This study tested conventional wisdom about how insurgencies end against the evidence from 89 insurgencies. It compares a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 89 insurgency case studies with lessons from insurgency and counterinsurgency (COIN) literature. While no two insurgencies are the same, the authors find that modern insurgencies last about ten years and that a government's chances of winning may increase slightly over time. Insurgencies are suited to hierarchical organization and rural terrain, and sanctuary is vital to insurgents. Insurgent use of terrorism often backfires, and withdrawal of state sponsorship can cripple an insurgency, typically leading to its defeat. Inconsistent support to either side generally presages defeat for that side, although weak insurgencies can still win. Anocracies (pseudodemocracies) rarely succeed against insurgencies. Historically derived force ratios are neither accurate nor predictive, and civil defense forces are very useful for both sides. Key indicators of possible trends and tipping points in an insurgency include changes in desertions, defections, and the flow of information to the COIN effort. The more parties in an insurgency, the more likely it is to have a complex and protracted ending. There are no COIN shortcuts.
Read the full study at Rand.
Update: Precedent Suggests Afghanistan Taliban Could Win - Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor.
While current U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan broadly conforms to historical best practices, the Taliban have a number of advantages that have produced insurgent success in the past, according to a new study of 89 past and ongoing insurgencies worldwide.
The factors that favor the Taliban include receiving sanctuary and support in another country, learning to be more discriminating in their attacks and fighting a government that's weak and reliant on direct external support.
The historical trends suggest that the Taliban's Achilles heel would be the loss of their Pakistani sanctuary, while the principal American vulnerability is Afghan President Hamid Karzai's weak pseudo democracy.
The study, said the author, cannot be predictive, but it can help the U.S. address or exploit these vulnerabilities...
Much more at The Christian Science Monitor.
Comments
All being well, in September, I am going to meet some insurgents I interviewed/talked to a few years ago. They never surrendered as it was a negotiated settlement. For handing in their guns they received an amnesty and logging concessions. Last time I met them they were wearing designer clothes and driving the odd Mercedes. I'm still trying to work out whop got the better deal, the government or the insurgents.
God bless you and your son Mike! I would have to agree about politicos-- its freightening. But US soldier is unique humanitarian at heart and it radiates. I just don't want that dimmed by whom politicos are shoving down Afghans' throats. Thanks for your kind response. I hope you can type. I can't and was exausted after that text. Special thanks. I have ntive American kids and grandkids so I have to believe in that Lady that welcomed me to NY Harbor so long ago.
I think we old guys-- based on health, mental and physical-- should form a Grandpas Corps to serve in Pashtun villages. China did that in Vietnam. Old people are not as threatening as military and not as suspect as DoS and corporate shysters. We would balance a lt of these SF cowboys. I'm ready to serve NO-SALARY to earn my pension. Afterall, I am eating my kids' future lunch evey check I get so I'd like to do something for the mom&dads in harm's way!
"In nearly all cases we studied,only the direct and consistent application of basic COIN methodology promulgated by David Galula (1964 [2006]), David Kilcullen (2009),
Thomas X. Hammes (2006), GEN David Petraeus, Gen. James Mattis, and others leads to favorable endings. Failure to heed the past 50 years of expert opinion on the subject almost guarantees an undesirable, and possibly a disastrous, end."
I had to reread this report several times. Generally, I love Rand's research, analysis, and methodology. They briefed a portion of this study in Monterey several years ago. On one hand, adding the math to support Dr. McCormick's Break Point and Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point to the existing literature is a good thing, but, on the other hand, the small sample size skews the findings.
In reality, there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of insurgencies throughout man's history. I suppose that ever since the first man-made government was formed, someone was frustrated and decided to take up violence in order to overtake it or separate from it. 99% of them do not grow to fruition. They merely disperse from many factors to include rapid governmental response and good police work, poor business models and the inability to grow, poor leadership, or the die-hards beliefs temper and fade. My personal favorite is the counter-culture, anti-government groups of the 1960's. I once asked some ex-hippies what happened to their revolution. They replied that they went corporate, became yuppies, had families, and started pursuing profit in the 1980's. Viva La Revolution was no more.
So, why such a small sample size? I think Dr. McCormick provided the best response a couple of years back. In the small academic realm of defense analysis and social science, the professionals only study the fascinating insurgencies. They don't bother with the "boring" ones that don't become full-blown. It is much more exotic to ponder and opine on the Tamil Tigers than considering why Theodore Kaczynski's manifesto failed to take root and spur an uprising to counter the perceived evils of the Industrial Revolution.
Ultimately, IMO, if we want to better understand the lifecycles of insurgencies, then we need to broader our research and examine more cases or else we're going to keep coming back to the same conclusions.
