Out of the Mountains

by David Kilcullen

  21.See Q iu Aijun, How to Understand the Urbanisation Rate in China?, Cities Development Institute for Asia, online at www.cdia.asia/wp-content/uploads/How-to-understand-the-urbanisation-rate-in-China.pdf.

  22.See “Concrete Jungles: A Mainly Rural Country Is Ill-Prepared for Its Coming Urban Boom,” Economist, September 29, 2012.

  23.Q uoted in Casey Kazan, “Sprawl! Is Earth Becoming a Planet of SuperCities?” The Daily Galaxy, June 24, 2009.

  24.United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2009 Revision, 1, online at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Documents/WUP2009_Highlights_Final.pdf (emphasis added).

  25.Ibid.

  26.For a discussion of these factors as they apply to rapid urbanization and slum growth in one African city, see Emmanuel Mutisya and Masaru Yarime, “Understanding the Grassroots Dynamics of Slums in Nairobi: The Dilemma of Kibera Informal Settlements,” International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, and Applied Sciences and Technologies 2, no. 2 (March 2011): 197–213.

  27.See United Nations Environment Program, Cities and Coastal Areas, online at www.unep.org/urban_environment/issues/coastal_zones.asp.

  28.See Ethan Decker, Scott Elliott, Felisa Smith, Donald Blake, and Sherwood Rowland, “Energy and Material Flow Through the Urban Ecosystem,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 25 (2000): 690–91. Decker and colleague list the top twenty-five megacities as Karachi, Cairo, Teheran, Tianjin, Beijing, Seoul, Moscow, New York, Delhi, London, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Osaka, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Mexico City, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, Jakarta, Dhaka, Manila, Bangkok, Calcutta, and Mumbai. Of these, only Delhi, Moscow, Teheran, and Beijing are inland cities—all the others lie within 100 miles of a coastline or on a major coastal river delta.

  29.Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook 2012, field listing for “Urbanization,” online at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2212.html. This entry lists the ten largest cities on the planet as Tokyo, 36.7 million; Delhi, 22.1 million; São Paulo, 20.3 million; Mumbai, 20 million; Mexico City, 19.5 million; New York–Newark, 19.4 million; Shanghai, 16.6 million; Kolkata, 15.6 million; Dhaka, 14.6 million; and Karachi, 13.2 million. Of these, only Delhi and Mexico City are not littoral cities.

  30.This definition is similar in some respects to that used by the United States and British Commonwealth navies. It is adapted from the definition applied by the Australian Army’s Directorate of Future Land Warfare, where the author worked in 2003–5, in developing Australia’s future operational concepts for Manoeuvre Operations in the Littoral Environment and Complex Warfighting. For the equivalent U.S. Navy definition, see U.S. Department of the Navy, Naval Warfare, Naval Doctrine Publication 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Navy, 1994).

  31.United States Marine Corps, Task Force 58, “Execution 25 November to 25 December” (after-action review), Strategy Page, online at www.strategypage.com/articles/tf58/execution.asp.

  32.French Republic, Parliamentary Office for Scientific and Technical Assessment, The Pollution in Mediterranean: Current State and Looking Ahead to 2030, summary of the report by M. Roland Courteau, online at www.senat.fr/fileadmin/Fichiers/Images/opecst/quatre_pages_anglais/4p_mediterranee_anglais.pdf.

  33.Olivier Kramsch, “Towards a Mediterranean Scale of Governance: Twenty-First Century Urban Networks Across the ‘Inner Sea,’” in Barbara Hooper and Olivier Kramsch, eds., Cross-Border Governance in the European Union (London: Routledge, 2007), 200.

  34.Iginio Gagliardone and Nicole Stremlau, Digital Media, Conflict and Diasporas in the Horn of Africa (London: Mapping Digital Media Program of the Open Society Foundations), December 2011, 9–10.

  35.World Bank, Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011, quoted in Gagliardone and Stremlau, Digital Media, 12.

  36.Rasna Warah, Mohamud Dirios, and Ismail Osman, Mogadishu Then and Now: A Pictorial Tribute to Africa’s Most Wounded City (Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2012), 3.

