Stabilization and the Problem of Insurgency: Additional Resources

These references supplement the Knowledge Base Essay, Stabilization and the Problem of Insurgency.

Additional Explanations of the Underlying Concepts:

Online (Web) Sources

Frontline: The Insurgency.
Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/insurgency/can/  [Backup Link]

"In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency." International Crisis Group, Middle East Report, 2000.
Available at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3953  [Backup Link]

"This report, based on close analysis of the insurgents' own discourse, reveals relatively few groups, less divided between nationalists and foreign jihadis than assumed, whose strategy and tactics have evolved (in response to U.S. actions and to maximize acceptance by Sunni Arabs), and whose confidence in defeating the occupation is rising. An anti-insurgency approach primarily focused on reducing the insurgents' perceived legitimacy - rather than achieving their military destruction, decapitation and dislocation - is far more likely to succeed. Failure to sufficiently take into account what the insurgents are saying is puzzling and, from Washington's perspective, counter-productive. Abundant material - both undervalued and underutilized - is available from insurgent websites, internet chat, videos, tapes and leaflets. Over the past two years such communication has assumed more importance, both among insurgent groups and between groups and their networks of supporters or sympathizers. This report, the first exhaustive analysis of the organized armed opposition's discourse, seeks to fill the gap, and the lessons are sobering." - abstract from article

Hoffman, Bruce. "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq." 2005.
Available at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional-papers/2005/RAND-OP127.pdf  [Backup Link]

This is Bruce Hoffman's article, "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq."

Hashim, Ahmed S. "Iraq's Chaos: Why the Insurgency Won't Go Away." , 2000
Available at: http://bostonreview.net/BR29.5/hashim.html  [Backup Link]

This is Ahmed S. Hashim's article, "Iraq's Chaos: Why the Insurgency Won't Go Away."

Beehner, Lionel. "Iraq's Insurgency After Zarqawi." Council on Foreign Relations , 2000
Available at: Primary Link  [Backup Link]

This is Lionel Beehner's article, "Iraq's Insurgency After Zarqawi."

"IRAQ: Quelling the Insurgency." Council on Foreign Relations, 2004.
Available at: http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=7635  [Backup Link]

This is the Council on Foreign Relations's article, "Iraq: Quelling the Insurgency."

Iraqi Insurgency Groups.
Available at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq-insurgency.htm  [Backup Link]
This site has a background on the insurgency in Iraq as of mid-2005 along with links to profiles on specific insurgent groups.

Pei, Minxin and Sara Kasper. "Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building." Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Policy Brief 24 , 2000
Available at: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Policybrief24.pdf  [Backup Link]

"The record of past U.S. experience in democratic nation building is daunting. The low rate of success is a sobering reminder that these are among the most difficult foreign policy ventures for the United States. Of the sixteen such efforts during the past century, democracy was sustained in only four cases ten years after the departure of U.S. forces. Two of these followed the total defeat and surrender of Japan and Germany after World War II, and two were tiny Grenada and Panama. Unilateral nation building by the United States has had an even rougher time-perhaps because unilateralism has led to surrogate regimes and direct U.S. administration during the postconflict period. Not one American-supported surrogate regime has made the transition to democracy, and only one case of direct American administration has done so. Importantly, many of the factors that experience shows are most crucial to success are absent in Iraq. To heed the lessons of its history and raise the odds of success, the United States should support a multilateral reconstruction strategy under U.N. auspices centered on bolstering political legitimacy and sharing economic burdens." - summary from article

Cohen, Craig. "Measuring Progress in Stabilization and Reconstruction." USIP , 2000
Available at: http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/srs/srs1.html  [Backup Link]

This report is based on a series of consultations under the auspices of the Working Group on Measuring Progress in Stabilization and Reconstruction, chaired by Frederick Barton, senior advisor and codirector of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Michael Dziedzic, senior program officer in the United States Institute of Peace's Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations and the strategic planner who drafted both the Mission Implementation Plan for the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and the December 2003 √?¬¢√?¬?√?¬?Standards for Kosovo√?¬¢√?¬?√?¬? for the UN Mission in Kosovo.

