to gain some early advantages over rulesbased societies in the present conflict. However the increased awareness within the developed world of the importance of culture and identity as factors in seeking societal stability in the information age has sharpened awareness of this form of organization, which is so central to the success or failure of policy responses that emphasize the exercise of soft power alternatives to the more traditional methods offered by conventional approaches. The chapters contained herein make a valuable contribution to current knowledge of this area of study. Finally, the editors would like to thank the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme (SPS) for providing funds that enabled us to hold the advanced research workshop session at which this project was first discussed.

NOTES *

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The analysis, opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC), the UK Ministry of Defence or any other government agency. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (2001), Networks and Netwars, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, p. 1; John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (1997), In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, Santa Monica, CA: RAND. H.R. McMaster (2008), ‘On war: lessons to be learned’, Survival, 50 (1), 19–30. Grahame F. Thompson (2003), Between Hierarchies and Markets: The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 189–224. Andrew Rich (2004), Think Tanks, Public Policy and the Politics of Expertise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 2008–2009, Eighth Report, Global Security: Afghanistan and Pakistan, paragraph 64, http://www.parliament.uk,

Introduction

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

9

accessed 3 August 2009; Daniel Byman (2007), Understanding Proto-Insurgencies, RAND Counterinsurgency Study, Paper 3, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, pp. 37–65. H.R. McMaster, ‘On war: lessons to be learned’, pp. 21–3; Philip Bobbit (2008), Terrorism and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century, London: Allen Lane, pp. 52–4. Brian Reed (2000), ‘A social network approach to understanding an insurgency’, Parameters, Summer, 19–30; David Ronfeldt (2006), ‘In search of how societies work: tribes – the first and forever form’, RAND, WR-433-RPC December; Marc Sageman (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 137–74. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (2005), ‘Netwar revisited: the fight for the future continues’, in Robert J. Bunker (ed.), Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency, London: Routledge, pp. 8–19. Shawn Brimley (2006), ‘Tentacles of jihad: targeting transnational support networks’, Parameters, 36 (2), 30–46; Bruce Reidel (2007), ‘Al Qaeda strikes back’, Foreign Affairs, 86 (3), 24–70. Martin C. Libicki, David C. Gompert, David R. Frelinger and Raymond Smith (2007), Byting Back: Regaining Information Superiority against 21st Century Insurgents, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, p. xiv; Intelligence and National Security Committee Report (2009), Could 7/7 Have Been Prevented? Review of Intelligence on the London Terrorist Attacks on 7 July 2005, CM 7617, www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/intelligence/ special_reports.aspx (accessed July 2009); Joseph Nye (2005), Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, New York: Public Affairs, p. 12. Marc Sageman (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ibid.

PART I

Informal Networks

1.

The utility of informal networks to policy-makers* Alexander Evans

MAPPING HUMAN TERRAIN On 7 May 2008 Michael Bhatia was killed by an improvised explosive device in Khost province, Afghanistan.1 A promising academic, he had studied at Brown University, USA and was researching a DPhil. in Afghan politics at Oxford. Bhatia was working in Afghanistan for a pilot programme run by the US Department of Defense that embeds social scientists with military units in order to take advantage of their expertise and experience.2 The $60 million programme has proven to be controversial,3 and some anthropologists have organized an on-line campaign against it that includes a pledge not to participate in counter-insurgency.4 But it underpins a transformation that is taking place in contemporary security policy as governments come to recognize that cultural and historical understanding remains as important as ever in forming, and delivering, effective policy.5 A systematic, evidence-based understanding of culture, language and history is essential to strong international policy-making. Indeed, an increasing emphasis in the US and Europe on evidence-based public policy, with new offshoots in areas such as behavioural economics, show how important this theme has become to government policy-making as a whole. This chapter sets out some of the ways in which informal networks matter to policy-makers – and how policy-makers can make better use of informal networks themselves. It briefly touches on four international case studies: China, Russia, Pakistan and Nigeria, demonstrating how informal networks are critical to understanding each of these societies.

INFORMAL IS NORMAL Informal networks, and unofficial ways of doing things, are all around us. Culture, as much as rules, shape organizations and the incentives that 13

14


apply to people within them. All those who join large institutions – a large company, government department or university, for example – usually find they have two very different inductions. The first is the formal one: a flurry of paper, slideshows, regulations and organograms. The second is the informal one: the key tips given by colleagues, their whispered confidences, a guide to the qualities and oddities of those at the top. This anthropological dissection of institutional culture is often far more useful to the budding executive, official or student than any ring-binder of formal guidance. Informal networks and cultures guide the way in which organizations function; in particular how information is transmitted within them. Power, prestige, influence and trust are all strongly influenced by the nature of organizational culture. There is a growing business literature on the importance of informal networks within organizations.6 Societies are also influenced by culture: social norms are powerful, and although not unchanging, can provide significant insights into where power is located and how decisions are reached.7 Informal networks take many forms, but often draw on ties of kinship, friendship or social obligation.8 This chapter makes four propositions about informal networks and policy-making. First, you cannot understand how other governments and societies work unless you grasp the nature of informal networks. This is particularly true of semi-closed societies like China or Eritrea,9 but also applies to open countries like France10 or the United States.11 Understanding who actually makes decisions, and assessing who actually influences decision-makers, is a vital contributor to effective national security policy. Second, an increasing element of government policy-making depends on understanding and drawing on informal networks. This is true across a welter of security issues. Informal networks lie at the roots of how terrorists are radicalized and plan operations, how drugs are distributed and how migrants are trafficked. Thirdly, the government’s own policy delivery at home and overseas depends on informal networks. There is an increasing interest in social marketing as a tool to influence behaviour.12 In order to build international support for debt relief or domestic awareness of preventative health care issues, governments need to use methods to reach as many people as possible. Governments need to work with the private sector, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), faith groups and civil society.13 While this is trotted out as a piety, it is also a truism. And finally, government itself consists of both formal and informal networks. There exists a formal network of ministries, agencies, contractors, and so on. To be effective, however, ministers and officials need to make

The utility of informal networks to policy-makers

15

best use of informal networks – to access a broader range of policy advice and expertise, to ensure policy coherence, and to use all available levers to achieve desired policy outcomes. The best policy-makers already do this.

PUTTING INFORMAL NETWORKS INTO CONTEXT Four brief country case studies demonstrate the continuing relevance of informal networks underpinned by culture and history: China, Russia, Pakistan and Nigeria. China: Guanxi In China you cannot understand political or economic life without a grasp of guanxi.14 It describes a personal relationship between two people in which ‘long-term mutual benefit is more important than short-term individual gain’.15 It can be based on direct family ties, or reflect a common birthplace, neighbourhood, workplace, and so on. As Fahr et al. set out, the Chinese ‘tendency to treat people differentially on the basis of one’s relationship with them is why guanxi is of such importance in Chinese societies’.16 This key concept in Chinese society dates back hundreds of years. In the feudal, warlord and communist periods, guanxi was how you got things done; while in today’s China it still plays a key role in networks of political and economic decision-making. Those doing business in China need to grasp how it works.17 Most important of all, social status is often equated with the scale and substance of a guanxi network. Whether someone is into real estate in Shanghai or seeks real influence within the Communist Party elite, guanxi is a fact of life. In many ways, guanxi is about how the state works rather than about a parallel system. Indeed, such is the strength of social capital that it can also play a regulatory role – as it did in the case of the twentieth-century China–Burma jade trade.18 As Buckley and Clegg put it: ‘Guanxi is an inseparable part of the Chinese business environment. It is a fundamental web of interpersonal relations permeating Chinese societies.’19 Political alliances within China’s Communist Party also rely heavily on guanxi, and it is a ‘significant part of the organizational culture’.20 Guo is at pains to argue that guanxi is not simply a currency of political exchange, but a system that includes instrumental, etiquette, moral and emotional elements.21 There is a long-term relationship in political guanxi that lies beyond short-term political deal-making, and the practice of guanxi reflects a cultural preference for harmonious and courteous relationships.

16


The moral dimension, Guo suggests, reflects the social value given to zhong (honour) and yi (righteousness). The patterns of reciprocal loyalties that result are identified with the Confucian tradition. Some argue that guanxi is declining, given China’s growing rise;22 but it can also be argued that it has gained more currency precisely because of the increase in transnational trade with China.23 However, even if guanxi’s role declines with China’s economic development,24 its political role is likely to persist within a relatively closed, relational Communist Party. Russia: Blat In Russia, informal networks remain critical in a political system where formal rule of law remains discretionary.25 During totalitarian rule, informal networks were often highly useful to ordinary people: a means to secure housing and jobs, and remedy official inaction or hostility. This petty corruption depended on informal networks, and went on across different communist countries. In Russia it went by a number of names: blat (pull or clout),26 pomochi (mutual aid), sviazy and znakomstvo (connections and acquaintances), and protektsiia (patronage). Alena Ledeneva’s deep contribution to scholarship in this area draws together a number of different forms of social organization and relates it to practice in Soviet and contemporary times.27 Blat is particularly important because of its resonance with both Soviet28 and pre-Soviet Russian society.29 In the nineteenth century, it had criminal connotations, but in the twentieth century it became widely used throughout Russian society. ‘Perhaps in response to the totalitarianism of the past’, suggests James Gibson, ‘Russians have developed extensive social networks with high levels of political capacity’.30 These networks are often politicized and transcend family ties, making them highly relevant to understanding Russian politics and society.31 James Gibson’s findings are particularly important because they show that despite low levels of trust in Russia as a whole – Russians tend to trust neither government institutions nor strangers – there are high levels of trust in acquaintances. In 1998, for example, less than one in five Russians trusted the police, and only half thought the police would treat them fairly.32 Russians distrust most institutions apart from the army and the presidency, according to data from 2000.33 This encourages the use of informal networks to achieve objectives: personal, economic or political. Similarly, in Ukraine in the late 1990s one study showed a greater preference for bribery when it came to obstructive officials as compared to other post-Soviet states.34 Bribes would be approached as requests for favours, rather than any assertion of rights.


17

Russian blat built on long-standing notions of shared responsibilities that were used to police rural villages in Tsarist times, a concept known as krugovaya poruka.35 The local rural community, the obshina, contained at its heart a system of mutual help provided by a collective of peasant households.36 Contemporary informal networks in Russian business, for example, offer similar protection against the excesses or uncertainties of the state. As Anton Oleinik has observed, these draw on similar relationships of reciprocity, and resemble clans, cliques or informal networks.37 Since 2001, however, informal networks have evolved and fuelled corruption in Russia, in particular among the elite siloviki – the security elite whose name derives from the Russian word for power.38 And a new concept has entered into social use: kompromat39 (grey propaganda that can be used as leverage in order to deliver through informal networks). In Russia, the personal is political, as one author has observed.40 In other words, Russian social networks are particularly important in terms of understanding Russian society, and political and economic organization. Pakistan: Sifarish In Pakistan, sifarish (recommendation) plays an important role in Pakistani society.41 This is the obligation of those in influential positions to secure appointments and distribute patronage to friends and family. However, sifarish often refers to an unequal patron–client relationship. One hears people talking about how much sifarish someone has: once again, the size and reach of someone’s informal social network are a measure of their social status. As Anwar Syed put it in 1971: ‘Sensible’ and ‘practical’ Pakistanis, conversant with the prevailing administrative mores, know that one’s business with the government must be pursued on a personal level. This is the operating premise of many officials also: they will not act on a case until the concerned citizen, or someone representing him, has called. Graft is not necessarily involved. ‘Sifarish’ may be enough. A visit from someone influential in this or that sphere is like money in the bank. You do something for me and you establish a claim on my consideration. If the nephew of a friend of yours has decided to study political science in my University, I shall admit him even if he falls short of my standards. Thus an expansive network of mutual obligations and personal relationships becomes the channel for successful conduct of one’s business with the government.42

Meanwhile biraderi (brotherhood) networks are critical in the Punjab and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.43 A mix of caste and kinship, biraderi is a nebulous term representing common descent based either on family, tribe or (sometimes) caste.44 In a village, biraderi connections

18


determine whether you get access to electricity or a phone; in a city, they can determine whether you get a job, a loan or planning permission. The informal moral economy of the biraderi is extremely powerful. It exerts strong influence over marriage choices45 and property transmissions (often one and the same), and has transnational reach. The alliances based on marriage are often miniature versions of the broader alliances that underpin biraderi-based politics in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, the Punjab and among Pakistani-origin communities in the UK. Many British Pakistanis are from Pakistani-administered Kashmir; a significant majority of these are Mirpuri Jats, part of one particular caste or biraderi. These extended kinship and biraderi systems that characterize the transnational reach of informal networks, linking families and communities in Luton, England with Mirpur in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, play a vital role in influencing social and political organization in both communities. In the UK, biraderi has been linked to the positives of social protection and the negatives of electoral fraud.46 In Pakistaniadministered Kashmir, political organization among biraderis remains as influential as political parties, particularly among two major groups – Sudhans and Mirpuri Jats.47 This has policy relevance in a number of areas, from forced marriages, immigration policy and development48 through to the political dynamics of the Kashmir issue49 as manifested both in South Asia and in the United Kingdom. Nigeria: ‘Big Man’ Culture In Nigeria, where I lived and went to school as a child, informal connections continue to be more important than formal ones. The basic reference unit, for example, is ‘family and kin-based: it is the fundamental “circle of trust” within which individuals operate.’50 As a result, patron–client relationships dominate. Hence Nigerian ‘Big Man’ culture; and there are similar informal systems elsewhere in Africa. Sometimes tribal, sometimes clan-based, sometimes constructed – African informal networks are often critical to survival. This is particularly true in the case of labour migrants moving to major cities like Lagos, as George Packer so sharply sets out in an excellent New Yorker article.51 For newly arriving migrants, informal social networks provide what little protection exists – even if only for a day or two after arrival. There are an extraordinary range of solidarity networks in Nigeria, based on kinship, village of origin and religion. These networks, and the obligations they create, are extremely important in understanding Nigerian society. As de Sardan puts it:


19

Each individual is integrated into various networks, each of which entails solidarities and therefore corresponding pressures. The problem is that the solidarity exacted by the network is so rigorous that anyone who fails to respect his obligations to a member of one of the networks to which he belongs suffers reproach, and becomes the object of considerable and sustained pressure from all members of the network. Should he persist, he becomes the cause of scandal, and his reputation soon becomes detestable.52

Peter Enahoro’s playful book, How to be a Nigerian, explains dash (dash, to give, is the word for a tip or bribe in Nigeria) culture well. He describes it as the ‘sweetly quaint custom of expressing gratitude in anticipation of services about to be rendered’.53 The combination of a weak state and strong kinship ties54 lead to a state of affairs in which the state awards resources and opportunities based on who you know – and who pays extra – rather than according to the rules.55 But the payments for services are often commissions paid after the fact: tips, rather than prepayments made beforehand. In the case of Nigeria, what is interesting is the distinction drawn by Nigerians themselves between corruption – and the critiques of an ineffective state – and informal networks. Patronage, if not at your expense, is not necessarily disapproved of. As de Sardan puts it: ‘Corruption is then shown to be socially embedded in “logics” of negotiation, gift-giving, solidarity, predatory authority and redistributive accumulation.’56 Indeed, de Sardan writes of the ‘cultural embeddedness’ of corruption.57 This chapter is not preoccupied with corruption, but with how societies work. Nigeria is another example of a country and society which can only be fully grasped with reference to the cultural context, in particular how informal networks of patronage and protection operate.

THE WEST Informal networks remain important in Europe and North America as well. But the nature of our political institutions often curtails their influence: mature institutions, the rule of law and transparency, weaker family and social ties, and open and competitive markets all serve to undermine informality. And in societies that publicly value rules and procedures, the continuing role of informal networks is sometimes viewed either as embarrassing (the ‘old boy network’) or discriminatory (nepotism). Even so, a simple stroll around St James’s in London illustrates the history of informal networks: witness gentlemen’s clubs like the Travellers Club and Brooks’s that used to play a major role in British establishment politics.58 In Washington, DC, the Cosmos Club continues to play a leading

20


role as a gathering of the city’s elite.59 Internationally, many informal policy networks are sustained thanks to e-mail and the Internet, while individuals meet at international conferences like those organized at Ditchley or Davos.60 Business networks like the D Group in London, or policy networks like the Club of Three, provide significant real-world opportunities for networks to be formed, sustained and achieve policy influence. Increasingly think-tanks, natural intermediaries, connect the disparate worlds of academia, business, journalism and public policy – although these worlds are increasingly able to interact directly.61 Back in the 1940s and 1950s, institutions like Nuffield College at Oxford did much to bridge the worlds of policy and academia. Meanwhile, fresh networks are coming into being as the result of social networking sites on the Internet, allowing networks to generate without the traditional reliance on intermediaries.62

POLICY-MAKING AND INFORMAL NETWORKS For policy-makers, there are advantages both in understanding and in accessing policy networks. In both instances, knowledge and expertise are often scattered worldwide. Diasporas can be a vital source of cultural expertise while professional intermediaries and experts are well placed to take advantage of what is a global marketplace for talent. As a result, governments have to work hard to keep up with the knowledge that they need, but do not always realize they do not have. One option is to access academic work, as a number of UK government departments do – either through maintaining in-house researchers or by contracting work where appropriate. Another option is to encourage policy advisers to engage actively with networks outside government. There are opportunity costs, but the advantages of well-informed, well-networked policy advice are clear – better public policy. Traditionally, deep government engagement with external networks has been contained. Interacting with the broader policy networks, both formal and informal, has often been the preserve of senior leadership in the public sector. Permanent secretaries or in-house experts were most likely to have access to non-civil-servants, and the strategic awareness that allowed these networks to be properly exploited. The Foreign Office’s research analysts traditionally maintained a wide range of external links, reflecting in part their heterodox backgrounds.63 Strategy units within departments – or more recently in the UK, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit64 – also had a remit to work closely with outsiders. Within the Foreign Office, the Policy Planning Staff was particularly engaged with the outside world, as Sir Robert Wade-Gery recalls of its role in the 1960s:


21

What the Planning Staff was there to do was to develop links between the Foreign Office and the foreign affairs community who weren’t the Foreign Office. That is to say, academics, businessmen, Chatham House, journalists and the military, all of whom had ideas to contribute, and most of whom had been kept at arm’s length by the old fashioned Foreign Office who thought that Chatham House was a nest of communists, and journalists were people you should never speak to, soldiers were too stupid to bother with and academics were wholly irrelevant.65

Government itself increasingly needs to behave as the network it is, opening itself up more to scrutiny and policy advice from outside. And this change is taking place as individual government departments shape stakeholder management strategies and increasingly talk up the value of external experience. It is easier to move from the civil service out into external employment, and then back, without career damage.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DIASPORAS Informal networks are both transnational and globalized, and many pay little heed to national borders. The growth in international travel, communications and migration means that assorted diasporas increase in size on a daily basis. More than 20 million Indians live outside India, some 60 million Chinese live outside China, and around 5.5 million British live outside the UK. The Iranian diaspora numbers more than 4 million worldwide, with more than 80 000 in the UK.66 Meanwhile there is increasing evidence of what the anthropologist Steve Vertovec dubs ‘superdiversity’ in major cities.67 In London alone there are people from some 179 countries. Many represent just a handful of people, but there are populations numbering over 10 000 respectively from each of no less than 42 countries. Diaspora networks often draw on forms of informality practised in their community of origin, for both good and bad ends. Indians in Dubai remit monies back to their families; Chinese in Malaysia invest in China; and diaspora communities with good social trust networks can build highly effective businesses. But similar informal networks can also support tight-knit gangs engaged in drug or people smuggling,68 present opportunities for radical extremists to recruit others, or provide financing and ideological support to terrorist organizations.69 New technologies have sharply increased the breadth and volume of diasporic linkages.70 And diasporas can have real-world impacts on politics, in both the state of residence and the state of origin.71 Governments have begun to get better at understanding the wealth of knowledge available to them from within diasporas – and the way in

22


which the social context of diasporas impacts upon public policy. Detailed understanding is important here, not least because differences are as important as similarities.

. . . AND THE POLICY OUTCOME? This knowledge could easily be put into the category of ‘interesting, but not essential’. One could argue that information about cultural context and informal networks only becomes policy relevant when tied into individual casework. If this knowledge can identify fraudulent asylum seekers, better direct aid efforts to ungoverned areas, or facilitate counterterrorist interventions, then the value of the knowledge can be properly defined. However, this chapter argues that there is generic value in such knowledge that cumulatively can lead to better public policy. This is (at least for this writer) difficult to prove empirically, beyond the assertion that history, culture and context can help policy-makers make obvious errors of judgement. In the field of security policy, this is particularly important. Increasingly, government efforts combine political, developmental and security interventions – and seek to minimize unintended consequences of such interventions. Only by grasping the strength of informal networks can policies be formulated that do not mistakenly confront them, yet still achieve government policy goals. Governments should not be in awe of informal networks, but policy-makers should be quick to find ways to take advantage of the loyalties, solidarities and connections that underpin them. Back in 1994, Lawrence Freedman warned that the end of the Cold War would not mean the ushering in of stability. Things would never settle down, he wrote.72 Precisely because some states are strong and others are weak, the international system reflects the competition that derives from inequality; as well as the cooperation that can be drawn from solidarity. The combination of weak states and the inequalities within them strengthens parallel social networks. The informal is normal, and it ought to be normal for any analyst to be familiar with the local cultural context of that normality. Successful government communications, counter-insurgency, managed migration and climate change policies will depend on strategic use of these networks of loyalty, as indeed does the broader government business of marketing good behaviour, at home and abroad. There is insufficient space here to go into the whole world of social marketing, save to say that this is becoming one of the major themes of government policy-making in the developed world.73 In health policy, for example, some of the current challenges lie around an ageing population


23

and a recognition of the limits of primary care. In most cases, we are our own principal carer: we medicate ourselves, regulate our own behaviour and demonstrate differing approaches to risk in how we manage our own personal lives. Given this, and the growing debate over the impact of obesity on government healthcare delivery, many recognize the importance of social marketing as a tool of public policy.74 And in development, there is tangible evidence that social marketing can deliver policy effects better than traditional forms of aid delivery, as the case of marketing mosquito nets in Tanzania illustrates.75 In both domestic and international policy delivery, however, detailed knowledge – and effective appraisal of existing and planned interventions – matters. Tackling security and other public policy challenges demands policy and operational responses that are informed by a proper, detailed understanding of informal networks – abroad and, increasingly, at home. And in order to develop policy, officials should draw on informal networks within government – and outside government – to manage complexity, access expertise and ensure optimal outcomes. To be frank, understanding how informal networks work in different cultural contexts – and they do vary, as the brief country case studies above show – lies at the heart of effective diplomacy. This cultural understanding depends on anthropologists, political geographers and sociologists as much as diplomats, intelligence officers or military political advisers. The knowledge this community can yield can help us understand how social networks are replicated, translated and transformed by new technologies. Guanxi, sifarish and blat are just as relevant when examining virtual behaviour in relation to newsgroups, social networking sites and e-mail as they are in the real world. The practical challenge for policy-makers is how to mainstream an understanding of informal networks and why they matter within the government machinery. Many officials cycle through a range of different jobs; cumulative expertise among policy-makers cannot always be relied upon. In the UK, a growing trend for civil servants to join departments at a slightly later age, and to spend periods of broader secondment outside, offers advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side many will bring a broader portfolio of experience from different organizations, but on the minus side sustained, developed expertise – in particular on cultures and countries – may be tougher to maintain. This risk could be offset through programmes of active outreach by government to the broader worlds of expertise outside. This is by no means the sole preserve of universities, although academic experts will be important. But it will be as much about the former aid worker who understands Chad inside out, or the priest whose sociological knowledge

24


of rural Colombia is second to none, or the businesswoman whose grasp of the Azerbaijan construction industry offers a portrait of how Azeri society operates. These are the kind of people government should be accessing on a constant basis, and ensuring that government informal networks of expertise do not wither away simply because relevant officials move on. For some, this is stakeholder management, but in the context of policy formation it needs to be fully mainstreamed into the work that civil servants do. Sometimes, this approach will carry risks. Given that so much of the knowledge base comes from people, a commitment to field-based social science matters. Today bureaucrats can have desktop access to press and academic databases that before 1990 either did not exist, or were extraordinarily expensive. Contemporary diplomats can travel and work in the field, in particular if they are given the time to dig into particular policy issues properly. Engagement between the world of public policy and the world of knowledge of informal networks should improve – ironically thanks in part to the evolution of how government approaches informal networking. Systematically accessing the serendipity of informal networks may sound like a contradiction. After all, many informal networks are influenced by social norms and rules: precisely why cross-border hawala76 (informal payments systems) are just as reliable as the official payments systems they compete with. Yet the benefits for government policy-making are clear. And so is the challenge: how to market this to civil servants themselves, for whom networking is rarely a performance goal in and of itself.

NOTES *

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

This chapter represents the author’s personal views, and does not reflect UK government policy. It is based on lectures given at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) advanced research seminar, Wilton Park, 2007 and to the Stockholm Network Annual Retreat, Lake Como, Italy, 2007. Sasha Polakow-Suransky (2008), ‘The fearless one’, Brown Alumni Magazine, May/ June, 10. See http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil. See Roberto J. González (2008), ‘Human terrain: past, present and future applications’, Anthropology Today, 24 (1), 20–33. See http://concerned.anthropologists.googlepages.com/home. Montgomery McFate (2005), ‘Anthropology and counterinsurgency: the strange story of their curious relationship’, Military Review, March/April. R. Cross, N. Nohria and A. Parker (2002), ‘Six myths about informal networks and how to overcome them’, MIT Sloan Management Review, 43 (3), 67–75. D. Krackhardt and J.R. Hanson (1993), ‘Informal networks: the company behind the chart’, Harvard Business Review, 71 (4), 104–11. M. Sherif (1966), The Psychology of Social Norms, New York: Harper & Row.

The utility of informal networks to policy-makers 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

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B. Wellman and S. Wortley (1989), ‘Brothers’ keepers: situating kinship relations in broader networks of social support’, Sociological Perspectives, 32 (3), 273–306. Michela Wrong (2006), I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation, New York: Harper Perennial. T. Zeldin (1983), The French, London: Flamingo. C. Coker (1989), Reflections on American Foreign Policy since 1945, London: Pinter. J. French and C. Blair-Stevens (2006), ‘From snake oil salesmen to trusted policy advisors: the development of a strategic approach to the application of social marketing in England’, Social Marketing Quarterly, 12 (3), 29–40. There is evidence to suggest that when governments engage with the private sector and civil society outwith formal organizational structures – in other words, through informal networks – the resulting global policy networks can be a dynamic force for policy change. See J.M. Witte, W.H. Reinicke, and J.H. Benner (2005), ‘Beyond multilateralism: global public policy networks’, Challenges of Globalization: New Trends in International Politics and Society, Washington: IRDC. M.M. Yang (2002), ‘The resilience of guanxi and its new deployments: a critique of some new guanxi scholarship’, The China Quarterly, 170 (1), 459–76. ‘What you “xi” is what you get’, Brandweek, 47 (42), 13 November 2006. J. Farh, A.S. Tsui, K. Xing and B.S. Ghiang (1998), ‘The influence of relational demography and guanxi: the Chinese case’, Organization Science, 9 (4), 471–88. H. Davies, T.K.P. Leung, S.T.K. Luk and Y.H. Wong (1995), ‘The benefits of “guanxi”: the value of relationships in developing the Chinese market’, Industrial Marketing Management, 24 (3), 207–14. W.-C. Chang (2004), ‘Guanxi and regulation in networks: the Yunnanese jade trade between Burma and Thailand, 1962–88’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 35 (3), 479–501. P.J. Buckley, J. Clegg and H. Tan (2006), ‘Cultural awareness in knowledge transfer to China: the role of guanxi and mianzi’, Journal of World Business, 41 (3), 276. X. Guo (2001), ‘Dimensions of guanxi in Chinese elite politics’, The China Journal, 46, 70. Ibid. D. Guthrie (1998), ‘The declining significance of guanxi in China’s economic transition’, China Quarterly, 154 (June), 254–82. See H. Davies, T.K.P. Leung, S.T.K. Luk and Y.H. Wong (1995), ‘The benefits of “guanxi”: the value of relationships in developing the Chinese market’, Industrial Marketing Management, 24 (3), 207–14; and H. Lu, J. Trienekens et al. (2007), ‘The role of guanxi networks and contracts in Chinese vegetable supply chains’, Journal on Chain and Network Science, 7 (2), 121–31. Y. Fan (2002), ‘Questioning guanxi: definition, classification and implications’, International Business Review, 11 (5), 543–61. Perry Anderson (2007), ‘Russia’s managed democracy’, London Review of Books, 25 January. John Lloyd (2006), ‘Blat brothers’, Financial Times, 9 December, p. 10. See A. Ledeneva (2006), How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; A. Ledeneva (1998), Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; A.V. Ledeneva (1999), ‘Practices of exchange and networking in Russia’, Journal of Financial Crime, 6 (3), 218–33. See G. Hosking (2004), ‘Forms of social solidarity in Russia and the Soviet Union’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 123, 47–62. A. Ledeneva (1998), Russia’s Economy of Favours; Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. J.L. Gibson (2001), ‘Social networks, civil society, and the prospects for consolidating Russia’s democratic transition’, American Journal of Political Science, 45 (1), 51–68. Ibid., p. 59.

26 32.


S. Rose-Ackerman (2001), ‘Trust and honesty in post-socialist societies’, Kyklos, 54 (2–3), 415–43. 33. Ibid., p. 427. 34. A. Grodeland, T. Koshechkina and W. Miller (1997), ‘Alternative strategies for coping with officials in different postcommunist regimes: the worm’s eye view’, Public Administration and Development, 17 (5), 511–28. 35. A. Ledeneva (2004), ‘The genealogy of Krugovaya Poruka: forced trust as a feature of Russian political culture’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 123, 85–108. 36. A. Oleinik (2004), ‘A model of network capitalism: basic ideas and post-Soviet evidence’, Journal of Economic Issues, 38 (1), 85. 37. Ibid. 38. I. Bremmer and S. Charap (2007), ‘The Siloviki in Putin’s Russia: who they are and what they want’, The Washington Quarterly, 30 (1), 83–92. 39. Celestine Bohlen (1999), ‘Yeltsin’s inner circle under investigation for corruption’, New York Times, 24 March. 40. N. Robinson (2007), ‘The political is personal: corruption, clientelism, patronage, informal practices and the dynamics of post-communism’, Europe–Asia Studies, 59 (7), 1217–24. 41. N. Islam (2004), ‘Sifarish, sycophants, power and collectivism: administrative culture in Pakistan’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 70 (2), 311. 42. A.H. Syed (1971), ‘Bureaucratic ethic and ethos in Pakistan’, Polity, 4 (2), 171. 43. See P.A. Wakil (1970), ‘Explorations into the kin-networks of the Punjabi society: a preliminary statement’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 32 (4), 700–707; H. Alavi (1995), ‘The two Biraderis: kinship in rural West Punjab’, in T. Madan (ed.), Muslim Communities of South Asia, Delhi: Manohar. 44. Steve Lyon’s thoughtful PhD chapter on ‘Caste and tribe as vertical organisations for patronage’ is particularly important here. He sets out the problematic nature of some of these terms, which are often used interchangeably, while noting their powerful social role. See S. Lyon (2002), ‘Power and patronage in Pakistan’, PhD Thesis, University of Kent, pp. 124–42. 45. T.E. Fricke, S.H. Syed and P.C. Smith (1986), ‘Rural Punjabi social organization and marriage timing strategies in Pakistan’, Demography, 23 (4), 489–508. 46. N. Akhtar (2003), ‘Pakistan clans “abusing” British politics’, BBC News Online, London. 47. See A. Evans (2008), ‘Kashmiri exceptionalism’, in T. Madan and A. Rao (eds), The Valley of Kashmir, New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 43–62. 48. Oxford Policy Management (2003), ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir: participatory poverty assessment’, London: Department for International Development. 49. P. Ellis and Z. Khan (1998), ‘Diasporic mobilisation and the Kashmir issue in British politics’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 24, 471. 50. Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz (1999), Africa Works: Disorder as a Political Instrument, London: International African Institute, p. 27. 51. G. Packer (2006), ‘The megacity: decoding the chaos of Lagos’, New Yorker, 13 November, pp. 63–75. 52. J.P.O. de Sardan (2000), ‘A moral economy of corruption in Africa?’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 37 (1), 41. 53. Peter Enahoro (1971), How to be a Nigerian, London Caxton Press. 54. Daniel Jordan Smith (2007), A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 263. 55. Ibid., p. 17. 56. J.P.O. de Sardan (2000), ‘A moral economy of corruption in Africa?’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 37 (1), 25–52. 57. Ibid., p. 36. 58. A. Lejeune and M. Lewis (1984), The Gentlemen’s Clubs of London, London: Studio Editions; A. Taddei (1999), ‘London clubs in the late nineteenth century’, University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, No. 28.

The utility of informal networks to policy-makers 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

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W.E. Washburn (1978), The Cosmos Club of Washington: A Centennial History, 1878– 1978, Washington: The Cosmos Club. David Rothkopf (2008), Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, London: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. A. Rich (2004), Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. N.B. Ellison, C. Steinfield and C. Lampe (2007), ‘The benefits of Facebook friends: social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12 (4), 1143–68. Richard Lavers (2001), ‘The role of research analysts in the FCO’, London: FCO, January. www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/. Sir Robert Wade-Gery, Churchill Archives Centre, British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, DOHP, available at http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/ BDOHP/Wade-Gery.pdf. C. McAuliffe (2007), ‘A home far away? Religious identity and transnational relations in the Iranian diaspora’, Global Networks, 7 (3), 307–27. S. Vertovec (2007), ‘Super-diversity and its implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30 (6), 1024–54. See J. Harding (2000), The Uninvited: Refugees at the Rich Man’s Gate, London: Profile Books and London: Review of Books. M. Ranganathan (2002), ‘Nurturing a nation on the net: the case of Tamil Eelam’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 8 (2), 51–66. M. Dahan and G. Sheffer (2001), ‘Ethnic groups and distance shrinking communication technologies’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 7, 85. For example, see C. King and N.J. Melvin (1999), ‘Diaspora politics’, International Security, 24, 108. This shows how Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakh politics has been influenced by diasporas. L. Freedman (1994), ‘Weak states and the West’, Society, 32 (1), 17–20. A.R. Andreasen (2006), Social Marketing in the 21st Century, London: Sage. M. Rayner (2007), ‘Social marketing: how might this contribute to tackling obesity?’, Obesity Reviews, 8 (1), 195–9. N. Kikumbih, K. Hanson, A. Mills, H. Mponda and J.A. Schellenberg (2005), ‘The economics of social marketing: the case of mosquito nets in Tanzania’, Social Science and Medicine, 60 (2), 369–81. R. Ballard (2005), ‘Coalitions of reciprocity and the maintenance of financial integrity within informal value transmission systems: the operational dynamics of contemporary hawala networks’, Journal of Banking Regulation, 6 (4), 319–52.

2.

Terrorist networks: strengths and weaknesses Peter Wilson

The best thing ever written on terrorism wasn’t by Conrad or Bobbitt but popped up on Not the Nine O’Clock News. The team played earnest young radicals poring over a copy of Das Kapital. One of them looked up and began reading out a particularly tedious passage. He paused, turned to his comrades and uttered words to the effect of: ‘Sod this, let’s just go and bomb something . . .’ (Michael Gove, The Times, 9 June 2008) In many ways we had more problems with the INLA [Irish National Liberation Army] than PIRA [Provisional Irish Republican Army]. PIRA had plans, strategies, logistic networks and structures to clear operations. We could infiltrate all that. INLA had a few blokes who’d just go to the pub, get drunk and say let’s go and kill a copper’. It was difficult to do much about that.1

This quote from a former Northern Irish police officer illustrates many of the strengths and weaknesses of using an informal network to commit terrorism. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)’s loose structure and lack of top-down direction or discipline made it hard for the security forces to counter. An attack could be conceived and implemented in the space of a few hours, by a small cell with no need to entrust their plans to insecure communications methods or unreliable colleagues.2 But of course in the end it was the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and its political wing Sinn Fein that achieved some of its aims and secured places in Government. Whilst the INLA could successfully carry out small-scale attacks it could not translate that into authority on the streets or use its threat potential to secure political power. This chapter aims to examine the strengths and weaknesses of different structures for committing violence in pursuit of political aims. In particular I examine the two forms of structure at the extremes of the spectrum of level of organization. At one end of the spectrum lies an informal network of independent individuals and cells, pursuing similar aims and using similar vocabulary, but unconnected by any form of command and control structure. At the other end of the spectrum I put state-like hierarchical structures. In this spectrum, the INLA would lie towards the 28

Terrorist networks: strengths and weaknesses

29

network end of the spectrum. PIRA, along with proto-states like Hamas and Hezbollah, would lie towards the hierarchical end. I do not claim any sociological insight into how such structures emerge or operate. I also do not claim to be able to identify exactly where alQaeda and associated organizations currently sit on the spectrum; one of the characteristics of al-Qaeda has been its use of a variety of organizational structures in different places in different times, combined with the tendency of groups to assert common purpose with al-Qaeda without having any direct organizational connection.3 I focus only on the question: ‘If a movement adopts or generates a certain structure, what capabilities and vulnerabilities does this create and what practical options are there for countering it?’

THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF INFORMAL NETWORKS The strengths of loose networks are clear. Precisely because they have no fixed overall strategy, their actions are unpredictable. Communications are minimized and can often take place in person between individuals who know and trust each other. The weaknesses of such a network are essentially ones of incompetence. By definition the individuals involved are not highly trained and are not under the direction of experienced commanders. They have little access to technical expertise, finance or guidance. There is a high probability that an attack will fail, an attack will technically ‘succeed’ but kill the wrong people, or an attack will be successful in terms of the cell’s intent but will be counterproductive for the interests of the wider movement. The conventional view is that this lack of competence does not matter in an informal network. In this view not every attack needs to be successful – after the Brighton bombing4 PIRA famously issued a statement saying: ‘Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.’5 This statement is often quoted by security experts wishing to emphasize the sheer probability that there will eventually be a successful attack, when a relatively small number of security officials are asked to counter a multiplicity of threats (however incompetent) from a variety of sources. Incompetent people and failed attacks offer numerous opportunities for security agency investigations, whether from surveillance during the planning stage or from forensic investigation or interview after an attempted attack. But again the argument is that in an informal network this does not matter: if a cell has operated autonomously, an investigation can offer few leads to the rest of the network.

30


But this conventional analysis ignores the effect of a failed attack on public opinion. The incompetent attack on Glasgow Airport6 created a sense of derision7 rather than terror amongst the British people, and the rapid capture of the perpetrators strengthened the reputation of the British police. The May 2008 bombing in Exeter,8 allegedly carried out by a mentally ill British convert to Islam under the influence of radicalizers, again created little terror and some contempt. Whilst the absence of terror on these occasions may not matter if a future attack is more successful, there must also be an effect on potential radicals, who instead of seeing the prospect of eternal glory as part of an all-powerful movement, instead see ignominy, incompetence and the prospect of a long jail sentence. A ‘successful attack’ which is seen to be illegitimate can of course also damage a movement’s purpose. The Amman hotel bombings9 hit ‘Western’ hotels but killed an estimated 36 Jordanians, 16 Arabs from other countries and ‘only’ 4 Americans, creating a significant public backlash.10 It is noticeable that between 2003 and 2007, the proportion of Jordanians expressing confidence that Osama bin Laden would do the right thing in world affairs fell from 56 per cent to 20 per cent, and the proportion viewing suicide bombing as justified fell from 43 per cent in 2002 to 20 per cent in 2007. Similar falls in support have been seen in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, the places where al-Qaeda and associated groups have been most active.11 Does it matter if movements are disorganized or if public opinion turns against a group? The evidence suggests that it does. Audrey Kurth Cronin has argued that terror campaigns usually fail because of doctrinal infighting, lack of effective operational control and lack of unity,12 and that ‘terrorist groups generally cannot survive without either active or passive support from the surrounding population’.13 Research by Max Abrahms14 suggests that terrorists have failed to achieve their stated policy goals in 93 per cent of cases, and that terrorists that mostly attacked civilians had a success rate of zero.15 Marc Sageman16 writes of the attacks against tourists by the Egyptian Islamic Group (EIG) in the 1990s: the leadership believed that the campaign would increase the hardships of the masses, who would blame the government and mobilize to overthrow it. When this strategy backfired and turned the population against the EIG, the imprisoned leadership recognized their error and completely reversed tactics in 1997, initiating a non-violent strategy.

Informal networks can be effective in carrying out attacks, if only through sheer probability that if you carry out enough attempts then some will be successful. But carrying out a series of attacks which together


31

achieve some purpose, and avoiding the negative impact of failed or badly targeted attacks, may be beyond the abilities of an informal network.

THE MOVE TO GREATER ORGANIZATION The obvious solution to the weaknesses of an informal network is to introduce a degree of strategy, structure, command and training, and to use these to secure the support of local people. This means moving towards the ‘state-like’ end of the spectrum of level of organization. But is creating more structure a sensible strategy, or does it lose many of the benefits of an informal network? In terms of a 2007 RAND report17 for the US Department of Defense, creating greater structure means successfully making the transition from a terrorist group to a proto-insurgency and then an insurgency. In this view an informal network is not a deliberately chosen structure designed to achieve an end, but instead a movement that has so far failed to evolve into an insurgency, because its members have failed to organize themselves and/or because they have failed to secure popular support. RAND has argued in favour of using the phrase ‘counter-insurgency’ rather than ‘Global War on Terror’ to describe current security priorities, precisely because insurgencies are seen to be more dangerous than terrorist groups. It argues that: ‘isolated terrorist groups come and go, often abruptly, but the average insurgency lasts more than a decade. Once insurgencies gain full strength, their likelihood of success, empirically, is 50 percent.’18 It is noticeable that the reassuring statistics given in the Human Security Brief 200719 for the decline in deaths from terrorism between 2001 and 200620 are achieved precisely because their definition does not include deaths from the insurgency in Iraq.21 At first sight this seems to be confusing: are terrorist and insurgency groups successful or not? Are their attacks increasing or decreasing? But this is mostly a question of definition. Most loose-knit terrorist organizations fail. Those few that do succeed are, by definition, more competent. They become more organized, garner more public support, and are redefined as insurgencies or actors in a civil war, and their successes are removed from the definition of terrorist successes. They stand a greater chance of achieving their aims, precisely because they are the ones who have successfully evolved into a more organized structure and commanded more public support. For our purposes it is enough to observe that successful movements tend to create more structure over time and that there are few, if any, examples of informal networks, conducting attacks against civilians, that remain

32


as informal networks whilst achieving their objectives. If RAND preoccupations are any guide, then the main enemy of many current terrorist movements, the US Department of Defense, seems to fear well-organized insurgencies more than it fears informal networks. The strengths of a more structured approach are many. Expertise can be passed on through training or by using experienced commanders to direct several cells. Control can be exerted to ensure that attacks contribute to an overall strategy and do not alienate potential supporters. Financial support can be provided, and more ambitious attacks can be created by coordinating several cells. Marc Sageman22 argues that the ‘apogee’ of al-Qaeda’s performance came during the period from December 1999 to late 2001 when it was safe in Afghanistan. This period saw a wave of plots, starting with the Amman and Los Angeles airport plans of December 1999, through the aeroplane attacks of 11 September 2001, and finishing with the shoe bombing and Singapore plots of December 2001 (the latter two planned in Afghanistan before al-Qaeda was expelled). Of these plots, the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and the 9/11 attacks created huge casualties, and the USS Cole operation and Indonesia and Manila bombings were partially successful. All of these plots were carried out by one of three tightly knit clusters: a Maghreb Arab cluster (Amman, Los Angeles, Strasbourg, Paris US Embassy, shoe bomber); a Core Arab cluster (USS The Sullivans and USS Cole, 9/11); and Southeast Asians (Indonesia 2000, Manila and Singapore). Each cluster had a leader who was aware of all his cluster’s operations, and there were even intersections between the clusters, through social or operational connections between their members or leaders. So the period of al-Qaeda’s greatest successes happened at a time when it was not operating as a highly decentralized informal network but as a relatively centralized operation with just three centres of gravity. Sageman further argues23 that once these organizational capabilities decreased on expulsion from Afghanistan, the quality and success rate of attacks declined, leading to examples like the Casablanca24 bombings in which, after a hasty period of low-level local training and bodged bomb manufacturing, four of the five ‘coordinated’ attacks failed. If the strengths of greater structure are clear, so are the security vulnerabilities. It becomes necessary to trust people who are not personally known to you. Communications cannot always be carried out in person and need to be entrusted to vulnerable telecommunications networks or couriers. Incompetent cells or failed attacks become much more dangerous, as the leads they give investigators can be used to trace back to commanders, financiers and couriers. Perhaps the most striking example of this was the ‘Vanguards of Conquest’ case in Egypt in 1992, when a leader


33

of Egyptian Islamic Jihad was captured with a computer containing the names of all members in Egypt, leading to 800 arrests.25 And even during al-Qaeda’s period of relative success from 1999 to late 2001 outlined above, seven of the plots failed because they were discovered before any damage was done.26 The structure of a well-organized terrorist group or insurgency can usefully be contrasted with the former enemy of Western security agencies, the KGB. The KGB usually had privacy but not anonymity. Typically, Western agencies knew the identities of KGB officers, but they could still hide their activities because they could draw on state infrastructure such as a secure operating base at an embassy and highly encrypted communications. A member of a structured terrorist organization faces the opposite set of issues: they aim to be anonymous but cannot achieve privacy. As soon as they are identified as a suspect and lose their anonymity – usually because they have been in some form of contact with other suspects – their every move can be traced through surveillance, communications intercept, covert entry and the analysis of bulk data such as travel bookings and financial transactions. The RAND report on proto-insurgencies argues that support for an insurgency from another state is helpful exactly because it can offer groups some respite from such security attention, and can introduce some of the benefits of state infrastructure to a group.27 Al-Qaeda’s leadership agree with this point: in Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, Ayman al-Zawahiri writes that when a cell is discovered by local security forces, withdrawal to a shelter should be sought ‘without hesitation, reluctance, or reliance on illusions’.28

THE ATTRACTIONS AND DANGERS OF A HYBRID MODEL To overcome the weaknesses of the two extremes, a hybrid structure might seem attractive. In this model a well-structured group of people set strategy and provide resources, whilst local cells have autonomy on how to achieve the desired results.29 There may also be a geographical split in which the group conducts disciplined insurgencies in those countries where it is achievable, whilst creating an informal network in other countries to achieve occasional spectaculars and distract the security agencies, under the minimum of direction from the centre. At best such a combination delivers a degree of concerted strategy plus some innovation and experimentation which can be used to modify the strategy and keep it strong. Arguably this is how al-Qaeda is currently operating, and it does indeed reap some of the benefits of both networks and hierarchies.

34


But the problems do not disappear. Ill-disciplined cells in an informal network can create an entry point for security agencies into the formal structure, as the agencies work backwards, tracing the contacts of insecure minor players on the periphery to identify competent, high-value targets at the centre. The more fundamental challenge to the idea of a hybrid model is that it is difficult to achieve in practice. Ayman al-Zawahiri30 summarizes the tensions between top-down direction and bottom-up innovation well: The loyalty to the leadership and the acknowledgement of its precedence and merit represent a duty that must be emphasized and a value that must be consolidated. But if loyalty to the leadership reaches the point of declaring it holy and if the acknowledgement of its precedence and merit leads to [notions of] infallibility, the movement will suffer methodological blindness. Any leadership flaw could lead to a historic catastrophe, not only for the movement but also for the entire nation.

Of course this view is partly influenced by the Salafist belief that only God has sovereignty over man’s affairs, which creates a distrust of any human leader or formal hierarchy. But it also captures the strategic tensions inherent in any institution: the ability to get results depends on the ability to cohere behind a strategy and a leader, but only when the strategy and leader are the right choice. Asserting the dilemma does nothing to help you choose which route to take on any given issue, and lessons from government and the private sector31 suggest it is extremely difficult for any institution to get this balance right. Arguably much of the story of al-Qaeda and its associated movements, including the successes, the splits32 and the failed attacks, stem from their successes and failures in resolving this dilemma.

SECURITY RESPONSES It is difficult to take a strategic security approach to targeting informal networks.33 By definition, it is not possible to focus resources on a few key individuals, expecting that this will help you to understand the movement as a whole. Equally, security agencies with limited resources cannot chase every possible piece of fragmented data. And for reasons of practicality as well as civil liberties, they cannot investigate every individual who expresses broad sympathy with a movement’s aims and may or may not be more active. The most effective response to informal networks is primarily through day-to-day policing and community relations. The RAND protoinsurgencies paper34 puts it well:


35

Governments opposing proto-insurgencies must recognize the protoinsurgents’ many weaknesses and avoid an overreaction that may inadvertently strengthen the group. Perhaps the best and most efficient way to prevent protoinsurgents from gaining ground is through ‘in-group’ policing. Individual communities know their own members, particularly in tight-knit societies in the developing world. These communities thus make intelligence-gathering easier and enable the use of arrests or other forms of pressure with far greater discrimination. In-group policing, of course, requires a government to work with more-moderate members of a community and often to make political concessions to them.

The security approach to organized structures is different. Here it does pay to focus resources on identifying and then tracking a few key individuals and operating mechanisms, such as funding channels and couriers. Whilst it can be difficult to target the senior command of such a structure if they are operating in an impenetrable community or location, it is normally possible to target the periphery of this group. In particular, once identified individuals step out of their own trusted networks and mechanisms and start using state and commercial structures – telecommunications, banking, international travel, negotiations with semi-sympathetic states, cooperation or commercial relationships with other insurgent groups or arms dealers – they become particularly vulnerable to interception and penetration.

WHEN TO DEPLOY DIVERSITY? We have identified some of the benefits of using an informal network to create a diversity of tactics and attacks. But perhaps the biggest challenge for Islamist groups is that whilst their terrorist tactics are diverse and allow for experimentation and adaptation, their view of a good society is rigid. There is increasing evidence that most Muslims simply do not find the Islamist interpretation of society as attractive: the vast majority of those [Muslims] surveyed support freedoms of speech, religion and assembly – as well as a woman’s right to vote, drive and work outside the home. The majority of opinion in every nation surveyed, save Saudi Arabia, also believes it is appropriate for women to serve at the highest levels of government. A mean of 60 per cent in the ten countries said they ‘would want religious leaders to play no direct role in drafting a country’s constitution’.35

In 2006 the US National Intelligence Estimate said: ‘the jihadis’ greatest vulnerability is that their ultimate political solution – an ultra-conservative interpretation of sharia-based governance spanning the Muslim world – is unpopular with the vast majority of Muslims’.36

36


The work of a Department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice, as existed under the Taliban and exists in Saudi Arabia, is never going to be easy – as it seeks to promote a single form of behaviour and suppress a huge diversity of others. So whilst the debate on informal networks sometimes presents an agile Islamist network pitted against inadequate Western hierarchies, and this is perhaps true when it comes to tactics, we should not forget that the secular West has its own informal network – of companies, media, universities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) – delivering a multiplicity of ideas and products, from Britney Spears to Voltaire to Heineken, to undermine the rigid control of a sharia council. Al-Qaeda is of course aware of this and in 2001 Ayman al-Zawahiri listed37 the tools of the Western powers as: the United Nations; friendly rulers of the Muslim peoples; multinational corporations; international communications and data exchange systems; international news agencies and satellite media channels; and international relief agencies.

AN OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER I have identified some weaknesses in structures for committing terrorism. But, obviously, this cannot automatically be taken as an argument that security responses have been excessive or that the world is once again safe. The weaknesses have only been identified and exploited because of action by security agencies. Terrorist structures have strengths as well as weaknesses, and there is every possibility that they may succeed in an attack that will throw the current positive trends off balance.

CONCLUSION Informal networks are perhaps the most difficult structure for security agencies to deal with. Whilst it may be relatively easy to wrap up individual, incompetent cells, this does not automatically lead to success against the whole network. Sheer probability suggests that even amongst many unsuccessful attacks, some will be successful. But whilst problematic for security agencies these informal networks are relatively unthreatening to the state as a whole – they are rarely able to garner public support and achieve political power. They are best dealt with by day-to-day policing and community relations rather than futile attempts to develop a targeted strategy. Those informal networks that are successful tend to evolve into more


37

formal structures. This presents opportunities for security agencies, particularly if informal and formal structures are for some period combined, as each new connection or communication between individuals in the movement is vulnerable to interception or penetration. This is particularly true if the movement cannot access state infrastructure to operate or communicate securely. But whilst formal structures are more vulnerable to security action, they can also represent a far greater threat to the existing state through amassing popular support and consistently implementing a coherent political and violent strategy.

NOTES 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Private conversation with former senior Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer. The INLA’s practice of committing attacks with friends against a commonly resented target, but with no clear strategic purpose, is perhaps analogous to the notion of ‘expressive Jihad’ as described by Marc Sageman (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Al-Qaeda is perhaps best understood as a network of networks, operating within a larger Salafi Jihadist social movement, so is operating simultaneously at many points on the spectrum (Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 63–4). 12 October 1984. PIRA Statement, 13 October 1984. 30 June 2007. See for example www.johnsmeaton.com and http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/ jul/05/terrorism.features11, both accessed 10 June 2008. 22 May 2008. 9 November 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4426458.stm, accessed 10 June 2008. All figures from Pew Global Attitudes Project (2007), A Rising Tide Lifts Mood in Developing World. Sharp Decline for Support of Suicide Bombing in the Muslim World, Washington DC: Pew Center, 7. The Human Security Brief 2007, pp. 17–19, summarizes additional polling data from different institutions, all of which strongly reinforce this view, and includes similar data from Afghanistan; http://www.humansecuritybrief. info/, accessed 10 June 2008. Audrey Kurth Cronin (2006), ‘How al-Qaeda ends’, International Security, 21 (1), 7–48. Ibid., p. 27. Max Abrahms (2006), ‘Why terrorism doesn’t work’, International Security, 31 (2), 43. This paragraph draws on Human Security Brief 2007, p. 16, op. cit. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 62–3. ‘Small bands of fighters and terrorist groups usually seek to become full-blown insurgencies as part of their strategy for victory. But their task is difficult. The groups often start out with few members, little funding, and limited recognition, while the governments they oppose enjoy coercive and financial advantages and are seen as legitimate by most domestic and international audiences. Despite these difficulties, some groups do make the successful transition to full-blown insurgency’ (Daniel Byman 2007, ‘Understanding proto-insurgencies’, RAND Counter-Insurgency Study – Paper 3, RAND, p. vii, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP178/, accessed 11 June 2008).

38 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks D.C. Gompert, J. Gordon IV, A. Grissom, D.R. Frelinger, S. Jones, M. Libicki, F. O’Connell, B.S. Lawson and R.E. Hunter (2007), ‘War by other means: building complete and balanced capabilities for counter insurgency’, Rand Counter Insurgency Study, Final Report, Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp., p. xxv. The Human Security Brief 2007. ‘[The brief] challenges the expert consensus that the threat of terrorism – especially Islamic terrorism – is increasing. It tracks a remarkable but largely unnoticed decline in the incidence of terrorism around the world, including a sharp decrease in deadly assaults perpetrated by al-Qaeda’s loosely-knit Islamist global terror networks’ (ibid., p. 1). ‘If the hitherto unusual practice of counting civilian fatalities from intentional violence in wartime as terrorism is rejected, then the trend data . . . pose a major challenge to the expert view that the global terrorist threat is increasing’ (ibid., pp. 13–14). Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 48–54. Ibid. 16 May 2003. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 41. Ibid., p. 51. Byman, ‘Understanding proto-insurgencies’, pp. 16–17. Al-Zawahiri (2001), Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, part 11, serialized in al Sharq Al Awsat from 2 December 2001 onwards. For a review see Youssef Aboul-Enein (2005), ‘Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner: the al Qaeda manifesto’, Military Review, 85 (1), 83. Analogous to the idea of ‘mission command’ in the British Army. Al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, part 11. See Peter Wilson (2006), ‘Preparing to meet new challenges’, in Steve Tsang (ed.), Intelligence and Human Rights in the Era of Global Terrorism, New York: Praeger. For example amongst the Egyptian groups in the 1990s, documented in Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 40–41. See Wilson, ‘Preparing to meet new challenges’, op. cit. Byman, ‘Understanding proto-insurgencies’, p. ix. Human Security Brief 2007, p. 18. National Intelligence Estimate, ‘Trends in global terrorism: implications for the United States’, National Intelligence Council (April 2006). Al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, part 11.

PART II

Regional Networks

3.

Northern Ireland: communal division and the embedding of paramilitary networks Adrian Guelke

During the course of 2007, the final pieces of the Northern Ireland peace puzzle appeared to fall into place, with the commitments by the representatives of the most important of the province’s violent organizations to a completely peaceful future and their acceptance of the normal policing of the society. But questions still remained as to how and whether this would work out in practice. Events since the devolution of power on 8 May 2007 present a mixed picture of the prospects for the new dispensation. For five months during 2008, the Northern Ireland Executive failed to meet because of disagreement between the two main parties over the agenda for such meetings. There was a major security crisis in March 2009, with the first killings of members of the security forces for more than a decade. A political challenge also emerged to the settlement in the form of a new political party, Traditional Unionist Voice, which was opposed to the inclusion of Republicans within the government of Northern Ireland. But the peace process was also boosted by the solidarity shown by the political parties in the face of the security crisis in March 2009 and by the subsequent decommissioning of weapons by Loyalist paramilitary organizations in June 2009. The manner in which the representatives of Northern Ireland’s two largest terrorist groupings announced the winding up of their activities appeared to epitomize fundamental differences in their organization. Thus, in the case of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), the whole process was carefully choreographed by the leaders of the political wing of the Republican movement, Sinn Fein. Its stages were arranged to extract the maximum political benefit for Sinn Fein from each step along the way, with the final stage of the process being the party’s acceptance in January 2007 of the police in Northern Ireland. By contrast, when the leaders of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) announced in November 2007 that they were satisfied that the war was over, it followed a period 41

42


of internal conflict within the organization and there remained considerable scepticism as to the leadership’s capacity to ensure adherence to the commitments they had made on behalf of the membership. An important source of many observers’ doubts arose from the decentralized nature of the UDA in comparison with the hierarchical control exercised over the Provisional IRA through the overlapping leadership of the military and political wings of the Republican movement. However, the organizational differences between the Provisional IRA and the UDA are easy to overstate. Identification with the organization at a local level was a powerful influence on behaviour in both cases. In neither case could the leadership take for granted local adherence to their decrees. While both the Provisional IRA and the UDA were commonly referred to as terrorist organizations outside of Northern Ireland, within the province itself they were more commonly referred to as paramilitary organizations. This usage was initially simply a reference to their adoption of military terms for their internal organization, with each divided into locally based brigades, further subdivided into companies. But the usage stuck in part because of the recognition that the term ‘terrorist’, with its implication of the involvement of small numbers of people operating clandestinely in cells, did not fit the circumstances that prevailed in Northern Ireland. This was because paramilitaries in Northern Ireland engaged in a wide range of activities beyond, in the Provisional IRA’s case, violently attacking the security forces or other agents of the British state or, in the case of the UDA, killing Catholics to avenge Republican atrocities. Further, in the case of the UDA it was difficult to apply the term ‘terrorist’, to an organization that was only outlawed in 1992. It had contrived to keep its status as a legal organization through almost the entire period of the troubles by the simple device of employing noms de guerre whenever claiming responsibility for murders and other acts of violence. The deeply divided nature of society in Northern Ireland, reflected in pervasive residential segregation of the two communities across the province, but especially in urban areas, facilitated the entrenchment of the paramilitaries in particular neighbourhoods. Enclaves in which one community was surrounded by districts predominantly occupied by members of the other community became and remained strongholds of the paramilitaries, such as the Catholic Short Strand area in East Belfast, the Catholic Ardoyne in North Belfast and the Protestant Shankill Road area in West Belfast. Such strongholds were not confined to the urban areas. In the case of the Provisional IRA, its control of the rural area of South Armagh matched in intensity its influence over socio-economically disadvantaged urban estates such as the Lower Falls in Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries were by and large confined to the urban areas; in rural areas

Northern Ireland: communal division and paramilitary networks

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Protestants who wished to play a part in fighting the Provisional IRA and other Republican paramilitaries were more inclined to do so through involvement, often on a part-time basis, in the security forces. In his seminal account of how terrorist groups recruit new members and create networks, Understanding Terror Networks, Marc Sageman compares and contrasts two rival Egyptian Salafi jihadist organizations, the Egyptian Islamic Group (EIG) and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).1 The former rejected the global jihad while the latter embraced it. And while the EIG was embedded in the community and responsive to reactions of its constituency, the EIJ was not constrained by such influences. It will be apparent from what has already been stated that Northern Ireland’s paramilitaries on both sides of the sectarian divide have conformed far more closely to the embedded character of the EIG than to the free-floating nature of the EIJ. In the final section of the chapter, the question of why no groups similar to the EIJ have emerged in the context of the Irish conflict will be explored. In his 2008 book Leaderless Jihad, Marc Sageman identifies three waves in the evolution of global jihadist terrorism.2 He identifies the first wave as what he calls ‘al-Qaeda central’, formed during the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The second wave comprised those who joined this social movement during the 1990s. The third wave comprises the postIraqi invasion generation. The salient characteristics of the third wave are that the groups involved have become radicalized on their own initiative and are autonomous of al-Qaeda central. His analysis begs the question why Republicans and Loyalists have not formed such a third wave in the case of Northern Ireland. This issue, too, will be addressed in the final section of the chapter. Understandably, much of the focus of world attention on Northern Ireland has been on the constructive political developments that have taken place in the province, most notably the formation of a powersharing government in May 2007. Apart from the wide coverage given to the Omagh atrocity in August 1998, murders and other crimes perpetrated by members of paramilitary organizations in recent years, particularly involving organizations formally committed to the peace process through support for the Good Friday Agreement, have (with a few exceptions) been downplayed. It is argued in this chapter that these cases raise important questions about the quality of the peace that has been achieved in Northern Ireland, while also throwing light on the operation of violent or terrorist networks of broader comparative relevance. But before addressing these questions, a reprise of some of the major developments in the peace process is necessary to place the issues in context. The roots of Northern Ireland’s peace process in the 1990s can be

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traced back to events that took place in the 1980s. In particular, a crisis in the prisons in the early 1980s precipitated the intervention of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, into electoral politics. The British government’s response to the rise of Sinn Fein was to seek to address Catholic alienation through involving the Irish government on a consultative basis in the governance of Northern Ireland. To the fury of Unionists, in November 1985 the British government signed the AngloIrish Agreement with the government of the Republic of Ireland, that enshrined the basis of cooperation with the Republic in an international agreement. Protests on the streets of Northern Ireland failed to bring about the demise of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. This forced Unionists to contemplate negotiations to secure its removal and helped to create the basis for talks among the constitutional parties in the early 1990s. The talks among the constitutional parties (that is, those parties without paramilitary connections) failed to reach agreement, but nonetheless provided impetus for a broader peace process. By 1992 there were signs that the Republican movement was seeking an alternative to continuance of the Provisional IRA’s ‘long war’. Talks between the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), John Hume, and the President of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, prompted the British and Irish governments to issue a joint declaration in December 1993. This promised that if the Provisional IRA brought its campaign of violence permanently to an end, the way would be opened for Sinn Fein’s participation in negotiations on a new political dispensation for Northern Ireland. The response from the Republican movement was to seek further clarification of the governments’ stance, but finally at the end of August 1994 the Provisional IRA announced an indefinite cessation. This was followed by a ceasefire by the principal Loyalist paramilitary organizations in October 1994. However, the paramilitary ceasefires did not lead immediately to negotiations among the parties. Indeed, the delay was a factor in the Provisional IRA’s abandonment of its ceasefire in February 1996. Elections for the purpose of establishing the parties to the negotiations were held at the end of May 1996. Despite the end of the Provisional IRA ceasefire, Sinn Fein fared well in the elections to the Forum, as it was termed, though the party remained excluded from the negotiations. However, in Sinn Fein’s absence, negotiations among the remaining parties made little headway. Following the election of new governments in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, there was a resumption of the Provisional IRA ceasefire in July 1997. This paved the way to negotiations among the parties, including Sinn Fein, but excluding two Unionist parties that left the talks on Sinn Fein’s entry into the process. Ultimately, these talks led to the


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achievement of the Belfast Agreement – also commonly referred to as the Good Friday Agreement – on 10 April 1998. The Agreement was endorsed by large majorities in referenda in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. However, the size of ‘yes’ vote in Northern Ireland of more than 70 per cent of those voting tended to mask the fact that whereas Catholics had voted almost unanimously for the Agreement, Protestants were more or less evenly divided between ‘yes’ and ‘no’. This became evident in the voting for the Northern Ireland Assembly in June, when pro-Agreement Unionists achieved only a narrow victory over anti-Agreement Unionists. The picture was further complicated by the fact that the anti-Agreement forces contained within their ranks a number of members of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the leading pro-Agreement party. Henceforth, these anti-Agreement members of the UUP waged a relentless campaign against the pro-Agreement leader of the party, David Trimble. Disagreement over the interpretation of the Agreement in relation to the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons proved an obstacle to its implementation. A devolved power-sharing government eventually came into existence in December 1999, but lasted only to February 2000 after the Provisional IRA failed to begin decommissioning. After a Provisional IRA initiative to allow inspection of some of its arms dumps, the devolved government was re-established in June 2000, but the issue of decommissioning continued to cast a shadow over its existence. However, it was other activities by the Provisional IRA, and not the issue of decommissioning as such, that brought the power-sharing experiment to an end in October 2002. Thus, after allegations that the Provisional IRA was illegally gathering intelligence from government offices, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland suspended the institutions ahead of expected Unionist resignations from the Executive over the issue of spying. By this time, there had been two acts of decommissioning by the Provisional IRA. There were intensive negotiations during the course of 2003 in a major effort by the British and Irish governments to restore devolved government and the international credibility of the Belfast Agreement. Both governments recognized that continuing paramilitary activity had been a significant factor in undermining support for the Agreement, and sought to address this issue in the joint declaration they issued in April 2003. Thus, they noted: ‘Ongoing paramilitary activity, sectarian violence, and criminality masquerading as a political cause, are all corrosive of the trust and confidence that are necessary to sustain a durable political process.’3 Paragraph 13 of the declaration spelt out what they required from the paramilitaries as part of a new deal to restore the political institutions:

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Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks Paramilitarism and sectarian violence, therefore, must be brought to an end, from whichever part of the community they come. We need to see an immediate, full and permanent cessation of all paramilitary activity, including military attacks, training, targeting, intelligence gathering, acquisition or development of arms or weapons, other preparations for terrorist campaigns, punishment beatings and attacks and involvement in riots. Moreover, the practice of exiling must come to an end and the exiled must feel free to return in safety. Similarly, sectarian attacks and intimidation directed at vulnerable communities must cease.4

Later in 2003, as part of the choreography of a new deal, the British government agreed to the holding of fresh elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, notwithstanding the suspension of the political institutions. A further act of decommissioning by the Provisional IRA took place as part of the same process. However, the deal then broke down because of the UUP’s anger over the secrecy surrounding this third act of decommissioning. This meant that the electorate was given little information about its scale or the proportion of the Provisional IRA’s arsenal it represented. Nevertheless, the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly went ahead as announced. They resulted in victories for the two radical parties on either side of the sectarian divide, Sinn Fein and the anti-Agreement Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Ian Paisley, over their more moderate rivals. With the DUP occupying a majority of Unionist seats in the still suspended Assembly, and Sinn Fein a majority of Nationalist seats, the obstacles to restoring devolution appeared insuperable. Nevertheless, thanks in part to a diminution of intercommunal tensions during 2004, the two governments came close in early December of that year to securing the agreement of the two radical parties to the terms of a document that built on their previous efforts to broker a deal among the parties. However, this was followed by setbacks to the peace process that appeared to rule out any prospect of agreement among the parties in the foreseeable future. As a consequence, the issue of the criminal activities of paramilitaries became as significant a cause of contention in the peace process as that of the decommissioning of paramilitary arsenals. Two events, in particular, were responsible for the prominence of the issue: a bank heist in which the robbers escaped with a total of £26 million and the murder of a young man following a brawl in a bar. The bank heist took place on 20 December 2004; the murder of Robert McCartney on 30 January 2005. There was massive coverage of these events in the media and they were presented as a watershed for the Republican movement that threatened the participation of Sinn Fein in the future government of Northern Ireland. Characteristic of the coverage was an article in the Irish Times, entitled ‘Is the party over?’5 The implication was that controversy


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over the bank raid and McCartney’s murder might prove capable of destroying Sinn Fein as a significant force in Irish politics. Initial estimates were that the robbers who raided the vaults of the headquarters of the Northern Bank in the centre of Belfast had got away with £20 millions in cash. This was subsequently raised to £26 million. The theft of even the lower figure focused the attention of the media on the heist, as one of the largest thefts of cash from a bank in history, if not the largest. The method used by the raiders followed a pattern of similar robberies in Northern Ireland that had been given the name of ‘tiger kidnappings’. This involved the taking of hostages to force cooperation from members of staff of the institution being robbed, so as to circumvent normal security. In the case of the Northern Bank raid, armed men posing as officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) took a bank official and his family hostage on Sunday 19 December at their home in a village in County Down. Another official and his family were taken hostage in a suburb of Belfast. The gang ordered the bank officials to go to work normally on Monday morning. The officials were told that their families would suffer if they failed to cooperate. Throughout the day, city centre businesses deposited their earnings from the weekend’s shopping. Members of the gang took over the bank after the close of business, by which time most of the staff had left. They forced the two officials under their control to override all the security mechanisms on the bank’s vaults, enabling the gang to get away with huge quantities of cash in a large van. Some of money was newly printed Northern Bank banknotes and the bank had a record of the serial numbers of the notes involved. However, almost half the money came from other sources, including deposits from businesses during the busy Christmas season, and the bank had no record of the serial numbers of these notes. The gang released the bank officials and their family members later in the evening, and close to midnight on 20 December the police were at last alerted to the heist. Nobody suffered physical injuries as a result of the raid, but the families taken hostage were described as having been traumatized by their ordeal.6 The initial media coverage of the bank heist emphasized the huge size of the robbery and the fact that it was yet another so-called ‘tiger robbery’, of which there had been more than 40 in the course of 2004. Also raised was the question of paramilitary involvement. Thus, in its coverage of the robbery, the Belfast Telegraph quoted remarks made to the Police Board by the Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI, Sam Kinkaid, in October 2004. Kinkaid said then: ‘All paramilitary groups in the last five to six months have been involved in serious robberies in Northern Ireland. That’s on both sides of the community.’7 In other words, the police

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believed that Republican paramilitaries, including the Provisional IRA and other dissident groups such as the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, and Loyalist paramilitaries, such as the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force, were responsible for much of this criminality. Consequently, it was not surprising that paramilitary involvement in the bank heist was suspected from the outset. It quickly became evident that the main focus of the police investigation was in Nationalist – that is, Catholic – neighbourhoods. Therefore there was general expectation that when the Chief Constable of the PSNI gave a press conference on the subject of the robbery, he would indicate that the police suspected Republican paramilitary involvement. In the event, at the press conference on 7 January 2005 he went much further than that, asserting that the organization responsible for carrying out the robbery was the Provisional IRA. This was not merely an assertion that members of the Provisional IRA had been involved in the robbery. It was a claim that the entire operation had been authorized by the leadership of the Provisional IRA. Assuming, as the two governments and other political parties certainly did, that in due course this claim would be borne out by the police investigation and subsequent criminal trials, it was clear that the robbery had potentially huge implications for the Northern Ireland peace process. The political dimension of the issue was underlined by a report on the robbery by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC). The IMC had been set up as a result of an agreement between the British and Irish governments in the context of the abortive push for a settlement in April 2003. The commissioners were drawn from Britain, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the United States of America. The international character of the IMC explains the frequency with which it was mistakenly referred to in the media as the International Monitoring Commission. Under Article 3 of the international agreement setting up the IMC, its purpose was described as follows: ‘The objective of the Commission is to carry out [its functions] with a view to promoting the transition to a peaceful society and stable and inclusive devolved Government in Northern Ireland.’8 Part of the remit of the IMC was to report on the activities of paramilitary groups at six-monthly intervals. There was also provision for the IMC to be asked to submit reports on an ad hoc basis, should it be considered that the circumstances warranted such action. The Northern Bank robbery was considered to be such a case, and the IMC issued a report on the robbery on 10 February 2005. The IMC report went much further than even the Chief Constable had, by linking the Sinn Fein leadership to the robbery and to Provisional IRA (PIRA) criminality in general. On the bank heist itself, the report stated: ‘We have carefully scrutinised all the material of different kinds that has become


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available to us since the robbery, which leads us to conclude firmly that it was planned and undertaken by the PIRA.’9 The IMC noted that in its previous report of 4 November 2004, it had stated that the IMC believed that the Provisional IRA had been responsible for a major theft of goods in Dunmurry on the outskirts of Belfast. It went further in its report of 10 February in connecting the Provisional IRA to a series of crimes in 2004: We conclude on the basis of information available to us that PIRA was responsible for: The theft of goods at Makro in Dunmurry on 23 May (the incident to which we refer above); The abduction of people and the robbery of goods from the Strabane branch of Iceland on 26 September; The abduction of people and the robbery of cigarettes with a market value of approximately £2m from a bonded delivery vehicle in Belfast on 2 October.10

The report then went on to connect the issue of Provisional IRA criminality to Sinn Fein: In our view Sinn Féin must bear its share of responsibility for all the incidents. Some of its senior members, who are also senior members of PIRA, were involved in sanctioning the series of robberies. Sinn Féin cannot be regarded as committed to non-violence and exclusively peaceful and democratic means so long as its links to PIRA remain as they are and PIRA continues to be engaged violence and other crime. Although we note Sinn Féin has said it is opposed to criminality of any kind it appears at times to have its own definition of what constitutes a crime. We do not believe the party has sufficiently discharged its responsibility to exert all possible influence to prevent illegal activities on the part of PIRA.11

As it had done in its first report in April 2004, the IMC asserted that if the institutions of devolved government had been operating, it would have recommended the taking of measures against Sinn Fein up to and including the party’s exclusion from the Executive. As it was, the IMC report formed the basis on which the British government justified the imposition of a series of financial penalties on Sinn Fein. The other issue to cause a crisis for the Republican movement, and by extension problems for the political process and ultimately the basis of the peace process itself, was the murder of a 33-year-old man, Robert McCartney, on 30 January. Ironically, the most succinct description of what happened was given in a Provisional IRA statement of 25 February 2005. The statement referred to an initial heated exchange of views in the bar between a senior Republican and Robert McCartney, and then between the Republican and another man. It continued:

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Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks Blows were exchanged and a major melee erupted in the bar. Neither that man [that is, the other man] nor the senior Republican had weapons of any description in their possession though both were struck with bottles thrown by others. Robert McCartney played no part in the melee. Both Brendan Devine and the senior Republican received serious stab wounds inside the bar. A crowd spilled out onto the street. Verbal abuse and threats were being shouted by many of those present . . . In the meantime, Brendan Devine, Robert McCartney and another man ended up in Market Street . . . They were followed into Market Street where Robert McCartney and Brendan Devine were attacked and stabbed. Both men were stabbed by the same man. Robert McCartney died a short time later in hospital.12

The statement referred to the fact that an individual had threatened a member of the bar staff before taking a CCTV tape and destroying it, and it also conceded that others had been involved in the clean-up and destruction of evidence at the scene. This was the second of three statements by the Provisional IRA on the subject of Robert McCartney’s murder. The third caused a storm of controversy because it mentioned that the Provisional IRA, in seeking to undo the damage being done to the Republican movement by the issue, had made an offer to the McCartney family to kill the principal suspect. The intention behind this offer was clearly to seek to dispel the notion that the Provisional IRA had any stake in protecting McCartney’s killer. In the aftermath of the murder the PSNI had complained that its inquiries into the killing were being hampered by intimidation of witnesses. The implication was clearly that this was being done by local members of the Provisional IRA in the Short Strand enclave, the principal focus of the police investigation. However, nobody suggested that McCartney was a target of the Provisional IRA as an organization. McCartney was a Catholic and a supporter of Sinn Fein. In leading protests seeking justice for their dead brother, his sisters tapped into a rich vein of resentment in enclaves such as the Short Strand at the arrogance and thuggish behaviour of the Provisional IRA figures who exercised control over such areas. The Sinn Fein leadership was slow to appreciate that the murder of Robert McCartney could fuel a campaign against the continuing existence of the Provisional IRA. Once figures such as Gerry Adams appreciated this danger they quickly sought to identify themselves with the sisters’ campaign for justice for their brother, but they failed to prevent the issue from tarnishing the reputation of the Republican movement as a whole. And the fact that the issue was seen as damaging to the Republican movement gave the Provisional IRA’s many media critics plenty of incentive to continue to highlight it. In the face of the threat to Sinn Fein’s standing, its President, Gerry Adams, signalled a major change in direction by the Republican movement.


