Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond

By Abdulkader H. Sinno

"After we had exchanged the requisite formalities over tea in his camp on the southern edge of Kabul's outer defense perimeter, the Afghan field commander told me that two of his bravest mujahideen were martyred because he did not have a pickup truck to take them to a Peshawar hospital. They had succumbed to their battle wounds. He asked me to tell his party's bureaucrats across the border that he needed such a vehicle desperately. I double-checked with my interpreter that he was indeed making this request. I wasn't puzzled because the request appeared unreasonable but because he was asking me, a twenty-year-old employee of a humanitarian organization, to intercede on his behalf with his own organization's bureaucracy. I understood on this dry summer day in Khurd Kabul that not all militant and political organizations are alike."—from Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond

While popular accounts of warfare, particularly of nontraditional conflicts such as guerrilla wars and insurgencies, favor the roles of leaders or ideology, social-scientific analyses of these wars focus on aggregate categories such as ethnic groups, religious affiliations, socioeconomic classes, or civilizations. Challenging these constructions, Abdulkader H. Sinno closely examines the fortunes of the various factions in Afghanistan, including the mujahideen and the Taliban, that have been fighting each other and foreign armies since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Focusing on the organization of the combatants, Sinno offers a new understanding of the course and outcome of such conflicts.

Employing a wide range of sources, including his own fieldwork in Afghanistan and statistical data on conflicts across the region, Sinno contends that in Afghanistan, the groups that have outperformed and outlasted their opponents have done so because of their successful organization. Each organization's ability to mobilize effectively, execute strategy, coordinate efforts, manage disunity, and process information depends on how well its structure matches its ability to keep its rivals at bay. Centralized organizations, Sinno finds, are generally more effective than noncentralized ones, but noncentralized ones are more resilient absent a safe haven. Sinno's organizational theory explains otherwise puzzling behavior found in group conflicts: the longevity of unpopular regimes, the demise of popular movements, and efforts of those who share a common cause to undermine their ideological or ethnic kin. The author argues that the organizational theory applies not only to Afghanistan-where he doubts the effectiveness of American state-building efforts—but also to other ethnic, revolutionary, independence, and secessionist conflicts in North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780801458064

Abdulkader H. Sinno

Melvyn Dubofsky, Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, is author of several books, including John L. Lewis: A Biography and We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW.

Book preview

ORGANIZATIONS AT WAR IN AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND

ABDULKADER H. SINNO

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Ithaca and London

In memory of Rafika and Hassan Sinno

CONTENTS

List of Maps and Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Note on Transliteration

1. Organizing to Win

PART ONE: A N O RGANIZATIONAL T HEORY OF G ROUP C ONFLICT

2. Organization and the Outcome of Conflicts

3. Advantages and Limitations of Structures

4. The Gist of the Organizational Theory

PART TWO: E XPLAINING THE O UTCOMES OF A FGHAN C ONFLICTS

5. The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan

6. Resilience through Division, 1979–1989

7. The Cost of the Failure to Restructure, 1989–1994

8. The Rise of the Taliban, 1994–2001

9. Afghan Conflicts under U.S. Occupation, 2001–

PART THREE: A ND B EYOND . . .

10. The Organizational Theory beyond Afghanistan

Glossary of Terms

Participants in Post-1978 Afghan Conflicts

References

MAPS AND FIGURES

MAPS

1. Afghanistan

2. Afghanistan Ethnic Map

FIGURES

1.1. Framework of the organizational theory of group conflict

1.2. The organizational theory’s predictions

3.1. How structure affects the ability to execute and counter different strategies

4.1. How structure influences organizational processes in territorial conflicts

6.1. A two-level game that illustrates how patronage ties created a strategic lockup for Afghan mujahideen parties

10.1. The effect of fit and aid on the probability of organizational survival, with 95 percent confidence intervals

10.2. The effect of fit and foreign aid on the probability of organizational survival by the end of the conflict for different organizational structures

10.3. The effect of wealth on the probability of the survival of incumbent and insurgent organizations by the end of the conflict (model 5)

