Primary Unit Cohesion Among the Peshmerga and Hezbollah

Abstract

This study analyzes the creation of primary unit cohesion among the Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers fighting the Islamic State in northern Iraq and among Hezbollah fighters active in Syria. For this comparative study, Kurdish soldiers were interviewed on three fronts outside Mosul, Erbil, and Kirkuk in February 2015 and May 2016, and Hezbollah fighters were interviewed in Lebanon in March 2016. In contrast to many studies’ depictions of unit cohesion as relating to shared experiences of training and battle, this study argues that the Kurdish soldiers also import into their units various ideas relating to Kurdish identity. These include ideas about nationalism and religion produced through discourses within the Kurdish military and society. However, Hezbollah seeks to minimize political damage in the multisectarian political context in Lebanon while conducting domestically contested military operations abroad. This has led to a downplaying of the sectarian aspects of the conflict, which could be imported from the Shia community to increase unit cohesion, and to an ideological framing of the conflict. The general ideas circulating in society and the political context therefore matter for the strategies that can be used to increase primary unit cohesion and soldiers’ fighting power.