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Networks and Armies: Structuring

Rebellion in Colombia and Afghanistan
a b
Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín & Antonio Giustozzi
a
Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales,
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, D.C., Colombia
b
Department of Crisis States Research Centre, The London School of
Economics, London, UK
Published online: 16 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín & Antonio Giustozzi (2010): Networks and Armies:
Structuring Rebellion in Colombia and Afghanistan, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 33:9, 836-853

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 Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 33:836–853, 2010
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1057-610X print / 1521-0731 online
DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2010.501425

Networks and Armies: Structuring Rebellion

in Colombia and Afghanistan

FRANCISCO GUTIÉRREZ SANÍN

Instituto de Estudios Polı́ticos y Relaciones Internacionales
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Bogotá, D.C., Colombia
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ANTONIO GIUSTOZZI
Department of Crisis States Research Centre
The London School of Economics
London, UK

Until recently, the importance of organizational factors in the understanding of the

variance of the behavior of state challengers had not been recognized. New studies
and theories have underscored its crucial character. This article contends that chal-
lengers can be placed in a continuum constituted by two opposed polar types, army
like and network associations, and compare the Afghan Taliban’s and the Colom-
bian Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia—FARC)’s organizational principles from this point of view. The main claim is
that organizationally inspired explanations behave much better than resource inspired
ones when accounting for the differences between the Taliban and the FARC.

The qualitative, small N, comparison of contemporary civil conflicts is still in its cradle.
By far and large, the main laboratory for theory building and testing has been case studies,
on the one hand, or quantitative cross-national investigations, on the other. Every brand of
comparative study has its strengths and weaknesses. Probably the main promise of small Ns
is their capacity of identifying explanatory mechanisms that travel across contexts, which
by definition the other two varieties cannot do well.1
An area in which the level of understanding is still very low is the cause and effect of
the organizational variety of non state violent political associations. Be it rebels or coun-
terinsurgents, it can be observed with the naked eye that they are structured in very many
different ways and obey contrasting organizational dynamics. Until relatively recently, this
maze of patterns and hierarchies aroused no intellectual interest. The “economic turn” in the
analysis of civil wars assumed that all rebeland counterinsurgent—entities were basically
identical, and faced the same strategic challenges (Gutiérrez 2008). From bottom to top they

Received 30 October 2009; accepted 18 January 2010.

This article presents Crisis States Programme research results.
Address correspondence to Francisco Gutiérrez Sanı́n, Researcher, Instituto de Estudios Polı́ticos
y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Carrera 7 no. 83-36, Apartamento
202, Bogotá D.C., Colombia. E-mail: fgutiers2002@yahoo.com

836
 Networks and Armies 837

were driven by greed, and organizational variety was thus no more than an epiphenomenon,
sometimes conscious eye-wash (Collier and Hoeffler 1998). It was typical of analyses of
this type to speak about THE insurgent or THE terrorist organization (Chai 1993), which
reveals quite neatly which was the hidden assumption of the model. Indeed, with the in-
creasing “distress of the [determinist] paradigm”—as christened by the Journal of Conflict
Resolution, 2005—that saw in civil conflict the unmediated expression of the economy
of primary commodities,2 new avenues of reflection opened. Gates (2002) pioneered the
interest in organizational structure, followed by a few others. Gradually, different studies
started to reveal that the basic assumption was flawed (Gutiérrez 2008; Johnston 2008), and
that organizational variation was not only important but could appear at both sides of the
equation (as a meaningful outcome, but also as a cause of meaningful effects). The interest
in organizations seems to be gaining momentum.
Weinstein’s justly celebrated investigation (2006) is both small N and organization fo-
cused. Weinstein, a student who quite correctly has emphasized the need to go beyond the
simple greed–grievance dichotomy, hypothesized that the behavior of nonstate armed orga-
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nizations vis-à-vis the civilian population is a function of their economic base (Weinstein
2006). The mechanism he proposes to explain such functional dependency is a varia-
tion of the “resource curse.” When those organizations can offer their recruits material
benefits and income independently from their social base, bad—self regarding, greed
oriented—militants crowd out good ones—ideological, altruistic—since they depend no
more on the support of the population (2006). The main hunch behind Weinstein’s elabora-
tion seems to be the following. Groups strategically dependent from civilians must refrain
from exercising violence against them. Groups independent from civilians not only have
the latitude to be violent, but—by attracting the wrong type of personnel—tend to be so.
Although Weinstein’s seminal work has stirred a fair amount of discussion, this con-
clusion remains unchallenged. The nearer to civil society, the better; the more permeable
to dynamics from below, the better. The authors find this proposition problematic, both
empirically and analytically. Here, based also on a small N qualitative comparison between
Afghanistan’s Taliban and Colombia’s Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC), the authors propose an alternative,
equally simple, story. There are two extreme poles behind the organizational variety of
nonstate violent political associations: the army and the network.3 The army maximizes
its separation from civilians, physically (placing its members in separate camps and lo-
cales), symbolically (by using insignias, uniforms, etc.), and hierarchically (creating new
structures that are independent of the natural ones encountered in the peasant world). The
network maximizes its integration with civilians, adopting already existing hierarchies, and
merging with them physically and symbolically. It should be noted here that the article
refers to the reliance on networks as the primary mode of organization of a group; of course
all kinds of social and political groups use networking to some degree, in combination with
other organizational forms. For an excellent analysis of the evolutions of networks in civil
work contexts, see Wood (2010). For armies, the condition of survival is internal cohesion,
and so allowing direct access of individual fighters or of the middle rank to rents, or permit-
ting internecine confrontations, is suicidal. For networks, the condition of survival is the
capacity to broaden their social base, and so must offer a rich set of incentives to increase
not only its membership but also its constituency. They can pay inclusiveness with internal
disorder. Armies and networks are driven by two different organizational principles, and
have strengths and weaknesses (both from the normative and the strategic point of view).
There are tradeoffs between networks and armies, not a clear cut superiority of one over
the other.
 838 F. Gutiérrez Sanı́n and A. Giustozzi

