Global Guerrillas

JOURNAL: Chechen Regional Community Development

How does open-source war spread across borders? Andrei Smirnov, a reporter writing for Jamestown, has an interesting take on the rise of the Caucasian front in southern Russia. Earlier attempts to form an united Caucasian front against the Russians failed in large part due to a hierarchical approach. Today's open-source community approach seems to be working (the most recent demonstration of success is the attack on Nalchik). This is to a lesser degree (due to the use of foreign recruits as suicide bombers) what we are seeing in Iraq.

MORAL INFLECTION POINTS

The attack on the Palestine hotel in Iraq was more than just an example of how fear management can improve the effects of a terrorist bombing. It was also a very important example of how the open-source insurgency has surmounted the limitations of decentralized management to mount large attacks.

JOURNAL: FVM + Media = Success

Iraq's global guerrillas tried an interesting application of fear vector management (which was explained in my brief on the topic last week, I will shorten the name to FVM for brevity). Three suicide vehicles were used to attack the Palestine hotel in downtown Baghdad. The Palestine, if you remember, is at the heart of the US media effort in the country since many reporters, cameramen, and photojournalists live there. It is also the Iraq HQ of the Associated Press.

JOURNAL: Creveld's Paradox

There is an interesting story in the New York Times Magazine on the rise and fall of Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman in Iraq. His experience is an excellent example of Martin Van Creveld's tragic paradox of weakness -- or, how a war-fighter was converted into a bully.

JOURNAL: A Halt to Iraqi Oil Exports

The combination of a bad weather and a storm have halted all Iraqi oil exports. Guerrillas hit a systempunkt -- a pipeline gathering point for four fields -- of the northern Iraqi oil network today with four bombs. This has totally shut down production from northern Iraq and the repairs will likely take a month to accomplish. In parallel, bad weather has shut down loading at the Basra offshore oil terminal completely shutting down the only remaining export point for Iraqi oil. It is important to note that not all damage from system disruption occurs as a direct result of attacks. Much of it happens when a stressed system is confronted with additional system perturbations. This incident a classic example of this (so was Katrina on a stressed US oil system).

FEAR MANAGEMENT

Last August, in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, a suicide car bomb went off near a police station across the street from an open air bus station. Ten minutes later, as people crowded in the station to watch the rescue across the street, another suicide bomber drove his car into the station itself. The carnage was widespread but far from over. Twenty minutes later, as the victims of the first two blasts were removed to Kindi hospital only 200 yards away from the terminal, a third suicide car bomb went off at the hospital's side entrance.

JOURNAL: Wars and Systems

This UN Human Security Report confirms the decline in conventional warfare (PDF) over the last century. Conventional wars are increasingly rare and markedly less bloody (due to the rise of nuclear weapons and an interconnected global economy).

Wars will continue to occur, but in a new form. Future wars will be fought over systems and by networks. The participants won't (or at least, shouldn't) measure the effectiveness of their activity in body counts but rather through their impact on systems. For the West that means efficient systems (or at least resilient systems), for guerrillas it means disruption (which translates into capacity to coerce states or breakdown state function).

JOURNAL: Basayev's After Action Report

This is an unusual war. The combination of the Internet and the character of open source insurgency makes it possible to read the dispatches of enemy commanders days after major events. Today's dispatch comes from Shamil Basayev (of Beslan infamy) on the Nalchik operation in Southern Russia. He is very upfront with his information.

THE OPEN-SOURCE WAR

I wrote a New York Times Op-Ed on this.

JOURNAL: Pre-election Disruption in Iraq

Iraq's guerrillas sabotaged high voltage power lines leading to Baghdad on election's eve. This led to a cascade that shut down electricity across the greater Baghdad area. This power outage also shut down water for parts of Baghdad when it disrupted operations at a water treatment plant.