Self-Organized Criticality in Asymmetric Warfare

Two current conflicts, in Afghanistan and in Iraq were studied to identify a possibility of a critical behavior in an asymmetric conflict. The analysis was performed using temporal dependence of fatalities. The data included daily fatality information from the beginning of each of the conflicts until 31 December 2007. The results suggest that these examples of asymmetric, counter-insurgency warfare can possibly be characterized in terms of self-organized criticality (SOC). While SOC could be an attractor for such conflicts in general, not all asymmetric conflicts are actually at the point of criticality. The conflict in Afghanistan is an example of such a subcritical conflict. The conflict in Iraq, on the other hand is an example of an already critical system. The two types of conflict have in common the power-law dependence between the numbers of fatalities and the frequency of occurrences. However, while for a critical system the numbers of fatalities are correlated over time, for a subcritical system they are anti-correlated. From the point of view of counter-insurgency, the subcritical state is a preferred option. However, from the system point of view the two cases are just two different phases of the same type of a dynamical system.