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Abstract
This article fills the gap in existing scholarship on asymmetric conflict, indigenous forces, and how socio-cultural codes shape the dynamics and outcomes of conflict transformation. Specifically, it identifies three key socio-cultural values commonplace in honorific societies: retaliation, hospitality, and silence. As sources of effective pro-insurgent violent mobilisation and support from among the local population, these values provide insurgents with an asymmetric advantage over much stronger incumbents. Using the case studies of the two Russian counterinsurgencies in Chechnya, the article shows the mechanisms on the ground through which Moscow’s deployment of indigenous forces against insurgents helped to stem the tide of conflict, reversing the insurgents’ initial advantage in terms of asymmetry of values.
Acknowledgements
This study was carried out in the framework of the Research Project of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, entitled P17 Science on Society, Politics, and Media.
Notes
1 Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Regular and Irregular Indigenous Forces for a Long Irregular War’, The RUSI Journal 152 /1 (2007), 42–7; James S. Corum, Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 2006).
2 Corum, Training Indigenous Forces; Robert M. Cassidy, ‘The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency’, Parameters 36/1 (2006), 47–62; Yoav Gortzak, ‘Using Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency Operations: The French in Algeria, 1954–1962’, Journal of Strategic Studies 32/2 (April 2009), 307–33.
3 Cassidy, ‘The Long Small War’, 47–8.
4 Gortzak, ‘Using Indigenous Forces’, 329–31.
5 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press 2006).
6 T.V. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge: CUP 1994); Colin S. Gray, ‘Thinking Asymmetrically in Times of Terror’, Parameters 32/1 (Spring 2002), 5–14.
7 Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts.
8 Cassidy, ‘Regular and Irregular Indigenous Forces’, 42–3.
9 Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Why Great Powers Fight Small Wars Badly’, Military Review 10-11 (2000), 41–53.
10 Ibid., 44.
11 Andrew Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict’, World Politics 27/1 (1975), 175–200.
12 The interest in motivational asymmetry began to increase following the Vietnam War.
13 Michael P. Fischerkeller, ‘David versus Goliath: Cultural Judgments in Asymmetric Wars’, Security Studies 7/4 (1998), 1–43.
14 Robert M. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic Culture and the Paradoxes of Asymmetric Conflict (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 1993).
15 Michael L. Gross, Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict (New York: Cambridge UP 2010); Yves Winter, ‘The Asymmetric War Discourse and its Moral Economies: A Critique’, International Theory 3/3 (2011), 488–514; Th.A. van Baarda and D.E.M. Verweij (eds), The Moral Dimension of Asymmetrical Warfare. Counter-terrorism, Democratic Values and Military Ethics (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff 2009).
16 Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge: CUP 2003).
17 Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2003).
18 John Alexander, ‘“Decomposing” an Insurgency: Reintegration in Afghanistan’, The RUSI Journal 157/4 (Aug./Sept. 2012), 48–54.
19 Kimberly Theidon, ‘Transitional Subjects: The Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Colombia’, The International Journal of Transitional Justice 1 (2007), 66–90.
20 David L. Buffaloe, ‘Defining Asymmetric Warfare’, The Land Warfare Papers 58/09 (2006), 22–4.
21 Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1996).
22 Alexander, ‘“Decomposing” an Insurgency’, 50.
23 David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst 2009).
24 Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars’, Parameters 34/1 (2004), 73–83.
25 Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla; Shahmahmood Miakhel, Understanding Afghanistan: The Importance of Tribal Culture and Structure in Security and Governance (US Institute of Peace 2009); Gilles Dorronsoro and Chantal Lobato, ‘The Militia in Afghanistan’, Central Asian Survey 8/4 (1989), 95–108.
26 Jama Mohamed, ‘Kinship and Contract in Somali Politics’, Africa 77/02 (May 2007), 226–49; Christopher Boehm, Blood Revenge: The Enactment and Management of Conflict in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 1984); Michael J. Boyle, ‘Revenge and Reprisal Violence in Kosovo’, Conflict, Security & Development 10/2 (2010), 189–216.
