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Armed Groups: A Tier-One Security Priority

Richard H. Shultz Douglas Farah

Itamara V. Lochard

INSS Occasional Paper 57

September 2004

USAF Institute for National Security Studies USAF Academy, Colorado

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The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the US Government. The paper is approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. The Consortium for the Study of Intelligence holds copyright to this paper; it is published here with their permission.

******* ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Richard H. Shultz, Jr. is director of the International Security Studies Program at the The Fletcher School and Professor of International Politics. At the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence he serves as research director. He has served as a consultant to US government agencies concerned with national security affairs. He has also written extensively on intelligence and security. He recently published “SHOWSTOPPERS: Nine Reasons Why We Never Sent Our Special Operations Forces after Al Qaeda Before 9/11,” Weekly Standard 9:19 (26 January 2004). His forthcoming book is Tribal Warfare: How Non-State Armed Groups Fight (Columbia University Press, 2005).

Douglas Farah is senior fellow at the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence. For 19 years worked as a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for the Washington Post, covering armed conflicts, insurgencies, and organized crime in Latin America and West Africa. He has also written on Middle Eastern terror finance, including Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror (2004).

Itamara V. Lochard is a researcher at the International Security Studies Program at the Fletcher School where she is completing studies towards a Doctorate in International Security Studies, Conflict Resolution and International Organizations. She has worked at the International Institute of Studies at Stanford University and in the African Studies department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

Comments pertaining to this paper are invited; please forward to: Director, USAF Institute for National Security Studies HQ USAFA/DFES 2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 5L27 USAF Academy, CO 80840 phone: 719-333-2717 fax: 719-333-2716 email: [email protected]

Visit the Institute for National Security Studies home page at

http://www.usafa.af.mil/inss

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword vii

Executive Summary ix

Acknowledgement xv

Introduction 1

Post-Cold War International Security Environment 2 Integration and Fragmentation 4 Fragmentation and Failing States 5 Lawless/Ungoverned Territory 8

Non-Traditional Security Challenges and Armed Groups 10 Evolution of the Non-State Armed Group Threat 11 A Taxonomy of Armed Groups 14 Insurgents 17 Terrorists 21 Militias 22 Organized Criminal Groups 28 Enhancing the Power of Armed Groups 31 The Direct Impact of Armed Groups 35 The Indirect impact of Armed Groups 43

Profiling Armed Groups 45 Understanding Operational Characteristics: A Framework 47 Leadership 48 Rank and File Membership 49 Organizational Structure, Functions, and Resources 49 Ideology/Political Code of Beliefs and Objectives 50 Strategy and Tactics 51 Linkages with other Non-State and State Actors 52

Key Findings and Future Trends 53 Weak States: A Chronic International Problem 53 The Geography of Lawless, Ungoverned Territory 59 Recognition of the Importance of Armed Groups 63 Internal/Transnational Conflicts: A Continuing and Major Source of Instability 64 Apocalyptic Scenarios and the Intentions of Armed

Groups 66

Implications for US Intelligence and Defense Agencies 72

Notes 77

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FOREWORD

We are pleased to publish this fifty-seventh volume in the Occasional Paper series of the United States Air Force Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Richard Shultz, Douglas Farah, and Itamara Lochard offered this paper for INSS publication because they saw it as complementary with two previous papers that we have published: Troy Thomas and Stephen Kiser’s Lords of the Silk Route (Occasional Paper #43, May 2002); and Troy Thomas and William Casebeer’s Violent Systems (Occasional Paper #52, March 2004). We agree. The Thomas, Kiser, Casebeer papers establish a systematic framework for the analysis of the broad category of violent non-state actors. Shultz, Farah, and Lochard add detail to significant elements of that framework. They develop a four-category typology of armed groups, demonstrating that one must recognize and adapt to the differences among the different types of violent actors in today’s international environment. They also develop a very promising profiling model for these groups, creating effectively a four-by-six matrix for group analysis. And they also suggest significant geographic regions of danger where these groups can thrive without effective controls. Finally, they suggest how the intelligence and operational communities must adapt to effectively counter this rising and significant threat. We commend this work as further development of important knowledge about this key arena of emerging national security threat.

About the Institute

INSS is primarily sponsored by the National Security Policy Division of the Nuclear and Counterproliferation Directorate, Headquarters US Air Force (HQ USAF/XONP), and the Dean of the Faculty, USAF Academy. Other sponsors include the Secretary of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment (OSD/NA); the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA); the Air Force Information Warfare Center (AFIWC); the Army Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI); the United States Northern Command/North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORTHCOM/NORAD); and the United States Military Academy Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). The mission of the Institute is “to promote national security research for the Department of Defense within the military academic community, to foster the development of strategic perspective within the United States Armed Forces, and to support national security discourse through outreach and education.” Its

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research focuses on the areas of greatest interest to our organizational sponsors: arms control and strategic security; counterproliferation and force protection; homeland defense, military assistance to civil authorities, and combating terrorism; air and space issues and planning; information operations and warfare; and regional and emerging national security issues.

INSS coordinates and focuses outside thinking in various disciplines and across the military services to develop new ideas for defense policy making. To that end, the Institute develops topics, selects researchers from within the military academic community, and administers sponsored research. It reaches out to and partners with education and research organizations across and beyond the military academic community to bring broad focus to issues of national security interest. And it hosts conferences and workshops and facilitates the dissemination of information to a wide range of private and government organizations. In these ways, INSS facilitates valuable, cost-effective research to meet the needs of our sponsors. We appreciate your continued interest in INSS and our research products.

JAMES M. SMITH Director

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Non-state armed groups pose a major security challenge to the United States, even without their acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.

Armed groups have now developed global capabilities to strike at high-value political, economic, population, and symbolic targets as well as level strategic blows. They seek not only local but also regional and global influence. Al Qaeda demonstrated this capacity on 9/11. It forced the United States to radically change its antiterrorism policy.

Other armed groups seek to have the same strategic impact by using the more standard forms of direct violence employed by terrorists and insurgents. Armed groups in Iraq are a case in point. Their attacks, which rapidly and violently spiraled over the last year, hope to put an end to the US reconstruction and democratization of Iraq. If successful, this would be a strategic defeat for the United States, with all the long-term ramifications that would entail.

There are also indirect ways armed groups attempt to undermine US policy. They do so by destabilizing states and/or regions that are of critical importance. For example, in Afghanistan, clan militias, as well as regrouping Taliban and al Qaeda forces, are committed to a long, drawn-out, and protracted conflict. They seek to prevent major political reforms, a central US policy goal in the war on terrorism.

In other states and regions, collaboration between political actors and criminal armed groups undercut stability, the rule of law, and political and economic development. The Andean Ridge region is illustrative. Large parts of it—both within and/or across state borders—have been turned into lawless and ungoverned territory in which narco-traffickers, insurgents, and other criminal gangs thrive.

There is little to suggest that these direct and indirect challenges posed by armed groups—insurgents, terrorists, militias, and criminal organizations—are a temporary phenomenon. Rather, all data trends illustrate just the opposite.

First, the number of weak and failed states remains a significant and chronic problem. In these regions, armed groups

find a hospitable environment with relative freedom from government authority and control.

Second, topographical mapping of these lawless and ungoverned areas reveals they cover a massive amount of territory, providing armed groups with access to secure bases for training, planning, and launching operations locally, regionally, and globally.

Third, non-state armed groups and internal/transnational conflicts pose the most recurrent cause of instability around the globe. And they are growing more lethal due to their acquisition and indiscriminate use of highly destructive weapons. Moreover, many of these conflicts, particularly those due to ethnic, religious, tribal, and communal differences, will remain vicious, long-lasting, and difficult to terminate.

Fourth, the gravity of this situation is further compounded by the publicly stated objective of several armed groups to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction.

Armed groups will not only continue to pose serious and dangerous strategic challenges into the 21st century, but also provide strategic opportunities that can be exploited to help achieve policy goals. There have and will be instances where the United States may find collaborating with armed group is in its strategic interests.

The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan is an example. In the latter 1990s, it sought US help in fighting the Taliban, who were then closely aligned with al Qaeda. A serious program of assistance as part of an overall strategy to degrade al Qaeda would have put it on the defensive. Having to worry about its own security would have meant less time to plan and execute operations against American targets. But no such aid was forthcoming because Washington did not grasp the opportunity.

To manage, neutralize, or utilize the phenomenon of armed groups an appreciable understanding of these actors—as well as the threats and opportunities that flow from them—is needed. Even today, doubts remain in the US defense and intelligence communities over whether any armed group can carry out attacks that could have a strategic impact or if armed groups can provide a strategic opportunity.

Understanding armed groups requires sophisticated tools for differentiating between and among them, as well as for constructing and monitoring systematic profiles of how they organize and function. Such profiles can serve to guide the ways in which states’ intelligence and security services plan and conduct operations against or in support of them.

What are these key operational characteristics? It will not be easy to find this information. Some is available, but much is hidden. The characteristics can be divided into six categories:

1. An understanding of the different leaders of the group, their roles, styles, personalities, abilities, beliefs, rivalries, and insecurities.

2. The group’s membership, how they are recruited, trained, and retained, as well as whether they are cohesive or riddled with factional divisions.

3. The group’s organizational infrastructure—funding sources, communications, logistical control, propaganda and media resources, security, and intelligence capabilities.

4. Different ideological, political, and cultural codes, beliefs, and cleavages.

5. Operational doctrine, strategy, and tactics.

6. The extent of linkages with other actors.

Such profiles serve as the basis for developing intelligence and special operations options—political, psychological, economic, and paramilitary—for responding to and degrading armed groups. They can likewise be used to determine whether and how to assist other armed groups that can help facilitate American foreign policy objectives.

Faced with a 21st century international security landscape in which armed groups will present a plethora of direct tier-one and indirect threats and opportunities, the United States should take the following steps to meet these challenges:

• Policymakers and intelligence community managers must comprehend both the complex nature of the

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armed groups as well as the threats and opportunities that flow from their emergence.

• Beyond constituting threats, in certain cases armed groups may also provide opportunities that, if seized, will contribute to the attainment of US foreign policy objectives.

• Major changes are needed in a US intelligence community where doubts remain over whether an armed group can undermine major American interests through attacks that have a strategic impact. That such attacks constitute a form of warfare also remains a suspect proposition.

• The organizational cultures of the intelligence agencies tasked with analytic and operational responsibilities of dealing with armed groups require major revision. New cultures must be established that approach armed groups as a tier-one priority.

• Sophisticated tools must be developed for differentiating among armed groups, as well as for constructing profiles of how they organize and function. These tools should serve as the basis for all source collection that provides the information needed for such profiles.

• These profiles would serve as the basis for developing intelligence and special operations options—political, psychological, economic, and paramilitary—for responding to and degrading those armed groups that threaten the United States.

• These profiles should also be adapted for use not only against armed groups already directly or indirectly attacking the United States, but also to identify those in nascent stages.

• Armed group profiles can likewise be employed to identify ways in which the United States may assist certain armed groups whose success will be advantageous to US foreign policy objectives.

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• Finally, beyond major revisions in the culture of the intelligence community there is the need to establish new practical requirements to create the requisite intelligence doctrine, organization, training, and personnel to meet the armed groups challenge in the 21st century.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This monograph was prepared as part of the “Armed Groups Intelligence Project” of the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). The Consortium was established in 1979 as a project of the National Strategy Information Center, a nongovernmental, nonpartisan research and policy center in Washington, DC. For twenty-five years the primary mission of CSI has been to identify appropriate intelligence practices for democracy. It also has promoted teaching and research on intelligence in a democratic society at the college and university levels.

In the aftermath of 9/11, there is broad recognition that the intelligence community, despite significant changes, requires major reforms to address new challenges. Among the most important are those posed by non-state armed groups, to include terrorists, guerrillas, militias, and organized criminal gangs. CSI’s Armed Groups Intelligence Project focuses directly on this aspect of intelligence reform. The Consortium seeks to conceptualize a new intelligence model and identify effective intelligence practices to respond to major security challenges posed by these non-state armed groups. To do so, CSI is conducting research to draw on the professional experiences of former senior members of intelligence/ security services and former leaders of armed groups on three continents. Its findings and recommendations will be drafted later this fall.

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ARMED GROUPS: A TIER-ONE SECURITY PRIORITY

INTRODUCTION

Political violence, conflict, and war since the end of the Cold

War have repeatedly pitted states against non-state armed groups or,

in the case of inter-communal strife, multiple non-state armed

groups against one another. This trend is not new. Various datasets

that track armed clashes confirm that throughout the post-World

War II era these types of conflict were numerous.1

However, a number of developments in the 1990s enhanced the

power and capacity of armed groups to attack the state. No longer

do states possess a monopoly on the use of force within or across

state borders. Armed groups—defined in this paper as insurgents,

terrorists, militias, and criminal organizations—have found innova-

tive ways to use force in this arena. To survive and protect them-

selves, states must change how they deal with this threat because

the proliferation of armed groups shows no sign of dissipating. Just

the opposite appears to be the case: armed groups are here to stay

for the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, as discussed below, some of these groups have

undergone a profound transformation and now pose a long-term

threat of the highest order to the United States. Al Qaeda has al-

ready demonstrated the capacity to strike inside America. Other

terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, have the same potential, hav-

ing established a significant presence in the United States.2 And in

Iraq, the spiraling insurgency following the conclusion of formal

hostilities, despite the capture of Saddam Hussein, demonstrates the

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

direct threat these groups pose to US interests. Other armed groups

pose more indirect threats.

Among the revolutionary innovations by armed groups in re-

cent years is the stated intention of terrorist elements to acquire and

use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the United States

and others. This apocalyptic scenario is more feasible than ever

before because WMD are mobile, inexpensive, and do not require

extensive facilities. The emerging threat from armed groups has

fundamentally changed the nature of war in today’s world, but na-

tion-states, including the United States, have not treated this devel-

opment as a tier-one threat and remain inadequately prepared to

deal with it, both conceptually and operationally.

If the United States is to develop an effective policy and strat-

egy to counter the threats posed by armed groups today and in the

decades ahead, it must have a clear understanding of their character-

istics. This paper provides an analytical framework for producing

such assessments: First, it outlines the post-Cold War security con-

text in which armed groups thrive. Second, the paper highlights the

direct and indirect threats posed by armed groups today and their

strategic impact on the United States. Third, it proposes an analytic

framework for constructing an operational profile of an armed

group. Fourth, the paper identifies trends that demonstrate that

armed groups will continue to pose direct and indirect security chal-

lenges to the United States in the decades ahead.

POST-COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

Even before the Cold War ended, it was evident that new forces

and actors were part of an evolving international security panorama.

By the end of the 1990s, US government agencies and institutes

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

generated several studies that highlighted these structural changes

and estimated their impact on stability and conflict in the 21st cen-

tury.3 Non-governmental research centers produced similar stud-

ies.4 Finally, academic specialists in international relations and

security studies published a plethora of books, monographs, and

articles exploring the rapidly changing, and often disorderly, post-

Cold War decade of the 1990s.5

A common theme running through these studies is the need for

conceptualizing a new framework or paradigm that can account for

a global environment in which the dynamics of change and the

emergence of new actors have a powerful impact on the state and

the Westphalian system.6 There is near unanimity that non-state

armed groups are proliferating in number and importance. How-

ever, there is disagreement over the extent to which these new ac-

tors could effectively challenge state power.

James Rosenau’s Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Ex-

ploring Governance in a Turbulent World provides an incisive de-

scription and analytic breakdown of the parameters of this new

international structure. It consists of the following six develop-

ments, each of which accelerated in the 1990s by the rapid advance

of information age technology:7

• Shifting and increasingly porous borders;

• New patterns of economic growth and interaction;

• A changing distribution of power, capabilities, and authority;

• Increasing numbers of weak and disintegrating states;

• Proliferation of various kinds of non-state actors (NSAs);

• Emergence of new issues and alteration of traditional ones.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

While Rosenau does not believe that these developments will

result in an end to the state, he marshals weighty evidence empha-

sizing that world affairs will no longer be dominated by state power.

The broad scope of global politics, the arena within which political

activities occur, and the relationships among actors are all changing

drastically, says Rosenau, and will continue to do so.

Integration and Fragmentation

At the center of this new global milieu lie the interactive and

seemingly contradictory processes of fragmentation and integration,

which give rise to new spheres of power and authority. Fostering

these twin phenomena are technological innovations in transporta-

tion and communications.

