Insurgent Groups Research Articles

"Martyrs do not die": Politics and security in Kurdish insurgents' funerals.

Insurgents' funerals play a significant role in the conflict between Turkey and the Kurdish insurgent group PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) for both parties. This article examines the dual features of the insurgents' funerals. While the Kurdish population seeks to reintegrate the dead into larger narratives of the "Kurdish liberation movement" and use funerals as a site for mobilization, the regime portrays the social and political lives of the dead manifested in the funerals as a matter of security and integrates them into larger security discourses. Kurdish mayors and deputies were dismissed from office and imprisoned for organizing and attending these funerals, and even for publicly displaying grief. In this article, I demonstrate how the social and political life of the dead that survives the biological death can still remain in the language and practices of security, and argue that securitization of funerals have a broader implication of leaving no space for the Kurdish Question to exist except for the realm of security.

Will They Continue to Endure: How Conflict and “Climate-Induced” Migration is Affecting the Lake Chad Region

The effects of climate change are undoubtedly global. Reports show that West Africa is in a precarious position, regarding some of the worst consequences of climate change, occasioning extreme events, such as violent conflict, insecurity, and loss of livelihoods in the Lake Chad region. The impact on human lives is full-blown as ‘climate-induced’ migration results in drought, desertification, and the intensifying water stress has on human migration in the region. Notably, the deterioration of individual and local living conditions has compelled inhabitants of the region in Nigeria to migrate to neighboring states as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) or ‘environmental refugees” in neighboring countries. However, existing studies focused on the impact and patterns of migration in West Africa thereby creating a “knowledge gap” on how ‘climate-induced’ migration is affecting the Lake Chad region. This paper employs secondary data collection, analyzing dynamic trends and patterns of climate change and challenges management. Findings revealed that while the activities of terrorists and insurgent groups have strongly impacted migration within the Lake Chad region, the continuous “dryness” and the ever-changing climate conditions, such as rising temperature, desertification, flooding, and drought have dramatically worsened and contributed to the mass decision to leave the region.

Uncertainties in the Contemporary Political Landscape of West Africa amidst Global and Regional Challenges

Purpose: This paper analyzes the political instability in West Africa, exploring how historical legacies, military coups, and insurgent violence contribute to this instability. It also examines the role of external geopolitical influences and the limitations faced by regional organizations like ECOWAS in fostering stability. Materials and Methods: The research adopts a historical and analytical approach, examining the colonial legacies, recent military coups in countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, and the rise of armed insurgent groups. It also investigates the external influences of powers like Russia and China, alongside regional efforts by ECOWAS to manage the political situation. Findings: The research highlights that the persistence of military coups and insurgent violence is deeply rooted in the colonial past and exacerbated by weak democratic institutions. The resurgence of military coups underscores the fragility of governance in the region, while the proliferation of armed groups intensifies security threats. External geopolitical actors such as Russia and China have reshaped political alliances in the region, complicating ECOWAS' efforts to foster cooperation. Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: To achieve lasting political stability, West Africa needs to strengthen its democratic institutions, promote regional cooperation, and develop more effective strategies to counteract both internal security threats and external geopolitical influences. ECOWAS must enhance its capacity to mediate conflicts and unify states amidst growing geopolitical divides.

Law and Order in Counterinsurgency: The Link between Insurgent Group Characteristics and the Use of Domestic Law Enforcement

Abstract Modern-day insurgencies are adaptive, enduring, and increasingly intertwined with criminal elements, and therefore pose serious threats to regional and global security. In response, counterinsurgency strategies have become more diversified. One of the strategies that states can employ toward insurgencies is the use of domestic law enforcement, which includes operations by police and intelligence agencies. Given the predominant focus on military approaches, however, there is little empirical work that examines the use of domestic law enforcement in counterinsurgencies. To address this, we investigate the underlying reasons behind a government’s decision to deploy domestic law enforcement against insurgencies. We argue that specific attributes of insurgent groups significantly shape this decision. Using the BAADI2 dataset, our analysis shows that insurgent groups that participate in cooperative alliances and engage in criminal activities are most likely to motivate a state’s decision to deploy domestic law enforcement as a counterinsurgency strategy against them.

