Category Insurgency & Counterinsurgency

Economics of Warfare 7

Examining the seventh lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture, which starts by discussing the “Dirty War Index”, remains focused on civilian casualties. He presents on slide 4 the “Dirty War Index” (DWI), which is actually something we could have used for our insurgency work.

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%207.pdf

We did something very similar in pages 88-92 in the section on “Use of Firepower” in America’s Modern Wars. On page 89 we have a chart with three columns tracking civilians casualties. They are 1) (civilians killed)/(CI/INS killed); 2) civilians killed/insurgents killed; and 3) total civilians killed/100,000 population. We only have data for nine cases (nine insurgencies). The first two formulations are ratios but the same data could be used to calculate an ersatz DWI. We then discussed the problem with Irish Loyalists Militias on pages 89-90 (using the exact same data as Dr. Spagat used on slide 6) and then we looked at 35 insurgencies compared to 1) rules of engagements, 2) civilians killed/insurgents kills, and 3) total civilians killed/100,00 population (pages 90-91). Our conclusions were (page 92):

In general, there does seem to be a pattern where insurgencies win more often if the number of civilians killed compared to the number of insurgents killed is greater than 10, but there is no statistical support for such an assumption.

This was a case where we needed to do a lot more work, but never got back to it (read: defense budget cuts and sequestration).

Slides 5 and 6 of Dr. Spagat’s lecture are worth looking at. You will note that in Colombia that while the guerrillas and government forces were responsible for their share of civilian casualties, it was the paramilitaries who were doing a lot of the bloodletting. Government ties to some of these paramilitaries have been an issue. As Dr. Spagat puts it (slide 7) “Their relationship with government forces is murky and controversial.” Slide 6 is from Northern Ireland. Again the “Loyalist Paramilities” are the worst offenders. Probably good policy to keep the Shiite militias out of Mosul.

On slide 10, Dr. Spagat switches from the rather depressing discussion of civilian casualties (which is a subject that needs to be discussed and analyzed more than it has) to a discussing of the “Benefits of Peace.” Because of the nature of our customers, we haven’t done a lot of work on peace…not that we don’t want to. He ends up looking at housing prices in Northern Ireland. Slide 13 has the total killings in Northern Ireland by quarter, although only from 1983 and on. The war was far more bloody in the early 1970s and the violence declined notably after that. The figures on slide 14 catches my attention because at one point in our insurgency studies we also looked at distribution of casualties by region in Northern Ireland, compared to Vietnam and compared to two other wars. We noted at the time that unequal distribution of casualties by geography was at a similar ratio between Northern Ireland and Vietnam. We did not go any further with this effort, because we needed a whole lot more cases and we could not see a pattern with what we had examined (and it took a lot of time). This effort was discussed in our report on terrain (Report I-12: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub3.htm) but I am pretty sure I left it out of my book.

Anyhow, Figure 15 shows housing prices in Northern Ireland. Not particularly surprising, peace is good for housing prices. You probably could have guessed that without a statistical analysis. The rest of the slides just go into more depth on the statistics behind this (slides 17-19). Then there is a discussion on “sampling rare events” (slides 20-29). Note the mention of bootstrapping on slide 29: Bootstrapping_(statistics)

Economics of Warfare 6

Examining the sixth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

In this lecture, Dr. Spagat works from three existing database from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (run by a group in Sweden). We were aware of these when we were doing our work on insurgencies, but never tapped them. We probably would have at some point, if the work had continued.

Anyhow, Dr. Spagat continues with his analysis of civilian casualties in conflict. We certainly could have done something useful with his Civilian Targeting Index (CTI — defined on slide 3) and looking at whether it effected the outcome of an insurgency. Slide 4 is worth noting, as is slide 8.

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%206.pdf

On slide 6 is his four “key take-home” points. They are:

  1. “First, the majority (61%) of all formally organized actors in armed conflict during 2002-2007 refrained from killing civilians in deliberate, direct targeting…”
  2. “Second, actors were more likely to have carried out some degree of civilian targeting (CTI > 0), as opposed to none (CTI = 0), if they participated in armed conflict for three or more years rather than for one year….”
  3. “Third, among actors that targeted civilians (there were 88 of them), those that engaged in great scales of armed conflict concentrated less of their lethal behavior into civilian targeting and more into involvement with battle fatalities…”
  4. “Fourth, an actor’s likelihood and degree of targeting civilians was unaffected by whether it was a state or a non-state group.”

