The Haqqani Network is an insurgency group based primarily in North Waziristan, Pakistan, and conducts cross-border attacks into eastern Afghanistan. The group is characterized by its use of coordinated small-arms assaults coupled with rocket attacks and IEDs against US, Coalition and Afghan forces in the region.
Insurgency group
The emergence of Communist states in Asia and Africa and the decolonization process following World War II changed established international legal doctrine regarding insurgency. The Communists and the new nations supported insurgents that claimed to be fighting just wars of national liberation and thus demanded the protections granted belligerents under international law. The United States and other Western states rejected such claims because they constituted indirect aggression or subversion. This schism created a global conflict of ideas about the nature of insurgency that continues to this day.
Insurgent groups must contend with competing imperatives of building support and securing resources while maintaining military effectiveness against overpowering state opposition. To do this they need to adapt their strategies. Ucko argues that these adaptations can take many forms. For example, the Zapatistas contented themselves with dominating a local region rather than overthrowing the Mexican government. The FARC sought total state power but had to accept political bargains to retain power in the end.
Groups with’movement’ origins often inherit organisational weaknesses and divisions within social movements and suffer from continuing fragmentation, while those with ‘insurgent’ or’state splinter’ origins tend to have more closed memberships that are differentiated by their background inside or outside the regime. These differences are important as they provide insight into why certain groups succeed or fail in achieving their objectives of building popular support and taking over state authority.