Security Officials’ Perspectives on Reintegration Challenges for Former Al-Shabaab Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Kenya

ABSTRACT This paper situates the perspectives of selected Kenyan security officials on the reintegration challenges for former foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) (returnees) affiliated with the AlShabaab. The study reflects on the amnesty intervention program that was launched by the government in 2015 to rehabilitate AlShabaab returnees. This is a situation not unique to Kenya. Since the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (post-2015), the dilemma became what states and, more principally, how western nations that had the bulk of foreign fighters would react upon their return from conflict theatres. In the Kenyan context, the rationale at the time was an unconditional surrender and consequently rehabilitation interventions to reintegrate these individuals into society. The Al-Shabaab is an insurgent group based in Somalia that has contributed to insecurity in the Horn of Africa region. This study, relying on a securitization theory lens, reflects on qualitative fieldwork insights with select government security officials in Kenya’s Mombasa and Nairobi Counties. The study probes how these officials frame the security threat that FTFs pose to Kenya, and indeed the region, and consequently their perspectives of reintegration challenges. The study findings present three major frames. The first is their framing of returnees as security threats. The second is their framing of returnees as hampered by legal/policy gaps. The third is their framing around gaps in community acceptance. The findings contribute to the literature on reintegration and offer lucid insights into how such programmatic interventions can be adapted for peacebuilding practice. The findings may be applied in the realm of contextual best practices on what works and does not in reintegration initiatives.

The Personalist Leadership Style of Fabio Vásquez: A Case Study on the Origins of the ELN

This article examines the personalist leadership style of Fabio Vásquez, a founding member of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), the Colombian guerrilla group. Personalism, as a theoretical framework for understanding Latin American leaders, has primarily focused on traditional political practices, emphasizing the tensions and conflicts among formal institutions, political parties, and personalist politicians. While these studies provide valuable insights, they overlook leaders who operate outside conventional political structures who also rely on personalist strategies to attract and retain followers. This article seeks to bridge this gap by presenting a case study of Vásquez’s leadership style. In an era marked by the resurgence of populism and renewed interest in the effects of personalism on conventional politics, this article argues that examining personalist leadership within revolutionary insurgent groups that reject conventional party politics is necessary for a thorough understanding of the phenomenon. In particular, it offers a comprehensive overview of how Vásquez’s personalist strategies shaped the ELN’s early insurgency, ultimately revealing the strengths and vulnerabilities of such leadership within revolutionary movements.

Normalistas-Teachers and Coloniality of Power in Mexico

This paper examines how the work of normalista-teachers in Mexico illuminates what Lucio Cabañas Barrientos termed the ‘new colonial system’ in 1972. There exists an ideological hegemony which asserts that colonialism ended in most Latin American nations, including Mexico, by the first decade of the nineteenth century. However, as this paper argues, the experiences of normalista-teachers demonstrate that colonialism is far from a relic of the past. Drawing upon the concepts of hegemony and coloniality of power, this study explores how normalista-teachers challenge the notion of ‘modernity’ and the myth of a bygone colonial era. It focuses primarily on the specific cases of teachers Margarita Chávez, Salvador Hernández, Antonio Gaytán, María Mendoza, José Lundez Martínez, Hernández, Ibarra, Elena Torres, Del Palacio, and Montiel. Additionally, it examines the social movements and guerrilla groups led by Genaro Vásquez Rojas and Lucio Cabañas Barrientos. This holds significant weight for critical pedagogy. If, through their lives and work, normalista-teachers are able to reveal how material and symbolic inequalities rooted in colonialism continue to shape Mexico, then this suggests they are not merely educators, but rather epistemic providers of critical pedagogy from a Latin American perspective.

Insurgents’ legitimisation strategies: a comparison between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban

ABSTRACT This article compares the legitimacy of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. It analyses normative and instrumental legitimacy based on Max Weber’s traditional, legal, and charismatic sources. The research draws on published literature for exploring the Afghan Taliban and two qualitative studies undertaken in Pakistan to understand the Pakistani Taliban. It argues that the former gained both types of legitimacy, while the latter initially achieved some level but failed to maintain it. The article proposes a two-dimensional understanding of legitimacy, along its types and sources, and argues that insurgent groups lose legitimacy when they fail to perform effectively on both dimensions.

