Security Studies Analysis Report

Running head: SECURITY STUDIES
Security Studies
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SECURITY STUDIES
The purpose of the following paper is to highlight on the questions of security issues
within the country. Both the external and internal security systems must be preserved properly to
keep peace within the country. The executive department should function properly so the law
and order can be maintained. Two terms have been very common in the recent times in terms of
national security. The first one is insurgency and the opposite one is counter insurgency. In some
cases, insurgency happens within a country when the government is unable to control the people
of the country and executes activities that are harmful for civilians (Paul et al., 2013). The
context of Iraqi insurgency will be discussed in this paper to address its reasons. On the other
hand, the context of American counterinsurgency will be highlighted when they took proper care
of Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda turned World Trade Center into dust.
Both these events will be compared to analyze them. Policy recommendations will also be
provided to counterinsurgency experts on how they can tackle this issue very easily.
The first case that would be discussed in this section is that of Iraqi insurgency. This
event took place from the beginning of this 21st century. This has happened several times starting
from 2003. It has not been resolved after US troops were withdrawn from Iraq (Paul et al., 2013).
The insurgency of Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in Iraq was developing more and its impacts were
mostly negative. More violence occurred in the region as inter group conflicts were on the rise
on a regular basis. The religious contrasts between sub categories of Islam gave birth to such
insurgency.
Here it is clear both the groups had hatred in their minds against Christians and they
despised the Americans. However, it is believed by some critics that there were several political
reasons behind this insurgency (Paul et al., 2013). This insurgency took place in two phases. It
had been observed by United Nations throughout Iraq that many prohibited weapons were

2SECURITY STUDIES
present all over the country without official permission. Thus, all these ammunitions were
illegally kept by the Iraqi government. Experts of international relations suspected many militant
groups were associated with these incidents. The Ba’ath Party was controlled by Saddam
Hussein in Iraq that had its roots in Syria. They wanted to dominate the Kurds and Shi’ite
Muslims because these two communities were minorities. The Sunni Muslims wanted to
establish their supremacy in the country.
Therefore, something must have been done to stop this insurgency. Apart from that, the
rise of ISIS in Iraq was also a reason for the insurgency in Iraq (Carruthers, 2015). These militant
groups wanted to eliminate all other minority groups and establish their supreme regime by the
name of Islam. Here they used the camouflage of Islamic religion so they could be successful in
their political demands (Paul et al., 2013). They wanted to gain the larger portion of the country
through setting up their own government. This faction of ISIS also opposed the Syrian
government and they retaliated against the Syrian army.
After the death of Iraqi chief Saddam Hussein, allied forces of United Kingdom and
United States found a safe haven in the north eastern regions of Iraq (Giustozzi, 2017). When
United States withdrew all their forces from Iraq, these Islamic militant groups became active
again. The situations went out of control after the withdrawal of US Armed forces. The militants
began large scale bombings in various states of Iraq. They began to kill the innocent people of
the country and humanistic organizations were called into action. Such level of violence was a
huge barrier to establish peace in the country (Paul et al., 2013). The law and order in Iraq was
completely broken and it needed the attention of international organizations like UN and NATO.

3SECURITY STUDIES
The similar kind of intervention that NATO did in Libya could have been repeated if the
situation was still not controlled properly. Criminal activities, corruption and extortion were very
common events in these cases (Joseph, 2014). Various communities had settled themselves in
different parts of the country. The Kurdish communities settled in north, Sunni people went to
the western provinces and Shi’ite sections moved to the south. The conditions of the Iraqi
government and their position had been questioned lot of times (Paul et al., 2010). They did not
take the strong position against such terrorism. When the country’s internal political environment
and law and order are completely destroyed like this, insurgency from civilians is also expected.
Millions of lives of common people were under threat and government did not arrange for any
security. In this situation, counterinsurgency became almost certain.
The context of insurgency is quite common in the recent times just like insurgency. This
has been one of the major concepts when it is associated with the military operations (Belcher,
2018). The military forces of various countries like United States, United Kingdom, Russia,
India, Israel, France and others have constantly conducted such military operations where they
have invaded the borders of insurgent countries and suppressed their activities through surgical
strikes on land and airstrikes through fighter jets (Sexton, 2016).
Some critics have opined that counterinsurgency operations will only neutralize the
contingent powers engaging in their land to get political advantage over the government (Paul et
al., 2010). This idea of counterinsurgency has definitely been very influential in various Western
countries. There are several techniques of military inventions through which all the countries
could retaliate against the cases of insurgency (Shapiro & Weidmann, 2015). Political issues are
always important in conducting the military operations for counterinsurgency.

4SECURITY STUDIES
In this scenario, the invasion of American forces into the regions of Afghanistan would
be discussed. It is known to all that World Trade Center of United States had been demolished by
Al Qaeda on 11th September in 2001 (Paul et al., 2010). Hundreds of people died in that event. In
the year 2011, Osama bin Laden had been killed by United States forces at Abbottabad in
Pakistan when they received the intelligence reports of his presence in that particular compound.
This level of counterinsurgency is almost unparalleled because it was really a tough job to kill
the most infamous terrorist in the world (Li et al., 2015). The techniques used in
counterinsurgency and use of technology were supreme in this secret mission.
In this part of the paper, the analysis will be presented of the two cases. According to the
critics, it has been said that the political interests have always been the primary reasons for this
insurgency in Iraq. The peacekeeping efforts have always been tried by United States and other
members of the United Nations (Paul et al., 2010). Still, the outcomes are not that much fruitful
because the Sunni Muslims have kept on their lethal attacks. On the other hand, the occupying
power in Iraq is mainly controlled by the will of United States.
This has been the main reason for the conflicts. The will of the insurgents is not to win
some conventional issues but they keep on pushing the reigning powers so they can feel their
presence (Pringle, 2014). This will help the insurgents in Iraq to claim back their territories and
continue their terrorist activities. The forces of United States were withdrawn but the impacts of
these insurgencies are still growing strong. The ill impacts of this insurgency have made many
people homeless and per capita income in the country had decreased also. The electricity
production has also reduced in the era after the war (Li et al., 2015). The Iraqis are yet to give up
on their insurgency and it requires strict actions to deal with this issue.

