There are four ways to close an insurgency. Each of them is either good or bad depending on which side one is on. The first way is the best end for the insurgent; that is for the insurgents to win outright. It usually ends with the insurgents triumphantly marching through the nations capital after ousting the incumbent government in a final battle. This is how the Chinese Communists came to power and Castro triumphed in ...Read more >

Conventional wisdom holds that a government must expend ten times as much as insurgents in their efforts to contain insurgency (Mataxis, 1994, p.7). Authors, experts, and military historians establish a variety of ratios for military engagements as a way of forecasting requirements and predicting ...Read more >

The most immediate threat to the security of Pakistan is an Islamist insurgency raging in the north-west tribal regions. They have launched a deadly campaign of terror attacks throughout Pakistan over the last few years which have killed large number of civilians and non-civilians alike, devastated infrastructure, and hindered NATO success in ...Read more >

Since the emergence of Counterinsurgency (COIN) as a strategy in 2004, it has gained widespread acceptance both within and outside of the military. It has gained so much acceptance that it has essentially become Army dogma. Most writing on the subject is overwhelming ...Read more >

The United States Military strategy is in the midst of the largest disarray since the ending of the cold war with global communism in the early 1990s. US Ground forces are now split between two competing and divergent missions: Counterinsurgency Warfare and the projection of High Intensity Combat (HIC) capabilities to its potential ...Read more >

Counterinsurgency (COIN) operations start with discipline the discipline to understand and execute a balance between kinetic and non-kinetic operations in shaping the battlespace1 and specific Target Audiences ...Read more >

In A Million Bullets James Ferguson comes to the conclusion that in 2006 ‘the government had sent a boy (albeit a very tough one) to do a man’s job’.1 In April of that year the British gained control of Helmand province in Southern Afghanistan as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ...Read more >

Traditionally regarded as a secondary activity in military thinking and practice, the notion of counter-insurgency (COIN) has undergone a remarkable renaissance. This analysis traces the origins of this renaissance to two distinctive schools: a neo-classical school and a global insurgency school. The global insurgency school critiques neo-classical thought and presents itself as a more sophisticated appreciation of current security problems. An examination of the evolution of these two ...Read more >

Much of the literature on counterinsurgency (COIN) emphasizes broad and simple approaches to victory, such as winning hearts and minds, searching and destroying, clearing and holding, applying costs and benefits, etc. Such prescriptions provide invaluable baselines against which to judge military and government performance and to measure progress against one’s adversary. However, there are also costs associated with strictly adhering to such ...Read more >

COIN Center participated in subject conference, the purpose of which was to identify effective practices in the application of counterinsurgency fundamentals to company level operations in support of deploying ...Read more >

The general theory of strategy, which explains the structure, content, and working of the strategy function, has a domain of intellectual authority that is universal and eternal. This logical precedence over the wide variety of historically unique strategic phenomena means that the theory can provide order and discipline to help those who argue about particular ideas and their practical expression in ...Read more >

The British approach to counter-terrorism is unashamedly based on intelligence-led policing; and in the decade since the 9/11 attacks of 2001 this has proved to be successful. RUSI’s terrorism database records some forty-three potential plots or significant incidents arising from jihadist terrorism, and only one plot – the London bombings of 2005 – has been successfully carried ...Read more >

The operation was carried out primarily by Counter Insurgency Force (R). CIF (R) is commonly referred to as Romeo Force. The operation took place in four phases. In the first phase, from about November 2002 to January 2003, CIF(R) developed the physical infrastructure necessary for conduct of operations, by constructing helipads and mule tracks. In the second phase, bases surrounding the target region were established, and migrant herders from the area were resettled elsewhere and ...Read more >

In November 2010, heads of state and government at the Lisbon Summit called for a streamlining of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) partnerships. In early 2011, the Alliance developed a more flexible and efficient partnership policy. It did so in accordance with the Lisbon tasking, and prepared simultaneously for a new mission, with contributions from several partner countries, as events unfolded in Libya. These developments involved significant NATO consultation with partner countries. ...Read more >

Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers whether aid workers or Afghan soldiers U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge to wage a successful ...Read more >