Insurgency In Iraq Research Articles

‘Dreams of Battle’: A Small Window into the Evolution of us Army Tactical Ethics, 1921–2009

E. D. Swinton's The Defence of Duffer's Drift: A Lesson in the Fundamentals of Small Unit Tactics, originally published in 1904, uses the device of a series of recurring but progressive nightmares to teach a set of tactical lessons that Swinton derived from his service in the Second Anglo-Boer War. Now a minor classic, The Defence of Duffer's Drift has had an enduring and international impact. The book's popularity has also led to the publication of several narratives inspired by the original, many of them authored by serving members of the US Army. Although this subset of the ‘progeny’ of Swinton's work are focused on teaching tactical lessons, read together they provide a small but fascinating window into the evolution of the US Army's understanding of the ethics of armed conflict at the tactical level. The texts that are the focus of this paper span a period of 88 years, covering the post-First World War emphasis on positional warfare, through the shift to a focus on large-scale mechanized warfare that reached its apogee in the Cold War, to the early approach to fighting insurgents in Iraq and, ultimately, to the population-centric approach of counterinsurgency propounded by General Petraeus and his advisers.

Recognition of Insurgent and Belligerent Organisations in International Law

There is a a very minimal line of difference between the terms, “terrorism”, "insurgency" and "belligerent" and in almost all cases these are terms denoting the different stages of the same process. The second half of the twentieth century has witnessed an increase in insurgent activities in several countries around the world, for example, the I.R.A. in Northern Ireland, the JKLF in Kashmir, Hizbul Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the L.T.T.E. in Sri Lanka the Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq, Nicararguan cases and so on. Insurgency means rebellion, riot or mutiny by portion of the citizens of a State against the established government. It indicates armed struggle by dissident forces the established government in a state. On the other hand 'Belligerent signifies a stage of the civil war in which there are two contenders for power that can be placed on a platform and there is something like a state of war, and not only civil conflicts. Despite conflicting opinions as to the exact definition of "insurgency" there is a consensus that the insurgency can become belligerency. International law treats insurgencies and civil wars in the internal affairs falling within the domestic jurisdiction of the State concerned and it is up to municipal law enforcement to deal with it. Furthermore belligerence has a formal status that implies rights and duties. However, if the rebels are granted the status of belligerents, they shall become subjects of international law and may be responsible for their actions. Therefore it becomes the duty of the international law to recognize belligerency once the conditions are met. The concept of insurgency and belligerency are undefined and are extremely subjective as it may depend on the state whether to grant recognition to a rebel group or not. Thus the research project will examine the consequences of belligerent and the insurgents and its implication on the government. It will also discuss in detail the concepts of belligerency and insurgency and the conditions required for their recognition. It will also lay emphasis on the duties of a neutral state towards the insurgents, belligerents and the lawful governments of the state.

‘Full spectrum dominance’: Donald Rumsfeld, the Department of Defense, and US irregular warfare strategy, 2001–2008

This article examines the evolution of US irregular warfare (IW) doctrine and practice from 2001 onwards. It argues that, after 9/11, top-tier civilian policymakers in the US Department of Defense (DoD) and across the US government developed a heightened awareness of asymmetric threats and non-conventional forms of warfare, especially those shaped by contemporary globalisation. The result was a gradual turn towards irregular warfare, led by Rumsfeld and the DoD, designed to ensure ‘full spectrum dominance’ across all modes of conflict. This pre-dated the insurgency in Iraq and the promotion of counterinsurgency in the US Army by General David Petraeus and others. Policymakers' reluctance to acknowledge the insurgency in Iraq was not down to a failure to understand the concept of IW, but because they had viewed Iraq in conventional terms for so many years and were reluctant to admit their mistake.

