GLOBAL GUERRILLAS AND TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONES

Like pirates of the past (particularly those of the 1st century BC and 18th century), global guerrillas operate from geographically dispersed locations. These locations are sanctuaries of convenience on a global scale. Examples include:

• Failed and collapsed states. GGs are able to establish mobile operations centers (Sudan and Afghanistan) and generate new sources of funding (opium in Afghanistan and oil "bunkering" in Nigeria) within these vacuums of authority.
  
• Zones of chaotic organic order. Negotiated relationships with tribesmen in Waziristan (Pakistan), have provided security, intelligence, and supplies for GG groups. In Fallujah (Iraq), GGs have used a collapse of state authority and the subsequent rise of organic Islamic order to provide cover for cells.
  
• The Internet. The size and structure of the Internet provides virtual sanctuary. The Internet provides the glue that links groups that operate within the ancient modes of organic order -- religious, tribal, etc. -- that form the backbone of the physical world sanctuary, with the modern world's operational environment. However, the Internet is more than merely a communications medium, it is a place of sanctuary in itself.

The TAZ
Global guerrillas do not require extensive logistical structures. Their units are small, fleet, and adaptable. Despite this, they are able to inflict extensive damage by leveraging the power of networks and markets. Most GG activity is accomplished within the confines of "controlled" areas (that's where the targets are), however, much of the long term planning and training occurs within temporary autonomous zones (TAZs) -- areas beyond the control of the global nation-state system. GGs can "manufacture" TAZ sanctuaries as needed from any location that exhibits a vacuum of global order. These places provide staging grounds for offensive operations in "controlled" areas. The elimination of TAZs will be a long-run problem for nation-states. Unfortunately, military solutions can work against progress by creating a TAZ where none existed before (example: Fallujah). Here are some ideas on how to approach the problem:

• Rapidly shifting locations. Entrepreneurial guerrillas are quick to take advantage of new opportunities for sanctuary when they arise. A partial solution is to avoid the creation of power vacuums via failed or collapsed states whenever possible (example: Iraq). A failed/collapsed state is worse than a rogue state. Economic and other non-military support structures need to be strengthened to prevent state failure.
  
• Locations that resist interdiction. Remote, hostile territory makes rapid response difficult. Nation-states require significant periods of time to work through the complexities (mostly political) necessary to neutralize these locations.
  
• Diversity. Again the theme of "strength through diversity" is apparent. There isn't any single formula for eliminating TAZs. Each location requires an unique effort.

Comments

[Strategic Armchair Command]

I would certainly consider the Internet a 'virtual' sanctuary for global guerrillas. In fact, it might be the primary sanctuary for them as it is a natural fit to their decentralized and yet global nature.

The other sanctuaries mentioned, however, are not really 'virtual'. Perhaps you mean, ad hoc, or temporary, but the truth is they fit very much into the pattern of conventional geurrilla warfare, with a global twist. In the past, geurrillas exploited these kinds of areas WITHIN a state [or near its borders] to establish 'remote' sanctuaries to defeat the state's ruling government. What has changed here is the scale. Now, they are simply using complete states or large parts of them to establish sanctuaries WITHIN the global system to defeat the global system's ruling government -- in effect, the US and/or the West.

Nevertheless, the Internet is truly a virtual sanctuary for the GGs and adds a new dimension to the conflict.

[gmoke]

GGs have sanctuary wherever they are able to plan and prepare. McVie, Aum Shinrikyu, Jonestown, even Heaven's Gate all operated without notice until they happened. GGs are small groups, possibly even individuals, who leverage technology into large-scale, indiscriminate destruction and confusion. They can be anywhere.

[John Robb]

I agree with both of you. I'm still working on this post (that's one of best aspects of this format). The word virtual, as I mention at the start of the post, is a bastardization of the term. I wanted to convey the idea that these sanctuaries are more logical constructs developed through the adaptation of the guerrilla network to local conditions than reality. However, "sanctuaries of convenience" may be better.

The problem is deeper than just the global scale. It is that these locations don't fit a standard pattern. They are not just rural, mountains, or urban sprawl. It's not just rogue or failed states. How GGs adapt to these conditions (and what their limitations are) is what interests me.

[gmoke]

Whatever sanctuaries GGs may have, I'd like to see the civilian population taking their own precautions and preparing their own sanctuaries from emergency and disaster. Emergency preparedness and civil defense are a key strategy that can limit the damage from GG actions.

Emergency preparedness and civil defense within a global ecological context has to be part of the response to global terror tactics.

[phil jones]

Might be interesting to compare :

http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

I was about to mention the similarity of "virtual sanctuaries" to the interesting concept of "Temporary Autonomous Zones" (TAZ) written about by "Hakim Bey", but Phil Jones has got a link in first.

