The Dictator's Inner Circle

From the National Bureau of Economic Research:

We posit the problem of an autocrat who has to allocate access to the executive positions in his inner circle and define the career profile of his own insiders. Statically, granting access to an executive post to a more experienced subordinate increases political returns to the post, but is more threatening to the leader in case of a coup. Dynamically, the leader monitors the capacity of staging a coup by his subordinates, which grows over time, and the incentives of trading a subordinate’s own position for a potential shot at the leadership, which defines the incentives of staging a palace coup for each member of the inner circle. We map these theoretical elements into structurally estimable hazard functions of terminations of cabinet ministers for a panel of postcolonial Sub-Saharan African countries. The hazard functions initially increase over time, indicating that most government insiders quickly wear out their welcome, and then drop once the minister is fully entrenched in the current regime. We argue that the survival concerns of the leader in granting access to his inner circle can cover much ground in explaining the widespread lack of competence of African governments and the vast heterogeneity of political performance between and within these regimes.

Authors: Patrick Francois, Ilia Rainer, Francesco Trebbi

NBER Working Paper No. 20216
June 2014

Hat-tip: The Interpreter

Saracen's shenanigans in Puntland

Abdiweli Ali Gaas who is now a MP of the Somalia’s Federal Parliament, refused to comment on the reports that the Puntland President’s son Mohamed Farole has sent forces trained by Saracen to surround his residence, during his visit in Bosaso the commercial capital of Puntland.

Last week, hundreds of the Puntland’s Maritime Police Force surrounded the villa Mr.Gaas was staying in Bosaso city, completely blocking all the roads leading to the residence. These forces are trained by a company called Sterling Corporate Services also known as Saracen.

The forces later abandoned their positions after local residents and armed militias supporting the former Prime minister gathered near his home in Bosaso.

Recently, the Controversial South African private military operator Sterling Corporate Services, aka Saracen International, has lost its anti-piracy contract in the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland.

Saracen embroiled in Puntland politics?

From this report from Somaliland Press:

Abdiweli Ali Gaas who is now a MP of the Somalia’s Federal Parliament, refused to comment on the reports that the Puntland President’s son Mohamed Farole has sent forces trained by Saracen to surround his residence, during his visit in Bosaso the commercial capital of Puntland. 

Last week, hundreds of the Puntland’s Maritime Police Force surrounded the villa Mr.Gaas was staying in Bosaso city, completely blocking all the roads leading to the residence. These forces are trained by a company called Sterling Corporate Services also known as Saracen. 

The forces later abandoned their positions after local residents and armed militias supporting the former Prime minister gathered near his home in Bosaso. 

Recently, the Controversial South African private military operator Sterling Corporate Services, aka Saracen International, has lost its anti-piracy contract in the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland.

Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)

The Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) identifies, compiles, and analyzes micro-level conflict data and information on insurgency, civil war, and other sources of politically motivated violence worldwide. ESOC empowers the nation’s best minds with the quality of data and information needed to address some of the most enduring and pressing challenges to international security. Ultimately, ESOC is committed to providing war fighters and policy makers with greater expert analyses and recommendations for responding to security threats.

Military needs to equip for COIN

From a speech by General Sir David Richards at the IISS (back in 2010):

