What was the one? See a podcast? This is your host Jack gains. When CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military diplomats development officers and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground for the partner Nations. People. And Leadership our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations to contact the show. Email us at.
See a Casting at gmail.com or look us up on the Civil Affairs association website at www.wrc.org. I'll have those in the show notes, Shadow government's, what they're doing is they're performing governance but what they're providing to the resistance or Insurgency is legitimacy. Today, we welcome Josh Bedingfield who has studied at the Army school of advanced military studies or Sam's. I brought Josh in today to talk
about his upcoming paper. The value proposition of Shadow governments and resistance operations which should be out this summer. Josh will give us a preview of his findings and discuss how they are applied. This is part 1 of 2. The second portion will be out next week so let's get started. I am I trade. The Baltic. Guy is how I would describe myself while doing a lot of work in the baltics and then a tour where I was focused on the entirety of the Yukon aor.
Do you bump into the 353? Civil Affairs. Command, my had worked with them. Personally, there was actually a 353 civil Affairs team in Latvia. While I was in Latvia us never to see a team's when used to kapok and one 95th while we were there. Okay, did somebody plan that or is it just they just happen to be there because two sides of the coin were thrown in the pond man? That's a short question. I think is a very complex
answer. You think the G9 of be like I'm bringing an active duty and reserve one to Latvia and there's What I need you guys to do? Yeah, it wouldn't you'd also think there was some delineation and responsibilities. Oh absolutely and synthesize efforts but that's our job so well. And this is the same thing that the Marine Corps with their combination of influence and messaging.
You know, that was one of their first frustrations is, how do you get all these individuals who've had their own silos for so long work together and it almost resulted in torture.
I yeah yeah. So I think what it is is at some point we're going to have to just start competing to where people like, if a team lead wants to go out in the field and they start saying, okay well these are the this is the combination that I need in order to make that happen and I know Jack's a good PA. Oh, I know that Andre is a good I/O and I want if they're available I want them to come with me and and it goes by name so that we're more effective.
Yeah. Like I would say, Kind of lends itself towards a theory of assignment by purpose or assignment by Talent, right right. Instead of saying I need the insert position here, regardless of who is in that position because their ruins trained at the same level and capability. We need to make sure that the right person is in that position.
Or if the right person is not in that position is so nice just to be the right person regardless of position, right to fulfill a specified function at a given time and place. Yeah. So about your paper. Do you want to give a big picture overview of it? Sure. Yeah so you know I'm currently a student at the advanced military studies program at Sam's one of the core outputs of your one-year time. Here is a research monograph. Sure.
So I have started both research project that I've done over the last two years. The first one at CGS see, sort of War scholar in the second. One here is stands by just going to the Joint Special Operations. University Research proposals. Yeah. So I found one in there that had to do with Shadow government's. What is their role? What's their purpose? What is our role as Special Operations forces within that portion of a resistance?
And or I'm going to use a word here that I will come back around to or Insurgency framework right on my research proposal, kind of looking at what our Owners have to say about Shadow governments in existing Doctrine and or concepts, right? And when I found was Shadow governments are mentioned within Special Forces Doctrine very minimally. There's about four paragraphs of text, right? We can translate that to about a
few pages of text. We could even say that I'm partially wrong and that I'm missing some, but it's still a small amount, right? And in multinational Concepts namely the resistance operating concept. Offered by Auto fiala. He spends considerably more time, talking about Shadow governments but I argue he spends that time talking about Shadow governments in terms of their relationship to enhancing the outcomes of other more common resistance or Insurgency, structures notably, the gorillas
underground, an auxiliary. So I had to work that way towards understanding exactly what we meant when we said
Shadow government. So, when we go by Doctrine Shadow governments exist, As one of three forms of what do U s-- Army Doctrine defines as the public component of a resistance or an Insurgency. So the public component can manifest, as either a shadow government, a government in Exile, or an internally displaced government, the common thread of what each of those organizations do is that they
provision governance, right? So if gorillas fire weapons, in order to cause some kind of a destructive effect in the auxiliary perform, And underground perform various functions like Logistics, and intelligence and providing Safe Haven. Okay, these forms of government are specifically purposed to providing governance in order to do two things simultaneously. The first thing is to enhance the connection between that resistance or Insurgency with an existing government, right? Right.
