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A study examining air strikes in Afghanistan found that they encouraged insurgency rather than inhibiting it.

In other theatres of war, the effectiveness of aerial bombardment has been questioned.

Both sides may be fighting for reputation, but there is asymmetry over how this can be achieved.

Jason Lyall is the James Wright Chair in Transnational Studies and associate professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College; he also directs the Political Violence FieldLab at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth.

In a recent research paper entitled "Bombing to Lose? Airpower, Civilian Casualties, and the Dynamics of Violence in Counterinsurgency Wars," he analysed U.S. Air Force (USAF) data and open-source satellite imagery to detail nearly 23,000 air operations in Afghanistan (2006-2011).

Satellite imagery was employed to identify the targets of these airstrikes. These air operations include airstrikes and "shows of force"—simulated bombing runs where no weapons are released

Did bombing the Taliban work?

His study finds that U.S. bombing airstrikes in Afghanistan are strongly associated with net increases in the mean number of post-strike Taliban insurgent attacks in targeted villages relative to comparison villages that were not bombed.

In other words, bombing a village tended to produce an armed response subsequently from the Taliban, whereas not bombing a village didn’t.

These increases in rebel attacks were found to be fairly long-lived, lasting at least 120 days after an air operation.

A new psychological theory explains the ineffectiveness of air strikes

The study found that the Taliban respond in equal measure to airstrikes that do, and do not, kill civilians. Lyall posits a new theory to explain this paradoxical finding, that bombing more seems to strengthen an insurgency, and even nonlethal "shows of force" also produce this outcome.

He proposes what some might see as a largely psychological theory, which emphasises the role of reputational psychology.

He argues that given their destructive and highly visible nature, airstrikes motivate insurgents to act to maintain reputations for resolve in the eyes of local populations, by striking back at the bombing forces. Failure to do so may embolden otherwise neutral civilians to withhold support or even defect from the insurgency.

Lack of local support would challenge a rebel army's ability to maintain control and, instead, could possibly give rise to armed counter-mobilization.

So bombing campaigns from the sky become about a psychological battle to hold or improve the various aspects of the standing of the insurgents in the eyes of the local community.

Why bombing an insurgency is not so easy

Lyall also points out that insurgents typically lack the key assets—capital, complex cities, infrastructure, and fielded forces—that must be threatened or targeted if airpower is to have a chance at being successful. Even simply identifying insurgents can be difficult if they blend within the population.

In his investigation of the Afghan war, he found that at least 1,478 compounds were struck, along with 2,911 farms, 418 buildings, and 882 road segments.

Revenge motives, for why air strikes just solidify opposition in the bombed population, for example, are tied most closely with residential property damage, which directly impacts individuals and doesn't lead to support for the side that was responsible.

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Damage to farms or infrastructure, such as roads, may lead to economic misery in the form of lost livelihoods and the introduction of new hazards like unexploded ordinance in fields and streets, while freedom of movement is restricted. These factors encourage insurgency participation by destroying outside options, as the economy falls apart, while heightening the lure of a steady (rebel) paycheck.

Did bombing campaigns in the recent past work?

Lyall points out that the two most severe bombing campaigns in history—the United States in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan—illustrate how a resistance can absorb colossal losses yet still continue to resist.

Previous research has also emphasized the counterproductive nature of airpower in counterinsurgency wars. No matter how precise, airstrikes will kill civilians, shifting support away from those conducting the bombing campaign, while creating new grievances that fuel insurgent recruitment.

Lyall referenced a detailed study of U.S. bombing of South Vietnam, where airstrikes were associated with a shift of hamlets from pro-government to pro-Vietcong control from July to December 1969.

That study supports the claim that civilian casualties lead populations to shift their allegiance away from the perpetrator, fueling further violence. Put simply, airpower may be far too blunt an instrument to wield effectively in wars over control of a country where there is a surging rebellion.

Lyall argues that as power imbalances increase, the incentives for investing in one’s reputation for resilience, even if it involves costly war-fighting, actually increase. This is because the reputational returns for inflicting harm accrue disproportionately to the weaker side.

If everyone expects aerial bombardment to be a wipe-out, then the longer those bombed hold out and instead demonstrate they can still respond, the more it is those doing the bombing come under psychological pressure to "show results" or stop.

Resistance to aerial bombardment could be about fighting back to show that you are still here despite the bombing, more than it is about inflicting significant damage.

The predicament is captured most succinctly by the American economist and game theory strategist Thomas Schelling, who once declared, "Face is one of the few things worth fighting for."

Both sides may be fighting for reputation, whereas one side has to merely survive to preserve its reputation, in which case retaliation is more about signalling we are still here, as opposed to having to actually cause the enemy that much harm.

War-fighting, according to this psychological model, becomes about absorbing and then retaliating, and this offers a powerful psychological problem for those performing the bombing, moving them toward a position that a political solution is preferable to continuing a vain, increasingly unsuccessful battle.

Lyall concludes his investigation by suggesting that his results drive home the conclusion that airstrikes had counterproductive effects on insurgent violence in Afghanistan.

Fighting a war or building a peace?

One key problem would appear to be how terror from the sky creates a variety of conditions that may drive the local population more into the arms of the rebellion, but also that aerial bombing can’t just occur in a vacuum where the local population is not offered a more sustainable, positive alternative option to the resistance.

It would appear that aerial bombardment campaigns in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq didn't work as expected, maybe partly because the bombed civilian population did not welcome their bombers with open arms and adopt their candidates for an alternative leadership. The repeated errors suggest a kind of deep psychological blind spot in the side lobbing the bombs, which is not to seek to see how others view them, which is very different from how they view themselves.

In her reflections on violence, Hannah Arendt famously remarked that “violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”

Jason Lyall. Bombing to Lose? Airpower, Civilian Casualties, and the Dynamics of Violence in Counterinsurgency Wars. 6 Feb 2018 Dartmouth College. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2422170

Matthew Adam Kocher, Thomas B. Pepinsky, Stathis N. Kalyvas. Aerial Bombing and Counterinsurgency in the Vietnam War First published: 01 February 2011. American Journal of Political Science https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00498.x Volume 55, Issue2, April 2011: Pages 201-218.

Hannah Arendt. On Violence.

Thomas Schelling. Arms and Influence. 1966.

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