Out of the Mountains

by David Kilcullen

  We might note in passing that trying to control a population solely through persuasive or administrative means, relying on these parts of the spectrum only and excluding coercion, is equally doomed to failure. Making a population like you, through administrative benefits and persuasive “hearts and minds” programs—an approach taken by some coalition contingents in both Iraq and Afghanistan—may initially appear to work. But at some point a competing armed group will turn up, put a gun to community leaders’ heads, and ask, “Who do you support now?” At that point, coercion trumps persuasion. More broadly, the field evidence that has emerged from many recent conflicts, as well as from patterns of organized crime and gang activity, suggests that a wider spectrum of control measures generally tends to overpower a narrow set of measures, whether these are primarily coercive or persuasive.

  Living the Hezbollah Lifestyle

  In contrast to AQ I, the example par excellence of a wide-spectrum group is Lebanese Hezbollah. Hezbollah brings to bear an extremely broad range of capabilities across the full spectrum of a well-developed normative system. The resilience and staying power that this generates can be seen most clearly in the events of 2006, which was a watershed year in Lebanon, as in Iraq.

  Hezbollah (the name means “Party of God”) was established after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with the goal of protecting the Shi’a community, resisting Israeli military occupation, and fighting Israel’s allies in the Phalangist militia and the South Lebanese Army (SLA). The organization began as a small militia that received training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, funding from Iran, and political support from Syria as well as from the Lebanese Shi’a community. Over time, however, Hezbollah has expanded and diversified into a wide-spectrum social and political movement that not only includes a capable military wing but also maintains regional and district administrative councils, law enforcement organizations, dispute resolution and mediation systems, employment programs, health clinics, schools, labor representation, a reconstruction organization, charity programs, a mass political party with elected representatives in the Lebanese parliament and at the local and regional levels, a series of local radio stations and print publications, the satellite television channel Al-Manar, and a significant Internet presence. Hezbollah is, in effect, a counterstate within the territory of Lebanon. This counterstate fields an extraordinarily effective “fish trap” system of incentives and disincentives that fully encapsulate its target population: you can live your whole life within the Hezbollah lifestyle and almost never need to engage with the outside environment.

  Hezbollah’s strength derives from its ability to create a full-spectrum normative system that dissuades people from opposing its agenda, gives them tangible administrative and economic benefits in return for support, and persuades them to participate in its program. The system rests on three pillars—Hezbollah’s capable terrorist and military organizations (giving it coercive and intimidatory power); its social and administrative programs, which benefit Lebanon’s urban poor and marginalized communities of all religious groups; and its noncoercive political and propaganda capabilities.

  The organization’s nonmilitary capabilities proved critically important during the 2006 July War (also known as the Second Lebanon War) between Israel and Hezbollah. During the thirty-four days of formal hostilities, the IDF launched extensive air raids across Lebanon and conducted a heavy artillery bombardment of the south. This caused severe damage to Lebanese government and civilian infrastructure, destroyed thousands of houses, and killed roughly one thousand civilians and two hundred Hezbollah fighters. Israel also mounted a ground invasion of Lebanon and imposed a naval and air blockade that continued for almost three months. Israeli attacks, according to some reports, left more than a million cluster bomblets scattered across residential areas of Lebanon, and flattened villages and buildings across the south.49 In the twenty square miles of Beirut’s southern suburbs, more than half a million inhabitants—most of whom were Shi’a—lost their homes.50 Hezbollah’s postwar role in reconstruction and repair of this urban damage helped consolidate its political position within Lebanon, making it arguably stronger after the war than it had been before the conflict.51 As the British journalist Robert Fisk reported in the immediate aftermath of the war, Hezbollah “trumped both the UN army and the Lebanese government by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars—most of it almost certainly from Iran—into the wreckage of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s destroyed southern suburbs. Its massive new reconstruction effort—free of charge to all those Lebanese whose homes were destroyed or damaged in Israel’s ferocious five-week assault on the country—has won the loyalty of even the most disaffected members of the Shia community in Lebanon.”52

  This reconstruction effort was directed by Jihad al-Binaa (“Construction Jihad”) the reconstruction and humanitarian assistance arm of Hezbollah. The leader of Construction Jihad is Kassem Allaik, a civil engineer partly educated in the United States. The organization was bombed out of its headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs during the war.53 But within a day of the cease-fire, Construction Jihad sent assessment teams out into the destroyed suburbs of Beirut and across southern Lebanon to survey the damage from the Israeli bombardment. As Roula Khalaf reported a few weeks after the conflict:

  Today, Construction Jihad’s makeshift premises in a south Beirut branch of the Mahdi school, the organization’s education association, is a hive of activity. Between pictures of Hezbollah leaders holding children, and the party’s yellow flags, a large map of the area is plastered on the wall, dividing neighbourhoods into small numbered zones. Engineers huddle along the length of a table strewn with forms detailing damage to individual properties from the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Since the ceasefire two weeks ago, Construction Jihad has moved into high gear, dispatching agents to areas affected by the conflict to measure the damage—they estimate 15,000 properties were destroyed or damaged—and send the forms back to this central office. This information is entered into computers, before people are paid compensation from the party itself, or assisted with reconstruction. Construction Jihad is part of a social network, including schools, hospitals, and a banking institution, that was critical to Hezbollah’s ability to fight Israeli troops during the occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s.54