10.4. Relationship between the structure of challengers without a safe haven and the outcome of conflicts

TABLES

6.1. Significant mujahideen parties during the Soviet occupation

6.2. Summary of factors that affected the Soviet divide-and-conquer strategy: expected results and actual outcomes

6.3. How different Afghan organizations executed processes before the Soviet withdrawal

7.1. Significant organizational contenders during the 1989–1994 conflicts

7.2. How Afghan organizations executed organizational processes between the Soviet withdrawal and the collapse of the Najib regime

7.3. How large Afghan organizations executed processes between the collapse of the Najib regime and the emergence of the Taliban

8.1. Significant organizational contenders during the 1994–2001 conflicts

8.2. How large Afghan organizations executed processes during the rise of the Taliban

10.1. Logit analysis of organizational survival by the end of a conflict

10.2. Fate of noncentralized and multiple challengers, based on whether they restructured or not

PREFACE

This is a detached academic book that hardly mentions the suffering and dignity of those who inspired it. Their suffering and dignity are no less real because of my tone and arguments.

It took a bit longer than a decade to bring this work from concept to book. Along the way, I collected debts of gratitude to many people. Their help was crucial but all mistakes are mine.

Among fellow academics, I thank Fiona Adamson, Mahabat Baimyrzaeva, Scott Desposato, Lynn Eden, Jim Fearon, Jonathan Friedlander, Barbara Geddes, James Gelvin, David Karol, Deborah Larson, Brian Lawson, Mike McGinnis, Lin Ostrom, Nazif Shahrani, Ben Valentino, and John Zaller for their comments and suggestions during the different phases of this project.

I thank participants at Stanford’s Decade of the Taliban conference for their comments on the paper that evolved into the eighth chapter of this book. I similarly thank participants, particularly Jim Fearon who was the discussant, in a Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) workshop at Stanford University for helpful comments on a paper that was the basis of the statistical study.

I also thank Daniel Shroeter, Mike Herb, Michael Gunter, and Gregory Gause for providing me with some hard-to-find data on Palestine, Oman, Turkey, and Yemen, respectively. I thank Dan Van Fleet and Michael Radcliffe for assisting with collecting data on conflicts from the Americas.

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Indiana University graciously provided the funds for producing the index and procuring a jacket image.

I acknowledge the support provided by Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation while working on this book and related projects. The CISAC fellowship provided income, facilities, a supportive environment, and research assistance. Most important, it allowed me to discuss my research with impressive scholars and practitioners with related interests. In particular, I acknowledge the support of Lynn Eden, Scott Sagan, and Steve Stedman.

I am heavily indebted to the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and the Department of Political Science at Indiana University for organizing a one-day symposium on the manuscript. In particular, I am grateful to Mike McGinnis, Jeff Isaac, Lin Ostrom, and Amos Sawyer for organizing and participating in this event. I thank other wonderful colleagues at Indiana University who participated in the symposium and who graciously provided me with incisive comments: Gardner Bovingdon, Michael Ensley, Sumit Ganguly, Henry Hale, Iliya Harik, Lauren Morris McLean, Vincent Ostrom, Karen Rasler, and Armando Razo. I particularly thank our guest at the symposium, David Laitin, for his thorough, extremely helpful, and penetrating comments on the manuscript. David Laitin’s boundless passion for the social sciences and his unmatched scholarship will always be a great model and source of inspiration for me.

I very much appreciate the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers.

I recognize the marvelous help, dedication, and patience of my editor at Cornell University Press, Roger Haydon, and the outstanding staff at the Press. They helped make this a much better book.

Many thanks go to Shaykh Lenny Binder, a superb adviser, mentor, master of the craft we both practice, and exemplar of integrity and intellectual grace.

I thank all those who were kind enough to meet me and provide detailed interviews, whether Afghans, Pakistanis, Arabs, or Westerners who experienced Afghan conflicts as observers, analysts, or participants. I decided to withhold all of their names, some on their request and others because of the unfortunate twists in Afghan-Western relations since 2001. I made sure that all information in this book would not harm or benefit any participant or interviewee. The information they provided was essential. I kept no records beyond the information provided in the text.

My appreciation goes to relatives and friends who supported me while I was working on this project. I am particularly indebted to my uncles Afif Sinno, Ahmad Jabr, and Rafik Jabr (bless his soul and wonderful memory). They gave me sound advice, encouragement, and financial help when, once, I was in dire need.

