MILITIAS IN INTERNAL WARFARE: FROM THE COLONIAL ERA TO THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST.

In early June 2014 the insurgent forces of the self-declared ‘Islamic State’ (IS) launched an

offensive in Northern Iraq,1 smashing the US-trained Iraqi Army, capturing substantial stocks

of its arms and vehicles, and conquering a swathe of territory in the country’s Sunni Arab

heartland.2 IS, which had emerged from the civil war in Syria, subsequently advanced against

both the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Kirkuk and the Democratic

Union Party (PYD), a Syrian Kurdish party that has established control of its own enclave on

the Turkish border. On 7 August US President Barack Obama ordered air-strikes against IS,

and the American air campaign was subsequently augmented by Western and Arab allies. 3

With this external assistance, the Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria (the peshmerga and the

PYD’s People’s Protection Units, or YPG) have been able to withstand the IS onslaught at the

time of writing, and the USA, Britain and other allies have committed themselves principally

to training and equipping the Kurds. The US is also reportedly planning to train Syrian rebel

factions fighting both IS and Bashar al-Assad’s Baath regime.4

The use of surrogate forces in internal conflicts has been a consistent characteristic of

counter-insurgency (COIN), whether waged domestically or by an interventionist state or

coalition. However, the multilateral war effort against IS remains hampered by a series of

politico-military problems. The first is the progressively more convoluted linkage between an

increasingly barbaric war in Syria pitting Assad’s regime against an array of rebel factions,

and the resurgence of violent Sunni-Shia animosities in neighbouring Iraq. The second

involves IS’s military capabilities, with its 30-45,000 fighters now in possession of armour

and artillery seized from the Iraqi military,5 and also augmented by several thousand foreign

volunteers who could potentially return to their home countries and conduct terrorist attacks

1

against their fellow citizens. The third, with respect to Iraq, is that although the Iraqi armed

forces should ideally be the main source of external assistance, the incompetence and

corruption of its officer corps makes it a poor partner for the USA and its allies.6

It is not surprising that the comparatively more combat-effective Kurdish fighters

have become the main recipients of Western aid, both in Iraq and Syria, although this in turn

has political implications on both sides of the old Sykes-Picot frontier.7 These are not only

evident with the contempt that peshmerga soldiers feel for their Iraqi Arab counterparts,8 but

also because Kurdish aspirations for independence have significant implications for the

territorial integrity of both Iraq and Syria. The PYD’s links with the PKK, fighting for

independence from Turkey, and the ill-disguised hostility with which the former is regarded

by Ankara, also provide the grounds for further friction between the USA and its main NATO

ally in the region, not to mention further complications in the already fraught relationship

between the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish movements.9 In the latter’s case, Kurdish aspirations for

independence from Iraq are likely to be encouraged by both the war against IS, and the

decrepitude of the Shiite Arab-dominated government in Baghdad.10

Both the Iraq and Syria conflicts are further complicated by the existence of pro-

government militias. Defections and desertions from the Syrian Arab Army have compelled

Assad to rely not only on the ‘National Defence Forces’ (NDF, reportedly at least 60-80,000

strong) recruited mainly from his Alawite minority,11 but also foreign fighters in the form of

Iraqi auxiliaries and the military wing of the Lebanese Shiite party Hezbollah, itself a

recipient of arms and funds from Damascus since the mid-1980s.12 Iran itself has committed

itself to backing both the Syrian and Iraqi governments; the former being a long-standing ally

of the Iranian Islamic Republic, whilst the latter’s Shiite-dominated government has

developed increasingly close ties with Iraq’s historical enemy.13 Tehran has sent advisors

from its Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to liaise with both countries’ armed forces, 14 and

also to train auxiliary forces such as the Syrian NDF and Iraqi Shiite paramilitaries,

2

collectively known as the Hashid al-Shabi.15 As such, the COIN campaign against IS in Iraq

had become interlinked not only with the Syrian civil war, but also the proxy conflict pitting

Iran and its ‘resistance’ allies (the Baathist regime in Damascus and Hezbollah) against its

predominantly Sunni Arab foes.16

Within international politics there is an established norm that the state has the sole

legitimate authority to use military force, and that it alone possesses (as the German

sociologist Max Weber noted in 1919) ‘a monopoly of violence’.17 However, in a variety of

historical and recent internal conflicts weak states have sub-contracted military force to

irregular auxiliary formations. The use of these paramilitary groups, or militias, has been the

subject of academic analysis,18 and given the current characteristics of the international

system their existence and employment is likely to be a facet of future conflict. Western

reliance on indigenous forces in Iraq now derives in part from popular war-weariness in the

USA and other Western powers, deriving largely from the costly and prolonged engagement

of combat troops in Afghanistan (2001-2014) and Iraq (2003-2011). The current crisis in

Ukraine, the sharp decline in Russo-Western relations, Moscow’s threats against its

neighbours, and the renewed significance of NATO’s mission of collective defence, may well

also reinforce this preference for advising and equipping local allies involved in COIN

campaigns against adversaries such as IS or Boko Haram.19

However, some governments rely on militias for their own internal defence because

of the inadequacies of their own regular military forces, which are often the product of

peacetime policies; these can include ‘coup-proofing’ and also the preferential treatment of

selected communities deemed loyal to the authorities. The resort to irregular paramilitaries

may therefore work as a short-term stratagem to avert imminent defeat and overthrow, but in

the long term it contributes to the erosion of governmental authority and makes state failure

more likely, as the use of militias serves only to exacerbate existing social tensions and to

further de-legitimise the state authorities. These trends have been observed in past conflicts

3

(notably Afghanistan and Sierra Leone), and the author argues that they are apparent in Syria,

Iraq, Nigeria and other conflicts today.

This article therefore sets the context for both the current conflict against IS and

Assad’s fight for survival by examining how militias have been employed by states in

successive internal conflicts, assessing both their utility and their drawbacks. It will conclude

by outlining the potential implications of the current conflicts in the Arab world, notably in

Iraq and Syria, and in particular the effect of militia activity on state stability.

Militias in their historical context:

Western armed forces are primarily configured for major combat operations and inter-state

warfare, rather than gendarmerie-style tasks related to internal warfare. Furthermore, since the

end of World War II North American and European militaries have progressively shrunk in

size, relying on technology and firepower to compensate for smaller all-volunteer forces (the

USA abolished selective service in 1973, the UK phased out national service a decade

earlier).20 While this model suits liberal democracies where casualty sensitivity and popular

resentment over conscription can hamper engagement in prolonged conflicts, Western

militaries lack the numbers and the awareness of the ‘human terrain’ which is required when

prosecuting COIN in a foreign country. The logical solution to these limitations on manpower

and local knowledge is to recruit indigenous forces that provide substitutes for mass, and also

address the shortcomings in linguistic and cultural understanding that external powers

experience whenever they intervene on behalf of an allied government waging internal

warfare.21 These local forces can include regular military and police units, or auxiliaries raised

on an ad hoc basis.

4

One of the perennial features of imperial history is the ability of states waging wars of

conquest to either co-opt local allies, or to recruit subjugated peoples to fight in their armies.22

More recently, the Afghan and Iraq wars led both the American and British armed forces to

stress the importance of training and equipping indigenous armies and constabularies to

safeguard internal security once interventionist forces have withdrawn.23 The US blunder in

dismantling the Iraqi armed forces in May 2003,24 the contentious circumstances behind the

British Army’s withdrawal from Basra and handover to the post-Baathist Iraqi Army (2007-

2009),25 and the poor showing of the latter in recent combat operations against IS

demonstrates that this process is often a convoluted and difficult one to manage.