3. Defence must respond to the new strategic, and indeed economic, environment by ensuring much more ruthlessly that our armed forces are appropriate and relevant to the context in which they will operate rather than the one they might have expected to fight in in previous eras. Too much emphasis is still placed on what Secretary Gates calls ‘exquisite’ and hugely expensive equipment. 4. - Our Defence establishment has not yet fully adapted to the security realities of the post-Cold War world and this complex and dangerous new century. US defence analyst David Wood recently described the US defence budget as encrusted with an "we've always done it this way'' convention and strategic choices attuned to the last century. - Operating among, understanding and effectively influencing people requires mass - numbers - whether this is ‘boots on the ground’, riverine and high speed littoral warships, or UAVs, transport aircraft and helicopters. They have to be able to fight but this is no longer sufficient. No nation is any better than the US in this respect and nearly all are far worse. 5. If one equips more for this type of conflict while significantly reducing investment in higher-end war-fighting capability, suddenly one can buy an impressive amount of ‘kit’. Whilst, as you will hear, I am emphatically not advocating getting rid of all such equipment, one can buy a lot of UAVs or Tucano aircraft for the cost of a few JSF and heavy tanks. 6.  - Can we take the risk? Well we have to take risk somewhere or run the far greater one of trying with inadequate resources to be all things to all conflicts and failing to succeed in any. Why this area of traditional state on state war though? - Having learnt the lessons taught by AQ, the Taliban and many other non-state actors, and thought how to exploit them perhaps on an ‘industrial’ scale, why would even a major belligerent state choose to achieve our downfall though high risk, high cost traditional means when they can plausibly achieve their aims, much more cheaply and semi-anonymously, using proxies, guerrillas, economic subterfuge and cyber warfare?

Even the generals are saying it.

Fabius Maximus's COIN reading list

Two lists by Fabius Maximus: one on the failure of COIN and the other on insurgencies against foreign armies:

Posts about COIN:

1. More paths to failure in Iraq, 16 December 2006 — Myths about COIN in Iraq
2. 28 Articles: a guide to a successful insurgency against America, 7 May 2007
3. Is COIN the graduate level of military hubris?, 30 July 2008
4. COIN as future generations will see it (and as we should see it today), 1 July 2010
5. COIN – Now we see that it failed. But that was obvious before we started (when will we learn?), 6 December 2011
6. COIN, another example of our difficulty learning from history or experience, 7 December 2011
7. “COIN of the Realm” – reviewing one of the books driving our strategy in the Long War, 18 March 2012 — Review of Nagl’s How to Eat Soup with a Knife
8. A look back at the madness that led us into our wars. How does this advice read 6 years later?, 26 June 2012

The history of foreign armies fighting local insurgents:

1. How often do insurgents win?  How much time does successful COIN require?, 29 May 2008
2. Max Boot: history suggests we will win in Afghanistan, with better than 50-50 odds. Here’s the real story., 21 June 2010 — Boot discusses 7 alleged victories by foreign armies fighting insurgencies.
3. A major discovery! It could change the course of US geopolitical strategy, if we’d only see it, 28 June 2010 — Andrew Exum (aka Abu Muqawama) points us to the doctoral dissertation of Erin Marie Simpson in Political Science from Harvard.  She examines the present and past analysis of  counter-insurgency.  This could change the course of American foreign policy, if we pay attention.
4. A look at the history of victories over insurgents, 30 June 2010
5. COINistas point to Kenya as a COIN success. In fact it was an expensive bloody failure., 7 August 2012

Powerful South Sudanese military leader dies

Quote:

Historians describe Matip as a man driven more by ambition during the war than by ideology. 

He was "the quintessential freebooter, willing to ally himself with God or the devil, depending on which would supply him with the resources to sustain his panache and his private army," Sudan historian Robert O Collins wrote. 

One of his main interests during the war was protecting and developing a "small trading empire" based on cattle and sorghum in the areas near Bentiu, capital of Unity State, according to historian Douglas Johnson.

Drone strikes work

Patrick B Johnston from RAND concludes that decapitation works:

My study of leadership decapitation in 90 counter-insurgencies since the 1970s shows that when militant leaders are captured or killed militant attacks decrease, terrorist campaigns end sooner, and their outcomes tend to favor the government or third-party country, not the militants.

When economies are commodity-intensive

Estimating this more formally in a recent report, we find that an economy’s growth typically becomes more ‘commodity intensive’ when it reaches per capita GDP of around $3,000 (in constant purchasing power parity 2011 dollars). At that point demand for commodities typically takes off. Conversely, we find that commodity demand tapers when economies reach per capita GDP of around $20,000.

- From the excellent blog beyondbrics in the Financial Times

We're doing Somalia the wrong way round

Ya gotta love Paul Collier and ya gotta love Foreign Policy.

