Weak State caused long duration of insurgency between 1995 to 2016

Abstract

Saddam Hussein’s government and the Taliban regime were both toppled in the early months of U.S. invasion. Nevertheless, the U.S. and coalitions’ supported government in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been battling insurgencies since the U.S. invasion. To be exact, the U.S. has been conducting counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan since 2002, and in Iraq since 2003. Why would such operations last so long despite U.S. military might? Many scholars have argued differently on the causes of long duration insurgencies but none has given an argument that can explain all cases of prolonged insurgencies. In this paper, I used the theory of political opportunity structure which posits that “repertoires for protest have traditionally been seen as influenced by political opportunity structure, consisting of both a formal, institutional aspect and an informal, cultural one (Porta 2008, 223)” to argue that weak states caused long duration insurgency between the years of 1995 to 2016. My argument gives another alternative argument that can explain the causes of long duration insurgencies. Using 66 cases of insurgency, from the Global Terrorism dataset, I showed that state weakness caused long duration insurgency between the periods of 1995 to 2016, but the only indicators of state weakness that are statistically significant to the duration of insurgency are security effectiveness score and security legitimacy score. Therefore, my policy recommendation is that for states to carry on successful Counterinsurgency campaigns they need to focus on improving the capability of their security forces, and seek public approval of their security apparatus .