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.