The establishment of regular security forces by an interventionist state or coalition

can be undermined by the weakness of the host nation government (possibly over-dependent

on foreign assistance, and potentially afflicted by corruption, factionalism and other

debilitating problems) and its security forces. In Afghanistan, the national police were

reported by their NATO patrons to be prone to drug abuse, predatory behaviour against the

civil population, and also collaboration with the Taliban. The Afghan National Army (ANA)

was ostensibly a more reliable partner (despite occasional ‘green-on-blue’ attacks on NATO

allies), although in its operations in the Pashtun South it has been hampered by its dominance

by Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara soldiers.26 The Afghan and Iraqi conflicts suggested that irregular

armed units – recruited on tribal and clan lines – were better at protecting communities from

insurgent attack than regular troops, particularly if the latter were predominantly drawn from

different ethnic or sectarian groups. These included Afghan Local Police units raised in

August 2010 (based on the community defence forces (arbakai) that traditionally kept the

peace amongst the Pashtun tribes),27 and also the ‘al-Anbar Awakening’ and the ‘Concerned

Local Citizens’ self-defence groups within the Sunni Arab community that US military

officials had enlisted in Iraq during the ‘surge’ of 2006-2007 (numbering 91,000 by March

2008, and 118,000 the following year).28

5

Empires, superpowers, post-colonial states, democracies, dictatorships and weak

states alike have all employed militias, defined here as armed third parties that are not

formally a component of the government’s security forces, but are nonetheless aligned with

them in an intra-state conflict. The establishment of these auxiliary paramilitary groups has

often transcended national, racial and ethnic differences, particularly in cases where the

‘government’ is that of a colonial or an external interventionist power. Furthermore, and with

reference to Weber’s statement on the ‘monopoly of violence’ in his 1919 lecture ‘Politics as

a Vocation’, in conditions of civil strife governments often determine which armed groups are

licit and which are otherwise; enlisting the former to fight the latter. Weber delivered ‘Politics

as a Vocation’ at a time when Germany was in a state of civil war, and while the Weimar

regime were employing paramilitary groups of ex-servicemen (the Freikorps) both to

suppress far-left revolutionaries and to defend the nascent Republic against external security

threats, notably from the newly-independent state of Poland.29

Militias have featured historically and more recently in a variety of COIN conflicts

waged by Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, the USA, the USSR (against the Central Asian

Basmachi guerrillas in the 1920s,30 as well as the Afghan mujahidin seventy years later),31

Russia (during the Second Chechen war from 1999 onwards),32 Yemen,33 the self-declared

state of Rhodesia (1965-1980),34 Turkey (in its response to the PKK insurgency), Ethiopia,35

Uganda,36 and Sudan.37 They have also emerged in cases where multinational polities have

collapsed as part of a process of state-building and civil strife, as was the case with the

paramilitary groups of Central and Eastern Europe after the First World War, and also in the

former Yugoslavia and USSR after 1991.38 Militias have therefore been involved in an array

of conflicts, either acting as surrogates to a state’s military, police and intelligence services, or

sometimes emerging autonomously as armed factions beyond the control of the state (notably

the Loyalist terrorist groups in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1998, or the Shia factions

involved in the sectarian civil war in Iraq in 2005-2007).39 This article excludes any

6

paramilitary forces which are still nominally under state authority and are subordinate to a

military chain of command. Examples here include the Freikorps of Weimar Germany, the

‘Black and Tans’ and the Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliaries fighting alongside British

crown forces during the Irish War of Independence (1918-1922),40 the Selous Scouts in

Rhodesia (active from 1973-1980),41 and the Koevoet unit established by the South West

Africa Police during the Namibian War of Independence (active from 1979-1990).42

Militias can consist of home guard formations are usually recruited from the local

adult male population for the static defence of villages, hamlets, or urban neighbourhoods.

The British recruited ‘town guards’ in the Cape Colony during the Boer War of 1899-1902,43

and also raised similar formations during their COIN campaigns in Malaya (1948-1960) and

in Kenya (with the Kikuyu Home Guard, or KHG).44 The French established civil defence

groups in Indochina during the war against the Viet Minh (1946-1954),45 and in South

Vietnam during the early 1960s President Ngo Dinh Diem raised a Civil Guard and a Self-

Defence Corps (SDC) to fight the Viet Minh’s successor, the National Liberation Front (better

known as the Viet Cong).46 More recently, the Turkish military and security raised the

Kurdish village guards as part of their COIN campaign against the PKK.47

These formations can however also consist of more mobile and heavily-armed

paramilitary groups. In the case of the Montagnards (the aboriginal tribes of the Vietnamese

Central Highlands recruited by US Army Special Forces during the early 1960s), they can be

recruited on tribal and ethnic lines.48 Further examples of militias include two Vietnamese

syncretistic religious sects – the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo – and the Binh Xuyen organised crime

syndicate (all three of which were co-opted by the French to fight the Viet Minh during the

late 1940s),49 the Afghan militias employed by the USA during the early phases of Operation

Enduring Freedom in 2001-2002,50 the pro-Moscow auxiliaries raised by the Russian

authorities during the second Chechen War (1999 onwards),51 and the enlistment of Sunni

Arab tribes in al-Anbar province by the US military during the latter phases of Operation

7

Iraqi Freedom, with the latter exploiting local outrage arising from the fanaticism and

atrocities committed by al-Qaeda fighters and their insurgent allies.52

Militias can also consist of former insurgent groups which have defected to fight for

the government and/or external interventionists engaged in a COIN campaign. During World

War II the Serbian Cetniks and the Albanian Balli Kombetar aligned with the Axis occupation

forces in Yugoslavia and Albania in order to destroy the Communist partisans led by Marshal

Tito and Enver Hoxha.53 In their African colonial wars (1961-1974) the Portuguese

established the Trupos Especiais (consisting of 1,200 former insurgents based in the Angolan

enclave of Cabinda), the ex-guerrilla Grupos Especiais who fought in Angola and

Mozambique, and the flechas recruited by the Portuguese security police from the Bushmen

of Eastern Angola. In the latter conflict UNITA sided with the Portuguese military against its

rival, the MPLA, during the early 1970s.54

With this point in mind analysts should remember that opportunistic alliances of

convenience or implicit truces may emerge between factions in civil wars, which allow the

parties concerned to concentrate their efforts against a common enemy without an overt

alignment. In Syria, the Assad regime has had a murky relationship with Islamist extremists,

as a decade ago it provided covert assistance to jihadi volunteers travelling to Iraq to fight US

and Coalition troops.55 Although there have been clashes between Baathist security forces and

IS during the current Syrian conflict, Assad has confined his military campaign to targeting

IS’s rivals within the rebel movement. This is partly because it is in his interests to have an

insurgency dominated by IS – thereby confirming Damascus’ propaganda about a rebellion

led by ‘terrorists’ – but also because the Baath regime and IS have a shared objective in

weakening and destroying the secular and the less extreme Islamist groups that emerged from

the 2011 uprising.56

8

Historical experience also shows cases where states use smaller armed groups

consisting either of auxiliary volunteers or former insurgents who have been ‘turned’ and

encouraged (or coerced) into changing sides after capture by the security forces. The roles of

these ‘counter-gangs’ involve reconnaissance, the tracking down of insurgent cells, and

surgical strikes intended to kill or capture enemy personnel.57 Examples include the

Philippines Constabulary raised by the US Army to fight Filipino rebels in the early 20 th

century,58 the Special Night Squads of British Army-Jewish commandos recruited during the

Arab insurgency in Palestine (1936-1939),59 the ‘Q Patrols’ of Greek Cypriot loyalists and ex-

EOKA fighters employed by the British during the Cyprus insurgency (1955-1959), the

‘counter-gangs’ raised by Frank Kitson and other British Army and Special Branch officers in

Kenya (in which former Mau Mau were inducted to track down their comrades), 60 and the

Provincial Reconnaissance Units (many of whom were ex-Viet Cong) established by US

special forces and the CIA in the latter phase of the Vietnam war (1968-1972).61

The utility of militias:

From a cynic’s perspective, militias can have the advantage of being cheap, expendable and

deniable, as they can be employed to indirectly intimidate the civilian population into

acquiescence, whilst providing a more cost effective means of combating an insurgency.

Militia irregulars are generally less expensive to train – and also often considered by the

authorities to be of lesser importance – than a state’s military or police personnel. The KHG

clearly fitted these criteria as far as the British war effort against the Mau Mau was

concerned, as did the harkis recruited by the French in Algeria during the war against the

FLN insurgency (1954-1962).62 However, even if one considers contemporary Western norms

concerning the laws of armed conflict, and the fact that current US and British doctrine

emphasises the ‘population-centric’ approach of conflict termination and resolution rather

9

than the use of coercive violence,63 the enlistment of indigenous militias can have the

following benefits.

