CIAO DATE: 03/2013
November 2012
An armed group’s capacity to control the behaviour of its fighters is key to its survival and the attainment of its goals. While insurgents establish hierarchies that may seem familiar to any other organization, they have to contend with particular challenges. These include the covert nature of most of their operations, the pressure and actions of the enemy that tend to weaken the group’s structure, and, perhaps most importantly, the strategic effect of behaviour at a tactical level, such as when an isolated incident at a very low level harms the group’s reputation, leading the population or foreign actors to withhold or withdraw support. Some armed groups are more effective than others at controlling their members. When control is firm, it can be used to humanitarian ends, such as the protection of civilians, but it can also be used to perpetrate unlawful acts. In the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), for instance, ‘fighters are tightly controlled in their actions, [even though] they have great freedom of action in conducting campaigns of violence’ (Bevan, 2006, p. 278). On the other hand, armed groups that exert poor control over their members tend to be less successful at delivering on humanitarian commitments or executing decisions taken by the leadership.
Resource link: Internal Control: Codes of Conduct within Insurgent Armed Groups [PDF]