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CIWAG Case Studies Reports & Studies

4-2012

Varieties of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in

Iraq, 2003–2009

Jon Lindsay

Roger Petersen

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Lindsay, Jon and Petersen, Roger, "Varieties of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2003–2009" (2012). CIWAG Case Studies.

10.

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UNITED STATES NAVAL WAR COLLEGE

CENTER on IRREGULAR WARFARE andARMED GROUPS

United States Naval War College

Newport, Rhode Island

Draft as of 121916

Jon Lindsay and Dr. Roger Petersen

Varieties of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency 

in Iraq, 2003-2009
Varieties of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency 

in Iraq, 

2003–2009

Jon Lindsay and Roger Petersen
LINDSAY AND PETERSEN: VARIETIES OF INSURGENCY AND COUNTERINSURGENCY IN IRAQ, 2003-

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2

Center on Irregular Warfare & Armed Groups (CIWAG)

US Naval War College, Newport, RI

CIWAG@usnwc.edu

This work is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This case study is available on CIWAG’s public website located at 

http://www.usnwc.edu/ciwag
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Message from the Editors

In 2008, the Naval War College established the Center on

Irregular Warfare & Armed Groups (CIWAG). CIWAG’s primary

mission is twofold: first, to bring cutting-edge research on Irregular 

Warfare into the Joint Professional Military Educational (JPME) 

curricula; and second, to bring operators, practitioners, and scholars 

together to share their knowledge and experiences about a vast array

of violent and non-violent irregular challenges. This case study is 

part of an ongoing effort at CIWAG that includes symposia, lectures 

by world-renowned academics, case studies, research papers, 

articles, and books.

Professors Roger Petersen (MIT) and Jon Lindsay (University of 

California, San Diego) are the authors of this case study, which uses 

the insurgency in Iraq to help us understand the motivations that spur 

individuals to join or reject a rebellion. This case study was created to 

focus on two specific challenges that our experienced operators and 

practitioners faced in Iraq: how to understand the actors and the 

complex irregular warfare environment, and how to manage

interaction, adaptation, and reassessment in irregular warfare.

The authors provide four approaches to counterinsurgency used 

in Iraq between 2003-2009 and ask what worked, when, and why. The 

four approaches examined are: (1) “clear, hold, build” tactics 

popularized in U.S. COIN doctrine; (2) decapitation, or leadership 

targeting of insurgent organizations; (3) ethnic homogenization in the 

course of civil war; and (4) mobilization of non-state armed 

communities. The authors then use a spectrum of resistance, developed 

by Roger Petersen, to examine the effect of these counterinsurgency 

approaches in different regions and with different populations. Taken 

together, this case study offers a useful analytical framework for 

understanding how and why rebellions either grow or diminish. 

This version of the case study was submitted in November 2011. 
LINDSAY AND PETERSEN: VARIETIES OF INSURGENCY AND COUNTERINSURGENCY IN IRAQ, 2003-

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It is important to note three critical caveats to this case study. 

First, the opinions found in this case study are solely those of the author 

and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense, the Naval 

War College or CIWAG. Second, while every effort has been made to 

correct any factual errors in this work, the author is ultimately 

responsible for the content of this case study. Third, the study questions 

presented in all CIWAG case studies are written to provoke discussion 

on a wide variety of topics including strategic, operational, and tactical 

matters as well as ethical and moral questions confronted by operators 

in the battlefield. The point is to make these case studies part of an

evolving and adaptive curriculum that fulfills the needs of students 

preparing to meet the challenges of the post-9/11 world and to show 

them the dilemmas that real people faced in high-pressure situations. 

Finally, in addition to a range of teaching questions that are 

intended to serve as the foundation for classroom discussion, students 

conducting research on Iraq will probably find the extensive 

bibliography at the end of the case helpful. Compiled by the case study 

authors and by CIWAG researchers at the Naval War College, the 

bibliography is a selection of the best books and articles on a range of 

related topics. We hope you find it useful, and look forward to hearing 

your feedback on the cases and suggestions for how you can contribute

to the Center on Irregular Warfare & Armed Group’s mission here at 

the Naval War College.
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Author Biographies

Dr. Jon Lindsay received his Ph.D. in political science (security studies) 

from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a M.S. in computer 

science and a B.A. in cognitive science from Stanford University. His 

research focuses on the control of complex adaptive systems in war, with 

topics in organizational behavior, military innovation, intelligence studies, 

cyber security, and irregular warfare. His dissertation, “Information 

Friction: Information Technology and Military Performance,” draws on 

fieldwork with a U.S. special operations unit in Iraq and historical case 

studies to explain how uncertainty-reducing technologies themselves 

generate additional uncertainty. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on 

Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California San Diego, he 

currently studies international cyber security with particular focus on its 

implications for the Sin-American military balance. He has served as an 

intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy with experience in the targeting, 

Naval Aviation, and Naval Special Warfare communities through 

assignments in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Iraq.

Roger Petersen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had taught at MIT since 2001 

and was recently named the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political 

Science. Dr. Petersen studies comparative politics with a special focus on 

conflict and violence, mainly in Eastern Europe, but also in Colombia. He 

has written three books: Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern 

Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2001); Understanding Ethnic 

Violence: Fear, Hatred, Resentment in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe

(Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Western Intervention in the 

Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict (Cambridge University 

Press, 2011). He also has co-edited, with John Bowen, Critical 

Comparisons in Politics and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1999). 
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Table of Contents

Message from the Editors .......................................................................................3

Author Biographies ...................................................................................................5

Acronyms and Terms................................................................................................8

Case Summary .............................................................................................................9

I. Introduction........................................................................................................... 14

A. “A Rather Negative Reaction”.................................................................... 14

B. Analytical Methodology............................................................................... 18

II. Analytical Framework...................................................................................... 21

A. Spectrum of Individual Roles .................................................................... 21

Figure 1: Spectrum of Participation in Insurgency and 

Counterinsurgency......................................................................................... 22

B. Forces That Move Individuals Along the Spectrum of Roles......... 24

C. General Connections Among Types of Mechanisms and Movement 

on the Spectrum of Roles ................................................................................. 36

Figure 2: Triggering, Counter-Triggering, and Sustaining 

Mechanisms for Insurgency and Counterinsurgency....................... 37

Table 1: Insurgency Triggering/Sustaining Mechanisms and 

COIN-Inhibiting Measures........................................................................... 43

III. Varieties of Counterinsurgency................................................................... 45

A. FM 3-24 and Clear, Hold, Build................................................................. 45

B. Alternative Strategies................................................................................... 46

Figure 3: Different COIN Strategies Address Different Segments of 

the Population.................................................................................................. 53
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IV. Evaluation of the Implementation of Counterinsurgency Strategy in 

Iraq................................................................................................................................ 54

Figure 4: Regional Monthly SIGACTs (Primary Axis) and Overall 

Troop Levels (Secondary Axis), Feb 2004 to Dec 2008................... 55

A. The Chaotic Capital Becomes Less Chaotic: Clear/Hold/Build 

and/or Homogenization................................................................................... 58

Map 1: The Ethnic Homogenization of Baghdad ................................ 62

B. The Sunni West, Anbar Province, and the Role of Tribal 

Mobilization .......................................................................................................... 66

C. The South: Overwhelming Complexity .................................................. 74

D. Decapitation: An Alternative Explanation of COIN Success That Is 

Difficult to Assess................................................................................................ 80

V. Conclusion............................................................................................................. 85

Annex A: Bibliography........................................................................................... 88
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Acronyms and Terms

AQI – al Qaeda in Iraq

CPA – Coalition Provisional Authority

CTC – Counterterrorist Center

EFP – Explosively-formed Penetrator

F3EA – Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze

FM 3-24 – Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency Field Manual

G-2 – intelligence officer

HUMINT – Human Intelligence

I MEF – First Marine Expeditionary Force

IFOR – Implementation Force

IIP – Iraqi Islamic Party

IRA – Irish Republican Army

IRGC – Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

ISF – Iraqi Security Forces

JAM – Mahdi Army

JOC – Joint Operations Center

MCIA – Marine Corps Intelligence Activity

MNF – Multinational Forces

NGA – National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

NSA – National Security Agency

OIF – Operation Iraqi Freedom

OMS – Office of the Martyr Sadr

PSYOP – Psychological Operations

Sadr II – Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr, nephew of Iraqi Shia cleric Ayatollah 

Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr

SCIRI – Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq

SIGACTS – Significant Activity

WERV – Western Euphrates River Valley
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Case Summary

This case study focuses on insurgency and counter-insurgency in 

Iraq and asks some of the most fundamental questions: why do men rebel, 

and why does that rebellion become organized, and what works to counter 

that rebellion?1

The authors examine three different regions in Iraq between 2003-

2006 – Baghdad, the Sunni west and Anbar province, and the south. The 

plunging levels of insurgent violence by the end of that period are most 

often attributed to successful implementation of COIN or even “the 

Surge”; however, the authors argue that the explanation is far more 

complex. Indeed, they provide evidence that local and political 

circumstances, specific to each region, played at least an equally important 

role in driving down the level of social violence.

To make their case, the authors present a unique analytical 

framework in Section II, a spectrum of participation in insurgency and 

counterinsurgency. This spectrum illustrates the steps and roles that 

individuals choose and move between in a rebellion. These can range at 

one extreme to being an active member of a guerilla unit, to neutrality and, 

at the other extreme, to joining government security forces. 

The case study then examines six overlapping motivations that 

spur individuals to join or reject a rebellion; six motivations that move 

individuals along this spectrum of participation. The authors point out that 

few individuals use simple cost-benefit rational calculations to decide the 

level of their involvement in a rebellion. Instead, social ties, focal point 

events, emotions, status, and complex psychological factors must be taken 

into consideration in order how to understand why individuals join an 

insurgency. The case also examines why some individuals stay neutral or 

are never sufficiently animated by the spirit of rebellion to actively pick up 

arms and fight. 

 

1 Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel, Princeton University Press, 1970
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In Section III, within this context of why men rebel, the case then 

examines four approaches to counterinsurgency used in Iraq between 

2003-2009 by a variety of U.S. forces and asks what worked, when, and 

why. The four approaches examined are: (1) “clear, hold, build” tactics 

popularized in U.S. COIN doctrine; (2) decapitation, or leadership 

targeting of insurgent organizations; (3) ethnic homogenization in the 

course of civil war; and (4) mobilization of non-state armed communities. 

In Section IV, the authors provide a close analysis of events in 

Baghdad, Anbar province and the Sunni west, and the south. They 

evaluate how to use data for evaluating progress in counterinsurgency 

campaigns and whether cause and effect can be established. The authors 

also ask what data better help us understand the effect of 

counterinsurgency tactics, operations, and strategy. Last, they examine the 

strategy of decapitation as an alternative explanation for the decrease in 

violence that COIN has been credited with.

Finally, the authors point out that in counterinsurgency, there is no 

substitute for deep social and cultural knowledge. Conducting these 

assessments during the insurgency is incredibly difficult. This heightens 

the importance of focusing on cultural and social knowledge as soon as 

possible. Indeed, this may strengthen the argument for indirect action 

approaches such as security force assistance and foreign internal defense 

programs in order to build strong ties to communities and develop the 

expertise necessary to understand the ties that bind a society together.

Key lessons from this analysis:

 Few individuals use simple cost-benefit calculations to 

decide the level of their involvement in a rebellion.

 Social ties, focal point events, emotions, status, and 

complex psychological factors must be taken into consideration in 

order to understand why individuals join an insurgency.

 The “spectrum of participation” can help to examine 

whether a specific counterinsurgency approach works better in 
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certain circumstances and which groups in society, a key to that 

success.

 Multiple factors beyond COIN tactics come together to 

affect the level of support given to the government or the rebellion. 

Identifying these factors and taking appropriate actions can help 

sway a population toward government support.

 In counterinsurgency, there is no substitute for deep social 

and cultural knowledge, particularly amongst the individuals most 

resistant to counterinsurgency strategies. 

 Developing cultural and social knowledge as soon as 

possible is vital; preferably before a conflict arises. This raises the 

question of how to balance direct versus indirect action and the 

roles of general-purpose forces and special operations forces across 

the irregular warfare spectrum.
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Discussion Questions

1. What are the key lessons of this case study for you? If you have 

operational experience in Iraq during the time frame discussed, 

does this case study help explain some of the dynamics of 

rebellion that you witnessed?

2. Why do people rebel? Why do they obey?

3. What are the key stages of rebellion identified by Lindsay and 

Petersen?

4. What triggers people to progress from one stage of the rebellion 

to another?

5. Conversely, what motivates individuals to shift from supporting 

the rebellion to neutrality or supporting the government?

6. How can the local population’s tipping point be identified 

accurately and in a timely manner? Does the opposition have an 

advantage in recognizing this? If so, what measures can you take 

to overcome or compensate for this advantage? What is the role 

of General Purpose Forces, Special Operational Forces, and 

civilian subject matter experts in identifying the tipping point?

7. What might Coalition Forces have done differently to impede or 

reverse the rebellion?

8. If you are on the ground, conducting or receiving these 

assessments, how can you use this information? How can you set 

aside entrenched biases (cultural, institutional, and personal) in 

order to see alternative courses of action?

9. How can a conventional military force be flexible enough to 

adapt to the changing tides of loyalty and rebellion inside an 

insurgency? Should this flexibility come from the top-down or 

the bottom-up?

10. How much time on the ground is needed to begin to understand 

the local culture? Does “academic” or theoretical knowledge 
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suffice, such as that provided in advance by subject matter 

experts? Or is lived experience, in the local culture, necessary? 

11. Are some cultures too “foreign” for Western militaries to 

understand or relate to? What effect does that have on our troops 

on the ground, and on higher-ups’ understanding of tactics, 

motivations, and strategy? Can Security Force Assistance and 

Foreign Internal Defense programs help to overcome these 

barriers to understanding, or is something else needed?

12. How can you apply this case study to other situations?
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I. Introduction

A. “A Rather Negative Reaction”

Insurgency is extremely dangerous for its participants. Why would 

individuals decide to take great personal risks to rebel against stronger 

military opponents? Thamer Ibrahim Tahir al-Assafi, a member of the 

Council of Muslim Scholars in Ramadi and a former commando who 

served in the Iran-Iraq war, describes the emergence of insurgency in 

Anbar Province in western Iraq: 

After the fall of Baghdad ... Coalition Forces ... wanted to come 

in from Baghdad, and they wanted to come in peacefully. An 

agreement was struck between some of the tribal sheikhs and the 

American forces for a peaceful entry. After they entered Ramadi, 

there was a big demonstration, a peaceful demonstration, because 

[the people] did not approve of an occupier coming into their 

capital. The American forces did not respect the people who were 

demonstrating. They dealt with them rather violently. The 

people’s reaction was to pelt the Americans with rocks and 

tomatoes, and it was a rather negative reaction. They provoked 

the citizens. That was the first thing that started hatred.

The next day, they demonstrated again, and the 

Americans treated them in the same manner, meaning their 

armored vehicles went right through them. A young man, an 18-

year-old youth, threw a rock at an American tank, and the 

soldiers shot him dead. We are a tribal people, and in our 

tradition, we know revenge. If someone gets killed from your 

family, you have to kill the killer, or at least a relative of his.

When the Iraqi army was dissolved, they left a lot of 

armaments, including armored personnel carriers, heavy machine 
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guns, and a lot ordnance. People took them and hid them in their 

houses, not to have a future confrontation with the Americans, 

but in fear of a confrontation with Iran. Keep in mind we are 

military-trained people as a society because of the battles—the 

Gulf War, the Iran War, the Kurds in the north. Most of us were 

in the army, so using weapons was something we could do with 

ease.

So these people whose youth was killed by the 

Americans, they formed a cell, and they started looking for 

revenge. They found out that placing an IED [improvised 

explosive device] is a simple matter, so a lot of cells began 

forming all over the place.

When the foreign Arabs came in, they came in with 

suitcases full of dollars, and they started organizing cells. They 

got in touch with the Iraqi people, and they started organizing 

them better.2

Different people rebel for different reasons, and rebellion can take 

on different forms, involving groups with different aims and backgrounds. 

The revolt against Coalition Forces in this story grows from mass 

demonstration, to violent protest, to the defense of family honor, to the 

formation of local armed resistance, to the organization of potent terrorist 

cells. What are the motivations of the participants at each stage? What 

triggers them to progress from one to another? What might Coalition 

Forces have done differently to impede or reverse this process?

Anbar was long one of the most violent regions in the Coalition’s 

campaign in Iraq. By August 2006, violent attacks climbed to an average 

of 50 per day, up 57% from February, and would continue to rise higher 

still. Marine Corps Colonel Peter Devlin, intelligence officer (G-2) of the 

 

2 Gary W. Montgomery and Timothy S. McWilliams, Al-Anbar Awakening: From 

Insurgency to Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2004-2009, Volume II, Iraqi Perspectives

(Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2009), 33-34.
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1

st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), released a somber assessment 

that month: “The social and political situation has deteriorated to a point 

that MNF [Multi National Forces] and ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] are no 

longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar.”3 

Yet by the following year, attacks in Anbar had plummeted to less 

than five a day, and local tribesmen who had once fought against U.S. 

troops now joined them in fighting the radical Islamist organization alQaeda in Iraq (AQI). Lieutenant General Ra’ad al-Hamdani, a former 

commander of Saddam’s 2nd Republican Guard Corps, describes the 

emergence of the “Awakening” in Anbar:

On the ground, it was discovered that these people [AQI] did not 

work for the benefit of Iraq. Their objective was to destroy Iraq. 

Accepting them turned into rejecting them, and for the lack of 

real security forces, the people who started fighting them were 

the people who suffered because of them. And that was done by 

absorbing and using the tribal forces in the areas to fight and hold 

the main target of the terrorists.

At the beginning of the Awakening, one of them was 

Sattar Abu Risha. The success of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha broke 

the fear barrier. The credit does not go only to Abdul Sattar Abu 

Risha, but we appreciate him for firing the first shot. 

