The Environment as a Factor in Small Wars*

This research paper analyzes the relationship between small wars, insurgency, and the natural environment. Existing literature and data are organized into four behavioral patterns: the resource-based wars accounts for the fight over natural resources; the warfare ecology paradigm refers to non-premeditated damage in preparation for as well as during and after conflicts; the environment as a target discusses intended attacks on the ecosystem; and the insurgency–climate intersection pattern denotes a deviation in climate change that increases the frequency of intergroup violence. The main premise is that small wars emerge when the ecosystem becomes a political asset.     

Forces of heresy versus forces of conservation: making sense of Hezb-e Islami-ye Afghanistan’s and the Taleban’s positions in the Afghan insurgency

Ethnicity and ideology are frequently used to determine whether an armed group is hostile or friendly vis-à-vis the state. By contrast, I argue that the social structure of insurgent movements holds more explanatory power for their respective positions than ethnicity or ideology. To illustrate this, I apply Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a contest between forces of ‘conservation’ and forces of ‘heresy’ to the current Afghanistan war. I demonstrate that the social structure of the Taleban renders them prone to ‘heresy’, while the formerly second biggest insurgent group, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party, has rather been an impeded force of ‘conservation.’     

Regional Support for Afghan Insurgents: Challenges for Counterinsurgency Theory and Doctrine

After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, several thousand Afghan Taliban forces fled across the border to Pakistan, and the area became a safe haven for Afghan insurgents. In 2014, the transnational dimension of the insurgency is still highly prominent. Although regional support for insurgents is not uncommon, how to counter this aspect is mostly ignored in counterinsurgency (COIN) theory and doctrines. In this article, a regional counterinsurgency framework is developed, using the regional counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan as an example. The framework will facilitate the systematic inclusion of regional COIN measures in theory and doctrine.     

Plague and Paradox: Militias in Iraq

Politicians, political pundits, and others focus a lot of attention on the political militias in Iraq, usually blaming them for their destabilising effect on the country and insisting that they disband. This study examines the impact that the militias in Iraq have on the Iraqi government's ability to consolidate control over its territory by first explaining how militias rose to prominence in Iraq during the power vacuum created by Saddam Hussein's ousting, then analysing the many ways militias adversely impact the security situation. The study then examines the other side of the argument – that is, why militias enjoy so much support in Iraq among their constituencies, and why they may actually be necessary to achieve stability in Iraq in the short term.     

Managing Withdrawal: Afghanistan as the Forgotten Example in Attempting Conflict Resolution and State Reconstruction

Perhaps surprisingly, given the availability of new Russian memoir material, some excellent individual monographs, and a large variety of declassified documents, a full operational–political account of the Soviet Union's withdrawal strategy from Afghanistan has yet to be written. This article, utilising openly published yet neglected sources, attempts to fill that gap. The final fate of the Najibullah regime, and the contradictory effect of the National Reconciliation Policy in Afghanistan itself, suggests four key lessons for international forces today as disengagement from both Iraq and Afghanistan again becomes a pressing issue, and as questions around re-creating stability within a failed state scenario again occupy the international community.     

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.     

COIN and civilian collaterals: patterns of violence in Afghanistan, 2004–2009

Theories and counterinsurgency doctrines emphasize the importance of avoiding civilian casualties. Yet, many operations produce large numbers of so-called collateral civilian deaths. I present two competing arguments for when collateral deaths occur. One the one hand, they could be the unintentional result of offensives when trying to maintain force protection; on the other hand, they could be the result of a deliberate choice of relying on indiscriminate violence when pressured on the battlefield. I use new data on violence in Afghanistan 2004–2009, disaggregated by province and month, to examine what type of battlefield dynamics are more likely to produce high levels of collateral civilian casualties. The results show that civilian casualties are particularly high after counterinsurgency forces suffer losses in combat.     

Dealing with disputes in Afghanistan: principles and rules for the tactical level

This article addresses the principles that should guide commanders, and the rules they must adhere to, when dealing with community disputes in Afghanistan. An important feature of these principles and rules is that they have been developed to ensure that coalition forces minimize the harm caused to the local population; and that members of the coalition do not violate their own laws and policies. The principles and rules have also been developed to be consistent with counterinsurgency guidance as practiced in Afghanistan. The article concludes with a number of ‘Dos and Don'ts’ concerning dispute settlement that are relevant for coalition forces dealing with disputes at the tactical level. The article also has two appendices, which are intended to guide commanders to better understand dispute settlement systems in Afghanistan.     

Comprehensive approaches,diverse coherences: the different levels of policy coherence in the Dutch 3D approach in Afghanistan

Since 2000, international organisations such as the UN, NATO and the EU, but also countries, have started to apply what has been called the comprehensive approach to crisis management. This article unpacks this comprehensive approach implemented by the Dutch in Uruzgan province, Afghanistan. It first borrows and expands a conceptual framework developed by De Coning and Friis. Subsequently, it maps the different sorts of coherence in the mission by applying the framework. It shows how in practice there was not one single comprehensive approach, but many different forms of interaction between a number of organisational units. Each interaction had its own distinct issues and its own level of coherence. The level of coherence differed depending on the level at which the interaction took place – strategic at headquarters level versus operational at field level – and at what point in the mission it happened – in most cases it moved towards more cohesion.     

Cognitivism,prospect theory,and foreign policy change: a comparative analysis of the politics of counterinsurgency in Malaya and Afghanistan

This article investigates the cognitive limitations on policy change in counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts by examining why American decision-makers failed to revise their government strategy substantially while fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan in 2003–2014 and why their British counterparts were more successful in adjusting their policies in the Malayan insurgency in 1948–1954. Unlike most of the COIN literature that concentrates on military strategy and tactics, the analysis of government policy-making in Malaya holds some important political lessons for American leaders today despite differences between the insurgencies in Afghanistan and British Malaya. As a response to the criticism of COIN studies in general that they lack theoretical guidance, this article utilizes an integrated cognitivist-prospect theory framework. It is argued that some of the COIN literature mistakenly suggests that a more difficult strategic situation was primarily responsible for American failure in Afghanistan. Instead, American decision-makers faced a more difficult task cognitively than their British counterparts, as policy change in Afghanistan would have required greater ideational change. American principals were much more attached to their beliefs emotionally, had no alternative problem representation, and had to shift between frames in order to engineer a response that was more in line with events on the ground in Afghanistan. Regarding prospect theory, findings indicate that gains frames appear to be unhelpful in monitoring progress until catastrophic failure endangers the reference point, and that decision-makers often have more than one reference point to attune their policies to, which often results in suboptimal choices with regard to at least one reference point.