Rebel Legal Order, Governance and Legitimacy: Examining the Islamic State and the Taliban Insurgency

Abstract

This article explores how ISIS and the Taliban have fostered support through their parallel legal systems. While much of the literature on rebel governance focuses on whether, why, and how rebels govern, less attention has been paid to the interaction between the legislative and legitimation efforts of rebel groups. Using a multi-method approach of critical discourse analysis and thematic analysis, this contribution analyzes ISIS and Taliban publications and academic literature through a twofold typology of legitimacy. It develops a framework of legitimacy claims across the groups that offers insights into rebel legitimation processes in civil war.

In 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) expressed in one of its propaganda magazines that “unlawful bloodshed (…) would be a short-term gain whose long-term consequences are weakness and helplessness.”¹ Similarly, in 1994, the LTTE enacted a penal code, established a law college to train hundreds of lawyers a year, and prosecuted crime in the areas under its control.² Most recently, after seizing power in Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban allegedly prohibited women from featuring in television dramas as it considered this against the principles of Islamic law.³ These are just three among many other insurgent groups that, albeit different in scale and scope, have invoked parallel legal discourse or institutions in their attempts to challenge the state and justify their actions.

The above examples speak to the scholarship that has developed in recent years, focusing on the many non-violent ways in which rebels try to achieve success.⁴ Whether through elections, creating currency or providing health care, this literature has highlighted how rebels increasingly focus on projecting themselves as legitimate alongside coercive rulers of territory by establishing their own governance systems.⁵ By now, we know that rebel groups need legitimacy to sustain their existence, exercise power and maintain support.⁶ Legitimacy can be derived from various resources. As a concept traditionally applied to the state, one of the sources through which legitimacy can be gained is by conforming certain claims and actions to existing legal principles.⁷ However, the assumption is that unlike states, violent rebel groups cannot claim legality to justify their struggle—and thus have to pursue other ways to legitimize themselves.⁸

Yet the provision of justice is not and has not been for a long time the prerogative of states. While rebel groups might not really be able to resort to international law and norms to justify their struggle, the above shows they have invoked alternative legal constructs; be it the invocation of certain local customs or in cases more extensively by setting up legal institutions and judiciaries. Despite these clear appeals to legality by rebels, the role of law specifically in their attempts to gain legitimacy has received little attention to date.⁹

This raises the puzzle of how rebel groups negotiate legal reservoirs in their efforts to gain legitimacy in light of the illegality of their violence, their behavior and, more fundamentally, their existence.¹⁰ What function does the establishment of alternative legal orders by these groups have in their legitimation processes? This article engages with this puzzle by examining how ISIS and the Taliban attempt to build legitimacy for their rule through their legal orders.

The relevance of exploring this is twofold. First, this study seeks to add to the literature by deciphering how rebel groups pursue legitimacy and the role of their legal order in these processes. The provision of law and order and the pursuit of legitimacy have traditionally been viewed as remits of the state.¹¹ Second, by enriching our understanding of how rebel groups garner legitimacy, this article aims to provide insights into ongoing policy discussions on how to best engage with rebel actors. Providing insight into the construction of the legitimacy claims of rebels and their (mis)use of law in these appeals is relevant for actors facing the challenge of interacting with or combating such groups.¹²

This contribution is divided into six sections. First, a review of relevant scholarship takes stock of existing knowledge and provides the theoretical parameters of this article. A discussion of the methods follows. The third section analyzes the Taliban and ISIS, and identifies several legitimation patterns. By comparing these patterns, the fourth section introduces a framework of overarching legitimacy claims among these rebels. The fifth section discusses the findings, followed by some concluding remarks in the sixth section.

The Nexus Between Rebels, Governance, Legitimacy and Law

Bridging contributions from law and political science, three strands of research are central to this article that in many respects overlap. These are first, the literature on rebel governance; second and related, the literature on rebels and law; and lastly, the debate about rebels and legitimacy. The three debates are briefly discussed below.

Rebels and Governance

The literature on rebel governance addresses “the set of actions insurgents engage in to regulate the social, political and economic life of non-combatants during war”¹³ and attempts to explain the factors behind whether, why and how rebels do so.

The literature agrees that territorial control is an important predictor of rebel governance.¹⁴ Yet this alone cannot fully explain the variation observed among groups in providing governance. As Kalyvas notes, rebel territorial control is accompanied by opportunities to generate loyalty among the local population.¹⁵ As a result, the durability of rebel governance structures often depends on the ability of rebels to engender support from citizens.¹⁶ Rebel groups need civilians as “combatants cannot monitor every inch of the territory they control—they need locals to tell them what they hear and see.”¹⁷ Consequently, rebel governance is facilitated not only by territorial control and coercion but also by civilian sympathy.¹⁸ This is a reciprocal process: by providing stable rule, rebels can also command respect from the population they seek to govern.¹⁹

Scholars show how rebels engage to varying extent in taxation,²⁰ elections,²¹ political institutions,²² and judicial processes.²³ Aside from mobilization capacity as an explanation for why a rebel group chooses one governing strategy over another, the literature suggests that the reaction of citizens is important in determining how rebels rule.²⁴ This is because civilians are more likely to accept governance institutions when they accord with their own social, cultural and religious beliefs.²⁵ As Duyvesteyn notes, “pre-existing norms in a society can form a vehicle for the development of legitimacy.”²⁶ By basing governance structures on pre-existing values and traditions, rebel groups may gain support and legitimacy in the eyes of their constituents.²⁷

Rebels and Law

Tied into the discussion of the different institutions that rebels create is the literature on rebels and law. When rebel groups commit to governing, they all have to resolve local disputes in some way or form—providing a degree of legal stability is central to any state-building attempt.²⁸ Some rebel groups, albeit few, sporadically subscribe to international humanitarian law (IHL) to paradoxically constrain their behavior. For example, rebels have at times expressed commitment to IHL, established courts according to these rules, or developed internal codes of conduct reflecting the legal regime.²⁹ In this way, rebel groups may use IHL to increase informal domestic legitimacy—i.e. with local populations—and international legitimacy—i.e. with states.³⁰

However, this does not mean that all legitimacy-seeking rebels are compliant with such rules. While rebel groups are bound by IHL, rebels and international law are commonly described as being “as incompatible as oil and water.”³¹ This is because the very nature of a rebel group is that it challenges a state through an illegal use of force.³² These characteristics exclude for rebel groups “any formal source of legitimation available for state actors, in fact, from any form of legitimacy based on legality.”³³ If international law is not an available option for most rebels, this raises the question of what other sources of authority these groups base their legal orders on.

Rebels and Legitimacy

This contribution departs from this rebel dilemma between legality and legitimacy. It seeks to theorize how rebels foster legitimacy through their legal systems. Legitimacy is understood as “the belief in the rightfulness of an armed group’s agenda and violent struggle.”³⁴ It follows that those who have mobilized this belief are perceived as “the rightful wielder of power, maker and interpreter of rules or user of force who thereby warrants support and compliance.”³⁵

Informed by the Weberian model of legitimacy that sees legitimate state rule as the product of legal, traditional, and charismatic authority,³⁶ the literature makes a broad distinction between normative and performative sources of legitimacy. Normative legitimacy is based on what actors say. This approach to legitimacy considers the sources delivering the moral input for the actions of actors.³⁷ In the context of rebels, this means that such groups base their normative claims to legitimacy on, for example, their traditions, culture, ideology, or by invoking common enemies and threats.³⁸ Conversely, performative legitimacy, also referred to as “delivery-based” legitimation,³⁹ refers to what actors do. This approach towards legitimacy focuses on the pragmatic output deriving from certain beliefs. Here, important factors include the credibility and charisma of a leader or the provision of certain goods and services.⁴⁰ In this way, rebels may establish some form of social contract with the population.

As a relational and contextual concept, normative and performative sources of legitimacy overlap.⁴¹ As noted, the services rebels provide might be perceived as legitimate not only because they are effective, but also because they tap into certain norms and beliefs that pre-exist in a society.⁴² For example, the LTTE leveraged Tamil grievances and nationalism in its governance to resonate with the population,⁴³ and the FARC’s reproduction of cultural values helped the group garner legitimacy.⁴⁴ This also means that to appeal successfully to domestic, regional and international audiences, rebels need to use a combination of different sources.⁴⁵

Research Design

Case Selection

Drawing on the above typology, this contribution explores how rebel groups attempt to foster support through their legal orders. The rebel groups chosen for analysis are ISIS and the Taliban post-2001 insurgency. The period under investigation includes the years where the groups exercised significant territorial control and had fully operational parallel legal systems. For ISIS, the analysis will span the years between the declaration of its Caliphate in 2014 and 2017, when it lost most of its territories again. For the Taliban, the analysis focuses mainly on the period between the group’s expansion of control over large swathes of Afghanistan from 2009 until it seized power in 2021.⁴⁶

This selection of cases is motivated by similarities they share in some respects and differences in others. First, both groups subscribe to a jihadist ideology. Consequently, both groups pursue a state operating according to Shari’a law. Yet their concrete goals differ significantly. Whereas the Taliban sought international recognition in its quest to (re)gain control over Afghan territory, ISIS rejected such recognition and had expansionist aspirations by striving for a global Caliphate. Third, while both groups draw on Islamic traditions, the broad geographical scope allows to shed light on local sources and traditions in their legitimation processes. Finally, both groups created advanced legal orders that served as state parallels, which arguably were the most popular institution in their larger system of governance.⁴⁷ The similarities and differences across groups speak to the multidimensional character of legitimacy and give more depth to unpacking their legitimation claims.