If this holds, then the Taliban are very near the network pole and the FARC near the
army one. Comparing these two groups has several crucial advantages. First, Colombian
and Afghan rebellions are longstanding, so there has been enough time for patterns and
structures to solidify. Second, both groups have been relatively successful, in that they have
survived the offensive of adversaries that hold a huge technological superiority. Third, they
exhibit commonalities and differences that are relevant for this story. Both are substantially
funded by narcotrafficking. Both are violent and repressive, but within bounds. At the same
time, the Taliban are a deeply rooted movement, while the FARC suffer from chronic isola-
tion. Here, proximity to civil society is not related either to the existence of an independent
resource base nor to the quality of the fighters. Underlying organizational principles explain
much better the similarities and differences.
But what causes the adoption of those principles? It would be tempting to assert that,
since the Colombian conflict takes place at a higher level of development and thus the FARC
had to face a tougher enemy at least until foreign military contingents got heavily involved
in the Afghan counterinsurgency effort from 2006 onward, the path taken by survivors in
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long conflicts depends on what kinds of relation do they have with which state. If this
relation is confrontational, and the national state is not that fragile, the only viable path is
army building; otherwise, the best option is network. This might be a working hypothesis,
but the actual landscape is much hazier. At any rate, the existence of two poles introduces
a first layer of order into the explanation of organizational variety, and highlights the tough
tradeoffs that rebel leaders face when trying to launch and sustain their undertakings.
The exposition is organized in the following manner. The first section grounds the
comparison, sketching some key differences between the two countries and then describing
the trajectories of both rebellions. The second section compares the Taliban and the FARC
from five points of view: Military hierarchy, membership and discipline, ideology, funding,
and relation with civil society. Not only do the authors find that in all regards the Taliban
is much nearer the network pole and the FARC close to the army one, but that these
characteristics are inter-related (i.e., the FARC military hierarchy would not work for a
group that recruits as the Taliban do, and vice versa).

Contexts

Two Wars, Two Worlds

The Afghan and Colombian conflicts are strikingly similar in a couple of simple, but crucial,
senses. They are both basically rural. They are protracted. They are fed by rents coming
from illicit economies: poppy crops, taxation of economic resources, and external funding
in Afghanistan, and coca crops in Colombia not only fund the war, but also open windows
of opportunity for rebels and counterinsurgents to take hold of a regulatory activity that, by
definition, the state will not fulfill.
At the same time, both conflicts take place in very different environments. The states,
economies, and insurgencies4 of both countries are different. The level of development of
Colombia is medium low, while that of Afghanistan is low (actually, it is a World Bank
LICUS, Low Income Country Under Stress). Colombia has nearly ten times the income per
capita of Afghanistan. Both states have been considered weak (respectively, fragile), but
in different senses. The Colombian conflict has been much more prolonged, and there are
big chunks of its territory that are under the influence of illegal actors (of different types,
from narcos to guerrillas).5 It has invested much less—proportionally—than Afghanistan in
security and defense. Even now, when Colombia has nearly duplicated its military budget
 Networks and Armies 839

with respect to its historical average, Afghanistan’s investment—as a percentage of its Gross
National Product (GNP)—in the issue is almost the double. But Colombia’s state never faced
a large-scale breakdown, as the Afghan state experienced in the 1990s. Colombia has had
a continuously existing army, and a small but relatively solid bureaucracy and technocracy.
In Colombia the state never ceased working as a modern bureaucratic apparatus, and a
clear cut line of command linking the civilian leadership and the Army. Nothing of the sort
can be predicated of Afghanistan. The conflicts of both countries have triggered forms of
international intervention, but different in nature and in degree. Colombia became a major
target of U.S. military aid, but Afghanistan suffered two major military interventions (by
the Soviet Union, and United States and allies; see later) in the last three decades.
Naturally, all these factors have shaped the trajectory of both rebellions. Indeed, both are
rural, but while the majority of Afghans live in the countryside, the majority of Colombians
live in the cities. The fact that the Afghan guerrilla has fought against a foreign army gives
it a strong nationalist, sometimes xenophobic, motive and ethos, which its Colombian peers
basically lack. Furthermore, the low level of development of Afghanistan, and the lack of
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continuity of its state as a unitary entity, has opened several windows of opportunity for
today’s insurgents, who actually took power in Kabul between 1996 and 2001. Colombia
has never been near an insurgent takeover.
Afghanistan’s is a society very weakly integrated in a national framework, if at all.
Hence the importance of social networks, local leaders, and “men of influence.” However,
it is also important to point out that this does not necessarily imply that any political group
operating in this environment has to identify its organizational structure with the network
model. Even in Afghanistan itself more heavily structured and centralized groups have
operated with a substantial degree of success. For example, Hizb-i Islami in the 1980s and
early 1990s adopted a substantially Leninist model of organization and was for most of the
1980s the leading anti-Soviet resistance group.
The next sections sketch separately the struggle in each country, and its main
participants.

Afghanistan
The Afghan conflict started in 1978 and dramatically accelerated in 1980 following the entry
of Soviet troops in December 1979. It then knew several phases of civil war, first between
the pro-Soviet government and the predominantly Islamist opposition (1989–1992), then
among various coalitions of Islamist and regional factions (1993–1996), followed by a war
between the Taliban movement and a coalition of the factions that had been fighting each
other in the civil wars (1996–2001) and finally by an insurgency led mainly by the Taliban
against the government brought to power by Americans at the end of 2001, as a result
of their attack against the Taliban regime. After 2001 a number of local conflicts among
armed militias also occurred, usually without direct involvement of the central government.
This succession of conflicts saw a variety of ideologies and para-ideologies being tested
on the ground (Maoist, nationalist, various brands of Khomeinism and Islamism, Islamic
fundamentalism, Sufism, tribalism, ethno-nationalism. . .), as well as a variety of modes of
organization being used in different contexts by different groups.6
The ethnic and cultural fragmentation of Afghanistan favored this organizational and
ideological pluralism, which in turns makes analyzing and interpreting the dynamics of the
conflict so difficult. During the 1980s, nonstate armed movements could be grouped on the
basis of their organizational development according to a scale from looser to most tightly
 840 F. Gutiérrez Sanı́n and A. Giustozzi