I owe everything to my mother and father. I dedicate this book to their memory.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

I generally employ the transliteration system suggested by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. For names and terms that have come into regular English usage, I do not transliterate (e.g., Shia instead of Shi‘a). I also drop initial hamzas and ‘ayns for well-known names, like Ismail or Massoud, for convenience. I do not add long vowel lines or the dots for velarized letters, confident that those familiar with Middle Eastern languages will be able to recognize the correct word from the transliteration and that others will be unaffected because of lack of interest in such minutiae.

CHAPTER 1

Organizing to Win

It was on the strength of their extensive organization that the peasants went into action and within four months [in 1926] brought about a great revolution in the countryside, a revolution without parallel in history.

—Mao Tse-tung, 1927

After we had exchanged the requisite formalities over tea in his camp on the southern edge of Kabul’s outer defense perimeter, the Afghan field commander told me that two of his bravest mujahideen were martyred because he did not have a pickup truck to take them to a Peshawar hospital. They had succumbed to their battle wounds. He asked me to tell his party’s bureaucrats across the border that he needed such a vehicle desperately. I double-checked with my interpreter that he was indeed making this request. I wasn’t puzzled because the request appeared unreasonable but because he was asking me, a twenty-year-old employee of a humanitarian organization, to intercede on his behalf with his own organization’s bureaucracy.

I understood on this dry 1991 summer day in Khurd Kabul that not all militant and political organizations are alike. While officers in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i Islami (Islamic Party) promptly honored written requests from their organization to allow me to set up basic clinics, field commanders (comandan) from other parties used the opportunity—and any other available leverage—to negotiate concessions from their party’s bureaucracy. The Hizb was a centralized organization with semiprofessionally trained officers, whereas the six other major mujahideen parties were based on highly decentralized and continuously renegotiated arrangements: field commanders gave their loyalty, support, and assistance to a party in return for the resources necessary to maintain their resistance activities.

The internal structure of the resistance explains not only how its field commanders dealt with me but also how different parties have performed during all Afghan conflicts since the 1979 Soviet invasion. During this summer of 1991, the mujahideen were bogged down around the defensive perimeters of the Afghan regime’s main garrison cities such as Kabul and Jalalabad. Jubilant experts expected that the regime of Dr. Mohammad Najibullah would collapse soon after the withdrawal of its Soviet patrons, but it lasted for longer than three years because the mujahideen were too loosely organized to mount the sustained assaults that would have led to victory. Ironically, their very decentralization had allowed them to be resilient in the face of overwhelming Soviet power for an entire decade earlier. I explain in this book how different modes of organization, such as these, affect the evolution and outcome of conflicts among organized groups in societies at war. But why should we try to understand the way group conflicts evolve and conclude?

Civil wars, revolutions, wars of liberation, guerilla wars, and other intrastate wars kill and maim millions every decade. Alas, they rarely end in negotiated settlements.¹ Yet social scientists have little understanding of the processes driving outcomes of civil wars other than those settled by negotiation. We generally focus on the rare negotiated settlement instead of decisive endings because the peaceful outcomes reflect our sensitivities and concerns.² Most of us, understandably, want to predict where conflicts will emerge and how to end them before they cause widespread human suffering or require costly intervention. Understanding the processes and correlates of decisive outcomes remains the concern of those directly involved in conflict—those in power, their advisers, and those dedicated to replacing them. Some participants survive long enough to analyze and share their experiences; but they may have good political reasons to ascribe their successes to the righteousness of their cause or the power of their ideology instead of the more mundane but critical factors that probably enabled them to defeat their rivals. Social scientists too should focus on decisive outcomes because winners of intrastate conflict shape the political system of the country, affect its economic performance, sometimes overhaul its culture and social structure, and rearrange the country’s alliances with other states.