With intelligence, a general rule of COIN is that the side which dominates in human

intelligence (HUMINT) has the advantage over its adversary. The challenge for the

government side is to identify the personnel, organisation and aims of the adversary; 64 to

understand the political and cultural characteristics of the indigenous society (particularly

important for any external military personnel involved in COIN); and above all to ensure that

insurgents and terrorists are not able to infiltrate the security forces and recruit informants

within their ranks.65 Locally-recruited militias often have a better knowledge of the physical

and human terrain, particularly compared to soldiers and marines from external powers,

especially if they are employed in their own territory or neighbourhoods. During the Dhofar

conflict in Oman (1965-1975) the firqat forces recruited from the local tribes proved overall

to be valuable sources of HUMINT for the Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF) and its British

military advisors; even if at times the latter considered to Dhofari militiamen to be somewhat

grudging and selective about the intelligence they passed on. Although the firqats were never

entirely trusted, the information they provided was of crucial importance to the Sultanate and

its British backers. To take one example, a tip-off from two firqat fighters led to the

unravelling of an insurgent network in Northern Oman by the Sultan’s security forces in

December 1972-January 1973.66

Counter-gang formations have a clear appeal to security forces, as they offer a more

discriminate and precise means of locating and neutralising small guerrilla groups than

conventional combat tactics. While British Army sweeps through the Aberdare district of

Kenya during 1953 failed to locate Mau Mau, the counter-gangs raised by Kitson and other

Army and police officers subsequently enabled the British colonial authorities to eliminate the

remainder of the insurgents.67 Another good example of the precision which formations of

‘turned’ and loyalist personnel can offer is that of the Philippines Scouts, consisting mainly of

10

Macabebe tribesmen. The Scouts’ effectiveness can be gauged by their role in capturing the

leader of the nationalist insurgency, Emilio Aguinaldo, in March 1901.68 In South Vietnam

from 1965-1971 the US Marine Corps’ Combined Action Program, which involved mixed

platoons of marines and local villagers, required a mere 4% of the Corps’ manpower in

Vietnam to these formations. Yet the Combined Action Program, in conjunction with other

irregular forces, inflicted around 30% of the Viet Cong’s losses during the war.69

Militias as a whole can also augment force numbers, freeing better-trained military

and constabulary personnel for more offensive operations.70 In Northern Nigeria the armed

forces have raised a local paramilitary unit (the ‘Civilian Joint Task Force’) to fight Boko

Haram, and also to offset the army’s shortage of manpower.71 These formations can

sometimes also interact more effectively with indigenous communities – gaining the latter’s

trust and support – than regular military or constabulary personnel. In Dhofar during the early

1970s the irregular firqat fighters recruited from the local tribes were more effective at

policing and security the jebeli nomads than the ethnic Arab and Baluchi soldiers of the

SAF.72

Indigenous militias can potentially offer the prospects of a political solution. If the

government can persuade substantial numbers of its foes to change sides, this can foster the

prospects of reconciliation, particularly if the former promises an amnesty, or pledges socio-

economic reforms and national reconciliation. Pragmatic policies such as these can exacerbate

internal disputes within an insurgency whilst also providing a means of conflict termination.

COIN practitioners stress that ‘turning’ insurgents is not only more economical than killing

them, but that every adversary who defects or surrenders voluntarily represents a net gain for

the government side, and a proportionate loss for the insurgency. As one British special forces

veteran from the Dhofar war noted in his memoirs:

11

Persuading a man to join you is far cheaper than killing him. Words are far less

expensive than bullets, let alone shells and bombs. Then, too, by killing him you deprive

the enemy of one soldier. If he is persuaded to join the Government forces the enemy

again becomes one less, but the Government forces become one more, a gain of plus

two.73

Policies of reconciliation therefore provide a practical demonstration of the willingness of the

authorities to rectify grievances and to reintegrate former foes into civil society. In the

Philippines during the 1950s the Defence Minister Ramon Magsaysay and his US military

advisors rewarded Hukbalahap guerrillas who voluntarily capitulated by giving them land to

farm. In Oman after July 1970, Sultan Qaboos bin Said gained considerable popular goodwill

by pledging to spend oil revenues on social development programmes. His offer of an

amnesty also split the insurgent movement (PFLO) in Dhofar, which was already divided

between nationalist-minded tribesmen and hard-line Marxist-Leninist ideologues.74

In the same way that civil development and ‘hearts and minds’ operations are futile if

the state lacks the means needed to protect the civilian population from insurgent violence, a

core of ‘true believers’ will invariably fight to the bitter end regardless of whether any of their

comrades can be persuaded to defect and join pro-government militias.75 Reconciliation

policies in ‘turning’ insurgents also require politicians and military commanders to

demonstrate the same degree of enlightened self-interest displayed by Magsaysay against the

Hukbalahap and Sultan Qaboos of Oman against the PFLO, rather than a vindictive desire to

punish rebellion currently typified by Assad. In this respect, recruiting ex-insurgents as

auxiliaries also provide a potential ‘exit strategy’ for any external participants in a COIN

campaign. During the al-Anbar Awakening and the rallying of thousands of ex-Sunni Arab

guerrillas to the government’s side in 2006-2007, an implicit bargain was struck between the

US military and the more nationalistic insurgent groups. The eventual withdrawal of

American troops was dependent upon an end to Shia-Sunni sectarian violence, the

12

suppression of al-Qaeda in Iraq and affiliated groups, and reconciliation between the Sunni

insurgents and the government of Nuri al-Maliki. The ‘Awakening’ was therefore a

precondition for the end of the Coalition occupation of Iraq in late 2011,76 although in the

long term it failed to provide the basis for a lasting settlement between the Sunnis and the

Shiite-dominated government.77

The firqat forces in Oman epitomise the potential benefits of raising surrogate forces,

although the Dhofari tribal fighters did have their limitations. As the British General seconded

to command the SAF noted in April 1974, they did not act like disciplined soldiers, and their

willingness to co-operate with the SAF required ‘endless patience and really good Arabic’ on

the part of the SAS special forces personnel assigned to train them. 78 A further problem was

that regular SAF soldiers and the British officers seconded to the Omani armed forces often

did not trust the firqats; many of the latter were ex-insurgents, and their loyalty was still

considered suspect.79 Their autonomous nature also meant that they were not suitable for

conventional combat operations of the type which the SAF and the Imperial Iranian brigade

group were waging against the PFLO in Western Dhofar in 1974-1975. Firqat forces were

therefore employed according to their capabilities, being used as a rear-echelon security force

while regular SAF and Iranian troops swept the insurgents out of Dhofar across the South

Yemeni border.80

Qaboos’ offer of an amnesty certainly weakened the PFLO; between 1970 and 1974

797 Dhofari guerrillas voluntarily surrendered, many of whom joined the firqat forces.81 Yet

Qaboos and his British advisors were careful to ensure that the Dhofari militias did not have

the means to turn their guns against the SAF. Firqat forces were not issued with heavy

weapons, and although they were retained as a territorial defence force after the war’s end,

they were outnumbered by the Sultan’s regular military forces (the latter exceeding the former

by 21,500 to 5,000 ten years after the PFLO’s defeat).82 Not only were the Dhofari irregulars

13

were therefore left in no position to threaten the Omani state in the civil war’s aftermath, but

they were also a complement (albeit a useful one) to a military campaign to defeat the

insurgency, rather than a crucial element in the Sultanate’s eventual victory.83

The challenges of exploiting militias:

States raising militias often have to concern themselves with their reliability, particularly if

the latter include former adversaries who have changed sides. In Algeria in 1956, the French

believed that they had raised an effective indigenous COIN unit in the Kabyle Mountains

known as ‘Force K’. In fact, Force K was heavily infiltrated by the FLN and subsequently

defected to the insurgents, after killing several loyalist Algerians.84 In Iraq since the late 1950s

successive regimes recruited a Kurdish loyalist force known pejoratively as the jahsh to fight

the KDP and PUK insurgents. In practice, the jahsh proved to be a weak force whose morale

was undermined by the barbarity of the Baath regime’s onslaught against the Kurds during

Operation al-Anfal (1987-1990). As a consequence the Kurdish auxiliaries collectively

mutinied and joined the peshmerga in the uprising that followed Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War

of 1991.85

Stathis Kalyvas observes that internal conflicts provide the opportunity for actors

within the population to settle scores against rivals – whether due to clan politics, sectarian

tensions, or personal vendettas – and as such militias can become a liability even if they are

not actually colluding with insurgent forces.86 In the first year of Operation Enduring

Freedom US forces were reliant upon anti-Taliban warlords whose loyalty proved to be

equivocal. During the Coalition effort to encircle al-Qaeda’s remnants at Tora Bora in

December 2001 Afghan militiamen were bribed to let Osama bin Laden and many of his

followers escape into Pakistan.87 The tendency of Afghan warlords to denounce rivals as

insurgents, in order to trick US and NATO forces into launching air-strikes against them,

14

demonstrates Kalyvas’ observation about the readiness and ability of local actors to

manipulate external ones to pursue their own feuds during a COIN conflict. 88 It is also worth

noting that a number of the Afghan Local Police formations have adopted a predatory

approach towards civilians, contrary to the aspirations of their founders that they could serve

as a community defence force.89 In Northern Nigeria, the Civilian Joint Task Force

paramilitaries have been accused of the torture and extra-judicial execution of suspected Boko

Haram ‘insurgents’; the Nigerian military authorities are also considered complicit in these

abuses.90

A further problem here concerns the possibility that external actors in COIN may

engage with an insignificant local partner because of an exaggerated perception of its utility.

