This is the final blog post in our eight part series on violence in Iraq and Afghanistan before and after the military surge. We have discussed our seven key findings in great detail and provided our in depth analysis and the raw data for our analysis on Both Finder! and Maker!. We welcome anyone else to use this data or any other data to continue to look into various aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. GIS Professionals, Neo-Geographers, and Spreadsheet Jockeys can all work together using publicly available data to do high-end analysis using GeoCommons, and we hope you do.

Here are abstracts of our key findings with links to the more detailed blog posts:

1. There has been a shift in violence from Iraq to Afghanistan. When all events of violence were tabulated there was a 13% increase in violence (attacks) in Afghanistan and 23% decrease in violence (attacks) in Iraq between the pre and post surge time periods. Blog Post Here.


2. When the total violence is examined, Afghanistan’s percentage share of violence has increased from 12% to 17% between the pre and post surge time periods. Blog Post Here

3. While there has been a shift in percent of change from Iraq to Afghanistan, the total violence in Afghanistan is dwarfed by Iraq. Since the surge, total violence in Iraq is equal to 5,465 attacks while Afghanistan’s is considerably less with 1,104 attacks. Blog Post Here

4. From the beginning of 2005 through to the end of the 1st quarter of 2008, the percentage of total attacks that were improvised explosive device (IED) related has increased by 13.19 % in Afghanistan, and 14.75% in Iraq. The pre-surge average for percentage of total attacks that were IED related in Afghanistan was 18.81% and 35.66% in Iraq. Post-surge averages show that 23.76% of attacks in Afghanistan were IED attacks and 41.59% of attacks in Iraq were IED attacks. Both countries are favoring IED attacks over other types, such as suicide bombing and assassinations. However, there has been a significant decrease in suicide bombings in Iraq since the surge but an increase in Afghanistan. This could indicate a move of more radical elements from Iraq to Afghanistan. Blog Post Here

5. From January of 2005 to March of 2008, there was a decrease in reported attacks on energy infrastructure by %70, although during the same time period the total number of attacks increased by %40. Blog Post Here

6. The overall trend of violence in Iraq has been moving gradually east towards the Iranian border. In Afghanistan there has been no consistent pattern or shift in violent attacks. Blog Post Here

7. Violent attacks in Iraq have been geographically concentrated and consistent over time, but attacks in Afghanistan are far more dispersed and locationally erratic. This could mean that the same strategy of hold and clear hostile territory by systematic progression, might not work in Afghanistan where attack patterns are not stable over time but spatially volatile. Blog Post Here

For Access to our public datasets in Finder! On Iraq, Click Here
For Access to our pulic datasets in Finder! on Afghanistan, Click Here
To view the maps that have been created on Iraq, Click Here
To view the maps that have been created on Afghanistan, Click Here

To get a sense of how attacks played out week by week, we used a time-stamped kml file in Google Earth. The change in the color of the points roughly indicates pre and post “surge” (early may 2007, in this case).

Check out the screen shots:

Attacks tend to concentrate in a few areas. In order to make sure all of them showed up, some points were pushed out just slightly from the point to which they were geocoded.

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