Our understanding of the dynamics of group conflicts is still very basic. Surprising developments such as the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the fall of the Berlin wall were the result of complex processes that few observers, no matter how thorough and seasoned, were able to foresee. Few Western scholars thought that the United States would face an insurgency in Iraq after 2003. The succession of conflicts that afflicted Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion included similarly baffling developments and unpredictable outcomes at every juncture. Very few observers expected the Afghan mujahideen to resist the mighty Red Army so stubbornly, or the Soviets to withdraw without achieving any of their original goals. Once they did withdraw, almost everyone predicted the prompt defeat of their puppet regime by the seemingly invincible mujahideen. But the Najibullah regime survived until aid from Moscow ceased completely. Once the victorious mujahideen entered Kabul, they shocked the world and their staunchest supporters by engaging in fratricidal warfare, with many organizations reserving their most aggressive behavior for their ideological kin. When the bloody balance of power between the five surviving organizations appeared to stabilize, a new entrant suddenly emerged to sweep aside parties, warlords, commanders, khans, bandits, and smugglers alike—the Taliban. The Taliban seemed poised to overtake the remaining 5 percent of Afghanistan when an attack by one of its key allies, al-Qaida, motivated a determined United States to actively support the nearly defeated Northern Alliance forces and become a direct participant in the conflict. U.S. intervention dismantled the Taliban as an organized force in a few weeks. But if the past is any indication, resistance to the U.S. and NATO military occupation will develop into a full-fledged insurgency.

Observers generally provide simple explanations for surprising developments in Afghan conflicts. Some would tell you that the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation was so resilient because of U.S. support, the provision of Stinger missiles, the deep religious motivation of the mujahideen, or cultural factors. Some would tell you that the meteoric rise of the Taliban resulted from Pakistani support and Saudi money, ideological purity, or a public that was receptive to their strict law-and-order agenda. But such explanations often fail to define how those factors led to the unexpected outcomes, and many do not withstand the weight of contrary evidence. I propose an alternative way of analyzing conflict, one that is grounded in the analysis of organizations in conflict.

Ethnic groups, social classes, civilizations, religions, and nations do not engage in conflict or strategic interaction—organizations do. When Samuel Huntington tells us that civilizations clash, he is merely informing us that there are organizations (states and nonstates alike) that are engaged in conflict across what he believes to be borders of civilizations. When Marxists talk of class revolt, they envision it as instigated by a dedicated organization that mobilizes the toiling masses. As any close observer of civil war will tell you, ethnic groups rarely fight each other en masse—organizations, which are either ad hoc or extensions of existing social structures, use an ethnic agenda to attract some members and wage conflict in their name. Engaging in conflict consists of performing a number of essential processes, such as coordination, mobilization, and the manipulation of information, to undermine rivals within a contested territory. Amorphous entities such as civilizations, ethnic groups, or the masses cannot perform such operations—only organizations can do so. To say that a certain conflict pits a politicized group against another is to use shorthand to indicate that organizations that recruit from among those groups are engaged in conflict. It is perfectly reasonable to use shorthand, but its use distracts the social scientist from focusing on the mechanisms that best explain how conflicts begin, evolve, and conclude.

An organizational approach to the study of conflict is both old and new. The fourteenth-century Muslim chronicler and analyst Ibn Khaldun (Muqaddimah, 130) tells us that a dynasty rarely establishes itself firmly in lands with many tribes and groups. In the sixteenth century, Machiavelli theorized that an occupier’s success in holding a newly conquered territory has much to do with the organization of its inhabitants:

Whoever attacks the Turk must reckon on finding a united people, and must trust rather to his own strength than to divisions on the other side. But were his adversary once overcome and defeated in the field, so that he could not repair his armies, no cause for anxiety would remain. . . . But the contrary is the case in kingdoms governed like that of France, into which, because men who are discontented and desirous of change are always to be found, you may readily procure entrance by gaining over some Baron of the Realm. . . . But afterwards the effort to hold your ground involves you in endless difficulties, as well in respect to those who have helped you, as of those whom you have overthrown. . . . All those other Lords remain to put themselves at the head of new movements; whom being unable either to content or to destroy, you lose the State whenever occasion serves them.³

His insight remains astonishingly relevant for today’s conflicts.

