The Return of the Franchise Resurgence in the Domestic Insurgencies of Al-Qaeda Affiliates
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Haverford College Department of Political Science The Return of the Franchise Resurgence in the Domestic Insurgencies of al-Qaeda Affiliates By Dylan Runde Senior Thesis April 2014 Professor Barak Mendelsohn 1 Acknowledgments This thesis would not have been possible without the guidance, advice, and support of my adviser, Professor Barak Mendelsohn. His remarkable attentiveness to my numerous queries and research pitfalls over the past several years were vital to the construction of the work presented here. I would also like to extend my gratitude to a number of other individuals: To Marion, for your constant moral support and much appreciated help with statistical analysis. To Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, for letting me use FDD’s data set on Shabaab attacks. Without this data, I simply would not have been able to craft an analysis for the case of Shabaab. To Margaret Schaus, for your remarkably prompt responses and assistance in acquiring numerous materials. To my peers in Professor Mendelsohn’s thesis group who provided valuable insights during the early stages of my research process as well moral support throughout the entire year. 2 Abbreviations AAS Alternative Authority Structure AQ al-Qaeda AQAP al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula AQA al-Qaeda Affiliate AQC al-Qaeda Central (the organization’s core leadership in Pakistan) AQI al-Qaeda in Iraq (sometimes referred as the ISI or ISIS in other literature) COIN Counter-insurgency ISI the Islamic State in Iraq ISIS the Islamic State in Syria and al- Sham UN the United Nations UNSC the United Nations Security Council 3 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………......5 I. Typology of Internal Warfare…………………………………………………………….......6 II. Insurgency……………………………………………………………………………………9 III. Resurgence and Activity……………………………………………………………………11 IV. Situating AQA Insurgencies………………………………………………………………...13 V. Literature Review…………………………………………………………………………...16 a. Structure vs. Agency…………………………………………………………………17 b. State Based Factors…………………………………………………………………..19 i. Regime Type…………………………………………………………………19 ii. Repression……………………………………………………………………19 iii. State Weakness………………………………………………………………22 c. Organizational Characteristics……………………………………………………….33 i. Membership………………………………………………………………….33 ii. Structure……………………………………………………………………...34 iii. Size……………………………………………………………………….......35 d. Organizational Strategy……………………………………………………………...36 i. Political Action………………………………………………………………36 ii. Military Action. ……………………………………………………………...38 iii. Territorial Control……………………………………………………………45 e. External Support……………………………………………………………………..46 VI. Research Design…………………………………………………………………………….49 a. Operationalization of Dependent Variable…………………………………………..49 b. Hypotheses…………………………………………………………………………...52 c. Case Selection………………………………………………………………………..57 VII. Al-Qaeda in Iraq……………………………………………………………………………58 a. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..58 b. Background…………………………………………………………………………..59 c. Hypotheses…………………………………………………………………………...70 d. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...97 VIII. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula………………………………………………………100 a. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………100 b. Background…………………………………………………………………………101 c. Hypotheses………………………………………………………………………….104 d. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….131 IX. Al-Shabaab……………………………………………………………………………….133 a. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………133 4 b. Background…………………………………………………………………………134 c. Hypotheses………………………………………………………………………….139 d. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….166 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...169 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………176 5 Introduction As a transnational jihadist organization, al-Qaeda’s ideological doctrine and large-scale organizational objectives are primarily global in their focus. Moreover, their military operations and the rhetoric accompanying these operations have generally possessed a signature anti- Western focus. Yet, in the last half-decade, the most notable efforts associated with the organization have not been spectacular attacks against Western countries but rather domestic campaigns conducted by jihadist-insurgent organizations that either officially joined the al- Qaeda (AQ) network or were established by AQ’s central leadership (AQC). Despite a large number of analysts arguing that AQ is in decline, al-Qaeda affiliates (AQAs) are surprisingly active in theaters like Yemen, Iraq, Mali, and Somalia.1 In these locations, despite organizational setbacks, AQAs have carved out significant operational space for themselves and proven their status as noteworthy non-state actors. While