Preventing Insurgencies After Major Combat Operations

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Notes

Based on a paper prepared for the 2006 annual meeting of the International Studies Association, 22–25 March, San Diego, California.

1 Dept. of Defense, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) US Casualty Status’, data current as of 13 Nov. 2006 p. 20, available at ⟨www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf⟩. The number of personnel wounded in action includes both those who returned to duty within 72 hours and those who did not.

2 Brookings Iraq Index, updated 13 Nov. 2006, p.20, available at ⟨www.brookings.edu/iraqindex⟩.

3 ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) U.S. Casualty Status’, data current as of 14 Nov. 2006; Brookings Iraq Index, p.10.

4 Brookings Iraq Index, pp.17 and 22.

5 I am indebted to my colleagues Kim Cragin and Sara Daly for developing the concept of trans‐regional militancy.

6 See, for example, Paul Collier, ‘Demobilization and Insecurity: A Study in the Economics of the Transition from War to Peace’, Journal of International Development 6/3 (1994) pp.343–51; Mats R. Berdal, Disarmament and Demobilisation after Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 303 (Oxford: OUP for IISS 1996); Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder (eds.), Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia UP 1999); United Nations Dept. of Peacekeeping Operations, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex‐Combatants in a Peacekeeping Environment (New York: UN Dec. 1999); Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens (eds.), Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002); Virginia Page Fortna, Peace Time: Cease‐Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace (Princeton UP 2004); Robert I. Rotberg (ed.), When States Fail (Princeton UP 2004); International Peacekeeping, special issue on Security Sector Reconstruction and Reform in Peace Support Operations, 13/1 (March 2006).

7 This section draws heavily on unpublished work conducted by the author.

8 These plans called for an additional third division, from a yet‐to‐be‐determined coalition partner, to join the two US divisions in Iraq. Michael R. Gordon with Eric Schmitt, ‘US Plans to Reduce Forces in Iraq, With Help of Allies’, New York Times, 3 May 2003; Esther Schrader and Paul Richter, ‘US Delays Pullout in Iraq’, Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2003.

9 Paul Wolfowitz, testimony to the House Budget Committee, 27 Feb. 2003. It is worth noting that this contradicted the assessment of Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, who had testified to Congress two days earlier that postwar operations would require ‘something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers’. Shinseki testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, 25 Feb. 2003.

10 Vice President Richard Cheney, remarks made on Meet the Press, televised 16 March 2003.

11 Kanan Makiya, an influential Iraqi expatriate, acknowledged after the war that this had been his message to President Bush, and he stated, ‘I admit I was wrong.’ Joel Brinkley and Eric Schmitt, ‘Iraqi Leaders Say US Was Warned of Disorder After Hussein, But Little Was Done’, New York Times, 30 Nov. 2003. See also Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster 2004) p.259.

12 Woodward (note 11) p.81.

13 One source reports that the number 50 came up frequently during discussions of how many senior Iraqi officials would need to be removed. Gordon Corera, ‘Iraq provides lessons in nation building’, Jane’s Intelligence Review 16/1 (Jan. 2004) p.31.

14 Ten days after the war started, an unnamed senior administration official was already quoted in the press as questioning this assumption: ‘We underestimated their capacity to put up resistance. We underestimated the role of nationalism. And we overestimated the appeal of liberation.’ Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, ‘Plan’s Defect: No Defectors’, Los Angeles Times, 28 March 2003.

15 In retrospect, it became clear that US analysts had underestimated the level of damage done to Iraq’s infrastructure, including the ministries, during the previous decade of international sanctions. For more on the effects of the sanctions, see Rajiv Chandrasekaran, ‘Crossed Wires Kept Power Off in Iraq’, Washington Post, 25 Sept. 2003.

16 Wolfowitz identified three conditions that were worse than defense officials had anticipated: the failure of Iraqi army units to fight alongside the United States and assist in the reconstruction; the requirement to rebuild the police forces; and the difficulty of imagining that Ba’ath Party remnants would continue to fight. See Dept. of Defense News Transcript, ‘Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Briefing on His Recent Trip to Iraq’, 23 July 2003, available at ⟨www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030723-depsecdef0441.html⟩, accessed Sept. 2005.

17 For more on the reasons behind this decision, see L. Paul Bremer, My Year in Iraq (New York: Simon & Schuster 2006), esp. Ch. 3.

