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.     

Brinkmanship,not COIN,in Pakistan’s post-9/11 Internal War

Politics is critical to making sense of Pakistani successes and failures in dealing with non-state armed groups. This includes domestic political currents; regional political currents; and the global impetus of the post-9/11 era. How these currents overlap renders to any reading of insurgency in Pakistan real complexity. This article engages with this complexity rather than shirking from it. Its hypothesis is that while the insurgency bordering Afghanistan has been an epicentre of Pakistani military efforts to fight the Taliban, this theatre is in of itself insufficiently inclusive to grasp the nature of Pakistan’s security challenges and its consequent responses.     

Explaining the impact of militancy on Iran–Pakistan relations

ABSTRACT

Sectarian militants have for years launched attacks from Pakistan across the border to Iran. Finding sanctuary in a neighbouring country can make the difference between success and failure for militants. Conventional wisdom holds that a lasting transnational militancy challenge would typically create serious interstate conflict. Militancy has triggered armed encounters between Iran and Pakistan. This article argues that despite some tension militancy has resulted in deeper cooperation in the ambivalent dyad. Both states’ overarching security concerns, having exhausted other options, the believed involvement of third-party states, and economic potential, have moderately alleviated negative pressure caused by militancy.     

Insights from a Database of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen Militants

This article uses a novel database of 1,625 posthumously published biographies of members of two Islamist militant organizations (Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM)), all of whom were killed in the course of carrying out militant attacks. In general, each biography provides data on the militant’s birthplace, education, recruitment, and training. The number of observations in this database is a full order of magnitude larger than those of previous databases assembled from militant biographies. While the sample of militants in this database is the product of multiple selection effects, analysis of the database undermines many common myths about Pakistani militants and casts doubt on current policy approaches to mitigating Islamist militancy in Pakistan.     

The German wars of liberation 1807–1815: The restrained insurgency

In the Age of Napoleon, ‘small wars’ and ‘revolutionary war’ were closely connected. There were, however, different strands of this phenomenon: speaking professionally, conservative officers condemned small wars as an irregular regression to previous less disciplined forms of warfare. The Prussian state continually tried to discipline and regulate spontaneous risings. Yet the irregular character of small wars offered the opportunities for a less complex way of fighting, thus enabling the arming of the ‘people’ to fight. Individual undertakings, such as Ferdinand von Schill's doomed campaign in 1809, were designed to spark off a general popular uprising. But they were cheered by many and supported by few. Meanwhile, Neidhardt von Gneisenau conceived guerrilla-style Landsturm home-defence forces, which were designed for an irregular people's war. These concepts were put into practice in the ‘war of freedom’ – or ‘war of liberation’ – in 1813. Eventually both the mobilisation and the tactics remained regular, however, despite the emphatic appeal to a national ‘people's war’.     

基于正交最小二乘估计的非线性时间序列的预测

在对非线性时间序列的短期预测中经常采用局部线性化的预测算法 ,原有的算法使用普通最小二乘法 (LS)估计近似线性模型的参数。对于存在噪声的数据 ,该算法的数值稳定性较差。本文在对非线性空间进行局部线性化的基础上 ,采用正交最小二乘方法 (OLS)对线性模型同时进行结构选择与参数辨识 ,改善了数值的病态特性 ,增强了算法的稳定性     

无人机虚拟维修训练系统及其HLA设计

以某型无人机虚拟维修训练系统的设计为实例,采用Creator对联邦实体建模,结合动态视景仿真软件Vega Prim e进行环境与目标的驱动,基于高层体系结构HLA对系统的分布式网络互联进行仿真设计,无人机虚拟维修训练系统有效地改善了目前无人机结合实装进行操作训练的局限性。     

生物降解聚酯材料L-PLA 与ε-PCL 共混行为的研究

本文用本体融熔共混法研究了聚(L-丙交酯)与聚(ε-己内酯)的共混行为。发现在存在少量催化剂钛酸丁酯Ti(OBu)_4情况下,两种均聚物于150C°明显降解。~(13)C-NMR 核磁共振精细谱图及扫描示差热分析DSC 谱图证实它们间发生酯交换。由~(13)C-NMR 与~1H-NMR 谱图计算出共聚物中L-LA 与-CL 嵌段平均链长与它们的摩尔比值。     

一类二阶Hamilton系统周期解的存在性

Hamilton系统是非线性科学中的一个重要领域,很多人在超二次或次二次条件及其他一些条件下对Hamilton系统的周期解进行了研究。此文则研究了非自制二阶Hamilton系统在零点局部环绕及“非二次”条件下周期解的存在性,并利用局部紧性条件(C)条件以及极大极小方法证明了其周期解的存在性。     

基于LMI的磁轴承-转子系统鲁棒增益调度控制器设计

针对陀螺效应明显的磁轴承-转子系统转速变化引起的模型变化而带来的控制问题,提出基于LMI的鲁棒增益调度方法设计控制器.通过建立系统依转速变化的LPV模型,设计了鲁棒增益调度控制器,使转子在全转速范围内保证了鲁棒稳定性和性能.为降低控制器设计的保守性,可缩小转速区间设计控制器使控制性能得到提高.与基于LTI模型设计的鲁棒...     

基于多目标优化的任务计划建模及方法

针对任务计划在进行多目标优化时采用进化算法求解效率较低的问题,设计了一种结合分组策略的非支配排序遗传(NSGA-Ⅱ)算法,可以快速有效地得到合理的分组结果。基于分组结果,调整NSGA-Ⅱ算法的步骤,灵活地进行种群初始化,使最终分配结果各优化的目标有了明显的改善,提高了算法的效率。通过实验分析,验证了所提方法的可行性和有效性。     

求解布尔不可满足子式的消解悖论算法

求解布尔不可满足子式在超大规模集成电路设计与验证领域都具有非常重要的理论与应用价值,帮助EDA工具迅速定位错误与不一致。针对求解不可满足子式的非完全方法,提出了消解悖论与悖论解析树的概念,在此基础上提出一种启发式局部搜索算法。该算法根据公式的消解规则,采用局部搜索过程直接构造证明不可满足性的悖论解析树,而后递归搜索得到不可满足子式;算法中融合了布尔推理技术、动态剪枝方法及蕴含消除方法以提高搜索效率。基于随机测试集进行了实验对比,结果表明提出的算法优于同类算法。