Networks, Terrorism, and Global Insurgency

Networks, Terrorism, and Global Insurgency
Robert J. Bunker, ed., various contributors
Routledge (2005), 211 pp.

A collection of essays from leading researchers in the fields of counterterrorism, insurgencies, and organized crime, Networks, Terrorism, and Global Insurgency is a revealing and sometimes provocative book that tackles these seminal issues from a variety of perspectives, concentrating on extremist groups from around the globe – everyone from al-Qaeda to the Chechens to the IRA – while also offering theoretical insights into the developing trends in collaboration between terrorists, criminals, and ideologues.

One of the book's strengths is the diversity and expertise of its authors, whose approaches are less agenda-driven than academic, though it should be said that they tend to be rather America-centric in outlook. This owes partially to the original provenance of some of the articles (RAND papers, government-addressed studies, etc.). Also, the work as a whole tends toward general rather than specific observations, though there are some exceptions. Yet these caveats aside, Networks, Terrorism, and Global Insurgency provides much food for thought in its synthetic approaches to some of the foremost issues of the day.

Structure

The work is divided into four parts, preceded by three brief chapters (preface, foreword, and introduction). The first part, entitled "Theory and International Law," is the most general. It is most useful as an introduction to the more specific and topical chapters that follow. One of the best offerings here is "Netwar Revisited: The Fight for the Future Continues" by John Arquilla and David F. Ronfeld, which discusses the increasing potency and presence in terrorist and even activist operations of networks, or "dispersed small zones of all-channel connectivity" (p. 9).

Also of interest in this section is Neal A. Pollard's "Globalization's Bastards: Illegitimate Non-State Actors in International Law." Pollard notes that "modern terrorism is globalization, albeit a parasitic (and paradoxical) dark side of it, and we [are] in the midst of the first war of globalization" (p. 41).

He goes on to argue that, despite the incorrigible difficulties of finding any relevant form of international law applicable to the rise of "non-state actors" such as terrorist groups, governments must strive to do so. "[T]here must be more responses to terrorism than extradition and military attack," Pollard says. "Forms such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and regional trade blocs – not traditional forms for security issues – provide a fertile ground for considering new instruments to hold states and even multinational organizations accountable for varying and complex levels of terrorist sponsorship … bilateral trade agreements can include statements of anti-terrorism principles, and even provide recourse if a state provides specific types of succor to terrorist groups" (pp. 65-66).

However, this solution is obviously problematic, in that it is left unclear as to who will decide whether a state is guilty or not. And in any case, it is not as if these economic bodies haven't been used for decades already to put pressure on "rogue states" through Western sanctions and political interference – the kind of things that breed the instability and resentment that cause terrorism in the first place.

Part two of the collection, "Terrorism and Global Insurgency," concentrates on three different topics from three different angles. The first, "Terrorism, Crime, and Private Armies" by John P. Sullivan, is a comprehensive look at the way terrorist/paramilitary groups have developed ties with organized crime groups to the extent that they can develop a high degree of independence in terms of funds management and military organization. The article also has an eye-opening section on the role of private military contractors, chiefly in Iraq, in today's warfare.

The section's second article, "U.S. Counter-Insurgency vs. Iranian-Sponsored Terrorism," by Sean K. Anderson, is a statistical survey listing the number of terrorist attacks allegedly carried out under the direction of the Iranian government since 1980 against U.S. interests, as compared to the number of American military actions carried out in the same time against Iran's perceived sphere of interest.

Given the Bush administration's current targeting of the regime in Tehran, the article is bound to be widely read; this is less likely for the final article in the section, Andrew Garfield's "PIRA Lessons Learned: A Model of Terrorist Leadership Succession," because the group it describes (the Irish Republican Army) has more or less ceased to operate. Nevertheless, some of the aspects of IRA leadership trends over time that the author describes, as well as motivators for individuals who have joined the paramilitary organization, have application for similar groups around the world, such as the Albanian UCK/KLA in Kosovo and Macedonia.

The third and fourth parts of the work will probably be of most immediate interest to readers, concentrating as they do on the al-Qaeda and Chechen terrorist groups. In Kimbra L. Fishel's "Challenging the Hegemon: Al-Qaeda's Elevation of Asymmetric Insurgent Warfare Onto the Global Arena," the reader gets a broad look at the modus operandi of the world's currently most infamous terrorist organization; a more detailed treatment of the same topic is found later in "Operational Combat Analysis of the al-Qaeda Network" (by Robert J. Bunker and Matt Begert), which begins from the author's aforementioned focus on networks, described as "the underlying foundation of postmodern military and police force structures" (p. 146).