Some three centuries later, Alexis de Tocqueville argued that patterns of societal organization governed the outcome of competition among colonial powers in the Americas. Decentralized states such as Britain, he said, endow their citizens with the characteristics (independence, initiative, autonomy) necessary to make successful colonists, unlike centralized ones such as France. This, he argued, explains why the Americas were ultimately dominated by people of British background and not by settlers of French descent. He also mentions that a society needs strong social groups and institutions capable of independent action in their own right to check the power of the established government, or any domestic or foreign usurper.⁴ Tocqueville also focused on the importance of organization within classes as well as the centralization of power in his elegant explanation of the French Revolution.⁵

The lives and writings of perceptive participants in resistance and revolutionary conflicts suggest the importance of organizational matters. The unsuccessful experiences of European anarchists who disdained political organization show how detrimental fragmentation can be for revolutionaries. A premature shift from a decentralized structure (with its regional autonomy and specialization, cohesive small groups, and efficient local mobilization) to centralization has been widely recognized to be disastrous for revolutionary organizations by participants in the Greek Communist experience and the Tet offensive in Vietnam.⁶ And Major (later General) Charles Callwell (1976, 157–58) notes in his late nineteenth-century manual on guerrilla war that it is in the best interest of the centralized state to assist in the transformation of its rivals into a centralized and specialized organization that mimics a modern army. The Chinese Communists accomplished the classic successful transformation from decentralized guerrilla forces into a centralized conventional army after World War II.⁷ This successful restructuring occurred after several failed and premature attempts (in Jiangxi between 1927 and 1934 and in northern China during World War II) that led to defeats but provided lessons that assisted the ultimate successful transformation.⁸ Mao summarized his experience with the following recipe:

There must be a gradual change from guerrilla formations to orthodox regimental organization. The necessary bureaus and staffs, both political and military, must be provided. At the same time, attention must be paid to the creation of suitable supply, medical, and hygiene units. The standards of equipment must be raised and types of weapons increased. Communication equipment must not be forgotten. Orthodox standards of discipline must be established.⁹

Vo Nguyen Giap applied Mao’s formula to resist the three latest occupiers of Vietnam.¹⁰ He successfully transitioned his forces from decentralized guerrilla bands into the three-tiered force—a mobile centralized force with specialized units, regional forces, and local militias, all flanked by a parallel system of political commissars—which defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu and caused the United States to abandon Vietnam. Giap’s description of the process shows the care given to organization building by those who successfully practice the craft of resistance and revolution:

In the early stage of the Resistance War, our army was in extremely difficult conditions, short of arms and munitions, its formation varied from one locality to another. Parallel with the gradual development from guerrilla warfare to mobile warfare and with better supply and equipment, we had from scattered units, gradually organized concentrated ones, then regiments and divisions of a regular army. In the units of the regular army, the organization was unified step by step. The regiments and divisions were made up at first of infantrymen only. Later there were units of support and later sappers units and light artillery units, etc.¹¹

We have research on Communist organizational thought because of the West’s longstanding obsession with the Communist revolutionary threat, but Communists have no monopoly on concern with matters of organization. Members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood engaged in tense debates about organizational matters that they believe to be extremely important. Such debates recur wherever Islamist movements develop, and different groups have adopted the organizational structure they felt best suited their situation. Nor is concern with organization restricted to territorially bound groups—it extends to transnational activities, as the words of Sheikh Fathi Yakan, a Sunni Islamist leader from Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, reveal:

Another principal feature that a unitary global Islamic movement should have is decentralization [la-markaziyyah]. . . . Emigration [hijrah] in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) was a profound indication that decentralization should be part of Islamic work and that the establishment of Islam could be easy and possible in one place and difficult, if not impossible, in another. It then becomes necessary to expand efforts where results are easier to achieve, to preserve time and energy.¹²

Advocates of decentralization, which would otherwise be abhorrent to Islamists because it might indicate an acceptance of the division of the Ummah (Muslim community), justify its adoption based on the writings of the fourteenth-century theologian Ibn Taymiyyah. Ibn Taymiyyah maintained that the Ummah does not necessarily need a single leader (imam) and that, when historical conditions require it, there could be several leaders so long as they are worthy individuals. Sayyid Qutb, the foremost ideologue of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, advocated extreme local centralization by recommending the formation of a tightly knit countersociety of believers in the midst of infidel society. The society of believers should be self-enclosed to avoid fragmentation and penetration by alien influences, but it should be able to engage the remainder of society to acquire what it needs but cannot produce itself.¹³ The countersociety’s goal is to become the majority and to later replace the old society. From an organizational perspective, this vanguard-based approach could appear to be similar to the Bolshevik approach to seizing power, but Qutb conceived of the possibility of many such countersocieties existing in the midst of society independent of one another.¹⁴ Any three believers can form an independent society, and this multiplicity would be acceptable at the early stage of the process of transforming society from the state of jahiliyya (pre-Islamic ignorance of the divine message or current disregard for it) to that of iman (belief).