  From a purely military standpoint, many analysts consider that Hezbollah performed well in the 2006 ground war.55 In an example of the “style points” phenomenon that I mentioned in the case of Mumbai, Hezbollah achieved military credibility simply because, despite Israel’s best efforts, the organization succeeded in launching thousands of rockets against northern Israel throughout the war, surprising both Israeli and international analysts with the sophistication of its capabilities and its ability to stockpile munitions.56 The Israeli government’s Winograd Commission subsequently acknowledged several problems in the IDF’s execution of the war, and General Daniel Halutz, the IDF chief of staff, was forced to resign as a result. Nevertheless, Israeli air superiority (aided by intelligence and precision munitions from the United States) meant that the final military outcome was at least a draw, if not a clear-cut defeat for Hezbollah. But the political outcome of the war left Hezbollah considerably strengthened in Lebanon, largely because the organization leveraged its nonmilitary capabilities (those residing in the persuasive and administrative parts of the spectrum, such as Construction Jihad) to bounce back quickly from its military losses.

  Evolving Traditionalists

  The Afghan Taliban lie somewhere between the two extremes of AQ I and Hezbollah, though their recent performance puts them much closer to the Hezbollah end of the scale than to AQ I. At the same time, the history of the Taliban’s relationship with the population also illustrates how groups can evolve over time. We’ve already noted how the Taliban got its start as a vigilante law-and-order movement opposing the depredations of the warlords after the Soviets left Afghanistan. We’ve
also examined the relatively effective Taliban local governance presence today in many contested districts of Afghanistan, and the way that Taliban local cells use governance, dispute resolution, mediation, and essential services to mobilize and manipulate populations in these areas.

  It’s worth noting, however, that the Taliban’s local governance performance today, as an insurgency, is markedly different from—and, in fact, significantly better than—its performance as the actual government during the five-year Taliban regime between September 1996 and 2001. During its period in government, the Taliban moved its capital from Kabul to Kandahar and ignored central ministries, international relations, economic development, and the broader functions of the state, focusing instead on issuing religious edicts and preventing un-Islamic behavior.

  The following Taliban edict, issued nine weeks after the movement seized Kabul, became a key document in the history of the Taliban’s approach to governance. It established the set of behavioral norms to be enforced by the Taliban religious police, the Directorate for Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil (Amr bil Maroof wa Nahi Anil Munkar). The edict was one of the first public declarations of the normative system that the Taliban imposed on Afghans under its control. It’s worth quoting in full, as it represents a catalog of the issues in which the regime was interested, and defines the boundaries of safe and unsafe behavior for the population:

  Islamic State of Afghanistan

  General Presidency of Amr Bil Marof Wa Nai Az Munkir

  Administration Department

  To: The received letter from the Cultural and Social Affairs Department of General Presidency of Islamic State of Afghanistan No. 6240 dated 26.09.1375 [December 16, 1996] states that:

  The rules and regulations of Amr Bil Marof Wa Nai Az Munkir are to be distributed via your office to all whom it may concern for implementation.

  1.To prevent sedition and uncovered females: No drivers are allowed to pick up females who are using Iranian burqa. In the case of violation the driver will be imprisoned. If such kinds of female are observed in the street, their houses will be found and their husbands punished. If the women use stimulating and attractive clothes and there is no close male relative with them, the drivers should not pick them up.

  2.To prevent music: To be broadcast by the public information resources. In shops, hotels, vehicles and rickshaws cassettes and music are prohibited. This matter should be monitored within five days. If any music cassette is found in a shop, the shopkeeper should be imprisoned and the shop locked. If five people guarantee, the shop could be opened and the criminal released later. If a cassette is found in a vehicle, the vehicle and the driver will be imprisoned. If five people guarantee, the vehicle will be released and the criminal released later.

  3.To prevent beard shaving and cutting: To be broadcast by the public information resources. After one and a half months if any one is observed who has shaved and/or cut his beard, he should be arrested and imprisoned until his beard gets bushy.

  4.To prevent not praying and [to] order gathering [for] prayer at the bazaar: To be broadcast by the public information resources that the prayers should be done on their due times in all districts. The exact prayer time will be announced by the Amr Bil Marof Wa Nai Az Munkir department. Fifteen minutes prior to prayer time the front of the mosque, where the water facilities and amenities are available, should be blocked and transportation should be strictly prohibited and all people are obliged to go to the mosque. At the prayer time this matter should be monitored. If young people are seen in the shops they will be immediately imprisoned. If five people guarantee, the person should be released, otherwise the criminal will be imprisoned for ten days.

