Islamist Insurgency Research Articles

The Caliphate

The Caliphate was abolished 85 years ago; there have been several attempts to resurrected it since. What is the potential for a restoration of the caliphate? A new caliphate was declared in Ramadi in mid-2006 by Islamic insurgents before being quickly crushed by the Iraqi government. Just what exactly is a caliphate, who says there is one or who wants one (for example, both the Americans and Islamists have views on the caliphate) and the ideological justifications for one. Where and how did the caliphate begin, what are the prerequisites to be caliph (according to Muslim sources) and were or are there troubles in the succession? Has there been more than one caliphal dynasty? Who are the heirs, pretenders and illegitimate claimants? Where do such families such as the Moroccan Alaouite royal family, the House of Osman, the exiled-Nizamat of Hyderabad and the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan fit in? Despite there not being a ‘legally’ recognized Caliphate today, there are existing proto-caliphate structures, such as the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. There are also legitimizing legal foundations, such as declarations recorded by the 1926 al-Azhar Caliphate Conference, enabling the possibility of a modern restoration of a caliphate.

<i>Islam, Ethics, Revolt: Politics and Piety in Francophone West African and Maghreb Narrative</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Islam, Ethics, Revolt: Politics and Piety in Francophone West African and Maghreb Narrative Aaron L. Rosenberg (bio) Islam, Ethics, Revolt: Politics and Piety in Francophone West African and Maghreb Narrative. By Donald R. Wehrs. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. x + 279 pp. $75.00. Donald Wehrs has provided a valuable addition to comparative literary scholarship with his recent volume on a group of novels from Northern and Sub-Saharan West Africa. Wehrs has conspicuously left out the work of Anglophone West African writers. He has also tightly defined his purview by focusing on only novelistic expression (albeit with frequent and extensive references to other expressive forms integral to Judaic and Christian ethical identity). It is clear that these scholarly circumscriptions were necessary to his project and prevent his observations from ranging too widely and thus losing their intellectual force. We can only hope that some other enterprising scholar will see fit to carry on Wehrs's endeavor by looking at Islamic narratives from this region (and possibly others) in other languages and other forms such as poetry, popular song, and drama. Wehrs's work stands as an important remedy to a lacuna in contemporary scholarship on West African literature. Stephanie Newell's recent volume entitled West African Literature: Ways of Reading (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), to take one current example, is a wide-ranging and well-organized volume which tackles important practical and theoretical issues in both Anglophone and [End Page 428] Francophone West African Literatures, although its scholarship on other languages of expression is less thorough. An additional weakness is Newell's treatment of Islam in literature. As Alioune Sow has noted in his recent review in African Studies Quarterly: "[Newell's] chapter on Islam is relatively short for what is an important and yet neglected aspect of West African literatures . . . the absence of figures such as Amadou Hampâté Bâ . . . or Yambo Ouologuem, with his devastating response to Islamic values in Le devoir de violence is questionable" (10. 1 [Spring 2008]). Even a cursory glance at Wehrs's table of contents reveals the extent to which his study remedies these oversights. His text considers the socio-cultural implications of works by authors who emerge from an Islamic environment. He devotes a chapter to unpacking the complicated messages of Ouologuem's Le devoir de violence (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1968) and although Wehrs does not deal with Ahmadou Ba's famous novel The Fortunes of Wangrin (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999), his choice not to include him in his analysis may have to do with the content of the novel and its inefficacy vis à vis his present project. Of more significance is Wehrs's ability to demonstrate the overlap between North and Sub-Saharan Africa through creative discourse. This is a task which he carries off admirably. That his focus on varied and intellectually divergent accounts of Islamic propriety and the systems of action that emerge from them is of a crucial, timely nature at present is underscored by recent events throughout the globe. The newly instated American president in his inauguration speech simultaneously expressed a willingness to "extend a hand" to governments willing to "unclench [their] fist[s] and emphasized his determination to crush Islamic insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere throughout the globe." President Obama also stated that "To the Muslim world we seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect." At other points, however, he invoked a strongly Christian tone; claiming that "God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny," and that "our security emanates from the justness of our cause." He even went so far as to claim that America's democratic ideals were spread because "we did not turn back nor did we falter and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations." All of this of course before he closed his speech with the following: "God Bless You and God Bless The United States of America" (my transcriptions). The mixed feelings and responses that Muslims are left with upon hearing such pronouncements are the logical outcome of this...

Insurgency in Ingushetia

The small Russian republic of Ingushetia, neighbouring Chechnya in the North Caucasus, has been plagued during the past year by a massive upsurge in violence. Civic activists are unhappy with the Kremlin-appointed local president, Murat Zyazikov, who has been accused of corruption and ineptitude. There is also a small Islamic insurgency engaged in terrorist attacks and criminal activities. The heavy-handed response by Russian federal forces has further fuelled discontent and violence, raising concerns that Ingushetia may be on the brink of a major conflict.

Thai Science Agency Clamps Down on Sensitive Research

ACADEMIC FREEDOMConcerned about Thailand's image and security, authorities are preparing to restrict foreign research involving three touchy subjects: child labor, prostitution, and a simmering Islamic insurgency.

Does Counterinsurgency Theory Apply in Northeast India?

Does Counterinsurgency Theory Apply in Northeast India?

Corruption and the Decline of the State in Pakistan

Pakistan is generally included in most discussions of ‘failing states’ that pose the maximum danger to global security, with the rise of Islamic militancy being the most commonly cited reason for the ‘failure’. However, Islamic militancy is a result of impending state failure, not a cause of it. This article argues that the state's inability, caused by decades of systemic corruption, to provide any appreciable level of public goods or services, broadly defined, is responsible for the delegitimization of the state and its inability to maintain law and order in the cities or suppress Islamist insurgents in the rest of the country.