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In a speech on 6 April 2005, he addressed the following appeal to the Provisional IRA: ‘Can you take courageous initiatives which will achieve your aims by purely political and democratic activity?’13 His words were interpreted as seeking from the Provisional IRA a declaration that it would go beyond its ceasefire of 1997 and abandon all forms of paramilitarism. They were also seen as a clear indication that in the context of a new deal, the Republican movement would be willing to accept the terms that the two governments had laid down on the issue of paramilitarism in April 2003. Adams’s initiative was warmly welcomed by the British and Irish governments. There was a chillier reaction from Unionists, who saw their hopes that the two governments might contemplate Sinn Fein’s exclusion from the future government of Northern Ireland dashed at a single stroke. Adams’s initiative was also successful in electoral terms. In the Westminster general election of May 2005, Sinn Fein consolidated its position as the province’s largest Nationalist party. However, there were small signs of the effect of the events of December 2004 and January 2005 on the party. The SDLP was more successful than its moderate counterpart on the Unionist side, the UUP, in limiting its losses to its radical adversary. Further, the party achieved one surprising success. It won the South Belfast seat, in part as a result of the poor showing of the Sinn Fein candidate, due to the impact of the McCartney case on the constituency. The Provisional IRA’s response to Adams’s challenge followed on 28 July 2005. A statement was issued that the organization was ending its armed campaign and calling on all units to dump arms. It stated further: ‘All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.’14 There was an expectation that this statement would be rapidly followed by the completion of the decommissioning of the Provisional IRA’s arsenal. As the weeks passed without an announcement from the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD), tensions rose. The combination of suspicions about the readiness of the British and Irish governments to reward the Republican movement for promises it failed to deliver on, and resentment at the rerouting of parades of the Orange Order, prompted a week of serious rioting in Loyalist areas of Belfast in the second week of September. The involvement of the Loyalist paramilitaries in the violence attracted the attention of the IMC, which commented on the UDA’s role as follows: Senior UDA members helped orchestrate violence during the parade, and members hijacked vehicles and during the course of the rioting attacked the police and military with gunfire, blast bombs and petrol bombs. In the

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Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks following few days we believe the leadership of the UDA concluded that things had escalated unacceptably on 10 September and it decided that there should be no further UDA involvement in the continuing disorders.15

However, in a wider political context and in media coverage of events in Northern Ireland, the misdeeds of Loyalist paramilitaries attracted far less attention than transgressions by the Provisional IRA. This was partly because the political parties associated with the Loyalist paramilitaries were too small to be able to stake any sort of claim to participation in the government of Northern Ireland. Consequently, their status and that of the paramilitaries associated with them did not present a direct threat to the functioning of the Belfast Agreement. But, indirectly, their actions were of significance through much of the period of the peace process, since their violence and unwillingness to decommission their weapons substantially reduced the political pressures on the Provisional IRA to move beyond its upholding of an open-ended ceasefire until the crises of the winter of 2004–5. In the years after 1998 and the Omagh atrocity, Loyalist paramilitaries were responsible for a very large majority of the political killings in Northern Ireland, as well as of assaults and shootings. The number of those who died in political violence in the period from 1999 to 2007 averaged in the low teens. Many of those killed were themselves members of paramilitary organizations and died in feuds between and within Loyalist paramilitary organizations. A turning point in this context was the expulsion from the Lower Shankill of the wife and supporters of ‘Mad Dog’ Johnny Adair in February 2003. This followed the murder of a rival leader of the UDA, John ‘Grugg’ Gregg, the brigadier for South-East Antrim, by members of Adair’s C Company. Adair himself was in prison at the time of both these events. After his release, he too was forced into exile. In the same report in which the IMC addressed the question of Loyalist paramilitary involvement in the September 2005 riots, it commented on the murder of the former brigadier for East Belfast, Jim ‘Doris Day’ Gray, on 4 October 2005. The IMC attributed responsibility for the murder to Gray’s fellow UDA members in the East Belfast brigade. Separately, the IMC noted that that some members of the UDA’s leadership were seeking ‘to steer the UDA away from violence and crime and into community development’.16 In fact, the two developments were almost certainly connected, as Gray had previously been warned by the Inner Council of the UDA to end his involvement with drug dealers.17 The confidence with which the IMC attributed violent actions, including murder, to local units of particular paramilitary organizations on both sides of the sectarian divide was not matched by convictions in the courts,


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even allowing for the inevitable delays that the legal process entails.18 The IMC received most of its information from the security forces and the detailed attributions in its reports reflected how successful the security forces had become in monitoring the activities of the paramilitary organizations, through the use of electronic means and through the widespread recruitment of informers. However, revelations of the extent of security force infiltration of the Loyalist paramilitaries had some uncomfortable implications for the authorities, since it helped to fuel accusations from Republicans that the government had colluded in the violence of Loyalist paramilitaries. Unionist suspicion that the commitments the Provisional IRA had entered into in July 2005 would not be matched by deeds proved unfounded. On 26 September 2005 the IICD announced that the Provisional IRA had completed the decommissioning of its entire arsenal of weapons. However, this major step by the Republican movement did not immediately end the political impasse. At this stage the DUP was still far from ready to agree to enter a power-sharing government with Sinn Fein participation. Unionists remained concerned at what they saw as an eagerness on the part of the British and Irish governments to appease the Republican movement at every turn, to ensure progress in the peace process. When on 8 December 2005 it was announced that the prosecution of the Republicans who had been implicated in the Stormont spying scandal that had led to the suspension of the devolved government in October 2002 was being abandoned as ‘no longer in the public interest’,19 the immediate Unionist reaction was that this was a reward for decommissioning. However, this explanation was undercut a week later by the outing of Denis Donaldson, the leading figure among the ‘Stormontgate’ accused, as a British agent. As Denis Donaldson was responsible for the running of the Sinn Fein parliamentary office at Stormont, had occupied important positions in the party over a period of 20 years, and before that had made a name for himself as an IRA volunteer who had defended the Short Strand enclave in 1970, this was a sensational revelation that shook the Republican movement by demonstrating the closeness of informers to its leadership. It also showed that a long record in the Republican movement was not incompatible with being turned into a British agent. After his exposure as an agent at a Sinn Fein press conference, Donaldson admitted his role in a statement to Radio Telefis Eirean (RTE). The exposing of Donaldson compounded the impact of an earlier revelation in 2003 that a British agent with the code name ‘Stakeknife’ had had a leading role in the Provisional IRA’s internal security unit, the body ironically with responsibility for identifying and punishing informers. Like the other high-profile agent, Freddie Scappatici, Donaldson fled Northern Ireland. Shortly after,

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a reporter tracked Donaldson down to a cottage in County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, and described the straitened conditions in which he was living on his own. He was murdered on 4 April 2006. Donaldson’s murder took place just two days before the British and Irish governments set 24 November 2006 as a deadline for the achievement of devolved government under the Belfast Agreement. Although decommissioning was no longer a source of contention among the parties, there remained disagreements among the parties on other issues, including support for the police, the devolution of responsibility for justice and policing, and the functioning of the institutions. However, despite the governments’ initiative, progress on resolving the outstanding issues was slow. To give impetus to the process, the British and Irish Prime Ministers convened a meeting with all the parties in St Andrews in Scotland from 11 to 13 October 2006. At the end of the meeting the two governments published what they styled the St Andrews Agreement, though their presentation of the outcome of the meeting in such positive terms was undermined by the insistence of both Sinn Fein and the DUP that they had not agreed to the text and that the agreement was one between the two governments alone. Nevertheless, it was evident that the text had not been rejected out of hand by either Sinn Fein or the DUP, and that in the absence of a hostile reaction from their supporters, both parties might be willing to acquiesce to its terms. Differences still existed between the parties over the sequencing: the DUP wanted Sinn Fein to endorse the PSNI ahead of a commitment to form a power-sharing government, while Sinn Fein wanted the DUP to commit to power-sharing in advance of its acceptance of the arrangements for policing. The DUP argued that acceptance of the police was a sine qua non for any party seeking to be in government, while Sinn Fein insisted that the setting of a target date for the devolution of responsibility for justice and policing was an essential element in securing nationalist consent for the PSNI. By this point, the deadline the two governments had set for devolution to be achieved had softened into the requirement that by 24 November 2006 the DUP and Sinn Fein should have put forward their nominations for the positions of First Minister and Deputy First Minister, respectively. In the event, on the day of the deadline, Paisley as the leader of the DUP declined to make a nomination on the grounds that the conditions for such a nomination had not yet been met. But, fortunately for the two governments, the media’s attention was diverted from this potentially serious setback by the somewhat farcical effort of Michael Stone, a notorious UDA killer, to disrupt the proceedings with bombs he had attempted to bring into the parliament in a bag. A statement was issued later in the day by Paisley that clarified his stance in a way that enabled the two


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governments to claim that their minimum conditions for proceeding with the timetable set out in the St Andrews Agreement had in fact been met, despite appearances to the contrary. In accordance with its requirements, Sinn Fein then convened a special party conference on 28 January 2007 in which the party endorsed the current policing regime in Northern Ireland. The endorsement was premised on the basis that the DUP would have to embrace power-sharing or be faced by the two governments’ implementation of an alternative to the Belfast Agreement in circumstances in which the DUP would be blamed for sabotaging the process. To the surprise of many observers, the vote in favour of the Sinn Fein leadership’s endorsement of the policing regime was overwhelming. Part of the explanation for the leadership’s success, despite the backdrop of continuing hostility towards the PSNI among Nationalists in Northern Ireland, was the very public hope of figures in the DUP that Sinn Fein’s difficulties in securing support for policing as required under the St Andrews Agreement might save their party from having to choose between sharing power with Sinn Fein or suffering the consequences from being blamed by the two governments for the failure of the Belfast Agreement. Rewarding the DUP and Sinn Fein’s cooperation, there were fresh elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 7 March 2007 under rules that strongly favoured the two radical parties.20 Their position of dominance in their respective communities was duly substantially strengthened. Even at this stage there was no certainty that the DUP would agree to go into government with Sinn Fein. The two governments had set a new absolutely final deadline of 26 March 2007 for the restoration of devolution. Just ahead of the deadline, the DUP traded its compliance for a further delay in the implementation of devolution to 8 May 2007. Unionist confidence in the whole process was strengthened by a series of IMC reports that underlined the Republican movement’s adherence to its 2005 commitments. For example, in its twelfth report in October 2006 ahead of the negotiations at St Andrews, the IMC declared that it was ‘aware of no sanctioned acts of violence’ by members of the Provisional IRA, and reaffirmed the conclusion of its tenth report that the leadership of the Provisional IRA ‘had committed itself to following a peaceful path’.21 In its fifteenth report on 25 April 2007, shortly before the establishment of the devolved government, the IMC asserted that the Provisional IRA had not been engaged in acts of terrorism ‘or in preparatory activities, such as recruitment, training, and weapons procurement and development’ and that ‘[t]he terrorist capability of the organisation continued to deteriorate following disbandment of paramilitary structures’.22 It did note that ‘some members continued to engage in crime’,23 but stressed that they did so contrary to the wishes of the leadership.

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The establishment of the new government increased the pressures on the Loyalist paramilitaries to follow the Provisional IRA’s example. To encourage the UDA along this path, the British government had invested money in a conflict transformation initiative that was widely criticized as a bribe for good behaviour. The Social Development Minister in the devolved government, Margaret Ritchie, threatened to cut off funding of this project if the UDA failed to decommission its weapons. The position of the UDA was weakened further by the involvement of its members in a series of disturbances over the summer, which prompted strong criticism of the organization by the Chief Constable of the PSNI. On 11 November 2007, the UDA leadership sought to answer its critics. In messages read out at Remembrance Day parades across Northern Ireland, the leadership announced that they considered the military war to be over and that the Ulster Freedom Fighters was being stood down. This was part of a fourpoint plan to meet the challenges of the future ‘within the law and through non-violent means’.24 The plan also included an order to its members ‘not to be involved in crime or criminality’.25 But there remained considerable scepticism about the capacity of the UDA leadership to secure adherence to these commitments. Further, in a somewhat similar way to which the murder of Robert McCartney had highlighted the meaning of paramilitary control in one of the Provisional IRA’s urban strongholds in Belfast, a murder in the Republic of Ireland very close to the border with Northern Ireland raised disturbing questions about the conduct of members and former members of the Provisional IRA in its rural stronghold of South Armagh. On 20 October 2007, a young lorry driver, Paul Quinn, was lured to a farm in County Monaghan where he was set upon by a gang of ten men who savagely beat him with iron bars. He later died of his injuries. Quinn had had a series of violent run-ins with members of a number of prominent Republican families in South Armagh, and had defied advice to leave the area. That led the Quinn family to blame the Provisional IRA in South Armagh for his death. In particular, claims were made that the beating had been ordered by the Operational Commander (OC) of the South Armagh brigade and approved by a member of the Provisional IRA’s Army Council. Sinn Fein’s response was to characterize Quinn’s death as the consequence of a clash between criminals and fuel launderers.26 The party called on its supporters to cooperate fully with police investigations into the murder on both sides of the border. Famously described by Merlyn Rees when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as ‘bandit country’,27 South Armagh was a place where the writ of the government did not run, and which was notorious for the smuggling of cattle, pigs, grain and oil, especially diesel. Throughout


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the period of the Troubles it was so dangerous that the army was forced to conduct most of its operations from heavily fortified bases served by helicopters, because the roads were too insecure for safe movement by the military. Before the troubles, South Armagh had a reputation as a lawless borderland. But the area’s association with criminality even predated the smuggling opportunities that partition created. There were warnings to travellers about the dangers of the area going back to the seventeenth century.28 Accounts of the conduct of the local population broadly match those of the social bandits described by Eric Hobsbawm in his seminal account of primitive rebels.29 However, in certain respects, comparison of Provisional IRA volunteers in South Armagh with bandits is misleading. Unlike bandits, a considerable number of volunteers from South Armagh did not confine their activities on behalf of the Republican movement to South Armagh. The area had substantial representation over the years in the national leadership of the Provisional IRA. Volunteers from South Armagh were central to the Provisional IRA’s bombing campaign in England and in the running of the Libyan connection through which the Provisional IRA secured large quantities of arms. They were also involved in gun-running from the United States of America. South Armagh’s remoteness from governmental authority did not prevent its being an ideal launching pad for attacks on the centre. The bombing of Canary Wharf in February 1996, which ended the Provisional IRA’s ceasefire of 1994, was a project entrusted to the leadership of the South Armagh brigade because it collectively possessed the technical skills to put together a large bomb, as well as the capacity to deliver it to the target in London without the operation’s becoming compromised. At the same time, the close-knit and homogeneous nature of the society was important in embedding the Provisional IRA in the area, as it also was in other Republican and Loyalist strongholds across Northern Ireland. In his investigation of the Canary Wharf attack, the police officer in charge, Commander John Grieve, ‘found that examining family networks was one of the keys to unlocking the puzzle of who was involved in the Docklands bomb’.30 The combination of local roots and global reach has also been evident in the terrorist networks operating from Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. While these areas are seemingly at the outer limits of the state’s capacity to impose its political will, they have not been sufficiently remote to prevent travel and illicit trade between them and metropolitan centres. The effect is to leave the capital cities of the affluent world vulnerable to spillover from political developments thousands of miles away. The contrast with failed states in Africa is striking. In their case there has been virtually no spillover to other continents and the international links of

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the plethora of insurgent groups remain slight or non-existent. Northern Ireland is not geographically remote from the rest of the United Kingdom, but socially it is a place apart. Its peculiar sectarian social structures bear little resemblance to relations between communities in any other part of the country. Nonetheless, the whole country could be affected if the current arrangements for governing Northern Ireland were to break down once again. This presents central government with a dilemma. Should it be content with what amounts to an open-ended truce between the factions in Northern Ireland? Or should it be seeking proactively to bring about fundamental social change in Northern Ireland through the promotion of integrated education and measures to break down residential segregation? The danger of leaving well alone, thereby allowing the province’s sectarian political parties to divide the spoils of office between them, is that existing social structures will remain in place and thus make possible the reactivation of terrorist networks rooted in the province’s sectarian divisions at some time in the future. And in the absence of far-reaching social change in Northern Ireland, can a further round of the Irish troubles be entirely ruled out? Admittedly, a significant obstacle to such an eventuality is the high level of cooperation between the British and Irish governments on the question of Northern Ireland. Leaving well alone is also likely to mean tolerating an imperfect peace in which the aspirations of political leaders will continue to be somewhat at odds with what happens at a local level, at least in some areas. But it can be argued that any departure from the current policy would be imprudent. In particular, a more activist approach by the British government might run the risk of bringing down the carefully constructed edifice that it put in place with the help of the Irish government in May 2007. The difficulties that simply sustaining the present settlement have presented might be cited as evidence of the wisdom of caution on the part of the two governments. Yet it might also be contended that the limited ambitions of the governments and, in particular, their unwillingness to press the main political parties to share power in a spirit of political accommodation, have helped to create the opening for opponents of power-sharing among Unionists that the ‘traditional Unionist voice’ has been able to exploit. A striking feature of the peace process in Northern Ireland has been the discipline shown by rank-and-file members of the Provisional Republican movement during the movement’s long transition to the pursuit of power through more or less exclusively democratic means. Through all the twists and turns of the process, the leadership has succeeded in retaining its control over the membership. The looser organization of the UDA has made it more difficult for its leading figures to exercise a similar measure


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of control over UDA members, so that at times during the process there have been significant challenges from below to the leadership’s approach. However, in the end, the leadership prevailed in securing broad acceptance from the membership for ending the conflict. The patience shown in relation to the failure of the UDA to meet successive deadlines on the decommissioning of weapons is an indication of the government’s sensitivity to the leadership’s difficulties. Eventual decommissioning by Loyalist paramilitary organizations in 2009 owed much to the positive response of Loyalists generally to the stance take by Sinn Fein during the security crisis in March 2009. In quick succession, two dissident Republican terrorist organizations opposed to the peace process killed two British soldiers and a police officer. These attacks, firstly by the Real IRA and then by the Continuity IRA, did not come completely out of the blue. Both these groups had come into existence prior to the Good Friday Agreement of 10 April 1998 and had continued to carry out sporadic attacks after the settlement. There was considerable concern in the security forces over the activities of these two organizations prior to the attacks in March 2009, especially after the Real IRA declared its intention to attack police officers in interviews given to the press in early 2008. There had been a number of such attacks or attempts, but none causing fatalities. Because of their focus on the security forces the activities had hitherto not undermined the general public’s confidence in the solidity of the province’s peace. By contrast, the fatalities in March 2009 fanned widespread fears of a return to violence more generally. In this context, the support given to the security forces by Sinn Fein was important not just in instilling confidence in the capacity of local politicians to stand together in the face of the threat from dissident Republicans, but also in allaying fears that the peace process itself might be in jeopardy. At the same time, the immense worldwide publicity given to the activities of the dissident groups has raised their profile and hence concern in the security forces over what they may do next. Both the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA are organized on hierarchical lines. What has not emerged are free-floating cells of disaffected Republicans willing to carry out acts of violence in the manner of the third wave of jihadists as described by Marc Sageman. Given the extent of disaffection among Republicans with the fruits of the peace process, this might seem surprising. Why have Republicans been so reluctant to engage in terrorism except as part of a recognized organization? And why have none of the dissident groups imitated the methods of global jihadist terrorists such as, for example, launching mass-casualty attacks? The answer to the second question would seem to be that Republicans operate within a moral universe imposed by the communities from which they spring,

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that is willing to countenance violent attacks on the British state and those seen by virtue of their links to state authority as legitimate targets, but which imposes constraints on what is acceptable. Thus, it has not been the general practice of Republican terrorist organizations to let off bombs that deliberately target civilians and that provide no warnings of the danger to the public. Further, some of the extreme forms of violence that have characterized other ethnic conflicts, such as torture, rape and mutilation, have not been typical of the violence in Northern Ireland. To answer the first question is more challenging. A possible explanation for the absence of violence by unaffiliated individuals or small informal groups in the Republican cause is that participation in an organization’s campaign of violence is seen as necessary to give individual acts of violence any meaning. As it is, the commonest criticisms by mainstream Republicans of violence by the dissidents are that their actions are futile and incapable of advancing any political cause. Further, dissident Republican violence does not fit into a pre-existing narrative in the media on the continuing threat from Republicans disillusioned with the peace process, since this would not tally with the overwhelming disposition of the media in both Britain and Ireland to present the peace process as a success story. The closest Northern Ireland has experienced to freefloating violence unsanctioned by any organization was the attempt of a Loyalist ex-prisoner, Michael Stone, to disrupt the proceedings at the Stormont Parliament on 24 November 2006. Stone himself sought to excuse his attempt to smuggle a rucksack full of explosive devices into the Assembly as an act of performance art. A possible explanation for the existence of free-floating jihadists (providing the basis for Sageman’s third wave) is that Western governments’ rhetoric on the war on terror and the media’s coverage of the threat has provided a framework of meaning for such attacks, by making it possible for individual perpetrators to imagine that they form part of a vast, secret army eager to carry out such attacks and that ultimately the combined actions of individuals connected only by an idea and unknown to one another will inflict politically meaningful damage on Western society. The relative infrequency of attacks on Western societies since the events of 11 September 2001 has failed to temper coverage of the threat from violent Islamists as imminent and growing. Verisimilitude has been lent to this position by the massive coverage afforded to every failed plot, and to episodes of terrorism within states that have only the most tangential connections with the strategy of global jihadists of attacking the far enemy. At the same time, the phenomenon of mass-casualty attacks, the deliberate attempts to kill as many people as possible in a single attack or set of attacks, understandably has given rise to far more alarmist coverage of


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the jihadist threat than any amount of violence emanating from Northern Ireland’s sectarian divisions is capable of creating.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

Marc Sageman (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 146–51. Marc Sageman (2008), Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 48–9. Joint Declaration by the British and Irish Governments (April 2003), p. 2. Available at: http://www.nio.gov.uk/joint_declaration_between_the_british_and_irish_governments. pdf. Ibid. Mark Brennock (2005), ‘Is the party over?’, Irish Times, 19 February. Belfast Telegraph, 22 December 2004. Ibid. Quoted in H.M. Government, Third Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, HC 1218, The Stationery Office, London, 4 November 2004, p. 5. H.M. Government, Fourth Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, HC 308, The Stationery Office, London, 10 February 2005, p. 5. Ibid., pp. 5–6. Ibid., pp. 7–8. Quoted in Irish Times, 26 February 2005. For the full text of the statement, see http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/sf/ ga060405.htm. For the full text of the Provisional IRA statement, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ northern_ireland/4724599.stm. H.M. Government, Eighth Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, HC 870, The Stationery Office, London, 1 February 2006, p. 22. Ibid., pp. 22–3. See Ian S. Wood (2006), Crimes of Loyalty: A History of the UDA, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 299. The absence of convictions is not just a feature of cases on which the IMC has commented. It has been a more general feature of many cases of paramilitary violence. This is most strikingly underlined by the absence of convictions by the end of 2007 in Northern Ireland’s two most lethal atrocities: the Real IRA’s bombing of Omagh on 15 August 1998 in which 29 people died, and the Provisional IRA’s bombing of Enniskillen on 8 November 1987 in which 12 people died. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4509858.stm. The most important change in the rules was the provision that the largest party in the Assembly would secure the right to nominate the First Minister, instead of that right being accorded to the largest party in the largest designation. The change meant that if Sinn Fein won the largest number of seats in the Assembly it would secure the right to nominate the First Minister even if nationalists were in a minority in the Assembly. That gave Unionist voters a strong incentive to plump for the larger of the two Unionist parties in case their divisions allowed Sinn Fein to become the largest party. H.M. Government, Twelfth Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, Cm Un-numbered, The Stationery Office, London, October 2006, p. 8. H.M. Government, Fifteenth Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, HC 478, The Stationery Office, London, 25 April 2007, pp. 8–9. Ibid., p. 9.

62 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks Quoted in Gerry Moriarty (2007), ‘Action must follow UDA’s strong words’, Irish Times, 12 November. Ibid. Suzanne Breen (2007), ‘Paul Quinn’s friends could hear him begging for mercy: despite Sinn Féin denials, neighbours and friends of Paul Quinn insist he was brutally beaten to death by the Provisional IRA’, Sunday Tribune (Dublin), 28 October. Quoted in Tony Harnden (2000), ‘Bandit Country’: The IRA and South Armagh, London: Coronet Books, p. 14. See Harnden, op. cit., p. 93. E.J. Hobsbawm (1971), Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Harnden, op. cit., p. 45.

4.

Informal networks in North Africa George Joffé

Since the civil war erupted in Algeria in 1992, political dissidence in North Africa has been primarily expressed through Islamic activism (Wiktorowicz 2004: 2).1 Thus, a mass Islamist2 movement developed in Algeria after the October 1988 riots. After the army-based coup in 1992, designed to prevent an Islamist victory in the legislative elections held in December 2001, dissident movements and associated networks subsequently developed there as well. These have been paralleled by the similar emergence of sophisticated networks in Morocco, Tunisia and Libya in recent years. Such movements, especially in Algeria, have challenged established governments and have also been alleged to have developed links outside the North African region. The conventional explanation for both the movements and the networks that have developed from them, quite apart from the socio-economic and socio-psychological motivations usually attributed to such phenomena, is that they are ideologically based, exploiting a concept of resistance developed from specifically political interpretations of Islam – an Islamist ideology of opposition and dissidence, in short. Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it may not reflect the complete picture, particularly in Algeria. The civil war there in the 1990s reflected two other factors which have found their echoes elsewhere in the region. One has been that such movements and networks have also been penetrated and manipulated by the state through its security and intelligence services. Parallel to this, other drivers, such as smuggling networks or even peer pressure based on contiguity (viz. Sageman 2004), may also meld into ideologically driven movements. Thus explanations based solely on analyses of social movements as autonomous bounded ideological entities can only be partial. The other factor is that such movements have their own precursors which used different ideological justifications and, very often, the past has been recreated in the present, as it were. The typical precursors, of course, have been the various struggles for independence and, once again, the paradigm has been Algeria. This linkage has been embodied in the

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catchphrase of the 1980s and 1990s there: ‘Le FIS est le fils de l’FLN’ (‘The FIS is the son of the FLN’).3 It was a lineage which the FIS itself consciously manipulated, alongside its Islamist ideology (Vergès 1997). This chapter, therefore, seeks to show that different ideological and political patterns from different historical periods can intertwine in driving Islamic activist movements and the networks that can emerge from them. It will do this by focusing on the civil war in Algeria but will also draw on the experiences of other North African countries. In particular, it will look at the crisis in Morocco from 2003 onwards, and its replication in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. It will also seek to highlight the role played by transnational extremist ideologies in developing what Hafez has called the ‘anti-system collective action frames’ that have been used in constructing the drivers for political action within the activist movements and networks that have emerged (Hafez 2004: 41).

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND NETWORKS Social movements are a reflection of contentious politics and are the baserock upon which opportunities for major political change depend. As Tarrow (1998: 10) has proposed: Contentious politics emerge in response to changes in political opportunities and constraints, with participants responding to a variety of incentives; material and ideological, partisan and group-based, longstanding and episodic. Building on these opportunities, and using known repertoires of action, people with limited resources can act contentiously – if only sporadically. When their actions are based on dense social networks and connective structures and draw on consensual and action oriented cultural frames, they can sustain these actions in conflict with powerful opponents. In such cases – and only in such cases – we are in the presence of a social movement; when contention spreads across a society, as it sometimes does, we see a cycle of contention; when such a cycle is organised around opposed or multiple sovereignties, the outcome is a revolution.

Social movements are, therefore, collective challenges to authority which embody common purposes. They tend to be a product of transitional societies and are facilitated by the social phenomena that such transitions produce, such as urbanization, industrialization and mass education as mediated through new means of mass communication and opportunities for political engagement. They often require catalytic events to initiate them and, characteristically, often – but not always – involve charismatic leadership. In addition, insofar as they lie outside the established structures of the state, they may also reflect – or be alleged to reflect

Informal networks in North Africa

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– criminalized patterns of behaviour, a reflection of the anomie that contributes to their formation as well as of official hostility towards them. Such movements are, in effect, collective manifestations of social disequilibrium and a range of explanations has been adduced to analyse what may cause such a development. For functional social psychologists, they result from structural strain induced by a cause exogenous to the movement itself. This creates both generalized grievance and mass anomie such that individuals engage in collective action as a coping mechanism in a pathological response to established political order (Schmidt et al. 2005). The exogenous causes can reflect socio-economic transition, political exclusion and authoritarianism, as well as cultural or ideological conflict. Explanations of this kind have, however, long been regarded as too simplistic to capture the complexities of social movements (Wictorowicz 2004: 8), particularly in terms of the ways in which they operate. One major objection has been that explanations of this kind do little to explain how individuals in the social atomization implied by anomie could collectivize and mobilize their frustrations and aspirations, and how they would then express them. Insofar as such movements are rational and organized, they also require and therefore create bureaucracies, or take over existing administrative structures. It is for this reason that, in Islamic activist movements, the mosque can play a crucial role (Wictorowicz 2004: 10), alongside informal Islamic institutions such as charities, schools, societies and cultural centres. Such patterns of resource mobilization can easily morph into more formal structures of contention such as political parties, as has tended to be the case with Islamic social movements in recent years. Indeed, social movements and political parties can co-exist as different patterns of mutually reinforcing contention, thus creating social movement communities, as has been the case in Morocco and Algeria. Here, patterns of contention are diffused between formal and informal movements with flexible leaderships and fluid boundaries between them. This was precisely the pattern which developed in Algeria during the 1980s and which contributed to the atmosphere in which countrywide riots developed in October 1988. These challenged the existing political system and initiated the changes that were eventually to lead to the civil war in the 1990s. In Morocco in the 1990s, it has led to a formal political party and an informal social movement seeking similar political objectives of democratizing the political system, despite the formal competition between them (Spiegel 2009). The drivers for such resource mobilization are, of course, socio-political in nature and a crucial aspect of them is the way in which participants conceptualize their own participation and attract others to join them. In other words, the way in which the hegemonic discourse of contention for the

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social movement is framed is a key factor in the mobilization of support and action. These ‘frames of contention’ are, in effect, interpretive schemata which provide a context for an ideological analysis which justifies contention, and for the social movement associated with it. They provide diagnoses of social disequilibrium, solutions to it and rationales for action to achieve solutions that have meaning and value for participants. In the context of the Muslim world, political extrapolations of Islamic doctrine have emerged as the most appropriate framing ideology. In part this arises from the cultural context, but it is also a conscious reaction to other ideological failures rooted in nationalism and secularist ideologies of liberation and development. Specific aspects of the Islamic corpus have become important, particularly those governing social and political organization such as the concept of a just society and sharía (Islamic jurisprudence), together with more atavistic and symbolic concepts, such as the recreation of the Caliphate (Wictorowicz 2004: 16).4 Such framing ideologies can, of course, be contested in terms of both content and strategy or tactics, such that mechanisms are developed to impose a hegemonic discourse on the movement. It was this that lay behind the struggle between the GIA (Groupe Islamique Armés – Jama’at Islamiyya Musalaha) and the AIS (Armée Islamique du Salut – Jaysh Islamiyya li’l-Inqadh) during the Algerian civil war in the 1990s. The frame can also be challenged from outside, particularly if the movement’s major opponent, the state, has created its own hegemonic framing ideology. Thus the Moroccan monarchy’s claim to be a caliphate and thus to dominate the domestic Islamic agenda challenges the discourse of groups such as ‘Adl wa’l-Ihsan and the PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Développement – Hizb al-‘Adala wa’l-Tanmiyya) (Joffé 2006). Such challenges can produce one or a combination of three outcomes, one organizational and the other two essentially ideological in nature; transformation into a social network, ideological and organizational exclusiveness, or transnational ideological adherence, whether symbolic or operational. Networks share many of the characteristics of social movements but are more purposive, in that they have specific agendas and restricted memberships. As Sageman (2004: 158) suggests: ‘social networks are complex communicative networks that create shared worlds of meanings and feelings, which in turn shape identity, perceptions and preferences’. They are structured as nodes and hubs linked by ties, in which nodes consist of individuals or cliques5 and hubs form key control nodes with the ties providing the interconnectedness generated by shared beliefs and common goals. As such they can cut across bounded groups and social categories within wider social movements as both gesellschaft and gemeinschaft, enjoying both shared values and structures.


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Ironically enough, membership of such networks is not apparently dependent on prior acceptance of a frame of contention. Sageman (2004: 69–95) rejects recruitment explanations based solely on common social backgrounds, shared psychopathologies and specific circumstances, arguing instead that recruitment is part of a process, not a specific decision. He points to analyses developed by Lofland and Stark with respect to the Moonies, by Della Porta for the Brigada Rossa in Italy, and by Saad Eddin Ibrahim for the violent Islamist movements in Egypt, to show that recruits are often alienated individuals and have prior affective links with their recruiters (Sageman 2004: 127–34). He concludes that the main driver is the peer pressure generated within cliques, alongside ideological frames of contention which may or may not be present (Sageman 2004: 152–3). Such networks tend not to be hierarchical, for then action by the state can easily decapitate them and destroy their intercommunication facilities. Instead they are decentralized, maintaining organizational coherence through the dense interconnectivity of their nodes and hubs so that, even if hubs are destroyed, alternative routes exist to restore communication and operational effectiveness.6 They also tend to depend on their ability to embed within the surrounding social environment, either through their relationship to a wider social movement or because of their links to the wider society. Indeed, loss of such embeddedness would imply vulnerability to hostile external action unless the network is sufficiently large for it to consider itself to be a virtual community in its own right; an ‘imagined community’7 based on a shared sectarian ideology (Sageman 2004: 149). This is, after all, how a social movement views itself and it also seems to be the case in the transnational networks and the associated transnational social movements8 that have emerged in recent years. The importance of this is that such virtual communities acting as networks also develop ideological frames that are not easily bounded by attitudes in the wider social movement or environment, as effective embedding would require. They can thus become exclusive in terms of organization, membership and frame – they develop anti-system collective frames, as Hafez (2004: 41) suggests, which are innately hostile to the existing political order which they seek to replace. His primary concern, however, has been to explain the extraordinary brutality that characterized dissident networks – he regards them as social movements – during the Algerian civil war in the 1990s. Towards the end of the decade a series of spectacular massacres of civilians took place which was conventionally blamed on these groups. There have since been well-authenticated claims of direct and indirect security force involvement in the massacres, as part of a counter-insurgency

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strategy and for other, more disreputable reasons. Whether or not this is true, it is the case that dissident social networks have engaged in targeted violence against civilians. This is a feature that needs to be taken into account in any discussion of dissident networks in North Africa, for similar exclusivist violence has also occurred in Morocco and has even been threatened in Tunisia. For Hafez (2004: 38–44), the violence was a consequence of a political process of radicalization as the result of the confluence of three separate conditions. These are: the brutality of state repression; the reactive construction of an exclusive dissident organization; and the consequent promotion of an anti-system collective frame9 to justify violence against state repression. Such a frame, by rejecting reform of the state as impossible because the political system itself was corrupt, seeks to justify its overthrow instead. The exclusive organizational structure, designed to counter the threat from the state and to exclude defectors, also creates ‘spirals of encapsulation’ (Della Porta 1995: 12) in which insurgents are isolated from the wider society and lose touch with the political reality of that environment. It also rejects other dissident organizations as potential threats and insists on ideological discipline and commitment, seeing resistance as a justification in itself for violence designed to eliminate its opponents and ideological alternatives (Jabri 1996: 7). Even neutrality becomes opposition (Crenshaw 1995: 447, 483–4) so that the population itself becomes a legitimate target for indiscriminate violence on the grounds that neutrality implies a return to jahiliyya10 and therefore ‘unbelief’ (kufar) and thus apostasy, for which the legal penalty, according to sharía-based religious law, is death.

ISLAMIC ACTIVISM IN NORTH AFRICA There is little doubt that Islamic social movements have had a long history in North Africa and have had considerable political implications there, some of which predate the colonial period. Some of them became the bedrock of resistance to colonialism and their legacies have lingered on to inform contemporary social movements and networks. Before 2001, their most direct effects were felt within primary resistance movements.11 The term ‘primary resistance’ is used here to describe resistance to the imposition of colonial rule. Secondary resistance is the indigenous manipulation of colonial institutions, including through violence, to achieve independence. Typical examples of such movements have been the Sanusiyya resistance to the advance of French and Italian colonialism at the turn of


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the twentieth century, the Darqawa-inspired resistance of the Emir Abdulkader to the French occupation of Algeria in the mid-nineteenth century, or the Salafi-dominated rejection of Spanish colonialism by the Rif tribes in the Rif War in the 1920s. Although such movements were relatively highly organized for warfare, they were also structured and supported by a wider audience through an ideological frame in which politicized Islamic doctrine dynamized the military struggle. To that extent, they were also genuine social movements (Berque 1967: 75–87) Once colonialism had been imposed – in 1830 in Algeria, 1888 in Tunisia, 1911 in Libya and 1912 in Morocco – secondary resistance movements began to emerge. They tend to date from the period of the First World War and, on occasion, co-existed with primary resistance movements as the process of imposing colonial rule, whether by France, Spain or Italy, tended to be protracted. They were modelled on the Young Ottoman movement and were inspired by the principles of Salafism (Abun-Nasr 1982: 325–86). As such, they initially sought to engage with the colonial experience, seeking to synthesize from Islamic precept political systems which were consonant with European paradigms of political order. They also sought, by doing this, to persuade colonial administrations to extend political rights to indigenous North African populations and, as those demands were increasingly ignored, to organize the struggle for independence (Berque 1967: 216–17). Although such movements were elitist, often requiring a familiarity with colonial language and culture amongst activists, their political objectives guaranteed them a much wider purchase (Gordon 1962: 34–46).

VIOLENCE IN ALGERIA Violence became a formal and fully integrated component of the Algerian political vocabulary with the outbreak of the Algerian war for independence in 1954.12 Furthermore, an explicit link between violence and Islam develops out of the conflict since the vehicle for that war, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), laid claim to Islam as one of its legitimating principles. Islam, after all, was key to the Algerian society the FLN wished to revive in its construction of an independent Algerian polity. The FLN’s struggle, however, was not merely with France; it was also with all competing groups that had sought to create an independent Algerian polity, whether through violence or negotiation. And in this struggle for political hegemony within the war, the FLN’s partially Islamic discourse was a powerful element in its own legitimization and in its ultimate success (Horne 1977: 404–8).

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Both issues emerge clearly in the ‘proclamation’ issued by the FLN on 31 October 1954 which defines as its objective the ‘restoration’ of the sovereign, democratic and social Algerian state within the framework of Islamic principles. It goes on to promise that the national and revolutionary movement would be cleansed politically by the ‘annihilation’ of all traces of corruption and reformism. This would enable the concentration of the energies of the Algerian people on the task of liquidating the colonial system (Harbi 1981: 101–3). This left a double legacy for the independent state. On the one hand, the FLN itself would always be vulnerable to the criticism that it had instrumentalized an Islamic discourse to justify its violence but had failed to reify the discourse afterwards in its structuring of the state. On the other hand, even if its competitors might have been crushed through violence, competing discourses, whether nationalist or Islamic, had not been eliminated, leaving the FLN vulnerable to ideological challenge as well. And the challenges soon emerged, not least because the FLN’s hegemonic position after the war ended was immediately and successfully challenged by Ahmed Ben Bella’s coup in July 1962, carried out with army backing. He himself was to be overthrown two years later by the very army commander on whom he had depended to come to power – Houari Boumediènne – but the damage had been done. The FLN had already been subjugated to central authority, within a state whose legitimacy relied on armed force. As a result, the legitimacy the FLN had originally acquired through its endorsement of the innately Islamic nature of the revolutionary struggle had been dissipated. The Algerian state itself was revealed as an arbitrary construct, entirely dependent on the power of the army for survival and thus ultimately legitimized by violence, rather than by the FLN’s original objectives (Harbi 1981: 352–3). The initial challenges to it were nationalist and ideological (Horne 1977: 540–1). Hocine Ait Ahmed and Mohamed Boudiaf had, in 1963, rejected the assumptions of the Ben Bella regime that Algeria was an Arabic state, to the disadvantage of the Berber populations who had predominated in the war for independence. Colonel Tahar Zbiri, a former supporter of Messali Hadj, in 1967 rejected the authoritarianism innate in the Boumediènnist concept of what the Algerian state should become. Then, in 1980, two years after Houari Boumediènne’s premature death, the Berber Spring movement in Kabylia – essentially a nationalist and separatist movement – melded with demands for the political liberalization of the state. This antiphonal discourse between legitimacy and violence became institutionalized in the 1970s and, after President Boumediènne’s death, by the actions of his successor, Chadli Ben Djedid. The Ben Djedid regime mobilized Islamist sentiment within the universities against political


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liberals, and failed to realize that political Islam itself was also creating its own movement that would eventually contest the legitimacy of the regime. Thus it ignored the warnings implicit in the short-lived Bouyali movement which launched armed resistance in the Larbaa region between 1982 and 1987.13 It also played down the growth of an Islamist mass movement amongst the discontented and disenfranchised urban populations, based around a series of charismatic leaders linked to the al-Qiyam movement, the Association des Ulemas Algériens (AUA) and the Muslim Brotherhood.14 It was a movement that met all of the criteria discussed above to define a social movement based on Islamic activism. It was one, too, which was to morph into a political party that shared these characteristics and, as such, was bound to attract the violence of the army-backed state. The Civil War The result was that the regime was totally unprepared for the countrywide riots that erupted in October 1988, and for the sudden emergence of a sophisticated and complex Islamist mass movement in their immediate aftermath. The regime reacted by trying, initially, to co-opt the movement – soon to be transformed into a political party, the FIS – in the hope of preserving its hegemony of power. This it sought to do by playing the Islamists off against the other political groupings that had emerged, so that it remained as the sole political arbiter and thus hegemon. When that failed, the army moved in, cutting the democratic experiment short and marginalizing the Islamist movement’s main vehicle of expression, the FIS. The banning of the FIS and the suspension of the legislative elections at the start of 1992 was not only an example of the violent assertion of the state’s hegemony over the political process through military force, but it also recreated the binary nature of the struggle for independence. However, on this occasion, it was the Algerian army that symbolically occupied the position that had been the prerogative of French colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s, whilst the role of the FLN was taken over by a widespread and variegated Islamist resistance increasingly organized in autonomous networks. The sense of historical connection was quite explicit – after all, for Algerians, ‘Le FIS est le fils de l’FLN’. In other words the legitimacy conferred on the FLN by its espousal of Algeria’s Islamic values was now transferred to the FIS and, by extension, to all other movements linked to it. Of course, not all the clandestine dissident movements that now emerged were linked to it, although the military-backed regime asserted

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that they were as the civil war began in 1993. The civilian population soon faced a particular danger, not from the FIS or its successors, the Mouvement Islamique Armé (MIA) and the Armée Islamique du Salut (AIS) which sought to force the new regime to restore the electoral initiative disrupted by the coup, but from the Groupe Islamiques Armés (GIA). Both movements, however, insofar as they espoused violence, looked back to the earlier paradigm of the Bouyali movement in the 1980s, and thus ultimately to the war for independence as the legitimizing principle. Although Bouyali had been killed in 1987 and his followers were imprisoned, his reputation was to inspire those who, in 1992, believed that violence was the only way forward. Indeed, some of his lieutenants were to lead the new groups, particularly the GIA. The GIA itself was commanded by a series of leaders who became steadily more extreme in their views and policies and were progressively eliminated by the army. At the same time, however, suspicions steadily grew within the Islamist movements that the GIA itself had been profoundly infiltrated by the military security system, the Direction des Renseignements de Securité (DRS) – the ‘dark heart’ of the regime. Locating the outbreak of violence in time and place is difficult. Some authors point towards an incident in February 1992 when six policemen were killed in the casbah of Algiers; others argue that it was an incident in Guemmar when a border post station was attacked in November 1991, with a non-commissioned officer being killed and arms being stolen. Thirty persons were killed in a subsequent army operation to track down those responsible. Whatever the actual catalysing incident may have been, the first real sign of an organized and militant Islamist opposition was the spontaneous development of isolated armed cells throughout the country. The nucleus of the new movement appeared, however, in the Algiers region when Mansour Miliani, a former Bouyali activist, took over a group of Afghanistes15 in January 1992. They wished to eliminate the Algerian state which they considered tyrannical (taghrut) and arrogant (hughra). Miliani had originally been close to Ahmed Chebouti, another Bouyali activist who, like him, had been arrested when Bouyali was killed and who had also been released from prison by President Ben Djedid after the October 1988 riots. Ahmed Chebouti rejected the extremist vision of the Afghanistes, supporting the FIS objective of restoring the electoral process instead. He eventually became a founder member and leader of the MIA, which subsequently became the AIS. Although Miliani himself was arrested in July 1992, after a series of actions including an attack on the Amirauté in the heart of Algiers the previous February, the group survived because it linked up with a second group of activist youth who sympathized with its views and objectives. This group, created by Mohamed


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Allal, who was killed in September 1992, effectively took over the leadership of the combined group, now known as the Groupe Islamique Armé and led by Abdelhak Lyada who had been a member of Allal’s group. By this time, the breach with the MIA, led by Ahmed Chebouti, was complete, after the failure of an attempt at unifying the clandestine Islamist opposition in September 1992. Instead, the GIA group went its own way, rejecting any suggestion of fusion with the MIA except on its own terms. The MIA, however, continued to broaden its contacts and, in March 1993, it formed links with other independent organizations, including Said Mekhloufi’s Mouvement pour un Etat Islamique (MEI). The GIA itself continued a violent ant-FIS and MIA campaign and began a series of high-profile attacks, coupled with threats against the security services, government servants, school teachers, Francophone intellectuals and foreigners. In 1993 it publicly warned these groups that they were at risk and began a campaign of violence against them. Abdelhak Lyada was arrested in July 1993 in Morocco, where he had fled to avoid detection and arrest, and extradited back to Algeria. He was followed as leader of the GIA, after a confused power-struggle, by Djaafar al-Afghani and, in February 1994, by Cherif Gousmi. Despite the rapid turnover in its leadership, the group continued to be characterized by the violence and high-profile nature of its attacks. This attracted much support, particularly from the autonomous urban-based groups that began to emerge, linked to the trabando networks, the informal but state-tolerated smuggling networks that had soaked up much of the unemployment in the past and which had become profoundly criminalized. Its hostility towards the FIS constantly increased, with strident attacks on FIS and MIA leaders and threats against them. By May 1994, the GIA was at the height of its power and attracted support from yet other autonomous groups and from the more activist FIS members who sought more effective ways of confronting the regime. This brought under its wing the MEI, the FIDA (Front Islamique du Djihad Armé) and former FIS leaders such as Mohamed Said and Abderrazak Rejam. The former FIS leaders joined the GIA primarily because they were concerned that the armed resistance, now dominated by the GIA, would lose sight of what they considered its real objectives – to force the government to reinstate the electoral process – and they hoped to be able to moderate its increasingly radical and intransigent leadership, a view not shared by many other prominent FIS members or by the MIA. The MIA, in response to this development, reformed itself under Mansour Mezrag into the AIS, recognizing the GIA, now the Groupes Islamiques Armés, as its major threat. However, with the death of Cherif Gousmi in September 1994, the

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new-found unity fell apart as a result of the growing extremism of the GIA itself. The movement became even more intolerant of dissent and increasingly targeted the FIS itself, claiming responsibility for the murder of Abdelbaki Sahraoui, a highly respected founder-member of the FIS, in Paris. Between September 1995 and November 1995, the new head of the GIA, Djamal Zitouni, eliminated putative rivals, including most of the FIS leaders around Mohammed Said and Abderrazak Rejam, who had rallied to him in order to try to moderate the GIA’s behaviour. By now, there were intense suspicions that the GIA was heavily infiltrated by the DRS and that most of its high-profile operations were directed by the regime to discredit the Islamist movement overall. Indeed, in recent years there have been several accounts from participants in the regime’s antiterrorist operations suggesting that the GIA had been ‘turned’ and was effectively now a counterterrorist operation, integrated into the military strategy of the regime.16 The Aftermath The result was that many of the groups that had allied themselves with the GIA in 1994 now broke away in disgust at its internecine violence and the increasing extremism of its rhetoric and actions. The breakaway groups, many of whom sought links with the AIS instead, included the MEI, the Mouvement Islamique pour la Dawa et le Djihad (MIDD), under Mustapha Kertali, and the Ligue Islamique pour la Dawa et le Djihad (LIDD), under Ali Benhejar. The latter two groups were made up from individuals who had split off from the GIA in disgust, and emerged some time later – the MIDD in July 1996 and the LIDD in February 1997. Both groups joined the AIS, and when in October 1997 the AIS declared a unilateral ceasefire with the army, they followed suit and took advantage of the civil concord law in January 2000 to end the armed struggle against the regime. Zitouni himself was killed in July 1996 – either by GIA dissidents or by the DRS and was succeeded by Antar Zouabri until he was killed in early February 2002. His replacement was Rachid Okapi, known as ‘Abu Tourab’, and his decease, apparently at the hands of his colleagues in late 2004, spelled a virtual end to the activities of the GIA. Under Zouabri, the extremism and violence of the GIA had become completely indiscriminate, leading to the horrific massacres of 1997 and 1998 – although, once again, great care must be exercised over these incidents as it is quite clear that the greatest beneficiary from them was the Algerian state. The situation was further complicated by the fact that many other groups, ranging from maverick Patriote militias settling old scores or seeking personal benefit, to simple criminal gangs – also claimed adherence


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to the GIA and justified themselves by appeal to an Islamist rhetoric to legitimize their purely criminal activities. There have even been suggestions that the worst of the massacres, such as that in Bentalha (Yous 2000), were motivated by a desire by figures within the regime to clear land, in order to force up its price as land cleared for construction. Other autonomous groups actively followed the agenda of the GIA although they had no direct linkage with its command structure, even if they coordinated their activities and communicated with it. This was particularly prevalent in the suburbs and urban peripheries of major cities where civil security has always been weak and where a significant proportion of the population was unemployed or in the informal economy (Martinez 2000: 119–46). Indeed, these informal economic networks have subsequently formed the basis for support networks for terrorist groups, providing material support and information, and for actual networks in urban areas which both carry out terrorist actions in urban areas and control local populations through violence and fear (Joffé 2002: 44). In fact, the GIA’s extremism was intolerable even inside a violent Islamist context, and the final breakaway from the group led by Hassan Hattab in December 1997 underlined this, for the new group, as its name makes clear – the Groupe Islamiste de Predication et du Combat (GSPC) – was certainly Islamist in inspiration yet rejected the GIA’s doctrinal justifications, targeting instead only the security forces and the Algerian state, not the civilian population. The GSPC has continued to resist all the attempts of the Algerian security forces to crush it and, up to 2006, maintained its campaign against the security forces and the Algerian state. In September 2006, it declared a rhetorical allegiance to the al-Qaeda movement in Afghanistan, rebranding itself as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). At the same time, it modified its tactics towards more spectacular actions against the Algerian state that did threaten civilians as well, but the underlying motivation has not changed. It introduced suicide bombing into Algeria, attacking government and international offices in the capital, Algiers, and even attempting to kill the President. Apart from limited activities in the Sahara Desert that spilled over into Mauritania, the majority of its actions, however, have been confined to its home region of Kabiliya. This account demonstrates that Hafez’s argument – that the extreme violence in Algeria can be explained by the construction of anti-system collective ideological frames that are exclusivist and thus out of touch with reality – is certainly consistent with the facts, at least as far as the GIA is concerned. It may also be the case that the GSPC is undergoing a similar metamorphosis as it tries to claim transnational linkages. Yet, in both cases, there seem to have been many other factors at work which

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have influenced both behaviour and ideological preconceptions. Not least amongst these have been the revolutionary tradition in Algeria, the parallel informal tradition of violence as a path to power and wealth, and the intermeshing of crime and political violence. Indeed, the record also shows that this is hardly sufficient to explain the complexity and the variegated nature of the extremist movements there. Some of these movements were not exclusivist, constructing frames that, instead, engaged the state; and others, such as the AIS, reflected the failure of the Algerian revolution itself in its own terms, rather than its simple rejection in extremist Islamist terms. Yet others were straightforward criminal networks taking advantage of political Islam to dignify their objectives, whether unresolved feuds dating back to the war for independence or simple criminality; or had become weapons of the state itself. Indeed, the most exclusivist of all these movements, the GIA, appears to have become the most prominent victim of manipulation by the state. This leaves the question of how these organizations can be best described in organizational terms. There is little doubt that the FIS had many of the characteristics of a social movement, even though it was formulated as a political party. The informal groups that turned to violence – whether to coerce the state or to challenge it – pose greater problems, not least because some of them adopted agendas that were irrational and exclusivist, in addition to their quite extreme violence. In many respects, they seem to have been far closer to networks in that they were often small or otherwise networks of networks consisting of hubs and nodes tied together by shared ideologies. Hierarchical organization within these networks was minimal but intercommunication between them was generally high, although that did not necessarily imply interaction. Thus, although the GIA divided Algeria into operational zones – a pattern that recalled the organization of domestic resistance during the Algerian war for independence – the zones operated autonomously, as did the various groups within them. Indeed, on the rare occasions when the groups did try to coordinate their activities – as occurred in Wilaya de Ain Defla in 1994 – the security forces caused heavy losses of personnel. The GSPC seems to have replicated this loosely coordinated structure of autonomous networks sharing a common ideology and strategy. The question then is to what extent these structures have been replicated elsewhere in North Africa.

VIOLENCE IN MOROCCO Morocco was unusual amongst Middle Eastern and North African states in that its political institutions emerged relatively unscathed from the


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colonial era. Although the monarchy had been subordinated to French control as part of the Protectorate system created there in 1912, the first French Resident-General, Marshall Hubert Lyautey, demonstrated great respect for the country’s indigenous political institutions and thus ensured their formal preservation until independence in 1956. As important was the fact that the Moroccan sultanate – now a monarchy – astutely realized that its interests lay with Istiqlal, the nationalist movement and now a leading political party, after it was created in 1944. As a result, the monarchy emerged from the colonial period as the hegemon over the Moroccan political scene and, given its tradition as a caliphate, as the dominant legitimate force within the religious sphere as well. One of the consequences of this has been the marginalization of Islamic activists simply because of the prestige of the monarchy for the majority of Moroccans, given its religious status. This was also the case during the reign of King Hassan II, despite the authoritarian nature of his rule. It also meant that Islamic activism tended to be confined either to quiescent, moderately political and often traditional approaches, or to take a radical position, strongly opposed to the monarchy. The monarchy, in turn, responded to such movements either by taking action against them or by co-option. On occasion both techniques have been used. Three basic tendencies have underlain the Islamist experience in Morocco. One of the oldest, localized around Tangier and led until his death in 1989 by Shaikh al-Zamzami, but with a branch in Casablanca now under his son, is essentially non-political but emphasizes social observance and strict adherence to the Sunna – the practices of the Prophet Muhammad. It has often been inaccurately described as Wahhabi, much to the irritation of its adherents. It is now of minor importance, appealing to the traditional merchant class, but could link into the transnational movements, as occurred with the neo-Salafi movements in Saudi Arabia in the wake of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Another, under Shaikh Abdesslam Yacine, now known as ‘Adl wa’lIhsan, derives from Salafist traditions – the Islamic revival movement of the late nineteenth century – and reflects a Moroccan tradition going back to Sidi Muhammad al-Jaf‘ar al-Kattani who opposed Sultan Mawlay Abdelhafidh at the start of the twentieth century, as well as the more internationalist practices of the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the movement has a relatively marginal position, it has considerable moral stature, largely because of its founder’s confrontation with King Hassan II whom he criticized in an open letter entitled ‘al-Islam aw’t-Tufan: risala maftuha ila malik al-Maghrib’ (Islam or the volcano: an open letter to the Moroccan King) in 1974. The third tendency is thoroughly modernist and highly politicized, being

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originally targeted specifically against the monarchy. It has also been the most marginalized but has also been in part co-opted by the monarchy, and this component now forms Morocco’s dominant formal Islamic party, the Parti de Justice et du Développement (PJD – Hizb al-‘Adala wa’l-Tanmiyya). Its current ideology reflects a moderate, non-violent and pluralist position and it has a significant presence in Morocco’s lower parliamentary house, the House of Representatives. Its original radical position has been taken up now by transnationalist radical Islamist groups operating in Morocco and in Europe, but linked to Morocco and deriving mainly from the Salafi jihadi tradition of the mujahidin in Afghanistan. The Evolution of Islamism in Morocco The origins of this extremist tradition lie in the radicalization of Abdalkarim Muti‘, a former schools inspector who had been a socialist militant but who converted to Islamic activism after a pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1960s and had then created a radical Islamist movement, al-Shabiba alIslamiyya (Islamic Youth) which by the early 1970s had attracted a significant following amongst high school students and in the universities. The movement challenged the hegemony of the left in the educational sector, and clashes between the two escalated. At the same time, the movement set up a military wing under Abdelaziz Nouamani, the Harakat al-Mujahidin al-Maghribia. In December 1975, a senior member of L’Union Socialiste Des Forces Populaire (USFP) ‘Umar Benjelloun, was assassinated and the Shabiba al-Islamiyya was blamed for the event – although the movement claimed that it had been framed by the government which had actually been responsible (Pennell 2000: 353). Within three days Abdalkarim Muti‘ had fled Morocco, and he has never returned. He eventually went to Saudi Arabia, where he was alleged to have been involved in the Grand Mosque attack in 1979, although the fact that he was apparently still there in 2000 suggests that this was not the case. Soon afterwards, the Shabiba al-Islamiyya began to fragment under the twin pressures of government repression – in 1984 71 members of the movement were tried, receiving sentences ranging from four years to death – and an attempt by Abdalkarim Muti‘ to control the group’s activities in the most minute detail. By the 1980s, a series of groups had emerged, seeking formal recognition and abandoning their radical past – this was perpetuated only amongst an exile group in Belgium that has since disappeared. A branch of it has re-emerged as a largely criminal conspiracy with links to the global Salafi jihadi movement based in Afghanistan, under Mohamed Belliraj, who was arrested in Morocco in mid-2008 and accused of planning an armed coup against the monarchy.


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Another branch, Islah wa Tawhid (Charity and Unity) under Abdalilah Benkiran, actively sought formal recognition as a political party in the late 1980s or early 1990s and began to develop links with the Casablanca branch of the al-Zamzami movement. In the mid-1990s – by which time he was suspected by the rest of the Islamist movement in Morocco of having become a pensioner of the Palace – Mr Benkiran and his supporters were co-opted by the Mouvement Démocratique Populaire Constitutionnel (MDPC), a recognized political party created by Dr Abdalkarim Khatib, a former member of the independence movement who created the party in 1967 and pledged its allegiance to the Royal Palace in 1972. Dr Khatib has been a close associate of the monarchy, despite his constant involvement on the fringes of the Islamist movements ever since independence in 1956. The new movement contested parliamentary elections in 1997 and again – after changing its name to the PJD – in 2002 and 2007. Mr Benkirane is now head of the PJD – an indication of the rewards that co-option can bring. The movement itself, however, despite its electoral disappointments – it failed to achieve a dominant position amongst the opposition in 2007 – has committed itself to democratic pluralism under the monarchy. The other branch of the Islamic activist movement in Morocco has been ‘Adl wa’l-Ihsan. Its founder, Abdesslam Yacine, was educated at the traditional al-Yussufiyya university in Marrakesh and then became a teacher of Arabic before becoming a schools inspector in 1956 at independence. In 1965 he had a spiritual crisis and then joined a Sufi order, the Butshishiyya, which he left in 1971 because he considered its members decadent. He became politicized in the 1970s when he read works by Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sayyid Qutb, its most prominent theoretician who was executed by the Nassirist regime in 1966. In 1974, inspired by their critiques of contemporary Islamic society, he wrote his famous open letter to King Hassan. Not surprisingly, he was detained and spent three-and-a-half years in a psychiatric hospital. He began to build up a following amongst students and the local bourgeoisie after he was released in 1979. He was subsequently confined to house arrest in Salé and spent two years in prison in 1985–87 after he had attempted to publish a newspaper which was banned. He was only released from house arrest towards the end of the 1990s, after a campaign for his release by his daughter Nadia, who has now become the major voice of his movement (Pennell 2000: 352–4). His ideas followed closely those of the Muslim Brotherhood, aiming for the peaceful Islamization of society as a preparatory stage to the construction of an Islamic polity, although the movement, unlike the Muslim

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Brotherhood, has never criticized the Sufi movement of which its founder had once been a part. Given the prevalence of Sufi orders in Morocco, this may have been a tactical adjustment. Initially, at least, the movement eschewed the democratic option, although this has now changed and it accepts concepts of a pluralist political society. The movement itself has always been denied registration as a formal political party and now refuses to make the ideological adjustments that would make this possible, so its real strength is difficult to judge. It has, however, adopted an increasingly political, as opposed to an Islamic, agenda, calling for the democratization of the monarchy as an institution as part of the democratization of Morocco overall (Spiegel 2009). The Extremist Islamist Fringe The crushing of the Shabibiyya al-Islamiyya in the 1970s and its subsequent fragmentation meant that such extreme groups virtually disappeared from the Moroccan scene for 20 years or more. Fragmented extremist groups appeared amongst Moroccan migrants in Europe in the 1980s and Moroccans became radicalized by both the Iranian revolutions and the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. However, the reintroduction of radical political Islam into Morocco emerged only in the wake of the decision by the King in the 1980s and 1990s to counter the growing moderate Islamist movement by encouraging Saudi-influenced religious scholars and preachers into Morocco, along with funds from Saudi Arabia to build up religious institutions. In the wake of the Gulf War in 1991, this new wave of radicalized youth began to imitate their mentors in Saudi Arabia, rejecting both the American presence in Saudi Arabia and, thereby, the Saudi regime which had admitted them; and by extension, the monarchy in Morocco. Although they suffered arrest and were prevented from using official mosques, they set up unofficial mosques in the poor quarters of major towns. They soon began to attract significant followings amongst the very poor, advocating jihad in Afghanistan and elsewhere and adopting an ideology akin to that of al-Qaeda and Salafi jihadism within Morocco. In parallel, a new element was introduced into the extremist movements, as Moroccans who had fought in Afghanistan, some of whom had been trained in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group camp there, began to return. Eventually, in the mid-1990s, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (Jama‘at al-Mujahidin al-Islamiyya li’l-Maghrib) established its own camp in Afghanistan. It, however, remained outside Morocco, its activists mainly moving into the migrant communities in Europe where its militants re-emerged in Spain and Saudi Arabia, being held responsible


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for the Madrid train bombings in March 2004; whilst its leader, Abdelkrim Mejatti, was killed in Saudi Arabia in 2005. The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, in short, was always too weak to establish itself in Morocco and has since effectively disappeared. In fact, there is a significant indigenous Moroccan aspect to the Madrid bombings, for the group involved was dominated by long-time Moroccan residents in Spain from Tetouan in Morocco, who had been involved in drug smuggling from Morocco into Europe. Many of those later accused of involvement in the bombings came from an austere Islamist district in Tetouan, located alongside the illegal drugs trade. The extremists from this district had created an exclusivist vision that condemned all other currents in political Islam in Morocco, and many of them were to die by their own hands in an explosion at Leganès in Madrid after they had been cornered by the Spanish police. In addition, radical groups led by personalities such as Zakaria Miloudi and Youssef Fikri, inspired by radical shaikhs such as Omar al-Haddouci, Hassan Kettani, Ahmed ar-Raffiki, Abdelkrim Chadli and Mohamed Fizazi, also emerged in Tangier, Fez and, particularly, Casablanca. These groups imposed a strict discipline on the populations of the impoverished districts in which they operated and created cult followings.17 Thus, in Sidi Moumen in Casablanca, Zakaria Miloudi created the Assirat al-Mustakim (Straight Path) which segregated itself from the local population but also imposed an intense repression upon it. One branch, under Youssef Fikri, actually executed those who disagreed with it. It was from this background that those responsible for the Casablanca bombings of late May 2003 and subsequent incidents in 2007 emerged. In the wake of the 2003 bombings, these radicals and the imams who had inspired them were arrested and are now in prison (Pargeter 2005). The Moroccan authorities have alleged that they were all part of a Salafi jihadi movement or of Takfir wa Hijra, thus implying that they were part of a trans-national terrorist movement. This seems highly unlikely as, although they were inspired by Salafi jihadism, there has been no real evidence of instrumental transnational links, in either the Casablanca or Spanish events. Furthermore, Moroccans in general have had the frightening example of what happened in Algeria to warn them of these dangers, so that such extremism has only been of marginal importance. Nevertheless, in the wake of the Casablanca incident, the Moroccan authorities did arrest 2000 people and introduce a ferocious anti-terrorism law in 2003 which is still in force. This has not however ended the violence, particularly in Casablanca, and there were further incidents in 2007, indicating that informal networks were still active, particularly in the city’s shanty-towns.

