Rebels and Legitimacy

Processes and Practices

Isabelle Duyvesteyn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429884139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Legitimacy is generally a term that is associated with the state. The term surfaces when there are problems with state legitimacy—when it is lacking or absent. This present volume attempts to think through the relevance of the concept of legitimacy for other political actors than the state. Rebel groups, in the shape of insurgents, terrorists, warlords and guerrillas, are all engaged in a process of claim making as legitimate actors representing certain political agendas and constituencies. We are interested in dissecting the processes of the emergence of legitimacy in contexts of disorder and conflict. Legitimacy is not only a belief or belief system that informs social action, but it is also a practice with a repertoire of legitimacy claiming, reinforcing, copying and emulating elements. Governance provision is an important legitimacy generating activity, just as it has been in the formation of states. The volume, however, points out that there are many more aspects to legitimacy that deserve attention. The contributors draw on a wide variety of cases and in-depth investigation to bring forward individual and micro-level dynamics related to legitimacy claims, as well as bringing forward the often-times problematic role of external actors when it comes to legitimacy and illegitimacy dynamics.

The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Understanding the Legitimacy of Armed Groups: A Relational Perspective

Sukanya Podder

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the multiple pathways through which legitimacy of armed groups is constructed in conflict-affected states. It adopts a political sociological approach to the study of armed group legitimacy. Such a strategy assists in identifying whether armed groups enjoy legitimacy in a given empirical context and avoids applying pre-determined normative criteria. The focus is on three types of relationships: civilian communities, the state or regime in power and external actors including regional and international sponsors, to discern which types of legitimacy matter for armed groups in different relationships.

Introduction

Most scholars would agree that the legitimacy of armed groups is a problematic phenomenon. In the international system, states are considered inherently legitimate whereas armed groups are considered by definition pathological.¹ While some of the concepts about legitimacy of states can be stretched to apply to armed groups, the understanding of legitimacy and how it applies specifically to them remains largely under-theorized. This is lamentable, given that, like states, considerations of legitimacy affect the strategic calculations and self-conceptions of armed groups.² Like states, armed groups have to accept or resist pressures from the domestic and international audience, to uphold their legitimacy.

How armed groups’ approach the relationship with key audiences and the ways in which this affects their legitimacy is at the heart of this study. Drawing on sociological works by Somers, Emirbayer and Tilly, International Relations scholars such as Nexon and Jackson have advocated the study of dynamic relational processes.³ Relational approaches to studying legitimacy in the context of statebuilding adopted by scholars like Wesley, Eriksen and Sending and Andersen are some prominent examples of relationalism in International Relations.⁴ The relational tradition in sociology encourages an analytically efficient way for studying armed group legitimacy. It encourages a shift away from the ontology of entities and their attributes, to focus instead on practices and relations constituting how legitimacy is constructed during conflict.

A note on terminology is warranted. A legitimate armed group is defined as ‘the rightful wielder of power, maker and interpreter of rules or user of force and who thereby warrants support and compliance’.⁵ Legitimacy can be assessed through a set of ‘right standards’, a normative approach, or through the perceptions and acts of consent of the authorities and citizens in a given society, an empirical approach.⁶ Legitimacy can also be conceptualized across domestic and international levels of analysis. Relations with the civilian community can be the most important source for domestic legitimacy, however it has the potential to shape international legitimacy as well. Relations with the regime in power shapes internal, domestic and international legitimacy. Relations with external actors, such as regional states, international powers and opinion makers including humanitarian actors, non-government organizations and the United Nations among others, are particularly important for external legitimacy, and for the recognition and support of an armed group’s political agenda.

The key relationships that will be analysed here to present important implications for the concept of armed group legitimacy include⁷:

• (1) the armed group and the civilian population it seeks to represent,
• (2) the armed group and the government of the state where it operates and
• (3) the armed group and the international community (including external patrons).

Community and armed group relations

Community support is often discussed as a key means for rebel survival and success. Popular support is defined as ‘more than reluctant acquiescence’. It suggests a degree of fit between an armed group and a community.⁸ However, popular support is not the same as compliance, which entails willing obedience to rules set by an armed group on civilians resident in a territory under its control. Compliance is more that merely supportive attitudes in terms of political or religious preferences. It is more in line with consent, guided by a belief in the appropriateness of the rules being enforced. Compliance links with people’s second order beliefs about legitimacy, that is the justifiability of an armed group and its governance practices as necessary for legitimacy.⁹ It also links with the social basis of legitimacy, when subjects as a collectivity accept the authority of a ruler as rightful.¹⁰ Understanding the nature of civilian compliance is important for establishing the degree of armed group legitimacy. It offers a measure of legitimacy by ascertaining people’s behaviours across a spectrum of voluntary, quasi-voluntary and coercive compliance.

