About the Author:  Bill leads the FortiusOne data analysis team. You can follow him on twitter @billfgreer. Read more from this author

Key Finding #7
Violent attacks in Iraq have been geographically concentrated and stable over time but are far more dispersed and locationally erratic in Afghanistan. The shape file, which was downloaded from Finder!, was used to run spatial statistics on the trends, particularly the distribution of the attacks in each country. To display and share the results, we exported shape files from ArcMap and then uploaded them into Finder! to then be displayed using Maker!.
The figures below show the spatial means of fatalities for Iraq and Afghanistan, calculated monthly, going back a year from March, 2008. Orange indicates fatalities from all violence and blue are fatalities from IED attacks. Spatial means show the spatial central tendency of a set of points weighted by a specific feature, in this case that is the average geographic center of attacks weighted by fatalities. A comparison of the means across different periods provides information on how the distribution of attacks may have shifted over time. The map of Iraq shows that the centrality of fatalities has remained relatively constant over the last year (the average locations are tightly clustered) with a few exceptions.

In Afghanistan, the spatial means for both fatalities and IED fatalities show more movement. The attack patterns in Afghanistan are far more erratic and geographically dispersed as shown in the map below.

Figure 16: Calculated Spatial Means in Iraq and Afghanistan

The map below also shows the spatial means, however, the size of the circles represent points in time: the largest circles are post-surge and the smaller ones are pre-surge attacks.

Figure 17 and 18: Calculated Spatial Means: Fatalities from Violence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The map illustrates an outward movement of attacks. In Afghanistan, the population is located around the periphery of the country since the interior is mountaneous. In Iraq the map shows a much tighter clustering of attacks with a slight shift north since the surge. Spatial standard deviations for the monthly fatalities and IED fatalities were also calculated. These statistics indicates the degree of spatial dispersion of the attacks weighted by some feature such as the number of fatalities or number of wounded. On the chart, the higher standard deviation score indicates that attacks are more spatially dispersed. With the exception of October, 2007 in Afghanistan, the spatial variation of fatalities has remained relatively constant in both countries and in terms of both fatalities and IED-related fatalities. Although, in comparison to Afghanistan, fatalities have been more geographically concentrated in Iraq. The statistics show that attacks are roughly twice as dispersed in Afghanistan as in Iraq—again reinforcing the different pattern of attacks being seen in Afghanistan.

Figure 19: Spatial Standard Deviations: Iraq vs. Afghanistan

Another method for examining the data is to map the spatial standard deviation ellipses for each month in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On both maps the blue ellipses reflect total fatalities and the yellow reflect IED fatalities. In both countries, IED attacks show a similar pattern to the overall pattern of violent attacks in the region. Although in both cases IED attacks are slightly more concentrated than violent attacks in general.

Figure 20: Spatial Dispersion of Fatalities in Afghanistan

Figure 21: Spatial Dispersion of Fatalities in Iraq

The more narrow ellipses in Iraq illustrate that the attacks are more concentrated in a southeast to northwest direction. The wider ellipses in Afghanistan indicate more dispersion and are located in a southwest to northeast direction.

In conclusion, the analysis shows a much different pattern of attack in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Pundits have pointed to the clear and rebuild strategy, used successfully in Iraq, for reducing violence in Afghanistan. In Iraq “First, US and Iraqi security forces project into an area and provide initial security, then locals are recruited into auxiliary security forces, and reconstruction and aid projects quickly follow,which encourage the population to engage with security forces for a new tier of security.” This strategy was systematically used to secure neighborhoods, sometimes on a block by block basis. Since the geographic pattern of attacks in Iraq was very consistent, it makes sense that this strategy would work well. The areas of violence were well understood and could be rooted out in a systematic way. The evidence produced by the analysis of Afghani attacks shows that the same strategy would be challenging since attacks are dispersed and there is not a stable pattern of violence. This means forces could spend a large amount of time securing neighborhoods where there were no enemy forces or potentially future attacks. This could further alienate the local population.

Datasets:
Spatial Mean, Fatalities in Iraq
Spatial Mean, Fatalities in Afghanistan
Spatial Mean, Fatalities from IED attacks in Iraq
Spatial Mean, Fatalities from IED attacks in Afghanistan

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