And to compete for Influence and legitimacy with the occupying or opposing government, okay, and speaking a gorilla. So I was thinking, is there a difference between proxy networks and Shadow governments? Is it because they're providing
services to the public. So, when we say proxy forces where I would draw a clear delineation between them and Shadow governments, or even internally displaced governments or government in Exile, is that proxy, invites a rhetoric where those Those conducting the activity or doing it on behalf of themselves, right? There's an installation or another entity that is conducting. Those functions may be similar in terms of purpose or output, but to use a metaphor or a hypothetical situation.
It would be like the United States sending United States Personnel. That don't necessarily find themselves as a native part of that resistance or Insurgency to go and perform the Auction of a shadow government or government in Exile. Perón internally Place government. I would be a proxy. Okay, so, and to give an example of publicly known one would be Wagner sure. I mean, as a proxy, whereas in your examples, I think there's two good examples.
One would be Myanmar and the national Unity government. That's the previously democratic government that's in. Exile. So they are what you would say is a shadow government versus The military regime that's in power now. Yeah. And you know what the second would be because you're talking about like a rebel force that is trying to Curry favor with the population. That probably was the farc back when they were still in full Revolt.
Absolutely. Yeah. So the farc had a component that was what's in, what we would Define it as an Insurgency, and they would Define us resistance, right? Right farting. Ever walked around saying, let's wait and surgeon. See they said resist right whether or not we Define things as a resistance. An Insurgency is purely. Based off of perspective. One man's Freedom Fighters. Another man's terrorist is it kind of like that? Absolutely. Yeah.
So, yeah. And even terrorists finds itself an interesting bedfellow here with Shadow government's, right? Because we would call the Taliban terrorists or insurgents kind of in the same sentence. And they might buy into that for messaging purposes, but the Taliban had a functioning Shadow government Afghanistan for 20 years.
Absolutely. And it's interesting how I've seen it with Terror. Groups and other insurgents in foreign policy where they're trying, they're driving to have some type of legitimacy and the United States does not recognize them or the host government will not recognize him the Tamil Target. Tigers is one example. Excellent example. Yeah, I mean, they fought for
legitimacy. They had a government, they had they had influence on the population but they struggled with recognition and all the way through until they were finally. Finally acquiesced after that massive shelling on their population in military, but that one that one just struck me as you were talking. So anyway, I apologize for cutting you off. No, it's no problem.
You've actually circled back around to the root question, what is the research about in looking at what we have to say and Multinational concept have to say about Shadow governments, right? We don't say a lot about it. So I said, okay, well, I think that they're important. That's my gut feeling was inclined to do is just say, hey, I need to make an argument about why. Why the US government needs to care about Shadow governments, more notably like are soft. Sure, Army Special Operations
forces. When we talk about supporting disrupting or building resistances, we need to care more about it. But we don't have enough in there to be able to determine if that's that juice, is worth the squeeze. So, the core research question that came up with this, What is the value proposition of a shadow government? What are its advantages and disadvantages in terms of a resistant structure?
What does it provide to a resistance that is novel and unique aside from what you get in, pretty much any resistance, which almost unilaterally includes gorillas and a grounds and auxiliaries? What is a shadow government do for you? And what you were just talking
about is kind of what I found. Where the research is that when you're talking about a shadow government exercising, governance within the occupied territory of, you know, what we might Define as a denied environment and old Doctrine, they're in the zone of control of an opposition government, right? What they're doing is they're performing governance but what they're providing to the resistance or Insurgency is legitimacy.
So, I perform a function itay out in terms of an output and what I get back in terms of currency is legitimacy. And what I had to do in order to Define legitimacy because interestingly it's not really clearly defined and US military Doctrine. Sure is I married up a few things that Doctrine says with a few researchers. And essentially, when I say legitimacy, what I mean is the number of people who support an authority, okay? That is the measure of legitimacy.
So if a resistance has X number of gorillas and X number of auxiliary, and X number of underground, they have 200,000 people. Right? That's support that resistance either materially or immaterial E passively right. When given a choice they're going to say I'm going to follow that resistance that they tell me to do something. Absolutely intimacy. That's people willfully. Obeying that Authority at the expense often of obeying the opposition Authority, right?
