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ABSTRACT
The paper compares political territoriality of selected jihadist violent non-state actors. Looking at selected groups that attempted to control territory (Afghan Taliban, Al-Shabaab, the Islamic State), it attempts to establish a generalization regarding the use of territory by this type of violent non-state actors. To this end, it analyses connection of territory to groups´ security provision, economic activity, and identity. Despite many differences among the groups, it concludes that these groups often utilize both territorial and personal characteristics. Territoriality of these actors is reactive as they are unable to present a sustained control in contested regions.
Acknowledgments
This paper is an outcome of the Charles University Research Development Schemes, programme PROGRES Q18 - Social sciences: from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. See, for example, Caspersen, Unrecognized States; Riegl, “Terminologie kvazistátů”; and Riegl and Doboš, Unrecognized States and Secession in the 21st Century.
2. Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 78–80.
3. See, for example, Menkhaus, “Governance without Government in Somalia.”
4. Before the invasion Taliban acted as a de facto Afghan government as it proclaimed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and was able to control most of its territory.
5. Despite the fact that they sometimes adopt strategy close to criminal gangs. This is evident, for example, from the use of violence by Al-Qaeda in Iraq against other Sunni movements (Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement, 80) that mimics the pattern of use of violence by criminal organizations in competition with its rivals (Mandel, Dark Logic, 52–56).
6. Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement, 160–161.
7. ‘(…) al-Qaida (…) sees places not as differentiated bundles of political opportunities, but as temporary nodes, targets or havens.´ (Hamdan, “Breaker or Barriers?” 613).
8. Sack, “Human Territoriality: A Theory,” 55.
9. Sack, “Human Territoriality: A Theory,” 56.
10. Vasquez, “Why Do Neighbours Fight?” 283.
11. Vollaard, “The Logic of Political Territoriality,” 690.
12. Elden, “Thinking Territory Historically,” 757.
13. Distinct from land – a portion of land not covered by water – and property – a collection of rights, moral powers, and duties giving the right to access and control object and deny others to do so (Moore, Political Theory of Territory, 15–16.).
14. Gottmann, The significance of territory, 7.
15. Elden, The Birth of Territory, 7.
16. Miller, “Territorial Rights,” 253.
17. Moore, Political Theory of Territory, 9.
18. Sack, “Human Territoriality: A Theory,” 57.
19. See note 11 above, 691.
20. Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History, 2–3.
21. Agnew, Globalization and Sovereignty, 6.
22. Kahler and Walter, Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization, 3.
23. See note 17 above, 26.
24. Goemans, “Bounded communities: territoriality, territorial attachment, and conflict,” 29.
25. Johnson and Toft, “Grounds for War”.
26. Gartzke, “Globalization, economic development, and territorial conflict”, 179; and Kahler and Walter, Territoriality and Conflict in an Era of Globalization, 4–13.
27. Vasquez, “Why Do Neighbours Fight?” 289.
28. Johnston, “Out of the moribound water”, 684–685.
29. Glassner, Political Geography.
30. MacKay et al., “Before and after borders”, 102.
31. Elden, The Birth of Territory, 329.
32. See note 14 above, 5.
33. Ibid., 11.
34. Grygiel, “The Power of Statelessness.”
35. Arjona, Rebelocracy.
36. See, for example, Gros, “Towards a taxonomy of failed states in the New World Order.”
37. Does the group defend territory or does it shift its territorial focus without the protection of a specific area? How does it act in relation to the permanent population of their claimed territory?
38. Does the group use resources from a given territory or does it rely on other forms of financing?
39. Do the selected groups see their area of operation as important for their identity or do they primarily pursue a global agenda?
40. See, for example, George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development, 95–96, 155–160; and van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, 77–88.
41. Otherwise known as ISIL, ISIS, or Daesh.
42. See, for example, Doboš, “Shapeshifter of Somalia”.
43. In 1996 the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was established.
44. Stratfor, “The Afghanistan Campaign, Part 2”.
45. Exemplified by a story of its leader Mullah Mohammad Omar allegedly saving two teenage girls from warlord captivity in which they were repeatedly raped in 1994 – similar stories appeared elsewhere giving Taliban large credibility among the part of the Afghan population. For more detail on the topic see Ahmed, Jihad & co., 64–94.
46. See note 44 above.
47. For more information on the issue see, for example, Abbas, The Taliban Revival.
48. See Ahmed, Jihad & co., 178–182.
49. Abbas, The Taliban Revival, 78–80. These two have been once again brought closer together as a consequence of the ISIS presence in the country (Azami, “The Islamic State in South and Central Asia,” 140).
50. Thruelsen, “The Taliban in southern Afghanistan,” 264.
51. Ahmed, Jihad & co., 4–6.
52. Thruelsen, “The Taliban in southern Afghanistan,” 269; Johnson, “Taliban adaptations and innovations,” 9; Mahendrarajah, “Conceptual failure, the Taliban’s parallel hierarchies, and America’s strategic defeat in Afghanistan,” 109–112; and Johnson, DuPee, “Analysing the new Taliban Code of Conduct (Layeha),” 87. It must also be noted that the popularity of Taliban grew in the face of the incursion of ISIS and its brutal tactics into the region. Azami, “The Islamic State in South and Central Asia,” 139.