Operationalization

The groups are viewed through the lens of legitimacy. Legitimacy is operationalized by using a two-pronged typology of normative and performative legitimacy. While making this analytical distinction, it is recognized these dimensions empirically interact.⁴⁸ Further, this article focuses on legitimation as a process rather than legitimacy as an outcome.⁴⁹ This means the analysis does not primarily focus on whether these systems enjoyed legitimacy by the population but rather on how these groups constructed their legitimacy claims. Understanding the construction of these claims incorporates the interactive nature of these processes. This is because without certain audiences with whom appeals to legitimacy may resonate, claims to legitimacy remain void.⁵⁰

This distinction between normative and performative legitimacy is operationalized according to the focus of this article—the legal orders of the two groups. The analysis of, first, normative legitimacy, includes the legal discourse of both groups about law(s), legality, the Shari’a, their courts and judiciaries, and specifically the cultural, religious and ideological beliefs providing the input for this discourse. Second, the analysis of performative legitimacy focuses on output. Here, the focus is on how these rebels have translated their discourse into practice by analyzing how they have used their legal institutions to foster legitimacy. Emphasis is placed on the operation of the groups’ courts, their lawmaking and enforcement, and their dispute resolution. These practices embodied the legal vision of these rebels on an institutional and day-to-day level.

Adopting both perspectives to legitimacy corresponds to the relational nature of the concept. It allows to identify how these groups have communicated their legal order among different audiences. The analysis of normative legitimacy provides insight into the appeals of these groups to global audiences whereas the investigation of performative legitimacy shows their appeals specifically to domestic audiences by examining their actions on the ground.

Methods and Data

This article adopts a multi-method approach to analyze these forms of legitimation. First, a critical discourse analysis of the groups’ publications explores normative legitimacy. This is a suitable method as normative legitimacy is about how rebels communicate their “justification discourses.”⁵¹ The analyzed discourse includes the groups’ English-language propaganda magazines. These publications are chosen because they provide insight into the strategy of these groups in communicating their legal order to their global audiences. For the Taliban, the magazines include all six issues of Azan, issued between 2013-2014. For ISIS, the corpus includes fifteen issues of the magazine Dabiq, and thirteen issues of its successor, Rumiyah. These magazines were all published between 2014-2017. The corpus for the Taliban is considerably smaller than for ISIS. Consequently, possible changes in its communication and strategy over time are not accounted for. However, as the analysis is primarily exploratory in nature, the data were still deemed rich enough as the Taliban’s journals are at least 40 pages each and some as many as 90.

Second, the article analyzes performative legitimacy using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis involves “the searching across a data set—to find repeated patterns of meaning.”⁵² Patterns of legitimation are traced by consulting mainly academic literature, as well as to a lesser extent reports from IGOs and NGOs and media reports. It is worth noting this article does not seek to provide a description of these legal orders, nor their evolution over time. Rather, it takes these systems as a premise and draws on the secondary material to explore how those rebels leveraged them to elicit support. The scope of this article does not allow to take on board both elements, and the specific workings of the legal systems of these groups have been described elsewhere.⁵³ Thematic analysis suits this purpose. This is because the method does not aim to provide a description of the data, but rather helps to highlight certain aspects of it relevant to identifying patterns, here legitimation.⁵⁴

This choice of methods is subject to several methodological limitations. First, when analyzing discursive practices, it is important to recognize the social constructions of knowledge in which this study is embedded.⁵⁵ To minimize potential biases, the analysis is guided according to a conceptual framework of legitimacy. The replicability and robustness of such a framework increases the rigor of the research and, as such, contributes to the reliability of the findings. A second limitation pertains to the broad time span of the analysis of performative legitimacy. Because of the many years under investigation, some generalization is required. Although the method of thematic analysis is flexible and can accommodate such generalization, there exists a possibility of missing certain nuances in the assessment of the data. Triangulation between different sources served to minimize this risk as much as possible.

Tracing Rebel Legal Order and Legitimacy

In the eyes of jihadist groups such as ISIS and the Taliban, “legitimacy can be conferred only through the adoption of Islamic law”—the Shari’a.⁵⁶ However, this does not mean that the legal administration established by these groups automatically equals and confers support—quite the contrary. Rather, jihadist groups have to transform coercive laws and institutions based on their interpretation of the Shari’a into legitimate legal narratives and practices. The following sections explore how ISIS and the Taliban have done so by analyzing their legitimation processes. This section explores, first, ISIS and its normative and performative forms of legitimation, followed by a focus on the same dimensions of legitimacy for the Taliban.

ISIS

Tracing its ideological roots to Al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS is a Salafi-jihadist group that developed in 2013 following a rebranding of its predecessor group Islamic State of Iraq. The group quickly succeeded in establishing a sophisticated governance system over a region spanning across Syria and Iraq, one which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi designated as the Caliphate in June 2014. At its height in early 2015, the group is estimated to have governed several million civilians.⁵⁷ ISIS developed an elaborate legal system to uphold its fundamentalist interpretation of Shari’a law. This system consisted of four hierarchically organized administrative bodies: first, a department overseeing the group’s legal system; second, a department responsible for law- and decision-making; third, mechanisms to enforce these rules such as courts; and lastly, police forces—including an all-female moral police force—enforcing the group’s rules on a daily basis.⁵⁸ This legal system helped the group, amongst others, to maintain internal discipline, to justify taxation, and to consolidate civilian obedience.⁵⁹ This system remained operative until 2017, when the group had lost much of the territories it once controlled. Currently, the group has reverted from a ruling rebel group to a global insurgency, with some claims to territory in parts of Asia and Africa.

Normative Legitimacy

The following sections unfold, first, how ISIS has constructed its legal order in its normative appeals to legitimacy, and second, how it has used its legal order to gain legitimacy by examining its performative forms of legitimation. Regarding the former, it is explained how the group promotes, first, a narrative of religious legal authority; second, a narrative based on history; and finally, a narrative by which it positions its legal order as the guarantor of peace and security.

Table 1. Conjunctive patterns of normative legitimation.

Normative Legitimacy
(1) Law as a Socio-Political Force (2) Binary Positive and Divine Law (3) Historical Precedents (4) Transcendentalism

Among the most dominant narratives that emerges from the legal discourse of ISIS are the many references to who has—or ought to have—the power to legislate. The group is firm on this matter by reminding the reader continually that “legislation is not but for Allah.”⁶⁰ By quoting Quranic verses and excerpts from the Hadith regularly, ISIS declares that “He [Allah] shares not His legislation with anyone.”⁶¹ It notes that “through these divine texts we have quoted, it becomes absolutely clear that none doubts the kufr⁶² and shirk⁶³ of those who follow the manmade laws.”⁶⁴ Law for the group originates from one source only—Allah and his Messenger.

However, ISIS does more than just reject positive or ‘manmade’ law. Because it regards legislation as the prerogative of Allah, the group also suggests it cannot possibly engage in lawmaking. Rather, ISIS argues it guards over a body of law as revealed by Allah and sees it the duty of all Muslims—and its Caliphate in particular—to enforce this set of legal rules by establishing “Allah’s Law on Earth.”⁶⁵ As such, like other jihadist groups, it positions its own legal system not as an attribute created by the group but as something pre-given to which it has a religious obligation to adhere.

This understanding of what law is clarifies the group’s consistent references to manmade law, usually spoken of in the context of the West and its allies, as antithetical to its own legal order. ISIS explains how many “have fallen into different shades of shirk⁶⁶ at all levels, including (…) ruling and legislation” or “ruling by manmade constitutions.”⁶⁷ The group’s belief that it does not craft law but rather acts as a legal custodian makes that it conceives of positive law as a condition of lawlessness. The group, for example, refers to those countries adhering to any other law than the Shari’a as “jungles of savagery.”⁶⁸ This shows how ISIS projects its own system as one of predictability, stability and truth—whereas in other systems law is effectively absent, unpredictable and arbitrary, made to suit the interests of its creators. For example, ISIS notes how the “inexplicably precise physical laws that govern the entire universe (…) came about through randomness,”⁶⁹ and that “the right to legislate is distributed amongst mankind so that they thereby determine what laws are fit to be ruled by in the lands.”⁷⁰

In accordance with its belief that only Allah has the right to legislate, ISIS regards separating between religion and state—more specifically, between Shari’a and governance—among the greatest sins. Instead, it purports the Quran should be regarded as the book of “governance, legislation and enforcement” at once.⁷¹ Taking together these realms, it is clear that law is at the very heart of ISIS’ state-building agenda. The consistent references to ‘manmade’ law illustrate how ISIS sees law based on anything other than divine sources an abomination by being a political and social construct, and translates these beliefs into positioning its own legal order as transcendent.

