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It is often claimed that local ‘support’ is a critical asset during insurgent-COIN campaigns. Below this apparent consensus, however, authorities such as Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ and Mao refer primarily to voluntary preferences (i.e. ‘attitudinal support’), on the usually implicit assumption that this asset delivers sufficient tangible benefits (i.e. ‘collaboration’ or ‘behavioural support’) to the belligerents in question. In contrast, the likes of Kalyvas and Kilcullen focus directly upon behavioural support, placing emphasis upon the role of control and authority. Taking issue with both of these stances, a core point of this paper is that the drivers of collaboration are diverse, with the role of attitudinal support varying substantially between and within cases. Furthermore, the above authorities are all equally guilty of overlooking that the strength of this relationship also depends upon the form of collaboration in question. For instance, while insurgents may be able to coerce food from a population, their ability to gain information upon the whereabouts of COIN forces is likely to depend to a greater extent upon supportive attitudes. Thus, it is necessary to focus research upon attitudinal and behavioral support as two distinct, but interrelated, assets. Rather than representing academic navel-gazing, the insights from such investigations have key implications for policy, determining the extent to which COIN forces should privilege efforts to undermine sympathy for the insurgents, provide security to coerced populations, target insurgent channels of funding, and so on, within each specific environment in question.

The Importance of Conceptual Clarity

It is frequently asserted that local support is a critical asset during insurgent-counterinsurgent (COIN) campaigns, but, as expressed by Stathis Kalyvas, ‘below this unanimity lies extreme confusion, for there are two very different ways of thinking about support.’[1] Specifically, the term may be used to refer to voluntary preferences gained from the community (subsequently referred to as ‘attitudinal support’), or actions and inactions that provide tangible benefits to specific belligerents (subsequently referred to as ‘behavioural support’ or ‘collaboration’). The latter encompasses the supply of various goods (food, clothing, finances, and so on), and services (from provisions of shelter and information, up to and including enlistment).[2] It is possible, or even common, for individuals to provide behavioral support to multiple belligerents almost simultaneously.

‘[Guerrillas] must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy.’ (T. E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia’)

‘Because guerrilla warfare basically derives from the masses and is supported by them, it can neither exist nor flourish if it separates itself from their sympathies and cooperation.’ (Mao Tse-tung)

‘The guerrilla’s major asset is non-military and without it he is helpless: he must have the sympathy and support, active and passive, of the local population. Any Robin Hood who loses it is dead, and so is any guerrilla.’ (Eric Hobsbawm)

Box 1: Accounts privileging attitudinal support[3]

A number of prominent academics and practitioners have stressed the need for insurgents and COIN forces to obtain attitudinal support on the often implicit assumption that behavioral support is largely driven by attitudes that are sympathetic, or, at least, non-hostile (see Box 1). In contrast, other authorities (see Box 2) focus directly upon collaboration through emphasizing the extent to which behavioral support may be gained from unsympathetic or even hostile populations, often highlighting the role of authority and coercion. Taking issue with both of these stances, a core point of this paper is that the drivers of collaboration are diverse, and that the role played by attitudinal support varies significantly between and within cases. Furthermore, these authorities are all equally guilty of overlooking that the strength of this relationship also depends upon the form of collaboration in question. As noted by Elisabeth Jean Wood regarding the case of El Salvador, for instance, ‘sustained flows of high-quality information are much more difficult to extract coercively than tortillas or water,’[4] suggesting that attitudinal support is less critical for the latter.

‘Emphasis should be placed upon behavior, rather than attitudes and sympathies. Attitudes, in the sense of preferences, affect behavior but are not identical with it; nor in most cases are they the primary influence on it.’ (Nathan Leites & Charles Wolf Jr.)

‘Contrary to a widespread perception that irregular wars are merely contests for ‘hearts and minds’, they can be seen primarily as a competition for territorial control, where violence is used to challenge and to create order. To be sure, both incumbents and insurgent actors must generate popular ‘collaboration’ and deter ‘defection’. However, the extent of collaboration they can achieve hinges largely on the degree of control they are able to exercise.’ (Stathis Kalyvas & Mathew Kocher)

‘Field experience in both Afghanistan and Iraq … have shown that insurgent intimidation easily overcomes any residual gratitude effect, while historical studies have shown that in civil wars and insurgencies, popular support tends to accrue to locally powerful actors rather than to those actors the population sees as more congenial: the more organized, locally present, and better armed a group is, the more likely it is to be able to enforce a system of rules and sanctions.’ (David Kilcullen)

Box 2: Accounts privileging behavioural support[5]

Rather than representing academic navel-gazing, the insights from research into the relationship between these two forms of support have significant COIN policy implications. For instance, if a given population is sympathetic towards an insurgent organization, and individuals collaborate largely to gain status, respect and honor from the community, then the primary COIN focus must be upon undermining this attitudinal support. However, if it is found that insurgents tend to coerce behavioral support from a specific group, provision of security will also be of key importance. Alternatively, in locations where individuals are often enticed to collaborate through material incentives (e.g. payments for IED emplacements, salaries for cadre, and so on), specific efforts must be made to cut incoming insurgent finances, and livelihood initiatives should simultaneously be prioritized. Much of the evidence cited in this paper is drawn from a specifically designed field research program undertaken by the author into the relationship between attitudinal and behavioural support during the ‘People’s War’ in Nepal,[6] with secondary evidence gained from locations as distinct as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Peru.

How Insurgents Generate Attitudinal Support

With insurgent approaches to gaining attitudinal support varying considerably between and within cases, the purpose of this first section is to briefly review a limited number of frequently reoccurring themes. The focus is primarily upon support for insurgents, rather than COIN forces, as the bulk of the empirical evidence lies with the former. However, many of the underlying principles are the same, for instance, with the insurgents and COIN forces equally capable of losing attitudinal support through the use of excessive force, with the Iraqi Al Qa’ida franchise and various instances of COIN ‘collateral damage’ (that despicable term) in Afghanistan coming readily to mind. Sympathy for the insurgents is often driven by a range of ‘structural’ factors (i.e. ones that can loosely be considered to be beyond the immediate control of the belligerent actors involved), such as poverty, inequality between religious, ethnic, tribal or clan groups, economic crises, landholding patterns, a lack of political ‘voice’, urbanization, ‘youth bulges’, and so on. While such factors are indisputably critical, they can only ever provide a partial explanation, and a specific focus must also be placed upon how insurgents successfully channel the associated grievances.

Many insurgent groups gain considerable attitudinal support through what amounts to alternative governance in locations where the state has limited presence. Numerous organizations provide local justice, for instance, and while such systems are invariably grounded on the specific worldview of the group in question, they often serve to generate support from certain sectors through being more accessible, more efficient, less expensive, and often less corrupt than state provisions. In the case of Peru, for instance, authorities maintain that this alternative justice ‘gave a certain legitimacy’ to the Shining Path, provoked ‘a certain diffuse sympathy,’ and was ‘viewed positively by the majority.’[7] Many insurgents also deliver welfare and development to local populations. For instance, David Kilcullen notes that Hezbollah has ‘charities that will help you if you are poor, and they can get you a job, and teach your children in theirs schools, and treat you the in their hospital if you are sick.’[8] Similarly, while much media attention focuses upon the violence perpetrated by Hamas, prior to their 2006 election victory it is reported that most of their resources were channeled towards ‘the social and welfare programs that the movement provides to the Palestinians.’[9]

Attitudinal support may also be gained if the violence perpetrated by the insurgents, against repressive state forces, members of other religious or ethnic groups, local ‘exploitative’ elites, and so on, provides a sense of retribution. Commenting upon the Philippine case, for instance, Richard Kessler claims that a critical strength of the New People’s Army was ‘in its ability to carry out carefully chosen assassinations, which, until 1985, won it considerable support.’[10] In contrast, however, various respondents in Nepal asserted that only a fraction of the populace supported similar violence against the targeted ‘enemies of the people’. Not all attitudinal support is generated through actions, however, in the sense that rhetoric alone often plays a prominent role. For instance, the Maoists were viewed in a positive light by many through being the most prominent advocates of republicanism, particularly towards the latter stages of their conflict as palace rule became increasingly dictatorial and repressive. Anti-US rhetoric has also often played an important role, in cases as distinct as Nepal, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

How Insurgents Generate Behavioural Support

In shifting the attention from attitudinal support to collaboration it is worth reiterating the key point that the extent to which the latter is driven by the former is contested, with authorities such as Lawrence and Mao implicitly disagreeing with Kalyvas and Kilcullen.[11] Attributing importance to the drivers of behavioral support is a complex task, and it is necessary to draw insight from rational choice theory (RCT). At the center of RCT-influenced research into armed conflict is the free-rider problem and its core conclusion that ‘rational’ individuals abstain from participation in such endeavors as they are equally able to benefit from the rewards irrespective of their actions.[12] On this basis the focus shifts from collective benefits (e.g. revolution, independence, redressing grievances of religious or tribal groups, and so on) towards incentives that serve to motivate on an individual basis. For the purposes of the subsequent discussion the identified drivers have been clustered under the headings of economic, security and socio-psychological (as summarized in Figure 1).

The application of RCT is not universally welcomed, and a common critique targets the core assumption that individuals are self-interested. However, while narrow versions of the RCT framework are restricted to the realms of economics and security, ‘thick’ variants also incorporate socio-psychological factors. Thus, critically, individuals acting in accordance with perceived group aims may be treated as being ‘rational’ if their motives in doing so are to gain respect or to avoid ostracism.[13] Arguably, this proves to be of particular relevance for insurgency given that such conflicts often occur in ‘traditional’ societies where individuals have a greater tendency to act in pursuit of community ends. However, as shall become apparent below, the incorporation of socio-psychological factors does serve to stretch RCT in that such variables are often extremely difficult to define and measure in such environments.
cont.

Figure 1: Motivators often associated with behavioral support for insurgents

It is also frequently observed that the interests pursued by ‘rational’ individuals are not universal, but are contingent upon context and culture. For instance, the extent to which material gain is pursued varies considerably between and within communities. Indeed, at a broader level this represents a significant limitation as RCT in its present form can only tentatively explain why drivers from security through to status inconsistently motivate.[14] While this does undermine efforts to reach a universal understanding of human motivation, however, it does not prevent comparative conclusion of immediate practical value to COIN policy. For instance, research may find that specific religious, ethnic or tribal groups are more consistently incentivized by Taliban financial enticements than others, suggesting a need to undermine this driver through investing in economic programs in their areas of residence. The following subsection focuses upon such material incentives, and this is followed by a consideration of security and socio-psychological drivers.

Economic Motivators

The very act of providing behavioral support to insurgents often entails an economic cost in the form of food or finances, or at least an ‘opportunity cost’ associated with contributions of time. On the flip side of the coin, however, the historical record shows that a wide variety of selective material benefits have been used by insurgents to gain behavioral support. For instance, during their respective conflicts the Chinese Community Party, the Peruvian Shining Path, and the Nepali Maoists all reportedly provided grain specifically to entice ‘good behavior’. Perhaps the most well-known example, however, is observed by Jeffrey Race, who claims that in his research locations in Vietnam ‘each beneficiary of land redistribution retained his land only as long as he did not oppose the revolutionary movement, and indeed only as long as he assisted in required ways.’[15] A more recent and ‘kinetic’ example is offered by Antonio Giustozzi from the London School of Economics, who reports that the Taliban pay villagers US$15-55 to conduct targeted assassinations or to fire rockets at enemy bases.[16]

Additionally, the very specific act of enlisting into the insurgent ranks is commonly driven by two further material enticements. Firstly, insurgent cadre may be provided with salaries (or, in certain cases, ‘payments in kind’), for instance, as was offered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Marcella Ribetti also observes this phenomenon in Colombia, adding that ‘material incentives for the lower ranking guerrillas are more often necessities, rather than luxuries.’[17] Yet, this author additionally claims that ‘joining the guerrillas seemed a good option, because it offered to provide for all their material needs in exchange for seemingly easy tasks.’ Maoist cadre in Nepal reportedly also earned in the region of 300 or 500 Rupees per month, although given that many of their contemporaries sought and often gained superior economic opportunities in India, for instance, the extent to which this drove enlistment is debatable.

Secondly, individuals may be encouraged to enlist because once within the insurgent ranks they are frequently provided with the opportunity to embezzle money intended for the campaign, or to otherwise make exploitative gains, as Ribetti also notes with regard to the Colombian case.[18] Unsurprisingly, the Nepali Maoists interviewed on the subject tended to focus upon the internal monitoring systems utilized to prevent such activities during their ‘People’s War’, and maintained that the individuals caught were punished. However, many respondents from the opposing political parties and those lacking affiliations contradicted these claims, often referring to specific cases of reported embezzlement. Similar motives have been reported in cases from Iraq to Sierra Leone, and the reported ‘criminalization’ of insurgency forms a prominent line of enquiry in recent conflict studies literature. This is perhaps best expressed by David Keen, who maintains that ‘to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, war has increasingly become the continuation of economics by other means,’ adding that ‘war is not simply a breakdown in a particular system, but a way of creating an alternative system of profit.’[19]

Security Motivators

In turning the attention to security matters, it is necessary to comment upon three main selective motivators. Firstly, the threat of apprehension or physical targeting by COIN forces offers an actual or potential cost that may serve to dissuade individuals from providing behavioral support to insurgents.[20] These COIN acts may be contingent upon the behaviours of the targeted individuals (referred to by Stathis Kalyvas as ‘selective violence’), and thus dissuade directly. In practice, however, they are also often based upon simple ‘guilt by association’ or ‘an unwillingness or failure to discriminate’ (referred to as ‘indiscriminate violence’),[21] in which case they work, theoretically at least, through socio-psychological disincentives (as discussed shortly). In general terms, indiscriminate violence is considered to be more common amongst COIN forces, as insurgents tend to have improved local knowledge through which they are able to make their violence selective.

