Roadmaps to Nowhere?

Abstract

This paper seeks to determine the extent to which the al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) and Islamic State (IS) insurgencies were influenced by—respectively—Abu Mus’ab al-Suri and Abu Bakr Naji’s strategic thought, and why the extent of that influence may have ultimately been limited. This is relevant for scholars of strategic studies because these strategic thinkers’ influence upon those insurgencies is an assumption within some academic and journalistic works which has thus far gone untested. To address this, the paper takes a comparative historical approach, measuring al-Suri and Naji’s strategic thought—as expressed in their principal written works—and the AQI and IS insurgencies according to a single analytical framework of organisational, operational, and lifecycle stage phenomena, and then using the results to compare strategic thought with insurgent practice. It then establishes whether externally-ascertainable issues can account for variance identified between strategic thought and insurgent practice. This approach yields two findings. First, AQI and IS’s insurgencies were ultimately conducted in a manner mostly at variance with al-Suri and Naji’s strategic thought, and second, such variance appeared resultant from insurgencies’ limited capacity to operate at increased scale, the tendency of jihadi insurgent organisations towards inflexibility and insularity, and the impact which the operational environment can have upon insurgencies. These findings support a conclusion that the influence of al-Suri and Naji’s strategic thought upon AQI and IS’s insurgencies was significantly limited, due apparently to externally-recognisable issues affecting jihadi insurgent organisations’ behaviour. Show more