A second narrative by which ISIS constructs its legal order is by drawing extensively on sources of history. By setting a precedent for its system of law and perceptions of legality, ISIS propagates a narrative of historical continuity to create legitimacy. The group regards history as a highly authoritative source by talking at length about the revival and restoration of its Caliphate. For example, it refers consistently to the earliest of Caliphates to substantiate its current legal endeavors as these represent a “revival of the laws of Sharia that were abandoned and the rulings that were concealed.”⁷² Using words such as “elimination,” “abandonment” and “return,” ISIS seeks to reinforce its claim to legitimacy in relation to its conceptions of law and justice by grounding its legal system in a historical pedigree.

As such, ISIS draws on its ideology, historical analogies and religious traditions as sources of authority for its legal order. Together, it illustrates how ISIS’ ideological claim to its Caliphate and its pursuit of territorial expansion are heavily based on legal arguments. However, to justify its expansionist aspirations, ISIS arguably needs more than just a legal authorization bestowed by these beliefs. It also needs to convince its readers of its capacity to govern according to its proposed legal system. Therefore, these narratives provide the building blocks and input for a final one that ISIS uses, based on a narrative of safety and security.

This third narrative warrants an explanation of the context in which ISIS administered justice. Due to the Syrian civil war, Iraqi and Syrian state institutions were largely absent or failing and insecurity was at an all-time high.⁷³ Throughout its publications, ISIS leverages this regional insecurity by noting how it delivers justice, provides security, and ensures accountability.⁷⁴ The group regularly provides evidence of its ability to administer justice and delivering security by showing its successes. Sometimes, it does so graphically. For example, it shows a man undergoing stoning, or another man facing punishment—beheading—for a crime—apostasy.⁷⁵ The group also displays its administration of justice in less graphic and more mundane ways, however, for example by depicting how it apprehended a major drug trafficker in Homs or how it broke a drug trafficking cell and seized weapons.⁷⁶ For ISIS, such efforts pave the way to safety and security within the borders of its Caliphate.

Accordingly, ISIS lists among the key benefits provided by its legal institutions “the state of security and stability enjoyed by the areas under the Islamic State’s authority,” as well as the “the reduced crime rate.”⁷⁷ Not only does this suggest that ISIS capitalizes on the social context at that time, it also indicates the group attempts to portray itself as a force worthy of being taken seriously—both regionally and internationally. For example, a guest writer with a regular column in Dabiq notes the following:

The Islamic State is not some bunch of guerrillas or gangsters. They have 32,000 fighters, tanks, missile system, law courts, a police force and they control the second largest city in Iraq. Surely they must be considered large enough and serious enough for any politician to deal with.⁷⁸

By exercising such legal functions that most would expect to be performed by states as opposed to rebels, the same writer one year later reminds the reader of the following:

Generally one doesn’t expect a mere “organization” to (…) have their own police force. (…). And one certainly does not expect a mere “organization” to have a (…) functioning court system. These, surely, are all hallmarks of (…) a country.⁷⁹

ISIS thus capitalizes on its fully operational and purportedly effective legal system to bolster its claim to statehood. To further reinforce this alleged delivery of safety and security, the group speaks of accountability as the core of its legal system. For example, it notes how there is an obligation “to take to account anyone who breaks His law”⁸⁰ and that justice operates only on “the basic principle (…) that supporting one who has been wronged and taking the wrongdoer to account—even if he is a Muslim—is a crucial duty.”⁸¹

In so doing, ISIS argues, its legal system “opens the door for the people to put forth their grievances against any individual or body in the Islamic State”⁸²—paradoxically echoing a rule of law the group strongly opposes.⁸³ Legal claims such as these reinforce both its claim to statehood and the idea that its legal order fosters accountability and predictability previously absent from the region—and in fact, the world at large. As ISIS puts it, by upholding Shari’a “the Earth will be filled with peace just as a jar is filled with water.”⁸⁴

Performative Legitimacy

Having analyzed how ISIS constructed its legal order in its normative appeals to gain legitimacy, this section unpacks the group’s performative legitimation processes. Discussed below in the order listed, the identified patterns illustrate how ISIS used its legal order to construct legitimacy by positioning itself, first, as the bringer and bearer of security; second, as filling some sort of legal vacuum; third, as a sovereign entity.

Building on its discourse, a first performative pattern of legitimation has to do with the effectiveness of ISIS’ court system, because of which it asserted itself as the guarantor of security. The group wielded its courts and administered justice, albeit harshly, generally in a stable, effective, and predictable manner.⁸⁵ This form of legitimation was based strongly on the idea of building reciprocal and transactional relationships with the citizens in the areas it controlled. By guaranteeing basic security to the population through its courts, it sought to gain their compliance with its rules in return, something which others have called a law-based social contract.⁸⁶

The courts of the group operated under the idea that every act punishable under the Shari’a offered a legal authorization for harsh sentences and, subsequently, that all its violent actions had a legal basis.⁸⁷ To uphold this—and in line with what it discursively suggested—no one, not even the group’s own members, escaped the possibility of being brought before the group’s Shari’a courts.⁸⁸ For instance, ISIS urged civilians to report misconduct by its members, and even placed a complaints box for such purposes in Mosul.⁸⁹ Accordingly, the group routinely punished its own members.⁹⁰ In so doing the group conveyed an image as being consistent and accountable in its application of the law. The idea that all Muslims regardless of status in the group were equal before its courts was thus central to ISIS’ legitimation strategy—and again seems paradoxical as ISIS strongly opposed notions of the rule of law.⁹¹

This social contract was at least in part governed by fear. Law, next to its ability to maintain social order, also has a strong control function.⁹² This is particularly evident in the coercive and symbolic aspects of ISIS’ administration of justice. ISIS commonly announced and exercised its harsh court verdicts in public squares in front of large audiences.⁹³ People were publicly crucified by the group as a showcase of justice,⁹⁴ and citizens were routinely invited to participate in stonings.⁹⁵ For ISIS, this open display of justice arguably had a dual purpose. It helped the group instill fear in the population and leveraged the obedience this fear generated to claim it kept its territories safe. Indeed, out of fear for harsh punishment, crime rates in ISIS-controlled areas dropped significantly.⁹⁶

As such, it was the effect of its court system and the legal protection ISIS afforded the population that provided the basis on which it asserted legitimacy. This also means that these attempts to legitimize its legal practices were both reciprocal and self-fulfilling; the group claimed legitimacy for the effectiveness and security its legal system provided, but this claim was at least partially anchored by the inability of citizens to challenge the group’s law enforcement.

The previous pattern of legitimation works as a bridge to a second. Exacerbated by the Syrian civil war, reliable justice mechanisms in Iraq and Syria were either corrupt, poorly accessible, or completely absent in the region, and the lack of accountability for crimes perpetrated by government officials had created a climate of impunity.⁹⁷ Both Iraqi and Syrian courts operated according to sectarian hierarchies and were characterized by trials that were more often than not unfair.⁹⁸ Further, rival armed groups that filled this justice gap, notably Jabhat al-Nusra, were also seen as lacking in transparency.⁹⁹ Through its courts, ISIS attempted to vie for legitimacy at the expense of these actors by filling this void. It administered justice in a manner more consistent, more available and less arbitrary than the Iraqi and Syrian governments and its main competitor in the region, Jabhat al-Nusra.¹⁰⁰

This makes this pattern more fundamental than the first. This is because it was not so much about the security ISIS could provide through its courts but about what preceded these outcomes—about the possibility to file complaints. In minor civil disputes that state police were either unwilling or unable to resolve, ISIS quickly intervened to mediate. Anecdotal evidence from an ISIS-controlled town near Mosul is how a local butcher filed a complaint with ISIS after one of the group’s fighters left his shop with a whole chicken while he had only paid for half. Perhaps implausibly, the fighter returned not long after to pay the butcher the other half.¹⁰¹ This illustrates not only the legal strategy of ISIS in effectively and quickly resolving petty crime in a manner unthinkable of the Iraqi state, but also the apparent trust and willingness this generated among citizens.

Importantly, this does not mean that fear played no role in generating civilian compliance—nor that ISIS sentences were not cruel or that cases brought before its Shari’a courts were free from corruption.¹⁰² But the bar was low. The weak performance of the Syrian and Iraqi governments were thus central to ISIS’ legitimation strategy by giving the group a comparative advantage.¹⁰³ This is because ISIS could offer the population something what these states lacked to offer to justify its claim on the region.

