Out of the Mountains

by David Kilcullen

  9.Presentation by Dr. Carter Malkasian during pre-deployment training for 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, U.S. Naval Base Point Loma, San Diego, November 2011.

  10.During a tour on Cyprus in 1997 with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, I regularly observed Greek Cypriot Orthodox priests taking a leading role in organizing demonstrations in Eleftheria Square, Nicosia, and at major crossing points across the Green Line that divides Greek and Turkish Cypriots. On the similar roles of Catholic clergy during the uprising in East Timor, see David J. Kilcullen, “The Political Consequences of Military Operations in Indonesia, 1945–99,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of New South Wales, 2001, 115, 146–50.

  11.For an outstanding account of Afghan warlord state-building behavior during this period, see Antonio Giustozzi, Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan (London: Hurst, 2009).

  12.See Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef [‘Abd al-Salam Za’if], with Alex van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, My Life with the Taliban (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), xxii.

  13.Anand Gopal, “The Battle for Afghanistan: Militancy and Conflict in Kandahar,” New America Foundation, Washington, DC, 2010, 7, online at http://security.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/kandahar_0.pdf.

  14.For one of several versions of this story in wide circulation in Kabul in late 2009, see Miles Amoore, “Taliban Bring Order, Say Afghans,” Sunday Times (London), December 14, 2009.

  15.Interviews with Afghan respondents SP in Jalalabad, September 2009; RP and RSP in Kabul, December 2009; and FA in Kabul, October 2010.

  16.Interview with Afghan respondent RP, a Taliban-aligned businessman from Kandahar, in Kabul, December 2009.

  17.See Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

  18.Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 12.

  19.Ibid.

  20.C. E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London: HMSO, 1906), 21. The familiar notion of “nonstate actors” is too broad to be useful here, because in modern conflict there may be dozens of nonstate actors in any given space, including humanitarian NGOs, local or international businesses, development contractors, bilateral and multilateral aid donors, the news media, and local or international civil society organizations. Many of these are not armed, do not apply violence, and do not prey on population groups. Likewise, the concept of “illegal armed groups” (like the related concept of “illicit networks”) has extremely limited applicability in failed or failing states, where there is no clear sovereign legal authority. Also, in civil wars where sovereignty is fragmented and legal frameworks are contested, the construct of “legal” and “illegal” armed groups lacks real-world meaning. Under my definition, a nonstate armed group may or may not be formally structured, it may or may not have an overt political motivation or an explicit ideology, and its actions may or may not serve a broader purpose than the self-interest of its members. But equally, the violence it applies is not merely random, psychotic, or bestial (though atrocious cruelties can and do occur) but rather purposeful—it is violence that supports a wider goal, that shows a pattern of rational intent.

  21.For example, members of the Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam) in Indonesia or the Zeta Killers in Mexico would fall into the category of vigilantes or armed public defender groups.

  22.I am indebted for this last insight to Professor Tammy S. Schultz of the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Q uantico, Virginia.

  23.David Witwer, “‘The Most Racketeer-Ridden Union in America’: The Problem of Corruption in the Teamsters Union During the 1930s,” in Emmanuel Kreike and William Chester Jordan, eds., Corrupt Histories (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 200.

  24.Ibid., 212–13.

  25.See, for example, Philip Selznick, The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (Glencoe, IL: Free Press of Glencoe, 1960), 27–28, 72–73.

  26.Ibid., 26.

  27.Ilse Derluyn, Eric Broekaert, Gilberte Schuyten, and Els De Temmerman, “Post-traumatic Stress in Former Ugandan Child Soldiers,” Lancet 363 (May 2004): 861–63.

  28.Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 17.

  29.See United Nations, Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts, Annex IV, “The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing,” United Nations, New York, December 28, 1994, online at www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/comexpert/ANX/IV.htm#0-VI.

  30.See Lijepa Nasa Domovina Hrvatska, “Brcko BC001-EA,” online at www.lijepanasadomovinahrvatska.com/dokumenti-mainmenu-70/79-iskazi/433-br-bc001ea.