You saw something very similar and Burundi with that. Attempted coup back in 2016, I believe the ruler is out of country. They block the airport and they threw a coup, but they weren't able to overthrow the ministry of Defence. So when the leader got back in country, the ministry of Defence went after the coup leaders, but there's still a heavy support. For the opposition. Yeah, let's look at that example.
So when that was occurring, when there was this surge of support, I would argue we need to look at that. In terms of what the balance of legitimacy is, is that you had a government that was looking at the people saying, don't Revolt, right? I'm going to Institute a measure of Martial law. I'm going to deploy some of my police. I'm gonna deploy some of my military. I'm going to try and exercise.
My instruments of power to either Either get you to willingly not take action or compel you into inaction, right? And on the response you got some people and it says the curse of the information of absence where we don't really have a good idea of the number of people that heard that message from the government and said all right I'm not going to go out and protest today like I'm not going to support it right? I will tell you that in is definitely more than zero.
But what you saw is a huge number of people who heard that message and say, hmm, when given the choice of willfully obeying or being coerced into obedience by the existing Authority, I'm going to choose to obey the resistance who is telling me go to the streets, take action today. That is representation of legitimacy of an opposition power, and you really only get that in large returns face. My research, if there is a form or another of a shadow
government at play. So essentially I had a few findings, my hypothesis is that shadow government formed governance, and the output of governance is legitimacy. Yes, which means that the function of a shadow government is to return to the resistance or Insurgency legitimacy. And my hypothesis is that as Shadow governments increase in their efficiency. There is a correlative increase in two other variables. The first variable is the odds that the resistance is successful.
There's some interesting research by a young lady named chynoweth, who is in her book. Why civil resistance Works soon as you get to nonviolent resistance that has 3.5 percent of the Civil population? Supporting you, the odds that you are going to be victorious Skyrocket. There's a noticeable jump and the odds that you are successful Genoa. That sounds familiar. Fantastic book. Highly. That anybody in the Civil Affairs Community, why civil resistance works by Erica Chenoweth?
I'll get a link to it. I'll Circle back around to you because actually, it's two people Erica Chenoweth, the Maria J, Stephen right? Okay, okay, so I just took that and said, hey, we can take that as a general ISM that says you can increase your legitimacy, which is the number of people to support you to such a degree that the odds that you were going to be successful approach to fit of Absent. Some kind of a massive Crackdown on behalf of the government.
And then, secondly, is that as your legitimacy increases, the odds that there is going to be a subsequent resistance to your Victory, decrease because the people are brought into your structure, right? So I did two case studies on this hypothesis. I looked at solidarity and Poland, which was my nonviolent resistance scenario.
And I looked at the Vietcong in Vietnam, essentially after the front end, In a war, we would Define as the Vietnam War, but really looking at 1955, through US, termination of involvement, right? As the violent one, right? Because the Vietcong were obviously violent, but they also had a robust Shadow government. They did that cities. Yeah, I mean, we say cities so literature. Refers to it differently. They will call it the Vietcong
infrastructure. Yeah. The Vietcong Shadow government, I even found some authors that simply just thought that the whole thing was an intelligence. Operation. But I mean, Morris is research on the Vietcong Shadow government, they had cells of governing authorities that reached all the way from Hamlet to National level that were so robust.
One of her great quotes in her book, is that when Saigon fell, when the North Vietnamese rolled into South Vietnam and declared Victory, there was this immediate transition. It was almost imperceptible or the shadow government because it had so much Legitimacy and had so deeply ingrained itself into the Runnings of the South Vietnamese sphere. It just became the government. They just traded hands. I just traded hands. It just became the government.
And frankly, a similar thing happened in solidarity, there's a different transience of events because you have 10 years of Martial law or solidarity, is pushed into the Shadows. But when they finally emerge jerez else Keys, martial law goes away, and you've got perestroika. Come in and there's this evening of the playing field of solidarity becomes legalized. Again, they go to the polls and all that legitimacy that they built back a decade before that.
In 1981, 1982 1983 is just still there, right? Solidarity, gets elected in a landslide Victory and nobody looks at it side way. You're talking about the Polish solidarity movement, right? Yeah, with luck. We'll listen. Yeah, yeah. So just checking, yeah, absolutely, yeah. So you look at that and then a good kind of check on it is Okay. Well, how do I confirm that? That's the good finding and I will give you a counter argument
like a straw man to it right? Those institutions had good legitimacy, they had legitimate support amongst the population and there's no resistance to him afterwards. What is a good example of a successful Insurgency, I will take the heat on defining it as such and the aftermath of this. Who did not have good legitimacy amongst the populace and continued to face a resistance to their rule? The Taliban. Sure they can walk out of the conflict and say we've been successful.
