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... All identities, without exception, have been socially constructed: the Han, the Burman, the American, the Danish, all of them ... To the degree that the identity is stigmatized by the larger state or society, it is likely to become for many a resistant and defiant identity. Here invented identities combine with self-making of a heroic kind, in which such identifications become a badge of honor ...
Professor James C. Scott, “The Art of Not Being Governed” — (pp. xii-iii.)
By Mike Smith
10th of June 2017
The term “Criminal Insurgency” and the links between organised crime, gangs, smugglers and an insurgency are not new. The term “Criminal Insurgency” was coined by the renowned anti terrorism author and policeman John P. Sullivan, contributor on, “Small Wars Journal”.
Author Stephen Graham talked about ”Military Urbanism” when he explained the rise of third world violence in first world colonial countries in “Foucalt’s Boomerang”.
Nevertheless, these “Military Urbanism” and “Criminal Insurgency” phenomena are what can be seen taking over on the Cape Flats, in black townships and predominantly white suburbs of South Africa where apparently none-state armed groups (secretly supported by the state) prey on the local population.
Why do local populations support insurgents?
Professor Stathis Kalyvas, professor of Political Science at Yale University, wrote in his 2006 book, ”The Logic of Violence in Civil War“ that we intuitively assume that insurgents become strong in a particular area, because the people support their cause or agree with their ideology, when in fact evidence shows that the exact opposite is true. People start supporting a group’s ideology in places where that group is ALREADY strong.
Kalyvas argued that as conflict continue, people increasingly collaborate with whatever armed actor (insurgents or normative government) controls that area, “Because political actors who enjoy substantial territorial control can protect civilians who live in the territory-both from their rivals and themselves-giving survival orientated civilians a strong incentive to cooperate with them, irrespective of their true or initial preferences. In other words, support follows strength, not vice versa.
How the insurgent establishes competitive control.
Previously I mentioned David Kilcullen’s “Fishtrap” analogy in setting up a “competitive system of control” and how the insurgents draw the population in and make it extremely difficult for them to leave, but how does it actually work in practice?
In its basic form the insurgent starts with providing a service in the absence of government service or when the government service is unobtainable due to extremely slow bureaucratic systems or simply being unaffordable.
For instance, poor people in rural areas are always standing on their toes to keep their heads above water and do not have money for lawyers, but still often need to solve disputes about grazing, land ownership or livestock ownership. Further, they do not have the means of transport, nor the time to travel to cities to see a lawyer, attend a court case that can drag out over months or years, etc.
In such a case the insurgent enters as a mediator in solving a dispute. It is quick, it is easy, it is cheap and the matter is settled.
However when the non combatant civilian goes over the head or around the judicial system and signs a piece of paper by the insurgent he is essentially committing a crime and at the same time accepting the authority of the insurgent. Now being a criminal himself, he is alienated from the normative government system.
The insurgents draw them into more and more illegal activities, killing innocent people, partaking in rape, more debt, and eventually they cannot escape.
The insurgents also practice “racketeering” by creating the very disease they offer to cure. Rape, assault, murder, etc...then charging protection fees to offer protection. In Jamaica the Dons of the garrisons even charge expats protection money for their families left behind.
Nevertheless, we see the same kind of alienation with warlords scarring child soldiers in Africa or prison gang members’ tattoos...the idea is that you are scared for life, there is no turning back. You are one of them and alienated from the government.
The insurgents eventually start making their own rules and laws, such as the Taliban edict in which they banned music, flying kites, etc...
Breaking the rules are severely punished, but the insurgent does not just use coercion, fear and punishment, because this will eventually backfire on him.
They also use an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. Lending people money, donating money to old people, donating to schools etc are all forms of luring the population into the fish trap. Benifits are that they can then prescribe what gets taught at school and if a teacher does not comply, is intimidated, beaten or murdered.
This system might not be popular, but it works, because it is predictable.
Think about road users. South Africa has one of the highest road fatality rates in the world with 25 fatalities for every 100,000 of the population per year. Latest statistics show an annual death rate of more than 13,000 per year. That is over a 1000 road deaths per month.
You would think that in such a case people would hardly leave their homes or set foot in a car. This is however not the case, because although it is dangerous, it is not chaotic and people feel secure due to the rules.
There is a designated side of the road you drive on. There are speed limits, road signs, etc, but to uphold these rules there is an armed actor in the form of the traffic police, backed up by a court and justice system to dish out sanctions, punishment.
People know that those who stick to the rules are relatively safe. Those who don’t, are punished. People do not like uncertainty and this predictability gives them a sense of security.
The system might not be popular...you do not need to like the policeman or the rule, but you follow the rules, because it is predictable. Predictability trumps popularity every time.
Classical COIN strategies.
The COIN tactics of rounding the locals up and interning them so that the insurgents cannot hide amongst them were behind the rationale of the British in the Anglo Boer War...with disastrous results. 34,000 Boer women and children died in these camps.
Therefore the strategy of WHAM (winning hearts and minds) was developed with very limited success. WHAM did not work in Indochina/ Vietnam and certainly did not work in Namibia. Despite the best efforts of the SADF in building schools and clinics for the locals in Ovamboland and educating and treating them free, in the 1989 general elections, 92% of the Ovambos voted for SWAPO.
Persuasions by winning hearts and minds alone are not enough.
With WHAM the idea is to win the local population (PB’s, Plaaslike Bevolking) over to your side so that they give you information and do not support or hide the insurgents.
However the counter insurgent cannot rely on this strategy alone, because somewhere along the line somebody is going to hold a gun against the head of a PB and ask, “Who do you support now?”
At that point coercion trumps persuasion.
How do people react under insurgent conditions?
