What Happens When Cities Fall Apart?
What Happens When Cities Fall Apart? By Geoff Manaugh, Gizmodo.
Military strategist David Kilcullen was in New York City earlier this week to talk about the future of urban warfare at the World Policy Institute here in Manhattan. Gizmodo tagged along to learn more about "future conflicts and future cities," as Kilcullen describes it, and to see what really happens when urban environments fail—when cities fall apart or disintegrate into ungovernable canyons of semi-derelict buildings ruled by cartels, terrorist groups, and paramilitary gangs.
Kilcullen's overall thesis is a compelling one: remote desert battlegrounds and impenetrable mountain tribal areas are not, in fact, where we will encounter the violence of tomorrow. For Kilcullen—indeed, for many military theorists writing today—the war in Afghanistan was not the new normal, but a kind of geographic fluke, an anomaly in the otherwise clear trend for conflicts of an increasingly urban nature…
History has shown us that insurgencies have always occurred in cities as well as in rural areas and both tend to reinforce each other—from China to Cuba, from VN to the Philippines, to Columbia, to Iraq and now to Mexico.
Why is that a new idea/concept?
Condor—my complaint with the article and Kilcullen’s new book is that the insurgency in Iraq was composed of two elements—one being a rural and one being a urban insurgency —-attacks came out of the rural into the cities and city based insurgent groups would pull into the rural areas if pressured in the cities and to rearm and refit and take R&R breaks.
I have a belief that historically one must fully understand the past in order to make assumptions for the future—ie from the surge worked to insurgencies will be fought in cities in the future.
This was on the SWJ journal today and if true 40% of Anbar is under their full control and they are making attacks into the cities—the reverse of what Kilcullen just released as a thesis. Anyone that knows the Iraqi insurgency understands that out of Anbar there are countless rat runs that were developed by both AQI/IAI and they all end in Baqubah/Diyala which was their favorite pullback area during the 2004 to 2010 timeframe.
Even the US never really cleared all the palm groves—the density reminded me often of the jungles of VN.
Now a core problem often written about but largely ignored by Kilcullen and Gen. P is coming to be true —ie we created the Iraqi security forces in our image with all of our own limitations.
Iraq’s Anbar Province Once Again Becoming A Center For Insurgent Operations
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Iraq’s Anbar province used to be one of the centers of the insurgency, and it might be becoming one again. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha recently told the press that 40% of the governorate was under the control of militants. Today there is a free flow of fighters back and forth across the Syrian border. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is targeting the security forces and local politicians. More importantly, it is attempting to gain control of territory as there have been several assaults upon towns and cities this year. This has occurred despite the Iraqi security forces (ISF) announcing one operation after another. Its tactics of raids and retreats have proven largely ineffective, and the mass arrests that have taken place are counterproductive. Violence is picking up across many parts of Iraq, but Anbar is one specific area where insurgents are attempting to establish a permanent presence.