An Analysis of Hezb-e-Islami's Behavioral Complexities in Post-Taliban Afghanistan: an Organizational Approach

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the post-2001 behavioral complexities of Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan, one of the main Jihadi Tanzims led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, referred to as HIG. It offers an organizational lens to understand why HIG while being an insurgency and military group opposed to the government, also participated in the electoral process, competing and contesting within the same state that it fights and deems illegitimate. It shows how the organizational structure of HIG produces contradictory behaviors, strategies and outcomes. It also explains why HIG splintered the most among its jihadi peer organizations. The theoretical part of the thesis offers a combined conceptual platform of organizational theory of group conflict, social networks and Patronage politics to provide theoretical explanations to demonstrate how the organizational structure and its political-military nature affect the strategies it adopts and the outcomes it produces, especially in terms of organizational splintering. It explains how patron-client ties and the social structure of an organization, in the context of Afghanistan, cause the organizational success and failure. The empirical chapters investigate how the organizational structure, social network and patron-client relations of the HIG and its rival led the HIG to politico-military impasses. In this part, findings strongly indicate that HIG was politically and militarily weakened in the past thirteen years and is not able to overcome its inter-organizational and intra-organizational disparities. Therefore, the antithetical behavior of the Hezb is the consequence of its weaknesses.