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VIOLENCE IN LIBYA Informal violent networks in Libya have resulted from the inability of the Qadhafi regime to tolerate any competitors, putative or real. This applies equally in the religious and political fields, although the regime does not distinguish between them. Its antagonism towards organized religion goes back to the period after the 1973 cultural revolution when Colonel Qadhafi subjugated the religious elite, depriving it of its assets and its political autonomy (Joffé 1995) after its leading members had criticized him. The regimes’ next target was, inevitably, moderate political Islam, a minority social movement but outside the control of the regime, until the early 1990s when more extreme forms of Islamist protest emerged. Most of those concerned with moderate political Islam were usually linked to the Ikhwan Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood), known in Libya as the Jama‘a al-Islamiyya al-Libiya (the Libyan Islamic Group) or, more simply, as Hizb Islami (the Islamic Party). It sought to use peaceful objectives and methods to effect first social, then political change. It had a natural constituency in Libya, for despite the revolutionary experiences since the 1960s which have profoundly fragmented Libyan society, Libyans in general remain pious, devout and committed quietist Malikite Muslims (Obeidi 2001: 99–103). For many of them the current regime – even if they dare not engage in open opposition – is profoundly sacrilegious. They therefore turn to Islamic and Islamist paradigms for alternatives in their personal lives and as a guide to righteous collective life. In this respect, the values of the Ikhwan Muslimin form a natural counterpart to the religious assumptions of Libyan culture. Its members, however, have constantly faced official repression, even as the population itself has become more Islamized as a reaction to its alienation from the Qadhafi regime. Islamists receive such severe treatment from Libya’s stateless state18 because they are perceived by the Qadhafi regime to be members of political parties, and divisive within a state system in which political divisiveness and disagreement is excluded by the very definition of the political process itself. More importantly, they represent an attack on the legitimacy of the Third Universal Theory, the defining ideology of the Libyan stateless state (Vandewalle 1998: 82–141), which is also implicitly based entirely on Islam. They thus sap at the very legitimacy of the regime and, for that reason alone, are condemned and repressed with particular fervour.19 Yet, since the Libyan political system does not permit such dissidence and legitimizes itself through Islam, the only possible vehicle through which dissent can now be effectively expressed must be Islamic in nature. This is the only mode of ideological expression that exists in Libya and


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that also forms part of the political and demotic culture of the country. Inevitably, therefore, when young Libyans disagree with the system, they often do so in Islamic terms, even though the regime argues that it itself is the expression – and the only permissible expression – of Islam in the Libyan political, social and cultural context. Incidentally, it should be borne in mind that Islam as practised in Libya officially, is considered to be heterodox in the rest of the Muslim world (Joffé 1988: 38–52). Thus its Islamic opponents are seen as legitimized outside Libya by the very fact of their opposition. Equally, they are condemned inside Libya by the authorities because they reject the heterodoxy of the official Libyan variant of Islam, hence their description by the regime as ‘heretics’ (zandaqa). Many were imprisoned under the 1994 Purge Law which was designed to fight financial corruption, drug trafficking and ‘atheism’ and enforced by the notorious Purge, Purification and Volcano Committees. The situation of home-grown Islamist opposition to the Qadhafi regime has begun to change in recent years. In fact, there always were links between Libyan Islamist opponents and Islamists abroad, particularly in Egypt. This meant that the growth of Islamist resistance to the Egyptian government in the 1970s and 1980s excited a tenuous response in Libya. The regime has thus assumed that its Islamist opponents are linked to the Egyptian Ikhwan Muslimin. In fact, although such links do persist, particularly for the older generation – many of whom were, after all, educated in the al-Azhar mosque-university in Cairo or by Egyptians brought into Libya as teachers – the links, particularly for young people in the 1980s, were primarily with the Brotherhood’s violent successors – the Jama’at Islamiyya20 and the autonomous student Islamist groups associated with it. It was certainly the case that the Egyptian groups had used the desert along the Libyan border as a rear staging area as repression in Egypt increased in the 1990s. Violent Islamic Opposition21 Since 1990, however, a much more active and violent Islamist resistance to the Qadhafi regime became evident, particularly in Cyrenaica. This first emerged in June 1995 and has resurfaced periodically since, mainly in the major towns of the Jabal al-Akhdar region – Benghazi and Derna in particular. It has been subject to repeated military repression, involving sweeps through the Jabal al-Akhdar and reprisals in towns. Although originally it was not fully clear whether it was a genuine Islamist opposition to the Qadhafi regime or simply a tribal opposition to the regime using an Islamist rhetoric – Cyrenaica, after all, had been the heartland of

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the monarchy in Libya and of the Sanusi Order from which it had emerged in 1951, which the 1969 coup that eventually brought Colonel Qadhafi to power had specifically targeted – it is now clear that Islamic radicalism had appeared on the Libyan scene and that it had links, if only ideological in nature, with the wider Islamic resistance movements in the Middle East. Most of the six dissident Islamist movements abroad claiming to control events inside Libya probably have fewer links with incidents there than they claim, but their role in resistance to the regime grew up to 1999. Thereafter, however, the response by the security forces was increasingly effective and rigid security arrangements imposed in the Derna and Benghazi regions were kept in place until the end of that year, when the threat was deemed to have receded. Indeed, despite the regime’s official hard-line policy towards its Islamist opponents, there have been rumours that the regime told the groups abroad in 2000 that their members would now be allowed to return, provided they made a public recantation – something which, even if they are marginalized, the groups in question could not accept. Some groups began, in response, a campaign of assassination of officials in Cyrenaica but this has now been curbed. Since 2007 there have been rumours that violent Islamists are active again in Eastern Libya but there is no independent confirmation of this.22 At the same time, these events have made the regime even more hostile to political Islam as an ideology that it sees as being in direct competition with its own political vision. It has openly declared that it faces an organized and globalized Islamist conspiracy, and has tightened repressive measures against persons suspected of such sympathies inside Libya itself. Since it considers Islamist movements a generic threat to its survival, it has associated itself with other regimes opposed to such movements in the Middle East, particularly with Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. It is, for instance, an enthusiastic supporter of the Arab League’s anti-terrorist convention, signed in Tunis in 1998, which is primarily but not exclusively directed against political Islam, and of the 1997 Arab League extradition treaty, also signed in Tunis, which allows extradition without recourse to the courts. The authorities in Libya have always automatically assumed that the ‘Afghanists’ – Libyans who had served with the mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1980s – were hostile to the regime, and imprisoned them on return whenever it was possible. Those who escaped imprisonment, in consequence or by previous design, began to plot against the regime. One such person, Salah Fathi Ben Slimane, who returned to Libya via Algeria in 1993, was a founding member of the Libyan Jamaat Islamiyya, an offshoot from the much larger Egyptian group of the same name. Saleh Fathi Ben Slimane had originally been a student at al-Fateh University


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in Tripoli and was typical of the recruits now moving into active Islamist opposition to the Qadhafi regime. He was killed by Libyan security forces in December 1997 in the Derna area of Cyrenaica where he had been leading an autonomous resistance group, the Jama‘a Islamiyyah Muqatilah fi’l-Libiyya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – LIFG). He was succeeded in this position by Abdullah al-Sadiq. This movement had originally formed in Afghanistan as a national contingent within the mujahidin and had concentrated on repatriating the struggle to Libya after the mujahidin victory in 1992 (Ouannes 2001). When Pakistan began to force such groups out, the LIFG moved to Sudan from where, in 1996 it began activities in Libya itself, despite the fact that its founder Emir Awatha al-Zuwawa, its spiritual leader Abu Munder Sa’idi and its military commander Abdullah Sadiq were to be arrested and handed over to the Libyan authorities, the first in 1998 and the others in 2004. By 1998, the movement’s activists inside Libya had been eliminated (Abedin 2005). Indeed, 1997 seems to have been a watershed for the Islamist movement in Eastern Libya. The growing role of the Islamist opposition in Cyrenaica provoked an official response against the university system – seen as a potential recruiting ground – where ‘anti-heresy committees’ rooted out suspected militants. At the same time, a prolonged security operation in the Derna area was directed against both the remnants of the Jabha al-Watani li’l-iInqadh fi Libiyya (National Salvation Front for Libya – NSFL)23 and the new Islamist opposition which was suspected of exploiting old Sanusi linkages within the major tribes. In the middle of the year, the focus moved to Libya’s second-largest town, Benghazi, where there were nightly gun battles, largely – so it appeared – because of attacks on security force and police barracks designed to capture arms. This carried on until August 1998. There were also rumours that there had been considerable local Islamist penetration of the security forces themselves. At the same time, two assassination attempts were reported, in addition to 12 alleged attempts on the life of the Libyan leader in the previous year. One, against Colonel Qadhafi himself, was the result of an alleged slight to the wife of a member of his bodyguard, a Qadhadhfa called Abdesslam Khashaba. A rumoured attack in June 1996 by a certain Abu Abdullah Radwan, an Islamist sympathizer, in the Wadi Shati region was said by the Libyan authorities to have been an initiative by the LIFG, which, they alleged, had been instigated by Britain’s MI6, although this has been denied by the British government. In late November 1996, the same group organized another grenade attack on Colonel Qadhafi, carried out by Muhammad Abdullah Ghreaw in Brak, in the Wadi al-Shati.24 Another attempted assassination was

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directed against Musa Kusa, the former head of the Libyan People’s Bureau in London who had been expelled in 1980 because of his actions against dissidents in Britain. This unsuccessful attempt was claimed to have been carried out in Benghazi by the Harakat al-Shuhadi Libiyyi (the Libyan Martyrs’ Movement, another of the six Islamist movements then claiming to be active inside Libya). The Islamist opposition to the Qadhafi regime, in short, had escaped from its indigenous roots. It was linked to the much wider ‘Afghanist’ movement; it had contacts with the Egyptian clandestine opposition and was suspected of using the Libyan–Egyptian border area for training and regrouping; it had developed an active foreign network or networks which reached into Europe and it had access to the Arabic-language press there. It also had a growing network inside Libya itself up to the widespread and successful repression of the movement in 1997 and 1998. It was, however, still national in scope and ambition and, to that extent, differed from the wider transnational networks to which it was rhetorically linked, al-Qaeda. Shortly after the death of Salah Fathi Ben Slimane in December 1997, the Libyan security forces swept through the Tripoli university campus and arrested 41 persons. The arrests were apparently based on information obtained from suspected Libyan Islamists repatriated forcibly from Saudi Arabia as part of a new security cooperation treaty signed in February 1997. Some 25 other Libyans were repatriated from Syria and Saudi Arabia in mid-1998 under the terms of the new inter-Arab security agreement signed in Tunis in March 1998. They were all accused of being Islamist sympathizers and were imprisoned. Subsequent action in Eastern Libya, particularly in Beghazi and Derna, finally eradicated activist Islamic opposition, although it might re-emerge again at any time. There is now, therefore, no real threat to the regime, but there has been an increasing crescendo of Islamist opposition, both militant and passive, both domestic and external. Not surprisingly, the regime has become virulently hostile to political Islam in any form and punishes brutally those it suspects (Ulph 2005a). And, if Colonel Qadhafi had decided to ignore the danger, he was violently reminded of it at the start of June 1998 when a convoy in which he was travelling was attacked between Derna and Benghazi, on its way to al-Baydah. The attack, which killed four people, was claimed by the Harakat al-Shuhadi Libiyi which was alleged to have close links with the Jama’at Islamiyya in Egypt but was in reality an al-Muqatilah (LIFG) operation. The regime continues to hunt down any vestige of the movement it detects (Ulph 2005b) but there seems to be little activity, despite a claim by the Libyan leader’s son, Saif al-Islam, in mid-2008 of a suicide bomber in Derna. In fact the regime appears to be


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so confident of its success against indigenous extremist political Islam that it released 90 members of the LIFG from prison in July 2008 because they had recanted their former extremist positions.

THE TUNISIAN SITUATION The one state that is missing in this picture of a region now infested with informal and violent social networks is Tunisia. One important reason for this is that, rather like the situation in Morocco where the monarchy was the normative Islamic hegemon, the Tunisian Islamic activist scene was seized very early on by the Mouvement de la Tendence Islamique (MTI), or the Harakat al-Ittijah al-Islam. This was created in 1981 on the basis of a discussion group created ten years before at the Zitouna mosque in Tunis and sought a formal political role as a political party, the Hizb alNahda (the Renewal Party), after Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali came to power as president in 1987. This option was denied and, in a series of trials in 1991 and 1992, the government crushed the movement as a threat to its security, forcing its leading members abroad where they re-established themselves as a political movement-in-exile in Britain. There had, of course, been attempts to create extremist activist movements in Tunisia but they were always marginal to the dominant movement, al-Nahda, which doggedly espoused a pacific agenda despite official repression. Bombings in 1987 were carried out by an independent group called Islamic Jihad which was disclaimed by al-Nahda, although it was accused of responsibility for them. Later violent activities in the 1990s were attributed to another clandestine group, the Tala‘i al-Fida‘ (the Vanguard of the Sacrifice) which was also denounced by al-Nahda and whose members publicly asserted their total independence from the movement during the spate of trials in 1992. Apart from one incident in April 2002 when there was an attack on a synagogue in Djerba which killed 21 people, including 14 German and four French tourists,25 nothing further occurred until 2006 in terms of extremist activism. The 2002 attack was certainly carried out by a local extremist al-Qaeda sympathizer. There has been no evidence, however, that he was part of a wider network of extremist violence within the country or that he had had significant contacts outside the country. It was only at the end of 2006, that extremist Islamic activism re-emerged. On 6 December 2006, a group of 12 persons was intercepted close to Hammamet in a farmhouse and killed by the Tunisian security forces. The security forces claimed that the group was made up of Algerians, Tunisians and Mauritanians and had been trained in Algeria at the hands of the

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GSPC. Some weeks later, another group was intercepted by the security forces at Grombalia, south of the capital, Tunis. Twelve people were killed in the ensuing gunfight and 15 others were arrested. They had apparently intended to attack American consular facilities in Tunis. The group was said to have been linked to al-Qaeda and to the GSPC in Algeria which had trained it and infiltrated it into Tunisia. It consisted of Tunisians, Algerians, Mauritanians and Moroccans. Those arrested joined a further 340 persons in detention in Tunisia from all over the Maghreb who had been detained between October 2005 and December 2006. In other words, despite the surface calm, the Tunisian state is beginning to have to confront an external threat which is linked into the violence already endemic elsewhere in the region. The Tunisian government seems to be coming aware of the danger it faces for it now proposes a depoliticized Islamic alternative as an integral part of the social scene to attract popular support away from political Islamic radicalism, despite the evidence that such approaches do not work because they ignore the reality of political disaffection. Nor is the danger over yet. In late September 2007, 30 persons were charged with membership of a terrorist organization and were said to be planning a military coup in Tunisia. They were also alleged to have had clandestine military training in Tunisia and to have been linked to the group dismantled in December 2006 and in January 2007. The new group of arrestees faced trial at the end of 2008 and were said to have had details of foreign embassies which they intended to attack. The question arising from both these recent attempts is the degree to which such groups are national in terms of their origins, recruitment and objectives, rather than becoming part of a network committed to transnational violence.

CONCLUSION: THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION This is an important consideration for, since 2003, there has been an increasing acceptance within the international community that an alQaeda presence has developed in the Sahel and is linked into North Africa. It is a claim that has long been argued by North African states who insist that the domestic violence from which they have suffered is part of a transnational pattern involving networks stretching from Afghanistan into their domestic arenas. They have been very resentful of the fact that, until 2001, European states had not generally been prepared to take their claims seriously. This has now changed, although it is debatable that the new assumptions about transnational violence are any more accurate than were the original ones, certainly as far as North Africa is concerned (Joffé 2008: 147–71).


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It has long been recognized that the extremist networks in North Africa share a common exclusivist ideology that is related to Salafi jihadism (Wiktorowicz 2001). As such, there is always a tendency for such movements, which challenge both established government and the population for their failures to live up to the ideal Islamist paradigm, to see themselves as virtual communities (Hafez 2004), distanced from the societies within which they operate. However, they are also concerned with the ‘near enemy’ (Faraj 2000),26 a concern which should inhibit the development of such a virtual community because such networks continue to depend on popular support, as they seek to emulate ‘the fish in the sea’.27 Thus, organizationally, such networks which deal with the ‘near enemy’ cannot afford to create an exclusivist virtual community, a situation which is typified by the violent Libyan groups in the Jabal al-Akhdar and reflects the errors of the GIA in Algeria. In some cases, such as in Kabylia in Algeria, local networks extract tithes from local populations to ensure logistical support. Otherwise, the networks engaged in violence depend on subsidiary networks concealed in urban areas for such support, although in some cases they seek to dominate such networks as well, as has been the case in Casablanca, Tangier and Fes in Morocco, despite the danger this might do to their security by alienating the surrounding population. They may also engage with other non-Islamist, often criminal networks for both material and logistical support or create such networks themselves (Martinez 2000). Thus there has been a close linkage between the informal smuggling economy in Algeria and violent networks, in terms of both logistical links and rhetorical claim by such criminal networks themselves. This has proved to be the case in the north of the country and in the desert south, where such developments have had an acute diplomatic significance since 2003. In addition, the GSPC has come to dominate the ‘sand mafia’ in northern Algeria – the illegal mining of sand and gravel for the burgeoning private construction sector. It has also made explicit use of criminal activities, such as kidnapping and ransom, to ensure its financial base. The logistical base of such movements and networks, in short, does not allow them to achieve the isolation that exclusivist ideological frames suggest, at least as long as they retain a localized physical presence. This is much less the case for transnational networks, where the logistical support networks can be globalized as well, so that the Maoist principle does not apply. Thus al-Qaeda and its associated networks are far less troubled by such considerations. Nonetheless, such groups still rarely threaten their immediate demographic surroundings as they still rely on tacit acceptance as part of their basic security structure. There is a further reason, however, why an exclusivist ideological frame

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has its dangers for any network espousing it. This is that recruitment to such networks tends to be locally based, as security tends to depend on prior personal links between individual nodes and between nodes and hubs, largely for security reasons. Recruitment of this kind is hampered if ideological frames are too exclusivist. Ironically enough, this approach to security, quite apart from the decentralized nature of such networks, can also be their greatest weakness for it can render them to easy dismantlement once key individuals have been eliminated or if the network is infiltrated. Associated with this is the danger that such networks face as they grow and move towards the tipping-point of becoming social movements instead, where personalized links disappear. It has, nonetheless, been the case that claims have emerged in the past five years of the appearance of links between indigenous North African networks and the transnational structures of violence associated with alQaeda and associated groups. These, if true, would imply that there has also been an ideological shift from the ‘near enemy’ to the ‘far enemy’ as well. One aspect of this has been repeated claims in Europe of support networks providing logistical and financial support for extremist groups in North Africa. Globalized Jihad This was a pattern that was established during the Algerian war for independence when the FLN created elaborate networks amongst migrant workers in France and used them to raise financial support for the struggle in Algeria itself. It also occurred with the FIS when a network amongst migrants, called the Fédération des Algériens en France (FAF), was created in Europe in the 1990s and was openly sympathetic to the FIS until it was dismantled by the French authorities. The French authorities suspected it of being linked to GIA networks in France that were engaged in violence, although many of these were later shown to have been mobilized by the Algerian security services as a counterterrorist operation. Other such networks in France and elsewhere in Europe were essentially imitative of the violent struggle in Algeria but autonomous from it. This was the case with the Chasse-sur-Rhône group which was dismantled in 1995 after a series of bombings on the RER rapid-transit system in Paris. It was also true of the group which carried out a spree of bombings and bank robberies in Morocco in the previous year, culminating in the shooting of two Spanish tourists in a hotel in Marrakesh. Such groups were recruited from amongst the alienated youth of the second generation of North African migrants in Europe but were not directly linked to the groups inside North Africa itself.28 Similar patterns


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have been repeated in the first decade of the twenty-first century, only this time basing themselves on the example of al-Qaeda. They were often accused by European security authorities of actually being linked to the parent organization, although the links frequently seemed tenuous and were often only virtual in nature. One reason for such assumptions resided in the increasing homogenization of the ideological framing used to justify such actions. This, in turn, reflected an ever-increasing facility of access as Salafi jihadism exploited the Internet and satellite television, thus becoming instantly available to the new generation sensitized towards it, not only in Europe but also in North Africa. Its members were predisposed towards the explanations it offered for their own situations in Europe or North Africa, and for the crisis faced in the Middle Eastern region by the growing polarization of Muslim opinion in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by Western forces led by the United States. This has produced a series of reactions, ranging from spontaneous and organized recruitment to wage jihad in Iraq,29 to recruitment into activist national networks such as the GSPC in Algeria. The effectiveness of such recruitment networks is underlined by reports from security sources in Iraq over the make-up of the extremist groups there. Thus one estimate in 2005 (Cordesman and Obaid 2005) suggested that Algerians were the most numerous recruits to al-Qaeda in Iraq whilst another source, based on records of entries into Iraq via Syria between August 2006 and August 2007, seized by American forces in October 2007 in a raid at Sinjar, suggested that Libyans were the second most numerous contingent after Saudis, followed by Algerians and Moroccans (Felter and Fishman 2008: 6).30 Of course, these figures are only indicative but they do indicate the degree to which North African sentiment is aware of Salafi jihadi ideas and their implications in the wider Muslim world. Necessarily, such developments have an implication inside North Africa itself. It has been argued that the GSPC in Algeria had been undergoing an evolution in terms of its recruiting base in 2007, in that it has begun to seek adherents from a new youthful generation sensitized by the Internet. Thus, the bombings of the Prime Minister’s offices and the Ministry of the Interior in Algiers on 11 April 2007 were said to have been carried out by representatives of urban youth, as was a subsequent bombing of a police station. These attacks differed from their predecessors in that they involved suicide bombers and urban youth recruited from the petite bourgeoisie in Algiers. They did not involve representatives of the generation that was engaged in the struggle for independence, or that of the 1980s and 1990s when political Islam replaced Algerian nationalism as the predominate driver of violence directed against the state. As such, they represented a

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new, global threat to established government and indicated the way in which Algerian youth was being shaped by new forces of information and radicalization. An important factor in this development has been the rate at which Internet usage has grown in North Africa – at an average rate of 3.5 per cent per year, but at rates ten times as large in Algeria and Morocco, with the disproportionate degree of that growth taking place in urban areas.31 Whether or not this is a new trend is not fully clear, but it was also notable in Casablanca in Morocco in the violent incidents that occurred in early March 2007, compared with the modus operandi in 2003. However, subsequent incidents in both Morocco and Algeria did not seem to demonstrate that this trend is coming to dominate the security scene, despite claims by both insurgent groups and government that this was the case. It remains to be seen to what extent they are the forerunners of a new wave of jihadi protest predicated upon youth and the Internet as a new virtual community of violence. Similar uncertainty clouds the reality of alleged threats of transnational violence replacing the older patterns of national violence through the direct incorporation of activist networks in North Africa into the al-Qaeda fold. These claims go back to the start of 2001 and the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. Shortly after these events, the United States, with the encouragement of the Algerian government, began to investigate the potential of the Sahel and Saharan regions as possible al-Qaeda redoubts for the future. Such suspicions were given substance by the kidnappings of 33 European tourists in the Sahara in the first quarter of 2003. The tourists were eventually freed in mid-year, partly by military action and partly by negotiation and the payment of a ransom. The incident, however, gave substance to American suspicions of the growth of transnational terrorism, suspicions that were eagerly fanned by Algeria. It also fitted within the Pan-Sahel Initiative, an American programme of aid and support for counterterrorism activities in Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger that had started with $125 million over a five-year period. In fact, the distinction between such transnational violence and the activities of local smuggling networks in the Sahara was extremely difficult to make, as a subsequent kidnapping of two Austrian tourists in February 2008 and of a small group of tourists attending a Tuareg music festival in Mali in late 2008 were to make clear. This did not deter the planners, however, and a more sophisticated counterterrorism strategy emerged in the wake of a defence intelligence review in 2004. This was a new American military command for Africa, Africom, which was to handle a new strategy, the Trans-Saharan CounterTerrorism Initiative, funded at $500 million over six years and extended


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to include Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and Morocco within its purview as well. The target of these activities, however, seems as ill-defined as ever and, apart from a series of attacks in Mauritania that seem to be Islamist-inspired, there are growing suspicions that much of the alleged transnational violence in the region really reflects local government counter-insurgency initiatives designed to ensure continued American concerns (Keenan 2005: 619–47). Nevertheless, this growth in Western suspicion of transnational violence located within the Sahara and the Sahel has been partnered by a growth in transnational rhetoric within the dissident groups in North Africa itself, especially in Algeria. In 2003 and again in September 2006, the GSPC claimed it owed allegiance to al-Qaeda and, in 2006, renamed itself ‘alQaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’. On the second occasion, this offer received a response through a web-cast from Ayman Zawahiri of al-Qaeda but there has been little evidence of a more substantial material link. It is true that within the GSPC the leadership group – the so-called Lakhdaria Brigade – seems to be far more aggressively tied to such a link, but there is little evidence that the group has been able to adopt a transnational agenda. Nor has it been engaged in region-wide initiatives, despite Algerian government claims of evidence that Tunisians and Libyans have been trained by it. The Tunisian government has not claimed that it was implicated in the events of December 2006 in Tunisia. Indeed, by the end of 2007, the al-Qaeda spokesman, Ayman Zawahiri, seemed instead to be favouring a dissident Libyan group in exile on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, led by a close Libyan collaborator of Mr Zawahiri, as its chosen North African partner. The conclusion must therefore be that the transnational dimension of the GSPC’s activities, like those of other groups within North Africa, is mere rhetoric and its arena remains substantially national in scope. In other words, despite the changes in the international environment of violent Islamic activism in recent years, with its rhetorical claim to transnational dimensions, the networks in North Africa continue to be substantially national in scope. They have adopted the exclusivist frame of Salafi jihadism but can no longer attempt to form a virtual community outside their social milieu. Thus the continuing requirement for a degree of embeddedness prevents the encapsulation characteristic of a truly detached transnational community of violence and means that, given the national aspirations that dominate such groups, they cannot genuinely participate in the global Salafi jihadi agenda. They are, therefore, vulnerable to their socio-political milieu and, should the state achieve its own domestication and legitimacy within the eyes of its population, their political relevance will eventually disappear, as will their support base.

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NOTES 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

‘The mobilisation of contestation to support Muslim causes’. A movement engaged in Islamic activism for specifically political purposes. FIS: Front Islamique du Salut (Jabha Islamiyya li’l-Inqadh), the portmanteau Islamist movement created in 1989 which won the first round of the legislative elections in December 1991, thus provoking the military-backed coup which sparked off the civil war. FLN: Front de Libération Nationale (Jabha li’l-Tahriri Watani), the hegemonic political vehicle which organized the war of independence between 1954 and 1962. This would also include the catchphrase ‘Islam is the solution’ as a mechanism for rejecting ideological alternatives, whether seen as secularist or as foreign cultural or political imports. Sageman (2004: 168) defines cliques as ‘dense networks of nodes, each connected to every other’, a situation which, at the extreme, would create social implosion as there could be no external links. He invokes ‘brokers’ as individuals mediating between cliques and networks who provide weak links outside the clique – a crucial factor for him in the construction of networks of networks that make up the modern transnational Salafi jihadi movement. Such networks are sometimes called ‘small-world networks’, which reflects the claim by Stanley Milgram that only six degrees of separation exist between any two disparate individuals. This has been rejected by Kleinfeld (2002). Related to this is ‘Dunbar’s Number’, the theoretical limit on the size of a social network to 150 members. See Gladwell (2000). The term was originally coined by Benedict Anderson to explain the concept of nationalism. Transnational social movements are: ‘mobilized groups recruiting across borders engaged in sustained contentious interaction with powerholders in which at least one state is either a target or a participant’ (Tarrow 2001: 3) ‘Condensed symbols of meaning that fashion shared understandings of the insurgent’s world to legitimate and to motivate collective action’ (Hafez 2004: 38) Jahiliyya (state of ignorance) is the term conventionally used to describe the situation in the Arabian peninsula before the Islamic revelation, but has been adopted by contemporary Islamists to describe the apparent abandonment of Islamic doctrine and praxis by contemporary Muslim society – a situation which they regard as culpable because this is done not through ignorance, as was originally the case, but with the full knowledge of the Islamic revelation available to the Muslim world. The terms ‘primary resistance’ and ‘secondary resistance’ are taken from Terence Ranger’s analyses (1968) of resistance to British colonialism in Southern Africa. It is worth noting here that, traditionally and in pre-colonial days, violence had been a pathway to power and wealth in Algeria, a tradition that had been interrupted by the 130 years of French colonial rule. See Martinez (2000: 7–15). Martinez would argue that this tradition was melded into the Islamist ideologies of the civil war in the 1990s to construct Hafez’s ‘anti-system frame’. Mustafa Bouyali had been an FLN militant during the war for independence who later turned on the Algerian state because of its lack of Islamic legitimacy, initially through peaceful protest but, after his brother was shot in 1982, turning to violence instead. He was killed in a security force ambush in 1987 but several of his lieutenants were to reemerge as founders and leaders of dissident groups during the civil war in the 1990s. See Willis (1997). The AUA had been created in 1930 as an expression of the wider Salafist movement in Algeria and as an explicit reassertion of Algeria’s Islamic society against colonialist pressure. Its successor in independent Algeria was the al-Qiyam movement which, after being initially tolerated by the Boumediènne regime, was suppressed in 1967, although its al-Ja’zara faction continued to meet informally thereafter, to re-emerge in the FIS in 1989 (Walsh 2007: 208–20). The Muslim Brotherhood had become a factor in Algeria’s informal Islamist politics partly because of the links created by the widespread


15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

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use of Egyptian teachers during the Arabization campaign in the 1970s during the Boumediènne era. This was the popular name given to those Algerians who had fought in Afghanistan as part of the mujahidin against Soviet forces in the 1980s and had subsequently returned to Algeria, bringing with them the extremist Salafi jihadi ideology that had developed there (Wictorowicz 2001). The best analysis of this complex story is to be found in Izel et al. (1999). These areas are often very poorly policed and are known in Morocco as part of the ‘bled as-siba’ – the ‘natural lands’ or the ‘lands of dissidence’ – in a conscious reference to Morocco’s pre-colonial past as it was the term used to describe lands beyond the political control of the sultanate, even if the Sultan’s normative religious authority was recognized by the populations there (see Joffé 2009). This aspect of them made them particularly easily penetrated by extremist Islamist networks. The Libyan state is based on a theory of direct popular democracy and sovereignty. It is thus considered by its creator, Colonel Qadhafi, to be a ‘state of the masses’, a jamahiriyah, rather than the duality of a state as an institution ordering a society and creating a polity. Law 71 of 1972 actually condemns any form of group activity based on a political ideology that challenges the principles of the ‘al-Fateh revolution’, and Article 3 of the law provides the death sentence for joining or supporting any group prohibited by law. This law is backed up by a series of provisions in the Penal Code: Article 206 (Law 48 of 1976) provides for the death penalty for membership of a proscribed organization; Article 208 bans forming or joining an international organization; Article 178 provides life imprisonment for disseminating information that ‘tarnishes’ Libya’s reputation abroad; and Article 207 provides for the death sentence for any challenge to the basic principles of the Libyan state or for any attempt to overthrow it. The Jama‘at Islamiyya was a very active mass movement amongst Egyptian students in the 1970s until it was forced underground by repression after the assassination of President Sadat in 1981. It was a decentralized movement at that time and was associated with a series of autonomous student Islamist movements known collectively as the ‘Tandhim al-Unqundi’ – the ‘cluster organizations’. There was clearly sufficient contact between Egypt and Libya for the term, at least, to pass into currency in clandestine Islamist student circles in Tripoli. It should not, however, be confused with the Jama‘a al-Islami in Libya which is the local branch of the Ikhwan Muslimin there. The information used here has been culled from a wide range of journalistic and consultancy sources not generally available for public use. In August 2007, Colonel Qadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, admitted that three suspected Islamists had blown themselves up in the Derna region rather than risk arrest, according to press reports. The NSFL was, in theory, a nationalist oppositional grouping created by a former Libyan ambassador, Muhammad al-Mugharief, but it had links to Islamist movements and one faction of it was based in Derna. www.libyanet.com/1-97nwsc.htm. Guardian, 4 September 2002. Faraj defined as the ‘near enemy’ those corrupted Arab governments that hindered the revival of the Rashidun Caliphate, and the ‘far enemy’ as those Western governments that supported them, and were thus the real target of Islamist retribution (Faraj 2000). ‘The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea’, Mao Tse-Tung (2000), p. 37. This alienation is typified by the comments of Khalid Kelkal, a leading member of the Chasse sur Rhône group. See Dietmar Loch (1995), ‘Moi, Khalid Kelkal’, Le Monde, 7 October. The interview had been recorded on 3 October 1992. The Algerian press, for example, has repeatedly reported on recruitment networks being dismantled, particularly in El-Oued, in 2008. That such networks tend to be spontaneous is revealed not only by press reports but also by an interesting interview on Al Jazeera in January 2008. See http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1659.htm.

96 30. 31.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks See the Appendix. See the Appendix.

REFERENCES Abedin, M. (2005), ‘From mujahid to activist: an interview with a Libyan veteran of the Afghan jihad,’ Spotlight on Terror, 3 (2), Jamestown Foundation. Abun-Nasr, J.M. (1982), A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berque, J. (1967), The Maghrib between Two World Wars, London: Faber & Faber. Cordesman, A. and N. Obaid (2005), Saudi Militants in Iraq: Assessment and the Kingdom’s Response, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 15 September. Crenshaw, M. (1995), ‘The effectiveness of terrorism in the Algerian war’, in M. Crenshaw (ed.) (1995), Terrorism in Context, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Della Porta, D. (1995), Social Movements, Political Violence and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Faraj, M.A. (2000), The Absent Obligation, Birmingham: Maktabah al-Ansaar Publications. Felter, J. and B. Fishman (2008), Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records, Harmony Project, West Point, New York: Combating Terrorism Center. Gordon, D.C. (1962), North Africa’s French Legacy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hafez, M.A. (2004), ‘From marginalisation to massacres: a political process explanation of GIA violence in Algeria’, in Q. Wiktorowicz (ed.), Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Harbi, M. (ed.) (1981), Les archives de la Révolution Algérienne, Paris: Editions Jeune Afrique. Horne, A. (1977), A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Jabri, V. (1996), Discourses of Violence: Conflict Analysis Reconsidered, Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Joffé, E.G.H. (1988), ‘The role of Islam’, in R. Lemarchant (ed.), The Green and the Black: Qadhafi’s Policies in Africa, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Joffé, E.G.H. (1995), ‘Revolution and religion: Qadhafi and Islam since 1969’, in D. Vandewalle (ed.), The Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah: Twenty Years of Revolution, New York: St Martin’s Press. Joffé, E.G.H. (2002), ‘The role of violence within the Algerian economy,’ Journal of North African Studies, 7 (1). Joffé, E.G.H. (2006), ‘Politics in the Muslim world: Morocco, Iran and Indonesia’, in L.E. Graham (ed.), The Politics of Governing: A Comparative Introduction, Washington DC: CQ Press.


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Joffé, E.G.H. (2008), ‘The European Union, democracy and counter-terrorism in the Maghrib’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 46 (1). Joffé, E.G.H. (2009), ‘Morocco’s reform process: wider implications’, Mediterranean Politics, 14 (2). Keenan, J. (2005), ‘Waging war on terror: the implications of America’s new imperialism for Saharan peoples,’ Journal of North African Studies, 10 (3–4). Kleinfeld, J.S. (2002), ‘The small world problem’, Society, January–February. Loch, D. (1995), ‘Moi, Khallid Kelkal’, Le Monde, 7 October. Mao Tse-Tung (2000), On Guerrilla Warfare, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Martinez, L. (2000), The Algerian Civil War 1990–1998, London: Hurst & Co. Obeidi, A. (2001), Political Cultures in Libya, London: Curzon. Ouannes, M. (2001) ‘Chronique politique en Lybie’, L’Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 2000, La Documentation Française (Paris). Pargeter, A. (2005), ‘The Islamist movement in Morocco,’ Terrorism Monitor, 3 (10), Jamestown Foundation. Pennell, C.R. (2000), Morocco since 1830, London: Hurst & Co. Ranger, T.O. (1968), ‘Connections between “primary resistance” movements and mass nationalism in East and Central Africa,’ Journal of African History, Part I, 9 (3), 437–53; Part II, 9 (4), 631–41. Sageman, M. (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schmidt, C., E. Davar and E.G.H. Joffé (2005), ‘The psychology of political extremism’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 18 (1). Spiegel, A. (2009), ‘Islamist pluralism: youth, activism and the state in Morocco’, unpublished PhD thesis (Oxon). Tarrow, S. (1998), Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrow, S. (2001), ‘Beyond globalization: why creating transnational social movements is so hard and when is it most likely to happen’, Annual Review of Political Science, 5; first published 1999 in the Global Solidarity Dialogue, http://www. antenna.nl/~waterman/tarrow.html. This is the version that has been consulted here. Ulph, S. (2005a), ‘Libyan Islamists under pressure’, Terrorism Focus, 2 (5). Ulph, S. (2005b), ‘Al-Qaeda cell in Libya threatens attacks’, Terrorism Focus, 2 (11). Vandewalle, D. (1998), Libya since Independence: Oil and State-Building, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vergès, M. (1997), ‘Genesis of a mobilisation: the young activists of Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front’, in J. Beinin and J. Stork (eds), Political Islam, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Walsh, S.J. (2007), ‘Killing post-Almohade man: Malek Bennabi, Algerian Islamism and the search for a liberal governance,’ Journal of North African Studies, 12 (2). Willis, M. (1997), The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History, London: Hurst & Co. Wiktorowicz, Q. (2001), ‘The new global threat: transnational salafis and jihadis’, Middle East Policy, 84 (4). Wiktorowicz, Q. (ed.) (2004), Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Yous, N. (2000), Qui a tué à Bentalha?, Paris: Editions La Découverte.

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APPENDIX Table 4A.1

Foreign fighters in Iraq

Cordesman and Obaid Nationality

Felter and Fishman

Numbers

%

Nationality

Numbers

%

Algerians Syrians Yemenis Sudanese Egyptians Saudis

600 550 500 450 400 350

20 18 17 15 13 12

Other

150

5

Saudis Libyans Syrians Yemenis Algerians Moroccans Jordanians Other

244 122 49 48 43 36 11 42

41.0 18.8 8.2 8.1 7.2 6.1 1.9 8.7

Total*

3000

100

Total**

595

100.0

Note: * Estimate of total numbers; ** Numbers arriving between August 2006 and August 2007.

Table 4A.2

Algeria Egypt Libya Mauritania Morocco Tunisia Total Source:

Internet usage in North Africa Population (2007 est.)

Usage (end 2000)

Usage Latest (2007)

33 506 567 72 478 498 6 293 910 2 959 592 30 534 870 10 342 253

50 000 450 000 10 000 5 000 100 000 100 000

1 920 000 5 000 000 205 000 20 000 4 600 000 953 000

5.7 6.9 3.3 0.7 15.1 9.2

5.8 15.0 0.6 0.1 13.8 2.9

3740.0 1011.1 1950.0 300.0 4500.0 853.8

715 000 12 698 000

8.1

100.0

277.3

156 115 690

% national % North % user peneAfrica growth tration (2000–2007)

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm.

5.

Iran: informal networks and leadership politics* Adam Goodman

Informal networks have played a major role in the evolution of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s internal and external politics.1 Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, informal networks, rather than formal parties, continue to dominate Iranian politics. The ongoing debate about whether the country needs political parties is, in itself, testimony to the power of informal networks in Iran.2 However, what is noteworthy about Iranian informal networks is that they continue to exist with a very strong and centralized state apparatus which has deep institutional roots in the country.3 As a result, Iranian post-revolutionary politics has had a kaleidoscopic nature. The competition between the informal networks for the control of various state institutions is what makes Iranian politics particularly complex. Moreover, the failure of the state to impose its authority and the lack of a strong partisan tradition in the country mean that debate over key questions of national importance such as republicanism versus theocracy, nuclear policy and the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the state are often conducted in terms of political conflicts between various factions. Political coalitions have formed and fallen apart because party politics has not become well established. This chapter will present a number of cases of the activities of informal networks to illustrate their impact on Iranian politics and foreign policy.

IRAN IN THE 1990S: FACTIONAL REALIGNMENT AND THE CIVIL SOCIETY PARADIGM Perhaps one of the most significant developments in Middle Eastern and world politics in the 1990s was the degree to which Iranian radicals who had taken part in the occupation of the US Embassy in 1979 and attempts to export the revolution to neighbouring countries were prepared to introduce political reform aimed at creating a civil society in Iran. Two organizations led the reform campaign, the Militant Clerics Association 99

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and the Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution. In 1979, the Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution was set up as an umbrella organization, bringing together six smaller urban guerrilla organizations. These groups subsequently formed the core of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).4 The Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution played a prominent role in the occupation of the US Embassy, and its members occupied key posts in the government of Mohammad Ali Rajai. Behzad Nabavi, who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Executive Affairs, was Iran’s chief negotiator during the negotiations that led to the signing of the Algiers Agreement. At the time, the Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution worked closely with a group of radical clerics around Mohammad MusaviKho’iniha and Mehdi Karrubi. However, the organization was not particularly supportive of the doctrine of the guardianship of the supreme jurisconsult which formed the basis of Iran’s constitutional system. They reached a compromise with Iran’s largest and most powerful conservative clerical group, the Combatant Clergy Society, to support the guardianship of the supreme jurisconsult in return for conservative clerical support for the pursuit of a radical anti-American foreign policy. However, both parties sought to bypass the other when dealing with vexatious issues such as relations with the US.5 Musavi-Kho’iniha, a radical cleric who was suspected of having links to the Soviet KGB,6 was the mentor of the Students Following the Line of the Imam and he encouraged them to occupy the US Embassy. Kho’iniha and his allies saw the US as the main threat to the revolutionary regime and they have contended that the main reason for their decision to hold US diplomats hostage was to prevent the US from staging a coup d’état to restore the monarchy in Iran.7 In the 1980s both Kho’iniha and Karrubi were among a group of clerics who broke away from the Combatant Clergy Society and formed the Militant Clerics Association. They were critical of the conservative clerics in the Combatant Clergy Society for their economic policies, and they were much more sceptical about the value of détente with the US. After Ayatollah Khomeini’s death, his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the then President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani used the Guardian Council, which is responsible for vetting candidates in all Iranian elections, to exclude the radicals from the elections for the Majlis (parliament) and the Assembly of Experts.8 As a result the political influence of the Militant Clerics Association and the Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution declined precipitously. Khamenei was particularly vulnerable to political pressure from the radical right. He did not have sufficient religious credentials to justify his elevation to the position of supreme leader. Indeed before his death Khomeini had approved changes to the Iranian

Iran: informal networks and leadership politics

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constitution which would make it unnecessary for the supreme leader to be a source of religious emulation. Thus the position of the supreme jurisconsult became primarily political. Khamenei was chosen because his knowledge of politics and international relations was judged to be superior to that of his peers. Khamenei’s lack of religious credentials also made him highly suspicious of clerical opposition to him. According to one account he was responsible for the execution of as many as 600 of his clerical opponents between 1989 and 2000. A number of his opponents also chose to go into exile to escape his wrath. Some of them formed a group called the Council to defend the Rights of Jurisconsults.9

THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN KHAMENEI AND THE CONSERVATIVE RIGHT Khamenei’s vulnerability to political pressure from the radical and conservative right made him highly dependent on two of the most powerful conservative informal networks in Iran, the Combatant Clergy Society and the Islamic Coalition Society. The Combatant Clergy Society was formed in 1977 shortly before the outbreak of revolutionary unrest in Iran. The Islamic Coalition Society was formed with the approval of Ayatollah Khomeini in the early 1960s and was involved in instigating anti-Shah unrest in the country. Members of the society were influenced by Fada’iyan-e Islam (Self-Sacrificers for Islam) whose formation was influenced by the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Fada’iyan-e Islam was involved in the assassination of another prime minister, Haji Ali Razmara, in 1952. The Islamic Coalition Society was formed in the aftermath of the Shah’s introduction of the land reform programme and his decision to grant women voting rights. Both these decisions were vehemently opposed by the conservative right, which had until then refrained from challenging the Shah’s political authority overtly. The Islamic Coalition Society was also involved in the assassination of Prime Minister Hasan Ali Mansur in 1965, which led to the imprisonment of a number of its members.10 In the 1990s, both the Combatant Clergy Society and the Islamic Coalition Society favoured the pursuit of strongly mercantile economic policies, and vehemently opposed the opening up of the Iranian economy. They also had close links to revolutionary foundations such as the Foundation for the Dispossessed and the War-Disabled, which since the revolution had grown into a veritable conglomerate, thereby raising profound questions about its commitment to the revolutionary transformation of Iranian society.

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Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rafsanjani sought to stabilize the Iranian economy, and introduced economic reforms to prevent the political collapse of the state in the aftermath of the Iran–Iraq war. However, Khamenei’s political dependence on the conservative and radical right, the main representatives of mercantile interests in conservative informal networks such as the Islamic Coalition Society and the Combatant Clergy Society, was the main obstacle to Rafsanjani’s efforts to modernize the Iranian economy. Rafsanjani’s government favoured the introduction of an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-style austerity programme and steps towards introducing one exchange rate for the rial. Both moves were opposed by the conservatives in the Majlis. As a result, Rafsanjani’s second administration (1993–97) achieved little in terms of economic policy. Moreover, the radicals in the Militant Clerics Association and the Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution began to transform themselves. They saw Rafsanjani as a corrupt politician who had no compunction about making concessions to the US to secure his own political interests. The radicals voiced their criticisms in such publications as the newspaper Salam (Hello), which was published by Mohammad Musavi-Kho’iniha. Salam raised profound questions about the government’s commitment to equality and economic justice. A number of riots in Eslamshahr and elsewhere in the 1990s indicated that political unrest was likely to endure unless the authorities took measures to address political and social repression and growing social gaps. What made the situation particularly difficult for Khamenei was the refusal of the IRGC to intervene to quell the unrest. As a result the paramilitary volunteer corps, the Basij Resistance Force, was ordered to intervene to stop the riots. Although Khamenei was much more wary of those who favoured the improvement of relations with the US, which the radicals saw as Iran’s main enemy, initially he cooperated with Rafsanjani to allow US oil companies to purchase oil from Iran. However, the Clinton administration’s decision to prevent the US oil company Conoco from investing in Iran, and the enunciation of the doctrine of dual containment of Iran and Iraq, led to a sharp deterioration in US–Iranian relations.11

CLERICAL OPPOSITION TO KHAMENEI AND THE GROWTH OF DISSIDENCE Throughout the 1990s opposition to Khamenei’s rule grew. Its most significant aspect was the attempt to redefine the basis of the supreme jurisconsult’s power. Khamenei and his supporters among the radical right defined his power on the basis of divine authority. The reformist effort was


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led by a religious intellectual, Abdolkarim Sorush, who had been one of the regime’s main ideologues in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, Sorush, Hojjat olEslam Mohammad Mojtahed-Shabestari and a circle around the journal Kian articulated a new vision which influenced the thinking of the religious reform movement in Iran. They argued that the people did not need clerical leaders to tell them how to think about religion, and that multiple interpretations of the text were permissible because of the uniqueness of religious knowledge. Sorush’s argument led to a major backlash. His speeches were disrupted and he was castigated as a counter-revolutionary figure who sought to destroy Iran’s system of government. Sorush and MojtahedShabestari, however, influenced the thinking of many young clerics, who increasingly saw the policies of the radical right as a threat not just to the state but also to the survival of religious politics in the country.12 Moreover, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was removed as Khomeini’s deputy in March 1989, emerged in the late 1990s as a prominent critic of Khamenei’s policies. Montazeri sharply criticized the authorities for the execution of at least 3000 political prisoners after the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988.13 In 1997, Montazeri and another prominent conservative cleric, Ayatollah Azari-Qomi, criticized Khamenei for his policies and lack of theological credentials.14 Montazeri was put under house arrest. By the time he was released the reform movement had been crushed.15 Another, more significant, aspect of the clerical opposition to Khamenei was the spread of reformist theological thinking in Iran throughout the 1990s. During the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005) a number of clerics such as Mohsen Kadivar and Hasan Yusefi-Eshkevari raised profound questions about the guardianship of the supreme jurisconsult. Kadivar called for direct elections for the post of the supreme jurisconsult, in an attempt to reconcile the republican and theological aspects of the system. Kadivar made it clear that younger clerics such as him were not all convinced by the radical right’s position on the issue. Yusefi-Eshkevari sharply criticized Khamenei for his dictatorial policies and called into question the very foundations of his rule.16 Kadivar and Yusefi-Eshkevari were representatives of a group of reformists who were increasingly associated with a new reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Party. The party sought to strengthen republican institutions and weaken those under the control of the supreme jurisconsult by encouraging mass participation in council and parliamentary elections. The policy was influenced by Sa’id Hajjarian, who had served as Deputy Intelligence Minister for foreign operations in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Hajjarian emerged as one of the foremost theoreticians of the reform movement.17

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Clearly, the Khatami presidency did little to restrain dissident clerics. All such activities were part and parcel of the reformists’ policy of encouraging the strengthening of republican institutions. However, Khatami could not stop the repressive policies of the state. A case in point was the imprisonment of one of his closest allies, Abdollah Nuri, a member of the Militant Clerics Association, who had criticized the state’s policies, including its policy towards Israel.18 Khatami appeared powerless to stop attacks against his government. As one observer noted, there had been ‘a crisis every nine days’ during Khatami’s first term (1997–2001).19 Moreover, Khamenei used patronage and financial levers to impose his authority on Iranian theological seminaries.20 The resignation of Esfahan Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri in 2002 was an example of how Khamenei’s repressive policies alienated senior clerics.21 He has pursued a similar policy abroad in an effort to undermine conservative clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Sistani.22 Indeed Khamenei has also exploited fear of ‘foreign intervention’ to continue to suppress clerical dissent. A salient example of this is the case of Ayatollah KazemeyniBorujerdi, who was jailed after sharply criticizing the authorities and calling for the separation of religion and politics. Above all, he challenged the traditional conservatives who had claimed that the supreme leader had received his authority directly from God.23

KALEIDOSCOPIC FACTIONALISM The tension between the vastly different interpretations of sovereignty, inherent in the very fabric of the Iranian state, has emerged as the centrepiece of Iranian politics. Iranian factions have repeatedly changed their positions on domestic and foreign policies in order to gain advantage visà-vis their rivals. In the process they have created a kaleidoscopic pattern of politics. For example, former President and current Chairman of the Expediency Council Rafsanjani was not a supporter of the reform movement during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami. In fact, a number of dissidents sharply criticized Rafsanjani’s opposition to political reform in the country. Since his defeat by Mahmud Ahmadinezhad in the presidential elections of 2005, however, Rafsanjani has emerged as a defender of the reform movement and party politics in Iran. He has sought to protect the reform movement through his opposition to Ahmadinezhad and his repeated attempts to use his institutional power to challenge the chief executive. Iran’s pursuit of radical policies in the 1980s was facilitated by the de facto alliance between the then radicals in the Mojahidin of the Islamic


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Revolution and the Militant Clerics Association, and the radical right and the conservatives in the Combatant Clergy Society. The break-up of all these organizations in the late 1980s led to a realignment of Iranian factional politics in the 1990s.24 The Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution and the Militant Clerics Association abandoned their radical policies and even called for détente with the US and the introduction of political and economic reforms. The radical and conservative right, however, underwent a major transformation and aligned itself with the new radicals who are sometimes called Iran’s ‘neoconservatives’. The neoconservatives favoured dirigiste economic policies and social and political repression at home, and radical foreign and nuclear policies.25 Two contradictory trends had emerged by 2005. Khamenei was leading a coalition of traditional conservatives in the Islamic Coalition Society, ‘neoconservatives’ in the Islamic Iran Developers Coalition and new conservatives such as Ali Larijani who opposed the so-called ‘pragmatic conservatives’ such as former President Rafsanjani and Hasan Rowhani. Increasingly, the reform and dissident movements became dependent on the ‘pragmatic conservatives’ whom Khamenei no longer supported strongly. The ‘pragmatic conservatives’ then established relations with the reform and dissident movements in an effort to compel Khamenei to enter into a power-sharing agreement with them. A salient example of the kaleidoscopic pattern of factional realignment is Rafsanjani’s involvement in the Akbar Ganji case in 2005. Ganji had served in the IRGC and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in the 1980s. During the Khatami presidency he emerged as a prominent critic of Rafsanjani and former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian. After the serial murders of a number of dissidents and writers in 1998, Ganji wrote several articles sharply criticizing Rafsanjani and Fallahian for being involved in the regime’s repressive policies. He was jailed after participating in a conference in Berlin on reform and dissidence in Iran.26 However, in jail he wrote the republican manifesto – which called for the abolition of the guardianship of the supreme jurisconsult.27 Ganji contended that the main conflict in Iran was between democracy and theocracy. He compared Khamenei to the Shah, going far beyond even what Khamenei’s most vociferous critics in the reformist camp, particularly in the Islamic Iran Participation Front, were demanding.28 Ganji had been Rafsanjani’s most vociferous opponent in the 1990s. After Ahmadinezhad’s election, however, Rafsanjani sought to mediate between the government and Ganji and his supporters. In 2005, Ganji went on hunger strike in prison. After he was released, he left Iran but he continued his activities abroad.29 Despite the fact that President Bush had expressed support for him during his hunger strike,30 Ganji argued

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that US assistance for the dissident movement would actually enable the regime to justify greater repression: ‘The Iranian regime uses American funding as an excuse to persecute opponents. Although its accusations are false, this has proved effective in poisoning the public against the regime’s opponents. Fear of foreign meddling is one reason for the regime’s staying power.’31 The emergence of Ahmadinezhad’s Islamic Iran Developers Coalition was in itself a major development in the politics of radical groups. The group was particularly close to the radicals in the Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC. Radicals had performed poorly in the presidential elections of 1997 and 2001, when they were represented by former intelligence ministers Mohammad Mohammadi-Reyshahri in 1997 and Ali Fallahian in 2001. Reyshahri’s faction, the Society for the Defence of the Values of the Islamic Revolution, was a front for radical and conservative Iranian officials.32 The society was particularly close to the Haqqani Theological Seminary, whose graduates have occupied senior posts in the Intelligence Ministry, the judiciary and other judicial institutions such as the Judicial Organization of the Armed Forces.33 However, the Haqqani seminary and its radical supporters were discredited following the murders of a number of Iranian writers and dissidents in 1998–99, in what became known as ‘the serial murders’ case. President Khatami formed a committee, including two former senior intelligence officials, Ali Rabi’i and Sa’id Hajjarian, to investigate the murders. The committee’s findings indicated that individuals with close ties to the Intelligence Ministry, the office of the supreme leader and the IRGC were responsible for carrying out political assassinations inside and outside the country.34 These findings led Ayatollah Khamenei to approve of a purge of the Intelligence Ministry.35 However, the purge did not curtail the power of Iranian radicals; indeed they stepped up their attacks on the government by sponsoring the so-called ‘parallel institutions’, in reality little more than front groups which represented the interests of Ali Fallahian, an intelligence adviser to Khamenei, and the ‘Said Emami gang’, followers of Deputy Intelligence Minister Sa’id Eslami (Emami) who allegedly committed suicide after being found guilty of involvement in the serial murders. The radicals managed to exact revenge by shutting down the Salam newspaper in July 1999; this led to a major student uprising, which was brutally suppressed.36 The emergence of the Iranian ‘neoconservatives’ was in itself a manifestation of Khamenei’s attempt to re-establish the relationship between the radicals and the traditional conservatives. Prior to the presidential elections of 2005, groups such as the Islamic Coalition Society, the Islamic Engineers Association and the Islamic Developers Coalition which referred


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to themselves as ‘fundamentalist’ failed to name one candidate. In fact, there were a number of candidates who claimed ‘fundamentalist’ credentials, such as Ahmadinezhad, Ali Larijani, former Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the IRGC Mohsen Reza’i, and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. Ahmadinezhad, Qalibaf and Rezai were basically competing for the votes of young radicals and conservatives. Reza’i did not have a party machine as such. Qalibaf, however, was supported by the Developers Coalition. Qalibaf, Reza’i and Rafsanjani, moreover, represented what had come to be known as ‘pragmatic conservatism’.37 Qalibaf also had excellent hard-line credentials and was among the Revolutionary Guards commanders who had signed a joint letter to the then President Khatami threatening to stage a coup if the student uprising of 1999 was not suppressed.38 Moreover, Ayatollah Khamenei had discouraged Rafsanjani from competing.39 Thus Qalibaf had emerged as the front-runner in the radical camp. However, according to one account, at a meeting at Khamenei’s residence before the elections Khamenei was presented with a report alleging financial impropriety on Qalibaf’s part and saying that IRG commanders had been critical of him. Qalibaf had clashed with the Guards because in his capacity as Tehran police chief he had said that every year goods worth up to $6 billion were smuggled into Iran via ‘unofficial ports’ managed by the IRGC.40 However, the charge of militarism undermined Qalibaf’s candidacy more than any other factor.41

THE TENSION BETWEEN REPUBLICANISM AND THEOCRACY The tension between the principles of republicanism and theocracy has been at the very heart of Iranian politics since the inception of the Islamic Republic. In the early 1990s some observers had argued that the revolution had entered a Thermidorian phase; that the Iranian state was being gradually bureaucratized and clerics were playing a less prominent role in Iranian politics.42 Given their fear of revolution or chronic unrest, it is not surprising that Iranian reformists should have concentrated their efforts on weaning key institutions from the supreme leader one by one. This strategy was primarily formulated by Sa’id Hajjarian, who called for moving from ‘fortress to fortress’. An assassination attempt against Hajjarian was probably sanctioned by his former colleagues in the Intelligence Ministry. However, since summer 2005 he has re-emerged as a key strategist in the reformist camp and he has sought to form a broad coalition against President Ahmadinezhad. Hajjarian went so far as to try to form a grand coalition among the pro-Khatami Islamic Iran Participation Front, the

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dissident Iran Freedom Movement, the pro-Rafsanjani Executives of Construction Party and the strongly conservative Islamic Coalition Party, which is part of the Ahmadinezhad government. Although such a coalition has not been officially formed, the de facto collaboration among a diverse array of groups opposing Khamenei and Ahmadinezhad’s policies has led Khamenei to seek to limit the political influence of Ahmadinezhad and his allies.43 Nowhere has this tension between republicanism and theocracy been more palpable than in criticism of President Ahmadinezhad and his relationship with the semi-secret society the Hojjatieh. Efforts to buttress Khamenei’s position should also be assessed within the context of the radicals’ attempt to co-opt Hojjatieh, an anti-Baha’i semi-secret society formed in the 1950s. During the Iranian revolution, it did not support the establishment of the rule of the supreme jurisconsult which was the centrepiece of Ayatollah Khomeyni’s teachings. Instead, members of Hojjatieh favoured collective religious leadership and opposed religious involvement in politics. After the revolution, however, the founder of Hojjatieh, Sheikh Mahmud Halabi, who was concerned about a communist victory in Iran, called on his followers to abandon their ideas and support the establishment of an Islamist government. Hojjatieh dissolved itself in 1983 when Khomeyni called on it to ‘get rid of factionalism and join the wave that is carrying the nation forward’.44 A powerful member of Hojjatieh after the revolution, Ayatollah Mohammad Hosseini-Beheshti, was involved in setting up the Haqqani Theological Seminary. Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi was also a founder of the seminary and lectured there in 2006.45 After the 2005 elections, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi was mentioned as a possible successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, despite his having been criticized for his lack of revolutionary credentials. However, Mesbah-Yazdi was among those members of the Assembly of Experts who could be relied upon to side with Khamenei in the event of a confrontation with former President Khatami over the course of the reform programme. In contrast, some of Khamenei’s strongest supporters in the clerical establishment, ayatollahs Behjat, Nuri-Hamedani and the late Ayatollah Fazel-Lankarani, lacked political credentials or any networks of political supporters.46 Moreover, contrary to rumours that Mesbah-Yazdi opposes Khamenei, the evidence shows that he has emerged as Khamenei’s key defender, arguing that the supreme leader is above the law. In the 1990s, MesbahYazdi was one of the main advocates of violence to suppress the reform movement, as one of a small group of clerics who issued fatwas justifying the assassination of dissidents.47 Mesbah-Yazdi has argued that republicanism is not as important as the guardianship of the supreme jurisconsult


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and has suggested that the supreme jurisconsult does not have to allow the people to elect their own president.48 The advent of the Ahmadinezhad government led prominent Iranian political figures, primarily supporters of former President Khatami, to warn of the re-emergence of Hojjatieh. There were two Haqqani alumni in the Ahmadinezhad cabinet, Intelligence Minister Hojjat olEslam Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezhe’i and Interior Minister Mostafa Purmohammadi.49 During the 2005 presidential elections two candidates, Mostafa Mo’in and former President Rafsanjani, raised the issue of modifying the constitution to curtail the powers of the supreme jurisconsult.50 Since the elections, the Ahmadinezhad government has taken a number of steps to ensure that the jurisconsult would not be attacked by his political opponents. They include: (1) suspension of the activities of the constitutional supervisory board set up by former President Khatami; (2) calling for the prosecution of those guilty of perpetrating ‘economic crimes’, a thinly veiled reference to Rafsanjani;51 and (3) preventing former Majlis Speaker Mehdi Karrubi from setting up a satellite TV network.52 At the same time, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Hossein Saffar-Harandi, a prominent radical and ally of Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, has been taking draconian measures against reformist and dissident journalists and publications. The reformists have come to the conclusion that they will have to directly attack Khamenei’s position to bring about a change. Perhaps the main concern of all old-style reformist groups, such as the National Trust Party and Militant Clerics Association, remains the fear that dissatisfaction with the supreme leader and the radicals will cause a major upheaval that will overthrow the state and lead to the total secularization of the country. However, even such politicians are changing their policies. For example, Mehdi Karrubi expressed support for Mohammad Mohsen Musavi-Tabrizi as the candidate of his party, the National Trust, in the 2007 mid-term elections for the Assembly of Experts.53 During the Khatami presidency, Musavi-Tabrizi was an advocate of using the powers of the Assembly of Experts to supervise the activities of institutions under the control of the supreme leader,54 including the armed forces, the IRGC and state media. Moreover, new reformist figures who are close to the Islamic Iran Participation Party increasingly see republicanism and post-Islamism as a future possibility.55 This was perhaps one of the main reasons why Ahmadinezhad adopted post-Islamist themes during his 2005 presidential campaign, such as economic growth and the redistribution of wealth. However, his economic policies have been sharply criticized, and this has led him to focus increasingly on ‘public order’ issues and accuse his

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opponents of ‘treachery’ and ‘corruption’. Increasingly, Ahmadinezhad and his allies are trying to persuade Ayatollah Khamenei to adopt a narrower definition of the concept of regime security. Their attacks on Rafsanjani even after his election to the speakership of the Assembly of Experts are increasingly organized around the theme of Rafsanjani’s failure to understand the state’s security interests. The case of Hossein Musavian discussed below is a salient example of this line of thinking.

THE BLOGOSPHERE Perhaps more than any other phenomenon the emergence of the blogosphere symbolizes the emergence of a modern networked polity in Iran. According to one estimate, the country has 700 000 bloggers.56 This has been partly a reaction to radical and conservative attempts to block the reform programme and crack down on the free press in the 1990s. Paradoxically, such attempts only accelerated the emergence of a modern networked society in Iran. As a result, the conservatives and radicals have chosen to use modern communication techniques such as weblogs to disseminate their message. The attempt to use cyberspace to gain political advantage is also a phenomenon of expatriate Iranian communities. As a result, according to one estimate, Persian is now the third most popular language on the Internet after English and Mandarin.57 Thus the periodic crackdowns on dissidence and reformism inside Iran have had a paradoxical effect in the sense that they have led to the creation of a huge Iranian virtual political space. The battle for the control of cyberspace has been no less significant than the battle for hearts and minds in Iran. Indeed, the two phenomena have been so closely intertwined that one cannot possibly deal with one without the other. The emergence of the Iranian blogosphere is an indication of the success of ‘citizen journalism’ despite the Iranian authorities’ resort to various means to muzzle reformist and dissident media. The next step for Iranian bloggers is to move towards a fully fledged and network-centric citizen activism. Citizen journalism is the outward manifestation of this phenomenon. In fact even Iranian radicals, such as President Ahmadinezhad himself, have started practising citizen journalism to counteract what they consider to be the adverse impact of such journalism on the theocratic system. It is highly probable that radical and conservative political figures will continue to practise such journalism to offer an alternative to the dissident media and to prevent pockets of opposition to the state from coalescing. However, it is unlikely that they will be able to practise ‘citizen journalism’ on a large scale without state subsidies, albeit covert.


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THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS CORPS The widespread dissatisfaction with the regime and the Ahmadinezhad government’s socially repressive policies have led to a transformation of the role of the IRGC. Increasingly, the Guards will be focusing on countering internal threats to the regime, particularly to Khamenei’s position. Undoubtedly, both the IRGC and the Basij Resistance Force have been playing a much more prominent role in Iranian politics since 2005. Even prior to the presidential elections of 2005 reformist and centre-right politicians had expressed their concerns about the emergence of ‘Caesarism’ or ‘sultanism’ in Iranian politics. In fact most reformists were worried about the Mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf’s emergence as the IRGC’s favourite candidate.58 Mohammad Ali Ja’fari was appointed as the new Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei in September 2007.59 Ja’fari has a reputation as a hard-liner. In 1999 he was among IRGC commanders who signed a letter to the then President Khatami threatening military intervention (which at the time was interpreted as a coup warning) in the event of his failure to bring the student unrest in the country to an end.60 However, Ja’fari reportedly has good personal relations with Khatami.61 There were contradictory reports on whether the appointment was due to a major change in policy or whether it was a straightforward replacement. One interpretation was that the former commander Rahim-Safavi had threatened to resign because of his dispute with former C-in-C Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, who in his capacity as Deputy Interior Minister for Political Affairs had been interfering in the affairs of the Guards with Khamenei’s approval.62 Ja’fari was close to Zolqadr and Ali Reza Afshar, both IRGC commanders who had been promoted to important Interior Ministry posts. Ja’fari spent most of his career in the IRGC’s ground forces before being promoted to head the IRGC’s Strategic Research division. He was considered to be a specialist on asymmetric strategies and had close relations with the commander of the Badr Corps, the paramilitary force of the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq. Some observers, such as Mohammad Mohsen Sazgara, a founder of the IRGC now living in exile, argued that Ja’fari’s appointment was aimed at tightening the IRGC’s grip on the state apparatus.63 Shortly after he appointed Ja’fari, Khamenei made a speech saying that the IRGC and the Islamic revolution safeguarded one another. However, he also observed that the IRGC had to evolve.64 Ja’fari was promoted to Major-General upon taking over as the new

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C-in-C.65 After his appointment, Ja’fari declared that Iran would adopt asymmetric warfare as its strategy of choice and seek to attain ‘ballistic missile superiority’.66 However, the most significant change was that Ja’fari declared that henceforward the IRGC would focus its attention on domestic politics. He pointed out that the Basij Resistance Force had to be fully integrated into the IRGC.67 Ja’fari’s pronouncements were consistent with the radicals’ focus on preventing what they described as a US-inspired ‘velvet revolution’ in Iran. They observed that Rafsanjani had complained about military intervention in politics prior to the 2005 presidential elections.68 Moreover, Khamenei appointed the former C-in-C, Rahim-Safavi, who also had a reputation as a hard-liner, as his military adviser.69 In December 2006 Rahim-Safavi was listed in UN Security Council Resolution 1737 calling for the assets of those involved in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes to be frozen.70 Moreover, addressing military commanders, Rahim-Safavi observed that Iran was the leading force in the Islamic world and had declared: ‘The events of September 11 were ordered by US [officials] and Mossad so that they could carry out their strategy of pre-emption and warmongering and unipolarisation in order to dominate the Middle East.’71 Rahim-Safavi had also had very close ties to President Ahmadinezhad, consolidated when Ahmadinezhad was Mayor of Tehran.72 However, the changes at the leadership level of the IRGC and the new commander’s determination to focus even more than his predecessor on domestic issues, undoubtedly reflect the tensions between Ahmadinezhad and former IRGC C-in-C Rahim-Safavi.

THE LINKAGE BETWEEN DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLICY The regime had already started a crackdown in the summer of 2006 when it arrested Ramin Jahanbeglu and accused him of engaging in anti-state activities. Despite Jahanbeglu’s release, the crackdown continued in September 2007, when four Iranian expatriates were arrested and accused of anti-state activities. Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbaksh were forced to make televised confessions.73 Esfandiari was allowed to leave Iran, and Parnaz Azima left a few days later but the charges against her were not lifted.74 There was also a turnaround in the situation at Iran’s main leadership body, the Assembly of Experts, when former president and current head of the Expediency Council Rafsanjani was elected the Speaker of the Assembly. Rafsanjani’s election was a major event because until then the


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conservatives and radicals had dominated the Assembly. This domination in the 1990s enabled them to stamp their authority on Iranian politics and prevent reformists from increasing their influence in the state apparatus and from curtailing the supreme leader’s powers. Significantly, on the same day, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani addressed the Assembly on the Iranian nuclear issue. Larijani presented a policy line which was vastly different from that of President Ahmadinezhad. He said that Iran was not interested in ‘regional hegemony’ and that it would be prepared to resolve regional issues through dialogue. In effect, Larijani’s speech amounted to a call for Iranian restraint on the nuclear issue in return for a US–Iran dialogue on regional issues.75 Rafsanjani’s election and Larijani’s presentation indicated that Khamenei was gradually moving away from the radicals. Rafsanjani had already indicated that he would not try to use his position in the Assembly to undermine Khamenei’s position as the supreme jurisconsult.76 In fact, Khamenei may well have decided to support Rafsanjani in the hopes of driving a wedge between Rafsanjani and the reformists. After all, in the 1990s, Rafsanjani had opposed the reformists more vehemently than did Khamenei. However, at a meeting with members of the Assembly, Khamenei made it clear to Rafsanjani that it was not a place for power brokers and that it merely fulfilled a ‘spiritual’ function.77 The Assembly of Experts elections demonstrated that the radicals and the Iranian ‘neoconservatives’ lacked the necessary level of clerical support to establish a strategic consensus. However, even after the elections the disputes over policy and strategy continued unabated. The resignation of Ali Larijani as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and his replacement by Said Jalili, the Deputy Foreign Minister for European and American Affairs, was almost certainly caused by a dispute over the choice of nuclear and regional strategy at the highest echelons of the Iranian state. Jalili is a veteran who lost a leg in the Iran– Iraq War. Like Ahmadinezhad, he is a radical. Speaking at a conference shortly after Ahmadinezhad’s election, Jalili had declared that the purpose of Iranian diplomacy had to be ‘eliminating threats’, not ‘relaxation of tensions’.78 According to one report in May 2007, Larijani had tendered his resignation several times because of ‘the irresponsible actions and statements issued by the Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinezhad and his colleagues which obstructed the negotiations with the European Union and the procedures being implemented to contain the threats to the country and its national interests’.79 Larijani and Ahmadinezhad also disagreed over policy towards France. Relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply after President Nicolas Sarkozy and Foreign Minister

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Bernard Kouchner warned that war might break out over the Iranian nuclear issue. Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki wrote to French officials and complained about French policy. Then President Ahmadinezhad wrote to Sarkozy. Iranian critics of Ahmadinezhad compared this letter to two other letters that he wrote to President Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, noting that world leaders were coming to the conclusion that Ahmadinezhad was turning correspondence into a form of diplomacy. They also warned that French officials had considered Ahmadinezhad’s tone to be condescending because he had tried to give Sarkozy ‘advice’.80 Larijani and Ahmadinezhad had also disagreed over policy towards Russia. While Larijani favoured the option of coordinating policy with Russia on uranium enrichment, Ahmadinezhad preferred to pursue a freehand strategy. He also seemed to prefer to coordinate strategy with China, Belarus, Venezuela and North Korea. Initially, both of these policies were amalgamated into what was known as Iran’s ‘Look to the East’ policy.81 However, the dispute over the choice of strategy became abundantly clear in 2006 when Larijani started hinting that he favoured a comprehensive dialogue with the US and the linkage of nuclear and regional security issues, including Iraq. Khamenei opposed the Larijani approach at the strategic level even though he approved of the opening to the US on Iraq at the tactical level.82 This was probably one of the main reasons why he approved of Larijani’s departure. However, it is important to note that Larijani retained his position as the supreme leader’s representative on the Supreme National Security Council. He also accompanied Jalili to Rome to meet EU Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana,83 and was involved in other major foreign policy initiatives such as the effort to normalize diplomatic relations with Egypt84 in a ‘family trip’ which almost coincided with French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ‘family holiday’ there. Two days after Sarkozy offered nuclear cooperation to Egypt,85 Larijani made a similar offer and declared that the two countries should try to normalize their diplomatic relations and work together to stabilize the region.86 Ahmadinezhad himself had accused his political opponents of exaggerating the US threats to Iran and of ‘encouraging’ other countries to impose sanctions on Iran.87 Moreover, Ahmadinezhad’s supporters, particularly in Iran’s largest vigilante organization, Ansar-e Hezbollah, had been accusing Hossein Musavian, a former nuclear negotiator and close associate of former President Rafsanjani and former Secretary to the Supreme National Security Council Hasan Rowhani of ‘spying’ for the UK.88 Larijani had done little to stop such allegations. However, Larijani’s brother, Mohammad Javad, a former Deputy Foreign Minister, sharply criticized advocates of what he described as ‘ideological’ diplomacy.89


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The evidence suggests that Khamenei and Ahmadinezhad agreed that the change of personnel would be presented as a personal decision by Larijani and that public statements would make it clear that Khamenei would remain in overall control of the country’s nuclear strategy. It is highly probable that the pressure on Musavian was also aimed at compelling Khamenei to agree to Larijani’s replacement. Despite the Ahmadinezhad government’s insistence that Larijani’s departure had nothing to do with disputes over the choice of strategy, statements by high-ranking Iranian officials, including Khamenei’s international affairs adviser and former Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, suggest the opposite. Velayati declared that Larijani had worked very hard and should not have left.90 In line with what seems to have been a tacit bargain with Khamenei, Ahmadinezhad’s supporters have tried to portray Larijani as a transitional figure who stood up to the West.91 Jalili himself declared that he would continue to follow the same course of action as Larijani.92 Their opponents, most notably Velayati, have already hinted publicly that they do not believe the radicals.

THE RADICAL OPPOSITION AND INCREASING CONVERGENCE BETWEEN REFORMISTS AND THE CENTRE-RIGHT It is also possible that Larijani was pressured to leave his post by the radicals because he was likely to combine the post of Secretary to the Supreme National Security Council with a parliamentary position, possibly as Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the Majlis after the spring 2008 elections. After his resignation, Larijani was among the group of politicians supported by Iranian Hezbollah as part of an effort to create a grand ‘fundamentalist coalition’ in the run-up to the elections. Despite expressing support for the government’s faction, The Pleasant Scent of Service, Hezbollah also strongly supported some of Ahmadinezhad’s most prominent political opponents such as the Mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and former C-in-C of the IRGC, Mohsen Reza’i. In its statement on Iran’s strategic options, Iranian Hezbollah has argued that Iran should refrain from developing nuclear weapons because they are unlikely to influence the balance of power. However, it also advocates the development of ‘defensive nuclear weapons’ in the event of threats to the revolution.93 It has called for ‘internationalizing’ the Iranian nuclear issue and making it clear to Third World countries that they could face exactly the same problems as Iran; and, moreover, for developing nuclear technology and making it available to other Muslim countries in

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order to establish a ‘balance of terror’ with Israel.94 It also advocates the formation of ‘a global Hezbollah’ movement to counter US ‘hegemony’. Perhaps the main difference between the Iranian ‘neoconservatives’ and the Iranian Hezbollah is over the latter’s commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT. Had Larijani decided to pursue a parliamentary career and combined it with the top job at the Supreme National Security Council, it is highly likely that this would have precipitated a major conflict between the radical and radical-conservative wings of the state. Larijani’s departure was accompanied by the escalation of an already major effort to crack down on dissent in the country. Ahmadinezhad’s attacks against Rowhani and Rafsanjani did not have much effect on their determination to challenge him. Rowhani strongly defended his conduct as nuclear negotiator, contending that Iran had little choice but to suspend its uranium enrichment programme in 2003. Rowhani sharply criticized the government for incompetence and for failing to exploit policy divisions among the great powers, particularly the US and Russia. He accused the government of manipulating the Musavian case for factional reasons, declaring that it was up to the judiciary and not the executive branch to determine who was guilty. Rowhani also declared that he had been in contact with ‘reformist’ and ‘fundamentalist’ forces to prepare for the 2008 parliamentary elections and predicted that ‘moderate’ forces would increase their supporters in the Majlis.95 Rowhani’s reference to the fundamentalists was indicative of growing cooperation between the Executives of Construction and the Moderation and Development parties on the one hand, and the Islamic Coalition Party on the other. Rowhani seemed to be trying to establish such connections because his own party, the Moderation and Development Party, was not doing particularly well. The Ahmadinezhad camp is relying upon the head of the Qom Theological Seminary Lecturers Association, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi (former head of the judiciary and brother of Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi) to prevent Rowhani and Rafsanjani from galvanizing support for the Executives of Construction Party and the Moderation and Development Party in the Qom clerical establishment and the Combatant Clergy Society. The most important political development in the Ahmadinezhad period has been the increasing convergence between the positions of reformists, particularly those who are close to the Islamic Iran Participation Party, and the centre-right and conservative Executives of Construction Party, which is close to Rafsanjani. Perhaps the best examples of this convergence are the newspaper Sharq, which was closed down for its harsh criticisms of Ahmadinezhad’s policies, and the Mizan News Agency, which


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reflects the views of the Iran Freedom Movement and the nationalistreligious dissidents such as Ebrahim Yazdi. This convergence predates Ahmadinezhad and is directly linked to Iranian radicals’ efforts to portray the reformists close to the Islamic Iran Participation Party and the Islamic Revolution Mojahidin Organization as counter-revolutionaries opposed to Khomeini’s ideals. The radicals were even hopeful about driving a wedge between some reformists such as the Speaker of the sixth Majlis and presidential candidate in the 2005 elections Mehdi Karrubi, and those such as President Khatami’s brother Mohammad Reza Khatami, whom they saw as being committed to the implementation of far-reaching reforms. However, their hopes were dashed after the 2005 presidential elections when Karrubi accused the son of the supreme leader of voterigging.96 Karrubi broke away from his old faction, the Militant Clerics Association, and set up the National Trust Party which has sought to chart an independent course and has appeared reluctant to form coalitions with other reformist parties. The radicals’ opposition to reforms was a constant theme throughout the 1990s. However, what has been noteworthy since Ahmadinezhad’s election is the gradual integration of what even the reformists considered to be the dissident movement into mainstream Iranian politics. There can be little doubt that the main reason for this development has been Ahmadinezhad’s extremist policies and the fear that if he is successful, he will transform the Iranian political system in such a way that there will be no place even for senior revolutionaries with long track records.97 The close linkage between foreign policy and factional politics has surfaced several times during the Ahmadinezhad government. The government has exploited its connections with informal networks such as the vigilante organization Ansar-e Hezbollah, to try to intimidate former presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani, former Secretary to the Supreme National Security Council Rowhani and former C-in-C of the IRGC Mohsen Reza’i. Ansar-e Hezbollah’s news agency, Ansar News, has been accusing these figures of ‘treachery’ and ‘siding with the enemy’ on the nuclear issue and ‘corruption’. The government has also used its connections with Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi’s network.

