On June 5 reports confirmed that Israel has been arming and apparently supporting or working with an armed militias in Gaza. Some reports refer to this group as a “gang.” Other reports describe the leader of the group, Yasser Abu Shabab, as a member of a large clan in southern Gaza. There may be more clans being activated or encouraged than just the one linked to Yasser Abu Shabab. Shabab is not his real name and his name is a nomme de guerre, meaning the full details about this group continue to be shrouded in some mystery.
As the details are shrouded in some fog, it is hard to know if these groups will become an effective anti-Hamas movement. If the groups are gangs that are more well-known for looting and crimes in the past, rather than achieving much, then they will likely not be embraced by the average people. If the groups are made up of clans or even men with links to Bedouin tribes, then it’s possible that it will be hard for them to make inroads among other Gazans. It’s worth asking whether the new militias in Gaza may be effective and whether history tells us that arming militias is an effective tactic.
First, let’s look at what we know about Gaza. It’s worth noting that Gaza’s population is divided into different groups. There are people who came to Gaza as refugees in 1949 1949, fleeing areas in the Negev that became part of Israel. These people likely make up more than half the population of Gaza. Then there are the people in Gaza who trace their heritage to people who lived in Gaza for hundreds of years before 1948. Those people could be called the original Gazans. They are very different than those called “refugees.”
The refugees moved to camps such as Khan Younis, Rafah, Maghazai, Deir al-Balah, Jabaliya, Nuseirat and Shati. The camps became the backbone of the Palestinian political and armed movements. They also became a hotbed of Hamas activity in the 1980s and 1990s, and thus a hotbed of terrorist activity. The Gaza Gazans, who predate 1948, are less inclined toward Hamas.
Will the militias be accepted by Palestinian society?
This means that any attempt by the armed militias, gangs or clans will face hurdles in terms of penetrating Gazan society. This is because groups that have roots in one area, may not be popular in others, or they may even alienate people. Back in the 1980s, Gazan families and clans were often involved in violence against one another. This kind of family violence is also common to Arab villages in Israel, where there has been an unprecedented level of gun violence in recent years. This kind of violence means people are often divided and it is hard to unify them, either militarily or politically.
What does history tell us about the challenge that militaries or countries have in recruiting or arming tribes, mercenaries, militias or other types of paramilitary groups? In antiquity, it was not uncommon for tribes to play a role as auxiliaries alongside normal military formations. In addition, it was common that when countries were at war they would often bring along a cavalcade of smaller allies. For instance, when Hannibal was fighting Rome, he had to recruit people from Italy because the actual number of Carthaginians in his army began to decline over time.
By the 15th and 16th century, mercenaries played a major role in fighting amongst the Italian city states. This was the era of Machiavelli, who wrote that mercenaries were often “disunited, ambitious, [and] undisciplined.” However, mercenaries continued to be used by European states. The British employed Hessian mercenaries and others during the Revolutionary War. These groups generally did not prove effective. In addition, the British and other colonial powers often relied on alliances with tribes to help during wartime or to keep the peace on the frontier. For instance, at the battle of Isandlwana, the British army fighting the Zulus included a number of local native troops. The native troops of the Natal Native Contingent, for instance, included tribes that had fought the Zulus. Henan Cortes, during his conquest of the Aztec empire, allied with groups that had been suppressed by the Aztecs in the past.
In the modern times, many countries have sought to work with tribes and militias. For instance, Lawrence of Arabia worked with tribes that were in revolt against the Ottoman Empire. During the Vietnam war, the US often worked with Montagnard fighters who opposed the Communists. The US also worked with the Hmong people in Laos. Later, during the US occupation in Iraq the US relied on a group called the Sons of Iraq or Sahweh, which were Sunni tribal militias. These were concentrated in Anbar province. Rwanda has long backed groups in eastern Congo who are made up of members of the Tutsi minority.
What this history tells us is that there is a long tradition of working with tribal militias, clans, gangs or mercenaries. However, historically these groups do not have a lasting ability to achieve results. Usually, they are used as part of a policy and then they are usually abandoned when a war is over. In other cases, they simply fade away. The Sunni “awakening” groups in Iraq, for instance, were starved of resources after the US left Iraq in 2011. Some of the tribes that supported the US continued to play a role. During the ISIS invasion of Iraq, a number of tribes near Haditha helped hold off the ISIS attack. These included the Jughayfa tribe and the Albu Nimr tribe. ISIS persecuted tribal groups that resisted. Key Sunni tribes such as the Shammar opposed ISIS and similar extremists. However, most of these tribes are not able to operate on a national level, they can only help secure certain areas.
The use of tribes and militias usually enable states to carve out areas of influence in states they are intervening in. When there is a chaotic state on the border or a weak state, countries will often seek to arm local groups to help protect their borders. This can backfire because the groups may end up going on rampages and massacring people, or they may escalate a war in a neighboring country. The Vietnam War, for instance, destabilized Cambodia and Laos and this led to great suffering over the years. Minority groups who were exploited as allies often were betrayed. In other situations states will try to co-opt or even work with drug cartels, which is how Mexico’s former PRI appeared to have run the country in the 1980s and 1990s. When this broke down the country fell into a brutal cycle of violence as the cartels had become more powerful than some state governments.
Relying on a tribal militia or clan in Gaza may work in the short term. However, in the long term it is unlikely to achieve success. The theory that Israeli soldiers' lives will be saved via this alliance is not necessarily proven by history. Usually, when states think they can provide guns to tribes or militias as a short-term fix, they find out later that they are drawn into more complex wars. For instance, the spillover from the Rwandan genocide has led to fighting in eastern Congo for thirty years. Has the use of proxies and tribes and militias there helped Rwanda or Congo or anyone else in the long term? Probably not. The same can be said for Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia or many other states teetering on failure and civil war. A long civil war in Gaza will likely harm Israel in the long term.