organized. At the loose end of the scale were tribally and Sufi-based organizations, such as
the “parties” led by Pir Gailani and Seghbatullah Mojaddidi, as well as clerical movements
like Nabi Mohammadi’s Harakat-i Enqelab, a mix of traditionalist and fundamentalist
mullahs, or Yunis Khalis’ Hizb-i Islami (a splinter of Hekmatyar’s group mentioned just
below), as well as a Shi’ite group called Shura-i Ettefaq. At the most tightly organized end
of the scale were radical Islamists such as Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i Islami and some Khomeinist
groups, as well as some small Maoist and nationalist groups. In the middle were catch-all
parties and organizations like Jamiat-i Islami, which included among others many Islamists
and fundamentalists. In Jamiat the leadership allowed much freedom to organize themselves
as they saw fit to its commanders, hence a wide variety of organizational modes within the
same party (see Dorrosoro 2005; Sinno 2008; Giustozzi 2009a).
The collapse of the pro-Soviet regime in 1992 coincided to a large extent with the
collapse of a central government in Afghanistan; most of the regions fell under the control
of local coalitions. During the series of civil wars started in 1993 the ideological element
wore out, not least because of the drying supply of educated, ideologically motivated recruits
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who could be turned into cadres. The more complex organizations such as Hekmatyar’s
knew a rapid decline, as it could not replace losses with skilled new cadres who could
maintain the same type of organization. By 1996 his group had become effectively irrelevant
militarily. New organizations started emerging, essentially the creation of a military class
devoid of political patrons, first and foremost Gen. Dostum’s Junbesh-i Milli-ye Islami.
Other surviving organizations too increasingly incorporated members of the military class;
in particular Jamiat-i Islami, which controlled what was left of a central government
from 1992–1996. The rising importance of this military class shaped the evolution of
nonstate armed groups after 2001, as the collapse of the Taliban regime allowed them to
resume control over most of the country. The other main trend of this period concerned the
coagulation of disparate and fragmented fundamentalist networks into a powerful movement
from 1994 onward, which took the name of Movement of the Taliban. Although the Taliban
too absorbed a substantial number of members of the military class after they took Kabul
in 1996, the fundamentalist clerics always remained in full control (see Giustozzi 2009a,
2009b; Dorrosnsoro 2005).

Colombia
The Colombian conflict also started in earnest in the late 1970s. Colombia had suffered
a previous wave of massive violence between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, which
pitted the two main parties—Conservative and Liberal—against each other. The FARC
was created in the 1960s by ex-Liberal guerrilleros, who gradually radicalized and adopted
revolutionary principles; it was heavily influenced by the communist party. It had to compete
with other guerrillas, inspired both in the Cuban revolution and the split between China
and Russia. In the 1970s yet another denomination, the M-19—nationalist—came to the
limelight. Counterinsurgent and paramilitary forces appeared in the early 1980s. Contrary to
other Latin American experiences, where they were simply a product of state outsourcing
(see for example Wickham-Crowley 1992), in Colombia they were the expression of a
convergence of different forces, where indeed the state played a major role, but also
organized crime and rural elites were an indispensable component (Gutiérrez and Barón
2006). Paramilitaries started as local undertakings, and evolved from murder squads to
broad security providing agencies that, while remaining brutally repressive, had to get
involved in ever new governance areas as their influence and clout expanded.
 Networks and Armies 841

In the late 1970s, nonstate armed groups were still quite small. The FARC, for example,
had no more than 800 fighters (Ferro and Uribe 2002). In the 1980s, all nonstate contenders
grew very fast. The FARC reached its upper bound of no more than 20,000 combatants,7
while other less successful guerrillas probably arrived to a ceiling of 10,000. In the moment
of its reinsertion in 2002, the paramilitary claimed to have more than 30,000, and even
discounting for the rational inflation of numbers that these processes produce, the real
figure of people in arms should not be below 20,000.
The guerrillas had created an organism to coordinate their offensive against the state in
the second half of the 1980s (Coordinadora Guerrillera Simón Bolı́var) but the experience
was short lived. In 1991, the M-19 and the Maoist Ejército Popular de Liberación [EPL],
together with other minor denominations, demobilized. The two remaining forces were the
FARC and the Ejercio Liberacion Nacional (National Liberation Army—ELN), although
from time to time both public opinion and the authorities had to take notice of smaller
undertakings. The FARC and the ELN had taken divergent trajectories. While the former
was by then deeply immersed into the narco-economy, the latter searched for other sources
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of funding (for example kidnapping and extortion of mining multinationals), and only very
late let drop its qualms and started to consistently receive narco-funds. The FARC was also
much more militaristic in its conception and its practice, while the ELN stressed interaction
with social movements and civil society groups (Aguilera 2006). By the way, both were
able to display extremely harsh and murderous behavior (Matta Aldana 2002). Be it as it
may, until the late 1990s both guerrilla groups grew consistently. The paramilitaries grew
as well. The main paramilitary group—in the Urabá region, north of the country—launched
a project to unify all the dispersed local undertakings into a single national project, a sort of
federal army, that—they claimed—constituted the “third actor” (apart from the state and the
guerrilla). In effect, the AUC—Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self Defenses of
Colombia)—were created in 1997. The incredibly fast paramilitary expansion continued,
punctuated by periodic internecine wars, pitting basically local, highly narcotized forces,
against the national project (Gutiérrez 2009).8 The expansion hit especially hard the ELN,
whose strategy was based on a tight connection with its social bases. By launching murder-
ous offensives against civilians, the paramilitary could “take away the water from the fish,”
complying with the old counterinsurgent objective. The FARC was much less affected by
this strategy, as it was much more an apparatus, relatively impermeable vis-à-vis its social
base.
After a peace process with the FARC attempted by the government that eventually
failed (1998–2001), war reignited with new impetus. However, an increase in war fund-
ing, technological scaling, and army reorganization allowed the new government to land
increasingly heavy blows on both insurgent organizations. Presently, the ELN—although
technically still fighting—is, for all purposes, hors de combat. The situation of the FARC
is more difficult to describe. It has lost probably half of its members, its communications
have been disorganized, and it has not found a way to counter the new techniques used by
the state, although indeed it has tried to adapt, fighting with smaller units and rediscover-
ing the advantages of mobility and waiting tactics. On the other hand, its organizational
structure is far from being dismantled or irreparably crippled; it can exhibit—almost on a
daily basis—its combat capacity, and has strong defensive skills. The AUC disintegrated in
2002, and in that same year the paramilitary started a peace process with the government,
in the midst of strong internal cross-fire.9 The peace talks culminated with the reinsertion
of tens of thousands of its members, but recidivists set up new undertakings—which the
police tag with the generic name of Bacrim, Bandas Criminales—that have been active in
some regions (Fundación Seguridad y Democracia 2008).
 842 F. Gutiérrez Sanı́n and A. Giustozzi

