Confronting Islamist Insurgencies in Africa: The Case of the Islamic State in Mozambique

The proliferation of Salafi-jihadi insurgencies across Africa challenges the United States’ counterterrorism approach. From its inception, the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique was driven by local and foreign dynamics, which have been complicated by additional external intervention in the conflict. Using the Cabo Delgado insurgency, we demonstrate how efforts to address its global dimensions, such as the group's affiliation with the Islamic State, can work against attempts to mitigate its local drivers. We conclude with recommendations for a more effective U.S. response that takes both the local and global dynamics into account. This article builds on our February 2021 report “Combating the Islamic State's Spread in Africa: Assessment and Recommendations for Mozambique,” published by the American Enterprise Institute.     

Making Civilian Casualties Count: Approaches to Documenting the Human Cost of War

Our understanding of civilian casualties is not based solely on what is reported but also who reports these human rights abuses. Competing interests at the data collection stage have impeded the development of a more thorough understanding of civilian victimization during conflict. We find that current definitions of “casualty” neglect nonphysical forms of victimization and that group-based definitions of “civilian” can obscure the role of different individuals in conflict. We contend that the dominant definition of “civilian casualty” should be expanded to include the full array of harm inflicted on individuals, including psychological harm and what we refer to as multiple casualties of conflict. Expanding our definition of civilian casualties to include different degrees and kinds of wartime victimization would improve both documentation and analysis. We propose several areas for improvement in terms of the documentation of civilian casualties as well as potential solutions to the problems we identify.     

Cash or Combat? America’s Asian Alliances During the War in Afghanistan

Abstract

A basic trade-off in military cooperation exists: States must respond to the dominant ally’s demands and act as a reliable partner while simultaneously making a decision that is acceptable to domestic audiences. We argue that compensatory burden-sharing strategies are imperfect but dependable solutions to manage foreign policy decisions at the domestic and alliance levels. Our theoretical expectations are tested using the US-Japan and US-Republic of Korea alliances and, in particular, the contribution of each country to the war in Afghanistan. We find that foreign aid commitments to third parties are made as a form of compensation when alliance expectations are substantial, but the secondary ally's ability to contribute militarily is highly constrained. Foreign aid has therefore served as an alliance management tool.