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Armed groups' organizational structure and their strategic options

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2011

Abdulkader H. Sinno
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Abstract

The organizational structures of armed groups, whether they develop by accident or by design, affect their strategic choices during the conflict and their ability to enter peace agreements. This article explains how frequently encountered structures such as centralized, decentralized, networked, and patronage-based ones affect strategic choices for the organization and its opponents. Only centralized organizations can make use of sophisticated strategies such as ‘divide and conquer’, ‘co-option’, and ‘hearts and minds’, and can engage in successful peace agreements. Centralized armed organizations that do not have a safe haven within the contested territory tend to be very vulnerable, however, which makes peace less attractive to their opponents and explains in part why long-lasting peace agreements between such groups and their opponents are rare.

Type
Todays Armed Groups: Structure, Actions and Strategic Options
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 93 , Issue 882: Understanding armed groups and the applicable law , June 2011 , pp. 311 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2011

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References

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2 David Laitin, National revivals and violence, paper presented at the Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences of the Juan March Institute, 29 March 1993, p. 14, argues that a dense rural social structure is a necessary condition for nationalist mobilization and strife. Russell Hardin, Collective Action, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1982, pp. 31–34, develops the ‘by-product theory’ that shows how easy it is for non-political organizations to perform political functions not originally intended for them because they have already overcome ‘latency’. Historical analyses also support this view: for example, Michael Taylor (ed.), Rationality and Revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 81–83; and Perez Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982, pp. 1–86.

3 By ‘traditional’, I do not mean to imply a ‘stiff cultural system imprisoned in the past’, as many wrongly understand the term (so David Apter, The Political Kingdom in Uganda, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1967, pp. 84–107, warns us). I simply call a social structure ‘traditional’ to indicate that it was well established before the advent of a traumatic event such as colonial or despotic government. It might very well have metamorphosed many times in the centuries preceding the conflict.

4 On this specific point, see John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, The Trend of Social Movements in America: Professionalization and Resource Mobilization, General Learning Press, Morristown, NJ, 1973 and their ‘Resource mobilization and social movements: a partial theory’, in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 82, No. 6, 1977, pp. 1212–1241; Freeman, Jo, ‘The origins of the women's liberation movement’, in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, 1972, pp. 792–811CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sara Evans, Personal Politics, Knopf, New York, 1979; Jenkins, Craig, ‘Resource mobilization theory and the study of social movements’, in Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 9, 1983, p. 531CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Ibid.

10 See Michael Radu (ed.), The New Insurgencies: Anticommunist Guerrillas in the Third World, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, 1990, p. 14, for a discussion of how even rightist and anti-communist revolutionaries study the strategies and tactics of glamorized communist insurgents such as Mao Tse-Tung, Fidel Castro, and Vo Nguyen Giap. See also M. Duverger, above note 7, pp. 25–26, for examples of how European parties imitated the organizational structures of more successful ones. The adoption of the structure du jour, even when it is not suitable for the company's situation, is also widespread in the corporate world (Henry Mintzberg, The Structuring of Organizations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979, p. 292).

11 M. Duverger, above note 7, pp. 58–59.

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15 Abdulkader H. Sinno, Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2010.

16 A. H. Sinno, above note 15, ch. 10.

17 A. H. Sinno, above note 15.

18 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979, p. 252. Skocpol de-emphasized the role of actors and most other structuralists argue that strategy does not even matter.

19 James DeNardo, Power in Numbers: The Political Strategy of Protest and Rebellion, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1985, pp. 29–32.

20 This argument is akin to the one made by the philosopher René Girard in Violence and the Sacred, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1977. Kramer, Martin, ‘Sacrifice and fratricide in Shiite Lebanon’, in Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 3, 1991, pp. 30–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, applies these ideas to the resistance against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

21 Uncompromising groups (Hamas in Palestine, Protestant militants in Northern Ireland, supporters of the Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi in South Africa) might try to derail deals concluded between the incumbent and more moderate groups. They do not always succeed, but their anticipated strategy reduces the incentive for the moderates to compromise and radicalizes all resistance groups. The success of such strategies is generally underestimated because it is hard to recognize cases in which moderate resistance leaders do not even enter negotiations because they realize that excluded groups will derail their efforts through increasing confrontation.

22 Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1962, p. 164.

23 From Dedijer's World War II diary, in ibid., p. 69.

24 David Laitin, National revivals and violence, paper presented at the Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences of the Juan March Institute, 29 March 1993, p. 26.

25 Gerard Chaliand, Guerrilla Strategies, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982, ch. 2.

26 A. Sinno, above note 15, chs 5 and 6.

27 For more details and evidence, see A. Sinno, above note 15, ch. 6.

28 The Syrian Alawites are a glaring exception here, but they did become very close to the centre of power by infiltrating the army before they controlled the institutions of the Syrian state. Steve Heydemann, Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946–1970, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1999.

29 From the two completed chapters of the sequel to the L'Ancien Régime, in Alexis de Tocqueville, Selected Writings on Democracy, Revolution and Society, ed. John Stone and Stephen Mennel, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980, p. 246.

30 The term ‘hearts-and-minds’ was coined by the British High Commissioner in Malaya, General Gerald Templer. He was appointed in 1952, when things looked bleak for the British, and successfully applied the general guidelines I describe in this section.

31 An obvious response to the famous Maoist aphorism that the successful insurgent is one who lives among the people as a fish in water.

32 Some might argue that another necessary ingredient to ‘hearts-and-minds’ is making plenty of concessions because, after all, the British did commit to withdraw from Malaya and gave it independence. This is not true: no such concessions were made in other cases where this strategy was successfully applied, including the Dhofar and the Huk rebellions. In both cases the government provided positive sanctions (step 3) but very little in terms of political concessions. While not necessary, however, affordable political concessions (especially developing a sense of political participation) would facilitate the government's task within the framework of a hearts-and-minds strategy.

33 Benedict Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1977.

34 John Bowyer Bell, On Revolt, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1976, p. 184.

35 Selznick, Philip, ‘Foundations of the theory of organizations’, in American Sociological Review, 1948, Vol. 13, Issue 1, p. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Philip Selznick, TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization, Harper and Row, New York, 1949, provides the classic case study of co-option as strategy. See Michael Saward, Co-optive Politics and State Legitimacy, Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1992, for a rare discussion of this important strategy and its general application to international relations and strategic interaction in general. Co-option is widely used in politics but has received too little academic attention.

36 The terms ‘co-option’ or ‘co-optation’ are most often used to indicate an outcome. I am only interested in co-option as strategy here. When needed, I refer to the outcome as a co-optive arrangement.

37 See Gargiulo, Martin, ‘Two-step leverage: managing constraint in organizational politics’, in Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, 1993, pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a stimulating discussion of two-step leverage and indirect co-optive behaviour in organizational politics.

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39 On the effect of co-option on power within the co-opting organization, see Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power in Organizations, Pitman, Marshfield, MA, 1981, p. 166.

40 Some maintain that organizations other than adversaries can be ‘co-opted’. This is a loose use of the term and seems to imply alliance more than co-option.

41 A. Sinno, above note 15, ch. 10.

42 Donald Rothchild and Caroline Hartzell, ‘The peace process in the Sudan’, in Roy Licklider (ed.), Stopping the Killing: How Civil Wars End, New York University Press, New York, 1993, pp. 69–70.

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44 For an illustration from Kosovo of how compromise could be impeded by a lack of centralization, see Chris Hedges, ‘Serbs ready for large-scale attacks on Kosovo rebels’, New York Times, 27 June 1998.