Secondly, and on the benefits side of the calculation, insurgents may be able to offer protection selectively to their supporters against this very violence perpetrated by the state. In practice, however, this is intimately connected to the relative capabilities of the armed adversaries in the location in question, and failures to provide protection of any form have been reported in cases as distinct as Zimbabwe, Peru and Nepal. Referring to Farabundo Marti de Liberación Nacional in El Salvador, Elisabeth Jean Wood similarly notes that ‘during most of the war, the FMLN offered little protection from government forces in the case-study areas.’[22] Indeed, specifically with the free-rider hurdle in mind, Wood goes on to maintain that ‘protection per se does not explain the ongoing participation of those who continued to support the insurgency.’ However, individuals may also be ‘protected’ from COIN violence through absconding with the insurgents,[23] and in certain contexts this may function as a selective incentive for the specific act of enlistment.

Finally, insurgents may provide a benefit in the sense of abstaining from violence against collaborators. Or, put another way, insurgents ‘encourage’ participation though targeting those who do not provide this support. For instance, Ismet Imset’s notes that the locals in contact with the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) were aware that the ‘attacks were directed not at ordinary people but villagers with state connections, who agreed to collaborate against the Kurds although they themselves were Kurds.’[24] This author continues that ‘the message was that any family who dealt with the state would be destroyed.’ Similarly, the Nepali Maoists relied upon threats and actual violence to combat ‘anti-people activities’ such as a refusal to ‘contribute’ to the cause. Over half of the 700 sampled respondents from the provinces of Pyuthan, Dang and Gorkha asserted that they collaborated on the bases of this coercion, representing a particularly high figure given that the Maoists retained their influence in these locations at the time of the investigation.[25]

Socio-Psychological Motivators

While RCT analysts may gravitate towards the above economic and security-based explanations, the ‘father’ of the free-rider problem, Mancur Olson, himself notes that socio-psychological stimuli ‘are among the kinds of incentives that may be used to mobilize a latent group.’[26] As previously observed, however, the difficulty is often that such variables prove to be particularly difficult to adequately define and measure, especially in the context of armed conflict. While only a few such drivers are considered here for the sake of brevity, Stathis Kalyvas identifies ‘curiosity and the prospect of excitement and adventure, the lure of danger, the acquisition of a new and more rewarding individual identity or moral worldview, [and] the pleasure of acting as one’s own agent,’ alongside negative motivators such as ‘anger, moral outrage caused by public humiliation, and the desire to take revenge.’[27] As with the material and security incentives discussed above, these socio-psychological drivers must motivate selectively, and in this sense ‘revenge’ is distinct from ‘retribution’ (as this term was previously applied in the context of attitudinal support) in that the latter may be gained by an entire community, while the former is experienced only by participants.

Focusing, firstly, upon ‘adventure’ as a driver, Marcella Ribetti asserts that in the case of Colombia ‘combat appears to have been an exciting experience form many.’[28] This factor is also identified by Kilcullen, who maintains that local farmers assisted the Taliban during a 2006 confrontation on the grounds that ‘this was the most exciting thing that had happened in their valley in years.’[29] With the opportunity to benefit from such ‘adventures’ open to many, however, such explanations fail to separate the collaborators from those remaining on the side-lines. Yet, as observed above, this limitation also applies to other drivers, posing questions as to why only certain individuals provided with the opportunity elect to plant IEDs in exchange for cash, collaborate in exchange for land, or chose to abscond with insurgents in order to benefit from this ‘protection’. While this limitation is significant it does not prevent conclusions that are of immediate value to COIN policy-making.

Perhaps more centrally to the current discussion, however, are community provisions of status, and related concepts such as honor and prestige. In the case of Northern Ireland, for instance, Eamon Collins observed that amongst certain communities ‘IRA men have considerable status, and for those Provos who look for sexual advantage from it, there is no shortage of women willing to give more than the time of day to IRA volunteers.’[30] Conversely, Roger Petersen notes that ‘when a majority is cooperating in a resistance effort, those who remain on the sidelines will receive the contempt of their fellows.’[31] It is at this critical juncture that the concept of attitudinal support remerges, providing an important determinant of whether communities elect to bestow such status and contempt. Put another way, while attitudinal support may not drive collaboration directly (failing on the free-rider hurdle), it encourages such activities indirectly through provoking communities to provide status, honor and prestige.[32]

The concept of indiscriminate violence may also return at this point, however, as if applied by COIN forces it may trump the effects of attitudinal support, and actually prevent communities from encouraging such acts. As expressed by Kalyvas ‘the logic of indiscriminate violence assumes civilians to be able to lobby armed actors to decrease the level of their activities,’ and ‘this requires that civilians have access and influence on armed actors and, conversely, armed actors care about civilians.’[33] However, Kalyvas goes on to suggest that indiscriminate violence largely fails to achieve its objectives, amongst other reasons, because it overestimates the above linkage. Indeed, while this is an area in particular need of additional research, this violence may even backfire through driving communities to bestow additional status and prestige upon the collaborators who seek to provide retribution. Seemingly on the basis of this dynamic, Arjun Karki and David Seddon claim that indiscriminate police violence ‘resulted in a substantial proportion of the local population making common cause with the Maoists, and the mid-west was effectively confirmed as a Maoist heartland.’[34]

Policy Implications

So, who were right? Were Lawrence, Mao and Hobsbawm correct to focus attention upon attitudes, implying that sympathy translates with sufficient consistency into collaboration? Or, were Kalyvas and Kocher, and Kilcullen correct to place the emphasis directly upon behaviors, stressing the role of control and authority? Unfortunately there are no simple answers to such questions, firstly, because the motives are very diverse, and vary considerably between locations and over time. And, secondly, as previously observed, attempts to draw such broad conclusions are undermined by a reality that it depends to a large extent upon the type of collaboration in question. Put another way, attitudinal support may be critical for obtaining certain forms of behavioral support, such as information on the whereabouts of the COIN forces, but much less so for others, including food and shelter.[35] Thus, in each field location is it necessary to focus upon attitudinal and behavioral support as distinct, but interrelated, variables.

Undermining Attitudinal Support for Insurgents

While insurgent-COIN conflicts are commonly characterized as a competition between two (or more) sides for support from the populace, in practice they often more closely resemble a struggle to lure reluctant community members ‘off the fence,’ and thus loses in attitudinal support for one set of belligerents do not necessarily imply gains for their competitors. Nevertheless, reducing attitudinal support for the insurgents is of clear benefit for the COIN forces, and this necessitates targeting the specific channels used to generate this asset. For instance, if a specific group gains sympathy through provisions of welfare, this may be undermined through targeting their sources of funds, or enabling the state to absorb greater responsibility for such provisions. If they generate attitudinal support through providing alternative systems of justice, then the COIN forces should invest in making the formal processes more accessible, affordable, efficient, and / or less corrupt. If sympathy is gained as the insurgents seek to redress ethnic or tribal grievances, then, to the extent that these are genuine, COIN policy should aim to achieve the same.

Undermining Behavioral Support for Insurgents

Policy-decisions must also reflect realities regarding behavioral support, and in the first instance this involves understanding local motivators. If revenge is a substantial driver, then this points to a need to avoid future instances of ‘collateral damage’ and other forms of excessive violence. If it is found that individuals are motivated largely by gains in status, respect and honor, it is necessary to target the extent to which communities bestow such rewards, through prioritizing efforts to reduce attitudinal support for the insurgents, as described above. Or, if individuals are often coerced into these behaviors, then the COIN forces must additionally focus their attention upon security provisions. Where economic incentives (salaries for cadre, payments for IED emplacements, and so on) provide a common motivator, livelihood programs should be prioritized, with parallel attempts being made to undermine the insurgent ability to offer such funding. While COIN campaigns routinely involve each of the above, shifts in the prioritization of these activities are likely to make a substantial difference, particularly given that motivations vary considerably between cases, provinces, villages, and individuals.



[1] Stathis Kalyvas, Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 92

[2] In contrast to the US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, in other environments the COIN actors often draw upon all of the forms of behavioral support identified here.

[3] Lawrence (1928) cited in Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004) 2; Mao Tse-tung (1937), On Guerrilla Warfare (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 44. Note that the term ‘guerrilla’ overlaps considerably with ‘insurgent’, with the former relating more directly to kinetic matters (i.e. guerrilla warfare) and generally implying a rural focus.

[4] Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Insurgency in El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 156.

[5] Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf Jr., Rebellion and Authority (Chicago: Markham, 1970), 45; Stathis Kalyvas and Matthew A. Kocher, “The Dynamics of Violence in Vietnam,” Journal of Peace Research, 46:3 (2009) 339; David Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 67-68

[6] The findings from this research are published in James Khalil, “Insurgent-Populace Relations in Nepal,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, 23:2 (2012) 221-244

[7] Ton de Wit and Vera Gianotten, “The Center’s Multiple Failures’”, in David Scott Palmer, Shining Path of Peru (New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc., 1992), 72; Ponciano del Pino, “Family, Culture, and Revolution” in Steve Stern (ed.) Shining and Other Paths (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998), 161; Lewis Taylor, Shining Path (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006), 128

[8] David Kilcullen, Counter Insurgency (London: Hurst & Company, 2010), 153

[9] Khaled Hroub, Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide (London: Pluto Press, 2006), 136-137

[10] Richard Kessler, Rebellion and Repression in the Philippines (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 77

[11] Whilst outside of the scope of this brief paper, there is undoubtedly variance in the extent to which insurgents are reliant upon local collaboration. This largely depends upon the extent to which insurgents are able to gain sustenance from external state or non-state sources, or through market activities (most notoriously involving trade or manufacture of narcotics in certain cases). However, the local reaction against the Al Qa’ida franchise in Iraq during the ‘Awakening’ demonstrates the risk associated with creating attitudinal opposition.

[12] While the key inference remains that non-participation is the default option, the concept of ‘free-riding’ proves to be a misnomer in the context of conflict through implying universal attitudinal support. In most cases numerous individuals from the communities that the insurgents supposedly represent oppose the aims or methods applied by these belligerents, and as such their preference to withhold behavioural support is not an attempt to free-ride. Thus, the discussion in this essay is framed around the costs and benefits to individuals of providing behavioural support, rather than ‘solutions’ to the free-rider problem.

[13] Many critics are seemingly unaware that RCT is sufficiently elastic to incorporate such variables. As with all variables, however, it is necessary to identify and define these ex ante in order to avoid tautology. This is described, for instance, in Margaret Levi, “A Model, a Method, and a Map”, in Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan Zuckerman (eds.), Comparative Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 19-41

[14] Critically, this translates into an inability to reliably understand, for instance, why certain individuals accept cash to place an IED, whereas others do not. However, important insights have emerged through, amongst other lines of enquiry, social identity theory and locus of control theory (with the latter overlapping considerably with the so-called ‘efficacy solution’ to the free-rider problem).

[15] Jeffery Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 174

[16] Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 14 and 41

[17] Marcella Ribetti, “The Unveiled Motivations of Violence in Intra-State Conflicts”, Small Wars and Insurgencies 18/4 (2007), 710

[18] Ribetti, Unveiled Motivations, 711

[19] David Keen, Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars (USA: Adelphi Series, International Institute of Strategic Studies 1998), 11

[20] The exclusive reference to state violence in this section is for simplicity. Such campaigns are not always ‘two-player games’, and other belligerent groups often use violence in an effort to reduce collaboration with the insurgents in question.

[21] Stathis Kalyvas, “The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War”, Journal of Ethics, 8 (2004) 101-103

[22] Wood, Insurgent Collective Action, 13

[23] This is discussed at length in Kalyvas and Kocher, Dynamics of Violence

[24] Cited in David Romano, Kurdish Nationalist Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 86

[25] Information on research methods is provided in James Khalil, Insurgent-Populace Relations in Nepal: Attitudinal and Behavioural Support for the Maoists during the People's War, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, UK.

[26] Mancur Olson, Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 61

[27] Kalyvas, Logic of Violence, 96-97

[28] Ribetti, Unveiled Motivations, 712

[29] Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, 40-41

[30] Eamon Collins, cited in Kalyvas, Logic of Violence, 97

[31] Roger Petersen, Resistances and Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 41-42

[32] Of course, this is not the only channel through which supportive attitudes may drive collaboration, as individuals may gain personal (internal) benefits through ‘doing the right thing’ (refered to by some as ‘personal normative rewards’). It is certainly possible to treat such individuals as being ‘rational’, but this motive stretches the RCT framework further in the sense of being even more difficult to define and measure than the socio-psychological variables in the text.

[33] Kalyvas, Logic of Violence, 158

[34] Arjun Karki and David Seddon, People’s War in Nepal (Delhi: Adroit Publishers 2003) 23

[35] See, for instance, Khalil, “Insurgent-Populace Relations”, 227

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/wi ... -campaigns

In the final candidates' debate last week, President Obama delivered a telling, somewhat snarky zinger in response to Governor Romney's call for naval expansion: "This isn't ‘Battleship.'" He then went on to school Romney about how having some aircraft carriers and submarines means we don't need more ships. The governor had no adequate reply.

But the fact of the matter is that the old "Battleship" board game -- not the more recent movie flop that was somehow based on it -- offers exactly the right metaphor to describe strategic affairs in the information age. "Battleship" does so by capturing the distilled essence of naval operations today: the hider/finder dynamic.

No longer do fleets move against each other en masse, engaging in well-defined, line-against-line slugfests, such as dominated naval affairs from Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars to Jutland a century later. Instead, sea wars have become far more cat-and-mouse matters, whose outcomes have become critically dependent on the need to see the enemy first, so as to be able to strike before being struck. Just like in "Battleship."

The Germans mounted an early hider/finder naval campaign with a relative handful of surface raiders and U-boats during World War I, and they followed a generation later with more raiders and a major submarine wolfpack offensive in World War II. They nearly won both times because of their ability to remain hidden until they pounced. It was only when means of detection improved -- with both advanced radars and code-breaking capabilities -- that these threats waned.

Subs and raiders aside, the larger fleet engagements of the Second World War, especially in the Pacific, were all about finding task forces before those doing the stalking could be detected and attacked first. Thus finding the enemy proved crucial to the U.S. Navy's great victories over the Imperial Japanese Fleet at Midway and -- later, and despite some near-fatal confusion -- at Leyte Gulf. Back in the Atlantic, the hunts for the German raider Graf Spee and the battleship Bismarck were clear examples of the hider/finder dynamic as well.

