Downward Scale Shift? Exploring the Political Preferences of Jihadi Groups in Syria

Why do some jihadi groups decide to adopt local-oriented strategies, attacking the “near enemy” (i.e. local governments in the MENA region), while others eventually decide to “go global”? And, equally interesting, why do certain jihadi groups shift their enemy hierarchy over time? Jihadists’ debates on the near and the far enemy (al-‘adu al-qarib and al-‘adu al-ba‘id, respectively) are not novel at all, dating back to the 1970s–80s. However, this distinction – inherently fuzzy – has become increasingly blurred over time, especially after 2001, with jihadi groups often combining both strategies; as noted by Anne Stenersen (2018), such developments compel us to question and revise this very categorization. Literature on political violence and target selection has often emphasized the role played by ideology in placing constraints on the choices of militants. Yet, in several cases, ideology alone cannot account for all those choices. First of all, in several cases, groups subscribing to the same ideological family make different strategic choices, as target selection has also to do with opportunistic dynamics and operational conditions. Besides this, ideology and operational dynamics are somehow intertwined and co-constitutive: therefore, a holistic framework should analyze both dimensions and their interplay. This preliminary study – which represents the first part of my ongoing doctoral research, and is based on a triangulation of qualitative methods (including document analysis, as well as preliminary fieldwork plus expert interviews) – seeks to broach such issues, focusing on the case study of post-2010 Syria. In particular, it will devote attention to two jihadi groups operating in the area: Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, former affiliate of al-Qa‘ida in Syria, and its splinter group Hurras al-Din, comprising al-Qa‘ida loyalists who defected from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. In doing so, it will attempt to bridge research on civil wars, political violence, and social movement studies – adopting a relational and dynamic approach. Indeed, it will make use of the concept of “scale shift” and attempt to identify relevant mechanisms that might explain such process, i.e. hypothetical mechanisms leading the jihadi groups under consideration to change their political preferences. To this regard, the cases of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Hurras al-Din are particularly interesting: while their genesis is rooted in al-Qa‘ida – regarded as the quintessential transnational actor –, the two groups have apparently adopted a local-centered strategy, enacting a sort of “downward scale shift”. Hopefully, the preliminary mechanisms detected here shall be further investigated, potentially enabling comparisons across different kinds of political violence, and thus contributing to “de-exceptionalize” the political behavior of jihadi groups.