  37.In fact, it’s worth speculating that there may be a critical mass for the size of a diaspora relative to the home population, a kind of quantum effect threshold, above which flows of money, information, and people suddenly jump to a much greater level and home populations and diaspora populations begin to move in a synchronized manner despite the geographical distance between them. Several researchers have examined this issue in passing, but it’s unclear how big a diaspora is needed to generate a critical mass of connectivity. Still, what is very clear is that there is a link between conflict at home and diaspora size, and that some populations—including Somalis, Tamils, Tunisians, Libyans, and perhaps Jamaicans, Haitians, and Filipinos—have reached this tipping point. See Dilip Ratha and Sonia Plaza, Harnessing Diasporas, International Monetary Fund, September 2009, online at www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/pdf/ratha.pdf. See also Yevgeny Kuznetsov, ed., Diaspora Networks and the International Migration of Skills (Washington, DC: World Bank Institute, 2006), and Rodel Rodis, “The Tipping Point of the Filipino Diaspora,” Global Nation Inquirer, September 23, 2011, online at http://globalnation.inquirer.net/13403/the-tipping-point-of-the-filipino-diaspora.

  38.See Nicholas Van Hear, Frank Pieke, and Steven Vertovec, The Contribution of UK-Based Diasporas to Development and Poverty Reduction, ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, April 2004, online at www.compas.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/files/People/staff_publications/VanHear/NVH1_DFID%20diaspora%20report.pdf. See also “Sri Lankan President Calls Influential Tamil Diaspora to Invest in Post-War Progress,” People’s Daily, November 30, 2011.

  39.See “UN Bans Trade in Charcoal from Somalia,” East African, February 25, 2012, online at www.hiiraan.com/news4/2012/feb/22927/un_bans_trade_in_charcoal_from_somalia.aspx.

  40.Sean Everton, Disrupting Dark Networks: Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences (London: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  41.See Gordon H. Hanson, “Regional Adjustment to Trade Liberalization,” Regional Science and Urban Economics 28 (1998): 419–44, quoted in Zhao Chen, Ming Lu, and Zheng Xu, “Agglomeration Shadow: A Non-Linear Core-Periphery Model of Urban Growth in China (1990–2006),” paper presented at Global Development Network 13th Annual Conference, June 16–18, 2012, online at http://cloud2.gdnet.org/~research_papers/Agglomeration%20shadow:%20A%20non-linear%20core–periphery%20model%20of%20urban%20growth%20in%20China%20(1990–2006).

  42.Josh Eells, “Chaosopolis: A Wild Week in Lagos,” Men’s Journal, May 2012, online at www.mensjournal.com/article/print-view/chaosopolis-20120504.

  43.Ibid.

  44.Ibid.

  45.See Asian Development Bank, Climate-Induced Migration in Asia and the Pacific, September 2011, online at http://beta.adb.org/features/climate-induced-migration-asia-and-pacific.

  46.Ibid.

  47.See Independent Evaluation Group, Facts and Figures on Natural Disasters (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006), online at www.worldbank.org/ieg/naturaldisasters/docs/natural_disasters_fact_sheet.pdf; see also PPRD South, Tackling Floods, the Most Common Natural Disaster in the Mediterranean, February 9, 2011, online at www.euromedcp.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=706%3Atackling-floods-the-most-frequent-natural-disaster-in-the-mediterranean&catid=199%3Ageneral-news&Itemid=881&lang=en, and Patrick Cronin and Nora Bensahel, America’s Civilian Operations Abroad: Assessing Past and Future Requirements (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2012), online at www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_AmericasCivilianOperationsAbroad_BensahelCronin_0.pdf.

  48.See T. B. C. Alavo, A. Z. Abagli, M. Accodji, and R. Djouaka, “Unplanned Urbanization Promotes the Proliferation of Disease Vector Mosquitoes,” Open Entomology Journal 4 (2010): 1–7.

  49.See Colleen Lau, “Urbanisation, Climate Change, and Leptospirosis: Environmental Drivers of Infectious Disease Emergence,” c
onference paper presented at Universitas 21 International Graduate Research Conference: Sustainable Cities for the Future, Melbourne and Brisbane, November 29–December 5, 2009.

  50.David M. Bell et al., “Pandemic Influenza as 21st Century Urban Public Health Crisis,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 15, no. 12 (December 2009): 1963–9.

  51.See N. Sarita Shah et al., “Worldwide Emergence of Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 13, no. 3 (March 2007): 380–87. See also Joshua M. Epstein et al., “Controlling Pandemic Flu: The Value of International Air Travel Restrictions,” PLOS One 2, no. 5 (2007): 401.

  52.Decker et al., “Energy and Material Flow Through the Urban Ecosystem,” 710.