Integration, writes Rosenau, is reflected in the internationaliza-

tion of capital and growth of markets, expansion of regional and

transnational corporations and organizations, spread of shared

norms (democratic practices, human rights, environmental protec-

tion, free enterprise), as well as the interdependence of issues.8

Integration’s antithesis, fragmentation, is the result of a con-

tinuing allegiance to traditional or particularistic values and prac-

tices (i.e., ethnicity, ethnonationalism, and religious

fundamentalism), a weakening of state authority, and the growing

influence of armed groups at both the sub-state and trans-state

levels.

Because fragmentation and integration alter the structure of a

global political setting anchored in the nation-state, other diverse

sources of power and authority—subsumed under the rubric of non-

state actors—now challenge the preeminence of the state. Bifurca-

tion of world politics is the result. Moreover, a major outcome of

bifurcation is growing violent discord between one category of in-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

creasingly powerful NSA—armed groups—and increasingly weak-

ened states.

Fragmentation and Failing States

Since 1945 the number of states has expanded from 51 to nearly

200. In almost every instance, upon achieving independence, this

plethora of new governments was granted sovereignty and the im-

primatur of legitimacy from the United Nations. However, achiev-

ing domestic legitimacy proved much more difficult for many of

them. Some were able to do so, but a significant number of others

embarked on the route or process of protracted state failure. Ac-

cording to Robert Rotberg: “The decade plus since the end of the

cold war has witnessed a cascading plethora of [these] state failures,

mostly in Africa but also in Asia. In addition, more and more states

are at risk, exhibiting acute signs of weakness and/or the likelihood

of outright failure.”9

With the end of the Cold War this process of fragmentation es-

calated as armed groups increasingly challenged the authority and

ability of states to rule, using a variety of means including terrorism,

guerrilla insurgency, and other irregular and unconventional forms

of organized violence. Several internal wars were the result.

The following map from Project Ploughshares’ Armed Conflicts

Report 2003 depicts how the vast majority of these conflicts—

focusing on the struggle for valuable resources, territorial independ-

ence, and religious and ethnic autonomy—flourished in sub-

Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and central Europe

in the past decade. They also occurred in Latin America and the

Pacific region.10

The primary cause of these internal wars today can be found in

the “domestic politics” of the state. The critical factor determining

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

whether a state is viable or failing, according to K. J. Holsti, is le-

gitimacy.11 Strong and healthy states are those that exhibit several

common characteristics or measures of legitimacy.

First, there is an implicit social contract between state and soci-

ety, the latter being comprised of all ethnic, religious, political, and

economic groupings. In other words, there is agreement on the po-

litical “rules of the game.” There is loyalty to the state, the political

principles upon which it is based, and its institutions.

Second, while legitimacy allows the state to extract resources, it

also requires it to provide services and a reasonable amount of or-

der, law, and security. Third, a clear boundary must exist between

public service and personal gain. State power is not a platform for

personal enrichment. Finally, no group is excluded from seeking

political influence or receiving a fair share of resources and services

because of its affiliation.

In the late 20th century, government legitimacy was eroding in

many states in the Third World, while failing to take root in a num-

ber of post-communist states, according to The Minorities at Risk

Project (MAR). It assesses the status and conflicts of politically-

active communal groups in all countries with a population of at least

500,000. The project “contributes to the understanding of conflicts

involving…over 285 groups.”12

Based on this data the Center for International Development &

Conflict Management recently published Peace and Conflict 2003:

A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self-Determination Move-

ments, and Democracy. It finds that when compared with the high-

water mark of the mid-1990s, internal or societal armed conflict was

somewhat reduced in 2002. That is the good news.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

However, it also explains that these trends are fragile.13 In the

words of the report, “positive trends coexist with counter-trends that

present major challenges to the emerging global community.”14

Among the latter are the enduring causes of failing and failed

states—weakened capacity, deeply divided societies, devastated

economies, squandered resources, traumatized populations, civil

societies crippled by war, international organized crime, and black

market networks.15

Chester Crocker summarizes this situation succinctly: “Self-

interested rulers…progressively corrupt the central organs of gov-

ernment.” And they “ally themselves with criminal networks to

divide the spoils.” The authority of the state is “undermined…

paving the way for illegal operations.” In conjunction with these

developments, “state security services lose their monopoly on the

instruments of violence, leading to a downward spiral of lawless-

ness.”16 Finally, “When state failure sets in the balance of power

shifts…in favor of armed entities [groups] outside the law” who

“find space in the vacuums left by declining or transitional states.”17

Lawless/Ungoverned Territory

The “vacuum left by declining or transitional states” results, in

turn, in the expansion of lawless and ungoverned areas that are be-

yond the authority of government. This creates safe havens in

which armed groups can establish secure bases for self-protection,

training, planning, and launching operations against local, regional,

and global targets. Terrorist groups, as well as insurgent and crimi-

nal organizations, are located in the remote parts of more than 20

countries. These areas are distinguished by rugged terrain, poor

accessibility, low population density, and little government pres-

ence.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

For example, the confluence of such territory in several Central

Asian states has made that region home to the following armed

groups: a nascent insurgency in Afghanistan based in the tribal ar-

eas along the Pakistan border; Kashmiri insurgents located in Paki-

stan; the reduced insurgent movement in Uzbekistan; and elements

of the Taliban and al Qaeda spread across this lawless area. Bin

Laden himself is apparently hiding in the mountains of the North-

west Frontier province.

Reports in the spring of 2003 warn of the regrouping of al

Qaeda and Taliban forces in this territory, and their alliance with the

radical Islamist party Hizb-i Islami. According to the Afghan am-

bassador to India, “[t]hese elements think that America will be dis-

tracted by the war in Iraq, and that the United States will not stay in

Afghanistan.”18 The map below highlights this area.

In South America, about half of Colombia’s national territory,

abandoned for decades by the central government, is now controlled

by a range of armed groups, including Marxist guerrillas, drug traf-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

fickers, and right-wing paramilitary groups, each pursuing their own

political and social agenda and the defeat of the state.

Lawlessness and ungovernability are not confined to remote ru-

ral territories. They can also be found in cities located in failing

states. Urban areas can likewise provide safe havens for armed

groups. Mogadishu is a case in point,19 as are the Pakistani cities of

Karachi and Lahore. In the aftermath of the overthrow of the Tali-

ban, many members of al Qaeda redeployed to the safety of these

cities to coordinate attacks, recruit members, and solicit funds to

continue their holy war against America.

NON-TRADITIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES AND ARMED GROUPS

For a nation’s intelligence and security services, armed groups

pose different analytical and operational challenges from those of

states. Understanding these differences is imperative today be-

cause, like their state counterparts, armed groups can now acquire

the capacity to execute violent strikes that can have a strategic im-

pact on even the most powerful nation-state. This capacity is new.

This appears to be the case for one type of armed group in particu-

lar—inter-national terrorist organizations—as was demonstrated by

al Qaeda on 9/11.

In effect, a revolution in terrorist affairs has occurred in the

1990s. This is analogous to a revolution in military affairs (RMA),

in which the conduct of war dramatically changes as the result of

major alterations by a nation-state in military organization, technol-

ogy, doctrine, and/or leadership. According to Knox and Murray,

“RMAs require the assembly of a complex mix of tactical, organiza-

tional, doctrinal, and technological innovations in order to imple-

ment a new conceptual approach to warfare.”20

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

Consistent with this definition is the revolution in terrorist af-

fairs carried out by al Qaeda in the 1990s. It had the desired impact

of fundamentally altering the conduct of warfare. However, this

innovation in the conduct of war was the work of a non-state armed

group—a development that terrorist specialists, with few excep-

tions, appear to have considered not possible prior to 9/11.

The costs of that surprise attack by al Qaeda, documented be-

low, illustrate this capability. Potential WMD attacks, an active

goal of several armed groups, could far exceed the strategic impact

of 9/11. In addition to these direct strategic threats, armed groups

such as international criminal organizations can also challenge

states in various indirect ways.

Evolution of the Non-State Armed Group Threat

Over the last two decades, NSAs who operate both within and

across state boundaries have increasingly challenged state suprem-

acy. They can be divided into two principal categories—inter-

governmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organiza-

tions (NGOs). The former includes the UN, its sub-units, and

regional counterparts. NGOs are far more diverse and far more

numerous. Today they are estimated to number over 30,000. They

seek to influence local, regional, and global agendas in ways consis-

tent with their perspective or ideology. NGOs span virtually every

facet of political, social, and economic life.21

While the image of the NGO is generally positive, those report-

ing on their growing numbers in the 1990s included in their classifi-

cation violent armed groups—militias, insurgents, terrorists, and

criminal cartels—in their classification. However, they down-

played the ability of these NSAs to confront the state through vio-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

lent conflict in a major or strategic manner and categorized them as

ancillary security problems, not first-order or top priority ones.

With few exceptions, US policymakers, and the security and in-

telligence organizations that served them, likewise failed to appreci-

ate the growing salience and power of some non-state armed groups

and were loath to consider them tier-one security threats that could

undermine major interests or carry out attacks that could have a

strategic impact. Only states had such power.

An examination of the National Security Strategy of the United

States, produced annually through the 1990s by the White House,

bears this out.22 While terrorist and criminal organizations are in-

cluded, they are seen as secondary or tier-two/three security prob-

lems not requiring a military response. This point was driven home

by the intelligence assessments of terrorist attacks against the

United States beginning with the first World Trade Center bombing

in 1993. Indeed, throughout the decade of the 1990s these terrorist

strikes both inside the United States and abroad were classified as

criminal acts, and few intelligence community officials and analysts

were willing to consider these actions a clear and present danger to

the United States—much less a form of war. Any attempt to de-

scribe terrorism in those terms ran into a stone wall of skepticism.23

The US military in the 1990s likewise considered conflicts in-

volving armed groups as minor contingencies. In fact, they classi-

fied them as “military operations other than war” (MOOTW) and

“peace operations.”24 They were not considered first-order threats

necessitating the use of regular military power against them.

This kind of thinking has to change. Armed groups today can

no longer be classified in this way. However, that said, it is impor-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

tant to understand how they differ both from the traditional threats

posed by states, as well as among themselves.

To begin with, armed groups represent non-traditional chal-

lenges to a government’s intelligence and security services that are

unlike the conventional ones presented by states. These distinctions

are important. They affect how a state threatened by an armed

group understands, targets, and moves to counter it.

Among the essential dissimilarities between an armed group

and a state is that the state maintains a formal, physical, and bureau-

cratic infrastructure. Furthermore, the policies and activities of the

state, with few exceptions, are unconcealed. It has formal law mak-

ing powers, and aspires to nationhood by seeking to achieve legiti-

macy and unity among its population. To accomplish this status,

states look to establish a core of political values or ideals that their

citizens embrace.

Some armed groups, as their ultimate objective, hope to attain

some or all of these state characteristics. However, when an armed

group begins to challenge a state through the threat or use of vio-

lence, it does not have these geographic, structural, bureaucratic,

legal, political, or philosophical characteristics. While they may

have overt front organizations, the activities of armed groups are

generally clandestine. This is especially true of their violent opera-

tions, whether executed within the borders of their state adversaries

or transnationally.

Furthermore, while a nation-state may take a democratic form

and be based on the rule of law, armed groups cannot be democratic

in ethos or organization, and do not comply with the rule of law in

settling disputes. Armed groups are illegal organizations that do not

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

follow the democratic rules of the game. They do, however, seek to

take full advantage of and exploit those state adversaries who do.

Increasingly, armed groups can acquire the potential to execute

violent strikes that can have a strategic effect against the states they

confront. While this may once have been true only of armed groups

challenging weak and failing states, it is no longer the case. Today,

even the most developed and powerful states are vulnerable to non-

traditional security challenges fostered by certain armed groups that

can take the form of ruthless attacks with strategic consequences.

Armed groups who employ unconventional and asymmetric means

in this way can target democratic and non-democratic states alike.

A Taxonomy of Armed Groups

What constitutes an armed group? How many are there? How

should they be differentiated from one another and categorized?

What motivates them? To what extent do they cooperate with one

another, as well as with states and other non-state actors? Can they

be identified and countered in their emergent or incipient stage of

development? Do armed groups provide policy opportunities as

well as threats to policy? No taxonomy exists that rigorously ad-

dresses these questions, even though armed groups are the subject

of increasing attention worldwide.

Consider how the Non-State Actors Working Group

(NSAWG), a unit of the International Committee to Ban Landmines

(ICBL), divides armed groups into the following categories: “rebel

groups, irregular armed groups, insurgents, dissident armed forces,

guerrillas, liberation movements, and de facto territorial governing

bodies.”25 Not very rigorous! What is the difference between in-

surgents and guerrillas or irregular armed groups and dissident

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

armed forces? And can not a liberation movement be a de facto

territorial governing body?

In its 2000 survey, the NSAWG identifies approximately “170

such non-state armed actors throughout the world.” In doing so it

observes that “[i]n ideology, objectives, strategies, form and level of

organization, support-base, legitimacy and degree of international

recognition,” these groups “vary greatly.”26 This is accurate. How-

ever, what is interesting about the survey is not just the various

groups included but those excluded. For example, there are no or-

ganized criminal groups; and al Qaeda, a transnational terrorist or-

ganization, also does not appear on the NSAWG list.

Claude Bruderlein, director of the Harvard Program on Hu-

manitarian Policy and Conflict Research, likewise notes that “armed

groups differ considerably, from Mafia-like militias to religious

movements and corporate armies,” making a common definition

difficult.27 He proposes that to qualify as an armed group, the fol-

lowing criteria must be satisfied:

[First,] combatants are organized according to a unitary command structure and…commanders have at least a minimum of control over the conduct of the combatants. [Second,] the group is engaged in a political struggle…to redefine the political and legal basis of the society through the use of violence. [Finally,] armed groups are independ- ent from state control.28

Here again, this definition excludes several types of armed groups.

For example, not all armed groups seek to “redefine the political

and legal basis of the society through the use of violence.” Clans

and tribes in places like Afghanistan who seek to maintain the status

quo are cases in point. And not all armed groups “are organized

according to a unitary command structure.” This is certainly true of

al Qaeda, as well as many of the militias in failing states like Soma-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

lia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition, some

armed groups are under the influence of a state. Consider Hezbol-

lah in Lebanon, sponsored by both Iran and Syria.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) describes armed

groups—which it calls Para-States—as entities that contest the

state’s “monopoly on the use of violence within a specified geo-

graphical territory.”29 FAS maintains profiles for 387 such organi-

zations. To be included on the list, a Para-State or armed group has

to have used force, defined by FAS as some form of “direct action

or armed struggle.”30 Unlike the previous examples, those who de-

veloped the Para-State list “cast a wide net” that ranges from

“criminal enterprises, such as substance distribution networks” to

“national liberation movements,” as well as those who “engage in

terrorism.”31

While these efforts to identify and define armed groups are

steps in the right direction, a more parsimonious taxonomy is

needed. We propose one that divides armed groups into four cate-

gories—insurgents, terrorists, militias, and organized crime. First,

here is what they have in common.

One, all armed groups, to varying degrees, challenge the author-

ity, power, and legitimacy of the state. Some seek to do so by over-

throwing the government and replacing it, while other armed groups

attempt to weaken, manipulate, or co-opt the state.

Second, armed groups, at least in part, use violence and force,

be it in unconventional and asymmetric ways. It is true that some

armed groups maintain political and paramilitary wings, and that the

former may for tactical reasons eschew violence. Still, the use of

force is a critical instrument for these organizations, regardless of

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

how they may seek to mask that fact. Violence is used instrumen-

tally to achieve political and/or other objectives.

Third, armed groups operate both locally and globally due to

the developments of the information age, a point elaborated below.

They are able to expand the battlefield to attack state adversaries

both at home and abroad. Finally, as noted above, armed groups are

not democratically based organizations. They do not adhere to the

rule of law to resolve disputes. Just the opposite is the case.

These common features withstanding, insurgents, terrorists, mi-

litias, and criminal organizations have many important differences

between and among them. There is no generic or ideal type for any

of these four variants. This is certainly true in terms of the basic

characteristics or nuts and bolts of an armed group, which can be

divided into the following six elements: 1) leadership; 2) rank and

file membership; 3) organizational structure and functions; 4) ideol-

ogy/political code of beliefs and objectives; 5) strategy and tactics;

and 6) linkages with other non-state and state actors. How armed

groups approach each of these issues will vary across and within the

four categories of the taxonomy. Below each of the armed groups

contained in the taxonomy will be defined, and key differences

among them highlighted.