In its own abstract way, "Battleship" forces players to concentrate deeply on the business of "finding." Given his great confidence in aircraft carriers and submarines, President Obama should take careful note that the board game includes them, too, with the carrier being the game's largest and most vulnerable ship -- just as it is in the real world today, as the array of smart, high-speed weapons that have emerged in recent years pose mortal threats to these behemoths. The most valuable vessel in "Battleship" -- that is, the one that is hardest to find and hit -- is also the smallest combatant.

Indeed, if Romney had remembered ever playing the game with any of his five sons, he might have been able to rebut the president on the spot. He could have said: "Of course this is ‘Battleship.' That's why I want a lot of smaller, but still well-armed vessels for the U.S. Navy, not just a handful of extremely expensive, highly vulnerable aircraft carriers and a few dozen submarines. China has hundreds of lethal missile and torpedo boats. We need more small, swift ships of our own that pack a real punch."

Romney might also have quoted Senator John McCain's cri de coeur against the huge cost overruns on and problematic performance prospects of the new Ford-class carrier: "It's outrageous. It's a national disgrace."

"Battleship" aside, there is another old-line board game, "Stratego," that also speaks to the hider/finder dynamic -- this time as it applies to land warfare. In "Stratego" the locations of enemy forces are clear; what remains hidden are the identities and relative strengths of the various units, minefield patterns, and the opposing commanders' headquarters. Thus victory in "Stratego" is completely dependent upon mastering the ability to "find" while keeping the identity and location of one's own key forces hidden. If we had the ability to find Taliban forces reliably, the Afghan war would end in a trice. "Stratego" is all about finding what is hidden in plain sight.

In addition to its value in thinking through the problems posed by irregular wars, the lessons of "Stratego" can be used to illuminate more conventional conflicts as well. In China, for example, soldiers of the People's Liberation Army train their minds using a hider/finder wargame, Lu Zhan Jun Qi ("Army Chess"), which bears a strong resemblance to "Stratego." However, "Army Chess" includes transport systems and missile weapons, adding layers of complexity that "Stratego" lacks. Still, it is a clear sign of the Chinese military's appreciation of the importance of "finding" the enemy.

On the theme of chess variants, I have created an offshoot of the old German game, kriegsspiel, a double-blind contest in which each side -- seated out of sight of the other and with a referee in between -- can see only its own chess pieces. The object is to learn how, over time, to infer the locations of the opposing forces -- in effect, "how to find" (and also how to keep hidden). Many graduates of the military school at which I teach have, over the years, confessed that the details of my lectures may have dimmed in their minds; but the lessons of kriegsspiel remain clear and have often helped to inform and guide their actions against our all-too-elusive enemies.

So, yes, this is "Battleship." "Stratego," too. And it is likely to remain so for decades to come.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... y?page=0,1

The Russian Counterinsurgency Operation in Chechnya Part 1: Winning the Battle, Losing the War, 1994 – 1996

Introduction

Between 1994 and 1999, Russia’s campaigns in Chechnya, labeled a counterinsurgency conflict by the Russian government, caused an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 civilian casualties with as many as 300,000 refugees in a nation of under a million.[1] In a nation the size of New Jersey, roughly one out of every two inhabitants had been killed or displaced in the decade following 1994.

At the end of this decade of war and death, the Russian response maintains that the counterinsurgency operations were successful, and that the insurgency movement has been largely crushed and relegated to occasional fringe attacks. This article aims to analyze the operation conducted in Chechnya and the North Caucasus by the Russian military between 1994 and 2004. In both the First (1994 – 1996) and Second Chechen Wars (1999 – 2004), the Russian Federal forces enjoyed overwhelming superiority in all aspects of conventional war, and yet were forced into a premature cease-fire in 1996 and suffered immense casualties. By utilizing unconventional and guerilla tactics, the Chechen insurgents adapted to the needs of urban and hit-and-run combat much more quickly and efficiently than their adversaries. While the Russian military entered the second war much more sure of themselves and their abilities to combat the insurgents, their success was marred by their inability to engage the insurgents in pitched battle, by the continued effectiveness of the insurgents, and most crucially, in their failure in the parapolitical struggle for legitimacy in the population.

The Russian forces’ overconfidence in regards to the Chechens’ organizational effectiveness in conducting guerilla warfare was directly proportional to their inability to react with any amount of speed and efficiency in changing their tactics to meet new threats. Perhaps the greatest mistake the Russians made was in approaching the conflict with an enemy-centric, conventional mindset, sharply divergent from their own rhetoric of counterinsurgency and population-centric benevolency.

Mired in the political culture of post-Soviet secessionism, the wars between Russia and Chechnya seemed set to fit the mold of so many other post-colonial conflicts between a recalcitrant and self-realizing satellite and its reeling and unstable metropole. Yet the inability of Russia to recognize this, and the resultant rhetoric underscored the desire of Russia to paint the war in terms of a counter-terrorist fight which precluded them from the moral obligations present when confronting an insurgent force within a civilian population. The inherent similarities in Russia's war with Chechnya with the current United States nation building/counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan highlight the importance of critically analyzing what exactly went wrong when Russia won the battles, but lost the war for Chechnya.

Background

Between August and December of 1991, all Union republics in the Soviet Union had declared independence, including Chechnya. In November of 1990, the National Congress of the Chechen People (OKChN) formally elected former Soviet Air Force General Dzokar Dudaev as leader of the Chechen nation.[2] In his quest to create a stronger national identity. The development of Chechnya into a modern nation occurred alongside other national movements throughout the Soviet Union in the 1980s and was a reaction to perestroika and the call to nationhood being heard throughout the developing world.

In 1994, the Russian Federation, under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, invaded Chechnya to end the separatist movement and bring Chechnya back into the Federation. Much has been written on the Russian decision to invade, though for the considerations of time and space, little analysis is given to this critical debate in the current project.[3] Suffice it to say that a likely reason for the decision to invade lay in the need for Russia to reassert itself in the international arena. The economic woes of a struggling nation came as a distressing reality check to a country that had once rivaled the United States in military prowess. The need for Russia to prove to itself and the to world that it continued to be a viable superpower went hand-in-hand with the need to end the fragmentation of the Federation which had begun with the declaration of independence of Lithuania in 1990. Russia’s international military prowess may have been temporarily in doubt, but no one thought the war in Chechnya would be anything but a short and reassuring show of power.

The First Chechen War

In December of 1994, ground forces moved into Chechnya and the capital city of Grozny was nearly completely leveled by air and ground artillery. In the greatest shelling since World War II, Grozny and the surrounding towns were reduced to rubble in a siege that lasted until early March and cleared the way for the heavily armored Russian troops.[4]

Yet from the beginning, it was clear that this would not be a conventional war between two standing armies. Impatience, arrogance, and incompetence on the part of the Russian troops led them to march headlong into the city center of Grozny, ill-equipped for urban warfare and undereducated on the tactical resourcefulness of the Chechen fighters. Much like in Prague in 1968, the Russians marched into the city in a show of force, hoping the presence of tanks and an organized and impressive army would deter further bloodshed—especially after their awesome display of aerial and fixed position artillery bombardment of the country. In direct contravention of tactics learned during World War II’s urban and unconventional theaters of war, the Russians entered the rubble strewn city with a column of tanks, followed by mounted infantry in APCs and jeeps, followed then by dismounted infantry.[5] The result was a military catastrophe. The Chechens were able to paradoxically overwhelm the far numerically greater foes through the superior use of small arms tactics and front-on ‘swarm’ attacks which simply overran the Russian troops within the city of Grozny.

RPG and sniper fire focused on the exposed Russian troops, small groups of 10-20 Chechen fighters moved in and out of buildings and the surrounding mountains to engage the heavily armed and armored Russian troops. The Chechen teams would attack in shifts, some attacking while the others rested, so that a force of no more than 50 often held entire battalions at bay, bottle-necked in the narrow streets of the cities, or the treacherous defiles of the mountains.[6]

The Chechen utilization of information and space, and their highly sophisticated networking allowed them a tremendous advantage in terms of physical combat, and an even more important advantage in terms of the psychological impact upon their enemy. Rather than a group of ragtag insurgent fighters fueled by hatred and national fanaticism, the Chechen fighters were highly trained, disciplined, well-equipped and knowledgeable of the terrain.[7] From the individual up through army level, the Chechens held the advantage in all but airpower and fire support. The Chechen fighters proved better trained, equipped, technically skilled and fed, and demonstrated remarkably higher morale and motivation, in addition to an intimate knowledge of the hazardous terrain.[8]

Throughout the First Chechen War, Chechen fighters – many of them former Soviet soldiers with combat experience in Afghanistan – dug into the hills and fought a defensive and fierce war of attrition with the Russian troops not unlike their former Afghani counterparts.[9] Although both sides engaged in acts of brutality to weaken the enemy’s resolve to fight, Chechen fighters far outdid their Russian counterparts in these ‘grisly psychological tactics’:

They hung Russian wounded and dead upside down in the windows of defensive positions, for example, forcing the Russians to fire at their comrades in order to engage the rebels… Both Russian and Chechen dead were routinely booby-trapped by the Chechens, who showed sophisticated insight into the likely actions and reactions of the average Russian soldier.[10]



In addition, Chechen fighters used dirty tactics collectively learned from dozens of asymmetrical guerilla conflicts before, such as instructing snipers to aim for the legs of Russian troops, injuring, but not incapacitating them; and then shooting free-range at the subsequent rescue parties that were sure to come. Some snipers aimed specifically at the groin, dealing a crippling and humiliating wound that resulted in a slow and painful death.[11] Chechens routinely dressed in Russian uniforms to gain access to bases, and used these opportunities to launch surprise attacks from behind enemy lines.[12] Each Chechen took seriously the notion that the center of gravity in war was no longer the enemy’s army, but rather the enemy’s people.[13] Tactics were devised to attack the psyche of the Russians, aimed at creating a ‘constant, high level of psychological stress on [Russian] servicemen and to undermine their morale.’[14] Hardened by a united sense of purpose in driving out the invader, the Chechen troops terrified and terrorized the Russian troops, slowly bleeding out their morale and willingness to fight.

The Russian troops, many still in their teens, were woefully underprepared and undertrained in comparison. In a study of 1,312 Russian soldiers involved in the war, 72% showed signs of psychological illness, such as depression, lethargy, insomnia, hypochondria and panic attacks.[15] The result of such a disparity in morale and military expectations had tragic consequences. According to one Russian participant, ‘the men on the ground, shaken and angered by their losses, were just taking it out on anyone they found. There was revenge in the air for those comrades who had been killed.’[16] Without recourse to set-piece conventional battle, the Chechen insurgents had arguably achieved ‘the acme of skill’ by subduing their enemy largely before the fighting began. Utilizing B. H. Liddell Hart’s ‘indirect approach’ in choosing the time, place, and method of fighting, the Russian soldiers were defeated often without ever seeing the enemy.[17] At the same time, the Russians, with their vast superiority in military firepower, failed to use it to tactical and strategic advantage. By employing ‘air and space power thoughtlessly or unimaginatively, [the Russians’ power was] less effective or even disastrously impotent.’[18]

The war escalated quickly, and Russian public support continued to plummet as journalist reports continued to highlight to the Russia public the reality of war. Under the aegis of the Soviet media, the success of the troops was a given, and the heavy censorship of all media would have ensured that anything contrary to the official party line be treated with hostility and suspicion. Not so in the new Russian media. With woefully little public support for an increasingly unpopular and embarrassing war, the Kremlin was faced with a crippling hostage crisis in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk. Led by Chechen warlord Shamil Besaev, about a hundred Chechen terrorists seized some 1,500 civilians at gun-point and barricaded themselves in a hospital.

After three failed attempts by MVD and special forces (spetsnaz) troops to storm the building, dozens of civilians lay dead. Hundreds more were wounded. Yeltsin finally agreed to the terrorists demands and signed the ceasefire. The Russian public had not responded well to the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign, and now harshly criticized the Russian security forces’ inability to secure peace more than they criticized the tactics of the Chechen terrorists. The Chechen fighters came out the victors, hailed as heroes within Chechnya and seen as saviors of the battered country. The Russians, who for once should have held the moral high-ground, had failed to protect the Russian citizenry from the overspill of an already unpopular war. Through ‘incompetence and heavy handedness,’ more people were killed by the Russians’ attempts to storm the building than in the original attack on the city.[19]

While the war continued for several months more, the political will of the Russian people had evaporated. According to one survey, 3% of respondents answered favorably towards questions concerning maintaining military operations in Chechnya near the end of the war, while 70% opposed it from the beginning.[20] During the initial 1994 invasion of Chechnya, most early observers would be hard-pressed to give favorable odds to a Chechen victory, yet at war’s end the Chechens could only be seen as ‘the overwhelming victors,’ and the Russians were forced into a shameful cease-fire. [21] After a dismal failure against a fomer Soviet Republic, Russian President Yeltsin began negotiations, and signed the Khasavyurt Accord, ending the war.[22]

The Interwar Struggle

From 1996 to 1999, a tenuous peace hung heavy over Chechnya. The emergent state was torn by the secular post-colonial crises familiar to many emerging post-communist fringe states. Lawlessness, warlordism, rampant criminality and chaotic violence marred the interwar period and the government struggled to maintain its legitimacy. A lack of centralized funds, the inability of the government to rebuild the state’s infrastructure and the inability or unwillingness to control the militarized groups of First War fighters was only exacerbated by the economic blockade by Russia, resulting in an state remarkably similar to interwar Berlin: ripe for a political takeover. The fragmentation of Chechen national identity went hand-in-hand with the largely unwelcome intrusion of Wahabbite influences as rival factions fought for control of the state. The economic crisis brought about by the war, combined with Chechnya’s high unemployment rate and general lack of upward social mobility for opportunity of advancement gave limited choices to the Chechen people, encouraging large-scale organized crime, gang warfare, bank robbery, kidnapping, and in some instances terrorism.[23]

The culmination came in 1999, when Shamil Besaev led a Wahabbi incursion into neighboring Ingushetia in an act of war intended to unite the North Caucasus into a greater Islamic Republic under strict shari’a law. Russia invaded to stem the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, and the Second Chechen War began.