THE RADICAL NETWORKS’ CONCEPT OF REGIME SECURITY The intra-state debate about regime security is not a by-product of the Ahmadinezhad presidency. It can be traced back to the late 1990s and is closely intertwined with the debate about Iranian nuclear policy. The

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so-called ‘neoconservatives’ began to oppose the NPT in the final years of the Khatami presidency. Moreover, some of the key figures in the antiNPT camp, particularly the managing editor of the radical daily Kayhan, also had close links to radicals in the Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC who vehemently opposed reforms and pursued repressive policies. By 2004 the Khatami government and the reformists had all but lost the nuclear debate to the pragmatic conservatives associated with the Executives of Construction, the traditional conservatives associated with the Islamic Coalition Party and Militant Clergy Society, and the radicals who went on to form the Islamic Developers Coalition, the so-called Iranian ‘neoconservatives’.98 What has happened under Ahmadinezhad is that the debate about regime security has emerged as one of the central defining features of the presidency. Paradoxically, as the opposition to Ahmadinezhad grew, his supporters began to redefine the concept of regime security and routinely referred to organizations such as the Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution as ‘anti-Islam’. This campaign was pursued vigorously by the news agencies Ansar News and Raja News, which reflected Ahmadinezhad’s own views on most issues. Significantly, even senior clerics with strong revolutionary track records, such as Grand Ayatollah Yusef Sane’i, have been attacked by supporters of Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi for siding with the Islamic Revolution Mojahidin Organization.99 In November 2007, President Ahmadinezhad accused opponents of his nuclear policy of being ‘traitors’. Only two days later, Iranian Intelligence Minister GholamHossein Mohseni-Ezhe’i accused Musavian of giving ‘information to foreigners, including the British embassy’, and of undermining ‘the country’s interests and security’. Mohseni-Ezhe’i also accused ‘influential people’ of supporting Musavian.100 Ahmadinezhad then began to lead the campaign against Musavian himself by calling for ‘the publication of the text of his conversations with foreigners’.101 Ahmadinezhad’s supporters, particularly in Ansar-e Hezbollah, accused Rafsanjani and Rowhani of interfering with the course of the investigations to ensure that Musavian would be acquitted.102 Musavian was found not guilty of the charges of espionage and ‘providing intelligence to foreigners’ and the decision was announced by a judiciary spokesman. However, Tehran chief prosecutor Sa’id Mortazavi, a close ally of the radicals, then brought the issue to a head by reversing the judicial decision and transferring the case from the security department of the prosecutor’s office to another department, arguing that procedures had been violated.103 Subsequently, the radicals continued their accusations against Musavian, and Khamenei’s representative in the IRGC, Mojtaba Zolnur, intervened in the case, stating that ‘certain people in


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the Expediency Council’ had tried to derail the course of the investigations. Zolnur, however, contended that Musavian would not be executed because he represented a certain political current and that if he went down he would take the rest of the members of that current with him.104 The radicals seemed to be determined to go beyond Musavian and target Rafsanjani and Rowhani.105 The threat to purge a significant crosssection of the state apparatus in this way led to a backlash in the domestic political arena where former presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani set aside their differences to join forces against Ahmadinezhad and his radical supporters in the run-up to the 2008 parliamentary elections. As early as 2006, Khatami had lambasted Ahmadinezhad for denying the Holocaust.106 However, Khatami has also defended Ahmadinezhad’s nuclear policies,107 indicating that support for the nuclear programme is broadly based across the political spectrum. In November, Khatami went so far as to call into question Ahmadinezhad’s and his allies’ commitment to the revolution, declaring: ‘Those who do not accept republicanism are not committed to the revolution’.108 Khatami also called for a direct dialogue with the US. However, his critics among the radicals and ‘neoconservatives’ attacked him for opposing Khomeini’s views.109 What distinguishes this bout of repression from the earlier ones is that this time around a number of powerful and prominent highranking former and current officials have been targeted simultaneously. Paradoxically, Ahmadinezhad might end up narrowing his power base in the process. Perhaps one reason why Ayatollah Khamenei has been wary of the Iranian President and his radical supporters is the radicals’ lack of support in the clerical establishment and the increasing likelihood of Iran’s diplomatic isolation as a result of their policies. Ahmadinezhad’s strongest supporter in the clerical establishment, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, was so anxious to demonstrate his loyalty to the supreme leader that he has likened support for Khamenei to support for monotheism.110 Khamenei, however, has been trying to balance the radicals against the reformists. He has called for the introduction of ‘reforms’ in Iranian theological seminaries.111 However, he has also pointed out the importance of ‘cultural engineering’.112 The policy of reforming the seminaries is undoubtedly a concession to the reformists who repeatedly complained about the long-term consequences of hard-line policies in the 1990s; some went so far as to argue that such policies would turn people against their religion. Khamenei’s pursuit of reform is also aimed at denying Iran’s regional rivals an opportunity to exploit domestic political tensions involving his religious opponents. Thus Khamenei combined his efforts to introduce religious reform with an effort to reach out to conservative Shi’ite clerics whom

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he sought to cultivate. Khamenei has also been preparing for the postSistani Iraq in the Shi’ite world, and has used his powers of patronage and financial assistance to recruit followers in Iraq and other parts of the Shi’ite world.113 However, in the medium to long term the tension between Iranian conservatives and radicals is likely to compel Khamenei to try to resolve the dispute between them one way or another. Since the advent of the Ahmadinezhad government Khamenei has increasingly tried either to devolve responsibility for settling such disputes to other institutions or to side with the conservatives on some issues and with the radicals on others. Khamenei’s formation of the Strategic Foreign Policy Coordination Council in summer 2006 is a case in point. After the formation of the council there were vast differences between various officials over the council’s responsibilities. While some contended that the council would have policy-making powers and seek to resolve differences between the Supreme National Security Council and the government, others argued that it would merely act as a think-tank.114 Since then sources close to the council have taken an anti-Ahmadinezhad position on most foreign policy issues, particularly relations with the US and Russia and policy towards the Middle East.115

NETWORK-CENTRIC POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY VACILLATION The conflict between Ahmadinezhad and his opponents, particularly Rafsanjani, was evident during the Lebanese conflict in the summer of 2006. While all the factions involved in the policy-making process in Iran favoured a degree of escalation of the conflict, hoping that this would enable Iran to gain policy leverage vis-à-vis the US, Israel and the EU, they disagreed sharply over the degree. Rafsanjani favoured an early settlement through mediation, whereas Ahmadinezhad supported escalation.116 Ayatollah Khamenei adopted a position between the two, during the crisis maintaining a channel of communication with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia through Ali Larijani.117 The conflict continued unabated and resurfaced during Iran’s seizure of British Royal Marines and sailors in March 2007. The evidence suggests that Ahmadinezhad sought to prolong the crisis by rejecting the UK’s diplomatic overtures,118 presumably in the hope of settling the internal dispute over strategy in his favour. However, Ali Larijani undermined Ahmadinezhad’s efforts when he entered into talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald.119 Ahmadinezhad


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sought to recover his position by meeting the hostages and awarding a medal to the Iranian commander who ordered their seizure.120 Yet another issue which divided the Ahmadinezhad government and reformist networks was the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear programme. The estimate’s conclusion that the Iranian nuclear weapons’ design programme had stopped in 2003 was seized upon by Ahmadinezhad as ‘a victory’ for Iran. Ahmadinezhad’s opponents, including those who were close to the Strategic Foreign Policy Coordination Council, however, sought to portray the NIE as a victory for the Khatami government.121 The key issue remained the connection between Iran’s nuclear programme and its quest for regional paramountcy. Until autumn 2007, the Ahmadinezhad government had sought to de-emphasize the linkage between the Iranian nuclear programme and regional security guarantees while seeking to exploit what it saw as declining US influence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even Larijani had ruled out giving up uranium enrichment for a US security guarantee. The most important objective of Iranian foreign policy was to exploit the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to establish Iran as the predominant power in the region. In that context the role of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states was of enormous significance to Iranian policy-makers. Iran’s relations with GCC states was also a major point of disagreement between the radicals and the conservative and centre-right groups. This disagreement surfaced after President Ahmadinezhad’s visit to Qatar to address a meeting of GCC leaders in December 2007.122 Given the fact that the GCC had been set up in 1981 to counter the policies of the Iranian regime,123 the Khatami government had done much to improve relations with the GCC states through its pursuit of détente.124 However, the key issue for Iran before and after the Khatami government was always regional security. Iran and the GCC states disagreed sharply over the role of the US in the region. Under Khatami such differences could be ignored because there was hope that Iran would be able to improve its relations with the US. Under Ahmadinezhad, however, the situation was vastly different. Firstly, the Iranian government was a radical force in the region. Secondly, it pursued a much more aggressive nuclear policy; and thirdly, it rejected a Saudi offer to have uranium enriched on the territory of a neutral country such as Switzerland.125 Moreover, the armed forces of GCC states were preparing themselves for the possibility of war between the US and Iran.126 Since 2005 the Saudi government had been steadily improving its relations with Israel, whereas the Ahmadinezhad government had alienated much of the international community through its denial of the Holocaust and

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calls for Israel’s extinction. In fact, Ahmadinezhad had sought to justify his statements on the Holocaust at the meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in December 2005 by contending that there was a danger that conservative Arab states would normalize their relations with Israel and that, therefore, Iran had to act to derail that process.127 Prior to the Annapolis conference on the Arab–Israeli peace process, Ahmadinezhad spoke to King Abdullah and said that he wished Saudi Arabia was not associated with the process. According to Kayhan, King Abdullah assured Ahmadinezhad that Saudi Arabia would never recognize Israel.128 Earlier, the government and its supporters had increased the political pressure on Bahrain, the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet. Hoseyn Shari’atmadari, one of Ahmadinezhad’s most prominent supporters and the managing editor of Kayhan, which has close ties to the radicals in the Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, wrote in July 2007 that Bahrain should be returned to Iran.129 Shari’atmadari’s article led to major official and unofficial protests in Bahrain.130 An official at the Iranian embassy in Bahrain told the Bahraini periodical Al-Waqt that Shari’atmadari’s statements were ‘unacceptable . . . Iran respects Bahrain’s sovereignty and independence’, and its ‘Arab’ identity.131 A senior Foreign Ministry official, Javid Ghorban Oghli, posted an article on the Batztab website, supporting the views of former C-in-C of the IRGC, Mohsen Reza’i and highly critical of the government. He argued that a newspaper ‘associated with the supreme leader’ must not act to cause tensions in Iran’s foreign relations.132 Despite such protests, Shari’atmadari repeated his statements. He claimed that his position represented that of ‘the majority of the Iranian people’ and even that of ‘the people in Bahrain’.133 Moreover, in an editorial, Shari’atmadari wrote that there were ‘indisputable official documents’ demonstrating that Bahrain was ‘a province of Iran’, ‘several decades ago’, and that it had been separated from Iran because of ‘a conspiracy by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi [the Shah] and the American and British governments’.134 Moreover, Kayhan interviewed members of the Basij Resistance Force who claimed that Bahrain was part of Iran.135 Relations between Iran and Bahrain deteriorated further in November when the Bahraini Crown Prince, Salman bin-Hamad al-Khalifa, said that Iran was developing either a nuclear bomb or the capability for it. This was the strongest statement so far by a GCC official on the Iranian nuclear programme.136 It was against this background that Ahmadinezhad visited Bahrain in November. Despite claims to the contrary, the visit achieved little in terms of realigning the foreign policy of Bahrain. Critics of the Iranian government’s policy, including those who were close to


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the Strategic Foreign Policy Coordination Council, noted that Bahrain had asked for a special partnership with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).137 However, the government continued its effort to bring about the realignment of the foreign policies of the GCC states and to encourage them to distance themselves from the US. Ahmadinezhad’s visit to Doha to address a meeting of GCC leaders was portrayed as a major diplomatic victory. Some of Ahmadinezhad’s supporters went so far as to characterize the visit as a counter-attack launched in response to Annapolis.138 At the Doha meeting Ahmadinezhad called for joint investment projects, free trade, the formation of a regional security pact and an organization for security cooperation.139 Some Iranian ‘neoconservatives’ also contended that there had been an improvement in Iran’s relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) because Ahmadinezhad and the UAE president had discussed the three disputed islands of the Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa at a private meeting.140 Critics of Ahmadinezhad’s diplomacy, particularly those who were close to Rafsanjani and Rowhani, noted that in their final communiqué, the GCC states had said that the three islands belonged to the UAE. They also noted that claims made by Ahmadinezhad’s supporters that the visit to Doha had been a historic one were false because other Iranian presidents had also been invited to attend GCC meetings, but had refused to do so because they had been informed about clauses in the final communiqués. In effect, they accused Ahmadinezhad of sacrificing Iranian national interests for the sake of diplomatic showmanship.141 Ahmadinezhad was also invited to perform hajj rites in Saudi Arabia. Again, his government sought to portray his pilgrimage as a historic visit because this was the first time an Iranian president had been invited by a Saudi king to perform hajj rites in Mecca.142 During the visit, Ahmadinezhad held extensive discussions with King Abdullah and they discussed the strengthening of bilateral relations within the framework provided by organizations such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the GCC.143 After his meeting, President Ahmadinezhad described relations between the two countries as ‘friendly’.144 However, during his visit to Saudi Arabia, Ahmadinezhad also met Hezbollah representative Shaykh Muhammad Yazbak and said: ‘We are waiting for the day when the flag of imperialists falls down’.145 Such pronouncements showed why relations between Iran and the GCC states were still tense. Ahmadinezhad’s visit to Iraq in early March 2008 was seen as a major turning-point in Iran’s relations with Iraq even by Ahmadinezhad’s opponents.146 However, Iran’s relations with Iraq are likely to be as much the product of its relations with the US and regional powers such as Saudi Arabia as of Iranian policy.

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THE AHMADINEZHAD PRESIDENCY’S LEGACY Nothing better exemplifies the failure of Iranian ‘neoconservatives’ than their repeated failure to improve the Iranian economy. During the presidential elections of 2005 Ahmadinezhad campaigned on a platform of redistributing wealth and improving the standard of living of the poor. However, despite high oil prices, his government has had to draw upon the strategic reserve fund to finance its development programmes. Share prices on the Tehran Stock Exchange fell by 7 per cent upon his election. Later the value of stocks plummeted by another 20 per cent.147 Ahmadinezhad replaced the top managers of Iranian banks, accusing them of ignoring those on lower incomes.148 The government’s profligacy also caused inflationary pressures. Iran’s income from the export of oil was $50 billion in the year ending 20 March 2006 and was approximately $60 billion in the following year.149 However, he withdrew $35.3 billion from the oil reserve fund in the first year of his presidency and another $43 billion in the second.150 His policies caused grave concern among professional economists: 50 professors of economics wrote a joint letter to the Iranian President warning him of the inflationary consequences of his policies.151 The government also alienated Iranian labourers. Paradoxically, the government that had chanted more slogans in support of the poor than any other in recent history alienated the poor more than its predecessors. It ordered a major crackdown on Iran’s fledgling labour movement and imprisoned one of its most prominent leaders, Mansur Osanlu, in the maximum security Evin Prison.152 This was accompanied by a crackdown on Internet cafes,153 pervasive censorship154 and arrests of women’s rights activists.155 Despite his numerous statements claiming that he was committed to advancing religious values, his government has also alienated a significant cross-section of the conservative clerical establishment and even the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. His presidency has also demonstrated that in Iran the connection between politics and radical theology is very complex. For example, according to his adviser on clerical issues, Saqa’i-Biria, his decision to allow women to go to sports stadia to watch men’s games was made for political reasons and to pre-empt US criticisms of human rights violations in Iran, but it exposed him to criticism from conservative clerics.156 The government’s colossal mismanagement of the economy and its repeated failure to silence its critics led the President and his supporters to adopt a much narrower definition of who was in the revolutionary family. In the 1990s Khamenei and Rafsanjani had cooperated with one another to exclude the 1980s radicals from the political process. The


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‘neoconservatives’, however, linked foreign and domestic policies even more closely to one another than did the 1980s radicals. They castigated such figures as former presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani as opponents of the state. The Iranian revolution has not entered its Thermidorian phase yet. If anything, Ahmadinezhad and his allies seem determined to carry out yet another revolutionary purge to clarify the regime’s supporters and opponents. Moreover, Ahmadinezhad has sought to exploit the nuclear issue, on which there is broad consensus among the country’s decision-makers, to redefine the parameters of acceptable political behaviour. However, he has failed to do so for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is only consensus on the lowest common denominator, namely Iran’s right to possess nuclear technology. Ahmadinezhad’s dispute with Larijani and his characterization of his opponents as ‘traitors’ indicate that there is no consensus on policy or strategy. Secondly, Ahmadinezhad’s political and economic failures have already made his relationship with Khamenei difficult. Thirdly, more than any other president he has demonstrated that the Iranian state has failed to articulate a coherent concept of raison d’état. During the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, the Iranian ‘neoconservatives’ had repeatedly accused the President of neglecting economic issues to focus on promoting democracy. They accused the Khatami government and the reformists of ignoring the values of the revolution and the interests of the ‘dispossessed’.157 Ahmadinezhad was elected on a post-Islamist and populist platform, particularly with regard to economic issues. Faced with the failure of all of his policies, he has resorted to sloganeering against his opponents and has called on the people to ‘tighten their belts’ in expectation of greater economic hardship.158 The government has continued to pursue a radical anti-Israeli policy despite reports that Israel might be contemplating unilateral military action against Iran.159 Indeed, Ahmadinezhad has predicted the ‘collapse’ of Israel160 and the ‘disintegration’ of the global ‘unipolar order’.161 However, as far as supreme leader Khamenei is concerned, the key issue remains the assessment of the risks associated with Ahmadinezhad’s policies. Despite Khamenei’s public verbal support for Ahmadinezhad, it is clear that Ahmadinezhad’s opponents, particularly among the traditional conservatives, have managed to convince Khamenei that the President’s behaviour will narrow the power base of the state. The conservatives are rapidly emerging as Ahmadinezhad’s main rivals in various state institutions, including the Supreme National Security Council. By narrowing the circle of pro-state forces, Ahmadinezhad and his allies drive ‘pragmatic conservatives’, reformists and dissidents towards one another. This was clearly demonstrated during the Majlis elections of March 2008 when the

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radicals used their influence over the Guardian Council to disqualify a large number of reformist candidates. The power of informal networks was demonstrated by the fact that a number of candidates stood for different political groups.162 A comprehensive analysis of the Majlis elections is well beyond the scope of this chapter. However, suffice it to say that the elections have not resolved the fundamental disagreements over policy between the conservatives led by Larijani and the radicals led by Ahmadinezhad.163 Moreover, the radicals’ decision to disqualify and prevent a large number of reformists from even participating in the elections led to a major clash between the radicals and Khomeini’s grandson and granddaughter.164 This, in turn, raised the issue of whether Ahmadinezhad and his radical supporters were seeking to preserve Khomeini’s legacy or trying to define their own. In the final analysis, the Ahmadinezhad presidency is testimony to the power of informal networks in Iranian politics.

NOTES *

1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

The editors would like to thank the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom for permission to reprint this material. The views expressed in this chapter are entirely and solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official thinking and policy either of Her Majesty’s Government or of the Ministry of Defence. See, for example, Abbas William Samii (2004), ‘Order out of chaos: the mad, mad world of Iranian foreign policy’, Hoover Digest, 3, 3–5; Abbas William Samii (2006), ‘The Iranian nuclear issue and informal networks’, Naval War College Review, 1 January, 11–19. On this point see Hesham Sallam, Andrew Mandelbaum and Robert Grace (2007), ‘Who Rules Ahmadinejad’s Iran?’, United States Institute of Peace Briefing, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, April. On authoritarianism and party politics see Jason Brownlee (2007), Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. On the mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution see Kenneth Katzman (1992), The Warriors of Islam: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Boulder, CO: Westview Press; Ali Rahnema and Farhard Nomani (1990), The Secular Miracle: Religion, Politics and Economic Policy in Iran, London, UK and New Jersey, USA: Zed Books. Babak Ganji (2006), Politics of Confrontation: The Foreign Policy of the USA and Revolutionary Iran, London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 152–6, 230–36. See Ganji, Politics of Confrontation, pp. 154–6. On this point see Massoumeh Ebtekar, as told to Fred A. Reed (2000), Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story of the 1979 US Embassy Capture, Burnaby, BC, Canada: Talon Books. See Anoushiravan Ehteshami (1995), After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic, London: Routledge. W. Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic, Washington, DC: Institute for Near Eastern Policy, pp. 47–55, 92–8. For a detailed account of the network’s activities before the revolution see Baqer Moin (1999), Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah, London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 160–81. On the application of dual containment to the Iranian case see Robert S. Litwak (2000), Rogue States and US Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War,


12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

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Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 158–97. See Ali M. Ansari (2006), Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change, London, Chatham House, pp. 70–81. Buchta, Who Rules Iran?, p. 52. See also Moin, Khomeini, pp. 277–81. See Mehdi Moslem (2002), Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran, New York: Syracuse University Press, p. 41. See Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, p. 255. On clerical opposition to Khamenei see Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Richard Tapper (2006), Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform, London: I.B. Tauris. On Hajjarian’s politics see Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, pp. 219–22. Ibid., pp. 127–8, 150–52, 198–207. See Iranian daily Nowruz, 6 June 2001, in ibid., appendix 1, ‘A crisis every nine days: Khatami’s first term’. See Buchta, Who Rules Iran?, pp. 94–7. For Ayatollah Taheri’s resignation see Nowruz, 10 July 2002, BBC Monitoring. See also Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, Appendix II, ‘Ayatollah Taheri’s resignation letter’, pp. 297–301. See Mehdi Khalaji (2006), The Last Marja: Sistani and the End of Traditional Religious Authority in Shiism, Policy Focus #59, Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, September. On this point see Amir Taheri (2006), ‘Schism in Iran’, New York Post, 22 October; Golnaz Esfandiari (2006), ‘Iran: outspoken Ayatollah alleges official persecution’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 6 October; B. Ganji (2007), ‘Iranian strategy: factionalism and leadership politics’, Middle East Series 07/06, Watchfield, UK: Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. See Rahnema and Nomani, The Secular Miracle; David Menashri (1990), Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, New York: Homes & Meier Publishers. On the ‘neo-conservatives’ see Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri (2007), Iran and the Rise of its Neoconservatives, London, UK and New York, USA: I.B. Tauris. Ibid., pp. 175–81. See Akbar Ganji, at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/ dv/akbarganji/akbarganjicv.pdf, Aftab News Agency, 20 July 2005 for a backgrounder; and Babak Ganji (2005), President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad: Turning Point in Iranian Politics and Strategy?, Camberley: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. See ‘Khamenei is to blame if I die, hospitalized journalist Akbar Ganji’, Iran Emrooz web site, 24 July 2005, BBC Monitoring. See ‘Akbar Ganji’, at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/docu ments/dv/akbarganji/akbarganjicv.pdf; Golnaz Esfandiari (2006), ‘Iran: journalist threatens mass hunger strike to free political prisoners’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 3 July; Anne Penketh and Jerome Taylor (2006), ‘Dissident Iranian leads hunger strike for political prisoners’, Independent, 12 July. See ‘Bush calls for Ganji’s release’, Voice of America, 31 July 2005. See Akbar Ganji (2007), ‘Why Iran’s democrats shun aid’, Washington Post, 26 October. On Reyshahri see Buchta, Who Rules Iran?, p. 19. See ibid., p. 166. For a detailed account see ibid., pp. 164–8. Ibid., pp. 168–9. See Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, pp. 177–96. See Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr (2006), Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 151–2.

128 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks On Qalibaf see Kasra Naji (2007), Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader, London: I.B. Tauris, p. 67. See ibid., pp. 66–75. Ibid., pp. 75–6. Babak Ganji (2005), Civil–Military Relations, State Strategies and Presidential Elections in Iran, Camberley: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. See Ehteshami, After Khomeini. On the kaleidoscopic nature of Iranian postrevolutionary politics see Daniel Brumberg (2001), Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran, Chicago, IL, USA and London, UK: University of Chicago Press. See Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, pp. 219–22. On the assassination attempt against Hajjarian, see Geneive Abdo (2000), ‘Khatami ally is shot and wounded in Tehran attack’, International Herald Tribune, 13 March. On factional realignment during the 2005 presidential elections see Babak Ganji (2005), President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad: Turning Point in Iranian Politics and Strategy?, Camberley: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom; Babak Ganji (2007), Iranian Strategy: Factionalism and Leadership Politics, Watchfield, Swindon: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. On Hojjatieh in the 1980s see D. Menashri (1990), Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution, New York: Holmes & Meier; Nikola B. Schahgaldian (1989), The Clerical Establishment in Iran, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. See Bill Samii (2006), ‘Iran: resurgence of religio-political society raises concerns’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 11 July; Bill Samii (2006), ‘Iran: early race for clerical assembly gets bitter’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 22 September. On Hojjatieh and Mesbah-Yazdi see Amir Taheri (2006), ‘Iran: the other clock is ticking’, Asharq al-Awsat, 10 February; Bill Samii (2006), ‘Iran: resurgence of religiopolitical society raises concerns’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 11 July. See Buchta, Who Rules Iran?, pp. 162, 168. For a detailed account of Mesbah-Yazdi’s views and Ahmadinezhad’s alliance with Mesbah-Yazdi see Naji, Ahmadinejad, pp. 98–105. See Bill Samii (2006), ‘Iran: early race for clerical assembly gets bitter’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 22 September. See Babak Ganji, President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad. See Babak Ganji, Iranian Strategy. See ‘Plug pulled on moderate Iranian satellite TV’, Zest Media, 2 January 2006. See Etemad-e Melli, 31 December 2007. On Musavi Tabrizi see Emrooz website, 14 January 2000, BBC Monitoring and ‘Iran: Leadership Assembly of Experts’ political role disputed’, 3 September 2001, BBC Monitoring. See also Babak Ganji (2005), Main Currents in Iranian Strategy Since 9/11, Camberley: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. On post-Islamism see Asef Bayat (2007), Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 49–135. On the blogosphere see the reviews of the book by A. Srebeny and G. Khiabany (2008), Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran, London, UK and New York, USA: I.B. Tauris. See Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr (2005), ‘The conservative wave rolls on’, Journal of Democracy, 16 (4), 9–22. See Ganji, Civil–Military Relations, State Strategies and Presidential Elections in Iran. See ‘Tehran bookshop-cafes closed in new move against dissent’, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, 30 October 2007; Faraj Sarkouhi (2007), ‘Book censorship the rule, not the exception’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 26 November. See Mahboubeh Niknahad (2007), ‘Sudden change in leadership of revolutionary


61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

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guards’, Roozonline, 3 September; Entekhab, 2 September 2007. See also Maziar Radmanesh (2007), ‘Calm or storm under Commander Jafari?’, Roozonline, 17 September. Maziar Radmanesh (2007), ‘Calm or storm under Commander Jafari?’, Roozonline, 17 September. Roozonline, 3 September 2007. See Vahid Sepehri (2007), ‘New commander takes over revolutionary guards’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 4 September. See ‘IRGC safeguards dignity of Islamic Revolution’, Office of the Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei, 9 September 2007. See Raja News, 2 September 2007. See ‘New IRGC commander: asymmetric warfare is our strategy for dealing with enemy’s considerable capabilities: we aspire to ballistic missile superiority’, Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series, No. 1718, 19 September 2007. See Najmeh Bozorgmehr (2007), ‘Iran’s elite military force fears security threat from within’, The Financial Times, 28 December. See Entekhab, 2 September 2007. Ibid. See ‘Security Council imposes sanctions on Iran for failure to halt uranium enrichment, unanimously adopting Resolution 1737’, Department of Public Information, News and Media Division, New York, Security Council, 5612th Meeting (AM), 23 December 2006. See Iranian Students News Agency, 5 September 2006. See Naji, Ahmadinejad, p. 53. For the ‘confessions’ see ‘US, Canadian citizens imprisoned in Iran “confess” on Iranian TV’, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Special Dispatch Series, No. 1664, 25 July 2007. See ‘Radio Farda’s Parnaz Azima leaves Iran’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 18 September 2007. On Larijani’s address see Entekhab, 4 September 2007. See Aftab News Agency’s review of the coverage of Rafsanjani’s election, Aftab News Agency, 5 August 2007. See Khamenei’s speech at a meeting with members of the Assembly of Experts, Office of the Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei, 6 September 2007. See Ansar News, 31 October 2007. See ‘Larijani tries to resign for the 5th time’, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 21 May 2007; quoted by Arms Control Wonk, 22 May 2007, http://www.armscontrolwonk.com. Iranian Diplomacy, 18 November 2007. See also ‘Iran president sends “acrimonious” letter to France’s Sarkozy’, International Herald Tribune, 16 November 2007. See Babak Ganji (2005), Iranian Nuclear Politics: The International Dimensions, Watchfield, Swindon: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. See Babak Ganji (2006), A Shi’i Enclave, Iranian Policy Towards Iraq, Camberley: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. See Iranian Diplomacy, 24 October 2007. On this point see the account of Ali Larijani’s ‘family trip’ to Egypt by Iranian Diplomacy, 28 December 2007. See ‘Sarkozy offers French nuclear help to Egypt’, Reuters, 28 December 2007. See also the account of Sarkozy’s visit to Egypt by the journal Iranian Diplomacy, 31 December 2007. See Iranian Students News Agency, 31 December 2007. See Ahmadinezhad’s speech at a gathering of academics, Ansar News, 2 September 2007, at http://www.ansarnews.com/, Iranian Students News Agency, 2 September 2007. See also ‘Ahmadinejad: maths proves US won’t attack’, Agence France-Presse,

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88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks Australian, 3 September 2007; ‘Ahmadinejad lashes out at Iran “nuclear informers”’, Turkish Press, 2 September 2007, turkishPress.com; Ansar News, 3 September 2007. See also A. Goodman (2007), Asymmetric Strategies in the Middle East, Shrivenham: Advanced Research and Assessment Group, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. See Ansar News, accessed 20 August 2007, www.ansarnews.com. See also the coverage of the Musavian case by the pro-Ahmadinezhad website, Raja News, particularly the article by Abbas Salimi-Namin, Raja News, 19 August 2007. See Mohammad Javad Larijani’s interview with Iranian Diplomacy, 16 July 2007. See Ali Akbar Velayati’s interview with Iranian Diplomacy, 22 October 2007. See particularly Ansar News, Raja News and the daily, Kayhan’s coverage of Larijani’s resignation. See Iranian Diplomacy, 24 October 2007. See Hezbollah’s statement on strategic issue on its website. Ibid. See Rowhani’s interview with the daily, Jam-e Jam, 17 December 2007. On Karrubi’s allegations see B. Ganji (2005), President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad: Turning-Point in Iranian Politics and Strategy?, Watchfield, Swindon: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. Ganji, Iranian Strategy: Factionalism and Leadership Politics. On this point see Babak Ganji, Conservative Factionalism and Iranian Nuclear Strategy. See Parto Sokhan, 8 December 2007. See Robert Tait (2007), ‘Iranian hardliners accuse former nuclear negotiator of leaking secrets to UK embassy’, Guardian, 15 November. See Raja News, 29 November 2007. See Ansar News, 2 December 2007. See Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Newsline, Southwestern Asia and the Middle East, 30 November 2007, 11 (221). See also Raja News, 29 November 2007. On Zolnur’s comments see Ansar News, 15 December 2007. Ansar News, 2 December 2007, 15 December 2007. See ‘Khatami attacks Ahmadinejad over Holocaust’, Agence France-Press, Khaleej Times, 1 March 2006. See David R. Sands (2006), ‘Khatami defends Ahmadinejad, Iran’s nuke plans: ex-president warns against use of force, denies rights curbed’, Washington Times, 8 September. See the report on Mohammad Khatami’s speech in Mashhad, Iranian Students News Agency, 23 November 2007. See Kayhan, 4 December 2007. See Ansar News, 20 December 2007. See ‘Supreme Leader urges reforms at seminaries’, Islamic Republic News Agency, 30 November 2007. See Iranian Students News Agency, 8 December 2007. See Khalaji, The Last Marja. Bill Samii, ‘Iran: new foreign policy council could curtail Ahmadinejad’s power’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 29 June 2006; Babak Ganji, Iranian Strategy: Factionalism and Leadership Politics. The e-journal Iranian Diplomacy reflects the views of those who are close to Sadeq Kharrazi, the nephew of former Iranian Foreign Minister and the current chairman of the Strategic Foreign Policy Coordination Council Kamal Kharrazi. See Babak Ganji (2006), Iran and Israel: Asymmetric Warfare and Regional Strategy, Watchfield, Swindon: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom; Babak Ganji (2007), Iranian Strategy: Factionalism and Leadership Politics, Partowe Sokhan, Watchfield, Swindon: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, 23 August.

Iran: informal networks and leadership politics 117. 118. 119.

120. 121. 122. 123.

124. 125.

126. 127.

128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139.

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See Y. Mansharof and A. Savyon (2007), ‘Signs of a possible rift in the Iranian leadership on the nuclear issue’, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Inquiry and Analysis Series No. 391, 20 September. See Julian Borger (2007), ‘Britain stumbles in diplomatic dance with Iran’, Guardian Unlimited, 30 March; Ned Temko, Mark Townsend and Jason Burke (2007), ‘Iran snubs UK olive branch’, Observer, 1 April. See Mark Deen and Caroline Alexander (2007), ‘UK has contact with Iran’s Larijani to start talks’, Bloomberg, 4 April; ‘Iran lauds Britain’s “change of tone” in detainee standoff’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 4 April 2007; David Clarke (2007), ‘Diplomacy in Iran row may help in nuclear stand-off’, Reuters, 6 April. Angus McDowall and Colin Brown (2007), ‘Both sides claim victory as Iran releases hostages’, Independent, 5 April. See Iranian Diplomacy, 12 December 2007. See the strongly pro-Ahmadinezhad news agency, Ansar News’s response to criticism of Ahmadinezhad’s visit to Doha, accessed 15 December 2007. Ibid. On the GCC see R.K. Ramazani (1988), The Gulf Cooperation Council: Record and Analysis, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press; Erik R. Peterson (1988), The Gulf Cooperation Council: Search for Unity in a Dynamic Region, Boulder, CO: Westview Press; M.H. Ansari (1999), ‘Security in the Persian Gulf: the evolution of a concept’, Strategic Analysis, 23 (6), 32–50. See R.K. Ramazani (1908), ‘The emerging Arab–Iranian rapprochement: towards an integrated US policy in the Middle East?’, Middle East Policy, 1, 10–25. See ‘Saudi offers deal to end Iran nuclear stand-off’, The Times, 1 November 2007; ‘Iran eyes nuclear options abroad’, BBC News, 18 November 2007; Tony Karon (2007), ‘Iran nukes: still room for diplomacy’, Time, 21 November; ‘Tehran terms uranium enrichment abroad “unacceptable”’, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 3 November 2007; ‘Acceptance of Saudi nuclear proposal subject to conditions: Lawmaker’, Fars News Agency, Tehran Times, 4 November 2007; ‘Uranium enrichment consortium must be based in Iran – MPs’, Ria Novosti, 3 November 2007; ‘King Abdullah urges Tehran not to exacerbate confrontation with the West’, Asia News, 9 November, 2007. See ‘Gulf armies ready for possibility of US–Iran war: Saudi’, Agence France-Presse, 7 November 2007. On this point see Ganji, Iran and Israel. On general Iranian opposition to a rapprochement between Israel and conservative Arab states see Trita Parsi (2007), Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US, New Haven, CT, USA and London, UK: Yale University Press. Kayhan, 28 November 2007. Kayhan, 9 July 2007. By Y. Mansharof and I. Rapoport (2007), ‘Tension in Iran–Bahrain relations after Kayhan editor claims Bahrain is inseparable part of Iran’, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Inquiry and Analysis Series, No. 379, 3 August. Ibid. Ibid., Baztab, 16 July 2007. Ibid., Iranian Students News Agency, 13 July 2007. Ibid., Kayhan, 15 July 2007. Ibid., Kayhan, 17 July 2007. See The Times, 2 November 2007; Breffni O’Rourke (2007), ‘Iran: Ahmadinejad’s Bahrain visit new piece in complex pattern’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 15 November. See Iranian Diplomacy, 9 December 2007. See Raja News, 4 December 2007. See also Kayhan, 4 December 2007. See Raja News, 4 December 2007. See also Kayhan, 4 December 2007. See also ‘Iran proposes Gulf security pact’, BBC News, 4 December 2007; and ‘Gulf states urge peace with Iran’, BBC News, 4 December 2007.

132 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146.

147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152.

153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks See Kayhan, 4 December 2007. See Aftab News Agency, 15 December 2007. See ‘Ahmadinejad invited to be pilgrim’, BBC News, 13 December 2007. See Iranian Diplomacy, 22 December 2007. See also ‘Abdullah, Ahmadinejad hold wide-ranging talks’, Arab News, 21 December 2007. See Iranian Diplomacy, 22 December 2007. See the account of Ahmadinezhad’s meetings in Saudi Arabia by Iranian Diplomacy, 22 December 2007. See for example the coverage of the visit by the journal Iranian Diplomacy, which has been consistently critical of the Ahmadinezhad government’s foreign policy. For international coverage see for example, ‘Four kisses, then the band played: the day former foes became friends’, The Times, 3 March 2008; ‘Ahmadinejad in landmark Iraq visit’, Al Jazeera English, 2 March 2008; ‘Ahmadinejad: “major powers” should quit Iraq’, MSNBC, Associated Press, 3 March 2008; ‘Ahmadinejad ends visit, hails Iraq ties’, Xinhua, China Daily, 4 March 2008. See Naji, Ahmadinejad, pp. 229–30 for a brief account of the impact of Ahmadinezhad’s presidency on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Ibid., p. 230. Ibid., p. 232. Ibid., p. 233. Ibid., pp. 232–3. See Golnaz Esfandiari (2007), ‘Profile: Iranian union leader Mansur Osanlu’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 12 July; Breffni O’Rourke (2007), ‘Iran: international unions condemn treatment of jailed activist’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 19 October. See Farangis Najibullah (2007), ‘Internet cafes shut down in drive against un-islamic behavior’ Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 18 December. See ‘Tehran bookshop-cafes closed in new move against dissent’, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, 30 October 2007; Faraj Sarkouhi (2007), ‘Book censorship the rule, not the exception’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 26 November. See for example ‘Iran: suspend heavy sentence for women’s right activist’, Human Rights Watch, 10 November 2007; ‘Iran: release women’s rights activists immediately’, Human Rights Watch, 17 December 2007. See Sepideh Abdi (2007), ‘Will Ahmadinejad travel to Qom?’, Roozonline, 12 February. Ibid. See ‘Iranians urged to tighten belts’, Agence France-Presse, The Times, 5 November, 2007. See ‘Ex-CIA official: Israel will attack Iran on its own’, Jerusalem Post, 21 December 2007. See ‘Iran leader believes Israel will soon collapse’, Reuters, 3 January 2007; Peter Kenyon (2007), ‘Ahmadinejad: Mideast peace talks a failure’, National Public Radio, 30 November. See Ahmadinezhad’s comments at his meeting with the new Chinese ambassador to Iran, Iranian Students News Agency, 23 December 2007. See for example, Jon Leyne (2008), ‘Iran bans make for flat election’, BBC News, 13 March. See ‘Extra: Larijani calls on pro-Ahmadinejad camp to amend policies’, DPA, 15 March 2008. See for example Omid Memarian (2008), ‘Khomeini’s granddaughter “The government suffers from delusions”’, IPS News, 17 March.

6.

How al-Qaeda lost Iraq* Andrew Phillips

Al Qaeda in Iraq has become a hand that destroys the Sunnis. Many Sunnis have been killed by them. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a source of corruption . . . they always direct their weapons at innocent civilians.1 We helped them to unite against us . . . The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise, or conduct our operations.2

In February 2008, the US military released extracts from two intercepted letters purportedly written by al-Qaeda field commanders operating respectively in Balad, north of Baghdad, and in Anbar province in western Iraq. Bemoaning the recent split between al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its erstwhile Sunni hosts, the first document recounts how Emir Abu-Tariq’s force of 600 operating in Balad was reduced to fewer than 20 in the face of a combined onslaught by Coalition troops and the tribal militias of the newly formed Awakening movement (Fletcher 2008). The second document echoes similarly bleak sentiments, with an unnamed al-Qaeda emir describing the organization as being in a state of ‘extraordinary crisis’ following the anti-al-Qaeda uprising of tribal militias in Anbar (Fletcher 2008). The timing of the documents’ release was undoubtedly fortuitous for an administration seeking to bolster the American public’s flagging enthusiasm for the Iraq War. Nevertheless, the ‘extraordinary crisis’ within al-Qaeda that the documents describe has been emphatically borne out in the organization’s declining fortunes in Iraq since late 2006. Following its attempt to declare an Islamic State of Iraq in October of that year, AQI suffered the widespread defection of its local allies, as tribal leaders entered into a tactical alliance with Coalition forces to expel AQI from its former stronghold in Anbar province. So successful was the resulting marriage of Coalition firepower with local muscle that the ‘Anbar model’ was subsequently exported to other parts of the country, including the provinces of Diyala, Salah ad-Din, Babil and Baghdad (Kilcullen 2007). By early 2008, over 90 000 predominantly Sunni militiamen had been organized into ‘Sons of Iraq’ groups tasked with the responsibility of fighting AQI, leaving the latter both outgunned and increasingly more estranged from 133

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the local population (Simon 2008: 64). Expelled from its former sanctuaries, weakened by a declining inflow of foreign fighters to replenish its dwindling ranks, and beset by a combination of internal fragmentation and unrelenting external assaults, AQI found itself weaker in 2008 than at any other time over the course of the Iraqi jihad. In the following pages, I will advance an explanation for al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq, before drawing out the theoretical implications and policy lessons that this defeat presents for the conduct of the continuing struggle against jihadist terrorism. My purposes in undertaking this inquiry are twofold. Firstly, I seek to contribute to the ongoing debate concerning the best means of managing the jihadist terrorist threat to world order. More specifically, I aim to validate and build upon the insights of those who have argued that the goal of driving a wedge between jihadist terrorists and host communities in conflict-torn Muslim-majority societies should comprise a primary component of Western counterterrorism strategies (Cronin 2006: 42; Kilcullen 2005). Al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq remains inexplicable without reference to the profound dissonance in values and political objectives that separated it from its tribal hosts in Anbar province. The Coalition’s eventual success in leveraging off these differences revealed the underlying frailty of the initial alliance struck between AQI and local Sunni militants. More importantly, the Iraqi case suggests a key point of vulnerability in the jihadist movement that could potentially be exploited in other theatres where transnational jihadists have opportunistically sought to hijack local conflicts for the purposes of advancing their global Islamist agenda. My second and subsidiary purpose in this chapter is to consider briefly the pitfalls as well as the promises associated with cultivating indigenous irregulars as a means of advancing Western security objectives. Following the endorsement of an ‘indirect approach’ to the Long War in the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review (Quadrennial Defense Review 2006: 11), considerable attention has been paid to the potential value of harnessing indigenous irregulars as a resource for furthering Western counterterrorism and counter-insurgency goals (Arnold 2008; Cassidy 2006; Williams 2007a). My analysis of recent events in Iraq confirms the critically important role that local allies can play in eliminating terrorist sanctuaries and thus weakening the global jihadist movement. Nevertheless, while dividing jihadists from host communities and building alliances with the latter is vital if the jihadist terrorism is to be contained, recourse to such expedients also carries the risk of empowering local warlords and thus jeopardizing state-building projects in the longer term. For this reason, attempts to replicate the ‘Anbar model’ in other theatres must proceed with an awareness of both the necessity and the difficulty of effectively binding local allies to central governments through targeted material and political inducements once the terrorist threat has

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been subdued. With respect to Iraq, my analysis therefore counsels against premature triumphalism. While AQI may have been defeated, the challenge of effecting an enduring reconciliation between Iraq’s feuding factions – and thus establishing an enduring political foundation for the development of a strong, stable and inclusive Iraqi state – remains formidable. The ensuing discussion proceeds in three sections. The first is dedicated to an analysis of the origins of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the ideological imperatives that sustain it, and the nature of its strategic objectives. The second section surveys the history of AQI’s activities in Anbar province, detailing their initially positive reception by local Sunnis, the progressive deterioration of AQI’s relationship to its hosts, and the violent split between the two that culminated in AQI’s expulsion from the province. In the third section, I attempt to account for the causes of AQI’s defeat in Anbar. I argue that the proximate causes for this defeat lay in the overly ambitious nature of AQI’s strategic objectives, the inadequacy of the means through which it sought to advance these objectives, and the inappropriateness of the ways in which it attempted to harness local support for the advancement of its goals. Underlying this mismatch between ends, ways and means, however, was a much more profound contradiction between the revolutionary and global nature of al-Qaeda’s ambitions and the restorationist and essentially local aspirations of its Sunni tribal hosts. This contradiction in ambitions and world-views provided a potent source of friction between the tribal leadership and the jihadists, which Coalition forces were eventually able to exploit once AQI attempted coercively to impose its authority over its host communities. Critically, in this section of the discussion I will demonstrate that AQI’s alienation of its local benefactors in Iraq was far from a sui generis phenomenon. On the contrary, it replicated a pattern of estrangement and hostility that has long characterized al-Qaeda’s relations with host communities in different zones of conflict ranging from Bosnia to Afghanistan. This persistent tendency for global jihadists to alienate host communities carries important implications for counterterrorism and counter-insurgency operations that extend well beyond the Iraq theatre, and these are reviewed in the conclusion of the chapter.

WHO ARE AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ AND WHAT ARE THEIR OBJECTIVES? Ideological Complexion In order to understand the nature of AQI as an adversary, it is first necessary to sketch the key tenets of the Salafi jihadist ideology to which it

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subscribes. Salafi jihadism constitutes a contingent synthesis of two ideological trends that have ripened in the Islamic world in the post-colonial period. The first of these, Salafism, refers to a movement that calls for the moral regeneration of Muslim societies through a return to the pure form of Islam that was supposedly practised by the first companions (salaf) of the Prophet (International Crisis Group 2004: 2). While the majority of Salafis are non-violent, their commitment to propagating an unadulterated form of Islam places them in an antagonistic relationship both to the West (as the supposed avatar of a corrupt and immoral modernity) and also to the majority of the world’s Muslims. With respect to the former, Salafis regard Western societies as being vitally implicated in the Muslim world’s political and moral decline since the seventeenth century (Yates 2007: 132–3). Specifically, Salafis rail against the importation of Western concepts of secularism and nationalism into Muslim societies, regarding the first as licensing an estrangement of humanity from God, and the second as divisively privileging parochial forms of collective identity over the universal community of the faithful (the ummah) (Gerges 2005: 4–5; Mendelsohn 2005: 62–4). In addition to decrying these modern deviations, however, Salafis also condemn as un-Islamic local variations in religious practice, ranging from the worship of local saints through to Sufi meditative rituals, that are also held to exemplify Muslims’ moral decline (International Crisis Group 2004: 2–3). At its heart, Salafism thus enjoins a comprehensive project of moral and spiritual purification, entailing both the renunciation of Western cultural ‘pollutants’, as well as the purging of innovations in religious practice in Islamic societies that have accumulated in the centuries following the time of the Prophet. The observation that contemporary Muslims are trapped in a condition of jahiliyya, referring to the time of ignorance and depravity that preceded the coming of Islam, is a central tenet of Salafism (Yates 2007: 132). This claim is nevertheless far from exclusive to Salafism, but can be found also in the writings of Islamist luminaries such as Mawlana Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb, who have also inspired the global jihadist movement (Wiktorowicz 2005: 78–9). Critically, whereas many Salafis have adopted a posture of political quiescence in the face of a morally bankrupt modernity, Qutb and his successors identified the waging of violent jihad against Islam’s earthly enemies as every true Muslim’s highest religious duty. For jihadists, the obligation to wage war against God’s enemies is incumbent upon all believers, and constitutes the most vital and authentic expression of religious devotion (Wiktorowicz 2005: 80). Additionally, the waging of jihad is seen as being absolutely necessary if Muslims are to be liberated from an infidel-dominated world order (Yates 2007: 136). In jihadist lights, the cosmic struggle against unbelief and the temporal struggle


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against Western encroachment on Muslim territory are completely conjoined, providing jihadists with a licence for waging unrestricted warfare against both the West as well as the local ‘apostate’ regimes in the Muslim world that form a part of its apparatus of domination. Salafi jihadism, of which al-Qaeda forms the most notorious expression, combines the puritanical moralism of Salafism with the violent activism and existential bellicosity of jihadism. In the instance of al-Qaeda, these ideological commitments are wedded to a very specific grand strategy, which envisages as its end goal the overthrow of apostate regimes throughout the Muslim world, the destruction of the existing international order of sovereign states, and the unification of the ummah under a restored Caliphate (Mendelsohn 2005). It was in order to advance this objective that al-Qaeda shifted its attention in the 1990s from the ‘near enemy’ of local apostate regimes in the Greater Middle East towards a focus on the ‘far enemy’, in the form of the United States and its allies (Gerges 2005: 1).3 The attacks that culminated in 9/11 were intended to draw the West into an unwinnable military confrontation with the Islamic world, which would begin with its defeat in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and end with its military and diplomatic disengagement from the Middle East (Doran 2002: 23). Emboldened by their victory over the infidels and secure in their sanctuary in Afghanistan, the jihadists would then be in a strong position to overthrow weakened autocracies throughout the Muslim world (Doran 2002: 23). This would in turn pave the way for the Caliphate’s establishment and Muslims’ restoration to their rightful place of global preeminence. These expectations were initially confounded with the Taliban’s rapid overthrow in late 2001. However, the Bush administration’s subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003 revived jihadists’ fortunes, simultaneously opening up a new ‘field of jihad’, while also catalysing the emergence of an indigenous Salafi jihadist presence in the heart of the Islamic world. Al-Qaeda in Iraq: Social Composition and Strategic Outlook With the exception of the Kurdistan-based Ansar al-Islam, no significant Salafi jihadist presence existed in Iraq prior to the Coalition invasion in 2003. This observation aside, the slow atrophy of the Iraqi state from 1991 onwards had witnessed a dramatic growth in clandestine religious activity throughout the country, which extended to the development of an indigenous Salafist movement (Hashim 2006: 148). Following the collapse of Saddam’s regime, Iraqi Salafists began to mobilize more openly, with some participating in the insurgency from its earliest stages. This process of indigenous Salafi mobilization occurred in tandem with a rapid inflow of foreign jihadists over Iraq’s poorly guarded borders in the chaotic months

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following the fall of Baghdad (Deneslow 2008: 19). These foreign fighters included a substantial number of jihadists affiliated with al-Qaeda, and foreign fighters would come to play a key role in the insurgency, introducing tactical innovations such as suicide bombing and public beheadings, while also accelerating Iraqi jihadists’ ideological radicalization (Hashim 2004). Nevertheless, it would be wrong to conclude that al-Qaeda in Iraq constitutes a foreign entity in the country. On the contrary, while foreigners such as the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi played a vital catalytic role in establishing AQI, and continue to occupy key leadership positions within the organization, informed estimates suggest that Iraqis constitute over 90 per cent of AQI’s membership (Hoffman 2007: 326). AQI should thus be regarded as a hybrid political entity incorporating both foreign and local elements, and one that furthermore constitutes merely one part of a broad and fractious insurgency. AQI’s hybrid origins can be discerned also in its strategic outlook, which reflects both the local sectarian anxieties of Iraq’s Sunni minority as well as al-Qaeda’s universalist aspirations to establish a transnational Caliphate. Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s origins lay with the establishment of the jihadist group Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A seasoned jihadist who had previously associated with Ansar al-Islam following his retreat from Afghanistan in late 2001 (Hashim 2006: 143), Zarqawi immediately recognized the opportunities for jihad presented by the Coalition’s invasion of Iraq, and quickly became notorious for his penchant for extreme blood-letting, including his alleged personal involvement in the public beheading of Western hostages (Byman and Pollack 2008: 60). In 2004, Zarqawi renamed his organization al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and formally pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. For Zarqawi, identification with the al-Qaeda ‘brand’ carried with it both the promise of increased notoriety as well as increased access to external sponsorship (Fishman 2006: 21). Equally, for the senior al-Qaeda leadership in hiding along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, affiliation with Zarqawi ensured a visible al-Qaeda presence in the world’s most prominent jihadist battlefield (Fishman 2006: 21). The alliance between al-Qaeda and Zarqawi was plagued by disagreements over strategy and tactics, with the former presciently decrying Zarqawi for alienating Muslim public opinion through his routine resort to the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians (Wright 2005). Nevertheless, the alliance was too valuable to both parties for either of them to consider abandoning it, and it has endured without serious challenge after Zarqawi’s death in 2007. AQI’s strategic objectives reflect both the murderous sectarian bigotries of its founder as well as the global preoccupations of its nominal patrons. For both Zarqawi and the senior al-Qaeda leadership, Iraq’s importance


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lay in its role as a beachhead for the global jihadists located in the heart of the Islamic world. Having long been preoccupied with the goal of obtaining a secure territorial base for the jihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri envisaged a staged struggle that would begin with expulsion of the ‘Crusaders’ from Iraq and entail the subsequent establishment of a Caliphate in western Iraq. This liberated territory would then serve as a launch pad from which to strike out at and eventually overthrow neighbouring apostate regimes, thereby facilitating the growth of the Caliphate and the political unification of an ever larger proportion of the ummah. With the Caliphate established, the conditions would then be ripe for a final armed confrontation with Israel and its infidel patrons (al-Zawahiri 2007). While Zarqawi subscribed to some aspects of al-Qaeda’s broader strategic vision, his fear and loathing of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority led him to conclude that the Coalition’s expulsion could best be expedited by goading Iraq’s Shi’ite militias into a sectarian civil war (Michael 2007: 346). For Zarqawi, a sectarian civil war that would eventually engulf the entire Middle East constituted an essential circuit breaker that would weaken incumbent regimes, terminate the Shi’ite ascendancy, drive the Coalition from the region, and thus create the conditions necessary for the rise of the Caliphate. Their differences aside, what united al-Qaeda’s senior leadership with Zarqawi was their common reading of the Iraqi insurgency through the lens of their pan-Islamic goals. In the chaotic aftermath of Saddam’s fall, Iraq became an ideal venue for deterritorialized nomadic jihadists to prosecute their dream of unifying the ummah under the banner of a universal Caliphate. The jihadists’ opportunistic insertion into the Iraq conflict was made possible by the prior existence of a clandestine Salafist presence in Iraq (Hashim 2006: 113), together with the fears of a recently disenfranchised Sunni minority in the face of a Shi’ite political ascendancy. Critically, however, this transient convergence of interests between AQI and elements of the Sunni community masked a far more profound divergence in ambitions and outlooks, which the ensuing five years (2003–08) of conflict have progressively exposed. It is to a more sustained examination of the successive alignment and estrangement between AQI and its Sunni hosts that I now turn.

THE RISE AND FALL OF AL-QAEDA IN ANBAR Reception and Alignment, 2003–04 Encompassing approximately a third of Iraq’s territory but accounting for only 1.3 million of Iraq’s 28 million inhabitants, the sparsely populated

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province of Anbar served as a hotbed of rebellion from the earliest days of the anti-Coalition insurgency. In contrast to more urbanized provinces, tribal loyalties have remained paramount in Anbar, with the province’s fiercely independent sheikhs violently resisting the encroachments of successive central governments from the establishment of British Mandate onwards (Vinogradov 1972). Even under the Ba’ath Party’s draconian rule, tribal resistance to Baghdad was never completely eradicated, and with the weakening of the Iraqi state under international sanctions during the 1990s, the centrifugal tendencies of Iraqi tribalism were again brought to the fore. From 1991 onwards, sheikhs from Anbar’s dominant Dulaimi tribe grew rich off their involvement in smuggling oil and other commodities across the border into Syria (Long 2008: 75; Kilcullen 2007). Confronted by restricted oil revenues and a faltering central state apparatus, Saddam made a virtue of necessity during the 1990s, endorsing a strategy of ‘auxiliary tribalism’ (Long 2008: 75) that charged Anbar’s sheikhs with responsibility for enforcing order throughout the province. In exchange, the sheikhs enjoyed extensive financial patronage and were even permitted to maintain their own private armies (Long 2008: 75). Such inducements failed to eliminate completely the threat of tribal rebellion, but they did nevertheless ensconce Anbar’s tribes in a position of privilege that was gravely jeopardized with the collapse of the Ba’athist regime in 2003. Given its religiously conservative character and its history of hostility to central rule, Anbar was always likely to emerge as a cradle for the antiCoalition insurgency, and with the Coalition’s attempt to impose democracy on Iraq, this possibility was soon realized. With the fall of Saddam, the generous patronage arrangements that had formerly tied the tribes to Baghdad were abruptly terminated, while the prospect of universal suffrage threatened to marginalize Anbar’s Sunni elite in a Shi’ite-dominated democracy (Hashim 2006: 105–6). The prospect of disenfranchisement was particularly galling to Iraq’s Sunnis given their historic dominance of the country from the time of the Ottoman Empire onwards, while the relative dearth of proven oil reserves in the Sunni Triangle promised to add material deprivation to political disempowerment as the Sunnis’ likely future.4 In light of these considerations, the initially warm reception the Sunni resistance accorded to foreign jihadists is unsurprising. The initial alliance between Anbar’s rebels and foreign jihadists stemmed from their common interest in expelling the Coalition from Iraq and arresting the Shi’ites’ political ascendancy. To the protean constellation of ex-Ba’athists, nationalists and tribal rebels that formed the backbone of the insurgency, foreign jihadists provided a useful source of volunteers, whose military inexperience was partially offset by their fanaticism and


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willingness to undertake ‘martyrdom’ operations against the Coalition and its local allies (F. Kagan 2007: 6). Additionally, foreign jihadists provided local insurgents with valuable connections to sources of financial support throughout the Muslim world, thereby enhancing the insurgents’ resilience in the face of Coalition attempts to dismantle their local infrastructure. Equally, for the foreign jihadists, Anbar served as a crucial portal through which to infiltrate Iraq from either Syria or Jordan, with a network of sympathetic mosques and safe-houses along the Euphrates river valley forming a conduit through which jihadists could be funnelled to Baghdad via Ramadi (K. Kagan 2007: 3–5). Later, Anbar would also serve as a staging area from which Zarqawi would direct AQI’s bombing of American-owned hotels in Amman, Jordan in November 2005. To the Sunni insurgency, foreign jihadists represented a useful tactical asset, while for the foreign jihadists, Anbar served a threefold role as a portal to the Iraqi jihad, a territorial beachhead on which to build the Caliphate, and a launching pad from which to strike out at neighbouring apostate regimes. Underlying the alliance between the Sunnis and the foreign jihadists was an extremely fragile and contingent convergence of interests, which splintered as AQI progressively sought to insinuate itself deeper into the fabric of Iraqi society. The Emerging Split within the Insurgency, 2005 Over the course of 2005, a split emerged within the insurgency between Anbar’s tribal leadership and AQI. When this split culminated in violence, AQI was initially victorious in coercing its local hosts back into conformity with AQI’s demands (Long 2008: 78). Nevertheless, this confrontation was driven by deeper dynamics that would soon blossom into the more enduring schism that developed within the insurgency from 2006 onwards. A consideration of the causes driving local disenchantment with AQI from 2005 is therefore essential in understanding the context for al-Qaeda’s subsequent expulsion from Anbar. Despite their common interests in expelling Coalition forces from Iraq and restoring Sunnis to a position of supremacy within the country, relations between Anbar’s tribal leaders and AQI steadily soured as the latter sought to entrench itself more deeply in Anbar. Three factors in particular contributed to Anbaris’ increasing hostility towards AQI. The first of these was AQI’s attempt to embed itself into local society by marrying its members into prominent tribal families. While attempts to engineer and exploit local kinship ties have long been a standard technique of roaming jihadists seeking to tether themselves to host societies (Kilcullen 2007), the attempt in the Anbar case proved highly counterproductive. Specifically,

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this strategy ran counter to long-established customs that forbade marrying off the tribes’ women to anyone from outside the larger tribal confederation (Kilcullen 2007). Al-Qaeda’s attempted violation of this cultural taboo was staunchly resisted by the locals, while the jihadists’ attempts to overcome this resistance through violence and intimidation created a revenge obligation that in turn catalysed a series of armed confrontations between AQI and its tribal hosts (F. Kagan 2007: 28). In addition to trying coercively to marry into the local tribal communities, AQI also tried to muscle in on the tribes’ lucrative involvement in black market activities, creating a powerful material incentive for the tribes to turn against al-Qaeda. Tribal leaders in the dominant Dulaimi confederation had long enriched themselves through their involvement in banditry and smuggling along the underpoliced Amman–Baghdad highway, and AQI’s attempt to usurp their position aroused their abiding hostility (Long 2008: 75). While AQI’s effort to tap into Anbar’s lucrative illicit economy represented an expedient means of financing its activities, its strategic effect was to alienate the group’s local protectors and patrons and thus further cultivate the conditions for an eventual split within the insurgency. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that one of the Awakening movement’s key leaders, the late Sattar Abu Risha, was a notorious highwayman in addition to being a tribal potentate, whose eventual turn against AQI was driven as much by economic self-interest as it was by moral and ideological convictions (International Crisis Group 2008: 12). Finally, AQI’s high-handed attempt to impose its own social and political agenda on the people of Anbar fostered further tensions within the insurgency. This tendency manifested itself firstly in AQI’s violent attempt to impress Salafism’s rigidly puritanical moral and religious code onto the local populace. Actions such as breaking the fingers of cigarette smokers and murdering women who refused to wear the niqab naturally alienated locals (International Crisis Group 2008: 13–14; Paley 2008), as did AQI’s attempt to stamp out local religious practices (for example the veneration of ancestors’ tombs), which the group decried as un-Islamic (Williams 2007b: 63). Even more significant than these infractions, however, was AQI’s attempt to bully the tribal leadership into conformity with the jihadists’ political vision. Whereas the Sunnis had boycotted the January 2005 elections on their own volition, by the year’s end a rough consensus had coalesced around a dual strategy entailing armed confrontation with the Shi’ite-dominated government in conjunction with formal participation in the political process (Knickmeyer and Finer 2005; Williams 2007b: 63). Such a strategy made sense to elements of the Sunni leadership anxious to avoid permanent political marginalization. Equally, however,


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participation in Iraq’s fledgling democracy was also anathema to alQaeda, which regarded any form of man-made law as an act of hubris, democracy itself being regarded as an intolerable affront to the majesty of divine law as revealed in the Koran (Michael 2007: 346). AQI’s inflexible hostility towards democracy, together with its continuing attempts to compel local conformity with its dictates, seeded the ensuing rebellion that led to AQI’s eviction from Anbar. Rejection and Rebellion: the Anbar Awakening and al-Qaeda’s Defeat, 2006–09 By the beginning of 2006, local opinion in Anbar was turning decisively against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Three factors on top of those already considered provided the catalyst for the shift from simmering resentment to open rebellion. The first of these was the shift in Sunni perceptions of the sectarian balance of power in Iraq following AQI’s bombing of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra in February 2006. The desecration of the al-Askari mosque was a calculated act of provocation by al-Qaeda that succeeded in propelling Iraq towards a sectarian civil war. The ensuing wave of sectarian cleansing that swept through Iraq succeeded in further polarizing the Sunni and Shi’ite communities, nominally advancing AQI’s goal of derailing the Coalition’s attempts to consolidate a functioning democratic state in the country. At the same time, however, the ensuing sectarian clashes compelled Sunnis to revise their expectations that they would emerge as the victors from an Iraqi civil war. While the Shi’ites’ numerical superiority was never in question, Iraq’s Sunnis had hitherto believed that victory would be assured (Biddle 2008: 6), given the military advantages they possessed by dint of their prior dominance of the Iraqi army officer corps (Hashim 2006: 67), and given also the support from foreign co-religionists that they may also have anticipated in the event of war. The course of the conflict in 2006 forced Sunnis to revise this assessment significantly (Biddle 2008: 6). More importantly for this inquiry, the flare-up in sectarian civil violence demonstrated that while AQI could certainly provoke the Shi’ites into conflict, it could not effectively protect Sunnis from the retribution of Shi’ite death squads, either in Baghdad or elsewhere. The perceived value of the Sunni alliance with al-Qaeda consequently diminished as sectarian violence escalated, while AQI’s continued highhandedness and conspicuous attempts to monopolize the insurgency further inflamed local hostility. Al-Qaeda’s announcement of the foundation of an Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in Ramadi in October 2006, which attracted fierce criticism not only from AQI’s indigenous jihadist rivals but also internationally from leading jihadist ideologues such as Hamid al Ali

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and Abu Basi al Tartusi, exemplified this tendency.5 The attempted establishment of an ISI in ‘liberated’ Ramadi, Anbar’s commercial centre and provincial capital, was consistent with AQI’s grand strategy of carving out a Caliphate amid the wreckage of the Iraqi state. Additionally, the ISI announcement may also have been motivated by a desire to deflect criticisms concerning the dominance of foreigners in AQI’s leadership by providing a more Iraqi public face for the organization (Fishman 2008: 49–50). If this was AQI’s intention in establishing the ISI, however, it backfired disastrously. Recoiling at yet another perceived attempt by AQI to dictate the course of the insurgency, a coalition of Islamist insurgent groups established their own rival umbrella group (the Reformation and Jihad Front) in May 2007 (Kohlmann 2008: 15). In the context of ongoing local resentment towards al-Qaeda’s bullying and penchant for indiscriminate violence, this acrimonious and highly public schism between AQI and other Sunni insurgents signalled a sharp rise in internecine insurgent violence from which al-Qaeda would eventually emerge as the loser. It was within the context of shifting Sunni perceptions of the sectarian balance of power and a growing fragmentation of the Sunni insurgency that the United States officially modified its counter-insurgency strategy in February 2007 to take account of these new realities. Whereas the United States had intermittently engaged with tribal leaders in Anbar from 2004 onwards in its efforts to stabilize the security situation, the possibility of forming a de facto alliance with the tribes emerged only once the Sunnis had themselves become disenchanted with AQI, and once the United States had also grown equally disillusioned with the prospects achieving of a ‘top-down’ process of political reconciliation through the auspices of the al-Maliki government (Simon 2008: 60–61). While Anbar’s rebels remained resolute in their commitment to ending the Coalition’s occupation of their country, the fear of an Iranian-sponsored Shi’ite takeover combined with exasperation at the intransigence and indiscriminate belligerence of al-Qaeda propelled them towards a tactical alliance with the United States. Backed by American firepower and buoyed by American patronage (the United States has budgeted $150 million to sponsor its tribal proxies in 2008), tribal Awakening groups rapidly overwhelmed al-Qaeda insurgents in Anbar following their establishment in 2007.6 The immediate consequence of this realignment was a surge in al-Qaeda casualties and AQI’s loss of its territorial base in Anbar. Subsequently, however, the ‘Anbar model’ has been successfully exported to other provinces, including Diyala, Salah ad-Din and Baghdad, leaving AQI without sanctuary and without friends throughout large swathes of Iraq (Kilcullen 2007). That al-Qaeda remains active in Iraq and capable of inflicting horrendous atrocities on the local populace is beyond doubt. But following


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the ‘betrayal’ of its former allies, al-Qaeda’s armed strength has been much reduced and its operational freedom dramatically curtailed. Now shorn of its base and encircled by enemies, al-Qaeda’s dreams of establishing the Caliphate on the grave of the Iraqi state today appear more remote than ever.