There are tens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis better 

than Sattar Abu Risha who fought the terrorists and al-Qaeda, but 

they have not come to the surface.

As you know, Sattar Abu Risha was not a nationalist, as 

the Americans understand it. As you know, he was a road 

gangster, and he committed crimes against Iraqi society 

previously. For the benefit of the area, and the benefit of the 

 

3

I MEF G-2, “State of the Insurgency in al-Anbar,” classified intelligence assessment on 

17 August 2006, reprinted in Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus 

and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (New York: Penguin Press, 

2009): 331-335
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Americans at that time, Sattar Abu Risha was raised above the 

surface. There are thousands of Iraqi nationalists and patriots who 

did the same thing he did.4

Like Han Solo in Star Wars, the charismatic Sattar Abu Risha rises 

from criminal smuggler to popular hero. Just as people moved through 

various degrees of support for rebellion in the opening vignette, here we 

see varying degrees of resistance to rebellion. As there are different levels 

of insurgency, what are the different degrees of counterinsurgency? How 

much symmetry is there in people’s movement into insurgency and back 

out into counterinsurgency? 

The situation in Iraq overall followed Anbar’s after a lag of several 

months. Measures of violent activity declined significantly throughout 

2007 and early 2008, while during the same period, the “surge” of over 

30,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq brought the total to 171,000 by 

October 2007. Under the leadership of a new commander in Iraq, General 

David Petraeus, this larger force emphasized the protection of the 

population in accordance with the newly drafted Army Field Manual 3-24, 

Counterinsurgency (COIN).5

The correlation of Iraq’s plunging violence with rising force levels 

and a new set of tactics offered a tempting recipe for success in irregular 

warfare. Thus the Obama administration would reapply the new 

conventional wisdom to Afghanistan by surging troops from the same 

military with the same COIN manual under the same commander; 

unfortunately, the outcome under very different local and political 

circumstances was ambiguous at best. In truth, the reality in Iraq was 

always more complicated than the simple surge narrative would suggest. 

While the war is rich in irregular warfare lessons for military 

 

4 Montgomery and McWilliams, Al-Anbar Awakening, Vol. II, 302

5 Michael O’Hanlon and Ian Livingston, “Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of 

Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq,” Brookings Institution, 26 April 2011, 

http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex
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professionals, at least one of them must be the importance of humility 

regarding the limits of doctrine amidst a shifting milieu of violent politics.

Discussion Questions

1. How important are standout figures like the youth who hurls rocks 

at American armor or Sattar Abu Risha in fomenting change? 

2. What, if anything, can or should friendly forces do to encourage 

individuals to end their support of the rebellion?

B. Analytical Methodology

This exceedingly complex case covers many years of shifting 

conflict across multiple diverse regions involving many different types of 

actors. There is a vast amount of information and analysis about this 

war—from journalist reportage, bureaucratic documentation and 

government statements, academic and policy research, practitioner 

memoirs and debriefings, and dramatic blogging and combat footage from 

soldiers themselves—and yet a great deal still remains unknown or 

unanalyzed, especially about Iraqi perspectives. The number of relevant 

points at the strategic and operational levels that could be fruitfully 

covered is overwhelming.

Rather than pretending to decisively explain the war, we will 

instead provide an analytical approach to unify the treatment of the case. 

We begin with the overarching question: How did the 

implementation of COIN strategy and tactics, as outlined in the field 

manual, match up with outcomes on the ground? What alternate 

explanations exist for these outcomes?
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To answer these questions, we introduce a specific analytical 

framework to guide the selection of facts, topics, and subjects in the 

sections that follow, as well as to identify important open questions and 

data requirements needed to evaluate them. While we can't decisively 

explain the war here, it is important to realize that there are greatly 

different potential explanations for its course, which furthermore differ by 

region. The main objective of this study is to show the existence and 

plausibility of different explanations, as well as the breadth of doctrinal 

and organizational tools practitioners should understand when they find 

themselves thrown into irregular war. This analytical framework is useful 

not only for understanding history but also as a model for the practice of 

COIN. If different segments of the population engage in different 

insurgent or counterinsurgent behaviors for different motivations, then it’s 

important for practitioners to understand how their actions may trigger 

movement through these different categories. 

We will apply the framework to the war in Iraq. The empirical case 

begins with an overview of the primary actors and their interaction in the 

early part of the war during the invasion in 2003 and its aftermath over the 

next two years. As you read, ask why different groups behaved as they 

did, and how Coalition Forces might have been able to shape behavior 

differently. 

Using the categories of the framework, we can analytically 

distinguish four different strategies6for countering insurgency: 

1. “clear, hold, build” tactics popularized in U.S. COIN doctrine;

2. decapitation, or leadership targeting of insurgent organizations;

3. ethnic homogenization in the course of civil war;

4. mobilization of non-state armed communities.

 

6 As will be discussed later, ethnic homogenization need not be an adopted strategy but 

can occur without any strategic intent by the counterinsurgent
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We will discuss the relative performance of these explanations in 

four different regions of Iraq: the Kurdish North, the Sunni West, the Shia 

South, and ethnically mixed Baghdad. Finally, we conclude with a brief 

summary and discussion of doctrinal and methodological issues raised by 

the case. Annex 1 at the end of the case provides a single table that

summarizes the operational lessons of how different COIN force 

behaviors can affect different insurgency behavior. 

Discussion Questions

1. How do these different strategies/forces work differently in each 

area? 

2. What additional information would you need to find out? 

3. If you were deployed in Iraq, does your experience contrast with 

our interpretations? 
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II. Analytical Framework 

A. Spectrum of Individual Roles

In studying any insurgency, one key methodological issue is the 

level of analysis. In some cases, ethnic and religious groups could be the 

unit of analysis (for example, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka or Kurds, 

Shia, and Sunnis in Iraq). Alternatively, organizations could be the unit of 

analysis (the IRA in Northern Ireland; al-Qaeda, tribal militia, government 

security forces in Iraq). At the most fundamental level, however, 

individual decisions determine variation within an insurgency. If seen 

primarily as political contests, the outcome of an insurgency is determined 

not only by the actions of ethnic and religious group leaders or violent 

organizations, but by the decisions of individuals across society. In this 

case study, our analysis begins at the most basic level—individual 

decisions about what roles to adopt during a contest between the 

government and insurgents.

Insurgency involves individuals moving across a set of possible 

roles. In much of the insurgency/rebellion literature, individuals are 

portrayed as deciding betwen just two choices, either to “rebel” or “not 

rebel,”– and then the analyst tries to determine the payoff structures 

between these two choices. Such treatment obfuscates the set of individual 

roles underlying most insurgencies. More realistically, individuals move 

along a set of roles that can be aligned on the spectrum shown in Figure 1 

below. 
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Figure 1: Spectrum of Participation in Insurgency and 

Counterinsurgency

Neutral (0): During any conflict between a government and its 

opponent, many individuals will choose neutrality; these actors 

will try to avoid both sides and go about their daily lives with a 

minimum of risk. They will not willingly provide information or 

material support to either the government or the insurgents, nor 

will they participate in public demonstrations for either side. 

Unarmed, unorganized insurgent supporter (-1): While avoiding 

any armed role, some individuals will occasionally provide 

information, shelter, and material support for the insurgents. 

While unorganized, these individuals may show up at rallies 

supporting the insurgents and will boycott elections and other 

activities that could legitimize the government. 

Armed local insurgent (-2): Some individuals will adopt a role of 

direct and organized participation in a locally based, armed 

organization. In the absence of a powerful state, individuals in 

this role often take the form of local militia members. In the 

presence of a powerful state, such individuals may appear as 

uninvolved citizens by day but play the role of active fighter at 

night. Even the most powerful states can have trouble identifying 

and neutralizing actors in this role. 
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Mobile armed insurgent (-3): Some individuals will join mobile 

and armed organizations, becoming members in a guerrilla unit 

or rebel army. These individuals will fight outside of their own 

local communities.

These four roles form one side of a spectrum of participation. At 

the onset of an occupation or violent conflict, many individuals will begin 

at neutrality but then move into a support role (-1) and then move on into 

even more committed and violent roles (-2, -3). Of course, individuals 

may also move along a parallel set of roles in support of the government. 

These roles basically mirror those above:

Unarmed, unorganized government supporter (+1): While 

avoiding any armed or organized role, some individuals will 

willingly identify insurgents and provide the government with 

valuable information about insurgent activity. These individuals 

may show up at rallies supporting the government and will be 

inclined to vote in elections and participate in other activities that 

legitimize the government. 

Armed local government supporter (+2): Some individuals will 

adopt a role of direct and organized participation in a locally 

based, armed organization that is either formally or informally 

connected with the government. In Iraq, organizations such as the 

Sons of Anbar provided these roles. More formally, states often 

develop paramilitary organizations or expanded police forces that

create opportunities for armed local government support. 

Mobile armed government forces (+3): Some individuals will 

join the mobile and armed organizations of the government, 

namely, the state’s military. 
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In later sections of this study, we will use this spectrum to analyze 

the state of insurgency in different regions of Iraq. For each region, we 

will assess the population’s distribution and movement on this spectrum. 

We will also use this spectrum of roles to analyze counterinsurgency 

practice. Obviously, the government wants to either neutralize individuals 

on the left side of spectrum or take actions to move those individuals to 

roles on the right side of the spectrum. The government will also wish to 

prevent leftward movement. A few points should be emphasized here. 

First, these roles are based on observable behavior and not attitudes. 

Second, it is critical to emphasize that the same individuals pass through 

different roles in the course of insurgency. The next question is what 

drives them along this spectrum, the focus of the following section. 

Discussion Questions

1. Behaviors are often reflective of necessities, not beliefs. Does a 

public rally in support of a dictator indicate that the population is 

moving from neutral, 0, to +1? How can this difference be 

distinguished?

2. How can “true” movement on the scale be differentiated from 

opportunistic movement? Can this only be done in retrospect, or 

can it be done at the time of change?

3. What might be the impact of intended conformity versus incidental 

conformity. All men in a given culture may wear beards, but not all 

are Taliban. How can we tell the difference?

B. Forces That Move Individuals Along the Spectrum of 

Roles

Keeping with our goal of breaking down insurgency into its most 

elemental parts, we seek to identify the small, generalizable forces that 

drive individuals across this spectrum of roles. In social science language, 
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these small causal forces are often called mechanisms. Mechanisms are 

specific causal patterns that explain individual actions over a wide range 

of settings.7

Consider one particular example: the tyranny of sunk costs. An old 

automobile that is constantly breaking down and being repaired might be 

retained by the owner despite the likelihood of numerous additional costly 

repairs. Although the optimal choice might be to “junk” the car, the owner 

refuses to rationally calculate probable future costs because he or she 

cannot bear the thought of previous repair efforts “going down the drain.” 

The same process might be involved in dysfunctional personal 

relationships or marriages. One or both partners in a relationship may find 

themselves continuously dissatisfied, in conflict, and on the verge of 

breaking up. Rather than ending the relationship, they may choose to 

remain together and ignore the probability that problems will recur,

because they cannot accept the fact that investments in the relationship 

have been in vain. The tyranny of sunk costs mechanism is both general in 

that it can be applied to a wide variety of cases (cars and spouses) and 

specific and causal in that it explains why an event occurs. This 

combination of generality and specificity is one of the benefits of a 

mechanism approach. Another benefit is the wide possible range of 

behaviors that mechanisms can encompass. Irrational psychological 

processes such as the tyranny of sunk costs or cognitive dissonance 

reduction are mechanisms, but so are rational adaptation and social norms. 

Concentration on mechanisms allows the social scientist to deal with 

 

7 The mechanism approach can be clearly contrasted with common alternatives. Variablebased treatments usually aim to estimate causal influence through statistical association. 

In this method, prediction becomes the primary goal. In opposition, a mechanism 

approach aims for explanation over prediction. For a discussion of the use of a 

mechanisms approach, see Peter Hedstrom and Richard Swedborg, eds. Social 

Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1998). Also, see Jon Elster, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the 

Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), especially the first chapter, 

“A Plea for Mechanisms.” Also see Roger Petersen, “Structures and Mechanisms in 

Comparison,” in Roger Petersen and John Bowen, eds., Critical Comparisons in Politics 

and Culture, (Cambridge University Press, 1999). 
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realistic actors affected by a complex variety of forces; it forces the social 

scientist toward causal explanations of increasingly finer grain.

The question here is what specific mechanisms are at play at 

specific points on the spectrum. What mechanisms move individuals from 

-1 (insurgent support) to neutrality (0) or government support (+1)? What 

mechanisms move individuals into insurgent armed roles (either at the -2 

or -3 level)? 

Several types of mechanisms are at play in insurgency. Developed 

from knowledge of a variety of cases of insurgency, we will briefly list six 

types of mechanisms that can theoretically play a role: rational calculation, 

focal points, social norms, emotions, status considerations, and 

psychological mechanisms. 

Rational Calculation

The mechanism underlying most theories of insurgency is 

instrumental rational choice related to a relatively narrow set of economic 

and security values. Individuals are seen as coldly calculating costs on the 

one hand and benefits on the other. In terms of the spectrum of roles, if an 

individual is at -1, he will calculate the costs and benefits of remaining at -

1 versus the costs and benefits of moving to another role. For most 

individuals, the most possible and likely move is to an adjacent position. 

For the individual at -1, the choice set may be to either move to -2 (joining 

up with a local insurgent group) or to play things safe and move into a 

neutral role (0). Much counterinsurgency theory concentrates on “sticks 

and carrots” used to influence the operation of this rational calculation 

mechanism. Early practice in Iraq reflected the focus on this mechanism. 

In the words of an American military colonel serving in Iraq in 2003: 

"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I 

think we can convince these people that we are here to help them."8 

 

8Dexter Filkins quoting Colonel Sassaman in the New York Times, December 7, 2003, 

"Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns." 
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If rational calculations are driving action in insurgency, what are 

the calculations about? As illustrated in the quotation above, practitioners 

concentrate on calculations about safety and economic values. Invasion, 

occupation, and insurgency are likely to disrupt the economy. Individuals 

will often have to deal with unemployment and black markets. Sometimes, 

individuals may find occupying one role or another on the spectrum to be 

instrumental for economic survival, for instance, joining the government 

police (+2) or military (+3) to get a paycheck. 

While economic calculations are fairly straightforward, safety 

calculations may be more complex. One of the primary inputs when 

calculating threats is a “safety in numbers” estimation. If an individual is 

at the neutral position (0), he or she will not wish to move to support of 

insurgents (-1 or -2) unless enough other individuals are also moving to 

that position to create a “safety in numbers” effect. It is dangerous to be 

one of a few individuals moving to a risk-laden role. 

Focal Points

This discussion of “safety in numbers” leads into a consideration 

of informational mechanisms: How does an individual gauge how many 

others are moving to positions across the spectrum? Individual decisions 

depend on the decisions of others. Is the rest of the population moving out 

of neutrality toward government support, or is it moving the other way,

toward the insurgents? Here, focal points may become important. Focal 

points are events, places, or dates that help to coordinate expectations and 

thus actions. For governments, elections can serve as focal points. The 

election is held on a specific day and requires voters to go to specific 

locations. Every individual can see how many others are going to the 

polls. For the government, a massive turnout can signal its legitimacy. 

Through high election turnout, neutrals and those sympathetic to the 

insurgents must face the fact that a majority of the population favors the 

government. Wavering individuals may adjust their behavior accordingly 

by moving rightward on the spectrum. In January 2005, 8 million Iraqi 
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voters went to the polls to cast their first post-election votes in the election 

of the transitional national assembly. Every newspaper around the world 

showed voters holding up a blue finger, indicating that they had braved 

threats to participate in a primary political institution of the new regime. In 

Shia areas, the election probably helped solidify the perception of societal 

movement to the +1 level. On the other hand, the lack of blue fingers in 

Sunni areas, where the majority of voters boycotted the election, may have 

provided a signal that significant numbers of the local population 

remained at 0 or -1. 

On the other side, insurgents may use specific holidays and 

locations to stage anti-government rallies. Religion, by its regular timing 

of holidays and rituals, often provides focal points. As an essential part of 

Islamic religious practice in Iraq, Friday sermons provide a regular basis 

for interaction and communication. More specific religious holidays also 

can provide a vehicle for shaping expectations about the progression of the 

conflict. For example, in March 2004 the Shia faithful were, for the first 

time in 20 years, free to celebrate the Ashura, the anniversary of the death 

of Imam Hussein in 680 and a founding event of Shiism. With majority 

rule coming in the wake of the invasion, the celebration of this event 

would mark the first time in history that the Shia might take power in an 

Arab country. This event thus was loaded with intense symbolism. 

Furthermore, the event entailed the physical gathering of thousands of 

Shia pilgrims at religious shrines. It also provided an ideal opportunity for 

Sunni jihadists to shape perceptions of conflict. After Sunni groups sent 

suicide bombers into throngs of Shia worshipers, expectations of further 

sectarian violence skyrocketed, and faith in the coalition;s and government 

force’s ability to control and protect plummeted. 

Social Norms

Under the influence of social norms, individuals do not calculate 

costs and benefits but rather follow accepted rules of behavior. Norms are 

often customary rules that coordinate actions with others. Social norms 
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can be crucial mechanisms in insurgencies in societies with strong family, 

clan, or tribal elements. For example, consider an individual member of a 

clan who wishes to remain neutral (at the 0 level) early in the conflict. If 

other members of the clan move to -1 support, the social norms of the clan 

will also impel this individual to support the insurgents in similar fashion. 

If the clan moves to -2 level of organized and armed support, this 

individual, following social norms of reciprocity, will likely be pulled 

along despite a personal inclination toward neutrality. Counterinsurgents 

may try to influence this individual’s calculus through a set of individually 

targeted threats (prison) or benefits (payoffs, amnesty), but if the group 

norm is strong, these sticks and carrots may not produce their intended 

effect. 

