David Ronfeldt sees Al Qaeda and its affiliates as a global tribe waging segmental warfare:
- Continuing to view Al Qaeda mainly as a cutting-edge, post-modern phenomenon of the information age misses a crucial point: Al Qaeda is using the information age to revitalize and project ancient patterns of tribalism on a global scale.
- Tribes behave more like balance-of-honor than balance-of-power systems.
- Al Qaeda’s design looks backward more than it looks forward; it reiterates as much as it innovates — and that’s because of its enduring tribalness.
- Jihadis are using the Internet and the Web to inspire the creation of a virtual global tribe of Islamic radicals — an online umma with kinship segments around the world.