Alternatively, Yakan advises Islamist organizations that compete with the powers that be on a one-to-one basis to adopt a strictly centralized structural pattern to preserve discipline and internal cohesion.¹⁵ He wants to avoid a repeat of the debilitating structural problems that plagued the Muslim Brotherhood, the original modern Islamist organization in the Middle East, among emerging ones.¹⁶

Revolutionary thinkers have given matters of organization their deserved importance, but their recommendations are not consistent. Some paid for their mistaken analyses with their lives. The findings in the balance of this study should show who was right.

Two factors hindered the modern emergence of theories of conflict and revolution based on the vertical stratification of society, such as Machiavelli’s, or a mixture of vertical and class stratifications, such as Tocqueville’s. The first is the adoption by many scholars and intellectuals of Marxist perspectives emphasizing class politics. The second is that many modern coups and revolutions that attracted Western attention until the 1990s were led by Communists who tried to develop class consciousness in even the least likely environments. Yet, political scientists have slowly regained awareness of the importance of social structure and other types of organizational patterns for a deeper understanding of conflict processes.

Charles Tilly (1978) tells us that political violence is likely to occur only when aggrieved groups have the means to mobilize resources through organization, which will allow them to develop the capability to control territory or topple the government. Some scholars of social movements (e.g., McCarthy and Zald 1973, 1977; several works by Tilly, Tarrow, and McAdam) have emphasized aspects of organization in mobilizing such movements in the West. Samuel Popkin (1979) argues that revolutionary movements succeed in attracting and holding mass support when, through the provision of good leadership, they succeed in solving local-level collective-action problems that could not be addressed by traditional leaders. Local organizers are able to generate a revolutionary surplus that they contribute to the nationwide revolution. Both Michael Taylor (1988) and David Laitin (1993, when applied to the development of nationalist movements) provide more general theories of collective action that argue that revolutions develop and are more likely to succeed where there is an abundance of well-knit small communities. More recently, Roger Petersen (2001), Stathis Kalyvas (2004, 2006), and Jeremy Weinstein have scrutinized the microsocietal dynamics that govern participation in civil wars. In this book I move beyond their insights by proposing that not all modes of organization are equal and by exploring how different organizational structures affect the outcome of conflict.

This book also benefits from breakthroughs in the field of organizational theory. The study of organizations has advanced dramatically in the last half century thanks to scholars of business management, sociology, and anthropology. I draw in particular on the development of contingency theory in management studies.¹⁷ Contingency theorists try to predict the performance or effectiveness of an organization based on the extent to which the organization’s structure matches contextual contingencies such as organizational size, technology, and the environment. I consider different organizational components and contingencies than classical contingency theorists, but the general principles of this approach apply equally well to business and militant organizations.

The similarities between a corporation and a warring organization are considerable: both compete with other organizations (the state and other revolutionary organizations in the case of the latter) to get a larger share of a market (popular support) and perhaps dominate it (take control of the state apparatus or an ethnic homeland). So why is the organizational study of corporations so advanced while scant attention is given to that of revolutionary and similar organizations? Perhaps because most corporations, unlike revolutionary organizations, encourage the study of their structures in their unrelenting pursuit of improved productivity. A second reason is that corporations pour huge sums into funding research that yields tangible results while scholars of conflict are not under pressure to provide practical advice. Yet another reason is that, in addition to scholars who study firms, there are legions of professional managerial consultants who are evaluated on the quality of their advice to the corporations to which they charge exorbitant fees. Specialized consultants and academics also frequently move in and out of firms, while few, if any, academics attain positions of leadership in militant organizations and return to academia to analyze their experiences in comparative context.