Caan, Christina. "Post-Conflict Stabilization and Reconstruction: What Have We Learned From Iraq and Afghanistan." , 2005
Available at: Primary Link  [Backup Link]

This is the United States Institute of Peace's Briefing on what the United States has learned from Iraq and Afghanistan with regards to post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction.

McNerney, Michael J. "Stabilization and Reconstruction in Afghanistan: Are PRTs a Model or a Muddle?." Parameters, 2005.
Available at: Primary Link  [Backup Link]

This is Michael J. McNerney's article, "Stabilization and Reconstruction in Afghanistan: Are PRTs a Model or a Muddle?"

Perito, Robert M. "The Coalition Provisional Authority's Experience with Public Security in Iraq: Lessons Identified." USIP Special Report No. 137 , 2005
Available at: http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr137.html  [Backup Link]

This is Robert M. Perito's article, "The Coalition Provisional Authority's Experience with Public Security in Iraq: Lessons Identified."

Offline (Print) Sources

Hashim, Ahmed. Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2006.
"More than two years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a loosely organized insurgency continues to target American and Coalition soldiers, as well as Iraqi security forces and civilians, with devastating results. In this sobering account of the ongoing violence, Ahmed Hashim, a specialist on Middle Eastern strategic issues and on irregular warfare, reveals the insurgents behind the widespread revolt, their motives, and their tactics. The insurgency, he shows, is not a united movement directed by a leadership with a single ideological vision. Instead, it involves former regime loyalists, Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation, foreign and domestic Islamist extremists, and elements of organized crime. These groups have cooperated with one another in the past and coordinated their attacks; but the alliance between nationalist Iraqi insurgents on the one hand and religious extremists has frayed considerably. The U.S.-led offensive to retake Fallujah in November 2004 and the success of the elections for the Iraqi National Assembly in January 2005 have led more "mainstream" insurgent groups to begin thinking of reinforcing the political arm of their opposition movement and to seek political guarantees for the Sunni Arab community in the new Iraq. Hashim begins by placing the Iraqi revolt in its historical context. He next profiles the various insurgent groups, detailing their origins, aims, and operational and tactical modi operandi. He concludes with an unusually candid assessment of the successes and failures of the Coalition's counter-insurgency campaign. Looking ahead, Hashim warns that ethnic and sectarian groups may soon be pitted against one another in what will be a fiercely contested fight over who gets what in the new Iraq. Evidence that such a conflict is already developing does not augur well for Iraq's future stability. Both Iraq and the United States must work hard to ensure that slow but steady success over the insurgency is not overshadowed by growing ethno-sectarian animosities as various groups fight one another for the biggest slice of the political and economic pie." - from Amazon.com

Dodge, Toby. "Iraqi Transitions: from regime change to state collapse." Third World Quarterly 26:4-5, 2004.
"This paper focuses on the US occupation of Iraq from the seizing of Baghdad in April 2003 until the official hand-over of sovereignty to the Iraqi government in June 2004. It seeks to explain the reasons for the failure of US forces to impose order on and then stabilize the country by examining the political and sociological legacy of Saddam Hussein, US planning before and after the war and how the occupation set about trying to build political structures in post-Saddam Iraq. Ultimately it argues that the most important reasons for the failure of the occupation have been ideological. US administrators charged with planning for and then occupying the country fundamentally misunderstood the size and nature of the task they were about to undertake. They set out to apply neoliberal measures of state reform only to find that the state had collapsed and they were now involved in a prolonged exercise of state construction. They then applied a primordial understanding of Iraqi society, exacerbating a divisive and potentially violent sectarianism into Iraqi politics." - abstract

