Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Russia: Contending Paradigms and Current Perspectives

The most outstanding trend in contemporary conflicts has been the fusion of the threats from terrorism and insurgency. Insurgent threats in many places on the globe today are mistaken as terrorist threats, and counterterrorism (CT) is deployed as the local insurgents come increasingly to resemble their transnational terrorist partners. Such an emphasis on the role of terrorism in insurgencies and the undue focus on CT risks strengthening, rather than severing, the connection between local insurgents and transnational terrorists. Russia's counterterrorist strategy inadvertently transformed the conflict from a contained, nationalist rebellion to a sprawling jihadi insurgency and perversely encouraged the group to resort even more to terrorist tactics. The Russian counterinsurgency has been unsuccessful, as the insurgents are neither demolished as a force nor are they isolated by society. Losing the hearts and minds among the Chechen people is a key reason behind why the Russian operation in Chechnya suffered failures. Too little attention was paid to winning over the “hearts and minds” of the people.     

Decentralisation,Economic Inequality and Insurgency

This paper investigates if devolution of political power in conflict-affected areas can reduce violence. Political decentralisation has been widely recognised to improve access to local public services. By providing institutional means to address local grievances, its role in diffusing social tensions has also been suggested. However, there is lack of systematic evidence on the role of local self-government in mitigating social-unrest arising due to local socio-economic issues. Our paper addresses this gap in the literature by assessing the impact of a local government institution, introduced in the Adivasi districts in 1996, on Maoist insurgency in India. The local councils aimed at addressing Adivasi grievances by recognising their traditional lifestyle and land, forests, and water rights, thereby reducing their incentive to participate in insurgency. However, empirical analysis performed using difference-in-difference methodology suggests that Maoist insurgency, as reported in Global Terrorism Database, increased post-decentralisation. We make sure this result is robust to various alternative explanations including state-level policy changes and political environment. Drawing on extensive empirical tests as well as existing qualitative studies, we show that an unequal local power structure and weak state-capacity in implementing the decentralisation programme resulted in local elites appropriating its benefits. This increased Adivasis grievances and consequently insurgency.     

Strategy in Counterinsurgency: A Distilled Approach

How does an established state authority respond to an insurgency? How does such an authority plan and carry out its struggle to counter an armed non-state actor and why? The issue of strategy in counterinsurgency (COIN) remains a rather contentious subject and several practitioners and theorists on COIN have prescribed various remedies to the same problem. This article offers a re-evaluation of the concept of strategy in COIN and outlines the practices and mentalities that counterinsurgents should adopt (and avoid) to successfully counter an insurgency.     

Counter-COIN: Counterinsurgency and the Preemption of Strategy

The notion of “counterinsurgency” (COIN) has for some years been the central concept driving military operations in Afghanistan, and before that, in Iraq. It constitutes the dominant idea influencing much current military planning of the major Western powers. This study questions the assumptions and relevance of the thinking behind counterinsurgency doctrine. It suggests that the ultimate effect of its dominance is to reduce the highly contingent nature of war to a list of techniques, the application of which are regarded as a sufficient precondition whenever states deem that they are confronted by conflicts that can be described as an “insurgency.” Such assumptions are both arbitrary and risk crowding out necessary, although by their nature very difficult, political judgments that are required for the effective construction and implementation of strategies that seek to ensure that the ends sought are proportional to the means employed.     

The Nepali State and the Dynamics of the Maoist Insurgency

In contrast to existing quantitative studies of the civil conflict in Nepal, we argue that combinations of motive and opportunity were crucial for the development of the Maoist insurgency and that these conditions stem largely from the nature of the Nepali state. The decade-long insurgency was characterized by two distinct dynamics. In the initiation period of the war (1996–2000), the insurgency was driven largely by newly enabled Maoist organizers capitalizing on the caste, ethnic, and economic divisions that had been codified over time by autocratic state-building efforts. In the more violent and geographically widespread maturation period of the war (2001–2006), the insurgency depended less on historical grievances than on the motivation of rebels and sympathizers by the often-indiscriminate violence perpetrated by the besieged Nepali state. We provide empirical evidence for this argument in a narrative section that contextualizes the Maoist insurgency as well as in a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of data for the 75 Nepali districts in the two periods of the insurgency. fsQCA allows for the assessment of how combinations of the largely state-generated motivations and opportunities affected the dynamics of the insurgency.     

Sinai's Insurgency: Implications of Enhanced Guerilla Warfare

This article aims to explain the endurance of Sinai's insurgency despite its limited military capacity and resources, and the overwhelming man- and fire-power of the incumbent's regular and tribal forces. After reviewing the literature on how insurgents beat or survive strong incumbents, the article offers a short overview of historical developments and socio-political causes leading to the rise of Sinai Province and its military build-up. It then analyses, qualitatively and quantitatively, how Sinai Province fight, based on its original documents and releases as well as on interviews with individuals who fought against it. Finally, the article concludes with an explanation of why did the insurgency survive and, at times, expanded based on the quality of its military tactics. It also provides policy implications, as a result.     