  31.Author’s interview with British officers recently returned from service in Bosnia with UNPROFOR and SFOR, British Army training area, Copehill Down, UK, September 8, 1997.

  32.Author’s interviews and personal observation in the Balibo, Maliana, Batugade, and Ermera areas of East Timor, September 1999 to February 2000.

  33.Interview with a U.S. diplomat serving in rural areas of Peru during the early period of the Shining Path uprising, Washington, DC, February 20, 2012.

  34.Bernard B. Fall, “The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency,” Naval War College Review, Winter 1998 [1965].

  35.See the Appendix for a more detailed explanation of the theoretical basis for this discussion, which draws on the theory of normative systems and in particular on the work of Carlos Alchourron and Eugenio Bulygin in legal theory, David Dressler in sociology, and Thomas Agotnes et al. in computer science.

  36.In taking this definitional approach, I draw in part on Hans Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943), 110ff., and in part on Carlos E. Alchourron and Eugenio Bulygin, Normative Systems (New York: Springer Verlag, 1971), 53–59.

  37.Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 154.

  38.Mao Zedong, “Problems of War and Strategy,” Selected Works of Mao Tse Tung, vol. 2 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967).

  39.Simon Neville, “U.S. Road Deaths at Lowest Levels for 60 years . . . but Still One Killed Every 16 Minutes,” Daily Mail, April 1, 2011.

  40.Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (New York: New American Library, Signet Classics,1959), 121–22

  41.For instance, Adam Hochschild argues that the character of Kurtz is drawn from Conrad’s direct observation of colonial officials in the field, in particular Captain Leon Rom of the Belgian Force Publique. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (New York: Mariner Books, 1999), ch 9.

  42.Joseph Conrad, “An Outpost of Progress,” in Tales of Unrest, 1898, online at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/conrad/joseph/c75ta/chapter3.html

  43.Author’s personal observation in Baghdad and surrounding areas, January to March 2006, and February to September 2007.

  44.Author’s observation; see also “Informant Led U.S. to Strike Zarqawi Dead,” Courier (James Logan High School, Union City, CA), June 9, 2006, online at http://jameslogancourier.org/index.php?itemid=365.

  45.See Nir Rosen, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Middle East (New York: Nation Books, 2010), 257.

  46.David Kilcullen, “Reading al-Anbar,” American Interest, September/October 2010.

  47.For a detailed description of these events, see United States Marine Corps, Al-Anbar Awakening, 2 vols. (Q uantico, VA: USMC, 2010).

  48.Kilcullen, “Reading al-Anbar.”

  49.See Human Rights Watch, “Flooding South Lebanon: Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006,” February 17, 2008; BBC News, “Million Bomblets in S Le
banon,” September 26, 2006.

  50.Robert Fisk, “Hizbollah’s Reconstruction of Lebanon Is Winning the Loyalty of Disaffected Shia,” Independent, August 24, 2006.

  51.“Israel’s Barak Says Hezbollah Stronger than Ever,” Agence France-Presse, January 7, 2008,

  52.Fisk, “Hizbollah’s Reconstruction of Lebanon.”

  53.Roula Khalaf, “Hezbollah Hopes to Engineer a Q uick Recovery,” Financial Times, August 27, 2006.

  54.Ibid.

  55.See, for example, Benjamin S. Lambeth, Air Operations in Israel’s War Against Hezbollah: Learning from Lebanon and Getting It Right in Gaza (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011); David E. Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War: Insights from the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon and Gaza (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011); Avi Kober, “The Israel Defense Forces in the Second Lebanon War: Why the Poor Performance?” Journal of Strategic Studies 31, no. 1 (2008): 3–40.

  56.“Israel’s Barak Says Hezbollah Stronger than Ever.”

  57.Q uoted in Physicians for Human Rights, The Taliban’s War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan (Boston: Physicians for Human Rights, 1998), 117–18.