Summarizing, this pattern of legitimation is closely embedded in its social context. By performing state functions and institutionalizing a legal order previously dysfunctional in these countries, ISIS filled a regional vacuum in justice and accountability. Bringing back order, even if repressive and excessive, was in these circumstances all that ISIS had to do to ‘out-govern’ the Syrian and Iraqi governments.

Finally, there is also a symbolic pattern of legitimation discernible in ISIS’ legal practices. Echoing its discourse, ISIS used its legal system to embrace something that appears paradoxical at first as the group strongly rejects the Westphalian system of state sovereignty: statehood.

Whenever ISIS would capture new cities, its first course of action would be to set up courts to listen to the grievances of the local population.¹⁰⁴ This arguably had a double benefit for the group. By creating social order through law enforcement in the territories it captured, the group secured both territorial control and the trust of the people.¹⁰⁵ Especially because the provision of justice is generally thought of as the task of the state, the ability of ISIS to take over from the state within its territories was the proof of its claims that it could get things done while also showing it was there to stay. This suggests that in so doing, the group effectively managed to establish a monopoly on violence and thus internal sovereignty that preceded and reinforced its claim to statehood.

In line with this idea of signaling statehood, ISIS enacted several rules untraceable to the Shari’a. These included rules on traffic safety, inappropriate haircuts, university admission rules, or a prohibition on selling cigarettes.^106,107 This highlights not only that ISIS did in fact engage in lawmaking which it itself denied—but also that the group devised rules that did not necessarily have a religious basis, yet were simply necessary to govern a contemporary state. More fundamentally, it suggests that ISIS constructed legitimacy through its legal order by catering its legal practices to what the population needed, ultimately functioning as the very fundament of its larger state-building project.

The Taliban Insurgency

The jihadist-Pashtun movement Taliban emerged in the early 1990s, owing its name to a faction of religious students that formed the group following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Creating a power vacuum in the country, different tribal groups vying for power further fragmented and descended the already war-torn country into civil war.¹⁰⁸ The Taliban, seeking to end disorder in Afghanistan by installing an Islamic governance system, managed to mobilize support through Pashtun networks of tribal affiliation.¹⁰⁹ Due to the battlefield successes of the Taliban, the fragmentation of the political landscape transformed and the group eventually seized power in 1996—submerging the country as the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’.¹¹⁰ During its years in power, the Taliban became known for its harsh rule characterized by a lack of basic human rights for women and strict implementation of Shari’a law.

After the regime was toppled in 2001, the Taliban returned to an insurgency and gradually expanded its territorial reach. As early as 1994 the Taliban had managed to establish courts which blended Pashtun tribal customs with Shari’a principles, so it was only logical that the group quickly reinstalled its judicial instruments in its resurgence as an insurgency from 2001 onwards.¹¹¹ From those years, the Taliban reorganized its judiciary by establishing a three-tiered system of lower, executive and higher courts,¹¹² and by 2009, this justice system was functioning in most areas where the Taliban operated.¹¹³ After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, the Taliban quickly managed to again seize power in the country, leading to the de facto return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Normative Legitimacy

The next sections unpack how the Taliban attempted foster support through its legal order by considering its normative and performative legitimation efforts. The investigation of the former makes clear how the Taliban propagates narratives, first, of law as giving authority to its envisioned state; second, of the legally enslaved; third, of a religiously and culturally adapted form of international legal norms; and fourth, of historical continuity. These are discussed below in the mentioned order.

The Taliban consistently constructs its legal order as a vehicle to the development of its envisioned state. The group notes that “the Khilafah¹¹⁴ recognizes Allah, The Exalted as the Sole Sovereign; all its machinery operates under the Allah’s Revealed Law.”¹¹⁵ In claiming that a successful state does not operate justly without complete enforcement of the Shari’a, the Taliban usefully draws on the ostensible successes it attained in its earlier governance of the country between 1996 and 2001. About this period, the group contends the following:

The Taliban implemented the Laws of Allah in their entirety. The hand of the thief was cut and the adulterer was stoned. (…) The Muslims who witnessed that society testified that they had never seen or experienced such peace before; true justice and harmony prevailed.¹¹⁶

Based on such successes and because during those five years “the Shari’a of the Taliban gained such acceptance with Allah,” the Taliban notes how “the land of Afghanistan [became] the base for the start of the global Jihad movement.”¹¹⁷ It thus justifies its legal order by referring to its own historical experiences with the provision of justice, the security it created, and the subsequent peace it brought.

By tapping into these religious beliefs, the group claims that participation in this global cause of (re-)establishing its legal system “is of the foremost duty of every Muslim—by word and by deed.”¹¹⁸ Indeed, as the Taliban argues, full worship of the religion carries with it “a crucial meaning: obedience to law.”¹¹⁹ By seeing the political and legal realm as two sides of the same coin, the group justifies its pursuit of statehood both directly—by claiming that the establishment of its legal order and by implication its envisioned state is a religious imperative—and indirectly—by mentioning the benefits of such a state. This mirrors many of the arguments and practices that ISIS has used, and seems to have been an important legitimation strategy for other jihadist groups as well.¹²⁰

A second narrative the Taliban propagates focuses on legal enslavement and oppression. The premise of this narrative is a binary between man-made systems and the Taliban’s divine system of law in which legislation is reserved only for Allah. As most states—usually referred to as the West—have taken matters in their own hands by legislating, the group notes how humans have become subject to such legal systems. Indicative is an interviewee recounting how living under the British legal system made them realize “I was a slave—a modern slave—a slave without chains or shackles, yet a slave strictly bounded to the chains of rules, regulations and laws.”¹²¹

Man-made legal systems, according to the Taliban, always yield enslavement and corruption because they are ruled by an elite legislating according to their own interests. As opposed to “the tiny elite who want to enslave the whole humanity for their evil agendas,”¹²² then, the Shari’a ensures that “all human [are] equal before the Law of Allah.”¹²³ The legal order of the group accordingly offers “real freedom to the masses—freedom from the oppression of man-made laws.”¹²⁴ By regarding man-made legal systems as artificial and oppressive while its own legal system as the ‘natural order’, the Taliban draws on these depictions to rationalize its conceptions of what law is. Accordingly, the Taliban also refers to international law as a construct, made by countries to suit their interests:

The governments [America, England, India, Pakistan] have forced upon you to submit to an ‘international law’ that has been created by their own desires to replace the law of Allah. (…) Indeed, it is a whole chain of enslavement.¹²⁵

As a result of this, the group argues, “whatever they craft becomes practically imposed—and the same becomes custom, constitution and law. The courts run according to whatever they craft,”¹²⁶ and “whatever America and the UN declare as the (international) law becomes binding.”¹²⁷ This is contrary to the Shari’a, which by no means is a menu of choice and hence the only true path for the Taliban.

Tying into the above is a third narrative. The Taliban translates universal concepts of law and justice into religiously adapted perceptions. The group continually refers to existing international institutions and law. The Taliban, for example, invites the reader to think about “what do terminologies like peace, equality, justice, human rights, freedom etc. really mean? Does the UN Human Rights charter (…) explain correctly what peace is or does the Shari’a explain what peace really is?”¹²⁸

By borrowing from international law, the group discursively creates its own global vision on law. The group brings together these alternative perceptions of justice in its substitute of international law which it refers to as “Muslim International Law.”¹²⁹ There are various characteristics of this interpretation of international law, which become clear particularly through the group’s precise description of how the extant international legal framework falls short.

First, according to the group, the current international legal order has led to “a world in which there is no justice—a world where a Rule of Law according to the Final Scripture revealed to Mankind—the Quran—is absent.”¹³⁰ As the group regards a rule of law according to the Quran as pivotal to a functioning international system, the question is how the Taliban defines this. This becomes evident from a later publication:

In an Islamic system, every socio-economic institution must refer back to the Divine Source. Even the ruler—the Khalifah—is not to declare his own sovereignty and impose his law upon the people.¹³¹

A rule of law that inspires the Taliban’s ‘Muslim International Law’ thus appears to consist of a system in which everyone is subject to the same set of indisputable laws. For example, the group notes that “all men are equal before the Law of Allah with none having superiority.”¹³²

A second characteristic of the alternative international legal order the Taliban proposes is found in the group’s reference to a Hadith, after which it notes “it [Islam] requires that legislations, laws and ordainments be accepted just as they were revealed originally. It requires that there be no extremism or laxity in implementing it.”¹³³ The Taliban thus argues law enforcement needs to be balanced, predictable, and consistent, resembling the core attributes of any legal system. As the group puts it, “whatever law, system or Shari’a gains the acceptance of the people is to be considered reliable and anything else besides it possesses no (…) value.”¹³⁴ The Taliban appears to leverage somewhat universal characteristics of law to translate them into its own values. Accordingly, the Taliban contends that only by establishing “the Law of Allah on Allah’s Earth” would “peace and justice (…) prevail.”¹³⁵

Finally, the Taliban propagates a narrative based on history. The group sets a historical precedent for its legal order by referencing lost traditions of the Shari’a and the need for their contemporary return. According to the group, the “implementation of the entire Shari’a has been barred for seven decades”¹³⁶—which appears to contradict its earlier claims that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan implemented Shari’a law in its entirety during the five years it governed. This suggests that to construct legitimacy, the Taliban invokes such historical analogies to embed its legal order within a larger historical pedigree extending beyond just its own experiences. This paves the way for seeing ruling according to the Shari’a as a tradition while ruling by positive law as artificial:

The world that we find ourselves in at the moment is a world devoid of the Law of Allah—the Divine Shariah revealed upon the heart of Prophet Muhammad. Even the so-called Muslim countries of the world have suspended the rule of the Quran, and the Muslim of today finds himself utterly handicapped with the loss of Islam as a socio-economic-political authority.¹³⁷

Performative Legitimacy

The following paragraphs delve into the Taliban’s performative forms of legitimation to understand the translation of the above narratives into legal practice. First, to claim substantive legitimacy, the Taliban symbolized Afghan identity by leveraging Islamic and Pashtun tribal norms in its legal practices. This highlights a clear convergence between normative and performative legitimacy. The second pattern is about how the group used its legal order to create a monopoly on justice. These are discussed in turn below.

