RAND Corporation. March 19, 2013.
Testimony presented Seth G. Jones before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Joint Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa and Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on March 19, 2013. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/CT300/CT382/RAND_CT382.pdf [PDF format, 13 pages].
Center for Strategic and International Studies. December 30, 2012.
History has made it all too clear that there is no easy way to assess progress in counterinsurgency, or to distinguish victory from defeat until the outcome of a conflict is final. Time and again, “defeated” insurgent movements have emerged as the victors in spite of repeated tactical defeats. The Burke Chair has reviewed recent official reporting on the progress in the war as of the end of 2012 and found major gaps in unclassified reporting, and serious problems in the limited metrics that have been made available. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://csis.org/files/publication/130102_uncertain_afghan_violence.pdf [PDF format, 61 pages].
Congressional Research Service. October 19, 2012.
This report provides an overview of transnational security issues related to patterns of interaction among international terrorist and crime groups. In addition, the report discusses the U.S. government’s perception of and response to the threat. It concludes with an analysis of foreign policy options.
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/200053.pdf [PDF format, 40 pages].
Congressional Research Service. July 25, 2012.
Major U.S. arms sales and grants to Pakistan since 2001 have included items useful for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, along with a number of “big ticket”platforms more suited to conventional warfare. In dollar value terms, the bulk of purchases have been made with Pakistani national funds, but U.S. grants have eclipsed these in recent years.
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/196190.pdf [PDF format, 1 page].
RAND Corporation. May 3, 2012.
The U.S. Department of Defense will receive more detailed, transparent and credible assessments of its counterinsurgency campaigns by replacing its top-down approach with a bottom-up method driven by contextual, narrative reporting provided by commanders on the ground, according to a new RAND Corporation report. The study finds that “contextual assessment”—which replaces standardized and aggregated quantitative metrics with a nested mix of qualitative and quantitative data and commanders’ input from the battalion to the theater level—is a superior way to gauge the success or failure of COIN operations. Indeed, in late 2011 after the study was completed the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan began developing and implementing an improved COIN assessment methodology. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2012/RAND_MG1086.pdf [PDF format, 342 pages].