27 Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘Honor and the Sentiments of Loss in a Bedouin Society’, American Ethnologist 12/2 (1985), 245–261; Scott Simon, ‘Politics and Headhunting among the Formosan Sejiq: Ethnohistorical Perspectives’, Oceania 82/2 (2012), 164–85.
28 Roger V. Gould, ‘Revenge as Sanction and Solidarity Display: An Analysis of Vendettas in Nineteenth-Century Corsica’, American Sociological Review 65/5 (2000), 682–704; Rudolph Bell, Fate, Honor, Family and Village. Demographic and Cultural Change in Rural Italy since 1800 (Univ. of Chicago Press 2009); Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1995).
29 Emil Souleimanov, ‘The Caucasus Emirate: Genealogy of an Islamist Insurgency’, Middle East Policy 18/4 (2011), 55–168.
30 Edward N. Luttwak, ‘Toward Post-Heroic Warfare’, Foreign Affairs (May/June 1995), 109–122; Avi Kober, ‘From Heroic to Postheroic Warfare: Israel’s Way of War in Asymmetrical Conflicts’, Armed Forces & Society 40 (2013), 1–27.
31 Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Counterinsurgency and Military Culture: State Regulars versus Non-State Irregulars’, Baltic Security & Defence Review 10 (2008), 53–85.
32 Charles Lister, ‘Cultural Awareness and Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan’, E-International Relations 11 (2011), 2.
33 Eli Berman, Jacob N. Shapiro and Joseph H. Felter, ‘Can Hearts and Minds be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq’, Journal of Political Economy 119/4 (2011), 766–819, 771.
34 Miakhel, Understanding Afghanistan, 6.
35 Ibid.
36 Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 39–41.
37 Amy Nivette, ‘Violence in Non-State Societies: A Review’, British Journal of Criminology 51 (2011), 578–98, 586.
38 Ibid., 585.
39 Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars; Ivan Arrequin-Toft, ‘How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict’, International Security 26/1 (2001), 93–128.
40 Cassidy, ‘Regular and Irregular Indigenous Forces’.
41 Aziz A. Hakimi, ‘Getting Savages to Fight Barbarians: Counterinsurgency and the Remaking of Afghanistan’, Central Asian Survey 32/3 (2013), 388–405, 388.
42 Dorronsoro and Lobato, ‘The Militia in Afghanistan’.
43 Ahmed S. Hashim, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2006).
44 Gortzak, ‘Using Indigenous Forces’.
45 Timothy K. Deady, Lessons from a Successful Counterinsurgency: The Philippines, 1899–1902 (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College 2005); Corum, Training Indigenous Forces; Christopher Herbert, War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma (Princeton UP 2008).
46 Cassidy, ‘The Long Small War’, 59.
47 Ibid.
48 Jeffrey Gettleman, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, ‘US Relies on Contractors in Somalia Conflict’, New York Times, 10 Aug. 2011.
49 Mark Kramer, ‘The Perils of Counterinsurgency: Russia’s War in Chechnya’, International Security 29/3 (2004), 5–63, 9.
50 The beginning of the massive deployment of kadyrovtsy paramilitaries in combat dates back to 2003.
51 Ilya Maksakov, ‘Chetyre Putinskikh Goda v Chechne’, Prague Watchdog, 26 March 2004.
52 In May 1999, just a few months before the outbreak of the Second Chechen War, the animosity between Kadyrov and his opponents among Chechnya’s jihadists, led by influential warlords (Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab) resulted in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Akhmad Kadyrov, which claimed the lives of five of his bodyguards, including three of his nephews. This effectively started the blood feud between the warring sides.
53 The seizure of relatives of Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of Chechnya’s insurgency, including his two brothers and sisters aged 69–75, is a typical example of this phenomenon. After Maskhadov’s refusal to capitulate, some of his relatives, captured by kadyrovtsy and Russian secret services, disappeared without a trace (Pravda.ru, ‘V Chechne Pokhischeny Rodstvenniki Maskhadova’, Pravda, 10 Jan. 10 (2005)).
54 Jamestown Foundation, Chechnya Weekly 8/21 (24 May 2007); New York Times, ‘Russia: Chechen Mass Grave Found’, NYT, 21 June 2008.
