Toward Uncivil Society Networks and the Rise of Dark Nets
The bulk of scholarship on the rise and spread of civic networks has tended to focus on those
elements of civil society that are explicitly nonviolent in nature and liberal in outlook and spirit.
These characteristics reflect, in large part, the ‘‘peace dividend’’ of the immediate post–Cold
War era that provided a hiatus from decades of interstate conflict, and where the bulk of visible or public sphere transnational networks tended to center on issues of social justice, environment, and universal rights and values. Of these elements, even the most extreme forms,
such as the anticorporate resistance networks described earlier, were still largely characterized by nonviolent methods and centered in and around Western industrialized activist circles.
However, outside the focus of mainstream scholarship, other social movements and resistance groups discovered and began to appropriate the Internet, recognizing the unprecedented capabilities it offered for organization, communication, mobilization, and action. These
actors, ranging from militants, insurgents, criminal elements, and diaspora and migrant communities, expanded exponentially, aided by the largely unfettered and unregulated growth of
the Internet throughout the developed and developing world. Much less was said or known
about these networks—whose activities and aims were facilitated by the Internet in much the
same way as were global civic and resistance networks, but whose aims were often criminal,
covert, and sometimes violent. These dark nets can be divided roughly into three categories.
The first and most well known of the dark nets are the armed social movements. Armed social movements can represent a multiplicity of local causes, but their ability to share tactics,
contacts, and at times drink from the same ideological well make them appear as a unified
global network. In the post–9/11 era, Al Qaeda and the jihad movements represent perhaps
the most visible manifestation of this kind of armed-social-movement dark net. However, they
are by no means the first and only networks of this kind. In the 1990s, the old paradigm
of wars among nation states was displaced by a new form of warfare—what Mary Kaldor
calls ‘‘new wars.’’
21 What sets ‘‘new wars’’ apart from the previous generation of Cold War–
era armed struggles is the participants’ ability to leverage the emerging global networked
economy—in particular the illicit global economy—to become self-reliant for the arms,
money, and political support required to pursue armed struggle against state and nonstate
actors. Many of the ‘‘new wars’’ that occurred during the 1990s, particularly those in the developing world where First World militaries were neither involved as supporters or peacekeepers,
were fought essentially as transnational civil wars where armed formations pursued both guerilla and conventional warfare against government and rival groups. In conflicts that included
Sri Lanka, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, western Africa, and Chechnya, ‘‘new wars’’ demonstrated that globalization had made armed social movements capable of challenging and at
times defeating state actors without the need of state-based patrons or backers.
More importantly, this new generation of armed social actors also increasingly embraced
the Internet, recognizing the capacity afforded to affect both their supporters and opponents.
Global Civil Society and the Securitization of the Internet
129
The bulk of scholarship on the rise and spread of civic networks has tended to focus on those
elements of civil society that are explicitly nonviolent in nature and liberal in outlook and spirit.
These characteristics reflect, in large part, the ‘‘peace dividend’’ of the immediate post–Cold
War era that provided a hiatus from decades of interstate conflict, and where the bulk of visible or public sphere transnational networks tended to center on issues of social justice, environment, and universal rights and values. Of these elements, even the most extreme forms,
such as the anticorporate resistance networks described earlier, were still largely characterized by nonviolent methods and centered in and around Western industrialized activist circles.
However, outside the focus of mainstream scholarship, other social movements and resistance groups discovered and began to appropriate the Internet, recognizing the unprecedented capabilities it offered for organization, communication, mobilization, and action. These
actors, ranging from militants, insurgents, criminal elements, and diaspora and migrant communities, expanded exponentially, aided by the largely unfettered and unregulated growth of
the Internet throughout the developed and developing world. Much less was said or known
about these networks—whose activities and aims were facilitated by the Internet in much the
same way as were global civic and resistance networks, but whose aims were often criminal,
covert, and sometimes violent. These dark nets can be divided roughly into three categories.
The first and most well known of the dark nets are the armed social movements. Armed social movements can represent a multiplicity of local causes, but their ability to share tactics,
contacts, and at times drink from the same ideological well make them appear as a unified
global network. In the post–9/11 era, Al Qaeda and the jihad movements represent perhaps
the most visible manifestation of this kind of armed-social-movement dark net. However, they
are by no means the first and only networks of this kind. In the 1990s, the old paradigm
of wars among nation states was displaced by a new form of warfare—what Mary Kaldor
calls ‘‘new wars.’’
21 What sets ‘‘new wars’’ apart from the previous generation of Cold War–
era armed struggles is the participants’ ability to leverage the emerging global networked
economy—in particular the illicit global economy—to become self-reliant for the arms,
money, and political support required to pursue armed struggle against state and nonstate
actors. Many of the ‘‘new wars’’ that occurred during the 1990s, particularly those in the developing world where First World militaries were neither involved as supporters or peacekeepers,
were fought essentially as transnational civil wars where armed formations pursued both guerilla and conventional warfare against government and rival groups. In conflicts that included
Sri Lanka, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, western Africa, and Chechnya, ‘‘new wars’’ demonstrated that globalization had made armed social movements capable of challenging and at
times defeating state actors without the need of state-based patrons or backers.
More importantly, this new generation of armed social actors also increasingly embraced
the Internet, recognizing the capacity afforded to affect both their supporters and opponents.
Global Civil Society and the Securitization of the Internet
129