Conflict Mitigation - “What Matters: Big data, small wars, local insights: Designing for development with conflict-affected communities” By David Kilcullen and Alexa Courtney

Comment:   This article serves as a mental tool to aid in the planning and engagement with various forms of conflict and fractured locations.  Whether one is dealing with criminal gangs of Los Angeles and Houston, the Drug Cartels of Mexico or other areas prone to various forms of low-intensity conflict/people wars in the Mid-East or Africa, it is the governments ability to effectively connect with its people that will increase the chances of securing a region.

While armies and security forces are good, real security comes from the people and their willingness and ability to work in concert with its government to achieve an acceptable form of stability.  Additionally, the population should be leveraged for purposes of developing an enhanced situational awareness regarding events on the ground.  The excerpt and link to the full article seem to reinforce this and is very much worth reading.

David Kilcullen is a world respected authority on conflict and conflict mitigation. If you ever have the opportunities to attend any of his speaking engagements, you will surely not be wasting time.  I personally consider him the modern day David Galula 2.0.

 

Excerpt: 

Problem solvers working amid the overlapping challenges posed by conflict—resource inequity, poverty, fragile governance, environmental damage, and disease—need imagination and integrative thinking skills. Development professionals, designers, and communities need to be the joint architects of social, economic, and political change. A design approach to development emphasizes communities’ experience and unique perspectives, informed by rigorous analysis.

Designing for development in this way, truly putting local people at the center of a design process that seeks to optimize their experience, we believe, is the best path to overcoming the threat that conflict poses to social, political, and economic development.

Source/Link to full article:  What Matters: Big data, small wars, local insights: Designing for development with conflict-affected communities