One would think that people living in a theatre of an insurgency would just all flee. This is true and some do indeed flee.
However, most people stay.
In fact it is not in the interest of the insurgents to chase the local population out if they can hide amongst them.
Fleeing and staying often creates accusations of “cowardice” against those who have fled, and “stupidity” and “collaborating” against those who have stayed, because the ones who stay, very seldom fight back against the insurgents or even support or help those fighting back against the insurgency.
Normally in an insurgency you have three groups: The insurgents, the counter insurgents and the 98% of people who just want to get on with their daily lives.
Why do people not all fight back against the insurgents?
Professor James C. Scott of Yale University explained it in 1976 when he discussed subsistence farmers in South East Asia in his work “The moral economy of the peasant; Rebellion and subsistence in South East Asia”.
Said Scott: “There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to his neck in water, so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him.”
We see the same effect with the whites of South Africa who are basically living on the subsistence margin. They are overtaxed, marginalised economically and just trying to survive from day to day.
Under such conditions where the downside risk of failure is so much greater than the upside potential of success, people tend to become extremely “risk averse”.
For this reason, marginalised people become experts at fine calculations of risk and tend to always minimise risk, maximise predictability and limit the influence of outsiders such as governments.
In high risk environments, where you have a criminal insurgency, criminal networks and gang conflicts – bringing the risk of extreme violence, death and major property damage into the equation – any miscalculation of risk can be fatal.
Where people experience high levels of violence, you will find that they become experts at navigating a complex and ever changing set of choices, always seeking to maintain safety, minimise risk, maximise profit, improve their situation and resist or exploit external control.
David Kilcullen, in “Out of the Mountains” (page 163) noted seven survival strategies of non combatant civilians living in insurgency theatres that he has observed. These strategies follow below and it is very important that we take note of them, because then we can understand our own and our neighbours’ behaviour in times of criminal insurgencies and or civil wars.
We can then maybe stop bullshit accusations of “cowardice” and “collaboration” and concentrate on what needs to be done to survive.
If we can predict how people might behave then we can take the necessary steps and set contingencies in place to first survive, then to seize the initiative away from the insurgents and lastly, to oust them.
1. Fleeing
Contrary to what people might think, fleeing is NOT the first response. Fleeing is an extreme response to chaotic violence. People’s wealth is in their land, in their business and moving away might mean losing everything.
We also find that it is very seldom that entire families leave. Mostly individuals will emigrate, take their partner and children along, but often will leave siblings and parents behind.
2. Passivity
Occurs in people who have been traumatised by extreme violence. It is an extreme reluctance to take any kind of action or accept responsibility for any decision whatsoever. The argument is that aking any initiative might expose yourself and get you killed.
3. Autarky
From the Greek word for "self-sufficiency". Autarky is an extreme form of neutrality and independence that denies allegiance to anyone or anything outside the personal and local level. It is not entirely defensive and people might even show externally agressive behaviour aimed at deterring interference.
4. Hedging
This means simultaneously supporting all sides. It is one of the most common survival strategies. Like a better laying an across the board bet on a horse race or a corporation donating to opposing politician’s campaigns. It can be risky if one side finds out that you have supported their opponents as well, but then you can always claim that your opposing support was extorted by force. In Afghanistan it is quite common for a family to have one son in the Taliban and another in the Afghan Army. It is an insurance policy against a victory by either side.
5. Swinging
Similar to hedging, but instead of supporting all sides at the same time, you support whoever is the winner at the time. This involves periodic, carefully timed switching of sides. It is very risky and populations need to learn to switch sides at just the right moment so as not to be caught on the losing side. If hedging is like promiscuous sleeping around, swinging is like serial monogamy. Critical here is judging the possible amount of violence you can expect from one side or the other. Violence trumps benefits. If a gang threatens to kill you whilst the police is trying to win you back, you are going to support the gang as the prospect of being killed outweighs the benefit of supporting the police.
6. Commitment
This involves picking one side or actor and depending on that side for protection and support only. You are effectively nailing your colours to the mast and it carries a high degree of risk. Therefore this strategy is not very popular and very seldom chosen willingly. One finds this mostly amongst ethnic or religious minorities where they have no other choice. Coptic Christians in Egypt, Assyrian Christians in Iraq, Whites in South Africa, etc.
7. Self arming
The final strategic option for a population at risk in an insurgent theatre according to David Kilcullen is self arming. It involves taking an active, armed role in the conflict, coming off the sidelines to become involved in the armed struggle for control and shedding any pretence of noncombatant status.
Instead of choosing any side and relying on any of them for protection, such a population gives up its civil status and arms itself instead, trains and relies on itself for protection.
This is successful because it smashes the subjective perception that the population is a soft target. Such a strategy may deter an armed group altogether, or (more likely) may make the population that adopts it less likely to suffer predation (attacks, preying and plundering) than some other group in the same area that is less well armed. The parasitic criminal insurgents always tend to seek out the path of less resistance and seek to control those who choose not to fight back.
What else can we do?
In his book “Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts” (1990) Professor James C. Scott (Yale) tells us that groups under domination—from bonded labor to sexual violence—thus cannot be understood merely by their public actions, which may on the surface appear acquiescent (ready to accept something without protest, or to do what someone else wants).
In order to study the systems of domination, careful attention is paid to what lies beneath the surface of evident, public behaviour.
In public, those that are oppressed accept their domination, but they always question their domination offstage.
Professor James C. Scott gives us another form of resistance against domination in his work “Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985)”.
Continuous everyday resistance shows that a population has not consented to dominance by an armed actor (government or insurgent) and it keeps the morale high. This daily defiance and resistance is also a central strategy of Dr. Gene Sharp’s theory of Non-violent Resistance.