Introduction -- Approach -- Insurgency -- Chronic insurgency and shadow governance -- Counterinsurgency -- Historical analysis : four different outcomes -- Group 1 : insurgent victories -- Group 2 : government victories -- Group 3 : degenerate insurgencies -- Group 4 : success through co-option -- Lessons -- A strategy of co-option -- Implications for Iraq and Afghanistan -- Conclusion.

Counterinsurgency remains the most challenging form of conflict conventional forces face. Embroiled in the longest period of sustained operations in its history, the U.S. Army maintains a fragile peace in Iraq and faces a chronic insurgency in Afghanistan. In much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, active insurgent conflicts continue and potential ones abound. The United States may become involved in some of these conflicts, either directly or by providing aid to threatened governments. Understanding how insurgencies may be brought to a successful conclusion is, therefore, vital to military strategists and policymakers. The author, Dr. Thomas Mockaitis, examines in great detail how past insurgencies have ended and how current ones may be resolved. Drawing upon a dozen cases over half a century, the author identifies four ways in which insurgencies have ended. Clearcut victories for either the government or the insurgents occurred during the era of decolonization, but they seldom happen today. Recent insurgencies have often degenerated into criminal organizations committed to making money rather than fighting a revolution, or into terrorist groups capable of nothing more than sporadic violence. In a few cases, the threatened government has resolved the conflict by co-opting the insurgents. After achieving a strategic stalemate and persuading the belligerents that they have nothing to gain from continued fighting, these governments have drawn the insurgents into the legitimate political process through reform and concessions. This monograph concludes that such a co-option strategy offers the best hope of success in Afghanistan and in future counterinsurgency campaigns.

Understanding how insurgencies may be brought to a successful conclusion is vital to military strategists and policymakers.This study examines how past insurgencies have ended and how current ones may be resolved. Four ways in which insurgencies have ended are identified. Clear-cut victories for either the government or the insurgents occurred during the era of decolonization, but they seldom happen today. Recent insurgencies have often degenerated into criminal organizations committed to making money rather than fighting a revolution or into terrorist groups capable of nothing more than sporadic violence. In a few cases, the threatened government has resolved the conflict by co-opting the insurgents. After achieving a strategic stalemate and persuading the belligerents that they have nothing to gain from continued fighting, these governments have drawn the insurgents into the legitimate political process through reform and concessions.

Insurgencies have dominated the focus of the U.S. military for the past seven years, but they have a much longer history than that and are likely to figure prominently in future U.S. military operations. Thus, the general characteristics of insurgencies and, more important, how they end are of great interest to U.S. policymakers. This study constitutes the unclassified portion of a two-part study that examines insurgencies in great detail. The research documented in this monograph focuses on insurgency endings generally. Its findings are based on a quantitative examination of 89 cases.

In Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in South Asia, ten experts native to South Asia consider the nature of intrastate insurgent movements from a peacebuilding perspective. Case studies on India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka lend new insights into the dynamics of each conflict and how they might be prevented or resolved.

The September 11, 2001, attacks and Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM revived the idea that insurgency is a significant threat to the United States. In response, the American military and defense communities began to rethink insurgency. Much of this valuable work, though, viewed contemporary insurgency as more closely related to Cold War era insurgencies than to the complex conflicts which characterized the post-Cold War period. This suggests that the most basic way that the military and defense communities think about insurgency must be rethought. Contemporary insurgency has a different strategic context, structure, and dynamics than its forebears. Insurgencies tend to be nested in complex conflicts which involve what can be called third forces (armed groups which affect the outcome, such as militias) and fourth forces (unarmed groups which affect the outcome, such as international media), as well as the insurgents and the regime. Because of globalization, the decline of overt state sponsorship of insurgency, the continuing importance of informal outside sponsorship, and the nesting of insurgency within complex conflicts associated with state weakness or failure, the dynamics of contemporary insurgency are more like a violent and competitive market than war in the traditional sense where clear and discrete combatants seek strategic victory. This suggests a very different way of thinking about (and undertaking) counterinsurgency. At the strategic level, the risk to the United States is not that insurgents will Swin in the traditional sense, take over their country, and shift it from a partner to an enemy.It is that complex internal conflicts, especially ones involving insurgency, will generate other adverse effects: the destabilization of regions, resource flows, and markets; the blossoming of transnational crime; humanitarian disasters; transnational terrorism; and so forth. Given this, the U.S. goal should not automatically be the defeat of the insurgents by the regime (which may be impossible and which the regime may not even want), but the most rapid conflict resolution possible. In other words, a quick and sustainable resolution which integrates insurgents into the national power structure is less damaging to U.S. national interests than a protracted conflict which leads to the complete destruction of the insurgents. Protracted conflict, not insurgent victory, is the threat. If, in fact, insurgency is not simply a variant of war, if the real threat is the deleterious effects of sustained conflict, and if it is part of systemic failure and pathology in which key elites and organizations develop a vested interest in sustaining the conflict, the objective of counterinsurgency support should not be simply strengthening the government so that it can impose its will more effectively on the insurgents, but systemic reengineering. This, in turn, implies that the most effective posture for outsiders is not to be an ally of the government and thus a sustainer of the flawed socio-political-economic system, but to be neutral mediators and peacekeepers (even when the outsiders have much more ideological affinity for the regime than for the insurgents). If this is true, the United States should only undertake counterinsurgency support in the most pressing instances and as part of an equitable, legitimate, and broad-based multinational coalition.