The power and meaning of contemporary clan and tribal 

membership can be difficult to understand and varies by region, but 

certainly these groups have often created strong social norms that have 

been a crucial basis of politics over the course of Iraqi history.9 Before the 

presence of any centralized government in the region, clans performed 

self-policing and alliance formation through their inherent social norms of 

punishment and revenge. As Hechter and Kabiri summarize:

Clans forged alliances based on the notion that “anyone who 

commits an act of aggression against any one of us must expect 

retaliation from us all, and not only will the aggressor himself be 

likely to suffer retaliation, but his entire group and all its 

members will be equally liable.” This principle led to a system of 

strong self-policing tribal groups that defended themselves by 

threatening to retaliate, and often retaliating, against individuals 

of aggressor groups. Because these tribes relied only on 

themselves for protection from outside threats, they had to 

 

9 For further reading on tribes and clans and their role in contemporary conflict, see 

Chapter 3 in Richard H. Shultz & Andrea J. Dew Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: 

The Warriors of Contemporary Conflict (New York: Columbia 2006).
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develop effective means for self-defense: they amassed enough 

weapons and knowledge of warfare to become mini-states.10

As the Ottomans established power and increased government 

penetration of society in Iraq, for instance, they built upon these existing 

tribal structures. The Ottoman Land Law of 1858 allowed the state to pass 

out title deeds to individuals. In practice, these deeds were given to tribal 

sheiks who in turn governed their tribesmen. The Ottomans played off 

some sheiks against others in a tribally oriented divide-and-rule game. 

When disorder and rebellion arose, relying on tribes was again an effective 

way to reestablish order. In 1910, one Ottoman official in Baghdad wrote, 

“To depend on the tribe is a thousand times safer than depending on the 

government, for whereas the latter defers or neglects repression, the tribe, 

no matter how feeble it may be, as soon as it learns that an injustice has 

been committed against one of its members readies itself to exact 

vengeance on his behalf.”11 The question for the present study is how 

much these social norms of clan and tribe were operative in the periods of 

relative chaos following the 2003 invasion. Their strength seems apparent. 

As seen in the empirical material below, these norms were often clearly a 

basis for insurgent mobilization at the local level. 

Emotions

Violent insurgencies often involve death, destruction, and 

desecration—all of which can create powerful emotions. During 

insurgencies, either the situation itself or political entrepreneurs are likely 

to create the emotion of anger or the emotion of fear, both of which can 

 

10 Michael Hechter and Nika Kabiri, “Attaining Social Order in Iraq,” in Stathis Kalyvas, 

Ian Shapiro, and Tarek Masoud eds. Order, Conflict, and Violence (Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 2008) pp. 51-52. The quoted passage within is from Ernest 

Gellner, “Trust, Cohesion, and Social Order,” in Theories of Social Order: A Reader, 

Michael Hechter and Christine Thorne, eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 

310-316. 

11 Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement of Iraq

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 21. Cited in Hechter and Kabiri, p. 54. 
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move individuals along the spectrum. Anger results from the belief that an 

actor has committed a bad action against one’s self or group. Under the 

influence of anger, individuals no longer calculate costs and benefits in a 

straightforward way. Under anger, they downgrade risks and skew 

information processing in ways that allow for the pursuit of revenge. In 

terms of the spectrum of roles, under anger individuals will feel compelled 

to move out of neutrality into a more active role. Under the influence of 

fear, on the other hand, individual perceptions of danger become 

heightened. Individuals may feel compelled to seek safety in ethnically 

homogenous areas, or to join local militias (-2, +2) as a form of protection. 

As with social norms, the emotions of anger and fear affect behavior in 

ways that can override the “sticks and carrots” policies of an occupier. 

One of the most well-know examples of an anger-based strategy is 

the effort by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, to 

foment civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.12 Here is a description of his 

strategy, based largely on a captured letter of al-Zarqawi:

As Zarqawi described in his letter and subsequent broadcasts, his 

strategy in Iraq is to strike at the Shia—and therefore provoke a 

civil war. “A nation of heretics,” the Shia “are the key element of 

change,” he wrote. “If we manage to draw them onto the terrain 

of partisan war, it will be possible to tear the Sunnis away from 

their heedlessness, for they will feel the weight of the imminence 

of danger.” Again, a strategy of provocation—which plays on an 

underlying reality: that Iraq sits on the crucial sectarian fault line 

of the Middle East and that a conflict there gains powerful 

momentum from the involvement of neighboring states, with Iran 

strongly supporting the Shia and with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, 

Jordan, and Syria strongly sympathetic to the Sunnis. More and 

 

12 This section is taken from Roger Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans: The 

Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 

Chapter Five. 
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more, you can discern this outline in the chaos of the current war, 

with the Iranian-trained militias of the Shia Islamist parties that 

now control the Iraqi government battling Sunni Islamists, both 

Iraqi and foreign-born, and former Baathists.13 

While many types of killings and bombings depend on local 

incentives and constraints, the timing of elections, and other specific 

factors, al-Zarqawi’s targets followed the general logic of creating anger 

and spiraling violence, at least in its early renditions.14 The target set 

included motorcades of specific Shiite political figures. Insurgents 

attacked the Islamic Dawa Party, car-bombed Sadr’s office in the Shuala 

district of Baghdad, and hit police stations associated with Shiite 

dominance in Karada, Saydiyah, and other towns. One summary statement 

written in May 2005 read, “Political leaders fear that insurgents have 

intensified their campaign to drive a wedge between Sunnis and Shiites 

and that they are trying to ignite a civil war. Last month, Shiite leaders 

accused the largest Shiite militia force of complicity in the killing of Sunni 

clerics.”15 The idea behind this strategy was to create anger in those who 

already have a clear ethnic identity in order to produce retaliation and 

begin a spiral of violence. It is the political and security elites who are 

most able to retaliate violently and set the spiral in motion. Several June 

2005 reports of violence describe revenge killings of Sunni in response to 

killings or attacks on Shiites.16

Certainly, the bombing of the golden dome in Samarra in February 

2006 fits the strategy. The shrine was central to Shiite identity. The 

 

13Mark Danner, “Taking Stock of the Forever War,” New York Times, September 11, 

2005. 

14 I am basing this judgment on data collected from my research assistant Jessica Karnis, 

who compiled a list of bombings based on information and descriptions from Iraq Body 

Count, the New York Times, and other sources. -R.P.

15 Richard Oppel and Sabrina Tavernise, with Warzer Jaff and Layla Istifan, “Car 

Bombings in Iraq Kill 33, with Shiites as Targets,” New York Times, May 24, 2005. 

16 See for example, John Burns, “Three Car Bombs Leave 18 Dead and 46 Hurt in a 

Shiite Suburb of Baghdad,” New York Times, June 23, 2005. 
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quotations given to reporters after the bombing are textbook responses to 

an anger-based strategy:

“The war could really be on now,” says Abu Hassan, a Shiite 

street peddler who declined to give his full name. “This is 

something greater and more symbolic than attacks on people. 

This is a strike at who we are.”17

“If I could find the people who did this, I would cut him 

to pieces,” said Abdel Jaleel al-Sudani, a 50-year-old employee 

of the Health Ministry, who said he had marched in a 

demonstration earlier. “I would rather hear of the death of a 

friend, than to hear this news.”18

Within hours of the attack, thousands of Shiites took to the streets 

in protest, many of them brandishing arms. Over 20 Sunni mosques were 

burned in retaliation.19

In addition to anger, one of the most relevant emotions to invasion, 

occupation, and state-building is resentment. Perceptions of unjust group 

subordination create this emotion. Prior to the conflict, group A might 

have held most of the visible positions of power and authority over groups 

B and C. After the invasion, the formerly subordinate groups B and C may 

be able to assert new dominance over A. Much recent scholarship has 

shown the power of group status reversals. Once a group has established 

itself in the dominant position in an ethnic status hierarchy, they do not 

readily accept subordination (or even equality). In a sweeping statistical 

study, Lars-Erik Cederman and his collaborators have found that groups 

 

17 Dan Murphy, “Attack Deepens Iraq’s Divide,” Christian Science Monitor, February 

23, 2006.

18 Edward Wong, “Blast Destroys Golden Dome of Sacred Shiite Shrine in Iraq,” New 

York Times February 22, 2006.

19 The Christian Science Monitor put the number at 29, while the New York Times

provided a number of 25 mosques “burned, taken over, or attacked with a variety of 

weapons.”
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that have undergone status reversals, such as group A in the example 

above, are about five times more likely to mobilize for violence than 

comparable groups that did not experience status reversals.20

Status Considerations

While resentment forms from group-based status 

considerations, individuals may also have status considerations 

within their community. In many cultures, becoming a visible early 

supporter or organizer may confer status as a “leader” or “big 

man.” Shadid describes how some local community members 

became first movers within the contours of Muqtada al-Sadr’s 

organization:

His men were from the community, and to the community they 

returned ... They spoke the vernacular of the neighborhood; they 

grasped, almost intuitively, its concerns; and they offered 

answers to countless questions, in face-to-face conversations in 

the cramped rooms of street-corner mosques. Through their work, 

Sadr and his men laid claim—vigorously contested—to 

leadership of the emerging community. As a motto and an 

approach they quoted a popular Quranic verse, as the clergy are 

want to do: “Those sitting are not equal to those struggling, even 

though each as been promised well by God.”21

 

20 Lars-Erik Cedarman, Andreas Wimmer, and Brian Min, “Why do Ethnic Groups 

Rebel?: New Data and Analysis,” World Politics 62 (2010): 87-119. Their extensive new 

data base contains nearly 30,000 observations. Strong support for the effect of resentment 

status reversals is also found in Donald Horowitz Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 2000). 

21 Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War

(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005), pp. 182-183. 
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Psychological Mechanisms

Finally, several psychological mechanisms have relevance for 

insurgency. While some of the mechanisms above help explain the 

“triggering” of insurgency (movement from 0 to -1 and -1 to -2), 

psychological mechanisms would appear to most help explain how 

insurgency is sustained (staying at -2, -3) in the face of declining insurgent 

power. The tyranny of sunk costs has been mentioned above. After blood 

has been shed, individuals will tend to believe that it must have been shed 

for a worthwhile purpose; it is difficult to accept that lives may have been 

lost in vain. In Islamic societies (as well as other religious traditions), the 

concept of martyrdom adds additional meaning to those killed during 

struggle. As Anthony Shadid writes of Sunni perceptions of fallen Islamic 

fighters, “To many, those who fell in its battles were remembered better 

by their deaths than by their lives. They were shuhada, martyrs.”22 Those 

at the -2 and -3 levels will be compelled to fight on even in the face of 

powerful government “sticks.” There is also the “tyranny of small 

victories.” In this case, the ability to inflict some pain on the government, 

that is, to carry out occasional successful operations against the 

government, will distort a rational evaluation of the overall course of the 

conflict. 

Discussion Questions

1. Do these mechanisms hold true for every society, and for all types 

of insurgency?

2. What other cultural mechanisms might play a role in moving 

someone along the spectrum of anti-government to progovernment, or vice versa?

3. How can COIN or troops on the ground affect these mechanisms?

 

22 Shadid, p. 292. 
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C. General Connections Among Types of Mechanisms 

and Movement on the Spectrum of Roles

Thus far we have identified a spectrum of roles and a set of 

mechanisms capable of effecting individual action along that spectrum. 

The next task is to specify which mechanisms are likely to be operative 

between specific nodes of that spectrum. Through identifying a sequence 

of mechanisms, we can identify processes that might trigger and sustain 

insurgency. Figure 2 can be used for reference.23

 

23 All models are simplifications that highlight some insights about the world while 

obscuring other interesting features. Three clarifications are in order so as not to draw 

unreasonable interpretations from this simple diagram.

First, this spectrum indicates different categories of behavior, not necessarily 

loyalty. Clearly, many real wars involve more, and often many more, than two parties. A 

government fighting a domestic rebellion is a different animal from a foreign intervention 

to combat third-party-funded terrorists. Yet when any two sides in even complex 

conflicts are taken into considerations, it should be possible to distinguish these different 

behavioral levels of mobilization. 

Second, although the linear spectrum shows points to be equally spaced, clearly 

there are usually far more people, relatively speaking, in the center (+1,0,-1), with only a 

small handful of active combatants at the extremes. It becomes more dangerous to move 

to the extremes, thus more costly to do so, thus less likely that it will happen. The model 

is meant to focus on the fact that there are different behavioral categories and different 

mechanisms for moving among them. 

Third, this model focuses on movements in sequence from one category to one 

of the adjacent categories. Often, people jump around. For example, it’s not uncommon 

for trained security forces (+3) to move into a clandestine rebellion role (-3) after an 

invasion or in unconventional warfare operations, or for local insurgencies (-2) to switch 

to self-defense forces (+2). This is something that could be better developed within the 

model, although we should expect similar mechanisms to be triggering and sustaining 

participation at any given level, whatever the complicated history getting there.
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Figure 2: Triggering, Counter-Triggering, and Sustaining 

Mechanisms for Insurgency and Counterinsurgency

0 to -1 or +1: The movement off of neutrality (either from 0 to -

1, or 0 to +1) will likely involve a combination of mechanisms—

emotions, rational calculation of safety, focal points, and status 

consideration. First is the question of motivation. Here, the 

emotion of resentment can be critical. At the beginning of an 

invasion or the time of state collapse, ethnic groups may exist in 

a hierarchy. Members of pre-conflict subordinate group C will act 

to change their position against former dominant group A. They 

can do this through cooperation with a foreign occupier (move to 

+1) or violence against A, or both. Group A, now experiencing a 
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status reversal, may move toward support of insurgents who are 

fighting against the new ethnic hierarchy (thus moving to -1). 

Motivations, however, are only one part of the story. An 

individual may feel compelled to act but will still desire some 

signals and assurances about how to act. Movement from 

neutrality still requires a set of first movers to serve as an 

example and show that action is possible. Local leaders, some 

seeking to gain or preserve their own status, can act as first 

movers. 

In some situations, focal points may provide information about 

“safety in numbers.” Working together, the mechanisms of 

resentment, status seeking, and focal points can provide the 

motivation, leadership, and information to push individuals 

quickly out of the neutral position. 

-1 to -2: The movement into armed roles of insurgent resistance 

involves higher risk. When individuals decide to pick up a gun 

and take on heightened chances of killing or being killed, they are 

more likely to be driven by mechanisms inextricably linked to 

powerful forces in their local communities. For this decision, 

social norms are potent mechanisms. Individuals often join local, 

armed groups when they are pulled in by the norms of family, 

clan, or other groups with tight bonds. For movement into the 

pivotal -2 position, the relationship of “first actors,” those willing 

to take high risks to violently act against the government, with 

other members in their community is crucial. If first actors are 

deeply embedded within tight-knit communities, or are in a 

position of leadership in those communities, they can act as 

catalysts to move much of the community from the 0 or -1 

positions to the armed, local -2 level. 
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+1 to +2: This movement may involve similar community-level 

social norms and safety considerations as -1 to -2. Local leaders 

can activate social norms to move their communities to a position 

of organized government support. Also, a clear economic 

component operates on this side of the spectrum. The government 

can develop relatively well-paid expanded local police forces, 

paramilitaries, or militias. 

Movement into -3 and +3: The -3 and +3 roles involve formal 

organizations. Al-Qaeda provides the prime example on the left 

side, while the military is the best example on the right side of the 

spectrum. Individuals often join these organizations for 

ideological/religious/patriotic or economic reasons. These 

organizations have ideologies, bureaucracies, rules and 

punishments, and regular payments to members. The purpose of 

these organizations is to routinize violent action. Organizational 

goals include creation of internal norms that build cohesiveness, 

development of rules that constrain emotions, establishment of 

ranked status system, and salaries. In short, at this level the 

organization subsumes the individual mechanisms discussed 

above. For less organized individuals, the nature of the society 

and the shocks of the insurgency produce the norms, emotions, 

and information that drive behavior. For organized individuals, it 

is the organization itself that controls (or tries to control) these 

forces. If the insurgency is fought mainly between two mobile 

and armed groups, then the organization rather than the 

individual should become the main unit of analysis. While 

organizations are important in Iraq, we argue that they are one 

factor among many. 

Sustaining -2, -3: Insurgent organizations sustain themselves 

through rational mechanisms such as coercion and threats against 
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40

defectors, but also through psychological mechanisms such as the 

tyranny of sunk costs, small victories, and wishful thinking. 

Sustaining +2, +3: Governments sustain armed organization 

through pay, discipline, and the demonstration of the inevitability 

of government victory. 

Figure 2 serves as a theoretical template that outlines a set of 

mechanisms and processes that trigger and sustain insurgency. While few 

insurgencies may proceed in exactly this fashion, the framework serves to 

focus the analysis of any specific insurgency. It forces the analyst to look 

for the smaller-grained causal forces that move individuals across a set of 

connected roles. The mechanisms and process approach is a middle 

ground between a variables-based method and description. This method is 

particularly well-suited to analyze complex events like insurgency.

Furthermore, the framework allows for the systematic analysis of 

our central question on counterinsurgency strategy. As outlined below, 

this framework helps specify the logic of any given strategy:

1. Where does the strategy concentrate its resources—at 

which nodes on the spectrum?

2. If the strategy aims to prevent or create certain types of 

movement along the spectrum, does the strategy’s logic actually 

engage the mechanisms that drive actors’ behaviors at those 

junctures?