<b>DE Teodoru:</b>
That reads like a lot of bitterness. I'm pushing 80, don't have time to waste on that fruitless emotion. Sorry you're perturbed by all that.
Your generational comment is of course correct. The American way is for each new generation to go where every man has gone before and make a big deal out of it. You seem to believe we could have a rational foreign policy. I contend that is not possible; we have developed three generations of self-serving professional politicians who all know that votes for them are from domestic sources. Ergo, domestic politics rule everything including international relations and defense -- that's why we throw dumb stuff at people who are not a bit smarter than we are but who are certainly more pragmatic and dedicated. Add the generation thing to that and I suspect my Grandchildren's kids will get a chance to nation build somewhere.
The airliner bit is a part of that syndrome. There were, as you say, rules. They were not enforced because someone whined to their Congress critter who called the FAA and threatened to withhold all their shekels for the next fiscal year. Thus the FAA did not fine at all heavily any of those who failed to enforce the rules. Congress took no action because to do so would have impacted their fund collection capability...
I see nothing wrong with mentioning Viet Nam -- unless one tries to compare it to Iraq or Afghanistan. Three different wars. The only common thread is that we elected to go into all of them. Foolishly, IMO but nobody asked me 55 years ago -- or nine or seven. They did send me a couple of times but they'd done that before so I didn't mind. Had more fun days than bad days...
I've read the Gelpi et.al. book and broadly agree with its thrust. Americans aren't really bothered by casualties, they just want results and preferably quickly. Makes sense to me. While casualties are regrettable, they are a fact of war and most people realize and accept that. Goes with the territory, as they say...
As for Soldiers getting older, several reasons for that, not least a good reenlistment rate. As the Father of one currently serving, he volunteered, he's cool with going places and doing things -- as am I cool with him doing that. Having served, BTW, in both volunteer organizations and an Army that Drafted, I have no doubt about which is better in all aspects. The Draft may be needed for an existential war, its employment short of that would be wrong and dumb. It would solve no problems but would create some we do not now have. We do not need to give Congress any problems to solve -- their solutions are universally expensive, inefficient and ineffective.
Having worked for a few Star wearers in my time, it's been my observation they are products of the society from which they come and that, as is true in any grouping of humans, some are good and some are bad -- the majority are in between, average folks doing their best as they see it just like most of us. They see what they have been taught and that is very much driven by Congress -- so it seems to me your bitterness is caused by Congress and / or other Politicians, not by Generals (who are admittedly Politicians in their own way but only at the behest of that same Congress...). I can sympathize with that.
Well, Mr. White, that's the issue, nothing new but every generation thinking it's going to win it. Of course, like Wash DC, the folks just across the line in Virginia end up repeating the history they disregarded. When they realize it, it becomes an issue of cover-up or pass on the responsibility for outcome to your replacement.
But I rarely see discussion of why we have to throw in everything we've got, including the high price video-game boys in Nevada and all the Corporate "experts" we can hire at a bunch of illiterate guys in rags and have to turn the world upside down, just in case they get nukes from, of course, someone elses ill-guarded stock, while we totally go mum about how could four airliners be taken over in ten minutes each to be used as missiles? The answer is that, as an airline exec said on TV on 9/12: the folks in First Class pay a lot for that ticket so they have a right to see than a human being is flying the thing so we have to keep the pilots cabin door open (despite rules set in the 1970s during a spade of skyjackings)... .(@#$#%#^%!!!!!)
Then there's Iraq....I recall a general with a starry chest, on loan to the White House as an "expert," warning me that if I want to continue our "meaningful dialogue" I had better never again mention that "loooooser's war," Vietnam! That's the Pentagon's way, isn't it? Everything, including used bathroom tissue gets marked "TOP SECRET" so there never develops an historic memory and one guy can get us in the same mess as his predecessor did while another one saves us from it by repeating the same un-listened-to solutions proposed at the start of the last COIN but never listened to back then.
Meanwhile, the soldiers get older-- now ~5 yrs. older than Vietnam-- so many moms&dads, leaving behind a lot of orphans and widows-- and yet no one feels that they're responsible for repeating the same tricks and ending up with the same result as on the last roll of "TOP SECRET" toilet paper. Folks with a GED kind of shake their heads. But it is folks with stars that can command an end to the head shaking, ordering a jump over the hill into automatic fire-- AGAIN!!!!
Lastly, sir-- without a draft were again facing the per Prof. Feaver crowd of "aint my kid going to war" disconnected folks who prefers not to lose than count the body bags. To me thats not patriotism. Patriotism is when you wont allow to be done with Americas--"OUR"-- kids what you wouldnt allow to be done with your biologic kids. But thats GED talk and kind of seeming dumb to the Pentagon stars with a "BS" degree.