In December 2007 US, British and ANA troops fought a week-long battle to recapture the

town of Musa Qala in Helmand province from the Taliban. The initiative from this operation

came from the then-Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, who claimed that a local Taliban

commander, ‘Mullah Salaam’, had promised to rally to the government along with a

substantial force of tribal fighters, and required a NATO-ANA offensive to support his

uprising. However, by the time US and British forces went into combat on 7 December,

Salaam’s anti-Taliban revolt had failed to materialise. An operation that was supposed to

foster a locally-based security force therefore ended up as a set-piece battle against the

insurgency. To compound matters Mullah Salaam – appointed governor of Musa Qala after

its capture – proved to be incapable of administering and securing the town once NATO and

ANA forces withdrew.91

A related problem is that the comparative weakness of militia formations often means

that they become the focus of insurgent violence. In Kenya the KHG was a far softer target

for Mau Mau attacks than the British Army or the colonial police force. In South Vietnam

during the early 1960s the Civil Guard and SDC came under more frequent and sustained

insurgent attack than the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and as a consequence the Viet

15

Cong was able to take over much of the countryside by 1964. In this respect, the Saigon

regime failed to recognise that the weakness of its surrogates was a strategic liability, and that

without military assistance they were defenceless.92

One problem with employing auxiliaries is the risk of dependency, as governments

that employ them may neglect their military and constabulary forces as a consequence. In

1 This insurgent/terrorist movement has also been dubbed ‘the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’ (ISIS), ‘the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) and (using the Arabic acronym) Daesh. For this article the author will use the term ‘Islamic State’ (IS). See Fromson & Simon, ‘ISIS’; Khalil, ‘Expansive year’ ; Weiss & Hassan, ISIS; & Wood, ‘What ISIS Really Wants’.2 Catherine Philp, ‘Islamic insurgents push Baghdad to the brink’, The Times (London), 12 June 2014. Vice News, 14 August 2014, ‘The Islamic State’. Knights, Long Haul, 6-9. 3 Tim Arango, ‘Sunni Extremists in Iraq Seize 3 Towns from Kurds and threaten Major Dam’, New York Times (NY), 3 August 2014. Stansfield, ‘The Islamic State’, 1330-3, 1338. 4 Spyer, ‘Successor story’. ‘UK troops training Kurdish forces in Iraq, says MOD’, BBC News, 12 October 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29586437, accessed 2 February 2015. Lale Sarlibrahimoglu, ‘Turkey, US closer to signing agreement on Syrian rebel training’, Jane’s Defence Weekly (JDW) 52, no.4, 28 January 2015. 5 ‘Confronting Islamic state: The next war against global jihadism’, The Economist (London), 13 September 2014. Cigar, Tribal Militias, 29-30.6 Mitchell Prothero, ‘Baghdad breakdown’, JDW 51, no.31, 30 July 2014. Tim Ripley, ‘UK puts Iraq training mission on hold’, JDW 52, no.4, 28 January 2015. 7 On the qualitative superiority of Kurdish forces over the Iraqi military, see Knights, Long Haul, 27. With reference to the YPG’s own combat performance see Associated Press, ‘Kurdish forces seize border town of Tal Abyad, cutting off key Isis supply line’, The Guardian (London), 16 June 2015. 8 In one recent documentary journalists asked a peshmerga commander: ‘What nickname would you give the Iraqi Army right now?’. He replied ‘I would call them cowards. They are full of fear and have no national loyalty’. Vice News, ‘Fighting back against ISIS: The Battle for Iraq’. 9 Lawson, ‘Syria’s mutating civil war’, 1352-8. ICG Middle East Report No.136, Syria’s Kurds. ‘Kurdistan: Ever closer to independence’, The Economist, 21 February 2015. 10 There are evident differences between the KRG – which would welcome the presence of Western ground troops in the fight against IS – and the Iraqi government, which has made clear its opposition to the overt involvement of US and other allied forces. Al Jazeera (English), 24 January 2015, bulletin at 1100 (GMT). 11 ‘Syria’s army defectors: Cracks in the army’, The Economist, 29 October 2011. ‘Syria’s civil war: The regime digs in’, The Economist, 15 June 2013. 12 ICG Middle East Report No.143, Syria’s Metastasising Conflicts, 15-6, 30. Blanford, ‘Qalamoun offensive’, 8-13. Nicholas Blanford, ‘ISIS’ Iraq offensive could trigger Hezbollah to fill gap left in Syria’, The Daily Star (Beirut), 16 June 2014. 13 Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution, 74-6. ICG Middle East Report No.38, Iran in Iraq: How Much Influence?.14 Hugh Tomlinson, ‘Iran’s special forces rush to support floundering ally’, The Times, 12 June 2014. Leenders, ‘How the Syrian Regime Outsmarted its Enemies’, 336-7. 15 The IRGC’s role in training the NDF was highlighted by footage captured by Syrian rebels and broadcast on Dutch TV in September 2013. See also BBC World Service, ‘Our World: Iran’s Secret Army’. ‘Islamic state: The pushback’, The Economist, 21 March 2015. 16 Hughes, ‘Syria and the perils of proxy warfare’.17 Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation. Tilly, Formation of National States, 42. Dodge, ‘Can Iraq Be Saved?’, 10-1. 18 Ahram, Proxy Warriors. Bunker (ed.), Non-State Threats and Future Wars. Cigar, Tribal Militias. Giustozzi, Empires of Mud. Hughes & Tripodi, ‘Anatomy of a surrogate’, passim. Vinci, Armed Groups and the Balance of power. 19 Cigar, Tribal Militias, 1-2, 57. Cornish & Dorman, ‘SDSR 2015’.20 Gray, War, Peace and International Relations, 236. Strandquist, ‘Local defence forces and counterinsurgency’, 91-2.21 Cigar, Tribal Militias, 60-1. Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 54.22 Hughes & Tripodi, ‘Anatomy of a surrogate’, 6. To take two examples from medieval Wales to the 19 th century Raj, see Clifford J. Rogers, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis, Edward I, and the conquest of Wales’, in Murray & Sinnreich

16

Afghanistan during the late 1980s both the Soviet Army and the regime of Mohamed

Najibullah became reliant on militia formations in the latter phases of the war against the

mujahidin, and as a result the Kabul government’s own security forces atrophied. While

auxiliaries such as the Uzbek Jowzjani were efficient fighters, their effectiveness depended

upon Najibullah’s ability to pay them. Once the money ran out in late 1991, these irregular