To prevent people from shifting toward the negative end of the 

spectrum, it is necessary to inhibit the mechanisms that trigger and sustain 

shifts toward insurgency. See Table 1 below. For example, to counter 

resentment formation, the counterinsurgent can include members of the 

newly disenfranchised group in local governance (such as regular tribal 

council meetings) and work to control targeting errors (false positives and 
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41

indiscriminate violence). To alter safety calculations, population control 

(barriers to entry and movement, ID cards, biometric surveys) is critical, 

as is a robust intelligence program to improve targeting precision against 

level -2 and -3 insurgents. To counter normative mechanisms, local elites 

can be encouraged (perhaps through bribing them with contracts for civil 

affairs projects) to publicly shame insurgents and lead their tribes to stand 

down insurgent activity. To counter sustaining mechanisms, amnesty and 

protection programs for defectors and informants are crucial, as are truthbased information campaigns to publicize insurgent defeats and atrocities. 

To counter a -3 insurgent organization, its bureaucratic processes and 

participants must be disrupted, subverted, or destroyed.

To encourage people to shift toward the positive end of the 

spectrum, the counterinsurgent can try to enable mechanisms that trigger 

and sustain shifts in that direction. Information campaigns should 

encourage resentment against insurgents for usurping power and resources 

and for committing indiscriminate atrocities, and should emphasize the 

prestige and heroism of people that stand up against the insurgents. For 

example, following the assassination by al-Qaeda of Sheikh Sattar alRishawi, founder of the Anbar Awakening movement, posters and buttons 

celebrating the martyrdom of “The Lion of Anbar” and exhorting Anbaris 

to continue the fight appeared all over Ramadi. The campaigns must be 

conducted with a high level of cultural fluency (and ideally conducted by 

indigenous groups themselves) to avoid negative cultural focal points and 

to exploit the positive ones.24 Local self-defense groups can be formed by 

improving safety thresholds for participating, emphasizing the prestige of 

self-defense, and forming groups with some prior tribal or community 

association. Sustaining mechanisms to maintain government security force 

integrity include counter-intelligence activities, professionalization, and 

 

24 Iraqis can put up some effective if obscene propaganda that would never be approved 

through American PSYOP channels. Sometimes the best PSYOP program might simply 

be providing computers and printers for indigenous partners.
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disciplinary measures, as well as emphases on esprit de corps, patriotism, 

and combat successes. 

Table 1 relates the mechanisms driving individuals along the 

spectrum to counterinsurgency practices aimed at affecting the operation 

of those mechanisms. The columns in Table 1 show the valence of shifts, 

while the rows show the degree of participation, thus preserving the 

symmetry between insurgent and COIN participation. Column I lists a 

typology of the mechanisms that generate rebellion, and columns II and III 

provide a typology of correlated mechanisms for its suppression. For 

simplicity, we collapse the level two and three sustaining mechanisms.

The COIN measures listed in Table 1 or Figure 3 below have all 

been described in detail in military doctrine, COIN histories, and 

practitioner memoirs, yet these sources freely mix up the various 

mechanisms in an ad hoc fashion with generic comment on the complexity 

and political nature of COIN. What is thus unique here is gathering these 

measures together into a coherent theoretical framework that shows how 

they work within the mechanisms that create or abate insurgency. This 

framework cannot by itself provide any prescription for how to balance 

these measures and allocate resources among them, since that would 

depend on the particular distribution of popular participation in each 

particular conflict. The goal in this theory is a more preliminary theoretical 

justification for various types of COIN operations, and to provide a basis 

for the common doctrinal exhortation to synergize and coordinate a wide 

range of operations in COIN.
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Table 1: Insurgency Triggering/Sustaining Mechanisms and 

COIN-Inhibiting Measures

Level of 

Participation

I. Trigger shift toward 

insurgency (- )

II. Inhibit shift toward 

insurgency (0)

III. Trigger shift toward 

government ( +)

A. 

Unorganized 

support 

(+/- 1)

• Resentment 

(status inversions; 

indiscriminate COIN 

violence)

• Safety calculation 

(society-wide)

• Status (heroic first 

mover)

• Focal points (culturally 

specific)

• Create political 

enfranchisement and 

honorable opportunities;

Control targeting errors & 

protect population

• Censure antigovernment displays (can 

increase resentment!)

• Publicize insurgent 

atrocities, ridicule 

radicalism

• Avoid negative focal 

points that resonate for 

insurgents

• Encourage resentment 

against insurgents, 

publicize & exploit 

atrocities

• Protect, encourage 

displays of support for 

COIN

• Emphasize COIN 

heroism, prestige of 

defying insurgents

• Leverage positive focal 

points

B. Local 

Organized 

Support

(+/- 2)

• Safety calculations 

(community)

• Reciprocity/honor 

(local norms)

• Material incentives

• Lower safety levels for 

insurgents: Improve 

intelligence coverage, 

targeting precision, 

population control (ID 

cards, biometrics, barriers, 

etc.)

• Respect legal/human 

rights; Engage & respect 

local elites, encourage 

elites to shame insurgents 

• Alternative employment, 

bribes 

• Protect/enable selfdefense groups

• Encourage local elites 

to reinforce prestige of 

self-defense 

• Fund self-defense 

groups, offer rewards 

for info & bounties 
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C. Mobile 

Combatant 

Organization

(+/- 3)

• Ideological 

commitment

• Bureaucratic 

organization

• Material incentives

• Reduce ideological 

appeal; isolate/attrite true 

believers

• Disrupt/destroy/subvert 

insurgent logistics, 

administration, and 

command

• Disrupt insurgent 

finance; alternative 

employment

• Enhance patriotism, 

esprit de corps, 

professionalism

• Strengthen 

administrative capacity 

& reliability; fight 

corruption

• Pay security forces 

fairly & reliably

D. Organized 

Action

(Sustain at

+/- 2 or 3)

• Coercion

• Irrationality (small 

victories; sunk costs; 

wishful thinking)

• Amnesty programs, 

protect informants & 

defectors

• Attrite insurgents; 

publicize COIN successes; 

discredit insurgent 

propaganda 

• Strengthen 

counterintelligence and 

security force discipline 

• Demonstrate progress, 

emphasize inevitable 

victory
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III. Varieties of Counterinsurgency

We now can directly return to our central question: How did the 

implementation of COIN strategy and tactics, as outlined in the field 

manual, match up with outcomes on the ground? What alternate 

explanations exist for these outcomes? 

The central strategic logic of FM 3-24 is the strategy of “Clear, 

Hold, Build.” Indeed, US forces implemented this strategy in many 

locations in Iraq. However, at least three other strategies or forces were 

also being implemented or occurred at the same time: decapitation, ethnic 

homogenization, and tribal mobilization. All four of these 

strategies/dynamics could explain the drop in violence seen across much 

of Iraq. In order to assess how and where these forces played out and to 

what effect, we again rely on our analytical framework. This section 

discusses the counterinsurgency logic underlying clear/hold/build, 

decapitation, homogenization, and tribal mobilization. The next section 

returns to a regional analysis to empirically assess the operation and 

possible interactions among these strategies. 

A. FM 3-24 and Clear, Hold, Build

FM 3-24 assumes that popular grievances cause small radicalized 

groups to take up arms against the government, and thus that the 

restoration of government legitimacy should redress these grievances.25 It 

represents the war as a triangular contest between government security 

forces and coalition partners (+3), “a neutral or passive majority” of the 

population (-1 to +1), and irreconcilable insurgents (-3).26 Proactive 

community resistance (-2) and government-aligned local militias (+2) are 

 

25 Stathis N. Kalyvas, "Review: The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency 

Field Manual," Perspectives on Politics vol. 6, no. 2 (2008): 351-353

26 FM 3-24, 1-20, Fig. 1-2. The assumption of passiveness on the part of the population is 

implicit in military jargon such as “human terrain;” terrain confers advantages and it can 

be lost, dominated, or shaped, but it is not a willful and reactive entity (thanks to Colin 

Jackson for this point).
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ignored or lumped into the other categories.27 Coalition COIN forces thus 

focus simultaneously on three tasks: first, they recruit and train 

professional indigenous military and police forces; second, economic 

development and propaganda (“information operations”) to “win hearts 

and minds” converts angry or resentful -1s to supportive +1s; third, they 

kill or capture insurgents using intelligence tips from the converted 

population and take great pains to minimize collateral damage. Thus the 

newly-won +1s enable the newl -trained +3s to separate the newly

delegitimized -3s from the population.28 These three tasks are manpowerintensive, although the commonly cited heuristic of ten counterinsurgents 

per rebel is questionable.29 Large force ratios are necessary but not 

sufficient: there must be sufficient “boots on the ground” long enough to 

“clear” populated areas of insurgents, “hold” them against relapse into 

violence, and “build” legitimate institutions.30 The primary focus is on the 

development of legitimate economic and political institutions. Success 

builds on success as the “oil spot” of stability spreads. 

B. Alternative Strategies

Decapitation

FM 3-24 provides advice to separate the insurgents from the 

population by winning the hearts and minds of the latter through economic 

development and propaganda and training security forces to protect them. 

 

27 We are describing COIN as ideally described in FM 3-24. In practice, U.S. forces 

absolutely did deal with level-2 populations, especially with the tribes in Anbar, but this 

is theoretically a different mechanism because of the direction of agency, as discussed in 

the section on tribal mobilization.

28 For a formal explication of this three-way bidding contest see Eli Berman, Jacob N. 

Shapiro and Joseph H. Felter, "Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of 

Counterinsurgency in Iraq," Journal of Political Economy (forthcoming, 2011)

29 Jeffrey Friedman, “Boots on the Ground: The Significance of Manpower in 

Counterinsurgency,” paper presented at Strategic Use of Force Working Group, MIT 

Center for International Studies, 24 February 2010

30 FM 3-24, 5-18-5-23
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Another approach is to go after insurgent organizations (-3) directly by 

enhancing the acuity and coverage of surveillance and the speed and 

precision of strike forces (+3). Manhunts for notorious fugitives like Pablo 

Escobar, Che Guevara, or Osama bin Laden are examples of decapitation 

operations or targeted killings. When manhunts are coupled together such 

that intelligence from detainees and materials gathered from one raid 

provides leads for new raids, then decapitation efforts are often called 

“counter-network operations” or simply “counterterrorism.” U.S. SOF 

describes this cyclic methodology as “find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze” 

(F3EA).31 Whereas “clear, hold, build” attempts to address grievance as 

the root cause of insurgency, F3EA aims to liquidate the clandestine 

organizations that insurgency requires, whatever its cause. Its goal is to 

kill or capture senior and mid-level insurgent commanders faster than they 

are able to regenerate in order to sow fear and confusion and ultimately to 

cause the network to collapse. 

Decapitation has more in common with the two-way relationship 

of conventional war than the triangular one of COIN, but whereas COIN 

doctrine worries about the counterproductive effects of undiscriminating 

“cordon and search,” “search and destroy,” or “harassment and 

interdiction” on the population, decapitation is selective violence; it tries 

to avoid interacting with the population much at all by seeking reliable 

intelligence to trigger a raid and by keeping a discrete footprint. In 

previous eras this approach has been controversial because of its reliance 

 

31 Michael T. Flynn, Rich Juergens and Thomas L. Cantrell, "Employing ISR: SOF Best 

Practices," Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 50 (2008): 56-61; Steven M. Marks, Thomas M. 

Meer and Matthew T. Nilson, "Manhunting: A Methodology for Finding Persons of 

National Interest," Naval Post Graduate School, Masters Thesis, June 2005. We use the 

term “decapitation” loosely here to describe targeted raids against network leadership, 

even if these targets are mid-level rather than senior leaders; the term “counter-network 

operations” is supposed to capture this focus on the middle of the organization, not just 

the head as implied by “decapitation,” but here we’ll use the term informally as a catchall 

for both.
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on torture to produce actionable intelligence,32 but new technologies of 

intelligence collection and analysis now enable SOF to find and fix targets 

without resorting to torture.33 The targeting focus of decapitation has 

much in common with the “network centric warfare” doctrine developed 

for conventional warfare to enable “sensors and shooters” to “self 

synchronize” in order to achieve “information dominance” over fleeting 

targets;34 in its reinvention for irregular warfare, the targets are individual 

insurgent commanders, the network spans military and intelligence 

organizations around the globe, and the shooters are SOF assault forces. 

Counterterrorism technology enables militaries to restore their preferred 

two-way relationship between +3s and -3s without having to be intimately 

involved with the messy population in the middle. Economic development 

only matters insofar as it improves intelligence and assault operations, 

such as through the improvement of communication and transportation 

infrastructure.35

 

32 An infamous example is described by Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: 

Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 (New York: Enigma Books, 

2002)

33 While U.S. SOF increasingly specialize in counterterrorism, conventional forces can 

and certainly do execute intelligence-driven 

34 James R. Blaker, Transforming Military Force: The Legacy of Arthur Cebrowski and 

Network Centric Warfare (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007)

35 Robust communications infrastructures provide countless opportunities for Orwellian 

“persistent surveillance” of the population. Jacob N. Shapiro and Nils B. Weidmann, 

"Talking about Killing: Cell Phones, Collective Action, and Insurgent Violence in Iraq," 

Working Paper Presented At Princeton University Faculty Colloquium in International 

Relations, 21 February 2011, report a reduction of violence in the areas where new 

cellular phone towers are installed; this might result either from improved signals 

intelligence collection or more phone-in tips. Individual economic development projects 

can provide covers for intelligence gathering, as in an innovative British SAS scheme in 

Northern Ireland to operate a laundry and test all the clothes for explosive residue, as 

described in Ed Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York: 

Faber and Faber, 2010), 119-121. 
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Homogenization

Many political scientists argue that the best way to end ethnic 

violence is simply to physically separate the warring sides and create 

defensible boundaries between them.36 There are some good examples 

where ethnic homogenization certainly led to a decrease in violence. 

Consider Bosnia. Ethnic cleansing had homogenized much of Bosnia’s 

territory and reduced the number of contestable, and potentially violent, 

hot spots. At the end of the war, Serbian forces faced off against the forces 

of a Bosnian-Croatian alliance across demarcated lines that would become 

the border between Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation. The war 

reduced the non-Serb population living in Republika Srpska from 46% to 

3%.37 Likewise, the Serbian population in the territory of the Federation 

had fallen from 17% to 3%.38 The Dayton Accord ratified already existing 

spheres of control rather than needing to establish control in the first place. 

A NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) comprised of 60,000 

multinational troops soon took over to maintain peace.39 Before yielding 

to an EU force in 2004, NATO troops would serve as peacekeepers in 

Bosnia for nine years without a single service-related fatality.40 The 

question is whether this remarkable lack of violence is the result of a large 

peacekeeping force or an outcome of ethnic separation produced by the 

war. 

The same question can be asked in Iraq, although the path to 

homogenization differed. In Bosnia, ethnic homogenization, more 

accurately termed ethnic cleansing in that case, was mainly a result of a 

 

36 The most well-known proponent of this position is Chaim Kaufmann. See Chaim 

Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” International 

Security 20 (4) (1996): 136-175. 

37 Elizabeth Pond, Endgame in the Balkans: Regime Change, European Style

(Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2006), p. 151

38 On demographic homogenization and the reduction of chances for war, see Chaim 

Kaufmann, “Intervention in Ethnic and Ideological Civil Wars: Why One Can be Done 

and the Other Can't,” Security Studies, 1996: 62-100

39 With a population of 4.5 million, that comes down to one peacekeeper for every 75 

citizens. 

40 Pond, Endgame in the Balkans, p. 161. 
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broad Serbian strategy. However, ethnic homogenization can also be the 

result of local conflicts. In the absence of a functioning state, local power 

brokers with a tribal, family, or even mafia base may create militias or 

organizations (violent community organizations at the -2 level) that pursue 

interests ranging from survival to enrichment and honor, and they react to 

their neighbors doing likewise. In the process, one identity group may be 

forced from the community, again resulting in homogenization. 

U.S. forces, like any human organization, tend to assume that the 

war is organized around their own activity.41 If the war is going badly, 

then bad tactics or insufficient material support is to blame; if it’s going 

well, then sound tactics and war-fighting prowess get the credit. Yet the 

war can also have its own local logic, either working around or exploiting 

U.S. forces as needed. Governments do not usually choose ethnic 

homogenization as a strategy; it is normatively too close to ethnic 

cleansing. Yet homogenization may help bring an end to violence. 

Governments may turn a blind eye to the process (as some claim is 

happening in Kirkuk), or they may work with the result of ethnic 

cleansing, as happened in Bosnia, to maintain peace. 

Community-Based Mobilization

Whereas homogenization as described above occurs without the 

direct involvement of COIN forces,42 here government security forces ally 

directly with +2 militias against -3 insurgents.43 While FM 3-24 stresses 

the importance of regular engagement with local elites, their role is limited 

 

41 Eliot Cohen, “Obama's COIN Toss,” Washington Post, 6 December 2009, points out 

“the greatest weakness of the COIN literature: It often lacks deep knowledge of the other 

side.” This is a problem in international relations broadly, known as “general attribution 

error” or “perception of centralization” as discussed in Robert Jervis, Perception and 

Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 

319-342. 

42 Assuming that government or COIN forces weren’t directly involved in the ethnic 

cleansing, in which case the resultant homogenization would indeed be a case of tribal 

mobilization.

43 The word “tribal” is used here in an Iraq context to call attention to a particularly 

important form of level-2 group in that society.
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to the provision of intelligence and recruits for +3 security forces and the 

bestowal of “legitimacy” to their efforts. Community-based mobilization 

is theoretically distinct for two reasons. First, FM 3-24 characterizes 

irregular units as threats because the use of violence outside of 

government authority erodes legitimacy and thus helps insurgents: “If 

militias are outside the [host nation] government’s control, they can often 

be obstacles to ending an insurgency.”44 By contrast, here COIN forces 

empower local militias to carry the fight to a common enemy (or at least 

don’t stand in their way). Second, today’s +2 allies are often drawn from 

yesterday’s -2 adversaries. The insurgency is not defeated outright or 

simply delegitimized in the eyes of the population; rather, one or more of 

its factions switch sides out of strategic interest.45 

Transforming -2s to +2s aids the counterinsurgent’s campaign 

against -3 adversaries, but not necessarily the overriding FM 3-24 goal of 

building a strong, legitimate government. Local +2s are willful actors who 

actively seek wealth, power, and/or honor; while they can be sources of 

manpower and intelligence for +3 security forces, they only agree to pay 

these taxes in order to bolster their own position. This stands in contrast 

with the U.S.-centric view that COIN tactics alone—or any sort of 

unidirectional agency—is sufficient to persuade a population. Influence 

runs both ways, so +2s can also use the +3s to liquidate their rivals and 

stabilize their revenue streams. This activity can be described as 

corruption, but it is a normal part of survival in the absence of the 

impersonal rule of law. COIN forces reinforce this personalized system 

through the use of no-bid contracts to reward local elites for cooperation—

bribes, in essence, although “patronage” might be a politer term—because 

they provide selective incentives for preventing +2s from becoming -2s. 

