Pink Slips from the Underground: Changes in Terror Leadership

Personnel management at the top of terrorist groups presents a puzzle. Commanders act off-message reasonably often, sometimes angering powerful backers. When this happens group leaders typically have the means, and every incentive, to kill the offending commander. Yet we often observe group leaders dismissing them instead, allowing the commanders an opportunity to work against the movement by providing aid to the government or starting a competing group. Why would rational leaders act this way? Using a formal model, we argue that this is a consequence of a problem common in organizational behavior, but underexplored in the study of terrorist organizations: having to satisfy two “masters. ” Our model elucidates the substantive factors that underlie a leader’s fraught personnel decision when caught in such a bind, here conceptualized as between backers and an important constituency. We develop implications for organizational functioning and structure, government action against groups, and the effect of technological innovations on leader incentives. In July of 2013, a document circulated through the tribal areas of Pakistan announcing that the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) had dismissed their spokesman, Sajjad Momand, for “. [making] comments that have raised the danger of divisions between the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban. ” (Zahra-Malik and Mehsud, 2013). This dismissal followed pressure on the TTP to take action to reduce these divisions. For example, a TTP commander described a tradeoff between loyalty to Momand and satisfying important backers, reporting, “after Ehsan’s damaging statements, the Afghan Taliban asked us not to use its stationery or its flag.This is unacceptable for us” (Zahra-Malik and Mehsud, 2013). Underscoring the impression that the TTP was pressured to remove Momand, the spokesman had reportedly been issuing statements without coordination or approval from the TTP leadership for some time (Shah, 2013). This detail suggests that the TTP’s leaders were not simply seizing a pretext to remove Momand; if so, they had ample prior opportunities. Although there was significant speculation in local and international media that these actions heralded a rupture in the alliance between the TTP and the Afghan Taliban which might affect the TTP’s 6-year-long insurgency, less attention focused on one of the most intriguing elements of the story: that it happened at all. Rather than force him out, the TTP could have simply killed the troublesome spokesman. Notoriously brutal, the organization had a precedent of slaying former allies and compatriots. Yet, despite the TTP’s record of internecine violence, Momand appears to have escaped unscathed. He remained active on social media sites through 2016, before resurfacing as a mouthpiece for a regional TTP branch, and eventually surrendering to the Pakistani government in April, 2017 (dai, 2017). As main spokesman for the group, Momand had access to information about the TTP’s Most notably, in February 2011, the TTP released a video documenting their assassination of an important former trainer of the Afghan Taliban, Sultan Amir Tarar. Alongside the video, the TTP issued a statement which simultaneously justified targeting an associate and signaled willingness to turn on current comrades. They castigated Tarar for working with Pakistani intelligence, branding him as among “the twofaced hypocrites and mischief makers” who are a “deadly poison” to the jihadi cause. Stating that such individuals “. may be disguised as a Mujahid today,” the TTP claimed that purges are “actually the responsibility of the Taliban” (Al-Qadisiyyah Media, 2011). Tarar’s execution was not an isolated occurrence of fratricidal behavior: in both 2012 and 2013, TTP-affiliated suicide bombers attacked the headquarters a former TTP commander who had splintered from the group in 2009 and was reported to have defected to the government (News, 2013).