Counterinsurgency and Pakistan Paper Series About the Series

Mastering Counterinsurgency: The Challenges and Lessons for Pakistan and the United States

There may be no more challenging issue for professional militaries than that of countering an insurgency. And, yet, this particular type of conflict is becoming more and more prevalent in the 21st century.

On March 10-13, 2009, the Brookings Institution, with support from the U.S. National Defense University and the Embassy of Pakistan (Washington), and in collaboration with the NDU’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, and the Pakistan National Defence University, held a conference that explored American and Pakistani approaches to counterinsurgency or low-intensity conflict (COIN/LIC).

Planned in collaboration with the Brookings 21st Century Defense Initiative, the session was unique in bringing together, for the first time, some of the top civilian and military experts from the U.S. and Pakistan to confer and share lessons on the many dimensions of counterinsurgency. They discussed principles of counterinsurgency, lessons learned from the American and Pakistani historic experiences, the roles of the police and paramilitary forces, the role of civilian aid and development, and looked at more contemporary case studies in Iraq and the NWFP/FATA regions. In addition to the days of discussion, the participants also traveled to Quantico, VA, for meetings with U.S. Marine Corps experts, and visited the Pentagon for briefings by civilian and military officials. The discussions were incredibly fruitful in sharing perspectives, as well as dispelling misperceptions, and all participants agreed that it was crucial for the dialogue to continue.

With this issue becoming even more timely and important, Brookings is honored to release to the public the conference papers that helped launch the discussions. These papers were released on a rolling basis, with the first being an excellent look at the terms and terminology that frame the issue by Dr. Janine Davidson, a former Brookings nonresident fellow and now Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, who is considered one of the world’s top experts on counterinsurgency theory. Subsequent papers explored the many themes raised in the conference, from the historic and contemporary lessons to civilian agency roles. These papers represent the views of the individual writer and do not represent the consensus of the assembled participants nor the Institution. A summary report and analysis by Stephen Cohen and Shuja Nawaz, of the Atlantic Council, was web-published as a concluding paper.

Comments on the papers are welcome, and may be sent to communications@brookings.edu. 

Stephen P. Cohen, Senior Fellow

Peter W. Singer, Director, 21st Century Defense Initiative