The Taliban sought to build legitimacy by cloaking its legal practices as Islamic, jihadist, and tribal. This is partly because from its inception, until its years in power and after its return to an insurgency, the Taliban envisioned restoring order to Afghanistan by introducing an Islamic system of governance. Second, unlike many of its jihadi counterparts, the Taliban did not have transnational territorial ambitions and its gaze was “firmly internal.”¹³⁸ Limiting its struggle within Afghan borders, another important reason for the group to assume this identity was the fragmented legal landscape in Afghanistan. Law had traditionally been a source of contestation in the country as formal legal institutions for a long time coexisted with informal ones.¹³⁹ The latter—traditional Pashtun councils known as jirgas, tribal customs and Islamic teachings—formed for many years the dominant legal system used by the Afghan people.¹⁴⁰

Accordingly, after returning to an insurgency and restoring its legal system, the Taliban made sure to integrate the complexity of this fragmented legal landscape. The group borrowed regularly from Pashtun tribal norms in its interpretation of the Shari’a and its administration of justice.¹⁴¹ For example, the Taliban preserved the Pashtun jirgas and drew upon a combination of Islamic and Pashtun norms and customs in its courts.¹⁴² Contrary to the rulings of state courts which were alien to local customs, the Taliban leveraged such pre-existing beliefs in its legal practices.¹⁴³ The legitimation of its courts was thus facilitated by the group’s rejection of how foreign actors intervened in the country’s legal matters.¹⁴⁴

This is also visible in how the group drew upon Islamic symbols to convey its legal order. For example, the Taliban used its well-known white flag, official lettering and standardized court processes in both contested territories and those controlled by the group,¹⁴⁵ and stamped court judgements with the logo of the Islamic Emirate.¹⁴⁶ Such use of Islamic symbols helped the group represent itself as “predictable, constrained by rules, and not simply one of pure force.”¹⁴⁷

Domestically, because the group saw itself as custodian of Islamic justice, this imagery invoked to substantiate its legal practices more broadly symbolized the Taliban’s vision for the country and provided a point of recognition for the population. Internationally, using this symbolism helped the group convey institutionalization. By using such symbolic practices of legality and laying claim to Islamic and tribal traditions, the Taliban presented itself as a legal authority that, in the group’s eyes, enjoyed the ideological prerogative to further expand its governance.

Aside from lacking ideological legitimacy because of their secular orientation, Afghan state courts were seen by the population as corrupt, laws as vague, and the judicial system more generally as dysfunctional.¹⁴⁸ Claimants reportedly had to wait years for a verdict and bribing state judges had become commonplace in the country.¹⁴⁹ The Taliban actively exploited the weakness of the Afghan state and the shortcomings of the formal judicial system by using its legal order as an instrument to claim legitimacy based on the relative effectiveness, stability, predictability and speed with which it handled court cases.¹⁵⁰ In so doing, the group attempted to secure a monopoly on justice in both government and Taliban-controlled areas as an attribute to claim and secure legitimacy.

A legal practice that points to this were the Taliban’s extensive efforts to facilitate accessibility to courts. The group made it its priority to provide Afghans living in rural areas where state legal structures had little permanent presence with access to judicial mechanisms.¹⁵¹ Taliban fighters would appear in remote areas on motorbikes or vans converted into mobile courts to address the grievances of the population.¹⁵² This form of justice on wheels was not only a service the Taliban rendered to the people, but also an attempt to penetrate rural communities and gain support in these areas where the majority of Afghans lived.¹⁵³

The Taliban applied this strategy not only in the areas it controlled but also in government-controlled areas.¹⁵⁴ In these areas the Taliban attempted to undermine the ability of the state to function through its administration of justice. As such, the group did not have a monopoly on force in these areas but rather attempted to establish a monopoly on justice. This is because in disputed territory where multiple legal mechanisms existed, the Taliban had to rely on the willingness of citizens to come to them for justice. This means the Taliban’s legal system was “a measure for legitimacy, as well as an instrument (…) to extend and entrench that legitimacy.”¹⁵⁵ By providing legal services, the group capitalized on its justice system to consolidate support among and control over the Afghan people.

Partially, this monopoly on justice rested on coercion. Challenging a Taliban sentence would be punished severely by the group—if not with death.¹⁵⁶ Additionally, the group sometimes publicly imposed and enforced severe punishments to signal to the population what awaited them if they disobeyed its rules. Interestingly, despite these overt displays of justice, Taliban law enforcement was generally appreciated by the population.¹⁵⁷ Unlike the Afghan government, the Taliban at least could enforce judicial decisions.¹⁵⁸ This monopoly on justice thus points to legitimation by coercion rather than coercion alone. That is, the coercion had a legitimating effect in light of the Afghan government under whom the alternative would be disorder and anarchy.¹⁵⁹

However, although the Taliban used symbolic violence and harsh punishments, this was not the norm. The harshest punishments were exceptionally imposed by the group as Taliban judges avoided issuing death sentences.¹⁶⁰ Cases were more often resolved through agreements between the parties.¹⁶¹ This could be explained by the fact that, as noted, the population in government-controlled areas had a choice of legal mechanisms. Thus, the Taliban had to maintain an image as fair rather than excessive by depending on the willingness of this population to use its legal services. Combined with the substantive and ideological advantage of its legal order over the Afghan state, it seems the Taliban monopoly on justice was a strategic balance between using just enough coercion to keep the people in check—with even that coercion at times having a legitimating effect—and just enough approachability to win hearts and minds.

Rebel Legal Order and Legitimacy: Conjunctions

Having explored how ISIS and the Taliban have leveraged their legal orders to gain legitimacy, this section outlines conjunctive patterns of legitimation. The purpose of this is to identify overarching claims to legitimacy among the groups. This section first evaluates the conjunctions in the normative legitimacy claims of the groups. This is followed by a discussion of the discerned performative legitimacy claims. The focus on finding commonalities does not stem from the assumption that there are no differences between groups—these nuances have been highlighted in the previous sections. Further, the two dimensions of legitimacy empirically interact, making this distinction primarily analytical, and these legitimation patterns are not claimed to be exhaustive.

Normative Legitimacy: Conjunctions

Both groups rely heavily on the narrative that positive law—spoken of usually in relation to the West—is not only apostate but also artificial. For both groups, legitimacy is grounded in and sought to be further consolidated by reference to such a counterpart. The groups convey this narrative by contending that positive law is crafted by the powerful for the powerful, and use terminology such as enslavement, oppression, subjugation and tyranny to substantiate this.

Departing from this premise, the groups create a binary revolving around two legal realities. The first—subscribed to by the groups and derived from the Shari’a—is the legal order of truth and liberation. They believe this to be the case not only because all Muslims are purportedly equal before this law, resonating a rule of law according to Islamic values, but also because their administration of justice is impartial as they see themselves as custodians rather than creators of this legal body. The second legal reality—the globally dominant system of positive law—is regarded by the groups as arbitrary and corrupt because legislation has been placed in the hands of people. Accordingly, the groups portray this second, usually Western, legal order as a de facto situation of lawlessness, for example by referring to countries operating on this system as ‘jungles’.¹⁶²

The groups reinforce this religious binary by references to history. The Taliban and ISIS regard the current world as one where Shari’a law has been ‘suspended’, ‘replaced’ and ‘abandoned’.¹⁶³ According to the groups, the two legal realities outlined above cannot coexist: it is only through elimination of the Western legal order that their own can thrive. These references to history thus have a dual function. The historical claims offer both a legal justification for fighting dissenting voices and a foundation for their own ideological aspirations. These appeals to history and religion reinforce one another. By claiming their legal order is God-given and predated by historical traditions, the groups position law as a transcendent socio-political force inextricably linked to their envisioned states—one at the time aspired to and presently realized by the Taliban, and one which was the concrete reality for ISIS.