(ed.), Successful Strategies, 88, 92; & Johnson, Afghan Way of War, 182, 193, 198. With reference to French enlistment of local auxiliaries in COIN in Syria and Indochina during the 1920s and 1930s see Thomas, Fight or Flight, 31, 33. 23 JDP3-40, Section 5. FM3/24, Chapter 6. 24 al-Marashi & Salama, Iraq’s Armed Forces, 201-5. Hashim, Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in Iraq, 92-9.25 Wither, ‘Basra’s not Belfast’, 611-35. ICG Middle East Report No.67, Where Is Iraq Heading?.26 Brian Brady, ‘Drugs and desertion: how the UK really rates Afghan police’, Independent on Sunday (London), 28 March 2010. ‘NATO’s planned offensive in Afghanistan: Get out of the way’, The Economist, 13 February 2010. Azam Ahmed, ‘Afghanistan on edge as Taliban take back ground’, New York Times, 24 October 2014.27 Jones, ‘Community Defense in Afghanistan’, 9-15. Strandquist, ‘Local defence forces and counterinsurgency’, 93. Tariq, Tribal Security System in Southeast Afghanistan.28 Cigar, Tribal Militias, 66-7. ICG Middle East Report No.99, Loose Ends, 25-7. 29 Hughes & Tripodi, ‘Anatomy of a surrogate’, pp.2-4. Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, 354-61, 373-81, 397-408. I am grateful to Mark Galeotti for his observations on the ambiguity of the ‘monopoly of violence’. 30 Alex Marshall, ‘Turkfront: Frunze and the development of Soviet counter-insurgency in Central Asia’, in Everett-Heath (ed.), Central Asia, 17.31 Johnson, Afghan Way of War, 241-4. 32 Adrian Blomfield. ‘In the front line of Putin’s secret war’, The Daily Telegraph (London), 27 March 2007. ‘Russia and Chechnya: The warlord and the spook’, The Economist, 31 May 2007.33 Cigar, Tribal Militias, 39-45.34 Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia, 202-16. Moorcraft & McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War, 155-6. 35 The Ethiopians have raised home guards to fight the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF); ‘The Ogaden’s trickling sands’, Africa Confidential 48, no.19, 21 September 2007. Horton, ‘Causing affront’, 12.36 During the 1990s the Ugandan government recruited Acholi militias to fight the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); Vinci, Armed Groups and the Balance of Power, 91.37 Jean-Philippe Remy, ‘Darfour: Les Arabes dans le piège janjawid’ (‘The Arabs in the janjawid trap’), Le Monde (Paris), 13 July 2007.38 Gerwarth & Horne (ed.), War in Peace. Melander, ‘Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict’, 64-72. Silber & Little, Death of Yugoslavia, 134-46, 169-89, 244-57.39 Taylor, Loyalists. Hubbard, ‘Militias in Iraq’, 345-62. In both these cases that Northern Irish Catholics and Sunni Arabs did accuse (respectively) the British and Iraqi governments of colluding with Loyalist and Shiite militia atrocities. 40 Anne Dolan, ‘The British Culture of Paramilitary Violence in the Irish War of Independence’, in Gerwarth & Horne, War in Peace, 200-15. 41 Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia, 118-31. 42 Reno, Warfare in Independent Africa, 103.43 Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 179.44 Thomas, Fight or Flight, 138. David Anderson, ‘Surrogates of the State. Collaboration and Atrocity in Kenya’s Mau Mau War’, in Kassimeris (ed.), The Barbarisation of Warfare, 159-74.45 Fall, Street Without Joy, 180, 184.46 Kaiser, American Tragedy, 152. Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, 183-4, 308.47 Patrick Cockburn, ‘Turkey reluctantly prepares for attack on Kurds’, Independent on Sunday, 28 October 2007.48 Ives, US Special Forces and Counterinsurgency in Vietnam.49 Dalloz, War in Indochina, 109-11.50 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 97-8, 125-44.51 Mark Franchetti, ‘Going in hard with the guerrilla hunters of Chechnya’, The Sunday Times (London), 15 May 2005. Anna Politkovskaya, ‘Karatel’nii Sgovor’ (‘A Punitive Agreement’), Novaya Gazeta (Moscow), 28 September 2006.

17

formations deserted and joined the mujahidin, precipitating the fall of the Communist

government in April 1992.93

The Russian Federation’s second war in Chechnya (1999-2009) illustrates the

problems of factionalism. In order to fight separatist and radical Islamist guerrillas Moscow

subcontracted military operations to Chechen surrogates, including ex-nationalist rebels from

the first war (1994-1996). The enlistment of local auxiliaries minimised Federal military and 52 Cigar, Tribal Militias, 13. Long, ‘Anbar Awakening’, 81-8. ‘Iraq: I want to kill you, but not today’, The Economist, 6 October 2007. 53 Bailey, The Wildest Province, 87-9, 285-315. Telegram from SOE mission to General Mihajlovic to Foreign Office (no date, sent in March 1943), HS5/929(NAUK). 54 Cann, Counterinsurgency in Africa, 96-102. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 239-41.55 Neumann, ‘Suspects into collaborators’. Weiss & Hassan, ISIS, 104-10, 144-9.56 ICG Middle East Report No.155, Rigged Cars and Barrel Bombs. ‘Syria’s civil war: Advancing on Aleppo’, The Economist, 21 February 2015. Weiss & Hassan, ISIS, 194, 197-9, 218-21. 57 Kitson, Gangs and Counter-Gangs, passim. Kitson used the terms ‘counter’ and ‘pseudo-gang’ interchangeably in this memoir. Hughes and Tripodi argue that there is a difference between ‘counter-gangs’ discussed here, and ‘pseudo-gangs’ that deliberately pass themselves off as insurgents in order to infiltrate the latter over the long-term, identify its cadres for the security forces, provoke internecine feuds, and perhaps also commit ‘false-flag’ atrocities against civilians which are then blamed by the government on its internal foes. See ‘Anatomy of a Surrogate’, 16-22.58 Tierney Jr, Chasing Ghosts, 128-9.59 Anglim, ‘Wingate and the Special Night Squads’, 28-41.60 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 574-8. Dimitrakis, ‘Cyprus Insurgency’, 388. Kitson, Gangs and Counter-Gangs.61 Moyar, Phoenix, 108-10, 166-9.62 Ahram, Proxy Warriors, 14. Anderson, ‘Surrogates of the State’, passim. Gortzak, ‘Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency’, 320-1. 63 The ‘population-centric’ approach is emphasised in both FM3/24 and AFM1/10, passim.64 Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 95-6.65 To cite three historical examples; during the Palestinian revolt in 1936-1939, British officials realised that Arab and Jewish constables in the police could not be counted upon to act against militants within their own community, and were often in league with them. Memorandum from G. D. G. Hayman (War Office) to F. G. Lee (Colonial Office), 14 February 1939, WO106/5720(NAUK). During the insurgency in South Arabia the National Liberation Front was able to infiltrate and subvert the South Arabian Police and the Federal Regular Army, turning them against their British sponsors. Memorandum by D. J. McCarthy (Foreign Office), 20 November 1967, FCO8/41(NAUK). In Northern Ireland, the presence of Loyalist sympathisers within the Royal Ulster Constabulary was noted as far back as the early 1970s. Lt Col. David Ramsbotham, Visit by Chief of the General Staff to Northern Ireland, 28 September 1973, DEFE13/990(NAUK).66 Col. Hugh Oldman (Defence Secretary to Sultan Qaboos bin Said) to Brig. John Graham (Commander, Sultan’s Armed Forces – CSAF), 9 January 1972, Graham Papers, GB165/0327 (Box 2, File 1), Middle East Centre Archive (MECA), St Antony’s College, Oxford. Maj-Gen. Tim Creasey (CSAF) to Qaboos, 4 January 1973, DEF11/759(NAUK). Oman Intelligence Report No.56, 10 January 1974, FCO8/2022(NAUK).67 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 257-69, 284-90.68 Tierney, Chasing Ghosts, 137-9. Cassidy, ‘The Long Small War’, 47-62.69 Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, 159-60. Joes, Resisting Rebellion, 114-6.70 Cigar, Tribal Militias, 42-3. Kitson, Bunch of Five, 294-5.71 Okeowo, ‘Vigilante Fight Against Boko Haram’. 72 Connor, Ghost Force, 156-7. Memorandum by P. Westmacott (Middle Eastern Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office), 29 January 1973, FCO8/2022(NAUK).73 Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 180-1. Jeapes, SAS Secret War, p.39.74 Anthony James Joes, ‘Counterinsurgency in the Philippines 1898-1954’, in Marston & Malkasian, Counterinsurgency, 51. Hughes, ‘Dhofar’, 281-2.75 Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, 84. McCuen, The Art of Counter-revolutionary War, 56.76 Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 177-83. Weiss & Hassan, ISIS, 68-78. ICG Middle East Report No.74, Iraq after the Surge I.

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security force casualties, and has also enabled Moscow to declare in April 2009 that

Chechnya has been successfully ‘pacified’ under its President, Ramzan Kadyrov. However,

Russia’s policies have also contributed to internecine violence between Kadyrov and his

rivals (notably the Yamadayev family) and their respective paramilitary formations.94 There is

also a related risk that militias may become involved in organised crime. This was evident not

only in Chechnya during Russia’s most recent wars but also with the occupation of Basra

from 2003-2007. During the occupation of South-East Iraq the British military authorities

recruited substantial numbers of Shia militiamen into the police, facilitating the take-over of

Iraq’s second city by armed factions responsible for serial human rights abuses against

civilians, as well as racketeering.95

77 Lawson, ‘Syria’s Mutating Civil War’, 1360. Pollack, ‘Iraq Faces the Brink Again’. The challenges of national reconciliation in Iraq were anticipated in the aftermath of the ‘Awakening’. See ICG Middle East Report No.75, Iraq after the Surge II. 78 D-OPS/5, Record of the Final Meeting with the Iranian Forces Delegation Held at the Headquarters Dhofar Brigade, 16 April 1974, Annex B, DEFE11/655(NAUK).79 LM/MO2/210/76, Notes on Visit to Oman by Col GS MO2 20-24 January 1974, Col. W. J. Reed (British Army), 30th January 1974, DEFE24/573(NAUK). P-OPS/4, Record of CSAF’s Audience of His Majesty the Sultan on 5 th