Civilian Defense Forces,State Capacity,and Government Victory in Counterinsurgency Wars

Given the onset of a violent rebellion by an armed non-state group, how do states re-establish intra-state peace and hence fulfill their basic function as providers of internal security? In this article I argue that one way governments perform this core function is by recruiting non-combatants into local self-defense units called civilian defense forces (CDFs). By providing for local security, leveraging their superior local knowledge, and provoking insurgent reprisals against civilians, CDF units facilitate the influx of tactical intelligence as well as isolate insurgents from non-combatant populations physically as well as politically. Consistent with the argument, statistical analyses of two different cross-national data sets of insurgencies from 1944 to 2006 reveal that a state is 53 percent more likely to vanquish a guerrilla threat if the incumbent deploys CDFs. The analyses also cast doubt on a recent claim in the literature that incumbent force mechanization adversely affects the states’ ability to counter insurgent threats. Given that CDF deployment is a more easily manipulable variable than most other elements of state power, CDFs appear to be an effective instrument of counterinsurgency deserving of further academic and policy attention.     

Security Through Sociology: The North Caucasus and the Global Counterinsurgency Paradigm

The global counterinsurgency strategy to combat terrorism emphasizes responding to the social and economic needs of communities where terrorists may find support. Public opinion data can help in that strategy, as shown by a 2006 survey of 1,200 young males from three provinces in Russia's North Caucasus. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the survey shows few signs of burgeoning radical Islam or ethnic animosity. Instead, economic conditions and poor governance are primary concerns. The region provides both an opportunity and threat: policymakers can and should address the region's needs; if not, radical Islamist groups can turn it into a flashpoint for terrorism.     

伊拉克危机与世界政治

自冷战结束以来,国际经济与经济全球化这两个概念的区别已为国人所能把握,关于经济全球化内涵及问题的研究也有了相当的积累,然而,国际政治与世界政治这两个概念在中国却因缺乏界说而被随意地使用,在大多数人看来,世界政治似乎只是国际政治在规模意义上的扩大,两个概念所指涉的对象并无多大区别,更谈不上专门去研究。事实上,借助于一定的国际关系理论的视角,我们看到,在国际政治与世界政治这两个概念     

A Subnational Study of Insurgency: FARC Violence in the 1990s

This article examines the traditional political and economic factors that have been purported to explain the prevalence of insurgency. It tests the following hypotheses at the subnational level in Colombia: guerrilla violence is positively associated with exports; higher levels of insurgency are associated with low levels of GDP per capita or negative growth rates; guerrilla violence emerges in the context of weak state presence; and higher levels of state repression are associated with higher levels of insurgent violence. The analysis utilizes a zero-inflated negative binomial to capture dynamics of both intensity and onset of violence. The econometric analysis is supplemented with cartographic visualization and qualitative analysis.     

The Other Side of the COIN: Private Security Companies and Counterinsurgency Operations

The Iraq War was a watershed regarding the scope of battlefield support by Private Security Companies (PSC). Skeptics soon raised concerns about these new actors being an impediment to the success of the very same operations they are meant to support. According to the critics, PSCs are grist to the mill for insurgents as they employ aggressive tactics and thereby alienate the population, cause credibility problems because they enjoy impunity, and increase coordination problems since they are not subordinated under the military chain of command. This article argues that this is not a necessary result of their employment, but rather the consequence of a lack of preparedness to operate alongside PSCs. However, the military is accustomed to adapting to new unexpected circumstances. Hence, when problems occurred, the armed forces underwent a trial and error learning process that improved PSC employment. The empirical picture supports this view. Initially, the counterinsurgency effort did indeed suffer from the actions, lack of oversight, and lack of coordination of PSCs. However, over the course of the Iraq War, most of the shortfalls were either improved significantly or even resolved.     

Driving Factors behind Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

With the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the phenomenon of foreign fighters became a significant security concern. Governments around the world have become preoccupied with the possibility of their citizens leaving for combat zones and then coming back with training and experience. While previously foreign fighters participated in such conflicts as Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya, today ISIS has attracted record numbers of individuals from various backgrounds. This article examines factors that might be connected with the outflow of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq. The analysis is based on 190 countries with 103 of them serving as countries of origin for 33,815 foreign fighters. Negative binomial regression is used to evaluate the connection of political, economic, demographic, and social factors to numbers of foreign fighters. The findings indicate that more foreign fighters come from countries with higher Human Development Index levels, unemployment rates, percentages of youth, population size, percentages of Muslim population, emigration levels, Internet penetration, and the presence of Al Qaeda cells. However, the findings further indicate that the effect of these variables is not uniform across majority Muslim and majority non-Muslim countries.     

什叶派开始在伊拉克当家做主

1月30日,伊拉克举行全国大选,选举产生由275个议席的过渡国民议会.2月中旬伊独立选举委员会公布的最终计票结果显示,伊全国1400万登记选民中855万选民参加选举,投票率为59%;约26.4万海外选民参加投票,投票率高达93%.