HOW AL-QAEDA LOST IRAQ At the most prosaic level, al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq can be attributed to its adoption of a grossly flawed strategy. Conceptualized through the prism of a classic ends–means–ways trichotomy, al-Qaeda pursued unrealistic ends through recourse to inappropriate ways and inadequate means. Beginning with an assessment of al-Qaeda’s strategic ends, the negative goal of humiliating the Coalition and energizing the global jihad through involvement in the Iraqi insurgency was eminently achievable. Conversely, al-Qaeda’s positive goal of establishing an enduring Caliphate in western Iraq appears in retrospect to have been wildly optimistic. That jihadists from al-Zawahiri down believed this goal to have been achievable merely underscores the degree to which they exaggerated the popular appeal of the jihadist cause among the Iraqi people. Additionally, al-Qaeda’s ambitions also betray a tendency to downplay the inherent difficulties involved in navigating an environment in which local concerns would inevitably predominate. Al-Qaeda not only misperceived the degree of concordance between its political objectives and those of its hosts, but it also ignored the formidable constraints imposed by having to negotiate local sensitivities and concerns in the furtherance of its goals. The belief that local insurgents would passively accept the subordination of their interests to the cause of global jihad was farcical, as was the supposition that Iraq was some sort of tabula rasa upon which al-Qaeda could carve out a microCaliphate without incurring the wrath of an insurgent movement that from its earliest stirrings remained dominated by Iraqi nationalists (Simon 2008: 62). The weakness of al-Qaeda’s strategy is evident also in the inadequate means it had available to advance its goals. Over the course of the war in Iraq, foreign fighters have never accounted for more than a fraction of the insurgency, and even following AQI’s ‘Iraqization’, AQI has always been outnumbered by nationalists, local Sunni jihadists and Shi’ite militiamen, not to mention Coalition forces and those of the fledgling Iraqi state (Hashim 2006: 139). Despite Sunnis’ initial gratitude for the military assistance provided by al-Qaeda, AQI’s small size ensured that it could only ever realistically aspire to be a junior ally to its Sunni hosts. If al-Qaeda was

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ever going to have achieved its goals, it would have needed to have augmented its own military capabilities by carefully cultivating local alliances and steadily persuading these allies as to the merits of the jihadist cause. As it was, AQI lacked the patience, the tact and the diplomatic prowess necessary to engineer such an outcome. Instead, al-Qaeda consistently overrated its value as an alliance partner to the Sunni population, while simultaneously underestimating the degree of resentment it was generating through the many burdens it imposed on its hosts. Through its maladroit handling of local allies, AQI not only forfeited the opportunity to develop the critical mass necessary to achieve its goals, but it also ensured its own isolation, creating the preconditions for its own destruction. Compounding the problems flowing from its unrealistic objectives and its inadequate means, the methods al-Qaeda employed both to embed itself in Anbar and to discipline wayward allies also contributed significantly to its defeat. In violating tribal taboos against exogamous marriage, encroaching on tribal leaders’ economic interests, and ruthlessly imposing its own puritanical interpretation of Islam on the local population, AQI perversely cemented its status as a malignant foreign entity in Anbar, a perception that no amount of local recruitment could dispel. Similarly, al-Qaeda’s attempts to punish local allies and thus deter subsequent defections proved equally counterproductive. By itself, the calculated use of atrocity is far from uncommon in unconventional conflicts, being frequently used both to assert control over local populations and to shore up coalitions where sections of an insurgency might otherwise be tempted to defect to the government’s side (Kalyvas 1999). Additionally, al-Qaeda’s turn to coercion was also likely motivated strongly by the desire to preempt the possibility of its local allies abandoning it with the expected cessation of conflict after the anticipated withdrawal of Coalition forces. Al-Qaeda’s motives for attempting to intimidate local communities into compliance with the jihadists’ vision for Iraq are strategically intelligible, given the jihadists’ enduring bitterness about their perceived ‘betrayal’ by local co-religionists at the end of previous conflicts such as the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina,7 and given also their concerns to prevent the fruits of victory from again being squandered by the treachery of ungrateful allies.8 In the context of Anbar, however, al-Qaeda atrocities merely activated tribal revenge obligations, thereby fortifying rather than weakening the resolve of al-Qaeda’s enemies (Kilcullen 2007). Al-Qaeda’s exclusive privileging of religious solidarity over other forms of identity may also have led its leadership to exaggerate the search costs entailed in tribal elites finding alternative allies to al-Qaeda. In overstating the holding power of religious loyalty and attempting to deny its Sunni allies an autonomous voice in determining the direction of the insurgency, AQI left its local partners


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with only exit remaining as a viable choice. The conflict’s subsequent course shows that the Sunni tribes seized this option with alacrity once a shift in American strategy enabled them to align with Coalition forces against their common enemy. Throughout the duration of its existence, al-Qaeda has revealed itself to be an ingenious and adaptive adversary, thus it is reasonable to expect that it may yet learn from its missteps in Iraq. The fluid character of tribal loyalties, the continuing spectre of sectarian conflict, and the increased operational freedom that AQI would enjoy in the event of a precipitate Allied withdrawal should also give pause to any who would assume that al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq is somehow irreversible (Byman and Pollack 2008: 62). These caveats aside, I nevertheless believe that al-Qaeda’s defeat is likely to prove enduring. Furthermore, I maintain that when considered within the context of the broader history of the global jihadist movement, al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq appears far from exceptional. On the contrary, analogues to the Anbar experience can be found in nearly every conflict involving roaming jihadists since the original Afghan jihad in the 1980s. In successive conflicts ranging from Bosnia to Chechnya to Kashmir, the jihad jet set has rapidly worn out its welcome among local host populations as a result of its ideological inflexibility and high-handedness, as well as its readiness to resort to indiscriminate violence against locals at the first signs of challenge (Sageman 2004: 59–60; Williams 2007a, 2007b). Throughout their history, al-Qaeda’s operatives have consistently sought to graft the global jihadist agenda onto localized conflicts involving Muslims. However, with the notable exceptions of Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, and to a certain extent the lawless tribal belt straddling the contemporary Afghanistan–Pakistan border, they have been generally unsuccessful in converting locals to the jihadist cause, much less securing a territorial base for the Caliphate. That this pattern has so frequently been repeated suggests that the underlying causes of al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq may transcend the specific circumstances of that conflict, being rather related to the very nature of global jihadism itself. Considering the Anbar case once again, what is most striking about AQI’s behaviour is its abject failure either to adapt itself to local circumstances, or to rein in its operatives’ excesses once their impact on al-Qaeda’s strategic position in the province became clear. Rather than seeking to mollify local actors or accommodate their concerns, al-Qaeda’s leaders condemned any who disagreed with them as un-Islamic, pronouncing the judgment of excommunication (takfir) against dissenters at the slightest provocation (F. Kagan 2007: 26). Al-Qaeda operatives also regularly meted out brutal punishments for seemingly trivial social transgressions such as smoking cigarettes or watching satellite television (International

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Crisis Group 2008: 13; Paley 2008). To outsiders, the negative strategic repercussions of punishing such infractions of the Salafist code would seem easy to anticipate. That al-Qaeda proved both so unwilling to adapt to local circumstances and so incapable of exercising self-restraint despite the existence of obvious incentives to do so demands explanation. While hubris and bloodlust commend themselves as immediate answers to this puzzle, I suggest that a more satisfactory explanation can be found through a more sustained exploration of al-Qaeda’s ideological essence. Baldly stated, the causes of al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq can be located in its ideological DNA (Stephens 2008: 26). By this, I mean that jihadist conceptions of religion and the self are so configured as to compel a relentless and ultimately self-defeating assault on local cultures as an essential part of the jihadist religious experience. Far from being marginal to the jihadist project, the promotion of a decontextualized Islam stripped bare of local cultural accretions is in fact central to the Salafist vision in its present neofundamentalist form (Roy 2004: 244). Thus for al-Qaeda’s roaming jihadists, the extirpation of local ‘deviations’ from Islam forms an inseparable part of a broader cosmic struggle against the condition of jahiliyya. This dimension of the cosmic struggle between faith and ignorance cannot be neglected, even when the surrounding social and political circumstances might otherwise recommend restraint as the preferred course of action. The culture of existential bellicosity that pervades the global jihadist movement provides a further reinforcement of this message. For the jihadists, violence conducted in the name of Allah assumes a significance that transcends its instrumental value. The killing of God’s enemies, be they infidels or nominal Muslims, thus serves as a purgative rite of violence in which spiritual ‘pollutants’ are cleansed from the ummah, and in which the individual believer’s fidelity to God’s word finds its highest affirmation. A full examination of the sociological origins of jihadist ideology remains beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, Olivier Roy has advanced some highly suggestive comments concerning the popularity of a ‘decontextualized’ and deculturalized form of neo-fundamentalism among sections of the Muslim diaspora (Roy 2004: 263–5). Within the context of the Iraq War, this observation may provide vital clues as to the exact nature of the cultural clash that underlay al-Qaeda’s disastrous confrontation with the Sunni tribes. Thus, for example, a consideration of AQI’s leadership reveals the dominance of deracinated exiles drawn from throughout the Arab world, while its Iraqi foot soldiers included large numbers of urbanized young men who had been dislocated from their original locality and social context, and who presumably found a surrogate form of community in al-Qaeda (International Crisis Group 2008: 3). It is easy to imagine how such rootless men would have chosen to identify with a deterritorialized


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and abstract ummah over the more parochial solidarities of tribe and nation, just as it is also easy to understand how they may have sought self-realization in the project of violently transforming Anbar into the foundation of a revived Caliphate. Equally, however, it takes little effort to comprehend how threatening such a project must have seemed to Anbar’s sheikhs, whose aspirations were restorationist rather than revolutionary, and who ultimately sought to preserve rather than overturn the province’s social order and its accompanying tribal hierarchy. This antagonism could only have been sharpened in light of the jihadists’ attempts to strip Islam of the very practices and rites that rendered it such a powerful source of identity and ontological security for Anbar’s Muslims. The foregoing speculations as to the ultimate causes of al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq are necessarily brief, and are intended to be suggestive rather than definitive. They are nevertheless completely consistent with the record of global jihadism’s long history of repudiation and defeat in successive conflicts in the Muslim world since 1990. Throughout this period, the jihadist ‘Internationale’ has time and again committed the same types of mistakes as those that contributed to its defeat in Iraq. In contrast to its reputation for tactical and operational innovation, jihadist strategy has remained remarkably maladaptive, with opportunistic forays into local conflicts rapidly segueing into fratricidal violence occasioned by al-Qaeda’s overweening intolerance and its ideological flexibility. The deracinated and ‘purified’ form of radical Islam espoused by al-Qaeda has undoubtedly amplified its appeal to a globally dispersed constituency, and has enabled it to reap a harvest of alienated young Muslims who are doubly estranged from disintegrating traditional social structures and an encroaching global market civilization (Cronin 2002; Mousseau 2002). But I maintain that the strategic dividends of al-Qaeda’s global reach have arguably been more than offset by its serial failures to capitalize effectively on local grievances by striking deeper social roots into war-torn Muslimmajority communities.9 Al-Qaeda’s murderous iconoclasm has favoured geographical breadth over social depth, repeatedly thwarting the jihadists’ declared goal of carving out a secure territorial base for a renewed Caliphate. Seen through the context of this longer history of failure, alQaeda’s most recent defeat in Iraq potentially carries important lessons for the conduct of counterterrorism and counter-insurgency operations that extend well beyond the Iraq conflict. With regards to the conduct of the struggle against jihadist terrorism, al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq appears to reflect long-standing incapacities for moderation that will continue to inhibit its capacity to forge enduring relationships with local allies in other theatres. The experience of Anbar province in particular seems to validate the notion that jihadist ideology

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constitutes al-Qaeda’s strategic centre of gravity (Fishman 2008), and that attempts to pry local allies from al-Qaeda’s grasp can benefit from a more sustained focus on exacerbating the ideological differences between global jihadists and local actors. Non-Muslims lack the religious and cultural authority necessary to influence directly the contours of the ideological debate. Nevertheless, they can do much to create the enabling conditions in which ideological disagreements may more easily mature. Specifically, I suggest that an integrated strategy of choking, wedging, building and binding inductively derived from the Anbar case provides the best means of fostering dissent between al-Qaeda and its host communities.10 By ‘choking’, I refer to operations that are designed to starve jihadist operatives of access to sources of money, materiel and personnel that are external to host communities. The primary purpose of such operations would be to diminish al-Qaeda’s value as an ally and a source of patronage to its hosts. It must be acknowledged that the success of choking operations would also likely prompt al-Qaeda to increase its exactions on the local populace, at least in the short term. This development would likely produce unfortunate humanitarian consequences given al-Qaeda’s penchant for violence and intimidation, but it would nevertheless work to alienate the jihadists further from indigenous sources of support, thereby paving the way for the jihadists’ eventual eradication from host communities. ‘Wedging’ refers to initiatives that are explicitly designed to aggravate divisions further between al-Qaeda and host communities by leveraging off existing differences of interest between them. In Anbar, for example, the opening up of opportunities for Sunnis to participate directly in elections played a crucial role in driving a wedge between the tribal leadership and al-Qaeda, giving the former a non-violent channel through which to advance their sectarian and tribal interests, while condemning the latter to adopt a position of ever more violent and intransigent opposition to the democratic process. ‘Building’, which works best when preceded by a successful attempt at wedging, refers to the cultivation of tactical alliances between counter-insurgents and indigenous proxies along the lines of the Anbar model, with a view towards employing these proxies to eradicate the jihadist presence within their communities. Finally, ‘binding’ entails the sustained use of patronage and opportunities for political participation to tie proxies ever more closely to the central government, and is intended to assist the long-term consolidation of state power, and with it the elimination of the conditions of internal instability within which jihadist terrorism thrives. The chief lessons of al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq are that global jihadists can be pried loose from their local hosts even in the context of an ongoing highintensity conflict, and that al-Qaeda’s ideological inflexibility constitutes a


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key point of vulnerability that should be explicitly targeted by its adversaries whenever local conditions allow. The Anbar experience also illustrates that indigenous irregulars can play a critical role in eradicating jihadist terrorists, appearing to vindicate the ‘indirect approach’ to counterterrorism that was advocated in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (Quadrennial Defense Review 2006: 11). Nevertheless, continuing developments in Iraq illuminate the perils as well as the promise of relying on local irregulars to fight jihadist terrorism. For while the empowerment of local auxiliaries provides a powerful means of countering groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, such initiatives carry with them the risk of strengthening local warlords at the expense of the very states they were intended to preserve. This danger is especially pronounced in circumstances of the kind now present in Iraq, where sectarian antagonisms have inhibited the consolidation of a central government enjoying broad-based cross-communal support, and where the rearmament of the Sunni militias heralds the risk of renewed communal violence in the event of an eventual American withdrawal. For the foregoing reasons, any optimism concerning the success of the American ‘surge’ in Iraq after 2007 must be tempered by an acknowledgement of the Faustian nature of the bargain between Coalition forces and Sunni irregulars that has underwritten AQI’s defeat. From a counterterrorism perspective, the Coalition’s exploitation of the schism between AQI and its Sunni hosts was strategically vital in ensuring the former’s suppression, and American sponsorship of indigenous irregulars to spearhead the assault on al-Qaeda was potentially unavoidable. Nevertheless, from a counter-insurgency and state-building perspective, this expedient has run the risk of further entangling the Coalition in Iraq’s sectarian antagonisms, while also weakening Baghdad’s faltering attempts to secure a monopoly over organized violence within the country. The facility with which elements of the Sunni leadership have leveraged off Coalition counterterrorism concerns, both to destroy their immediate adversaries (AQI) while also renewing their military capacity credibly to threaten renewed hostilities against al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-dominated government, also testifies to the independence and political sophistication of so-called local ‘proxies’, further cautioning against premature triumphalism in the wake of the ‘surge’. Al-Qaeda’s defeat in Iraq demonstrates that predatory roaming jihadists are eminently beatable, and that tactical alliances between international forces and indigenous irregulars provide a useful means of advancing Western counterterrorism objectives in the context of ongoing high-intensity conflicts. The gulf in values separating Salafi jihadists from tribal communities also suggests the potential for exporting the ‘Anbar model’ to other conflicts in which jihadists have sought to impose their

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agenda on local populations through their characteristic blend of propaganda, patronage and terror. Nevertheless, the precarious and partial nature of the order that has been established in Iraq also demonstrates the inherent risks associated with such a strategy. Attempts to export the ‘Anbar model’ to other theatres such as Afghanistan must proceed with an awareness that indigenous irregulars invariably enter into alliances with international forces to advance their own political agendas, and that these agendas frequently contradict Western aspirations to build centralized Weberian states established on broadly liberal-democratic principles. While the ideological intransigence of jihadist terrorists thus leaves them susceptible to isolation and excision from local communities, the existence of a parallel values gap between Western counter-insurgents and host communities also complicates efforts to harness local proxies to the task of creating strong, inclusive and democratically accountable sovereign states once the common threat posed by jihadist terrorism has been subdued. Binding proxies to the central government once jihadist terrorists have been defeated therefore remains as essential to achieve in theory as it is difficult to accomplish in practice, particularly in contexts where the internal security dilemma between a polity’s constituent communities remains intense. In the case of Iraq, the ongoing restiveness of the tribes, the slow pace at which Sunni militiamen are being formally integrated into the state’s security establishment, and the omnipresent threat of revived sectarian bloodletting all caution against an overly optimistic assessment of the country’s prospects. Al-Qaeda may have lost Iraq, but this in no way implies that the USA and its allies have won.

NOTES * 1.

2. 3.

4.

A version of ‘How al-Qaeda lost Iraq’ first appeared in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, 63 (1) and appears by permission of Taylor and Francis. Abd al-Rahman al-Qaysi, spokesman of the Mujahedin Army in Iraq, an indigenous force opposed to al-Qaeda in Iraq, cited in Kathleen Ridolfo (2008), ‘Iraq: Bin Laden appeals to Muslims to support al Qaeda’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 4 January. Unnamed emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq, cited in Martin Fletcher (2008), ‘Al Qaeda leaders admit: “We are in crisis. There is panic and fear”’, The Times Online, 11 February. It is necessary to qualify my portrayal of the shift from the ‘near enemy’ to the ‘far enemy’ by noting that this shift in focus was conditioned by circumstantial factors (specifically the jihadists’ experience of the constraints and opportunities of exile in the 1990s) as well as by the ideological imperatives of Salafi jihadism. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this observation. It is nevertheless worth noting that the Iraqi government has subsequently substantially revised upwards its estimates of existing oil and natural gas deposits on Sunni territory.


5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

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Given the preliminary nature of these findings and the many years it will take to extract these resources effectively, however, Sunni fears of economic marginalization will continue to be a salient factor governing their relations with Baghdad for the foreseeable future. See James Glanz (2007), ‘Iraqi Sunni lands show new oil and gas promise’, New York Times, 19 February. My thanks to Barak Mendelsohn for drawing my attention to the negative international reaction that AQI elicited with its declaration of an Islamic State of Iraq. Figures on the United States’ financial support for the Sunni tribal groups are taken from Steven Simon (2008), ‘The price of the surge: how US strategy is hastening Iraq’s demise’, Foreign Affairs, 87 (3), 65. While Bosnians had accepted the military support of foreign jihadists during the course of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, relations between the Bosnians and the foreign jihadists were marked by persistent friction. Consequently, the government of President Izetbegović proved only too happy to implement the provisions of the Dayton Peace Accords mandating the expulsion of foreign jihadists from Bosnia-Herzegovina, incurring the jihadists’ enduring enmity. See Brian Glyn Williams (2007b), ‘The failure of al-Qaeda basing projects: from Soviet Afghanistan to the Sunni Triangle’, in M.A. Innes (ed.), Denial of Sanctuary: Understanding Terrorist Safe Havens, London: Praeger, p. 55. My thanks to Barak Mendelsohn for drawing my attention to this point. My thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for encouraging me to clarify my thoughts on the strategic consequences of the trade-off between al-Qaeda’s geographically broad appeal and its limited capacity to strike up enduring alliances with local communities. This approach is inspired by David Kilcullen’s advocacy of ‘disaggregation’ as a preferred strategy for combating the global insurgent threat posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates. See generally David J. Kilcullen (2005), ‘Countering global insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 28 (4), 597–617.

REFERENCES al-Zawahiri, Ayman (2007), ‘English translation of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’, accessed 5 November 2007, available from http://www. weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/203gpuul.asp?pg=1. Arnold, Matthew B. (2008), ‘The US “Surge” as a collaborative corrective for Iraq’, RUSI Journal, 153 (2), 24–9. Biddle, Stephen (2008), ‘Stabilizing Iraq from the bottom up: statement by Dr Stephen Biddle before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Second Session, 110th Congress, 2 April 2008’, accessed 16 July 2008, available from http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2008/BiddleTestimony080402p.pdf. Byman, Daniel L. and Kenneth M. Pollack (2008), ‘Iraq’s long-term impact on jihadist terrorism’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 618, 55–68. Cassidy, Robert M. (2006), ‘The long small war: indigenous forces for counterinsurgency’, Parameters, 36 (2), 47–62. Cronin, Audrey Kurth (2002), ‘Behind the curve: globalization and international terrorism’, International Security, 27 (3), 30–58. Cronin, Audrey Kurth (2006), ‘How al-Qaeda ends: the decline and demise of terrorist groups’, International Security, 31 (1), 7–48. Denselow, James (2008), ‘Iraq’s Ho Chi Minh Trail: the Syrian–Iraqi border since 2003’, CTC Sentinel, 1 (6), 19–20.

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Doran, Michael Scott (2002), ‘Somebody else’s civil war’, Foreign Affairs, 81 (1), 22–42. Fishman, Brian (2006), ‘After Zarqawi: the dilemmas and future of al-Qaeda in Iraq’, Washington Quarterly, 29 (4), 19–32. Fishman, Brian (2008), ‘Using the mistakes of al-Qaeda’s franchises to undermine its strategies’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 618, 46–54. Fletcher, Martin (2008), ‘Al-Qaeda leaders admit: “We are in crisis. There is panic and fear”’, The Times, 11 February. Gerges, Fawaz A. (2005), The Far Enemy: Why Jihad went Global, Cambridge, UK and New York, USA: Cambridge University Press. Hashim, Ahmed (2004), ‘Foreign involvement in the Iraqi insurgency’, Terrorism Monitor, 2 (16), 1–4. Hashim, Ahmed (2006), Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, London: Hurst. Hoffman, Bruce (2007), ‘The “cult of the insurgent”: its tactical and strategic implications’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 61 (3), 312–29. International Crisis Group (2004), ‘Indonesia backgrounder: why Salafism and terrorism mostly don’t mix’, Asia Report 83. International Crisis Group (2008), ‘Iraq after the Surge I: the new Sunni landscape’, Middle East Report 74. James, Glanz (2007), ‘Iraqi Sunni lands show new oil and gas promise’, New York Times, 19 February. Kagan, Frederick (2007), ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq: how to understand it. How to defeat it’, Weekly Standard, 12 (48), 22–32. Kagan, Kimberley (2007), ‘The Anbar Awakening: displacing Al-Qaeda from its stronghold in Western Iraq’, accessed 15 July 2008, available from http://www. understandingwar.org/files/reports/IraqReport03.pdf. Kalyvas, Stathis (1999), ‘Wanton and senseless? The logic of massacres in Algeria’, Rationality and Society, 11 (3), 243–85. Kilcullen, David J. (2005), ‘Countering global insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 28 (4), 597–617. Kilcullen, David (2007), ‘Anatomy of a tribal revolt’, accessed 15 July 2008, available from http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/08/. Knickmeyer, Ellen and Jonathan Finer (2005), ‘Sunni leaders attacked in Iraq’, Washington Post, 19 August. Kohlmann, Evan F. (2008) ‘State of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq: August 2007’, accessed 16 July 2008, available from http://www.nefafoundation.org/ miscellaneous/iraqreport0807.pdf. Long, Austin (2008),‘The Anbar Awakening’, Survival, 50 (2), 67–94. Mendelsohn, Barak (2005), ‘Sovereignty under attack: the international society meets the al-Qaeda network’, Review of International Studies, 31 (1), 45–68. Michael, George (2007), ‘The legend and legacy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’, Defence Studies, 7 (3), 338–57. Mousseau, Michael (2002), ‘Market civilization and its clash with terror’, International Security, 27 (3), 5–29. Paley, Amit R. (2008), ‘Shift in tactics to revive struggling insurgency’, Washington Post, 8 February, p. A13. Ridolfo, K. (2008), ‘Iraq: Bin Laden appeals to Muslims to support al Qaeda’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 4 January.


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Roy, Olivier (2004), Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, London: Hurst. Sageman, Marc (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Simon, Steven (2008), ‘The price of the surge: how US strategy is hastening Iraq’s demise’, Foreign Affairs, 87 (3), 57–76. Stephens, Brett (2008), ‘How to manage savagery’, Commentary, 126 (2), 19–26. Quadrennial Defense Review Report 2006. United States Department of Defense, accessed 15 July 2008, available from http://www.defenselink.mil/qdr/report/ Report20060203.pdf. Vinogradov, Amal (1972), ‘The 1920 revolt in Iraq reconsidered: the role of tribes in national politics’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 3 (2), 123–39. Wiktorowicz, Quintan (2005), ‘A genealogy of radical Islam’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 28, 75–97. Williams, Brian Glyn (2007a), ‘Anbar’s Sunni militias: fighting by proxy’, in Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, 25 September, accessed 15 July 2008, available from: http://www.brianglynwilliams.com/IAA%2010%20p1-4%20Anbar.pdf. Williams, Brian Glyn (2007b), ‘The failure of al-Qaeda basing projects: from Soviet Afghanistan to the Sunni Triangle’, in M.A. Innes (ed), Denial of Sanctuary: Understanding Terrorist Safe Havens, London: Praeger, pp. 20–73. Wright, Robin (2005), ‘US obtains treatise by Bin Laden deputy’, Washington Post, 7 October. Yates, Joshua J. (2007), ‘The resurgence of jihad and the specter of religious populism’, SAIS Review, 27 (1), 127–44.

7.

Informal networks in Southeast Asia: the case of Jemaah Islamiah and its affiliates David Martin Jones

The Bali nightclub bombings of October 2002, which killed 202 people, graphically demonstrated the existence of an Islamist terror network in Southeast Asia. To be sure, in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington,1 both the Singapore and Malaysian governments had detained a number of suspects in late 2001. Nevertheless, official and academic opinion had, until Bali, either neglected or discountenanced the extent to which a global transnational terror network, to use Marc Sageman and Scott Atran’s term, had established itself across the region.2 This neglect was the more surprising given the often intrusive intelligence structures in many Southeast Asian countries that failed to predict the threat it posed to regional order. The oversight reflected the fact that these intelligence services imbibed the official regional view, purveyed by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), that asserted regional harmony and stability among its membership. Consequently, the state intelligence agencies within the ASEAN grouping, preoccupied with internal security, paid minimal attention to transnational risks.3 This, in turn, influenced academic and media commentary upon the region, that neglected sources of instability. Regional intelligence cooperation prior to the 9/11 attacks was poor, and there was little awareness of the character and evolution of crime and terror networks. In particular, there existed a collective nescience concerning the growing ideological links between the most militant jihadist group in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiah (JI), and the globalizing transnational network pretensions of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.4 The object of this chapter, therefore, is to indicate the process by which al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates attempted to draw essentially localized, separatist struggles in Southeast Asia into an evolving, but loose network of transnational jihadism; the evolution of Jemaah Islamiah as a regional network constituted through kin groups, marital alliances, cliques and radical pesantren 156

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(religious schools); and the counterterrorism strategies that disrupted the network after 2003. The broader point this chapter illustrates is how, long before it was appropriate to speak of an entity called al-Qaeda or the emergence of Osama bin Laden as its figurehead, those inspired by a radical theopolitical vision were strategically thinking in terms of regional and transnational networks. In its Southeast Asian manifestation, we can trace this ideal, if not the strategy, back to the Darul Islam movement in Indonesia that dates from the struggle against the Dutch colonial power subsequently adumbrated by the influence of Muslim Brotherhood ideologists like Sayyid Qutb5 and Osama’s own original inspiration, the so-called ‘Emir of Jihad’, Abdullah Azzam.6 In fact long before the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which is often seen as the first intimation of an Islamist ‘internationale’,7 Pan-Islamist thinkers conceived resistance to jahiliyya (the state of ignorance) as a single, unified global struggle that transcended local, state and regional concerns. As Richard Engel has argued, the story of al-Qaeda is essentially how ‘bin Laden has tried to align with local militant groups with country-specific grievances to increase his global reach and influence’.8 Jemaah Islamiah (JI) provides an interesting case study of how a regional grouping came to share al-Qaeda’s philosophy and developed links with it in the course of the 1990s, whilst at the same time sustaining its own distinctive character and practice. I shall here examine JI’s origins, development, disruption and its status.

THE SOURCES OF THE NETWORK The roots of the network can, in fact, be traced to the 1970s and two geographically separate ethno-religious struggles in the Philippines and Indonesia. Guerrilla groups orchestrating these distinct struggles were eventually linked through the auspices of al-Qaeda and the globalized franchising opportunities it exploited from the early 1990s, when an increasingly and virtually interconnected global economy afforded the movement to emerge as an entity of concern.9 It was a discontented faction within the proscribed Indonesian Islamist movement Darul Islam (DI), exiled in Malaysia, that actually formed the organization al-Jama’ah al-Islamiyyah or, more commonly, Jemaah Islamiah (JI Islamic Community) in 1993.10 Significantly, it was through links with and exposure to the emerging Islamist internationale, often through participation as mujahidin in the Afghan struggle, that inspired the Indonesian JI leadership to think pan-Islamically rather than focus on building an Islamic state in Suharto’s New Order Indonesia. This was the

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source of the split between the founder of JI, Abdullah Sungkar, and the Indonesian-based DI leader, Ajengan Masduki. I shall therefore explore the Indonesian and Malaysian roots of JI before examining its links with the very different networks evolving from the 1970s in the Southern Philippines with which it allied in the course of the 1990s for the purpose of training, education and force multiplication. The Indonesian Connection: From Darul Islam to al-Jama’ah al-Jamayyah In the 1990s, media and official commentary emphasized the moderate and capital-friendly nature of Southeast Asian Islam. This view seemed accurately to capture modern Indonesia, a secular, nationalist state ruled along authoritarian, corporatist lines by Suharto’s New Order (1966–98). During the New Order the majority Muslim population and their officially sanctioned organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhamidayah, with a combined membership of 70 million Muslims, promoted a politically quiescent and secularism-tolerant self-understanding.11 This notwithstanding, post-colonial Indonesia also incubated a more radical form of political Islam that dated from the era of national resistance to Dutch colonial rule. Participation in the protracted twentieth-century struggle to liberate Indonesia from Dutch, Japanese and, once again, Dutch rule after 1945 saw Maridjan Kartosuwijoro’s Darul Islam (DI) propose an Islamic constitution for the liberated Indonesian state. When the post-colonial Indonesian government refused Islam a significant political or constitutional role, Kartosuwijoro formed the Tentera Islam Indonesia (Islamic Indonesian Army) in West Java in 1948 to contest the secular nationalism promoted by first President Sukarno. For the next 13 years DI conducted a rebellion across the archipelago that culminated in Kartosuwijoro’s arrest in 1962. Subsequently, the remnant of DI enjoyed a chequered relationship with the anti-communist, New Order regime that replaced Sukarno in 1966. General Ali Moertopo, head of the New Order’s special operations, briefly reconstituted DI after the fall of Saigon (1975) to counter the potential revival of the discredited communism of the Partai Kommunis Indonesia (PKI). Subsequently, the government dismantled DI’s militant paramilitary wing, Komando Jihad, in 1977. Although linked by some authors with the New Order government’s attempt to destabilize moderate Muslim opposition to the New Order,12 Komando Jihad shared both the uncompromising theology, and geographical and family ties to, the founders of the Darul Islam movement. Amongst the 185 militants arrested in 1977 were Sheikh Abu Bakar Bashir, and Abdullah Sungkar, who had established the al-Mukmin pesantren or religious boarding school in Solo, Central Java in 1971.13 This Indonesian-style madrasah formed the basis


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for what Sidney Jones termed the ‘Ngruki Network’ which promulgated DI’s political vision of an Islamic state across the archipelago.14 Bashir and Sungkar rejected the secular, inclusionary corporatist New Order ideology of Pancasila. Tried in 1982 and sentenced to nine years in prison for subversion, the pair eventually fled to more politically congenial Malaysia in 1985. Here together with an al-Mukmin graduate, Abu Jibril, they established a school, hospital and small Islamic community in Johor aided by sympathetic Malaysian businessmen. Subsequently, the Lukmanul Hakiem school in Johor, like al-Mukmin in Solo, Central Java, played a crucial role in recruitment and radicalization. Mukhlas, another al-Mukmin graduate and Afghan veteran, opened the Lukmanul school in 1991, Noordin Top and Universiti Teknologi, Johor, lecturer and Reading University graduate, Azahari Husin, organized the curriculum before Malaysian authorities eventually closed the school in 2001.15 After 1993, the developing Malaysian group broke with their former DI mentors in Indonesia along ideological lines. From this period, the Malaysian entity, with Sungkar as its emir, became known as al-Jemaah al-Islamiyyah (JI). The General Guidelines (Pedoman Umum Perjuangan al-Jemaah al-Islamiyah – PUPJI) for the group required all true Muslims to strive to establish a Daulah Islamiah or Islamic Caliphate and identified the correct path or dakwah via education, enjoining good, forbidding evil and jihad to achieve it. Initially, the path required resistance to the corrupt New Order regime. Subsequently, it extended resistance to include ‘pharaohnic’ rule in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. In advancing this strategy Abu Jibril envisaged the eventual transformation of Southeast Asia into a Daulah Islam Nusantara.16 The guidelines outlined an ambitious three-stage process of political transformation. The first stage required preparation to establish the Daulah or Islamic state; the second required the organization of the Daulah; and the final stage would see the reformed Islamic state leading the Muslim world into an integrated and reinvigorated Caliphate. A vanguard jemaah or group, with a righteous or correct leadership carefully grooming its membership, represented the crucial first step in the process. The initial JI leadership included Sungkar, Bashir, Faiz Bafana – who had migrated to the group from Jakarta – and Abu Jibril. They were joined in the course of the 1980s by another Javanese cleric, Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali. Hambali became a disciple of Sungkar and through Sungkar’s mentoring was selected to train with the mujahidin in Afghanistan and Pakistan between 1986 and 1987.17 In Peshawar through the good offices of Abdullah Azzam’s Maktab al-Khidmat (MaK), the precursor of alQaeda, Hambali along with Bafana and approximately 50 graduates of the jemaah project networked with a global diaspora of radicals inspired

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by the mujahidin struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. These included Zulkarnaen who subsequently headed JI’s military wing, as well as a desultory mixture of Southeast Asians from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Hambali returned to Malaysia briefly in 1987 before leaving for Mindanao in the Philippines where he developed links to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and its Abubakar training camp. In the course of the 1990s JI evolved into an ideological hybrid deriving its theology and strategy in part from the Egyptian Islamic Jihadi groups Gamaa al-Islamiyah al Masri and al-Islamiyah al-Jihad al-Masri. JI entertained Ayman al-Zawahiri in Malaysia in the mid-1990s and Sungkar and Bashir both visited Pakistan. Al-Zawahiri was al-Qaeda’s number two and the theorist of globalizing the Islamist struggle against kuffar (infidel) regimes. Sungkar also met bin Laden on three occasions between 1990 and 1997. By 1999, Hambali had risen to become a key figure on al-Qaeda’s Military Command Council.18 It was in the course of the 1990s that Sungkar, Abu Jibril and Hambali also established close ties with, or more accurately, formed the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM) franchise.19 JI also allied with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the recently formed Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) splinter group Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines as part of its regional strategy of forging alliances with groups that shared its ideology and jihadist modus operandi. The general guidelines (PUPJI) formulated at this time outlined the structure of the organization. Emir Abdullah Sungkar presided over and appointed a governing council (markaz). In 1998 the markaz consisted of Sungkar, Bashir, Mukhlas, Rusdan and Zulkarnaen. The military leadership of the markaz – Mukhlas; Abu Rusdan, the son of a jailed DI activist; and Zulkarnaen – were Afghan trained. This council, not unlike the senate of a contemporary Australian university, took responsibility for education, training, fundraising and internationalization. The central command of the council oversaw four regional spheres of operation or mantiqi.20 Hambali was responsible for Mantiqi 1 which comprised Malaysia and Singapore. Fati, an Indonesian, headed Mantiqi 2 which extended across Western Indonesia. Nasir Abbas, Mukhlas’s brother-in-law, assumed responsibility for Mantiqi 3 which included the Philippine province of Mindanao, Indonesian Sulawesi and the West Malaysian state of Sabah. Meanwhile the al-Mukmin graduate Abdul Rahim Ayub, who married an Australian convert, Rabiyah Hutchinson, led Mantiqi 4 comprising Papua and Australia.21 The mantiqis were subdivided into wakalahs. Thus Mantiqi 1 consisted of four wakalahs, Perak, Johor, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, each possessing their own internal command. According to Sydney Jones’s International Crisis Group report, this


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structure came be seen as essentially military with: ‘brigades (mantiqi), battalions (wakalah); companies (khatibah); platoons (quirdas); and squads (fiah)’.22 JI also possessed at least one special operation group (Laskar Khos) responsible for the Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta (2003). Nevertheless, despite the hierarchical character of the organization, which rendered it more rigid than al-Qaeda, the mantiqi structure allowed for a considerable degree of regional latitude in both planning and operations. After 1998 links between JI and the jihad in the Philippines evolved dramatically. Mantiqi 1 sent groups of Malaysians and Singaporeans to MILF training camps. Al-Mukmin graduate, Fathur Rahman al Ghozi, became the primary JI contact with MILF and Abu Sayyaf.23 Al-Ghozi had made at least two training trips to Afghanistan to further his studies. At the same time, contacts between JI and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan appreciably deepened. Hambali developed ties with Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s man in the Philippines, whilst several JI personnel regularly visited Kabul. Consequently, when the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 undermined the legitimacy of the New Order regime in Indonesia and damaged the authority of the United Malay National Organization-led multi-ethnic coalition that had governed the Malaysian federation since its inception in 1963, JI and its affiliates were well placed to exploit regional political and economic uncertainty in the interests of jihad against both the secular enemy within, and the far enemy in Washington. In this context, JI organized a crucial connection between al-Qaeda and KMM that facilitated the 9/11 attack. Here Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian army officer who, by the 1990s, had significant business interests in companies in Kuala Lumpur such as Green Laboratories and Infocus Technologies, had become a significant benefactor of both JI and KMM.24 In January 2000, Sufaat hosted the Pentagon hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi.25 Later, in October 2000, he met with Zacarias Moussaoui, subsequently tried in the US for his role in the 11 September attacks, in the same condominium. At this meeting he provided Moussaoui with funds and papers to enter the US as an Infocus Technologies ‘marketing consultant’. Also in October 2000, Sufaat purchased 4 tonnes of ammonium nitrate for Fathur Raman al Ghozi to carry out a regional bombing campaign (in March 2003 Malaysian police found the explosive in a plantation near Muar).26 Over the same period, the Malaysian connection extended its reach into Singapore via mosques across the causeway in Johor Baru. Mas Selamat Kastari oversaw the Singapore link whilst Ibrahim Maidin coordinated the JI cell in the city-state. Ibrahim Maidin had spent three weeks training in Afghanistan in 1993, and had in 1999 written to Osama bin Laden and

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Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban in Afghanistan, seeking spiritual and ideological guidance.27 From the early 1990s he held religious classes in Singapore which doubled as a recruitment centre for the JI cells he established there.28 The collapse of Suharto’s secular nationalist New Order regime in 1998, further facilitated the extension of regional and international connections. By the end of 1998, Sungkar, Bashir, Hambali and Abu Jibril had returned from Malaysia to Indonesia. In 1999, Sungkar died and Bashir assumed the role of Emir. However, after Sungkar’s death JI became factionalized. Those associated with Bashir followed a political as well as a militant route establishing the Majlis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI) in Jakarta in August 2000 to advance cooperation amongst ideologically like minded Indonesian Islamist groups like Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front) and Hizb-ut Tahrir.29 By contrast, the more militant members of Hambali’s Mantiqi 1 found Bashir’s political activity and his ties to former Indonesian Deputy President Hamzah Haz antithetical to Sungkar’s secretive, underground strategy of resistance and jihad. Despite the evolving disagreement, the relative openness of Indonesian politics after 1998 and the collapse of internal security coordination especially during the brief presidency of moderate Islamic leader Abdurrahman Wahid (1999–2001) enabled JI in Indonesia to consolidate linkages with cells in Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. In 2000 JI created Rabitat ul Mujahideen (Legion of Mujahidin), an umbrella of Islamist groups conducting armed struggle against secular regimes. The groups included MILF and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, Rohingiya Solidarity Organization (Burma), Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement – GAM) and Jemaah Salafayya (Thailand). Interestingly, whilst links with the Philippines and Malaysia flourished, GAM rejected JI’s overtures and the long-standing Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO) separatist, Muslim resistance in Southern Thailand restricted JI influence in Southern Thailand to a minimum. By contrast, in the Philippines and Malaysia contacts via Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who regularly visited the Philippines, and Hambali’s significant position on the Military Command Council of al-Qaeda advanced the integration of regional strategy and ideological guidance into a wider, transnational Islamist agenda. The political uncertainty that gripped post-Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) Indonesia facilitated the process. The military (Tentera Nasional Indonesia – TNI), responsible under the New Order for the dual function (dwifungsi) of external security and preserving national integrity, lost its autonomy. The national police (POLRI) assumed responsibility for national security. JI and MMI exploited the


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transition to recruit fighters and sponsor intercommunal violence in Ambon, Maluku and Sulawesi. Moreover, once the Philippine military had overrun Camp Abubakar in Mindanao, JI established its own training camp in Poso, Central Sulawesi, in 2000. Meanwhile, in December 2000, Hambali organized attacks on Christian churches across Java, the most widespread terror attacks in Indonesian history, which bore the al-Qaeda signature of multiple coordinated targeting.30 Involved in Hambali’s Indonesian military operations were al-Mukmin graduates like Mukhlas, who operated under the name of Ali Gufron, and other operatives, Imam Samudra and Mukhlas’s brother, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim. The same team were implicated in the bombing of a church in Batam in January 2000. By 2001, Hambali was the chief executive officer (CEO) of JI terror, running a network within the wider JI and MMI franchises. This militant tendency within JI reached the apex of both its power and regional influence in early 2002.31 The Philippine Connection Although JI is essentially an Indonesian creation, it demonstrated from the mid-1990s a capacity to integrate operations across Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. The Philippine connection in Mindanao with its long-standing Moro resistance movement against the Catholic Philippine state was particularly important both for JI and al-Qaeda. The long-established MILF training camp, Camp Abubakar, played a vital role in the education and training of successive generations of mujahidin, and al-Qaeda early recognized the importance of Moro separatism to its transnational strategy. Sustained Moro resistance dates from the 1950s but became increasingly networked globally in the course of the 1970s with the emergence of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and later Abu Sayyaf, a violent splinter group which broke away from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1991, although the precise circumstances surrounding its evolution remain somewhat obscure.32 From the late 1980s, both MILF and, after 1991, Abu Sayyaf received direct support from al-Qaeda. In 1988, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden’s brother-in-law, had established a number of businesses that subsequently supplied financial and logistical support to Abu Sayyaf and MILF.33 Khalifa’s front organizations included E.T., Dizon Travel – which was active in shipping goods between the Philippines, Malaysia, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia – as well as Dizon and Dizon Realty, as well as non-governmental organizations and charities that laundered money for the resistance like the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO).34 Through these organizations Khalifa established further links

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with Libya and the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA in Algeria. Khalifa’s philanthropy also enabled Abu Sayyaf personnel to study at Islamic madrasahs in Pakistan. Khalifa left Manila in 1995 and has not been seen since. The revenues from such enterprises financed training centres like Camp Abubakar in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines.35 Until it was overrun by the Philippine army in 2000, the camp provided instruction in explosives and assassination techniques and by the mid-1990s regularly brought in mujahidin expertise from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Algeria to train local Islamists.36 In 1998, al-Qaeda sent a Sudanese colonel, Ahmad al-Gamen, to Mindanao to train MILF members in explosives and commando techniques.37 The process was two-way. In 2002, former counterterrorism task force head of the Philippine National Police, Senior Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza, observed that: ‘There were foreign nationals like French Algerians, Egyptians, and Pakistanis who were trained by Filipinos inside Camp Abubakar.’38 Camp Abubakar maintained its international profile and was internally subdivided into Algerian, Palestinian and other sections. From 1996, the Indonesian JI contingent trained in Camp Hudaibayah within the sprawling Abubakar complex. Hudaibayah was in turn divided into ‘tribes’, encompassed by Camp Solo, Camp Banten and Camp Sulawesi. In 1998 and 1999, whilst Camp Abubakar remained in operation, bin Laden facilitated links between the Algerian GIA and the MILF’s leader Salamat Hashim.39 The Philippine Directorate of Intelligence maintained that: ‘Sometime last mid-February 1999 Osama bin Laden reportedly contacted separately MILF chairman Salamat and the Algerian leader Hassan Hattab. Bin Laden reportedly sought the assistance of Salamat in establishing new camps in Mindanao and instructed Hattab to start operations in his areas respectively.’40 Prior to this development, in 1991, Khalifa fomented particularly close ties with Abdulrajak Janjalani, the founder of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). Abdurajak Janjalani, a former school teacher who had spent time in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan where he met Osama bin Laden, formed the ASG from former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) fighters in his native Basilan in the Southern Philippines. Bin Laden supported Janjalani’s group with a donation of US$6 million. From the outset the ASG shared al-Qaeda and JI’s vision of creating a pan-Islamic realm, Daulah Islamiyah Nusantara.41 In this they deviated profoundly from the far more circumscribed separatist political ambitions of both the MILF and MNLF. The ASG also shared al-Qaeda’s jihadist approach to instantiating its pan-Islamic vision. After 1991, ASG embarked upon a campaign of bombings, kidnappings, rapes and extortion across the


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Southern Philippines. Janjalani’s links to Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed facilitated the ASG’s pursuit of polymorphous violence. Yousef, a Baluchi based in the Philippines,42 like most elite Islamist international terrorists, possessed multiple identities, a degree from a UK university, and travelled on a variety of passports including an Iraqi one. Yousef planned the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.43 His putative uncle, also a Baluchi Sunni, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was number three in the al-Qaeda hierarchy and featured in both the planning of 9/11 and later JI operations.44 Both Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed took regular scuba diving trips to Puerta Galera in Basilan in order to train the ASG. In December 1994, the ASG claimed responsibility for Yousef’s failed attempt to bomb a Philippine Airlines Flight 434 from Cebu. The bombing was a test run for Yousef’s grand plan, Operation Bojinka, to explode 11 passenger planes over the Pacific en route to Los Angeles. A fire at Yousef’s apartment followed by a police raid and Yousef’s arrest disrupted the operation in January 1995.45 Yousef had also planned to assassinate the Pope during his visit to the Philippines in 1995. The subsequent arrest and interrogation of Abdul Karim Murad in Pakistan in March 1995, who operated under Ramzi Yousef’s guidance, confirmed the bin Laden connection.46 Via Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, Osama bin Laden’s imprimatur was clearly visible upon the ASG’s political vision and strategic style. Indeed, the loose, protoplasmic al-Qaeda framework served as the model for Abu Sayyaf. Notwithstanding the disruption of Operation Bojinka, the ASG subsequently conducted a beachhead assault on the town of Ipil in Mindanao in April 1995. However, the links with al-Qaeda deteriorated after 1998 when the Philippine National Police killed Abdurajak Janjalani in a firefight on Basilan Island. Janjalani’s younger brother, Khadafy, assumed the leadership of the group which increasingly had recourse to kidnappings and hostage-taking to subsidize its activities. In 2000 it expanded its operations to the West Malaysian dive resort of Sipadan where it took 21 hostages. Apart from a ransom the ASG demanded the release of Ramzi Yousef, detained in the US, in exchange for the hostages. The abduction of 20 hostages from an upmarket resort on the ‘safe’ Southern Philippine resort island of Palawan followed in May 2001. A year after the raid a botched Philippine army rescue saw two of the hostages, including the American missionary Martin Burnham, killed, while the rest of the hostages were wounded and the kidnappers escaped. Khadafy’s pattern of random kidnapping, ransom demands and nihilistic violence culminated in the bombing of the Manila Super Ferry 14 in February 2004 that killed 116 passengers. Abu Sayyaf bombed the ferry because the owners refused to pay protection money. Despite its

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continuing links to JI, under Khadafy’s leadership, the ASG became both increasingly fragmented and assumed the character of a violent crime gang with Islamist pretensions. To some extent the ASG’s degeneration into banditry and raiding explains the divergent estimates of the size of the group, which ranged from 200 to more than 2000 members. Its variable membership, however, also reflected the group’s roots in the alliance system practised traditionally amongst the Tausug and Yakun ethnic minorities that inhabited the Basilan and Jolo islands. In the case of both JI and the ASG, kinship ties constitute a key independent variable in the evolution and security of the group. Indeed, as I shall show, kinship and marriage also facilitated the informal mutation of the network.

KINSHIP, MARRIAGE AND TRANSNATIONAL TERROR NETWORKS The evolution of JI as a transnational terrorist group up until 2002 demonstrated the developing capacity to insinuate itself into seemingly selfcontained conflicts and develop what Jessica Stern has termed ‘friendships of convenience’. It also demonstrated the extent to which local groupings are willing to receive al-Qaeda’s largesse and support to sustain resistance. As Gregory Copely, of the Washington-based International Strategic Studies Association, rightly cautions: ‘All of these [Islamist] groups have connections . . . we like to look at different labels for them, but they are so interrelated and overlapping. Even Shiite and the Sunni groups work with each other to achieve common objectives.’47 The relationship between JI and Abu Sayyaf and with al-Qaeda was, however, essentially protean. Although facilitated by the revolution in communications that a global economy has facilitated, it clearly depended for its connectivity upon ethnic and kinship ties and marital alliances. In the case of Abu Sayyaf, both kin and clan ties played a crucial role in the structure of the group and its pattern of violence. Thomas Kiefer, in his classic work on the Tausug minority in Jolo and Basilan in the 1960s, observed how the local alliance system constituted the building block of political organization particularly in relation to warfare.48 Dyadic friendship relations, ties of reciprocity ‘involving the exchange of political and military services, goods and affect’ enabled the formation of armed bands.49 Here minimal alliances founded on close kin ties like the Janjalani brothers and their in-laws formed the base; whilst medial alliances formed through the dyadic relationship between two minimal kin groups constituted the mid-level alliance. Finally, a maximal alliance involving regional affiliations formed the apex of the Tausug system. By the 1960s


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the developing power of the post-colonial state had effectively disrupted the formation of maximal alliances. However, for purposes both of resistance and political organization, medial and minimal alliances remained. The ASG deployed this minimal and medial alliance system, facilitated by the technology and training that al-Qaeda made possible, to conduct operations and then melt back into the civilian population. Its capacity to network with like-minded alliances in both Afghanistan and Indonesia further enhanced its regional and transnational cachet. The globalization of the 1990s that opened borders and accelerated communication facilitated the process, particularly its evolving connection to JI. Consequently, a number of factors may be identified as critical to the organization and development of the JI and Abu Sayyaf networks in the course of the 1990s. Firstly, the evolution of an ideology that viewed jihad as a duty to bring about a radical millennial transformation of the regional and international order. Secondly, access to training camps and schools to recruit and indoctrinate a generation of true believers. Access to camps and funding from Afghanistan and Saudi charities helped develop training camps like Abubakar in the Philippines and schools like Lukmanul and Ngruki that formed the hard core of the JI network. Yet the training and funding was secondary to the close interpersonal and kin ties. Unlike the very specific Tausug ethnicity that formed the backbone of ASG, most of the JI leadership hail from Indonesian Hadramat backgrounds and often retain Yemeni kinship connections. JI membership also demonstrates close ties to the DI movement of the 1950s. Thus, Fathurrahman al-Ghozi’s father was a DI member imprisoned by the New Order. The family of Ahmed Kandai exhibits a jihadist genealogy. Kandai belonged to DI and had attempted to assassinate Sukarno in 1957. His brother Natsir worked closely with both Sungkar and Bashir in Central Java and Malaysia. Kandai’s three sons all became jihadists. Two took part in the bombing of the Philippine Ambassador’s residence in Jakarta in January 2000, whilst the third bombed the Atrium shopping mall in the same year. Brothers are a notable feature of JI, apart from the Bali bombers, and al-Ghozi, Hambali’s brother Rusman Gunawan, acted as a conduit for e-mails between al-Qaeda and Hambali and participated in the Jakarta Marriott Hotel bombing of 2003. Intermarriage further reinforces the JI membership and keeps the network secure. Thus Mukhlas married head of Mantiqi 3 Nasir Abbas’s sister, whilst al-Ghozi and Amrozi are in-laws. After the police killed al-Ghozi in 2003, his younger brother, also a member of JI, married his widow. Abdullah Sungkar married two of his stepdaughters to Ferial Muchlis Abdul Halim, head of a Selangor JI cell, and Syawal Yassin, a prominent Sulawesi jihadi. Sungkar also celebrated the marriage between Abdul Rahyim Ayub and the Australian Rabiyah Hutchinson. Haris

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Fadillah, a DI militia leader in Ambon, married his daughter Augustina to Indonesian-based al-Qaeda representative Omar al Faruq. Somewhat differently, Australian Jack Thomas married Indonesian Maryati on the advice of JI friends.50 Kith and kinship ties facilitate the network’s informal proliferation. JI intermarriage extended its links from Afghanistan through Malaysia and Indonesia to Sydney and Melbourne. At the same time, this long-gestating Islamist qabilah or tribe dedicated to transforming the region into a Daulah Islam (an Islamic realm) spreads Islam’s pre-modern injunctions by utilizing modern communications systems, transcending the nation state in order to forge a transnational network that creates both virtually and potentially an Islamic realm with the potential to disrupt, disorganize, paralyse and terrorize insecure post-colonial arrangements. Globalization of communications facilitates the interconnections, whilst funding from a variety of sources, including remittances, ransoms, charities and front organizations, lubricates the process. According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) section chief Dennis Lormel, clandestine funds found their way from the Middle East into Southeast Asia through the operation of ostensibly Saudi-sponsored charity organizations. After 1999 JI successfully embedded members or co-opted Saudi charities (al-Haramain and IIRO) and their Indonesian counterparts that were used to support militant activities.51 In August 2006, the US Treasury identified the IIRO Indonesian and Philippine offices as ‘facilitating fund raising for al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups’.52

COUNTDOWN TO BALI Both JI’s and the al-Mukmin and Lukmanul schools’ unorthodox curricula activities were only exposed by the discovery of JI’s video plan to attack Western embassies in Singapore. Somewhat fortuitously, an American soldier stumbled upon the video in the rubble of al-Qaeda’s headquarters in Kabul following the US-led attack on Afghanistan.53 It also emerged that the Changi naval base and several other installations in Singapore, including the main civilian airport, were also on JI’s target list.54 As a result of this fortuitous discovery, al-Ghozi was arrested in Manila in January 2002. In February 2003, Singapore’s Internal Security Department revealed that it had found e-mails and letters linking Maidin, the leader of the Singapore JI operation, with Mullah Omar, Mohammed Atta and Osama bin Laden in Kabul.55 These contacts date from 1999. Informing the strategic thinking of the Singapore plot was a sophisticated attempt to damage the increasingly fraught bilateral relations with Malaysia, with the


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aim of creating conflict between the two neighbours and thus destabilizing the regional order that the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), formed in 1967, had crafted after the European colonial powers eventually departed the region. Mohammed Mansoor Jabarah, a 19-year-old Kuwaiti with Canadian citizenship who had met with bin Laden on at least four occasions, provided the finance for the operation and its link to al-Qaeda.56 Jabarah escaped to Malaysia in December 2001. Subsequently, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sent Jabarah to organize new missions with Hambali. In January 2002 Jabarah met with Hambali, and Omar al Faruq, the alQaeda representative in Southeast Asia,57 Mukhlas and Noordin Top in Southern Thailand. Here they agreed to hit soft targets such as the Kuta Beach resort in Bali.58 Jabarah made available US$150 000 for the Bali operation. Hambali delegated the planning and execution of this mission to Mukhlas.59 Mukhlas chose Imam Samudra, from a Persis family in West Java, to lead the Bali operation and recruited a hard core of al-Mukmin graduates. Azahari Hussin directed Ali Imron, Amrozi, Mubarok, Sarjiyo, Umar Patek and Dul Matin in constructing the bombs responsible for the attack on Paddy’s Bar on 12 October 2002.60

AFTER BALI: THE AMBIVALENT REGIONAL RESPONSE In piecing together the evolving relationship between JI, the ASG and alQaeda between 1985 and 2002, it is a curious fact that regional intelligence and police services exhibited a marked degree of complacency about the nature and extent of the threat. Jabarah, for example, was detained in March 2002 and Faruq was arrested in August 2002. An FBI report derived from their interrogations was made available to Australian and regional intelligence agencies in August 2002.61 Yet even after the Bali bombs, Australian police and intelligence still officially denied any connection between JI and al-Qaeda. In January 2003, Australian police sources even maintained that: ‘there is nothing concrete to link al-Qaeda to the [Bali] bombings’.62 Eventually, in February, it was officially but somewhat obscurely admitted that ‘until the events of October 12’ JI was ‘an unknown quantity’.63 In many ways, the scale of the intelligence failure across the region reflected a wider intergovernmental complacency towards the spread of Islamic extremism prior to the Bali bombing, which consistently underestimated the nature and extent of the threat. Thus, regional scholar bureaucrats like Jusuf Wanandi of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta maintained that: ‘Attention to such groups as Laskar

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Jihad has been overblown. They are rather noisy groups, but small and marginal.’64 Such views found their echo in Australian assessments, where security analysts were claiming barely a week before the Bali attack that: ‘the tendency is still to overplay [the terror] threat’.65 Given the protoplasmic character of al-Qaeda, with JI sleeper cells still in Australia, the threat remained pervasive between 2002 and 2007. Before the Bali attack ASEAN had set up a number of discussion forums to look into the issue of extremism in the region. However, the organization was often divided in outlook amongst its membership and significantly could not agree on an accepted definition of terrorism.66 After the Bali bombing, ASEAN nations increased low-level intelligence cooperation. Nevertheless, the Association remains hamstrung in dealing with the Southeast Asian terror network as a result of its commitment to the principle of non-interference. As a consequence, some ASEAN states, along with regional commentary more generally, continued between 2002 and 2005 to exhibit a degree of ambivalence toward the global interconnectedness of radical Islam.67 In Indonesia, in the aftermath of the authoritarian New Order, the presidency of Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001–04) officially discounted links between regional Islamism and globalizing transnational terror despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, the 35-page indictment of the night club bomber, Amrozi, failed even to mention his membership of JI,68 whilst the subsequent indictment of Bashir made no mention of his links with al-Qaeda.69 Bashir was arraigned on charges of trying to topple Indonesia’s secular government, assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri and establish an Islamic state. Bashir himself, of course, dismissed all the charges against him as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plot, and threatened US President Bush with ‘punishment by Allah’.70 Moreover, JI had by no means been rendered redundant by the arrest of the Bali bombers. Bomb attacks on Jakarta airport and in the Philippines in May 2003 demonstrated a continuing terror capability that the attack on the Marriott Hotel on 5 August, in which more than a dozen people were killed, only served to reinforce. The bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2004, the second attack on Bali in October 2005 in which 23 died, and the suicide attack on the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in the Mega Kuningan business district of Jakarta in July 2009 that killed nine people, demonstrated the continuing capacity of the group to conduct operations. Its protean character and loose and increasingly fragmented structure, combined with the fact that al-Qaeda operates as a global conduit for anti-Western resentment, means that it had become more elusive and difficult to eliminate. Indeed, a study by Sidney Jones in 2003 suggested that JI was a much


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larger organization than previously suspected, ‘with a depth of leadership that gives it a regenerative capacity’.71 In August 2003, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty maintained that JI would not be defeated whilst the Indonesian government permitted pesantren to recruit future generations to the jihadist cause. Somewhat predictably, the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Hasan Wirayuda, dismissed Keelty’s observations as ‘fortune teller’s talk’ and an intolerable intrusion into Indonesian domestic politics.72 Commissioner Keelty’s prophecies, however, appeared confirmed when in September 2003 a Jakarta court convicted Abu Bakar Bashir of the lesser crime of subversion rather than treason, and sentenced him to four years in prison. The court found insufficient evidence to prove that he was the leader of JI or conspired in the planning of terrorist operations. He was released from jail in 2006 and continues to preside over his boarding school at Pondok Ngruki near Solo in Central Java. Meanwhile, in 2003 the Thai government threatened to prosecute any foreign journalist who alleged that senior al-Qaeda operatives like Hambali had ever met in the Muslim-populated south of the country to coordinate attacks across the region, despite well-informed reports that this was indeed the case.73 In June, however, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who had previously derided travel warnings against his country, somewhat lost face when Thai police uncovered a JI cell actively planning suicide bomb attacks on Western embassies in Bangkok. The embarrassment was further compounded with Hambali’s arrest in the former Thai capital of Ayodhaya in August 2003. Further revelations in May that JI members ran a school complex in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and had opened a new training camp in southern Mindanao, which gave diplomas to its graduates, indicated once more the adaptive qualities of the organization. Indeed, the largely unregulated borderland region that comprises parts of Mindanao, islands in the Sulu sea, the Malaysian state of Sabah and northern Indonesia continues to offer sanctuary to those opposed to the secular governments of the region. Moreover, despite continued harrying by the Philippine military and police, the ASG threat remained sufficiently serious that the Philippine government postponed an ASEAN ministers meeting and East Asian summit planned for Cebu in November 2006.

DISMANTLING JI These setbacks notwithstanding, it nevertheless appeared that when the usually uncoordinated internal security apparatus of regional states

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was overcome, and the traditionally fragmented minds of the ASEAN members concentrated, and in association with Australian and US expertise, ASEAN states could expose and disrupt both JI and its transnational connections. After October 2002, the Indonesian police arrested 34 members of the JI group whose existence the government officially doubted until 2005. Whilst Bashir received a light sentence, in Denpasar, Bali, Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Imron were found guilty and sentenced to death in August 2003 for securing the explosives and the car for the Bali nightclub bombings. Moreover, after the second bombing of Bali and with the election of President Susilo Bambang Yudyhono (2004), the Indonesian police developed with the assistance of the Australian Federal Police and the US military both the resolve and the capacity to dismantle the JI network. From 2004, the Indonesian police received a clear mandate to excise the most militant JI group, Mantiqi 1. The police paramilitary Brimob (Brigade Mobile), and particularly its second anti-terror regiment Gegana, together with its US trained and funded special forces group Detasemen Khusus 88 (Detachment 88) that became operational in 2005, harried the militant wing of JI across the archipelago. In 2005, Detachment 88 raided a house in Malang East Java and killed Azahari Hussin, the bomb-maker responsible, with Noordin Top, for the Bali, Marriott Hotel and Australian Embassy attacks. In January 2007, they engaged in an operation in Poso, Sulawesi where ten jihadis died in a gunfight. Subsequently, intercommunal violence in Sulawesi declined. The counter-insurgency achieved another notable coup in June 2007 with the arrest of Abu Dujana, the head of JI’s military wing, together with the new supreme leader of JI, Zarkasih. The arrests of Dujana and Zarkasih severely disrupted the postBali organization of JI. By 2007, therefore, the JI network responsible for Bali had been significantly degraded. Hambali, Mukhlas, Faiz Bafana, Abu Jibril, Abu Rusdan and the Bali bombers were all in jail, and Azahari Hussin and Fathurahman al-Ghozi dead. In 2009 the remnant of JI’s hard core, Umar Patek and Dulmatin – remained at large, probably in the Southern Philippines, where they retained links with the ASG. By 2007, JI was so fragmented that the Noordin Top group broke away, declaring themselves the Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad. In the Philippines, the police and military continue their protracted campaign against the ASG and related militias in Mindanao. The police killed Khadaffy Janjalani in 2006 and his successor, Abu Suleiman, in January 2007. Romeo Ricardo, chief of police intelligence group maintained Khadaffy and Suleiman had been the main contacts both with Middle Eastern donors and with JI.


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In Malaysia, which had hosted both Zacarias Moussaoui and a number of late participants in the events of 9/11, government security forces interned 62 members of the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM). Indonesia, coming to the party after 2004, even cooperating with Singaporean authorities to pick up the head of the Singapore branch of JI, and participating in joint operations with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to dismantle JI’s military wing, the capacity to mount terror attacks in the region has been rendered far more difficult. Moreover, the arrests of Omar al-Faruq in August 2002, and Hambali JI’s chief strategist by US special forces in Thailand in August 2003, severed links between JI and al-Qaeda’s already disrupted military council and further damaged its operational effectiveness.

THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN CONTEXT At the same time, as more effective regional policing, intelligence and counter-insurgency operations disrupted JI and its links with the KMM, the ASG and al-Qaeda, a number of regional governments also launched initiatives to counter the ideology that JI and its affiliates in the MMI espouse. This is not unimportant because, although regional governments have disrupted jihadism in Indonesia and Malaysia, the democratic transition in Indonesia since 1999 and the increasing openness of Malaysian politics since 2004 has afforded Islamism an opening to advance its ideology by political means. Significantly, the more astute and pragmatic figures in JI recognize this opportunity. The long-serving Emir of JI, Bashir, has since 2007 outlined and promoted a political Islamist agenda. His message of transforming the political state into an Islamic one converges with that advanced by Islamist political parties like the Prosperous Justice Party (PKN) and Hizb ut Tahrir that operate both regionally and transnationally to advance the Caliphate, but unlike JI, eschew, at least officially, any recourse to physical jihad. Consequently, in order to confront the ideological appeal of Islamism to the regional community of Muslims that constitute the majority population in Indonesia and Malaysia, and significant minorities in the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, a number of governments have revived or modified strategies to sustain internal cohesion and national resilience. This is not without interest given that Southeast Asian states like Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia were the focus of classical counter-insurgency practice in the 1950s and 1960s. Significantly, in the Cold War period it was these insecure new states that paid conspicuous attention to nation-building and fomenting internal resilience in the face of a variety of external and internal threats. Indonesia evolved its secular

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identity of unity in diversity via a national ideology of Pancasila; after race riots in 1969, Malaysia devised its national pillars or Rukun Negara; whilst Singapore developed a strategy of total defence, a crucial dimension of which required psychological defence designed to reinforce loyalty to and trust in government. Moreover, in attending to national resilience these states have increasingly come to recognize that the threat posed by violent extremism is not one of inadequate public policy but one of ideological motivation. As Rohan Gunaratna, head of the Centre of International Terrorism and Violence Research at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) observes: ‘ideology not poverty or illiteracy’ is ‘the key driver of politically motivated violence’. In this he merely asserts the orthodox view not only of the Singapore government, but also that of the moderate Muslim ruling parties in Indonesia and Malaysia. In Malaysia, the Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi promotes a civilizational Islam or Islam hadhari that emphasizes Islamic tolerance, market friendliness and pluralism. This together with a recourse to internal security legislation, dating from the Emergency period, to interdict those suspected of membership of radical Islamist groups like Kumpulan Mujahadin Malaysia and al-Qaeda-related affiliates, has succeeded in reducing Islamist-inspired violence in Malaysia. Analogously, in Indonesia, former President Abdurrahman Wahid’s Wahid Institute promotes a moderate Muslim voice that emphasizes Islam as a moral and social teaching rather than a political ideology. Nadhlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization in the world, promotes Wahid’s thinking, as well as his critique of radical Islamist ideas, across the archipelago. Moderate teaching together with the Indonesian government and its paramilitary police’s increasingly combative approach to JI militancy has effectively degraded the capacity of JI as a terrorist organization. The strategies adopted by Southeast Asian states, therefore, emphasize the centrality of an awareness of al-Qaeda’s ideology and the capacity to address it. As a 2006 report on ‘Terrorism in Southeast Asia’ observed, ‘weaning the mainstream Muslims away from [Islamist] influence through political concessions, amnesties or other personal initiatives’ is not enough. Instead, ‘the best chances for success is to engage them in dialogue, show them how they are being manipulated by perverted or corrupt interpretations of the religious texts and to convince them that there could be better alternatives to acts of violence’.74 Outlining what this entails in terms of counter-ideological practice, Rohan Gunaratna observes that until recently, ‘the ideological or intellectual battle has been overlooked’. In particular, ‘there has been no effort to ideologically target al Qaeda and JI and other comparable groups that apply religious justification to legitimate and authenticate their terrorist activities’.75


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To address this Singapore, and the region more generally, has adapted – if somewhat belatedly – a more proactive strategy. Working within an established framework for sustaining national resilience and maintaining harmony within its diverse communities, the Singapore government has acted in conjunction with the moderate Muslim community ‘to root out extremists and radical teaching’. In this enterprise the government recognized, as Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng, observed, that: ‘the government cannot deal with the terrorist ideology by changing the minds of the detainees who have been poisoned. This has to be done by the religious teachers and scholars themselves’.76 Thus, to combat the ‘deviant ideology’ the government-linked Muslim community organizations address the distortions present in JI ideology as well as counselling Singapore’s 31 JI members detained under the state’s draconic Internal Security Act (ISA) since 2002.77 In particular after 2003, the Muslim Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) established a register of religious teachers (asatizah) as part of a ‘comprehensive regulatory system’.78 This system also involves prominent Singaporean Muslim clerics both counselling jihadists and engaging directly with their ideology. Moslem scholars Ustaz Haji ali Haji Mohamed and Ustaz Haji Mohamed Hasbi bin Feisal Hassan, President of the Singapore Islamic Scholars and Religious Teachers Association, became the core personnel of the Religious Rehabilitation Group devoted to correcting the misconceived ideology held by JI detainees and disseminated across the Muslim community.79 The Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG) undertakes intensive counselling of those who have been radicalized. Since 2005, the RRG has successfully rehabilitated 26 former JI sympathizers who have been released back into the community, albeit on restriction orders. In the Southeast Asian context, therefore, security analysts like Noor Huda Ismail consider ideological rehabilitation crucial, ‘because it tackles the heart of the problem, a radical reinterpretation of Islamic teachings’.80 Apart from its counselling programme, asatizah (religious teacher) like Muhammad Hassan also play an active role in confuting Islamist writings and their justifications for jihadist violence. Thus Hassan, like Wahid in Indonesia, addresses the questionable use of the Koran to defend the jihadist recourse to violence. Hassan notably undertook a detailed criticism of Bali bomber Imam Samudra’s best-seller Aku Melawan Teroris! (2004).81 Samudra defended the Bali bombing in 2002 on the grounds that Muslim lands needed defence against the infidel crusade. Jihad, moreover, is not only necessary but constitutes a personal obligation (fardhu ain) for the true as opposed to the fake or ‘chocolate’ Muslim. By contrast, Hassan draws upon Islamic theology to show that Samudra’s personal obligation to jihad negates the concept of rightful

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authority in Islam, whilst his generalization about the necessity of jihad against non-believers is a generalization that no established Muslim scholarship sustains. Ultimately, Hassan demonstrates that Samudra’s thinking tends to conspiracy theory rather than faith. Significantly, therefore, the governments of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia have recognized since 2002 that: ‘no counter ideology work can succeed and no correct alternative ideas can be offered unless a clear and accurate understanding of the opposing ideology held by jihadists is established’.82 As Hassan concludes: ‘the problem of violent extremism is twofold: misinterpretation of the text and the opportunity and context that provide for such misinterpretation’.83

CONCLUSION What this genealogy demonstrates is both the long-term thinking and planning of al-Qaeda, and its protean and diffuse character, which enabled it to connect Islamist movements as far afield as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, organizing them, financing them and subordinating them to its strategic goals. Its capacity to draw disparate radical groups together and coordinate their ideology and practice through collaboration and exchange, to broaden the reach of these groups from local to national to regional and beyond, contrasts with the partial understandings of the threat by regional intelligence agencies and commentators limited by national horizons and bureaucratic or government-determined agendas. In particular, scepticism needs to be shown towards the idea that what may appear to be localized Islamic resistance will somehow obey official edicts to keep within established sovereign state boundaries and remain confined to provincial frames of reference. Finally, whilst JI has been effectively dismantled it has succeeded in making its ideology both widely available and increasingly attractive to Southeast Asian Muslims confronted by the uncertainty of regional politics and the anxiety generated by globalization. Moreover, as the Jakarta hotel attacks in 2009 demonstrate, despite the increasingly fragmented and protean character of JI’s extremist tendency, its continuing appeal to a new generation of radicals remains asymmetric and potent.

NOTES 1.

See ‘Alien arrests bid to flush out “sleepers”’, Bangkok Post, 11 March 2002; Reme Ahmad (2002), ‘KL arrests 23 Islamic militants in swoop’, Straits Times, 5 January.

Informal networks in Southeast Asia 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

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Justin Magouirk, Scott Atran and Marc Sageman (2008), ‘Connecting terrorist networks’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 31 (1), 30–42. See David Martin Jones and Michael Smith (2002), ‘The perils of hyper-vigilance: the war on terrorism and the surveillance state in Southeast Asia’, Intelligence and National Security, 17 (4), 31–54. An indication of the somewhat uncertain comprehension of al-Qaeda’s future threat potential see Robert Fisk (1993), ‘Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace’, Independent, 6 December. It was Fisk’s opinion that the ‘Saudi businessman who recruited mujahideen now used them for large-scale building projects in Sudan’. See Sayyid Qutb (1971), Islam: The Religion of the Future, Kuwait: International Islamic Federation of Students; and Elie Kedourie (1994), Democracy and Arab Political Culture, London: Frank Cass, pp. 94–100. Abdullah Azzam was a Jordanian–Palestinian scholar and a Muslim Brotherhood radical. He studied Islamic law at Cairo’s al-Azhar University. Inspired by the prospect of being able to put the principles of Islamic resistance into practice, he was one of the first Arabs to leave for Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation after 1979. In 1980 he founded Maktab al-Khidmat lil-Mujahideen al-Arab (MaK) (the general translation is the ‘College that Serves the Arab Warriors’, but it was also known in English as the Afghan Service Office), in Peshawar, Pakistan. MaK formed one of the umbrella groups of the foreign fighters of the Afghan mujahidin and was part of the Muslim World League. It was here along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border that Osama bin Laden, the Islamicized scion of a wealthy Saudi family, first encountered Azzam. Azzam became Osama’s ideological guru. Osama bankrolled MaK and honoured Azzam with the appendage the ‘Emir of Jihad’. The recruitment of Arab fighters for the Afghan struggle meant that from early on MaK became heavily infiltrated by groups like the Egyptian al-Gamma al-Islamyia, the Palestinian Hamas and the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA). It was MaK that was to form the nucleus of later ideas about developing a transnational jihad and which was to evolve into the entity known as alQaeda. It is claimed that Azzam and Osama were to fall out over the future direction of MaK, though precisely over what seems to be a matter of debate. Some say Azzam had less commitment to global jihad, other accounts suggest both men got caught up in Afghan tribal politics, with Azzam supporting Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance while Osama supported the Taliban. Evidently, though, while in Afghanistan Osama developed far more sympathy for the views of the militant Egyptian surgeon Dr Ayman al-Zawahri (and later leader of the al-Gamma al-Islamyia) who proclaimed that: ‘Afghanistan should be a platform for the liberation of the entire Muslim world.’ Azzam was assassinated in a car bomb in Peshawar in September 1989 which, fortuitously or not, permitted the hard-line elements within the Maktab al-Khidmat like al-Zawahri and Osama himself to predominate. See Fiona Symons, ‘Analysis: the roots of jihad’, BBC News, 16 February 2003, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_ east/1603178.stm; Mohamad Bazi (2001), ‘Bin Laden’s “Logistical Mastermind”, New York Newsday, 21 September; Pierre Conesa (2002), ‘Al-Qaida, The Sect’, Le Monde Diplomatique, January at http://mondediplo.com/2002/01/07sect; ‘Al-Qaeda (The Base)’, Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC, 20 December 2002. See Richard Engel (2002), ‘Inside al-Qaeda: a window into the world of militant Islam and the Afghan alumni’, Jane’s International Security, 28 September, www.janes.com/ security/international_security/news/misc/janes010928_1_shtml. Ibid. It is sometimes queried whether it is correct to say that al-Qaeda existed in the 1980s. It is not certain when the grouping actually came into being, though 1989 is often stated as the year of its formation. However, it also seems probable that what we call al-Qaeda is in fact simply the name given to the later evolution of MaK. There is even evidence to suggest that ‘al-Qaeda’ is not self-given, but was merely the name of a file found on Osama bin Laden’s personal computer listing members and contacts within the MaK. Thus, the appendage ‘al-Qaeda’ appears to have been coined by the US authorities as

178

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks a convenient short-hand to describe the loose, if rather complex, arrangements of a network based on MaK’s membership. See ‘Al-Qaeda’s origins and links’, BBC News, 16 May 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1670089.stm; ‘Al Qaida’, Wikipedia, http:www.wikipedia.org.wiki/Al-Qaeda; ‘Blowback’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, 26 July 2001. See also Rohan Gunaratna (2006), ‘Al Qaeda’s origins, threat and its likely future’, in David Martin Jones (ed.), Globalisation and the New Terror, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, pp. 1–15. Jemaah Islamiah is the Malay and Indonesian translation of the Arabic al-Jemmat or the Egyptian al-Gamma which denotes either a group or community. ‘Islamiah’, sometimes spelt ‘Islamiyah’ in its Indonesian variant is the Arabic ‘Islami’ or the adjectival form of the noun ‘Islam’. See Greg Barton (2005), Jemaah Islamiyah Radical Islamism in Indonesia, Singapore: NUS Press, p. 45. See Asia Watch (2009), Human Rights in Indonesia and East Timor, New York: Asia Watch, pp. 76–85. See ‘Hambali plotted terror campaign’, Star (Malaysia), 1 January 2003. International Crisis Group (2002), ‘Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia: the case of the “Ngruki Network” in Indonesia’, 8 August, reissued 10 January 2003, at http://www. intl-crisis-group.org/projects/asia/indonesia/reports/A400733_08082002.pdf. Greg Barton, Jemaah Islamiyah, p. 114; and Justin Magouirk, Scott Atran and Marc Sageman (2008), ‘Connecting terror networks’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 31 (1), 9. The authorities closed the school in 2001. Rohan Gunaratna (2007), ‘Ideology in terrorism and counter terrorism: lesson from combating al Qaeda and al Jamaah al Islamiyyah in Southeast Asia’, in Abdul Halim Bin Kader (ed.), Fighting Terrorism: The Singapore Dimension, Singapore: Tamaan Bacaan, pp. 84–85. ‘Hambali: SE Asia’s most wanted’, BBC News/Asia-Pacific, 21 October 2002, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/asia-pacific/2346225.htm. Christian Science Monitor, 30 April 2002, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0430/ p01s04-woap.htm. Federation of American Scientists, http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/kmm.htm. See Greg Barton (2002), ‘An Islamist North Australia: al Qaeda’s vision’, Age, 30 October. Barton, Jemaah Islamiyah, pp. 56–57. Sydney Jones (2002), ‘Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia: the case of the Ngruki Network in Indonesia’, International Crisis Group Asia Briefing, Brussels: ICG, August, http:// www.crisisweb.org/projects/reports.cfm. Christian Science Monitor, 12 February 2002, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0212/ p06s02-wosc.html. See ‘Tentacles of terror’, Bulletin, 13 February 2002; and David Martin Jones and Mike L. Smith (2002), ‘The strange death of the ASEAN way’, Australian Financial Review, 12 April. See ‘Bush backs independent 9-11 probe’, CBSNews.com, 20 September 2002, http:// www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/24/attack/printable523156.shtml; and ‘The FBI’s hijacker list’, CBSNews.com, 27 September 2001, http://www.cbsnews.com/archive/ printable311329.shtml. Mark Fineman and Bob Drogin (2002), ‘Indonesian cleric had role in skyjackings, officials say’, Los Angeles Times, 2 February. Straits Times, 10 January 2003. Farah Abdul Rahim (2003), ‘White Paper sheds light on Singapore JI indoctrination process’, Channel News Asia.com, 9 January, http:www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/ singaporelocalnews/view/29264/1/.html. See Office of Public Affairs (2003), ‘Statement by the Treasury Department regarding today’s designation of two leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah’, Washington, DC, 24 January, KD-3796.