Insurgents. Insurgents can threaten the state with complex po-

litical and security challenges because of how they organize and

operate. One specialist defines insurgents as armed groups that

“consciously use political resources and violence to destroy, refor-

mulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of one or more aspects of

politics.”32 While a useful starting point, we propose a more com-

prehensive delineation:

Insurgency is a protracted political and military set of ac- tivities directed toward partially or completely gaining

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

control over the territory of a country through the use of ir- regular military forces and illegal political organizations. The insurgents engage in actions ranging from guerrilla operations, terrorism, and sabotage to political mobiliza- tion, political action, intelligence/counterintelligence ac- tivities, and propaganda/psychological warfare. All of these instruments are designed to weaken and/or destroy the power and legitimacy of a ruling government, while at the same time increasing the power and legitimacy of the armed insurgent group.

Within the parameters of this definition, insurgent groups take a

number of different organizational forms ranging from complex

political, intelligence, and military dimensions to narrowly struc-

tured conspiratorial groups.33 The classic insurgent model is de-

signed to mobilize supporters and establish an alternative political

authority to the existing government, while employing intelligence

and military means to attack and weaken the state through escalat-

ing violence. The more narrow conspiratorial variation, on the

other hand, focuses more exclusively on using violence to under-

mine the will of a government to sustain losses and stay in the fight,

and not on controlling a particular territory and building a parallel

political apparatus in it.

Also affecting the approach taken by insurgents is the area or

terrain in which they carry out their activities. They can take place

in an urban and/or rural environment, as well as transnationally.

Each of these locations will have an impact on how the insurgents

approach each of the characteristics or elements of an armed group

identified above—organization, ideology, motivation, leadership,

membership background.

Where armed insurgent groups operate, the objectives they pur-

sue, and the organizational approach they adopt will shape the strat-

egy employed. In the classic insurgent model, that strategy goes

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

through four stages—pre-insurgency, organizational/infrastructure

development, guerrilla warfare, and mobile conventional warfare.

This can extend over a very long time. However, not all insurgen-

cies seek to go through all four stages, and this will affect how they

employ unconventional paramilitary tactics including guerrilla war-

fare, terrorism, and sabotage. Often, insurgents receive assistance

from states and, increasingly today, other NSAs.34 This likewise

affects the groups’ organizational and operational profile.

Finally, armed insurgent groups have pursued very different ob-

jectives. During the Cold War, leftwing revolutionary and national

liberation movements employed insurgency strategies. These

movements took considerable time to establish complex political

structures as a prelude to carrying out military operations. Their

overall objective was to overthrow the state and carry out radical

political and social change.

Starting in the 1980s this began to change. New types of insur-

gent movements appeared, based on existing ethnic and religious

identities. This had a profound impact on the objectives pursued.

Examples of the former include the Democratic Party (DPK) and

Patriotic Union (PUK) of Kurdistan, the Northern Alliance in Af-

ghanistan, the armed clans fighting the Russians in Chechnya, and

the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eel (LTTE). Religious cases include

the People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and People's Liberation

Movement (SPLM) of Sudan, various Sikh and Kashmiri factions in

India, and Hizballah in Lebanon.

Are there incipient or nascent indicators that can be identified

by a state before an insurgency rises to the level of a serious threat

to its stability and security? The answer is yes. And that is true not

just for insurgents but for each of the armed groups included in the

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

taxonomy. However, most states faced with such challenges fail to

see the early telltale signs and, consequently, do not take the neces-

sary steps to prevent the situation from escalating. According to

senior-level Pentagon and CIA officials interviewed for the study,

this is certainly true of the US government, though they expressed

doubt that such early and preventive steps are possible, given the

existing organizational cultures in each agency.35

Nevertheless, these indicators do exist, and they can be ob-

served if the intelligence and security agencies are structured to do

so. For example, a new group seeking to mount an insurgency must

take certain steps. First, it must build an organization. If the state is

vigilant it can see early signs of this such as the departure of a num-

ber of individuals from their homes for training and indoctrination

or the defection of a noticeable number of members from moderate

political parties. Increasingly radical political proselytizing by

members of a heretofore unknown political group to draw people to

it would be another early indicator.

Reports of people receiving political and paramilitary training

or identification of non-government training facilities springing up

inside the state or just across the border would be other signals. So

would the discovery of small but growing amounts of arms and

other materials needed for an insurgency. And money raising ef-

forts to purchase these necessities would constitute further support-

ing evidence of the beginnings of an insurgency.

These and other early warning signals of the emergence of an

insurgency—including evidence of linkages between the nascent

insurgent organization and existing political parties, labor unions

and other social groupings, and sporadic violence—do not take

place in the dark. All of these activities, which begin small, are dis-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

cernible. Intelligence and security services can discover them at the

beginning or pre-insurgency stage of development. But to do so, a

way of thinking has to be bread into the organizational culture of

the intelligence and security services.

Terrorists: Terrorism and those armed groups who employ it

have been defined in a myriad of ways.36 Moreover, since the latter

1970s “terrorism” has frequently been used pejoratively to discredit

and de-legitimize. With that in mind, a more operational definition

is proposed:

Terrorism is the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear by an armed group through the threat and/or use of the most proscribed kind of violence for political purposes, whether for or in opposition to an established government. The act is designed to have a far-reaching psychological effect beyond the immediate target of the attack and to in- still fear in and intimidate a wider audience. The targets of terrorist groups increasingly are non-combatants, and large numbers of them, who under international norms have the status of protected individuals and groups.

Terrorists differ from insurgents in several ways. Important

distinctions can be seen in tactics and targeting. Insurgents use a

number of political and paramilitary tactics, of which terrorism fre-

quently is only one. Terrorist groups, on the other hand, have a

more narrow operational approach that increasingly focuses on tar-

geting non-combatants. Through the 1990s, terrorist groups were

progressively more indiscriminate in their targeting, seeking to kill

as many as possible from protected groups.

As with insurgents, terrorist groups in the 1990s were moti-

vated more by ethnicity and religion. According to the RAND-St.

Andrews University index, approximately half of all known terrorist

groups were religiously focused.37 Furthermore, not all, but an

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

overwhelming majority of these groups are located in the Islamic

world.

Another important difference between terrorist and insurgent

armed groups is the extent to which the former establish linkages

and cooperative arrangements. During the 1990s, al Qaeda created

an elaborate set of connections with a significant number of like-

minded terrorist groups in as many as 60 countries. In effect, al

Qaeda established a multinational alliance among armed groups that

can operate in their originating states as well as transnationally. It

also developed a sophisticated financial network for collecting and

transferring money for the organization and its operations.38

As with an insurgent movement, there are incipient indicators,

identifiable by the state, of a terrorist group’s ability to mount a se-

rious threat against it. However, given that some terrorist groups

can be quite small, this is difficult. Nevertheless, such groups still

have to establish a clandestine organization, recruit and train per-

sonnel, acquire resources, meet and communicate, and so on. While

they do so in secret, nonetheless these activities can be monitored.

As more is learned about al Qaeda’s origins, early stages, and

maturation, it becomes apparent that early warning indicators were

there for the US intelligence community (IC) to collect and analyze.

However, as more that one official from the IC explained to the au-

thors during research for the study, such an approach is not part of

the IC culture.

Militias: With the growing number of weak and failing states,

a third category of armed groups—militias—became more numer-

ous and prominent in the 1990s.39 They appeared to thrive, in par-

ticular, in states with ineffectual central governments and to benefit

from a global black market that facilitates their growth. While indi-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

vidual militias received considerable international attention, particu-

larly those in Africa and Central Asia, there have been few attempts

to define this type of armed group in a systematic way or to identify

different sub-types.

What is a militia? Below we propose a broad definition. Based

on post-Cold War examples, armed militia groups appear to share

the following characteristics:

A militia in today’s context is a recognizable irregular armed force operating within the territory of a weak and/or failing state. The members of militias often come from the under classes and tend to be composed of young males who are drawn into this milieu because it gives them access to money, resources, power, and security. Not infrequently they are forced to join; in other instances it is seen as an opportunity or a duty. Militias can represent specific eth- nic, religious, tribal, clan, or other communal groups. They may operate under the auspices of a factional leader, clan, or ethnic group, or on their own after the break-up of the states’ forces. They may also be in the service of the state, either directly or indirectly. Generally, members of militias receive no formal military training. Nevertheless, in some cases they are skilled unconventional fighters. In other instances they are nothing more than a gang of ex- tremely violent thugs that prey on the civilian population.

Within the parameters of this general characterization, militias

can vary widely in terms of how they organize, recruit, operate, and

conduct themselves. Furthermore, the literature on them is by far

the weakest from an analytical perspective.

Several militias that emerged since the latter 1980s have been

brutal in their use of violence, directing it more at civilians than at

soldiers or other militias. In fact, in conflicts involving militias, ci-

vilians frequently are the target. This is especially the case in Af-

rica. Untrained militia groups, often made up of youth who are

forced to join and compelled to take part in initiation rituals involv-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

ing frightful human rights abuses, are guilty of unspeakable crimes

and atrocities, even against the tribe or clan they claim to represent.

Consider the situation in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1990s. Both anti-

and pro-government militias were charged with widespread mal-

treatment of civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, these

militias engaged in “systematic and indiscriminate attacks on civil-

ians, [including] summary executions, arbitrary arrest and detention,

disappearances, torture, rape, pillage, corporal punishment and other

violent acts.”40

The same pattern can be seen in armed militia groups elsewhere

in Africa. They plunder and pillage at will. These militias amount

to little more than bandits, thriving in ungoverned areas although

they sometimes try to don a veneer of ideological and political re-

spectability. Examples of this are Foday Sankoh and the Revolu-

tionary United Front in Sierra Leone, and his sponsor, Charles

Taylor, in Liberia.

In other parts of the world militias have been more disciplined,

less abusive of the population in general and of their own ethnic

tribe or clan in particular, and led by men interested in local or re-

gional political power. Afghanistan is a case in point. Still, there is

no generic Afghan militia. Rather, they include various formations

comprised of former mujahideen commanders, tribal contingents,

seasonal conscripts, and foreign volunteers. The combat potential

of these units varies considerably, ranging in strength from a few

dozen to several hundred fighters, depending on the ability of their

leaders and the resources available. To be sure, Afghan militias and

their leaders threaten both the stability of the country and the cur-

rent attempt by the United States and international community to

build a post-Taliban government of unity.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

Militias have been central players in the politics of other multi-

ple identity countries as well. This has been true in Lebanon where

many Lebanese seem to be more loyal to their confessional group or

clan than their country. This was the case in the latter 1970s, when

Lebanon plunged into civil war. For the next fifteen years confes-

sional factions and their militias were locked in an intractable po-

litical fight in which Sunnis fought Shiites, Maronites fought Druze,

Christians fought Muslims, and so on. When the civil war ended in

the early 1990s, demobilizing these militias was not easy. Eventu-

ally, it took place, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) began to

slowly rebuild itself as Lebanon's only major non-sectarian institu-

tion. The LAF has extended central government authority over

about two-thirds of the country. However, Hizballah retains its

weapons and militia forces.

Another way militias differ has to do with leadership. There are

those operating under the control of a recognized and powerful

leader like the late General Aideed in Somalia. However, clan mili-

tias function under a decentralized collective leadership that seeks

to protect or advance the interests of the clan. Many of the armed

groups in Chechnya fit this description. There is no one identifiable

leader.

Where strong militia leaders exist, “warlord” is often used in

the media to describe them. As with other terminology employed to

describe militias, this one also lacks analytic clarity. What is a war-

lord and how does he operate as a militia leader? One specialist

describes modern-day warlords as “local strongmen able to control

an area and exploit its resources and people while…keeping a weak

authority at bay. Warlord’s motives range from the advancement of

clan, tribe, or ethnic goals to political ambition, localized power,

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

and personal wealth.” Such individuals as General Dostum (Af-

ghanistan), General Aiheed (Somalia), Walid Jumblat (Lebanon),

Charles Taylor (Liberia), and Colonel Khudoiberidyev (Tajikistan)

are all prominent examples from the 1990s. 41 But among these

individuals there are important differences that the generic label

“warlord” obscures.

These examples illustrate how widely militias can differ. Thus,

any attempt to categorize them by how they organize, recruit, oper-

ate, and behave requires close attention to the cultural and political

context in which they exist.

Militias impact areas beyond the borders of the states in which

they operate and, in the aftermath of the Cold War, have engaged

US interests and policy. As a result, Washington had to appreciate

the complex nature of these disparate armed groups. Doing so,

however, has been thorny. Not infrequently, the United States en-

gaged in situations bereft of knowledge and suffered the conse-

quences.

Consider Somalia in the early 1990s. When President Bush

first deployed troops there it was not to take part in the carnage that

had ripped that country apart. He sent American soldiers to do

“God’s work.” Others in his administration referred to the opera-

tion as the “Immaculate Intervention.”42 The objective—to feed the

hungry, heal the sick, and bring order—was purely humanitarian,

and was to serve as the model for using military forces in the post-

Cold War world. However, to do so required an understanding of

the Somalia militias and their clan base, an appreciation that the

United States did not have. The ultimate result was the devastating

16-hour shootout between elite American soldiers and fierce Somali

warriors in the urban canyons of Mogadishu on October 3-4, 1993.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

The US intervention in Afghanistan following 9/11 is also illus-

trative. To understand what goes on inside Afghan borders the key

unit of analysis remains the tribe, even in the 21st century. This

was the reality Washington faced following September 11th when it

went to war with the Taliban, a radical Islamist regime that for sev-

eral years had given sanctuary and succor to al Qaeda.

Washington aligned with the Northern Alliance, a compilation

of different tribal factions—Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks—that had been

fighting the Taliban for years. The Alliance reflected the traditional

nature of politics and society in Afghanistan, where tribal groups

and their leaders are central actors. The Department of Defense and

CIA were unable to incorporate the majority Pashtun tribe into their

operations. It proved unnecessary, but had more long-term implica-

tions that a sophisticated understanding of Afghanistan’s tribal sys-

tem would have signaled. In the aftermath of the war Washington

found costly this expedient decision to ride the Northern Alliance to

a quick victory. In order to stabilize and unify Afghanistan it had to

bring all of the tribes together, demobilize their militias, and estab-

lish a national government of unity. That was tricky given both the

course of action Washington pursued in the fall of 2001, and its be-

lated understand Afghanistan’s complicated tribal system.

As with insurgent and terrorist groups, there are identifiable in-

cipient indicators of a militia’s ability to threaten both regional sta-

bility and US interests. Information on those indicators, highlighted

above, can be collected and analyzed. However, to do so requires

that an intelligence service not only be geared to spot such devel-

opments early on, but also have a mature understanding of the cul-

ture and traditional setting in which militia groups flourish.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

Organized Criminal Groups. The final category of armed

group is that of organized crime. While certainly not new, it has

grown in significance as a dangerous threat to individual states and

the international system. The wealth and power of these organiza-

tions has burgeoned over the last 25 years, and several have estab-

lished international linkages and networks.

Armed criminal groups today exhibit the following characteris-

tics: First, they possess an identifiable structure and leadership

whose purpose is to operate outside the law in a particular criminal

activity. They maintain hierarchical arrangements with clearly de-

marcated leadership-subordinate roles, through which the group's

goals are advanced. As such armed groups mature, they no longer

rely on the leadership of one or a few individuals for their survival.

Second, these armed groups can take different forms and “oper-

ate over time [and space] not just for ephemeral [or temporary] pur-

poses.”43 That is to say, they engage in more than one type of

criminal enterprise and operate over large parts of a region or glob-

ally.

Third, armed criminal groups maintain internal cohesion and

loyalty through ethnicity and the family ties of its members. They

are anchored in a “community, family, or ethnic base.” This pro-

vides the armed group with a code of behavior that entails “alle-

giance, rituals, ethnic bonds…[to] help to engage the compliance

and loyalty of individuals within the organization.”44 These “ties

that bind” allow group members to trust one another in ways that

are very personal, reducing the likelihood of law enforcement infil-

trating the group.

Fourth, criminal organizations employ violence “to promote

and protect their interests.” It can be directed externally against

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

rivals to either intimidate or eliminate them as competitors. Inter-

nally, it maintains discipline and loyalty. While criminal organiza-

tions vary in the extent to which they employ violence, all do so

“for business purposes.”45 If violence is the stick, criminal organi-

zations also use the carrot of bribery. The availability of cash, in

large quantities, is used to corrupt police and other government offi-

cials, seducing them to look the other way.

