Groups, networks, or movements: A command-and-control-driven approach to classifying terrorist organizations and its application to Al Qaeda

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 241-262

  Jackson, Brian A ^a  

^a RAND CORPORATION   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33645123142     PISSN: 1057610X     EISSN: 15210731     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10576100600564042     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. David Ronfeldt, "Al Qaeda and Its Affiliates: A Global Tribe Waging Segmental Warfare?" First Monday 10(3) (2005) (http://firstmonday.org).
2. Doug Frantz, "Defining Al Qaeda: They're coming after us, but who are they now?" The New York Times, 20 October 2002.
3. Bruce Hoffman, "What can we learn from the terrorists?" Global Agenda (2004), pp. 32-34
4. Ronfeldt, "Al Qaeda and Its Affiliates."
5. See, for example, discussions in both the policy and popular literatures in Jason Burke, "Think again: Al Qaeda," Foreign Policy (May/June 2004), 18-26
6. Douglas F. Frantz et al., "The new face of al Qaeda," The Los Angeles Times (26 September 2004), 1
7. Rohan Gunaratna, "Al-Qaeda adapts to disruption," Jane's Intelligence Review (1 February 2004)
8. Bruce Hoffman, "The changing face of al Qaeda and the global war on terrorism," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 27 (2004), pp. 549-560
9. Xavier Raufer, "al Qaeda: A different diagnosis," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26 (2003), pp. 391-398.
10. See, for example, Rohan Gunaratna, "The new Al Qaeda: Developments in the post 9-11 evolution of al Qaeda" (paper presented at the International Conference on Post-Modern Terrorism: Trends, Scenarios, and Future Threats, Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, 7-10 September 2003)
11. Hoffman, "The Changing Face of Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism"
12. Ronfeldt, "al Qaeda and Its Affiliates."
13. Brian A. Jackson, Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 1: Organizational Learning in Terrorist Groups and Its Implications for Combating Terrorism, MG-331-NIJ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005)
14. Brian A. Jackson, "The Provisional Irish Republican Army," in Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 2: Case Studies of Learning in Five Terrorist Organizations, edited by Brian A. Jackson, et al. (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2005), pp. 93-140.
15. Because a central topic of this article is the specific use of language, an introductory point on the use of the word "organization" is merited. In this article, the word organization is used in its most general sense - organizations are systems to structure the activities of their components (which could be individuals or other organizations) in pursuit of specific goals. Because the existence of an organization implies the inclusion of some components and the exclusion of others (members and non-members), organizations also undertake activities to maintain their boundaries. Organizations may be temporary or permanent, but focus on the organization of activity aimed at specific goals.
16. (See, for example, Howard Aldrich, Organizations Evolving (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999) for additional discussion of the characteristics of generic organizations.) The term is used generically to encompass all the types of organizations considered - illustrated by the three in the title: Groups, networks, and movements.
17. For example, the monograph (John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, MR-1382-OSD [Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001]) and related publications.
18. Use of the term command and control authority (or authority more generically) should not be interpreted to mean only formal command authority similar to that exerted in a traditional military organization. This article intends for the term to be much broader to capture formal and informal influence mechanisms within these organizations. The authority that allows one part of an organization to coordinate the actions of other parts to help ensure unity of action may come from formal mechanisms (for which the author uses the term control), but more frequently comes from mechanisms such as the level of respect he or she maintains from peers, perceived legitimacy within the group, and so on (for which the author uses the term influence). The "strength" of authority relationships may differ depending on the source of the authority. Whereas a traditional "commander" might be able to exert direct control and issue enforceable orders, an "opinion leader" in a group with more consensual decision nmaking might only be able to influence priorities and activities through persuasion, argument, and other non-formal authority mechanisms.
19. Ronfeldt's description of a tribal chief is a useful illustration: "The title of chief, if there was one, meant little; he was a man of influence, an adviser, a facilitator, a broker - but he could not give orders that had to be obeyed" (Ronfeldt, "Al Qaeda and Its Affiliates").
20. The source of the authority (e.g., formal vs. informal influence) is not necessarily inherently linked to the strength of that authority. It is, for example, possible for an individual whose authority comes from the respect of group members to exert as strong, or even stronger, influence than one who only derives authority from his or her position. Mechanisms through which such information authority can be built include familial relationships, shared time in prisons, interaction in training activities, or common experiences in previous conflicts, for example, discussion in Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars, pp. 31-32, 72
21. Ronfeldt, "Al Qaeda and Its Affiliates").
22. These two approaches are complementary - addressing different components that determine organizational effectiveness: Access to appropriate information, capabilities, and resources and the command, control, and communications capability needed to effectively coordinate and apply those resources to organizational goals. The sources of these components are partially driven by structure (e.g., the structures that connect internal capabilities or link the organization to external capabilities) and partially driven by the functional control and coordination capabilities. See, Jonathan David Farley, "Breaking Al Qaeda cells: A mathematical analysis of counterterrorism operations (A guide for risk assessment and decision making)," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26 (2003), pp. 399-411 for an example of an analysis that includes both these structural and control issues in examination of terrorist cells.
