| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The ongoing war in Afghanistan presents many questions for both scholars and policymakers. In particular, understanding insurgent military behavior generates considerable interest. Using a newly assembled daily, province-level data set, I begin to study the violence, focusing on the timing of US and allied fatalities in the war. I evaluate arguments commonly made about those elements favoring insurgent military success, proximity to resupply and difficult terrain, and find strong evidence supporting the first but less supporting the second as determinants of coalition fatalities. In addition, I find significant evidence linking factors unexamined in most civil war research, such as religious observance (the month of Ramadan) and warm weather, to these fatal events.
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