Finally, each of these characteristics contributes to the feature

that distinguishes criminal organizations from other armed groups—

they seek to maximize their profit, much like a legitimate business.

The quest for money and the power that goes with it drives and sus-

tains armed criminal groups. Based on the five characteristics de-

scribed above, the following definition is proposed:

An armed criminal group possesses a clandestine or secret hierarchical structure and leadership whose primary pur- pose is to operate outside the law in a particular criminal enterprise. Such groups frequently engage in more than one type of criminal activity and can operate over large ar- eas of a region and globally. Often, these groups have a family or ethnic base that enhances the cohesion and secu- rity of its members. These armed groups typically maintain their position through the threat or use of violence, corrup- tion of public officials, graft, or extortion. The widespread political, economic, social, and technological changes oc- curring within the world allow organized crime groups to pursue their penultimate objective—to make as much money as possible from illegal activities—in ways that their earlier counterparts could not.

Major International Criminal Organizations (ICOs) have estab-

lished linkages with other armed groups, and not just criminal ones.

One of the more significant developments since the end of the Cold

War is the increased involvement of insurgents, terrorists, and mili-

tia groups in criminal activities. Unable to rely on outside aid from

state sponsors, which can be fleeting, many insurgent and terrorists

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

groups diversify their resource base by becoming involved with

international criminal organizations. For ICOs, these partnerships

are equally valuable, widening the scope and profitability of their

operations.

A case in point is Hezbollah. Although Iran provides signifi-

cant assistance, Hezbollah is involved in drug trafficking as another

way of financing its activities. It provides opium production and

transshipment protection to criminal organizations in exchange for

financial and other kinds of support.46 In Afghanistan, various

armed ethnic groups are involved in similar activities, as was al

Qaeda.47

Another example can be found in Colombia. Since the late

1980s, insurgents there cannot rely on financial support from states

that once backed them. Therefore, some insurgent fronts of the

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National

Liberation Army (ELN) generate substantial revenue by taxing and

protecting criminal enterprises involved in coca cultivation, cocaine

processing, and drug shipments in the areas they control. It is esti-

mated that this provides the FARC with as much as half of its reve-

nues. And for the criminal groups this collaboration provides safe

haven in which production can flourish. At the same time, official

government support for paramilitary self defense groups, which

control up to one-third of the national territory, waned. Groups

such as United Self Defense of Colombia (AUC) in recent years

have turned to drug trafficking for economic support, allying with

leaders of Colombia’s heroin trade as well as the cocaine cartels.48

A final example can be found in Africa. Since the late 1980s

the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA)

and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone paid the

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

costs of their armed struggles from mining and illegally exporting

diamonds through arrangements with international criminal syndi-

cates. The problem of looting and illegal mineral exploitation by

ICOs, among others, is perhaps best exemplified in the ongoing 30+

year war of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC—former Za-

ire).49

Yet an additional linkage that enhances the power of ICOs is

the active partnership between political actors—officeholders and

the staff of the legal-governmental establishment of a state—and

criminal actors. These arrangements are termed the political-

criminal nexus (PCN). It consists of varying degrees of cooperation

among political and criminal participants at the local, national, and

transnational levels.50

An example of such a nexus is the relationship between Victor

Bout, one of the world’s largest illegal arms merchants, and differ-

ent governments and rebel groups across Africa. Bout used the

states of Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, and Central African Republic

to register his aircraft. His organization purchased end-user certifi-

cates for tons of weapons from the governments of Burkina Faso,

Togo, and Ivory Coast. And he provided not only small arms, but

attack helicopters to Taylor’s regime in Liberia, anti-aircraft guns

and surface-to-air missles to the RUF in Sierra Leone, and sophisti-

cated mines and artillery to UNITA in Angola. Payment for the

weapons was often in the form of diamonds from the rebel groups.51

Enhancing the Power of Armed Groups

Three factors enhanced the potential power of armed groups in

the 1990s: globalization, information-age technology, and network-

based approaches to organization.52 Each provided them with the

opportunity to operate in ways that their earlier counterparts could

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never imagine. As illustrated below, this is especially true for inter-

national criminal and terrorist organizations. While these three fac-

tors were touched on previously, they are highlighted here to

underscore how each affords armed groups the potential capacity to

attack even the most powerful states either directly or indirectly.

Globalization erodes the traditional boundaries that separated

and secured the nation-state.53 It allows people, goods, information,

ideas, values, and organizations to move across international space

without heeding state borders. Anyone with the necessary resources

can do so. Modern transportation and communications systems, the

movement of capital, industrial and commercial trends, and the

post-Cold War breakdown of political and economic barriers not

only in Europe but around the world accelerate the globalization

process.

Information age technologies are central to globalization.

These are the networks through which communications takes

place—instantaneously—on a worldwide basis. Cellular and satel-

lite phones allow contact between the most remote and the most

accessible locations of the globe. Computers and the Internet are

the other pillars of the information revolution. “No area of the

world and no area of politics, economics, society, or culture,” write

Kegley and Wittkopf, “is immune from the pervasive influence of

computer technology.”54

To take advantage of globalization and information-age tech-

nologies, non-state armed groups adopt new organizational strate-

gies that are less hierarchical and more networked. They follow the

lead of the business community, which is in the forefront of such

change. Small and large corporations developed virtual or net-

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worked organizations that were able to adapt to the information age

and globalization.55

The organizational design is more flat than pyramidal, with less

emphasis on control from a central headquarters. Decision-making

and operations are decentralized, permitting local autonomy, flexi-

bility, and initiative. To operate globally, network-based organiza-

tions require a capacity for constant communications among

dispersed units, a capability afforded to them by the World Wide

Web and cellular networks.56 Globalization, information age tech-

nology, and network-based organization not only empower interna-

tional business, but also armed groups, to expand their activities

across the world.

Contemplate the impact on international organized crime. In

2000, at the direction of President Clinton and as part of the Interna-

tional Crime Control Strategy, a US government interagency work-

ing group prepared a comprehensive assessment of the dimensions

of the threat posed by international crime. The central theme of that

report, captured in the following excerpt, is that criminal organiza-

tions embrace globalization and the information age to expand their

operations worldwide:

Law enforcement officials around the world have reported a significant increase in the range and scope of interna- tional criminal activity since the early 1990s. The level and severity of this activity and the accompanying growth in the power and influence of international criminal organiza- tions have raised concerns among governments all over the world—particularly in Western democracies—about the threat criminals pose to governability and stability in many countries and to the global economy. International criminal networks have been quick to take advantage of the oppor- tunities resulting from the revolutionary changes in world politics, business, technology, and communications.57

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The threat assessment highlights the impact of globalization, in-

formation-age technology, and network-based organization. Ac-

cording to the working group, “[t]he dynamics of globalization,

particularly the reduction of barriers to the movement of people,

goods, and financial transactions across borders, have enabled in-

ternational organized crime groups to expand both their global reach

and criminal business interests.”58

To do so, ICOs take full advantage of revolutionary advances in

communications and transportation technologies, notes the assess-

ment. These are central to legitimate commercial activity in the

1990s, greatly quickening its pace, volume, and scope. And they

“are daily being exploited by criminal networks worldwide…. To-

day's fast-paced global markets are easily used by criminal net-

works. Commercially available state-of-the-art communications

equipment greatly facilitates international criminal transactions.”59

Before these developments transpired, ICOs did not have the

organizational capabilities to operate on a global scale. Their “in-

ternational” activities were more limited in scope, and any cells or

units they had beyond their central base operated more or less

autonomously and performed only a few specific functions for the

criminal organization. In effect, for most organized crime groups,

“international activities were more regional than global.”60 Now,

according to the threat assessment, ICOs have adapted their organi-

zations to establish “extensive worldwide networks and [organiza-

tional] infrastructures to support their criminal operations.” These

are “inherently flexible in their operations, adapting quickly to chal-

lenges from rivals and from law enforcement.”61

Terrorist organizations follow the same pattern as their ICO

counterparts, adapting to and taking advantage of globalization, in-

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formation age technology, and network-based organization. Most

notable in this respect is al Qaeda. In a 1997 interview bin Laden

described his organization as “a product of globalization and a re-

sponse to it.”62 To be sure, it could not have operated in the 1980s

as it did in the 1990s. Al Qaeda is a child of globalization. As with

international businesses, globalization had a transforming impact on

how and where al Qaeda organized and operated.63

Unlike hierarchically structured terrorist groups of the 1980s,

bin Laden established a networked organization of dispersed units

that prior to 9/11 were able to deploy nimbly, almost anywhere in

the world. Al Qaeda’s doctrine, configuration, strategy, and tech-

nology are all in harmonization with the information age. During

the 1990s, it created an elaborate set of connections with fronts,

several likeminded terrorist groups, other types of armed groups,

and terrorist-sponsoring states. Information-age technologies and

cyber networks allowed al Qaeda to recruit, communicate, establish

cells, and attack targets globally. The pattern that emerged was of a

web of cells and affiliates around the world that could provide the

intelligence and manpower needed to execute terrorist attacks

against the United States and other targets. The 1998 East Africa

embassy bombings and the 9/11attacks are illustrative.64

The Direct Impact of Armed Groups

The developments outlined above now make it possible for cer-

tain armed groups to attack asymmetrically and strike at high-value

or strategic targets of even the most powerful states. And these at-

tacks can have strategic consequences for the states’ policy. This is

new and requires states to change their behavior in dealing with this

threat. Of course, not all armed groups that exist today can reach

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this level of power to constitute a tier-one threat to the United

States.

An asymmetrical attack is one that seeks to circumvent or un-

dermine an adversary’s strengths and exploit his weaknesses using

methods that differ significantly from the adversary’s mode of op-

erations. While asymmetric options are a normal part of all wars,

armed groups must pay closer attention to this approach because of

the power differences between themselves and the states they are

confronting. Given that imbalance, the asymmetrical techniques

armed groups employ fall into the irregular, unconventional, and

paramilitary categories of armed violence and warfare.

States confronted by armed groups often do not understand the

significance of those challenges and frequently downplay the dan-

gers they produce. Asymmetric threats work, in part, according to

Colin Gray, by defeating a states’ imagination. He argues that in

the 1990s the United States was “trapped in a time warp of obsoles-

cent political, ethical, and strategic assumptions and practices.”65

Evidence of this proposition can be seen in how the US intelligence

community downplayed asymmetrical terrorist threats and even

successful operations.66

This lack of imagination coincided with the attainment by at

least one armed group—al Qaeda—of the capacity to initiate opera-

tions against high-value US targets across the globe. In other

words, they could undertake an action or series of actions that, if

successful, struck targets of major political, economic, or military

importance. A small number of strategic specialists went so far as

to propose that this constituted a transformation in war and permit-

ted irregular forces to challenge states with strategic asymmetric

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attacks, ones that could cause a significant change in the direction

of a states’ foreign and national security policies.67

War, said the specialists, was undergoing big changes—

transformation—and entering a whole new stage that they called

fourth-generation warfare.68 The engine of that change was the

non-state armed group. Violence by armed groups could now have

a strategic impact on both weak and strong states. It was this capa-

bility, facilitated by globalization, network-based organization and

information age technologies that provided the potential for armed

groups to move from second- or third-order ancillary security

threats to first-order ones for the United States.

As noted earlier, when states radically alter the prevailing ap-

proach to war it is called a revolution in military affairs. Al Qaeda

was the first non-state armed group to have such an impact on the

conduct of war, which it demonstrated through its attacks in the

1990s, culminating with the operation on September 11th. Al

Qaeda carried out fourth-generation warfare against a major state

power. Here are its precepts:

• 4th generation warfare is irregular, unconventional and decentralized in approach.

• Asymmetrical operations are employed to bypass the superior military power of states and attack political, economic, population, and symbolic targets in order to demoralize the psyche of both government and its populace.

• The organization and operations of 4th generation warriors are masked by deception, denial, stealth and related techniques of intelligence tradecraft.

• They exploit information-age technologies. The devel- opment of network-based terrorist organizations con- nected transnationally through cell phones, fax machines, e-mail, web sites, and the Internet provides global reach.

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• Modern transportation technologies have a profound impact on this new battlefield. Not only are there no fronts but the old distinctions between civilian and military targets is irrelevant.

• Laws and conventions of war do not constrain terror- ists as they seek new means, to include WMD, to attack civilians and nonmilitary targets to inflict terrible car- nage.

• 4th generation warriors, frequently in the name of God, are remorseless enemies for the states they chal- lenge, employing unlimited violence, unencumbered by compassion.

• The organization has a broad financial base, built on different pillars that constantly adapt to state pressure. Individual donors support the radical agenda, charities and NGOs are infiltrated and exploited with and with- out the consent of the organizations, and “legitimate” banks and businesses are used as fronts to hide and move the network’s resources.69

In the past, when a state revolutionized the conduct of war,

other states sought to follow suit and emulate those changes. It is

conceivable, even probable, that other armed groups will seek to

learn from and replicate al Qaeda’s conduct of war.70

Al Qaeda’s operations since the early 1990s—both successful

and unsuccessful—reveal a pattern of attacks that aimed at hitting

high-value/strategic targets of the United States. Clearly, this was

the objective in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

It came up short, but not by much. The unit carrying out the attack

placed the truck within yards of the location that would have

brought the building down.

Other examples were the attacks on major US warships, also

strategic targets. There were at least two such operations. The first

sought to sink the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer, the

USS Sullivans. The operation took place in January 2000 but failed

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because the would-be martyrs overloaded their boat with explosives

and it sank before reaching the ship.

The next operation was more successful. Al Qaeda operatives

nearly sank the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000 with an asymmetrical

operation in Aden. Had the Cole, also an Arleigh Burke class

guided-missile destroyer, gone down, the operation could have had

strategic consequences forcing changes in US counterterrorist pol-

icy. After all, the Cole is one of the most powerful surface combat-

ants ever put to sea. It cost one billion dollars to build and 240

million dollars to repair. However, nearly sinking it was not enough

to force a radical change in US policy.

These and other successful and unsuccessful attacks were a

prelude to 9/11. However, Washington did not understand the con-

sequences of these operations and the need to change counterterror-

ist policy. Al Qaeda’s attacks were downplayed. The US

government could not imagine that these strategic strikes could es-

calate to the level of 9/11 and plunge the nation into war.71

The costs inflicted that day can only be characterized as devas-

tating, with serious strategic consequences. Consider what they

accomplished. First, approximately 3,000 Americans lost their

lives. Then there were the immediate and long-term economic costs

of 9/11. These include costs to New York City, the insurance and

airlines industries, the economy, and the price of preventing future

attacks.

The costs to New York City alone were staggering. There is

the bill for cleanup of the site and repair or replacement of related

infrastructure. This includes a replacement cost of $21.8 billion for

the WTC buildings destroyed in the attack; $4.5 billion to repair

adjacent buildings in and around the trade center complex; $4.3 bil-

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lion to restore damaged transportation facilities and utility lines for

telecommunications and power; $5.2 billion to replace tenant assets;

and $1.1 billion for removal of the rubble.72

The costs to the city’s economy are equally high. For example,

in the year following the attack jobs in the securities industry fell by

between 17% and 20%. Other industries, including business ser-

vices, printing, restaurants and hotels were hit equally hard. The

overall cost in gross city product calculated through fiscal 2002 was

between 52.3 and 64.3 billion, depending on what was included.73

Moving outside of NYC there was the impact of September

11th on the insurance industry, the “largest single insured event loss

in history.” Estimates range from “$30 to $58 billion,” based on a

combination of property/casualty and health/life losses.74 And this

does not include the more long-term impact on insurance premiums.

The effects on the airlines industry were analogous. According to a

Booz-Allen-Hamilton study, during 2002 the annual revenues for

the airline industry fell by 35-40%. Not surprisingly, this led to a

number of bankruptcies, the layoff or furlough of 90,000 employ-

ees, a decline in passenger traffic by 22% domestically and 37%

internationally, and a cut in airline capacity by approximately

16%.75

In addition to NYC-related costs and costs associated to spe-

cific industries, the overall national economy was also shaken by

the 9/11 events. Spillovers from the industrial side impacted some

macroeconomic areas. Although the United States economy was

already in a slowing down trend, the environment that emerged at

the end of 2001 spoke of a recession closely associated with the

attacks on the World Trade Center. For example, general consumer,

business, and investor confidence took a nosedive and employment

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loss continued to grow. Three years later, economic assessments

indicate that although the local and industry specific costs were

relevant, the total economic impact of the attacks was not as high as

originally forecasted. Nonetheless, one should note that although

the American economy proved resilient there are specialists who

believe that future terrorist attacks could actually have an important

long-term impact on the economy.

