COIN at Yale

Yale political scientist Nicholas Sambanis and a couple of
his homeys had an article in Science
magazine (May 18, 2012 issue) titled "Parochialism as a Central Challenge in
Counterinsurgency."

I am pretty sure I don't understand the article well,
because I am not familiar with the political science literature on
parochialism. But I can read, and it seems to me that  core conclusions of the article are that:

--Counterinsurgency is harder and more complex than it looks.

-- It was only partially responsible (at best) for the
decrease in violence in Iraq in 2007.

--It didn't work in Afghanistan.

I think anyone who spent time on the ground in either war
would find those conclusions uncontroversial.

My one problem with the article is that it assumes that the
counterinsurgent desires peace, and that this is the goal of any
counterinsurgency campaign. But I suspect that for many people, the central
goal of the American COIN campaign in Iraq in 2007-08 was to extricate the U.S.
military from Iraq in a way that didn't look like the Americans were just
running away. I think that if that was indeed the case then, whatever
ultimately happens in Iraq, then the 2007-08 COIN campaign succeeded.

(HT to JB)