2. The Spatial Dynamics of Counterinsurgency (FOR ISA 09)

Conflicting political and security metaphors of spatial knowledge, simulation and control - “failed states”, “human terrain”, “terrorist sanctuaries” - have revealed deep divisions over the perception and management of threat. Contemporary counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq has specifically elevated problems of “terrain” and “complexity” to the forefront of doctrinal revision and scholarly research, though the latter lags significantly behind the former.

US and Allied counterinsurgency doctrine suggests that wars now and in the future will be fought in “complex terrain”. It acknowledges that such landscapes of conflict are rooted in an intricate weave of material, demographic, and cognitive threads. It generally limits “terrain analysis”, however, to the physical world of rugged hinterlands and the built environment, while simultaneously advocating social network analysis methodologies largely devoid of locational data.

This paper explores the spatial dynamics of counterinsurgency. It briefly surveys various initiatives to regulate complexity in the insurgent battlespace, with special emphasis on the contentious deployment of U.S. Army and Marine Corps human terrain teams in Afghanistan and Iraq. It argues that practically oriented “terrain analysis” and socially oriented network analysis have been speaking past each other. It introduces a methodological way forward, in three parts: development of a terrain complexity index that integrates physical and non-physical variables; an elaboration of social network analysis through the development of hypocentrality measures focused on locational correlates of social networks as they evolve over time; and the introduction of the TEMPEST (Tracing Extremism: Measures Per Evolutionary Spatial/Temporal) dataset.

from:
http://www.terraplexic.org/journal/2008/4/27/regulating-complex-terrain-in-counterinsurgency.html