Understanding the Role of Agriculture in the Nature of Insurgency in Manipur

The state of Manipur in India has been in a state of turmoil and militarization since the time it lost its princely status in 1949. And over the years since then it has witnessed mushrooming of various insurgent groups among the numerous ethnic communities in the tiny state. In as much as the causes for such state of insurgent movements, the nature and dimensions of insurgency in the state is diverse. It would be of paramount importance to understand the nature of insurgency in Manipur rather than just see all groups from the prism of “Law and order” problem but perhaps the root cause of it could be related to an ancestral agriculture practice and its ownership. This will surely enable the government to have a multi-prone approach to finding a lasting solution to the prolonged narrative of insurgency issue which is socially divisive, economically expensive and politically national integration is at stake.

Violence and the Voice Note: The War for Cabo Delgado in Social Media (Mozambique, 2020)

In Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, the year of 2020 marked a dramatic escalation of military activities of the Islamist insurgent group locally known as Al-Shabab or mashababe. This intensification was accompanied by a more immaterial phenomenon: the rise in prominence of social media, both as battleground and as public forum. While the insurgents sacked and occupied major towns and district headquarters, the Web 2.0 networks - Facebook and WhatsApp especially - became the central arena in which the war was apprehended and discussed. This essay is an exploration of the entwining of social media with the 'new war' in Cabo Delgado, focussing on the events that surround the conquest of the Makonde plateau, mythical cradle of the Mozambican liberation struggle. Building on a budding literature on digital militarism, the essay dwells especially on orality and the use of the voice note as a medium to convey information deemed to be more trustworthy and stable than images. Tracking these media and their interrelations, the essay establishes a narrative, however fragmentary, of the downfall of the Makonde plateau; highlights recurring features of violence in the Cabo Delgado conflict; and provides fresh insight into the formation of the Local Force (Força Local), a State-sponsored militia largely constituted by war veterans.

Evasive countermeasures: Boko Haram’s influence operations in the Lake Chad Basin region

Since its emergence, the insurgency group, Boko Haram has continued to wreak havoc on local communities in Northeast Nigeria and across the Lake Chad Basin region together with its offshoot, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). This has led to the death of several people and the displacement of many others. While affected states in the troubled region have mostly responded through kinetic operations, the activities of both groups have continued unabated. These activities have mostly been achieved via attempts to exert influence in communities with little or minimal state authority. Previous studies have focused on the origins, causes, attacks, and consequences of the activities of the violent extremist group, yet its influence operations particularly in contested territories remain under-examined. This qualitative study foregrounds the need to close this gap using descriptive analysis. Countering Boko Haram and ISWAP’s influence operations in the Lake Chad Basin region remains the key to winning the “soft” war which is necessary to ultimately degrade, dismantle, and defeat these insurgency groups in the region.

Organizational Bricolage and Insurgent Group Effectiveness in Cities: The Formation and Initial Urban Campaign of the Movement of the 19th of April in Colombia (1973–1980)

Abstracts How do rebel groups form in cities? What makes urban-based insurgent organizations effective? Urban armed conflicts have become an important subject of research due to the political, economic, and demographic significance of cities. Yet, we know little about the mechanisms of insurgent group formation and effectiveness in urban contexts. Building on the case of the formation and initial urban campaign of M-19 in Colombia (1973–1980), this article argues that rebel leaders originating from multiple organizations and confronted with intramovement competition have strong motives to employ organizational bricolage to form their organization. Organizational bricolage shapes insurgent effectiveness by producing structures that are fit for achieving certain objectives but not others. M-19’s organizational bricolage combined the armed vanguard, intellectual collective, and populist party forms. This structure was effective to foster public support but ineffective to establish a robust social base and maintain urban operations under repression. The research employs the analysis of organizational repertoires and process tracing to retrace M-19’s formation and initial urban campaign. Empirical material includes an original dataset comprising M-19 founders’ biographical data, archival documents, and interviews with ex-combatants. Studying how rebel leaders employ organizational bricolage sheds light on how insurgent organizations form, behave, and transform after war.