Informal networks in Southeast Asia 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

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‘The Bali bomber’s network of terror’, BBC News/Asia-Pacific, 12 May 2003, http:news. bbc.news.co.uk/1/world/asia-pacific/2499193.stm. See Justin Magouirk, Scott Atran and Marc Sageman (2008), ‘Connecting terrorist networks’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 31 (1), 8. The US State Department’s (2002) Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002, Washington, DC: State Department, formally lists the Abu Sayyaf Group as having broken away from the MNLF in the early 1990s under Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani (http://www. state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2002/html), although this is questioned by other analysts who argue that it evolved somewhat more independently based on the Tauseg ethnic group. See also Federation of American Scientists, http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/asg.htm. For a more concerted examination of the general development of Moro separatism see Peter Gowing (1974), Muslim Filipinos, Manila: Solidaridad; and W.K. Che Man (1990), Muslim Separatism: The Moros of the Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 1. Manila Times, 1 November 2002. The Guardian, 23 September 2001. Lira Dalangin (2003), ‘MILF: Camp Abubakar upland military’s next goal’, Newsbreak (Philippines), 17 February, http:www.inq7.net/brk/2003/feb/17/brkpol_4-1.htm. See C.C. Hidalgo (2000), ‘Camp Abubakar: a symbol of Muslim pride’, Codewan. com (Philippines), 17 May, http:www.codewan.com.ph/CyberDyaryo/features/ f2000_0515_01.htm. Republic of Philippines Directorate for Intelligence (1999), ‘Reference folder on international terrorism’, National Headquarters, Philippine National Police, Camp Crame, Quezon City, p. 2. The document is marked D1, classified as secret. The document also refers to MILF’s links with al-Qaeda and MaK stating that: ‘A certain Zine el Abiddin Abou Zoubaida of Maktab al Khidmat has been in contact with 2 prominent personalities of the MILF.’ Zoubaida was, of course, a Saudi on the leadership council of al-Qaeda. Quoted in Maria Ressa (2002), ‘Infiltrating the MILF’, Newsbreak, 28 October, http:www.inq7.net/nwsbrk/2002/oct/28/nbk_1-1.htm. Philippines Directorate for Intelligence, ‘Reference folder on international terrorism’, pp. 1–2. Ibid., p. 2. The Philippine police report concluded that: ‘Bin Laden and Khalifa are channelling funds to support the MILF through its various Islamic NGOs. The MILF on the other hand provided training venues for other Islamic extremists in their stronghold areas.’ The National Bureau of Terrorism Research (2005), Funding Terrorism in Southeast Asia: the financial network of al Qaeda and Jemmah Islamiyah, Washington, DC: NBTR, pp. 3–35. ‘Dancing girls and romance on road to terrorist attacks’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 2002. See also Washington Times, 18 October 2002. Laurie Mylroie (1995/96), ‘The World Trade Center bomb: who is Ramzi Yousef? And why it matters’, National Interest (Winter), 52–6; ‘The Baluch connection: is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tied to Bagdad?’, Wall Street Journal, 18 March 2003. See ‘Top al-Qaeda suspect captured’, BBC News, 1 March 2003, http:www.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/world/south_asia/2811473.stm. See Christopher Kremmer (2003), ‘Then there were two: al Qaeda planner caught’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March. Mylroie, ‘The Baluch connection’. ‘Behind the Kenya terrorist attacks’, Fox News, 2 December 2002, http://www.foxnews channel.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,71954,00.html. See Thomas M. Kiefer (1972), The Tausug: Violence and Law in a Philippine Moslem Society, Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, pp. 35–6. See Eduardo F. Ugarte (2008), ‘The alliance system of the Abu Sayyaf’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 31 (2), 134.

180 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75.

76.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks Noor Huda Ismail (2006), ‘The role of kinship in Jemaah Islamiah’, Straits Times, 22 April. Zachary Abuza (2006), ‘Terror network spreads’, Australian, 9 October. ‘Saudi linked charity linked to Bali bombs’, Australian, 8 August 2006. ‘Saudi linked charity linked to Bali bombs’, Australian, 8 August 2006. ‘Al Qaeda plot to bomb US ships foiled by MI6’, Daily Telegraph, 13 January 2002. ‘PM reveals plan to crash jet into Changi’, Sunday Times (Singapore), 7 April 2002. Rahim, ‘White Paper sheds light on Singapore JI indoctrination process’. See Mark Baker (2002), ‘Evidence points to web of extremists’, Age, 9 November. See ‘Confessions of an al-Qaeda terrorist’, Time Magazine, 15 September 2002. ‘A deadly connection’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 November 2002. ‘Four corners: the Bali confessions – chronology’, http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/ content/2003/20030210_baliconfessions_chronology.htm. See Seth Mydans (2003), ‘Suspect going on trial in Bali blast’, International Herald Tribune, 12 May. Marian Wilkinson (2002), ‘We’ll hit you: pre-Bali alert’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October. Australian, 25–26 January 2003. Australian, 15–16 February 2003. Jusuf Wanandi (2002), ‘Indonesia: a failed state?’, Washington Quarterly, 25 (3), 142. Again, it may be averred that Laskar Jihad, rather like Hizbollah, poses only a ‘limited’ indigenous threat within Indonesia and has no wider pretensions. One should caution, however, that the notion of confinement within sovereign borders is a fundamentally un-Islamic concept (only Allah is sovereign). Further, the very term ‘jihad’ only has resonance as a universalized Islamic idea and does not have any meaning as a geographically constrained interpretation. This much is hinted at on Laskar Jihad’s own website which states that jihad is a ‘holy ibadah’ (pious duty) for all Muslims. Moreover, the fact that the grouping has a global presence on the web indicates that it is part of the ‘Cybercaliphate’. See ‘Laskar Jihad Ahlus Sunnah wal Jammah’ at http:www.laskar jihad.or.id. Alan Dupont, quoted in Far Eastern Economic Review, 2 October 2002. Reme Ahmed (2002), ‘Asean ministers acknowledge defining terrorism is not crucial, fighting it is’, Straits Times, 21 May. See for example, Dini Djalal (2003), ‘Asia’s intelligence gap’, Foreign Policy, March/ April, 20–24. See ‘Bali opens terror trial in blast fatal to 200’, International Herald Tribune, 12 May 2002. See Caroline Munro (2002), ‘Bashir goes on trial’, Daily Telegraph (Australia), 11 May. Quoted in letter sent to President Bush from Bashir, Australian, 2 September 2003. International Crisis Group (2003), ‘Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: damaged but still dangerous’, ICG Asia Report 63, Jakarta/Brussels, 26 August, p. 1. Weekend Australian, 23–24 August 2003, p. 6. See Mark Baker (2002), ‘Angry Thais threaten writers over Hambali plot reports’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November. See also ‘Into the heart of darkness’, Age, 16 November 2002. ‘Terrorism in Southeast Asia: the threat and response’, Report of an International Conference organized by the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies and Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism, US Department of State Washington DC, Singapore, 12–13 April 2006 Rohan Gunaratna (2007), ‘Ideology in terrorism and counter terrorism lessons from combating al Qaeda and Al Jemaah al Islamiyah in Southeast Asia’, in Abdul Halim bin Kader (ed.), Fighting Terrorism: The Singapore Perspective, Singapore: Taman Bacaan, p. 95. Wong Kan Seng (2007), ‘Guarding against radical ideology’, ibid., p. 20.

Informal networks in Southeast Asia 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

181

Goh Chok Tong (2007), ‘After Amman: uniting to defeat terrorism’, ibid., p. 11. Yaacob Ibrahim (2007), ‘Stand up to deviants, don’t give them the last word’, in bin Kader (ed.), Fighting Terrorism, p. 25. Mohamed Feisal bin Mohamed Hussein (2007), ‘The role of the religious rehabilitation group in Singapore’, in bin Kader (ed.), Fighting Terrorism, p. 166. Zakir Hussain (2007), ‘Reforming JI detainees remains a long struggle’, Straits Times, 3 February. Iman Samudra (Abdul Aziz) (2004), Aku Melawan Teroris!, Solo: Jazeera. M.H. Bin Hassan (2007), ‘Imam Samudra’s justification for the Bali bombing’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30 (12), 1051. Ibid., p. 1052.

PART III

Disrupting Informal Networks

8.

Modeling proliferation networks Bruno Gruselle

Several tonnes of centrifuge components were discovered on their way to Libya when the German ship BBC China was intercepted in October 2003, thus revealing the existence of a large-scale network in nuclear technology smuggling. Its founder, Dr Abdul Qader Khan, considered as the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, had succeeded in creating a commercial system designed to assist countries aspiring to the possession of nuclear weapons, in return for payment, making use of contacts woven within the framework of the Pakistani nuclear bomb program. This enterprise illustrates the development of a second-tier proliferation phenomenon by which developing countries mutually assist each other in their efforts to develop and possess nuclear weapons or missiles.1 Everything suggests that the Khan network extended beyond simple assistance to nuclear programs and contributed to setting up technical cooperation between its customers. For example, this is the case for the development of the Nodong missile, its Pakistani version (Ghauri) and the Iranian Shahab-3. Although attention has been focused on the Khan network, there is no doubt that several more or less interconnected systems were set up to bypass the non-proliferation system. Work done by the Iraqi Survey Group demonstrated that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had set up a system designed to circumvent the embargo and acquire goods from other countries or foreign companies for use in its United Nations (UN)-prohibited programs. Similarly, the underground activities of the North Korean regime probably include the supply of proliferation technologies to customers such as Iran, Pakistan and even Syria. Other proliferation networks, such as that which led to the transfer of Kh-65 missiles to Iran and the People’s Republic of China, are more comparable to ‘conventional’ criminal enterprises, taking advantage of the weaknesses of export control systems. Developments and changes to these networks, some of which have existed for several decades, illustrate several serious trends in terms of proliferation. Firstly, the export control tools set up by some states are found to be

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effective in preventing the acquisition of key technologies for the nuclear and missile domains. But on the other hand, technical progress is tending to make some goods previously reserved for military use commonplace. At the same time, the spectrum of technologies and goods that could potentially be used for proliferation projects is quickly broadening. Western states are literally facing an explosion in the quantity of goods and services that should be controlled because of their possible application to nuclear programs or missiles; simply looking at recent changes to lists of dual-use goods controlled by supplier regimes demonstrates the magnitude of the task facing national control authorities. Furthermore, the worldwide distribution of some of these technologies (for a priori legitimate applications) makes it almost impossible to control their destination strictly. The involvement of the Malaysian SCOPE Company in the Khan network illustrates the difficulty; in a country in which there are few or no strict controls over transfers of sensitive know-how, a company can freely produce and export goods without knowing that they are intended for a nuclear program.2 Thus, the heteroclite nature of national control systems enables proliferation networks to acquire goods that members of supplier regimes refuse. The increase in world trade in material and immaterial goods tends to facilitate this task. Proliferators have made massive use of the main hubs of world trade like Dubai and Singapore that handle large volumes of transactions without having developed appropriate control systems, as turntables for equipment flows, particularly by setting up local front companies for the purpose of managing the acquisition of dual-use goods in the West and transferring them to their final destination. Similarly, companies legally doing business in services (banking, logistics, transport) find themselves potential prey for proliferators seeking to move money or goods internationally. The development of communication means (Internet or inexpensive media capable of storing large quantities of data) has also facilitated the transfer of know-how to customers. It also makes it possible to delocalize some of the technical support needed for programs. Furthermore, in the academic domain, the increase in scientific cooperation and the acceleration of foreign training policies have made a direct contribution to the increase in the technical expertise of executives who might participate in nuclear or missile programs. Finally, it is quite clear that, paradoxically, the proliferation phenomenon has become privatized. Although some states directly involved in the supply of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-related goods have officially renounced this activity, existing networks continue to operate more or less independently. The question of the degree of complicity of

Modeling proliferation networks

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governments and even managing authorities nonetheless arises in the Chinese and Pakistani cases. These trends have one practical consequence for proliferants: although critical know-how has become more difficult to obtain because it is better protected by the countries holding it, most of the goods necessary for development of a program are accessible. Proliferation networks benefit from the globalization of the economy which makes it easier for them to achieve one of their main objectives, namely to circumvent control systems in order to supply their customers.

TOWARDS A MODEL OF PROLIFERATION NETWORKS In order to obtain the technologies they need, proliferation players need to be capable of accessing dual-use components through discrete acquisition (direct or indirect); and obtaining and understanding and controlling critical know-how.3 This can be done using two different paths: ●

●

Create a national acquisition tool, backed up by an independent or quasi-independent development effort. The Iraqi case illustrates this approach: the acquisition network performed logistics, financial and administrative functions but was not directly involved in the technical effort. Call upon an external supplier capable of transferring critical knowhow, or even of supplying a turnkey capacity, by proposing a series of complementary technical and trade services. In particular, this supplier must be capable of participating in the technical evaluation of the need and production of a proposal, guaranteeing the transfer of the related material and immaterial goods and integrating them for the benefit of the customer. This is the case for the Khan network, or North Korea’s transfers of missile technologies.

Nevertheless, the boundary between suppliers and buyers is porous. An acquisition network may become a purveyor of technologies. For example, the existence of a ‘Nodong for centrifuges’ transaction between the North Korean network and the Khan network is sometimes mentioned in open source papers.4 Similarly, the Pakistani nuclear network created during the 1970s to support Islamabad’s acquisition efforts has transformed into the first ‘proliferation Wal-Mart’. A systemic study of these operation is essential in the effort to find solutions adapted to this new proliferation era. The first objective is to

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identify the structure of the two major types of networks to determine the principal functions performed and methods used for management of flows (financial, goods, know-how). The two best-documented cases, the Khan network and the Iraqi system, can be used to identify key mechanisms that control the structure of acquisition and supplier networks. The second objective is to model the two major types of proliferation networks. Finally, conclusions have to be drawn about conditions under which networks function and, therefore, their vulnerabilities. There is no single pathway leading to the development of proliferation networks. Each tool created to acquire or supply proliferation goods is specific and satisfies constraints and needs related to the immediate environment (political, security, economic and cultural) of the programs.5 However, the controlling principles that govern the appearance of such networks remain globally identical, even if individual situations are different. Thus, two essential principles should be mentioned in a first analysis: ● ●

The will to hold nuclear weapons and their carrying means. The impossibility of obtaining the required goods legitimately and/ or legally.

The existence of a strong demand from some states has always been the driving force for proliferation, but the structure of networks designed to satisfy this demand is new. It has been made possible by three concomitant phenomena. Firstly, the increase in worldwide trade flows and the widespread development of tools for managing them has facilitated layering of material and immaterial transfers. Like other trafficking organizations, proliferation networks conceal themselves in dark corners of world trade that have become difficult to monitor strictly.6 Payments for transfers are made through front companies, technical or financial intermediaries that take advantage of lax controls in some states. Secondly, the fact that some technologies and goods that used to be specific to military programs have now become commonplace makes it possible for proliferation networks and countries to deceive the vigilance of authorities responsible for proliferation control. Finally, the appearance of suppliers capable of and wishing to transfer complete systems and related technologies to potential purchasers is one of the factors that triggers setting up these new proliferation networks. In this respect, the case of North Korean ballistic exports is symptomatic in that it is integrated into a set of criminal activities designed to finance the nomenklatura.7 Thus, operations performed by the Khan network and adaptation of


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the Iraqi acquisition system illustrate trends in proliferation flows. Both are fairly extensive and their operations are sufficiently well known that we can understand practical aspects of their operation and draw conclusions about the structure of this type of organization.

MODELING PROLIFERATION NETWORKS Supplier Networks Functional analysis To be able to operate, a supplier’s network must be capable of offering its customers the product(s) best adapted to their needs and within their budget, but must also be capable of delivering them discreetly. This is one of the key capacities of a suppliers’ network, together with a series of optional services, such as setting up technical support during the project definition phase or on-site to help define the need.8 Thus, essential functions necessary in a suppliers’ network can be identified: ●

●

●

Engineering: in other words the capability of making a proposal corresponding to the customer’s need. Existence of this function is the necessary condition for the network to exist, in that it is capable of proposing a product or a service. This product or service may be primary (a specific component) or it may be complex (a complete proposal, knowledge or know-how). The engineering function may also be provided through the network itself, subcontracted to suppliers (voluntary or otherwise) or may be shared between external suppliers and part of the network. Logistics: including management of production or acquisition of the needed goods and their transport to the customer. For some projects, routing can be taken care of partly by the network itself and partly by the customer.9 Similarly, production can be subcontracted to companies working (willingly or not) for the network, as was the case for SCOPE. In any case, coordination with the customer and internal flows management are key functions for the network. Financial: which is the capability of managing financial flows, both within the network to pay intermediaries and suppliers, and outside the network. The network must be capable of receiving payments for transactions and distributing them to the various persons concerned, while camouflaging operations. This means that it is capable of laundering money received from its customers, and also of using its funds to acquire goods for its customers.

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Interactions between these functions determine the basic structure of the network. Considering the case of the A.Q. Khan network once more, some functions are performed by a single person. Thus, BSA Tahir manages routings and financial flows, while A.Q. Khan and some intermediaries or associates are responsible for engineering and production aspects. However in this case, a single person is responsible for coordinating key functions. Although this centralized aspect makes the organization efficient provided that the key person is competent, it also makes the organization vulnerable to disappearance of this person. This weakness can be compensated if the central level includes one or several redundancies, in other words persons or an organization capable of performing the coordination function in the case of a failure. Networks structured around organizations rather than persons appear to be less fragile.10 Due to their national nature, they also benefit from extra means in terms of routing and financial operations. In particular, they can transport goods with national means or they can benefit from diplomatic advantages. On the other hand, the structural weight imposed by the involvement of organizations can harm the overall efficiency. Therefore, coordination between engineering, logistics and financial functions may be a source of difficulty for the network, partly due to competition or even the lack of cooperation between the organizations involved. However, this difficulty appears to be less crucial for the operation of a suppliers’ network than it might be for an acquisition network. Therefore, two basic models could be considered for suppliers’ networks, corresponding to two different realities: ● ●

A star model, a priori corresponding to a private or semi-private network (of the Khan type, Figure 8.1). A cyclic model, a priori corresponding to a national network (of the North Korean type, Figure 8.2).

Combination of the two models would be possible, that would correspond to the Khan network structure between 1992 and 1999, and in which organizations of the state concerned are involved with central control exercised by an individual. The existence of organizations with a more informal structure, in which each center is linked to the others, is noteworthy.11 From a functional point of view, such a network appears relatively complex to manage. However, this type of network could be envisaged in a scenario of degrading cyclic or star networks, in which participants no longer coordinate at a global level, and instead create informal links between themselves (Figure 8.3). Such a configuration makes the network less vulnerable to the disappearance of the coordination


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Financial function BSA Tahir Carriers

Function technique AQ Khan KRL Logistic function (production) AQ Khan Collaborators

Figure 8.1

Logistic function (implementation) BSA Tahir SMB Group

Distribution of the functions provided by the Khan network

authority or one of the functional centers than the basic cases described above. Overall organization: circumventing regulations, financial and logistic operations, strong and weak points Regardless of its functional structure, the mission of a supplier network is to deliver a product to its customers conforming to their needs. To do this, in some cases, it must be capable of acquiring goods for the benefit of its customer and routing them, possibly in addition to its own proposal. Thus, the Khan network purchased goods from various European, Asian and South African companies on behalf of its customers. In order to control this type of operation, the network must be capable of contacting foreign companies and assuring that national authorities do not detect that their goods have been exported. Therefore, in terms of organization, the network needs to search and use intermediaries with good knowledge of the local industrial fabric and aware of the weaknesses of the national export control systems. It is also essential that the network should include front companies that will be official purchasers and therefore need to transport goods to their genuine destination. These front companies also act as transit points for goods that have been acquired

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Financial function • Management of internal financial flows • Management of external financial flows • Transport of funds

Logistics function • Organization responsible for routing of goods • Organization responsible for production

Engineering function: • Definition of proposals • Negotiations with the customer

Figure 8.2

Distribution of functions in a state network

by intermediaries, and must route them. Their physical location must be chosen such that they re-export the acquired goods without any or with only a minimal control on their transfer. In order to dissimulate their destination in the most restrictive case, in other words in a country with an efficient control system, intermediaries and front companies need to set up a series of measures. Firstly, they need false documents; in particular, false final destination certificates or even forged non-re-export certificates when required to obtain an export authorization from the country concerned. In some cases, these documents have to be countersigned by the national authorities of the country in which the front company operates.12 Complicity within the government is then necessary. Thus, for the supply of AS-15/Kh-55 cruise missile airframes by Ukraine to Iran and to China through Russia, one or several civil servants in Rosoboronexport had signed final user certificates to obtain a Ukrainian authorization. The use of false cargo manifests to


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Logistic function

Coordination function

Finance function

Technical function

Formal links Informal links Figure 8.3

Informal structure (simplified)

conceal the nature of the product is another solution to elude the efforts of customs and intelligence services (see Figure 8.4). The second set of measures relates to the selection of products, suppliers and transporters. The external part of the network (intermediaries and front companies) must select firmly dual-use goods wherever possible or goods that are not considered as being sensitive for the declared destination, so as to get around existing export control systems. Elementary components can also be chosen rather than complete subassemblies, the use of which is easier to determine. For example in the Libyan case, elements made by SCOPE that are useful for oil prospecting could legitimately be sent to a Gulf company: in other words the network must be able to cover its activity by legitimate operations, making use of the diversity of suppliers and the location of front companies. Finally, the network selects transporters if the acquirer cannot use their own means. If the network does not acquire equipment in other countries on behalf of its customers, it can minimize its external structure. But it must then

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Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks COUNTRY A Supplier Contract

Intermediary

Delivery Front company COUNTRY B Network internal structure

Delivery

Customer

Figure 8.4

Order Payment Direct delivery

Organization of a network for external suppliers

possess its own transport and logistical means (assumed to be reliable) for the movement of goods, and possibly for engineering support. Capital and money flows are usually detectable, even in the case of direct bank transfers between national banks.13 The main difficulty for suppliers’ networks is related to the volume of bank operations performed. Thus, a network using external players for some of its activities needs to perform a large number of financial operations, unlike an organization providing its own production. There may be several operational choices for managing these flows. Firstly, perform as many operations in cash as possible; however, the use of currency introduces the problem of reinjecting this currency on the market, in other words its laundering. Some countries have introduced rules limiting the amount of cash payments,14 which should prevent networks from making cash payments to any suppliers.15 In this case, considering the size of the financial flows involved (in millions of dollars16), this market cannot be organized solely through currency transfers. On the other hand, cash financing of part of the network, particularly intermediaries or cooperating companies, would appear to be feasible. Secondly, use of a network of banks and financial institutions; the objective for the organization is to put most of its financial resources in several banks or financial institutions that will receive payments and manage flows necessary to finance the various activities. Thus, Pyongyang appears to have distributed income generated by its illegal activities in several Asian,


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European and American banks.17 For some networks, it is also possible to set up financial institutions in other countries under their own control, with the exclusive role of managing their credits, paying suppliers and receiving payments from customers. Such a solution (similar to that set up by Iraq through the Rafidain Bank) has the advantage of limiting the risk of credits being frozen and enabling illegal operations to be carried out without the risk of detection by financial control services (see Box 8.1). For a supplier network, the ideal situation would be to be able to sell products wanted by its customers without the need to use brokers and external suppliers. The network would then have almost complete control over all flows generated by its traffic, and limit risks of detection and dismantling. However, this is not the case for known examples of supplier networks (North Korea, Khan). There are apparently two reasons that could account for this fact: 1.

The private nature of some networks. This is the case for the Khan network after 1999, that obliged it to acquire some goods in other countries to satisfy its customers’ demand; the specific nature of these networks was also to propose a complete offer (from technologies to the production cycle). Since they are not necessarily capable of producing all necessary elements internally, external acquisition is essential (in the form of subcontracting). 2. The dual nature of some networks. Supplier networks may also serve as acquisition organizations set up to satisfy national needs.18 Existing structures for acquisition activities then also manage the export activity. Therefore they need to generate larger flows and rely on more extensive international contacts and agents than if they only managed export activities. Determination of applicable criteria for making a judgment on vulnerabilities of a suppliers’ network If it is to be efficient and durable, a suppliers’ network should have three essential characteristics: 1.

2.

3.

Discretion. Particularly to escape detection by organizations responsible for monitoring suspicious movements of goods and capital: customs, intelligence agencies, police. Efficiency and ‘affordability’. To be capable of satisfying customer needs19 at relatively accessible and affordable costs for customers, while ensuring that the operation is cost-effective for the supplier. Resilience. The network must be able to continue operating if part of its means are eliminated or are no longer available.

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BOX 8.1 1.

LAUNDERING AND ‘DIRTYING’ OF MONEY IN PROLIFERATION

Money Laundering

Definitiona Money laundering is one element of financial criminality techniques. It is the action of dissimulating the source of money acquired illegally (in our case the traffic of proliferation products prohibited for export) to reinvest it in legal activities. It is an important step, since without laundering, these companies would be unable to have proliferation networks as customers (the fruit of these illegal sales has to enter their accounts) and they could not use large amounts of this income without being identified. There are usually several steps that occur in the laundering process; investment of amounts in financial products, stacking of intermediaries to loose track of the origin, finally reinsertion of funds into the legal economy. Laundering methods in general and laundering methods used in proliferation ● ●

●

●

●

‘Smurfing’: bank deposits of small amounts in cash by several persons. Bank complicity (by a bank or an employee): for example the Rasheed Bank and Rafidain Bank for Iraq,b the Delta Bank and the branch of the Popular Republic of China Bank (national bank) in Macao for North Korea. Purchase of goods in return for immediate cash payment; but this is not possible if the state acquiring illegal weapons also wants a long-term relation with the supplier and does not want to be suspected. Electronic transfer of funds: if the CIA and the Treasury Department of the SWIFT interbank network continue monitoring, this method is too risky because it leaves traces.c Amalgamation of funds in honest companies: this method is too slow for proliferation countries that have immediate needs.

Although it is possible to struggle against state networks procuring ‘sensitive’ products (fissile material, component included in


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the Zangger Committee list), it is much more difficult to struggle against a priori legal operations (sales of subassemblies, spare parts for which the end use is not known), but which are actually traffic in dual-use goods. Money ‘Dirtying’d

2.

Money dirtying is the inverse of money laundering. While the main concern of suppliers paid by proliferation networks is to reinject illegal income into the official economy, the concern of a state that would like to develop illegal activities (purchase of parts prohibited for import, corruption) is usually the contrary, namely to generate concealed funds and dirty cash originating from money legally acquired. The ‘Oil for food’ program provides a wide variety of dirtying techniques used by Iraq.e 3.

Typology of Problems from a Country Perspective ●

●

●

Iraq, Iran, Libya, oil-exporting countries with hard currencies, already having ‘clean’ money. The question of laundering does not arise for these countries since they already have clean money (income from oil). Therefore, they need to ‘dirty’ some of this money that they use to buy goods on the world market or in Western countries to conceal the user and the end use. There is no need to dirty money for purchases that they make in rogue countries (Khan Research Laboratory in Pakistan, North Korea, etc.). North Korea and other countries without hard currencies. Since the North Korean economy is very weak and only survives through the assistance of international aid (from South Korea, China and the United Nations World Food Programme), the Pyongyang regime needs to acquire hard currencies before it can purchase imports. In the past, North Korea has done this by distributing false $100 notes and selling counterfeit such as Viagra, cigarettes and amphetamines in cooperation with Chinese gangsters.f Pakistan’s problems are probably the same; Pakistan is apparently willing to barter (with North Korea) to acquire technologies that it does not have (missiles) or so that Khan

198


●

●

● ●

Research Laboratory can make a profit from its enrichment plants. Profit is one of the main motivations for sub- and transstate semi-private networks (like Khan) and subnetworks; therefore any honest or dishonest purchaser of their technology is acceptable. Several special features make the task of terrorists more difficult. If they have no ‘sanctuary’ countries (like Iran), it is difficult for them to be supplied with missiles or radioactive materials. Furthermore, many suppliers might hesitate if the final destination were known. But on the contrary, ideology might also convince them to take greater risks and help them obtain goods through other cooperating suppliers sharing the same beliefs. Individuals alone: for example Gotthard Lerch.g Countries of concern and companies that could illegally export proliferation technologies. Apart from Pakistan and North Korea already mentioned, Russia and China could be worrying.

Notes: a http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchiment_d’argent; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Money_laundering. b http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-finalreport_vol1_rfp-anx-g.htm. c Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_ Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication. d http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noircissement_d%27argent. e http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Survey_Group; http://www.globalsecurity.org/ wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/. f http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2261782,00.html. g http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?060807on_onlineonly.

To judge the vulnerability of a supplier network – in other words, the possibility of permanently or durably neutralizing it – it is important to analyze its minimum conditions for operation. Therefore, it appears important to determine a set of elementary criteria to characterize the organization.20 The first is the size and extent of the network; the number of persons, organizations and companies involved in the network. The largest networks have the advantage that they facilitate a larger range of acquisitions, which increases their efficiency. On the other hand, smaller networks are less detectable and their operations are more discrete since there are fewer


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of them. However, they are more vulnerable to neutralization actions in that they have very little redundancy or none at all. The second applicable criterion is the functional concentration of the network; the number of functions performed by one or a few units in the network. Thus, some functions in the Khan network were performed by a few persons. This is particularly true for network coordination and engineering functions, in which a priori only a handful of persons had any responsibilities.21 For example, BSA Tahir worked as a coordinator for logistic and financial functions. This functional concentration creates a risk for survival of the organization. On the other hand, it may have an advantage in terms of efficiency because it avoids the dilution of responsibilities that can lead to coordination difficulties. The last criterion is the engineering skill of the network. It measures the capability of the organization to propose a technically viable offer and to deliver the product to its client. At first sight, the most competitive networks appear to be or have been backed up by national engineering expertise (North Korea and Pakistan). Other networks, like the organization that transferred about ten Ukrainian AS-15 airframes to Iran and China in 2000, do not appear to have extensive knowledge about the product, but are capable of efficiently organizing its delivery to customers. Based on these criteria, it appears possible to draw up a summary of the vulnerabilities of our models. Private organizations are characterized most plausibly by a strong functional concentration, even if they can be very extensive in size. Based on known examples, it appears that their engineering skills are not uniform, but they are capable of managing the generated flows efficiently. Everything about state networks tends to suggest that they are relatively extensive, but they do not have any noteworthy functional concentration. Their engineering skill depends directly on the competence of the state that they work for (see Table 8.1). Acquisition Networks Functional analysis Acquisition networks are organized around the objective of obtaining components or know how necessary for national weapons of mass destruction programs, and a priori include two elementary functional organizations. The first organization, responsible for specification of the need, is used as an intermediary between the product user and the purchasing network. The objective is to define components, systems or technologies that best satisfy the need expressed by the beneficiary. In the Iraqi case, the MIC (Military Industrialization Committee) was responsible for this

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Table 8.1

Private or semiprivate networks


Determination of criteria for network models

Centralized networks Informal networks

State networks

Extent

Functional concentration

Engineering skill

Vulnerability

Wide

Better

Small

Medium to high High

Low because redundancies High

Wide

Low

Poor to good Variable

Low

function, based on requests made by production managers or research centers. Secondly, the organization responsible for purchases and acquisitions must find suppliers capable of satisfying the needs, sign direct contracts with these suppliers or with middlemen responsible for approaching them, and check financial flows necessary to pay suppliers and intermediaries. This organization has many functional similarities with a supplier network, but there are a few differences. In terms of logistics, the network can limit itself to the transport of equipment between front companies set up in other countries and the final user, the remainder of the operations being handled by intermediaries or suppliers. However, this function does not appear to be essential to enable its operation.22 On the other hand, the financial function is predominant because flows have to be managed within the network itself, including within front companies belonging to it, but also with any intermediaries and with suppliers. Apart from these differences, we can conclude that models developed for supplier networks are applicable to these organizations (see Figure 8.5). The factor that makes acquisition networks different from other organizations is their ability to coordinate these two branches of their activity. The coexistence of two concurrent organizations responsible for acquisition in the Iraqi organization – the first dependent on the MIC and the second attached to the secret services – reduced the efficiency of the network for a long time. The coordination effort started in 1997 enabled the MIC to benefit from unique services offered by the secret services, but also to improve the capacity of the secret services to satisfy some needs expressed by engineering centers. The coordination function is indeed not limited to finding the best way of satisfying the need as primarily expressed by the user, but also enables the user to have a technical dialog with suppliers so as to obtain the most suitable product for his need.23 This may

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Figure 8.5

Functional organization of an acquisition network

• Financial function (contractualization) • Logistics function

Acquisition branch

• Programs • Expression of need

User:

Coordination

• Specification of need • Check that the need and supply are compatible

Technical organization

202


involve creating a direct contact between the user and the supplier, for example for training or technology transfer purposes. Organization of acquisition networks Two types of agents can operate for acquisition networks: ●

●

Companies belonging to the network, financial institutions or companies that the network sets up in foreign countries to facilitate its acquisition operations. They are remunerated by the acquisition branch and perform direct (but dissimulated) representative functions for the organization. Companies that do not belong to the network; in general, a series of companies participating in acquisition activities occasionally or involuntarily, such as financial institutions exchanging money with controlled banks, brokers and middlemen acting on behalf of front companies, or suppliers. Suppliers’ networks also belong to this category.

In order to facilitate its operation, the acquisition structure may rely on the presence of agents in the field under its direct control; members of secret services (as was the case for Iraq) or persons in the engineering branch sent specifically to negotiate a project. Thus, in the Iraqi case, once the first contacts with a supplier or an intermediary had been made, members of the MIC were sometimes sent on-site to review the engineering and/or financial clauses of the contract. These agents could also be sent to a supplier to collect a technology or know-how, either legally or illegally.24 They could also provide a courier service for some projects by transporting goods and currencies. However, their essential role is to act as permanent contact points for companies external to the network, to set up permanent or occasional legal structures (typically front companies) in the target countries so that some projects can be worked on according to needs, and to manage international activities of the network, including financial activities. These purchasers can use two particular methods to improve the security of operations.25 The first is to contact several potential suppliers for a single product. The Iraqi MIC frequently used this method, that consists of calling for several bids, sometimes publicly, to satisfy a specific need.26 Apart from the economic and technical advantages27 of such an approach, it is particularly useful to reduce the risk incurred by depending on a single procurement source. In the case of an established program, it is often essential to have access to suppliers capable of selling specific components several


203

times for procurement security reasons, over a fairly long period. For example, production of a given missile may depend on the capability of periodically acquiring critical components that cannot be manufactured in the country. Conversely, in the case of a single operation, this method can minimize losses if the authorities in the country concerned discover the matter. The second method is to dissimulate a critical component in a list of commonplace goods. This technique may have two end purposes: (1) to legitimize a call for bids to a supplier originating from a company in a given business by dissimulating a product required by the network among elements that could effectively be useful for this company’s activities;28 (2) to make the task of national control authorities more difficult by increasing the volume of requests that have to be treated by them. The increased number of participants also appears to form a complicating trend. Thus, a first intermediation company replying to a particular call for bids from a front company could itself call upon several other brokers that may be located in different countries. These intermediaries contribute to increasing the number of logistic and bank operations related to the acquisition and transport of a given product, making identification of the final destination and detection of a given operation more difficult. This is particularly the case when, as we have seen above, these brokers hide the nature of the final user or even the identity of the addressee, when they know it. The inherent nature of brokering companies is an additional advantage influencing the effectiveness of operations in an acquisition network. They are composed essentially of individuals relying on simple commercial structures29 and that are very mobile (financially and geographically) so that they can operate from any country. Consequently, they can partly overcome controls imposed on them by setting up in a state that does not have any legislation governing their activities. For example, consider a broker operating from Switzerland to manage transactions between a European company and a front company set up in Hong Kong, without taking any legal risk.30 However, this geographic mobility is largely theoretical. In order to operate, brokers rely on companies set up in a given country, with which they have specific contacts.31 The intermediaries themselves are no doubt extremely flexible, but the working environment on which they depend is not. Financially, acquisition organizations use a number of companies to conceal the origin of the funds and consequently the end purpose of operations. Some of these institutions are more or less directly under their control. Apart from the use of cash payments so as to escape the vigilance of financial monitoring services, the use of electronic transfers in preference

204


to letters of credit is also becoming more frequent.32 Opening of a letter of credit requires several documents, including the contract between the two parties, which when completed enables payment to the seller. Therefore, the letter of credit leaves a trace that can be detected by financial monitoring services and that can be used to determine the exchanged goods or services. On the other hand, a bank transfer is not linked to any documentation whatsoever and is consequently more difficult to connect to a given operation even if it is detected. This method is probably used to finance operations within the network (for example activities of front companies), and also with external players (see Figure 8.6). In this context, the Banco Delta Asia was probably used as Kim Jong Il’s financial reserve33 (supplied initially by generous donors) and also financially to maintain Pyongyang’s acquisition network. By freezing North Korean credits managed by this bank, the US Treasury department created a genuine chain reaction on financial institutions further downstream.34 However, everything suggests that networks are capable of reorganizing their financial structure if one of their centers is neutralized, relying on trusted institutions. Thus, it appears that Pyongyang has already initiated such a procedure to replace the Banco Delta Asia with a Singapore entity.35 The North Korean regime also seems to be attempting to open accounts in Russian or Vietnamese banks under the names of individuals rather than companies.36 Vulnerabilities of a suppliers’ network While defining vulnerability criteria for suppliers networks, I have defined a set of parameters that also appear applicable to acquisition organizations. However, the special feature of these networks is that due to their institutional nature,37 and therefore their size and their functional deconcentration, they are more vulnerable technically than structurally. The main difficulties are the ability of the states to define their need precisely, to find suppliers capable of responding to it satisfactorily, and to organize efficiently the interface between the acquisition branch and the end user. Therefore, the level of progress of the weapons program plays an essential role in determining the efficiency of the network. Thus, an actor without any engineering or technological experience who needs to acquire off-the-shelf goods or technologies should call on suppliers capable of proposing a complete offer. In this case the acquisition system could be relatively simple compared with the model described above, since most operations are handled by the supplier. Therefore, its vulnerability is related more specifically to the national capability of understanding and using the supplied technologies rather than to its organization. In financial terms, the network may be limited to direct

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Figure 8.6

Payment

Intermediary bank

Intermediary

Conversion and transfer

Local bank

Supplier

Payment

Operating scheme for a bank transfer associated with acquisition of a proliferating good

Proliferating country

Transfer instructions

Network bank

Transfer order

206


payment of the supplier in the most discreet form (cash or bank transfer) or even to opening of letters of credit giving priority to contacts between its own bank institutions and bank institutions in the supplier’s network. Similarly, if it can make use of brokers or intermediaries, direct contact with these brokers or intermediaries can considerably reduce its visibility towards the outside and risks of temporary neutralization of its activity. Libya is the case that most closely corresponds to this model among known acquisition networks. Interactions between Networks: Towards a Globalization of Proliferation In the examples mentioned above, the organizations involved have carried out two types of operations, either with companies located in non-proliferation states, or with other proliferation networks. In the latter case, movements of part of material, immaterial and financial flows may appear uncontrollable to the extent that they do not involve the use of legally established companies. However, the very nature of the proliferation networks is such that exchanges between them are impossible without relying on external companies. This is due particularly to the fact that known suppliers are incapable of offering an entirely indigenous product. For example, after the Khan network detached itself from the acquisition organization of the Pakistan nuclear program, it had to turn to foreign suppliers for some components. Therefore, unlike the theoretical models described herein, proliferation networks cannot operate without some interaction with non-proliferation entities, since they perform both acquisition and sales activities. Nevertheless, the creation of networks weaving links between proliferation organizations is a worrying development since it tends to strengthen the resistance of each organization to external disturbances. In the case of ballistic missiles, it is particularly striking to observe that cooperation created between networks in the 1980s and 1990s tends to put North Korea in a position which is no longer central, thus facilitating mutual cooperation between its former customers. The result today, having started from a star structure organized around the North Korean network, is a more dynamic decentralized structure that is also more difficult to neutralize. Other entities, situated in China or Russia, are also attached more peripherally to this network of networks. For nuclear proliferation, the structure of relations between networks remains centralized, with the core being the ex-Khan organization. However, the development of nuclear capabilities in Iran and North Korea could eventually lead to decentralization. One of the specific features of nuclear proliferation is due to the fact that the central organization holds


207

and proposes knowledge and know-how necessary for the others. Over time, this know-how (technologies, knowledge, experience38) is distributed between the various entities involved. Eventually, this global nuclear network could become decentralized due to the emergence of new players capable of distributing or exchanging their knowledge and know-how among themselves without passing through the center. It is worth noting that apart from technical interaction between networks, other links have also tended to develop within the small world of proliferation. Firstly, they relate to networks’ agents within the source states:39 in other words, intermediaries, brokers and other hired hands that networks use to perform some of their operations. Even if most organizations use their own agents to carry out operations in other countries, it is not unusual for them to call upon these intermediaries. Thus, it appears that the Indian nuclear acquisition network relied on South African entities that also worked for the Khan network.40 The networks may also decide to federate their acquisition efforts in source states within the framework of a common program. The program for development of the Argentine–Egyptian–Iraqi Condor-2 missile in the 1980s was managed by a transnational company, the CONSEN group, responsible for financial and engineering supervision aspects of the program and for acquisition activities in other countries. This company had called upon intermediaries, particularly including Abdel Kader Helmy, whose role was to purchase some necessary components for the program, in the United States.41 Setting up of the Russian–Iraqi ARMOS joint venture as part of the acquisition efforts made by the Iraqi network uses a similar logic. Considering the increase in cross-cooperation between proliferant countries, some kind of pooling of assets appears to be unavoidable. It could be in the form of an isolated mutualization of logistical and financial means so as to improve the efficiency of managing material and immaterial flows between the networks concerned. The use of the transport means of one network for an operation carried out by another organization should also not be ignored,42 as is the use of banking institutions operating for one network on behalf of another.43 But if these operational reconciliations can increase, they will be limited due to vulnerabilities that they induce on national systems. The various actors in the market need to assure that complete or partial neutralization of a friendly network does not cause neutralization of its own organization. Furthermore, as emphasized by Alexander Montgomery, even if networks are tending to move closer to each other due to the similarity of their structure and the contacts that they can maintain with a common supplier, the existence of competition between them, or even bad political relations, reduces the risk of them cooperating directly.44

208


Interactions with the Outside World and Adaptation Capability of Networks Apart from the interactions that they develop among themselves, proliferation networks maintain close relations with other actors. This includes commercial and functional (for example logistical) and even political relations. As we have already seen, these organizations do not operate in a closed loop; their technical dependence on key suppliers, the need to move their funds around to perform their operations, management of material flows or neutralization attempts all have a direct influence on their operations. There are two types of external actors involved in the activities of a network. Firstly, friendly actors: apart from customers, some countries and institutions act for the benefit of networks for political or economic reasons. For example, the Iraqi network benefited from the support of some of its neighbors to set up bank accounts facilitating its bank transactions. This category also includes brokers not acting under the direct and exclusive control of the network. Secondly, hostile actors: networks are confronted with actions that could reduce their efficiency or undermine their operations, from groups of suppliers or states attempting to neutralize them. For example, the United States plays a key role in the fight against networks, particularly in launching the Proliferation Security Initiative and through its efforts to dismantle financial operations. Similarly, efforts made by intelligence services in Western countries to dismantle organizations endanger the very existence of proliferation networks. The possibility of seeing their operations exposed by intelligence actions (including infiltration) is real. Urs Tinner, for instance, who worked in Malaysia for the benefit of A.Q. Khan as part of the Libyan contract, could have acted on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)45 and supplied the US agency with information about the network’s activities. In any case, the existence of hostile actors makes it necessary for proliferation organizations to be reactive and dynamic; in other words capable, firstly, of protecting their operations so that they cannot be exposed, and secondly, of reorganizing them so that they can continue to function if their environment is disturbed. It has been found that known networks are not always capable of adapting when faced with various difficulties. More precisely, it appears reasonable to put the difficulties into three categories to analyze them: technical, logistical and banking. Firstly, technical difficulties. The evolution of export control tends to broaden the field of controlled components and technologies (although not all countries have exactly the same standards). In fact, this may have


209

already forced networks to concentrate their acquisitions on more and more elementary components to escape the vigilance of organizations responsible for control. But their technical competence effectively limits their capability to adapt to the broadened spectrum of controlled components. Thus, if this trend continues, they will need to carry out some of their acquisitions more and more illegally, increasing risks for their agents and intermediaries.46 Secondly, logistical problems. Setting up organizations to transport goods acquired in foreign countries is usually based on the use of transport or freight companies that do not belong to the network.47 If the source state belongs to a proliferation network and the means used belong to it, the risk of disturbance is small.48 On the other hand, if goods are transported by a private company on a ship or commercial cargo aircraft not belonging to a proliferant country, several events can expose the operation and potentially jeopardize the network, for example the interception of a cargo. However, this type of disturbance does not appear to be able to have grave consequences for the organization itself in that a priori it only exposes the front company to which the goods are addressed. Therefore the network can react quickly by using other front companies under its control (or possibly creating others). Moreover, the lack of any external controls or code of conduct for logistics businesses (transport and freight), and the economically profitable nature of this economic activity, makes the companies concerned fairly lax when examining the identity or nature of their customers.49 Endangering or durably neutralizing intermediaries set up in foreign countries appears to be more harmful for a network (or a network of networks). Even if they can be replaced, brokers appear to be playing a key role in the day-to-day operations of networks, and their neutralization can do a lot of damage. Thirdly, banking difficulties. The operations of proliferation networks depend on the possibility to distribute funds to their agents, customers and suppliers. Some of these transactions take place within the international banking system and therefore require private or public finance institutions to be ‘in the loop’. Freezing credits deposited in these ‘trusted’ banks can profoundly disturb the operation of networks because, apart from the associated financial losses,50 in practice it prevents the remuneration of brokers and suppliers. Furthermore, it can create cascade effects on other banks connected to the operations (see Figure 8.7).51 The difficulty that the network will have in recovering is more or less severe. Thus, the neutralization of local banks that only manage an infinitely small part of network resources does not create insurmountable problems because it can be assumed that financial flows can pass through other institutions at the same level. On the other hand, neutralization of intermediary banks is

210


Controlled or friendly bank

Intermediary bank

Intermediary bank

Intermediary bank

Local bank

Local bank

Figure 8.7

Sensitivity level of financial institutions working for the benefit of a network

a bigger issue because they manage larger amounts and they also control flows to other key actors. Furthermore, unlike institutions under the more or less direct control of the network, it appears possible to neutralize them because they are usually commercial companies sensitive to the threat of commercial sanctions, or they are under the jurisdiction of governments upon which political pressures can be applied.52 The influence of developments in world trade on proliferation networks is also one of the questions being raised about how this phenomenon is changing, and its interaction with external players. Although globalization and dematerialization of exchanges are not the causes of networks appearing, they have contributed to development of their operation.53 Technologies have become more accessible due to the expansion of information technologies. Thus, a supplier can now transfer this information to its customer quickly and confidentially, and an acquisition network can even obtain engineering support discreetly. The benefits acquired by networks due to the dematerialization of financial exchanges are not so obvious. This dematerialization means that sums of money can be moved between financial institutions, agents and suppliers or customers quickly and efficiently. However, the discretion of these exchanges is questionable because intelligence services can monitor computer exchanges more easily and process them more efficiently than for paper exchanges. However, traffic is more difficult to detect based on computer exchanges if there is no documentation base associated with the transaction.


211

The increase in the volume of exchanges also makes it easier to dissimulate traffic within legitimate transactions.54 For sea shipping alone, the quantity of goods transported by sea increased from 2500 to 5800 million tonnes between 1970 and 2005,55 this growth being concentrated particularly in the Asia-Pacific zone. In particular, transport by container carriers has grown strongly, due to the increase in the carrying capacity of ships, but also due to the modularity of this type of transport.56 Development of this transport mode has several advantages for proliferation networks: ●

●

The number of large operators in the sector (charter companies, transporters, handlers) has increased, yet they do not have the physical means to assure traceability of loadings. Therefore, a proliferation company can conceal a sensitive component in a container and thus limit the possibility of it being detected. Transshipments are a means of taking advantage of the more or less lax nature of control over goods in transit at the main commercial hubs. For example, it may be advantageous to choose to have merchandise delivered in Dubai or Taiwan rather than Marseilles or Singapore, where controls are stricter.

The expansion of worldwide exchanges has largely contributed to the distribution of technologies to a larger number of industrial players. Therefore, proliferation networks can call upon companies located in states in which control systems are less efficient than elsewhere to obtain key goods. The Khan network’s use of the Malaysian company SCOMI illustrates this point. The international distribution of technologies contributes to limiting the extent to which proliferation networks are affected by some states extending the list of goods controlled for export. Finally, globalization provides an opportunity for existing proliferation networks to improve their functioning, and also gives them tools to protect themselves from attempts made by states to neutralize them. However, in order to use these tools, systems must have technical capabilities and an adapted functional organization. For example, a new proliferation player cannot take advantage of the distribution of technologies if they do not have sufficient knowledge, since they would be incapable of developing and producing a complete system starting from elementary components. To do this, they would have to call upon a supplier with the necessary abilities, as Libya called upon the Khan network to acquire an off-theshelf enrichment capacity.

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PROSPECTS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF NETWORKS Everything suggests that the dissemination of technologies, goods and know-how related to weapons of mass destruction and their vectors operates more or less like a market. But the match between the needs of buyers and the ability of the market to respond to them is by no means assured. Despite the efficiency of its organization and ceaseless efforts, the Iraqi acquisition network was incapable of completely satisfying the expressed needs. The pressure created by the United Nations inspection and control regime obviously contributed to this failure. By obliging the Iraqi system to operate using clearly illegal and the most discreet possible means, the UN probably prevented it from getting into contact with suppliers capable of efficiently satisfying the need. For instance, it is probable that the breakdown of negotiations between Baghdad and the Khan network was due to fears of the Iraqi secret services that the matter would be discovered. However, the appearance of supplier networks capable of offering a complete and technically reliable product will tend to make the market more efficient and consequently increase the risks of proliferation. The case of the privatization of the A.Q. Khan network appears to be particularly worrisome, in that this was the first time (in the nuclear field) that an organization operating on an essentially commercial basis was in a position to offer a complete capacity beyond the control of the national authorities. Other organizations of this type could exist in the future. This is already the case for missiles, with the North Korean network that could extend its activities to include the supply of nuclear capacities. But the state-controlled nature of this network partly limits the nuisance. Another worrying trend is developing with the possible entry of nonstate purchasers such as terrorist groups into the market. Efforts made by the Aum Shinrikyo sect, to acquire several tonnes of chemical precursors in order to make weapons, prefigure such a development.57 Considering the nature of the terrorist activity at the beginning of the twenty-first century, micro-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction could emerge, being supplied by supplier-assemblers58 that are also non-state suppliers, or rather are independent from states, like the Khan model. Finally, although it is important to apply pressure on the demand (particularly through non-proliferation actions), we also need to accelerate the development of an effective response to control how the supply changes. The objective is not to attempt systematically to neutralize suppliers offering elementary components, even if this were desirable, but rather to prevent the appearance and development of private networks capable of


213

delivering a complete system to any customer, and ready to do so. These organizations present the greatest threat in terms of non-proliferation.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

C. Braum and C.F. Chyba (2004), ‘Proliferation rings’, International Security, 29 (2), 5. Malaysian investigation report on the activities of B.S.A. Tahir and SCOPE, 20 February 2004. For empirical knowledge and equally for knowledge acquired through experience. See Alexander H. Montgomery (2005), ‘Ringing in proliferation: how to dismantle an atomic network’, International Security, 30 (2), 176. Gaurav Kampani (2002), ‘Second tier proliferation: the case of Pakistan and North Korea’, Nonproliferation Review, 9 (3), 107–16. We can talk about incentives and disincentives. See Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason (eds) (2003), The Diffusion of Military Technologies and Ideas, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 163. James A. Russell and Christopher Clary (2005), ‘Globalization and WMD proliferation networks: challenges to US security’, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, Conference Report, 29 June–1 July. These activities combine traffic in false currency, drugs and counterfeiting. This is the ‘advantage’ of the Khan network. Particularly if the customer manages their own acquisition network. For example, in the case of Khan’s proposal to the Iraqis, Iraq would undoubtedly have wanted to control part of the routing. For example, this is the case for the North Korean network for the supply of missile technologies. Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘Ringing in proliferation’, International Security, op. cit., p. 170. This is the case for sensitive military and dual-use equipment exported from the United States. Some European countries are beginning to demand this type of visa for dual-use or military equipment. Automation of bank transfers led to setting up a secure international network activated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) Company used by 7800 financial institutions in 202 countries. SWIFT is centralized in Belgium and opened a back door to the CIA to check flows after 11 September 2001. ‘Laundering continues despite increased vigilance’, Le Monde, 23 May 2006. Suppliers who do not form part of the network. Apparently the Khan network generated profits of a few hundred million dollars. ‘US insists sanctions on N. Korea are having worldwide “ripple effect”’, East-AsiaIntel, 12 April 2006. This was the case of Khan before 1999, and of North Korea. Meaning that customers have to be known and contacted, so that their needs can be understood. Anne Platt Barrows, Paul Kucik, William Skimmyhorn and John Straigis (2005), ‘A system analysis of the A.Q. Khan network’, Stanford Social Sciences Seminar, 8 December, p. 7. See Leonard Spector and Haider Nizamani (2006), ‘New head of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission apparently tied to 1980s nuclear smuggling’, WMD Insights, 5, 4 May. However, as we shall see, the Iraqi case demonstrates that an acquisition network can handle a large proportion of routing.

214 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks For example, this concept of dialog is present in the organization of technical discussions between MIC engineers and suppliers organized by agents working in other countries. For example, this was the case for A.Q. Khan in the 1970s in Europe. Communication by B. Tertrais to the Terrorism, Transnational Networks and WMD Proliferation conference, Indications and Warning in an Era of Globalization, 25–27 July 2006, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. See also the case of the Indian Rare Earths Ltd company associated with the Delhi enrichment project. David Albright and Susen Baus (2006), ‘India’s gas centrifuge program: stopping illicit procurement and the leakage of the technical centrifuge knowhow’, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), 10 March, pp. 1–37. Particularly the possibility of obtaining technical data on the equipment and thus refining the definition of the need, or even obtaining modifications on components. David Albright and Susen Baus, ‘India’s gas centrifuge program: stopping illicit procurement and the leakage of the technical centrifuge know-how’, op. cit. A few employees and sometimes only a postal address. It is not unusual that brokers create mushroom companies to carry out some specific operations. http://www.nisat.org/publications/armsfixers/Chapter1.html. This is the case particularly for the transport of goods or even financial operations. Author’s interviews, June 2006. ‘US now believes Macau bank account was Kim Jong Il’s “personal” slush fund’, EastAsia-Intel, 26 July 2006. Thus, the Chinese Central Bank would also have frozen North Korean credits, like several European banks; ibid. ‘North Korean counterfeiters back in business, via Singapore bank’, East-Asia-Intel, 9 August 2006. ‘North Korea opens bank accounts in Russia to avoid scrutiny of leadership cash flow’, East-Asia-Intel, 6 September 2006. Ignoring private acquisition organizations such as sects and terrorist movements, for which the scale of the means set aside and the completely illegal nature of their activity are beyond the scope of this chapter. Experience is what can only be learnt from tests, failures and trial and error operations for a specific program. As demonstrated by William Potter (and to a lesser extent by Alexander Montgomery), diffusion of technologies between countries takes place not only by the transmission of data or components, but receivers also have to be able to understand and control them. This is a phenomenon influenced by political, historical, engineering and economic factors that depend on the countries concerned. William C. Potter (2003), ‘The diffusion of nuclear weapons: underlying pressures and constraints’, in Emily O. Goldman and Leslie Eliason (eds), Adaptive Enemies, Reluctant Friends: The Impact of Diffusion upon Military Practice, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 45–73. This is the term used to refer to states in which companies whose proliferation networks are attempting to obtain goods or technologies are located. By extension, it also includes tax havens, states flying convenience flags and countries acting as turntables for traffic. David Albright and Susen Baus, ‘India’s gas centrifuge program: stopping illicit procurement and the leakage of the technical centrifuge know-how’, op. cit. His arrest in 1988 was largely the reason why Egypt abandoned the program; http://nti.org/ e_research/profiles/Egypt/Missile/index.html. For example, some networks make use of a large merchant fleet that they can make available for their customers or suppliers to escape from interception within the context of the PSI. Thus, a Chinese Airline company, Great Wall Airlines, linked to the Chinese Great Wall Industries Company, was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for being used to freight components to Iran and North Korea: ‘US sanctions Chinese airliner for freighting WMD to Iran, N. Korea’, East-Asia-Intel, 6 September 2006.

Modeling proliferation networks 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

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Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘Ringing in proliferation’, op. cit., p. 177. ‘The Double Game in the nuclear poker’, Focus, 15 March 2005. However, to reach this situation, organizations responsible for control must be capable of efficiently monitoring an increasing number and a broader variety of goods and technologies. It also requires international harmonization of criteria used by inspection systems, and their effectiveness. Author’s interviews, November 2006. For example, this is the case in North Korea. This case also includes the use of diplomatic communication channels. Author’s interviews, November 2006. These losses may be very high as freezing affects banks at the heart of their financial activities. See Figure 8.7. Author’s interviews, November 2006. Thus, the fact that the Chinese Central Bank decides to make an investigation of North Korean credits deposited in China illustrates the sensitivity of these relay institutions to economic pressures. J. Caves (2006), ‘Globalization and WMD proliferation networks: the policy landscapes’, Strategic Insights, 5 (6), 5–12. According to the World Bank, the growth in world trade was 8.9 percent in 2005, and 11.8 percent in 2004. http://www.ac-rennes.fr/pedagogie/hist_geo/ResPeda/mondialisation/commerce/cemari timegraphes.htm. A. Frémont (2005), ‘Containerized shipping networks: spinal cord of globalization’, Paris: Institute National des Recherche sur les Transport et leur Securite (INRETS), October, p. 4. Scott Jones (2005), ‘Black market, loopholes and trade controls: the mechanics of proliferation’, 2005 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, 8 November. In other words, capable of providing a complete system offer.

REFERENCES Albright, D. and S. Baus (2006), ‘India’s gas centrifuge program: stopping illicit procurement and the leakage of technical centrifuge know-how’, Washington, DC: Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), 10 March, pp. 1–37. Barrows, Anne Plat, Paul Kucik, William Skimmyhorn and John Straigis (2005), ‘A system analysis of the A.Q. Khan network’, University of Stanford, CA, Social Science Seminar, December. Braun, Chaim and Christopher F. Chyba (2004), ‘Proliferation rings: new challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime’, International Security, 29 (2), 55–70. Caves, Jr, John P. (2006), ‘Globalization and WMD proliferation networks: the policy landscape’, Strategic Insights, 5 (6), 21–40. Frémont, A. (2005), ‘Containerized shipping networks: spinal cord of globalization’, Paris: Institute National des Recherche sur les Transport et leur Securite (INRETS), pp. 1–15. Goldman, Emily O. and Leslie C. Eliason (eds) (2003), The Diffusion of Military Technologies and Ideas, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Inspector General of Police, Malaysia (2004), ‘In relation to investigation on the alleged production of components for Libya’s uranium enrichment programme’, Press Release, 20 February.

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Jones, Scott (2005), ‘Black markets, loopholes, and trade controls’, New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Roundtable transcript, November. Kampani, G. (2002), ‘Second tier proliferation: the case of Pakistan and North Korea’, Nonproliferation Review, 9 (3), 107–16. Montgomery, Alexander H. (2005), ‘Ringing in proliferation: how to dismantle an atomic bomb network’, International Security, 30 (2), 159–86. Potter, William C. (2003), ‘The diffusion of nuclear weapons: underlying pressures and constraints’, in Emily O. Goldman and Leslie Eliason (eds), Adaptive Enemies, Reluctant Friends: The Impact of Diffusion upon Military Practice, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 45–73. Russell, James A. and Christopher Clary (2005), ‘Globalization and WMD proliferation networks: challenges to US security’, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, Conference Report, 29 June–1 July. Spector, Leonard and Haider Hizamani (2006), ‘New head of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission apparently tied to 1980s nuclear smuggling’, WMD Insights, 5 (4 May), 6–8.

9.

Small-world networks, violence and global distress Francesc Badia

Global capitalism brought about global terrorism. Parallel to the development of the global network society, fostered by the new information and communication technologies that emerged in the 1980s, a new type of extreme terrorism appeared in the post-Cold War international arena. Its causes are numerous, from the democratization of technologies to the redefinition of the role of the states and their crisis of sovereignty, and the proliferation of non-state actors. The double character of this globalization period can be described as being split between the ‘vertebrate’ feature of the nation-state world system and a new nature of non-state world capitalism that can be defined as ‘cellular’, following the interesting concept elaborated by the American anthropologist, Arjun Appadurai. He has described the new terrorist networks as: ‘connected yet not vertically managed, coordinated yet remarkably independent, capable of replication without central messaging structures, hazy in their central organizational features yet crystal clear in their cellular strategies and effects’. These organizations, he writes: ‘clearly rely on the crucial tools of money transfer, hidden organization, offshore havens, and non-official means of training and mobilization, which also characterize the workings of many levels of the capitalist world’.1 This new way of organizing the activities around the world has been very profitable for a privileged minority of global corporations and individuals, while bringing unprecedented prosperity to a large number of people, be it in Southeast Asia, China or Latin America. Yet it also has a dark side in terms of security since, along with its demonstrated capacity for destruction, transnational terrorism emerged with randomness, resilience, daily impact in the media and a surprising ability to elude traceability and disruption. It emerged as part of the complex system created by a highly communicated, decentralized, flexible, disorganized and transnational world economy and globalization. Yet this new form of terrorism, that can be characterized as an emergent quality of the social networks formed by young men who undergo a process of radicalization and grow 217

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to be fanatics ready for martyrdom, can cause indiscriminate death and seriously harm strategic targets and innocent civilians alike, in their home countries, and in the Western world. Poor understanding of terror network dynamics, superficial command of the impact of their action in public opinion through mass media, both in the West and in the Arab-Islamic world, and political manipulation by government leaders for domestic reasons, resulted in the unfortunate performance of the everlasting ‘war on terror’ strategy as a whole. Giving fighting against terror the category of ‘war’ resulted in a major error. Politicians seemed not to be aware of what Sun Tzu wrote over 2500 years ago in The Art of War: ‘There is no example of a country that has taken profit of a prolonged war.’2 A better understanding of network dynamics and an increased sensibility of the key role of the media and political impact could help to shorten the so-called ‘war on terror’. The purpose of the present chapter is to shed some light on this phenomenon by taking a general view of what I know about social networks dynamics. I will develop a special focus on what the small-world theory can bring in terms of analysis and comprehension, as terror networks are increasingly associated with this type of self-organizing structure. I will show how small-world networks can be very efficient, can handle sensitive information well, and are very difficult to tackle. I will discuss how the shape and dynamics of these networks of collective violence directly affect their behaviour. I will also attempt to show why the genesis, morphology and topology of these networks should be studied and understood in order that the rules-based system of government may develop immunity to the activities of these networks, given their capacity to paralyse the economy, media and politics. The picture will not be complete without an effort to understand how the technological, socio-economic and political context derived from global capitalism is affecting both individuals and social group behaviour. This analysis will try to demonstrate how giving an analogical answer to a digital challenge, and using vertebrate structures to tackle cellular organizations, has resulted in a strategy of limited effect. As is increasingly being argued, bringing social science methodology to the study of this phenomenon is crucial. Finally, it may be important to clarify to the reader that the biological, social and communication metaphors I use through the chapter should not be taken as exact correlates. That is, human society is not a cellular body, nor an informatics programme. They may share some structural similarities, but social relations should be studied empirically by themselves, not only through biological or technological models. Here I use them to facilitate comprehension through analogy, but this does not give us the complete picture. It is by combining that analogy with the sociological and psychological aspects of terror

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networks and their participants that we can grasp their implications as a complex product of our global era.

NETWORKS, MEDIA AND THE LOCAL FACTOR Networks are about communication. Life itself has to do with a network of communicated elements which are in permanent interaction. The exchange of information is essential to survival and evolution. The simplest kind of life is predicated on information contained in a cell – a membrane of proteins that is, to a degree, permeable to the environment which surrounds it. It is able to communicate thereby with the outside world. This, of course, has to do with thermodynamics and entropy: any isolated system will tend to an even distribution of disorder and eventually collapse. It is only through interaction and permeability, in fact through communication, that systems manage to survive, grow and reproduce. Our social system, also based in a complex system of communication and interaction, has seen a fast development of information and communication technologies since 1980. This has fuelled a proliferation of social networks which are so extensive that controlling their dynamics is no longer manageable with the classic methods of intelligence, let alone knowing where and when they appear, for which purpose, and how they mutate, reconfigure or suddenly disappear just to reappear unexpectedly somewhere else. The poor quality of intelligence is due not only to frequent prejudice against Muslim people, outdated methods of analysis and sometimes poor quality of sources and data, but also to a general lack of rigorous contrast and feedback of external views. The consequences are felt at all levels of society. From financial flows and criminal gangs to transnational terrorism, the question of how we understand the social networks’ self-organizational dynamics and their cellular nature is central, if we are to secure an effective management of their complexity and anticipate future consequences of their behaviours in our ‘vertebrate’ nation-state political system. The abundance of inexpensive, easily accessible and highly efficient communication systems has had a particularly powerful impact on social network dynamics, especially at a time when light and flexible networks are being established to tackle and challenge traditional hierarchical structures such as nation-state systems and national armies, both inherited from the modern industrial era. This asymmetrical state of affairs has jeopardized most traditional ways of organizing security in recent years. No doubt e-surveillance and extensive data mining from identified websites, chat rooms and suspect individuals are doing their job, but the combination of fast, agile, devious networks and an increasingly ubiquitous

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and influential system of mass media can be lethal, as 9/11 demonstrated. One of the key problems for tackling terrorism is the mass media fascination for spectacular violent action that exponentially magnifies the action itself, producing an overamplified impact. This, of course, is the effect the terrorist desires. Where the bombers themselves commit suicide in performing the terrorist act in the name of martyrdom, and are linked even remotely to al-Qaeda, then they magnify the effect still further. Suicide bombing is not new: the first recorded suicide for political purposes was the biblical Samson who pulled down the temple of Dagon and killed himself and the Philistines. This was already a terror act with a political goal. Talal Asad observes that this story, which involved the killing of a large number of innocents, is recounted in the Bible as an act of triumph. It is a religious suicide through which God’s enemies are killed with God’s assistance and a new political world is initiated: ‘Samson’s final act redeems not only his heroic status but also his people’s freedom’.3 So the idea of committing suicide to kill innocent people for religious and political reasons is not new. What is new is that it is relatively easy and not particularly expensive for a group of otherwise ordinary individuals to carry on such an action, sneak through security holes, take the attacked target by surprise and produce catastrophic effects. The media propensity to magnify the violence of terrorist actions assists the attainment of their objectives, not the least of which is that of forcing the authorities to overreact. The images of the destruction of the twin towers in particular, as icons of American capitalism, broadcast on TV screens around the globe, sent a powerful message to the world: that this is a new era, with new actors, an era where even the single remaining superpower can be struck at home. The resulting declaration on the part of the Bush administration of a ‘war on terror’ might have created the conditions which allowed the terrorists to legitimize their action and extend its reach. Equally, the terrorists may have underestimated both the impact of the events of 9/11 and the determination of the United States in addressing the issues it raised. It may be that neither party took into account Newton’s third law, which holds that for every action force there is an ‘equal and opposite’ reaction force. Hence, poor understanding of ‘the local factor’ of informal social networks in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere has turned out to be one of the unexpected challenges of the counterterrorism campaign. Sociological – if not anthropological – analysis and the use of social science methodology might help build a successful strategy in which understanding the world vision of the opponent becomes a key tool for avoiding major mistakes. The role of the media is also critical in this approach. It is unclear that the ‘war on terror’ is winning the key battle, namely that of ‘hearts and minds’.4 An effort has to be made to minimize the already significant


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damage produced, not only in logistic losses and personnel casualties, but also at the symbolic, collective and imaginary level. Once the monopoly of the image is lost to the Internet, satellite TVs, mobile phone cameras and other digital image electronic devices, the prestige of the allegedly ‘moral superiority’ of Western values – human rights, freedom, democracy and the rule of law – has been the principal casualty of this confrontation. Even though double standards are constituent of the nature of international relations, resentment against Western double-standard policies can be found everywhere, starting from the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, explicitly mentioned by Osama bin Laden as one of the justifications for his global jihad against America and the infidel West. Arrogance in not taking into account how local Al Jazeera-like TV stations are telling the war story undermines the daily efforts of troops on the ground. Thus there is a remarkable lack of understanding of how local dynamics work and develop under conditions of turmoil. With strong motivation, deep personal commitment and the right links and connections, terrorist groups of all sorts proliferate, fuelled by the combination of existent informal networks, easily accessible communication technology and intense jihadist propaganda. Where the context is unstable – that is, in weak states with immature institutions and corrupt power structures – the challenge may become overwhelming, as has lately been seen in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mauritania, Somalia and Yemen. Obviously, terror cells can also develop in Western cities and display very different patterns. Networks can be integrated by sophisticated, welleducated medical doctors from the Pakistani diaspora or by immigrant Moroccans of modest backgrounds, as has been seen in England and Spain, respectively. It is worth recalling the simplicity of the narrative and the means required to articulate a network capable of a major terror act, by looking at the Madrid train bombings in March 2004. The case illustrates how a cell can operate with little more than inspiration and determination. A gang of friends, gathering frequently in a public telephone call centre and probably inspired by an Islamist document posted on a radical website, decided to bring together a group of acquaintances and relatives – originating mostly from the Moroccan town of Tetouan – to engage in some action. Apparently, the network had three leaders – two Moroccan (a PhD student formerly funded by the Spanish International Cooperation Agency, and a minor drug dealer) and an Algerian ex-Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) activist – who had a different degree of former connections to global jihadists somehow related to the al-Qaeda nebula. They got together a network of 40 people out of which 25 participants ended up directly involved in the action. The leading member in charge of logistics and financing – the drug dealer – knew a minor Spanish criminal who had

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access to some explosives stolen from a mine in Asturias, on the northern coast of the country. In exchange for some hashish he managed to get the explosives and the detonators, connect them to very basic, inexpensive mobile telephones, carry them in backpacks onto the trains, leave them lying on the floor and step down at the next station. A simple phone call to each mobile did the rest. The total cost of the operation has been calculated to figure between €41 000 and €54 000.5 As a result, 191 people were killed and nearly 2000 were injured. This is a distinctive example of how a spontaneous self-organizing network with slight connection to the global jihad led by al-Qaeda can cause extensive damage to rules-based societies. On top of the bombing’s lethal effect, the action induced some major communication mistakes by the government that ended up affecting the coming election’s results. The Spanish government at the time considered admitting the Islamist origin of the bombings to be contrary to its electoral interest: connections might be established with its widely contested policy of enthusiastic support of the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq. The Prime Minister and his crisis committee decided to place the blame on the Basque terrorist organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), while evidence which confirmed Islamist authorship was leaked to the press. One unanticipated consequence of the criminal action, therefore, was that this small, spontaneous network was able to claim that it had toppled a major Western government. The newly elected Prime Minister fulfilled his promise during the election campaign of immediately withdrawing Spanish troops from the Coalition authorities in Iraq. Although this was different in terms and scale from the events of 9/11, this event represents once again an example of the powerful interaction between a terror act, media action and political overreaction. This example is particularly interesting for what it shows us about the self-organizing character of such networks. It is this that allowed the phenomenon to evolve freely into a small-world network – or even a network of networks – developing as it did so an impressive robustness and enduring flexibility. But understanding these dynamics and anticipating their performance is difficult precisely because these complex social phenomena are still poorly understood owing to their ‘emergent’ nature.6 The deep interconnectedness and tight intertwining between terrorism, politics and the media make it difficult to predict the consequences of actions, frequently following what physicists will call a non-linear pattern, a pattern where logic and common sense do not apply in a complex dynamic that operates ‘on the edge of chaos’. The combination of network proliferation and unpredictable outcomes of terror actions is impressive and requires further analytical insights.