23. Modes of exerting strategic control or influence range from direct control relationships to communication of a strategic vision to a group overall through public statements or documents. As suggested in (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars, pp. 328-333), strategic coherence in certain types of organizations (potentially obviating the need for ongoing strategic control efforts) can be maintained through common and accepted "stories" or "narratives" that knit the members together and shape their actions.
24. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Staff Statement No. 16: Outline of the 9/11 Plot (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004 [cited 16 March 2005]); available at (http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/index.htm).
25. Ibid.
26. Previous analyses, such as Networks and Netwars which focuses discussion on organizational structures and the information technologies that can connect organizational components, do not address constraints on command and control relationships within organizations - focusing on situations where all three types of control (or, more specifically, a level of group consensus obviating the need for formal control mechanisms) can be achieved: "The capacity of this design for effective performance over time may depend on the existence shared principles, interests, and goals - perhaps an overarching doctrine or ideology - which spans all nodes and to which the members subscribe in a deep way. Such a set of principles, shaped through mutual consultation and consensus-building, can enable members to be "all of one mind" even though they are dispersed and devoted to different tasks. It can provide a central ideational and operational coherence that allows for tactical decentralization" (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars, p. 9.) This discussion is focused on unpacking the consequences for counterterrorism when terrorist groups do not attain such full coherence and/or control at all levels - a situation likely to be relatively common.
27. For example, to exert tactical control over Jemaah Islamiyah activities (pressing the group toward planning attacks in Singapore on American and other targets), members of the Al Qaeda core had to interact face-to-face with members of that group and directly participate in the operation (John C. Baker, "Jemaah Islamiyah," in Aptitude for Destruction: Case Studies of Learning in Five Terrorist Organizations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), pp. 57-92, 65
28. Rohan Gunaratna, "Al-Qaeda's Operational Ties with Allied Groups," Jane's Intelligence Review, 1 February 2003
29. David Martin Jones, Michael L. R. Smith, and Mark Weeding, "Looking for the pattern: Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia - The genealogy of a terror network," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26 (2003), pp. 443-457).
30. For the purposes of this discussion, let it be assumed that the loosening of command and control coupling within organizations occurs sequentially - loss of tactical control or influence, then operational, and finally strategic. Although arguments can be made supporting such sequential loss (e.g., tactical control requires the tightest and most frequent connection and will therefore be lost first, etc.) there may be cases that would evolve differently. Though such differences would complicate the simple classification of groups discussed in the next section, the need to both look for them and systematically address them is discussed later when attention is turned back to the complexities of real-world groups.
31. Brian A. Jackson, "The Provisional Irish Republican Army," in Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 2: Case Studies of Learning in Five Terrorist Organizations, edited by Brian A. Jackson et al. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), pp. 93-140.
32. Shaul Mishal, "The pragmatic dimension of the Palestinian Hamas: A network perspective," Armed Forces & Society 29(4) (2003), pp. 569-589.
33. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, "The advent of netwar (Revisited," in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, edited by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), pp. 1-25, p. 8.
34. Although the part of an organization that can exert this control - for which authors generally use the term "leadership" - is treated as stable for the purposes of this discussion of different organization types, there is no reason it should be assumed-and, in fact, many reasons do not do so - that loci of authority within organizations are either single or will remain stable over time. Consistent with Luther Gerlach's analysis of social movements, centers of influence within organizations may be multiple and unstable (Luther P. Gerlach, "The structure of social movements: Environmental activism and its opponents," in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, edited by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), pp. 289-310). From the perspective of the analytical approach described here, any such shift would be reflected in the directions of the "arrows" of control or influence within the model of the organization or multiple nodes with the ability to exert levels of control or influence over other parts of the organization.
35. Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, p. 8.
36. Russ Marion and Mary Uhl-Bien, "Complexity theory and Al-Qaeda: Examining complex leadership," Emergence 5(1) (2003), pp. 54-76 discusses the nature of coupling in organizations as a critical variable in understanding them in the context of complexity theory - however, the loose coupling discussed here in the context of movements appears to be much weaker than the analogous term used in that article.