Two Organizing Principles: The Taliban and the FARC

Organizing Principles in Practice

Starting from the summer of 2002, the Taliban have re-emerged as the leading insurgent
movement in Afghanistan. They are not the only one: at least two other Afghan groups
are active, as well as several non-Afghan jihadist organizatons, many of which also recruit
Afghans. However, the Taliban accounted for around 80 percent of the armed strength of the
insurgency in 2009 and this analysis will be focused on them. The organizational structure
of the Taliban could most aptly be described as decentralized. The “Fronts,” which are the
basic battle unit, are formed on the basis of the initiative of individuals, who depending on
their ability to gather a sufficient number of men (no less than 20) can seek recognition from
the leadership as a Front commander. A Front commander is entitled to receive supplies and
cash from the leadership in order to pursue his activities. A leader of men who cannot reach
the minimal number of combatants required, or who has not received the endorsement of
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the leadership, remains at least in principle under the order of some Front commander. Each
Front commander, therefore, can have an indefinite number of sub-commanders under him
(Coghlan, T. 2009, “Taliban in Helmand,” 142–143, in Giustozzi 2009a, 119–153). There
does not seem to be a limit to the size of a Front, but in practice as they grow they tend to
split and “reproduce.” It appears that the leadership does not provide supplies for Fronts
larger than 300 men, thereby offering an indirect incentive to split once the Front grows
beyond that limit.10 The Taliban also use mobile formations, which join local Fronts and
bring specialist skills (sniping, mortar targeting, etc.) and may have a more organic link
to the leadership of the movement, but are not necessarily under a tighter command and
control chain than the Fronts. Note that for a highly decentralized organization, that gives
latitude to violent internecine confrontation, it is not wise—from the point of view of the
top leadership—to allow intermediate structures to develop above a threshold. Usually, the
bottom command unit is the team of 5–10 men.
The FARC has suffered several transformations. Initially, the nucleus that gave origin
to the organization was composed of families, which had joined it escaping governmental
repression during the Conservative–Liberal confrontation (Matta Aldana 2002). Eventually,
both due to the Communist influence and to combat demands (Ferro and Uribe 2002), it
developed practices like the donation of all spoils to the group, not to individuals11 (Matta
Aldana 2002). These practices promoted further centralization. However, centralization did
not derive in a personality cult: since in the first two decades of its existence the FARC
relied on the Communist party for ideology and “political line,” its historical leader, Tirofijo,
did not play the role of “total reference point” so frequent in the twentieth-century tradition
of the armed left. Tirofijo was a primus inter pares, much more a military strategist—a first
class one, certainly—than an ideologue, a dimension in which he never played a central role.
As a strategist, though, he adopted long-term initiatives, particularly endowing the FARC
with army-like discipline and mentality (Alape 1989), a perspective that crystallized in the
decisions of the 1982 7th Conference, which transformed the group into a “people’s army”
(Matta Aldana 2002). Non-personalization of the leadership together with high levels of
centralization produced an organizational profile that is unique in the history of Colombia’s
conflict.
After the 1982 Conference, the FARC consolidated around a structure that is very much
the current blueprint, with minor changes. Its basic military unit is the column, composed
of 20 to 40 fighters; it is an operational unit in charge of the control of a certain territory,
of collecting taxes and rackets, and of military actions.12 A plurality of columns makes
 Networks and Armies 843

up a Front. The Fronts sometimes congregate in Blocks. Front and Block commanders
respond directly—both militarily and financially—to the Secretariat, which operationally
is the supreme direction of the group.
There are some important military units outside this structure—especially the Mobile
Column Teófilo Forero—which depend directly on the Secretariat. The level of centraliza-
tion in general is extremely high. In the last years, under the weight of the state offensive,
the organizational structure has loosened, because: (a) The group’s communication system
was intercepted; (b) it lost several key cadres, and the information they held; (c) several
structures were disarticulated; (d) to adapt to the new conditions, the FARC has created
more special units in each Front (e.g., of snipers). Some journalists expect that this will
result in an increasing autonomy of the Fronts with respect to the Secretariat, and eventu-
ally trigger an evolution toward a different, less centralized and more criminalized, modus
operandi.
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Membership and Discipline

The Taliban have a system of disciplining and punishment of their own fighters, cen-
tered around the field commanders. These have the right to judge their men and are
indeed supposed to punish them if they misbehave. Particularly in areas of recent Taliban
penetration—that is, where the movement is still disorganized—unauthorized criminal be-
havior by Taliban fighters seems to be quite frequent. In these and in other cases as well,
however, the field commanders often failed in their duty to maintain discipline. Possibly in
part to address this problem, the Taliban established at an undisclosed date a special com-
mission in charge of internal discipline and of fighting enemy infiltration. The commission
seems to be responsible for many of the executions of Taliban that have taken place so
far. In early 2009, a new wave of executions of commanders and combatants accused of
indiscipline and abuses was reported to have taken place. In general, however, the decen-
tralized nature of the movement makes it difficult to maintain a very strict discipline; all the
leadership can do is to punish culprits from time to time, hoping to contain degenerative
tendencies. If such tendencies picked up and became widespread, the leadership would
have very limited means to bring its armed wing back to the fold (“Stalemate in Helmand.”
Afghan Profile (Oxford Analytica) no. 1, May 2009; Coghlan, T. 2009, “Taliban in Hel-
mand,” in Giustozzi 2009a, 148; Abdul Awwal Zabulwal, “Taliban in Zabul: A Witness’
Account”, in Guistozzi 2009a, 179–189).
Although the Taliban deny that financial motivations are a factor for recruitment in their
ranks and the Kabul government and International Security Assistance Force [ISAF] claim
implausibly high pay rates for the Taliban, it is sufficiently clear that Taliban fighters get
paid a U.S. $140–150 monthly “indemnity” (in 2007). This is in line with the pay rates of
the National Army on deployment. Although policemen get less, they usually have plenty
of opportunities to top up their salaries with money taken at checkposts from travelers.
The Taliban also employ fighters ad hoc or “per piece”; in practice mercenaries paid to
fire a single rocket or lay an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), particularly in areas
where they have a weak presence. As their recruitment accelerated from 2006 onward, they
seem to have used “mercenaries” less. In any case, they were paid higher daily rates of
$15–55, but only for the few days of their job (Giustozzi 2008, 40ff; Coghlan, T. “Taliban
in Helmand,” 143; Gretchen S. Peters. “The Taliban and the Opium Trade,” 13, in Giustozzi
2009a, 7–22). Of course, the casualty rates between the two forces are very different, with
death rates in the Taliban ranks as high as 10–15% a year if one believes ISAF figures, or
closer to 5% if one accepts Taliban figures.13 As far as it is possible to tell, there are no
 844 F. Gutiérrez Sanı́n and A. Giustozzi

