Factional Networks in Fragmented Conflicts
Abstract
Modern insurgencies and civil wars are often composed of many independent armed actors, e.g., insurgent groups, ethnic militias, state security forces, and foreign militaries. Opponents and allies are often fluid in these fragmented conflicts which can lead to radical transitions in conflict trajectories such as occurred when Sunni militant factions turned against Al Qaida in Iraq (AQI)during the Sunni Awakening in 2006-07 but later helped enable the territorial conquests of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2014. We propose a network approach in which the proliferation of armed actors within fragmented conflicts is represented by multilevel networks of cooperative and conflictual relationships and group attributes such as ideologies, targeting practices, size, and geographical regions of operation. We will use this rich representation to develop structural analysis metrics and models of group cooperation and competition which can be applied to tracking, analyzing, anticipating, and influencing key militant factional behaviors and conflict trajectories.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141612919
Entities
People
- Michael Gabbay
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Washington