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SMALL-WORLD NETWORKS’ TOPOLOGY AND DYNAMICS In order to shed some light on the terror networks that have developed since 2001, it might be helpful to look at how an informal social network can be established and evolve into a small-world one. One example, that complements the example of the Madrid train bombers’ plot, concerns the everyday life of a layman – let us call him ‘K’. The following account seeks to illustrate how an informal social network can start and grow out of a very simple idea and motivation, and how a simple node can potentially become a hub. The story is as follows. K was born on 17 September. When he was a child, the date coincided with the beginning of the new school year, a day which most children associate with the end of the long footloose summer holidays. Later on, beginning with K’s twenty-sixth birthday, this rentrée spirit provided the context for an annual celebration of the end of the summer by holding a gathering of friends, taking advantage of the fact that everybody was looking forward to seeing each other after the summer break. The challenge each year was to get as many different people as the number of years K was celebrating. At the age of 26 it was an easy task, and became easier at the age of 30 and even at 35. Then, when the children were born and the crowd was ageing, it became more difficult. Fortunately the ‘soirée de rentrée’ had become popular among friends and acquaintances, and through these gatherings a kind of informal network was born, a network of people who met once a year with old friends and new, unexpected people. The year K turned 46, so some 20 years since the first party, he needed to gather 46 new people if the now traditional objective was to be accomplished. K had changed job every two years on average over the previous ten years so that there was a constant turnover of people in and out of the social gathering. Provided that each year K managed to gather the number of new people corresponding to his age, then some 755 people (26 + 27 + 28 + n + 1 up to 46) would have attended the party. Depending on the year, the attendance might well exceed its goal number. Social scientists believe that a normal person would have between 200 and 1000 connections depending, among other things, on character, profession and social status. The more extroverted, liberal and rich, the more connections you have. If the average at that particular event is 50 different connections per capita, there is a potential network of 37 750 people (50 x 755) who know at least somebody who has attended that particular event. One of the consequences of this relatively large number of connections is that, during the gathering, people unexpectedly meet somebody they had

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never imagined they could meet at that particular place. Consequently, one could say K (or more precisely K’s party) has become a connector, a hub that shortens the distance between one node and another. This brings us to the point that an astonishingly short number of links separate one human being from another, a principal characteristic of small-world networks where a few nodes concentrate a big number of connections. The famous ‘six degrees of separation’ story, a play by John Guare that helped gain acceptance for the complex networks concept, says something important about this small-world approach. Towards the end of the play, Guare’s character Ouisa Kittredge delivers her famous monologue stating that she: read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice . . . It’s not just big names. It’s anyone. A native in a rain forest. A Tierra del Fuegan. An Eskimo. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It’s a profound thought . . . How every person is a new door, opening up into another world.7

The play by Guare was inspired by Stanley Milgram, a Harvard professor who in 1967 set out to find the ‘distance’ between any two people in the United States. He established that the median number of intermediate persons was 5.5. Round it up to six, and the famous ‘six degrees of separation’ was born. The play was written in 1991, enjoyed great success on Broadway and was afterwards made into a film which inevitably gained much wider distribution. But the idea of the existence of a ‘small world’ was implanted in peoples’ mind a long time ago. When you meet somebody you know out of the blue – or most probably somebody who knows somebody you know – in an unexpected and sometimes remote place, you will exclaim ‘It’s a small world!’ The Spanish expression for that – el mundo es un pañuelo – is more metaphorical, meaning literally that ‘the world is a handkerchief’, for a handkerchief is a very modest piece of cloth. This idea of a small world where everyone is connected to everyone else by a short chain of intermediaries has strong implications when you look at it seriously from the perspective of networks science. As Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, put it: the small world phenomenon is much more than a curiosity of human social life: It is a unifying feature of diverse networks found in nature and technology. . . . many scientists have begun to explore the implications of small-world connectivity for the spread of infectious disease, the resilience of the internet, the robustness of the ecosystems, and a host of other phenomena.8


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This line of argument fosters the conclusion that we live in a world in which no one is more than a few handshakes away from anybody else. Our world which boards 6 or 7 billion people9 can easily be navigated by following social links, a network of 6 or 7 billion nodes in which any pair of nodes are on average six links from each other. This is quite mysterious, and you need some theory to understand how it happens. From describing the structure of the network to building scenarios of network dynamics and evolution, a long path has to be followed if some light is to be shed on the puzzle. We must take a broader view on the architecture of networks. The principle is basic: the layout of the network, its very structure, inevitably affects its function and shapes its dynamics. Working at the RAND Corporation in the early 1960s, the Internet’s inspirer, Paul Baran, was asked to develop a communicator system which would secure command in the event of a nuclear strike. Looking for the optimal structure of a computer communication network, he described three possible architectures, as shown in Figure 9.1. Both centralized and decentralized networks were far too vulnerable, whereas the distributed one was flexible enough to resist some of its nodes going down, as alternative paths will keep the rest of the nodes in the system connected. If one of the nodes is disconnected, the network reconfigures itself, showing incredible robustness and resilience. This characteristic had a key influence on the way in which the Internet grew and became the dominant communication system of our time, a system which is shaping the way human networks are functioning today. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to tackle a criminal or terrorist network that has a distributed architecture, as it is not enough to hold down a few key nodes, however important they may be. When tackling a small-world-type network, where real impact is required, it is necessary to attack the existing hub or hubs, where the large number of connections or links are concentrated. If you miss the principal hubs, the network is liable to be very resilient and reconfigures itself very quickly, as with the al-Qaeda network, which reconfigures itself at various levels and in different regions. Recent studies have confirmed the complexity of understanding such networks.10 They can easily evolve into small-world networks, they are very efficient in handling information and can become very difficult to tackle, while their topology, following Marc Sageman’s findings, is ‘able to adapt to changing circumstances and solve unforeseen obstacles in the execution of general plans’. Sageman argues that: the self-organizing hubs and nodes topology of a small-world network or the dense topology of a clique performs this function (of handling information) very well. Communications are possible horizontally among multiple nodes,

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CENTRALIZED

(A)

DECENTRALIZED (B)

DISTRIBUTED (C)

Source: Albert-Laszlo Barabási (2002), Linked: The New Science of Networks, Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, p. 145. The editors would like to thank Cambridge University Press for kindly giving us permission to use this material.

Figure 9.1

Paul Baran’s networks

allowing them to solve their problem locally without having to refer them upward to Central Staff and overwhelming the vertical links of communication. This flexibility and local initiative of small-world networks and cliques contrast with the rigidity of hierarchies, which do not adapt well to ambiguity but are excellent at exerting control.11

This sort of anarchic, random character of network-building and performance is a major difficulty that has to be addressed in a multidisciplinary way. Experience shows that it is possible to recognize and even scrutinize a network but it cannot be controlled or degraded from the outside. If we take a closer look into this difficulty we can observe how network building has both a spontaneous growth and a structured dynamic: the


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presence of mixed geographical and socio-economic origins, going from highly educated wealthy individuals leading the cause to petty criminals or graduate middle-class medical doctors acting independently, adds complexity to the system and obliges us to include a multilevel vision of the phenomenon in our thinking. John Arquilla and David Rondfeld in their studies of ‘netwar’ have established that besides the organizational aspects: theoretical arguments and the practice among netwar actors indicate that the design and performance of such networks depend on what happens across five levels of analysis (which are also levels of practice): ● Organizational level – its organizational design ● Narrative level – the story being told ● Doctrinal level – the collaborative strategies and methods ● Technological level – the information systems in use ● Social level – the personal ties that assure loyalty and trust The strength of a network . . . depends on its functioning well at those five levels. The strongest networks will be those in which the organizational design is sustained by a winning story and a well-defined doctrine, in which all this is layered atop advanced communications systems and rests on strong personal and social ties at the base.12

All of these characteristics can be discerned in the networks discussed in this chapter. Network theory has evolved since 1990 going from describing networks as static features to seeing them as growing systems, from random performance to scale-free behaviour. It might be helpful to shift from describing their structure and topology to, as the network theorist at the University of Notre Dame, Laszlo Barabási puts it, ‘understanding the mechanisms that shape network evolution’.13 As Figure 9.2 shows, the distribution of a random network follows a bell curve which demonstrates that most nodes have the same number of links, and nodes with a very large number of links do not exist (top left). Thus it is similar to a national highway network, in which the nodes are cities, and the links are the major highways connecting them. Indeed, most cities are served by roughly the same number of highways (bottom left). In contrast, the power law degree distribution of a scale-free network predicts that most have only a few links, held together by a few highly connected hubs (top right). Visually this is very similar to the air traffic system, in which a large number of small airports are connected to each other via a few major hubs (bottom right).14 One of the problems increasingly cited as a perverse tendency of global capitalism, known as the ‘long tail’ problem, is that the topology of the small-world networks of corporations operating in a particular sector is less and less ‘democratic’, in the sense that very

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Number of nodes with k links

Number of links (k)

A few hubs with large number of links

Very many nodes with only a few links

Power law distribution

Random and scale-free networks

Barabási, Albert-Laszlo (2002), Linked: The New Science Networks, Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, p. 71.

Figure 9.2

Source:

No highly connected nodes

Most nodes have the same number of links

Number of links (k)

Bell curve Number of nodes with k links

Small-world networks, violence and global distress Maghreb Arabs

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Core Arabs

Central Staff

Osama bin Laden

Southeast Asians

Source: Marc Sageman (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 138. The editors would like to thank the University of Pennnsylvania Press for permission to reprint this figure.

Figure 9.3

The global Salafi network as described by Marc Sageman

few nodes concentrate the majority of connections; that is to say, very few corporations concentrate a large number of customers. This is leading to marginalization in the sense that marginal nodes tend to become more and more marginal, and eventually disappear from our focus (for instance in Google, which organizes its information by connectivity) and can easily fade away or simply hide. Accordingly the argument here is that networks are being increasingly described as small-world networks. In Sageman’s description of the global Salafi jihad network shape, the jihad is described as ‘not a specific organization, but a social movement consisting of a set of more or less formal organizations’, before he proceeds to refine social network analysis, concluding that the ‘more connected nodes, called hubs, are important component of a terrorist network. A few highly connected hubs dominate the architecture of the global Salafi jihad’.15 Perhaps the most interesting point about al-Qaeda’s architecture shown in Figure 9.3 is that it was not planned and executed from the top, but rather it was the bottom-up product of the changing circumstances of the national and international environment that globalization brought about. This bottom-up quality is now increasingly seen in the new generation of jihadist networks that seem to be scattered around the globe. Nevertheless, the preceding paragraphs seem to lead to the tentative conclusion that, in

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network theory, there seems to be an overemphasis on structure, on nodes and key hubs and clusters, but there is little thought on the nature of the social relationships that establish the links. Here is where research effort should be invested. Even virtual links, like face-to-face relations, vary in quality (that is, formal–informal, hierarchical–horizontal, kinship, gender, class, race, interest-oriented, identity-oriented and so on). This variety defines different networks even though they may share the same smallworld structure.

GLOBALIZATION, VIOLENCE AND IDENTITY Two concepts are crucial to understanding the nature of transformations and challenges emerging when studying contemporary networks in the light of the connection between violence and identity issues. On the one hand there is the increasing speed of interconnections and interactions that, in the realm of individual psychological perceptions, are ‘shortening’ our time. On the other hand, this speed has an important impact in ‘shrinking’ our space: distances matter less and less. Portable communication devices also have a very important role, as we are only recently beginning to discern. The classical psychological space–time patterns that were used to grasp this reality have obviously become obsolete. This has major consequences for identity building of particularly vulnerable individuals or groups that might resort to violence as a reaction to uncertainty. In order to offset this danger, it is very important that new tools for understanding and developing adaptive codes for interpreting different realities are constructed. All kinds of networks are growing every day. Powered by the Internet, collecting in ‘chat rooms’, fuelled by websites and other virtual spaces, all kinds of networks are growing every day, incrementally, node by node, even ‘face by face’ as we have seen with the accelerated expansion of Facebook. Earlier we saw how it takes just a few nodes and, provided at least one of them is linked to a connector (or a hub), there is already a functioning web, a seminal small-world network with a great deal of potential, spontaneous growth. Yet, social networks of individuals have existed throughout human history, conditioned by time and space. Simultaneity and proximity (personal face-to-face contact) were a must. What is different now, what is new, is the varied scope and scale of interconnectedness that can develop and function in asynchrony and at long distance. We know that communities develop patterns of social interaction defined as ‘networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support information, a sense of belonging and social identity’.16 The most active


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members of the network are the ones who shape its structure and control its dynamics and orientation. So the network will be shaped by their users. Networks of individuals are, in a way, blown up by the use of the Internet and proliferate through virtual forums and websites. The findings of sociologist Manuel Castells’s research tell us that: ‘users of the Internet tend to have larger social networks than non-users. People of higher status tend to have more friends, who are more diverse and live at a greater distance, so e-mail is a good instrument to keep in touch with this wider network of personal contacts and use them, eventually, for a purpose’.17 ‘The medium is the message’, said Marshall MacLuhan in 1964. ‘The network is the message’, argued Manuel Castells in 2001.18 The rise of the network society in the late twentieth century constituted a change of paradigm. Interconnectedness has become the obsession of the contemporary era, if only because a volatile environment is making individuals conscious of the ever present danger of redundancy. Becoming redundant means becoming underconnected, poorly attached, thus becoming marginalized, disconnected and finally turned into waste. Increasing our interconnectedness means increasing our chances of surviving and progressing through complexity. In the context of an overwhelming performance of post-modern capitalism, we are continuously producing ‘human waste’.19 Broadening this analysis to our study of societies, we might be tempted to conclude that the long period of economic growth in the Western world, facilitated by the processes we refer to collectively as globalization, have produced much waste in the less-developed areas. While Africa is becoming redundant to the Western economies, parts of the Muslim world are facing difficulties to adapt their social systems to the new global scenario where emerging economies like China, India or Brazil, modernizing themselves very quickly, are playing their cards. Closed, traditional societies, even if they are relatively well off, experience a sense of décalage with the speed of changes fostered by the global world and go through identity crises that can result in what might be called ‘regressive utopias’. Even if it is a too dichotomist analysis – since open societies have a number of closed corners, while closed societies allow more open spots than commonly anticipated – we can argue that open societies are creative, can face crisis and manage political changes that will better adapt to fluid situations than closed ones. Closed societies will struggle to survive by tightening social control mechanisms and political repression. And yet this reaction is contrary to the global dynamics set in place by open markets and free circulation of capital, goods, services and information, pushing these societies into the periphery of the system, where they become more vulnerable to corruption and violence. The changing nature of our times is very demanding and confronts

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individuals with the need to cope with the liquidity, instability and volatility of our interconnected social environment, be it in our private sphere or our professional career. As the German sociologist Ulrich Beck put it, in a world of fast-changing references our society almost continuously tells us to seek ‘biographical solutions to systemic contradictions’.20 These solutions can go from deepening individuality and egotism through status and economic success to putting the accent on identity building and political or religious radicalism. The relationship between identity building and violence that was at the origin of modern nation-state construction, has been at the core of the conflicts that emerged in the post-Cold War world. The recent violence occasioned by the identity crises in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda and Sudan are self-explanatory. Harvard professor and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen argued that: many of the conflicts and barbarities in the world are sustained through the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity. The art of constructing hatred takes the form of invoking the magical power of some predominant identity that drowns other affiliations . . . . The result can be homespun elemental violence, or globally artful violence and terrorism.21

In today’s complex multiple identity22 process, many young men would find joining a network of a violent nature an effective way of finding trustworthy peers with whom to share a purpose and simply make sense of everyday life. This can be the answer to insecurity, uncertainty, poor social integration in foreign countries or hopelessness at home. As individualism is a feature of modern societies, the difficulties of semi-closed impoverished or alienated groups that fail to cope with success based in economic or professional achievement and social integration might explain why more or less alienated youngsters seek an alternative narrative. Once you find enough motivation – through Islamist websites, or satellite TV propaganda or through some fundamentalist preaching in your nearby mosque – to increase your fanatic feelings through chat rooms on the Internet and establish a cell of self-organizing activist friends might turn to be a quite straightforward process. A very different issue though was to manage to link with the real al-Qaeda network members, as Marc Sageman has shown in his description of the organization’s behaviour during the 1990s and early 2000s. ‘The critical and specific element to joining the jihad’, Sageman wrote, ‘is the accessibility of a link to the jihad. Without it, the group of friends, kin, pupils and worshippers will undergo a process of progressive isolation’.23 However, since the American campaign against Osama bin Laden’s sanctuary in Afghanistan failed to hunt him down but managed instead to disperse al-Qaeda’s alleged high commanders, thus failing to remove the principal hubs of the network effectively, the problem has become even


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more complex. The intensive use of Internet communication tools, and the vanishing need to get in touch with some al-Qaeda veteran or travel to a training camp, makes organizing a plot and declaring al-Qaeda’s paternity much more easy than in the past. Therefore this ‘deterritorialization’ has fostered greater uncertainty on who is and who is not directly linked to bin Laden’s matrix, on what and what is not an al-Qaeda franchise. In consequence, an added difficulty to the looseness of real relations with original global jihad leaders is the diversity of networks that can decide autonomously to act on their name to bury their real goals, as we have seen in the case of a number of bombings in Algeria, where some experts from inside the country pointed out that blaming al-Qaeda could be a tactic to cover internal political struggle. The variety of motivations and contexts adds to the variety of socio-economic origins and social dynamics of terrorists, making it difficult if not impossible to identify a ‘typical background’ of a potential terrorist individual or network that can range from ‘lone wolves’ to ‘home-grown wannabes’, following Sageman’s recent characterization. ‘The present threat’, he writes, ‘has evolved from a structured group of al Qaeda masterminds, controlling vast resources and issuing commands, to a multitude of informal local groups trying to emulate their predecessors by conceiving and executing operations from the bottom up. These “home-grown” wannabes form a scattered global network, a leaderless jihad’.24 Of course some patterns can be described, such as being an expatriated student or immigrant young Muslim going through a crisis of identity and/or integration in a Western European country, but little more can be said. As Peter Neumann argues: ‘No researcher has yet been able to construct a single profile based on simple socioeconomic indicators that would accurately describe the typical jihadist . . . The pattern is that there is no pattern’.25

DARK AGE AHEAD? I have so far discussed different characteristics of the networks and their behaviour, the social and psychological nature of their potential members, but have found little that could guide us to building a solid strategy to prevent their emergence and proliferation. Far from solving the problem, President Bush’s administration policies in Afghanistan and Iraq appear to have failed to achieve their objective of ‘making the world a safer place’. By 2004, the International Institute for Strategic Studies was reporting that: ‘the Iraq conflict has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qa’ida and [bin Laden’s] followers, while diluting those of the global counter-terrorism coalition’. The report states that: ‘in the wake of the

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war on Iraq, al-Qaeda now has more than eighteen thousand potential terrorists scattered around the globe’.26 Iraq became a second Afghanistan for global jihad fighters. They did not need training camps any more, as they could roadside bomb American Humvees, killing real enemies, and use the tactic of suicide car bombings against servicemen or civilians alike. Since 2003, all that horror – including repulsive televized beheadings – has been systematically broadcast by Arab television stations throughout the Middle East and the Maghreb, resulting in daily propaganda and potential recruits for the jihad, now that the ‘far enemy’ has come close. A report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point analysing al-Qaeda documents captured in Iraq containing nearly 700 records of foreign nationals who entered Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007, shows that they were usually young – average age of 24–25 years – and came from a wide range of Arab countries, mainly from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Yemen and Tunisia: The fighters’ overall youth suggests that most of these individuals are first time volunteers rather than veterans of previous jihadi struggles. If there was a major influx of veteran jihadists into Iraq, it may have come earlier in the war. The incitement of a new generation of jihadists to join the fight in Iraq, or plan operations elsewhere, is one of the most worrisome aspects of the ongoing fight in Iraq . . . So long as al-Qa’ida is able to attract hundreds of young men to join its ranks, it will remain a serious threat to global security.27

What will happen to the young people who survive the Iraq conflict and are left behind as veterans of that war after Allied withdrawal? Will they resume their home networks and attempt to use their lethal experiences against new targets? While describing al-Qaeda’s first public appearance, the French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu argues that al-Qaeda or ‘The Base’ eponym can be also interpreted within a double meaning: that of a territorial ‘base’ whence to anchor the jihad for better diffusion, and that of an electronic ‘database’ (qâ’ida alma ‘lûmât) of Afghanistan veterans constituting the jihad’s avant-garde.28 An Iraq veterans’ Qaeda or ‘database’ is a very detrimental inheritance of the occupation and may leave a grim legacy for the years to come. While it is clearly important to develop an understanding of the development of small-world connectivity for future counterterrorism action planning, this is to deal with abstractions. The lack of understanding of local societies and cultural dynamics has led to huge mistakes, especially when we let arrogance and the abuses of oversophisticated technology condition our perceptions while fuelling hatred and anger both in the Arab Islamic world and in migrant communities of that origin abroad, resulting in new


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Terrorist act

Media blow-up

Political overreaction

Figure 9.4

Terror action feedback loop

recruits for the jihad. It might be useful to refer to what Professor Werner Heisenberg,29 famous for his groundbreaking Uncertainty Principle, wrote: ‘What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ It is clearly necessary to examine the quality of our perceptions, distorted as they are by our ideology, our hegemonic views and our alleged superiority based on Cartesian thinking and hyper technology. The obsession of measuring and rationalizing everything precludes us from understanding the system as a whole. Confusing the screen with the landscape, the hard with the soft, is a common disease in our technological times. Thus, when analysing the new reality of distributed network-based global terrorism, it is necessary to be very cautious. We must shift into non-linear systemic thinking and bring in the social, political and cultural context if we are to grasp something about their logic and evolution. As we have seen, bringing in the highly sophisticated complexity theory or small-networks theory – the realm of mathematicians and physics – is not enough. We will need some psychology as well, some sociology and simple examples of everyday life. Terrorists are not essentially evil people from the outside world, but usually lay people from our neighbourhoods who undergo a radicalization process fuelled by complex and multiple reasons. We need ‘cultural translators’ who can open our eyes to the realm of social dynamics on the ground. And yet, all that knowledge will become useless if we do not integrate into the algorithm the role of the media and the reaction of the politicians, in a devious and unpredictable but very basic feedback effect, as illustrated in Figure 9.4.

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This change of perspective brings us back to the idea that an apparently commonplace, simple event such as K’s rentrée party described above can become a growing system, a potent power-distributed network that can work as a connector. The whole idea revolves around the key role that hubs may play. A regular gathering of 40-something people can become a small-world network if kept alive for a number of years, potentially linking hundreds of thousands. Its power can be large if used appropriately. Imagine if somebody participating in the network tried to convince a core group of its participants – maybe those going through some turning point in their private or professional lives – to use it for a wicked goal. Even if its small-world architecture makes it vulnerable, we have to abandon the idea that identifying and eventually removing some nodes will help us to destroy the network. Some very marginal, difficult-to-identify nodes are likely to survive and easily reconstitute the network and become the substitute of the original hub. The key person to remove will be K himself – or Osama bin Laden, if you wish – being the principal hub around which the network is formed. But doing so would not be easy if extremely accurate quality intelligence on the ground is missing. A quick overlook at the 9/11 Commission Report30 shows us how the efforts made to track down al-Qaeda’s leader through some nodes of the Afghan tribes’ networks were in vain and ultimately unsuccessful. Not even massive bombing of the Tora Bora caves was the right answer to that failure of intelligence. Additionally, poor understanding of cultural codes and refined social links has led to poor performance in disturbing their networks. If indeed we are entering a ‘leaderless jihad’ era, where networks of all sorts might proliferate with a general objective of causing distress but lacking any central command and control component, that may complicate an already intricate situation. Finding a way out would not be straightforward. Maybe a smart use of public diplomacy and soft power might overturn the situation, even if it is done by adding democratic networks of policy-making, committed individuals and institutions to the already existing long tail of initiatives. Finding appropriate solutions will be difficult as they are likely to entail some radical reform of our way of thinking. Therefore, if action is not taken, devoured by its own contradictions and harassed by seldom but devastatingly violent cells, American and European culture might be facing what urban sociologist Jane Jacobs called a ‘dark age ahead’.31


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CONCLUSION A small world network is easy to establish and shows a rather spontaneous and self-organized behaviour, as seen in both the Madrid plotters and K’s party examples. If we are to mention only some aspects of the complex social nature of their durable links, we will cite the need of a narrative, a sense of belonging, a common purpose and trust among their members. Provided the Internet and some modest funds are in place, directing the network towards hyper violence is just a matter of determination and resolve. As I have discussed extensively through this chapter, a central commander or a precise instruction to act is not needed any more. This devaluation of order and hierarchy is a side product of ‘globalization’, a concept that was coined, according to Zigmund Bauman’s analysis: ‘to replace the long-established concept of “universalization” once it had become apparent that the emergence of global links and networks had nothing of the international and controlled nature implied by the old concept’. He argues that: Globalization stands for processes seen as self-propelling, spontaneous and erratic, with no one sitting at the control desk and no one taking on planning, let alone taking charge of the overall results. We may say with little exaggeration that the term ‘globalization’ stands for the disorderly nature of the processes which take place above the ‘principally coordinated’ territory administrated by the ‘highest level’ of institutionalized power, that is, sovereign states.32

In contrast with classical modern terrorist organizations, al-Qaeda has evolved into a fluid postmodern association as a distinctive globalization outcome. This global network (and its imitators) has no headquarters and it is not coupled with this or that state or region. The trouble is that, in a technology and communication-driven highly unstable global environment, our traditional ‘industrial’, ‘modern’ and ‘sovereign’ way of thinking and acting has become obsolete. Yet major changes at the macro level of policy-making are urgently needed, and a quick and ‘honourable’ end of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as well as to the Israeli–Palestine conflict are only preconditions for scaling down the potentialities of global terrorism. In the meantime, understanding network dynamics and reinforcing highly specialized ‘hub-hunting’ task-forces might be of some help in disturbing a number of terror cells. In addition, actions like building multilateral democratic platforms of trust and common understanding, integrating smart, influential, committed-to-action people from both sides (as the Alliance of Civilizations’ UN initiative is trying to do33) might be of some use. However, in the light of what I have been discussing, it is likely to be insufficient.

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Declaring perennial ‘war on terror’ turned out to be an error of major consequences. At this stage, the accurate response must come from truthful community policing and fine police work rather than from harsh military campaigns. The answer must come from ‘intelligence’ multidisciplinary teams (incorporating social scientists willing to test their hypotheses), rather than from political opinionated cabinets ready to overreact, or from overexcited journalists seeking sensationalist news to increase their ‘share’. To my understanding, the remaining core question will be nevertheless how to handle the key role of traditional and new media, and create a healthful narrative, both in the West and in the Arab Muslim world. After years of mistrust fuelled by violent extremism and violent response, in Cairo in June 2009 the newly elected Barack Obama told his audience: ‘I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect’. The path indicated by this speech reveals a major change of trend and opens a window of opportunity for mutual understanding. We can conclude that global terrorism is a side-effect of globalization, as it exploits its technology, its looseness and flexibility, and its impact in reshaping the global power struggle from the bottom up. In consequence, the critical social and psychological tensions that globalization has added to individuals is shaping people’s identities, and some are solving their conflict by canalizing violence in an odd way. ‘War on terror’ was a wrong move and probably did put oil to the fire. Thus, Islamist terror networks are here to stay, unless they fade away, if they are no longer able to attract new adherents, as Sageman suggests.34 In the meantime, moving on the edge of chaos, some ‘sleeping cell’ might be planning to obtain some biological or nuclear material in Pakistan or somewhere else in the world. Hard – and quiet – security is necessary to tackle that, but possibly the present counterterrorism coalition of ‘vertebrate’ nation-states should be more sensitive to the new environment and foster a ‘cellular’ network of responsible media and insightful policies. The political response (as it seems to be understood by the Obama administration) should be based on careful listening, not only to the usual intelligence units and customary terror experts, but to a wider range of fresher views with a better social and anthropological understanding; that is, if we are to avoid, in the event of a shocking attack, the disastrous overreactions and policy errors we have witnessed in recent times.


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NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

Arjun Appadurai (2006), Fear of Small Numbers. An Essay on the Geography of Anger, London: Duke University Press, p. 28. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, quoted by Basil H. Liddell Hart (2007), Stratégie, Paris: Éditions Perrin, p. 93 Talal Asad (2007), On Suicide Bombing, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 74. Steve Tatham (2006), Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion, London: Hurst & Company. Luis de la Corte Ibáñez and Javier Jordán (2007), La yihad terrorista, Madrid: Editorial Síntesis, p. 254. Steven Johnson (2001), Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, New York: Scribner. John Guare (1991), Six Degrees of Separation, New York: Vintage Books. Steven Strogatz (2003), SYNC: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, New York: Hyperion, p. 232. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html, September 2008. ‘In fact, complex networks are the natural setting for the most mysterious forms of group behaviour facing science today. If the day should ever come that we understand how life emerges from a dance of lifeless chemicals, or how consciousness arises from billions of unconscious neurons, that understanding will surely rest on a deep theory of complex networks. At the moment, such theory is almost inconceivable’ (Strogatz, p. 232). Marc Sageman (2004), Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 165. John Arquilla and David Rondfelt (1999), ‘Networks, Netwar and the fight for the future’, http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_10/ronfeldt/index.html. Albert-Laszlo Barabási (2002), Linked: The New Science of Networks, Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing. Ibid., p. 71. Sageman, op. cit, pp. 137–8. Barry Wellman quoted by Manuel Castells (2001), The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manuel Castells (2001), The Internet Galaxy Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 120. Ibid., pp. 1–8. Zygmunt Bauman (2004), Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts, Cambridge: Polity Press. ‘The production of “human waste” or more correctly wasted humans (the excessive and redundant . . .) is an inevitable outcome of modernisation and an inseparable accompaniment of modernity’. Ulrich Beck (2002), ‘The terrorist threat: world risk society revisited’, Theory, Culture and Society, 19 (4), 39–55. Amartya Sen (2007), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, p. 23. There is a wide bibliography discussing ‘multiple identities’ in recent modernity. In his article Stuart Hall (1993), ‘Cultural identity and cinematic representation’, in Mbye Cham (ed.), Exiles’ Essays on Caribbean Cinema, London: Africa World Press, Hall argued that: ‘identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact . . . we should think of identity as a “production” which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.’ Sageman, op. cit., p. 120. Marc Sageman (2008), Leaderless Jihad: Terror Network in the Twenty-First Century, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, p. vii.

240 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks Peter R. Neuman (2007) ‘A crisis of identity and the appeal of jihad’, International Herald Tribune, 6 July. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (2004), Strategic Survey 2003/2004, New York: Routledge. Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman (2008), Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records, West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center, US Military Academy. Jean-Pierre Filiu (2006), Les frontières du Jihad, Paris: Fayard, p. 131. Werner Heisenberg (1958), Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, New York: Harper & Collins. http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf. Jane Jacobs (2004), Dark Age Ahead, New York: Random House. Zygmunt Bauman (2001), The Individualized Society, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 34. http://unaoc.org/. ‘The leaderless jihad will probably fade away for (different) internal reasons. The danger is that too vigorous an eradication campaign might be counterproductive and actually prolong the life of the social movement. The eradication efforts may be seen as unjust and therefore attract new recruits to the movement, just when it was dying out on its own. A measure of restraint is necessary to prevent new members from joining. The leaderless jihad should be allowed to expire on its own’ (Marc Sageman, 2004, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Network in the Twenty-First Century, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 146).

10.

Hearts and minds: time to think differently?* Steve Tatham

Insurgent media are forming perceptions of the war in Iraq amongst the best educated and most influential segments of the Arab population.1

In 2005 the Cambridge academic Ivan Arreguin-Toft published a study entitled How the Weak Win Wars: a Theory of Asymmetric Conflict.2 In it he analysed 200 years of global conflict and measured which actor (be it the weaker or stronger) prevailed. As might reasonably be presumed, he found that since 1800 the stronger actors had won their conflicts by a ratio of approximately 2:1. Yet Arreguin-Toft also found that in the years since 1900, and particularly since 1950, the weaker actor has fared significantly better, in many cases either winning or achieving a tied outcome. That early period of his study is notably characterized by the decolonization process, ostensibly in Africa and the Middle East; the victory of weaker forces as a result of the decline in support for the objective by the stronger side. Yet even with the colonial experience removed, the results still support Arreguin-Toft’s hypothesis: weaker actors are proving more adept at wining conflicts than ever they were before. Arreguin-Toft’s study attempts to identify why this may be, and posits a series of ideas; key is that of ‘strategic interaction’, the idea that the actor who most efficiently utilizes all available warfare strategies and tactics will prevail. When, he argues, two actors battle in a direct–direct manner (that is, they employ a similar strategic approach to their war fighting) then invariably the stronger actor will win. Yet when they employ a direct–indirect strategy (that is, strategically different or asymmetrical) then the weaker actor is more likely to prevail. Experience of contemporary insurgent operations in Iraq and Afghanistan supports this hypothesis. In both countries asymmetric campaigning by the smaller and less-equipped actor has proved highly successful against the leviathan resources of the US-led coalition. For example, the willingness of al-Qaeda and the Taliban to use abhorrent violence (such as suicide bombing and hostage beheading) has had notable effects on the 241

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morale of participant nations. Yet all of these are examples of hard kinetic power,3 and for all of Arreguin-Toft’s completeness his research overlooks one key change since 1950: the media, its reach and its influence. Today, military commanders on both sides of a conflict are as likely to reach into their soft-power toolbox as they are for their hard kinetic power resources. But are Coalition toolboxes as well equipped for the dynamism of the information environment in which they must operate as those of our adversary?

24 HOURS, OR, 2 TO 4 HOURS? Somewhere between the Falklands conflict in 1982 and the crisis in Bosnia in 1992, military commanders began to realize that their freedom of manoeuvre was being eroded, not by supply lines or the absence of intelligence (indeed, just the opposite, for never before have military forces had the resources and capability to conduct offensive operations as they do today), but by the presence and scrutiny of the world’s media. Academics and doctrinaires contemplated the issue and ascribed to it a name: the ‘CNN effect’. Twenty-four-hour news coverage, it was argued, was impacting upon the conduct of nation-states’ policies, and in particular their military interventions. In his paper ‘Clarifying the CNN effect: an examination of media effects according to type of military intervention’, Professor Steven Livingston postulated how the media influenced agendas, how it could prove an impediment to the achievement of desired policy goals and, perhaps most crucially, how it acted as an accelerant to policy decision-making.4 The body of evidence is such that there can be few detractors from this idea. However, Livingston’s 1997 study, and those of his contemporaries, considered the word ‘media’ to mean the established, organized, news-gathering media of TV, radio and the press. It did not consider the utility of today’s ‘new media’, which we might classify in three parts. The ‘new’ journalists, sometimes called the citizen journalists,5 new news-gathering technology, such as mobile phones and cheap video cameras; and a new distribution conduit, the Internet. Arguably these present government with a far greater management challenge than the established mainstream media, although the emergence of so many new and increasingly influential international channels is already causing Western governments, who traditionally are attuned to domestic media handling, significant challenges. The impact of citizen journalists has been all too apparent. The BBC’s Andrew Marr once noted that: ‘journalism is the industrialization of gossip’.6 It would be enormously helpful if the West7 were able to ensure that its gossip – which we might instead choose

Hearts and minds: time to think differently?

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to call ‘narrative’ – is as widely available as that of our adversaries, whose actions are orchestrated as much to garner public opinion as they are to achieve military or political advantage. On 7 July 2007 four home-made explosive devices were detonated around London. Fifty-two Londoners were killed. As the British Government’s Cobra (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) committee sat to consider its response, another British institution also struggled to manage the situation. During the course of that day the BBC received more than 1000 images, some 20 videos – mainly from mobile phones – more than 3000 text messages and nearly 20 000 e-mails. The ‘new-journalists’ and their ‘news-gathering technology’ had deployed in force – citizen journalists supplementing paid and trained BBC staff. For the BBC this presented colossal challenges. Whilst allowing it to build a comprehensive picture of what was actually happening, it required the validation and authentication of a huge barrage of information, some of which was wrong and some of which was deliberately mischievous. Similar dilemmas have been faced in other parts of the world: in the US the catalyst was 9/11; and the Spanish train bombs in mainland Europe. Even military dictatorships such as Burma’s ruling junta have struggled to cope with the appetite and drive of the citizen journalism at momentous moments. All served to illustrate how 24-hour news was actually no longer the problem that Livingston had articulated. What was of much greater concern was the sheer proliferation of news, the immediacy of the need to respond to it, and the criticality of the two- to four-hour window that follows major events – in essence that period of time in which the world’s media expected answers to emerging issues. This is today’s dilemma. How fast, or perhaps even should governments respond to the new and immediate revelations supplied by the citizen journalist – revelations that are now not just in mainstream news media but which are uploaded to the new and alternative distribution conduit of the web, a global resource of increasing utility to our adversaries?

AFGHANISTAN’S TALIBAN: UNEXPECTEDLY EMBRACING THE MEDIA The early years of the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan were not known for their press freedom. Technology was unwelcome, images of human beings considered apostate and world public opinion largely irrelevant. Yet since December 2006 the information environment has unexpectedly become a key component of its campaign, demonstrating both a surprising agility of mind and a developed grasp of the role of information to its heavily

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outgunned insurgency. This properly began in late 2006 when reports began circulating that the Taliban had sent representatives to Iraq, not to view the insurgency per se but instead to learn how al-Qaeda’s video production arm – al-Sahab – depicted that insurgency to its followers, through both conventional and emerging media. A primary strategic objective for al-Qaeda – indeed an imperative – has been the need to mobilize Muslim populations. Analysis of jihadist communiqués between 2001 and 2005 shows a clear preference for Muslim audiences: 92 per cent of their output targeted Muslim audiences, 6 per cent were designed for an undifferentiated audience, while only 2 per cent were directed specifically at non-Muslim audiences.8 As one of the principal strategists of al-Qaeda, Abu ’Ubeid al-Qurashi, wrote: ‘They did not aspire to gain Western sympathy; rather, they sought to expose the American lie and deceit to the peoples of the world – and first and foremost to the Islamic peoples’.9 And yet in recent years jihadist groups have devoted an increasing interest to ‘Western’ audiences. For example, many Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups have created English mirrors of their Arabic websites. And they have adapted their output to meet the characteristics and modalities of the West. For example, they have sought to glorify ‘Juba’, the sniper of the Islamic Army of Iraq – who may or may not exist. The Juba website contains English commentary and claims of responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of Coalition soldiers. Another significant example is the insurgents’ engagement in a ‘black propaganda’ operation called ‘Lee’s Life for Lies’. This operation involved fabricating the false history of American soldier Lee Kendall, whose USB flash drive was found by insurgents.10 The insurgents utilized the information contained in the USB to write a fake letter that described the desperate situation of the foreign soldier in Iraq, and the existence of abuses and unpunished war crimes. One could obtain the material via a downloadable video which contained the reading of the false letter by an anonymous narrator using American-accented English. Thus the Taliban had much to learn. Early in 2007 the West began to see the results of the Taliban’s education. Videos started appearing on the Internet which looked just a little more professional and, of more consequence, were appearing quicker than had previously been seen. By April the Taliban had its very first embedded journalist in place. Al Jazeera’s Pakistan correspondent produced a five-part series for his multimillion Arab and Islamic audience. One episode was entitled The People’s Movement and gave the first indication of a concerted Taliban ‘hearts and minds’ campaign. In that piece an (alleged) female Afghan doctor declares her support for the Taliban, her bourqa conspicuously absent, whilst tribal elders speak with approval of the peace and security that the Taliban had brought. In June 2007 a


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video of a Taliban suicide graduation ceremony reached the international media and caused consternation in the Canadian media in particular with its assertion that the Taliban could send its suicide bombers to Ottawa and London. Unlikely, but like the female doctor, a fine piece of directed information operations. In June the new Taliban commander Mansor Dadullah provided a long and detailed interview with Al Jazeera and in July 2007 the Taliban announced to the world, again via the conduits of Al Jazeera and the web, that it had rebranded itself as ‘neo-Taliban’. Key in the channel’s three-part documentary was the filming of the Taliban’s media centre, sophisticated video editing equipment, used to churn out the Taliban’s message. The depth, quality and sophistication of this al-Qaeda inspired spin machine is noteworthy; it would appear from the vast numbers of Internet videos that not only does no attack on the coalition go unrecorded, but also, as in the case of the Afghan doctor, no wider propaganda opportunity is missed. As Dave Sloggett notes: we are faced by a second generation asymmetric insurgency that is backed by a sophisticated media operation . . . that reinforces a number of key but simple messages. These include the need to do duty through Jihad, to fight Zionist and Christian aggression that are targeting Islam and setting this in some [sic] 14th Century period of world history.11

So to what do we attribute this change in communications priorities? Undoubtedly al-Qaeda has been disappointed at the response of the Muslim ummah. In spite of its capability to mobilize significant activist support, the reality is that the dream of a Global Islamic Insurgency has yet to be achieved. Polls in the Muslim world indicate that jihadist propaganda has not significantly increased the levels of popular support towards al-Qaeda and its objectives. Yet this explanation would belittle the agility and intelligence of al-Qaeda. Jihadists recognize that the ‘crusader armies’’ determination to fight depends on the support of its internal constituencies and it seems likely that this is the new target of our adversaries. We may characterize this battle as one for the ‘hearts and minds’ of both alQaeda’s adversaries and potential allies, and whilst the West is not losing it, nor does it appear that its message is prevailing.

HEARTS AND MINDS ‘Hearts and minds’ is an ancient concept, perhaps first considered in a military sense by Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu, but undoubtedly predated in the annals of history. Today it is an overused cliché, its

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application appearing to fit an array of contemporary political and social issues, from gun crime in south London and the Northern Ireland peace process through to the perilous state of Muslim–Western relations. For all its apparent utility it is an expression that lacks nuance and encourages simplistic solutions to complex issues. While there can be no argument over the idea of ‘minds’ – swaying opinion by the force of reasoned debate and intellectual advocacy – the ‘hearts’ component is far too simplistic. Whether we are indeed referring to young black gang members in London, to die-hard Republicans in West Belfast or to disenfranchised Palestinians in Gaza, it is equally disingenuous, for it implies that those very hearts can be cleverly won over. In the context of the war of ideas it suggests that the historical, cultural, religious, tribal, ethnic and educational backgrounds that have coalesced together to form the opinions of a targeted ‘group’ can somehow be turned not by any substantial qualitative change in circumstances but, in many instances, by the ingenious auspices of a clever information campaign.12 And yet, for all its clumsiness, ‘hearts and minds’ is, if nothing else, a compellingly tidy term, if only because it encapsulates – however inarticulately – those multiple areas of activity, most of which are non-kinetic and many which are non-military, that symbiotically must come together in order to win across public opinion. For example, in Afghanistan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) views its operations in a trinity of Ds: defence, diplomacy and development.13 Afghanistan can be won from the clutches of al-Qaeda and the Taliban (so proclaimed a senior NATO official14), but increasingly the Taliban wages its battle not at NATO’s military strengths but at its weaknesses; experience suggests that NATO is still struggling to find its way in the information environment.

OUTSIDE THE COMFORT ZONE Alongside the emergence of new media is the growth of opinion-forming established media: channels such as Al Jazeera (in both English and Arabic forms), Al Arabiya and Press TV. While some commentators have taken to referring to them as the ‘ideological media’, which is a slightly insulting misnomer for it immediately hints at bias, these outlets have become vital opinion battlegrounds. It is no coincidence that Al Jazeera is the channel of choice of bin Laden’s speeches, and was the Taliban’s preferred channel for its first embed – its reach and influence is far more important than any perceived bias either for or against al-Qaeda. What is striking however is that it has taken nearly six years of conflict for the Coalition genuinely to


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appreciate the importance of the Arab channels in the hearts and minds campaign, and this relationship is still evolving. In my 2006 book Losing Arab Hearts and Minds,15 built upon observations as a military spokesman between 2000 and 2003, I argued that the Western Coalition all but ignored the organic Arab media, and its Arab and Muslim audience, focusing attention instead upon Western domestic audiences. More than 500 journalists were embedded with front-line Coalition units during March and April 2003, yet of this total less than 3 per cent were from Arab or Muslim news organizations. British forces had no Arab media with them at all. The concerted anti-war campaign instigated by some sections of the British media led to a major effort to woo UK audiences through the embedding of correspondents with frontline units. The British Daily Mirror newspaper, at the very forefront of the anti-war rhetoric, found its defence correspondent embedded with Royal Marine Commandos, amongst the first troops to land ashore in Southern Iraq. That particular correspondent filed reports that told the stories of individuals; of men, and in some instances women, with families, homes, lives and aspirations. Indeed across the Coalition’s forces embedded journalists permeated the often intimidating facade of body armour, kevlar helmets and wrap-around sunglasses to tell their audiences of the humanity of the person beneath. Arguably it was the portrayal of the combatant as an individual which perhaps more than other single factor brought the British public around to supporting their troops through a war that was hugely and manifestly unpopular with the majority of them. Yet in the Arab world television screens were filled with very different images. Their portrayals were not of the humanity of US and UK forces; instead they were of the effects of the direct and indirect actions of those forces on the Iraqi civilian population. This very often meant very unpleasant and graphical images of death, destruction and misery. In the West, news organizations such as the BBC and CNN are prevented from airing images of death and horror by broadcasting standards legislation. The result is a rather clean-cut portrayal of military action. Yet in the 22 countries of the Arab world – many of them no strangers to civil war and to the carnage of combat – no such standards applied and the hard, cold edge of real warfare was openly displayed to the anguish and anger of Arab viewers. Some may question the need for external engagement as it is clearly impossible to speak to every one of the world’s media outlets. Why bother with those outside of those that serve the domestic audience, particularly when they come with a reputation. Al Jazeera, for example, continues to have no mainstream outlet in the US, where many still choose to follow former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s opinion that the channel is

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‘vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable’.16 Others are simply ignorant of the importance of such conduits, and others find the effort to see the problem in more sophisticated terms as quite simply too much work. In considering the issue of ignorance a recent op-ed in the New York Times17 makes interesting reading: ‘America needs to watch [Al Jazeera] to see how the world had changed. The first change . . . is America’s diminished ability to influence people. Global access to information now amounts to an immense a la carte menu. Secondly . . . the erosion of American power and finally the solidification of anti-Americanism.’ In each of those points the word ‘Western’ could arguably be substituted for ‘American’, making this a global not a parochial issue. Al Jazeera’s English service provides further proof that the currency of opinion lies in emerging and new media. Around the world, Al Jazeera is a brand-name for integrity and honesty. As US journalist Edward Murrow noted: ‘To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible’. Al Jazeera is all of these. If we do not care for the arguments of hearsay then there is ample empirical academic evidence of the need to engage. As far back as 1922, the newspaper columnist Walter Lippman was concerned that the media had the power to present images to the public. However it was not until the 1968 US presidential campaign that two American academics, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, attempted to assess the relationship between what voters in one community said were important issues, and the actual content of the media messages used during the campaign. McCombs and Shaw concluded that the mass media exerted a significant influence on what voters considered to be the major issues of the campaign.18 They drew two core conclusions which today underpin one of the most established and recognized principles of communications theory – agenda setting: (1) the press and the media do not reflect reality – they filter and shape it; (2) media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. It is an idea immortalized as early as 1963 by US Professor Bernard C. Cohen, when he wrote: ‘The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about’.19 We also need to be nuanced in understanding which part of the media is the most influential for target audiences. A general survey of the media in Afghanistan shows that most Afghans are interested in radio and TV rather than in the press. This is because, on the one hand, it is perceived as being free (away from party political control) and, on the other, because of the illiteracy problem in the country. How good are we then at setting the international media agenda? Are we as good as al-Qaeda? Certainly Western government press offices are extremely adept at dealing with their own established domestic media.


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Yet, as we have seen, this is no longer the great challenge. Who is studying the emerging media and our adversaries’ use of it, and who is proposing a plan to engage with it, to manage it and its consequences? As political tensions with Iran rise, are we studying how we get our message heard in that country’s information environment? And what of the emerging superpowers, China and India? How would we quickly communicate with their populations? Given the obvious importance of information it is problematic that to all of these questions the answers are probably, no one.

A NEW METHODOLOGY? If we accept these presumptions then we need to think carefully about the importance that we attach to information and public opinion. If we deem it to be of importance then the West may need to develop greater expertise, familiarity and fidelity in six key areas: syntax, content, media primacy, people, actions and, finally, measurements of effectiveness. Research suggests that the Coalition has unwittingly accepted, and repeated, al-Qaeda’s narrative of contemporary events. Public officials are often quoted using words such as ‘fundamentalist’, ‘jihad’ and ‘Islamist’; in many instances these are singularly inappropriate and have served merely to reinforce bin Laden’s unification of disparate global conflicts under his banner of ‘Holy War’. There have been skirmishes and conflicts over religious and territorial disputes since time immemorial but bin Laden has very successfully constructed those with a Muslim component into one global jihad. Thus, Jemaah Islamiah (JI)’s bombing of a Bali nightclub in 2002 was explained to fearful Western audiences as an al-Qaeda event; that JI can trace its roots back to the 1940s was not so carefully explained. Thanks to Russian government rhetoric, the struggles in Chechnya are now also al-Qaeda-based; that violence has been endemic in the southern Caucasus since the fifteenth century is an inconvenient and often ignored fact. In the Philippines there has been conflict between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front since the early 1970s, a fact largely ignored in coverage of today’s struggle by militant jihadist group Abu Sayyaf and its links to al-Qaeda. Some careful manipulation, or hasbarah,20 by the Israelis, has sought to link together the 60-year-old Palestinian issue with the US global war on terror and, by implication, to al-Qaeda. In uniting these often disparate struggles under one banner, bin Laden has created his own Orwellian newspeak. As George Orwell himself wrote in 1984, newspeak is: ‘the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year’.21 Today’s media coverage finds the terms ‘jihad’

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and ‘al-Qaeda’ as the most convenient way of explaining rather more longstanding and complex issues. Arguably this twenty-first century newspeak has provided a more digestible and understandable narrative to explain the complexities of contemporary events to largely ignorant audiences. Longterm Speaker of the US Congress Tip O’Neil once famously declared that all politics is local;22 this is not a message that suits al-Qaeda. For it, all politics must be global. If we are to think again about winning the hearts and minds battle, a useful start point would be a concerted effort to deconstruct publicly this monolith of global jihad. This is not without historical precedent. US diplomat George Kennan is perhaps best known for his thoughts on the ‘containment’ of the USSR during the 1950s. Yet he also sought to encourage the Truman administration to regard Communist China as a different strategic problem to the USSR, to ignore the overt communist link and to treat them as separate and discrete entities – an idea he called fragmentation.23 Uniting long-standing conflicts under the banner of al-Qaeda plays into bin Laden’s hands, for it unhelpfully simplifies the audiences that we should be addressing and encourages the use of strategic messaging rather than more nuanced and localized appreciation of issues. The messages that NATO needs to deploy to an Afghan poppy farmer will be demonstrably different to those that need to be deployed to a separatist group in Mindanao. That messaging must be transactional: the West must think in terms of what the audience needs, not just what the West desires. Strategic communications, by definition, postulates global themes; global themes, by definition, ignore local problems. Thus, far from developing messages that exploit inconsistencies and undermine our opponents, we often inadvertently reinforce them. As an adjunct to this, when we do settle upon our messages we must ensure their consistency, completeness, rationality and comprehensiveness. Again these have often been problematic because their construction may fall outside the accepted frames of reference and experience of governmental staff. In short, it is too difficult. If there is one lesson that the Coalition must learn from the hearts and minds battle that is Iraq it is that the simple promotion of ideals such as ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of speech’ simply do not work. As the British Embassy in Damascus warned in March 2003: ‘some public diplomacy buttons simply do not work. For example, “liberating the Iraqi people”. The Syrians say that the Iraqis do not want to be liberated by foreign soldiers’.24 Message construction and content is an extremely complex issue that requires a multitude of skills and abilities, many that do not naturally reside within established government structures. Content should be driven by proper behavioural understanding of intended audiences, whilst structures should be created from those upon which proper academic research


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has been conducted. Overcoming this asymmetry of communications is vital to structuring effective communications; it is perhaps best illustrated in a comparative cognitive survey of Arab men and US males (Figure 10.1). Although only a subset of the research, Figure 10.1 is useful for showing us that at no point do the cognitive attributes of poorly educated Arab males – whom we may choose to refer to as the Arab Street – match the attributes of educated Americans, the subset from which US policymakers will come. Thus when policy-makers articulate what they consider to be a reasoned policy for a particular action their audiences may actually be swayed more by a ‘gut feeling’ or an emotion than the ‘reasoning’, however compelling or irrefutable it may appear. The reasons for the US invasion of Afghanistan were, to Western thinking, quite compelling. And yet in the region the presence of ‘invaders’ on Muslim territory – and the inevitability of collateral damage and civilian deaths – caused a much more emotional and wholly negative response. This is not to say that we cannot respond reactively; sometimes our adversaries’ actions facilitate a rapid response. For example the Taliban has rebranded itself as ‘neo-Taliban’, attempting to dissociate themselves from the excesses of its regime. This presents Coalition forces with an easy task: simply remind Afghans of what Taliban rule looked like and how its current actions consistently undermine the words of its members. We must also be mindful of the manner in which our people conduct this information battle. In particular we need to remain rational. 9/11 was a tragedy, but so too was the hysteria that it engendered, hysteria often blind to reality and objectivity. We might consider the words of political philosopher Hannah Arendt who observed the effect of patriotism thus: politically speaking patriotism always insists that its own people are surrounded by a world of enemies, one against all, and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind.25

Her words, written in 1951, find unfortunate resonance with the post 9/11 mentality of ‘with us, or against us’. We must be more nuanced and work in localized domains addressing local concerns, deploying messages tailored for specific circumstances and events. This is tricky – the global reach of media means that local messages will almost certainly be repeated to other audiences. Thus the content of messages needs much greater care and the explanation associated with their deployment must be easily understandable both to recipients and, importantly, to those practising in the field. To address the first and to aid the second we need both a change of vocabulary

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High

Concern about Honor – Low to

Poorly educated Arab males < 29

Individualistic

Cognitive attributes of Arab male audiences

Christine McNaulty (2008), Applied Futures Inc., presented at Deterrence Seminar, NATO Centre of Excellence, Rome, April.

Figure 10.1

Source:

Middle-aged, well-educated US

Group Orientation – Collective to

Well-educated Arab males < 29

Irrelevant

Religious Beliefs – Critical to

High

Feeling

Approach to Understanding – Thinking to

Concern about Shame – Low to

Empirical

Epistemology (ways of knowing) – Authoritarian to


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and an understanding of that which motivates our adversary. This has not gone unnoticed ‘in Iraq cultural awareness instruction should form part of pre-deployment training . . . consideration should be given to adding the cultural equivalent of a POLAD26 to deployed staffs . . . to advise commanders on the implications of planned and developing activities’.27 Moreover, we have to shed the mantle of domestic media primacy. This is an institutional issue, born from hard political impetus, which can only be affected by a profound change in mindset. Domestic media may well have a bearing on who gets elected and how taxpayers’ money is spent, but it is not necessarily the conduit of choice for those who may find sympathy with, or choose to fund, those who would do us harm. Thus we must engage with believable and credible conduits. That US President George W. Bush should have chosen to explain the US’s regret at the abuses of Abu Ghraib on a US government-funded Arabic language channel that is uniformly ignored throughout the Middle East was construed by many as being entirely counterproductive and indicative of the unwillingness to engage organic Arab media. We might also consider new media outlets. The controversy over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet was keenly observed across the world’s media, but for one young Dane, Anders Boetter, that was not sufficient to represent properly the views of ordinary Danes. He established a Facebook site called ‘Sorry Muhammad’ to apologize to Muslims on behalf of ordinary Danes, and also to give them a voice in the controversy over the row. His view was that conventional media was too polarized: ‘Either you were for the Muhammad drawings or you were against it, but I believe there are many Danes who do not feel that way – they’re somewhere in between and I am one of them’,28 he explains. This is true communication’s innovation and demonstrates that target audience and target conduit analysis is a sine qua non of the overall approach. We know the channels that carry influence and credibility; what we must do now is build relationships with them in same way as we do with our own domestic media. This is perfectly possible, but takes time and expertise. We have seen this work first-hand in Afghanistan; in September 2006 the Commander of British Forces travelled to the Gulf-based pan-Arab TV channels to extend a personal invitation for them to embed with his forces. The purpose of the visit was twofold: firstly, to place Afghanistan on the Arab news agenda, until then dominated by Iraq; and secondly, through the building of empathy and the recognition of cognitive dissonance, to achieve balanced coverage of the UK mission. Both were achieved and the latter exceeded. In this context, it is a source of frustration that across the Coalition we see the same, often simplistic, ideas being tried again and again; this is symptomatic of Western peacetime thinking that continues rotational

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military and civil service career structures. Desk officers, with perhaps little or no prior experience, are placed in positions of responsibility for which they are often poorly equipped. At the end of their two- or threeyear tours, at the point of maximum understanding and utility, they are moved on and replaced. Our opponents see their work as a life-long vocation, not a two- or three-year posting. This is anathema; we must build and retain expertise. Deeds must match rhetoric. This needs no further explanation than this recent quote from a discussion on the Al Jazeera TV station: Who confronts NATO in Afghanistan? Who is fighting NATO forces in their entirety in Afghanistan? Who fought in Iraq and destroyed it? The civilization that got Iraq back to the Middle Ages, and removed it from the course of history – is it really a civilization? This civilization killed one and a half million people. It killed a million Iraqi children during the siege. It left traces of enriched uranium from the weapons that were used, and destroyed the environment for the next 35 billion years, according to American estimates. Is this a civilization? Was it the Muslims who annihilated the Indians? Did the Muslims ever annihilate any people, or even a nation of animals?29

Ultimately, we require a structured measurement of effectiveness (MOE). These are expensive and invariably require specialist linguistic, cultural and analyst skills. We must have the capability to monitor the debates that we try to engender. One interesting example is the ongoing theological discourse in Islam over the religion’s interaction with modernity. This is a hugely important issue and one that the West might justifiably seek to influence. Yet, arguably, there is no UK governmental organization that has the capacity or skill base to keep apace with that highly complex debate and to advise ministers on how it might best be influenced.

CONCLUSIONS If the West wishes to engage seriously in the hearts and minds battle – and by implication be successful – then it can do no better than to follow the example of the Taliban and review its place and practices in the hugely dynamic global information environment. It is an environment that has changed dramatically since 2001, one that is very different from that which existed when governments first established their press information machines. As military operations in Iraq slowly recede, so the issue of Afghanistan will gain even greater prominence – not just in NATO governments but in the wider information environment in which the hearts


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and minds campaign is being waged. NATO’s mission to Afghanistan will not be won through military activity alone, but also through political dialogue and, ultimately, consensus. Consensus will require acceptance of the West’s version of Andrew Marr’s ‘industrialized gossip’ – the narrative. How we get our narrative, in the right linguistic and cultural mould, to the right audiences, via the complexity of the world’s communications networks, is our challenge. And that is a challenge as much for behavioural psychologists, political scientists and communications specialists as it is for politicians, soldiers and civil servants. The renowned thinker and United States Air Force officer Colonel John Boyd once noted that: ‘When I was a young officer, I was taught that if you have air superiority, land superiority and sea superiority, you win. Well, in Vietnam we had air superiority, land superiority and sea superiority but we lost. So I realized there is something more to it’. It is my belief that the ‘something more’ is the most obvious component of all – the information space.

NOTES * 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

The editors would like to thank the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom for permission to reprint this material. A. Kimmage and K. Ridolfo (2001), ‘Iraqi insurgent media: the war of images and ideas’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 7 June. Ivan Arreguin-Toft (2005), How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kinetic offensive military operations; the antithesis of soft power – the ability to exert influence through education, culture, heritage, persuasion and values. Steven Livingston (1997), ‘Clarifying the CNN effect: an examination of media effects according to type of military intervention’, pdf, John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. A term of debatable utility for the Western paradigm of journalism implies balance and objectivity. Many citizen journalists are anything but, using the Internet to push their own particular views. Andrew Marr (2004), My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism, London: Macmillan. What do we mean by ‘The West’? The term is dynamic. In the early years of the twentieth century French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conceived of the West as the set of civilizations descended from the Nile Valley civilization of Egypt, whilst more recently Samuel P. Huntingdon ‘The clash of civilisations?’, Foreign Affairs, 72 (3), 12–23, defined the West in terms of culture and religion. For the purposes of this chapter the West is presumed to mean, at the very least, the cultures and peoples of continental Europe, the UK, the two Americas, Australia and New Zealand. M. Torres, J. Jordan, J. Horsburgh and N. Horsburgh (2006), ‘Analysis and evolution of the global jihadist movement propaganda’, Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence, 18 (3), 399–421. MEMRI (2002), ‘Al-Qa’ida activist, Abu ’Ubeid al-Qurashi: comparing Munich (Olympics) attack 1972 to September 11’, MEMRI, 12 March. http://www.lee-flash.blogspot.com.

256 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks David Sloggett (2007), ‘A framework for analysing and developing theatre specific information operations’, IO Sphere, Summer, 2–36. The US-produced ‘Shared Values’ marketing campaign, led by Charlotte Beers, is an extraordinary example of the failure of this simplistic approach. Term defined at the George C. Marshall Centre conference on ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Modern Conflict’, 25–26 March 2007. Ibid. Steve Thatham (2006), Losing Arab Hearts and Minds, London: Hurst & Co. Guardian, 19 April 2004. Roger Cohen (2007), ‘Bring the real world home’, New York Times, 12 November. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw (1972), ‘The agenda-setting function of mass media’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 36 (2), 176–87. Bernard C. Cohen (1963), The Press and Foreign Policy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 120. A Hebrew word (‫ )הסברה‬that literally translated means ‘explaining’, but which colloquially has come to be known as ‘spin’. Richard Ben Cramer (2004), How Israel Lost: The Four Questions at the Heart of the Middle East Crisis, New York: Simon & Schuster. See also: http://www.jewishsf.com/content/20/module/displaystory/story_id/17571/edition_ id/348/format/html/displaystory.html. George Orwell (2004), 1984, London: Penguin. Tip O’Neil, Speaker, US House of Congress. This policy did not find traction amongst the Truman administration and the two were simultaneously regarded as a communist monolith. Steve Tatham (2003), Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion, London: Hurst & Co., p. 128. Hannah Arendt (1973), The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harvest Books. Political adviser. Ministry of Defence (2005), Operations in Iraq (OP TELIC 2-5) An Analysis from a Land Perspective, Army Code 71844, London: Ministry of Defence. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7247286.stm. Ibrahim Al-Khoulib (2007), ‘The opposite direction’, Al Jazeera, 30 June.

11.

Producing terror: organizational dynamics of survival* Jessica Stern and Amit Modi

In this chapter we use an organizational approach to explore terrorism as a definable and distinctive product rendered by groups or ‘firms.’ This approach allows us to analyze the evolution, behaviors and attributes of terrorist organizations, and their adaptive fit to their domestic and international environments. We are able to hypothesize how terrorist groups adapt to changes in their environment and, in particular, to governmental counterterrorism policies, such as attempts to limit a terrorist group’s access to funds. Organizations have an array of adaptive mechanisms available to them to survive in a competitive environment. We consider these in depth below, and our analysis includes hypotheses regarding a broad range of organizational behaviors. We consider how terrorist groups overcome the collective action problem to attain resources and how they may compete with other groups or splinter into ‘subsidiaries’, attempting to garner these resources more effectively. Groups may attempt to diversify revenue sources in order to reduce vulnerabilities to market instability. Additionally, groups may attempt to change missions as the environmental demand for particular ‘products’ changes. We consider other adaptive behaviors, but it is already clear from these examples that a terrorist firm’s response to an environmental stressor will depend on the internal dynamics of the organization. For instance, we consider why some firms are ‘sticky’ and others ‘spry’ in their ability to change missions. Because internal dynamics are crucial, we analyze the firm’s organizational structure, primarily focusing on the hierarchical and network modes of organization and their relative proficiencies and deficiencies. In this chapter we use an organizational approach to explore terrorism as a definable and distinctive product rendered by groups or ‘firms’. This approach allows us to analyze the production and ‘purchase’ of terrorism, the evolution of groups, and the types of behaviors, shapes and attributes that make groups more or less effective and resilient. Here 257

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we ask: What are the inputs of terrorism? How does resource scarcity or abundance affect organizational dynamics, such as competition and splintering? Why do terrorist organizations change their missions, and what factors affect their mission flexibility? What strategies do terrorist organizations choose in order to survive under changing environmental conditions? Under what set of conditions are the various organizational forms most efficient? By analyzing the organizational structures used for creating the ‘terrorist product’, we can hypothesize how terrorist groups adapt in response to changes in their environment, in particular to governmental counterterrorism policies that limit a terrorist group’s access to funds. The behavior of terrorist firms has always been responsive to and a reflection of the internal dynamics of the organization. Today, however, terrorist groups face extraordinary evolutionary pressures to adapt and evolve in the midst of the global war on terrorism. The argument presented here is that these internal and external dynamics encourage the development of terrorist organizations along a recognizable trajectory from creation to dissolution. Over time, groups that survive tend to evolve from the cause-maximizing end of the spectrum to the incentive-maximizing end. In this chapter we are primarily interested in groups that simultaneously pursue maintenance goals (providing incentives for labor) and collective goals. These groups, situated in the middle of the spectrum, are neither purely mission-driven (devoted to achieving the stated mission of the organization) nor incentive-driven (devoted to securing the financial or emotional wellbeing of participants). By understanding this trajectory of development, we may create policies and strategies that are better poised to combat terrorism.

ANALYTICAL APPROACH Employing a slightly different method from that of the majority of scholars in the field, this chapter takes the internal dynamics of the terrorist organization as its starting point, and then proceeds to define the terms and outline the structure of the life cycle of a terrorist organization, with special emphasis on the professional or mature group. We have developed this organizational model attentive to the two dominant models that exist in the literature – the instrumental and expressive approaches – with the exclusion of all other models. The instrumental model, which sees terrorism as a form of violent coercion and tacit bargaining, flows out of Thomas Schelling’s Strategy of Conflict and subsequent works by Schelling and others.1 The instrumental

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paradigm assumes that terrorists are rational actors who select strategies to maximize a clearly defined set of political objectives. Exhibiting a collective rationality, terrorists act in response to external stimuli, particularly actions by nation-states. Bruce Hoffman, a proponent of this view, argues that ‘the terrorist is fundamentally a violent intellectual’ who uses force to attain goals that are ‘ineluctably political’.2 The instrumental model posits that the costs and benefits of a given attack can be calculated using measures based on the explicit mission of the organization rather than implicit group goals.3 Therefore, an increase in the costs or a decrease in the benefits of violence will make terrorist attacks less likely.4 The expressive model, in contrast, assumes that terrorists are communicating with an audience – their supporters, the group itself, an enemy government or a deity – but they are not primarily trying to alter the world outside the group. This focus on the internal dynamic of the group runs counter to the assumptions of the instrumental model. While the instrumental model assumes that terrorists may hope to attract attention and air grievances, in Schelling’s words, these expressive acts serve only as ‘an intermediate means toward political objectives’.5 The expressive model allows for the possibility that some individuals enjoy violence for its own sake or enjoy belonging to a group that employs violence. For instance, in her interviews with terrorists, Jessica Stern found that operatives are often more interested in the expression of a collective identity than they are in the group’s stated goals.6 According to psychiatrist Jerry Post, who is a proponent of this model, terrorists may feel ‘psychologically compelled’ to commit violent acts, and the political objectives they espouse are only a rationalization for their actions.7 In contrast, the organizational approach used here is most akin to that of Martha Crenshaw who, in several articles published in the 1980s, emphasizes the internal politics of terrorist groups, concluding that: ‘terrorist behavior represents the outcome of the internal dynamics of the organization rather than strategic action’. She argues further that some terrorist groups can best be understood as self-sustaining organizations whose fundamental purpose is to survive.8 The organizational approach assumes that making progress (or at least appearing to make progress) towards stated goals is an important consideration for terrorists, but rejects the assumption that the terrorists’ principal aim is necessarily to achieve those goals. Unlike the instrumental model, this organizational approach takes the terrorist group’s mission as endogenous and assumes that it is not necessarily static. We reject the assumption that terrorist groups can most profitably be categorized according to their ideology or mission. On the contrary, our approach assumes that the group’s ideology is just

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one of many variables that a group can control in order to enhance its survivability. Indeed, one of the requirements for long-term survival is a flexible mission. In keeping with the expressive model, the organizational approach assumes that terrorist organizations are made up of individuals with psychological and physical needs. However, even as we incorporate individuals into this organizational approach and relax the assumptions of the instrumental model, we nonetheless aim to give primacy to a model that considers the terrorist group’s behavior in its entirety. In addition to drawing upon individual psychology, we also posit that terrorist groups depend on their socio-political contexts: the efficacy of behaviors, missions and organizational forms depends on the terrorist group’s interaction with its environment. Environmental changes act as stressors that may require an adaptive shift in the organization’s strategy or structure. This argument depends heavily on the definition of terms. In light of the fact that this volume concerns terrorist networks, it is fitting that we define the structure of terrorist organizations in terms commonly associated with business firms. We assess the missions, strategies, consumers and products of the terrorist group. We also evaluate the conditions that favor networks versus hierarchies, vertical integration versus disaggregation, and pure competition versus network governance. And we consider how different organizational structures influence the long-term effectiveness of terrorist groups in an increasingly complex and polarized global environment.

THE TERRORIST PRODUCT: EXPRESSIVE AND INSTRUMENTAL GOALS Terrorists claim to be producing a great variety of things, depending with whom they are speaking and in what context. But the one thing they inevitably produce is violence, or the credible threat of violence. For the purpose of this discussion, we will call the terrorist product ‘violence in the service of a collective goal’. This simplification assumes that even those terrorists whose main goal is expressing rage or earning money are trying to affect the world in some way. The amount of terrorist product can be measured by the number of attacks a group produces, the symbolic importance of the targets, or the number of deaths or dollars in property damage per attack. We will use the term ‘quantity’ to refer to the number of attacks an organization carries out in a given time period, and ‘quality’ to refer to a variable that combines the symbolic importance of the target, the type of weapons or tactics used, and the average number of deaths or dollars in property damage per attack.