37. Karl E. Weick, "Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems," Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1) (1976), pp. 1-19 discusses strength of coupling in educational organizations and the advantages of loose coupling from an organization's perspective.
38. Uncoupled Individuals could be viewed as a fourth class - violence perpetrated by fully uncoupled individuals would lack any of the three types of control because they would not meet the requirements to be an "organization."
39. Marion and Uhl-Bien, "Complexity Theory and Al-Qaeda," pp. 72-73
40. Shaul Mishal, "The Pragmatic Dimension of the Palestinian Hamas: A Network Perspective," Armed Forces & Society 29(4) (2003), pp. 569-589 also discuss comparable ideas specifically with respect to Hamas.
41. For example, in reference to criminal networks: "Networks of any substantial size will generally have both a core and a periphery, reflecting asymmetries of power, influence, and status within the network... the core members initiate specific criminal activities, arbitrate disputes, and provide direction" (Phil Williams, "Transnational criminal networks," in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, edited by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), p. 72). Such authorities roughly correspond to strategic ("provide direction") and operational ("initiate specific criminal activities") control.
42. See, for example, discussion in Jackson, Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 1: Organizational Learning in Terrorist Groups and Its Implications for Combating Terrorism; Jackson, "The Provisional Irish Republican Army."
43. It should be noted that levels of operational (and even some tactical) control and coordination may be required for characteristic netwar-type activities such as swarming (John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, "What Next for Networks and Netwar?," in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, edited by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), pp. 311-361, p. 333. Depending on the target of a swarm type attack, unity at different levels is required to make sure the elements of the swarm show up at the appropriate time and act in ways that are at least complementary, if not completely unified.
44. Marion and Uhl-Bien argue that organizations with moderate coupling are the best compromise between the innovation enabled by loose coupling and the coordination/control enabled by tight-coupling (Marion and Uhl-Bien, "Complexity Theory and Al-Qaeda: Examining Complex Leadership."). This is likely the case as long as the path the organization needs to follow to achieve its goals is at least somewhat "fault tolerant" - able to survive failures or mistakes caused by the absence of tight control down to the tactical level. Such faults for the terrorist could include failures in operational security, staging attacks when a larger political strategy "needed" silence, or killing too many or the wrong type of victim. Depending on what the organization is seeking to do, some faults will be survivable, others will not.
45. Jackson, "The Provisional Irish Republican Army."
46. See, for example, Ronfeldt's discussion of tribal organizations in Ronfeldt, "Al Qaeda and Its Affiliates."
47. WordNet 2.0, Wordnet 2.0 - "Social Movement" (Princeton University Cognitive Science Laboratory, [cited 18 March 2005]); available at (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/).
48. Gerlach, "The Structure of Social Movements," p. 295.
49. Ibid.
50. Kevin Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1982), p. 284.
51. Jackson, "The Provisional Irish Republican Army," pp. 134-135
52. Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA, pp. 246-247.
53. Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA, pp. 138-139.
54. The word control is intentionally omitted due to the lack of direct connections among units in such organizations.
55. See discussion in Horacio R. Trujillo, "The Radical Environmentalist Movement," in Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 2: Case Studies of Learning in Five Terrorist Organizations, edited by Brian A. Jackson et al. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2005), pp. 93-140.
56. Arquilla and Ronfeldt, "The Advent of Netwar (Revisited), " p. 8.
57. The availability of communications technologies can make almost any organization an all-channel network in some respects with mechanisms for some individual components to communicate with the organization as a whole. Even corporations or government agency (frequently cited as examples of the prototype hierarchical organizations with strong and unidirectional authority relationships), leadership will have some all-channel communications modes with all members. Whether through blast e-mails from the CEO or public speeches by the President, certain types of (usually strategic) control and influence can be exercised directly from the highest to the lowest levels of a hierarchy.
58. Lawrence Wright, "The terror web," The New Yorker, 2 August 2004.
59. For example, Hoffman's assessment of Al Qaeda activities in Iraq: "The Coalition Provisional Auhority (CPA) may be right that hundreds, perhaps even a few thousand, of foreign fighters have converged on Iraq. But few who have been captured have any demonstrable direct ties to Al Qaeda. Nor is there evidence of any direct command-and-control relationship between the Al Qaeda central leadership and the insurgents." (Hoffman, "The Changing Face of Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism," p. 555).
60. Ibid, pp. 551-552.
61. Like PIRA, Al Qaeda has paid a price for lack of coordination. The clearest example of the downsides to the group itself of this strategy resulted from its operations in Saudi Arabia claimed by "Al Qaeda Organization of the Arabian Peninsula" (Anthony H. Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid, "Working Draft: Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia" (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2005).).