Analysis of the Operational Application of Military Capabilities in Counterinsurgency within a Military Operations Other than War Framework in the Papua Region

The military plays a key role in Indonesia’s fight against armed separatist -insurgent groups. Not only that is it mandated by law, the military’s involvement in counterinsurgency is also necessitated by practical demands and the nature of the conflict where separatist insurgents would often utilize guerilla warfare attacks such as exploitation of terrain to ambush security force positions. Other than the ability to inflict lethal force, the military also possess “soft” capabilities needed to win hearts & minds and facilitate the implementation of government policies. This study aims to analyze the operational application of military capabilities in counterinsurgency within an MOOTW framework in Papua. This article utilized a qualitative research design with a deductive analysis method where the researcher seeks to deductively analyze the data collected by understanding and studying theories from various literatures related to the research topic and then critically analyzing the data to answer the research questions as it pertains to the utilization Indonesia’s military capabilities as means within an operational plan to implement the counterinsurgency strategy, as well as the challenges in conducting such operations & the relative limitations of the capabilities of the Indonesian military that can be utilized. The results of this study found that the military capabilities are applied in territorial, intelligence, and combat/ enforcement operations. The challenges to the operational application include lack of cultural competence, actionable intelligence, unified command, as well as suitable metrics. In conclusion, the military supports the implementation of government policy in Papua via territorial, intelligence, and combat/ enforcement operations with significant impediments including lack of intelligence, cultural/ linguistic competence, metrics, and a unified command. To improve this, the military needs to provide cultural/ linguistic training, enable point persistent surveillance, stand up a unified structure to coordinate intelligence, and implement viable metrics to assess progress.

Why insurgents engage in kidnappings: A coercive strategy in quasi-state governance and control?

Despite the common perception viewing kidnappings as means to generate ransom income and to obtain political concessions, it remains unclear why kidnappings are disproportionately employed by some violent insurgent groups but not by the others. Combining data from the Global Terrorism Database and the Big Allied and Dangerous Insurgency Dataset, we empirically examined this question with a theoretical focus on the possible role of insurgents’ performance of state-like functions, which may necessitate the use of kidnappings as an illicit form of ‘policing’ and punishment for social control. Our analyses mainly focused on three aspects of quasi-state activities: extraction; provision of public services; and warring activities. A series of negative binomial regressions were conducted to examine the effects of insurgents’ quasi-state activities on their kidnapping activities over a base model with only group capacity and resource factors. We found that the initial effects of territory-control and membership size disappeared when variables measuring quasi-state activities were included into the model. This suggests that the influence of group capacity and resources on kidnappings may be an indirect one via insurgents’ strategic need for coercive control when contending for quasi-state status.

Violent orders and coup-proofing: A new typology of wars in Africa

ABSTRACT Conflicts on the African continent present a paradox: the number of conflicts and casualties are increasing while at the same time becoming more peripheral and less threatening to governments. This article argues that the rise of a new kind of conflict helps explain this trend: violent political orders in which warfare is used by governments as a means of doling out patronage and managing dissent rather than defeating opponents on the battlefield. This logic of governance emerges as regimes weaken their own military as a form of coup-proofing; and due to the rampant fragmentation and marginalisation of insurgent groups, which lack the ability to topple governments. After detailed broad conflict trends on the continent, the article uses conflicts in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as examples of this logic, with Mali offered as a partial, theory-building exception. Grappling with this reality will require peacemakers to shift focus from the short-term imperatives of reaching peace deals to the broader challenge of reforming the logic of governance at the heart of the state.

Love and Care in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda

Abstract Dominant storylines about armed conflicts and rebel groups, such as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group in Uganda, typically focus on violence, suffering, harm, and abuse. Without a doubt, life within insurgency groups, including in the LRA, is characterized by immense social suffering, typically portrayed to be beyond the pale of humanity. Yet, what of the connections of compassion, joy, love, and care that emerged in the context of cohesion and alongside these aspects and experiences of violence, suffering, and abuse? Over the years, our interlocutors narrated to us what can be understood as meaningful forms of kinship, social connections, or intimacy during and after their time with the group; in the context of conjugal spousal relations, among fellow recruits, or between abductees and their families and communities. This article focuses on these practices of love and care within and in the wake of life in the LRA, and how they are entangled with and sit alongside experiences of violence. The simultaneities of care and suffering constitute a key aspect of this analysis; not intending to negate, downplay, ignore, or trivialize the detrimental impact of violence within rebel groups in general, nor to idealize the relations of compassion, love, or care that emerged within this context. This dual focus, we maintain, is important for unearthing the complexities, intricacies, and nuances of peoples’ lived realities in the context of insurgency movements, and in the context of armed conflict more broadly, holding important analytical and ethical implications.

