Nonstate Actors in Intrastate Conflicts

1. The ‘Modern Sherwood Forest’: Theoretical and Practical Challenges

C h a p t e r 1 The “Modern Sherwood Forest”: Theoretical and Practical Challenges Oren Barak and Chanan Cohen Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake? Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake, Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn, Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn. Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves, Calling as he used to call, faint and far away, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day. —Alfred Noyes, “A Song of Sherwood” (1913) Bassam Ahmad Kanj, a Sunni Muslim, was born in 1964 in a small village in the al-Dinniyeh region of North Lebanon. In 1985 he left for the United States and studied in Boston. There, he was influenced by the conferences on Jihad in Afghanistan, organized by sympathizers of the Islamic cause in that country . In 1989, Kanj left the United States for Pakistan, where he underwent military training. He crossed the border to Afghanistan and joined the “Arab Afghans”: the Arab volunteers who came to fight the Soviet “infidels” alongside the local mujahidin. In Afghanistan, Kanj developed close ties with other Arab Afghans—including Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, future The “Modern Sherwood Forest” 13 leaders of Al Qaeda. In 1991, Kanj returned to Lebanon to spread the word of Jihad, and during the next three years he fought alongside the Muslim militias in Bosnia. Chechnya was supposed to be the next stop in his quest, but the office in charge of recruiting Arabs volunteers for Chechnya rejected him and he returned to Lebanon. There, he began setting up training camps in North Lebanon and was assisted by radical Islamic activists in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh. In less than a year, Kanj recruited more than two hundred young militants. In late 1999, Kanj and his group attacked the Lebanese army; after six days of fighting, which left scores of people dead, they were defeated, resulting in Kanj’s death (Saab and Ranstrop 2007: 832–33). What is striking in this case is how a nonstate actor was able to move with relative ease from one zone of statelessness to another and use violence against his rivals in the name of a universal ideology—Jihad. This phenomenon , however, is by no means unique: Al Qaeda, which carried out the terrorist attacks of 9/11, is probably the most best-known example of a violent transborder nonstate actor (VITNA) that has emerged in a zone of statelessness (Afghanistan) and espoused a universal ideology (Jihad). But other VITNAs currently operate in places such as Iraq, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Algeria, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The historical record, too, provides several relevant examples: Andrzej Tadeusz Kościuszko, the Polish army officer who came to the help of the American colonists during the Revolutionary War; Lord Byron, the English poet who fought alongside the Greek nationalists in their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire ; British author George Orwell and American author Ernest Hemingway, who joined the Spanish Republic in its war against General Franco and his fascist and Nazi allies; Fawzi al-Qawuqji, the former Ottoman army officer who fought against British forces and Zionist Jews in Palestine. In general, contemporary research considers these and other VITNAs from one of three perspectives. The first looks into the motivations, organization , and modus operandi of terrorist movements and networks (i.e., of particular types of VITNAs).1 The second asks how the emergence and persistence of “failed states” and “ungoverned territories” help sustain and sometimes intensify violent transborder nonstate action.2 Finally, a third research trend emphasizestheroleoftransnationalidentities —especiallyethnicandreligious—in a globalizing world, which, according to their view, are sometimes manifested in nonstate violent action.3 It is clear, however, that concepts such as “failed states” (or “ungoverned 14 Oren Barak and Chanan Cohen territories”), “international terrorism,” and “transnational identities” are all insufficient when attempting to explain this phenomenon. First, not every failed state and ungoverned territory has attracted VITNAs or become a cause célèbre for them. In fact, most of these territories elicit little international attention. Second, the term “international terrorism” not only is politically charged—no VITNA would describe itself in this way—but also relates to individuals and groups that operate in various settings, including functioning states. Finally, transnational identities are...