Successful and Less Successful Interventions: Stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan 1 D AVID R OMANO AND B RIAN C ALFANO Missouri State University AND R OBERT P HELPS Rhodes College The US troop surge and awakening movements are the two factors most often associated with the decrease of violence in Iraq after 2006. However, these policies, including a distinction between the Anbar Awakening and later Sons of Iraq (SOI) program, did not occur simultaneously. To date, it also has not been made clear whether the surge, Anbar Awakening, and/or SOI deserve credit as the intervention responsible for improving security conditions in Iraq. Hence, we compare the relative effects of these three interventions using Poisson autoregression models for interrupted time series to assess which policy reduced civilian and Coalition troop casualties in Iraq between 2004 and 2011. We find clear evidence that the non-Anbar SOI rather than the troop surge reduced casualty rates in Iraq, though this effect distinction has not been made salient in policy circles, where the conventional wisdom of a combined effect for the surge and awakening councils persists. Given this, the same kind of “surge and local militia allies” strategy held significant appeal for NATO strategists in Afghanistan. Yet for reasons we consider in the second portion of this article, a number of more challenging factors bedeviled counterinsurgency there. Keywords: Iraq, Afghanistan, counterinsurgency, insurgency, military science A steady decrease in insurgent activity and lethal attacks occurred in Iraq between June 2007 and early 2009. Determining the factor (or factors) contributing to this apparent counterinsurgency success has been at the center of a highly politicized debate. Though numerous variables were “in play,” the Coalition troop surge, the al-Anbar “awakening” councils (which germinated in 2005, and became fully operational in 2006), and the follow-on SOI program have received the greatest attention as interventions against the insurgency (Kilcullen 2007; Biddle 2008; Fishman 2009; McCary 2009; Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro 2012). The surge refers specifically to the additional infantry brigades sent to various provinces beginning in January 2007 (including the extension of tours of duty in Anbar province). The SOI was a nationwide 1 The authors would like to thank Saad Mazhar, Michael Edwards, Keith Bachman, Lucy Brown, and Aaron Kruse for research assistance in preparing this article. Romano, David, Brian Calfano, and Robert Phelps. (2013) Successful and Less Successful Interventions: Stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan. International Studies Perspectives, doi: 10.1111/insp.12067 Ó 2013 International Studies Association International Studies Perspectives (2013), 1–18.