Altogether these elements highlight legitimation processes contributing to their legal orders both internally—by emphasizing the socio-political benefits inherent in an Islamic legal order—and externally—by focusing on the shortcomings of other legal systems. The Table 1 demonstrates the overarching claims in the groups’ attempts to build legitimacy.

Performative Legitimacy: Conjunctions

The above shows that the construction by these groups of what constitutes the ‘other’ legal order serves as input for their own legal system. This is also evident in the performative claims to legitimacy of both groups. These rebels have engaged in ‘comparative legitimation’, where they vie for legitimacy by outperforming the state.

ISIS and the Taliban capitalized on weak state performance to construct legitimacy for their legal practices. Filling a legal vacuum in the countries where they operated enabled these rebels to position their legal order as fairer, more reliable and less corrupt than the incumbent states. Additionally, this helped the groups signal statehood by showing their ability to take up—or take over—governance functions traditionally expected to be performed by states.

Within their legal practices, both groups also relied on ideological and religious elements to further substantiate their claim to statehood. For both, however, it appears that not what they attempted to represent but what they could attain was more important for their claim to legitimacy. By prioritizing being effective rulers, some of their ideological beliefs receded into the background in their legal performance. For ISIS, this meant that it supplemented Shari’a law with contemporary rules to navigate the needs of a twenty-first century state. For the Taliban, this meant that it appealed to Afghans by using Pashtun legal traditions even though it purported to only follow jihadist ideology,¹⁶⁴ and occasionally ruled more flexibly than would have been required by Shari’a law. The group’s present challenge to maintaining ideological cohesion within its ranks thus does not appear to be unique to its current rule.¹⁶⁵

For both groups, these contradictions between ideological input and pragmatic output also demonstrate that the balance these rebels must strike between domestic populations and local concerns on the one hand and global aspirations on the other is a contentious one.¹⁶⁶ Reflecting these concerns for different audiences, the Table 2 shows the identified overarching legitimacy patterns of the groups.

Table 2. Conjunctive patterns of performative legitimation.

Performative Legitimacy
(1) Filling the Legal Vacuum (2) Signaling Statehood (3) Reinstating Reliability

Discussion

The discourses and practices by which the Taliban and ISIS have attempted to foster legitimacy illustrate that these groups, like any state, have used their legal systems to legitimize violence, to create social order and to further their state-building projects. And like any state, the Taliban and ISIS have used their legal order both as an instrument of control and of legitimation. Unlike states, however, the claim to legitimacy of these rebels relies largely on their ability to outbid the legal authority of a perceived adversary.

The use of comparative legitimation by these rebels suggests that they are engaged in a process of “competitive statebuilding.”¹⁶⁷ The engagement of these rebels in law—whether through discourse or practice—bears centrally on their abilities to appropriate the functions of statehood. Although the ability of these rebels to appropriate state functions may be a piece of the puzzle to success, the one necessary to complete it is to gain acceptance by those involved: the population.

Civilian acceptance appears paradoxical given the stringent legal regimes of these rebels. Unpacking their legitimation processes, however, helps understand why many Afghans preferred Taliban courts over the legal system of the state, and how ISIS successfully managed to gain trust for its legal system from the population. Citizen acceptance is thus provided by state failure and further entrenched by legitimation strategies. This provides evidence that while such conditions of what has been called “fragmented sovereignty” pose challenges for states,¹⁶⁸ they may provide opportunities for rebels.

These analogies to how states construct legitimacy challenge theoretical premises in the literature, particularly the assumption that rebels cannot rely on legality to gain legitimacy.¹⁶⁹ This seems to talk about a specific kind of legality as known in the West or as precipitated in international law. Contrary to these assumptions and in line with recent findings on the governance of jihadist groups, the Taliban and ISIS construct their legal systems as “the key to their legitimation processes.”¹⁷⁰ These legal systems suggest that legitimacy in conflict might be conferred by little more than giving the people the idea they are treated fairly rather than by grand notions of what justice is or should be.

More fundamental to the literature is the assumption that civilian support during civil war is based on a combination of coercion and persuasion.¹⁷¹ The literature subscribes to the idea that these elements, although mutually reinforcing, are essentially distinct. For example, some have asked whether rebels are either “legitimate jihadists or coercive extremists.”¹⁷² But when it comes to these systems based on jihadist justice, it appears legitimation can be replicated through coercion. With the alternative of insecurity, the use of coercion in the legal practices of the Taliban and ISIS generated social stability from which legitimacy was bestowed. If this distinction between fear and sympathy is blurred, the question may not be whether these groups are considered illegitimate or legitimate, but to understand how these elements coexist and reinforce each other.

From a policy perspective, the findings suggest attempts to undermine rebel legitimacy reside at least in part in the ability of state and organizational actors to promote the rule of law and the reliability of legal mechanisms in conflict-affected states. Considerations of such non-violent actions remain important in light of counter-insurgency approaches that continue to use kinetic force.¹⁷³

Conclusion

While it is known by now that rebels seek legitimacy in conflict, the traditional state formula of gaining legitimacy by adhering to (inter)national legal principles is usually not an option for them. Despite this apparent contradiction, absent from the literature is how rebels construct, negotiate and harness their parallel legal orders in their efforts to pursue legitimacy.

This contribution set out to explore these interrelations between legality and legitimacy. It asked how rebel groups attempt to build legitimacy through the construction and use of legal orders. It looked at the legal orders of two such groups, the Taliban and ISIS, through a twofold typology of normative and performative legitimacy.

This led to the identification of an overarching framework of legitimacy patterns across the groups. The framework highlights how the Taliban and ISIS have in their normative forms of legitimation discursively constructed their legal order as transcendent and as grounded in a historical pedigree, fostered by ideas about a legal binary between divine and man-made systems. The analysis of performative legitimacy illustrates how these groups have used their legal order to signal statehood and to fill a legal vacuum in contexts of civil war. These legitimation processes highlight how these rebels have relied heavily on legal reservoirs to build and appropriate legitimacy, to maintain and enhance this legitimacy, and to ultimately exploit that legitimacy to advance their rule.

There are certain caveats in interpreting these results. First, the legitimation processes dissected here pertain to Islamist groups and are exploratory in nature. This means they cannot be so easily extrapolated to rebel groups with other ideological outlooks. The framework presented in this article, therefore, primarily serves as an invitation for further research. A second limitation concerns the adopted theoretical approach. This contribution did not consider the state perspective.

These limitations raise several lines of further research. Two developments make it necessary to further interrogate the legislative and legitimation processes of the investigated groups. The first, ISIS, is about achieving political success. Aside from branches of the group claiming territory in other parts of the world, the increased activity of ISIS in Syria makes it important to monitor whether it revives its legal practices. The second, Taliban, is about maintaining political success. Having again seized power in Afghanistan, the group must prove that the legal order it created as an insurgency is sustainable as a regime. The durability of its legal regime bears further questioning, and more research is needed to establish whether its enforcement of the Shari’a will assume more repressive forms in the current context where its legal architecture is all that remains.

More generally, further research could explore rebels with other ideological outlooks to examine whether similar mechanisms of legitimation can be identified. Longitudinal and temporal approaches in particular would be valuable to understand how legitimation fluctuates and evolves over time.¹⁷⁴ Finally, a fruitful area for further study would be the interaction between state and rebel legitimation processes and their different ways of instrumentalizing law. Future work on such questions would prove useful in expanding our understanding of the nexus between law, legitimacy and governance in rebel groups. A clearer insight into these crossroads would help explain how rebels strategize, mobilize and thrive and, by extension, to determine how to respond to them.

Disclosure Statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 ISIS, “From Hypocrisy to Apostasy: The Extinction of the Grayzone,” Dabiq 7 (2015a): 1–83, 7.

2 Sandesh Sivakumaran, “Courts of Armed Opposition Groups: Fair Trials or Summary Justice?” Journal of Criminal Justice 7, no. 3 (2009): 489–513, 494.

3 “Afghanistan: Taliban Unveil New Rules Banning Women in TV Dramas.” (BBC, November 21, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59368488 (accessed January 10, 2022).

4 See for example Ana Arjona, Nelson Kasfir, and Zachariah Mampilly, Rebel Governance During Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Zachariah Mampilly, Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2011); Niels Terpstra and Georg Frerks, “Rebel Governance and Legitimacy: Understanding the Impact of Rebel Legitimation on Civilian Compliance with the LTTE Rule,” Civil Wars 19, no. 3 (2017): 279–307.

5 Ibid.

6 Terpstra and Frerks, “Rebel Governance and Legitimacy,” 279; Niels Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention: Assessing Three Phases of Taliban Rule in Afghanistan,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 31, no. 6 (2020): 1143–73.

