Insurgency by the numbers I: A reconsideration of the ecology of communist success in jiangxi province,China

Theorizing about Taliban operations in Afghanistan has its limits and it is possible that Kabul-centric strategies do not adequately address the unique circumstances of each region in the country. How exactly has the Taliban gone about attaining its objectives in Kandahar province and how have those approaches evolved since 2002? And how have the Taliban adapted to coalition forces' attempts to compete with the insurgency and stamp it out? The answers to these questions are critical in the formulation of any counterinsurgency approach to Afghanistan.     

Naw Bahar District 2010–11: A case study of counterinsurgency Conducted by Naval Special Warfare in Afghanistan

This article provides a critical analysis of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan at the tactical level. The efforts of several Naval Special Warfare detachments deployed to Naw Bahar district in Zabul Province, Afghanistan are examined in detail to identify key successes and failures in planning and execution. It defines the operating environment in which the detachments worked and identifies the goals and outcomes of the first and second phases of the counterinsurgency effort. The article concludes by placing the tactical effort in the context of the overall strategy in Afghanistan and suggests that time is the limiting factor to success.     

The Taliban's ‘military courts’

The Taliban's ‘code of conduct’, which lists rules of discipline for the fighters, has been widely discussed, but do the Taliban try to implement it? This article discusses the structures that the Taliban have put in place for this purpose and their evolution over the years. It assesses that while the Taliban's ‘military justice’ system is still work in progress, the fact that it has attracted a significant investment in human resources bears witness to a serious intent of the leadership. However, the Taliban's concern with the behaviour of their fighting force is driven by their own political calculus, not by any sympathy for the international law of conflict.     

The Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001): ‘War-Making and State-Making’ as an Insurgency Strategy

This paper examines the institutional and functional aspects of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA). The Taliban’s coercive approach and its entire reliance on “war-making” to “state-making” shows the difficulty of the transformation of an insurgent group into a state structure. The Taliban was primarily capable of establishing a two-track system of governance. However, the assessment of the IEA’s institutional and functional capabilities shows that the military–political organization formed by the Taliban lacked statehood in all three areas of legitimacy, authority and capacity.     

India’s Taliban Dilemma: To Contain or to Engage?

India’s Afghanistan policy in the 1990s is termed a zero-sum game of influence with Pakistan. New Delhi’s aversion to the pro-Pakistan Taliban regime is considered a marker of this rivalry. This paper revisits India’s approach towards Afghanistan and examines if New Delhi was necessarily averse to engaging with pro-Pakistan political factions during 1990s. Based on fresh primary interviews with former Indian policymakers, media archives, and official reports, the paper shows that India engaged with and accommodated pro-Pakistan factions after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 until 1996. The Taliban’s rise to power in Kabul in September 1996 challenged India’s engage-with-all approach. Nonetheless, the decision to sever ties with the Taliban and to bolster anti-Taliban factions was highly debated in New Delhi. Many in India saw the Taliban as a militant Islamist force sponsored by Pakistan. For others, however, it was an ethno-nationalist movement representing Pashtun interests, and not necessarily under Islamabad’s control.     

Beyond the Double Game: Lessons from Pakistan’s Approach to Islamist Militancy

States commonly take one of three approaches to militant groups on their soil: collaboration; benign neglect; or belligerence. All three approaches are present in Pakistan, where some groups also move back and forth among these categories. I employ the term “coopetition” to capture this fluidity. The dynamic nature of militancy in Pakistan makes the country an excellent laboratory for exploring a state’s assessment of the utility an Islamist militant group offers, and the threat it poses relative to other threats informs the state’s treatment of that group. In this article, I put forward a typology that situates Islamist militants in Pakistan in one of the above four categories. I also illustrate how a group’s identity, objectives, and alliances inform assessments of its utility and threat relative to other threats. In addition to enhancing our understanding of militant–state dynamics, this taxonomy builds on and helps to unify earlier typologies of Pakistani militancy.     

Can we negotiate with the Taliban?

The belief that the insurgency in southern Afghanistan is a singular entity and the assumption that negotiations with that entity can bring an end to the conflict are simplistic and do not take into account the other insurgent partners, nor the role of local power brokers. Care must be taken when providing advice in the public domain on how to end or limit conflict in Afghanistan.     

Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: US Performance and the Institutional Dimension of Strategy in Afghanistan

It is not too soon to draw cautionary lessons from the inconclusive results of US performance during more than 11 years of Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan. As in Vietnam, fundamental difficulties persist in adapting enduring institutions to the requirements of strategy. At the heart of the matter is tension between the assumptions that underlie counterinsurgency as practiced in Afghanistan and organization of the US Armed Forces, State Department, and Agency for International Development. Knowledge of basic principles and necessary changes is available to answer the question, could the US have done better?     

The Hunt for Martín Caballero

While the success of Colombia's fight against illegal armed groups, led by Fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de Colombia – ejército del pueblo (FARC-EP), is generally lauded as evidence of the effectiveness of both COIN doctrine and security assistance, the configuration of Colombia's counter-insurgency effort remains largely unstudied. This article will explain the success of one of those campaigns carried out principally by the Colombian marines (Colmar) in an area of northern Colombia known as the Montes de María. Contingent factors shaped the success of this campaign, beginning with the fact that the Montes de María forms an area where insurgents, relative late comers to the region, found it difficult to put down deep roots. However, operations to eradicate them were complicated by the inexperience of the Colmar, and by constraints placed by Colombia's Constitutional Court on COIN methods modeled on those successfully applied by the British in Malaya and Kenya. Therefore, Colmar officers initiated their five-year campaign by building up a base of popular support in the towns and targeting insurgent logistical networks. This bought time to strengthen the Colmar's combat and intelligence capabilities, and take the offensive that eventually isolated and killed the leader of the FARC in the Montes de María, Martín Caballero. Unfortunately, the failure of the Colombian government to follow up the Colmar victory by installing a regional and local governments viewed as legitimate by the population, and to resolve long standing land tenure issues, has meant that, so far, the Colmar looks to have delivered a tactical victory in a strategic vacuum.     

The Weight of the Past(s): The Impact of the Bundeswehr’s Use of Historical Experience on Strategy-Making in Afghanistan

This article seeks to explain the basic dynamics of the development of the German military approach in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2010 by looking at the impact of the Bundeswehr’s established uses of historical experience. First, the German military approach in Afghanistan has slowly evolved from a peacebuilding and mediation mission towards a full-fledged combat deployment. Second, the Bundeswehr’s exclusive focus on the World War II experience has contributed to the emergence of the Balkans experience as a formative experience that shaped initial operational thinking in Afghanistan. Third, because a thorough debate on the historical foundation of counterinsurgency remained absent, the operational shift in 2009 was perceived as a return to ‘classical’ military tasks and thus led to an almost exclusive focus on training for combat.     

Measuring hard power: China’s economic growth and military capacity

China’s rapid economic growth is facilitating massive increases in its military spending and causing increased security concerns in Asia and the Western Pacific. But there is uncertainty over how large China’s military spending is relative to other countries, or how fast it is growing in real terms. We address this issue by deriving a relative military cost price index based on the relative unit costs of inputs. We find that China’s real military spending is much larger than suggested by exchange rate comparisons, and even larger than standard purchasing power parity comparisons. We also find, however, that the real growth of China’s military spending has been smaller than conventionally thought. This is due to rapidly growing wages in China and the large share of personnel in China’s military budget.     

Smart Power and Military Force: An Introduction

Abstract

Smart power is comprised of two elements: the quest for building society among states and between states and non-state actors; as well as the desire for cleaner forms of power projection. This special issue explores how states continue to fumble over achieving the optimum mix of hard and soft power across several country cases and themed articles. This set of contributions suggests that smart power is not unlike a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ analogy: multifunctional and challenging to choose the right combination of ideational and material tools.     

‘Mowing the Grass’: Israel’sStrategy for Protracted Intractable Conflict

‘Mowing the Grass’, Israel’s strategy in the twenty-first century against hostile non-state groups, reflects the assumption that Israel finds itself in a protracted intractable conflict. The use of force in such a conflict is not intended to attain impossible political goals, but a strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities. Only after showing much restraint in its military responses does Israel act forcefully to destroy the capabilities of its foes, hoping that occasional large-scale operations also have a temporary deterrent effect in order to create periods of quiet along its borders. The Israeli approach is substantively different from the current Western strategic thinking on dealing with non-state military challenges.