Whereas FM 3-24 assumes that the solution to civil war anarchy is a 

Weberian monopoly on violence invested in the state, the tribal 

 

44 FM 3-24, 3-20

45 Paul Staniland, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic 

Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries," Journal of Conflict Resolution

(forthcoming 2011)
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mobilization strategy gives rise to a stable truce among an oligopoly of 

feudal warlords (or party bosses, mafia dons, tribal patriarchs, or whatever 

the polite term might be).46 How and whether these can be consolidated 

into the central state is a major research area in comparative politics, but 

historically the process has been both lengthy and violent.47 

Figure 3 illustrates how these different COIN “theories of victory” 

target different parts of the spectrum of behavior:

A. Clear, hold, and build is the classic triangular COIN model focused 

on protecting and persuading the population; 

B. Decapitation is a two-way fight between militarized organizations, 

emphasizing the systematic dismantling of clandestine networks by 

SOF; 

C. Homogenization is the termination of ethnic civil war, unrelated to 

the efforts of government forces; 

D. Tribal mobilization is an alliance between local power brokers and 

COIN forces for mutual benefit. 

The population plays an active role in (C) and (D) above in a 

violent contest for feudal power consolidation. The counterinsurgent plays 

an active role in (A), (B), and (D) in fighting, training, and development; 

its absence in (C) underlines the fact that COIN forces are not masters of 

 

46 Colin F. Jackson, "Fighting for Feudalism? Dilemmas of State Consolidation in Iraq 

and Afghanistan," Paper presented at International Studies Association Annual 

Convention, New York, February 2009. Jackson’s dissertation on COIN learning argues 

that while militaries have an inherently hard time transitioning from a professional 

“operational code” for conventional warfare to triangular COIN along the lines of FM 3-

24, they hardly ever engage doctrinally with the feudal state-building dynamics of civil 

war; Colin F. Jackson, Defeat in Victory: Organizational Learning Dysfunction in 

Counterinsurgency, Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008.

47 Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social 

Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 

University Press, 2009); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States: AD 990 -

1992 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1992); Joseph R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the 

Modern State (Princeton University Press, 1973)
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their fate in a complex civil war. Economic development, which receives 

such tremendous emphasis in COIN theory and practice, can serve 

radically different functions: in (A) it softens popular grievances and 

enhances government legitimacy; in (B) it enhances targeting intelligence 

and avenues for assault against insurgents; in (D) it selectively bribes local 

elites to collaborate. All four of these were in evidence in Iraq to some 

degree, and while teasing them out empirically can be difficult, they are 

conceptually different mechanisms for reducing violence in COIN.

Figure 3: Different COIN Strategies Address Different Segments of 

the Population
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IV. Evaluation of the Implementation of 

Counterinsurgency Strategy in Iraq 

The preceding section laid out the logic of Clear, Hold, Build, the 

foundation of FM 3-24, and alternative strategies. This section will return 

to a regional analysis of the Iraqi insurgency. We return directly to the 

central question of the study: how did the implementation of COIN 

strategy and tactics, as outlined in the field manual, match up with 

outcomes on the ground? Furthermore, what alternate explanations exist 

for these outcomes?

We begin with an overview of aggregate statistics. Figure 4 

provides an overview of the violence in Iraq together with the total 

number of U.S. and international troops in the country. The primary axis 

on the left measures the monthly level of significant activity (SIGACTS) 

between February 2004 and December 2008, disaggregated by region.48

Anbar and Baghdad are broken out separately because of their intrinsic 

importance. The largely Sunni province of Ninewa has been broken out 

from the Kurdish northern provinces (Tameem, Sulaymaniyah, Erbil, and 

Dahuk). The South combines the four southernmost provinces (Basra, 

Missan, Thi-Qar, and Muthanna), and Central is everything else 

 

48 SIGACT data derived from Multi-National Forces Iraq SIGACT-III database as 

reported by Eli Berman, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Joseph H. Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds 

Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq,” NBER Working Paper No. 

14606, 2008. SIGACTS count a great number of different events ranging from direct and 

indirect fire attacks on U.S. troops to IED finds (ambiguous whether finds measure foiled 

attacks or informant cooperation), whether or not there are any casualties. They are 

compiled from patrol, intelligence, and artillery counter-battery reports, and thus they 

undercount Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence where U.S. troops are not present. There is some 

difference in the shape of these curves compared to government reported data as 

compiled in O’Hanlon and Livingston, “Iraq Index,” for example, which can be as a 

result of counting different types of SIGACTS, aggregating on different timescales, or—

more worrisome—discrepancies between the classified SIGACT III database and filtered 

data reported by Berman et al. But this is what we have and still usefully depicts the 

broad trends.
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(significantly including Diyala and Salah-ad-Din, which drive most of the 

SIGACTS in this category). See Map 1 on the provinces. The secondary 

axis on the right measures the overall level of international troops 

stationed in Iraq, with U.S. troops broken out separately.49 

Figure 4: Regional Monthly SIGACTs (Primary Axis) and Overall 

Troop Levels (Secondary Axis), Feb 2004 to Dec 2008

Descriptive statistics by themselves don’t explain anything, but 

Figure 4 does suggest a few interpretations. First, it is easy to see how the 

numbers roughly correspond with the surge and the introduction of FM 3-

24. As troop levels rise in 2007, there is a dramatic decrease in SIGACTS 

in the most violent regions during the same period. However, the broader 

view over the several previous years shows that any simple correlation 

between troop levels and SIGACTS is illusory. It is unlikely that an extra 

30,000 troops would have kept the lid on the eruption of sectarian violence 

in the central provinces and Baghdad in 2006 after AQI’s bombing of the 

 

49 Troop data from O’Hanlon and Livingston, “Iraq Index,” 16
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Golden Mosque. While 2004 and 2005 appear to find some steady state of 

violence, 2006 and 2007 are two to three times more severe.50

Second, it’s clear that Anbar is the first region to experience an 

abrupt decrease in violence; this drop is plainly underway before the troop 

surge momentum builds. Although troop levels are not broken out by 

region, the surge concentrated on Baghdad anyway, with very little 

increase in Anbar’s urban areas. As discussed further below, the turn of 

Anbar’s tribes toward the Marines and against AQI began in late 2005 in 

the Battle of al-Qaim, visible in the chart as a spike in SIGACTS, prior to 

AQI’s instigation of sectarian civil war in 2006. JAM and the Badr 

Brigades were of course eager to reciprocate in the killing once it started, 

but it’s interesting that this did not happen until AQI experienced the 

turning of the native Sunni tide in Anbar. Note that the rising SIGACTS in 

Anbar in 2006 track not sectarian violence but the Battle of Ramadi 

against U.S. forces. In Anbar and elsewhere, AQI violence was a 

consequence and not a cause of the Awakening.

Third, SIGACTS rise in Ninewa—in and around Mosul in 

particular—in 2007 and 2008, following the Anbar Awakening and during 

the surge. This is significant in that it highlights the resilience of AQI, a 

battle-hardened combat organization (-3), which simply picked up and 

relocated its base of operations from Anbar to Ninewa during this time. 

Fourth, SIGACTS in the south remain relatively low following a 

few upticks in 2004 as the British combated Sadrist uprisings. However, 

the situation steadily degrades through 2006 and 2007, which came as a 

stark disappointment to premature pronouncements that the British, 

drawing on experience in Northern Ireland, had implemented a softer and 

more successful method of COIN than their knuckle-dragging cousins 

across the ocean. It is likely that these measures do not adequately 

describe the level of violence associated with the south for two reasons: 

SIGACTS are measured by Western troops, which means the lighter 

 

50 It’s unclear why violence in and around Baghdad appears to dip sharply and then 

rebound in Autumn 2004, Winter 2005, and Spring 2007.
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British footprint in the South would have missed a lot of intra-Shia and 

criminal violence; furthermore, Iraqi militias and their Iranian advisors 

used the South as a logistics training and staging areas for sectarian attacks 

carried out elsewhere in the Central region.

Lastly, violence levels in all regions do finally come down together 

by the end of 2008. While not shown on this chart, levels remain at about 

the same level into 2011. There is some cause for hope that Iraq’s “fragile 

peace” is sustainable through ongoing changes in Iraqi government and 

U.S. troop withdrawals. At the same time, it is sobering to note that Iraq’s 

new normal—with mass murder attacks by AQI and other groups still 

occurring on a regular basis—is comparable to the levels of violence in 

2003 and early 2004 when the situation seemed to be unraveling. It is only 

relative to the severe violence of 2006 and 2007 that the stable diminution 

to present levels can be considered something like COIN success.

Another way to assess our central question is to pick up on the 

previous regional analysis and extend it into the surge period. Doing so 

shows how alternative counterinsurgency strategies provide explanations 

to challenge the surge narrative. Indeed, this analysis will show multiple 

strategies in operation across regions.We will examine Baghdad, Anbar, 

and the Iraq South in turn. (On the whole, the Kurdish north was 

effectively mobilized from the beginning, with interests that remained 

durably aligned with the coalition in keeping Sunni and Shia insurgents at 

bay. For the sake of parsimony, we will not cover those stable politics 

here.) We also briefly discuss the strategy of decapitation.

On the eve of the invasion in 2003, Iraq was a land primed to 

unleash many of the mechanisms that trigger and sustain insurgency. The 

invasion and occupation would overturn a Sunni-dominated ethnic 

hierarchy. Iraq’s numerous agents of repression in the secret police and 

Baath Party militias would soon be released into an anarchic Iraqi society 

awash with weapons. Significant remnants of tribal and ethnic social 

norms mixed with elements of a modern repressive state. Religious 

organizations, with their inherent focal points, would emerge from the 
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breakdown of the state to focus action. This combination of forces would 

provide complex social ties and multiple avenues for the mobilization of 

violence when the state collapsed following the 2003 invasion. 

Discussion Questions

1. How can COIN operations be evaluated? How do you know what 

is causal and what is contributory?

2. Do changes in “contributory” inputs necessarily affect outcome?

3. How can we recognize potential problems or actions to be taken 

before entry of military or COIN personnel?

4. How can lessons learned be applied in the future?

A. The Chaotic Capital Becomes Less Chaotic: 

Clear/Hold/Build and/or Homogenization

The center of Iraq is dominated by its capital city of Baghdad,

which holds almost a quarter of the country’s population. The city 

resembles many large cities in the U.S. in terms of variation among its 

neighborhoods. For instance, Baghdad contains an ethnically homogenous 

section of sprawling mass housing projects built in the 1950s—the Shia 

neighborhood of Sadr City, with perhaps a million residents. But Baghdad 

also sprouted richer neighborhoods such as Mansour, an ethnically mixed 

area sometimes referred to as Baghdad’s Upper East Side. Other 

neighborhoods fell along a spectrum of wealth-poverty, ethnic 

homogeneity-heterogeneity. Often, the neighborhoods were separated by 

natural boundaries, such as the Tigris River, or manmade ones, such as 

highways or parks. All of them would come under violent pressures in the 

wake of the occupation, although, as this section will illustrate, these 

forces would play out very differently across neighborhoods. 
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Troubles began soon after the arrival of US forces in 2003. With 

the disappearance of police and order, thousands of looters descended on 

17 of 23 government ministries. Then they turned on schools and 

hospitals. Looters first sought out computers and air conditioners, but the 

extent of looting spread to include even cooper wiring.51 After the 

establishment of order (helped by the fact that there was little left to loot), 

Baghdad experienced a period of relative calm. Two events in May, 

however, set the stage for the violent conflict that followed. First, Paul 

Bremer, as head of the CPA, proclaimed the de-Baathification of Iraqi 

society as CPA Order Number 1; CPA Order Number 2 disbanded the 

Iraqi Army, putting 350,000 men in the street without a salary. Second, on 

May 19, Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr led thousands of Shia through 

Baghdad in a protest of the American occupation. The event was a 

precursor of things to come. On July 18, Muqtada al-Sadr announced 

plans to form an “Islamic Army” to challenge the occupation. 

Religious figures soon became central actors and mosques became 

focal points in Baghdad just as in other regions of Iraq. As an International 

Crisis Group report would later summarize:

For a variety of reasons, mosques have become the focal point of 

political mobilization. Once the Baathist regime was removed 

and its institutions disbanded or discredited, no other viable 

centre of mobilisation survived. For Shiite parties that returned 

from exile—SCIRI and Daawa in particular—and those that 

emerged from the shadows inside the country—such as Muqtada 

Sadr’s movement—religious identity was the prime organizing 

principle of politics. They seized upon the mosque, an institution 

untainted by the past, as their main vehicle for assembly, 

propagation and recruitment. ... Sunni and Shiite mosques alike 

 

51 Keegan, p. 206. Also see “Baghdad: A Race Against the Clock,” International Crisis 

Group, Middle East Briefing No. 6, June 11, 2003. For a critique of the Bush 

Administrations early efforts, see David Rieff, “Blueprint for a Mess,” New York Times, 

November 2, 2003. 
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became staging grounds for political marches and 

demonstrations, and Friday sermons began to be used as channels 

of political communication.52 

While much of the Baghdad population met the invasion with 

passive support (+1) or neutrality (0), the stage was set for several 

mechanisms to move significant parts of the population to the left side of 

the spectrum, that is, to resistance. 

The population might have supported the government if it could 

have met expectations for safety. However, violence was already rocking 

Baghdad by the late summer and fall of 2003. On August 7, a car bomb 

killed 15 at the Jordanian Embassy; on August 19, a truck bomb killed 24 

and injured over 100 at U.N. Headquarters; on October 9, 12, 14, and 27,

suicide attackers hit a variety of targets—police stations, the Turkish 

Embassy, the Islamic Red Cross, the Baghdad Hotel. Religious events not 

only provide focal points for mobilization, they also provide symbolic 

targets for strategies aimed at setting off the emotion of anger and violent 

spirals. On March 2, 2004, Shia observed the Ashura ceremony in 

Baghdad and Karbala for the first time since the Baathists took power. 

They were met with a wave of bombs that killed at least 270 and wounded

573. 

By early 2005, the violence was taking on sectarian overtones in 

Baghdad. After the Second Battle of Fallujah, many Sunni refugees fled 

that leveled city to move to predominately Sunni neighborhoods in the 

western part of Baghdad. These Sunni refugees then came into contact 

with a police and government now dominated by Shia. Attacks on the 

police and government accordingly took on an ethnic meaning, with 

Sunnis pitted against “collaborating” Shia. Soon, in a process first 

observed in the al Amriya neighborhood, Sunnis began targeting Shia just 

 

52 International Crisis Group, “The Next Iraqi War? Sectarianism and Civil Conflict,” 

Middle East Report, no. 52, February 27, 2006. 
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for being Shia.53 Shia families began to find threatening letters identifying 

them as collaborators, as seen in this example:

In the name of God, do not think that God is unaware of what the 

oppressors are doing. We are watching your movements step by 

step, and we know that you have betrayed God and his 

messenger; for that we give you 48 hours to leave Amriya 

forever, and you should thank God that you are still alive. And 

there will be no excuse after this warning.54

In other predominately Sunni neighborhoods, such as Dora, letters 

and threats turned into violence. Soon, Shia began to retaliate in kind 

against local Sunni minorities. The violence became more organized, more 

clearly sectarian, and more brutal. Militias, with their own death squads, 

formed in several neighborhoods (-2). Building on local network ties, 

individuals took advantage of the chaos to establish themselves as leaders 

of neighborhood organizations.55 The population, caught in between, was 

forced to side with a militia able to offer protection or to flee to a 

neighborhood dominated by their co-ethnics. Spiraling violence soon led 

to homogenized or homogenizing neighborhoods. At the end of 2006, the 

U.S. military created a new map of Baghdad, one that reflected the new 

 

53 Nir Rosen, “Anatomy of a Civil War: Iraq’s Descent into Chaos,” Boston Review

(November/December 2006). 

54 Quoted in Rosen, “Anatomy of a Civil War.” 

55 The International Crisis Group, in a report based on the words of insurgents 

themselves, summarized early resistance dynamics: “Elements of the former regime, 

some Shiites included, soon helped set up small cells of fighters. But this was not planned 

ahead of time and reflected neither a desire to restore the past nor ideological attachment 

to Baathism; rather, these cells developed gradually, initially drawing individuals angered 

by dim prospects and resentful of the occupation and its indignities, and building on preexisting party, professional, tribal, familial, or geographic—including neighborhood—

networks.” International Crisis Group, “In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi 

Insurgency,” Middle East Report No. 50, February 15, 2006. 
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sectarian reality of the city (see Map 1).56 Almost every neighborhood 

could tell a story of one side cleansing the other—in Amriya, the Sunnis 

pushed out the Shia; in Dora, Sunnis attacked Shia but then Shia members 

of the Mahdi Army counterattacked and purged the Sunni; in Adhamiya, 

Sunnis maintained an ethnic island within Shia east Baghdad; in ShaabUr, Shia established complete dominance; Shia Badr Brigades controlled 

sections of Karada.57 

Map 1: The Ethnic Homogenization of Baghdad

 

56 Map 3 is taken from Ned Parker and Ali Hamdani, “How Violence is Forging a Brutal 

Divide in Baghdad, Times of London, December 14, 2006. 