Once the ruler had a tax system, he had an interest in growing the economy, which in turn called for basic economic infrastructure and the rule of law. At some point, provoked by this taxation, people came to demand political representation, and the state embarked on a long journey toward inclusivity. This is how modern Europe emerged, consolidating from thousands of proto-states into today's handful of modern states, all of which are more or less centralized and inclusive. 

In Somalia, the West is putting the cart before the horse. The first step is decidedly not to build imitations of representative government. Rather, it is to encourage the emergence of monopolies of organized violence at the local level. Even without international support, this is already happening. Somaliland and Puntland are proto-states in Somalia's north, while the transitional government, in reality if not aspiration, is a proto-state around Mogadishu. Conforming to the history of state-building, these three proto-states do not like each other, and they have demonstrated it in armed clashes. But such competition can be healthy. It provides the impetus for taxation, which eventually provides the incentive for development.

Role of median age

While youth are important in making revolutions happen, older people make it successful.

...political demography research shows that countries with very young age structures are prone both to higher incidence of civil conflict and – most relevant to the outcomes of the Arab Spring – to undemocratic governance. ... The difference in outcomes across the region, according to Richard Cincotta, can be attributed to the fact that as age structures mature, elites become less willing to trade their political freedoms to autocratic leaders in exchange for the promise of security and stability.  

...the initial events following the uprising in Tunisia that quickly spread across the region played out in a neatly linear fashion. Among the five countries where revolt took root, those with the earliest success in ousting autocratic leaders also had the most mature age structures and the least youthful populations. 

In Tunisia, with a median population age of 29, one month passed between a fruit seller’s self-immolation and Zine El Abedine Ben Ali’s flight to exile. In Egypt and Libya, where median age is close to 25 years(identified by Cincotta as a threshold when countries are at least 50 percent likely to be democratic), Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gaddafi took three weeks and eight months, respectively, to lose their titles. Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen (median age 17), took one year to be convinced to formally resign, while in Syria (median age 21), the 15-month uprising continues to be brutally repressed by Bashar Assad’s forces.

Report from Zabul province

It is hard to say why, but this was a more-interesting-than-average, highly readable report from the coalface. I've never heard of Zabul province, have you? I think that might be the point. Apparently it's the Missouri of Afghanistan.

Of note:

In Tarin wa Jaldak, we met with the shopkeepers in the bazaar and their primary concerns were the process for opening new shops and taxation. That’s a success—they were not fearing for their lives. In Suri, a part of Shinkay District, property values have risen due to the American troops stationed nearby. 

And here is the lesson:

The Afghan paradox is that while reality here can be infinitely granular, differing almost from village to village, the whole picture counts too. Places like Zabul are impoverished because they are ungoverned, but they are also ungoverned because they are impoverished. Security is weak in such provinces because the central government remains a disaster, and the central government remains a disaster because these provinces have no security.

Afghan villagers take up arms against Taliban

Al Jazeera covers the formation of the 'National Uprising Movement,' a group of fighters from four villages who have banded together to fight the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.

H/t: The Long War Journal

Positive Afghanistan report

Despite signs that the Taliban’s influence is spreading throughout Afghanistan, international military efforts over the last 12 months have not been fruitless, as changes on the battlefield are becoming visible. This can mainly be attributed to prolonged ISAF/ANSF operations against the Taliban’s (and other anti-government elements) logistic chains and, more importantly, their mid-level commanders. These commanders, with their years of tactical experience, are crucial to the Taliban’s battlefield strategies, and their loss has significantly affected the Taliban's ability to continue the same level of intensity and effectiveness that characterized their campaigns from 2009-2011.

... 