[1] See “Human Rights Violations in Chechnya”, organized by the ‘Society of the Russian-Chechen Friendship; and Human Rights Group Memorial. Accessed 2/27/2012.

[2] Siren and Fowkes, ‘An Outline Chronology,’ 170.

[3] A number of works address the identity crisis of Russia after the dissolution of the USSR and have speculated as to the reasons why Yeltsin made the decision to invade, and when to invade. For more see King, Extreme Politics; Peimani, Failed Transition, Bleak Future?; Tolz, Russia.; Trenin and Malashenko, Russia's Restless Frontier; Zurcher, The Post-Soviet Wars.

[4] Schaefer, The Insurgency in Chechnya, 129

[5] Oliker, Russia's Chechen Wars, 5

[6] Combat Films and Research, Immortal Fortress.

[7] McIntosh, Thumping the Hive, 16.

[8] Safranchuk, Chechnya: Russia's Experience.

[9] Arquilla and Karasik, ‘Chechnya: A Glimpse,’ 211.

[10] Ibid., 218.

[11] Kramer, ‘Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency,’ 240.

[12] McIntosh, 28.

[13] Ibid., 11.

[14] Kramer, 222.

[15] McIntosh, 29.

[16] Ibid., 28.

[17] For a short overview of both Sun Tzu and B.H. Liddell Hart’s philosophy of war, see Bartholomees, ‘A Survey of the Theory’, 20-23.

[18] Szafranski, ‘Neocortical Warfare?’ 395.

[19] Gall and de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity, 275.

[20] See Pain, ‘The Second Chechen War’, 59-69; and Souleimanov and Ditrych, ‘The Internationalisation of the Russian-Chechen Conflict, 1202.

[21] Arquilla, and Karasik, 223.

[22] Schaefer, 142.

[23] Rigi, ‘The War in Chechnya’, 37.

Bibliography

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Akhmedova, K., & Speckhard, A. (2006). Black Widows: The Chechen Female Suicide Terrorists. In Y. Schweitzer (Ed.), Female Suicide Terrorists. Tel Aviv: Jaffe Center Publication.

Arquilla, J., & Karasik, T. (1999). Chechnya: A Glimpse of Future Conflict? Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 22(3), 207-229.

Banner, F. (2006). Uncivil Wars: "Suicide Bomber Identity" as a Product of Russo-Chechen Conflict. Religion, State and Society, 34(3), 215-253.

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de Jong, K., van der Kam, S., Ford, N., Hargreaves, S., van Oosten, R., Cunningham, D., . . . Kleber, R. (2007). The trauma of ongoing conflict and displacement in Chechnya: quantitative assessment of living conditions, and psychosocial and general health status among war displaced in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Conflict and Health, 1(4).

Fearon, J. D., & Laitin, D. D. (2003). Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War. American Political Science Review, 97(1), 75-91.

Gall, C., & de Waal, T. (1999). Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus. New York: New York University Press.

Henderson, J. D. (1985). When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Tolima. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Hughes, J. (2007). Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kalyvas, S. (2006). The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kaufman, C. (1996). Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars. International Security, 20(4), 138.

King, C. (2010). Extreme Politics: Nationalism, Violence, and the End of Eastern Europe. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kramer, A. E. (2012, March 5). At Chechnya Polling Station, Votes for Putin Exceed the Rolls. Retrieved March 23, 2012, from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/world ... s-for-puti...

Kramer, M. (2005). Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency and Terrorism in the North Caucasus: The Military Dimension of the Russian-Chechen Conflict. Europe-Asia Studies, 57(2), 209-290.

Layton, K. S. (2004). "The Emperor Carries a Gun": Capacity Building in the North Caucasus. The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, 6(1), 241-271.

Lotnik, W. (1999). Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands. London: Serif.

McIntosh, S. E. (2004). Thumping the Hive: Russian Neocortical Warfare in Chechnya. Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School.

Moyar, M. (1997). Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.

Oliker, O. (2001). Russia's Chechen Wars: 1994-2000. Santa Monica: RAND.

Pain, E. (2000). The Second Chechen War: The Information Component. Military Review, 80(4), 59-69.

Peimani, H. (2002). Failed Transition, Bleak Future? : War and Instability in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Westport, CT: Praeger.

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Safranchuk, I. (2002). Chechnya: Russia's Experience of Asymmetrical Warfare. Center for Defense Information, Terrorism Project, Accessed 2/14/2012. http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/chechnya-pr.cfm.

Schaefer, R. (2010). The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad. Denver: Praeger Security International.

Siren, P., & Fowkes, B. (1998). An Outline Chronology of the Recent Conflict in Chechnia. In B. Fowkes (Ed.), Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis (pp. 170-182). New York: MacMillan Press LTD.

Souleimanov, E., & Ditrych, O. (2008). The Internationalisation of the Russian-Chechen Conflict: Myths and Reality. Europe-Asia Studies, 60(7), 1199-1222.

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Tolz, V. (2001). Russia. New York: Oxford University Press.

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http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/th ... ing-the-wa

The Parapolitical War

The Second Chechen War was notably more violent, protracted, and extreme both in terms of Russian violence and Chechen retaliation. The resort to indiscriminate shelling of villages was widely publicized and broadcast throughout the world, yet the rhetoric of Russia fighting back the waves of Islamic terrorists found resonance with the Russian public.

Both the Russian military command and the political establishment had learned the valuable lessons of the successful psychological component used against them in the First Chechen War. Political propaganda meetings for soldiers were made mandatory, daily and weekly newspapers, bulletins, flyers and leaflets with anti-Chechen agitation and tales of Russian gallantry and bravery were distributed to boost morale. Psychological preparation courses were provided for troops before they entered Chechnya, including simulated combat scenarios and drills on self-regulation and self-motivation; additional medical and psychiatric personnel were at hand, and mobile groups of psychologists, specializing in psychoanalysis, psychodiagnostics and rehabilitation, neurologists and counselors were present in much higher numbers. The Russian military command also instituted more effective unit rotation schedules and conducted training exercises with full units which would improve group cohesion and an esprit de corps.[1]

Recently elected President Vladimir Putin declared that ‘Russia is really standing at the forefront of the war against international terrorism. And Europe ought to fall on its knees and express its great thankfulness that we, unfortunately, are fighting it alone.’[2] The rhetorical delegitimization of the Chechens as ‘terrorists’ dehumanized them by pointing to their ‘otherness’, portraying the conflict as not only a struggle against a local fundamental Islamist threat, but against the bulwark of the international jihad. The enemies in the North Caucasus were no longer national separatists, as they had been in the First Chechen War; they were Islamic terrorists; not wolves, the national symbol of Chechen resistance, but werewolves (oborotni).[3]

By the Second Chechen War the ‘conflict idiom’ of the Chechens Islamist radicals had shifted as well, often paradoxically proving the fears of many Russians. The shift in what Clifford Geertz calls ‘parapolitical warfare’ included a change in language and dress on the part of many Chechen fighters. Whereas the Russian forces in the First War were often described with ethnic or secular terminology such as ‘the federals’ or ‘occupiers,’ by 2000 the Chechen Islamists framed the war as a jihad by mujahidin (religious fighters) and shahids (martyrs) against the kafirs (infidels) and munafiqs (traitors to the true faith). Chechen fighters grew their beards long and shaved their heads in traditional Mujahidin style . Many, including Shamil Besaev, adopted Islamic names (his was Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris) and wore the emblematic green headband of martyrdom.[4]

One aspect of this insurgency-war which Russia found increasingly difficult to properly handle was the flexible notions of civilian and soldier. As the established Chechen military units were increasingly pushed into the mountains and driven from their forward operating bases, the distinction between civilian and soldier became blurred. Fighters whose units were dismembered or disbanded took refuge in the villages and continued the fight, more often than not donning civilian garb. To remedy this, the Russian forces regarded all Chechen civilians as criminals, bandits, or worse. The terminology in use – especially during the Second Chechen War – was aimed to dehumanize and humiliate the Chechens and de-legitimate their cause for self-determination, regardless of their political or ideological affiliation and regardless or their self-perception as fighters or civilians. While the Chechens waged war on the Russian military, the Russian military waged war on the Chechen people. Thus, paradoxically, ample cause was given for formerly insurgent fighters or non-insurgent victims to adopt radical religious identities and resort to terroristic methods to exact revenge.

Even as the Russian forces brought forth the experience, confidence, national public opinion and resources to win the parapolitical war with the enemy, their heavy-handed measures and enemy-centric approach, rather than population-centric approach, only ensured stiffened resistance and actually created a radicalized public that had largely not existed before.

Identity Crisis

Even without the backdrop of a tremendously violent war, many Chechens faced a national identity crisis as a result of the dissolution of the USSR. In the absence of a unified and declared purpose to the war, combined with the trauma of constant warfare, many Chechens were unsure as to who ‘the enemy’ even was. Individualized conflicts occurred as a result of unstable, fluctuating national identities of both the Chechens and Russians, and just as an individual Chechen’s identity may have been ‘tribal, Soviet (class-based), religious, ethnic, nationalist, gendered, rural or urban,’ the larger conflict may have been deemed an ethno-nationalist war, Soviet-style class struggle, a racial struggle, or an Islamic holy war.[5]

While most Chechens were self-declared Muslims, they often turned to religion as a fundamental core of their self-identity only after they experienced traumatic loss.[6] Family members of suicide bombers often spoke about the significant change in religious beliefs as only one step in their path to terrorism, with these beliefs functioning as a psychological mediator that helped the terrorist to cope with their fate.[7] The level of ‘psychological traumatization’ is likely the most significant motivational factor which attracted these individuals to embracing radical religious and terrorist ideologies and led, eventually, to individual terrorist acts. To those recently exposed to the violent death or injury to a loved one, a jihadist ideology provides a simple and culturally acceptable psychological coping method to deal with the stress and trauma of war and personal loss. One aspect of religion is that it gives meaning to suffering, both the personal suffering, and to the suffering of those who one deems as innocent, who suffered otherwise without reason.[8] A reconstruction of a personal identity and the reconstruction of a worldview that incorporates and explains the traumatic event are allowed through an immersion into a religious sect which can act as a secondary, powerfully binding social group.[9]

While invading ostensibly to beat back the throngs of religious fanatics who sought to establish a regional caliphate over the North Caucasus, the abysmal failure of the Russian forces in ‘winning the hearts of minds’ of the Chechens resulted in actually creating those forces Russia so feared in the first place.

The Second Chechen War

Using similar tactics as in the first war, the highly mobile Chechen fighters utilized RPGs, sniper rifles, light and heavy automatic rifles, anti-tank weapons, military grade C4, anti-personnel pressure-sensor mines, dynamite, and surprisingly sophisticated night-vision equipment. From seemingly out of nowhere, the self-described wolves of Chechnya would materialize in small groups and attack convoys, military helicopters and isolated Russian soldiers.

From August 1999 to December 2002, more than 4,730 Russian servicemen in Chechnya were killed, with 15,550 wounded. In 2003, no less than 100 Russian soldiers were killed each month. Unofficial estimates are two to three times higher. Once again, despite the improved mental and physical preparation, the Russian military behemoth seemed unable to come to terms with the elusive Chechen troops.[10] One problem on the part of the Russian command was the reliance upon Soviet-style top-heavy bureaucracy to run an over-crowded and poorly organized operation. The number of federal agencies, organizations, departments and branches – often with three letter acronyms – is enough to make the most efficient bureaucrat cringe. The newly-created OGV, or ‘Unified Grouping of Federal Forces’ was comprised of units from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), anti-riot Police, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Federal Border Patrol, special forces (spetznaz), all military branches, the Federal Service of Railway Troops (FSZhV) and even surveillance specialists from the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAPSI).[11]

To make matters even more confusing and disorganized, the chain-of-command in Chechnya included the Commander of the OGV, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, head of MVD Regional Operational Staff for Control of Counterterrorist Operations in the North Caucasus, First Deputy Minister responsible for Counterterrorist Training and Combat Operations, and FSB Deputy Director responsible for the North Caucasus.[12] The utter lack of coordination among branches and commanders and the apparent insistence upon fitting as many top-brass officers in one chain-of-command as possible is a primary reason the Chechens were able to operate so successfully, so often, and with so few casualties.

The inability of the Russian authorities to rectify this dearth of effective communication had dire consequences for their troops. On 28 February, 2000, MVD chief Vladimir Rushailo boasted that ‘the military phase of the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya is drawing to a close.’ Over the next two days Chechen fighters ambushed and killed all 84 members of a Russian paratrooper unit and attacked a heavily armed convoy killing 40 and wounding 35.[13] In mid September, 2001, several days after OGV commanders declared the Chechens were no longer capable of putting up large-scale resistance, thirteen officers including three generals and eight colonels were killed when Chechens shot down an Mi-8MT command helicopter with a shoulder-held Strela-3 missile in downtown Grozny. On the same day a daring daylight raid was carried out in Gudermes, killing 20 troops.[14] Between 1999 and 2002, more than eight helicopters were shot down with an assortment of Soviet-era and newer, more sophisticated missile systems, killing more than 20 high-ranking military leaders. In one instance 127 men, many of them junior-grade officers, were killed in one helicopter strike.[15]

Several days after Vladimir Putin’s reelection speech in 2004, in which he promised to quickly and decisively end the conflict, a convoy of MVD troops was ambushed and 37 out of 41 were killed. A few months later, as Putin gave a Victory Day speech boasting of his government’s success in ‘combating international terrorism,’ and comparing the war on terror with his role model and predecessor’s war with the Nazis, a bomb rocked central Grozny, killing Akhmed Kadyrov, the Moscow appointed president of Chechnya, the head of the republic’s state council, and numerous Chechen and Russian officials.[16]

By June 2004, a top military commander publicly acknowledged the toll, both psychologically and physically, of the constant ambushes. That same night, a group of Chechen fighters launched a series of raids, killing 98 troops and wounding 104 while suffering only two casualties. Just three weeks later, 70 Chechen fighters ambushed FSB and police units, killing 18 and wounding 10. As a result of the sudden wave of insurgent successes, Putin dismissed the chief of the Russian General staff and several other high-ranking army, FSB and MVD officers responsible. Within the next month and a half, Chechens ambushed troops in Kizlyar, Dagestan, and conducted raids on Grozny and other surrounding cities, killing at least 120 security forces.[17]

The success of the insurgents, and their unconventional tactics, only served to intensify Russian frustration. Chechen soldiers often disguised bombs in cigarette packages, videocassette cases, lighters, cell-phones, water bottles and soft drink cans. Mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were scattered over the rough terrain and poorly mapped roads. Snipers often gave away their position within abandoned, booby-trapped buildings as a lure to ensnare unsuspecting Russian troops.[18] The Russian troops’ wrath often was directed at the only targets they actually could see: the nearby citizenry. Russian troops would evacuate a village, detaining and often torturing the men of fighting age, only to later reoccupy the same village with a vengeance after insurgents struck again.

Conclusion

The First and Second Chechen Wars demonstrated aspects of both interstate and civil wars, and often exemplified the most destructive aspects of both. As we have seen, the Chechen Wars must be described above all as identity wars, and as data shows, identity wars, wars for political rights, and wars fought for dignity or self respect are often far less negotiable and less easily settled than interstate wars, leading to higher mortality rates and an increase in brutality.[19] In Chechnya, the tremendous and violent experience of war brutalized combatants on both sides, resulting in a callousness and disregard for human life which rose above racial or religious prejudices – a common trait shared with civil wars.[20] The inability and/or unwillingness of the Chechen and Russian leaders to establish a dialogue was in large part due to what Chaim Kaufman calls the ‘irreconcilable visions of the identity, borders, and citizenship of the state’ and was only complicated by the lack of consensus between the Chechen leadership and combatants themselves.[21]

The Russians’ use of indiscriminate violence can, in most situations, be seen merely as a result of weakness borne out through their inability to assert control over the insurgents. The desire for conventional battle, combined with the ‘hardships of war’ led to what even the Russians labeled bez predel, a war without limits. The constant fear of attack was only exacerbated by the often brilliant successes of the insurgents’ ambushes and the ever-present threat of snipers, mines and most terrifying of all, suicide bombers. The knowledge that the relative safety of numbers or location has been erased by the suicidal willingness of Chechens to attack anywhere, at any time, with near impunity brought about a numb desensitization of troops. What has been described as ‘the core problem of the Russian military establishment’ was a lack of discipline and a rampant unprofessionalism at the non-commissioned officer and enlisted ranks, aided by the flagrant disregard for the well-being of civilians by the high-ranking military officers.[22]

Despite the protestations of Russian officials and the insistence that the counterterrorist operation was a success and the insurgency crushed, the truth is far less optimistic. As recently as 2008 there were at least 400 attacks in the North Caucasus and almost 750 in 2009. In 2008, during a seven-month period, at least 173 Russian security forces were killed, with another 300 injured, while throughout the whole of 2008, 346 Russian security force were killed with 516 wounded. In 2009, nearly 350 Russian troops or police were declared dead while over 650 were reported injured. With the Russian tendency to neglect reporting numbers of soldiers who died from wounds, the total death rate is likely substantially higher. In November 2010, there was at least one insurgent attack per day throughout the North Caucasus. When the situation is compared to Afghanistan, the picture becomes clearer: during the same time period of 2009, 520 soldiers were reported killed for the entirety of the coalition forces compared to 350 Russians dead. While Chechnya is five times smaller than Afghanistan and 1/25th the size of Iraq, the death rate continued to rise faster in Chechnya than in either Iraq or Afghanistan even as the Russian government insisted the counter-terrorist operation was completed.

While the Russians continued, and still continue, to declare an end to the operation in Chechnya, the forecast for the near future does not bode well for either side.[23] Corruption, police intimidation and a deliberate feeling of fear are still widespread. As of this writing, voter turnout in one precinct in Chechnya for now-reelected President Vladimir Putin exceeded 100%. Putin reportedly received 99.82% of the popular vote. One woman interviewed stepped away from the crowd and told reporters anonymously, ‘I hate [Putin], but, speaking honestly, we were forced to come here.’[24]

The price paid by the Chechen nation for the rhetoric of counterinsurgency was an ‘apocalyptic demographic crisis’.[25] By 2007 a survey of Chechen refugees found that two-thirds ‘never felt safe’, while in the past month alone, over 10% had been exposed to violence. 94% of Chechens reported exposure to violence since the war started, while 35% personally experienced physical violence. Almost a quarter of the Chechen population witnessed at least one murder. 5% had been witness to torture, a surprisingly large number given the Russian and Chechen tendency to kill those they tortured. Almost three-quarters had heard of a friend or relative being raped. A quarter of all Chechens had lost a nuclear family member, and over half responded to violence with a resort to religion.[26] Up to 80% of the adult population in Chechnya were unemployed in 2004, with illiteracy and juvenile delinquency on the rise.[27] Most catastrophic of all was the creation of a nation with no memories of peace. ‘I am very pessimistic about the future,’ said Ilias Akhmadov, Foreign Minister of Chechnya, ‘and it will probably be more horrible than you would like to think. Because the young generation which is now growing up and which hasn’t seen anything but war and violence; who knows nothing except ‘Mr. Kalashnikov’; who are brave to the point of insanity; who don’t have a drop of mercy or regret because their relatives were killed in front of them, their sisters were raped, their houses were destroyed… These people have nothing.’[28]

The Russian claim is that their counterinsurgency operations in Chechnya were successes: but at what cost?

Bibliography



Society of the Russian-Chechen Friendship. Human Rights Violations in Chechnya. Retrieved December 26, 2011, from http://web.archive.org/web/200706190018 ... t/main.htm

Akhmedova, K., & Speckhard, A. (2006). Black Widows: The Chechen Female Suicide Terrorists. In Y. Schweitzer (Ed.), Female Suicide Terrorists. Tel Aviv: Jaffe Center Publication.

Arquilla, J., & Karasik, T. (1999). Chechnya: A Glimpse of Future Conflict? Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 22(3), 207-229.

Banner, F. (2006). Uncivil Wars: "Suicide Bomber Identity" as a Product of Russo-Chechen Conflict. Religion, State and Society, 34(3), 215-253.

Combat Films and Research (Producer). (1999). Immortal Fortress: A Look Inside Chechnya's Warrior Culture. David M. Kennedy Center For International Studies.

Combat Films and Research (Producer). (2005). Chechnya: Separatism or Jihad? David M. Kennedy Center For International Studies.

de Jong, K., van der Kam, S., Ford, N., Hargreaves, S., van Oosten, R., Cunningham, D., . . . Kleber, R. (2007). The trauma of ongoing conflict and displacement in Chechnya: quantitative assessment of living conditions, and psychosocial and general health status among war displaced in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Conflict and Health, 1(4).

Fearon, J. D., & Laitin, D. D. (2003). Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War. American Political Science Review, 97(1), 75-91.

Gall, C., & de Waal, T. (1999). Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus. New York: New York University Press.

Henderson, J. D. (1985). When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Tolima. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Hughes, J. (2007). Chechnya: From Nationalism to Jihad. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kalyvas, S. (2006). The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kaufman, C. (1996). Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars. International Security, 20(4), 138.

King, C. (2010). Extreme Politics: Nationalism, Violence, and the End of Eastern Europe. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kramer, A. E. (2012, March 5). At Chechnya Polling Station, Votes for Putin Exceed the Rolls. Retrieved March 23, 2012, from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/world ... s-for-puti...

Kramer, M. (2005). Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency and Terrorism in the North Caucasus: The Military Dimension of the Russian-Chechen Conflict. Europe-Asia Studies, 57(2), 209-290.

Layton, K. S. (2004). "The Emperor Carries a Gun": Capacity Building in the North Caucasus. The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, 6(1), 241-271.

Lotnik, W. (1999). Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands. London: Serif.

McIntosh, S. E. (2004). Thumping the Hive: Russian Neocortical Warfare in Chechnya. Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School.

Moyar, M. (1997). Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.

Oliker, O. (2001). Russia's Chechen Wars: 1994-2000. Santa Monica: RAND.

Pain, E. (2000). The Second Chechen War: The Information Component. Military Review, 80(4), 59-69.

Peimani, H. (2002). Failed Transition, Bleak Future? : War and Instability in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Reuter, J. (2004). Chechnya's Suicide Bombers: Desperate, Devout, or Deceived? The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

Rigi, J. (2007). The War in Chechnya: The Chaotic Mode of Domination, Violence and Bare Life in the Post-Soviet Context. Critique of Anthropology, 27(37), 37-62.

Safranchuk, I. (2002). Chechnya: Russia's Experience of Asymmetrical Warfare. Center for Defense Information, Terrorism Project, Accessed 2/14/2012. http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/chechnya-pr.cfm.

Schaefer, R. (2010). The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad. Denver: Praeger Security International.

Siren, P., & Fowkes, B. (1998). An Outline Chronology of the Recent Conflict in Chechnia. In B. Fowkes (Ed.), Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis (pp. 170-182). New York: MacMillan Press LTD.

Souleimanov, E., & Ditrych, O. (2008). The Internationalisation of the Russian-Chechen Conflict: Myths and Reality. Europe-Asia Studies, 60(7), 1199-1222.

Akhmedova, K., & Speckhard, A. (2006c). The Making of a Martyr: Chechen Suicide Terrorism. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29(5), 429-492.

Szafranski, R. (1997). Neocortical Warfare? The Acme of Skill. In J. Arquilla, & D. Ronfeldt (Eds.), In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age (pp. 395-416). California: RAND Corporation.

Tolz, V. (2001). Russia. New York: Oxford University Press.

Trenin, D. V., & Malashenko, A. V. (2004). Russia's Restless Frontier: the Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace.

Zurcher, C. (2007). The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus. New York: New York University.



[1] McIntosh, Thumping the Hive, 55.

[2] Souleimanov and Ditrych, ‘Internationalisation of the Russian-Chechen Conflict,’ 1199.

[3] Ibid., 1200.

[4] Hughes, Chechnya: From Nationalism, 105.

[5] Banner, ‘Uncivil Wars,’ 217.

[6] Akhmedova and Speckhard, ‘The Making of a Martyr,’ 447.

[7] Ibid., 447.

[8] Ibid., 451.

[9] Akhmedova and Speckhard, ‘Black Widows,’ 66-7.

[10] Kramer, 214.

[11] Ibid., 218

[12] Ibid., 218.

[13] Ibid., 213.

[14] Ibid., 233.

[15] Ibid., 231-4.

[16] Ibid., 243.

[17] Kramer, ‘Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency,’ 225.

[18] Ibid., 228

[19] Fearon and Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War,’ 75-90.

[20] The literature on the longstanding questions of interstate vs. civil wars is immense both in quantity and quality. For more on civil wars in particular, see Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence, 54; Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy, 128; Henderson, When Colombia Bled, 51; Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds, 97-98; Lotnik, Nine Lives, 54-79

[21] Kaufman, ‘Possible and Impossible Solutions,’ 138.

[22] Schaefer, Insurgency in Chechnya, 193.

[23] Ibid., 3-4.

[24] Kramer, ‘At Chechnya Polling Station.’

[25] Reuter, ‘Chechnya's Suicide Bombers,’ 21.

[26] de Jong, et al. ‘The trauma of ongoing conflict.’

[27] Layton, ‘The Emperor Carries a Gun,’ 242.

[28] Combat Films and Research, Chechnya: Separatism or Jihad?

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/th ... %E2%80%93-

The New (and Old) Classics of Counterinsurgency
by Laleh Khalili
published in MER255
Two weapons today threaten freedom in our world. One -- the 100-megaton hydrogen bomb -- requires vast resources of technology, effort and money. It is an ultimate weapon of civilized and scientific man. The other -- a nail and a piece of wood buried in a rice paddy -- is deceptively simple, the weapon of a peasant.
—Lt. Col. T. N. Greene, The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him (1962)

Counterinsurgency is another word for brotherly love.
—attributed to Edward Lansdale

In the 1930s handbook for British imperial officers, Imperial Policing, Maj. Gen. Charles Gwynn, who had seen action in both West Africa and Sudan, writes:

When armed rebellion occurs, it presents a very different military problem from that of a deliberate small-war campaign. There is an absence of a definite objective, and the conditions are those of guerrilla warfare, in which elusive rebel bands must be hunted down and protective measures are needed to deprive them of opportunities. The admixture of rebels with a neutral or loyal element of the population adds to the difficulties of the task. Excessive severity may antagonize this element, add to the number of the rebels and leave a lasting feeling of resentment and bitterness. On the other hand, the power and resolution of the government forces must be displayed. Anything which can be interpreted as weakness encourages those who are sitting on the fence to keep on good terms with the rebels.

Gwynn distinguishes the policing role of occupying powers from conventional warfare and even from asymmetric “small wars” against irregulars, which he defines as “deliberate campaigns with a definite military objective, but undertaken with the ultimate object of establishing civil control” and in which “[no] limitations are placed on the amount of force which can be legitimately exercised, and the Army is free to employ all the weapons the nature of the terrain permits.” [1] Pitched closer to civil governance, policing occurs where the government expects to continue ruling a population after hostilities have ended and, as such, wishes to avoid antagonizing the civilians from whom nascent rebel groups can recruit members and receive logistical and moral support.

The precise calibration of lethal force advocated in Imperial Policing is embraced as the primary tactic of contemporary counterinsurgency doctrine in the United States, as most clearly set out in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual (2006), [2] whose free Army-published online version has been downloaded by over 2 million people. [3] Since the Manual’s dissemination, which roughly coincided with the 2007 “surge” in Iraq, counterinsurgency doctrine has become a cottage industry with numerous admirers in the press corps. A key achievement of counterinsurgency doctrine, in fact, has been to bring the majority of American foreign and military affairs reporters back on board the careening bandwagon of Washington’s post-September 11 wars.

The Soldier-Scholars
Counterinsurgency doctrine is interpreted, expanded and sometimes challenged in the proliferation of publications and blogs dedicated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One widely read blog is known by its URL, taches d’huile (oil spots), named after the anti-guerrilla tactic invented by French general Joseph Gallieni in the late nineteenth century. Gallieni’s idea was that, rather than pushing forward across a broad front, the occupying army would gradually and evenly expand its control outward from a central stronghold, as oil spreads on paper. Other prolific bloggers include Abu Muqawama (nom de plume of Andrew Exum, an ex-Army Ranger who is completing a doctoral thesis on Lebanese Hizballah) and former Washington Post journalist Tom Ricks. Among the authors of books and articles are a number of active and retired military officers who publish in a range of venues, from Military Review and Small Wars Journal to think tank occasional papers series and, increasingly, university and trade press monographs. Crucially for counterinsurgency doctrine’s cachet, many of these authors are soldier-scholars. Among those brandishing doctorates are Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster (North Carolina, history), retired Col. Conrad Crane (Stanford, history), retired Col. Peter Mansoor (Ohio State, military history), retired Lt. Col. John Nagl (Oxford, international relations), retired Col. Kalev Sepp (Harvard, history) and retired Lt. Col. David Kilcullen of the Australian army (New South Wales, politics). Then there is Gen. David Petraeus (Princeton, international relations), the motivating force behind the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, the only general of the post-September 11 wars whose name is bruited for the presidency.

Petraeus is in such favor because the surge is widely seen to have “worked,” allowing the military and the media to shift their attention from Iraq to Afghanistan. The works of Kilcullen, Nagl and Sepp, along with Ricks, have been highly influential in establishing this metanarrative, and also in providing blueprints for soldiers, commanders and civilian officials on how to fight asymmetric wars against non-uniformed guerrillas now and in the future. Significantly, the admiration for counterinsurgency doctrine crosses partisan lines and is touted as progressive by many liberal interventionists in Europe and North America. [4] Sarah Sewall, former director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, was involved in drafting the Manual and wrote the introduction to the press edition. Such humanitarian types focus on counterinsurgency’s emphasis (now a cliché) on “winning hearts and minds,” as well as its “restraint” and even “political correctness.”

What makes the Counterinsurgency Field Manual and its cohort an ostensible repository of progressive intent is related to what distinguishes counterinsurgency from conventional warfare. In conventional warfare, as T. E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) wrote, opposing armies are each “striving into touch to avoid tactical surprise.” Guerrillas, by contrast, “might be a vapour.” Their weapons are not firepower but “speed and time.” [5] To wit, they can move faster than large armies and they can hold out longer. It is not surprising that Mao, perhaps the greatest theoretician of guerrilla warfare, stressed “protracted war” or that the Pentagon speaks of today’s overseas missions as “the long war.” In such wars, Mao went on, guerrilla leaders must strengthen “the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water, the latter to the fish that inhabit it.” [6]

The US military now makes a further distinction between “enemy-centric” and “population-centric” counterinsurgencies. The former, what Gwynn called “small wars,” is the attempt to defeat the guerrilla by killing him and using punitive measures to deter the civilian population from supporting him. Such a campaign was waged in the “Sunni triangle” of Iraq in 2003-2004, succeeding mostly in multiplying the number of insurgents. The latter, as promulgated by the Manual, is about persuading the civilians that the counterinsurgent army can best shield them from hardship. This approach, beloved of liberals for its emphasis on “protection,” is of course aimed primarily at defeating the guerrilla, by literally starving him of shelter, food and medical supplies.

“Armed Social Work”
David Kilcullen argues precisely this point in his first and most widely read piece, “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency,” self-consciously modeled on Lawrence’s advice for mobilizing Arabs in World War I but drawing as well on his own doctoral “fieldwork” as a serving officer in Indonesia. Some of Kilcullen’s guidance for ground commanders has to do with inter-agency cooperation, knowledge of the locale or motivations for insurgency. The core of the article, however, is concerned with how the counterinsurgent should interact with civilians:

This is the true meaning of the phrase “hearts and minds,” which comprises two separate components. “Hearts” means persuading people their best interests are served by your success; “minds” means convincing them that you can protect them and that resisting you is pointless. Note that neither concept has to do with whether people like you. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts.

The article emphasizes the importance of building relations with community leaders, local NGOs and police. Counterinsurgency is “armed social work,” and depends not only on the fighting abilities of the occupying military, but also on performing for local and international audiences, presenting a “unified narrative” that can counter nationalist sentiments and “coopting neutral or friendly women, through targeted social and economic programs.” [7]

Kilcullen’s heralded volume The Accidental Guerrilla expands on these ideas. He presents a series of cases -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia and even Europe -- through which he contends that insurgents’ strategies aim to provoke their opponents, intimidate the locals and prolong the conflict in order to “exhaust their opponents’ resources.” He identifies a “pathology” whereby infection, contagion, intervention and rejection form a cycle named “the accidental guerrilla syndrome.” The accidental guerrillas are the ostensibly neutral civilians who wind up “fighting alongside extremist forces not because they support takfiri ideology but because they oppose outside interference in their affairs.” [8] Some of this statement rings true -- native populations do tend to resist foreign occupiers. But it is another point that has become the counterinsurgency truism. In his analysis of the Afghan counterinsurgency, Kilcullen says:

Counterinsurgency theory, as well as field observation, suggests that a minority of the population will support the government come what may, and another minority will back the Taliban under any circumstance, but the majority of Afghans simply want security, peace and prosperity and will swing to support the side that appears most likely to prevail and to meet these needs, and that most closely aligns with their primary group identity. [9]

Kilcullen is rephrasing a “basic tenet of the exercise of political power” put forward by French counterinsurgency expert David Galula, a veteran of colonial Algeria’s wars who is regularly and vociferously declared to be the forefather of US counterinsurgency effort today. Galula writes: “In any situation, whatever the cause, there will be an active minority for the cause, a neutral majority, and an active minority against the cause. The technique of power consists in relying on the favorable minority in order to rally the neutral majority and to neutralize or eliminate the hostile minority.” [10] Aside from the fact that Kilcullen minimizes the latter portion of the formula, his entire book seems to pivot on this Machiavellian understanding of politics.

“Be Polite”
The Galula/Kilcullen thesis finds its academic counterpart in Stathis Kalyvas’ vaunted The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Interestingly, rather than calling a counterinsurgency operation by that name, Kalyvas uses the conceptual framework of civil war, thus obscuring the most important element of counterinsurgency: the asymmetry of power between occupying forces and guerrilla groups. In this sophisticated, extensively sourced book, the central case is the Greek state’s suppression of the Communist insurgency in the 1940s. In order to emphasize the “civil war” element, Kalyvas neglects to mention that the US provided Greece with $467 million in military aid, a “flood of arms and equipment” and a corps of military advisers under the auspices of the Truman Doctrine. [11]

Like Galula and Kilcullen, Kalyvas sees two methods that can win over a neutral population: deterrence through intimidation or persuasion through protection. His main argument is that civilian support for one of the sides is neither ideological nor political. In asymmetric warfare, civilians can be detached from such considerations through domination of the battlespace, though their allegiances may remain in flux throughout the period of fighting. In Kalyvas’ words, “control is increasingly likely to shape collaboration because political actors who enjoy substantial territorial control can protect civilians who live in that territory.” [12] Although convincing as regards the transformative effects of violence, Kalyvas transforms violence into the raison d’etre of conflict. There is no power ascribed to memory, history or ideals of justice, except in so far as one side or another can use these things instrumentally.

The process by which the “protection” of a population can work is complex and, Kilcullen suggests, requires a root-and-branch transformation of both military and political practice. The Counterinsurgency Field Manual lays out the steps taken in the field, including integration of civilian and military activities, judicious use of intelligence and “information operations,” population control, provision of essential services and economic development, and training of local police. Kilcullen’s proposals are more strategic in nature. He suggests developing a new disciplinary approach to this form of conflict -- not international relations, but anthropology, which he defines as “the study of social roles, groups, status, institutions and relations within human population groups, often in non-elite, non-state-based frameworks.” He further posits that US grand strategy has to choose between containment and intervention and between military and non-military spending, to decide what the acceptable costs are “in resources and lives,” and to determine which geographic areas are high-priority. Kilcullen wants the imbalance between US military and non-military capabilities remedied and US “soft power” reinforced. In a sense, he would like to see sovereign power (defined by Foucault as “the power over life and death”) give way to a panoply of disciplinary capacities, including “cultural and ethnographic intelligence, social systems analysis, information operations, early-entry or high-threat humanitarian or governance teams, field negotiation and mediation teams, biometric reconnaissance and a variety of other strategically useful capabilities.” [13] But sovereign power is to be kept in reserve. Or, as fellow warrior-solon John Nagl half-jokingly said on The Daily Show, counterinsurgency means, “Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill.”

Of Boers and Boy Scout Troops
Counterinsurgency doctrine gets reverent treatment from the media, in part because it seems to originate in the uniformed military’s sprawling network of war colleges and institutes of specialized study rather than universities or think tanks. Nagl and his colleagues cannot be derided, as the neo-conservative intellectuals were, as “chicken hawks.” But counterinsurgency doctrine is firmly ensconced in civilian Washington, and its American Enterprise Institute is the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), of which Nagl is now president. The chief executive officer is Nathaniel Fick, a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars whose book One Bullet Away (2005) is reportedly required reading for Marine cadets. Andrew Exum and Tom Ricks have offices at CNAS; Kilcullen is a non-resident senior fellow. CNAS was founded in 2007 by Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy, who now serve in the Obama State and Defense Departments, respectively. It is not coincidental to counterinsurgency doctrine’s ascendancy that it is linked to the right wing of the Democratic Party, the paladins of the status quo who, because the American media dubs them “centrist” and “middle-of-the-road,” are thought to be non-ideological. (“I could go there without being branded,” one journalist with a temporary perch at CNAS told The Nation. [14])

The CNAS president, Nagl, has also done a great deal to lend a scholarly sheen to the concept of population-centric counterinsurgency. He has, for instance, helped to spread what has become an unquestioned verity among his peers, that the suppression of Communist guerrilla warfare in British Malaya (1948-1960) is proof that great power wars against irregulars need not be quagmires. [15] In Malaya, the story goes, the guerrillas were vanquished, the civilian population was deterred from supporting them and the regime that replaced imperial British rule was decidedly friendly to British interests.

When the Communist guerrillas began their struggle, they were supported logistically and morally by “squatters” -- landless workers of Chinese extraction in the rubber plantations and tin mines owned by the British -- whose communities dotted the jungles. A state of emergency was declared, and British units from elsewhere, including British members of the Palestine Police who had lost their jobs with the establishment of the Israeli state, were flown into Malaya in large numbers. A three-pronged plan was put into action to suppress the revolt. In the cities, emergency regulations were used to silence critics (particularly of Chinese extraction) and to send potential “agitators” to detention camps; significant numbers of Chinese residents considered troublesome were also deported. [16] Military units, aided by contingents of trackers from other parts of the empire, were sent into the jungle to fight the guerrillas. Perhaps most significantly, the British moved to sever the connection between the civilians and the guerrillas. They engineered the resettlement of 500,000 squatters into “New Villages” and some 600,000 laborers into “controlled areas” -- still near the tin mines and rubber plantations to ensure a steady supply of labor, but with these compounds surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, accessible via military checkpoints and heavily monitored. [17] Food denial operations rationed the victuals of New Village and controlled area residents to ensure they passed none on to the guerrillas. [18] The areas from which the squatters had been evacuated were declared “black areas,” free-fire zones in which the police and army were free to “shoot anything that moved.” [19] Conditions in the New Villages were dire; vegetables and other crops had been uprooted, old households burned down, animals slaughtered, and the new land could scarcely support agriculture because of extensive rubber farming. The guards manhandled the residents, and missionaries were invited only eventually to provide health care and education. Where electricity was introduced, it was to power the floodlights used for surveillance of the villages. [20] In effect, these procedures succeeded in depriving the guerrillas in the jungles of intelligence, information, support, food and medicine.

Alongside innovations in tactics and “psy-ops” (i.e., psychological operations, or what is now called information operations), Nagl attributes the success of Malayan counterinsurgency to this resettlement of civilians, which he credits to the “strategic directions” of British colonial officials. In addition, he sees the lessons of the Malayan counterinsurgency to be decentralization of anti-guerrilla military action, “protection” of civilians and extensive gathering of intelligence, all guaranteed by the British military’s flexibility and capacity for organizational learning. Extraordinarily, Nagl sees the New Villages as benign institutions, “more than concentration camps” hosting village cooperatives and “even Boy Scout Troops.” They are the emblem of population-centric counterinsurgency. Nagl admiringly cites Harold Briggs, the British Army’s director of operations in Malaya:

The problem of clearing Communist banditry from Malaya was similar to that of eradicating malaria from a country. Flit guns and mosquito nets, in the form of military and police, though some very local security if continuously maintained, effected no permanent cure. Such a permanent cure entails the closing of all breeding areas. In this case the breeding areas of the Communists were the isolated squatter areas. [21]

Setting aside whatever qualms one may have about the immediate violence done to those 1 million civilians, or their long-term traumas, Nagl’s celebration of “population control” is incoherent. After all, the New Villages are the direct descendants of the concentration camps the British set up for Boers and black Africans starting in 1900. In the Boer war, the language of protection and refuge was used to herd hundreds of thousands of civilians into barren compounds after their farms and houses were ordered torched by Lord Kitchener. [22] In counterinsurgency doctrine, however, Boer war tactics are held up as enemy-centric (with an odor of disapproval wafting from the term), [23] while the New Villages are considered sources of emulation for practitioners of humane, population-centric quashing of rebellion. In fact, in Kalev Sepp’s heavily cited “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency,” what he euphemizes as “electrified rural villages” are placed alongside mass citizenship and elevation of the role of women as basic determinants of the success of counterinsurgency. [24] It is noteworthy that Nagl, so enthusiastic about New Villages, barely touches on their direct descendants in Vietnam, the strategic hamlets. While recognizing the family connection of the two concepts, he simply attributes strategic hamlets’ failure to “overly enthusiastic implementation effort that created new hamlets before the old ones had been pacified.” [25] Instead, Nagl sees in local militias created by the CIA and the Marine Corps Combined Action Platoons (which wedded patrolling to “civic action”) routes to salvation not taken by a top brass infatuated with conventional, offensive warfare. [26]

The writings on Malaya or Vietnam rarely comment on the massive dislocation caused by the New Villages and strategic hamlets, or the intrusiveness of the population control measures and their systematic violation of human rights -- not to mention norms of justice. The British campaign was, in fact, an exercise in collective punishment that sought not to “protect,” but to divide and rule. At their most “civic,” US forces in Vietnam similarly attempted social engineering in the Vietnamese countryside through displacement on an immense scale.