regular additional economic selective incentives offered by the Taliban to their rank and
file, although a similar status-based system could have been operating at least until the end
of 2008. In this case, appointments seemed to be related to the importance and strength of
one’s personal networks and of the ability to mobilize fighters, with little consideration for
his ability as a commander, strategist, or politician.
The Taliban do not really have a mechanism for dealing with the delinquency of
prominent figures within their movement, such as network leaders. It is widely believed
in Afghanistan that Mullah Omar or some other high-rank figure in the movement had
somebody tipping off ISAF about the whereabouts of Mullah Dadullah, leading to his death.
The often extreme and unpredictable Dadullah might have been seen by the leadership as a
growing liability, after his repeated clashes, even physical, with some other senior leaders.
His anti-Pakistani position might also have been seen as an embarrassment. Whether the
story is true or not, it highlights how Mullah Omar’s only resort in the event of a major
disobedience by a key leader of the movement would be accommodation or a sneaky
assassination.
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The attitude of the Taliban toward leaving service with them does not appear to be
very strict; individuals enlist for a period of a few months and then take leave. In principle,
they do not seem to be forced to come back. In practice, unless they reside in Pakistan
it may be difficult for the Taliban to quit altogether. Often they stay away from the Front
for several months and then come back, sometimes after having come under pressure from
their commander. A not very high number of Front commanders and smaller field leaders
have over the years surrendered to the authorities, or directly to the British. The Taliban
seemed to dedicate substantial resources to the hunting down of defectors. Mullah Salam
of Musa Qala, one of the highest profile defectors, had by early 2009 survived three major
assassination attempts, which cost the lives of 26 bodyguards and several of his family
members (Tariq, M. O., “The Resurgence of the Taliban in Kabul, Logar and Wardak”
in Giustozzi 2009a, 43–55; Coghlan, T. 2009, “Taliban in Helmand in Guistozzi 2009a,
148; “Afghan attacks kill 20 police, two foreign soldiers,” AFP, 1 January 2009; Ron
Synovitz, “Afghanistan: Ex-Taliban Commander Lectures Mullah Omar About Koran,”
RFE/RL, 1 February 2008; “Roadside bombing kills 6 guards,” Xinhua News Agency,
5 February 2005). Forced recruitment seems rare and limited to a few areas; it is also
difficult to distinguish forced recruitment by the Taliban and community mobilization on
the Taliban side. In the latter case, it would be expected of every household to contribute
at least a male fighter to the struggle and reluctant households may be punished, hence the
“forced” character of the recruitment (Giustozzi 2008, 33–34; personal communications
with refugees from areas affected from the insurgency, London and Kabul, 2008–2009).
The ground rules of FARC membership are in some sense at the opposite side of the
spectrum. There are commonalities, though. Forced recruitment is also not predominant,
despite the fact that FARC’s social base is much narrower than Taliban’s. The main differ-
ence, though, resides precisely here: the FARC is much more inward looking. The FARC
membership rules have six basic outstanding characteristics:

a) The fighters get no payment. This is a historically structuring principle. Not

only is there no semblance of allowance; according to the formal rules of the
organization, no person in a position of authority has individual access to rents
(Ferro and Uribe 2002). It is indeed much easier to monitor the nonpayment of
soldiers than the prohibition of access to rents of middle and high ranks, as an
illegal armed organization always has to allow people in operational positions to
administrate large sums of money in personal accounts.14 Middle-rank officers
 Networks and Armies 845

have deserted—to the Army, the paramilitary, or to create splinter groups—with

large amounts of money; there is evidence that in some Fronts, some leaders have
started to indulge in lifestyles that suggest personal enrichment. However, all this
is quite marginal. Splinter groups never attracted a non-negligible support within
the organization, and incidents involving money occur, but sparsely.
b) The FARC is the Colombian nonstate armed actor that most engages in combat.
Joining the FARC, according to governmental calculations (Pinto, Vergara, and
LaHuerta 2002) increases more than ten times the risk of getting killed vis-à-vis the
rest of the Colombian population.
c) Life membership is also a key organizational principle, which according to the rules
distributed to recruiters should be stated clearly to candidates (Gutiérrez 2004).
Desertion is punished with death.15 Only under extraordinary circumstances is it
possible to leave the FARC with the permission of the organization.
d) There is hardly any equivalent for the FARC of “community mobilization.” While
the Taliban enjoy a large constituency, and their ideology and Weltanschauung is
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deeply shared by broad sectors of the population, the FARC are fairly isolated, al-
though this of course is not necessarily true locally. Indeed, the FARC has promoted
mass mobilization, combining coercion and traditional agitprop (Ramı́rez 2001),
but by and large it is not as rooted as the Taliban. On the other hand, recruitment
of teenagers, or of under-ages, has triggered conflicts with the local population
(Aguilera 2006).
e) A crucial difference: contrary to the Taliban, the FARC is a highly feminized force.
No less that 15 percent (and no more than 30 percent) of its active fighters are
women (see the calculations in Gutiérrez 2008), which is an incredibly high figure
by any standard. The Taliban, instead, do not recruit female fighters for ideological
and cultural reasons. But this leads directly to the next point.
f) The FARC is a highly cohesive entity, that has not known violent internal purges
or clashes between its members. There are very few episodes of factionalism, and
dissidents have always failed to attract a non-negligible followership.

All in all, the FARC has a much clearer line of command, a type of structure that is at odds
with the “natural” institutions of the rural world, and it is conceived of by its members
as an organization. Individual forms of violence are bashed, and fighters have very little
margin of maneuver for actions that do not fit the operational schemes of the group. Feuds
between rank-and-file and commanders are practically unknown. For all members, joining
is a lifetime engagement.