TOTAL Taliban/Anti-Government Element (TB/AGE) incidents(Includes all types of attacks, intimidation, abductions, extrajudicial killings & assassinations): 

2011: 10103 - 2012: 5198 A decrease of 41%

IEDs Total: 2011: 5133 - 2012: 2269 A decrease of 55%

Successful IEDs: 2011: 1789 - 2012: 889 A decrease of 50%

Failed IED Attempts: 2011: 3344 - 2012: 2269 A decrease of 32%

Direct Attacks: 2011: 3510 - 2012: 1787 A decrease of 41%

Source: Indicium Consulting via Michael Yon

A conversation on counterinsurgency

Stratfor's Friedman and Kaplan on COIN:

International conflict triggers and potential conflict points resulting from food and water insecurity

A Workshop Report by Future Directions International:

Over the next 40 years, there is a high probability of a global food and water crisis. This will result from population pressures, an increasing shortage of fresh water and a decline in access to arable land. The result will be demand exceeding supply due to competing interests, including environmental pressures, poor governance, high levels of food wastage, pre- and post-harvest losses and inadequate research.

All these factors will put upward pressure on the price of food. Unfortunately, those most affected are the least able to afford price increases.

There have been tensions between, and within, states over access and control of food and water. The signs of an impending crisis suggest these tensions will increase.

This paper summarises the conclusions reached during a series of workshops conducted by FDI over the last 18 months, including the recent workshops on conflict points held in March 2012.

H/t: Australian Policy Online

Most successful contingent in Afghanistan

from The Simple Truth? Securing the Population as a Recent Invention by Sergio Miller in the Small Wars Journal.

The most successful region has been the Italian-Spanish Regional Command West (measured by incidence of violent acts, civilian and security force deaths, and reconstruction). Why have the Italians and Spanish succeeded where the rest are floundering? ... Neither contingent has attempted to ‘secure the population’ (or start gun fights with local fighters, as the British did so disastrously in 2006). The opposite has been the case. The last time the British were in Herat they became embroiled with the locals and destroyed a number of the city’s historic towers, an act of cultural vandalism that has not been forgotten. The Italians and Spanish were never going to follow that route. Instead, both have deliberately maintained a low profile, away from Afghan civilian centres, and both have focused on training and reconstruction. It has paid off.

Irregular Warfare, Village Stability Operations and the Venture Capital Green Beret

at Small Wars Journal by EM Burlingame:

And there are three overriding truths driving this IW [Irregular Warfare, of Globalisation, not of the Cold War]: investors are more powerful than nation states; stateless actors are more effective than standing armies; and, stability means employment.

The Platoon Leader's Fight: Lessons from Maiwand

Excellent article in the Small Wars Journal by Alexander Frank.

This point needs to be quoted in full:

Train your men for flexibility
The single best training you can do is squad-level situational training in which your squads get hit from multiple directions by direct fire mixed with IEDs or suicide bombers. After defeating the ambush, have a large group of civilians come up to them while they are evacuating their casualties. The transition between direct fire and dealing with non-combatants will be key. To add more realism to it, make it a force-on-force. Task one of your squads with conducting the ambush and one to reacting to it. Grade both squads at the same time.

Read the rest of this paragraph:

...There should at least be one person devoted to intelligence full time, and one person devoted to money and politics full time in every company.

This is what at bottom you're doing:

...the basis of governance is a consistent set of enforceable rules that bring stability, security and order to people’s lives. People will kill for it and Afghan leaders will need your help if they are going to achieve it...

Numbers count and other things

from Waging COIN in Afghanistan: An Interview with Col. Robert M Sandusky

...The first thing you adapt is your thinking and doctrine and then you try to get the equipment more suitable for the war you are currently waging...

...The Soviets failed not because they had too many troops but because they employed too few in waging the wrong kind of campaign...

...counterinsurgency is not in itself a strategy, but a methodology for undermining or mitigating the insurgents and their effects. You can do counterinsurgency continuously, but you may not achieve success if you don’t have a strategy to which that is linked...

...I was always intrigued by the CORDS program ... [f]rom Vietnam the US military should have learned the imperative in counterinsurgency for a command and control structure that was capable of unifying and integrating indigenous and allied military forces, paramilitary organizations, both military and civilian effort...