Everyone talks about the difference between counter terrorism approach and counter insurgency approach to problems in Afghanistan, mostly based upon the myths produced in Iraq with the application of the US Army and USMC new Field Manual of Counter Insurgency Warfare (COIN Manual). The number of people who have read this manual is exceedingly small in relation to the number of people who quote it. Here is some information about counter insurgency warfare.
The Counter Insurgency guide, assembled under the direction of General Petraeus, came out two years ago with much fanfare. I read it at the time while I was deployed in Iraq, 2007-2008, as part of the Surge. I’ve thought about it since as it pertains to Iraq and now to Afghanistan and wanted to share a few thoughts with you.
One of the coproducers of this guide is Ltc John Nagle, USA (Ret.) who also wrote a book entitled "Eating Soup with a Knife" which is a quote from T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and comes from his "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" which is the story of the insurgency band of Arab fighters he advised/led in WW I with support from British forces in Egypt in their war against the Turks. Lawrence implies that the traditional Turk Army forces opposing the insurgent Arabs makes as much sense as "eating soup with a knife." In Iraq in 2007, I was eating at the DEFAC with some Christian Assyrian translators who worked for the US Army and at the end of the usual meal we’d go and get a bowl of lentil soup and a bowl of rice. Back at our table we’d combine the two and lo and behold, it was so thick you could eat this soup with a knife or with chop sticks if you so desired. Showing once again that truth is a relative thing in Arabia.
With this background in mind, let me add some thoughts about counter insurgency warfare. This is very current as the debate in the punditocracy of the US today weighs counter terrorism warfare against counter insurgency warfare. Although President Bush made a convincing case for counter terrorism action to be of a military nature, as opposed to a police-judicial response after 9/11, I was wrong at the time and have come to change my mind about the wisdom of this decision. So, I’m not even sure if the question of counter terrorism versus counter insurgency is even valid. However, counterinsurgency warfare is based upon ways to combat a local or regional insurgency movement which is best described in the writings of Mao Tsung and Che Guevera in their books on Guerilla Warfare. It calls the populace the sea and the guerilla or insurgent fighters the fish who swim amidst the populace. Counter insurgency warfare as described in the Army/Marine Corps Manual (UC Press) calls for the placement of many US soldiers in small groups to provide security to the populace, ‘win the hearts and minds" of the populace, and go on to support the host national government, provide more security, and establish tremendous amounts of Information Operations (IO’s) and then provide for nation rebuilding including the power grid, schools, health, etc. Parenthetically, today these Information Operations are aimed at the people of the USA, as much as the people in the nation beset by insurgents, to maintain support for what is always a long and costly operation.Information Operations used to be called propaganda.
The actual estimate number of troops for counter insurgency warfare in the new COIN manual is about one troop per 20 of the populace. This could call for 400,000 US troops in Afghanistan. This isn’t going to happen. It also called for at least 400,000 troops in Iraq which never happened either.
I would also offer that whenever the "win the hearts and minds’ argument is advanced, the war has already been lost. Do you want someone to win your heart and your mind? Sounds like a form of total enslavement to me. This cliché just has to be dropped from the US lexicon!
In Iraq, in conjunction with a spontaneous "Iraq Awakening Movement which involved Sunni tribal leaders who had personal reasons (sexual exploitatin of their daughters) to oppose Al Quaida of Iraq (AQI) along with a splurge of dollars in addition to a surge of troops, local security was improved at least in the short and intermediate period. This allowed US troops to receive more intelligence regarding who and where the ‘bad guys’ were. We can only hope that this information could be vetted and that the Special Forces and CIA assassination teams actually killed bad guys and not just enemies of local Sheiks. Those who weren’t killed were incarcerated. The US prison population of Basra eventually approached 30,000 inmates. Later, in an information operation, it was painted as a positive as we turned these people over to Iraqis. However, the Iraqis don’t have the infrastructure to deal with so many prisoners and one can only imagine either the executions or human rights violations that may have occurred by this transfer.
Okay, so we provided more local security, killed or locked up lots of bad guys. We did some ‘nation building’ though the return on investment (ROI) of these projects remains questionable, particularly given the level of financial corruption in Iraq. And there continued to be tremendous Information Operations, both in Iraq and in the USA regarding the success of counter insurgency warfare. A close reading of the counter insurgency warfare manual and some thought will reveal this manual to be a blueprint for the establishment of a police state as a means of providing security. And that is assuming there is a legitimate local host government to support. Something lacking both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Gil Meron in his monograph "How Democracies Lose Small Wars" (Cornell University Press) reviews the losses in Viet Nam (USA), Lebanon (Israel), and Algeria (France). He concludes that in these small wars, with under commitment and marginal home support, that increasing levels of violence became necessary to advance objectives. However, popular support back home didn’t support the escalating violence, so the efforts became more and more covert. This covert use of violence goes against the grain of a democratic society which then begins to reject the covert war as a way to preserve democratic principles at home. Eventually, this leads to rejection of the war and withdrawal.
If establishment of a police state is equivalent to escalating violence, then the US public will not long support a costly and bloody war in support of questionable objectives in Iraq or in Afghanistan. The counter insurgency approach will not be successful but will require tremendous amounts of personnel and money that will cripple US defense elsewhere in the world and be a failure in the Islamic world.
Counter insurgency warfare is not the answer in Iraq and will not be the answer in Afghanistan.