It draws on my forthcoming book, Rebels in the Field. In an interview with me, a US SF officer put this research in context: ‘I just don’t understand our military’s baseline assumption that insurgents aren’t “real” forces who train and fight well, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary’

To fight this way, I argue that insurgents, like any other military actor, need capable small units that can fire and maneuver without suffering extensive losses. This requires skilled and committed small-unit combat leaders who plan operations, train fighters, and generate task-based cohesion

The book is available here
global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Interestingly, these leadership changes were inadvertently aided by the US decapitation campaign, which removed many leaders who opposed reform.

It was only after the Taliban introduced a cadre of small-unit combat leaders, which they referred to as nizami massuleen, that their ability to fight began a to improve.

Illustratively, the Taliban’s long-standing social, political, and ideological foundations created resistance to tactical adaptation and improvements in military training and preparation.

This means that the social, material, and political endowments that insurgents can draw upon do not result in meaningful combat power on their own. It is what insurgents do with what they have that matters.

And military cadres are central to how rebels can benefit from weapons, sanctuary, or external support. Military cadres plan operations, generate force through training, and create task-based cohesion, uniting fighters around shared expectations of competence and trust.

Cadres represent a missing link needed to activate many processes identified in the study of civil war. For example, political cadres are a central factor in explaining when processes such as political education, indoctrination, and discipline work.

Without any type of cadres, the theory explains how some organizations can only employ simple (though still meaningful) forms of military power. But, to fight with more complex forms of military power, I argue that a cadre is fundamental.

To explain variation in military power, I propose the "cadre theory" - which argues military power is a function of how rebels forge connections. Small-unit leaders, I argue, create the strongest connections.

Drawing on evidence from the Taliban after 2001 and 17 organizations in Iraq (2003-present) and Vietnam (1945-1975), the book develops a novel spectrum of what insurgents actually do on the battlefield.

The book is motivated by the puzzle of how the Taliban turned from a broken organization to an effective military force. More broadly, how should we describe variation in insurgent military power? Why can some insurgents deploy these various forms of power on the battlefield while others can't?

Totally agree. It's a notable challenge to sort this out, but it's meaningful. The article mostly discusses the role of political integration in shaping the military, but there are plenty of insurgent examples (eg, the LTTE), where the military embeds cadre in the political wing to establish control

I do think that when the political and military leadership is separated, in this case in different countries, it can shape the power dynamics of insurgent civ-mil -- often strengthening military leaders. @judah-grunstein.bsky.social, happy to send the AFS article, I'm at [email protected] CivMilSky