Attack Trends

Update: Feb 18th - Added Map from MNF-I

General Lynch on Attack Trends - via Pentagon Channel

June 2005 Attack Trends


Points that I found significant.

General Lynch showed a chart showing attacks over the last 6 months by province.

My analysis-

12 of the provinces are at an average of 1 or fewer attacks per day.

Babil province was on the 5 or fewer list in June 2005 and has been added to the one or fewer list.

Ninewa progressed from the 15-20 attacks per day, to the 5-10 attacks per day. Significant given it's population of 2.5 Million.

Bagdhad moved from 30-40 attacks per day to the 20-30 attacks per day range.

Tamim and Diyali remained statistically the same at the 5 or fewer attacks per day.

Sallahdin remained statistically the same at 10-15 attacks per day

AlAnbar remained statistically the same as 20+ attacks per day.

On a per person basis in reverse order
AlAnbar has approx 20 attacts per day/million population
Salahadin has approx 13 attacks per day/million population
Tamim,Diyali and Baghdad have approxiamtely 4 attacks per day per million population.
Ninewa has approxiamately 3 attacks per day/million population
Everywhere else has 1 or fewer attacks per day per million population.

Other things to consider -
IMHO, there is a limit to how much violence can be supressed via Occupying Forces, unless one is willing to have a force of 20 Soldiers/thousand(540,000 troops on the ground). I personally believe that limit to be 5 attacks/day per million population.
There is also an argument that more forces generate more anti occupation sentiment.

There are only 2 provinces that are above my personal theoretical minimum.

AlAnbar and Salahadin.

AlAnbar has the problem of extremely low population densitities. Which means committing relatively large numbers of troops to protect a relatively small population. It is also at least a year behind the rest of the country in development of it's local security forces. It has also never been governed in it's history.

Salahadin is problematic. If there is a province dominated by Saddam loyalists, then it is Salahadin. LSA Anaconda is also the largest US facility as the logistics hub.


In other news from General Lynch, I noticed he has starting quoting percentage of ISF independent operations at "Company or Above"(31%). This is significant, as the vast majority of operations are at the "Company" level, rather than the Battalion of Brigade Level.

Update:
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