Modern armies are never more than a step behind corporations in adopting structural innovations.¹⁸ Generals and military planners are often preoccupied with chains of command, command and control (with a focus on redundancy), and the advantages and disadvantages of centralization.¹⁹ Many sociologists have promoted the idea that organizations in different settings, such as corporations, states, and tribal societies, have much in common.²⁰ Although this may not always be true, there is no reason to believe that organizations at war are unlike any other kind of organization and cannot be more or less effective because of structural factors.

The Core of the Argument

The distribution of power within organizations (what we call structure) in conflicts such as civil war or resistance to occupation creates incentives that motivate the individual behavior of organizational members in ways that affect the organization’s ability to outlast its rivals. Figure 1.1 provides the framework for an organizational theory of group conflict. The framework lists relevant organizational structures, the key processes they influence, and the possible outcomes for an organization engaged in conflict. It also represents the one contingency that affects whether a structure is advantageous: the organization’s ability to keep its rivals from infringing on a territorial safe haven within the boundaries of the overall contested area. The adoption of specific structures by rivals in a territorial conflict affects their odds of survival and, consequently, the outcome of the conflict.

Types of Organizational Structure

I consider five basic organizational structures (ways that power can be distributed within and among organizations): centralized, decentralized, patron-client, multiple, and fragmented. Centralization is the measure of distribution of power over decision making among the top-tier leadership and second-level or subsequent cadres within the organization. Decision making deals with the formulation of strategy, making appointments, the distribution of resources, the control of communication, and enforcing discipline. Second-level cadres (e.g., field commanders, village leaders, imams of mosques, heads of associations) can only make such decisions for local matters, while the top leadership can be decisive on both the local and organizational levels. The more control second-level or subsequent cadres wield over the formulation of local strategy and other decisions, the more decentralized the organization.

A patron-client relationship is one of exchange in which a party (the patron) allocates a resource or is capable of providing a service to another party (the client) who needs it and is ready to exchange temporary loyalty, general support, and assistance for it. It is considerably easier for a client to exit a relationship with a patron than for a regular agent to do the same with his principal. To illustrate with familiar terms from the corporate world, a client is analogous to a contractor and an agent to an employee. Although some consider patron-client relations to be attributes of some cultures, I consider them to be structural links that can exist within any organization.

FIGURE 1.1. Framework of the organizational theory of group conflict

The two other dimensions of organization are movement-specific and only applicable to challengers. Some conflicts feature one independent challenger, some multiple independent challengers (two to four organizations), and others a fragmented opposition (five or more organizations). I decided on the cutoff between multiplicity and fragmentation after noticing a different dynamic in qualitative case studies once the number of organizations exceeds four—this is the empirical point of transition from competition with specific rivals to positioning the organization within an industry of conflict. What makes an organization independent is that its rank and file is bound to its leadership, and no other leadership, as agents or clients. I consider an organization to be significant if it musters reasonable popular support and its activities affect the strategies and operations of other significant organizations. If the incumbent (the government or occupier) has no organized challengers, then society is atomized for our purposes. Atomized societies do not produce sustained militant opposition.

The Safe Haven Contingency

The contingency that decisively influences how structure affects performance is the organization’s control of a territorial safe haven—a portion of the contested territory where an organization’s rivals cannot intervene with enough force to disturb its operations. A safe haven is important because each organization in conflict must perform eight critical processes well, and perform most of them better than the competition, to have a good chance of winning. The way power is distributed within the organization (i.e., structure) creates incentives that affect how organizational members perform such operations, and the availability of a safe haven (the contingency) affects whether they can achieve the levels of performance their organizational structure permits. The safe haven should be within the contested territory. Havens across the border are rarely safe for long because finicky sponsors may interrupt operations at will or distract the organization from its original goals by making it a tool to project influence in the neighboring country. Insurgents have a safe haven when the incumbent lacks the ability to effectively fight them in some regions of the country for any number of reasons—for example, loss of foreign aid, divisions within the military, or an underdeveloped state apparatus. Insurgents do not necessarily need a safe haven to win because regimes may collapse (e.g., Iranian Revolution) and occupiers may withdraw (e.g., Algerian War of Liberation) before they acquire one.