November 1974, 7 November 1974, DEFE11/658(NAUK).80 DO9, CSAF’s Assessment of the Military Situation in Dhofar as at 14 February 1972 , 17 February 1972, GB165/0327 (Box 2, File 1), MECA. D-OPS/5, Record of the Meeting held at Headquarters the Sultan’s Armed Forces on Saturday 13th April 1974, 14 April 1974, & Supporting Annexes, DEFE11/655(NAUK). 81 Minute by H. Blanks (MOD), 3 June 1974, DEFE11/737(NAUK). On the latter phases of the war see Hughes, ‘Dhofar’, 284-9.82 A-OPS/4, CSAF to Brigadier J. Akehurst (CO, Dhofar Brigade, SAF), Guidelines, 21 August 1974, DEFE11/656(NAUK). Yapp, Near East Since the First World War, 375.83 For a more detailed discussion of the firqats and their role in this war, see Hughes, ‘Demythologising Dhofar’, 540-4. 84 Gortzak, ‘Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency’, 330. Horne, Savage War, 255-7.85 Ahram, Proxy Warriors, 78-82. Tripp, History of Iraq, 244-6, 256.86 Kalyvas, Civil War, passim. French makes this point about the KHG in British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 149, 186, as does Thomas in Fight or Flight, 231. Cigar makes similar remarks about Yemen’s enlistment of auxiliaries in Tribal Militias, 40, 49. 87 Giustozzi, ‘Auxiliary Force or National Army?’, 45-67. Synnott, Transforming Pakistan, 116. Al-Qaeda fighters were also reportedly able to escape in much the same manner after Operation Anaconda in March 2002. See Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die, 489-91. 88 Johnson, Afghan Way of War, 270. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 106. 89 This phenomenon is analysed in ICG Asia Report No.268, Afghan Local Police. Standquist, ‘Local defence forces and counterinsurgency’, 95, 105.90 ‘Nigeria’s Hidden War’, Dispatches.91 Grey, Operation Snake Bite, 55-60, 73-4, pp.174-7. Jerome Starkey, ‘Former warlord blames UK for breakdown in security’, The Independent (London), 9 June 2008. 92 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 254-5. Kaiser, American Tragedy, 166-7, 204-5.93 Marshall, ‘Managing Withdrawal’, 68-89. Giustozzi, Empires of Mud, 53-56.94 Mark Franchetti, ‘Rival on run after standoff with Chechen president’, The Sunday Times, 27 April 2008. ‘Russia and Chechnya: The Caucasian connection’, The Economist, 14 March 2015.95 Knights & Williams, The Calm before the Storm.

19

The ethical consequences of employing auxiliaries need to be acknowledged,

although these may be a product of deliberate calculation on the part of the governments

concerned. The massacres committed by the militias employed by the Sudanese state against

Southern rebels during the 1980s and the Syrian Shabiha more recently were intended by the

regimes concerned to incite internecine violence as part of a strategy of ‘divide-and-rule. 96 In

Kenya during the 1950s, the British colonial authorities deliberately provoked a civil war

within the Kikuyu tribe, using the KHG as a deniable means of both eliminating suspected

Mau Mau sympathisers, and also of intimidating undecided Kikuyu into obedience.97 Even in

cases where the government side does not follow this ‘divide-and-conquer’ approach, the

demands of self-preservation often oblige surrogates to wage a vicious war a l’outrance

against their insurgent enemies. The plight of the Algerian harkis at the hands of the FLN

after 1962 is also a reminder that defeat in a COIN campaign may have limited consequences

for a colonial power or external interventionists, but can have catastrophic ones for their

indigenous allies.98

The use of militias can also exacerbate ethnic, tribal and social tensions, contributing

to internal instability. In Angola earlier the Portuguese authorities discovered that co-opting

UNITA had dire consequences for their efforts to form a national unity government in 1975.

By this point Portugal intended a negotiated settlement in Angola which would enable it to

grant independence and withdraw its forces, yet the MPLA’s bitterness over UNITA’s

collaboration with the Portuguese Army contributed to Lisbon’s failure to establish a stable

post-colonial order, contributing to decades of internal strife.99 During the civil war in Sierra

Leone (1991-2000) the government in Freetown became increasingly reliant on the Civil

Defence Forces (CDF) in its fight against the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). However,

96 Clayton, Frontiersmen, 166-7. Leenders, ‘How the Syrian Regime Outsmarted its Enemies’, 333-4.97 Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau, 247-52. Thomas, Fight or Flight, 233-4. 98 This is a point Bernard Fall makes in his introduction to Trinquier, Modern Warfare, viii. On the harkis see Thomas, Fight or Flight, 289-90, 367-8.

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the government’s reliance on the CDF contributed to military disaffection, and ultimately led

to a coup in May 1997 after which the instigators became aligned with the RUF.100

Militias in the early 21st century Middle East:

The problems discussed in the previous section are exacerbated in states where regular

militaries are ‘coop-proofed’ by the ruling regimes. In Western polities professionalism and

efficiency within the armed forces are essential attributes if the latter are to protect states and

societies from external and internal security threats.101 Yet as Risa Brooks, Daniel Byman,

Kenneth Pollack and James Quinlivan have observed, absolutist monarchies and dictatorships

in the Middle East have often taken deliberate measures to weaken the armed forces in order

to avert a military takeover (similar to those experienced in Egypt in 1954, Iraq in 1958,

Libya in 1969 and Syria repeatedly between 1951 and 1970). These include the deliberate

creation of a divided and dislocated command structure; the establishment of a promotion

system within the officer corps based not on professional competence but loyalty to the

regime (defined by clan, tribe, ethnicity, sectarian identity or political ideology); the intrusive

and coercive surveillance of the military by the security services; restrictions imposed on

routine peacetime training exercises (on the grounds that these manoeuvres could provide the

cover for a coup); and the promotion of regime defence forces (the latter often being better

funded, armed and equipped than the regular military).102

These traits could be observed in the Libyan military under Muammar Qaddafi

(1969-2011), which with the exception of elite loyalist forces such as 32nd Brigade was of

generally poor quality.103 The same was true with Syria under both Hafez and Bashar al-Assad

99 Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 253-4.100 Clayton, Frontiersmen, 197, 199. Gberie, A Dirty War in West Africa, 14-5, 83-6.101 Murray and Woods make this point in Iran-Iraq War, 3-4.102 Brooks, Stability of Arab Regimes. Byman, ‘‘Friends like these’’, 104-5. Quinlivan, ‘Coup-proofing’. 103 Pollack, Arabs at War, 359-60, 364. ‘Britain’s Demanding Ally in Tripoli’, Africa Confidential 50, no.19, 25 September 2009.

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(where the Special Forces, 4th Armoured Division and Defence Companies were better trained

and equipped than the Syrian Arab Army);104 Iraq under Saddam Hussein (with the

Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, and the al-Quds and Fedayeen Saddam

militias),105 and Nuri al-Maliki (2006-2014);106 and also Saudi Arabia, with the qualitative

difference between the regular army and the National Guard.107

One of the observable consequences of ‘coup-proofing’ is that the militaries

concerned are usually defeated in inter-state wars.108 The Syrian armed forces were worsted

by their Israeli counterparts in 1973 and 1982.109 Libya’s military – including its Islamic

Legions recruited from foreign Arab and African ‘volunteers’ – was humiliated at the climax

of Qaddafi’s intervention in Chad (1986-1987).110 During the Baathist era, Iraqi military

performance in the war against Iran (1980-1988) was mediocre, and Iraq’s armed forces were

catastrophically defeated by their US-Coalition adversaries in 1991 and 2003.111 Regime

measures to deliberately neuter the military led to inadequate training, poor doctrine, a

generally incompetent and dysfunctional command, and low troop morale, all of which

directly contributed to battlefield defeat. Some regimes may well accept this inability to wage

inter-state wars if the coup-proofed military and security forces can withstand an internal

revolt. Saudi security forces eventually managed to suppress the Islamist fanatics who seized

the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November-December 1979, and Hafez al-Assad destroyed the

Muslim Brotherhood revolt in Hama three years later.112 In 1991 Saddam Hussein rallied a

sufficient number of Republican Guard and other loyalist troops to crush the Shiite and

Kurdish rebellions that erupted after Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. 113 However, in the

104 Pollack, Arabs at War, 479-80. Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria, 23-4, 40, 47.105 Woods et al, The Iraqi Perspectives Report, 39-71. 106 Sullivan, Maliki’s Authoritarian Regime, 10-2.107 Jeremy Binnie, ‘SANG deploys to Yemeni border’, JDW 52, no.18, 6 May 2015. Pollack, Arabs at War, 426-31. Quinlivan, ‘Coup-proofing’, 142-4. 108 Pollack & Eisenstadt, ‘Armies of Snow, Armies of Sand’. Quinlivan, ‘Coup-proofing’, 155-64.109 Pollack, Arabs at War, 478-513, 523-51.110 Ronen, Qadhafi’s Libya, 168-71. ‘Libya/Chad: A fragile peace’, Africa Confidential 28, no.19, 23 September 1987.111 Murray & Woods, Iran-Iraq War, passim. Woods, Iraqi Perspectives Report, passim.112 Trofimov, Siege of Mecca. Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria, 146.113 Stansfield, Iraq, 132-5. Tripp, History of Iraq, 254-9.