success may be too strong of a term to describe AQA campaigns, a number of AQAs have recently demonstrated notable increases in activity after periods of significant setbacks. Given the aforementioned observations, the work presented in this paper seeks to answer the question, what accounts for the resurgence of the domestic campaigns of al-Qaeda affiliates? To clarify, though the apparent organizational shift from global to local jihad is an interesting trend, it is not the focus of the work presented here. Numerous authors have already written extensively on this shift, eloquently addressing the potential reasons for its occurrence, the effectiveness of franchises, and what it says about AQC’s capabilities.2 On the other hand, there is little work that analyzes in depth the actual dynamics of recent AQA resurgence in comparison with one another. Consequently, my analysis here: 1) Examines the efforts of AQAs 1 Bergen 2012. 2 See Hegghammer 2009, 2013; Mendelsohn 2011; Watts 2013b; Della Porta 2013, 167-171; Helfstein and Wright 2011. 6 as domestic insurgencies and 2) Presents a causal explanation for the resurgence of AQA insurgencies. The study begins with a detailed explanation of several fundamental concepts, with the most important being that of insurgency and the observed trend, resurgence. Next, I review literature on insurgency, terrorism, and civil war, in order to identify the mechanisms most likely to affect insurgent activity. Then, I present several conceptual schools of thought that feature hypothetical explanations for the resurgence of AQA activity. Subsequently, the aforementioned the hypotheses are applied to specific cases of AQA insurgencies in order to determine which explanations appear most accurate. The cases that analyzed in this paper involve insurgencies in Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia conducted by the AQA’s respectively known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and al-Shabaab. Through this process, this thesis has identified three variables as being the most impactful on AQA resurgence: Emergent Conflict, Organizational Adaptation, and Economic Factors. I Typology of Internal Warfare “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” -Frederick the Great Guerrilla Warfare Before moving forward, it is first necessary to define a number of terms central to the vocabulary of internal warfare. Due to discrepancies in its meaning, the first term that must be explicated is guerilla warfare. Though Mao Tse-Tung uses the term guerrilla warfare as a label for a particular system of revolutionary war, guerilla warfare is usually discussed as a set of military tactics used by weaker forces against a conventional army. 3 Guerrilla warfare tactics emphasize the use of small, mobile units of fighters that conduct low-intensity military operations characterized by speed and surprise. Such operations include ambushes, 3 Mao 2000, 41-57. 7 assassinations, and hit-and-run attacks. While these tactics feature obvious offensive utility, they also possess a defensive purpose since units are expected to rapidly retreat and disperse following engagement. Because insurgent resources are limited, guerrilla warfare aims to maximize enemy casualties while minimizing the opportunity for insurgent losses by dedicating a minimal amount of soldiers to the operation.4 For the purposes of this paper, guerrilla warfare will be referred to from the tactical perspective and the label “guerrilla” will be interchanged throughout the narrative with terms like “rebel” and “insurgent.” Civil War Another point of terminological clarification involves the difference between an insurgency and a civil war. The most fundamental condition separating insurgency and civil war lies in the relationship between each side’s capabilities and the scale of combat. An insurgency sits at a point of significant asymmetry in comparison to the resources possessed by the state. However, as the force ratio between opposition groups and the state nears equilibrium and resources are increasingly dedicated to the fight, the scale of the conflict will escalate. As the sides become more symmetrical and fighting intensifies, the conflict will more likely be classified as a civil war. Thus, civil wars are commonly differentiated from an insurgency because they feature combat on a greater scale and a more symmetrical balance of power between the state and its challengers. In this regard, state’s experiencing a civil war record higher casualty rates, a wider geographic distribution of fighting, greater mobilization of resources statewide, and a larger percentage of citizens involved with and affected by the fighting than would be seen by a state experiencing an insurgency. It should be noted that civil wars also differ from insurgencies via the tactical nature of military operations. Though unconventional warfare may feature prominently in a civil war, combat primarily