53. Thruelsen, “The Taliban in southern Afghanistan,” 267–268.
54. Abbas, The Taliban Revival.
55. Peters. “How Opium Profits the Taliban”.
56. Mahendrarajah, “Conceptual failure, the Taliban’s parallel hierarchies, and America’s strategic defeat in Afghanistan,” 109.
57. Also, see Azami, “The Islamic State in South and Central Asia,” 142.
58. Ahmed, Jihad & co., 27.
59. See Ahmed, Jihad & co., 64–94.
60. Mwangi, “State Collapse, Al-Shabaab, Islamism and Legitimacy in Somalia,” 518; and Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, 73.
61. Fergusson, The World’s Most Dangerous Place.
62. Marchal, “A tentative assessment of the Somali Harakat Al-Shabaab,” 390.
63. Mwangi, “State Collapse, Al-Shabaab, Islamism and Legitimacy in Somalia,” 514; Garnstein-Ross, “The Strategic Challenge of Somalia´s Al-Shabaab,” 34–35; and Antwi-Boateng, “The Rise of Pan-Islamic Terrorism in Africa,” 268.
64. Anderson, “Kenya at War”.
65. United Nations Security Council, “Letter dated 10 December 2008 from the Chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 751 (1992) concerning Somalia addressed to the President of the Security Council”.
66. Anderson, “Kenya at War,” 10–11; and United Nations Security Council, “Letter dated 10 October 2014 from the Chair of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea addressed to the President of the Security Council”.
68. Kambere, “Financing Al-Shabaab”; and Jones, Waging Insurgent Warfare, 140.
69. Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia.
70. See Solomon, Terrorism and Counter Terrorism in Africa, 50–58.
71. Ahmed, Jihad and co., 119–141.
72. Menkhaus, “Al-Shabab´s Capabilities Post-Westgate,” 5; and Solomon, “Somalia´s Al-Shabaab,” 357.
73. Thomas, “Exposing and exploiting weaknesses n the merger of Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab,” 413.
74. Thomas, “Exposing and exploiting weaknesses n the merger of Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab,” 416.
75. See Malkasian, Illusions of Victory, 160–208.
76. For more details on the background of the Islamic States see Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement; and Stern and Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror.
77. Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement, 170–174.
78. Hamdan, “Breaker or Barriers?” 609.
79. Katagiri, “ISIL, insurgent strategies for statehood, and the challenge for security studies,” 548.
80. Stern and Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror, 43.
81. Distribution of basic goods as food is problematic, the population is brutalized, and governance is often crony (Joffé, “The fateful phoenix,” 15).
82. Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement, 174.
83. Joffé, “The fateful phoenix,” 15.
84. Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement, 173; and Hashim, “The Islamic State,” 75, http://cat-int.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ISIS-Financing-2015-Report.pdf.
85. See http://fortune.com/2017/07/24/isis-mosul-defeated-news-territory-islamic-state-drugs/; http://cat-int.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ISIS-Financing-2015-Report.pdf.
86. Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement; and Stern and Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror.
87. See Fishman, The Master Plan; and Byman, Al-Qaeda, The Islamic State, and The Global Jihadist Movement.
88. Joffé, “The fateful phoenix,” 12.
89. Fishman, The Master Plan, 60–74.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Bohumil Doboš
Bohumil Doboš is a researcher at the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Czech Republic. His research focuses on topics of the violent non-state actors, neomedieval theory and astropolitcs and space security. His recent works include Shapeshifter of Somalia: Evolution of the Political Territoriality of Al-Shabaab, Geopolitics of the Outer Space: A European Perspective, co-authored Power and Recognition: How (Super)Powers Decide the International Recognition Process or co-edited Unrecognized States and Secession in the 21st Century. He also works at the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic.
Martin Riegl
Martin Riegl has a PhD. from the Institute of Political Studies of Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, where he is assistant professor. His main areas of interest comprise of topics of international recognition, unrecognized states, secession, and the global distribution of power. His recent works include Promény politické mapy po roce 1945, Power and Recognition: How (Super)Powers Decide the International Recognition Process or co-edited Unrecognized States and Secession in the 21st Century (co-author). He also works at the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. Dr Riegl’s research interests include political geography of the sovereign state and quasi-states, geopolitics of failed states, geopolitics of unrecognized states and geopolitics of sub-Saharan Africa.
Stig Jarle Hansen
Stig Jarle Hansen is a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Life Sciences. He is a foremost expert on topics of violent non-state actors in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa with a special focus on the region of the Horn of Africa. Among his most important works are Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group, 2005-2012; The Sahel, the Horn and the Rift: the New Fault-lines of Jihad or International Interventions, State-building and Democratization: Justifying the Role of the Private Military Companies in Mogadsíshu?