Neighborhood Sectarian Displacement and the Battle for Baghdad: Unanticipated and Anticipated Consequences of Crimes Against Humanity in Iraq

We use two unique Iraq datasets to show how fear and uncertainty served to prefigure and motivate the self-fulfilling, neighborhood-specific forces that followed the US led invasion of Iraq. Sectarian criminal violence by armed Shia and Sunni organizations created a situation of ethnic/religious cleansing that reconfigured much of Baghdad. The paper focuses on the case of how one particularly violent group, the Mahdi Army, mobilized through the coercive entrepreneurship of Muqtada al-Sadr, used organized crime tactics of killing, torture, rape, kidnapping, harassment, threats, and forced displacement in a widespread and systematic attack against civilians that forced Sunni residents from their Baghdad neighborhoods. Ordinary Iraqis were victims of an amplified “self-fulfilling prophecy of fear” that created the momentum for massive sectarian displacement in the battle for Baghdad. We demonstrate that there is a neighborhood specific effect of early post-invasion neighborhood fear net of intervening violence on displacement three years later, following the Al Qaeda Samara Shrine attack, confirming an effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy of fear in the neighborhoods of Baghdad that compounded in a self-reinforcing way. The neighborhood measurement of this effect of fear in a dataset separate from the neighborhood measurement of displacement three years later is a demanding test of the self-fulfilling effect of neighborhood specific sectarian fear in Baghdad. The Mahdi Army changed the neighborhood demography of Baghdad and helped leverage al-Sadr and his movement into Iraq politics and governance, serving to extend a particular vision of Shia influence in the remaking of the Iraq state. The changed demography of Baghdad was effectively consolidated by the later Surge of U.S. forces that left in place the territorial gains made by the Shia led Mahdi Army at the expense of former Sunni residents. We conclude that this continues to matter because the resulting grievances have contributed to renewed violence and a resurgent Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

How the Transformation of Military Power Leads to Increasing Asymmetries in Warfare? From the Battle of Omdurman to the Iraq Insurgency

As captured by neorealist theory, military power became increasingly relative through into the twentieth century, leading to a concentration of power within and between states—and enabling the buildup of huge colonial empires hardly a century ago. Yet since 1945, due to the overproportional effectivity gained by weaker and in particular nonstate actors it has become less relative, leading to a dispersion of power—resulting in an often violent decolonization, the problems US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces have faced in Iraq and Afghanistan in dealing with comparatively small insurgencies and a growing number of failing states. Military power has a selective function: the more relative it is, the more it restricts patterns of conflict as well as the number and nature of actors relevant to international and domestic security. Today, it is because military power is becoming less relative that security policy has to adapt to increasingly asymmetric challenges.

Civilian Deaths and the Iraq War: Who Is Responsible?

The greatest number of victims in wars are civilians. Of the 50 million victims of World War II, only 20 million were military (Keegan, 1989). The Iraq War started in 2003 and produced over 100,000 deaths between 2004 and 2010, where 60,000 of these deaths were civilians (Dewar, 2010). This study aims to find who and what is responsible for these civilian deaths in the 2003 Iraq War. At the same time, it will illustrate how a new generation of free, open data analysis tools can empower any researcher to answer important questions about the state of the contemporary world. In most previous conflicts, civilian deaths were the product of random acts of violence rather than direct attacks. Therefore, we hypothesized that the Iraqi civilians very likely were to be killed by random acts of violence such as those created by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), originally set by Iraqi insurgents to kill American and allied troops. In order to test our hypothesis, we analyzed WikiLeaks’s Iraq War Logs, a dataset of 391,832 signifi cant acts of war recorded by U.S. troops between November 6, 2004 and April 23, 2009. We used Python scripts, the R statistical analysis package, and Microsoft Excel to format, sort, and analyze the data. Our findings indicate that IED explosions contributed to 31% of civilian deaths, while direct fire contributed to 7% of civilian deaths. A comparison of how civilian deaths related to insurgent and allied intent shows that more civilians were killed by insurgents than by allied troops. Surprisingly, however, nonmilitary murder accounted for 49% of civilian deaths. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that the differences between these causes are strongly significant. Although the findings incompletely support the hypothesis, they reveal the complex nature of violence in Iraq and the multiple effects military intervention can have in a country.

