A common feature of contemporary intrastate conflicts is that they are fought by a multitude of coercive organisations[1] with different loyalties, capabilities and objectives. In the Levant, for example, one can think of Iraq’s Al-Hashd al-Sha’abi, an amalgam of over 50 coercive organisations that operate de jure inside the state and de facto partially outside of it.[2] One can also consider the dozens of foreign and Syrian militias loyal to President Assad, including the Shabiha (originally smuggling gangs), Syrian ‘branches’ of Iraq’s Hashd or Afghan voluntary militias. In addition, there is the bewildering universe of hundreds of Syrian opposition groups ranging from the moderately conservative Free Syrian Army to the more radical Islamist Ahrar al-Sham and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Then there are various manifestations of Kurdish militancy: the YPG (Syria) as popular militia; the Peshmerga (Iraq) as state-sanctioned armed factions of different Kurdish political parties; and the PKK (Turkey) as largely a guerrilla force. Finally, there are organisations – usually extremist in their orientation – that have come to operate globally, such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). If one broadens the analytical net to include more minor organisations or to encompass the wider Middle East (e.g. Yemen, Libya or Egypt), there are many more examples of coercive organisations.[3]
This proliferation of coercive organisations, commonly restricted to the subset of ‘armed groups’, is not uniquely associated with the Arab uprisings. Consider, for example: the many paramilitary organisations of the Yugoslav wars (1991–1995); the numerous rebel and paramilitary organisations active during the two Congo wars (1996–1997 and 1998–2003) and in the eastern DRC today; the proliferation of coercive organisations in Somalia after the fall of the Barré regime in 1991; the mujahedeen and other armed factions in Afghanistan since 1979; and the longstanding presence of coercive organisations, including extremist and criminal groups, throughout the Sahel.[4] Nevertheless, the existence and presence of such organisations has arguably become more visible and influential since 2011.
What the examples above highlight is that coercive organisations grow, emerge and proliferate more easily under conditions of severe political contestation. When a political order that features both formal and informal components of rule and faces disruption because of major internal and/or external challenges to its unaltered continuation – such as sustained civil protest, elite strife or foreign invasion – coercive organisations are likely to grow and proliferate either to defend the existing political order or to challenge it. Although coercive organisations themselves are not necessarily part of the initial challenge to a prevailing political order, they are often a mitigating response to[5] or an amplification of[6] it. They are usually not created from scratch but based on pre-existing social structures and power relations that enable mobilisation under particular conditions.[7]
In short, coercive organisations emerge and thrive somewhere between sociopolitical contestation and violent conflict – when political order weakens without fully collapsing, opportunities for power acquisition and redistribution increase, and the need for self-protection grows. Once new coercive organisations are there, they become part of the conflict tapestry as well as the post-conflict political order, since they produce new sources of protection and/or violence that subsequently legitimise their permanence and encourage their growth.[8] Cause and effect become hard to untangle: contemporary violent conflicts are protracted in part because coercive organisations proliferate easily under conditions of political disorder, while their existence tends to cause further destabilisation. For this reason, coercive organisations can be viewed as manifestations of severe contestation in political orders with formal and informal components of rule, as catalysts of violent conflict, and as elements of both wartime and post-conflict political orders.
This report assesses how new coercive organisations arise, what (and whose) purpose they serve, how they develop and – key from a policy perspective – what influence they have on state development. To reduce state-centric bias in the analysis of violence, we use the term coercive organisation, which puts governmental and paramilitary (i.e., quasi-governmental) forces, as well as various types of organisation that oppose the government or state, on the same continuum as peer competitors. We consider coercive organisations as mechanisms to block changes in the existing political order that are not aligned with the interests of those forming such organisations – governmental actors or otherwise – and/or to effect changes in the political order that align with their interests. We focus our discussion on the Levant because of the proliferation of coercive organisations in Syria and Iraq since 2011 and because concrete cases help to connect conceptual discussions with reality.[9]
The report offers an empirical – rather than normative – framework to analyse the creation, development and role of coercive organisations in relation to state development. Coercive organisations are key tools in processes of contestation that seek to reconfigure political order. Greater awareness of their functionality can help make expectations, and the interventions they give rise to, more realistic about the kind of political order that might emerge and at what point in time.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 conceptualises the notion of a coercive organisation and develops a typology. Section 3 examines when coercive organisations emerge and to what purpose. Next, Section 4 analyses the factors driving the development of coercive organisations and identifies common dynamics between governmental and hybrid coercive organisations. By way of conclusion, Section 5 offers a few practical reflections on how policy interventions can better engage with hybrid coercive organisations.