Unity Under Allah? Cohesion Mechanisms in Jihadist Organizations in Africa

• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Author: Stig Jarle Hansen
• Date: 01 October 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17740086
• Subject Matter: Forum on Cohesion

Forum on Cohesion
Armed Forces & Society
2018, Vol. 44(4) 587-605
Unity Under Allah?
ª The Author(s) 2017
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Cohesion Mechanisms
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17740086
journals.sagepub.com/home/afs
in Jihadist Organizations
in Africa
Stig Jarle Hansen1
Abstract
This article explores mechanisms fostering cohesion in jihadist organizations in relation
to territorial presence. This article takes four types of territorial presence as its point of
departure: (1) a clandestine network-based presence; (2) an accepted presence where
the organization is tolerated by a state; (3) a semiterritorial presence, where the
organization is allowed some control between phases of enemy offensives and with-
drawals; and (4) a relatively permanent territorial presence, where the organization fully
controls the territory in which it has bases. The article argues that each of these types of
territorial presence opens up for different ways for organizations to create cohesion.
Cohesion mechanisms thus vary according to type of territorial presence.
Keywords
Africa, cohesion/disintegration, military organization, strategy
The rise of the Islamic State (IS) sent shock waves through the international com-
munity. From 2013 to the time of writing, IS conquered a territory the size of
Denmark and governed it to the extent that Lia (2015) labeled it a form of proto
1 Institute of International, Development and Environment Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences,
A
˚ s, Akershus, Norway
Corresponding Author:
Stig Jarle Hansen, Institute of International, Development and Environment Studies, Norwegian University
of Life Sciences, universitetstunet 3, 1433 A
˚ s, Akershus, Norway.
Email: stig.hansen@nmbu.no

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Armed Forces & Society 44(4)
state. Adding to the confusion was the fact that IS soldiers fought on the battlefield
with a level of cohesion much higher than, for example, their opponents in the Iraqi
army, which often collapsed in the face of war (Astore, 2014; Walsh, 2016). Massive
amounts of resources and training have been committed to building up the Iraqi and
other armies fighting the likes of Boko Haram and Harakat Al Shabaab, but the
jihadists often prevail despite many hardships, while the Western-backed allies tend
to underperform. Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
Ansar Dine, and the Taliban, all have at some point established forms of relatively
permanent territorial control, most of them creating governance institutions in the
process (Hansen, 2018).1 In many ways, their forces more closely resembled regular
armies than the small group networks often studied in previous research of jihadist
organizations. In this article, “jihadist organizations” are defined as organizations
publicly claiming that they fight an armed struggle required by the creed of Sunni
Islam. Such groups share ideological traits—one important trait being the resurrec-
tion of the caliphate or the drive to achieve a state-like status (Byman, 2015).
Arguably, one of the problems of past analyses of jihadist organizations has been the
artificial binary differentiation between terrorist and insurgent organizations (Khalil,
2013). An organization that only employs terrorism is rare among jihadists—even Al
Qaeda fought conventional battles early in its history while also using terror to achieve
its targets. An example of this is the 1996 battle of Gedo, Somalia, where Al Qaeda
fighters supported other militias. Yet, this side of Al Qaeda has often been ignored in the
literature on jihadist organizations. Studies of cohesion in terrorist groups have tended
to focus on the type of small groups that implemented terror attacks in the 1970s and the
dynamics of the smaller cells of Al Qaeda in Europe or United States. This produced
important knowledge but did not really cover cohesion in the large units fielded by the
IS, for example, in the battle for Kobane in 2014–2015 or by Al Shabaab during the
Ramadan offensive in 2010. These two battles were more similar to a First World War
campaign than a terrorist attack (Hansen, 2013; Cockburn, 2015).
When the cohesion mechanisms of jihadist organizations have been studied, the
studies have tended to focus on small group dynamics. The proposed mechanisms
often describe how a good leader could pull a group together; how the elimination of
a leader could end a group; or how repression, negotiations, or implosion could end
the terrorist group (Alonso, 2011; Altier, Thoroughgood, & Horgan, 2014; Ashour,
2011; Barelle, 2015; Bertram, 2015; Bjørgo & Horgan, 2009; Cronin, 2010; Della
Porta & Diani, 2006; Jones & Libiki, 2008; Jordan, 2009; Weinberg & Perliger,
2010). Previous studies have also focused on how group interaction leads to the
creation of a group psychology.
A few articles have in fact studied the effects of hierarchy on jihadist organiza-
tions, for example, Zelinsky and Martin (2009), but even these contributions failed
to explore why such hierarchies developed over time. Additionally, the effects of
hierarchy on cohesion were not explored. However, Zelensky and Shubik argued, as
will this article, that centralization became more likely when an organization had a
secure base of operations.