Finally, there are the costs of defending against future attacks.

While this is also hard to gauge, it is clear that it will be high. For

example, following the attack the 2002 approved spending for anti-

terrorism was supplemented by $20 billion. Next, the Homeland

Security structure was established with a fiscal year 2003 price tag

of $38 billion.76 Then there is the cost of the war and its aftermath

in Iraq.

Al Qaeda is the first transnational armed group to have made

such revolutionary breakthroughs in terms of its ability to use vio-

lence in new ways to level direct strategic blows against the United

States with strategic consequences. However, an armed group

could achieve the same strategic impact on US interests and policies

using more standard forms of terrorist and insurgent violence. The

insurgents, militias, and terrorists attacking coalition forces in Iraq

are a case in point. These assaults have seriously and rapidly spi-

raled since the end of the conventional war in April 2003. Each day

the headlines report more and more violence carried out through

mortar and rocket strikes, ambushes, sniper attacks, assassinations

and suicide operations, all standard non-state armed group methods.

This escalating killing could have dire strategic consequences

for US foreign policy not just in Iraq but globally if it is not coun-

tered and defused. It is already cutting into public support at home.

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If that support continues to atrophy it could weaken and even put an

end to the US commitment and its long-term reconstruction and

democratization program for Iraq.

If this sequence of events unfolds in Iraq in a way that culmi-

nates in a US withdrawal before these objectives are reached, Wash-

ington will once more be seen by both friends and enemies as

unwilling to meet the commitments it makes to others. Thus, armed

groups will have inflicted a strategic defeat on the United States

with a host of very serious and long-term ramifications.

So far, we have examined situations in which armed groups

constitute direct and strategic threats to US foreign policy. Are

there also instances, to be sure fewer, where the United States may

find it in its strategic interest to provide assistance to an armed

group? We believe the answer can be yes. In the 1990s, two such

opportunities were on the table.

First, there was the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Through

the latter 1990s, the United States eschewed their requests for help

in fighting the Taliban, who were closely aligned with al Qaeda. A

serious program of assistance to the Northern Alliance as one part

of an overall strategy to go after al Qaeda would have put the latter

on the defensive. Having to worry about its own security and very

survival would have meant less time to plan and execute operations

against American targets.

The second example in the 1990s was the Iraqi resistance. Here

also requests for assistance generally fell on deaf ears in Washing-

ton. The one exception, which was very limited in scope, ended in

disaster when the United States backed out. Robert Baer, the CIA

case officer who headed that failed covert program in northern Iraq,

has chronicled the debacle in his book, See No Evil.77 Could a seri-

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ous program of paramilitary and political assistance to the Iraqi re-

sistance have succeeded against the Baathist regime of Saddam

Hussein? Perhaps. But Washington policymakers in the 1990s

were not willing to give that option any meaningful consideration.

The Indirect Impact of Armed Groups

In addition to asymmetrical attacks against high-value targets,

there are other indirect ways armed groups can affect the interests

and policies of the United States. For example, they can do so by

destabilizing states and/or regions that are of critical importance to

the United States. These indirect threats, while not of the same

magnitude as those described above, nevertheless, can affect impor-

tant US interests in various ways.

Take the example of regions where the stability and develop-

ment of states is undermined by collaboration between the political

establishment and armed criminal groups. The political-criminal

nexus (PCN), as noted earlier, represents collaboration between po-

litical and criminal actors at the local, national, and transnational

levels. Where a criminal group has endured and prospered, in most

instances, it has reached some type of accommodation with political

authorities.78

Such active partnerships can undermine the rule of law, human

rights, and economic development. They can also create ungov-

erned areas where armed groups can flourish. In some areas, the

problem of the PCN is chronic, for example in Mexico, Nigeria, and

Turkey. In other countries and regions—Colombia, Afghanistan,

the Balkans, and the Caucuses—the problem is more acute, violent,

and often can dominate political, economic, and social life.

States offer other benefits to criminal organizations. They can

issue criminals internationally-recognized diplomatic passports,

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provide end-use certificates to help make illegal arms sales appear

legal, facilitate the entry and exit of criminal elements to certain

countries, reducing the risk of capture, and provide banking facili-

ties to organized criminal groups.

An example of this is Liberia, where the government of Charles

Taylor helped several Russian organized crime figures carry out

business and weapons sales across Africa. Among those he dealt

with were Victor Bout and Lenoid Menin. Bout, in turn, supplied

weapons and aircraft to the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

In the summer of 2001, Taylor also allowed senior al Qaeda

operatives to enter Liberia and purchase large quantities of dia-

monds, a move that may have allowed al Qaeda to move many of its

resources out of banks, where they could be frozen, and into an eas-

ily protected and convertible commodity.79

These situations constitute security problems because they can

interfere dramatically with the functioning of state and society, un-

dermining political, economic, and social infrastructure. The insta-

bility generated can affect not only the state and region in which it

takes place, but can also have negative implications for US policy

interests. In each of the countries and regions identified above as

having acute PCN problems, the US interests range from important

to vital.

This is especially true of Afghanistan, one of the main battle

grounds in the war against terrorism. The nexus between ICOs and

local warlords undermines US efforts to establish post-Taliban sta-

bility, the rule of law, and economic development. Instead, major

parts of Afghanistan remain outside the control of the interim gov-

ernment, headed by Hamid Karzai. And in those areas, drug pro-

duction and trafficking remain serious problems, ones that neither

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the United States nor the UN, in conjunction with the interim gov-

ernment, thus far has been able to establish a coordinated program

for combating.

And this contributes, according to the 23 July 2003 report on

the situation in Afghanistan to the UN Security Council, to an

“overall security situation throughout Afghanistan [that] remains

fragile and, in many areas, exhibits signs of deterioration.”80 More-

over, in those areas outside government control al Qaeda terrorists

said to be aligned with the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar “have

stepped up their activities.”81

Another example where the development of a political-criminal

partnership can affect US interests is Russia, a political system in

transition with a thriving PCN. For Washington, the activities of

PCNs in Russia are particularly threatening because of the presence

of WMD. PCNs can facilitate their acquisition by armed groups

hostile to the United States.82

As in the previous section on direct threats, here also the focus

has been on how through indirect ways armed groups can nega-

tively affect the interests and policies of the United States. How-

ever, it is also worth noting that there can be situations in which

providing assistance to an armed group would support a more indi-

rect interest of Washington.

PROFILING ARMED GROUPS

What are the key operational characteristics of armed groups?

What do we need to know about each of these characteristics in or-

der to assemble a comprehensive depiction or profile of them? Pre-

venting and countering the challenges of armed groups requires as a

first step an understanding of these key operational traits. Only then

can the United States and other states facing the kinds of armed

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group threats outlined in this paper respond with effective counter-

measures.

To gain that understanding it is necessary to construct a sys-

tematic profile of how the armed group attacking the state is organ-

ized and the ways in which it functions. The development of such a

profile will provide an understanding of the armed group at both the

strategic and tactical levels, and should serve to guide the ways in

which the states’ intelligence and security services plan and conduct

operations against such unconventional adversaries.

What follows is a framework for profiling armed groups. It

may be adapted for use not only against armed groups already at-

tacking the state, but also as a tool for identifying ones in their for-

mative stages. Used in this manner the framework may allow the

state to take preventive measures, defusing a threat before it reaches

the stage of serious armed violence. To do so, the intelligence

and/or security services of the state must think in this way, embrac-

ing an ethos that seeks to prevent armed groups from emerging

rather than only taking action after the attacks have begun.

For democratic states in general, and the United States in par-

ticular, such an approach is highly unusual. It almost never takes

place. Recall what senior-level Pentagon and CIA officials cited

above had to say about possibility of the United States taking early

and preventive steps against armed groups in their formative stages.

The existing organizational cultures in each agency are not capable

of doing so. Can America afford to remain aloof to such preventive

measures in a future where armed groups seek to execute operations

much more destructive than 9/11?

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Finally, this framework could also be adapted and employed to

construct a systematic profile of an armed group that the United

States found in its interest to support.

Understanding Operational Characteristics: A Framework

The characteristics of armed groups can be divided into the fol-

lowing six categories: 1) leadership; 2) rank and file membership;

3) organizational structure and functions; 4) ideology/political code

of beliefs and objectives; 5) strategy and tactics; and 6) linkages

with other non-state and state actors. Each of these characteristics,

defined below, is important to the success of an armed group. The

order they are listed here should not be construed as signaling their

degree of significance. All are crucial to success.

The context or situation particular to each armed group also

matters. It will influence and shape how the group approaches each

of these six factors. Armed groups cannot consider these factors in

the abstract or adopt formulas that have worked for others without

close attention to the circumstances in which they are waging a con-

flict against a state, as well as against other armed groups. Indeed,

the geographic, historical, political, economic, and social milieu

determines how an armed group develops its overall strategy and

operations.

Each of these six characteristics generates a series of key ques-

tions, the answers to which fill in the details of the armed groups’

operational profile. What follows is a delineation of each of the six

characteristics and an elaboration of the kinds of questions that a

comprehensive assessment of each should address, in order to craft

as complete a profile as possible of an armed group.

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1) Leadership

Competent leadership is manifestly indispensable to all organi-

zations, and especially armed groups, which generally challenge

much stronger state organizations. Leadership is a key ingredient

for identifying and accomplishing the goals and objectives of the

armed group. Therefore, an understanding of the roles, styles, per-

sonalities, and abilities of its leaders is critical.

At minimum, the leader(s) of an armed group must devise an

appropriate code of political beliefs and/or set of objectives, create

an appropriate organization, and employ the instruments of power

and influence available in an effective manner. Therefore, in profil-

ing the leadership, the following key questions should be collected

on and answered:

• What are the social, economic, and political origins of the leaders of the armed group?

• What is the worldview and political-social perspective of the leaders of the armed group?

• What motivates an individual to become a leader of an armed group?

• How does an individual gain the legitimacy and moral authority to achieve leadership status in an armed group?

• How are leaders able to attract a committed group of able lieutenants and followers?

• What role do charisma, personal magnetism, commit- ment, audacity, and practicality play in leadership ef- fectiveness?

• What are the different political, organizational, com- munications, motivational and paramilitary skills and capabilities of the armed group’s leader(s)? How do these skills contribute to armed group effectiveness?

• What factors contribute to leadership limitations and ineffectiveness?

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• What are the political and other differences among leaders of the armed group? How sharp are these dif- ferences? How do these differences affect cooperation and interaction among members of the leadership?

2) Rank and File Membership

In order to offset the advantages and superior resources of gov-

ernment, the leaders of armed groups must be able to identify and

recruit able and skilled individuals into the organization and to train,

motivate, and retain them. How do they accomplish these objec-

tives? What methods and approaches do they use? To gain insight

into these issues the states’ security and intelligence services must

answer the following questions about the armed groups’ rank and

file membership:

• What societal, demographic, and gender elements do leaders target for recruitment? Are they from diver- gent social groupings? Is there an attempt to build cross-cutting alliances and coalitions? How effective are these efforts? Do political differences among di- vergent elements of the armed groups’ membership create problems for group cohesiveness? To what ex- tent is this the case?

• Does recruitment focus on activists and individuals willing to make a strong commitment to the armed group, or is there also recruitment of those who play a more passive role in the organization?

• What kinds of techniques are used to identify, appeal to, and recruit individuals?

• Once recruited, how are individuals trained for spe- cific tasks within the armed group?

• How are recruits motivated and retained?

3) Organizational Structure, Functions, and Resources

Armed groups adopt various organizational models that can dif-

fer widely along structural and functional lines. Organization func-

tions to channel the energies and skills of members toward the

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realization of its goals and objectives. Organizations also have to

acquire resources to support their activities. Organization is the key

to effective communications, political activities, intelligence opera-

tions, and paramilitary actions, all crucial ingredients of an armed

group’s success. Therefore, an understanding of how an armed

group approaches these matters necessitates close attention to the

following issues:

• What are the scope, location, and complexity of the or- ganization? Is it small and conspiratorial or does it have the more complex structure of a shadow govern- ment?

• Is the organization hierarchical or network based?

• How are decisions made in the organization? Is it cen- tralized or do local units and branches have autonomy to act?

• What are the organization’s functionally specific sub- units (e.g., military, intelligence, political, financial)?

• What kinds of intelligence and counterintelligence ca- pabilities does the armed group have, and how impor- tant is each to the leadership?

• What is the groups’ financial structure and network? How does it raise and move money? How does the armed group acquire resources to support its activities and what kinds of resources does it need?

• How cohesive is the organization?

• Does the armed group suffer from factionalism and disunity? To what extent is this a problem, and how does it affect the functioning of the organization? Is it a serious problem?

• What other weaknesses does the organization have?

4) Ideology/Political Code of Beliefs and Objectives

Armed groups may follow a coherent ideology or a more ad

hoc set of political beliefs and objectives that perform a number of

crucial socio-political and psychological functions important to the

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effectiveness of the armed group. Whatever form it takes, all armed

groups—insurgents, terrorists, militias, and criminal organiza-

tions—require a set of ideas, beliefs, values, and legends that bind

the group together.

During the Cold War armed groups tended to be committed to

various leftwing ideologies. In the post-Cold War period ethnic,

ethnonational, and religious ideologies have predominated. In other

cases, armed groups are motivated by financial and other objectives.

To assess this characteristic of an armed group the following sub-

jects require scrutiny:

• What is the ideological, political, or other basis for the armed group?

• To what extent does it offer an alternative set of values and a new political-social vision and plan?

• How effective is it in creating a social-psychological sense of unity, solidarity, collectivity, and commitment within the armed group?

• To what extent is it able to rationalize, justify, and le- gitimize the actions taken by the armed group includ- ing the use of violence?

• How is it used as a tool for recruitment and mobiliza- tion?

• What are its weaknesses and shortcomings?

5) Strategy and Tactics

Armed groups employ a range of different tactics to achieve

their objectives. Sometimes these are integrated into a coherent

strategy. This tends to be more the case for insurgents and terrorist

groups. Militias and criminal organizations, on the other hand, are

more likely to employ tactics in an ad hoc and diffuse manner.

Whatever the approach to strategy and tactics, the following issues

should be addressed in this part of the armed group profile:

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

• To what extent has the armed group developed a for- mal strategy?

• What types of political and psychological tactics does it use?

• What kind of armed violence is employed and against what targets?

• How effective are these different tactics? How coordi- nated are they? Is there an overall strategy that coor- dinates and integrates these various tactics?

• How flexible is the armed group in adapting its strat- egy and tactics to meet a dynamic and changing envi- ronment?

• What are their shortcomings and weaknesses in the armed groups strategy and tactics?

6) Linkages with other Non-State and State Actors

Finally, armed groups often establish linkages with other state

and non-state actors for a number of tactical and strategic reasons.

These include acquiring various kinds of resources, be they politi-

cal, intelligence, financial, or military. Since armed groups are al-

most always weaker than the states they challenge, they frequently

seek the assistance and resources of others to level the playing field,

even though this does not come without costs to the group. With

respect to the nature and extent of these linkages, here are the key

questions the state should focus on in this final part of the profile:

• To what extent have linkages been established between the armed group under investigation and other state and non-state actors?

• What purposes do those linkages serve?

• To what extent does the armed group rely on external support? What kinds of resources does it receive from other state and non-state actors?

• What must it do in return for this assistance?

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

KEY FINDINGS AND FUTURE TRENDS

There is little to suggest that threats by armed groups—direct

and indirect—are a temporary post-Cold War phenomenon. What

the trend lines and data bear out is that armed groups will continue

to pose serious and increasingly dangerous first-order security chal-

lenges to states, the United States included, into the foreseeable fu-

ture. The following indicators substantiate this supposition.

First, statistics on the number of weak states and the concomi-

tant problem of ungovernability demonstrate this is not a temporary

but chronic international challenge. The number of weak, very

weak, and failed states is significant.

Second, topographical mapping of lawless/ungoverned areas

reveals the extent to which these locales cover significant territory.