Back to Their Old Selves

Back to Their Old Selves

Hero or terrorist? A comparative analysis of Arabic and Western media depictions of the execution of Saddam

While the role of the media in the war against terror has received ample attention from scholars, there is little in the literature that deals specifically with the Iraqi point of view with respect to the nature of terror or with the comparative analysis of Western and Arabic media treatment of terror. That Western and Arabic ideologies arise from divergent political, national, cultural, and religious traditions is well understood in the West. Indeed, this understanding is generally implicit and unconscious, often leading to perception of Arabic culture and ideology as a monolithic whole. Lost in this division between ‘Us’ and ‘Other’ are the multitude of inner-Arabic ideological divisions. Among these is an important inner-Arabic ideological division that reflects the larger Arab–Western ideological split, a split between those in support of Saddam’s reign and the post-invasion Iraqi insurgency and those in opposition. Cultural ideologies, all-encompassing yet often unstated, are difficult to summarize and analyze through the examination of indigenous news media. The media must balance truthful accuracy and objectivity with self-preservation. They must be exceedingly sensitive to the moods and outlooks of their target audiences in order to survive politically as well as economically. This work is a comparative, descriptive analysis of Saddam’s execution as covered by Arab and Western media, making use of Van Dijk’s Socio-ideological Discourse Theory as embodied in the Theories of Semantic Macroproposition and the concept of the Ideological Square as well as the Discourse-Historical Approach of Wodak. This combination of theoretical elements constitutes a basis for comparative Arabic–English discourse analysis with a focus on socio-linguistic analysis of text and rhetoric, rather than the more common functional Systemic Linguistic analysis or grammar theory considerations. These analytical elements also enable the de-construction of news media coverage in terms of macro-microstructures, micro-semantics, and the rhetoric news discourse. Technical analysis of news article word count, lexical selection, grammar, literary style, and rhetoric provides a portal through which hidden opinion, ideology, and dogma are made visible.

THE ETHICS OF WAR: CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY READINGS/EDITED BY GREGORY M. REICHBERG, HENDRIK SYSE AND ENDRE BEGBY

In no uncertain way have the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent attacks in Madrid and London, the War on Terror depicted by Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the subsequent insurgency in Iraq, and the 2006 war in the Middle East moved matters of ethics and justice in war back to centre stage. How justifiable are the actions by the USA, Israel, Hezbollah and al Qaeda to go to war? If justified, how ethical are their actions in the execution of their version of warfare against their opponents? Subjective and nationalistic or ideological opinions even further complicate matters. In addition, the interstate profile of war collapsed into an intrastate phenomenon with a humanitarian crisis profile where the suffering of innocent victims, rather than soldiers, personifies the violence and destruction. If ever the boundaries of war needed to be reinstated and the conduct of war redirected by justice and ethics, the early 21st century presents a case in point. The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings brings to the fore an extensive array of fundamental Western thoughts and scripts on two primary domains of war: firstly, the righteousness of going to war against an opponent and secondly, the morality or justification of the ways and means employed during war. To these ends this publication by Reichberg, Syse and Begby (eds.) on the ethics of war follows a chronological-thematic line that depicts important contributors and sections of the original (translated) scripts from the Western debate.

Improvised Explosive Devices in Southern Afghanistan and Western Pakistan, 2002–2009

