@article{f970db088ee340e7ad240f9980511c76,
title = "Lessons on Political Violence from America{\textquoteright}s Post–9/11 Wars",
abstract = "A large literature has emerged in political science that studies the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This article summarizes the lessons learned from this literature, both theoretical and practical. To put this emerging knowledge base into perspective, we review findings along two dimensions of conflict: factors influencing whether states or substate groups enter into conflict in the first place and variables affecting the intensity of fighting at particular times and places once war has started. We then discuss the external validity issues entailed in learning about contemporary wars and insurgencies from research focused on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars during the period of US involvement. We close by summarizing the uniquely rich qualitative and quantitative data on these wars (both publicly available and what likely exists but has not been released) and outline potential avenues for future research.",
keywords = "asymmetric conflict, civil wars, civilian casualties, conflict, foreign policy, military intervention",
author = "Christoph Mikulaschek and Shapiro, {Jacob N.}",
note = "Funding Information: Public opinion. In Afghanistan, ISAF has conducted more than two dozen waves of the Afghanistan Nationwide Quarterly Assessment Research survey starting in 2008. This survey is administered to a sample of more than 8,000 Afghans in all thirty-four provinces. One limitation of this survey is the high refusal rate: for instance, almost 50 percent of the respondents refused to participate in the fourteenth wave of the survey administered in late 2011 (Blair, Imai, and Lyall 2014, 1045). In addition, ISAF conducted almost two dozen waves of the quarterly Foghorn survey focused on public sentiment and perceptions of government services as well as the quarterly Anvil survey on media consumption and exposure to different messages from parties to the conflict. Starting in 2011, ISAF also conducted the quarterly BINAA nationwide household survey of approximately 13,000 households across eighty key terrain districts. In addition to a high nonresponse rate, the BINAA surveys may suffer from inadequate sampling strategies (Management Systems International 2012, 21). Between 2004 and 2014, the Asia Foundation conducted nine rounds of a survey with more than 6,000 respondents across all provinces (see, e.g., Warren 2014). Recently, the Measuring Impact of Stabilization Initiatives project funded by US Agency for International Development started a semiannual survey to track stabilization trends and measure program impacts in Afghanistan. The first two rounds included 35,000 and 38,000 respondents, respectively. In Iraq, the MultiNational Corps-Iraq and the Multinational Division-Baghdad also conducted series of surveys over several years, including one which collected political sentiments from a sample of more than 6,000 respondents per month from September 2004 through 2010. Unfortunately, even sensitive questions were posed directly in these surveys, which can lead to severe bias from nonresponse and social desirability bias. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016, {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2016. Copyright: Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2018",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1177/0022002716669808",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "62",
pages = "174--202",
journal = "Journal of Conflict Resolution",
issn = "0022-0027",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Inc.",
number = "1",
}