Modeling uncertainty in adversary behavior: Attacks in diyala province, Iraq, 2002-2006

Uncertainty is a hallmark of conflict behavior, and other forms of violence that accompany civil and international war - such as low-intensity warfare, guerrilla, insurgency, and asymmetric conflict - are no exception. This study applied the theory of political uncertainty and complexity theory to the analysis of conflict events during the first three years of the second Iraq war, 2003-2006, limited to the Diyala province. Findings show that neither the time between attacks T or the severity of attacks S (fatalities) have the "normal" (bell-shaped) or lognormal distribution that is characteristic of equilibrium systems. Instead, both variables showed heavy tails, symptomatic of non-equilibrium dynamics, in some cases approximating a power law with critical or near critical exponent value of 2. The empirical hazard force analysis in both cases showed that the intensity was high for the first epoch in both variables (March 2003 to June 2004) but even higher in the latter period from July 2004 to March 2006. Selected policy implications are discussed, including the possibility that real-time or near real-time analysis of the data analyzed through the uncertainty-complexity computational methods would have revealed the gathering momentum of adversarial attacks perhaps in time to have prevented the insurgency.