Homemade bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are staple weapons of conflicts in South Asia and especially Southern Afghanistan and Western Pakistan, where the Taliban, their affiliates, and other armed groups use them to undermine recognized governments and policies. This study establishes IED trends in the Afghanistan provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, and Nimroz and the Pakistani province of Balochistan between 2002 and mid-2009, using geo-referenced open source IED event information and statistical or geospatial analysis techniques. This study also furnishes assessments of specific IED technologies, techniques, and procedures (TTPs; like explosively formed projectiles or radio-controlled “spider devices”) as well as discussions of their potential causes and observable effects. There are several major trends observed: a continuous increase in volume and lethality of attacks, more expansive geographic distribution of attacks, and multiple bombing campaigns overlapping in Quetta, Balochistan province, that are perpetrated by groups with different means, tactics, and objectives. The most IED-related violence occurred in Kandahar province from 2002–2008; however, Helmand province was the leading location of bomb events by early 2009. Although large population centers—such as the cities of Kandahar, Quetta, and Lashkar Gah in Helmand province—commonly experienced effective bombings, the trans-border routes through Zaranj in Nimroz province and Spin Boldak in Kandahar province were also prone to many lethal attacks. In particular, this study both confirms and scrutinizes the so-called Iraq effect, the phenomenon of knowledge-sharing between fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though fighters who gained experience in the Iraq insurgency provided assistance and training to Taliban fighters, the evidence indicates that some developments in IEDs predated the Iraq conflict or were original to South Asia or other conflicts in history. This evidence provides support for a more generalized and global phenomenon here called “TTP acceleration,” whereby insurgent and terrorist advances in IED capabilities take progressively shorter periods of time to develop and transfer among groups, usually as a result of increased information-sharing opportunities and coincidental alignment of group objectives.

Armed Conflicts and Security of Oil and Gas Supplies

The paper offers a systematic analysis of the impact of international or civil wars and violent non-state groups on global oil and gas supplies. Statistical evidence points to the fact that international wars are becoming increasingly rare, while civil wars remain frequent. The paper discusses the cases of the Iraq-Iran war and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, showing the limits to the damage that belligerents were able to inflict on oil installations and illustrating how the world was able to compensate for this damage. The Iraqi insurgency following international intervention to replace the Saddam Hussein regime is discussed together with other cases of civil wars in Nigeria, Angola and Sudan. The analysis supports the conclusion that oil and gas installations appear to be much more resilient to armed conflict than is normally acknowledged. History shows that civil wars have caused limited damage to existing installations, but they have hindered the desired investment in new development and attainment of target production levels. However, it is very obvious that government’s inability to overcome or reabsorb violent opposition discourages international oil company investment even if the violence does not affect the areas around oil and gas installations. * Giacomo Luciani is Director of Gulf Research Centre Foundation. CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS’ research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent any institution with which he is affiliated. Research for this paper was carried out in the context of the SECURE project (Security of Energy Considering its Uncertainties, Risks and Economic Implications), funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. The project develops appropriate tools for evaluating the vulnerability of the EU to the different energy supply risks, and for promoting the optimisation of EU energy insecurity mitigation strategies, including investment, demand side management and dialogue with producing countries.

The impact of Coalition offensive operations on the Iraqi insurgency

Coalition offensive operations in Iraq seek to disrupt insurgents and their networks, but may also act as a recruitment tool for the insurgency. We use data from Coalition press releases and casualty reports to assess the total impact of these operations. We find that two additional offensive operations come at a future cost of an additional Coalition soldier's life. The evidence suggests that rather than diminishing the insurgents’ appetite to wage counterattacks, these operations may act as a recruitment tool for the insurgency. We further find that while the insurgents change their level of operations in response to the Coalition, the Coalition does not react to the insurgents.

Counter-Terrorism: Lessons from the Malay Archipelago

Following the seminal terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the USA’s subsequent challenges in dealing with the threat of global terrorism and jihadist-inspired insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanist...

Identifying Agile Security Patterns in Adversarial Stigmergic Systems

AbstractSystem adversarial communities appear to exhibit characteristics of natural agile systems, and enjoy an advantage as a result over static systems that are the focus of their attacks. A project started in graduate courses at Stevens Institute of Technology and currently pursued by the International Council on Systems Engineering Working Group on Systems Security Engineering works under the premise that security strategy will benefit by architectural patterns that are equally self organizing. To that end a pattern cataloging project is in process, identifying fundamental self organizing patterns that can explain the adversary operational modes and inform next generation security strategy. This article advances that pattern project by exploring and capturing the stigmergic communication employed by system‐adversarial communities according to the pattern project guidelines. This article first identifies the unique stigmergic pattern, explores its nuances, and presents it in a format identified by the pattern project. Then the stigmergic pattern is applied as a mold to analyze a series of three systems in an effort to regard each within a familiar context. Three adversarial systems, the Iraqi Insurgency, IED Networks and Cybercrime, were selected as prominent opponents that provide significant consternation to security experts. They are first identified as agile systems, per characteristics defined by the pattern project, then studied in the context of the stigmergic pattern.