Third, armed groups, of which there are several hundred, are a

growing topic of analysis and concern. Recognition of armed

groups as important and dangerous actors on the world stage is

growing.

Fourth, internal conflicts, many with transnational dimensions,

while somewhat fewer than in the latter 1990s, remain a dominant

cause of violence and instability in many regions of the world ac-

cording to the experts.

Fifth, scenarios and government exercises of the impact armed

group violence can have, especially if it crosses the WMD thresh-

old, likewise reveals the magnitude of this non-traditional threat

today. And these scenarios are reflective of the stated intentions of

specific armed groups.

Weak States: A Chronic International Problem

A number of organizations have compiled data to assess the

global trends in governance. This data provides a macro-level view

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

of the extent to which weak states and ungovernability constitute a

chronic international problem that facilitates internal conflicts and

wars. Of these, the recently revised World Bank’s dataset is per-

haps the most multifaceted measurement tool for assessing how

countries perform in this critical area of development.

The World Bank defines governance as that set of traditions and

institutions by which authority in a state is or is not exercised le-

gitimately and effectively. This includes the process by which gov-

ernment is selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the

government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies;

and the respect of citizens for the institutions that govern economic

and social interaction. To measure how well or poorly each nation

governs, the World Bank collected and analyzed data on six indica-

tors.83 These include: 1) voice and accountability; 2) political sta-

bility and absence of violence; 3) government effectiveness; 4)

regularity quality; 5) rule of law; and 6) control of corruption.84

For each time period covered by the World Bank,85 states were

assigned a score ranging from 2.5 (highest) to –2.5 (lowest) for each

of the six governance indicators. These six scores were then aver-

aged to create a single governance measure for every country. To

better understand the meaning of a 2.5 to –2.5 rating, this aggregate

governance measure is expressed in percentiles of 0-99, with the

latter representing the highest level of governance.

The World Bank divides these governance scores into four sec-

tions or quartiles. The highest governance scores range from 75th

to 99th percentile. The second best quartile includes 50th to 74th

percentile. Governance ratings equaling 25th to 49th percentiles are

the second lowest section. And the lowest quartile is comprised of

scores up to the 24th percentile. We initially labeled these quartiles

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

“good, fair, weak, and very weak” governance scores. However, in

order to better represent the extremes that exist in the world, the top

and bottom ten percentiles are further identified as “excellent” and

“failed.” Thus, “excellent” governance corresponds to a numerical

score of 90-99; “good” governance 75-89; “fair” 50-74; “weak” 25-

49; “very weak” 10-24; and “failed” 0-9.

What an analysis of the data demonstrates is that weak, very

weak, and failed states constitute a significant and enduring chal-

lenge for the world community. This can be seen below by compar-

ing 1996 with 2002. The costs of corruption, weak economies,

deteriorating infrastructures, and poor governance all facilitate this

state of affairs and the instability and conflict that accompany it.86

Indeed, those states that have experienced violent conflict and inter-

nal war due to an increase in ethnic, cultural, or religious tensions

serve as breeding grounds for the illicit activities of armed groups.

The rating for each country is based on its average score on the six

governance factors. Not every country in every region received a

score because data was not available for a small number of states.

For 2002, approximately half of all countries are categorized as

“weak, very weak or failed.” Furthermore, another one-fifth is

ranked as “fair.” This means that only about 20 percent of the states

of the world consistently fall within the “excellent” and “good”

categories. The World Bank data can be disaggregated by region

for the periods covered. By doing so, it becomes apparent that sig-

nificant governance challenges exist in Africa, the Middle East,

Asia, and Latin America (including the Caribbean).

Based on 2002 data, of Africa’s 53 states, nine are assessed as

having “fair” governance, with the remainder falling into the “weak,

very weak, and failed” categories. Within the region, West, East,

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

2002 Governance Summary by Region

Region States Excellent Good Fair Weak V. Weak Failed

# %

Africa 53 38% 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 9 (17%) 22 (42%) 13 (25%) 9 (17%)

Asia 36 18% 0 (0%) 3 (8%) 6 (17%) 11 (31%) 11 (31%) 2 (6%)

Europe 42 21% 14 (33%) 10 (24%) 7 (17%) 6 (14%) 1 (2%) 0 (0%)

LatAmer/Carib 38 19% 0 (0%) 9 (24%) 12 (32%) 12 (32%) 2 (5%) 1 (3%)

Middle East 16 8% 0 (0%) 1 (6%) 7 (44%) 3 (19%) 3 (19%) 1 (7%)

N America 2 1% 1 (50%) 1 (50%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

Oceania 13 15% 2 (15%) 0 (0%) 1 (8%) 6 (46%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

1996 Governance Summary by Region

Region States Excellent Good Fair Weak V. Weak Failed

# %

Africa 53 38% 0 (0%) 2 (4%) 7 (13%) 27 (51%) 10 (19%) 7 (13%)

Asia 36 18% 0 (0%) 3 (8%) 5 (14%) 15 (42%) 6 (17%) 3 (8%)

Europe 42 21% 11 (26%) 10 (24%) 8 (19%) 7 (17%) 2 (5%) 0 (0%)

LatAmer/Carib 38 19% 0 (0%) 5 (13%) 10 (26%) 14 (37%) 1 (3%) 0 (0%)

Middle East 16 8% 0 (0%) 2 (13%) 6 (38%) 3 (19%) 2 (13%) 1 (6%)

N America 2 1% 2 (100%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

Oceania 13 15% 2 (15%) 0 (0%) 3 (23%) 3 (23%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

and Central Africa are all troubled, with several armed conflicts

taking place. In the Middle East, governance scores for 2002 are

reported for 15 states. With one exception, they are all grouped in

“fair” (7), “weak” (3), “very weak” (3) and “failed” (1) categories.

Almost two-thirds of the states of Asia are ranked by the World

Bank as “weak, very weak, and failed,” most of which are located in

the central, southwest, and southeast parts of the region. The

strongest sub-region is in East Asia with Japan and South Korea.

Similar to Africa, the weakest states also have the highest rates of

instability and conflict.

Although more countries receive “good” or “fair” governance

scores in Latin America and the Caribbean than in the previously

discussed regions, approximately 40 percent fall into the “weak,

very weak, and failed” categories. Not surprising, states such as

Colombia, which experience high levels of internal conflict, also

receive correspondingly low governance marks.

A review of nations categorized as “failed” reveals an interest-

ing pattern. In the past 20 years, the United States has almost ex-

clusively sent troops to countries receiving “very weak” or “failed”

ratings. Furthermore, in the past 10-15 years, the United States has

identified most of those countries as safe havens for terrorists.

These include Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of

Congo, Haiti, the Balkans, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, Sudan, and

Somalia.

In sum, the World Bank dataset provides empirical evidence of

the extent to which “weak, very weak, and failed” states constitute a

chronic international problem, facilitating internal conflicts with

transnational dimensions. This macro-level assessment demon-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

strates that it is precisely in those types of states that armed groups

find safe haven free from government authority and control.

The Geography of Lawless/Ungoverned Territory

There is growing recognition of the extent to which law-

less/ungoverned areas within and/or across the borders of very weak

and failed states provide various armed groups with a safe haven in

which they can establish secure bases for training, planning, and

launching operations locally, regionally, and globally. The darker

shades on satellite maps below identify six lawless/ungoverned re-

gions.

These remote territories are not all the same in terms of the

types of armed groups present. Some regions have each of the four

identified in this study—terrorists, insurgents, militias, and crimi-

nals. In other locations, fewer can be found. What is increasingly

clear about all of these lawless/ungoverned areas is that they cover

significant territory, are attractive to a range of armed groups, and

governments where they are located are unable, on their own, to

meet the challenges of these illicit actors. They lack the economic,

military, intelligence, and police power to do so. What follows is a

brief examination of each region.

Mexico to Honduras. The first region is the area stretching

from southern Mexico through Guatemala to El Salvador and Hon-

duras. Narco-traffickers, insurgents, and other criminal gangs are

all found there. Its close coastline provides easy access to overland

routes that are used extensively by these armed groups. The area

could likewise be attractive to terrorists seeking to gain access to the

United States, serving as a forward operating base.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

Tri-border Area. At least two Middle Eastern terrorist

groups—Hamas and Hezbollah—are present in the tri-border area

of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. The rough terrain, lack of gov-

ernment presence, and access to Arab communities in Ciudad del

Este, Paraguay and Foz do Iguacu, Brazil provide these two organi-

zations with the opportunity to conduct illicit fundraising and

money laundering, train Islamic extremists, and plan operations.

Central Asia. As noted earlier, Central Asia has significant ter-

ritory attractive to armed groups. Today the following are present

in this region: a burgeoning insurgency in Afghanistan along the

Pakistan border; Kashmiri insurgents; the reduced insurgent move-

ment in Uzbekistan; and re-grouping elements of al Qaeda. The

region is also home to a number of criminal organizations.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia (SEA) has the largest portion

of territory suitable for armed group activities. Present in this re-

gion is the al Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiya that since 9/11 has

carried out several terrorist operations. These include the October

12, 2002 Bali bombing (killing 202 people) and the car-bomb attack

on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003 in which 12 civil-

ians died. Other armed groups include separatists who are heavily

involved in narcotics trafficking in Burma and southern Thailand;

ethnic insurgents in Indonesia; and arms traffickers who are active

throughout the territory. Another area in SEA not shown on the

map that has active armed groups present is the southern Philip-

pines.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

Borneo. Further south is the lightly populated Indonesian re-

gion of Borneo and adjacent remote territory. Several armed groups

are present there. It would be an ideal location for Jemaah Islamiya

to use as a base and transit point to move operatives to the Philip-

pines, Malaysia, and elsewhere in Indonesia.

Central Africa. Finally, Africa has several lawless/ungoverned

areas. Among the regions with the largest concentration of such

territory is Central Africa. It has several armed groups including

insurgents, militias, and criminal organizations. Other parts of Af-

rica that are havens for various armed groups not depicted on the

map below are the Parrot’s Beak area in the tri-border region of

Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia; the lawless borderland between

Liberia and Ivory Coast; and Somalia.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

In sum, this topographical plotting of lawless/ungoverned re-

gions makes clear the extent to which these areas cover significant

territory and can provide armed groups with extensive sanctuary not

just for safe hideouts but to develop secure bases for training opera-

tives, planning operations, and storing resources.

Recognition of the Importance of Armed Groups

Until recently, non-state armed groups were not recognized as

important players in international politics. However, this is chang-

ing. Acknowledgment of armed groups as significant and danger-

ous actors on the world stage is growing. Increasing numbers of

research projects and centers focus on them.

Several were cited above, including the Federation of American

Scientists (FAS), the Non-State Actors Working Group (NSAWG)

of the International Committee to Ban Landmines (ICBL), and the

Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research.

These are in the forefront of identifying, categorizing, and analyzing

armed groups as important actors in contemporary global politics.

And they are only the beginning of what appears to be growing

awareness that armed groups are no longer minor players in a world

once dominated by states.

For example, the Centre of International Relations, a compo-

nent of the University of British Columbia's Liu Institute for Global

Issues, has recently initiated an Armed Group Project. Its directors

note that “[d]espite the salience of non-state armed groups, the aca-

demic and policy-making communities have been slow to confront

them as a distinct problem. Both have focused overwhelmingly on

states, either as units of analysis, or as building blocks of a policy

framework.”87

The Project is currently undertaking a “series of research en-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

deavors designed to expand knowledge about the phenomenon of

armed groups” and examine how to encourage them “to comply

with human rights norms and international humanitarian law.”

Their research focuses on a number of themes including analysis of

armed groups’ strategies and instruments; assessment of their or-

ganizational structures; and determination of whether and how in-

ternational norms influence armed groups. The website for the

project includes research papers, bibliographies, and links to others

concerned with armed groups.

Another project that identifies and catalogs armed groups is

Global Security, which provides online reports on emerging interna-

tional security challenges to its subscribers.88 It lists armed groups

according to the geographical region—Europe, Latin America,

Asia, and Africa—in which they are based. Each is briefly de-

scribed. Also compiling information on armed groups is the Center

for Defense Information and the International Crisis Group. Yet,

other research organizations, too numerous to cite here, focus on

specific types of armed groups. These include terrorists and crimi-

nals. Finally, a number of armed groups maintain their own web-

sites. These provide yet additional sources of information. Links

for many of these websites can be found in the FAS profiles. To

date, of all of these efforts, the profiles assembled in The Federation

of American Scientists’ (FAS) database remain the most inclusive.

Internal/Transnational Conflicts: A Continuing and Major Source of Instability

Internal conflicts, many with transnational dimensions, while

somewhat fewer than in the mid-1990s, remain a dominant cause of

violence and instability in many regions of the world. Numerous

assessments by experts and quantitative data sets of the continuing

significance of the clash of ideological, political, ethnic, and reli-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

gious beliefs that pit armed groups against one another and against

states all point in this direction. Two examples are illustrative.

The first of these assessments was sponsored by the US Na-

tional Intelligence Council (NIC)—Global Tends 2015: A Dialogue

About the Future With Nongovernment Experts—and published in

December 2000. In undertaking this study, the NIC worked with a

number of leading nongovernmental institutions and experts, in-

cluding specialists from academia and the private sector. Ten major

conferences were held in support of Global Trends 2015.89

According to the findings, non-state armed groups and the in-

ternal/transnational conflicts they generate pose the most recurrent

cause of instability around the globe, and these conflicts will grow

in lethality due to the availability of more destructive weapons and

other technologies. Moreover, many of these conflicts, particularly

those due to communal differences, will be vicious, long lasting and

difficult to terminate. This is because armed groups are not strong

enough to eliminate the government and the government is just

strong enough to hang on.

Global Trends 2015 underscores that weak and failing states

will generate these conflicts, threatening the stability of a globaliz-

ing international system. “Internal conflicts stemming from state

repression, religious and ethnic grievances, increasing migration

pressures, and/or indigenous protest movements will occur most

frequently in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caucasus and Central Asia,

and parts of South and Southeast Asia, Central America, and the

Andean region.”90

The studies and assessments derived from the application of the

Conflict Analysis Framework (CAF), developed by the Social De-

velopment Department of the World Bank are a second example.

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

These reports mirror the conclusions found in Global Trends 2015.

The purpose of the CAF is to enable World Bank teams to assess

factors causing conflict when formulating development strategies,

policies and programs. What these studies demonstrate is that vio-

lent internal conflict poses an unremitting and major challenge to

development in many of the states that it classifies as “weak, very

weak, and failed.”

Apocalyptic Scenarios and the Intentions of Armed Groups

Finally, the growing concern that the US government has over

possible future apocalyptic operations by armed groups is reflected

in scenarios and simulations it has developed to practice responding

to the consequences that will result if one of those operations

crosses the WMD threshold. These scenarios and simulations re-

veal the magnitude of the damage armed groups can inflict today,

and the need to prepare for how to respond to such catastrophic

events. And these scenarios are not mere speculation but are reflec-

tive of the stated intentions of specific armed groups.

Perhaps the most widely publicized example of these exercises

is “Dark Winter.” In June 2001, with the support of the US gov-

ernment, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the

Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, the ANSER

Institute for Homeland Security, and the Oklahoma National Memo-

rial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism hosted a senior-level

crisis game examining the national security, intergovernmental, and

information challenges resulting from a biological attack on the

American homeland.

Such an event could have severe consequences including mas-

sive civilian casualties, a breakdown in essential institutions, disrup-

tion of democratic processes, civil disorder, and reduced US

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

strategic flexibility. Dark Winter is a fictional scenario involving a

covert smallpox attack on the United States and the challenges sen-

ior government officials would face responding to a rapidly escalat-

ing epidemic that would follow. Within 22 days, smallpox spreads

to 26 states. A total of 16,000 smallpox cases are reported, 1,000 of

which are fatal. Next, the NSC is told during the next 12 days the

total number of cases will grow to 30,000. They are advised that a

worst-case condition could result in 3,000,000 cases of smallpox

and as many as 1,000,000 deaths.

Dark Winter is an option available to terrorists and other non-

state actors who can gain access to smallpox and other biological

weapons. It illustrates that the threat posed by proliferation today is

more diverse, dangerous, and increasingly difficult to counter using

traditional nonproliferation approaches.

Other similar programs sponsored by the federal government to

assess the nation’s crisis and consequence management capacity

under extraordinary conditions include the TOPOFF exercises,

which test the readiness of senior government officials to respond to

multiple terrorist WMD attacks at different geographical locations.