7 Christine Chinkin and Mary Kaldor, International Law and New Wars (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2017), 20.

8 Klaus Schlichte and Ulrich Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” Civil Wars 17, no. 4 (2015): 409–24; Heike Krieger, “International Law and Governance by Armed Groups: Caught in the Legitimacy Trap?” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 12, no. 4 (2018): 563–83; Agnes Termeer and Isabelle Duyvesteyn, “The Inclusion of Women in Jihad: Gendered Practices of Legitimation in Islamic State Recruitment Propaganda,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 15, no. 2 (2022): 463–83, 467.

9 For a notable exception see Joana Cook, Haid Haid, and Inga Trauthig, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State: An Analysis of Jihadist Justice in Yemen, Syria and Libya,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 46, no. 5 (2023): 559–78.

10 Krieger, “International Law and Governance by Armed Groups.”

11 Cook, Haid and Trauthig, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State,” 559.

12 This is especially the case because COIN campaigns focused on reducing insurgent support have historically been more successful than those relying on kinetic force. See Christopher Paul, Colin P. Clarke, Beth Grill, and Molly Dunigan, “Paths to Victory: Lessons from Modern Insurgencies.” (RAND Corporation, 2013), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR291z1.html (accessed March 24, 2023), 74–6.

13 Arjona, Kasfir and Mampilly, Rebel Governance During Civil War, 3.

14 Arjona, Kasfir and Mampilly, Rebel Governance During Civil War; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers; Kasfir, Nelson. 2015. “Rebel Governance – Constructing a Field of Inquiry: Definitions, Scope, Patterns, Order, Causes,” in Rebel Governance in Civil War, ed. Ana Arjona, Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 21–46.

15 Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 128.

16 Cyanne E. Loyle, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Reyko Huang, and Danielle F. Jung, “New Directions in Rebel Governance Research,” Perspectives on Politics 21, no. 1 (2023): 264–76.

17 Ana Arjona, Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 46.

18 Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 101, 174.

19 Till Förster, “Dialogue Direct: Rebel Governance and Civil Order in Northern Cote d’Ivoire,” in Rebel Governance in Civil War, ed. Ana Arjona, Nelson Kasfir, and Zachariah Mampilly (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 203–25, 207.

20 Mara Revkin, “What Explains Taxation by Resources-rich Rebels? Evidence From the Islamic State in Syria,” Journal of Politics 82, no. 2 (2020): 757–64.

21 Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Reyko Huang, and Katherine Sawyer, “Voting for Militants: Rebel Elections in Civil War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65, no. 1 (2021): 81–107.

22 Zachariah Mampilly and Megan Stewart, “A Typology of Rebel Political Institutional Arrangements,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65, no. 1 (2021): 15–45.

23 Frank Ledwidge, Rebel Law: Insurgents, Courts and Justice in Modern Conflict (London: Hurst and Co Publishers, 2017); Tom Ginsburg, “Rebel Use of Law and Courts,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 15 (2019): 495–507; Cyanne Loyle, “Rebel Justice During Armed Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65, no. 1 (2021): 108–34.

24 Reyko Huang, The Wartime Origins of Democratization: Civil War, Rebel Governance, and Political Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 75; Loyle, “Rebel Justice During Armed Conflict”; Zachariah Mampilly and Megan Stewart, “A Typology of Rebel Political Institutional Arrangements,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65, no. 1 (2021): 15–45.

25 Kasfir, “Rebel Governance – Constructing a Field of Inquiry,” 40.

26 Isabelle Duyvesteyn, “Rebels & Legitimacy: An Introduction,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 28, no. 4-5 (2017): 669–85, 679.

27 Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham and Cyanne Loyle, “Introduction to the Special Feature on Dynamic Processes of Rebel Governance.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65, no. 1 (2021): 3–14.

28 Ginsburg, “Rebel Use of Law and Courts.”

29 Hyeran Jo, “Law-Making Participation by Non-State Armed Groups: The Prerequisite of Law’s Legitimacy?” in Law-Making and Legitimacy in International Humanitarian Law, ed. Heike Krieger and Jonas Püschmann (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2021), 357–83, 365.

30 Hyeran Jo, Compliant Rebels: Rebel Groups and International Law in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 53.

31 Jo, “Law-Making Participation by Non-State Armed Groups,” 357.

32 Krieger, “International Law and Governance by Armed Groups,” 565.

33 Ibid. Emphasis added.

34 Ibid.

35 Sukanya Podder, “Understanding the Legitimacy of Armed Groups: A Relational Perspective,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 28, no. 4-5 (2017): 686–708, 687.

36 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (London: University of California Press, 1978), 215.

37 David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991); Margaret Levy, Audrey Sacks and Tom Tyler, “Conceptualizing Legitimacy, Measuring Legitimating Beliefs,” American Behavioural Scientist 53, no. 3 (2008): 354–75.

38 Schlichte and Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” 417–19.

39 Antonio Giustozzi, Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan (London: Hurst Publishers, 2009), 193–4.

40 Schlichte and Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” 418.

41 Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention,” 1147.

42 Duyvesteyn, “Rebels & Legitimacy,” 679.

43 Terpstra and Frerks, “Rebel Governance and Legitimacy,” 300–301.

44 Simon Pierre Boulanger Martel, “Cultural Production, Music and the Politics of Legitimacy: The Case of the FARC in Colombia,” Civil Wars 23, no. 1 (2020): 104–26.

45 Podder, “Understanding the Legitimacy of Armed Groups: A Relational Perspective.”

46 Antonio Giustozzi, “Hearts, Minds and the Barrel of a Gun: The Taliban’s Shadow Government,” Prism 3, no. 2 (2012): 71–80, 72–73.

47 See e.g. Mara Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State.” (Brookings Institution, July 18, 2016), https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-legal-foundations-of-the-islamic-state/ (accessed February 8, 2023); Adam Baczko, “How the Taliban Justice System Contributed to Their Victory in Afghanistan.” (Social Research Council, October 26, 2021), https://items.ssrc.org/insights/how-the-taliban-justice-system-contributed-to-their-victory-in-afghanistan/ (accessed April 29, 2022).

48 Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention,” 1147.

49 For a discussion about this distinction see Duyvesteyn, “Rebels & Legitimacy.”

50 Ibid., 678.

51 Schlichte and Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” 417.

52 Virgina Braun and Victoria Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology,” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, no. 2 (2006): 77–101, 86.

53 See for example Andrew March and Mara Revkin, “Caliphate of Law: ISIS’ Ground Rules.” (Foreign Affairs, April 15, 2015), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2015-04-15/caliphate-law (accessed June 5, 2022); Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State”; Antonio Giustozzi and Adam Baczko, “The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary, 2003-2013,” Central Asian Affairs 1 no. 2 (2014): 199–224.

54 Ibid., 84.

55 Ruth Wodak, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in The Routledge Companion to English Studies, ed. Constant Leung and Brian V. Street (London: Routledge, 2014), 302–317, 305.

56 Bruce Hoffmann, Inside Terrorism (Revised Edition) (New York: Colombia University Press, 2017), 92.

57 Revkin, “Competitive Governance and Displacement Decisions Under Rebel Rule,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65, no. 1 (2021): 46–80, 47.

58 Beatrice de Graaf and Ahmet Layla, “Policing as Rebel Governance: The Islamic State Police.” (The ISIS Files, April 21, 2021), https://extremism.gwu.edu/isis-files-policing-rebel-governance-islamic-state-police (accessed April 5, 2022).

59 Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State.”

60 ISIS, “The Law of Allah or the Laws of Men,” Dabiq 10 (2015c): 1–79, 4.

61 ISIS, “Shari’ah Alone Will Rule Africa,” Dabiq 8 (2015b): 1–68, 26; “The Law of Allah or the Laws of Men,” 43.

62 Disbelief.

63 Polytheism.

64 ISIS, “Shawwal 1438,” Rumiyah 3 (2016d): 1–46, 17.

65 ISIS, Rabi Al-Akhir 1438,” Rumiyah 5 (2017a): 1–44, 2.

66 Polytheism.

67 ISIS, “The Flood,” Dabiq 2 (2014b): 1–44, 10; “Al Qa’idah of Waziristan: A Testimony from Within,” Dabiq 6 (2014d): 1–63, 21.

