The Locals Strike Back: The Anbar Awakening in Iraq and the Rise of Islamic State

Andersen, Lars Erslev

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-58877-7_9

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Civilian populations, on the other hand, were alienated by AQI’s extreme demands and violent rule. By September 2006, AQI had lost much of the legitimacy it enjoyed early in the war, and the Sunni triangle, previously an important AQI base, was becoming an increasingly hostile place (Andersen, 2017: 94–95; Long, 2008: 77).…”

Section: Empirical Analysis: Explaining Variation In Resistance To Jihadi Rulementioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting the caliphate? Explaining civil resistance in jihadist proto-states

Svensson

Finnbogason

2020

European Journal of International Relations

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Research has shown the potential of nonviolent civil resistance in challenging autocratic state regimes (e.g. Sharp, 1973; Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011). Yet, little is known about its applicability in jihadist proto-states, that is, territories governed by militant jihadist groups. We argue that civil resistance is more likely to occur when jihadists impose a rule that local populations perceive as alien and when organizational structures capable of collective nonviolent mobilization are activated. We develop this argument through a comparative analysis of three jihadist proto-states: one in which manifest and organized civil resistance occurred (Islamic Emirate of Azawad in Mali in 2012), and two in which it did not: the Islamic State of Iraq (2006–2008) and the Islamic Principality of al-Mukalla in Yemen (2015–2016). Whereas the former was met with mainly armed resistance (the Sunni Awakening campaign), the latter saw neither armed nor unarmed organized and collective resistance by locals under its rule. We demonstrate how variation in the jihadists’ governing strategies (especially the degree of adaptation to local conditions) as well as in the social structures for mobilization (i.e. whether opposition was channeled through civil society networks or tribal networks) created different conditions for civil resistance. This study adds to a growing research discussion on civil resistance against rebel governance (e.g. Arjona, 2015; Kaplan, 2017). More broadly, our study is an innovative first attempt to bridge research on terrorism, rebel governance, and civil resistance, three fields that have been siloed in previous research.

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Section: Empirical Analysis: Explaining Variation In Resistance To Jihadi Rulementioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting the caliphate? Explaining civil resistance in jihadist proto-states

Svensson

Finnbogason

2020

European Journal of International Relations

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“…Nevertheless, the dominance of this form of counterinsurgency knowledge-cum-doctrine as militarized state-building in the name of modernizing traditional societies, formalized in FM 3-24, soon encountered its limits. As the situation in Iraq started to destabilize in the 2010s, notably with the rise of the Islamic State (Erslev Andersen, 2016), and as the Obama administration announced a drawdown of the US counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan in 2010, many critics argued that the overambitious goals of state-and nation-building through counterinsurgent modernization would be impossible to achieve (e.g. Smith and Jones, 2015;West, 2014).…”

Section: The New Counterinsurgency Eramentioning

confidence: 99%

Counterinsurgency, knowledge production and the traveling ofcoercive Realpolitikbetween Colombia and Somalia

Moe¹,

Müller²

2018

Cooperation and Conflict

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Counterinsurgency witnessed a powerful revival in our post-9/11 world. With its focus on the control of territory, populations and seemingly less kinetic hearts and minds campaigns-as well as a good dose of liberal humanitarianism-contemporary counterinsurgency has become the dominant form of the Western military interventionism. While most of the associated debates focus on the potentials and pitfalls of Western counterinsurgency approaches, the role of South-South cooperation in the making of 'Global Counterinsurgency', and the related emerging geopolitical convergences of interest between Western and non-Western elites in counterinsurgency, has received little attention. In focusing on counterinsurgency-related forms of knowledge production, and by analyzing the role of transnational military knowledge entrepreneurs promoting a form of coercive Realpolitik that supports 'locally owned' elite-driven counterinsurgency efforts in the field of South-South military cooperation between Colombia and Somalia, this article addresses this void. We show that conventional North/South divides no longer capture the realities of counterinsurgent warfare going global and call for a de-centering of the study of military interventions that is sensitive to how knowledge production in regards to 'Global South' contexts not only makes them legible, and thereby more governable, but also how this knowledge production informs ongoing reconfiguration of interventions themselves.

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Confronting the Caliphate

Svensson

Finnbogason

Krause

et al. 2022

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When jihadist groups establish their own governance and proto-states, they, to some extent, rely on the acquiescence of the civilians under their control. Therefore, civilians are not only victims of coercive control but are also agents of change, sometimes providing fundamental challenges to the jihadists’ governance attempts. Civilians in Mali, Iraq, Algeria, and Syria have engaged in various forms of civil resistance against jihadist groups: refusal to cooperate, participation in public protests, and various forms of more covert everyday resistance. Exploring civil resistance against jihadist groups, the book not only studies the conditions under which it occurs but also the forms it takes. It explores who chooses to resist and the conditions under which such resistance can be successful. Confronting the Caliphate is a comprehensive study of this topic, based on original research from surveys in Mosul; disaggregated data on protests across communities in Syria; a comparative analysis of Mali, Iraq, and Yemen; and accounts of resistance in Algeria. It clearly shows that civil resistance is not only possible but is much more prevalent than previously assumed. The rule of jihadist groups presents civilians with some of the most difficult and dangerous circumstances for engaging in civil resistance, but the book demonstrates how they can nonviolently and successfully resist.

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The Locals Strike Back: The Anbar Awakening in Iraq and the Rise of Islamic State

Cited by 17 publications

References 13 publications

Confronting the caliphate? Explaining civil resistance in jihadist proto-states

Confronting the caliphate? Explaining civil resistance in jihadist proto-states

Counterinsurgency, knowledge production and the traveling ofcoercive Realpolitikbetween Colombia and Somalia

Confronting the Caliphate

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