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Conflicts involving transnational jihadist actors have been difficult to resolve. Are global jihadist groups uniquely resilient or conflict prone? In order to address this question, this article unpacks what we mean by global jihadism and evaluates how different aspects of transnationalism affect the prospects of conflict termination and disengagement from violence, drawing on existing arguments from both terrorism studies and peace studies. The article develops a new typology of armed Islamist groups, based on whether they have national or transnational goals, engage in national or transnational mobilization, and operate in one or multiple countries. Building on this typology, the article underlines three potential vulnerabilities of transnational armed actors: localization, fragmentation and public backlash. The empirical section illustrates these vulnerabilities and the tensions that can emerge between local and global imperatives in the case of the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah.

Legitimacy is widely theorized as shaping the dynamics of contentious politics, fostering support and stability for those involved while imposing behavioral constraints. Yet, empirical research reveals wide variation in how these effects are realized in practice. We contend that divergences in legitimacy's effects are tied in fundamental ways to the relationship between actors engaged in contentious politics and their audience(s). We develop a framework that highlights three conditions shaping the effects of legitimacy—legitimacy type, network balance, and structural dependence—and use a comparative analysis of dyadic relationships of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and Jemaah Islamiyah to illustrate how convergence and divergence in legitimacy's effects are systematically structured by these conditions. Doing so advances scholarship on legitimacy in contentious politics by providing a basis for systematically comparing the effects of legitimacy across cases, situations, and historical contexts.

The increased ability of clandestine groups to operate with little regard for borders or geography is often taken to be one of the dark consequences of a brave new globalized world. Yet even for terrorists and smugglers, the world is not flat; states exert formidable control over the technologies of globalization, and difficult terrain poses many of the same problems today as it has throughout human history. InNo Man's Land, Justin V. Hastings examines the complex relationship that illicit groups have with modern technology-and how and when geography still matters. Based on often difficult fieldwork in Southeast Asia, Hastings traces the logistics networks, command and control structures, and training programs of three distinct clandestine organizations: the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, the insurgent Free Aceh Movement, and organized criminals in the form of smugglers and maritime pirates. Hastings also compares the experiences of these groups to others outside Southeast Asia, including al-Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and the Somali pirates. Through reportage, memoirs, government archives, interrogation documents, and interviews with people on both sides of the law, he finds that despite their differences, these organizations are constrained and shaped by territory and technology in similar ways. In remote or hostile environments, where access to the infrastructure of globalization is limited, clandestine groups must set up their own costly alternatives. Even when successful, Hastings concludes, criminal, insurgent and terrorist organizations are not nearly as mobile as pessimistic views of the sinister side of globalization might suggest.

Studies of masculinity and armed conflict have struggled to capture the complex interaction between globalized militarized masculinities and local gender formations. Particularly in conflicts characterized by a high degree of combatant mobility (in the form of foreign fighters, massed displacement, or significant diaspora involvement) locating the relevant gender dynamics can prove to be a difficult step in understanding the character of armed groups. Based on fieldwork with Indonesian former foreign fighters, we make the case that feminist international relations have tended to unreflectively default to the nation when locating gender hierarchies. Exploring the multiple articulations of masculinity present in former fighters’ lives, we suggest that efforts must be made to resist methodological nationalism in understanding the relationship between gender hierarchies and armed conflict. Charting how foreign fighters traverse local constructions of gender, national gender hierarchies, and transnational social structures to participate in the conflict, we argue that adopting a conscious consideration of scale in our research method is needed to move beyond methodological nationalism.

This article looks at the first two local jihads in Indonesia after the fall of President Suharto: the 1999–2005 Ambon jihad and the 2000–7 Poso jihad. Both jihads were launched by Javanese mujahidin in response to the eruption of Christian–Muslim communal violence. The Ambon jihad was characterized by disagreement, infighting and lack of strategic direction, while the Poso jihad was comparatively better led and linked to the broader goals of establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia. This article explores the differences between the two jihads and asks to what extent the better organization of the Poso jihad was the result of lessons learnt from the “mistakes” of the Ambon jihad. The article advances two arguments. First, the Ambon jihad was undermined by the lengthy debate within Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) on how to respond to the Ambon conflict as well as by the shifting dynamics between JI, Mujahidin KOMPAK and Laskar Jihad. Second, that the Poso jihad was more organized than the Ambon one because JI’s leadership had a more comprehensive approach to the Poso jihad; because JI and Mujahidin KOMPAK had learnt from the mistakes of the Ambon jihad in the areas of leadership, training and using local jihads to achieve national aims; and because the intra- and inter-mujahidin dynamics and with it the “state of jihad” had evolved between February 1999 and September 2000.