18 See Elizabeth Stanley‐Mitchell, ‘No Peace Without Surrender’, New York Times, 8 April 2003.

19 For three important contributions to the literature on war termination, see Fred Charles Iklé, Every War Must End, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia UP 1991); H.E. Goemans, War and Punishment (Princeton UP 2000) ; and Elizabeth Stanley‐Mitchell, ‘Working Out the Inevitable: Domestic Coalitions in War Termination’, PhD Dissertation, Dept.of Government, Harvard Univ. 2002.

20 Senior leaders of the defeated party may demand some sort of concessions in exchange for making such a statement, including potentially unpalatable ones such as amnesty or a continued position of privilege in the new government. Such concessions should be considered on a case‐by‐case basis, since the tradeoffs involved with such offers will vary widely depending on the particular situation. This does suggest, however, that US planners should seek to identify those parties before the war starts, so that the specific tradeoffs can be analyzed and appropriate policies can be developed.

21 Scott Feil, ‘Laying the Foundation: Enhancing Security Capabilities’, in Robert C. Orr (ed.), Winning the Peace (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies 2004) pp.39–57; Seth G. Jones et al., Establishing Law and Order after Conflict (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, MG‐374‐RC 2005) pp.8–10.

22 For more on the concept of the ‘security gap’, see Erwin A. Schmidl, ‘Police Functions in Peace Operations: An Historical Overview’, in Robert B. Oakley, Michael J. Dziedzic, and Eliot M. Goldberg, Policing the New World Disorder (Washington DC: National Defense UP 1998) pp.19–40.

23 James Dobbins et al. America’s Role in Nation‐Building (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, MR‐1753‐RC 2003) p.151.

24 Charles T. Call and William Stanley, ‘Civilian Security’, in Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens (eds.), Ending Civil Wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002) (note 6) esp. pp.314–16; Jones et al. pp.207–11.

25 For more on the repressive nature of indigenous security forces, see Mats R. Berdal, Disarmament and Demobilisation after Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 303 (Oxford: OUP for IISS 1996) (note 6) esp. pp.13–14; and Call and Stanley (note 24) esp. p.306.

26 The United Nations defines disarmament more broadly, as extending to the civilian population as well as ex‐combatants. Assessing the costs and benefits of civilian disarmament is quite complicated, and is beyond the scope of this paper. United Nations Dept. of Peacekeeping Operations, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Ex‐Combatants in a Peacekeeping Environment (New York: UN Dec. 1999).

27 Joanna Spear, ‘Disarmament and Demobilization’, in Stedman, Rothchild, and Cousens (note 6) p.143.

28 Weapons buy‐back programs often suffer from the fact that armaments provide a source of livelihood as well as security, and the payments offered for the weapons are often not enough to compensate. As a result, the weapons turned in during such programs tend to be poor quality small arms, rather than more advanced armaments. Berdal (note 25) pp.17 and 33–37; UN Dept. of Peacekeeping Operations (note 26) p.35.

29 Virginia Gamba, ‘Managing Violence: Disarmament and Demobilization’, in John Darby and Roger MacGinty (eds.), Contemporary Peacemaking (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2003) p.134.

30 Berdal (note 6) p.39; Nat J. Coletta, Markus Kostner, and Ingo Wiederhofer, ‘Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration: Lessons and Liabilities in Reconstruction’, in Robert I. Rotberg (ed.), When States Fail (Princeton UP 2004) p.173.

31 Spear (note 27) p.145.

32 For a discussion of these issues in Iraq, see Walter B. Slocombe, ‘Iraq’s Special Challenge: Security Sector Reform “Under Fire”’, in Alan Bryden and Heiner Hänngi (eds.), Reform and Reconstruction of the Security Sector (Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces 2004) esp. pp.22–3.

33 Berdal (note 6) p.17; Spear (note 27) p.145; Call and Stanley (note 24) pp.305–6.

34 As Coletta, Kostner, and Wiederhofer (note 30) note, ‘Demobilizing combatants into a livelihood vacuum can lead to disgruntled warriors and increased criminal activity.’ See p.171.

35 Berdal (note 6) p.57. It is worth noting that this study was published in 1996, well before regime change operations and demobilization efforts in Iraq.

36 Berdal (note 6) pp.46–7.

37 Ibid. pp.47–9; Coletta, Kostner, and Wiederhofer (note 30) p.175; Nicole Ball, ‘Demobilizing and Reintegrating Soldiers: Lessons from Africa’, in Krishna Kumar (ed.), Rebuilding Societies After Civil War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1997) p.99.

38 For more details on these phases, see Ball (note 37) esp. pp.86–90, and UN Dept. of Peacekeeping Operations (note 26).