57 The New York Times summarized the dynamics of Baghdad neighborhoods in a special 

report published on December 15, 2010
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The analytical framework captures much, but not all, of the early 

evolution of insurgency in Baghdad. Sunni resentment first fueled antigovernment violence. These Sunni attacks on a new predominately Shia 

government and police force stoked sectarian tensions and led to violent 

spirals. Some individuals, building on community connections, created 

local militia cells outside the control of the government (-2). Caught in the 

middle of escalating violence, individuals could not remain neutral. In 

effect, individuals were forced to calculate in terms of “safety in 

numbers.” They either had to join the local militia (moving to -2), become 

part of the support network of local militias (moving to -1), or move into 

ethnically homogenous neighborhoods protected by militias. The 

analytical framework does not pick up one central phenomenon though. 

The spectrum roles spread from government support to insurgent support. 

In this case, the government was hard to find. Movement occurred 

between poles defined by insurgent groups. 

As the numbers of SIGACTS indicates, Baghdad saw dramatic 

changes over the course of a few short years. In December 2005, the 

number of SIGACTS totaled just 500. By January 2007 this number 

skyrocketed to 3500, a sevenfold increase. The figure then plummeted as 

dramatically as it rose, returning to a level of approximately 600 

SIGACTS in February 2008. The surge deployment began in January 

2007 and reached its peak in June of the same year. The question is 

whether the surge and the implementation of FM 3-24 and clear/hold/build 

are responsible for the observed decline.

Several military officers have written their own neighborhood case 

studies of the implementation of the new COIN strategy during this 

period. These narratives illustrate in detail the application of the 

clear/hold/build strategy. Major Thomas Sills describes the tactics used in 

the East Rashid area of Baghdad, including the Sunni Dora neighborhood,
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which contained a significant AQI presence.58 The First Cavalry Division 

arrived in November 2006 and quickly began “clear” operations. They 

conducted cordon and search operations focusing on three neighborhoods. 

By June of 2007, U.S. forces had established a 24/7 presence able to 

monitor movement and reduce the ability to plant IEDs. In Operation 

Close Encounter, soldiers, protected by rooftop surveillance, visited every 

home on certain blocks. If all residents are visited, insurgents cannot 

single out specific informants. At each home, soldiers took pictures and 

gathered resident information. 

After a constant military presence had been established, “hold” 

operations began. U.S. forces erected a series of concrete barriers to help 

funnel movement into a system of checkpoints where documents could be 

systematically examined. Current residents were queried about new 

arrivals in the neighborhood. Enhanced security then propelled “build” 

operations. U.S. forces first concentrated on visible public works projects,

including sewage clearage and trash removal. The US forces employed 

locals to fix the streetlight system and build soccer fields. Nearly a halfmillion dollars of micro-grant funding found its way into local hands. By 

November of 2007, US forces began hiring local members of the Sons of 

Iraq as security guards with the intention of some eventual integration 

with the local police. 

Major Sills’s description illustrates clear/hold/build in practice. As 

in theory, the strategy aimed at converting individuals at the -1 level to the 

+1 level through heightened security and visible public works projects. 

The newly sympathetic population then becomes more willing to provide 

information to hunt down the now delegitimized -3 elements lurking in the 

community. As Major Sills states, “The enemy’s greatest strength seemed 

to be the ability to blend into the community without being recognized as 

 

58 The following paragraphs are based on Thomas J. Sills, “Counterinsurgency 

Operations in Baghdad: The Actions of 1-4 Cavalry in the East Rashid Security District,” 

Military Review, May-June 2009, pp. 97-105. 
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part of the insurgency by coalition forces.”59 With the information gleaned 

from local residents, US forces were able to identify and capture 250 of 

these formerly hidden AQI targets, with 81% sent to Camp Cropper. 

Despite these narratives, there is still reason to question whether 

the application of clear/hold/build produced the dramatic fall in SIGACTS 

seen above. While the surge correlates with these numbers, it also occurs 

directly after the ethnic homogenization of Baghdad. Recall Map 1. The 

neighborhoods in Baghdad were radically homogenizing during 2006. 

Logically, one could imagine a three-step process during the ethnic 

unmixing of any neighborhood. In the first stage, at the very beginning of 

violent conflict, the number of SIGACTS would be low. As violence 

begins to spiral, the number of SIGACTS would increase at a very fast 

rate. The highest number of incidents of violence might occur when one 

side (call it X) has gained an advantage over another side (call it Y). If the 

ratio of X:Y is at 50: 50, then a rough balance of power may act as a 

deterrent. However, if through ethnic flight, the ratio changes to 75: 25, 

then X gains some offensive advantage while the numbers of Y still 

provide ample targets. If ethnic flight continues and the ratio falls to 95: 5, 

then X can act with impunity, but the number of targets has fallen to a 

level where we would not expect to see a high number of violent acts. 

After complete homogenization, the level of SIGACTS would be expected 

to become very low, especially if the boundaries between the separated 

populations were firm. 

This story would seem to fit the Baghdad numbers. Spiraling 

sectarian violence began homogenizing the population during 2006, 

especially after the Samarra bombing in February. In the days following 

the bombing of the Shia Askari shrine, over 1,300 bodies, mostly Sunni, 

were found in Baghdad. By the time the surge and the new strategy were 

being fully implemented, the spiral of violence was near its peak. The 

level of ethnic heterogeneity may have been at the right proportions to 

produce high violence. The surge continued while the process of 

 

59 Sills, pp. 98-99. 
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homogenization played out and the numbers of victims declined. As the 

US forces constructed concrete barriers around Baghdad, they may have 

only been “cementing” the results of the homogenization process. 

B. The Sunni West, Anbar Province, and the Role of 

Tribal Mobilization 

Anbar province sprawls from the western suburbs of Baghdad to 

the Jordanian and Syrian borders. Its population of 1.4 million is almost 

exclusively Sunni Arab, in contrast with Iraq’s religious and ethnic 

diversity elsewhere. The provincial capital Ramadi anchored the western 

corner of the restive “Sunni triangle,” which stretched from Baghdad to 

Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit. The Anbari population was solidly -1 in 

2003 because it had suffered a major status reversal with the defeat of 

Saddam and rise of “Persian usurpers” in his place (as Sunnis often

referred to Shia in power). American patrols inadvertently reinforced this 

resentment with indiscriminate arrests of military-aged males and 

humiliating treatment of Iraqis in their homes. Many displaced Baath 

Party members, demobilized Republican Guard soldiers, and intelligence 

service elites made their way back into this disgruntled and resentful 

population, becoming seeds for movement to -2. Furthermore, the Iraqi 

Army had dissolved rather than surrendered, former soldiers taking their 

weapons with them and raiding supply depots, so Anbar was awash in 

weapons. Former regime elements provided a ready supply of resentful 

Sunni fighters at the -2 (local organized fighters) and -3 (mobile 

organized) levels. The province was primed to become the locus of 

nationalist rebellion against American occupation.60

 

60 COIN in Anbar is better documented than any other province not only because it was 

the violent heart of the insurgency for so long as well as the home of the dramatic 

Awakening, but also because the Marine Corps was the battlespace owner for most of the 

war. The Army, institutionally, took a national rather than a provincial view of Iraq 

because it had to divide its intelligence and staff support across all provinces and tended 

to send soldiers to different locations for each deployment. The Marines, by contrast, put 
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Anbar’s populated areas are almost all along the Western 

Euphrates River Valley (WERV), a longstanding historical corridor for 

licit and illicit trade between the Levant and Baghdad. After the invasion it 

became a major channel for foreign fighters and weapons fueling the 

insurgencies. Control of lucrative smuggling traditionally rested with the 

Bedouin tribes along the WERV, which have retained a distinct form of 

organization around traditional patriarchs, family clans, and codes of tribal 

justice. With the fall of Baghdad, former regime element loyalties reverted 

to their tribal affiliation. Wherever the state grows weaker, tribal influence 

over local social and economic affairs grows stronger, as reflected in time 

with the weakening of the Baath regime during years of war and sanctions, 

and in space with distance from the formal authority of provincial and 

national capitals.61 

In 2003 the tribes were thus quite influential on the Syrian border, 

a lucrative point of control for WERV smuggling. However, as foreign 

Arabs began pouring in to wage jihad against Americans, they also began 

to contest control of the WERV to fund their operations. Competition over 

the WERV black market would eventually provide the wedge between 

Anbari tribesmen and insurgents like AQI. Tribal clans with strong local 

social and economic interests were the basic organizing principle for 

 

down roots and developed relationships across successive rotations. The Marine Corps 

Intelligence Activity (MCIA) in particular provided useful intellectual contributions and 

continuity to the Marines’ understanding of the sociopolitical dynamics of the province. 

The Marines’ invaluable official history is notable amid the largely U.S.-centric literature 

on COIN and the war for giving equal weight to the perspective of Iraqi protagonists; see 

Timothy S. McWilliams and Kurtis P. Wheeler, Al-Anbar Awakening: U.S. Marines and 

Counterinsurgency in Iraq 2004-2009, Volume I, American Perspectives (Quantico, VA: 

Marine Corps University Press, 2009); Montgomery and McWilliams, Anbar Awakening, 

Vol. II.

61 Hosham Dawood, “The Stateization of the Tribe and the Tribalization of the State: The 

Case of Iraq,” in Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East, ed. 

Faleh Jabar and Hosham Dawood (London: Saqi Books, 2003); Amatzia Baram, "NeoTribalism in Iraq: Saddam Husayn's Tribal Policies 1991-1996," Journal of Middle 

Eastern Studies vol. 29, no. 1 (1997): 29-56; Lin Todd, Iraq Tribal Study–al-Anbar 

Governorate: The Albu Fahd Tribe, the Albu Mahal Tribe and the Albu Issa Tribe, 

Global Resources Group, Department of Defense, 2006
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organized +2 and -2 activity. Urban Baathists and rural tribesmen rebelled 

against the occupation to defend national and tribal honor. The 

organization known as the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades, named in 

commemoration of resistance against British colonialism, was the most 

notable -3 manifestation of this set of identities. 

Nationalists were soon joined by religious extremists. Religious 

and nationalist identities reinforced one another as clerics and former 

regime elements fomented resentment against the occupation. Fallujah in 

particular, “the city of mosques” located between Ramadi and Baghdad 

with a conservative Sunni population, generated considerable indigenous 

religious fervor for insurgency—exemplified in organizations like Ansar 

al-Sunnah—and the city also became a magnet for foreign Sunni 

extremists. Predominantly from Saudi Arabia, these foreigners were not 

initially affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. An entrepreneurial 

Jordanian terrorist named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared his alliance to 

al Qaeda in October 2004 and renamed his group “al Qaeda between the 

two rivers” or AQI. AQI would prove to be a robust combat organization 

(-3), with formal bureaucratic processes governing its manpower and 

operations; thus it had the capacity to plan complex operations, quickly 

replace slain leaders, and administer its finances and logistics across 

national and operating area boundaries.62

The First Battle of Fallujah was sparked by the killing of four 

Blackwater private contractors on March 31, 2004. The bodies were set on 

fire and two were hung from a bridge, a potent symbolic focal point for 

the angry crowds. The Marines launched an offensive to take the city but 

halted when members of the Iraqi Governing Council threatened to resign. 

The Second Battle resumed in November after the ceasefire collapsed and 

the Iraqi unit in charge of securing Fallujah dissolved and abandoned its 

weapons to the insurgents. The Marines prevailed in intense urban combat 

 

62 Benjamin Bahney, Howard J. Shatz, Carroll Ganier, Renny Mcpherson, Barbara Sude, 

Sara Beth Elson and Ghassan Schbley, An Economic Analysis of the Financial Records of 

Al-Qa'Ida in Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010)
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against insurgents who had poured in throughout the summer and fall to 

prepare fighting positions.63 The battles of Fallujah highlighted the fact 

that religious insurgents had managed to upstage regime loyalists as the 

deadliest threat. Angry Anbaris boycotted the national and provincial 

elections in January 2005; with voter turnout less than 2%, the Baathbanned and newly active Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) won most of the 

positions in the province, but it never managed to achieve popular 

legitimacy throughout the next several years (whether because of stealing 

the election or just being the incumbent during some hard years is an open 

question). Marine attempts to cultivate working relationships with tribal 

leaders during 2005 were largely abortive. Meanwhile, AQI’s influence 

and violence in the province grew.64

Starting on the Syrian border in late 2005 and intensifying in 

Ramadi through 2006, Sunni tribesmen began to work with U.S. forces to 

combat a common AQI enemy. The tribes (initially -2) had welcomed in 

foreign fighters and Iraqi religious extremists to aid in their nationalist 

rebellion against the occupation, but this alliance of convenience frayed as 

AQI began to assert control over the lucrative Euphrates smuggling 

networks that the tribes traditionally controlled. The tribes (level -2 but not 

yet pro-American) proved no match for the combat-organized AQI (-3) on 

their own. Early U.S. attempts to cultivate tribal alliances, such as the 

2005 Anbar People’s Council, failed as AQI retaliated with a fierce 

murder and intimidation campaign against tribal elites. After 

unsuccessfully trying to take on AQI, Albu Mahal tribesmen on the Syrian 

border eventually turned to U.S. Marines for assistance. Cooperation 

 

63 Bing West, No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle For Fallujah (Bantam, 

2005)

64 For an excellent—and pessimistic—contemporary analysis of the increasing influence 

of, popular sympathy for, and self-funding by the Sunni insurgencies in and around 

Anbar, see Michael Eisenstadt and Jeffrey White, "Assessing Iraq's Sunni Arab 

Insurgency," Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Focus #50, December 

2005. See also Bruce R. Pirnie and Edward O'Connell, Counterinsurgency in Iraq (2003-

2006) (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), 

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG595.3.pdf.
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between the Marines and Iraqi Army combat power (+3) and a tribal 

militia called the Desert Protectors (+2) during Operation Steel Curtain led 

to the first solid setbacks for AQI in and around the border town of alQaim.65

 Two important points stand out: first, alliances were abortive 

until influential tribesmen decided to make them; second, AQI violence 

was a consequence, not a cause of this turn.66

By 2006 similar tribal alliances with American forces were 

forming in Ramadi. The well-known Anbar Awakening (Sahawa alAnbar) movement emerged under the leadership of Sheikh Sittar alRishawi, a smuggler from a relatively minor tribe; Sittar rose to 

prominence after AQI killed his father and two brothers and he remained 

in Anbar while more senior sheikhs fled to Jordan and Syria. Alliances 

formed haphazardly through negotiations on the initiative of local tribal 

elite, junior- and mid-grade Army and Marine officers, and the CIA.67 

U.S. combat power (+3) or Anbari tribal militias (+2) alone had been 

unable to turn back AQI’s ferocity because Americans could not find the 

enemy, while the tribe could not withstand AQI’s retribution. Yet by 

working together, the tribes were able to provide local intelligence and 

mobilize manpower for municipal police and self-defense forces, which 

enabled regular combat forces to decimate AQI throughout its strongholds 

along the Euphrates. U.S. military learning proceeded through trial and 

error in the absence of standardized COIN doctrine, with significant 

 

65 Scott Cuomo, "The Wild, Wild West," Marine Corps Gazette vol. 93, no. 10 (2009): 

22-26

66 Austin Long, "The Anbar Awakening," Survival vol. 50, no. 2 (2008): 67-94; John A. 

McCary, "The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives," The Washington Quarterly

vol. 32, no. 1 (2009): 43-59

67 The CIA’s role in Anbar remains mysterious but is potentially a quite significant one in 

cultivating irregular allies well in advance of regular engagement by conventional 

military forces. Urban, Task Force Black, 183; Dick Couch, The Sheriff of Ramadi: Navy 

SEALs and the Winning of Anbar (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008)
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bottom-up innovation, especially in the field of information gathering and 

management.68

Violence spiked in late 2006 as AQI stepped up its campaign of 

intimidation and beheadings against tribal collaborators, and newly 

emboldened militias started executing suspected AQI members with 

greater frequency. The climax of the war in Anbar was the battle to secure 

Ramadi, which was notable for tribal vigilantism, local self-defense 

groups, significant physical controls on movement (such as sand berms 

around cities, concrete barriers partitioning neighborhoods, checkpoints, 

and mandatory identification cards), and U.S. combat outposts situated 

right in the middle of urban neighborhoods. American personnel—both 

SOF and conventional forces—engaged and reassured local Anbari civic 

and tribal leaders, helping to organize neighborhood defense organizations 

and rewarding collaborators with lucrative construction contracts. Popular 

sympathy shifted sharply against AQI even in the face of fierce 

retribution.69 In early 2007, AQI remnants were forced to shift northward 

to Mosul, and violence in Anbar dropped precipitously. The pacification 

of Anbar predated the Petraeus surge.70

 

68 James A. Russell, "Innovation in War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and 

Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005-2007," Journal of Strategic Studies vol. 33, no. 4 (2010): 

595 - 624

69 Marc Lynch, "Explaining the Awakening: Engagement, Publicity, and the 

Transformation of Iraqi Sunni Political Attitudes," Security Studies vol. 20, no. 1 (2011): 

36-72, argues that information operations and multi-track engagement enabled trust and 

understanding between Americans and Anbaris, and this attitudinal change made it 

possible for changes in material interests to be realized as an effective alliance. This 

account is valuable as a detailed history of engagement in Anbar, but is less convincing in

making the case that attitudinal shifts are a cause rather than a symptom of changed 

interests.