Now, granted this is a snap-shot of only five years, but it is one with more than 88 cases in it, but it is still interesting to note. None of the work we did support nor contradicts any of these results.

Slides 9 to 13 is a discussion of logistic regression and linear regression, which is something that I think everyone should understand, but won’t be surprised if our readers choose to skip it. There are some interesting (as always) Slides are pages 14, 16, 17 and 21. In fact, slide 21 is a pretty good to use in an argument with someone who thinks things are only getting worse. It is worth your while to look at it.

Starting on slide 22 to the end (slide 34), Dr. Spagat takes on counter-arguments developed as a result of examining World Health Surveys (WHS), which is a point worth noting. Lots of people like to throw around figures. These figures are not always very accurate.

Anyhow, these lectures are great to flip through, and if you actually carefully (and painfully) read through them, it is probably a better use of your time than most things you will do this week.

Economics of Warfare 5

Examining the fifth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture is about regressions and logistics regressions. Now, I think everyone should take a econometrics course….but just a warning, this is all pretty dry stuff. So, if you choose to skip it, don’t blame you.

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%205.pdf

On the other hand, what he is discussing is using regression models to analyze the nature of the civilian casualties, including in the Rwandan genocide. This gets a little hard to discuss. On slide 11, you can learn that in the Kibuye Prefecture in 1994 there were 31,117 people killed by machete, 9,779 killed by clubs and 442 burned alive. Not exactly relaxing reading.

Slide 20 tracks Israeli and Palestinian deaths from 2000-2005, which is a lot less.

Anyhow, Dr. Spagat’s work often focuses on civilian casualties. These are often a significant part of warfare, even if we don’t particularly like to address it. For example,. the United States lost over 4,000 troops in Iraq 2003-2011. Iraq lost over 150,000 people during that time. The same pattern for Vietnam, where the United States lost over 58,000 people in what was the third bloodiest war in our history. Vietnam lost one to two million people !

I did attempt to address civilian casualties in our insurgency work. It is also addressed in my book America’s Modern Wars in Chapter 9 “Rules of Engagement and Measurements of Brutality” and Chapter 15 “The Burden of War.” I am not sure that this attention to civilian casualties was fully appreciated by our DOD customers, but it was there because sadly, it is always a significant part of warfare. Tragically, sometimes so is genocide, as recently demonstrated by ISIL. Dr. Spagat, in a course on the “Economics of Warfare,” is quite correct to focus on civilian casualties.

P.S. I have been informed by Dr. Spagat that he still has another ten lectures to post up on his blog.

 

Economics of Warfare 4

Examining the fourth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This one is on “opportunity costs,” linear regression, comparing unemployment rates to violence, and the effectiveness of some civil action problems in Iraq to violence. This discussion does get into the weeds, so to say. It is not casual reading.  The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%204.pdf

To summarize:

  1. On slide 9 there are links to two papers by Dr. Eli Berman and others: 1) Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines? (2011) and 2) Modest, Secure and Informed: Successful Development in Conflict Zones (2013).
  2. Conclusion on Berman’s first paper: It is a little more complicated than a simple trade-off between violence in an insurgency and unemployment (slides 11-13). In fact the relationship is “negative.” As Dr. Spagat notes (slide 26): “In summary, I would say that the relationship between unemployment and violence in Iraq is not tiny, but it is not big either.”
  3. Conclusions on Berman’s second paper: This one look at levels of funding versus insurgent attacks. There are of course problems with trying to determine cause and effect here (see slides 29-30). As Dr. Spagat notes (slide 41): “Again, we wind up with a statistically significant effect that does not have enormous practical significance.”

Now, I did discuss civil works briefly in Chapter 14 of America’s Modern Wars. It is a grab bag chapter called “Other Issues” that looked at 1) Duration of Insurgencies by Type of Insurgency, 2) Outcome of Insurgency by Type of Insurgency, 3) Winning Hearts and Minds, 4) Decapitating Insurgencies, 5) Early Suppression of Insurgencies, 6) Wounded to Killed Ratios, 7) Exchange Rates, 8) Bleeding an Insurgency to Death, and 9) Focus on Population.

In the section on “Winning Hearts and Minds” we ended up noting (on page 151) that:

As much as people talk about winning hearts and minds (a Vietnam-era phrase, which of course, was not entirely successful), there is no program, theory, agenda or list that tells the counterinsurgent what he must do to achieve this….