Ideology
The Taliban are inspired in a religious ideology, tinged with Afghan nationalism, and
linked with a broad and dense network of “organic intellectuals” composed mainly of
clerics. It is frequent that in some areas these are the only people who know how to read
and write, and thus exercise hegemonic control over the cultural and intellectual horizon of
the peasants. The FARC, instead, is a radically lay group, which initially had to overcome
the debate—typical of the Latin American leftist guerrillas—about the acceptable degree of
tolerance with respect to practicing Catholics (Aguilera 2006). It adopted quite literally the
teachings and political line of the Colombian Communist party (CP)—which in turn was
a guardian of pro-Soviet orthodoxy—until the 1980s. Eventually, though, the differential
of power between the CP and the FARC—which year by year turned in favor of the
 846 F. Gutiérrez Sanı́n and A. Giustozzi

latter—and divergences with respect to the perestroika, produced a rupture. Thus, violating
Leninist orthodoxy, the army decided not to obey the party. Eventually, it evolved toward
a combination of Marxism and Bolivarianism, but the latter is a source of inspiration in a
wholly different basis than the former.16
A very obvious military expression of these ideological differences is the existence
of suicide bombers within the Taliban, and not in the FARC. The former have a score of
candidates that are ready to immolate themselves, probably not because they really believe
that a gorgeous paradise is awaiting them,17 but because they have been socialized in
networks that are able to put enough social pressure—via beliefs but especially norms—to
make martyrdom seem a valid option. Martyrdom is completely alien to FARC’s—and in
general, Colombia’s guerrillas—mentality. Soldiers and leaders want to survive, and even
when they are fully loyal to the group, if they find themselves in extreme situations they
rarely, if ever, recur to self-sacrifice.18
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Funding and Organizational Structures

Every Front is responsible to the FARC Secretariat of fulfilling concrete yearly financial
objectives. The Secretariat not only establishes the percentage of income it will receive,
but also the redistribution between Fronts (funding poor or strategically important units
with money coming from the rich ones). This contrasts with the highly decentralized
Taliban modus operandi where, although in principle the fund-raising effort is subjected
to the supervision of the leadership, and contributions are collected by specially appointed
representatives, field commanders collect money too, particularly harvest tax. For practical
reasons, it would require excessive human resources to appoint civilian cadres to collect
dispersed revenue like this, the more so as the armed wing of the movement would operate
in these areas anyway.
Before discussing illegal rents, it is important to note that both groups interact, via
extortion or support, or a mix of both, with the legal economy. Traders in frontier economies
have supported—at least in some critical junctures—both the Taliban and the FARC. When
they have been able to establish a long-term influence, or control, of a region, several
sectors, including (only occasionally, in the Colombian case) the rural elites, have provided
them a steady source of income in the form of contributions, logistics, and so on.
However, these rural economies tend to be too localistic and inefficient to compete with
the rents provided by the big narco global market. The capacity of structuring this market
has had a crucial economic importance for sustaining the rebellion in both countries; it has
also given the FARC and the Taliban the capacity to supplant the state in its regulatory
function. At a basic level, these groups operate in a very similar fashion. Both protect the
trade of coca and poppy, respectively, and in exchange for this extract a tax. Through such
operation they are generally able to obtain political legitimacy and an entry point (acting
as a visible and basically benevolent authority) to the daily life of the peasants.
At the same time, the FARC and the Taliban fulfill this role in different manners. As
seen earlier, a key FARC organizational principle, that has played a foundational role, is
to not allow individual access to rents. In contrast, there is evidence that the Taliban also
get paid in goods by narcotraffickers, for example Toyota 4 × 4s handed over to their field
commanders.
The relations with narcotraffickers and bandits are also structured in a differential way.
The FARC have a very strong participation in the coca business, and there are credible
evidences that since the 1990s it started to develop vertical integration, actively engaging
in the protection of crops, the processing of the product, and its exportation. However, once
 Networks and Armies 847

again this was made by the apparatus, and in the name of an organization. No personal
interaction with bandits was, or is, formally permitted, and suspicion of these having taken
place is considered a very serious offense, for both ideological and strategic reasons (the
narcos are one of the main funders of paramilitary groups, and it is supposed that “morally
degraded” individuals could become a bridgehead for paramilitary infiltration). On the other
hand, the relationship of the Taliban with criminal elements has always been ambiguous
after 2001. Although the Taliban do not tolerate breaches of law and order in areas under
their control, they often cooperate with bandits and gangs elsewhere, usually giving them
incentives to operate in areas under government control. There also seems to be a consistent
record of recruiting former criminals within the ranks of the Taliban; in these cases, they are
taken in on condition that they will abandon their previous activities and will rehabilitate
themselves through participation in the jihad. Because the enforcement of these rules is
entrusted to the field commanders, there has been some contamination of the Taliban by
bandit groups.
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Rebellion and Civil Society

In an easily understandable sense, both Afghan and Colombian wars are waged “against
society” (Pécaut 2001): to obtain their objectives, rebels frequently shoot against the people.
For example, the FARC and the Taliban target systematically purported snitches. From
its very beginnings, way before having anything to do with narcotrafficking, the FARC
already killed purported collaborators of the Army.19 Neither the FARC nor the Taliban
have developed even a semblance of just trial for those accused of informing the enemy;
actually, even mere inadvertences in the management of information that the group considers
vital can be punished with the death penalty. Both groups disregard –also systematically–
the safety of civilians, although in 2009 evidence emerged that the Taliban leadership was
trying to change this.20 The FARC has regularly planted bombs in places that can, and
do, kill civilians. In the 1990’s, its basic artillery weapon was a mortar that threw gas
cylinders, and that due to its high level of imprecision, very frequently harmed civilians.
The biggest mass killing in the Colombian war—the Bojayá massacre—occurred precisely
because of this (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] 2002). FARC
leaders claim that they inform dwellers about dangers and upcoming military actions, but
this probably varies according to period and region.
In rural areas, the Taliban often tell the population to leave before setting an ambush,
even if this often gives their presence away to ISAF and Afghan forces. However, in urban
areas, or in villages where they do not have strict relations with the villagers, the Taliban
carry out explosive attacks regardless of the presence of civilians. The Taliban also often
fight from settlements and mix among civilians, a fact which often leads to heavy civilian
casualties, but this of course is typical of many guerrilla wars. This may have contributed to
several communities in different provinces shutting themselves off from both Taliban and
government authorities (Giustozzi 2008, 102ff, 108ff, 117; Giustozzi 2009a, 34, 74).21
Beyond these similarities, though, any sensible evaluation of the relation of both
insurgent groups vis-à-vis civil society will reach the conclusion that, while the Taliban
are deeply rooted, the FARC has a very brittle and fragmented support base. The Taliban
are integrated to their society in at least three ways. First, through religion, shared ideas,
beliefs and values. Second, through the coordination of regional interests, managing key
issues where the traders, smugglers, clerics and agrarian elites converge (e.g., legal and
illegal trade routes). These interests can be both defended and negotiated with other regions
by and through the Taliban. Third, through the very network structure of the group. The
 848 F. Gutiérrez Sanı́n and A. Giustozzi