Kurdish Insurgents and Postgeneration: „Big Village” as an Interactive Memory Work

The Kurdish people, lacking a sovereign state of their own, reside within the boundaries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, where they are subjected to the rules and identities of these nations, often facing restrictions on their cultural expression. This situation has disabled their entry into the filmmaking, with documentaries becoming their preferred medium due to its cost-effectiveness and simpler technical demands. These documentaries typically delve into the Kurds’ painful historical experiences. Big Village (2020), directed by Beri Shalmashi and Lyangelo Vazquez, stands out as the first Kurdish interactive web documentary (i-doc). It intricately weaves personal and social narratives, focusing on several families and a Kurdish insurgent group from Eastern Kurdistan. The i-doc explores the stories of the former residents of Gewredê, a village that has since vanished. It uniquely blends old photos and video clips to craft its narrative. This study aims to analyse Big Village through the lens of the insurgents’ memories, the inherited memories of their children, and the use of archival materials, examining how an interactive documentary can effectively communicate historical traumas to modern viewers.

Examining the counterinsurgency-counterterrorism tradeoff: the effects of targeted strikes on militant attacks

ABSTRACT Do targeted strikes against militant groups affect insurgent operations differently from terrorist operations? One of the reasons it is challenging for states to counter militant groups who simultaneously wage an insurgency and a terrorist campaign is that there are offsetting effects between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. As both an insurgent group and a terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) poses particular challenges to states. Since 2014, the United States and coalition allies have conducted thousands of targeted strikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR). In this article, we examine the effects of targeted strikes against ISIL. Using a novel dataset of time-series observations from Iraq and Syria between 2015 and 2018, we examine the relationship between targeted strikes conducted under OIR and the number of insurgent and terrorist attacks conducted by ISIL. Our findings give empirical support to the theoretical argument that the same military strategy can have different effects on insurgency and terrorism.

Uloga autoritarnog fuhimorističkog režima u Peruu u suzbijanju delovanja levičarskih gerilskih grupa Sendero Luminoso i Revolucionarni pokret Tupak Amaru

The subject of this research is the analysis of the role played by the Fujimorist regime in Peru, i.e. the rule of Alberto Fujimori in that Latin American country from 1990 to 2000, in suppressing the activities of the left-wing, i.e. Marxist-Leninist guerrilla groups Sendero Luminoso and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement which represented the main security threat in the observed area from the 1980s to 2000. The basic assumption is that the Fujimorist regime, due to its authoritarian character, had greater success in the fight against Sendero Luminoso and Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement than was the case with the democratic regime before it, primarily due to the greater use of violence and brutal methods of suppressing guerrilla activity. The results of the research showed that it was in the period of the 1990s that the greatest successes of the state in the fight against the observed guerrilla groups were achieved, as evidenced, among other things, by the arrest of Sendero Luminoso leader Abimael Guzmán in 1992 and the complete neutralization of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in 1997. The conclusion of the research is that the observed case is another indicator that authoritarian regimes, more prone to violence and less interested in human rights and freedoms, tend to solve security problems more quickly and efficiently, such as the activities of guerrilla groups, but also that security risks related to the activities of Sendero Luminoso in Peru still exist, although they are much smaller than before the 2000s. In the research, we used the historical method, the case study method and comparative analysis.

Changing Insecurity Threats in Nigeria from 1999-2021

This study examines the changing insecurity threats in Nigeria, focusing on the significant causes of insecurity threats in Nigeria since 1999, the impacts of changing insecurity threats on human security, and strategies that the government could adopt to curb insecurity threats. The study address insecurity threats not only from the traditional security approach but also incorporated human and social security approach. As a matter of fact, most of the research on security studies heavily rely on the traditional security approach. The study adopts a qualitative research approach, and secondary data obtained from journals, articles, organization reports, academic materials, libraries, the internet, and newspapers were analyzed with hermeneutics approach. Elites’ theory and relative deprivation theory were adopted as the study theoretical framework. The study shows that several insecurity threats exist in all the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria which includes; Kidnapping, Insurgent groups, Separatist agitators, Boko-Haram, Herdsmen-farmers conflict. The study gave certain recommendations and advises the government to adopt the composite model approach, perceiving security as a collective responsibility of individuals, government, religious groups, business organization, and civil society. The study further provides the following recommendations that government must ensure good governance and promote democratic principles, government should train and retrain security operatives, government should also invest in agriculture, health and education. The study also recommend that the Nigerian government should set up a referendum that will cut across nooks and crannies of the country and must also address crucial issues that threaten the peaceful coexistence of Nigerians.