Publication

This article suggests that counter-insurgency (COIN), as a strategic and operational art to ‘bring order’ to a restive population, has always been a failed policy option. The problem is that a foreign country, committing itself to rebuild or reshape another country’s political and social dynamics is a futile exercise. The author argues that no modern developed state has ever ‘won’ a counter-insurgency war at a strategic level. The paper expects that the foreign intervention in Mali will follow this pattern.