  5.To prevent keeping pigeons and playing with birds: To be broadcast by the public information resources that within ten days this habit/hobby should stop. After ten days this matter should be monitored and the pigeons and any other [pet] birds should be killed.

  6.To eradicate the use of addiction and its users: Addicts should be imprisoned and investigation made to find the supplier and the shop. The shop should be locked and both criminals (the owner and the user) should be imprisoned and punished.

  7.To prevent kite flying: First should be broadcast by the public information resources advising the people of its useless consequences such as betting, death of children and their deprivation from education. The kite shops in the city should be abolished.

  8.To prevent idolatry: To be broadcast by the public information resources that in vehicles, shops, room, hotels and any other places pictures/portraits should be abolished. The monitors should tear up all pictures in the above places. This matter should be announced to all transport representatives. The vehicle will be stopped if any idol is found in the vehicle.

  9.To prevent gambling: In collaboration with the security police the main centres should be found and the gamblers imprisoned for one month.

  10.To prevent British and American hairstyles: To be broadcast by the public information resources that people with long hair should be arrested and taken to the Amr Bil Marof Wa Nai Az Munkir department to shave their hair. The criminal has to pay the barber.

  11.To prevent interest charges on loans, charges on changing small denomination notes and charges on money orders: All money exchangers should be informed that the above three types of exchanging money are prohibited in Islam. In the case of violation the criminal will be imprisoned for a long time.

  12.To prevent washing clothes by young ladies along the water streams in the city: It should be announced in all mosques and the matter should monitored. Violator ladies should be picked up with respectful Islamic manner, taken to their houses and their husbands severely punished.

  13.To prevent music and dances in wedding parties: To be broadcast by the public information resources that the above two things should be prevented. In the case of violation the head of the family will be arrested and punished.

  14.To prevent the playing of music drums: First the prohibition of this action to be announced to the people. If anybody does this then the religious elders can decide about it.

  15.To prevent sewing ladies’ cloth and taking female body measures by tailors: If women or fashion magazines are seen in the shop the tailor should be imprisoned.

  16.To prevent sorcery: All the related books should be burnt and the magician should be imprisoned until his repentance.

  The above issues are stated and you are requested, according to your job responsibilities, to implement and inform your related organizations and units.

  Regards,

  Mawlavi Enayatullah Baligh

  Deputy Minister

  General Presidency of Amr Bil Marof Wa Nai Az Munkir57

  This edict is the basis for the often-quoted claim that the Taliban banned music, kite flying, long hair, and so on. All these things are certainly covered in the decree, but it’s worth noting that the edict’s deeper purpose is to regulate an entire set of behaviors and social relationships (especially between the sexes) and thereby establish a normative system with which the movement could control the population. The decree lays down the boundaries of acceptable behavior so that, by implication, behavior that falls within the rules will not be punished. It gives a population, terrorized by years of violent chaos, a clear understanding of how to be safe—something that’s reassuring and comforting, irrespective of the content of the rules themselves. Note that in many cases husbands or heads of households are to be punished for infractions on the part of female family members, rather than the women themselves—a measure that effectively delegates enforcement of these rules to male heads of households, relieving the Taliban of part of the burden of enforcement, making men complicit in the ownership of the rule set, and thus reducing the Taliban’s transaction costs in enforcing the rules. It also provides a measure of protection to women, guaranteeing that family members (ra
ther than outsiders or strangers) will stand as an intermediary between the women and the Taliban state. Likewise, in articles 2 and 4, the community is given an enforcement role via the stipulation that rule breakers can be released or spared from punishment “if five people guarantee.”

  This rule setting and enforcement system was one of two major Taliban governance behaviors; the other was creating a monopoly of force. The religious police operated alongside the Taliban’s security police, whose primary role was to disarm the population so as to establish a monopoly of force for the Taliban regime. As the Afghan writer Nushin Arbabzadah points out, when the Taliban captured Kabul, they didn’t “make use of their unspoken [customary] right to pillage and loot. They searched the conquered populations’ homes, but only to confiscate weapons and so ensure a monopoly of violence for their state. The Taliban were exceedingly ignorant—which made them cruel—but there’s no doubt that they saw jihad as a means to establish a state rather than legitimacy to pillage a conquered territory. Building a state was of utmost importance to the Taliban because without it the sharia law could not be enforced. . . . With the Taliban, rural Afghans came to power, ruling over the more sophisticated urban populations.”58

  Arbabzadah’s comment here echoes that of Nuruddin Farah in Chapter 2 on what happened in Mogadishu when the urbophobic “country cousins” captured the city and controlled its population. In Kabul, the rural Taliban government’s behavior between 1996 and 2001 showed a similar disdain for the urban population and a distrust of the capital’s cosmopolitan and worldly traditions—they dropped most of the traditions of Afghan courtesy and moved their capital out of Kabul and back to Kandahar, in part to avoid the polluting effect of governing from the ancient royal capital.59 Their primary goal was to impose behavioral control over the urban population and establish a monopoly of force, not to govern the city or develop its institutions or economy.