What prompted Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to turn away from terror tactics? This article argues JI did not disengage from violence per se because it did not demobilize and disarm. Instead, it is more appropriate to view JI as having postponed amaliyat (actions) until such time as it has built up sufficient support among the population. This occurred in response to three factors: the realization of the costs exacted on the network by the 2002 Bali bombing; the splintering off of the group’s pro-bombing wing; and the series of mass arrests following the disruption of its project to build a secure base in Poso, Central Sulawesi. Taken together, these events reinforced the understanding that dakwah (Islamic propagation) had to precede jihad, a view that was already present within parts of the JI network prior to certain members’ decision to undertake terrorist attacks. This article explores how JI members who were involved in terror attacks revised their previously held views in light of these experiences.

How do terrorist groups control their members? Do the tools groups use to monitor their operatives and enforce discipline create security vulnerabilities that governments can exploit?The Terrorist's Dilemmais the first book to systematically examine the great variation in how terrorist groups are structured. Employing a broad range of agency theory, historical case studies, and terrorists' own internal documents, Jacob Shapiro provocatively discusses the core managerial challenges that terrorists face and illustrates how their political goals interact with the operational environment to push them to organize in particular ways. Shapiro provides a historically informed explanation for why some groups have little hierarchy, while others resemble miniature firms, complete with line charts and written disciplinary codes. Looking at groups in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, he highlights how consistent and widespread the terrorist's dilemma--balancing the desire to maintain control with the need for secrecy--has been since the 1880s. Through an analysis of more than a hundred terrorist autobiographies he shows how prevalent bureaucracy has been, and he utilizes a cache of internal documents from al-Qa'ida in Iraq to outline why this deadly group used so much paperwork to handle its people. Tracing the strategic interaction between terrorist leaders and their operatives, Shapiro closes with a series of comparative case studies, indicating that the differences in how groups in the same conflict approach their dilemmas are consistent with an agency theory perspective. The Terrorist's Dilemmademonstrates the management constraints inherent to terrorist groups and sheds light on specific organizational details that can be exploited to more efficiently combat terrorist activity.

This article explains that the religion ideology has potential power to ignite fanaticism and radicalization that unquestionably can erupt violence and destruction. The emergence of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Jamaah Islamiyah, Majelis Mujahiddin Indonesia, for instance, is a reflection of the rise of religionized politics and radicalization of Islamists. And in this context, religion (Islam) in this position will have two functions; building better integrity among its followers while creating conflict and violation. The tragedy of Bali bombs, Australian Embassy bomb in Jakarta, suicide bomb in Solo and other brutal acts done by anarchists like those from Jamaah Islamiyah, ISIS, and even Islamic Defender Front (FPI) - where they use violence and destructive acts to close down businesses that they think is not in accordance of sharia like bar and café since they sell alcoholic beverages - are examples where fundamentalists have shown intolerant exclusiveness and belligerent sense of supremacy in facing minority communities.

The major militant Islamist network in Indonesia, comprising the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and its associated groups, was believed to have been responsible for dozens of violent incidents after 2000, including the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005. Generally JI sympathized with al-Qaeda’s ideology, openly supported al-Qaeda and other militant ideologues by translating and publishing their work in Indonesia, and sent hundreds of fighters (mujahidin) to Afghanistan for training. The Indonesian militant Islamist groups were not foreign controlled, but they shared some features with a broader militant Islamist network. This essay takes as its point of departure Albert-Laszlo Barabasi’s characterization of al-Qaeda as a matrix of self-organized networks, not a military organization with structured divisions. In Barabasi’s theorization of networks, al-Qaeda appears as a “scale-free network” of a limited number of persons who had accumulated many nodes in a scattered and self-sustaining web. Hence, JI was loosely organized and yet hierarchical, composed of small cells held together by personal loyalties, family, school, and other friendly connections. Faced with intensifying police assaults, militant Islamists increasingly fell back on their networks. Using published reports and the author’s own interviews with relevant individuals, this essay traces the links and nodes of the militant Islamic networks in Indonesia and examines why and how jihadists in Indonesia tenaciously sustained their violent activities.