Evaluating Sunni Participation in an Election in a Representative Iraqi Town

摘要

What we once thought of as purely civilian considerations are today increasingly significant matters to international peace and security. Conflicts within states and urban encounters make civilian considerations particularly troublesome for military forces sent to stabilize that country. Stability operations are an application of military power to influence the political and civilian environment. Often these take the specific form of peacekeeping or Peace Support Operations (PSO). PSO are military operations to support, provide for, and sustain a long-term political settlement. PSO and conventional war have different characteristics. It is possible to generalize the main purpose of conventional war as 'defeat the enemy,' whereas peacekeeping attempts to 'win the peace.' At the tactical level, some of the goals of peacekeeping missions are to help and protect civilians, avoid violence and escalation, and ensure the safety of the public. The peace support operation examined in this thesis is the safeguarding of elections. The operation is investigated using an agent-based model called PAX. The election is held in an Iraqi town that is inhabited mostly by one ethnic group. There are Peace Support Units (PSUs) assigned to provide security and prevent escalations before, during, and after the election. Because of high security precautions, terrorist attacks within stations are unlikely but still possible. However, there are some disturbers whose intentions are to scare and threaten voters. The questions this research aims to answer are as follows: Does the number of civilians in the theatre make any difference in the outcomes; Does the ratio of disturbers to voters have any impact on the outcomes; and What is the impact of duty posts on the security of PSU soldiers and the outcomes of the election. The study focuses primarily on the impacts of instituting different sets of rules of engagement (ROE) for PSUs in an election in an Iraqi town.