American Counter Insurgency Definition

Insurgency, as defined by author Seth Jones, is “a political military campaign by non-state actors who seek to overthrow a government or secede from a country through the use of unconventional—and sometimes conventional—military strategies.” There are two distinct instances of insurgency in the Middle East that aptly convey this definition: Iraq and Afghanistan. Comparatively these to cases are quite similar in motivation and success. It is the act of counter-insurgency by outside forces that were quite different. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it is questionable whether attempts at counter-insurgency by the United States were successful. Jones deems it necessary for the counter-insurgents to have the support of the locals to claim an overall victory …show more content…
The Baath’s—led by Saddam Hussein-- were the controlling governmental party in Iraq for many years. Known for their suppression of the Shia population in Iraq, they were a government with a monopoly on state sanctioned violence. Ironically enough, the party had this monopoly on violence in order to cease violence among the people. When the party began to lose its’ monopoly following the Gulf War, people began lashing out at the violence of the state. State-sanctioned violence was only one factor that motivated insurgency in Iraq. Other factors that led to this insurgency were the invasion of Iraq by coalition forces and the religious/ethnic divisions within the country. Coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003 in order to remove Hussein and the Ba’ath government and “free” the Iraqi people. This caused a problem: the coalition of outside forces, led by the United States, did not actually defeat the Ba’athist military. Instead the military disintegrated and went home, leaving their mass stockpiles of weaponry from previous wars open to the public (Dodge). The public, who as mentioned earlier endured years of violence, now had military grade weapons and began taking up arms against invaders. On top of not de-militarizing the state, the coalition also began putting in place a new government, which was beginning to resemble a most Shiite assembly. This angered the Sunni’s …show more content…
In both scenarios it appears that a key factor motivating people to rise up is a weak central governments. In his book, Dodge stated that insurgency was easy to fall into because it offered the weaker public protection and was more attractive that the corruptness of outside forces. Following their removal from power by the US and NATO forces in 2001, the Taliban began their insurgency. The Taliban insurgents were deeply against the United States’ involvement in their nation and the newly put-in-place president of Afghanistan. Among the Taliban were other groups of insurgents including followers of Hekmatyar and al-Qaeda. Alongside these political motivations for insurgency there were others. Similarly, as in Iraq, there were religious/ethnic divisions. At the time Afghanistan was roughly fifty percent Pashtun and varying smaller percentages of other ethnic groups like the Tajiks, Uzbeks, etc. Socioeconomics were another factor of turmoil and uprising in Afghanistan, as the majority of people were poverty stricken and