Swatting Flies with Piledrivers?: Modeling Insurgency.

From as early as the Roman Empire to the present, governments have faced staunch political violence from organized, insurgent groups. In this paper, we contend that insurgencies cannot be easily categorized because through the course of an insurgency both insurgents and counterinsurgents depend critically on the members of the population for support. Whereas insurgents need recruits and material resources from the population, the government seeks to deter this assistance by stopping the flow of resources or by providing economic incentives to the population. Governments fare better, therefore, when they correctly identify and influence the commitment level of members of the population (as opposed to the commitment of insurgents themselves). Using an agent-based computational model, we demonstrate that a government response or counterinsurgent strategy is most successful when identifying and influencing the population?s commitment level. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the model for the current insurgency in Iraq. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]