5SECURITY STUDIES
On the contrary, counterinsurgency has also been a very well known issue in the recent
times. The counterinsurgency movement of the US forces in Afghanistan has been known
throughout the world (Acun, 2014). The deterioration of social, economic and political
conditions are the main reasons as to why United States had to intervene into the internal matters
of the country. The terrorist activities in the Middle East and the level of losses have damaged
the economy of the region. Moreover, the Bush administration wanted to take the revenge on Al
Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden as they demolished the World Trade Center (Serena, 2014).
All these events led to this counterinsurgency attack on Afghanistan. The tensions in the
global politics due to rising of terrorism were a major thing for all first world countries. Amidst
these events, United Nations also declared Laden as a global terrorist and a major threat for
mankind. All these reasons acted collectively to lead to the attacks by US forces. All the key
challenges had been explored by the foreign ministry of USA and they had meetings with the
representative groups of United Nations. Many civilian agencies also supported the US military
forces in this action (Goodhand & Hakimi, 2014). They also made sure that insurgents in
Afghanistan did not receive any kind of support from the external sources.
Some policies must be recommended to ensure that these types of insurgency activities
do not take place in the countries so foreign military forces have to intervene to save the innocent
civilians. The governments must identify the people and their authenticity when the cross the
borders and enter their countries (Serena, 2014). Strict vigilance is highly important to stop any
kind of violent insurgent activities within the countries. The cross-border relationship with other
neighboring countries should be proper so they can get support in the difficult times. The
telecommunications ministry must be aware and look into the social media handling of the
suspected persons who come from outside (Nance, 2014). Counterinsurgency movements must

6SECURITY STUDIES
be controlled to stop killing innocent people. It is because many innocent people died in Syria
while Russian forces conducted the airstrike and destroyed buildings by missiles. United
Nations, NATO and other global organizations should improvise some legal regulations such
kind of heavy military actions to establish peace and economic prosperity across nations (Nance,
2014).
In the concluding part of the paper, it has to be stated that both insurgency and
counterinsurgency has resulted has resulted in heavy amount of bloodshed and loss of lives. The
global organizations should manage some ways through which they can stop these military
activities in the world and especially in the Middle East regions. On the other hand, governments
also must ensure their citizens get all the facilities that will help them to keep faith on the
government. Any suspicious activity on social media should be kept under strict vigil so these
kinds of insurgent events like Iraq and Afghanistan might not take place again in the future.

7SECURITY STUDIES
References
Acun, C. (2014). The Map of Insurgency in Iraq: The Armed Groups. SETA, July.
Belcher, O. (2018). Anatomy of a village razing: Counterinsurgency, violence, and securing the
intimate in Afghanistan. Political Geography, 62, 94-105.
Carruthers, S. L. (2015). Why can’t we see insurgents? Enmity, invisibility, and
counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. Photography and Culture, 8(2), 191-211.
Giustozzi, A. (2017). Counterinsurgency challenge in post-2001 Afghanistan. Small Wars &
Insurgencies, 28(1), 12-33.
Goodhand, J., & Hakimi, A. (2014). Counterinsurgency, local militias, and statebuilding in
Afghanistan (Vol. 90). Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.
Joseph, P. (2014). “Soft” Counterinsurgency: Human Terrain Teams and US Military Strategy
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Springer.
Li, X., Zhang, R., Huang, C., & Li, D. (2015). Detecting 2014 Northern Iraq Insurgency using
night-time light imagery. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 36(13), 3446-3458.
Nance, M. W. (2014). The terrorists of Iraq: Inside the strategy and tactics of the Iraq
insurgency 2003-2014. CRC Press.
Paul, C., Clarke, C. P., & Grill, B. (2010). Victory has a thousand fathers: Detailed
counterinsurgency case studies. RAND NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH INST
SANTA MONICA CA.

8SECURITY STUDIES
Paul, C., Clarke, C. P., Grill, B., & Dunigan, M. (2013). Paths to victory: detailed insurgency
case studies. Rand National Defense Research Inst Santa Monica CA.
Pringle, H. (2014). ISIS cashing in on looted antiquities to fuel Iraq insurgency. National
Geographic, 27.
Serena, C. C. (2014). It takes more than a network: The Iraqi insurgency and organizational
adaptation. Stanford University Press.
Sexton, R. (2016). Aid as a tool against insurgency: Evidence from contested and controlled
territory in Afghanistan. American Political Science Review, 110(4), 731-749.
Shapiro, J. N., & Weidmann, N. B. (2015). Is the phone mightier than the sword? Cellphones and
insurgent violence in Iraq. International Organization, 69(2), 247-274.