Small Wars & Insurgencies

This special issue is projected for Volume 35 Issue 4/5 of Small Wars and Insurgencies in 2024. It is aimed at providing a re-assessment of radical jihadist movements at a time of changing global power relations and a heightened risk of inter-state war. It also seeks to re-evaluate the academic discussion and debate in the two decades following the events of 9/11 and the American-led “war on terror.”

Much of this discussion has become muted as attention has turned to a dangerous medium level war in Central Europe. For some analysts though it confirms predictions, articulated for instance in 2010 in Nelly Lahoud’s The Jihadis Path to Self-Destruction, that jihadism was fated to self-destruct eventually, even if the dream of a global caliphate might live on in utopian discourse.

Nevertheless, it is still the case that various forms of jihadist insurgencies are not simply hibernating, waiting for a more auspicious time, but are continuing to expand in various conflict zones such as West Africa, the Sahel, East Africa and the Middle East along with more isolated conflicts in South Asia and the Asia Pacific. In some cases, such as Mali and Northern Nigeria, the movements appear to be gaining strength as they fight against corrupt and incompetent regimes. In Syria, too, US forces continue to mount small-scale operations against the remnants of ISIS. Along with this, analysis and debate over various forms of counter-insurgency continue, though without perhaps the same sense of immediate global relevance even if the concept of “the west” has been partially rejuvenated as a result of the war in Ukraine.

There is thus a need for a re-assessment of the nature and extent of the supposed “jihadist” threat and how this might be countered over the next two or three decades at a time of heightening great power tensions. Indeed, the issue requires reframing within new ideas of global order that reflect a general shift from the “bipolarity” of the Cold War era followed by the “unipolarity” of the US in the three decades after 1991. While the exact nature of this shift continues to be debated by IR scholars and strategic analysts, it is fair to say that some form of “multipolar” global order is now emerging even if its exact form remains unclear. We are keen that this special issue should explore the degree to which some, if not all, of the new building blocks of this multipolar order may not only be less consensual and supportive of universal norms of international law, but also increasingly authoritarian and imperial in nature. Some analysts indeed have suggested that a new imperialism is back on the international agenda in a manner that was largely unthinkable even a decade ago.

How this relates to existing jihadist movements at local and regional levels merits serious consideration. Here recent debates on rebel governance (some of which has been published in past issues of Small Wars and Insurgencies) is pertinent and the editors of this special issue welcome further contributions in this area, focusing on the degree to which Jihadist movements have been capable of evolving into functioning quasi-governmental structures at the local level, blunting in the process some of their radical ideological thrust but achieving, in some cases, a limited degree of political legitimacy. Imperial structures are likely to endure too in the emerging multi-polar order ensuring that important issues emerge over how far Jihadist movements can serve either as global or regional anti-imperial movements or newer forms of national liberation movement in a religious rather than secular guise.

This issue is thus projected to have two parts. The first part will examine general issues relating to jihadism and global order while the second part will examine a series of case studies. The editors will supply both a general introduction as well as a conclusion based on the papers accepted for the special issue. Thus, the issue overall will take this form:

Part One: Thematic issues

• An historical overview of jihadist insurgent movements over the past 40 yrs. What are the major turning points?
• The changing nature of jihadism. Is there still an ongoing process of radicalisation both in the west and the developing world and is it taking new forms?
• How serious a threat is contemporary jihadist terrorism? In the US, especially, is it more of a long-term threat to political and social order compared to random civilian shootings and the rise of radical far right populism?
• What are the issues surrounding the absence of a globally-accepted legal definition of terrorism? How far is this relevant in cases of jihadist terrorism at a time when there is growing pressure to prosecute Russian leaders and military commanders for war crimes committed in Ukraine?
• What extent does Jihadism remain a serious threat to global security? There has been for instance an ongoing quiet expansion in recent years of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. How far are they hibernating or actually gaining new support and territory? The current state of western counter-insurgency.
• To what extent does Jihadism remain a serious threat to global security? There has been for instance an ongoing quiet expansion in recent years of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. How far are they hibernating or actually gaining new support and territory?
• How far are domain western conceptions of counter-insurgency relevant to dealing with newer forms of jihadist insurgency. What has been learned and internalised by Western governments from the involvement in expeditionary warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan and parts of West Africa?

Part Two: Case Studies

• Local, national, or regional case studies observing how successful have jihadist groups been in the last few years in procuring recruits and/or gaining a territorial base
• Case studies of new or less well-known examples of jihadism, with a focus on what makes them jihadist, how they began, and the significance of networking with other jihadist groups
• Local, national or regional case studies examining the degree to which jihadist groups have been able to evolve into quasi-governmental structures that have facilitated the procuring recruits and/or the control of territory.
• We also welcome submissions examining cases where the jihadist project has largely failed, such as in the Caucasus where jihadist fighters have been mostly expelled and politics has morphed into ethnic and national state building.
• Submissions that examine the fall-out from jihadist insurgency. Here the focus can be on issues such as the poor management of the mass exodus from Afghanistan following the renewed Taliban takeover in 2021 and the refusal of some western governments to readmit former jihadists, such as those recruited by ISIS.

We welcome submissions covering these listed topics while other topics will be considered based on their strength and relevance to the issue. Authors are requested to write a brief letter outlining their current research along with a paragraph-length abstract of their proposed paper. The deadline for these submissions that can be sent to either email below is September 10th 2023.

Paul B Rich
[email protected]

M.J. Fox
[email protected]

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