Posted in Andrew Exum, Counterinsurgency, Culture, Intelligence, Military on Apr 17th, 2008 Comments Off on Gates calls for truce (with academia)
From Andrew Exum Be sure to read the speech given on Monday by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Association of American Universities in Washington. Since 9/11, the U.S. and its allies have been involved in two prolonged counter-insurgency campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are low-tech conflicts in which anthropological skills […]
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Posted in Counterinsurgency, Daniel Byman, Iraq, Qaeda, Terrorism on Mar 6th, 2008 Comments Off on U.S. success in Iraq and the global jihad
From Daniel Byman While it is far too early to say that the United States and its allies have permanently “crippled” Al Qaeda in Iraq (as claimed by some U.S. officials), clearly the terrorist organization has suffered grievous blows in the last year. Indeed, U.S. officials are so pleased they hope to use the “Anbar […]
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Posted in Counterinsurgency, Iraq, Maps, Terrorism, Turkey on Feb 24th, 2008 Comments Off on PKK bases in northern Iraq
From MESH Admin On Thursday evening, Turkish forces entered northern Iraq to do battle with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari has called the move “a limited military incursion into a remote, isolated and uninhabited region.” According to various sources, there have been clashes in the Qandil mountains along the […]
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Posted in Counterinsurgency, Iraq, Maps on Feb 18th, 2008 Comments Off on Pacification of Baghdad
From MESH Admin Here is the latest (January 17) map of trends in ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad, from the Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I). The green areas are predominantly Shiite, the blue are mostly or predominantly Sunni, and the brown areas are closely mixed. The yellow-orange-red inflammation indicates “incidents where deaths occurred from any means that […]
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Posted in Counterinsurgency, Harvey Sicherman, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians on Feb 5th, 2008 Comments Off on Civilians: shields and targets
From Harvey Sicherman The Winograd Report has confirmed what I heard on a trip to Israel in August 2006, namely, that an inexperienced Israeli cabinet sought the rewards of a combined arms (air-ground) operation at the risk of an air raid. When this proved inadequate to the rhetoric of victory, the same group bungled the […]
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Posted in Andrew Exum, Counterinsurgency, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Military on Jan 8th, 2008 Comments Off on Learning from Israel’s mistakes
From Andrew Exum If there is but one article readers of this blog should take the time to read in the next few days, it is most certainly Matt Matthews’s interview with Israeli general Shimon Naveh on the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. Since I wrote my study of Hezbollah’s performance during the 2006 […]
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Posted in Andrew Exum, Counterinsurgency, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon on Dec 22nd, 2007 Comments Off on Learning from Hezbollah
From Andrew Exum A few weeks ago, I stood in front of a roomful of U.S. Marine Corps officers at Quantico and spoke at length about Hezbollah, the Shia militant group whose military successes against Israel have alternately inspired the Arab public and frightened the ruling Sunni regimes of the Arab world. The Marine Corps […]
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