The advent of Islamist rebel governing projects in different regions of the world provides an opportunity to link the empirical study of these groups with the broader, emerging academic literature on rebel governance as well as studies of political Islam(s) and religion and violence. This paper seeks to do just that through its central case study, the Somali Sunni Islamist insurgent group Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (Al-Shabaab). Drawing on primary sources from Al-Shabaab, the paper traces the group’s governing project from its origins in 2008 up to the present day, paying particular attention to the foundational years (2008-2010) when its civil administration was being set up. The territorial governance projects of Islamist rebel groups, like those of non-Muslim rebels, include a wide range of activities including the distribution of food and material aid, implementation of a system of law and order, mediation of civil disputes, and construction and agricultural projects. As part of their proto-state governance projects, Islamist rebels construct and deploy symbols and symbolic repertoires that advance the group’s claim to symbolic sovereignty and legitimate sociopolitical authority in a systematized language that is meant to resonate more deeply with local audiences than a naked display of insurgent power or a system of exchange based on material incentives alone. Symbolic repertoires and the use of symbolic power allow Islamist rebel rulers to advance their governance ambitions and claims of legitimacy within a defined narrative frame, imbuing them with added historical and religious legitimacy through the inclusion of specific symbols and performance of specific rituals such as congregational prayers, communal religious festivals, reconstructing local education systems, and couching insurgent shariʿa-based ‘justice’ within a theological as well as legal framework. This paper considers how Al-Shabaab as a governing organization uses symbols and symbolic power as a form of soft power as part of a socialization process within local communities in rebel-held and rebel-influenced territory.

Within the literature on rebel rule, attention has been devoted to the factors that influence patterns of governance. Among those, ideology is particularly debated: while some scholars believe that a group’s ideology influences its approach to governance, others argue that rebels often govern differently than their ideology would suggest. Inserting my research in the framework of this debate, I will investigate the influence of ideology on the governance system implemented by al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 2011-12 and 2015-16. I consider AQAP an appropriate case study to explore the relationship between ideology and governance for multiple reasons. Firstly, AQAP – as all Salafi-Jihadists – claims its commitment to ideological purity. Therefore, it is interesting to assess whether the group followed ideology even when governing, when other factors may influence rebel preferences. Secondly, AQAP ruled in two different moments, which contributes to illuminating whether the influence of ideology is static or dynamic. Thirdly, AQAP has traditionally displayed a close relationship with al-Qa’ida Central. Therefore, studying AQAP informs observations that can be tested on other al-Qa’ida affiliates. Finally, while studies on AQAP’s governance exist, they have not investigated the influence of ideology in a systematic way. To study the influence of ideology, I will focus on four relevant dimensions of rebel rule: the understanding of citizenship, which indicates whether the group regards as citizens everyone or only some categories of people; the approach to civilian participation, which indicates whether the group includes civilians in decision-making or excludes them; the relationship with other actors, which indicates whether the group governs in cooperation or in isolation; and the approach towards pre-existing institutions and personnel, which indicates whether the group is innovative or conservative. To illuminate the relationship between governance and ideology in the case of AQAP, I will discuss the group’s ideology and I will build expectations on the characteristics that governance is most likely to display if influenced by Salafi-Jihadism. Subsequently, I will offer a qualitative case study analysis of AQAP to determine whether the group ruled consistently with the expectations suggested by its ideology. I will rely mostly on the group’s primary sources in both Arabic and English that are openly accessible online. I will also refer to secondary sources to offer a more accurate picture than might emerge from an exclusive reliance on AQAP’s own materials. Following the case study, I will advance conclusive observations and indicate avenues for future research.

Between 2014-2019, ISIS embarked on a state-building project that attempted to replicate the functions and structure of contemporary nation-states. ISIS - like other Salafi-Jihadi rebel groups – had to rely extensively on civilian employees to staff its governing institutions and to provide both the expertise and competencies needed to achieve its state-building ambitions. Iraqi and Syrian civilian employees received a salary from ISIS but did not join ISIS as members nor pledge allegiance to its Caliphs. Although ISIS’s governance project has received extensive policy and academic attention, there is lack of understanding about the exact role that civilian employees played in ISIS’s state and the extent to which ISIS relied upon them. In this paper, I explore and compare the role that civilian employees played in four governing sectors of ISIS’s state: healthcare, education, natural resources and public services. I find that ISIS civilian employees were integral to the functioning of ISIS’s state and show that there is variation in both how ISIS incentivized its civilian employees and the degree of agency that civilian employees had within their positions. This paper is based on two sources of primary data: interviews with 43 civilian employees of ISIS conducted in Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon and a unique dataset of documents issued by ISIS’s provincial governing institutions.

Capitalizing on the virtual space, extremist organizations broadcast their activities to the rest of the world. The performative elements and the symbolic behavior of statehood are as essential as a legitimizing strategy as activities on the ground (Weber, 1998). As extremist groups have become more prominent in the digital world, scholars are researching women’s agencies within these organizations more frequently. Scholars across disciplines prolifically examined women’s roles in extremist organizations (for example, Blee, 1996; Forcucci, 2010; Latif et al., 2020; Phelan, 2020). Nonetheless, such literature does not address how the group conveys the family unit within their aspired statehood and whether the group’s ideology and territorial aspirations influence this choice. The hegemonic gender stereotypes espoused by these groups will help us further understand their self-descriptions and inner narratives. The family unit is inherent to statehood (Hanley, 1989). Thus, including women and children in rebel governance literature will provide a more comprehensive approach to understanding extremist groups’ global constituency. More specifically, my paper will ask how violent extremist organizations construct the ideal family unit and how this is associated with their ideology and territorial aspirations. Through a mixed-methodology of unsupervised machine learning and content analysis, this paper will examine the family unit’s use within the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) online magazines (Dabiq, Rumiyah, and al-Naba) between 2014-2020. Using unsupervised machine learning, topic modeling (LDA) (Blei et al., 2003), and the ANTMN approach (Walter & Ophir, 2019), the paper will map the thematic structures of the corpora to illustrate the topic networks around gender and family unit. The paper tests significant associations between the variables, including gender roles, home economics, and family with the group’s ideology, time, and space (territory). The findings demonstrate how ISIS employed the family unit as an idealized concept to perform statehood to the global audience.