Organization and Community: Determinants of Insurgent Military Effectiveness - Working Paper

 Alec Worsnop's paper "Organization and Community: Determinants of Insurgent Military Effectiveness" is very much a work in progress and yet giving us already some interesting insights into insurgency from the organizational stand point. Abstract below:
 

"The United States and other members of the international community have expended billions of dollars and thousands of lives confronting insurgent organizations across the globe. Strikingly, however, there has been little systematic analysis of how some insurgent organizations have developed and maintained the military capacity to challenge superior military forces. Thus, this dissertation project is motivated by a fundamental question: What explains why some insurgent organizations are more militarily effective than others? Building on the study of conventional militaries, informal and formal institutions, and sub-state conflict, I focus on the centrality of organizational characteristics in determining military effectiveness. This organizational focus is driven by the observation that while structural and material factors may play a role in explaining the capacity of military actors, the most important factor is how organizations are able to utilize what they have.

This chapter constructs a comprehensive theory accounting for the importance of both informal structures of community support and formal military structures such as logistics, command and control, and personnel management systems in explaining how some insurgent organizations achieve relatively high levels of military effectiveness and others do not. In particular, to achieve base levels of effectiveness, I argue that insurgents must use formal elements to actively link themselves to the informal networks within the organization. In addition, this framework uncovers two understudied potential insurgent development pathways. First, organizations built around weak communities are not destined to become ineffective military forces. Instead, they may compensate for a lack of strong bonding ties of trust by constructing informal structures and legitimacy. Second, organizations surrounded by strong pre-existing communities may not develop into effective military entities. Organizations surrounded by strong communities can only benefit from them if they act to leverage those bonds and complement them with dedicated formal military structures"

 While we all eagerly wait for the final paper, some initial thoughts and comments on my side. Organizational effectiveness is a key component of insurgent groups that is sometimes hidden by the military action itself or media perceptions. An organizational approach to insurgency does have some interesting policy implications:
- If the aim of the counter-insurgency operation is to find a negotiated solution, one has to defeat the insurgency "enough" to bring them to the table but not degrade its operational capability to the point that it loses control of it own units.
- In environments where communities are weak, insurgent organizations have to invest in indoctrination, thus creating a bond/cohesion within the units. A dynamic not explored in the paper but that may play a role would be "pre-recruitment" indoctrination. ISIL, Al-Qaeda and other groups use of the media and propaganda as a recruitment tool and also as a norm-setting channel; new recruits have already internalized some of the norms and values of the organization by the time they joined.
- It would also explain why, among weak communities, insurgent groups are so public about disciplinary procedures (i.e. ISIL and Al-Shabab executions of deserters, collaborators or abuses of power). They need to send the message not only within its ranks but also in the wider community and hence establishing a norm.
- When formal militaries have very low levels of cohesion, counter-insurgency leans on Popular Committees (i.e. Yemen) and Self Defense Groups (i.e. Algeria). Interestingly enough, these groups have parallel organizational issues to that of insurgents.
- In the case of strong counter-insurgency, the paradox is that it may lead to a more effective (militarily) insurgency as it creates more chances from battle-learning and promotion and more positions within the organization are taken by the military wing over the political one. Timing, sequencing and tempo of military counterinsurgency should take that into account.
- Stronger communities can provide an important impetus to insurgencies if there is organizational capabilities and objectives are aligned; however, if the communities changes their alignment, the insurgency can be seriously undermined by the competing bonds and relations of its members (i.e. Iraq Awakening). Therefore a counterinsurgency strategy should take into account the community strength (like in Somalia where there are locations where clans structures remain strong while others it has been seriously undermined)