In the long run, there needs to be a focused analytical effort that looks at what efforts in other insurgencies have actually worked in the long run to gain support from the population, and what efforts in other insurgencies have not made that much of an impact. Considering the large amount of money being spent on these efforts, it is surprising that nothing systematic has been developed on this.

I do start the Chapter (page 147) with a great quote written by Bernard Fall in 1967:

Civic action is not the construction of privies or the distribution of anti-malaria sprays. One can’t fight an ideology; one can’t fight a militant doctrine with better privies. Yet this is done constantly. One side says, “Land Reform,” and the other side say, “Better culverts.” One side says “We are going to kill all of those nasty village chiefs and landlords.” The other side says, “Yes, but look, we want to give you prize pigs to improve your strain.” These arguments just do not match. Simple but adequate appeals will have to be found sooner or later.

Anyhow, it does not look like this has all been resolved yet. The line to remember is: “One can’t fight an ideology, one can’t fight a militant doctrine with better privies.”

Economics of Warfare 3

Examining the third lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%203.pdf

This one starts with the war in Kosovo (1998-1999), which was actually a successful invention although very poorly done. It does pick on a constant theme of Dr. Spagat’s, which is how to get the correct counts of actual people killed in the conflicts, including civilians. For those of us who actually try to do things like quantitative analysis of insurgencies (for example America’s Modern Wars)….this is very useful. A lot of other people don’t particularly care, sometimes because a particularly high or low number serves their political agenda (or cosmology).

Starting on slide 11, Dr. Spagat discusses Iraq casualty estimates. This, along with Colombia, were the two areas we discussed with him when we were working on our Iraq and insurgency material (2004-2010). He was one of the few people out there doing work similar to ours. He points out that there were two estimates of deaths in Iraq, one of 150,000 and one of 600,000. Needless to say, the lower one was closer to correct. The higher number got heavily broadcast. This whole section is worth reviewing and remembering for any future conflicts. I like the picture on slide 14.

Sorry about this abstract look at some very sad and gruesome statistics.

P.S. Merry Christmas

Economics of Warfare 2

Examining the second lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%202.pdf

It is all good stuff, but we don’t do a lot of work on terrorism, so don’t have any insights to add. We actually don’t have a category for “terrorism” so this is filed under “insurgencies.”

The point that got my attention was on slide 13 where he states: “Mueller and Stewart estimate that the US is spending about $75 billion per year more on terrorism after 9/11 happened than it was spending before 9/11. The real number is almost certainly bigger than this and, possibly, a lot bigger.”

Hmmm…..16 years since 9/11 times $75 = $1.2 trillion. Is this really the whole cost for the Global War on Terror?

Slide 12 gives economic “losses per incident.” The financial losses from 9/11 is estimated at $200 billion. Of course, there was considerable human life lost. Not sure how that is “costed.”

Anyhow, it is always interesting to see what the economists are looking at. It is worth flipping through the entire lecture. It is pretty interesting material.

Economics of Warfare 1

If you look at our “Interesting Links” down towards the bottom of the right side of the page, you will see a link to a blog called Wars, Numbers and Human Losses with the byline “The Truth Counts”: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This is the blog of Professor of Economics Michael Spagat of England’s Royal Holloway University. He is American. We think highly of Dr. Spagat’s work. In particular, there a series of blog posts that publish the lectures of his course “Economics of Warfare.” A look at the first lecture is worthwhile: economics-of-warfare-lecture-1

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%201.pdf

A couple of highlights:

  1. Slides 13 & 14 on the causes of casualties among civilians in Iraq.
  2. Slide 20 is damn interesting. More on civilian casualties over the first years of the Iraq War.

For those few who have read my book America’s Modern Wars, I do address civilian casualties, primarily in Chapter 9 “Rules of Engagement and Measurements of Brutality.”

So, is it 25,000?

I hate to keep harping on this…..but I do believe in reasonable estimates of opposing forces strength and losses. I am not sure we are doing that.