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face of nationwide uprisings regime forces may find themselves unable to cope, and may find

themselves obliged to enlist auxiliaries to survive.114

As the Libyan armed forces disintegrated and soldiers deserted to the rebel factions,

Qaddafi was forced to rely on irregular formations such as his African mercenaries. 115 In the

more recent phase of the Yemen civil war military and security force units loyal to the former

President Ali Abdullah Saleh joined the Houthi rebels who overthrew Abd Rabbuh Mansur

Hadi in late March 2015. Saudi Arabia – which is attempting to return Hadi to power – has

reportedly tried to raise a force of Yemeni tribal fighters to bolster the deposed President’s

depleted forces.116 In Syria, the NDF provides the infantry support required to support the

Baathist regime’s armoured vehicles in urban battles against the rebels, filling a gap in

manpower left by deserting army conscripts. Hezbollah’s troops and fighters from the Iraqi

Shiite militias have performed a similar role in operations along the Lebanese border, as

Syrian Arab Army soldiers cannot be trusted by their commanders.117 In Iraq, General Qassem

Soleimani (the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force) reportedly runs the war effort against

IS, training and orchestrating the Hashid al-Shabi militias.118 In both the latter conflicts it is

the irregular auxiliaries and their Iranian patrons that are the key sources of regime support,

bearing grave implications for regime stability.

There are two further long-term consequences of ‘coup-proofing’ and militia

dominance that are worth noting, the first being the attrition of the traditional regime defence

forces. In Iraq, the loss of Ramadi on 17 May 2015 was attributed to the weakening of the

Special Operations Forces units (the so-called ‘Golden Division’) that had defended the city

for months without relief.119 In a war of attrition, the Baghdad government does at least have

114 Springborg makes a similar point in ‘Arab Armed Forces: State Makers or State Breakers?’. 115 ‘Gadaffi falls, revolution rises’, Africa Confidential 52, no.17, 26 August 2011.116 ICG Middle East Briefing No.45, Yemen’s Civil War. Horton, ‘Indecisive storm’, 38-9. ‘The war in Yemen: From Aden to Camp David’, The Economist, 16 May 2015. Jeremy Binnie & Sean O’Connor, ‘Indecisive storm’, JDW 52/27, 8 July 2015. 117 ‘Iran’s Secret Army’, passim. Blanford, ‘Qalamoun offensive’, 13. 118 Newsnight (BBC2), 23 September 2014. 22:30 GMT. ‘Iran in Iraq and Syria: Death of a general’, The Economist, 3 January 2015.

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demography on its side, insofar as it can call on Shiite fighters to fill manpower losses in

combat against IS. The Assad regime – relying on minority support from the Alawites and

other communities – does not have that luxury. Recent rebel advances around Idlib and Deraa

suggest that Assad’s best-trained loyalist troops (such as the 4 th Armoured Division) are

suffering the same debilitating combat losses as elite Iraqi government forces, the difference

being that Damascus is unable to offset these casualties with recruitment for the NDF and

other irregular formations. Alawite morale is reported to be dwindling, with its militiamen

being unwilling to fight beyond their own heartland on Syria’s Northern coast. 120 The

downfall of the Assad regime has been repeatedly predicted, but if reports of a tipping-point

turn out to be true then Syria’s President will either become more dependent on Iranian and

Hezbollah assistance, or will discover that he can no longer hold onto whatever power he

retains.

The second concerns growing internecine violence between local allies. By providing

the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds arms and air support the US-led Coalition potentially runs four

risks. The first is that the supply of military and financial aid inadvertently revives historic

tensions between the PUK and KDP, both of which waged a civil war in Northern Iraq during

the 1990s, and both of which still maintain separate peshmerga and security forces. The

second is that the already delicate relationship between the KRG and PYD breaks down, with

in-fighting ensuing between the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish communities. The third is that if

Turkey intervenes militarily against the PYD/YPG in Northern Syria the Obama

administration will have to address the diplomatic consequences of a clash between an

important local ally against IS and a key NATO partner. The fourth is that if Kurdish and

Iraqi Arab forces (either government troops or Hashid al-Shabi militias) clash over Kirkuk

119 Adam Withnall, ‘Ramadi: Isis secures largest military victory for almost a year as last government troops flee Iraqi state capital’, Independent on Sunday, 17 May 2015. Ayman Oghanna, ‘Iraq’s finest forces died by the hundred in Ramadi bloodbath’; & ‘Defeat was a crippling blow for non-sectarian band of brothers’, The Times, 25 May 2015. 120 Blanford, ‘Hollow Crown’. White & Alirifai, ‘Growing Rebel Capabilities Press the Syria Regime’. Nicholas Blanford, ‘Syrian army pushed back by new militant coalition’, JDW 52, no.18, 6 May 2015. Ford, ‘The Assad Regime: The Beginning of the End?’.

24

and other disputed territory in the North, then the USA and its allies may find itself arming

both parties in the confrontation which follows.121

Beyond Iraqi Kurdistan, inter-communal animosities were exacerbated prior to 2014

by Maliki’s marginalisation of the Sunnis, and the Iraqi government’s establishment of closer

ties with Iran.122 In Syria, the Baathist regime has deliberately incited sectarian hatreds

through massacres of Sunni civilians by the Shabiha, and other acts of indiscriminate violence

such as the ‘barrel-bombing’ of civilians in rebel-held cities.123 Reliance on militias is

therefore likely to lead to intensified brutality in both the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts. There are

reports that Iraqi Shiite volunteers who had fought for Assad have committed massacres

against their Sunni compatriots; Iranian-trained Badr Corps units in Diyala province have a

particularly sordid reputation for inter-communal attacks on civilians. Yazidi militiamen have

also reportedly carried out reprisal attacks against Sunni Arabs who they blame for supporting

IS’s barbaric attack on their community last summer.124 Such atrocities will serve only to

inflame sectarian and ethnic hatreds on both sides of the border, and may well provide IS with

a larger recruiting base in the process.

Conclusions:

121 Shapland, ‘Independent thinking’. ICG Middle Eastern Report No.158, Arming Iraq’s Kurds. Thomas Seibert, ‘Turkey Plans to Invade Syria, But to Stop the Kurds, Not ISIS’, The Daily Beast, 28 June 2015; online at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/28/turkey-plans-to-send-troops-into-syria-widening-the-war.html, accessed 30 June 2015.122 Pollack, ‘Iraq Faces the Brink’. ICG Middle Eastern Report No.150, Falluja’s Faustian Bargain. 123 ‘Syria’s civil war: The country formerly known as Syria’, The Economist, 23 February 2013. ICG Middle East Report No.143, Syria’s Metastasising Conflicts, 6, 24, 29, 31. Weiss & Hassan, ISIS, 134-7. 124 Vice News, ‘Peshmerga vs the Islamic State’. Lawson, ‘Syria’s Mutating Civil War’, 1361-2. Michael Weiss & Michael Pregent, ‘How Iran is Making It Impossible for the US to Beat ISIS’, The Daily Beast, 1 February 2015; online at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/01/how-iran-is-making-it-impossible-for-the-us-to-beat-isis.html; accessed 18 February 2015. Knights, ‘Iraq’s Bekaa Valley’. The Badr Corps are the military wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (formerly the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq), a proxy force of Iraqi Shiites established by Iran during the war with Iraq (1980-1988). See Stansfield, Iraq, 111, 132-3, 136-7.

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Although predicting the future is inherently hazardous, it is the author’s contention that the

use of militias will remain a characteristic feature of internal warfare. In the current political

and strategic environment the USA and other Western states are unwilling to intervene in

conflicts similar to that against IS with expeditionary ground forces, preferring instead to rely

on local allies reinforced with small military missions of trainers and enablers (personnel with

specific skills such as intelligence, tactical air control and logistics), supported by air power.

The weaknesses of the Iraqi armed forces, and the fact that Assad’s regime is a pariah, means

that in the immediate future Western powers prosecuting the fight against IS are likely to

concentrate their assistance on the Kurds, and possibly the more moderate Syrian rebel

factions.

As argued above, auxiliary irregular forces in COIN are best employed alongside the

state’s military and police, working as a local security force protecting the population whilst

the latter concentrate on offensive operations against the insurgency. If employed

successfully, they can provide an opportunity for conflict resolution and national

reconciliation, but as was the case with the KHG in colonial Kenya they can also be a tool for

state terror. If they are recruited from within the community that provides the source of

insurgent violence they can be a positive asset for the government cause, as was demonstrated

in Oman in the 1970s and in al-Anbar province, Iraq, in 2007-2008. Even in these cases,

however, formations such as the Dhofari firqats and the Sunni tribes will not necessarily

eliminate or alleviate all internal opposition. At the end of the Dhofar war the British general

commanding Sultan Qaboos’ troops observed that there were still significant pockets of

PFLO support within the civilian populace,125 whilst in al-Anbar the city of Fallujah was

never reconciled with either the Americans or the Maliki government.126 It is also worth

noting that an auxiliary force may work well with Western interventionists, but could

nonetheless remain alienated from the indigenous government, particularly if the latter pursue

125 Maj-Gen Ken Perkins (CSAF) to UK Chiefs of Staff, 28 December 1975, DEFE11/912(NAUK).126 ICG Middle Eastern Report No.150, Falluja’s Faustian Bargain.

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policies which inflame social, ethnic or sectarian hostilities. In South Vietnam the

Montagnard tribesmen formed strong bonds with US Army Special Forces personnel, but they

mutinied in 1964 after operation control was handed over to the Saigon regime. Much the

same happened with the al-Anbar tribes and Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government in Iraq

fifty years later.127

Weak states may rely predominantly or even entirely on militias because of the

inadequacies of their own military and security forces, and in some Arab countries the process

of coup-proofing has left the likes of Iraq and Syria even more reliant on irregular forces

recruited on the basis of ethnic, clan or sectarian ties to the ruling regime. During its offensive

to recapture Tikrit in March 2015 the Iraqi government committed a force of 3,000 regular

Iraqi Army troops, 1,000 Sunni tribesmen and an estimated 18,000 Shia paramilitaries. It does

not bode well for Iraq’s sovereignty that the incompetent and corrupted armed forces of the

Maliki era have been replaced by largely Shiite irregulars organised by Iranian military

advisors. Militias that are beyond state control can engage in predatory behaviour that

alienates the government from the civil populace (such as banditry, abuses and atrocities

against civilians, and the prosecution of sectarian or ethnic vendettas), weakening state

cohesion in the process.128

Ideally, the current Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi should endeavour to recruit

Sunnis in the fight against IS, but the figures given for government forces in the Tikrit

operation suggests that the prospects for a new ‘Awakening’ are limited at best. Abadi’s own

political base is also far from secure. His gestures of reconciliation towards the Sunnis have

reportedly aroused a furore within the Shiite political elite. It is worth remembering that the

ostensibly deposed Maliki is still the Deputy Prime Minister, and is by no means a politically

127 Long, ‘Anbar Awakening’, 81-2. Strandquist, ‘’Local defence forces and counterinsurgency’, 100-4. Kaiser, American Tragedy, 346. ‘Iraq: Too late to keep the peace?’, The Economist, 12 February 2010.128 Jeremy Binnie, ‘US sidelined from Tikrit offensive’, JDW 52/10, 11 March 2015. Richard Spencer & Magdy Samaan, ‘Isil jihadists flee as Iraqi forces storm into Tikrit’, The Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2015. ‘Islamic State: The pushback’, The Economist, 21 March 2015.

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marginalised figure in Baghdad. The Hashid al-Shabi militias, hard-line Shiite politicians and

their Iranian backers have a vested interest in undermining Abadi as being soft on the Sunni

insurgent threat, and of being too deferential to the unreliable Americans.129 In this respect,

and to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Maliki’s political demise could prove to be

exaggerated, and the Shiite-dominated government may well continue to be dominated by

political parties that are intransigently opposed to any comprise with the Sunni Arabs.

It should also be noted that the tribal rising against al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2007-2008

worked because it was concurrent with the ‘surge’ of US combat forces into the country.

Earlier attempts to turn Sunni clans against al-Qaeda failed because the Americans lacked the

troops needed to protect the former, and it was only the synergy between an expanded US

military presence and the ‘Awakening’ which enabled the Americans to quell the insurgency

in the ‘Sunni Triangle’ in 2007-2008.130 It is doubtful whether local tribal leaders will be

collectively willing to support a second ‘Awakening’, having experienced both the blatantly

sectarian rule of Maliki and the botched demobilisation of their militias.131 Such reluctance

will only be reinforced by reports that Sunni sheikhs that have rallied to the government’s

side against IS have been starved of meaningful support, and effectively abandoned to their

fate by the security forces. Whether this is a consequence of official incompetence or malign

neglect, this is not indicative of a strategy by the Baghdad government to seek to rally any

Sunni resentment against the insurgency.132 The Sunni Arab community in Iraq is therefore

caught between fear of retribution by IS, and of persecution by the government and its Shiite

auxiliaries. IS itself is also seeking pre-empt efforts to revive the Al-Anbar militias by

recruiting former tribal fighters who had fought alongside the Americans against al-Qaeda, in

129 Michael B. Kelley, ‘The US and Iran are closer in Iraq than people realize – and things are getting ugly’, Business Insider, 4th April 2015. Knights, The Long Haul, viii, 4, 60. 130 Cigar, Tribal Militias, 11, 13-4. Malkasian, ‘Did the United States Need More Forces in Iraq?’.131 Martin Chulov, ‘Iraq disbands Sunni militia that helped defeat insurgents’, The Guardian, 2 April 2009. Cigar, Tribal Militias, 17-23, 33. ICG Middle East Briefing No.38, Iraq’s Jihadi Jack-in-the-Box. Weiss & Hassan, ISIS, 81, 89-95. 132 Mark Perry, ‘George W. Bush Is Intervening in Iraq – Again’, Politico Magazine, 12 February 2015, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/george-w-bush-iraq-anbar-115155; accessed 18 February 2015. Weiss & Pregent, ‘Iran’.

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the process being prepared to exercise a degree of magnanimity in dealing with fellow Sunnis,

including those who had hitherto opted to align with the Americans. This combination of

punitive action and reconciliation may well forestall any attempt to rally the Sunni Arab tribes

against the current generation of jihadis in Northern Iraq.133

Finally, it is important to consider the political risks for the USA and the West if the

war against IS in Iraq becomes conflated with Assad’s struggle for survival, or Iran’s pursuit

of regional hegemony. Syria’s President is aptly described as an ‘arsonist posing as a

firefighter’; his deliberate incitement of sectarian violence with his own militias and his

unofficial truce with IS means that any hint of a reconciliation and alignment between the

Baathist regime and the West will alienate Sunni Arab opinion both in Iraq and Syria itself,

and also across the region.134 As for Iran, whilst it is reported that US military commanders

are planning coalition air operations so that they do not appear in conjunction with those

conducted by Soleimani and the IRGC ‘advisors’,135 it is sufficient to note that given Sunni

Arab hostility towards the Iranians there is a clear danger that the USA and other allies

involved in the current campaign against IS might be seen locally and regionally as de facto

partners of Tehran.136 Such a perception would in all likelihood be exploited by IS in order to

rally support for its cause across the Sunni Arab world.

133 Dominic Evans & Emma Gatten, ‘Assault on Tikrit: Iraqi forces move against Isis to retake Saddam Hussein’s city and province of Salahuddin’, The Independent, 3 March 2015. Fromsen & Simon, ‘ISIS’, 11.134 Bente Scheller, ‘Assad’s Trap for the West’, 6 January 2015, Heinrich Boll Stiftung, online at http://www.boell.de/en/2015/01/06assads-trap-west, accessed 3 March 2015. Von Drehle, ‘The War on ISIS’. 135 Catherine Philp, Ammar Shamary & David Taylor, ‘Baghdad begs US for air power to win Tikrit’, The Times, 17 March 2015.136 Stansfield, ‘The Islamic State’, 1343-9. Michael Young, ‘Why Bashar Assad appears so smug’, The Daily Star (Beirut), 12 February 2015.

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Endnotes:The author wishes to express his gratitude to Alex Marshall for his invitation to the ‘Proxy Actors, Psyops and Irregular Warfare’ Workshop’ held at the University of Glasgow on 22-23 June 2015, and also to the participants for their feedback on an earlier version of this article. He also wishes to thank Christian Tripodi of the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, as some of the topics and ideas covered here are examined in their co-authored article ‘Anatomy of a surrogate’. Nonetheless, the analysis, opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Joint Services Command and Staff College, the Defence Academy, the MOD or any other UK government agency.

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