A Wake-Up Call in Afghanistan

As Afghanistan enters its sixth year since the overthrow of Taliban rule, the violent comeback campaign by Islamic insurgents is dominating headlines. Restoring security will require bringing more aid and better government to neglected rural areas, but it will be impossible to deliver those improvements so long as officials, workers, and projects remain vulnerable to attack. It is now dramatically apparent that even though Afghanistan has successfully held elections and met the formal requirements for a transition to democracy, it remains beset by a staggering array of problems, from public corruption to private warlordism, that have been allowed to fester virtually unchecked.

Combating terrorist networks: An evolutionary approach

This paper will briefly examine how Al Qaeda evolved from an insurgency assistance group to a terrorist network of sophistication and global reach. It argues that Al Qaeda filled the needs of Islamist insurgencies and then developed into a complex system of networks by co-opting other groups, hijacking their agendas and transforming their ideologies during the late 1990s to the present. Al Qaeda thus has global and local aspects. Locally-oriented "associate" organizations may have somewhat variant structures and will vary in their goals, targets, and ideology. In some ways, these groups are more vulnerable to discovery by local authorities and disruption. They tend to lack the training, professionalism, education and capacity to ensure strict security measures and discipline within their own ranks. They lack resources such as weaponry and human social capital, such as experience or specific kinds of knowledge that Al Qaeda has been able to provide. Because they are only loosely coupled to the parent organization, both parent and "child" network receive "force multiplier" benefits while minimizing risks and costs.

Algérie: Les retours de la mémoire de la guerre d'indépendance

After independence, the history of national liberation in Algeria was largely managed by the single-party state. Founding figures of Algerian nationalism such as Messali Hadj and Ferhat Abbas were shrouded in silence. Since 1988 a plurality of voices has emerged and a number of historic figures have been rehabilitated. The state of quasi-civil war which has existed since 1992 between government forces and Islamic insurgents has, nevertheless, continued to inhibit discussion of human rights abuses during the war of independence. The recent resurgence in France of the debate over the use of torture during the Algerian war has been largely ignored by the Algerian government. The status of harkis , Algerian Muslims who fought on the side of the French during the war of independence, also remains acutely sensitive in official Algerian circles. Events such as the 'Berber Spring' of 2001 are continuing to press the authorities towards greater openness.

Islam, institutions and insurgency: territorial and network jihad

Contemporary research and policies often reduce Islamic insurgency to a simpli?ed notion of jihad, and, simultaneously, the religious doctrine of jihad to pure militancy. Such an approach fails to consider the complexities that de?ne and di?erentiate Islamic insurgents, and hinders further understanding of when, how and if they implement jihad. This paper attempts to address these shortcomings by considering how the ideological histories in?uencing territorially-based movements yield either an adherence to a modern jihad doctrine or a secular nationalist doctrine. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories provide the case studies wherein this distinction is manifest in their respective popular bases, institutions and military relations. Responding to assumptions of an emergent ‘third form’ of jihad—the network—this study applies the inverse model of the territorial doctrines to the Arab-Afghans and al-Qaeda (the network headed by Osama bin Laden) in order to elucidate its potential explanatory limitations, as well asto o?er some insights.

The Geography of Egypt's Islamist Insurgency

The end of the Cold War has not ushered in an era of global peace. Conflicts continue that often feature insurgent movements seeking to topple incumbent regimes. In the post-Cold War era, insurgent...

The Islamic insurgency in the Philippines

The Moro insurgency in the Philippines represents an interesting case of Islamically‐based insurgency with very differing roots and developments from the more widely studied Islamic movements in the Middle East. The Moro groups in the Philippines have displayed the difficulties in combining ethnic and religiously based ideologies of insurgencies. The insurgent groups have been marked by considerable factionalism and defections, but the government's counterinsurgency operations have been largely ineffective. Although neither the government nor the insurgent groups have ‘won’ the war, the Moros have gained significant autonomy from government control.

The decline of revolutionary Islam in Algeria and Egypt

Despite savage killings in Algeria and intermittent attacks on government officials and foreigners in Egypt, the Islamist advance has come to a halt in both countries. Revolutionary Islamists no longer represent a real threat to the survival of the secular authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Brutal as their methods have been, militant Islamists could not match the counter-violence unleashed by these regimes. The regimes' military successes have not, however, led to peace, and their campaigns have yet to crush Islamist insurgency. Authoritarian policies from Cairo and Algiers have marginalised and alienated the militant Islamist opposition, pushing it towards the politics of terror. In the absence of substantive political and economic reforms, low-intensity conflict is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Nigeria's Colonial Government and the Islamic Insurgency in French West Africa, 1914-1918.

J. Osuntokun — L'administration coloniale du Nigeria et l'insurrection musulmane en AOF, 1914-1918. L'alliance turco-allemande a soulevé des craintes quant au loyalisme des sujets coloniaux musulmans des Alliés. Les rébellions des musulmans d'Afrique occidentale contre la conscription ont, en conséquence, été attribuées à l'action d'agents turcs et allemands, provoquant une réaction disproportionnée des autorités coloniales. La rébellion, en 1916, des Touareg Oulliminden, en liaison avec la campagne senusi dans la région d'Agadès créa une situation sérieuse, menant à la formation d'un front saharien confié au général Laper-rine. La crainte, apparemment peu fondée, de la part de l'administration nigériane de voir les populations islamisées du Nord se joindre à leurs coreligionnaires d'AOF conduisit, en dépit de l'hostilité traditionnelle entre les deux administrations, à une coopération militaire qui joua un rôle important dans la pacification.