Civilian Deaths in City Fights Embolden Insurgencies

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a Senior Fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Felbab-Brown is the author of the forthcoming books, The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It and Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder (with Harold Trinkunas and Shadi Hamid).

Urban environments pose special challenges for counterinsurgency efforts as well as for complex operations against criminal gangs and drug trafficking operations. In Brazil, for example, the counter-crime operations have come to resemble counterinsurgency operations.

Efforts to oust insurgents from urban spaces come with particularly complex difficulties.

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