Scenarios include chemical, radiological, and biological weapons.91

Several TOPOFF exercises have been held.

State governments are likewise funding WMD simulation and

training exercises. For example, in April 2002 the state of Okla-

homa sponsored “Sooner Spring,” a simulation involving senior

state-level political officials, first response agencies and organiza-

tions, and representatives from the state homeland security agency.

The crisis sought to “validate bioterrorism response planning."92 In

June 2003 the state of Kansas tested the viability of emergency re-

sponse plans to handle a bioterrorism attack on livestock or crops in

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

a simulation exercise called “Silent Prairie.”93

It is not just the United States that is apprehensive about WMD

attacks by non-state armed groups. There is also increased interna-

tional concern over the issue. The BBC reports that globally, fears

are high that nations with biological and chemical weapons exper-

tise and stockpiles may pass them on to terrorists.94 This led to the

recent addition of 14 pathogens to the control list of the Australia

Group, whose 33 members coordinate export control policies on

items that could be used in chemical or biological weapons pro-

grams. These modifications “take into account that a terrorist

doesn’t need to get the worst of the worst,” said a spokesperson for

the Group. “All you need is something pretty bad and you can

cause a lot of harm and a lot of panic. So, the expansion of the list

is in response to the need to look at the terrorist angle.”95

Reasons for this heightened international concern include the

danger of states that maintain weapons of mass destruction pro-

grams sharing them with armed groups they harbor and/or sup-

port.96 As of September 2002 at least 13 countries were currently

pursuing biological weapons and at least 16 states had chemical

weapons programs.97 Theft is another reason for worry. The stock-

piles of the former Soviet Union, one of the largest producers of

WMD, are insecure and have already suffered thefts.98

These examples of United States and international concern over

apocalyptic operations executed by armed group are not wild specu-

lation. James K. Campbell and other terrorist specialists note that

certain sub-state armed groups exhibit “ripeness” for developing

and using WMD. These include ones espousing radical religious

ideologies comprised of apocalyptic millenarianism, messianic re-

demptiveness, or racist/ethnic prejudice.99 Groups that believe their

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

actions are sanctioned or demanded by God are less likely to feel

concern about backlash or be inhibited by mass casualties. Aum

Shinrikyo, Al Qaeda, and others are evidence that the planning for

and/or actual use of WMD is a reality.

Aum Shinrikyo’s ideology, for example, is based on a belief in

apocalypse violence, as can be seen in its WMD operations. The

first sarin attack occurred in June 1994 when Aum members

sprayed sarin gas from a moving vehicle in a residential neighbor-

hood of Tokyo.100 Less than a year later, a second sarin attack was

launched against Tokyo subway trains.101 Then in May 1995 five

Aum members used cyanide gas in a subway. Finally, two months

later they launched a fourth attack by placing chemical devices in

subway and railway stations.102

Other armed groups have made public statements regarding

their intention to use WMD. This is another indicator that apoca-

lyptic scenarios by armed groups today are possible. In 1995,

Shamil Basayev, the most skilled and notorious Chechen paramili-

tary commander, was asked how he would set about destroying the

Kremlin, which he referred to as “the seat of satanic power.”103 He

replied that this would be accomplished by “sprinkling radioactive

sand” in Moscow.104 Basayev “rejoiced in the fact that develop-

ments in the twentieth-century warfare have hugely improved his

chances of succeeding where generations of freedom-fighting an-

cestors failed.”105

On November 23, 1995 a crude bomb of radioactive waste and

dynamite was left in a Moscow park by Chechan insurgents as a

warning of their capacity to follow through on Basayev’s boast.

They did not detonate the device but alerted the media of its

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

location. According to Graham Allison in his new book Nuclear

Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe:

Chechan separatists have a long-standing interest in acquir- ing nuclear weapons and material to use in their campaign against Russia.... Chechan militants made off with radioac- tive materials from a Grozny nuclear waste plant in january 2000; stole radioactive metals—possibly including some plutonium—from the Volgodonskaya nuclear power station in the southern region of Rostov between July 2001 and July 2002; and cased the railway system and special trains designed for shipping nuclear weapons across Russia.106

Likewise, in a December 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden al-

luded to WMD acquisition as part of his Holy War.

Q: The [United States] says you are trying to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons.

A: Our job is to instigate and, by the grace of God, we did that, and certain people responded to this instigation…. Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a reli- gious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so. And if I seek to ac- quire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty. It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Mus- lims.107

While bin Laden alluded to acquiring and using WMD, al Qaeda

operatives were seeking to acquire them as early as 1993, according

to the 9/11 Commission Report. It explains that in that year a top

bin Laden aide sought to purchase for $1.5 million what he believed

to be a cylinder containing weapons-usable uranium. “Al Qaeda

purchased the cylinder, then discovered it to be bogus.”108

This did not deter bin Laden, according to other evidence found

in the 9/11 Commission Report. For example, a former al Qaeda

member close to bin Laden, who defected from the organization in

May 1996, provided details of continuing efforts to acquire

WMD.109

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

Interviews of other al Qaeda members also reveal that the or-

ganization was seeking to obtain WMD capability. An October

2003 memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee by Under Secre-

tary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith reported

[D]uring a custodial interview, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi [a senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was asked to travel to Iraq (1998) to estab- lish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for CBW-related [Chemical and Biological Weapons] training beginning in December 2000. Iraqi intelligence was ‘encouraged’ after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this train- ing…. CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh’s timeline is con- sistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and poisons.110

By the time of the 9/11 attacks, Allison writes, the US intelli-

gence community had concluded that al Qaeda had “experimented

with chemical weapons (including nerve gas), biological weapons

(anthrax), and nuclear/radiological dispersal devices (dirty bombs).”

While none of these efforts came to fruition, they nevertheless re-

veal that bin Laden and his al Qaeda followers were serious about

WMD.111

Evidence of chemical labs in Afghanistan found in August 2002

by international peacekeepers further substantiates these state-

ments.112 They discovered 36 types of chemicals, explosive materi-

als, fuses, laboratory equipment, and “guide books.”113

In addition to al Qaeda, there have also been statements by

Hamas members demonstrating its desire to acquire WMD. The

International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism in Israel reports

that after the January 1993 arrest of Mohammed Salah, he revealed

details of his Hamas training, which included the building of explo-

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sive devices, electronics, and the development of chemical weap-

ons.114 George Tenet, then Director of Central Intelligence, in Con-

gressional testimony in 2000, stated: “Hamas is…pursuing a

capability to conduct attacks with toxic chemicals.”115

Still another indicator demonstrating the feasibility of a WMD

attack by a non-state armed group is the actual use of WMD by

armed groups who have not taken credit for such actions. The “Ter-

ror Attack Database” of the International Policy Institute for

Counter-Terrorism, for example, lists seven instances of unknown

armed groups using anthrax against targets in the United States,

Pakistan, and Chile following the 9/11 attacks.116 Furthermore, it is

important to note that although Aum’s use of WMD marked the first

time an extremist organization had attempted to employ a chemical

substance in a mass terrorist attack, it was not, however, the first use

of chemical agents by armed groups in order to instill terror, carry

out blackmail, or cause large-scale economic damage to their ri-

vals.117

In conclusion, the use of WMD by non-state armed groups is a

reality. WMD is inexpensive and does not require extensive facili-

ties. In addition, chemical substances have the advantage of mobil-

ity.118 In ideology, statements, actions, availability, insecure

stockpiles, ease of delivery, and lethality, armed groups have all the

ingredients needed to wage fourth generation warfare using WMD.

IMPLICATIONS FOR US INTELLIGENCE AND DEFENSE AGENCIES

The findings and conclusions presented in this monograph

make clear that armed groups have strikingly changed the nature of

conflict and war in today’s international security environment. De-

velopments in the 1990s, as demonstrated in these pages, enhanced

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the power and capabilities of armed groups to attack the United

States and other states in ways that constitute direct tier-one secu-

rity challenges. And these attacks should be considered, when they

rise to the level attained by Qaeda or by the insurgents, terrorists,

and militias fighting US forces in Iraq, as forms of warfare and

treated as such.

Moreover, there is little to suggest that armed groups are a tem-

porary post-Cold War phenomenon. What the trend lines and data

all illustrate is just the opposite. Armed groups will continue to

pose serious and increasingly dangerous security challenges to

states, including the United States, into the foreseeable future.

These developments have important implications for American

intelligence and defense agencies tasked with responsibility for

handling these challenges. Below are ten steps the United States

should consider to deal with a 21st century international security

landscape in which armed groups—insurgents, terrorists, militias,

and criminal organizations—will present a plethora of direct and

indirect threats and opportunities.

• Senior policymakers and intelligence/defense commu- nity managers need to recognize the impact of the de- velopments outlined in this monograph which demonstrate that in the years ahead armed groups will seek to attack the United States asymmetrically to strike at high-value targets. And these attacks can have strategic consequences similar to and even greater than 9/11. While not all armed groups can reach a level of power similar to that of al Qaeda, it is probable there are those who will see al Qaeda’s conduct of warfare as a model to emulate and replicate.

• Policymakers and intelligence/defense community managers also have to come to comprehend the com- plex nature of the armed group phenomena, and the threats and opportunities that flow from their emer- gence as a tier-one security priority. In the 1990s, as

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armed groups proliferated in both numbers and power, Washington was inattentive to these developments and subsequently paid a steep price. Given that certain non-state armed groups exhibit a keen interest in ac- quiring and using WMD, US policymakers and intelli- gence/defense community managers can afford no such indifference in the years ahead.

• The escalating role of armed groups in the international security environment of the 21st century should not be seen as only constituting threats to US interests and se- curity. In certain cases armed groups may also provide opportunities that, if taken advantage of, will contrib- ute to the attainment of US foreign policy and national security objectives.

• Such an appreciation of the evolving security setting necessitates major changes in the US intelligence and defense communities. Those institutions through the 1980s-1990s assessed armed groups as secondary— peripheral—security issues and were unwilling to ap- preciate their growing salience, linkages, and power. Even today, doubts remain in these agencies over whether any non-state armed group can undermine ma- jor US interests or carry out attacks that could have a strategic impact. That such attacks constitute a form of warfare likewise remains a suspect proposition.

• Consequently, the organizational cultures of the intelli- gence and defense agencies tasked with the analytic and operational responsibilities of dealing with armed groups require major revision. What the various inves- tigations of 9/11 have all revealed is that the organiza- tional cultures of those agencies—the pattern of thinking about their central tasks, activities, and opera- tions—are not geared to deal with the emerging strate- gic challenges of armed groups. New organizational cultures must be established in the intelligence and de- fense communities that approach armed groups as a tier-one priority.

• Armed groups present complex analytic puzzles. Un- derstanding them requires sophisticated tools for dif- ferentiating between and among armed groups, as well as for constructing systematic profiles of how they or-

Shultz, Farah, and Lochard—Armed Groups

ganize and function. These analytic tools should serve as the basis for all source collection that will provide the information needed to build such profiles.

• These profiles, in turn, would serve as the basis for de- veloping intelligence and special operations options— political, informational, psychological, economic, and paramilitary—for responding to and degrading those armed groups that threaten the United States. They could also be employed to identify options for assisting those armed groups that provide the United States with potential opportunities.

• These profiles should also be adapted for use not only against armed groups already directly or indirectly at- tacking the United States, but for identifying ones in their nascent stages. This will allow the United States to take preventive measures, defusing a threat before an armed group reaches the stage of serious violence.

• Armed group profiles can likewise be employed to identify ways in which the United States may want to assist certain armed groups whose success will be ad- vantageous to US foreign policy objectives.

• Finally, beyond major revisions in the culture of the in- telligence and defense agencies that have responsibility for dealing with armed groups, the developments out- lined in this monograph have other important implica- tions for those agencies. These include the need for each to establish new practical requirements to create the requisite intelligence and defense doctrine, organi- zation, training, and personnel to meet the armed groups challenge in the 21st century.

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NOTES

1 Nils Petter Gleditsch, et. al., “Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research, No. 5 (2002): 623. 2 On Hezbollah presence in the United States, see Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (New York: Free Press, 2002); and Annonymous, Terrorist Hunter (New York: Harper- Collins, 2003). 3 For example, see National Intelligence Council (NIC), Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernment Experts (De- cember 2000) www.cia.gov/cia/ reports/globaltrends2015/. In the Fall 2003, the NIC launched the National Intelligence Council 2020 Project, a year-long program of dialogues and conferences with experts from around the world. Initial products are posted at www.cia.gov/nic/ NIC_home.html. Also see Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Assessment 1999 posted at www.ndu.edu/inss/ Strate- gic%20Assessments/sa99/sa99cont.html. 4 For example, see Jaquelyn K. Davis and Michael J. Sweeney, Strate- gic Paradigms 2025:US Security Planning for a New Era, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999); and Zal- may Khalilzad and Ian O. Lesser (eds.), Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century: Regional Futures and US Strategy (Washington, DC: RAND, April 1998). 5 Some examples include the following: Ted Robert Gurr, Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2000); Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Los Angeles: UC Berkeley, 2000); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, July 1999); Sudhir Kakar, Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion and Conflict (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, February 1996); Charles W. Kegley, Jr. and Eugene R. Wittkopf, World Politics: Trends and Transformations, 9th edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Press, 2004); John Bailey and Roy Godson (eds.), Organized Crime and Democratic Governability (Pitts- burg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2000); Roy Godson (ed.), Menace to Society: Political Criminal Collaboration around the World (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2003). 6 The Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. It aimed to end wars over religion and other internal matters by creating the nation-state system.

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7 James Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2001). 8 It is possible for a state to be part of this integration, at least at the economic level, without adopting the shared norms identified by Ro- seau. China would be a case in point. In addition to Roseau see James E. Dougherty and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations, 5th ed. (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Long- man, 2001); Michael Doyle and G. John Ikenberry (eds.), New Think- ing in International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997); Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World His- tory: Remaking the Study of International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),10. 9 Robert I. Rotberg, “Nation-State Failure: A Recurring Phenomenon?” This paper was prepared for the aforementioned National Intelligence Council’s project on the shape of the world in 2020. It is posted at www.cia.gov/nic/NIC_home.html. Also see Rotberg (ed.), Why States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 10 Project Ploughshares, Armed Conflict Report 2003 www.ploughshares.ca. 11 K. J. Holsti’s, The State, War, and the State of War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 15; Donald M. Snow, Distant Thunder: Patterns of Conflict in the Developing World, 2nd edition (New York: Sharpe M.E., Inc., 1997); Snow, Uncivil Wars: Interna- tional Security and the New Internal Conflicts (Boulder, CO: Lynne- Rienner, 1996); William E. Odom, On Internal War: American and Soviet Approaches to Third World Clients and Insurgents (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Small Wars and Insurgencies Jour- nal Special Issue: Non-State Threats and Future Wars, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Autumn 2002); Ted R. Gurr, “Communal Conflicts and Global Secu- rity,” Current Security (May 1995). 12 The The Minorities at Risk Project website allows easy access to this dataset and also provides up to date qualitative assessments for each communal group www.cidcm.umd.edu/ inscr/mar/data.htm. 13 Monty Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2003 (Col- lege Park, MD: Center for International Development & Conflict Man- agement, 2003), 1. 14 Ibid.,15. 15 Ibid.