70 Almost all accounts of the Awakening agree on this point. Accounts diverge in 

assigning credit to the Army, Marines, Special Forces, or—a notable omission of most 

practitioner accounts—Anbaris themselves, and whether attitudes or material interests 

made the difference. In addition to the excellent official two-volume Marine history cited 

above (n. 60), military professional accounts include: Niel Smith and Sean Macfarland, 

"Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point," Military Review (Mar 2008); Thomas R. Searle, 

"Tribal Engagement in Anbar Province: The Critical Role of Special Operations Forces," 

Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 50 (2008): 62-66; Mark F. Cancian, "What Turned the Tide 
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Events in Anbar inspired irregular militias outside of Anbar to take 

the fight to insurgents in other parts of the country, contributing to a 

similar diminution in violence nationwide. As violence subsided in 2007, 

U.S. forces renewed their emphasis on building government capacity,

worked to demobilize militias and integrate them into police and security 

forces, and encouraged tribal elite to participate in legitimate politics. 

While this did not resolve the deep rift between the Sunni province and the 

Shia-dominated central government, the emergence of stability and its 

endurance up through the time of this writing was nonetheless remarkable. 

It’s worth noting, furthermore, that with the fading of Baathist or extremist 

hopes for regaining power, little was left to fight about in oil-free, 

ethnically homogenous, out-of-the-way Anbar. Combating insurgency 

gave way to political competition in Anbar, and the province transitioned 

peacefully to Iraqi control in August 2008. RAND conducted surveys in 

2008 and 2009 and found that Anbaris reported rising standards of living 

and perception of safety; remarkably, “most now say they would turn to 

their local police, rather than other community-level actors, such as tribes 

and local leaders, to deal with crime effectively.”71 

Anbar by 2009 was coming close to realizing the FM 3-24 goal of 

strengthened public institutions and enhanced government legitimacy, but 

the path to get there was not necessarily the one charted by FM 3-24. 

Rather, that path was better described by tribal mobilization. FM 3-24 

views the population as passive “human terrain” that can yield 

intelligence, security force recruits, and sympathy if properly cultivated. In 

practice, COIN forces in Anbar and elsewhere encountered a diverse array 

of actors pursuing their own interests and agendas. Typical battalion-level 

 

in Anbar?" Military Review (September-October 2009). Book-length treatments of the 

heroic version of the Awakening include: Bing West, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, 

and the Endgame in Iraq (New York: Random House, 2008); Dick Couch, The Sheriff of 

Ramadi: Navy SEALs and the Winning of Anbar (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 

2008).

71 Audra K. Grant and Martin C. Libicki, Assessing Living Conditions in Iraq's Anbar 

Province in 2009 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010), xii
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after-action reports described chaotic violence upon arrival, followed by a 

period of developing new tactics and work practices, building 

relationships with the local elite and building public works projects, 

intelligence to catch some real bad guys finally, and through it all, a 

gradual diminution of violence. The improvement often did not last, which 

gave later relief battalions the chance to write the same sort of reports. 

These accounts, although written in the argot of FM 3-24, suggest that 

some individual American warlords—the battalion commanders—

managed to reach accommodations to bolster local powerbrokers through 

the use of selective development projects as incentives and credible 

commitments to keep to the deals negotiated. But their stability was 

always very sensitive to the local microbalance of power, which might be 

changed simply with the rotation in of a new fresh and ignorant unit, to 

say nothing of the larger constellation of political and insurgent 

movements.

Where the incentives of powerful +2s durably aligned with the 

Americans, the effects could be dramatic. Violence could be abated, but at 

the cost of a weakening of the central government. As one Anbari sheikh 

put it, “If we had a modern state, we wouldn't have to rely on the rule of 

tribes, [but until then] a little bit of evil is better than more.”72 In Anbar, 

not until the tribes and the religious extremists broke over control of the 

provincial black market in late 2005 was there an alignment of interests. 

Anbar Awakening leader Sittar al-Rishawi wryly noted that, “Our 

American friends had not understood us when they came. They were 

proud, stubborn people and so were we. They worked with the 

opportunists, now they have turned to the tribes, and this is as it should 

be.”73 Prior to this marriage of convenience, negotiated progress was 

fragile and weak allies vulnerable to assassination. After this, a wave of 

 

72 Anthony Shadid, “Iraq Election Highlights Ascendancy of Tribes,” Washington Post, 

January 25, 2009, A1.

73 Quoted in John A. McCary, "The Anbar Awakening: an Alliance of Incentives," The 

Washington Quarterly vol. 32, no. 1 (2009): 43-59
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Awakenings and Sons of Iraq movements scrambled to make use of 

American power before it left for good. 

Tribal mobilization in Iraq was frustrating because COIN forces 

were not the masters of their fate. One troubling irony of Anbar, the 

paradigm case of tribal mobilization, is that the U.S. seems to have needed 

to lose before it could win. The alliance between Sunni tribes and Islamic 

extremists that sustained rebellion against continuous American tactical 

victories split up on the eve of victory over a feud for control of lucrative 

smuggling; the tribes then recruited the considerable combat power of the 

political loser to vanquish its new rival. They also never took their eye off 

gathering Shia power in the central state and needed to consolidate their 

hold on the province. The tribes had work for U.S. forces to do before they 

left Anbar, once it was clear that they were in fact going to leave.

C. The South: Overwhelming Complexity 

Iraq’s southern provinces—especially Basra—are distinguished by 

their predominantly Shia population and their rich oil fields situated on 

Iraq’s only Gulf access. The Baath regime repressed the former and 

exploited the latter. The region suffered some of the heaviest fighting 

during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, which provided Iran with experience 

supporting irregular Shia partisans deep within Iraqi territory and which 

forced many Shia to flee the country. The Shia population suffered further 

in the wake of the abortive 1991 uprising following the First Gulf War. 

Saddam heavily garrisoned the region and drained the marshes in the 

Euphrates-Tigris delta in order to deny cover to rebels and bandits; this 

also wrecked the rural agricultural and smuggling economy. Like the 

Sunni tribes in Anbar’s WERV, Shia tribes in the marshes traditionally 

made their living through illicit trading and resistance to municipal rule. 
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Unlike resource-poor Anbar, Basra’s oil fields and Gulf ports also made it 

the country’s economic prize.74

Coalition forces fought the Battle of Basra in the early days of the 

invasion and then focused on hunting down Baath elite rather than 

policing the heavy looting. British troops garrisoned in the “deep south” 

faced a crisis of rising expectations among the liberated but destitute Shia, 

marked by increasingly violent demonstrations and rampant criminality. 

Rory Stewart, the British governance coordinator in Maysan province, 

noted that the fractured tribes “relied on theft, kidnapping, smuggling and 

looting” to maintain their relevance and could not be counted on to 

mobilize manpower or other support for the government.75 Resuscitation 

of the oil industry to fund reconstruction and the lifting of sanctions on all 

sorts of consumer goods was a major boon to smuggling rackets. The 

anarchic competition among fractured criminal and tribal networks (level 

2s) proved an inscrutable and unreliable base upon which to rebuild the 

prior predictability of Baath and Iraqi Army rule. Instability and 

disappointment with the ongoing occupation shifted the population to -1, 

while attempts to tamp down on criminality had the effect of switching 

any +2 segments of the population that depended on it firmly to -2.

To this vicious spiral of anti-Coalition rebellion was overlaid a 

class-based schism in the Shia Islamist community. The split originally 

emerged after the Iranian revolution and the Baathist execution of one of 

two senior Shia clerics in Iraq, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr. The 

other, Ayatollah Baqr al-Hakim, took refuge in Iran and founded the 

Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI had a 

militant wing known as the Badr Brigades that conducted cross-border 

operations as an Iranian proxy throughout the war. Sadr’s nephew, 

Ayatollah Sadiq al-Sadr (Sadr II), remained in Iraq to lead a more 

 

74 Michael Knights and Ed Williams, "The Calm Before the Storm: the British 

Experience in Southern Iraq," Washington Institute For Near East Policy, Policy Focus 

#66, February 2007, 2

75 Rory Stewart, Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq (London: Picador, 

2006), 231
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nationalist and radical Islamist faction until Saddam executed him and his 

two eldest sons in order to consolidate Baath grip in the wake of the U.S. 

Operation Desert Fox raids in 1998. Sadr II’s followers carried on through 

the Office of the Martyr Sadr (OMS), finding a receptive audience with 

the young urban poor throughout southern Iraq. Sadr II’s fourth son, 

Muqtada al-Sadr, seized leadership of OMS after the invasion and, with a 

militant wing known as the Mahdi Army (JAM), attempted to wrest 

control of Shia holy sites in Iraq and the slums of eastern Baghdad (which 

were renamed Sadr City).76 

The Islamist confrontation between the populist OMS and the 

returned émigré SCIRI, with their respective militias JAM and Badr, 

interpenetrated the criminal/tribal mafias and ruined moderate political 

competition. OMS developed an alternative legislature and provided 

public welfare services, sharia courts, and jobs in the JAM for the large 

numbers of unemployed Shia men. SCIRI and Badr had returned with 

financial and logistic support from Iran and won the support of educated 

middle-class Shia who feared the rise of the Sadrist mob. A more 

disciplined organization, SCIRI targeted leadership positions in Baghdad 

and the southern provinces and became more palatable to Coalition forces 

in doing so. Badr infiltrated Iraqi police and intelligence units and 

undertook their own illegal de-Baathification programs against both Sunni 

and Shia, foreshadowing the sectarian conflict to come. Thus while both 

OMS and SCIRI scrambled for power in anticipation of the CPA handing 

over power to Iraqis, it was the populist OMS and JAM that came into 

violent conflict with Coalition forces more often. British operations 

managed to suppress several Sadrist uprisings in advance of the 2005 

elections, but the Islamist takeover of the south proceeded apace. Sunni 

Arabs and moderate or secular intellectuals were most at risk in the 

poisonous mix of extreme factionalism. The web of violent political 

competition among local militias (-2s) became ever more complicated as 

 

76 Knights and Williams, " Calm Before the Storm,” 2-4; Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: 

How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2006)
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new Sadrist factions emerged, electoral coalitions formed and dissolved, 

and oil rackets remained extremely lucrative for feuding mafias.77 As an 

Iraqi civil servant in Basra put it, “Today, the police fear the citizen, not 

the other way around. They are afraid he may belong to a powerful 

party.”78

The final complicating factor for Coalition forces in the south was 

Iranian influence. U.S. intelligence estimated that as many as 150 

members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards paramilitary Qods Force 

(+3) were operating in Iraq, providing training and material assistance.79

Munitions with Iranian markings, newly constructed 240mm rockets, and 

deadly explosively formed penetrator (EFP) mines began appearing with 

increasing frequency from 2004 onward. EFPs were effective even against 

heavy armor, so while they were used in less than 10% of roadside attacks, 

they caused 40% of the casualties.80 While Iranian ties with Badr were 

historically strongest, Qods also facilitated JAM special groups in their 

attacks against Western troops, even as Badr and JAM fought one another. 

Persian influence should not be overstated in the intensely nationalist 

political struggle for southern Iraq, but Iran did play an important spoiler 

role by bleeding Coalition forces and complicating their understanding of 

local dynamics. 

Absolute levels of violence in southern Iraq never approached the 

horrifying levels elsewhere; nevertheless, the complex situation there 

revealed the limits of all of the varieties of COIN. To sum up the situation 

in Basra, Coalition forces and their unreliable and infiltrated Iraqi partners 

(+3) were caught in the middle of a complex tussle between various tribal, 

political, and criminal militias (-2) who used violence as a routine tool in 

 

77 Knights and Williams, "The Calm Before the Storm”; International Crisis Group, 

"Where is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra," Middle East Report #67, 25 June 2007

78 International Crisis Group, "Where is Iraq Heading,” 15

79 Mark Urban, Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and the Secret 

War in Iraq (London: Little, Brown, 2010), 206-7

80Michael Knights, "Iran's Ongoing Proxy War in Iraq," Washington Institute For Near 

East Policy, Policy Focus #1492, 16 March 2009.
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their struggle for local power. As none of them were able to dominate the 

others, the counterinsurgents found no capable tribal partners to help 

assert a durable stability, and the situation remained inscrutable. 

Development projects intended to win the hearts and minds of a frustrated 

and disappointed population (-1) disappeared into corrupt pockets, and so 

the population looked to the party militias (-2) for protection. Iranian 

paramilitaries (-3) provided material support to any who would attack the 

British and encouraged liquidation of Sunni and secular threats. JSOC did 

initiate a Counter Iranian Influence campaign to attempt to disrupt this 

support network, but target approval was hampered by protection provided 

by Shia elite in Baghdad and U.S. reticence to publicly antagonize Iran.81 

In any case, the conflict between SOF (+3) and Qods and JAM’s special 

groups (-3) was carried on simultaneously and with a separate logic from 

(i.e., orthogonal to) the level-2 power struggles in and around Basra. 

What stability did exist was a result of the balance of power among 

militias, not COIN. While the parties—OMS and SCIRI—became vital in 

the emerging political organization of the south and interacted regularly 

with the Coalition, both flouted the rule of law. Ironically, Coalition 

attempts to recruit members for legitimate police forces only increased 

their penetration by JAM and Badr. Even worse, local actors could and did 

fleece COIN forces for resources and exploit them to liquidate rivals. The 

International Crisis Group noted in June 2007 that “[s]ecurity forces act at 

best as bystanders, at worst as one or another side’s accomplice. Informal, 

unofficial mechanisms also are used to regulate violence ... extrainstitutional forums have become privileged arenas of conflict resolution, 

further undermining official institutions, most notably the judiciary.”82 

The British set out to tackle police corruption prior to their drawdown with 

Operation Sinbad, which was to implement “clear, hold, and civil 

reconstruction,” much along the lines of the Baghdad Security Plan. 

Sinbad’s recruitment drives, neighborhood sweeps, and community 

 

81 Urban, Task Force Black, 205-215

82 International Crisis Group, "Where is Iraq Heading?," 15
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projects produced a temporary improvement within the urban center of 

Basra, but the area outside remained tied up with illegal checkpoints and 

feuding gangs. Furthermore, once the British retreated to their compounds 

in mid-2007 and formally handed over control of the province to the Iraqis 

on December, the city itself also relapsed into militia control.83 A senior 

U.S. intelligence official said, "The British have basically been defeated in 

the south.”84 

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki surprised U.S. commanders in 

March 2008 with an ambitious plan called Operation Charge of the 

Knights to send two Iraqi Army brigades to pacify Basra with little 

advance notice. The Americans scrambled to provide backup support, 

SOF, and close-air support as the Iraqis ran into stiff resistance from JAM 

and suffered desertions by over 1,000 personnel. The heavy fighting died 

down on March 30 with a negotiated ceasefire between Sadr’s OMS, 

SCIRI’s Badr Organization, and Maliki’s Dawa party, brokered by, 

curiously enough, the head of IRGC Qods Force in Iran. Throughout April 

and May, reinforced Iraqi units with American support moved to 

deliberately clear militants and weapons caches from Basra 

neighborhoods, and then followed up by dispensing humanitarian aid, 

garrisoning forces, recruiting police, and launching reconstruction 

projects.85

Charge of the Knights enjoyed sufficient manpower and the will of 

Maliki’s government to follow through, unlike the earlier British-led 

Operation Sinbad. Despite the early stumbles, this looks like a successful 

instance of “clear, hold, build,” although contemporary observers were 

quick to add caveats that security gains in Basra were fragile and 

 

83 International Crisis Group, "Where is Iraq Heading?," i, 16-18; Knights and Williams, 

“Calm Before the Storm,” 32-37

84 Karen Deyoung and Thomas E. Ricks, "As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates," 

Washington Post (7 August 2007)

85 Nazar Janabi, "Who Won the Battle for Basra?" Washington Institute For Near East 

Policy, Policy Focus #1361, 10 April 2008; Marisa Cochrane, "The Battle for Basra," 

Institute for the Study of War, Iraq Report, 31 May 2008, 

http://www.understandingwar.org/files/reports/Iraq%20Report%209.pdf
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reversible and that the militia and criminal networks were still alive and 

well underground. Charge of the Knights was a political victory for 

Maliki. It sent a message to Sunnis—awakened but still suspicious of the 

Baghdad government—that Maliki was willing to use the predominantly 

Shia Iraqi Army (+3) to crack down on Shia militias (+2) as well as Sunni 

insurgents (-2); also, it shored up worries about Maliki’s resolve within the 

Dawa- and SCIRI-dominated Shia leadership in Baghdad, even as JAM 

losses in Basra provoked heavy fighting in Baghdad’s Sadr City. 

It’s hard to assess the lasting impact of Charge of the Knights

because Basra largely drops out of most secondary source literature as 

Western analysts turn their attention to the political drama of American 

drawdown. It strains credibility to think that the feisty mélange of militias 

and mafias that defied the rule of law in the south for years suddenly 

became accommodated to Baghdad governance after a single security 

crackdown. More likely, the same corrupt and feudal practices have reemerged, but there are no longer Western troops there to observe them, 

nor Iranian proxies there to attack the observers.

D. Decapitation: An Alternative Explanation of COIN 

Success That Is Difficult to Assess 

The adoption of the FM 3-24 version of COIN by the majority of 

forces was the public face of U.S. military learning in Iraq;86 however, 

during the same time period but in the shadows, U.S. SOF led by Lt. 

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Joint Special Operations 

Command (JSOC), developed an impressive counter-network operations 

capability.87 SOF controlled the majority of unmanned aerial 

 

86 Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era, describes the significant institutional obstacles 

and thus halting progress to U.S. internalization of COIN doctrine.

