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| 1 |
ID:
192652
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this paper, we argue that the current insurgency and counterinsurgency discourse is dominated by concepts that are too narrow and too isolated from the wider civil war literature within which insurgency and counterinsurgency occur. Rather than accounting for the complex political processes and wide range of forces and actors that shape conflict dynamics, the dominant insurgency and counterinsurgency debate tends to reduce highly messy contexts to a competition between the often false dichotomy of insurgents and counterinsurgents, usually understood as the state versus one or more non-state violent actors. In order to understand civil war contexts like South-Central Somalia, we argue that orthodox reductionist concepts and assumptions underpinning the dominant insurgency and counterinsurgency discourse provide limited value. Building on recent critical literature, the paper proposes a refined conceptualization. Instead of understanding insurgency and counterinsurgency as peculiar forms of war, strategies, or sets of guerilla tactics, we follow Jaqueline Hazelton’s line of thought, suggesting that insurgency and counterinsurgency are mere elements of a broader process of violent order-making. Thus, insurgency and counterinsurgency are, in our view, comprehensive processes of organized challenge to and consolidation of established political order within the context of civil war.
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| 2 |
ID:
173388
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| Summary/Abstract |
Based on unique field work in southern Somalia, this article explores how the interrelationship between jihadi insurgent rulers and traditional authority structures fostered local order in the southernmost part of Somalia in the period 2008 to 2012. While the Jihadi insurgent group al-Shabaab’s state project was profoundly inspired by jihadi-Salafi ideology when it conquered large parts of South-Central Somalia in 2008–2009, it developed a strategy to cooperate with and co-opt local authority structures. This was partly a pragmatic approach in order to gain control of local institutions and populations. However, utilizing the local clan elders was a practical and cost-effective arrangement through which al-Shabaab could collect material resources, such as money, weapons, new recruits and other local resources. By sustaining the traditional authority structures, al-Shabaab also fostered a degree of trust and legitimacy from the local populations.
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