The Taliban Shadow government to a degree assumes control of the Afghanistan government but they don't have real legitimacy because they've been relying on coercive legitimacy to compel the population and obedience, rather than actually establishing good governance with them, good strong bond, right? Right. And they take control, and they immediately had a threat on their doorstep because they're not perceived as legitimate. Yeah. And that's a tough one.
That's a tough one to Define. Because, in a way, they came in with an integrated governance system. So that like you said, they were able to basically hand over the keys. And they had people at every level provincial level all the way up in the National taking positions, but they did it in a course of way. But are they, are they still, are they a legitimate? Government or are we just holding up and we're holding a blind eye to it, or are they in a little illegitimate
government? That is oppressed in this population and this is where the term legitimacy gets a little weird. So I have to look at it from a very specific Viewpoint of legitimacy when applied to the population. Sure. But when we asked a broad question, like, is the government legitimate We can look at that and say, oh well let's look at the percentage of the population. Is that willingly obeys the Taliban government, right?
But when we expand that perspective as into a question of like is it internationally legitimate? Then we have to come up with a totally different framework for it. Right? Like is it internationally recognized? Do they have allies? Do they have treaties well, that that's an argument. You can place on Iran and a dozen other countries you know because that's that's a good atmosphere. It's hard to Define, it's hard to Define, which is why I really tried to stick to it, from a
perspective of the people, okay? And what I would argue and I'll cite Florian weekend. He wrote a great book called waiting for dignity legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan. Took a really great look at how the Taliban Shadow government executed its functions through the conflict.
And then also, you know, a little bit of a look at gyro, has actions throughout that bay area and the problem on both which is a key part of the research that I conducted was, If we look at it through what governments actually is, which I don't Define the same way that the US Army defines it for not just the actions of the government first and foremost, my own little Insurgency, it just baffles me. Can I strongly encourage that we as a profession actively work
toward directly acknowledging. That governance is not the function of governments alone. There are systems of authority, all around that have nothing to do with governments that shape our daily lives, right? Through. So we have to find a way to say what governance is without just saying it's things that governments do. If we do that, I'm a big fan of Morgan key and Selma magnussen's theory on the social contract theory.
And they say essentially governance boils down to re lines of effort you have shared values performance and services of systems of exchange, right? So instead of categorizing it by a type of action of actor, they categorize it by the types of actions of An actor and they say, hey, this is how you get Authority, you build systems of exchange you provision services
and performance. And you do so by demonstrating, shared values with those who are being governed and if you do that, well, they're going to give you a Jetta mahseer. Going to choose to buy into this system. This contract that you have put forward with them and what gyro and the Taliban Shadow government didn't do very well was demonstrate shared values. Okay, and they covered up poor metrics of performance and really didn't have good systems
of exchange. I mean I was in Afghanistan it's a platoon leader back in 2011 and a little tiny District Center just south of Bagram. And you know it's this little village and there's Hills all around them and they don't look up like we do in America. I look up and I see him salmon the clouds, right? Like the federal government is a part of my daily life. The state government is a part of my daily life. I interact with Their various means and mechanisms as a part of the way that we are
structured. They don't do that in Afghanistan. A local Village looks at their elders and they look at the systems of power that actually shape how they go about their lives. And so, a purely democratic form of government where there's this representative democracy with these Representatives, you know, speaking on behalf of tribes that they don't actually Geo locate themselves. With is actually great ties with about why the Vietnamese Shadow government by the Viet Cong.
Shadow government was successful. Similar values out there and where the South Vietnamese government was trying to build this prong Western facing democracy. The Vietcong were saying, hey I understand that you guys are much more focused at the Hamlet and town level hyper, local forms of governance and that's where I'm going to be. Yeah. So you might have had a South Vietnamese government actor.
