Harmony and Disharmony - Organizational issues in Al-Qaida and startups
There’s an interesting new report out today from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (the US Military Academy), titled “Harmony and Disharmony: Exploting Al-Qa’ida’s Organizational Vunerabilities“, which has some useful insights for entrepreneurs and corporate managers as well as for those dealing with global jihadist movements or with a general interest in global security issues.
The report is based on a collection of captured documents which have been recently declassified, and examines some of the strengths and weaknesses of the Al-Qa’ida organizational structure. The merits of a 21st-century, networked, mobile, internet-enabled insurgency have been observed elsewhere at length, as summarized by James Na at Korea Liberator:
Martin van Creveld of Hebrew University, the author of the highly influential Transformation of War who has been lauded (including by me) as a leading prophet of military transformation, even went on to suggest that the small/weak would always beat the big/strong in a long war. (The stronger side is more constrained in methods; it also loses morale more rapidly from inability to defeat the weak completely over a long period of time; on the other hand, the weaker side often enjoys a more flexible, networked organization, and has a faster decision making cycle, i.e. the OODA loop).
The captured documents (available online in both original Arabic and translated English) have a remarkably familiar feel to them. Take out the parts about politics, religion, and carrying out jihad, and it looks kind of like an odd startup, with position descriptions (”must have work experience of no less than 5 years and have complete military operational experience in the battlefront and bases”), employment contracts (”vacation requests must be submitted two and a half months before the travel date”), and bylaws (”Goals - To spread the feeling of Jihad throughout the Muslim nation”).
Part of what makes the report interesting is that it’s based on Al-Qa’ida’s own self-assessment of what’s working and what isn’t working. Here are some sample items from a post-mortem summary of Al-Qa’ida’s experience in Syria:
- Absence of an advanced comprehensive plan and strategy
- The faithful mujahideen were spread among numerous organizations
- Failure to explain the mujahid revolutionary theory and clarify it’s objectives on an ideological level
- Low level of religious instruction and scarcity of revolutionary and political awareness
- Dependence on quantity after the 1st blow did away with the quality
- Weak public relations campaign both inside and out
- Dependence of the mujahideen on outside sources for support instead of being self-sufficient
- Getting bogged down in long term gang warfare unsuitable for the country
- Moving out of the country for an extended period of time, losing touch with the masses, and the decline of the religious and revolutionary level among the members
- Not benefiting from the Islamic and international gang warfare experiences
- Dealing with the neighboring regimes as if they were permanent supporters of jihad
- Operating publicly was a grave error
- Deficiency of military operations on the outside and failure to deter the enemy and their friends
- No planning for the aftermath of the regime
- Not rallying around the religious scholars and benefiting from them
A lot of this looks like the “before” part of a management consulting project.
Some items here remind me of Noel Tichy’s views on management, on the need for aligning ideas and values to achieve effective action within the organization. At the same time, many of their operational problems are linked to “agency” problems. This is when individuals or affliates have an incentive to do something in their own interest rather than those of the organization, and which get worse in the presence of personal risk and operational secrecy. This tends not to happen as much in companies, but there are still spectacular failures from time to time (think Enron’s SPEs).
If you’re interested in thinking about startup organizations and competition from a very different perspective, check it out.
Update 02-14-2006 23:37 PST: You may also be interested in “Unrestricted Warfare“, on asymmetric warfare, a 1999 paper by senior Chinese PLA officers, and Scott Maxwell’s recent series of posts, “How David can beat Goliath“.
Update 03-08-2006 10:58 PST: You may be interested in “Stealing Al-Qaida’s Playbook” which reviews other writings from active jihadists, also from the Combating Terrorism Center, although it’s probably less useful in a business context than the ideas on asymmetric warfare.
Tags: terrorism, global, security, jihad, startups, business, management, organization, theory