Means without end? A review of Civil resistance and power politics.

The last decade has witnessed an interesting mix of civil unrest, from mass protests for global justice; to student riots throughout Europe; to the ongoing, brutal insurgency in Iraq. The abundance...

‘Transformation in contact’: learning the lessons of modern war

The US and British armies have faced intelligent and adaptive enemies in Iraq and continue to do so in Afghanistan. While both armies have proved adept at fighting high-intensity conflict, their initial performance against asymmetric threats and diffuse insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated how much each army had to learn about conducting counterinsurgency operations. This article examines one important means by which the US and British armies have transformed themselves into more flexible and responsive organizations that are able to harness innovation at the front effectively. It traces the development of the lessons-learned systems in both armies from the start of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq to today. These changes have resulted in significant development within the organization of both armies. Reform of US and British army learning capabilities offers an important insight into the drivers of military change. The reformed lessons-learned systems have been better integrated into training, experimentation, and doctrine and force development. While there are still challenges to be overcome, both armies have created robust structures that facilitate the movement of knowledge from recent experience at the front to the rest of the organization. As such, these reforms provide us with a useful case-study that enhances our understanding of the role of ‘bottom-up’ initiatives in military innovation.

Russia's Very Secret Services

Russia's <i>Very</i> Secret Services

Foreign Influences and Shifting Horizons: The Ongoing Evolution of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

This article details how prior to the establishment of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AGIM), Meghrebis—that is, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and others--made up a significant percentage of the foreign fighters in the al Qaeda-led insurgency in Iraq, thus helping to build the trust networks between al Qaeda central and the Maghreb-based groups, culminating in the the 2007 formal affiliation of the Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat (GSPC) with al Qaeda. Since then, an emboldened AQIM has evolved significantly, both strategically and operationally.

Transformation of America's Military and Asymmetric War

In the post–Cold War and post–9/11 era, the need for broadening the focus of military transformation to include asymmetric warfare capabilities has been given lip service. The U.S. military did not feel the necessity to widen the scope, if not to change the focus, of transformation to include asymmetric warfare until 2003 and 2004. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraqi insurgency emerged as a potent force. It was only then that the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps deemed it vital to come up with a new doctrine, which was to become the chief driver for America's asymmetric war against terrorism and the insurgency in Iraq. Since politics remain central to the resolution of an asymmetric conflict, the U.S. military is likely to become involved in quagmire-like situations in future warfare of this nature. That is true in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda’s Strategic Gamble: The Sociology of Suicide Bombings in Iraq

The article analyzes the suicide campaign conducted by the Iraqi insurgency since the 2003 US-led invasion. It offers a theoretical framework to identify the factors that explain why only certain armed organizations – in particular Al-Qaeda and its allies – have mounted a terrorist campaign and indiscriminately targeted civilians, in particular the Shiite population instead of the occupying forces, by perpetrating suicide attacks instead of using other tactics. This issue certainly requires identifying a complex set of preconditions for organizing a terrorist campaign, namely the Sunni extremists’ common capacity for exploiting contingent political and social opportunities after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. However, in accounting for the specificities of Al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorism campaign this paper explores three crucial elements: the anti-systemic stand of Al-Qaeda and its allies with respect to the new political regime determined by the Anglo-American occupation; the highly asymmetric nature of the fighting between Al-Qaeda and the occupying forces, combined with Al-Qaeda’s vigilantism against the Shiites; and, finally, the efficacy of suicide attacks in terms of their military, emotional, and symbolic impacts.&#x0D; &#x0D; Keywords: Asymmetric Warfare; Instrumental Rationality; Insurgency; Pan-Islamic Nationalism; Political Opportunities; Terrorism; Suicide Attacks; Vigilantism.