That was governing a large area but the people in the hamlets didn't see that, they didn't have a system of exchange with it. There was Way to build shared values there, that's how the Taliban were trying to influence as well as to reach out underneath the provincial governance and go into these Villages and work with the elders in order to get support right, Bri wholeheartedly. As long as we Define the word work in that sentence as coerce,
right? Right violently coerce, there were times where they were just out there paying off at for influence and there are other times where it was agreements on, keeping a mosque open, or allowing, In public weddings. So it wasn't always at the barrel of a gun or at a thread. Sometimes it was trying to get collaboration with the local population if they could sure if they couldn't, then they got into coercion. Let's say that the overriding majority of the time. Yeah yeah.
That's a great way to put it, right? Like if there was an easy way to do it. Then yeah, we're going to get legitimate. We're going to get actual shared values or a system built on actual shared values. But if I don't get it that I'm not, I'm not above, you know, a night letter, right? Or Shooting your your father or something, right? And that's why the u.s. is counter Taliban influence program focused on having people on the ground doing
atmospherics. And then when a local Elder was in contact with the Taliban and they were saying, oh yeah we'll leave your moderate. Mosque open or will allow you to have Sports Plus females can have sports to, we would find out from other atmospheric said, no they had shut that down in other towns and we would get those reports to that. Village Elder. So they knew what was going on around them and that would give them more power to say.
Well you're already shutting people down here and there so I don't trust you. Sure. And that was in hopes of then building reasonable police for security around that Village support of state with governance and aid for development. I never felt like the counter Taliban program coalesce that well. Yeah, and again not to trip on it a lot but there's another great parallel with what the This military's approach to combating the Vietcong Shadow government was right in
Afghanistan the program. You just mentioned, I would add to it, you had the vso program and then the contrast that in the Vietnam War was the Phoenix chords program, right? Which is same Dual Purpose Phoenix, which was admittedly kill capture, very enemy Centric. I'm going to remove the Personnel that are performing this function by either a killer capture method, that's Phoenix.
And then chords Was there anti governance approach and this is where again, our Doctrine really, there's a gap in it. When we say that governments is the activities of a government. Then when we say, you know, hypothetically speaking were conducting governance activities or transitional governance which is the the recently updated 3-5 7. Then we're saying that when we are conducting an operation in line with governance, we're doing is strengthening Stunning.
The activities of the government were building resilient structures within them or making them perform better and some way shape or form. Sure. But what we just talked about it's two great examples where we applied military and to a degree whole-of-government approach, but we did it to weaken a form of governance. Yes, it wasn't. I'm not going to say that there wasn't a purpose in Vietnam to strengthen the South Vietnamese government will say that those programs in Afghanistan weren't
meant to strengthen. Earthen gyro up but there was a purpose with them to weaken the opposition Shadow government. Sure, break down those structures reorient the people away from them toward the structures we need them to be bought into and that's counter government.
That's an activity that is purposed toward breaking governments and again if we don't have a good framework which I argue we don't on what governance actually is then it becomes very difficult to qualify what Likely governance has a governance activity is or operation or a counter governance operation. Then we just have to say big things like strengthen government. I very much agree with you because what I saw was mirroring
where we just in place the u.s. style judicial system or we in placed a parliamentary system but we didn't really look at how we can reinforce the local community. Local leader, governance. Those networks that were already naturally there. We didn't reinforce those into something that would be a national government.
We just we just imposed style that we thought would fit and I'll be honest, a Greco-Roman judicial system was already tried by the Greeks and the Romans and it didn't work so I'm not really sure why we're trying the same thing over. That sounds kind of like trying to repeat the same thing over and over to find a new solution. This is another reason why I really like K and magnussen's theory on social contract.
Because what it says is, you could theoretically have great systems of exchange and really Stellar performance and services metrics, but if it's not built on shared values, right? You're a fraud. It's just increasingly becoming simpler to determine for, at least question the motives that were presented. That's part one of two will see Josh next week where he'll finish this discussion on the value? Proposition of Shadow governments. Thanks for listening.
If you get a chance, please like And subscribe, and rate the show on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you're interested in coming on the show, or hosting an episode, email us at, see, a podcasting at gmail.com, I'll have the email and see a association website in the show notes. It's and now most importantly to those currently out in the field working with a partner Nations people or leadership to forward us relations. Thank you all for what you're doing.
This is Jack, your host stay tuned for more great episodes once the a podcast It's and now most importantly to those currently out in the field working with a partner Nations people or leadership to forward us relations. Thank you all for what you're doing. This is Jack, your host stay tuned for more great episodes once the a podcast