55 For a detailed account of the Russian military-led COIN in Chechnya, see, for instance, Emma Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya: Russia and the Tragedy of Civilians in War (Princeton UP 2013).
56 Online interview with Irina Gordienko, Novaya gazeta, 9 June 2014.
57 Kavkaz Uzel, 28 Jan. 2014, <www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/237203/>.
58 Ibid., <www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/237341/>.
59 For a more detailed overview of Chechen ethnography, see Amjad Jaimoukha, The Chechens: A Handbook (New York: Routledge 2005); Emil Souleimanov, An Endless War: The Russian-Chechen Conflict in Perspective (Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2007), 19–42.
60 James Hughes, ‘The Chechnya Conflict: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?’, Demokratizatsiya 15/3 (2007), 293–311; Souleimanov, An Endless War; Michael McCullough, Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2008), 35–8; Jean-François Ratelle, Radical Islam and the Chechen War Spillover: A Political Ethnographic Reassessment of the Upsurge of Violence in the North Caucasus since 2009 (Univ. of Ottawa 2013), 157–64.
61 Interview with ‘Idris’, 43, London, Nov. 2011.
62 Interviews with Chechens, eyewitnesses of the First and Second Chechen Wars, in Moscow (Sept. 2009), Paris (Aug. 2011), London (Nov.2011), and Istanbul (Sept. 2012).
63 Ibid.
64 Interview with a member of the Chechen Ministry of Interior, Istanbul, Sept. 2012. See also Emil Souleimanov, ‘Russian Chechnya Policy: “Chechenisation” turning into “Kadyrovisation”’, CACI Analyst 5/31 (2006).
65 Emil Souleimanov, ‘An Ethnography of Counterinsurgency: Kadyrovtsy and Russia’s Policy of Chechenisation’, Post-Soviet Affairs (forthcoming in 2014), 1–24.
66 Interview with ‘Rasul’, 41, London, Nov. 2011.
67 Online interview with Mairbek Vatchagaev, 28 May 2014.
68 Online interview with Tomáš Šmíd, an expert on the North Caucasus at Masaryk University, 9 June 2014.
69 Interview with ‘Magomed’, 61, Istanbul, Sept. 2012.
70 Interviews with Chechen eyewitnesses of the First Chechen War, in Moscow (Sept. 2009), Paris (Aug. 2011), London (Nov. 2011), and Istanbul (Sept. 2012).
71 Interview with Boris Yemelin, a Russian Army officer during the First Chechen War, Moscow, Sept. 2009.
72 Interviews with Chechen eyewitnesses of the First Chechen War, in Moscow (Sept. 2009), Paris (Aug. 2011), London (Nov. 2011), and Istanbul (Sept. 2012).
73 Interview with ‘Magomed’, 46, Copenhagen, Sept. 2012.
74 Online interview with Irina Gordienko, Novaya gazeta, 9 June 2014.
75 Kadyrovtsy are a committed, disciplined, and well-armed force of 7,000, outweighing any Chechen clan.
76 Interviews with Chechen eyewitnesses of the First Chechen War, in Moscow (Sept. 2009), Paris (Aug. 2011), London (Nov. 2011), and Istanbul (Sept. 2012).
77 Online interview with Magomed Toriyev, Radio Freedom/Radio Free Europe, North Caucasian Department, 15 June 2014.
78 Literally translated as ‘Chechenness’, the code of etiquette interlinked with adat.
79 Interview with ‘Musa’, 57, London, Nov. 2011.
80 Online interview with Mairbek Vatchagaev, Jamestown Foundation, 9 June 2014.
81 Interview with ‘Beslan’, 60, Copenhagen, Sept. 2012.
82 Online interview with Mairbek Vatchagaev, 9 June 2014.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Emil A. Souleimanov
Huseyn Aliyev has recently completed his PhD in Politics at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His most recent publications have appeared in Demokratizatsiya (2013), Etnopolitics Papers (2013), Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (2014) and Studies of Transition States and Societies (2014).
Huseyn Aliyev
Emil Aslan Souleimanov is an associate professor of Russian and East European Studies at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He has published extensively on the insurgency and counterinsurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus.