Counterinsurgency Tactics

I have recently been seeing journalists refer to a deteriorating security environment in Afghanistan. It’s a mischaracterization. Theaters in both Iraq and Afghanistan are in fact seeing marked reversals in insurgent capabilities. The classic successful insurgency, ala Mao’s 1949 takeover in China, begins with a small, poorly armed, organized, and equipped group of rebels who start out with a campaign of terrorism to intimidate the population into supporting them. If it works they slowly escalate into a more sophisticated force that can seize and hold territory, eventually evolving into an army able to engage in conventional maneuver warfare. What we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan is the reverse of that, with insurgents no longer able to conduct normal military operations and resorting almost exclusively to suicide bombing and random acts of terror. The trick now is to separate them from the population, in Lyndon Johnson’s hackneyed phrase to “win the hearts and minds of the people”, principally by providing them with security. That’s always the key to ultimate success. It is a principle well understood by American military officers at least since the Indian Wars. The 64 dollar question is just how you go about doing that. Tactics employed against 19th century Indians would be anathema to a twenty first century American public. There are more civilized models from 1950s British operations in Malaysia and French in Algeria but both Britain and France were colonial powers at the time. Americans don’t want to be seen as occupiers let alone colonists and we can neither order forced relocations as the British did, nor used coercive interrogation techniques on civilians as the French did. There is one idea to borrow from both British and French however and it figures prominently in General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency manual. You disperse your troops among the people, get to know them, and give them the local security they need. It is often said that there is no military solution to an insurgency and there is an element of truth to that. Troops ultimately have to become more like policemen than soldiers. There are a couple of flies in the ointment though. Petraeus calculates a requirement of 25 counterinsurgents per 1000 population. That’s a lot of troops and police and after four years in Iraq (five in Afghanistan) we are only just now reaching those force levels. Another problem is that troops need security too. Dispersed troops are vulnerable to an enemy who can selectively attack in force. That was the American problem in Vietnam. When I was there in 1965 we had to be constantly on the move, never staying two nights in the same place unless we could defend it in force. If we did, North Vietnamese regulars could scout our positions from secure sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia and attack in overwhelming numbers. There is a moral issue too if you are a foreign power trying to suppress a domestic rebellion. To be successful you must solicit local support. If you fail your supporters will pay a heavy price. You must be able to assure them that you are there for the long haul, a serious concern for our current allies in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end it was the cause of French failure in Algeria, and American failure in Vietnam. French troops could deal with rebels. They could not deal with French public opinion and the anti-colonial tide of history. American troops could win every battle on the ground in Vietnam but still lose in Washington. Those are the real lessons to be learned. They will determine the outcome of current and future conflicts.