87 The U.S. Congressional Research Service describes JSOC’s counterterrorism mission 

and units in Andrew Feickert and Thomas K. Livingston, "U.S. Special Operations 

Forces (SOF): Background and Issues for Congress," Congressional Research Service 7-

5700, 3 December 2010. JSOC’s organization and evolution is also described in U.S. 
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reconnaissance in Iraq, which, combined with growing Iraqi use of cellular 

phones, provided a panoptic 24/7 surveillance network they called “the 

unblinking eye.”88 Intelligence fed into a central Joint Operations Center 

(JOC) staffed with analysts from the major national agencies (CIA, NSA, 

NGA, etc.) who analyzed the “pattern of life” of insurgent leaders in 

collaboration with others back in the U.S. and throughout Iraq.89 

McChrystal’s “industrial counterterrorism” machine conducted multiple 

intelligence-driven raids every night, which over the course of six years 

killed or captured 15,000 insurgents.90

General Petraeus stated that “JSOC played a hugely significant 

role” in Iraq by killing or capturing many “high-value targets.” He further 

stressed the organizational dimension of this achievement by noting that 

“the real breakthrough has been in the fusion of all this [intelligence] ...

and in the coordination and cooperation of all elements.”91 In describing 

this “vital, untold chapter of the history of a global conflict,” McChrystal 

observed that “[o]ver time, it became increasingly clear—often from 

intercepted communications or the accounts of insurgents we had 

captured—that our enemy was a constellation of fighters organized not by 

rank but on the basis of relationships and acquaintances, reputation and 

fame.” He adopted the now-famous slogan “It takes a network to fight a 

 

Congress, “THE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN,” Congressional Record Volume 

157, Number 57, 2 May 2011, Pages H2926-H2929; Austin Long and Colin F. Jackson, 

"The Fifth Service: The Rise of Special Operations Command," in US Military 

Innovation After the Cold War: Creation Without Destruction, ed. by Harvey M. 

Sapolsky, Benjamin H. Friedman and Brendan Rittenhouse Green (New York, NY: 

Routledge, 2009). The most detailed account to date of JSOC in Iraq is Mark Urban, Task 

Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and the Secret War in Iraq (London: 

Little, Brown, 2010)

88 Urban, Task Force Black, 79-83

89 Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing, “Secret Weapon: High-Value Target Teams 

As an Organizational Innovation,” National Defense University, Center for Strategic 

Research Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Perspecitves 4, March 2011

90 Urban, Task Force Black, 270-271

91 Sean D. Naylor, "Petraeus Sounds Off on Afghanistan: General Says Killing or 

Capturing Bin Laden Not Enough in Battle Against Al-Qaida," Army Times (21 Oct 

2008)
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network” to stress collaboration among working analysts and SOF in order 

to respond to fleeting intelligence triggers.92

The strategic effect of this frenetic activity is difficult to assess 

because of its secrecy. Senior officers offer little evidence to support their 

accolades for JSOC. Journalists like Bob Woodward credit SOF for severe 

disruption of militant networks in both Iraq and Afghanistan but without 

many details.93 A few high-profile success stories, like the 2006 killing of 

al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leader Zarqawi, have been reported in more 

depth.94 Yet raids like this also raise doubts, for despite the tactically 

exemplary Zarqawi operation, AQI violence continued to climb 

throughout 2006, and AQI maintained its capacity for mass-murder attacks 

even after 2007.95 The cyclic F3EA methodology can run after high-value 

targets indefinitely, boosting performance measures with impressive tales 

of commando derring-do; however, the essential underground support 

structure of insurgency (the -2s) may be able to withstand this.96 

 

92 Stanley McChrystal, "It Takes a Network," Foreign Policy (March/April 2011)

93 Bob Woodward, "Why Did Violence Plummet? It Wasn't Just the Surge," Washington 

Post (8 Sept 2008). Woodward also credits the efficacy of ethnic cleansing prior to the 

surge, as well as the Anbar Awakening.

94 The manhunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the most publicly detailed case to date of 

contemporary U.S. counternetwork operations. A series of raids on minor safehouses 

recovered detainees and computer files, the exploitation of which revealed the identity 

and habits of Zarqawi’s close advisor. This information facilitated tracking the advisor 

via unmanned aerial surveillance to the meeting location where Zarqawi was eventually 

killed by an aircraft-delivered precision munition as soon as a team of U.S. commandos 

on the ground confirmed his presence. For details on the Zarqawi hunt see: Scott 

Macleod and Bill Powell, "Zarqawi's Last Dinner Party," Time (11 June 2006); Mark 

Bowden, "The Ploy," The Atlantic Monthly (May 2007); Matthew Alexander and John 

Bruning, How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not 

Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (New York, NY: Free Press, 2008).

95 Urban, Task Force Black, 241-242; Austin Long, "Assessing the Success of Leadership 

Targeting," CTC Sentinel (1 November 2010)

96 Andrew R. Molnar, Jerry M. Tinker and John D. Lenoir, Human Factors 

Considerations of Undergrounds in Insurgencies (Washington DC: Special Operations 

Research Office, The American University, 1972); Derek Jones, "Understanding the 

Form, Function, and Logic of Clandestine Cellular Networks: The First Step in Effective 

Counternetwork Operations," USACGSC School of Advanced Military Studies Paper, 

2009
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Academic studies of decapitation in other cases are ambiguous: some 

institutionalized groups are adept at replacing slain leaders, while others 

collapse.97

Any assessment of decapitation would have to try to tease out the 

interaction with conventional forces engaged in “clear, hold, build” 

operations. Perhaps the former did most of the work while the latter 

provided an elaborate cover. Perhaps SOF task forces actually depend on a 

large conventional footprint to flush out intel. The counterterrorism 

hammer and the development anvil could be truly synergistic.98 Or more 

pessimistically, secretive and hyperactive SOF with an autonomous chain 

of command could have been impediments to the conventional COIN 

operations that were doing the real work. Relationships between the two 

forces were sometimes testy, to be sure, first because conventional forces 

resented SOF’s disproportionate allocation of intelligence and 

reconnaissance assets, and second because violent SOF raids often caused 

collateral damage in conventional areas of operation. Since Iraqis would 

have a hard time believing Americans could be so disorganized, it could 

undermine the difficult relationship-building work that had been done in 

the community. As one special operator said, “We disappear into our 

helicopters and the local unit is left to feel the pain.”99 Tension between 

 

97 Obviously these studies don’t treat the JSOC “industrial counterterrorism” model, 

which introduces the novel element of sustained and speedy raids. For discussions of not 

quite comparable cases outside of Iraq, see: Daniel Byman, "Do Targeted Killings 

Work?" Foreign Affairs vol. 85, no. 2 (2006): 95-111; Jenna Jordan, "When Heads Roll: 

Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation," Security Studies vol. 18, no. 4 

(2009): 719–755; Stephen T. Hosmer, Operations Against Enemy Leaders (Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND, 2001); Alex Wilner, "Targeted Killings in Afghanistan: Measuring 

Coercion and Deterrence in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency," Studies in 

Conflict and Terrorism vol. 33, no. 4 (2010)

98 This is the politically correct doctrinal answer. U.S. Special Operations Command, 

USSOCOM Publication 3-33: Conventional Force and Special Operations Forces 

Integration and Interoperability Handbook and Checklist, Version 2 (Macdill Air Force 

Base, FL: USSOCOM, 2006); Gary Luck and Mike Findlay, "Special Operations and 

Conventional Force Integration," United States Joint Forces Command, Joint Warfighting 

Center, Focus Paper no. 5 (2008)

99 Urban, Task Force Black, 263
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units with overlapping jurisdictions is inevitable, especially when one of 

them eschews transparency and enjoys generous resourcing. It is difficult 

to assess the degree to which these two radically different doctrines 

complemented or interfered with one another.

Discussion Questions

1. How are COIN operations affected when society is controlled by 

an ethnic or religious minority that suppresses the majority? If the 

shift occurs too slowly, the minority might rise up, making the 

occupying force seen even more illegitimate. But leaving the 

minority dominant risks retaliation by the majority. What is the 

most effective and efficient balance of minority/majority 

dominance at each stage of transition?

2. What other factors might affect these calculations?

3. The authors state, in terms of Anbar, that “the U.S. seems to have 

needed to lose before it could win.” What does this mean? Is it an 

accurate analysis of how and why tribal leaders decided to stop 

supporting AQI? 

4. Can the U.S. cause changes in attitudes and actions, or enable

those changes? What is the difference? Why does it matter?
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V. Conclusion 

We can return to our overarching question: how did the 

implementation of COIN strategy and tactics, as outlined in the field 

manual, match up with outcomes on the ground? Furthermore, what 

alternate explanations exist for these outcomes?

After all the analysis done here, there is no simple answer to our 

central question. Above all, the extent of regional variation is so great that 

Iraq would be better described as multiple cases rather than one single 

case. While the clear/hold/build strategy was applied in Baghdad, the 

effects of sectarian homogenization may have been just as powerful. In 

Anbar Province, tribal mobilization would seem to have been the most 

powerful factor. In the Kurdish north, historical factors appear to have 

determined the outcome. In Iraq’s south, there does not seem to be a clear 

story, with the counterinsurgents throwing a variety of strategies and 

tactics at a very complex societal mix. The effect of decapitation 

strategies, while possibly having great effect across regions, remains 

murky. While the implementation of FM 3-24 and the surge get a lot of 

credit, our analysis emphasizes that correlation is not causation. An 

examination of regional-level data casts doubt on any simple explanation. 

Once HUMINT reports, patrol reports, interrogation reports, and other 

military data stores are declassified, future researchers will have an 

opportunity to better sort out the effects of these multiple strategies. 

Our study does clearly emphasize several critical aspects of the 

Iraq insurgency that other treatments miss or underplay. Above all, our 

study identifies the critical role of the +/-2 level actors. Battalion-level 

after-action reports are full of stories of partnerships with local elites. The 

way counterinsurgents played local politics affected the course of the 

insurgency, not only in terms of tribal mobilization but also in the actual 

practice, if not the theory, of clear/hold/build. While some COIN theory 

tries hard to find a silver bullet for U.S. agency in “solving” complex civil 

wars, if the battle is to be played out at the +/-2 level, there is not likely to 
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be one. Locals organized at the local level have their own interests. These 

local organizations align one way or another for a variety of reasons. It’s a 

truism that “politics” are important in COIN, but this is usually used to 

talk about top-down interagency “unity of command” rather than the sort 

of bottom-up competitive state building that seems to matter. Going 

further, if the crucial action is occurring at the +/-2 level, then targeting is 

crucial. Not only targeting of violence, but targeting of engagement and 

development is crucial. Indiscriminate aid may be as counterproductive as 

indiscriminate violence. To be able to target both aid and violence requires 

local understanding, relationships, and intelligence. 

If community-level organization is critical, counterinsurgents 

should try to understand who is able to organize violent action at that 

level. Who are the first actors who have the ability, network ties, and 

motivation to catalyze movement from -1 to -2? If the CPA had asked 

itself this question, they might not have disbanded the Iraqi Army nor 

done such a complete purging of Baathists. 

Our study also clearly points out how the mechanism of resentment 

formation can play a critical role in the early stages of insurgency. 

Invasions and occupations, especially those committed to democracy, will 

almost inevitably shake up existing ethnic hierarchies and create status 

reversals. Members of groups experiencing status reversals will tend to 

move quickly to the -1 position on the spectrum; efforts must be made to 

reassure these groups that they will not face exclusion (in the same way 

that they may have formerly excluded others). Our study also specifies the 

role of informational mechanisms. Counterinsurgents should try to 

identify the focal points and institutions that provide information and 

coordinate action. US forces may not have fully understood the 

importance of the mosque in a society where other institutions had been 

decimated and discredited by war and Saddam’s repressive regime. 

Our study also leads to some speculation. Given the uncertainties 

and high costs of other strategies, we anticipate that the robust 

decapitation capability embodied in JSOC will be an enduring institutional 
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legacy of this war for the U.S. military. The killing of Osama Bin Laden 

further enhances its prestige. Its effectiveness, including potential 

counterproductive aspects, remains hard to evaluate given its secrecy and 

unknown interaction with conventional COIN. Its similarity to networkcentric warfare enhances its attractiveness for many in the US military. 

However, it risks putting the tactical problems of targeting ahead of 

resolution of the local and regional political issues. A potential major risk 

is that SOCOM will continue to under-invest in “non-kinetic” SOF who 

specialize in Foreign Internal Defense and Unconventional Warfare 

missions because of the prestige and wealth accruing to the JSOC flavor of 

Direct Action. These might be just the sort of low-profile, intelligenceintensive, relationship-building forces you want to engage with +/-2s, 

especially during the period of waiting for interests to align.

Our framework focuses on fine-grained causal mechanisms and 

how they combine in sequence to trigger and sustain insurgency. It 

suggests ways in which counterinsurgency may, or may not, work to 

intervene in this process. The main goal of this study, in addition to 

providing an overview of the specific Iraq case, has been to provide a 

fresh analytical lens for analyzing counterinsurgency. 
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Annex A: Bibliography

Iraq Before 2003

Some of the strategic planning and operational learning failures 

experienced in Iraq were rooted in a failure to understand Iraq’s unique 

culture and history. An accessible single volume is Phebe Marr, The 

Modern History of Iraq (Westview Press, 2003). For far more detail see 

Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement of 

Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), and Marion FaroukSluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to 

Dictatorship (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001). For background on the ways in 

which Saddam manipulated Bedouin tribal identities, see Amatzia Baram, 

"Neo-Tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Husayn's Tribal Policies 1991-1996," 

Journal of Middle Eastern Studies vol. 29, no. 1 (1997): 29-56.

For an account of U.S. and Iraqi perceptions of and biases toward 

one another in the decades before the war, written by the lead author of 

the2004 Iraq Survey Group report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction 

program, see Charles A. Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson, "Chronic 

Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience," 

International Security vol. 36, no. 1 (2011): 73-100. U.S. prewar 

intelligence failure is further analyzed in Joshua R. Rovner, Fixing the 

Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca NY: 

Cornell University Press, 2011) and Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: 

Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Ithaca NY: 

Cornell University Press, 2010).

Invasion

A detailed account of the American operational planning and execution of 

the invasion—and failure to plan for post-combat operations—is Michael 

R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the 

Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Random House, 2006). An 

invaluable look at Iraqi perception of the same events, based on 
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documents recovered in Baghdad, is Kevin M. Woods, Michael R. Pease, 

Mark E. Stout, Williamson Murray, and James G. Lacey, Iraqi 

Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom From Saddam's 

Senior Leadership (United States Joint Forces Command, Joint Center for 

Operational Analysis, 2006), 

http://merln.ndu.edu/archive/DigitalCollections/IraqiPerspectivesProject.p

df.

Insurgency

An accessible journalistic account of the gloomy early years of the war as 

the insurgency became increasingly lethal is Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: 

The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 

2006). See also Bruce R. Pirnie and Edward O'Connell, 

Counterinsurgency in Iraq (2003-2006) (Santa Monica, CA: RAND,

2008), http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG595.3.pdf. 

A similarly gloomy but different picture is painted of the British 

experience in southern Iraq in Michael Knights and Ed Williams, "The 

Calm Before the Storm: The British Experience in Southern Iraq," 

Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Focus #66, February 

2007.

An invaluable portrait of the irregular adversary is provided 

through analysis of recovered documents in Brian Fishman, Bombers, 

Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: Al Qaeda's Road in and Out of Iraq (West 

Point, NY: Center for Combating Terrorism, 2008) and Benjamin Bahney, 

Howard J. Shatz, Carroll Ganier, Renny Mcpherson, Barbara Sude, Sara 

Beth Elson, and Ghassan Schbley, An Economic Analysis of the Financial 

Records of Al-Qa'Ida in Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010)

Counterinsurgency

Ricks’s companion volume to Fiasco provides a good overview of the 

improvement of the war and the emergent conventional wisdom about the 

surge and counterinsurgency doctrine: Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: 
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General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 

2006-2008 (New York: Penguin Press, 2009). On the civil-military 

politics of the U.S. decision to double down with the troop surge, written 

by one of the participants, see Peter D. Feaver, "The Right to Be Right: 

Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision," International 

Security vol. 35, no. 4 (2011): 87-125. On the operational and institutional 

challenges of articulating and implementing the new counterinsurgency 

doctrine, see David Ucko, The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming 

the U.S. Military for Modern Wars (Washington, DC: Georgetown 

University Press, 2009). The dismal prospects for democratization in the 

medium term for Iraq are analyzed in Bruce E. Moon, "Long Time 

Coming: Prospects for Democracy in Iraq," International Security vol. 33, 

no. 4 (2009): 115-148.

Anbar Province

Anbar province, because of its dramatic tribal “Awakening,” has become 

one of the most well-documented regions of the war. For background on 

tribal organization and culture in Anbar, see Lin Todd, Iraq Tribal Study–

al-Anbar Governorate: The Albu Fahd Tribe, the Albu Mahal Tribe and 

the Albu Issa Tribe, Global Resources Group, Department of Defense, 

2006. The best paper-length accounts of the dramatic turn of events are 

Austin Long, "The Anbar Awakening," Survival vol. 50, no. 2 (2008): 67-

94 and John A. McCary, "The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of 

Incentives," The Washington Quarterly vol. 32, no. 1 (2009): 43-59. The 

Marines have produced an invaluable official history consisting of 

excerpts from interviews with key U.S. and Iraqi participants: Timothy S. 

McWilliams and Kurtis P. Wheeler, Al-Anbar Awakening: U.S. Marines 

and Counterinsurgency in Iraq 2004-2009, Volume I, American 

Perspectives (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2009); Gary 

W. Montgomery and Timothy S. McWilliams, Al-Anbar Awakening: 

From Insurgency to Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2004-2009, Volume II, 

Iraqi Perspectives (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2009). 
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On special operations forces in Anbar’s capital, see Dick Couch, The 

Sheriff of Ramadi: Navy SEALs and the Winning of Anbar (Annapolis, 

MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008). A history of Anbar told through the 

biography of one participant is William Doyle, A Soldier's Dream: 

Captain Travis Patriquin and the Awakening of Iraq (New York: NAL 

Hardcover, 2011).

Counterterrorism

As of this writing, there is little in the public domain about the emerging 

style of Special Operations-centric counterterrorism operations, but see 

Mark Urban, Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and 

the Secret War in Iraq (London: Little, Brown, 2010) and Dana Priest and 

William M. Arkin, “Top Secret America: A Look at the Military’s Joint 

Special Operations Command,” Washington Post, 2 September, 2011.
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