It's the Tribes (merged thread)

[William F. Owen]

Sir, it gets you secular lines of communication and influence over those who are working for extremist thugs.

I think you can connect the dots from there.

-Tribeguy

So? Exploiting personal relationships for HUMINT purposes? The Brits were doing that in Northern Ireland for 40 years. The same basic understanding works against organised crime for the FBI, NYPD and many others. Exploiting family ties is something we are good at, have done for years and it's far from new.

And that doesn't have any application to Hezballah?

It has application against every individual in the world who has an extended family. I assumed that your point was the detailed knowledge of tribes allowed you to craft policy towards them. - and I agree on that, IF it is relevant to the context of the policy.

I see that as largely irrelevant in Hezbollah's case, because, it does not speak to a policy and they are largely meritocracy - but with strong connections to the Lebanon's organised crime families.

Yes you can look at some Terrorist groups and see their command structure break down along family/clan/tribe lines. Folks have been doing the same with the Mafia for years. This is not insightful. Everyone working in the Africa, Asia and Mid-East has been doing it for 100's of years - and still does.