  53.See Muhammad Hayat, “Fishing Capacity and Fisheries in Pakistan,” in S. Pascoe and D. Greboval, eds., Measuring Capacity in Fisheries, Food and Agriculture Organization , Fisheries Technical Paper no. 445, 2003, online at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/y4849e/y4849e00.pdf.

  54.Stephen Graham, “Urban Metabolism as Target: Contemporary War as Forced Demodernization,” in Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swingedouw, eds., In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism (London: Routledge, 2006), 236.

  55.See Dominic Wabala, “65 Criminal Gang Members Arrested in Nairobi Major Swoop,” Nairobi Star, March 23, 2012, online at http://allafrica.com/stories/201203231381.html; Kenfrey Kiberenge, “Saccos Bring Sanity to Public Transport,” Kenya Standard, May 5, 2012, online at www.standardmedia.co.ke/index.php/business/mag/radio-maisha/?articleID=2000057647&;pageNo=1; County Team, “Fears of Mungiki-Like Gangs Disrupt Transport Sector,” Kenya Standard, September 6, 2012, online at www.standardmedia.co.ke/index.php?articleID=2000065490&;story_title=Fears-of-Mungiki-like-gangs-disrupt-transport-sector.

  56.Mutisya and Yarime, “Understanding the Grassroots Dynamics of Slums,” 197–99.

  57.Christopher Eastwood, “Identifying Sustainable Water Supplies: A Preliminary Assessment of Sustainable Water from an Urban Metabolism Perspective,” master’s thesis, Q ueensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 2007, 5.

  58.Yan Han, Shi-guo Xu, and Xiang-zhou Xu, “Modeling Multisource Multiuser Water Resources Allocation,” Water Resource Management 22 (2008): 911–12.

  59.Decker et al., “Energy and Material Flow Through the Urban Ecosystem,” 697–700.

  60.Sheela Patel, founding director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers, Mumbai, interviewed by Gary Hustwit in the documentary film Urbanized, Plexifilm, New York, 2012.

  61.Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, “Conclusions: Governing Exclusion and Violence in Megacities,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, eds., Mega-Cities: The Politics of Urban Exclusion and Violence in the Global South (London: Zed Books, 2009), 174–75.

  62.Jamaican garrison communities such as Tivoli Gardens are discussed later in this book. See also “Witness Provides Compelling Account of Jamaican ‘Garrisons,’” Caribbean News Now, online at www.caribbeannewsnow.com/news/newspublish/home.print.php?news_id=11049.

  63.Widespread rioting and civil unrest in outlying and periurban areas struck Paris (and several other French cities) in 2005 and again in 2007 and 2010, while large-scale rioting and looting occurred in parts of London in 2011.

  64.See (among many other works) Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (New York: Verso, 2007); Stephen Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (New York: Verso, 2011); Diane E. Davis, Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Politics in Urban Spaces (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); and Saskia Sassen, Global Networks, Linked Cities (London: Routledge, 2002).

  65.The Australian Army published its operational concepts Manoeuvre Operations in the Littoral Environment and Complex Warfighting in 2002 and 2004, respectively, and the Royal Marines developed the Commando 21 concept in 2003. Like these military concept papers, the U.S. Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025 and the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Operating Environment 2010 discuss the implications of urbanized littoral areas on modern warfare. See Department of Defence (Australia), Future Warfighting Concept (Canberra: Headquarters Australian Defence Force 2002), online at www.defence.gov.au/publications/fwc.pdf; Australian Army, Complex Warfighting (Canberra: Australian Army Headquarters 2005), online at www.quantico.usmc.mil/download.aspx?Path=./Uploads/Files/SVG_complex_warfighting.pdf; United States Department of Defense, Joint Operating Environment 2010, online at www.fas.org/man/eprint/joe2010.pdf; and United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025 (Q uantico, VA: Headquarters USMC, 2009), online at www.onr.navy.mil/~/media/Files/About%20ONR/usmc_vision_strategy_2025_0809.ashx.

  66.For a useful review of the literature on this approach, see Elizabeth Rapoport, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Metabolism: A Review of the Literature,” University College London Environmental Institute Working Paper, October 27, 2011, online at www.ucl.ac.uk/environment-institute/forthcoming-events/urbanlitreview.

  67.Joel Tarr, “The Metabolism of the Industrial City: The Case of Pittsburgh,” Journal of Urban History 28, no. 5 (July 2002): 511.