With only a GED, I'm having trouble understanding all this high powered stuff. Let me see how I'm doing...
Insurgencies generally end -- except for those that don't.
Rule 1 is, I guess; No two are the same.
Rule 2 seems to be; Inconsistent support generally leads to defeat on the side with most inconsistencies.
Insurgents are often from an area and have family ties there and thus constitute an echosystem.
Americans object to excessive costs with poor to no results.
Countering insurgencies is difficult, time consuming, expensive, tedious and not likely to be successful.
"Weapons Bazaars" are the new thing. Everyone should know about them. They seem sort of like Liege in the Middles Ages but I may be missing something. These links may help: <a href=http://www.ff12sector.com/ff12_weapons.php>LINK,</a> <a href=http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Weekend/GC12Jp03.html>LINK,</a> <a href=http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0512-04.htm>LINK.</a> They of course do not really address the global aspect but that is bound to be out there on the internet someplace. Everything else is.
Is that global, open source aspect like the British buying and selling guns, whisky and tribal loyalties worldwide for several centuries, usually under the table? Is it sort of like the old ComIntern and Agitprop only different?
Non State Actors are a current problem. Are these the same as the Warlords in ancient China that allowed Sun Wu to become a 21st Century icon (and which Generation of warfare is that? Seems like it's old enough to be 1st but some of the stuff I've read makes it sound like 4th or even 5th...)? The same as the Tribal Sheiks that bedeviled the Pharaohs and the Persian and Ottoman Empires? The Indian Tribes of the Americas?
Too much for me to keep up with...
Seems like to me insurgencies end when a conclusion acceptable to all players is reached and that may or may not be what any of them had in mind at the outset. Also seems that the so called generations of warfare are really based on the age of he or she who writes about them and that not much has changed recently:
Countering insurgencies is difficult, time consuming, expensive, tedious and not likely to be successful. While there are numerous theories about how to do that, many are unproven and most can be only partly successful.
Thus insurgencies are best avoided, particularly if one is a third party. Is there absolutely nothing new here, merely variations and logical, to be expected modernization on themes or did I miss something?
(Pun way above intended)
Concerning when do insurgencies end--they end when the ecoystem of an innsurgency feels it should end.
Maybe one should really begin looking at new theories--if one takes the actual writings of John Robb concerning open source warfare beginning in 2004, and then understands the following definition one has a complete package in understanding insurgency/counter-insurgency.
In some aspects the current tools being used to "depict" insurgent networks be it simple link analysis tools or the Carnegie Mellon visualization SNA tool ORA does little more than depict lines between people, places and events---it does not give us cause and effect, does not give us what the insurgency is; learning, growing, reacting to the counter insurgent or what is the counter insurgent doing wrong with their plans or operations.
IE everyone trumpets the killing of the AQI senior leadship but the fight goes on---so what does the social network analysis tool ORA tell us as the next move by the group--it doesn't.
As long as the Army internally is unable to view insurgency/counter-insurgency from a different perspective all IW efforts are actually being wasted-regardless of what direction the Army takes IW in.
One must take the efforts of social network analysis to a higher level---that of understanding the ecology of the insurgency and then in turn understanding the ecoystem of the insurgency. But that requires quantum physics--can the Army handle that?
Ecology of an Insurgency:
The scientific study of the way that living "organisms" (in this case "organism" is defined as an insurgency cell, group, or organization) interact with their environment and predators (the counter insurgent).
Ecosystem of an Insurgency:
An insurgent ecosystem is a system whose members (members defined as being either an insurgent group or groups) benefit from each other's participation via symbiotic (mutually beneficial and self-sustaining) relationships.
The main goal of an insurgency ecosystem is to generate common ventures. It forms when many small and potentially diverse (origin, tribe, religious belief, etc.) insurgent groups join together to fight a common predator (the counter-insurgent or state).
Insurgent ecosystems attract and retain members (groups) due to network effects:
ââ¬Â¢ The benefits of the ecosystem (shared ventures) are so great that groups wont leave it (although temporary departures to avoid targeted pressure from counter-insurgents are possible).
ââ¬Â¢ The ecosystems features (i.e. immediate access to shared resources) make it easy for new groups to form and participate.
ââ¬Â¢ The growth of the ecosystem results in an exponential increase in benefits (i.e. more segmentation and specialization) for all of the member groups.