TAZ draw analogies with the multinational buccaneer pirate havens in the 17th and 18th century and the Medieval Assasins networks (based in the mountains between what is now Israel, Syria and Iraq) and the concepts of data havens, annonymity etc. available via the Internet.

TAZ were the subject of a lot of discussion just as the World Wide Web was starting to get popular about 10 years ago, some of which are well worth re-reading even today.

By the way, just in case the "terrorist profiling" software doesn't get it, "Hakim Bey" is not actually an Islamic fundamentalist scholar (add 10 points to your terrorist profiling secret police zapiska), but is a pseudonym for Peter Lamborn Wilson.

[phil jones]

Good point about the assasins' networks. That wasn't explicit in my mind.

Wouldn't it be interesting if there was actually a *historical* connection. Although I suspect it's more a case of convergent evolution.

[gmoke]

Posted at juancole.com 8/23/04:

"Radical Islamist terrorism is a form of vigilanteism. Angry young Muslim men see their own governments doing nothing about Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians, and bowing to US adventures like Iraq, and they grow disgusted. They have no hope of getting their governments to do anything about what they see as profound injustices. So they form small groups of engineers or other professionals and take matters into their own hands."

Didn't Muhammad, peace by on his name, make use of TAZ in his life?

[John Robb]

I really like the TAZ concept and Sterling's "Islands in the Net". Let me see what I can pull out of those works that is valuable for GGs. It seems that we are pulling on a similar thread here.

[John Robb]

Ok. I've updated it. I think it is a better post now.

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

"In the case of the Internet, rapid reaction teams that attack and shut down terrorist sites, may be a partial answer. Again, this must be done without official government sanction."

The actions of such "rapid reaction teams", if these do not have official government sanction within the actual legal jurisdiction that the "terrorist sites" reside, or are being operated from, may be indistinguishable from those of cyber-criminals or cyber-terrorists and should be equally condemned and prosecuted.

Even this weblog, like many others, has had to censor some offensive postings, and many "terrorist websites" can only be deemed to be so because of the content posted by many different contributors, not necessarily by the actual operators of the websites themselves.

Surely from an intelligence agency viewpoint, it must be much more valuable to track and monitor such websites and their contributors, rather than to actually shut them down ?

Operating a website which seems to support possible terrorist organisations should not in itself be illegal, and it it can raise fundamental problems of jurisdiction e.g. the case of Babar Ahmad, who after being arrested under our draconian and catch all Terrorism Act, and released without charge, presumably for lack of actual evidence, has been arrested in London in order to be extradited to the USA. He is accused of running a website in the USA, which apparently supported the Taleban in Afghanistan and some rebels in Chechnya in Russia. Neither of these were at the time or are now, proscribed terrorist organisations in the United Kingdom, yet this British citizen is in the process of being extradited to a foreign country the USA, regarding possible actions in a third and fourth country i.e. Afghanistan or Russia.

www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/000433.html

All that this extradition will do is to further alienate the British born Islamic community, and could contribute to terrorist recruitment propaganda.

[phil jones]

Why have you now made "symbolic sites" subsidiary to "zones of chaotic organic order"? Couldn't there be some symbolic sites in which terrorists are untouchable but actually in relatively stable surrounds? I dunno Mecca, some bits of Jerusalem, The White House etc.

[phil jones]

Actually I think Watching Them has a good point. How do you define the good guys and the bad guys if everyone is using GG tactics, if counter-insurgency agents aren't backed by national governments and operating according to the rule of law?

[phil jones]

Now you've taken away "Symbolic sites".

I hope that wasn't because of my last comment because I liked the idea very much - that there are sites which are protected not by physical barriers but cultural / symbolic ones. Hope you don't forget this insight altogether.

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

The Federation of American Scientists has published a Congressional Research Service report

"Removing Terrorist Sanctuaries: The 9/11 Commission Recommendations and U.S. Policy"

www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32518.pdf

"The 9/11 Commission identified six primary regions that serve or could serve as terrorist sanctuaries. These included Western Pakistan and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region; southern or western Afghanistan; the Arabian Peninsula, especially Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and the nearby Horn of Africa, including Somalia and extending southwest into Kenya; Southeast Asia, from Thailand to the southern Philippines to Indonesia; West Africa, including Nigeria and Mali; and European cities with expatriate Muslim communities. In all of these regions, the United States and its allies have mounted campaigns to deny safe havens for terrorists."

No mention of Iraq ?

Surely Southern Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank are Temporary Autonomous Zones of some kind ?

What about the safe havens and TAZ within the USA ?

[Brian St. Pierre]

John, you said in a comment above, "It is that these locations don't fit a standard pattern." While it is true that the *geography* doesn't fit a standard pattern, the locations themselves are very similar in terms of the level of anonymity and privacy that they provide.