Organizations without a Safe Haven

The most important goal for organizations that are subject to the constant harassment of rivals is to survive long enough to take advantage of opportunities that may come up in the future that could advantage them. Centralized organizations are very vulnerable absent a safe haven because they rely on close coordination among their specialized branches and depend heavily on a few key leaders. Coordination can be frequently interrupted by stronger rivals, which makes the nonautonomous organizational components ineffective. The organization can also be incapacitated if decapitated, the way the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was weakened by the capture of Abdullah Ocalan or the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, the Communist Party of Peru) by the capture of Abimael Guzmán. Centralized organizations without a territorial safe haven can also be routed through the use of sophisticated strategies that aim to isolate them from potential supporters. This is how the Omani Zhofaris, the Kenyan Mau Mau, and the Malayan Communists, among others, were defeated. Centralized organizations are also much less capable of mobilizing support than noncentralized ones absent a safe haven because they are less rooted in the social structure and their nonautonomous branches are not as responsive and adaptable to local needs.

Centralized organizations are also vulnerable to becoming tools for the projection of the power of their foreign sponsors instead of pursuing their independent goals because their leaders are able to bring the rank and file along with their shifts in strategy. Many Palestinian organizations shrank their way to near oblivion by becoming surrogates of Syria or Iraq in internecine Palestinian conflicts rather than pursuing a sensible agenda and popular policies so that they could grow at the expense of rivals. A foreign sponsor often requests exclusive sponsorship of a centralized organization and consequently manages to have strong leverage over its leader. Even more damaging can be the withdrawal of support by this one sponsor. Many organizations, such as the Sahrawi Polisario in the Western Sahara region of Morocco after the withdrawal of Algerian support, faltered this way. A centralized organization without a safe haven will also not be able to effectively use mechanisms otherwise available to it to enforce discipline, such as redundant structures and specialized branches, because they cannot be easily developed under duress and they require coordination and intensive communication. Centralized organizations also cannot manipulate and move information and knowledge effectively absent a safe haven: information needs to travel a long way from where it is produced to where it is needed in such organizations, and its flow can be easily interrupted or intercepted by rivals.

Noncentralized organizations are more resilient than centralized ones in hostile environments because their different components are more autonomous and less dependent on coordination. They are not as vulnerable as centralized organizations to shortcuts like decapitation or sophisticated strategies that aim to isolate the organization because the rank and file are both fairly independent and well ensconced within the social structure. The leader of a noncentralized organization will risk the noncompliance of its more autonomous rank and file if he tries to transform the organization into the surrogate of a foreign sponsor; the noncentralized organization is therefore less likely to squander its credibility and support. Some decentralized organizational setups (multiple patronage-based organizations) can even result in a strategic lockup when the insurgent organizational leaders cannot compromise with the powers that be regardless of their desire to do so or be pressured by sponsors because they would lose their rank and file (see chapter 6). Multiple organizations might even attract multiple sponsors, thus producing the kind of redundancy that would shield them in the aggregate from an abrupt cessation of support by any one sponsor. Noncentralized organizations are also advantaged in mobilizing support in a hostile environment because their more autonomous cadres are more responsive to local needs and are better able to mete out positive and negative sanctions than the officers of centralized ones. Control and discipline are easier to maintain within smaller and autonomous groups in hostile environments, which gives an advantage to noncentralized organizations enmeshed in intricate social structures. Information does not need to move far in noncentralized organizations: it is mostly produced and used locally with little input from the leadership and with little probability of interception by rivals.

Sophisticated incumbents can easily defeat a fragmented insurgent landscape because its different components are the equivalent of tiny vulnerable independent centralized organizations.

Organizations with a Safe Haven

An organization that can operate in a portion of the contested territory without much interference from rivals needs to take coordinated strategic action to decisively eliminate such rivals beyond its safe haven. If it doesn’t, it will allow its rivals to repeatedly attack it and to perhaps ultimately defeat it. It might also lose supporters to organizations that make faster progress and be dropped from aid from sponsors that lose interest. Centralized organizations are much more capable than noncentralized ones of taking the strategic