Once an ecosystem is established in a particular region/area, it becomes very difficult for the counter insurgent to eliminate it. The presence of multiple groups means that the counter insurgent must divide its efforts. Operationally, a focus on one group leaves other groups to operate freely and success against one group yields very little overall benefit (the roll-up stops with the leadership of only that group). Strategically, the diversity of the groups in the ecosystem (different reasons for fighting) means that it isnt possible to address a single set of issues or grievances at the national level that would reverse the insurgency (via negotiated settlement, repatriation, etc.).
The driving force of the ecosystem is in fact the open source availability of virtually everything it needs to survive, sustain itself and to grow---even retired Gen. Meigs former Cmdr of JIEDDO states the same thing in a recent DODBuzz comment when he talks about "weapon bazaars" passing on insititutional knowledge to other insurgent groups even on a global scale.
"Weapon bazaars" was first mentioned by John Robb in 2004/2005 and finally after five years even Cmdr's are now using it.
Again based on the definition of Ecology of Insurgency and the Ecosystem of an Insurgency the insuregency ends when the participating group or groups defines it ended from their mutual perspective--NOT our perspective.
Sorry to say all current insurgencies show life signs of being around for a rather long time---even Columbia is still active---heck even Peru is active again.
Alas there's no clear rule as to how insurgencies end.
But we know one thing from experience: America is like a muscle-bound guy naked in the snow. The more he moves the more heat he generates... and loses. But the more heat he generates the more he needs rest. The more he rests the colder he gets. And the colder he gets the less able to move he is. End of Republic of Vietnam was signaled to Hanoi by the fact that the US NEEDED a way out. The more the US got a respite in the field, the harder it would be for the US to rise again in response to Hanois offensive (until Nixons brilliant Christmas Bombing that caused them to allow us a Paris exit plan). By Spring 1975 Hanoi's bet on our freezing-up won.
We never tried to reverse the tables. Everything we did for the Afghans was tagged with a conditional demand that dead Talibans be produced. Unfortunately, the local Talibans were of the same families as those locals on our side. Invariably, sooner or later, the dead Taliban had to be the members of their families they shelter. The more families on our side lost members to us, the more we become the enemy no matter what we offered. The problem is that we cannot tell when we pushed a family into the other side.
McChrystal knows that while Feaver's study is correct-- most Americans don't care about losses but just don't want to lose-- soon it is the loss of $ rather than the loss of soldiers that bothers them. More troops mean more $ lost. To that McChrystal has no response for he has yet to achieve the death of any one Taliban without it costing us millions. I remind you that the polls on Vietnam had their biggest dip, not after Tet 68, but when Westy was doing well in 1967 but LBJ had to add a 10% surcharge to income tax.
Finally, Iraq did not quiet down because of Petraeus's surge but because the REGION balanced between countries with Shia or Sunni interests. American buying off of Sunni insurgent tribes also helped but basically, the regional decision to end the fighting-- even if only so Americans leave per SOFA-- had more to do with the fighting inside Iraq than anything else. The same will happen with Afghanistan if we cease to be a force instigating more combat. All of Afghanistan's neighbors are members of the Shanghai Cooperative Accord along with Russia and China. They can work it out between them far better than we can with any of them as now all are using us against each other. As in Iraq they can easily dumb down support for the insurgents. Actually, insurgencies are more revolutions. Without lots of outside support they can't do anything revolutionary. A resolution at the regional level can cut off funds to the revolutions and with nothing to offer their supporters revolutions dry up. Look at how the "socialist" revolution in Vietnam deteriorated in both North and South once the USSR collapsed.
Later, as things calm down, we can help other counties train and support national police forces. We killed too many Afghans to be the trainers. For that illiterates have to be educated before they can train to be cops. Only then can they function as peace officers. All this cannot be done by our military because too many of their own interests are at stake and military are kinetic forces that destroy, not peace forces build and secure. That's the job of law enforcement, requiring skills soldiers don't possess.
The end is near. The question is whether it will be as is 1973 in Vietnam, making 1975 inevitable, or like Russia in 1989, but without the US cutting off the Kabul regime as had Yeltzin, making its demise and the tragedy that followed inevitable, even worse than in Vietnam. There's a lot for us to learn from Russian control in Afghanistan after 1983. WE can't say: "Ah, it's easier if I do it myself." We must make ourselves gradually scarce so that Afghans can come to terms with each other and do it themselves. So far, our wild spending military has only attracted American, European and Afghan crooks as feces attracts flies. If we cut back, only those who are dedicated to the future will take a risk on it as they know there are no more quick bucks. When there's no more lose cash around, that's when insurgencies end.
'Corroborate and "the truth will set you free"!'
http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/2010/04/corroborate-and-truth-will-set…