Iraq. December 2005. As the US military's attention was focused on the chaotic political process in Iraq, the open source insurgency has switched targets yet again. While the ongoing methods continue (IEDs, Suicide bombers, etc.) at a reduced rate, the clear focus of Iraq's open source guerrillas has shifted towards systems disruption -- the aim of which is to delegitimizing the political process from the ground up (see State Failure 101 for more on how this process works). Historically, this has been effective against the two previous governments. To accomplish this, the guerrillas have (rightly, from a purely theoretical standpoint) focused attacks on electricity using the following methods:
- Attacked power lines. The US military conceded that 2,800 megawatts of the country's potential 7,100 megawatts (7,200 megawatts is the average demand) is disrupted, mostly due to sabotage, at any given time (nearly 40%). This is a slight improvement over 2004 numbers. Network analysis, tempo, and efficiency play a role here.
- Attack contractors and workers. 32 assaults were recorded (likely conservative) in December against contractors including: 6 killed, 5 wounded, and 2 kidnapped (this is a renewed continuation of the operational method I called Halliburton Targeting that I wrote about in 2004).
- Increased inefficiency. Ongoing attacks have added both excessive costs to the reconstruction effort and ongoing delays (see Disrupting Reconstruction for a more detailed description of how this works).