  1. The U.S. claimed in August that there were 19,000 – 25,000 ISIL:Islamic State strength estimates
    1. I don’t believe I have seen strength estimates from before this time that is more than 25,000: Global Security
    2. About half were in Iraq.
  2. The U.S. now claims there are 12,000 to 15,000 ISIL: white-house-isis-down-to-12000-15000-battle-ready-fighters
    1. This includes 3,000 to 5,000 in Mosul: War updates
  3. The U.S. claims were have killed 50,000 in the last two years: Over 50000 killed
    1. Including 25,000 in the last 11 months: pentagon-counts-isil-dead-refuses-discuss-them
    2. 25,000 – 50,000 = 15,000…meaning they recruited 40,000 new fighters in the last two years?
  4. The U.S. claims were have attrited 75% of ISIL: US-Officials-Say-ISIS-Has-12-000
    1. 15,00 times 4 = 60,000…meaning working backwards this was the ISIL strength….or this includes the 40,000 new recruits added to a strength originally equal to 25,000? This math actually works, if you accept the figure of 40,000 new recruits.
    2. Of course, this is exterminating and replacing the entire ISIL force each year for two years in a row. Can’t really recall the historical president for this.
  5. The UK estimates we have killed 25,000 ISIL: uk-us-number-isis-fighters-killed
    1. This seems more reasonable.

Of course, part of the problem is that ISIL and every other insurgency movement out there does not consists only of full-time fighters. For example (see America’s Modern Wars: Chapter 11: “Estimating Insurgent Force Size”), looking at some the insurgent strength estimates from Vietnam, Cabanas (Mexico) and Shining Path (Peru), we came up with some rules of thumb for determining the mix of insurgents (see page 120):

  1. Full-time insurgents make up 10 to 20% of the force.
  2. Full-time and part-time insurgents are 20 to 50% of the force.
  3. Casual insurgents are 40 to 80% of the force.

This was based on a very limited selection of marginal data and of course, may not be relevant to ISIL, as they have developed a more conventional-like force structure. But, it does bring up the issue that most insurgencies are not only full-time committed fighters, but lots of people that only sometimes active (often regional), and a large collection of people that are only occasionally active (and may become inactive if things are not going well). Also, many of the insurgents are “support personnel” vice fighters. It is an issue that I don’t believe I have seen anyone else attempt to deal with analytically. Our efforts were only preliminary.

Over 50,000 killed

OK…latest estimate from DOD is that they have killed over 50,000 ISIL fighters over the last two years: Body count = 50K+

Here is my post on the subject in August when the count was a mere 45,000: some-back-of-the-envelope-calculations

I don’t think I have much more to add to this without getting very sarcastic. Note that they refer to it as a “conservative estimate.”  Something does not add up somewhere (either their loss estimates are way too high or their force size estimates have been way too low).

War Updates

We are not a news site or current affairs site (because it takes too much time)……but…a few things of note in the middle east:

  1. Mosul has still not fallen. Offensive started 17 October….we were on the outskirts of Mosul by the beginning of November, and now in a grind that some said would take 6 to 8 weeks. So far, it appears to be taking longer than that. We are claiming that 2,000 ISIL fighters have been killed or wounded. 2000-Islamic-State-militants-killed-or-injured-in-Mosul-offensive and us-says-2-000-is-fighters-killed-gravely-wounded-in-mosul
  2. The Syrians appear to be pushing hard to take all of Aleppo before the new U.S. president arrives in office. I suspect this is an attempt to get a negotiating advantage in light of what they perceive to be Trump’s attitudes towards Russia and Syria. According to this report, they have at least 85% of the city: thousands-flee-heavy-aleppo-fighting.
  3. ISIL has retaken Palmyra. latest-syria-says-98-percent-east-aleppo-retaken and recaptures-palmyra

The odd claim is the one made in the second article of this link, where Russia Foreign Minister Lavrov claims about the taking of Palmyra by ISIL that: “…it has been staged to give a respite to bandits in eastern Aleppo.” Of course, one person’s freedom fighters is another person’s bandits.

To take a quote from the first article from Lt. General Townsend: “‘At the start of the campaign, we estimated somewhere between at the low end 3,500, at the high end, about 6,000. By our calculations we think we have killed or badly wounded over 2,000. So if you do the math, that’s still 3,000-5,000’ militants remaining in Mosul, Townsend said.”

We assume he is talking 2,000 killed or seriously enough injured to no be able to return to action in the next couple of months….so, maybe 1,000 killed and 1,000 seriously wounded (kind of grabbing numbers out of thin air here). So, total losses are 4,000 – 6,000 if you count all wounded? That is kind of the entire opposing force.

Then there is the estimates that coalition has lost 14,000 killed and wounded since the start of the offensive (see our post at: Casualties in Iraq (November)). Does that mean that trained conventional counterinsurgency forces are losing something like 2.3-to-1 fighting the insurgents. That would be significant if that was the case.

Something if off somewhere in these various numbers. I not sure which number not to believe (although the estimate of insurgent strength has traditionally always been way too low).