  58.Nushin Arbabzadah, “The 1980s Mujahideen, the Taliban and the Shifting Idea of Jihad,” Guardian, April 28, 2011.

  59.Ibid.

  60.Q uoted in Roy Gutman, “We’ve Met the Enemy in Afghanistan, and He’s Changed,” McClatchy Newspapers, March 14, 2010.

  61.Interviews with schoolchildren, teachers, and school principals in the Jalalabad, Kunduz, and Kunar regions, September and December 2009.

  62.Ray Rivera, “Taliban Challenge U.S. in Eastern Afghanistan,” New York Times, December 25, 2010.

  63.Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). Migdal’s work develops a functional model of state effectiveness, drawing on previous work by Gabriel Almond, G. Bingham Powell, Harry Eckstein, and others.

  64.Ibid., 3.

  65.William Maley, The Afghanistan Wars (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 13.

  66.Robert Kemp, “The District Delivery Program in Afghanistan: A Case Study in Organizational Challenges,” Small Wars Journal, June 26, 2012.

  67.Author’s discussion with Afghan provincial government official, Kabul, December 2009.

  68.Steve Bowman and Catherine Dale, War in Afghanistan: Strategy, Military Operations, and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2009), 5ff.

  69.Jerome Starkey, “Former Warlord Blames UK for Breakdown in Security,” Independent, June 9, 2008.

  70.James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), 1, 3–4.

  71.Ibid., 5.

  72.Ibid.

  73.See James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).

  74.Obika Gray, Demeaned but Empowered: The Social Power of the Urban Poor in Jamaica (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2004), 60.

  75.Karl D. Jackson, Traditional Authority, Islam, and Rebellion: A Study of Indonesian Political Behavior (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).

  76.David J. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 76.

  77.Author’s personal observations and discussions with community elders in Sadr City, Abu Ghraib, Dora, and Kadhimiya districts of Baghdad, March to July 2007.

  78.Ibid.

  79.For a discussion of this concept, see C. Boggs, Gramsci’s Marxism (London: Pluto, 1976), 39.

  Chapter 4

  1.John Pollock, “People Power 2.0: How Civilians Helped Win the Libyan Information War,” MIT Technology Review, April 20, 2012, 1.

  2.Ibid.

  3.See Pollock’s reporting in MIT Technology Review, including “Watching a Digital ‘Jasmine Revolution’ Unfold: Using Facebook and Twitter to track trouble on the streets of Tunisia,” June 21, 2011; “Play It Again, King Mohammed: Oldest Arab Monarchy Uses Classical Tactics to Stifle Latest Protests,” June 22, 2011; “Streetbook: How Egyptian and Tunisian Youth Hacked the Arab Spring,” August 23, 2011; and “The Voice of Libya: An Inspiring Story of Citizen Journalism,” September 5, 2011.

  4.In this chapter, as throughout this book, I use the term “connectedness” to describe the general phenomenon of increasingly dense informational, financial, human and electronic linkages among populations across the planet, and the term connectivity or network connectivity to describe the narrower subset of those linkages that is associated with access to mobile communications technology and, especially, the Internet.

  5.Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, United States Government Joint Publication 1–02 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2001), 533.

  6.Ibid.

  7.Obviously, there’s a lot more to the international law of armed conflict than just this territorial aspect, and lawyers generally recognize that a person’s combatant status “travels” with that person if he or she leaves an area of conflict. My point here is merely that the “theater of war” construct, which drives part of this legal regime, is a spatial one.

  8.Australian Army, Future Land Warfare Operating Concept: Complex Warfighting (Canberra: Australian Army Headquarters, Directorate-General of Future Land Warfare, 2004), 8–9.

  9.Karoun Demirjian, “Creech Drone Pilot, Instructor Feted in White House Dinner Honoring Iraq Veterans,” Las Vegas Sun, March 2, 2012.

  10.Elisabeth Bumiller, “A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away,” New York Times, July 29, 2012.