Tribes Without Flags
Indeed, it is an abiding interest in divisions of sect, ethnicity, tribe and clan, alongside the tactics of population control, that defines counterinsurgency practice as passed down from the twentieth century to the twenty-first. In a 1906 memo intended for British imperial officials, Lord Lugard, the chief theoretician of indirect rule, writes:

Since the Fulani Chiefs are aliens who won their position by conquest, it would not, of course, be surprising if the bulk of the people, seeing that the Fulani power has been broken by the British, were no longer to accord to the Chiefs the obedience and respect which they had hitherto exacted…. I am anxious in every possible way to counteract this tendency, and to support the authority of the Native Chiefs, though I consider that it is necessary to retain the means of enforcing order -- viz., the Military and Police forces -- solely under Government at present, and probably for some time to come. [27]

Bolstering the powers of local chieftains was profoundly important to the indirect rule, or “dual mandate,” methods employed by the British in so much of their empire. (The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa was Lugard’s best-known tome.) Just as significant was the reduction of local (or native) political structures and relations to a mosaic of tribes (or communities) that could be bought off or manipulated to fit military and political exigencies. Classifying the inscrutable natives into tribes rendered them legible to colonial eyes.

It is instructive to compare two texts about the Pashtun tribes of Afghanistan and Pakistan, one written at the end of the nineteenth century by a British colonel and the second at the beginning of the twenty-first century by an American major. Sometime in the 1880s, Col. R. J. Marker delivered a lecture on the Northwest Frontier, then part of British India, and now the locus in Pakistan of the various Pashtun militias of which the Taliban is one. Marker wrote that “the semi-independent Tribes” of this mountainous zone “have no common binding influence except that of the jehad or holy war, and in peaceful times spend the greater part of an uneventful existence in inter-tribal feuds or attempts to murder a fellow clansman with whom they have a blood quarrel. Should the cause of religion lead them to combine against a common infidel enemy, they could turn out not less than 200,000 of the finest guerrilla fighters and marksmen in the world, an increasing proportion of which number is daily becoming armed with weapons of precision and modern range, owing to the developments of the gun-running trade through Persia and Afghanistan.” [28] Marker suggests the use of an “irregular corps” of local fighters to subdue these tribes one by one. His essay includes a sort of proto-ethnography of the tribes, measuring the susceptibility of each kinship group to alliance with and obeisance to British imperial power.

Flash forward to 2009, when US veterans of the post-September 11 wars had begun to commit their own proto-ethnographies to paper. A latter-day Marker, Maj. Jim Gant of the Army’s Special Forces, describes the political landscape of Afghanistan as being

constituted of tribes. Not individuals, not Western-style citizens -- but tribes and tribesmen.… Tribes understand protection. Tribes are organized and run to ensure the security of the tribe. Not only physical security, but revenue and land protection. But most important of all is preservation of the tribal name and reputation.... When honor is at stake, tribal members stop at nothing to preserve their tribe’s integrity and “face.” [T]ribes understand power. How many guns do we have? How many warriors can I put in the field? Can I protect my tribe? Can I attack others who threaten my tribe? Can I back my words or decisions up with the ability to come down the valley and kill you? Can I keep you from killing me? Lastly, tribes understand projection. Tribes have no “strategic goals” in the Western sense. Their diplomatic, informational, military and economic priorities are almost without exception in reference to other tribes. [29]

US officials take Gant so seriously that this “Lawrence of Afghanistan” is being sent there to implement his vision of tribal control. [30] The same faith in the explanatory power of tribes also underpinned the US surge in Iraq, even if that policy came with considerably more window dressing about “hearts and minds.” [31]

Back on Board
While the surge has many champions, its master hagiographer is Tom Ricks, whose The Gamble is so complete in its advocacy of the new counterinsurgency orthodoxy that its cast of characters, narrative arc and subtle norms have passed into mainstream lore. In a way, The Gamble is meant to sear shut the wound to the US military’s honor that was gouged by Ricks himself in his earlier account of the first phase of the Iraq war, Fiasco. In Fiasco, Ricks tells not only the familiar tale of bad faith on the part of the Bush White House, but also a narrative of incompetence and cruelty among the ranks of American soldiers, from the top generals on down. The problem, as Ricks sees it, was that US forces in Iraq were violating “at least three” of the four rules put forward by Charles Gwynn in Imperial Policing: “Civil power must be in charge, civilian and military authorities must cooperate relentlessly, action must be firm and timely, but when force is required it should be used minimally.” [32] By contrast, The Gamble, which covers the years 2006-2008, is the story of how the US military in Iraq began to obey the rules of effective counterinsurgency.

In Ricks’ account, two of the most significant early steps in the counterinsurgency effort were, first, to “recognize” Iraq’s “tribal” character and, second, to prise open fissures in the hostile opposition’s ranks. With regard to the former, he applauds the “insight” of a US general who idolized the British imperial officer, Gertrude Bell. The general asserted that “tribal society makes up the tectonic plates in Iraq on which everything rests.” [33] As for the latter, Ricks writes of the commander of US military forces in Ramadi and his Arabic-speaking right-hand man, whose approach was to separate the “tribes” from the insurgents: “Together they tried to sort out who was a real sheik, with big wasta, or influence and who was a lightweight.” [34] In turn, this tribal chieftain was paid and given some autonomy of action in order that he and his followers challenge insurgent groups. Here, the officers were following an edict of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual to “remain alert for signs of divisions within an insurgent movement,” since “rifts between insurgent leaders, if identified, can be exploited.” [35]

Ricks also approvingly tells the story of the cooptation of civilians as advisers to senior military officers. Petraeus’ adviser in Iraq was a Palestinian-American Arabic speaker and “schmoozer,” Sa‘di ‘Uthman, while Gen. Ray Odierno’s adviser was an Arabic-speaking British humanitarian worker, Emma Sky, who has been compared to Bell herself. [36] In an eerie echo of British imperial policies, these “native informants” and renegade civilians, ostensibly sympathetic to the locals but ultimately loyal to the empire, provided a pathway for local knowledge, a velvet glove of joviality and compassion for the mailed fist and, most importantly, a more disciplinary (rather than overtly coercive) form of governance.

Despite the adulatory tone of the book, Ricks is fully aware that the US presence in Iraq has persisted far longer than envisioned. Few advocates of counterinsurgency comment on how it has become the long-term replacement for policies of direct action, ostensibly handing over control to locals, reducing the number of US troops, and all the while polishing modes of indirect rule. Ricks has, indeed, been the main publicist of the omnipresent question attributed to Petraeus, “How does this end?” In The Gamble, Ricks writes that “the best answer” came from a Petraeus adviser who said, “I don't think [this counterinsurgency] does end…. We are going to be in this centrally located Arab state for a long time. There will be some US presence, and some relationship with Iraqis, for decades.” [37] This answer is in line with the strategic vision of Gen. Jack Keane, the man credited with persuading Petraeus to back the surge. According to the consummate insider journalist Bob Woodward, Keane told Petraeus: “We’re going to be here [in the greater Middle East] for 50 years minimum, most of the time hopefully preventing wars, and on occasion having to fight one, dealing with radical Islam, our economic interests in the region and trying to achieve stability…. We’re going to do it anyway because we don’t have a choice.” [38] But geopolitics is not Ricks’ concern. He promotes counterinsurgency as the difficult, but humane, path to governing conquered and occupied countries overseas. He does not question the underlying will to conquest.

Counterinsurgency is always an instrument of imperial rule, but its ardent proponents set this fact aside. To them, counterinsurgency is simply a mindset that commanders need to adopt or a toolkit that soldiers need to master in order to do their jobs properly. It is even a kinder, gentler means of rescuing a recalcitrant world; a way for the US to police a chaotic planet with a light avuncular touch rather than a firm paternal hand. It is a familiar maneuver. The prophets of counterinsurgency concentrate on everyday, commonsensical tasks in pursuit of unobjectionable goals such as “stability,” “development,” “nation-building” and “democracy.” The progressive proponents see in it a humanitarian style of military intervention. Such aims seem devoid of political or ideological content; in fact, all of them have been seen to stand for the purported “end of ideology” brought about by US hegemony since the end of World War II. [39] But, at a deeper level, their celebratory projections of US managerial prowess -- whether with “oil spots” or accounting ledgers -- obscure the broader US ideology of domination.

Population-centric counterinsurgency has been a particularly capacious vessel for transmission of a new kind of rule from a distance: ostensibly humanitarian, much more reliant on pliant proxies (whether in political or security positions) than on gung-ho occupying forces, dependent on a scientific or ethnographic knowledge of the natives, and ultimately dismissing the political sentiments among the ruled. The effect of the hegemony of the counterinsurgency narratives is that the civilian populations are seen as malleable and calculating masses, subject to manipulation by the “terrorists” and the counterinsurgents alike, their acquiescence necessary for obtaining intelligence and tactical support in the first instance and maintaining “stability” in the last. Counterinsurgency is self-avowedly an update of “dual mandate” methods for our time or, in other words, a new managerial handbook of imperial rule.

Endnotes
[1] Sir Charles Gwynn, Imperial Policing (London: Macmillan, 1939), pp. 3-5.
[2] US Army, Counterinsurgency Field Manual: US Army Field Manual 3-24 and US Marine Corps, Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
[3] Chicago Tribune, September 8, 2007.
[4] See Rachel Kleinfeld, “Petraeus the Progressive,” Democracy Journal (Winter 2009), pp. 108-115.
[5] T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (New York: Doubleday, 1935), p. 194.
[6] Mao Tse-tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Samuel Griffith (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 93.
[7] David Kilcullen, “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency,” Military Review (May-June 2006), pp. 105-107.
[8] David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (London: Hurst, 2009), pp. 30-2, 35, 38.
[9] Ibid., p. 66.
[10] David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), p. 53.
[11] Charles Shrader, The Withered Vine: Logistics and the Communist Insurgency in Greece, 1945-1949 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), pp. 225, 254.
[12] Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 12.
[13] Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, pp. 296-299.
[14] Nathan Hodge, “Coalition of the Shilling,” The Nation, March 29, 2010.
[15] John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
[16] Karl Hack, “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm,” Journal of Strategic Studies 32/3 (June 2009), p. 386.
[17] Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (London: Frederick Muller, 1975), pp. 391-411.
[18] Ibid., pp. 375-379.
[19] “A Survey of the New Villages in Malaya” (Singapore: Malayan Christian Council, 1958), p. 1.
[20] Judith Strauch, Chinese Village Politics in the Malaysian State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 63.
[21] Nagl, pp. 71-76.
[22] See S. B. Spies, Methods of Barbarism? Roberts and Kitchener and Civilians in the Boer Republics, January 1900-May 1902 (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 1977).
[23] See, for instance, Michael Lackman, “The British Boer War and the French Algerian Conflict: Counterinsurgency for Today,” M.A. thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 2006, p. 23.
[24] Kalev Sepp, “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency,” Military Review (May-June 2005), p. 9.
[25] Nagl, p. 130.
[26] Ibid., p. 128, 156-158.
[27] F. D. Lugard, Instructions to Political and Other Officers on Subjects Chiefly Political and Administrative (London: Waterlow and Sons, 1906), p. 190.
[28] Private papers of Colonel R. J. Marker (1867-1914), National Army Museum, London [6505-62-4], “Lecture on the North West Frontier Province of India,” pp. 6-7.
[29] Jim Gant, One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan (Los Angeles: Nine Sisters Imports, 2009), pp. 8-14.
[30] Washington Post, January 17, 2010.
[31] See Lin Todd et al, Iraq Tribal Study—Al-Anbar Governorate: The Albu Fahd Tribe, The Albu Mahal Tribe and the Albu Issa Tribe (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2006).
[32] Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London: Allen Lane, 2006), p. 266.
[33] Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (London, Allen Lane, 2009), p. 219.
[34] Ibid., p. 64.
[35] Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. 33.
[36] On the comparison between Sky and Bell, see Times (London), April 13, 2009.
[37] Ricks, The Gamble, p. 325.
[38] Bob Woodward, The War Within (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 410.
[39] See Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 56-63.

http://www.merip.org/mer/mer255/new-old ... insurgency
Laleh Khalili

Editor's Note: SWJ would like to thank theIllinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board's Executive Institute for allowing us to republish this article. It was originally published in Law Enforcement Executive Forum 12(3).

A Shared Culture of Criminal Behavior

Criminal street gang members are not insurgents, and street gangs are not insurgencies. Law enforcement agencies are not the military, and our cities are not legitimate battlefields. However, insurgent fighters operating in countries around the globe and domestic street gang members engaged in criminal behavior share more in common than we often care to openly admit. The most obvious similarities between the two groups can be described based upon what we overtly note:

• Ability to easily blend into the population, making initial detection and apprehension difficult

• Activities that hold the population they operate within “hostage”

• Furtherance of activities based upon population response, be that response supportive, coercion through fear or reprisal, or acquiescence

• Attempt to expand operations through recruitment of local population

• Operations executed under no legitimate “Rules of Engagement”—that is, open hostilities and use of force against any other person within the population

The similarities, however, extend much deeper than just the above surface treatment. According to the U.S. Army’s (2006) publication, FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, an insurgency is “an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control” (p. 1.1). The manual goes on to define counterinsurgency as “military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency” (p. 1.1). These definitions can easily be rephrased to apply to criminal street gang activity: “an organized, protracted criminal endeavor that weakens the control and legitimacy of government and civic authority while increasing gang control over the community”; and law enforcement efforts against the criminal street gang: “legal, procedural, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat the criminal street gang.”