  68.We should note that this is a contested approach that includes a range of perspectives. Some view biological systems as useful metaphors for the physical and sociopolitical dynamics of urban space, while others view the interdependent subsystems that overlap within this space as organic elements of a material flow system that is truly (not just metaphorically) biological.

  69.Tarr, “Metabolism of the Industrial City.”

  70.See John Bellamy Foster, “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundation for Environmental Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 2 (September 1999): 366–405.

  71.Ibid.; Abel Wolman, “The Metabolism of Cities,” Scientific American 213 (July-December 1965): 179–93.

  72.Rapoport, “Urban Metabolism,” 5.

  73.I am grateful to officials of the Colombian government for insights into the concept of “territorial logic,” which I extend in this context to the notion of “systems logic.” Author’s discussions with Colombian National Police and the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia, December 2011.

  74.David J. Kilcullen, “Countering Global Insurgency,” in Small Wars Journal, November 22, 2004, 22–23.

  75.See “Honduran City Is World Murder Capital; Juarez Drops for Second Year in a Row,” Fox News Latino, February 6, 2013.

  76.James Bargent, “Latin America Dominates World’s Most Dangerous Cities List,” Insight Crime, February 8, 2013, online at www.insightcrime.org/newsbriefs/latin-america-dominates-worlds-most-dangerous-cities-list.

  77.See Mark Kukis, “Is Baghdad Now Safer than New Orleans?” Time, May 1, 2009; Citizens Report, “All London Murders, 2006–2013,” online at www.citizensreportuk.org/reports/london-murders.html.

  78.This section draws on original research produced by a Caerus Associates field team led by Stacia George and Dr. Christopher Johnson, which conducted fieldwork in 2012–13 in San Pedro Sula. See Caerus Associates, “The City as a System: Understanding Illicit and Licit Networks in San Pedro Sula, Honduras,” Washington, DC, February 6, 2013.

  Chapter 2

  1.The following account draws on multiple sources, including contemporaneous media accounts, published analyses of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and testimony at the trials of the sole surviving attacker, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, and of David Coleman Headley (a Pakistani American allegedly involved in the support network for the attack).

  2.Testimony by Willi Brigitte, quoted in Sebastian Rotella, “On the Trail of Pakistani Terror Group’s Elusive Mastermind Behind the Mumbai Siege,” Washington Post, November 10, 2010.

  3.Saikat Datta, “Terror Colours, in Black and White: Outlook Accesses the Dossier India Has Sent to Pakistan and Its Unabridged Version That Proves the Pakistani Link,” in Outlook (India), January 19,
2009.

  4.Jedburgh Corporation, “Mumbai Attack Timeline and Order of Battle,” online at http://jedburgh-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/Mumbai%20Reconstruction.pdf.

  5.Sebastian Rotella, “Mumbai Case Offers Rare Picture of Ties Between Pakistan’s Intelligence Service, Militants,” ProPublica.org, May 2, 2011.

  6.“Mumbai Attacks 2008: ’40 Indians Involved in Terror Plot,’” One India News, July 2, 2012, online at http://news.oneindia.in/2012/07/02/mum-26–11–2008-attacks-40-indians-involved-terror-plot-1027835.html.

  7.“Serving Major Among 4 Pak Nationals Behind 2008 Mumbai Attacks: US Chargesheet,” Times of India, May 9, 2011.

  8.Gordon G. Chang, “India’s China Problem,” Forbes, August 14, 2009.

  9.The inclusion of these items of escape-and-evasion gear have led some to speculate that the raiding team intended to survive the attack and exfiltrate by blending in with the city afterward.

  10.Damien McElroy, “Mumbai Attacks: Terrorists Took Cocaine to Stay Awake During Assault,” Daily Telegraph, February 9, 2009.

  11.S. Ahmed Ali, “26/11: Kuber Skipper Didn’t Re[s]ist When Militants Used Ship,” Times of India, January 6, 2009, online at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009–01–06/mumbai/28005435_1_vinod-masani-kuber-amar-narayan.

  12.S. Ahmed Ali and Vijay V. Singh, “Terrorists Used Code Words to Evade Suspicion,” Times of India, December 6, 2008.

  13.In an uncharacteristic error, the LeT raiding party failed to sink the Kuber, which seems to have been their original intention. As a result the ship drifted, abandoned, until it was discovered along with Solanki’s body several days after the attack. A GPS unit and satellite phone on board provided valuable intelligence to Indian investigators, showing the team’s origin in Karachi, a fact later confirmed by Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist.