Structuring Militant Groups: Ideology, Leadership and Evolution

In a late October videotape from Osama bin
<http://web2.stratfor.com/news/2004TER/Story.neo?storyId=238680> Laden, the
al Qaeda leader attempted to posit himself as a political leader of the
Muslim world. That al Qaeda will one day become a legitimate political party
-- in any country -- seems a stretch at the moment. However, militant groups
can and do evolve over time. Before the evolutionary process begins, the
various players must come together to form a cohesive enough unit to be
called a group or, in al Qaeda's case, a network. After that, the key is to
keep the group working together to achieve certain goals along the way to
its ultimate ambition. Ideology, leadership and time ultimately determine
how a particular group is structured and how well it functions.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), for example, is a
nationalistic leftist group with a rigidly hierarchical and militaristic
structure. Its communist ideology does not influence the FARC's structure as
much as the separatist element of its beliefs. For all intents and purposes,
the FARC is a military group that happens to utilize terrorist tactics to
fight a regional conflict. Its ultimate goal is to defeat the Colombian
government, an aim that warrants a tight military structure. If the FARC
were a ragtag group of independent cells pulling off ad hoc attacks that, by
some wild stroke of luck, defeated the Columbian military, it would then
lack the organizational apparatus to take over and institutionalize its
political philosophy.

On the other hand, al Qaeda's worldwide grassroots movement makes a strict
hierarchical structure impractical and impossible. Al Qaeda cannot open a
concentrated front on even one of the militaries protecting the long list of
countries it despises. Furthermore, the expansive target list derived from
al Qaeda's ideology is so broad that the group, by nature, has spread across
the globe. It would seem almost impossible for a militant group to maintain
a worldwide presence that utilizes a strict command hierarchy -- as does al
Qaeda's major foe, the U.S. military. For grassroots movements that think
globally and act locally, the decentralized structure functions to help
achieve the group's ideological goals.

The strength of an exceptional leader or a change in leadership can affect
the structure of a group, as was the case with the Indonesia-based Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI). The emergence of Nurjaman Riduan Ismuddin, aka Hambali, as a
JI tactical leader had a major effect on the group's broader structure,
though only temporarily. Hambali directed JI's expansion from an
Indonesia-focused enterprise into a multi-tiered international system with
command centers in various areas of the entire South Asian region. Hambali
also cultivated a working relationship between his group and al Qaeda.
Despite the grumblings of other JI leaders, he shifted the group's target
list to Western interests, culminating in JI's most spectacular attack: the
bombing of a Bali nightclub in October 2002. Hambali's subsequent arrest and
the increased pressure on the group from authorities further changed the
group by creating a split between those who wanted to return to JI's initial
Indonesian focus and those who wanted to continue with attacks that would
further their broader pan-Islamic goals.

The loss of a leader, for whatever reason, also can affect a group beyond
the immediate impact of a leadership void. The death of Abu Sayyaf leader
Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani signaled a period of decline and chaos for the
group. No other leader had the capacity to hold the organization together,
and it descended into a period of petty criminality, with various factions
struggling over the fundamental makeup of the organization. In Spain,
periodic roundups of leaders of Basque separatist group ETA have hobbled the
organization. Not all groups, however, are as subject to fundamental change
caused by a shift in leadership. Over its 40-year history, the FARC has
developed a multi-generational structure that can absorb losses of
leadership without major disruption.

If a group remains in existence long enough, evolution can become another
big factor in its philosophical makeup, its goals -- and its structure.
Lebanon's Hezbollah has evolved from being primarily a militant group into a
quasi-legitimate political actor in the Lebanese parliament. To operate
within that realm, it established a civilian/political wing and developed it
over time. If bin Laden is to be believed, al Qaeda is setting its sights on
the political arena, as well. Events that occur over time spur changes, but
viewing a group in the context of a progression can give clues as to where
it is headed.

Al Qaeda has developed such a degree of sophistication and scale of
operations that it no longer needs the intelligence services and financial
support of established governments. Partly because of that, we are seeing a
move toward stateless groups that operate with limited hierarchy and employ
autonomous or semiautonomous cells. Al Qaeda has an upper echelon of
hardcore leaders, but below them are a myriad of groups or cells that
function -- and stage attacks -- on their own. These cells may receive some
funding or operational support from the leadership, but in some cases the
cells are self-sufficient enough to send funds
<http://web2.stratfor.com/news/2004TER/Story.neo?storyId=239604> to al
Qaeda's general headquarters in the Pakistan/Afghanistan area.

Ultimately, a militant group's structure will depend mainly on its ideology
and its leadership, with time being a factor in how it evolves.