JOURNAL: Gated Communities for Baghdad?

Classic counter-insurgency runs into problems when faced by a modern city. The connectivity that is necessary for a city's operation undermines any attempts to hold cleared districts. Recent developments indicate that the COIN team in Baghdad is starting to think the same way. As a result, we will see lots of attempts at ways to reduce this connectivity without destroying the economic basis for the city. The approach that the US military has opted for is an inversion of the gated community approach. It will wall off restive districts from the rest of the city rather than protect successful ones -- the first wall to go up will be a three mile, 12-ft high barrier around the Sunni Adhamiya district. However, since the barrier is based on subtraction (it reduces the connectivity for the restive district to the rest of the city), it will serve to lock-in failure since economic activity will likely halt in the affected area.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

In Renaissance Florence, wealthy banking families such as the Medici built palazzos, which essentially were mini-fortresses intended to repel street mobs. Perhaps John Robb is discussing a Renaissance renaissance in urban architecture, with hypermodern palazzos springing up to repel modern Global Guerillas

[Cavolonero]

" If you lived here you'd be dead by now ! " ~

[Doctor G]

Topologically there is no difference, but when you aim to keep people inside the wall you call it a prison, or a ghetto, or even the West Bank.

[french swede the rootless vegetable]

Heinz Guderian said: combustion engine + radio = blitzkrieg (3rd generation)

John says: swarming + (scale-free)* networks = global guerrillas (4th generation)

The difference between former guerrillas like Vietnam, etc, and iraq insurgents is e.g. their non-hierachality, wich gives them the resilience that makes (conventional) counter-insurgency fruitless.

As for the testability, the surge is one test, as it is the first time the U.S. tries to follow the basic precepts of counter-insurgency (specifically, the "oil spot" strategy); if it succeeds,then you have your falsification (provided there are exogenous factors that make the test invalid). So we'll have the answer in about a friedman unit.

* [which is what makes possiblity of dipersed tactics at an operational level possible]

[french swede the rootless vegetable]

*no* exogeous factors.