The name "global guerillas" doesn't work for what I'm thinking of. It is also on a much more localized scale, but it may be worthwhile to compare and contrast gangs or organized criminals operating in underserved urban areas of the US. I'm thinking of places like East LA or a few-square-block neighborhood in a city near me.

The deep motivations of the organizations involved are very different, but some of the short-term goals are the same. I may be stretching the theory of a TAZ a little too far here...

Have you given any consideration to the application of your theory of GG to the pursuit of ordinary (organized) criminals?

[John Robb]

Brian, that is a good insight. There are a lot of similarities (that I have compiled) between GGs and local criminal gangs. They are definitely part of the same movement I am tracking. However, most of my focus is on those groups that are in direct conflict with the state (at war), and the evolution of their capabilities. However, William Lind says, "Gangs will be one of the most important forms of combatants in Fourth Generation war. As the police in many an American city can attest, gangs are not easy to defeat. And this particular gang has both an endless source of recruits and a religious identity for which dying is seen as worthwhile. Al-Sistani may have the support of most Shiites, but al-Sadr now has the support of most Shiite fighters, and that is what is likely to count."

[Graham]

It concerns me that the acronym TAZ and phrase 'temporary autonomous zone' has been used without citing its original usage and context - which, if nothing else, incites unnecessary confusion.

As was mentioned in a post above, Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson develops this idea in a popular poetic tract by the same name published in 1991.

You would at the very least need to make a comparison with Bey's ideas else this reads like conceptual misappropriation. Not concerned with 'guerrilla entrepreneurs', The TAZ (1991) offered the conceptual architecture, what Bey called 'poetic terrorism', for personal and social liberation. That such 'zones' are 'autonomous', not simply from the state or governing bodies, but are also internally non-hierarchical, co-operative and non-dogmatic, suggests that they differ in large part from the 'guerilla' structures or cells that you pursue. Bey's ideas were a kind of postmodernist revision of anarchism, a liberatory or individualist anarchism (a 'guerilla ontology')which fuelled the ire of some social anarchists. While there are certain parallels with clandestinity, fluidity, cells, the TAZ (as it was orifianlly coined) is so ill-suited to the model you're striving for that it's almost laughable. All the more reason to make the distinction, or find other terminology.

Though it is possible that some of your ideas could resonate with what Bey later (in a book called Millennium, 1996) referred to as the 'lesser jihad' (exemplified by the Zapatistas) which appear to correspond with more 'permanent autonomous zones' of resistance, such movements would not always be associated with 'failed' states, and their activity only questionably characterised as 'terrorism'.

Also many peaceful, alternative, oppositional and anarchic cultural organisations within so called 'strong' and democratic states' in the first world have identified with the TAZ discourse, and many observers have utilized this language to describe these. Many are also noted to possess festal - that is celebratory, life affirming, difference tolerating - characteristics, which is also compatible with Bey's understanding of a TAZ.

The problem with your appropriation of the TAZ label is that it appears to make 'autonomy' and pleasure synonymous with entrepreneurialism, violence and terror, and would suggest little understanding of the potential and ability of autonomous and independent movements to develop and maintain facilities and services - housing, education, health and energy alternatives - independent to, or in some cases complementary to, that provided (or indeed not provided) by the state.

[John Robb]

Graham, thanks for the input. It's true that I haven't spent the time to write up a full brief on the term's origins.

One thing working against Bey's (and your) utopian vision is that these locations are hotly contested by the state. There isn't the time necessary to develop services (although the guerrillas did supply Haditha with 24 hours of electricity every day).

[Graham]

Maybe we're talking past each other Robb...

What's amusing is that you appear to believe that the idea of a 'strong state' is somehow less idealistic (or holds greater legitimacy) than that which might develop in opposition to it - call it a TAZ or whatever.

Given some of your key sources are CIA documents, there's no surpirse there.

But, whats not amusing is that you've misappropriated a term/idea which has long been in wide circulation. The TAZ has a pervasive presence on the Net, and is a concept widely used in scholarship, yet not only have you introduced it without recognition, the idea has been abused in the pursuit of your own interests. Bizarre behaviour for a net-savvy eagle scout such as yourself.

I'm trusting that you address this if continuing to publish this material on-line or in any other public fora.

[John Robb]

First, I'm not sure what you are talking about in the first section. CIA documents? Not sure where you are going here.

Second, I don't I owe anything to anybody in regards to the use of this term or the ideas behind it. That being said, I would be more than happy to link to useful background material. If you have a definitive link for the TAZ as it was originally conceived, please provide it to me so I can include it in the body of the brief.

[Graham]

I was not suggesting that you owe anyone for the way youve used this term (no that's your concoction), but that if you insist on using it, you would be wise to make the clear distinction because it's a *radically* different concept than that which is in circulation. A good link was provided above:
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html