62. "Some operations, such as the 2003 attack on Western compounds in Riyadh, which killed mainly Muslims, were such fiascos that it appeared Al Qaeda was no longer able to exercise control" (Wright, "The terror web.").
63. Just as the PIRA Army Council was forced to do, Al Qaeda leadership was forced to address the outcomes of these operations (Middle East Media Research Institute, Al-Qa'ida Magazine Debates Attacks in Saudi Arabia - Proposes More Attacks in the U.S. Will Boost Support (Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series - No. 632, 23 December 2003 [cited 15 March 2005 2005]); available at (http://memri.org/bin/ articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP63203), even though the core of the organization did not have control over the actions themselves.
64. Brynjar Lia and Thomas Hegghammer, "Jihadi Strategic Studies: The Alleged Al Qaida Policy Study Preceding the Madrid Bombings," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 27 (2004): 355-75.
65. Hoffman, "The changing face of Al Qaeda and the global war on terrorism," p. 553.
66. Gunaratna, "Al-Qaeda's operational ties with allied groups."
67. Gohel, quoted in Raufer, "Al Qaeda: A different diagnosis."
68. Gunaratna, "Al-Qaeda's operational ties with allied groups."
69. Hoffman, "What can we learn from the terrorists?"
70. Marion and Uhl-Bien, "Complexity theory and Al-Qaeda: Examining complex leadership," p. 66
71. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Staff Statement No. 16: Outline of the 9/11 Plot.
72. Rohan Gunaratna, "The post-madrid face of Al Qaeda," Washington Quarterly (Summer 2004), pp. 91-100, p. 93.
73. Hoffman, "The changing face of Al Qaeda and the global war on terrorism," p. 551.
74. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Staff Statement No. 16: Outline of the 9/11 Plot.
75. There was direct Al Qaeda participation in planning of the (later foiled) attacks on U.S. and Western targets in Singapore in late 2001 (Baker, "Jemaah Islamiyah," pp. 65-66, 69-70).
76. Ibid.
77. Frantz, "Defining Al Qaeda."
78. Reported in a story about his subsequent capture in March 2003. Maria Ressa et al., Top Al Qaeda Operative Caught in Pakistan (CNN.com, 2003 [cited 19 March 2005]); available at (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/ asiapcf/south/03/01/pakistan.arrests.)
79. A diagram of Al Qaeda's "management tree" - a structure very similar to those constructed for more formally hierarchical groups like PIRA - is included in Cordesman and Obaid, "Working draft: Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia."
80. Such an approach is consistent with Hoffman's point that fully understanding the threat of jihadist terrorism requires accepting bin Laden/Al Qaeda involvement in all these types of influence and control modes (Hoffman, "What Can We Learn from the Terrorists?"; Ronfeldt, "Al Qaeda and Its Affiliates").
81. Frantz, "Defining Al Qaeda."
82. The author would like to acknowledge Dennis Pluchinsky for this specific observation.
83. See, for example, Paul K. Davis and Brian Michael Jenkins, Deterrence & Influence in Counterterrorism: A Component in the War on Al Qaeda, MR-1619-DARPA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2002)
84. Williams, "Transnational Criminal Networks," p. 94.
85. Tiffany Danitz and Warren P. Strobel, "Networking Dissent: Cyber Activists Use the Internet to Promote Democracy in Burma," in Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, edited by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001), pp. 1-25, p. 132.
86. Ibid., pp. 129-169.
87. Bruce Hoffman, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, OP-127-IPC/ CMEPP (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 2004).
88. Hoffman, "The Changing Face of Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism," p. 551.
89. Due to problems with unity of action, even PIRA had to find ways of bringing uncoordinated activity more under control before the group could navigate the sensitive and fragile paths of entering various types of negotiations - so the leadership could ensure that violence was quiet "when quiet was needed" (J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA, Revised 3rd ed. (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg, 1998), pp. 468-469.).
90. Similar suggestions have been made by some about Al Qaeda, which may eventually reach a point where bin Laden's ability to move toward his goals, "to manipulate the political future," will "depend, in part, on convincing the West that Al Qaeda and bin Laden remain in control of the worldwide Islamic jihad" (Wright, "The terror web," emphasis added).
91. Paul R. Pillar, "Counterterrorism after Al Qaeda," The Washington Quarterly (Summer 2004), pp. 101-113.
92. Ibid.
93. Burke, "Think Again: Al Qaeda."