Compliance with commands is voluntary when they are seen to be in the interest of the community as a whole.¹¹ To secure voluntary compliance, rebel groups must adapt their practices to historically contingent values, norms and beliefs.¹² In addressing the preferences of local populations, symbolic and cultural or ritualistic norms that are contextually valued can create the necessary fit between the armed group’s goals and the community’s expectations from legitimate political authority.¹³ In the South Kivu region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, General Padiri’s Mai Mai militia group developed a system of governance that drew on many of the values, rationalities and practices of authority of the existing socio-political order of eastern Congo. The group produced a mythical narrative, forged around divine authority and the bipolar relation between autochthony and foreigners. This syncretic mythical narrative resonated deeply with the local society.¹⁴

At the same time, voluntary compliance is not entirely free of control. Social control mechanisms such as surveillance, symbolic and coercive sanctions remain intact. Stathis Kalyvas refers to the control-collaboration mode for explaining patterns of violence in civil wars.¹⁵ Armed actors must maximize collaboration from the local population and minimize defection to their opponents. Local information is the key resource held by the population and this resource needs to be controlled. Collaboration is also a function of some element of coercive control by violent actors.¹⁶ For example in Nepal, the Maoists revolutionaries organized the social order in ways that can be defined as atyanta krās or ātas in the Nepali language. Ātas translates into intense fear, a term used by civilian residents to characterize the nature of Maoist action in villages under their control.¹⁷ In one incident registered at Rolpa district, a Maoist stronghold, about a dozen local goons and six police informers were punished with amputation of their limbs. Such violence fomented a reign of terror among the reactionaries, discouraging civilian collaboration with the government agencies in the area. Over time the instrumentalization of violence legitimated it, becoming a necessary political means, driving away the enemies to urban areas, and bringing new recruits to the revolution.¹⁸

As the level of coercion increases, the nature of compliance becomes quasi-voluntary – a type of compliance that is motivated by a willingness to comply but backed up by coercion, in order to ensure that others will obey the ruler.¹⁹ This type of compliance involves social control and governance activities alongside coercive elements. To illustrate, the Islamic State’s (IS) occupation of Mosul, Iraq for example started with a hopeful position for oppressed Sunnis. The almsgiving department collected taxes to divide among needy families. Each family was offered 25 United States Dollars (USD) a month, in addition to rations such as wheat, rice, sugar, pickles, food oil and fuels. Support for IS, among the local youth, was premised on a perception of fairness and justice. IS members were reprimanded by the Sharia court if instances of civilian abuse were reported. The IS provided basic services as well. They cleared out all the checkpoints imposed by the Iraqi Army and opened the roads. Locals viewed the advent of IS as freedom from the occupying Iraqi ‘Shia’ army and freedom from forced detention and compulsory bribes.²⁰

With time, coercive elements became progressively stifling affecting the nature of compliance. Residents attending the mosque on Friday were forced to pledge allegiance to the Caliph al-Baghdadi, as their emir. Obedience and non-resistance were demanded. Christians were asked to leave Mosul, following an inability to negotiate the tax they were required to pay to the IS administration. The Christian priests were distrustful of meeting with IS after having experienced brutality in Aleppo, Syria. Hospitals, universities and public spaces came to closely monitored by the IS monitors. Women were instructed to wear the veil at all times. The hisbah or religious police enforced penalties for any unsolicited interaction. A professor at Mosul University found correcting student papers with a female colleague got 30 lashes for the offence. As a result what was viewed initially a liberating force, became synonymous with oppression.²¹

The third type of compliance is coercive compliance. In the case of most armed groups, the basis for compliance relationships is coercive.²² The conviction of civilian subjects about the appropriateness of rule is inconsequential. Obedience is entirely coerced and not based on a set of shared beliefs (substantive) or perceptions about the decision process (procedural).²³ Coercive compliance is characteristic of resource-rich groups that have access to revenue-generating resources. Such groups can fund extensive military capability to enforce territorial control and have low reliance on civilian contributions in material terms.²⁴ Methods of extraction both of rents and of local resources, such as information, material support and recruits are enforced.²⁵ Similarly, armed groups that choose to depopulate territories under their control, and those that are roving in nature are unlikely to enter into any meaningful relationship with local constituents. They remain less responsive and more fluid in their interaction with civilians and likely to be more abusive towards civilian populations. Examples include the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) under Jonas Savimbi and the Ex-Seleka and Anti-Balaka groups in the Central African Republic.²⁶

In contrast, resource poor groups remain largely dependent on local communities for material and non-material resources, information and recruits. These groups are more attuned to local grievances and norms and are least likely to adopt a coercive compliance approach. For example, in Northern Ethiopia, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a Marxist styled guerrilla army forged relationships cooperative with peasants of Tigray. The leadership of the TPLF were mainly from urban locations, they needed the local knowledge of peasants to survive in unfamiliar rural areas. In the Ethiopian example, the TPLF set up local councils called bayto to administer the liberated zone...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword: How Legitimacy Helps Explicate Rebel Governance
• Introduction: Rebels & Legitimacy; An Introduction
• Part I The Concept and Practice of Rebel Legitimacy
• Part II Rebels and Dimensions of External Legitimacy Claims
• Index