68 ISIS, “The Law of Allah or the Laws of Men,”  55.

69 ISIS, “Break the Cross,” Dabiq 15 (2016b): 1–82, 32.

70 ISIS, “The Murtadd Brotherhood,” Dabiq 14 (2016a): 1–68, 34.

71 ISIS, “The Return of the Khilafah,” Dabiq 1 (2014a): 1–50, 24.

72 ISIS, “Jumada Al-Awwal 1438,” Rumiyah 6 (2017b): 1–44, 22.

73 See for example Revkin, “Competitive Governance and Displacement Decisions Under Rebel Rule,” 54.

74 ISIS, “Rajab 1438,” Rumiyah 8 (2017c): 1–48, 9.

75 ISIS, “From Hypocrisy to Apostasy,” 43; ISIS, “The Murtadd Brotherhood,” 9.

76 ISIS, “The Flood,” 22, 33.

77 ISIS, “The Return of the Khilafah,” 13.

78 ISIS, “The Failed Crusade,” 55.

79 ISIS, “Shari’ah Alone Will Rule Africa,” 65.

80 ISIS, “Dhul-Hijjah 1437,” Rumiyah 1 (2016c): 1–38, 6.

81 Ibid., 11.

82 ISIS, “Dhul-Hijjah 1437,” 11.

83 René Provost, Rebel Courts: The Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 25.

84 ISIS, “From Hypocrisy to Apostasy,”24.

85 Ginsburg, “Rebel Use of Law and Courts,” 498.

86 March and Revkin, “Caliphate of Law.”

87 Provost, Rebel Courts, 126.

88 Mara Revkin and Ariel Ahram, “Perspectives on the Rebel Social Contract: Exit, Voice and Loyalty in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” World Development 132 (2020): 1–9, 5; Provost, Rebel Courts, 108, 116.

89 Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State,” 31.

90 Provost, Rebel Courts, 109.

91 Ibid., 25.

92 Ginsburg, “Rebel Use of Law and Courts,” 499.

93 Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State,” 25.

94 Olivia Becker, “Islamist Rebels Are Allegedly Crucifying People in Syria.” (Vice, April 30, 2014), https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3j5ym/islamist-rebels-are-allegedly-crucifying-people-in-syria (accessed April 27, 2022).

95 Provost, Rebel Courts, 110.

96 Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State,” 29.

97 Ibid., 11.

98 Mikael Ekman, “ILAC Rule of Law Assessment Report: Syria 2017.” (International Legal Assistance Consortium, 2017), https://newilac.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Syria2017-1.pdf (accessed April 26, 2022).

99 Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State,” 11.

100 Mikael Ekman, “ILAC Rule of Law Assessment Report: Syria 2017.” (International Legal Assistance Consortium, 2017), https://newilac.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Syria2017-1.pdf (accessed April 26, 2022), 17; Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State,” 11.

101 Rukmini Callimachi, “The Case of Purloined Poultry: How ISIS Prosecuted Petty Crime.” (New York Times, July 1, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/middleeast/islamic-state-iraq.html (accessed April 27, 2022).

102 Provost, Rebel Courts, 117.

103 Revkin and Ahram, “Perspectives on the Rebel Social Contract,” 5.

104 Revkin, “The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State,” 30.

105 Ibid.

106 Ginsburg, “Rebel Use of Law and Courts,” 499.

107 Provost, Rebel Courts, 112–113.

108 Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention,” 1155.

109 Ibid., 1151.

110 Ibid.

111 Anchita Borthakur and Angana Kotokey, “Ethnicity or Religion: The Genesis of the Taliban Movement in Afghanistan,” Asian Affairs 51, no. 4 (2020): 817-837, 821.

112 Florian Weigand, “Why Did the Taliban Win (Again) in Afghanistan?” LSE Public Policy Review 2, no. 3 (2022): 1–10, 7; Antonio Giustozzi, “The Taliban’s ‘Military Courts’,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 25, no. 2 (2014): 284–96, 288.

113 Giustozzi, “Hearts, Minds and the Barrel of a Gun,” 74; see also Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, The Taliban Reader: War, Islam and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 340.

114 Territory governed by Shari’a.

115 Taliban, “An Awakened Ummah,” Azan 3 (2013d): 1–84, 29.

116 Taliban, “A Call to Jihad,” Azan 1 (2013b): 1–80, 14.

117 Ibid.

118 Taliban, “A Call to Jihad,” 3.

119 Taliban, “An Awakened Ummah,” 15.

120 See Cook, Haid and Trautig, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State,” 567, explaining how HTS has “exploited religious ideology as a means to validate its territorial advancement and other unpopular governance policies.”

121 Taliban, “A Call to Jihad,” 44.

122 Taliban, “An Awakened Ummah,” 52.

123 Taliban, “A Call to Jihad,” 10.

124 Ibid., 11.

125 Taliban, “An Awakened Ummah,” 16.

126 Taliban, “The Scales Have Turned!” Azan 6 (2014a): 1–44, 26.

127 Taliban, “An Awakened Ummah,” 43.

128 Taliban, “To The Jihadis In The West,” Azan 4 (2013a): 1–74, 24.

129 Taliban, “A Call to Jihad,” 48.

130 Taliban, “You’ll Never Be Safe,” 16.

131 Taliban, “An Awakened Ummah,” 29.

132 Ibid., 33.

133 Taliban, “A Call to Jihad,” 60.

134 Ibid.

135 Taliban, “You’ll Never Be Safe,” 84; “An Awakened Ummah,” 46.

136 Taliban, “The Scales Have Turned!” 25.

137 Ibid., 19.

138 International Crisis Group, “Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?” (International Crisis Group, July 24, 2008), https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/taliban-propaganda-winning-war-words (accessed March 29, 2023), 26.

139 Baczko, “How the Taliban Justice System Contributed to Their Victory in Afghanistan.”

140 United Nations Development Goals, “Afghanistan Human Development Report 2007.” (Center for Policy and Human Development, 2007), https://www.af.undp.org/content/afghanistan/en/home/library/human_development/AfHDR2007.html (accessed May 7, 2022), 9; Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention.”

141 Borthakur and Kotokey, “Ethnicity or Religion: The Genesis of the Taliban Movement in Afghanistan,” 821; Florian Weigand, “Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 11, no. 3 (2017): 359–81, 376.

142 Borthakur and Kotokey, “Ethnicity or Religion: The Genesis of the Taliban Movement in Afghanistan,” 821.

143 Antonio Giustozzi, Claudio Franco and Adam Backzo, “Shadow Justice: How the Taliban Run Their Judiciary.” (Integrity Watch Afghanistan, 2012), http://iwaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/shadow_justice-how_the_taliban_run_their_judiciary.pdf (accessed April 30, 2022), 35.

144 Baczko, “How the Taliban Justice System Contributed to Their Victory in Afghanistan.”

145 Ibid., 220.

146 Provost, Rebel Courts, 130; Adam Baczko, “Legal Rule and Tribal Politics: The US Army and the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Development and Change 47, no. 6 (2016): 1412–33, 1427.

147 Giustozzi and Baczko, “The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary,” 220.

148 Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention,” 1162.

149 Danny Singh, “Explaining Varieties of Corruption in the Afghan Justice Sector,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 9, no. 2 (2015): 231–55, 239–41.

150 Weigand, “Why Did the Taliban Win (Again) in Afghanistan?” 7; Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention,” 1159; Giustozzi, “Hearts, Minds and the Barrel of a Gun,” 73; Thomas Johnson, “Taliban Adaptations and Innovations,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 24, no. 1 (2013): 3-27, 9; Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Will the Taliban Regime Survive?” (Brookings Institution, August 31, 2021), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/08/31/will-the-taliban-regime-survive/ (accessed March 3, 2023).

151 Weigand, “Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?” 375.

152 Ibid.

153 Giustozzi and Baczko, “The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary,” 215.

154 Weigand, “Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?” 375.

155 Terpstra, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy and External Intervention,” 1159.

156 Provost, Rebel Courts, 126; Giustozzi and Baczko, “The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary,” 220.

157 Giustozzi and Baczko, “The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary,” 215.

158 Backzo, “Legal Rule and Tribal Politics: The US Army and the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Development and Change 47, no. 6 (2016): 1412–1344, 1428.

159 Giustozzi and Baczko, “The Politics of the Taliban’s Shadow Judiciary,” 215, 220.

160 Provost, Rebel Courts, 134.

161 Ibid.

162 ISIS, “The Law of Allah or the Laws of Men,” 55; Taliban, “A Call to Jihad,” 16.

163 Taliban, “The Scales Have Turned!”, 22; ISIS, “Jumada Al-Awwal 1438,” 22.

164 Strick van Linschoten and Kuehn, The Taliban Reader, 340.

165 Felbab-Brown, “Will the Taliban Regime Survive?”

166 Cook, Haid and Trautig, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State,” 573.

167 Revkin, “Competitive Governance and Displacement Decisions Under Rebel Rule,” 50; see also Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 218.

168 Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 173.

169 Krieger, “International Law and Governance by Armed Groups,” 566; Schlichte and Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” 414; Terpstra and Frerks, “Rebel Governance and Legitimacy,” 284-285; Termeer and Duyvesteyn, “The Inclusion of Women in Jihad,” 467.

170 Cook, Haid and Trautig, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State,” 559.

171 Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 102.

172 Weigand, “Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?”

173 Cook, Haid and Trautig, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State,” 573.

174 See also Hanna Pfeifer and Regine Schwab, “Politicising the Rebel Governance Paradigm. Critical Appraisal and Expansion of a Research Agenda,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 34, no. 1 (2023): 1–23, 8.