Asfandyar Mir

Asfandyar Mir is a 2017-2018 CISAC Predoctoral fellow and a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago. His dissertation examines the variation in counterinsurgency effectiveness, explicating coercive capabilities which lead to effectiveness and the politico-organizational sources of the relevant capabilities. The dissertation integrates research on insurgent organizations, military organizational pathologies, politics of state-building, and repression to build a theory of counterinsurgency effectiveness. The dissertation provides detailed evidence - collected through field work and archival sources - from conflicts in South Asian and colonial contexts, specifically British Kenya, French Algeria, India, and Pakistan. Related papers examine the effectiveness of the US counterterrorism campaigns, with a focus on the US drone deployment in Pakistan. In other work, Asfandyar examines sources of disorder in modern states, methods for violence data collection, and international politics of war-torn regional neighborhoods.