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Hansen
589
This article argues that if one introduces the variable of territorial control, mil-
itary cohesion literature becomes an important untapped resource in the study of
jihadist groups. It should be noted that well-known jihadist organizations such as
Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab have not only implemented terrorist attacks but at times
have also served in a more traditional “military-like” role (Coll, 2004; Hansen,
2013). Most jihadist groups have in fact both implemented terror and wielded larger
military units that resembled a conventional army in many ways, including Ansar
Dine, Boko Haram, the IS, Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Les
Marabouts, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and others. Some of these organi-
zations, such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ansar Dine, the IS, Al Shabaab,
and Boko Haram, have controlled large territories over a significant period of time,
establishing more traditional mechanisms of cohesion and recruitment. Thus, in
order to study such formations, it becomes natural to draw upon the literature
studying traditional military cohesion.
However, the article argues that the military cohesion literature has to be applied
with care, as jihadists groups take various organizational forms, not always similar to
regular armies, or insurgents, as with other groups using terror. This is easier to see
when dealing with some traditional groups mostly employing terrorist tactics. For
example, it becomes hard to classify the Red Army Faction as an insurgency or as
military unit, it was simply too small and did focus on other tactics than conventional
or guerilla attacks (Aghai, 2011, p. 171). Jihadist organizations, as will be shown
later, might also not engage in combat or terrorism in the state that host them. In fact,
in some cases, the jihadist organization might only attack targets outside the borders
of its host state or train other groups active outside the borders of the state that host
them. This makes some jihadist organizations different from insurgents but also
from a regular army, the latter being a part of the formal state apparatus while the
former being outside, as for example, Al Qaeda in its Sudan years. Some jihadist
organizations are also different from how Kalyvas (2006) and Staniland (2012,
p. 247) see insurgency, as having segmented which (each side controls some
territory) or fragmented territorial control which “both sides have presence through-
out the area under contestation.” Jihadist organizations are in some stages not able or
willing to contest territory, as for example, the Al Qaeda in the West. In fact, jihadist
organizations might not have territorial control of any of these forms; rather the
jihadist organizations always have a territorial presence. If they are to exist in a
territory, they must have members there.
This article takes into consideration variations in such presence among jihadist
organizations. Drawing on Hansen (2018), four stages of territorial presence serve as
a point of departure for the analysis. The first is a clandestine network-based pres-
ence, where the organization operates illegally in a territory more or less controlled
by an efficient state. The second is an accepted presence, where the organization is
tolerated by the state, these two states being different from common definitions of an
army or insurgent group. The third is a semiterritorial presence, where the organi-
zation is allowed some control between phases of enemy offensives and

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Armed Forces & Society 44(4)
withdrawals; while the state cannot control these areas on a permanent basis, it can
still defeat the jihadists in open battles. The last type of territorial presence is
relatively permanent, where the organization controls territories. The cohesion
mechanisms available to an organization will vary between these four stages of
territorial presence.
This article will not focus on the mechanisms of transformation between the
stages, done in Hansen (2018), nor will it focus on ideological transformations but
explore the equally important variations in the mechanisms of cohesion between
each stage. The article basically argues that each of these types of territorial presence
opens up different ways organizations can create cohesion and organizational hier-
archy, for example,...