FARC has none of these assets. Its ideology is not shared by many Colombians, certainly
not by the majority. Though it has participated in elections and tried to build diverse forms
of political influence, the impact of its initiatives has been either short lived, or marginal,
or both. In the mid-1980’s, a new political movement, the Unión Patriótica, appeared as
a product of the peace accords between the government and the FARC. Apparently, it
had a serious positive impact in the forms of governance of some of the municipalities
where it achieved electoral success (Carroll 1993). Nationally, the Unión Patriótica was not
extremely influential (Campos 2003). At any rate, it will never be known which was its true
growth potential, because it was the victim of an extremely brutal repression. In a period
of five years practically all its cadres were killed (Dudley 2004). After this experience,
though, and with the intensification of war, the FARC became increasingly isolated. Its
last initiatives—like the launching of the Clandestine Communist Party—have had only
very marginal impact. Due in part to some national specificities—an old rivalry between
Colombia and Venezuela—any ideology that smells of Venezuelan craftsmanship does not
have very good probabilities of prospering. Indeed, Bolivarian discourses and proposals
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have not made headway in Colombia in the last years.22

Presently, the group itself is deeply disliked, as opinion polls have systematically
shown. It has enjoyed in certain regions long-term influence, but not in the sense of the
Taliban, who have exercised something very near full control. FARC’s presence—typically
in sparsely populated regions—is porous, intermittent, and the support of the population is
clearly linked to the ebb and flow of war itself. Furthermore, the FARC does not have the
capacity of networking with regional elites. Although during certain periods and in certain
regions the group had their support, it ultimately lost it due to “structural” contradictions:
for the FARC, narco funding was not enough and, to meet the needs of war, it had to expand
its economic base by kidnapping. Thus, regional arrangements favorable to the FARC broke
down when the Secretariat demanded from the Fronts the capture of new rents (Gutiérrez
2008).
Thus, while the FARC is an army without substantial political support,23 the Taliban
are a powerful political movement without an army proper. They are politically organized in
a series of personal networks, each having at its center a charismatic figure, almost always
a cleric, a pattern clearly imported from the clerical environment, where it is common.
At the center of these networks and accepted by all as the leader (Amir al Muminuun) is
Mullah Omar. However, broad influence is paid at the cost of lack of coherence. Some
of the networks composing the Taliban only interconnect through Mullah Omar and even
then precariously, since in at least a couple of cases tension between Mullah Omar and
network leaders has surfaced. The gravest one was the friction that occurred in 2008 with
Serajuddin Haqqani, who has de facto replaced his ailing father as the leader of the so-called
Haqqani network. As of early 2009 such tension seemed to have abated, even if Mullah
Omar was still reported as being very critical of Serajuddin. The network-type organization
makes it difficult of course to impose any discipline within the movement; indeed, unity is
preserved only insofar as the aims of the Taliban are shared by its different components. This
characteristic of the movement is reflected in Mullah Omar’s leadership: not a decisive or
authoritarian one, but rather a “moral” leadership where the constituent parts of the Taliban
have to be brought on board whenever a major decision is taken. On the positive side, this
structure is able to accommodate various groups, with (within certain limits) diverging aims
and even external alliances. It is clear that there are at least three “currents” or “tendencies”
within the Taliban, as far as their external allegiances are concerned. The first one, led by
Mullah Baradar (Mullah Omar’s deputy), has traditionally been closest to the Amir and
is inclined to accept Pakistan help, but without allowing the Pakistani security agencies
 Networks and Armies 849

to exercise direct interference over the modus operandi of the movement as well as over
its internal appointments. The second one is led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and much more
prone to Pakistani “interference,” to the point that many describe it as a puppet of Pakistani
intelligence. The third tendency is the Mullah Dadullah one. Mullah Dadullah was killed
in 2007 and his brother was arrested, but the network survived, even if weakened.
Until 2009 at least, this mode of organization had been functional to the expansion of
the Taliban from a small insurgency confined to a few areas, mostly along the Pakistani
border, to most of Afghanistan. Its loose structure facilitated the re-incorporation of old
Taliban or the incorporation of new fighters; the demands placed on the members were
relatively modest if observed from the standpoint of rural, conservative Afghanistan. The
Taliban have proven apt at exploiting local grievances, enlisting at least temporary support of
communities and creating an environment conducive to the establishment of their presence
in strength (see Giustozzi 2008, 1ff, 15ff, 37ff). With time, the Taliban seem to have realized
that personal networks are not a sufficient organizational tool in a protracted insurgency
where the final aim is political power; once the problem of maintaining territorial control
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and law and order emerges as a result of the expansion of the insurgency, new organizational
modes have to be developed. Already in 2003 the Taliban started controlling a number of
“liberated areas” in the more remote regions of the country. By 2009, there were at least 11
districts (out of almost 400) where the government had completely collapsed and the Taliban
were in full control. Another 70 or so districts had some degree of Taliban control over their
territory.24 This gradual growth of territorial control demanded a more institutional approach
to governance. Indeed, already in 2003 the Taliban started establishing an administrative
structure over the territory, composed of provincial and district governors, chiefs of police,
judges, and a few other, less important, positions.

Conclusions
Rebel leaders—more generally, leaders of nonstate violent associations—have to decide
how to launch their activity, sustain it, and fund it. Said in other terms, they have to decide
which organizational techniques they will utilize. Organizational techniques are ways of
putting expertise together, and coordinating the knowledge and skills of component units.
Neither side knows if a global optimum is achievable in their search space; they look for
local optima, immediate solutions to urgent problems that gradually solidify in the form
of practices, routines, identities, and know how (Nelson and Winter 1982). Operational
thumb rules are thus of crucial importance, because they will decide if an armed agency
will survive and, if so, in which direction will it evolve.
Organizational specificity, as discussed here, is: (a) a result of a co-evolutionary pro-
cess; (b) not reducible; (c) prone to produce path dependency. It is a product of co-evolution,
in the sense that armed groups develop their practices and thumb rules in response to hard
evolutionary pressures, coming both from economic and other (human resource–based, for
example) constraints, and from the strategies of their adversaries (for example, armies and
counterinsurgencies). This article has laid out the nature of such pressures, but has focused
primarily on the “comparative statics.” A (necessarily posterior) “comparative dynamics”
would resemble what economists call tatonnement: a step by step spiral of mutual adapta-
tions of the actors involved, which eventually crystallizes in a more or less definite form.
This form can indeed be extinction. To claim that a specific form is “necessary” given
X or Y endowments, or the nature of J or K adversary, is to wholly miss the point: many
insurgencies fail to adapt to the new circumstances, and perish. Organizational specificity is
not reducible, in the sense that this “definite form” is not a mechanical result of the context,
 850 F. Gutiérrez Sanı́n and A. Giustozzi