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16 Chester Crocker, “Engaging Failing States,” Foreign Affairs (Sep- tember/October 2003): 34-35; I. William Zartman, Collapsed States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), chapters 1 and 17; Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (Free Press, 1991), chapter 7; Robert Dorff, “Democratization and Failed States: The Challenge Un- governability,” Parameters (Spring 1996). 17 Ibid., 36. 18 Scott Baldauf and Owais Tohid, “A Triangle of Militants Regroups in Afghanistan,” The Christian Science Monitor, 9 April 2003, 1. 19 Military operations in cities are taken seriously by many. The fol- lowing are examples: Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT), Urban Operations Journal www.urbanoperations.com/; Travis M. Allen, Protecting Our Own: Fire Support in Urban Limited Warfare (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 1999). Global Security maintains an urban operations bibliography at its web site www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ops/mout.htm. Also see the bibliog- raphy on urban warfare and urban operations at the Naval War College web address www.nwc.navy.mil/library/3Publications/ NWCLibraryPublications/LibNotes/liburbanwar.htm>. 20 MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, ed., The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2001). 21 Figures for states are based on the Correlates of War Project at the University of Michigan under the Direction of J. David Singer, in Ke- gley and Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation 9th edi- tion. 22 For the most current publication, see The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html. 23 This rejection of terrorism as a form of warfare is made forcefully by Deputy Chief of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Paul Pillar’s Terrorism and US Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2001). 24 Department of Army, FM 100-23 Peace Operations (Washington, DC: US Government, 30 December 1994); Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 3- 07 Joint Doctrine for Military Operations Other Than War (Washing- ton, DC: US Government, 16 June 1995); John T. Fishel (ed), The Sav- age Wars of Peace: Toward A New Paradigm of Peace Operations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Charles W. Hasskamp, Opera- tions Other Than War (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, 1998). 25 Please see Non-State Actors Working Group www.icbl.org/wg/nsa/ nsabrochure.html

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26 Non-State Actors Working Group of the ICBL, “Non-State Armed Actors Region & Country Survey,” (February 2000). The survey di- vides armed groups by country and by region. However, it does not designate each entry according to the types of groups noted above— rebel groups, irregular armed groups, insurgents, dissident armed forces, guerrillas, liberation movements, and de facto territorial govern- ing bodies www.icbl.org/wg/nsa/library/nsasurvey.html. 27 Claude Bruderlein, The Role of Non-State Actors in Building Human Security: The Case of Armed Groups in Intra-State Wars, (Geneva: Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, May 2000), 8-9. www.humansecuritynetwork.org/docs/report_may2000_2-e.php. 28 Ibid. 29 The Para-State data is contained within the Federation of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program www.fas.org/irp/world/ para/. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Bard E. O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1990), 13. 33 Thomas H. Green, Comparative Revolutionary Movements (Engle- wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990); Jack A. Goldstone, Tedd Robert Gurr, and Farrokh Moshiri (eds.), Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991); Anthony James Joes, Guerrilla Warfare: A Historical, Biographical, and Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996); Mustafa Rejai, The Comparative Study of Revolutionary Strategy (New York: McKay, 1977); Walter Laqueur, Guerrilla: A Historical and Cultural Study (Boston: Little Brown, 1976); James DeFronzo, Revolutions and Revo- lutionary Movements (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991); Paul Ber- man, Revolutionary Organizations (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books,1974). 34 Daniel Byman, et. al., Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001). 35 Confidential interviews with Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency officials conducted in 2004. 36 See Russell Howard and Reid Sawyer (eds.), Terrorism and Counter- terrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment (Guilford, CT: McGraw Hill, 2004); Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Paul Pillar, Terrorism and

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US Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2001); Eqbal Ahmad and David Barsamian, Terrorism: Theirs and Ours (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001); Cindy Combs, Terrorism in the Twenty-First Cen- tury (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997); Thomas Badey, “De- fining International Terrorism: A Pragmatic Approach,” Terrorism and Political Violence (Spring 1998); C. J. M. Drake, “The Role of Ideol- ogy in Terrorists’ Target Selection,” Terrorism and Political Violence (Summer 1998); and Bruce Hoffman, “The Confluence of International and Domestic Trends in Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence (Summer 1997). In addition, there are academic journals devoted to the topic including Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Terrorism and Political Violence. 37 The database can be found at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St. Andrew’s University (UK) www.st- andrews.ac.uk/intrel/research/cstpv/. 38 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda (New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press, 2002) and Douglas Farah, Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror (New York: Broadway Books, 2004). 39 Ralph Peters, Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? (Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1999) and Alice Hills, “Warlords, Militia and Conflict in Contemporary Africa: A Re-examination of Terms,” Small Wars and Insurgencies (Spring 1997). 40 Human Rights Watch, “Côte d’Ivoire: Militias Commit Abuses with Impunity,” Human Rights News (November 27, 2003) www.hrw.org/ press/2003/11/cote112703.htm.

41 Hills, “Warlords, Militias and Conflict in Contemporary Africa,” 40; John MacKinlay, “War Lords,” RUSI Journal (April 1998). 42 Scott Patterson, Me Against My Brother (London: Routledge, 2000), 51, 61. 43 Roy Godson and William J. Olson, International Organized Crime: Emerging Threat to US Security (Washington, DC: National Strategy Information Center, 1993), 4. Also see Bailey and Godson (eds.), Or- ganized Crime and Democratic Governability ; Godson (ed.), Menace to Society: Political Criminal Collaboration around the World; Phil Williams, “Transnational Criminal Organizations: Strategic Alliances,” Washington Quarterly (Winter 1995): 57-72; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized_crime.html; Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption www.yorku.ca/nathanson/Links/links.htm; Center For Strategic and International Studies Organized Crime Project www.csis.org/tnt/;

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Jane’s Intelligence Review jir.janes.com/; The Narco News Bulletin www.narconews.com. 44 Godson and Olson, International Organized Crime: Emerging Threat to US Security, 4, 6. 45 Ibid., 6. 46 Magnus Ranstorp, Hiz’ballah in Lebanon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). 47 Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda. 48 Alberto Garrido, Guerrilla y el Plan Colombia: hablan las FARC y el ELN (Caracas, Venezuela: Producciones Karol, 2001); Thomas Marks. Colombian Army Adaptation to FARC Insurgency (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2002); Bailey and Godson, Organized Crime and Democratic Governability ; God- son, Menace to Society. 49 See UN Report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo www.un.org. 50 Godson, Menace to Society. 51 For a discussion of Bout’s extensive operations see UN reports by the Panel of Experts for Liberia for Dec. 20, 2000; Oct. 26, 2001; Oct. 16, 2002 www.un.org: and the Making a Killing: The Business of War, The International Consortium of Journalists, Public Integrity Books, Washington, D.C., 2003. 52 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (eds.), Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001. 53 Rosenau writes that “[w]hat distinguishes globalizing processes is that they are not hindered or prevented by territorial or jurisdictional barriers. They can spread readily across national boundaries and are capable of reaching into any community anywhere in the world.” Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier, 80. 54 Kegley and Wittkopf, World Politics, 272; Kakar, Colors of Vio- lence; Kaldor, New and Old Wars. 55 Harles Heckscher and Anne Donnelon, eds., The Post-Bureaucratic Organization (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995). 56 Peter F. Drucker, “The Coming of the New Organization,” Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 1998), 3.

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57 International Criminal Threat Assessment (Washington, DC: The White House, 2000), 1. The interagency working group included rep- resentatives from the Central Intelligence Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Drug Enforcement Administration; US Customs Service; US Secret Service; Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; National Drug Intelligence Center; the Departments of State, the Treasury, Jus- tice, and Transportation; the Office of National Drug Control Policy; and the National Security Council participated in the drafting of this assessment. 58 Ibid., 3. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Foreign Policy Association, “In Focus—Al Qaeda.” www.fpa.org/ newsletter_info2478/newsletter_info.htm. See also Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden (New York: The Free Press 2001), 222. 63 Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda. 64 Richard H. Shultz, Jr. and Andreas Vogt, “The Real Intelligence Failure of 9/11 and the Case for a Doctrine of Striking First,” in How- ard and Sawyer, Terrorism and Counterterrorism. 65 Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Gray, A Second Nuclear Age (Boulder, CO: Lynne- Reinner, 1999); Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Af- fairs and the Evidence of History (London: Frank Cass, 2002); Gray, “Handfuls of Heroes on Desperate Ventures: When do Special Opera- tions Succeed?” Parameters Vol. XXIX, No. 1 (Spring 1999). 66 Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (December 2002) www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html; Gunaratna, Inside Al- Qaeda; Shultz and Vogt, “The Real Intelligence failure of 9/11 and the Case for a Doctrine of Striking First.” 67 Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars; Peters, Fighting for the Future; and Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press, 1991). 68 These specialists sought to determine how non-state actors could take advantage of globalization, network-based organization and informa- tion age technologies to enhance their ability to attack the state. How could these developments affect the terrorist’s capacity to execute stra-

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tegic level unconventional attacks on the states they targeted? By the end of the 1990s the proponents of fourth generation warfare had iden- tified seven integrated precepts that they believed armed groups could adopt and employ with strategic effect on the state. The proponents of this theory asserted that armed groups that acquired the capacity to op- erationalize these seven principles in an integrated manner could attain the power necessary to initiate strategic level strikes on the state. 69 Al Qaeda’s initial financial base came from donations from 20 wealthy Gulf-state donors. The “Golden Chain” list of supporters was found during a March 2002 raid in Bosnia on an office of the Benevo- lence International Foundation. Benevolence was one of several US- based charities funneling money to al Qaeda and shut down by the US Treasury Department after 9/11. A 1996 CIA report estimated that one-third of the 50 Islamic NGOs “support terrorist groups or employ individuals suspected of terrorist connections.” Because most of the early leaders of al Qaeda had strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Brotherhood’s financial empire also served to funnel money to the terrorist enterprise. Among the Brotherhood banks that have been closed because of their support for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are Bank al Taqwa and Akida Bank, both based in Nassau, Bahamas. The banks were conrolled by Yousef Nada and Idriss Nasreddin, both senior leaders of the Brotherhood, and both designated as terrorist fi- nanciers by the United States and the United Nations. The UN also ordered the freezing of the assets of the joint business empire run by the two men. For descriptions of the al Qaeda financial structure, see Farah, Blood from Stones; Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Ter- rorists Living Among Us (New York: Free Press, 2002); Anonymous, Terrorist Hunter; United Nations Report of the Monitoring Group to the Security Council (Nov. 3, 2003), available at www.un.org. 70 See Shultz and Vogt, “The Real Intelligence failure of 9/11 and the Case for a Doctrine of Striking First.” 71 Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and US Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2001). During the latter 1990s Pillar served as the Deputy director of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. 72 “The Economic Effects of September 11th,” Chicago Tribune, 5 Sep- tember 2002. This PowerPoint study was completed under the auspices of the Department of Economics at Penn State University. 73 Ibid.; William F. Ford, “Economic Impacts of the World Trade Cen- ter and Pentagon Attacks (Forum on Emerging Issues),” Business Eco- nomics (October 2001); “Revised Forecasts,” AFSA Spotlight on Financial Services www.spotlightonfinance.org; “Economic Forecast- ers See Modest, Steady Recovery,” AFSA Spotlight on Financial Ser-

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vices (October 2002). www.spotlightonfinance.org/issues/October02/ Stories/story1.htm. 74 Figures come from Visibillity—the leading litigation management solution provider to the insurance industry. 75 “Economic Impact of 9/11 on the Airline Industry.” See PowerPoint presentation at http://acy.tc.faa.gov/jup/jupq_011002/special_guest/ wangerman/presentation.pdf 76 See the Department of Homeland Security www.dhs.gov. 77 Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (New York: Crown Publishers, 2002). 78 Godson, Menace to Society. 79 Douglas Farah, “Conflict Diamonds and Failed States,” Journal of International Security Affairs (Winter 2004). 80 United Nations Secretary General, “The Situation in Afghanistan and its Implications for International Peace and Security,” Report of the Secretary General to the UN Security Council A/57/850-S/2003/754 (23 July 2003) www.un.org/Docs/sc/sgrep03.html. 81 “The Situation in Afghanistan and Its Implications for International Peace and Security,” Report of the Secretary-General. www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/1b1f74fd1dc62a1c85256d74005b0563? OpenDocument. 82 Godson, Menace to Society. 83 Measurements for each governance indicator are based on 25 sepa- rate data sources compiled by 18 different organizations, including Afrobarometer, Columbia University, DRI/McGraw-Hill, the Econo- mist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House, Gallup International, IMD, Latinobarometro, Reporters Without Borders, the World Economic Forum, and the World Bank itself. 84 Voice and Accountability measures the political process to determine the extent to which citizens participate in the selection of governments. Political Stability and Absence of Violence measures the likelihood of destabilization including domestic violence and terrorism. Government Effectiveness reflects quality of public service, bureaucracy, and civil servants; independence of the civil service from politics; and the credi- bility of the government policies. Regulatory Quality focuses on the policies themselves, measuring the incidence of market-unfriendly policies such as price controls or inadequate bank supervision. Rule of Law measures the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society. These include the incidence of crime, the effec-

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tiveness and predictability of the judiciary and the enforceability of contracts. Control of Corruption measures the exercise of public power for private gain. 85 The database covers four time periods—1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. 86 For detailed analysis of the data and its implications see the World Bank study: D. Kauffmann, A. Kraay, and M. Mastruzzi, Governance Matters III: Governance Indicators for 1996-2002 (May 2003). www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/wp-governance.html.. 87 Please see the Armed Groups home page at www.armedgroups.org/ home.htm. 88 See the Global Security website at www.globalsecurity.org. 89 For a listing of all those involved and the topics of the conferences held in support of the study see www.cia.gov/nic/pubs/2015_files/ 2015.htm. 90 Ibid. 91 Thomas Inglesby, Rita Grossman, and Tara O'Toole, “A Plague on Your City: Observations from TOPOFF,” Biodefense Quarterly (Sep- tember 2000) www.hopkins-biodefense.org. 92 For background see www.mipt.org/pdf/soonerspringfinalreport.pdf. 93 For background on the exercise see www.mediarelations.ksu.edu/ WEB/News/NewsReleases/preparedness60503.html. 94 Please see the BBC news website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ 2808901.stm. 95 Seth Brugger, “Australia Group Concludes New Chem-Bio Control Measures,” Arms Control Today (July/August 2002). www.armscontrol.org. 96 Another example is Libya, which produced over 100 metric tons of blister and nerve agents at a facility in Rabta between 1998 and 1990. Joseph Cirincione with Jon B. Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly Arsenals, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (June 2002): 308. In addition, Iraq stockpiles are known as they used chemical weapons extensively in the closing stages of the 1980-88 war with Iran and against Kurds in northern Iraq. Furthermore, it has also admitted manufacturing mustard gas, and the nerve agents VX, sarin, and tabun, as well as the biological agent anthrax and the toxins botulinum, ricin, and aflatoxin. For more information, please see John R. Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Testimony be- fore the House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on

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the Middle East and Central Asia, (16 September 2003). http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/2003/Sep/16-408986.html. 97 “Chemical and Biological Weapons Proliferation at a Glance,” (Sep- tember 2002) www.armscontrol.org. 98 “In October 2001, the commander of the force that guards Russia’s nuclear weapons reported that during that year, terrorist groups had twice carried out reconnaissance at Russian nuclear warhead storage sites—whose very locations are a state secret.” Furthermore, it has been reported that the 40 armed Chechens who seized hundreds of hos- tages at a Moscow theater in October 2002 had considered seizing a nuclear reactor with hundreds of kilograms of HEU. This is enough to build several nuclear weapons. John R. Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Testimony before the House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia. 99 James K. Campbell, “Excerpts from Research Study ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism: Proliferation by Non-State Actors,’” Terrorism and Political Violence (Summer 1997). 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Victoria Clark, “Chechens Prefer Total War to Bad Peace,” The Ob- server. 13 August 1995. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Simon Saradzhyan, “Russia: Grasping Reality of Nuclear Terror,” BCSIA Discussion paper 2002-2003, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, March 2003 (bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication. cfm?program=ISP&ctype=paper&item_id=374) in Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004), 33. 107 Interview of Osama Bin Laden by John Miller, Frontline. PBS (23 December 1998). www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/ who/edicts.html. 108 9/11 Commission, 9/11Commission Report: The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: WW Norton and Company, 2004), 60.

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109 See 18 March 1997 US intelligence reports on bin Laden ‘s efforts to acquire WMD materials as cited in the 9/11 Commission Report, 479, footnote 3. 110 Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, “Memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee,” 27 October 2003, in Stephen F. Hayes, “The US Government’s Secret Memo Detailing Cooperation Between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden,” The Weekly Stan- dard, Vol. 9, No. 11 (24 November 2003). 111 9/11 Commission Report, 28. 112 “Kabul Terror Lab Said Found at Ex-Saudi NGO Office,” Reuters (25 August 2002). www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/role/globdem/credib/ 2002/0825kabul.htm. 113 Ibid. 114 “Parents of Slain American Teen File Suit Against Hamas Front Groups” International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, (15 May 2000) www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=431. 115 Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, “The Worldwide Threat in 2000: Global Realities of Our National Security,” Senate Committee on Armed Services, 3 February 2000. 116 “Terror Attack Database,” International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism, www.ict.org.il 117 Boaz Ganor, Non-Conventional Terrorism: Chemical, Nuclear, Bio- logical,” (25 April 1998) in 2000 WMD Terrorism Chronology: Inci- dents Involving Sub-National Actors and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, or Nuclear Materials. http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/ cbrn2k.htm. 118 Ibid.