  11.Relevant Supreme Court judgments include Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), and Boumedienne v. Bush (2008). See also David Rivkin and Lee Casey, “Within His Rights,” American Lawyer, February 9, 2013.

  12.See James Gordon Meek and David Saltonstall, “Pakistani Taliban Leader Hakimullah Mehsud Is Brutal Mastermind Behind Thwarted Times Square Bombing,” New York Daily News, May 9, 2010; United States Department of State, Rewards for Justice Program, wanted poster for Hakimullah Mehsud, online at www.rewardsforjustice.net/index.cfm?page=mehsud.

  13.Akbar Ahmed, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013).

  14.Siobhan Gorman, Yochi Dreazen, and August Cole, “Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones,” Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2009.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Noah Schachtman, “Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet,” Wired, October 7, 2011.

  18.David Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Random House, 2012).

  19.David Sanger, “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran,” New York Times, June 1, 2012.

  20.Ibid.

  21.Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, “Panetta Warns of Dire Threat of Cyber-attack Against U.S.,” New York Times, October 11, 2012.

  22.Mikko Hypponen, “Cyber Pearl Harbor,” F-Secure blog, October 18, 2012, online at www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002446.html.

  23.Thomas Rid, “CyberFail: The Obama Administration’s Lousy Record on Cyber-Security,” New Republic, February 4, 2013.

  24.Pollock, “Streetbook,” 2.

  25.Ibid.

  26.Olivier Kramsch, “Towards a Mediterranean Scale of Governance: Twenty-First Century Urban Networks Across the ‘Inner Sea,’” in Barbara Hooper and Olivier Kramsch, eds., Cross-Border Governance in the European Union (London: Routledge 2007), 200.

  27.Ibid.
, 4.

  28.Paul Wood, “Gangster’s Life of Serb Warlord,” BBC News, January 15, 2000.

  29.Dave Fowler, “Football, Blood and War,” Observer, January 18, 2004.

  30.Author’s participant observation and discussions with community elders in Dili, Balibo, Ermera, and Batugade districts, East Timor, September 22–23, 1999, November 15, 1999, and January 2, 2000. See analysis in Chapter 4 of David J. Kilcullen, “Political Consequences of Military Operations in Indonesia, 1945–1999,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of New South Wales, 2000.

  31.James M. Dorsey, “Pitched Battles: The Role of Ultra Soccer Fans in the Arab Spring,” Eurasia Review, December 24, 2012.

  32.Ibid.

  33.Ibid.

  34.Ibid.

  35.Ibid.

  36.Robert F. Worth, “How a Single Match Can Ignite a Revolution,” New York Times, January 21, 2011.

  37.Jonathan Adams, “Tunisian Protests Escalate, Reflecting Widespread Discontent,” Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2011.

  38.See the Web portal of the democracy activist group Nawaat for screenshots of Amamou’s smartphone post, at http://nawaat.org/portail/2011/01/06/tunisia-blogger-slim-amamou-arrested-today.

  39.Peter Beaumont, “The Truth About Twitter, Facebook and the Uprisings in the Arab World,” Guardian, February 24, 2011.

  40.Ibid.

  41.Ibid.

  42.Pollock, “Streetbook,” 6.

  43.Ibid.

  44.Q uinn Norton, “How Anonymous Picks Targets, Launches Attacks, and Takes Powerful Organizations Down,” Wired, July 3, 2012.

  45.Evan Hill, “Hackers Hit Tunisian Websites,” Al Jazeera, January 3, 2011.

  46.See Open Net Initiative at https://opennet.net, WikiLeaks at http://wikileaks.org, Cryptome at http://cryptome.org, and Nawaat at http://nawaat.org.

  47.Kramsch, “Towards a Mediterranean Scale,”

  48.See “Egypt Population Reaches 91 Million, Grows 18 Percent in Eight Years,” Ahram Online, August 30, 2012, online at http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/51634.aspx.

  49.Andrew McLaughlin, “Egypt’s Big Internet Disconnect,” Guardian, January 31, 2011.