not even of the violent interactions with adversaries, but also of the search of agents for
good solutions given a set of problems and resources. As has been observed earlier, in the
Afghan context a much more army-like agency than the Taliban played an important role
for a long time (Hizb-I Islami)—and in Colombia, the counterinsurgency was always very
near to the network end of the spectrum. Contexts, like resources, count, but do not deter-
mine nor explain the final form that an insurgency takes, because this form depends also on
agency and contingency. Organizational specificity produces path-dependency, in the sense
that organizational solutions today weight heavily over the solutions that will be adopted
tomorrow, because they create know-how and social interactions that are organization-
specific, and can only be activated under the umbrella of that solution. Indeed, both agency
and contingency can take an organization from one point of the spectrum to another, but
organizational trajectories strongly “trap” and “enable” actors that operate within them.
Early solutions by the FARC regarding centralization, distribution, and management of
resources and collegiate leadership, gave it unique characteristics, that no other Colombian
guerrilla was able to develop, and that go far in explaining its military prowess and survival
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capacity.
This article has suggested that a parsimonious tool for classifying insurgent organi-
zational variation is to put them (insurgencies) in the army-network spectrum. Of course,
the overwhelming majority of examples will combine characteristics of both ideal types,
and in a protracted struggle it is possible that a group changes more or less its nature, say
from an army to a network. However, at any point in time a classification (e.g., establishing
where the group is in the continuum) is possible, and—in the case of the two groups studied
here—the army-network contrast reveals neat differences. Other classificatory tools seem
to perform much worse: the rootedness of the given group on civil society, or its access to
huge illegal resources, do not explain well the obvious differences between the Taliban and
FARC, nor the level and type of violence they exercise against civilians, nor their modus
operandi.

Notes
1. Large Ns focus on associations, sacrificing mechanism identification, and case studies cannot
evaluate mechanism performance in different contexts.
2. It is not a coincidence that Humphreys (2005) found that long-term, persistent conflict is
much more the product of state weaknesses than of a resource course. Furthermore, he finds that,
anyway, primary commodities have an independent role, but part of the effect is attributable to the
dependency on agriculture.
3. This resembles, but does not completely coincide with, Johnston’s (2008) U and M organi-
zational models. Note that this article speaks about entities that have nearly national coverage, so the
authors drop geography and incorporate other variables—especially, the type of relation with society
but also the type of rent distribution within the organization—into the analysis, which constitutes an
important difference.
4. Also their counterinsurgencies, but the issue is not delved into in this article.
5. But from 2002 on, the paramilitaries reinserted, and the hold of the guerrillas over sev-
eral territories was drastically weakened. Even then, narcos and ex-paramilitaries are powerful and
influential in several regions, and participate actively in the governmental coalition.
6. For in-depth analyses of the conflict, see Gilles (2005) for the period up to 2001, and
Giustozzi (2008), for the period from 2002 onward.
7. In a non-conservative, but still reasonable, calculation. The most conservative figure comes
from the Colombian security agencies, according to which the FARC had in 2002, just before its
decline started, more than 16,000 fighters (see Dijin 2009).
 Networks and Armies 851

8. The AUC internecine conflicts have been understudied. Once again, it is useful to stress that
both the AUC people from Urabá and the “localists” were highly murderous, and it is probably not
sensible to try to tell them apart in this regard.
9. For example, the commander that started the peace, Carlos Castaño, was bumped by his
brother, Vicente, apparently because of divergences related to the degree of compatibility between
narcotrafficking and paramilitarism.
10. Personal communication with UN official, London, January 2008; personal communication
with Islamist from North-eastern Afghanistan, Kabul, March 2009.
11. The process, and transcendental meaning, of this innovation is narrated in Alape (1989).
12. There are units below the column: the escuadra, the guerrilla, and the company. Two
escuadras (around 12 fighters) make a guerrilla, two guerrillas a company, and two companies a
column. However, in practice several columns are less than 100 units strong.
13. The Taliban report their monthly casualties in Al Somood, an Arabic publication covering the
Afghan jihad. In 2008–2009 the reported deaths fluctuated between 100–150 monthly. ISAF sources
instead estimate at around 5,000 the number of Taliban killed in 2008 (personal communication with
ISAF official, London, May 2009). See also “Afghanistan expects bloody 2009,” AFP, 5 January
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2009.
14. The group does not have any type of formal access to bank systems, and so on.
15. Deserters have reported about retaliations against relatives.
16. The writings of Bolı́var are not taken by the group as an operational reference point, while
all the evidences show that in the “good old times” FARC members believed that Marxism was the
tool to understand scientifically the world, and thus to develop adequate strategy and tactics.
17. As standard rationalist amateur psychology proposes. See, for example, Sandler and Enders
(2006). Amateur psychological speculation about the motivations of suicide bombers rarely match
well-known facts. The Tamil Tigers were a lay organization, but they were the inventors of suicide
bombing (see Elster 2006).
18. In some other groups, fighters preferred to be killed in combat rather than to survive, fearing
that, for example, they would not resist torture. See for example Villamizar (1995).
19. The difference with other Colombian guerrillas is that they very rarely assassinated people
within their ranks.
20. A new “code of conduct” was distributed to the field commanders in 2009, asking them to
avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.
21. 1 On the communities shutting themselves off, see “Stalemate in Helmand,” Afghan Pro-
file (Oxford Analytica) no. 1, May 2009 and van Bijlert, “Unruly commanders and violent power
struggles: Taliban networks in Uruzgan” in Giustozzi 2009a, 155–177.
22. This is a simplification, of course. The complicated ups and downs of Colombian Bolivari-
anismo are omitted.
23. Although with political influence, which is not the same.
24. Personal count based on information collated district by district. See also Giustozzi (2008),
and in particular the maps, which are however somewhat out of date at the time of publishing this
article in 2010.

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