Beckett, Ian. Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies; Guerrillas and Their Opponents Since 1750. London: Routledge, 2004.
"Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies explores how unconventional warfare tactics have opposed past and present governments all over the world, from eighteenth century guerrilla warfare through to the urban terrorism of today. Insurgency remains one of the most prevalent forms of conflict and presents a crucial challenge to the international community, governments and the military. In addition to examining the tactics of guerrilla leaders such as Lawrence Mao, Guevara, and Marighela, the book also analyzes the counter-insurgency theories of Gallieni, Callwell, Thompson, and Kitson. Encompassing both an analytic and historical framework, this timely one-volume study runs the gamut from The Revolutionary War and Napoleon's campaign in Spain to the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Colombia -- and is a must read for anyone interested in military history and international relations." - from Amazon.com

Rathmell, Andrew. "Planning post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq: what can we learn?." International Affairs 81, .
"Efforts to improve national and international capabilities to plan and manage post-conflict reconstruction operations are underway in many countries and are high on the agenda of several multilateral institutions. The international community has learned lessons from the numerous post-conflict reconstruction and nation-building operations that it has engaged in since the end of the Cold War but Iraq represented the most difficult and ambitious operation undertaken to date. Although the coalition effort in Iraq had many unique features, we can nonetheless draw lessons from the tenure of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) both for the ongoing effort in Iraq and more broadly for future post-conflict reconstruction operations. This article discusses the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction planning and mission management and assesses what happened under the CPA. It draws lessons for the future international effort in Iraq and for the international community as it considers how to plan and organize future such missions." - abstract from article

Barakat, Sultan. "Post-Saddam Iraq: Deconstructing a Regime, Reconstructing a Nation." Third World Quarterly 26:4-5, .
"This paper draws on four key tenets of post-war reconstruction: understanding the context (historical, cultural, regional); developing a shared national vision of the future; developing collaborative governance; and inducing development as a framework for analyzing the nature of the reconstruction attempted in Iraq. It traces the difficulties of effecting a peaceful transition to the failure to understand the implications of attempting to impose a pre-determined plan in the fragile conditions of Iraq, post-Saddam. Nevertheless, despite these many mistakes, the paper concludes by suggesting that a way forward can still be found." - abstract

Brown, Richard H. "Reconstruction of Infrastructure in Iraq: End to a Means or Means to an End?." Third World Quarterly , .
"This paper will explore the dilemma of facilitating reconstruction for short-term aims and whether in these circumstances it is possible to maintain a long-term vision. It will also analyze to what extent the Iraqi people have genuinely participated in reconstruction plans and whether the eventual outcomes might have been different if a truly participative approach had been taken." - abstract

Bazarian, Melissa S.M. "Whither the Iraqi Insurgency: Prospects for Counterinsurgent Success." Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement 13:1, .
"The 2003 conflict between Iraq and the US-led Coalition resulted in liberation for the country, enabling its citizens to experience freedom they have not had for decades. While the US-led operation was successful, insurgent movements have hindered the reconstruction efforts and the rebuilding of the government in Iraq. The tactics used by these insurgent groups are not that of 'traditional' warfare, therefore the US and Coalition forces adapted their tactics to respond to this new threat. It is argued that with the application of the Manwaring Paradigm (also known as the SWORD Model), the US and Coalition forces successfully responded to the insurgent movements during the period leading up to the Iraqi elections in January 2005." - abstract

Return to Top

Teaching Materials on this Topic:

Offline (Print) Sources

Orr, Robert C., ed. Winning the Peace: An American Strategy for Post-Conflict Reconstruction. Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 1, 2004.
"Events in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans have proved that failed and defeated states threaten the national security interests of the United States and the stability of entire regions. But success in addressing these threats clearly depends on more than military might; the post-conflict period is equally crucial. Case studies in this book examine the U.S. approach in Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The book offers policy guidance on how to handle current reconstruction challenges and on building capacity to do a better job when America is inevitably called on to restore failed nations in the future." - from Amazon.com

Return to Top