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The inputs of the terrorist product are not unlike the inputs of products manufactured by corporate firms in that both include capital, labor and a branding or ‘mission’. For terrorist groups, capital includes such things as weapons, camps, equipment, factories and the physical plant for any businesses run by the terrorist firm. Labor includes the terrorist leaders plus all the personnel employed by the organization, including managers, killers, marketers, financiers, public-relations officers, and so on. Unlike goods produced by corporate firms, the product of terrorism – violence in service of a collective goal – is a public good. Terrorist activity is measured not only by the costs incurred by those who contribute, but also by the benefits shared by a broader collective or group.9 For example, when Jewish extremists attempt to lay a cornerstone for the Third Temple they hope to build, all like-minded messianic Jews (and messianic Christians) benefit. Only the participants pay: when they ascend the Temple Mount, they incur risks to their person, livelihood, freedom and families. Given this, extremists should be asking themselves, why bother participating? Why not let others do the work and take the risks? The theory of collective action suggests that people tend to ‘free ride’ on the contributions of others to collective goods.10 To address this free-rider problem, terrorist leaders encourage participation by offering two broad types of incentives to individual members: material incentives in the form of housing, food and cash, and nonmaterial incentives in the form of spiritual and emotional rewards. Financial rewards include cash payments for successful operations, and money or housing for the families of ‘martyrs’. In the spiritual realm, leaders hold out the promise of heavenly rewards and the threat of heavenly retribution. They provide adventure, camaraderie and, most importantly, a collective identity with honor for their followers, who often describe themselves as humiliated. Some operatives participate because they fear being punished in the afterlife or because they desire to be virtuous (in their conception of the term) for virtue’s own sake. Alternatively, those who refuse to obey orders in jihadi groups can be subject to corporal punishment including, in extreme cases, death.11 In addition to these individual motivations for joining a terrorist group, terrorists also commit violence to advance a diversity of exogenous goals. Osama bin Laden, for example, has said at various times that his goals are: (1) forcing US troops out of Saudi Arabia; (2) initiating an economic crisis in America; (3) impressing potential recruits with the aim of persuading them to join the al-Qaeda movement; (4) changing US policies in Iraq, Israel and elsewhere around the world; and (5) establishing a Caliphate. In addition to these various instrumental goals, bin Laden has stated

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the expressive goals of: (6) drawing attention to the plight of Muslims in various conflict zones around the world; and (7) exacting revenge. In a video produced shortly after the 11 September attacks, a senior al-Qaeda manager listed the ‘benefits’ of the 11 September strikes. He boasted: The operations have brought about the largest economic crisis that America has ever known. Material losses amount to one trillion dollars. America has lost about two thousand economic brains as a result of the operations. The stock exchange dropped drastically, and American consumer spending deteriorated. The dollar has dropped, the airlines have been crippled.12

An additional goal was revenge. It was permissible to attack civilians, the al-Qaeda manager said, because it was a ‘reciprocal’ response to American sanctions and bombing of Iraq, which killed ‘millions of Iraqi Muslims’.13 Another objective was the inevitable psychological damage that many Americans incurred from the attacks. Shortly after 11 September, bin Laden boasted that seven out of ten Americans suffered psychological trauma as a result of the attacks, according to articles that he had read in the press.14 Bin Laden also intended a ‘rift between the American people and their government’ to result from the attacks, by making Americans aware that the US government was sacrificing people to serve the interests of the rich, especially the Jews.15 Forcing the targeted government to overreact in a way that ultimately turns the people against their government, in what James Der Derian calls an ‘autoimmune response’ to terrorism, may be the terrorists’ main goal.16 In summary, the goals of terrorism fall on two continua: from the purely instrumental (aiming to achieve something) to the purely expressive (aiming to communicate something); and from promoting a mission to promoting the wealth or personal power, identity or enjoyment of the participants. Organizational theorists distinguish between a rational system paradigm, which asserts that organizations seek specific, stated collective goals, and a natural system paradigm (now dominant in the literature), which asserts that participants in organizations pursue multiple interests, both disparate and common, instrumental and expressive, with the perpetuation of the organization as the single most important objective. Natural system theorists emphasize that even when the organization is pursuing its stated goals, it will also promote the needs of the individuals who belong to the group. These maintenance goals, required to secure the capital and labor needed to keep the organization in business, often ‘absorb much energy, and in the extreme (but perhaps not rare) case, become ends in themselves’.17


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ORGANIZATIONAL SHAPES: HIERARCHIES VERSUS NETWORKS At this stage it is important to differentiate between two ideal types of terrorist group structures: commander–cadre and network. A commander–cadre organization is essentially a terrorist army. The leader of a commander–cadre organization provides both material and nonmaterial incentives.18 A network is generically defined in the literature as a set of actors connected by a set of ties. These actors are referred to as nodes. The nodes can be persons, networks or hierarchical organizations. The term ‘network’ refers to an organizational form characterized by a flat hierarchy, and we will use the term here in the same way. The pattern of ties among nodes may make some nodes more important by virtue of their access to information, but there are no leaders issuing instructions to followers in a network. The term ‘key player’ describes the most important node in a network. A key player is defined as the node that, if removed, would maximally disrupt communication among the remaining nodes.19 Nonetheless, the key player’s importance does not stem from their position in a hierarchy. While a node within the network may be organized hierarchically, there will be no hierarchy at the superstructure level where the network exists. A network is different from a team, in that teams have identifiable leaders (for example, coaches, captains), a hierarchical structure, and they are usually governed by rules. Networks, in contrast, can be self-organized and self-enrolling. We further differentiate between virtual and non-virtual networks. Non-virtual networks imply ‘long-term recurrent exchanges’ that create interdependences, resulting in an ‘entangling of obligations, expectations, reputations, and mutual interests’. Exchanges are protected – not by contracts as in a market, but by shared norms of trustworthy behavior.20 Like participants in markets, nodes in networks have a shared social purpose. But unlike markets, networks depend on the assumption that participants are not solely self-interested.21 Non-virtual networks exist both within terrorist organizations (nodes within al-Qaeda) and between them (for example, the consortium of terrorist groups with which bin Laden established ties while al-Qaeda was based in Sudan). According to the 9/11 Commission Report, bin Laden formalized relationships with terrorist groups from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia and Eritrea. Each of the groups had its own leaders and operatives, but the groups met together in a coordinating body, the Islamic Army Shura. Bin Laden also established cooperative but less formal relationships with other extremist groups in these same countries as well as groups in Africa

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and Southeast Asia. For some groups he provided training and financial assistance, sometimes for particular operations.22 By contrast, within a virtual network, individuals take action on their own initiatives: raising their own funds, purchasing their own equipment and creating and sustaining their own cells. The leader of a virtual network is inspirational. Rather than providing housing, cash or training, as in a non-virtual network, the leader of a virtual network provides for the higher-order needs of operatives, such as a collective identity. A virtual network contracts almost all of its functions to the level of the individual node.23 The network is a group of nodes (organizations or individuals) that come together to produce a particular product, but there are no formal or long-term ties among the nodes and no exchange of material things. Instead, the ties that link the nodes are shared world-views. In a virtual network, the leader’s role is to articulate this shared world-view and mission, suggesting strategies and targets and perhaps providing instructions, but never to any particular individual or node. The leader provides instructions and inspiration abstractly to a large, open audience. In the USA, where virtual terrorist networks have become relatively common, terrorist leaders are likely to disseminate information in a way that is protected by the First Amendment. For example Neal Horsley, a leader of the Army of God, a violent anti-abortion network, put up a website called ‘The Nuremberg Files’ in 1995.24 The site provides information about personnel at abortion clinics all over the country, and about judges and politicians ‘who pass or uphold laws authorizing child-killing’. Visitors are urged to send names and birth dates of abortion providers’ family members and friends; social security numbers; license plate numbers; photographs and videos; affidavits of former employees, former patients, or former spouses; or ‘anything else you believe will help identify the abortionist in a future court of law’.25 When Dr Barnett Slepian’s name was crossed out within hours of his death, Planned Parenthood and a group of doctors filed suit, and Horsley’s Internet service provider took the site down.26 But Horsley relaunched the site on his own server and has expanded it since he won the court case.27 Horsley manages to keep the website up because he does not provide instructions to kill anyone. He is simply providing information on targets of opportunity. In a virtual network, followers can become leaders at a moment’s notice – either of their own cells, or of entire movements. Conversely, leaders may one day articulate the mission to followers and the next day become followers themselves by carrying out attacks on their own. A good example is Paul Hill, a former Presbyterian minister who was executed in 2004 for murdering two abortion-clinic personnel a decade earlier. Hill was both an operative and a leader in the doctor-killer movement. He


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advocated murdering Supreme Court justices and sending chemical and biological agents through the mail to abortion clinics.28 He wrote a book while sitting on death row and regularly communicated his views to virtual followers through material published on the Internet. From his prison cell, he admonished his followers not to remain at home, leaving others to respond to the ‘call from the womb’. ‘Death opens her cavernous mouth before you’, he said. As evidenced by Paul Hill, the Internet facilitates the spread of virtual subcultures, including those based on dissatisfaction and rage. It has greatly increased the capacity of loosely networked terrorist organizations. It enables inspirational leaders to communicate the mission to vast numbers of people they may never meet. It also allows people with ‘unusual interests’ to find one another. An anti-government inspirational leader, James Dalton Bell, told Stern, ‘I’m as big a fan as it is possible to be of the internet’, arguing that it ‘dramatically increased’ the strength of anti-government movements. The Internet has dealt a decimating blow to the government’s strength, he said, a blow it has not even noticed. ‘Historically people couldn’t talk to others around the world. To get your story out – maybe you’d write a letter to the editor. Today, anybody can get his or her word out.’ The internet means that ‘the story can’t be killed’, he told Stern.29 The Internet is particularly useful for ‘gateway’ organizations that spread a violent ideology without actually promoting violence, whose adherents are then susceptible to recruitment by violent groups. One example is the Islamist group Hizb-ut Tahrir (HT, ‘Liberation Party’). HT was established as a Palestinian Islamic movement in 1953, but is now active in approximately 25 countries with an estimated membership of 15 000–20 000 in Central Asia alone.30 HT advocates conversion of the entire world to Islam and the urgent re-establishment of the Caliphate. Perhaps in imitation of white supremacists’ use of music as a means to indoctrinate and create a community of sympathizers, HT promotes technopop bands.31 Influenced by HT, a group of American Muslims formed a rock group known as Soldiers of Allah, which spread HT’s ideology to a broader audience. Song lyrics encourage ‘the masses [to] be joined under the banner of Allah and rise up in jihad against their “oppressors” and “occupiers”’ in the United States and elsewhere around the world.32 Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted in Pakistan of the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, had been a member of HT, but it is not known whether HT facilitated his subsequent involvement in terrorist organizations linked to al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials worry that al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups could target HT cadres for recruitment.

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The leader of a virtual network is not required to recruit or train personnel, raise money or acquire weapons. The leader’s job is to inspire rather than to command. Capital and labor are inputs to the terrorist product of virtual networks, but they are gathered by individual nodes rather than by central nodes. In a virtual network, the entire process is carried out by fluid cells that are independent of one another. There are several advantages to the virtual network organization from the terrorists’ perspective. Firstly, redundancy of functions makes the network maximally resilient to disruption. Secondly, the Internet facilitates the creation of virtual communities among people who have trouble finding others interested in fighting their chosen ‘enemy’, whosoever that enemy may be. Thirdly, the Internet allows people who have trouble cooperating with others to form cells without necessarily having to meet in person. Fourthly, because communication among nodes in planning actual operations is minimal or non-existent, it is harder for law enforcement personnel to disrupt attacks or penetrate the group. Indeed, ‘leaderless resistance’ – the term American neo-Nazis use for virtual terrorist networks – was developed with precisely this goal in mind: to avoid detection and penetration by law enforcement personnel. Louis Beam, who calls himself Ambassador-at-Large, staff propagandist and ‘Computer Terrorist to the Chosen’, of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, is one of the original promoters of the concept of leaderless resistance.33 Beam writes that hierarchical organizations are dangerous for insurgents. This is especially so in ‘technologically advanced societies where electronic surveillance can often penetrate the structure revealing its chain of command’, such as the United States. He writes: ‘Organs of information distribution such as newspapers, leaflets, computers, etc., which are widely available to all, keep each person informed of events, allowing for a planned response that will take many variations. No one need issue an order to anyone.’34 Beam’s essay on the virtues of leaderless resistance has been picked up by radical Muslim sites, according to researcher Michael Reynolds.35 The disadvantage to virtual networks from the terrorists’ perspective is that they are not well suited for carrying out complex tasks that require coordination among cells.36 Unless terrorists acquire impenetrable means of communication, virtual networks will be incapable of carrying out large-scale, complex attacks such as the 11 September strikes.37 However, technological developments will make virtual networks more dangerous over time as improved encryption and the dissemination of more and more powerful weapons to smaller and smaller groups continue to become available. At the opposite end of the organizational spectrum is a commander–


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cadre organization, which enables terrorists to carry out big, complex strikes that require coordination. These terrorist bureaucracies are characterized by clear lines of authority, functional specialization and centralized decision-making. There are separate departments responsible for particular tasks, and training takes place for operatives and managers at all levels. A commander–cadre organization, at least in its ideal form, is likely to possess many characteristics of Weber’s ‘rational bureaucracy’.38 Hierarchies provide for lines of authority and responsibility and a clear division of labor. They facilitate the breaking down of complex tasks into specific jobs that can be handled more efficiently by the various subunits or functional groups in the organization. They also facilitate complex, customized exchanges.39 Because terrorists violate laws and require secrecy to commit their crimes, a commander–cadre organization can exist only under particular circumstances: in weak or failed states, where governments are not able to impose a monopoly on the use of force; in regions within states that are outside of governmental control; or in countries where the government or parts of the government allow or facilitate terrorist groups to function. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) believes there are ‘stateless zones’ in approximately 50 countries, and that terrorists are operating in half of them. These zones tend to appear in remote, rugged areas plagued by socio-economic problems, where the central governments have inconsistent reach, the CIA finds.40 As the war on terrorism progresses, terrorists are likely to move from their traditional hideouts to these stateless zones, where they can train personnel and plan and stage operations without interference from government authorities.41 For instance, the most wellknown stateless zone is the tribal area of Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and other jihadi organizations are believed to be hiding. Others, likely to be important in the future, are in Bangladesh and in various parts of Africa, including the Horn and the Sahel. Leaders who want to control the flow of information, resources and status – possibly for personal gain, and possibly to keep information secure – will favor hierarchies over flatter structures. Moreover, the need for secrecy makes centralization of recruitment attractive because it facilitates protecting the identity of existing members. But, as Bonnie Erickson explained in regard to secret societies more broadly, ‘in risky situations members and hence the links they are part of may be frequently deleted: they may be informed on, etc.’ Unless there is link redundancy, she explains, ‘the secret society would be in continual danger of being cut to pieces’,42 because recruiters for secret societies operating under risk will tend to recruit individuals they trust based on a prior, reasonably strong relationship. This tendency introduces an inherent vulnerability.

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For instance, once law enforcement officials discovered the importance of family relationships in the structure of al-Qaeda, parts of the organization became easier to map and unravel. A member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi told Stern’s interviewer that he joined that particular organization ‘due to my friends’ and later shifted to a new group, also ‘due to my friends’. He also admitted that the hierarchical tribal organizations known as biradri play a significant role in recruitment to jihadi organizations.43 Another disadvantage to pyramidal structures is that they can lull workers into focusing on the narrow task they are assigned rather than seeing how their work fits into the bigger picture. For this reason, hierarchies can reduce innovation and discourage initiative; this is as true for producers of terrorism as it is for producers of cars. As a result of a ‘do as I am told’ mentality, new or cross-cutting issues may fall through organizational structures. In summary, hierarchies provide for lines of authority and responsibility and a clear division of labor. They facilitate the breaking down of complex tasks into specific jobs that can be handled more efficiently by the various subunits or functional groups in the organization. They facilitate complex, customized exchanges.44 As a commander–cadre or hierarchical terrorist organization grows and matures, it will develop certain operating routines and procedures for workers at different levels. This is fine in a static environment. But in a situation of rapid change and uncertainty, workers cannot rely on prespecified routines or wait for clearance from those at higher levels of the bureaucracy before taking action. Networks, which encourage innovation and initiative, are better suited to dealing with rapidly changing environments. It is noteworthy that the idea for the 11 September strikes came from a man who was not a member of al-Qaeda at the time. He proposed a complex plot involving simultaneous attacks in several cities and using airplanes as weapons. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 11 September plot, initially declined bin Laden’s invitation to join al-Qaeda, preferring to retain the option of working with a variety of terrorist groups as an independent entrepreneur. The plot he had in mind, however, required personnel, logistics and money available only to a group like al-Qaeda. Mohammed eventually joined alQaeda when bin Laden approved his pet project to use planes as weapons, albeit in much simplified form.45 Increased law enforcement and intelligence cooperation internationally and a rapidly changing law-enforcement environment, including financial controls, reduce the reliability of inputs to the terrorist product – especially the supply of finance and skilled labor. In the post-2001 environment, skilled laborers working for al-Qaeda are under increased threat of being captured or killed. Money to pay laborers, buy explosives


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and provide training is also in shorter supply. Rather than destroying alQaeda, law enforcement and intelligence efforts are forcing al-Qaeda to evolve into an increasingly loose network. If each cell raises its own funds, less money is needed at the center. If each cell recruits its own labor, the organization, taken as a whole, is less vulnerable. If there is redundancy with respect to organizational requirements and tasks, the loss of a single node is less damaging. The looser the links between the cells (the more the network becomes a virtual one) the more resilient it will be with respect to law enforcement detection and penetration. Having operationalized the terms ‘network’ and ‘commander–cadre’ relative to the structure of terrorist groups, we may now begin to understand these organizations in relation to the ‘product outputs’ – attacks, as described previously. Attack quality, defined above, refers to the average number of deaths or dollars in property damage per attack. It also depends on the symbolic importance of the target and the shock value of employing sophisticated tactics or weapons, but these aspects of quality are difficult to measure. We will define capacity as the upper bound on the aggregate potential production of the organization – it is the summation of quality and quantity. In the context of terrorist networks, network capacity is the maximum death and destruction the nodes in the network are capable of generating in aggregate. Capacity is thus a function of the resources available to the network.46 A terrorist organization’s effectiveness is then a measure of its actual production of outputs over time, or the sum of quantity and quality for a given time period. Efficiency is a measure of how well an organization transforms inputs into outputs, and resilience refers to the organization’s ability to project capacity into the future, which in turn depends on its ability to withstand attack. To be effective over time, an organization must not only have a high capacity to inflict damage, but must use its resources efficiently and be capable of surviving its adversaries’ attempts to destroy it. In other words, it must be resilient. Virtual networks are designed to optimize resilience. Resilience requires both redundancy of nodes to reduce the effects of extraction (the removal of a node by enemy military or law enforcement personnel), and separation of nodes to reduce the effects of contagion (the process by which the discovery of one node leads to the discovery of additional nodes). There is often an inherent trade-off between efficiency and resilience in that maximizing efficiency requires coordination and communication (connectedness), which makes an organization vulnerable to penetration. The more connected the nodes, the easier it is to unravel the network in that identifying one node is likely to lead to the identification of others.

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In general, maximizing efficiency requires a more connected network, and resilience requires a less connected configuration. It is important to point out that effectiveness does not necessarily imply success. An effective terrorist organization is one that produces civilian deaths or destroys property. A successful terrorist organization achieves its instrumental objectives.47 An optimal network organizes a set of given resources, or nodes, in a configuration that most efficiently produces outputs, but is also maximally resistant to attack.

THE TERRORIST MISSION: A GOAL OR MARKETING STRATEGY? While labor, capital and organization are all essential features, the most important requirement for a terrorist organization is its mission or ideology. Even the most diffuse organizations, in which small cells or lone wolves raise their own operating budgets and select targets on their own, need to articulate their grievances in a way that attracts recruits and capital. The mission serves many functions: it helps the group raise funds, it provides a raison d’être for action, and it provides a narrative about collective identity. There are several things to note about terrorist missions. Firstly, making progress toward achieving the mission does not guarantee organizational survival. Indeed, the two objectives – mission achievement and organizational survival – are quite distinct. This is different from the for-profit world, where mission achievement (or value maximization), financial performance and organizational survival are aligned. Maximizing profits is the firm’s long-term goal, and the production of goods and services is a means to that end. Secondly, terrorist organizations must make two calculations instead of one. They must attend to the financial performance of the enterprise and its long-term survival, and they must ensure that the enterprise is promoting, or at least appears to promote, its social objectives. For nonprofit firms, including terrorist ones, revenues are not the objective but the means to the desired end of achieving social objectives.48 (It is important to point out that some terrorist organizations evolve into organized criminal groups with no apparent mission other than generating profits. For example, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) appears to be moving in this direction.) Third. terrorist groups, like other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have to raise money by ‘selling’ their mission to donors and patrons, the terrorist groups’ ‘customers’. Some of these customers or


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donors, such as intelligence agencies, may buy more than the mission: they may buy particular attacks against particular targets. As is the case for more traditional NGOs, however, charitable donations – a contribution to the public good terrorism is supposed to provide, rather than the purchase of a particular attack – are often an important source of funding. Selecting and advertising a mission that will attract such donations is often important to the group’s financial well-being. This way of looking at terrorism suggests that the increase in religious terrorism after the break-up of the Soviet Union occurred in large measure because terrorist organizations realized that there was no longer money for purportedly promoting workers’ rights or attacking enemies of the Soviet Union, but there was new money coming in to support religious causes. For instance, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a leftist terrorist group, lost influence and Hamas, a nationalist Islamist group, became prominent. Why, then, did the PFLP not choose a new ‘brand’ as a religious organization to capitalize on the popularity of this religious wave? Our analogy between legal NGOs and terrorist organizations continues, as both groups, seeking to assure their own survival, become hampered by an organization phenomenon called ‘mission stickiness’.

THE TERRORIST MISSION: STICKY OR SPRY? NARROW OR BROAD? Terrorist missions can be sticky or spry. Most studies of terrorism assume that the mission is exogenously defined – the terrorists respond to an unmet societal need – and that the mission is static. Typologies of terrorist organizations are almost always based on their ideologies: left-wing, rightwing, irredentist or secessionist. The assumption is that the group would not exist without its ideology and that its mission stays the same over time. But this assumption is not always correct. We will argue here that groups that survive over the long term are likely to change their mission to attract more funding, support or recruits, even at the risk of losing some of their original personnel or backers. They may form alliances of convenience with groups they once described as infidels or enemies. They may form temporary or even permanent alliances with groups with missions that are quite different from their own, or even with organized crime.49 A flexible mission is an additional component that will affect the organization’s resilience and, in turn, its effectiveness over time. Why are some organizations ‘sticky’ in regard to their mission and others ‘spry’? Three factors seem paramount for terrorist organizations: a reliable source of revenue; a flexible organizational structure that allows

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the organization to sell different products (violence in the service of different missions) at different times to different consumers; and a reliable source of recruits. In essence, these factors amount to a reliable source of inputs and a reliable demand for the products the group aims to sell. Like other NGOs, terrorist organizations need to sell their mission to donors as well as recruits. As the environment changes, NGOs and terrorist organizations may find that their missions need to change to keep up with the desires of new or more generous donors. This need for flexibility can cause a variety of problems. Employees may be wedded to the original mission and resent the need to kowtow to donors, rather than focusing on the needs of the beneficiaries. Managers are vulnerable to charges of mission creep. From the viewpoint of the original stakeholders in the organization, there is a principal–agent problem if the group’s mission shifts. An important example of this is when a state funds insurgent groups in the belief that it will have total control over the groups’ activities. But if the groups find ways to diversify their revenue streams, they may eventually engage in activities that are counter to the state’s interests. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is an example of a group that shifted its mission to attract new donors and, like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the IMU eventually joined forces with al-Qaeda. Its original mission was to fight the post-Soviet ruler of Uzbekistan, Islom Karimov, whose authoritarian rule continues to be characterized by corruption and repression. The IMU formed an alliance with Mullah Omar and began to pursue the Taliban’s mission, reviling America and the West but also music, cigarettes, sex and alcohol. This new agenda reduced the organization’s appeal to its original supporters in Uzbekistan as many felt that the IMU no longer represented their interests.50 Terrorist groups need to maintain popular support. Perhaps ironically, overproduction of the terrorist product can undermine a group’s appeal with the population it claims to represent. In Algeria, terrorists initially received support in their fight against the government. Algeria’s autocratic regime responded with a brutal crackdown, but the terrorists who remained on the street continued to carry out even more vicious attacks. The terrorists fighting the government became so violent that al-Qaeda backed away from them. The conflict between the government and the Islamic Army of Salvation resulted in an estimated 200 000 deaths between 1992 and 1997. ‘Instead of being seen by the general population as heroic warriors defending their interests, the militants became babykillers whose campaigns were morally repugnant (and very bad for the economy)’, Jason Burke explains. ‘Their legitimacy – and thus the crucial support from the community that is the key for any insurgent fighter – was gone.’51 Interestingly, Burke believes that the al-Qaeda movement may be


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undermining its popular support in Saudi Arabia by carrying out vicious attacks against innocent civilians in that country. State-sponsored groups that rely exclusively on funds supplied by the state presumably have little autonomy in selecting their missions. But groups that are partly funded by states, partly by charitable donations, and partly by licit or illicit businesses or other revenue-generating activities can change their missions more easily. In general, the more diverse the sources of revenue, the greater control the group will have to alter its mission at will. A large pool of donors means that no single donor can claim the right to control the core mission. This principle applies to any kind of NGO, including terrorist groups.52 Another factor affecting a mission’s stickiness is its level of specificity. The mission statement describes the social justice problem the NGO was formed to alleviate. The broader the mission statement, the easier it is for managers of non-profits, including terrorist groups, to alter their organizations’ stated goals to attract different consumers at different times.53 Supporters of and volunteers involved in single-issue groups with narrowly defined missions might defect if the group abruptly changes its mission. For example, supporters and terrorist-volunteers for the Animal Liberation Front (a group that uses violence to protect animal rights) might object if the leader suddenly decided that the group would violently oppose abortion rather than singly focus on promoting animal rights. Mission statements vary on a continuum from narrow to broad and from abstract to specific and concrete. Leaders need to balance the appeal of a narrow, specific mission that might be attractive to a particular set of donors and recruits in a particular region at a particular time with the flexibility and more general appeal of a broader mission. Al-Qaeda, for example, has shifted its stated mission a number of times. Beginning in 1998, its main mission was to force US troops to leave Saudi Arabia. US troops, with the exception of some training personnel, have now left. The group’s new mission – to fight the new world order – is sufficiently broad that it appeals to an extraordinary variety of individuals and groups from across the political spectrum, from anti-globalization groups on the far left to neo-Nazi and Identity Christian groups on the far right.54 We believe that part of the reason al-Qaeda has been able to make this shift is that the group itself has become a kind of brand as the only subnational group able to frighten a superpower. Sometimes large groups hive off subgroups with narrower missions, enabling them to cater to the needs of a variety of donors and political supporters. For example, several groups have broken off from the Pakistani religious party Jamiat Ulema e-Islam (JUI). JUI offshoots attracted

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Pakistani and Saudi support when they aided the Taliban regime – for example, by providing ‘religious’ training at madrasahs preaching jihad to Afghani and Pakistani youth. And when JUI offshoots like Jamiat-ulMujahidin and Harkat-ul-Mujahidin focus their attention on Kashmir, the groups can bring in support from the Pakistani government and the Pakistani and Kashmiri diasporas. The splintering of the larger group can thus help the organization better cater to diverse market niches, but we will see shortly that splintering is not always adaptive. A further factor in determining whether an organization’s mission will be sticky or spry is the attitude of the employees and volunteers. Managers may be highly paid professionals willing to sell their expertise with little thought to the purported mission of the organization, but NGOs and terrorist groups often rely on staff or foot soldiers who are willing to work for below-market wages because of their commitment to the cause. These volunteers may be attached to the original mission. A management team that realizes there is a greater prospect of financial or political gain in a slightly different issue area may find itself battling the staff. Managers may be forced to accept a diminished (but possibly more committed) staff, or they may have to attract new recruits if they change the mission. When bin Laden shifted al-Qaeda’s mission with his February 1998 fatwah, which instructed sympathizers to target American civilians, a number of operatives quit in protest, rejecting the new doctrine as counter to Islamic law.55 An organization is more able to shift to a new mission when it is confident that there is a large pool of potential laborers from which to recruit and a reliable source of funding. The bottom line remains that changing missions, and even keeping the mission constant in a changing environment, involves a risk of splintering. A subset of the management team of a non-profit group can break off from the main body of the organization for three reasons: (1) the splinter group may find a new source of funding for a new mission; (2) an ‘old-guard’ faction, strongly attached to the organization’s original mission, may oppose changing the agenda over time; and (3) a faction of ‘true believers’ can break off because the main group has purportedly become ideologically flabby or is allegedly selling out to its enemies.56 For example, a member of the Pakistani sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ), which split off from the group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), told Stern’s interviewer: SSP leaders got addicted to their political success, and started compromising on the ideology. They were just sitting in the parliament, enjoying all the benefits, and doing nothing for the Shi’a. In fact they were sitting with Shi’a [considered by the group to be infidels]. The youth decided to stick to the ideology and formed LJ.57


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Splinter groups commonly break off when peace processes move forward. The belief that the IRA was selling out seems to have inspired a group of IRA operatives to create a splinter group called the Real IRA in 1997. Five operatives, taking some weapons with them, created the new group shortly after the mainstream IRA had restored its ceasefire so that Sinn Fein could be part of the negotiations on power-sharing in government. All five members of the break-off group were reportedly veterans of the IRA’s managing executive body. In 1998, the splinter group set off a bomb in Omagh, a small town in Northern Ireland, killing 29 people; the most violent single attack ever perpetrated by IRA operatives.58 More generally, there are various ways that substitution of a terrorist organization’s objectives may come about. The organization may broaden or change its mission as a result of an inability to meet its original objective. It may be adapting to the needs of an evolving environment. A leader might shift to a more diffuse mission in order to make it more difficult to assess the group’s success or the leader’s competence. The tendency toward self-preservation is one of several possible distortions of objectives. Those who work for the organization inevitably seek to preserve its organizational structure above all.59 As sociologist Alberto Melucci explains: ‘This analytical perspective points up some of the central phenomena of the organizational process and demystifies the image which movement organizations tend to project of themselves through their ideology.’60 Max Weber first observed the tendency for organizations to shift their mission from achieving their objectives to promoting their own survival. When spontaneous movements create bureaucratic structures, he argued, the organization’s ends are inevitably distorted, with the substitution of self-preservation for the objectives it was formed to promote. James Q. Wilson argued a quarter-century ago that: ‘Organizations tend to persist. This is the most important thing to know about them.’61 Thus, terrorist organizations, like other non-profits, can shift their missions in two principal ways: from one stated objective to another stated objective; or from their stated objectives to no objective other than organizational survival or personal enrichment.

WHO CHOOSES THE MISSION? DEMAND-DRIVEN VERSUS ENTREPRENEURIAL TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS Non-profit organizations can be seen as responding to two different forces: one on the demand side and the other on the supply side.62 Problems such as religious discrimination, poverty and violence create

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demand for solutions. Demand-driven organizations respond to the pull of these unmet needs. Indeed, the existence of non-profit organizations is justified largely on the basis of the assumption that they are catering to public needs that remain unmet by governments and businesses. Most of the literature on non-profit firms accepts the assumption that non-profits are demand-driven. But an alternative supply-driven perspective sees social entrepreneurs, donors and volunteers advancing their own agendas, pushing forward their own ideas and resources rather than responding to the pull of social needs. Peter Frumkin argues that non-profit firms are often actually driven by ‘the people with resources and commitments who fire the engine of nonprofit and voluntary action. Drawn to the sector by visions and commitments, social entrepreneurs bring forward agendas that often operate independently of immediately obvious and enduring community needs.’63 Confusion over who is in control of the mission at any given level of the organization is in fact part of Frumkin’s definition of the non-profit organization. The argument presented here assumes that donors and managers select the terrorist organization’s mission, often at the expense of terrorists on the front lines or even the putative beneficiaries of terrorist activity. The balance of power between manager and donor therefore plays a key role in the direction and behavior of the terrorist organization.

WHOSE NEEDS ARE BEING SERVED? THE TERRORISM CONSUMER Another key variable in the organization and behavior of terrorist groups is the definition of the customer. Non-profit organizations, including terrorist ones, typically describe their customers as the recipients of their largesse. Refugee International describes its customers as the refugees whose interests it promotes.64 Save the Children describes its customers as the mothers and children it houses and feeds.65 In its fund-raising literature, Lashkar-e-Taiba focuses on the Kashmiri Muslims it is assisting. NGOs have an interest in seeing and especially in describing their customers as the beneficiaries of their assistance. Donors want to feel that they are making the world a better place, and often they are, but not necessarily in the most efficient way possible. In truth, donors’ needs often eclipse beneficiaries’ needs, according to some observers.66 Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Agency provides one example. The ISI actively promoted the Islamist groups who joined Kashmiri militants fighting India’s rule in Kashmir. But over time, the ISIfunded groups shifted their sights to other agendas more consistent with


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the Pakistani regime’s interests than the Kashmiri people’s, such as carrying out strikes in India proper or serving as a counterweight to secular parties in Pakistani elections.67 Employees and volunteers working at NGOs are often partly donating their time. They do this because they benefit from the act of contributing to the objectives of the NGO. In some ways they too are consumers – arguably of increased self-esteem. Referring to donors of labor or money as consumers is an admittedly unusual way to look at terrorism. ‘Drug dealers have customers; terrorists have supporters and victims’, according to a study comparing the ‘war’ on terrorism with the ‘war’ on drugs.68 However, ignoring the demand for terrorism may be equally as damaging as ignoring the demand for drugs.69 Interestingly, according to Peter Reuter, suppliers of drugs are often simultaneously consumers.70 The same is true for terrorism, although the suppliers/consumers of drugs consume a thing, whereas suppliers/consumers of terrorism consume the process of production. Once we begin thinking of donors as consumers of the product, it becomes easier to understand why NGOs, including terrorist groups, act on behalf of individuals who do not really desire or need the kind of assistance they provide. For instance, the Kashmiri people are increasingly unhappy with the ‘assistance’ of Pakistani jihadi groups. The local jihadi groups complain that they are being used as porters and guides, rather than as legitimate fighters in their own conflict.

CHANGES OVER TIME As terrorist organizations become more concerned with self-preservation and securing benefits for laborers and less concerned about their ostensible raison d’être, the mission becomes a marketing tool for securing organizational survival or a source of social identity. Although militant groups often start out with the interests of the public in mind, volunteers become attached to the organization and the benefits it provides at least as much as to the organizational mission. They become addicted to the sense of purpose they receive from ‘serving’ the public and promoting ‘good’, even when the public resents their assistance and disagrees with the group’s conception of good. This is what James Wilson refers to as the purposive incentive: it is the satisfaction of pursuing a goal (which is different from the satisfaction one might get from achieving it). In Stern’s interviews, terrorists reported becoming ‘addicted to jihad’. This is partly a psychological attachment to living a certain way of life and promoting a purported public good, and partly due to the fact that the longer

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a militant remains active, the harder it is to find alternative employment, especially for operatives who join in their youth. Sometimes operatives – or even whole organizations – lose all attachment to the purported mission and begin selling their expertise to the highest bidder. In the for-profit sector, where organizations must provide profitable investment opportunities to shareholders to secure inputs, organizations adapt to trends of changing consumer demands. For example, when McDonald’s redefines its core mission from provider of short-order hamburgers and sandwiches to provider of fast food, including ‘healthy food’, it is adapting to changes in consumer preferences to maintain profitability and hence satisfy shareholders. Successful non-profit social sector organizations also change their missions over time. The March of Dimes raised a large sum of money to find a cure for polio. After an effective vaccine was discovered, the March of Dimes shifted its mission to fighting birth defects.71 The YMCA was founded during Prohibition as an organization committed to temperance. When the public mood shifted, the YMCA was able to transform its core mission from promoting temperance to promoting other kinds of healthy habits such as exercise.72 Persisting organizations change their missions with changing environments.

REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTY Like more traditional NGOs, terrorist organizations also find ways to commercialize their activities to supplement the revenues earned though ‘charitable donations’. Some finance their operations in part through smuggling or weapons sales. Hezbollah, for example, is involved in smuggling cigarettes in the United States. Since the 1990s, both sides in the conflict in Northern Ireland have been heavily involved in drug smuggling.73 The IRA has also linked with organized criminal groups in Croatia and Bosnia, trading in guns, bombs and cigarettes.74 Many groups rely on robberies as a source of revenue. The leader of the Khalistan Commando Force admitted in an interview that his organization raised money by robbing banks and kidnapping for ransom.75 The IRA raises money through a variety of illegal activities, in addition to drug smuggling. For example, a suspected IRA member was arrested in August 2001 as the alleged mastermind of a £150 million share-dealing fraud in Thailand. Authorities described the scam as the largest stockdealing fraud ever perpetrated.76 Operatives or groups sometimes sell or barter their expertise to other groups. Three suspected IRA operatives were arrested in August 2001 on charges of having provided training in


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explosives manufacture to Colombia’s most violent leftist terrorist group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as part of a multimillion-dollar deal between the two groups.77 Ali Mohamed, a witness for the US government in the Africa embassies bombing trial held in 2001, testified that bin Laden’s al-Qaeda maintained close ties to Hezbollah and to Iranian security forces through the 1990s. Hezbollah provided alQaeda and its allies training in explosives at camps in Lebanon, Mohamed claimed, and received bombs ‘disguised to look like rocks’ from Iranian security forces.78 While diversifying revenue streams gives terrorist organizations more flexibility in defining their missions, if the group ceases to attract ‘charitable’ donors it becomes more difficult to claim that it is fulfilling a humanitarian function. Terrorists claim to act on behalf of the people, and the people’s support of the cause is important to them in maintaining their legitimacy. The defining source of revenue for non-profit organizations is charitable donations. This is an important part of what distinguishes NGOs – including terrorist organizations – from for-profit firms.79 As groups become more professionalized, this distinction may begin to wear thin. Operatives, or the group itself, may become more like mercenaries. Governments or subnational actors may hire terrorists to carry out paramilitary operations. Charitable donations from ordinary people begin to pale in importance. Stern found in her interviews that leaders tended to emphasize small-scale charitable donations by ordinary people as the most important source of revenue for their groups while operatives, presumably less attuned to the public relations implications of their words, admitted that smuggling, government funding or large-scale donations by wealthy industrialists are the main sources of funding.80 When terrorist organizations rely on criminal activities to raise revenue, what distinguishes them from organized or petty crime? Ideology cannot be the whole answer, since organized criminal groups and drug smugglers often have codes of honor and promote various ideological perspectives, and since in professionalized terrorist organizations ideology is less important over time. But organized criminals and drug smugglers rarely solicit charitable donations. Revenue that can be described as charitable donations appears to be part of what makes NGOs and terrorist groups distinctive.

THE COMPETITION FOR RESOURCES When multiple groups purportedly promote similar goals, competition for scarce resources such as donors, government assistance and personnel can

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make them fierce competitors. This leads to a dynamic in which marketing becomes increasingly important.81 The group’s competitors can become their actual enemies, rather than those enemies that they identify publicly. Interestingly, a public affairs officer for the Pakistani group Lashkar-eTaiba told Stern in an interview that he felt ‘happy’ about the growth of Bajrang Dal, the purported arch-nemesis of the Pakistani militant groups. These groups provide a raison d’être for Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan, he said. ‘What is the logic for stopping the jihadi groups’ activities, if the Indian government supports groups like Bajrang Dal?’82 Bajrang Dal’s activities can serve Lashkar-e-Taiba as a propaganda tool to enlarge the pool of available funds and recruits for which the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba and other jihadi groups know they must compete. When groups are competing with one another, violence can become a critical marketing tool, directed at political and financial backers rather than at the ‘target audience’ described in the literature. The day-to-day task of political combat becomes one of competition for supporters and financial backers. Neutralization of the competition can become the group’s most important goal.83 Selznick’s study of communist organizations shows that the communists’ enemies were not the bankers, bosses and imperialists they identified as their arch-enemies in public. Their real enemies were the socialists. Imperialists, unlike other socialist groups, did not challenge the communists at the source of power. They did not compete for the leadership of unions. And they did not appeal to the goodwill of liberal intellectuals. Most importantly, they were not equipped ‘to expose the communists as corrupters of the very ideas they claim[ed] to represent’.84 Thus, the communists could compromise with the class enemy, but they ‘dare[d] not tolerate the political existence of those who [offered] the target groups an alternative ideological leadership or [those who could] effectively expose the totalitarian practices of bolshevism in power’.85 Neutralization of the competition – especially groups potentially capable of winning over party cadres – became the most important objective. Tactics employed to accomplish this end included destruction of rival organizations by infiltrating them and disrupting their activities. This need to destroy the competition helps to explain the virulence of the attack against Titoism and Trotskyism, Selznick explains. The competition among various terrorist groups for funding and recruits is an important vulnerability that governments can exploit. In other instances, competition benefits extremist terrorist organizations. The presence of more moderate groups seeking the same goals can strengthen the hand of the more extreme groups, according to Peter Merkl. When the government does not concede to the moderates, the


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terrorists have greater claims – ‘the perfect excuse for extreme action’.86 Moreover, the claims of the illegal groups make the moderates seem reasonable. Selznick explains: ‘The relation between the two, therefore, is apt to be one of conflict and collusion, and both types of interaction potentially serve the interests and objectives of each group.’87

CONCLUSION This chapter has shown that terrorists produce a definable product and that consumers ‘purchase’ this product with their donations to a terrorist organization; these donations are made to support a perceived public good that the recipient terrorist group purports to promote. A terrorist group’s resilience is enhanced when it diversifies its consumer base and its sources of labor and when it maximizes the flexibility of its marketing strategy and mission. But there is a trade-off between the group’s capacity for carrying out high-quality attacks and its resilience. The same factors that make terrorist bureaucracies capable of high-quality attacks – clear lines of authority and communication, ease of coordination and centralization of tasks – reduce the resilience of commander–cadre organizations. This finding suggests that a mature terrorist group will be both resilient at the network level and effective at the level of the node. In a rapidly changing environment, networks (rather than market-based transactions among separate terrorists or terrorist groups) become a more attractive organizational form, just as they are for legal organizations. When enhanced cooperation among intelligence agencies makes the supply of skilled labor uncertain, terrorist groups are likely to form networks with gateway organizations that can assist in indoctrinating potential recruits. And they are likely to network with other terrorist organizations, which may themselves be organized as networks or commander–cadre organizations. Terrorist organizations that are flexible – in terms of their structure, their funding sources and their mission – are more resilient to counterterrorism measures. In such a network, effective terrorist nodes become, at least in theory, replaceable. For all these reasons, a war on terrorism that is predominantly focused on killing terrorists – ‘hunting down the killers, one by one’, in VicePresident Cheney’s words – is unlikely to be successful in the long run. It presumes a finite number of targets within a finite set of organizations. Given the characteristics of a mature terrorist network described above, this assumption is flawed. Similarly, attempting to freeze terrorist bank accounts and shut down terrorist-supporting charities assumes that terrorist organizations are

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static and inflexible. This chapter argues the opposite. Successful terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaeda, respond to changes in their environments by changing their mission and changing their shape. If there is a threat to survival, they will form virtual networks. If there is a shortage of cash, they will network with other groups that are expected to raise their own funds. If the old mission is no longer attractive, they will find a new one that is more attractive to donors and potential recruits. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked in a memo in October 2003: ‘Are we capturing, killing, deterring or dissuading more terrorists every day than those [radical] clerics are deploying against us?’ The answer appears to be no. Data compiled by the Rand Corporation show that nearly twice as many acts of terrorism were carried out in the two years after 11 September 2001 (4422) than in the two preceding years (2303). An increased number of attacks is joined by increasing efficacy: the number of people killed per attack has also risen, from an average of 0.65 deaths per incident to an average of one. During this same period, al-Qaeda evolved from an organization to a movement comprised of many autonomous, locally organized cells spread around the world. But it is not clear that this shift in organizational style is what led to the greater lethality of terrorism. While the number of incidents and their lethality might have risen still higher in the absence of the war on terrorism, our approach will be far more successful if we focus more of our efforts on the demand for terrorism. Terrorist organizations cater to the needs of their workers and supporters by supplying spiritual, emotional and financial benefits to the alienated, disenfranchised and humiliated. Until we understand that we need to compete with the producers of those benefits, our ‘war on terrorism’ will continue to fail.

NOTES *

1.

This chapter is a revised version of a chapter that appeared in Countering the Financing of Terrorism, edited by Thomas J. Biersteker and Sue E. Eckert (2008), London: Routledge, pp. 19–46. We would like to thank the publishers for their permission to reprint this material. We would like to thank Thomas Biersteker, David Leheny and Peter Reuter for their excellent comments and Steve Smith for research assistance. T. Schelling (1960), The Strategy of Conflict, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; T. Schelling (1976), Arms and Influence, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. When Thomas Schelling wryly observes that, ‘despite the high ratio of damage and grief to the resources required for a terrorist act, terrorism has proved to be a remarkably ineffectual means to accomplishing anything’, he is assuming that terrorists have substantively rational objectives and that their main purpose is to achieve those objectives. T. Schelling (1991), ‘What purposes can “international terrorism” serve?’, in R.G. Frey and Christopher W. Morris (eds), Violence, Terrorism, and Justice, Cambridge:


2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

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Cambridge University Press, pp. 20–21. See also Sun-Ki Chai (1993), ‘An organizational economics theory of antigovernment violence’, Comparative Politics, October, 99–110. B. Hoffman (1998), Inside Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 43. Ariel Merari (1998), ‘The readiness to kill and die: suicidal terrorism in the Middle East’, in W. Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press. M. Crenshaw (1998), ‘The logic of terrorism: terrorist behavior as a product of strategic choice’, in W. Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism, p. 8; M. Crenshaw (2001), ‘Theories of terrorism: instrumental and organizational approaches’, in D.C. Rapoport (ed.), Inside Terrorist Organizations, 2nd edn, Portland, OR: Frank Cass, p. 13. Schelling explicitly excludes religious cults from his discussion. Schelling, ‘What purposes’, p. 20. J. Stern (2003), Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, New York: Ecco/HarperCollins. J. Post (1998), ‘Terrorist psycho-logic’, in Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism, p. 25. Crenshaw, ‘The logic of terrorism’; M. Crenshaw (1985), ‘An organizational approach to the analysis of political terrorism’, Orbis, 29 (3), 473–87; Crenshaw, ‘Theories of terrorism’, p. 13. In the first cited work, Crenshaw outlines an instrumental approach in response to works by a group of psychologists. In the second, she distinguishes an instrumental approach from an organizational one, but does not specify what the organization would entail. The theory of collective action was developed in M. Olson (1971), The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Many people find the application of this theory to terrorism surprising or even shocking. I do not subscribe to the notion that terrorists promote social justice, but it is critical to understand that terrorists and their sympathizers believe this. Given that, the same questions Olson raised with regard to voting or pollution abatement ought to apply when individuals are deciding whether or not to contribute to terrorist organizations. This section builds on the arguments in J. Stern, Terror in the Name of God. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action. For more extensive discussion of the findings from the author’s interviews with terrorists, carried out between 1997 and 2003, see Stern, Terror in the Name of God. Alan Cullison (2004), ‘Inside al-Qaeda’s hard drive’, Atlantic Monthly, September, p. 68. Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., p. 70. Ibid. J. der Derian (2002), ‘911: before, after and in between’, in C.J. Calhoun, P. Price and A. Timmer (eds), Understanding September 11, New York: W.W. Norton & Company. W.R. Scott (1981), Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, p. 52. For much more on what we mean by inspirational leadership and virtual networks, please see Stern, Terror in the Name of God. S.P. Borgatti (2003), ‘The Key Player Problem’, Dynamic Social Network Modeling and Analysis: Workshop Summary and Papers, Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences Press, p. 241. S.P. Borgatti and P.C. Foster (2003), ‘The network paradigm in organizational research: a review and typology’, Journal of Management, 29 (6), 995; see, for example, J.L. Bradach and R.G. Eccles (1989), ‘Price authority and trust: from ideal types to plural forms’, American Review of Sociology, 15, 97–118; and W.W. Powell, ‘Neither market nor hierarchy: network forms of organization’, Research on Organizational Behavior, 12, 295–336. A.R. Elangovan and D.L. Shapiro (1998), ‘Betrayal of trust in organizations’, Academy of Management Review, 23 (3), 547–66.

284 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp. 58–9. See S. Borgatti (2005), ‘Virtual or network organizations’, http://www.analytictech. com/mb021/virtual.htm, accessed 16 September 2005. N. Horsley (2002), ‘The Nuremberg Files’, http://www.christiangallery.com/atrocity/, accessed 25 August 2002. As of 5 October 2004, only limited parts of this website are available online. Ibid. J. Gonnerman (1998), ‘The terrorist campaign against abortion’, Village Voice, 9 November, p. 36; S. Lerner (2001), ‘The Nuremberg menace’, Village Voice, 10 April, http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0114/lerner.php, accessed 16 September 2005. See US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Planned Parenthood of the Columbia/ Willamette Inc.; Portland Feminist Women’s Health Center; Robert Crist, M.D.; Warren M. Hern, M.D.; Elizabeth Newhall, M.D.; James Newhall, M.D., Plaintiffs-Appellees, and Karen Sweigert, M.D., Plaintiff, v. American Coalition of Life Activists; Advocates For Life Ministries; Michael Bray; Andrew Burnett; David A. Crane; Timothy Paul Dreste; Michael B. Dodds; Joseph L. Foreman; Charles Roy Mcmillan; Stephen P. Mears; Bruce Evan Murch; Catherine Ramey; Dawn Marie Stover; Charles Wysong, Defendants, and Monica Migliorino Miller; Donald Treshman, Defendants-Appellants, case no. 99-35320; see also F. Clarkson (2001), ‘Journalists or terrorists?’, Salon, 31 May. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, pp. 167–88. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, pp. 147–71. M. Gruen (2004), ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir’, unpublished report, 30 January. P. Baker (2003), ‘Renewed militancy seen in Uzbekistan: government crackdown threatens to radicalize previously non-violent groups’, Washington Post, 27 September, p. A19. Gruen, ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir’. Author interview with Rahmen, 15 May 2004. Author interview with M. Reynolds, 11 October 1999. L. Beam (1992), ‘Leaderless resistance’, Seditionist, 12, February, 2–6. This system of organization, Beam claims, is almost identical to ‘the methods used by the committees of correspondence during the American Revolution’. It is also similar in structure to Communist revolutionaries’ cells. The essay received significantly more attention after Beam republished it and presented it to the Aryan National Congress in 1992. The essay is published on different websites at different times. See, for example, http://www.louis beam.com/leaderless.htm, accessed 16 September 2005; as well as http://www2.mo-net. com/~mlindste/ledrless.html, accessed 21 October 2002. The idea, at least as practiced in America, was originally conceived by an American named Colonel Amoss in 1962, according to Beam, who refined the concept in his essay ‘On revolutionary majorities’, published in the Inter-Klan newsletter and Survival Alert 4 (1984), and in the Seditionist in 1992. Most published accounts have wrongly attributed the original idea to the 1992 essay. Author interview with M. Reynolds, summer 2003. Hierarchical nodes within a virtual network would have the same strengths and weaknesses as commander–cadre organizations, discussed below – including their vulnerability to law enforcement detection and penetration. But organizational theorists explain: ‘it would be incorrect to conclude that hierarchies are superior to more decentralized or equalitarian arrangements under all conditions . . . . [A]s tasks become more complex or ambiguous, decentralized nets are usually superior to centralized structures . . .. [F]ormal hierarchies aid the performance of tasks requiring the efficient coordination of information and routine decision making, but they interfere with tasks presenting very complex or ambiguous problems.’ There is a curvilinear relation between information processing requirements and the utility of hierarchy, Scott explains. We believe our conclusions differ from those of organizational


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theorists because of the added requirements of secrecy inherent in terrorist activity. See Scott, Organizations, pp. 158–61. R. Stark (1998), ‘The organizational age’, in Sociology: Third Edition, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth; see also S. Borgatti (1996), ‘Bureaucracy’, http://www.analytictech.com/ mb021/bureau.htm, accessed 16 September 2005. C. Jones, W. Hesterly and S. Borgatti (1997), ‘A general theory of network governance’, Academy of Management Review, 22 (4), 923. G.J. Tenet (2004), ‘The worldwide threat 2004: challenges in a changing global context’, testimony of Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 24 February, http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/ speeches/2004/dci_speech_02142004.html, accessed 16 September 2005. See also J. Fearon and D. Laitin (2003), ‘Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war’, American Political Science Review, 97 (1), 75–90. Tenet, ‘The worldwide threat’. B. Erickson (1980), ‘Secret societies and social structure’, Social Forces, 60 (1), 188–210. Author interview with ‘Abu Bakar’ (an assumed name), Jhang, Pakistan, 28 January 2004. Questionnaire administered by Muzamal Suherwardy. Jones et al., ‘A general theory’, p. 923. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 150. Resources are represented by nodes, so capacity is a function of the number of nodes in the network. S. Toumpis and A. Goldsmith (2000), ‘Ad hoc network capacity’, Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Vol. 2, Pacific Grove, CA: Asilomar, pp. 1265–9. Martha Crenshaw defines successful terrorism in this way in M. Crenshaw, P. Wilkinson, J. Alterman and T. Schaffer (1999), ‘How terrorism ends’, Special Report 48, Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 25 May, p. 3, available at http:// www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr990525.pdf, accessed 16 September 2005. Stern conversations with Mark Moore, 2002–03. See J. Stern (2003), ‘The Protean enemy’, Foreign Affairs, 82 (4), 27–41. A. Rashid (1999), ‘The Taliban: exporting extremism’, Foreign Affairs, November/ December, 42–8; A. Rashid (2002), Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; R. Gunaratna (2002), Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 168–72; C.J. Chivers (2002), ‘Uzbek militants decline provides clues to US’, New York Times, 8 October, p. A15. J. Burke (2004), ‘The Arab backlash the militants didn’t expect’, Observer, 20 June. The executive director of one NGO expressed his frustration with the selection process of the board of directors. He wanted a board that was better equipped to attract a broad variety of private donors so that he would be less reliant on the foundations on which his organization had traditionally depended for support. But the board kept appointing members whom the foundations saw as experts, arguably facilitating his ability to attract the usual sponsors, but not in any way enabling him to attract new money, in his view. Author interview with an executive director who asked not to be identified, 18 May 2001. Stern conversations with Mark Moore, 2002–03. For more on this see Stern, Terror in the Name of God. Cross-examination of Khertchou (2002), United States of America v. Usama Bin Laden, et al., Part 1, Book 3, 1409–92. Examples of humanitarian relief organizations breaking up for such reasons include the group of doctors who broke off from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to form Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The splinter group was unhappy that the ICRC refused to speak out about the abuses it witnessed in the aftermath of the Biafra war. A few years later, another splinter group broke off from MSF to form Médicins du Monde (MDF). J. Fawcett, e-mail, 4 August 2001.

286 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71.

72. 73.

74.

Terrorism, security and the power of informal networks Author interview with ‘Abu Bakar’. ‘Real trouble’, The Economist, 10 March 2001. John Fawcett argues that a reliable funding stream is an important component in an NGO’s evolution to an organization with no important mandate other than survival. ‘The process goes something like this’, he explains. ‘The more donors or grants that an NGO has, the more labor intensive becomes the proposal and reporting process, which is called grant management. This means more people. More people means more overhead, which means the growth of a bureaucracy, a key component of an organization that is shifting towards bureaucratic survival. In my experience NGO’s and UN agencies will always find justification for stretching or violating their mission, as long as money is available. The mission statement becomes a cover and something few of them take seriously. And donors, particular the US government, are complicit in this charade. They have to spend money to keep up budgetary allocations, and are content to justify spending on “do-gooders”’ (J. Fawcett, e-mail, 4 August 2001). A. Melucci (1996), Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, London: Cambridge University Press, p. 314. J.Q. Wilson (1995), Political Organizations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 30. This paragraph summarizes Frumkin’s theory of non-profit activity. P. Frumkin (2002), On Being Nonprofit: A Conceptual and Policy Primer, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 20–22. Frumkin, On Being Nonprofit, p. 21. Author interview with board member of Refugee International, 19 May 2000. Author interview with board member of Save the Children, 19 May 2000. But fundraising would be far more difficult if donors were told that they were the most important customers and that the product they are buying is improved self-esteem. See, for example, H. Abbas (2004), Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. J.P. Caulkins, M.A.R. Kleiman and P. Reuter (2003), ‘Lessons from the “war” on drugs for the “war” on terrorism’, in A. Howitt and R. Pangi (eds), Countering Terrorism: Dimensions of Preparedness, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 96–7. Any demand-side strategy for containing terrorism depends on the ability of the practitioner to implement tactics beyond the scope of violence and spying; simultaneously, such a strategy offers a status quo power (for example, a government) opportunities both to consolidate its own power base and to undermine the social bases of support for terrorist groups. Although Peter Reuter appears to reject the notion that there are consumers of terrorism, his arguments about the limits of supply-side controls seem to me to apply to terrorism as well. See P. Reuter (2001), ‘The limits of supply-side drug control’, Milken Institute Review, First Quarter, 2–7. The March of Dimes reports on its website: ‘In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to search for a cure for Polio. In 1954, through March of Dimes funding, Dr. Jonas Salk discovered a vaccine to eliminate polio, making the March of Dimes the only national health organization to defeat the disease it was created to conquer.’ After achieving its original mission, the March of Dimes shifted its mission to reducing the incidence of premature birth. See March of Dimes (2005), ‘History of success’, http://www.marchofdimes.com/aboutus/789.asp, accessed 16 September 2005. E.L. Johnson (1979), The History of YMCA Physical Education, Washington, DC: Association Press. J. Horgan and M. Taylor (1999), ‘Playing the “green card” – financing the provisional IRA’, Terrorism and Political Violence, Summer, 1–38; A. Silke (2000), ‘Drinks, drugs, and rock’n’roll: financing Loyalist terrorism in Northern Ireland – Part 2’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 23 (2), 107–27. See, for example, G. Tremlett (2001), ‘Karadzic family “arming Real IRA”’, Guardian,


75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

287

5 April; ‘Real IRA arms purchasing in Croatia indicates a change of tactics’, Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor, 23 August 2000. Author interview in Lahore, Pakistan, 2 August 2001. M. Bright and A. Barnett (2001), ‘IRA linked to Thai share “scam”’, Observer, 19 August, p. 1. J. Forego (2001), ‘Columbia arrests 3 as IRA bomb experts’, New York Times, 15 August; Bright and Barnett, ‘IRA linked’, p. 1. K.R. Roane, D.E. Kaplan and C. Ragavan (2001), ‘Putting Terror Inc. on trial in New York’, US News and World Report, 130 (1), 8 January, p. 25. This is Mark Moore’s term. Author interviews with Laskar Jihad, Jakarta, 9 August 2001; and Yogyakarta, 11 August 2001. Questionnaires administered in Pakistan. Author telephone and e-mail interview with J. Fawcett, 15 July 2001. Among humanitarian relief organizations, the drive to beat other organizations in the competition for funds can replace the drive to provide humanitarian relief where it matters most. John Fawcett argues that donor agencies wanted the NGOs active in the former Yugoslavia to carve up the problem and coordinate their activities. But the aid agencies are actually competing for funding, he says. They did not want to coordinate; they wanted to outbid each other. Each aid agency feared the others would steal its ideas. Author interview with Lashkar-e-Taiba public affairs officer, 3 August 2001. P. Selznick (1952), The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, p. 229. Ibid., p. 227. Ibid. Ibid., p. 454. Ibid., p. 468.

Index Abrahms, M. 30 Abu Sayyaf Group 163, 164–6 kinship and clan ties 166–7 acquisition networks, proliferation technologies 187, 199–206 functional analysis 200–202 organization 202–4 Adair, Johnny 52 Adams, Gerry 50–51 ‘Adl wa’l-Ihsan 79–80 Afghanistan, al-Qaeda networks 3 Afghanists, Libya 84 Africa, North informal networks 63–93 Islamic activism 68–9 Ahmadinezhad, Mahmoud (President of Iran) 108, 109–10, 113–15, 124–6 and foreign policy 113–15, 120–23 and Iranian economy 124 and regime security 118–19 Aku Melawan Teroris! 175 Al-Ghozi, Fathur Rahman 161 al-Jama’ah al-Islamiyyah, see Jemaah Islamiah Al Jazeera 246, 247–8 al-Qaeda 3 effects of Iraq conflict 233–4 ideology 135–9 media coverage 249–50 mission changes 273 network structure 3, 32, 229, 268–9 strategies against al-Qaeda 150–51 successful period 32 use of media 244–5 al-Qaeda in Iraq in Anbar 139–45 defeat 143–53 ideology 135–9 al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb 93 al-Qurashi, Abu’ Ubeid 244

al-Shabiba al-Islamiyya (Islamic Youth) 78 al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab 138 al-Zawahiri, Ayman 33, 34, 36, 139, 160 Algeria 65, 69–76 and globalized jihad 90–93 loss of support for militants 272 Anbar province, Iraq, and al-Qaeda 139–45 Appadurai, Arjun 217 Arab males, cognitive attributes 251 Arab media channels 246–8 Arendt, H. 251 Arquilla, J. 227 Arreguin-Toft, I. 241 Art of War, The 218 Asad, Talal 220 Azzam, Abdullah 157, 177 Bahrain and Iran 122–3 Bali bombing 169–71 bank raid by paramilitaries, Northern Ireland 47–9 banking difficulties, proliferation networks 209–10 Barabási, L. 227 Baran, Paul 225 Bashir, Sheikh Abu Bakar 158–9, 160 Bauman, Z. 237 Beam, Louis 266 Beck, U. 232 Belfast Agreement 45 Bell, James Dalton 265 Belliraj, Mohamed 78 Ben Bella, Ahmed 70 Ben Slimane, Salah Fathi 84–5 Benkiran, Abdalilah 79 Bhatia, Michael 13 ‘Big Man’ culture, Nigeria 18–19 bin Laden, Osama 164, 249, 261–2

289

290

Index

‘binding’ strategy against al-Qaeda 150 biraderi, Pakistan 17–18 blat, Russia 16–17 blogosphere, Iran 110 Boetter, Anders 253 Bouyali, Mustafa 72, 94 Boyd, John 255 brokering companies and proliferation networks 203 Buckley, P.J. 15 ‘building’ strategy against al-Qaeda 150 Burke, J. 272–3 capacity of terrorist network 269 Casablanca bombings 81 Castells, M. 231 Charity and Unity (Islah wa Tawhid) 79 Chebouti, Ahmed 72 China, guanxi 15–16 ‘choking’ strategy against al-Qaeda 150 citizen journalism 242–3 Iran 110 civil war, Algeria 71–4 Clegg, J. 15 CNN effect 242 cognitive attributes, Arab and US males 251 Cohen, Bernard C. 248 Combatant Clergy Society, Iran 101 commander–cadre structure 263, 266–7 communication technology and social networks 219–20, 230–21 competition, terrorist groups 279–81 consumers, terrorist groups 276–7 Continuity IRA 59 Copely, Gregory 166 Crenshaw, M. 259 criminal activities Algeria 89 paramilitary groups, Northern Ireland 46–50 and terrorist groups finance 278–9 Cronin, A.K. 30 Darul Islam 158 de Sardan, J.P.O. 18–19

Della Porta, D. 68 demand-driven organizations 275–6 Der Derian, James 262 diasporas 21–2 distributed networks 225 domestic and foreign policy, Iran 112–15 Donaldson, Denis 53–4 effectiveness of terrorist networks 269–70 Egyptian Islamic Group (EIG) 43 Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) 43 Enahoro, P. 19 Engel, R. 157 engineering capability and proliferation networks 189 Erickson, B. 267 expressive model of terrorism 259 Fada’iyan-e Islam (Self-Sacrificers for Islam) 101 Fahr, J. 15 Fikri, Youssef 81 finance and proliferation networks 189–90, 194–5, 203–4 terrorist groups 270–71, 278–9 FIS (Front Islamique du Salut), Algeria 71 flexibility of organizations 271–5 FLN (Front de Libération Nationale), Algeria 69–70 foreign policy, Iran 112–15, 120–23 framing ideologies 66 Freedman, L. 22 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), Algeria 69–70 Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), Algeria 71 Frumkin, P. 276 funding, see finance Ganji, Akbar 105–6 GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) states, and Iran 121–3 Al-Ghozi, Fathur Rahman 161 GIA (Groupe Islamiques Armés), Algeria 72–6 Gibson, J.L. 16

Index globalization 237 and proliferation networks 206–11 globalized jihad 43 and North Africa 90–93 goals of terrorism 260–62 Good Friday Agreement 45 Gove, M. 28 Gray, Jim 52 Grieve, John 57 Groupe Islamiques Armés (GIA), Algeria 72–6 Groupe Islamiste de Predication et du Combat (GSPC) 75, 91, 93 guanxi, China 15–16 Guare, J. 224 Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran 121–3 Gunaratna, Rohan 174 Guo, X. 15 Hafez, M.A. 64, 67, 68 Hajjarian, Sa’id 103, 107–8 Halabi, Sheikh Mahmud 108 Hambali (Nurjaman Ridduan Isamuddin) 159–60, 163 Haqqani Theological Seminary 106 Harakat al-Ittijah al-Islam 87 Hassan, Muhammad 175–6 ‘hearts and minds’ concept 245–6 Taliban 244–5 Heisenberg, W. 235 Hezbollah, Iranian 115–16 hierarchical organizations 267 Hill, Paul 264–5 Hizb-ut Tahrir (Liberation Party) 265 Hoffman, B. 259 Hojjatieh 108 Horsley, Neal 264 Hosseini-Beheshti, Ayatollah Mohammad 108 How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict 241 How to be a Nigerian 19 hybrid network structures 33–4 identity building and violence 232 IMC (Independent Monitoring Commission) 48–9, 51–2 , 55 incentives for terrorism 261

291

Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) 48–9, 51–2, 55 Indonesia anti-Islamist strategies 174 and Jemaah Islamiah network 158–63 informal networks 1–4, 13–15 China 15–16 Nigeria 18–19 Pakistan 63–93 and policy-making 20–24 Russia 16–17 strengths and weaknesses 29–31 the West 19–20 INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) 28 instrumental model of terrorism 258–9 insurgency groups 31–3 Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, Pakistan 276–7 intermarriage al-Qaeda in Anbar 141–2 and Jemaah Islamiah 167–8 international links, North African networks 88–93 Internet Iran 110 and spread of ideologies 265 IRA (Irish Republican Army) Provisional IRA, see Provisional IRA Real IRA 275 Iran 99–126 Iranian Hezbollah 115–16 Iraq, al-Qaeda failure 133–52 Iraq conflict, effects on al-Qaeda 233–4 Ireland, Northern 28, 41–61 IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps) 111–12 Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) 28 Isamuddin, Nurjaman Ridduan (Hambali) 159–60, 163 Islah wa Tawhid (Charity and Unity) 79 Islamic activism, see Islamism Islamic Coalition Society 101 Islamic doctrine as framing ideology 66 Islamic Iran Participation Party 103

292 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan 272 Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) 111–12 Islamic Youth, Morocco 78 Islamism Libya 82–7 Morocco 78–81 North Africa 68–9 Tunisia 87–8 Ja’fari, Mohammad Ali 111–12 Jabarah, Mohammed Mansoor 169 Jahanbeglu, Ramin 112 Jalili, Said 113, 115 Jama‘a Islamiyyah Muqatilah fi’lLibiyya (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – LIFG) 85 al-Jama’ah al-Islamiyyah, see Jemaah Islamiah Jamiat Ulema e-Islam 273–4 Janjalani, Abdulrajak 164 Janjalani, Khadafy 165 Jemaah Islamiah 156–76 dismantling 171–3 and Indonesia 158–63 kinship ties 166–8 and the Philippines 163–6 jihadism 136–7 and media reporting 249–50 North Africa 90–93 jihadist terrorism 43 jihadist use of media 244–5 Joint Declaration by the British and Irish Governments 45–6 Jones, Sidney 170–71 Kadivar, Mohsen 103 Kandai, Ahmed 167 Karrubi, Mehdi 100, 109, 117 Kartosuwijoro, Maridjan 158 Kazemeyni-Borujerdi, Ayatollah 104 Kendall, Lee 244 KGB 33 Khalifa, Mohammed Jamal 163–4 Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali 100–102, 105, 108, 113, 115, 119–20, 125–6 clerical opposition to 102–4 Khan, Abdul Qader 185 Khatami, Mohammad 103–4, 119

Index Khatib, Abdalkarim 79 Kinkaid, Sam 47 kinship and terrorist networks 166–8 Komando Jihad 158 Larijani, Ali 113–16 Leaderless Jihad 43 leaderless resistance 266 Ledeneva, A. 16 ‘Lee’s Life for Lies’ 244 Liberation Party (Hizb-ut Tahrir) 265 Libya 82–7 Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) 85 Livingston, S. 242 London bombings and citizen journalists 243 Losing Arab Hearts and Minds 247 Lyada, Abdelhak 73 Madrid train bombings 221–2 links to Morocco 81 Maidin, Ibrahim 161–2 Malaysia, anti-Islamist strategies 174 marriage, see intermarriage 166–8 McCartney, Robert 49–50 McCombs, Maxwell 248 MDPC (Mouvement Démocratique Populaire Constitutionnel) 79 media 242–55 as anti-terrorism tool 249–54 Arab media 246–8 citizen journalists 242–3 influence on terrorism 220–21 Iraq war coverage 247 and the Taliban 243–5 Mendoza, Rodolfo 164 Mesbah-Yazdi, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi 108–9, 119 MIA (Mouvement Islamique Armé) 72–3 Milgram, Stanley 224 Miliani, Mansour 72 Militant Clerics Association 99, 100, 102, 105 Miloudi, Zakaria 81 missions, terrorist 270–71 changes over time 271–5, 277–8 Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh 165, 268

Index Mojahidin of the Islamic Revolution 100, 102, 104–5 Mojtahed-Shabestari, Hojjat ol-Eslam Mohammad 103 money dirtying 197 money laundering 196–7 Montazeri, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali 103 Montgomery, A.H. 207 Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group 80–81 Morocco 65, 76–81 motivations for terrorism 261–2 Moussaoui, Zacarias 161 Mouvement de la Tendence Islamique (MTI) 87 Mouvement Démocratique Populaire Constitutionnel (MDPC) 79 Mouvement Islamique Armé (MIA) 72–3 MTI (Mouvement de la Tendence Islamique) 87 Murrow, Edward 248 Musavi-Kho’iniha, Mohammad 100, 102 Musavi-Tabrizi, Mohammad Mohsen 109 Musavian, Hossein 118–19 Muti‘, Abdalkarim 78 Nabavi, Behzad 100 natural system paradigm 262 networks and communication technology 230–33 informal, see informal networks non-virtual 263–4 proliferation networks 185–213 small-world theory 223–30 structures 225–30 and terrorist group structure 263–6, 268–9 terrorist networks 28–37 virtual 264–6 Neumann, P.R. 233 Nigeria, ‘Big Man’ culture 18–19 non-virtual networks 263–4 North Africa 63–93 Algeria 69–76 Islamic activism 68–9

293

Libya 82–7 Morocco 76–81 Tunisia 87–8 Northern Bank raid, Northern Ireland 47–9 Northern Ireland 28, 41–61 Real IRA 275 nuclear policy, Iran 117–18, 121, 125 nuclear proliferation, see proliferation networks Nuremberg Files (anti-abortion website) 264 Nuri, Abdollah 104 Obama, Barack 238 Oleinik, A. 17 organizational approach to terrorism analysis 257–82 Orwell, George 249 Pakistan 17–18 Pan-Sahel Initiative 92 paramilitary organizations, Northern Ireland 42 criminal activities 46–50 see also Provisional IRA Parti de Justice et du Développement (PJD), Morocco 78, 79 patriotism, effects of 251 peace process, Northern Ireland 43–6 personal connections and informal networks 3 Philippines and Jemaah Islamiah 163–6 PIRA, see Provisional IRA PJD (Parti de Justice et du Développement), Morocco 78, 79 policy-making and informal networks 20–21 Post, J. 259 power of social networks 236 power-sharing government, Northern Ireland 45 primary resistance movements, North Africa 68–9 product of terrorism 260–62 proliferation networks 185–213 acquisition networks 199–206 and globalization 206–11 supplier networks 189–99

294

Index

propaganda, Taliban 244–5 proto-insurgencies, RAND report 33, 34–5 Provisional IRA 28, 41–3, 44–6 commitment to peace process 55 decommissioning weapons 45, 51, 53 and murder of Paul Quinn 56 and murder of Robert McCartney 49–50 and Northern Bank robbery 48–9 and Sinn Fein 49 South Armagh 56–7 public good nature of terrorism 261 public opinion, effect of failed terrorist attacks 30 Qadhafi regime, Libya, Islamist opposition 85–6 Qalibaf, Mohammad Baqer 107 Quinn, Paul 56 al-Qurashi, Abu ’Ubeid 244 Rafsanjani, President 102, 104, 112–13 election 112–13 Rahim-Safavi, Yahya 112 RAND report on proto-insurgencies 33, 34–5 random network distribution 227 Real IRA 59, 275 regime security, Iran 117–20 Religious Rehabilitation Group, Singapore 175 republicanism and theocracy, Iran 107–10 resilience of networks 269–70 Rondfeld, D. 227 Rowhani, Hasan 116 Roy, O. 148 Rumsfeld, Donald 282 Russia 16–17 Sageman, M. 30, 32, 43, 66, 67, 225–6, 232 Salafi jihadism 135–7 Iraq 137–9 network structure 229 North Africa 89 Samudra, Imam 175–6 Saudi Arabia, relations with Iran 123 scale-free networks 227–9

Schelling, T. 258 secondary resistance movements, North Africa 69 security responses to informal networks 34–5 Self-Sacrificers for Islam 101 Selznick, P. 280–81 Sen, A. 232 al-Shabiba al-Islamiyya (Islamic Youth) 78 Shaw, Donald 248 sifarish, Pakistan 17–18 Singapore Jemaah Islamiah bomb plot 168–9 strategies against Islamist ideology 175 Sinn Fein 49, 50–51 and St Andrews Agreement 54, 55 six degrees of separation 224 Sloggett, D. 245 small-world networks 217–38 social marketing 22–3 social movements 64–6 social networks 1–4, 66–8; see also informal networks Sorush, Abdolkarim 103 South Armagh 56–7 Southeast Asia anti-Islamist strategies 173–6 and Jemaah Islamiah 156–76 specificity of terrorist missions 273 splinter groups 274–5 spryness of terrorist missions 271–5 St Andrews Agreement 54, 55 Stern, J. 259, 279 stickiness of terrorist missions 271–5 Stone, Michael 54, 60 Strategic Foreign Policy Coordination Council, Iran 120 Strategy of Conflict 258 Strogatz, S. 224 structured groups, strengths and weaknesses 31–3 Sufaat, Yazid 161 Sungkar, Abdullah 158–9, 160 supplier networks, proliferation technologies 189–99 functional analysis 189–91 organization 191–5 vulnerabilities 195–9, 204–6

Index supply-driven organizations 275–6 Syed, A.H. 17 Tala‘i al-Fida‘ (The Vanguard of the Sacrifice) 87 Taliban and the media 243–5 Tarrow, S. 64 terrorism, organizational approach 257–82 terrorist groups competition 279–81 consumers 276–7 decision-making 275–6 financing 270–71, 278–9 mission changes 277–8 missions 270–75 structures 263–70 violence as product 260–62 see also al-Qaeda; jihadist terrorism; Provisional IRA terrorist networks 28–37 theocracy and republicanism, Iran 107–10 Tinner, Urs 208 Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative 92–3 transnational terrorism 90–93 Tunisia 87–8 UDA (Ulster Defence Association) 41–2, 58–9 Ulster Defence Association (UDA) 41–2, 58–9 Understanding Terror Networks 43 United Arab Emirates and Iran 123 United Kingdom, policy-making and informal networks 20–21

295

United States counter-terrorism initiatives 92–3 men, cognitive attributes 251 Vertovec, S. 21 violence and identity 232 virtual networks 264–6 vulnerabilities, proliferation networks 195–9, 204–6 Wade-Gery, R. 20–21 Wanandi, Jusuf 169–70 war effect of Iraq conflict on al-Qaeda 233–4 weak actors winning 241–2 Western and Arab media coverage of Iraq conflict 247 Weber, Max 275 ‘wedging’ strategy against al-Qaeda 150 Western countries, informal networks 19–20 Wilson, J.Q. 275, 277 Wong Kan Seng 175 Yacine, Abdesslam 79 young people and jihadism, Algeria 91–2 Yousef, Ramzi 165 Yusefi-Eshkevaru, Hasan 103 al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab 138 al-Zawahiri, Ayman 33, 34, 36, 139, 160 Zitouni, Djamal 74 Zouabri, Antar 74

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