The chapter is unique for its combination of historical analysis (the genesis of al-Qaeda, a recap of its military and terrorist operations over the years) and analysis (in terms of its speed, offensive and defensive attributes, and a "combat multiplier" factor). The article then goes on to painstakingly take apart different examples of al-Qaeda attacks according to translatable military principles – the object of the study being "to further research into the military capabilities and ultimately, vulnerabilities of network organizational structures" (p. 146).

Finally, Mark Galeotti's "'Brotherhood' and 'Associates': Chechen Networks of Crime and Resistance'" analyzes the link between armed struggle and organized crime in Chechnya, taking a more nuanced view of the identity and attributes of the Chechen cause than one gets from American Russophobe writers sympathetic to the neoconservative vision of a new Pax Americana in the Caucasus. In fact, the author's remarks are considerably enlightening in that he ties together historical aspects of the Chechen resistance and the pseudo-Soviet aspirations of its corrupt pro-independence bloc in the 1990s with the thoroughly criminalized nature of its paramilitary groups, themselves rooted in an ancient clan structure having its own leadership structures and interpersonal obligations.

The book closes with a sort of conclusion, "Multilateral Counter-Insurgency Networks," by Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan, which draws on the predominant themes expressed throughout the work while offering advice and direction on the desired future role of law enforcement (particularly, American) in the war against terror.

Some Limitations

Inevitably, a work such as Networks, Terrorism, and Global Insurgency is bound to have some limitations, even flaws. By nature, it is stylistically speaking rather academic, meaning there is a certain degree of repetitiveness, rehashing, and reliance on now stock terminology such as "asymmetric warfare" and "non-state actors." Again it seems that placating the original target audience of the papers delivered (Department of Homeland Security, branches of the military) might have had something to do with this tendency.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, though it might be a turnoff for some readers. The academic focus also means the manifestation of extremes: while articles such as "Challenging the Hegemon" seem a tad fluffy and verbose, full of cliché terminology, others such as "Operational Combat Analysis of the al-Qaeda Network" might bewilder the general reader with idiosyncratic terminology and formulations almost bordering on mathematical equations.

On Private Enterprise

Perhaps the most fascinating article in the collection, which provides much food for thought, is the aforementioned "Terrorism, Crime, and Private Armies" by John P. Sullivan, which does an even better job of presenting the full ramifications of the topic than Pollard's similar piece. The study is particularly useful in that provokes thought regarding the ultimate future outcomes of today's manifested activities in these categories.

For example, take Sullivan's description of human rights abuses carried out by private mercenaries against civilians in Bosnia and Iraq, as well as his observation that such groups have their own intelligence services and relationships with local militias. In the former case, private military contractors if found guilty of abuses seem to risk only a demotion, not a prosecution, due to the lack of applicable law. Sullivan laments the implications for human rights this lack has brought about, in an era when "the law has not yet caught up with the shift in conflict and participants in market-state war" (p. 79). As for the latter, these individuals and their organization, while they often work with and count on the support of the U.S. and allied forces, remain unaccountable to their official state bodies.

Sullivan's presentation here inspires further deliberation. How, for example, can limits or control be placed on the "alliance-building" tendencies of the Blackwaters or MPRIs of the world – especially considering that they have a huge amount of cash at their disposal, which is subject to no official oversight other than that of the corporate headquarters? The lack of moral restraint sometimes exhibited by employees of such firms is no doubt fed by their wealth and perceived unaccountability, while at the same time they enjoy the same patriotic support back home as the legitimate military gets (such as the storm of outrage in America at the death of the four "civilian contractors" in Fallujah in 2004, which launched a small war with a devastating human toll for that city's residents).

Further, and perhaps most interestingly, if private armies have their own intelligence networks, what will the legal difference prove to be in terms of its disclosure? The government's penalties for leaking "classified" information are severe; what if the same class of information is acquired independently, by a private company? Should it abide by similar laws? The relativity of treatment between private and public military forces are also pointed out by the author in terms of the huge discrepancies in salary between private mercenaries and soldiers, whose "take" varies tremendously – for what is often the same work.

Indeed, just as terrorism is described in the beginning of the work as the "dark side" of globalization, the entrance of private military contractors into the game also illustrates some of the dangers of a new scenario in which "the market prevails rather than the rule of law or state identity" (p. 79). In the end, the business of terrorism and war is a symbiotic one, bringing together an unlikely cast of opposing characters, from nationalist militants to Mafia clans, from soldiers of strong states to the private mercenaries who cooperate with both them and, sometimes, local warlords and crime bosses. As Networks, Terrorism, and Global Insurgency abundantly demonstrates, war has never been stranger than it is today.