Several studies have specifically addressed the concept of legitimacy in law enforcement (Kelling & Coles, 1996; Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Sunshine and Tyler (2003) examined perceptions regarding police legitimacy in New York residents and found that citizens are more apt to openly and actively support the police when they perceive the police to be a legitimate authority, and the perception of the police as a legitimate authority is dependant upon the fairness of the procedures applied by the police.

The perception of legitimacy places the population on a tipping point and makes the struggle, as David Kilcullen (2010) writes in his book Counterinsurgency, one of “contested governance” (p. 1). For the criminal street gang, the struggle for control is de facto; they have no legitimate governance, but their criminal actions, intimidation, and use of violence have allowed them to gain a margin of control over the local community. It may also be argued that their willful disregard for the law is itself a manner of contested governance; they categorically reject the legitimate authority through their criminal actions.

The military and law enforcement communities have recognized the similarities between insurgent fighters and street gang members for some time. In preparing for counterinsurgency operations, the military has trained directly with domestic law enforcement agencies (Calese, 2005; Musa, Morgan, & Keegan, 2011; Watson, 2010). Calese (2005) examined the similarities between insurgent organizations and criminal street gangs and determined five shared characteristics: (1) leadership within the organization, (2) organizational structure, (3) culture within the organization, (4) recruitment, and (5) finances. He concludes by suggesting five concepts that the Army should adopt from law enforcement for use against insurgent organizations: (1) a “cultural shift” from killing the enemy to winning popular support in the local population; (2) the need to accurately determine the identity of members within the population; (3) a use of intelligence software to track insurgents and manage crime data; (4) a “community policing” style of operations aimed at working with local civic leaders; and (5) the development of “street knowledge,” learning the motivators and cultural mores for the local population. These suggestions are included within the Army’s (2006) FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency and are distilled succinctly early on in the manual’s 13 principles for counterinsurgency:

1. Legitimacy is the main objective.

2. Unity of effort is essential.

3. Political factors are primary.

4. Counterinsurgents must understand the environment.

5. Intelligence drives operations.

6. Insurgents must be isolated from their cause and support.

7. Security under the rule of law is essential.

8. Counterinsurgents must prepare for a long-term commitment.

9. Manage information and expectations.

10. Use the appropriate level of force.

11. Learn and adapt.

12. Empower the lowest levels.

13. Support the host nation. (pp. 1.20-1.26)

Major Michael L. Burgoyne (2011), U.S. Army, examined how each of these principles might be applied to law enforcement operations against criminal street gangs in his study “The Right Tool for the Job: An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Counterinsurgency Principles Against Criminal Insurgency.” Burgoyne examined the favela gangs of Rio de Janeiro and the Medellin and Cali Cartels of Colombia, comparing each of the 13 principles outlined in FM 3-24 (U.S. Army, 2006) against the law enforcement operations utilized against them. Burgoyne (2011) found that both efforts used several of the 13 principles with differing rates of success. In Rio’s operations against the favela gangs, 11 of the 13 principles were used successfully, and the overall operations against the favela gangs were vital in breaking apart the criminal organizations. In Colombia, six of the 13 principles were used successfully, with three specifically noted as not achieved or failed. These three principles were (1) Government Legitimacy, (2) Rule of Law, and (3) Information Operations (p. 33). Burgoyne reasons that because narcotrafficking organizations have as a center of gravity financing operations and do not rely on local popular support in order to be effective, counterinsurgency principles that focus on establishing government legitimacy (population-centric strategy) are not effective. Rather, a focus on high-ranking individuals within the organizations and the appropriate financing centers of gravity (enemy-centric strategy) is more successful (pp. 33-34). Burgoyne notes that the counterinsurgency strategy is not simply “plug-and-play” but that the principles of counterinsurgency as described in FM 3-24 (U.S. Army, 2006) should be included as part of operational analysis and planning:



The development of a more comprehensive analysis framework that integrates tools used for gangs, organized crime, terrorism, and insurgency would be a valuable tool for policymakers and practitioners. An insurgency framework alone is insufficient. (I)nsurgency and COIN (counterinsurgency) insights should remain part of threat analysis and campaign design. (Burgoyne, 2011, p. 55)

A Manner of Strategy

Within the counterinsurgency debate, there are two commonly contested strategies: (1) enemy-centric and (2) population-centric. Enemy-centric strategies focus on direct action against insurgent fighters, using raids and sweeps to actively seek out and eliminate enemy combatants. Proponents argue that it is through the elimination of these malefactors in the population that the insurgency is brought to a close. Detractors argue that direct action and raids threaten the local population through collateral damage and the alienation of local people. Population-centric strategies put the bulk of the operating energy toward establishing host nation government legitimacy, working to bring the local population onto their side through increased security and service restoration, thereby cutting off the insurgents from access to support. Proponents argue that this approach is more effective because it cuts insurgents off from needed resources, prevents new insurgents from being created, and allows the counterinsurgency to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the local population. Detractors argue that the strategy is wholly ineffective; local residents are not “fence-sitters” trying to decide with which group they will side.

Another counterinsurgency strategy that continues to draw traction is leadership-centric strategy, which asserts that the outcome between insurgents and counterinsurgents is wholly dependant upon which side has better leaders. In A Question of Command, Dr. Mark Moyar (2009) describes these leaders as not only being strategically and tactically proficient but as being charismatically superior to their enemies. The side that has the strongest leadership personalities and can rally its fighters and the population around them will be the victor.

FM 3-24 (U.S. Army, 2006) is written with a population-centric strategy. The effectiveness of this strategy in counterinsurgency warfare is an active subject for debate within the military, but for policing, it provides a thoroughly tested application of community policing against aggressive and armed groups who would actively seek to do violence against authority. As violence perpetrated by criminal street gang members against each other and the police continues to intensify, law enforcement has more than a passing interest in examining the lessons learned through the application of population-centric counterinsurgency strategy as described in FM 3-24.

The 19 Articles of Policing Criminal Street Gangs

The creation of guiding principles in counterinsurgency warfare is not a new one. T. E. Lawrence wrote his Twenty-Seven Articles in 1917, describing what he believed were the necessary requirements for any counterinsurgency leader or advisor operating in an Arab-populated region. The most recent doctrinal principles were written into the FM 3-24 (U.S. Army, 2006) and listed earlier in this document. Dr. David Kilcullen (2006) provided his own, modern rendition of Lawrence when he wrote “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency.” Like Lawrence, these articles were based upon his own observations of what worked in counterinsurgency operations. Unlike Lawrence, however, these Articles had the benefit of being field-tested and compared to an established counterinsurgency doctrine.

By using what has been written into population-centric counterinsurgency theory and strategy and combining it with both the lessons learned through their application and with lessons learned through years of community policing in urban locations with entrenched criminal street gang problems, it is possible to create a similar list of field-tested “Articles” for policing street gangs. Utilizing the structural format offered most recently by Kilcullen (2006), what follows are those principles. These principles are described individually, but experience indicates that their application as a well-integrated whole offers the best chance of success. As principles, they serve to create a firm foundation upon which specific strategies and operations should be built.

First Do No Harm. Do nothing to tarnish your integrity, your agency’s integrity, or your profession’s integrity. Your primary purpose is to protect the residents of your area and to impartially enforce the law. A reputation as a fair and just officer will increase your public legitimacy. Citizens are more likely to actively assist you by providing information if they know you will treat them and others fairly.

Know Your Turf. Know the streets, the alleys, and the parking lots. Know which streets dead-end and which alleys end in “T” intersections. Know how to get from one place to another in multiple ways. Know the gangsters and the dealers. Know the drug corners, the gang hangouts, and the location where gangs recruit new members—including the schools. Know the gang members by name and by face; recognize them at each contact you have so you know with whom you are speaking. Know which gangs operate in your area and what their territorial boundaries are. You should know where you are at all times and what gang territory you are in at all times. When conducting a vehicle stop, you should instantly know if the occupants are gang members and if they are in a rival’s territory. Learn the gang identifiers: the graffiti, the colors, the manner of dress, and the hand signs. Know the individual members and what they do in the gang: you should recognize enforcers, dealers, and higher-ranking members by name and sight. Know who the “good guys” are: the businesspeople, the families, and the kids. Be able to identify when they might need your help and be able to call them by name. If you don’t know the turf, you can’t effectively police it.

Diagnose the Problem. How widespread is the gang problem? How many members are in the gang(s)? What is their purpose? Are they concerned only with territory, or are they invested in illegal narcotics trade? Who is in competition or conflict with whom? Why? How aggressive are they with recruitment? Once these questions are answered, you begin to get an accurate picture of the problem. If you are in command, sit with your field supervisors and field commanders. Ask them what they see or how they have been dealing with the problems. Solicit opinions, find out what has worked, and design new operations. Work the problem as often as is necessary.

Organize for Intelligence. Create methods of intelligence gathering within your own command. Ask your field supervisors to bring in information from the street. Encourage the collection of intelligence from your officers on the street—they have the direct contact with the community and the gang members. If your command has units designated for street-level anti-gang, anti-narcotics, or plainclothes operations, ensure that the information they gather is shared with patrol officers and vice versa. Task someone in your command or a small group in your command to collect, maintain, and disseminate the intelligence. Intelligence must be useful and it must be timely, so encourage the regular updating and dissemination of it. Set aside a regular time to meet with your field supervisors and ensure that operations are driven by the most recent and relevant intelligence. Resist the temptation to leave intelligence gathering and distribution to units outside your command that have those functions as their primary purpose. No one knows your streets like your own people, and they will know it better when you put a premium on their own intelligence-gathering efforts. Remember that you are responsible for your own area of operations, so gather your own intelligence and design your operations around it.

Organize for Intra- and, When Possible, Inter-Agency Operations. You are not the only law enforcement unit in your region and, if your agency is large enough, you may not be the only unit from your own agency operating in the area. Be sure that your command is speaking with other commands about operations in your area. If they are working on something in your area, you have a stake in the outcome. You should at least be aware of the basics of those operations. Whenever possible, seek direct input in these operations or be included in the planning and execution. Understand that at certain times your inclusion may not be warranted or complete. Nevertheless, be sure that your command continues to speak across open lines of communication with your own agency’s assets. Do not neglect agencies outside your own, including other municipal agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and local civic or business agencies. If they are in your area, they have a stake in your area. Meet regularly to share information and pool resources. The eradication of criminal street gangs is not just a law enforcement problem, it is a civic problem and it is a community problem. A holistic approach that coordinates law enforcement operations with civic needs is required. Clean, well-lit neighborhoods with basic civic services, well-populated with local residents and shoppers, is as much a part of the solution as search warrant service and open-air drug market closures.

Find and Build Trust with Local Community Advisors. These advisors may be clergy, business owners, or vocal community residents. They may be several of each. Find these local people and include them in your operations. Give them a forum in which to speak, and include as many of their suggestions as possible. Understand that it may not be possible to accomplish all that they want, and that the wants of certain people may be contrary to the wants of others in the group. Seek the common ground and work to resolve those issues. For your operations to be successful, you need to win the trust of these people. They, in turn, will go out into the community and win you the trust of those who trust them. This will affirm your legitimacy as the authority in the area, and intelligence will begin to make its way back to you. Remember that the first Article is “First, do no harm.” Your officers must consistently behave in a manner that is fair and respectful to local residents. Any inappropriate actions will undermine your efforts to build trust with your community advisor(s).

Develop Your Field Supervisors—Then Trust Them. If you are in a position of command, the development and training of your supervisors rests on your shoulders. Set a standard, train to that standard, and hold your supervisors accountable to that standard. If you have successfully developed your supervisors, you must then give them the room to operate. If their strategic vision is aligned with your own, you must empower them with the authority to make the critical, minute-by-minute tactical decisions. A constant command oversight—micromanaging—signals that you do not trust them. If you must micromanage your supervisors, you have not adequately developed them. Step back. Their success is a product of your successful development of them.

Push Operational Decisionmaking Down the Chain. At first glance, this sounds very much like “Develop your field supervisors—then trust them,” but it is much more. The nature of all bureaucratic organizations with a defined rank structure is to centralize approval authority. As accountability rises through the chain of command, so does operational control. This is a mistake. Requiring field commanders and supervisors to constantly seek approval up through the chain of command takes time, stifles creativity, and kills initiative. Developing field supervisors and granting them the authority to act is part of the solution. You must organize for intelligence and plan for operations at this level. Many law enforcement agencies centralize this as well, holding monthly accountability and intelligence-sharing briefings at the upper-most command levels. While this may be beneficial in understanding the overall picture and ensuring that the mission of the agency as a whole is being maintained, it offers little help to field commanders and field supervisors who are confronted with daily operational needs. Organize your intelligence and operational efforts around these field units and allow them to make the operational decisions they need to make on a daily basis.

Rank Is Important—Talent Is More Important. Respect for rank must remain, but the simple fact of the matter is that some people are better at policing than others. Certain officers have a “nose” for certain aspects of policing. These people should be actively sought out in your command and moved into positions in which their talents can be fully developed and utilized. If this means that a police officer reports directly to a commander, so be it. The goal is to develop strategies and operations that significantly impact crime in your area and eliminate criminal street gangs and the violence associated with them. Do not let rank prevent you from putting the best people in the best spots.

Stability in Strategy; Agility in Operations. Too many agencies vest their interests in a single theory of policing: Broken Windows, Community Policing, Pulling Levers, Intelligence Led, etc. For a strategy to have the best chance at success, it must be implemented for a long enough period of time to deliver demonstrable results, and it must be designed to allow for adaptation as the environment adapts around it. This means that, at any time, elements from one or more of the policing theories may need to be utilized. Do not let any theory or doctrine lock you into a singular course of action. Have the built-in ability to evolve in strategic design as the operational environment requires. Use adaptive strategies—strategies that have at their core a cycle of understanding the environment as it currently exists, designing strategies to affect relationships in the environment, influencing those relationships to change the environment in an intended manner, and evaluating the environmental response. Strategies that adapt to the environment by design are stable; the desired end state remains the same throughout, but the tactics used to reach that end state are as fluid as the situation on the ground dictates. It is this fluidity that necessitates agility in operations. The area you operate within is a complex environment. It is affected by relationships within it. These relationships include those that exist between members of any one gang, between different gangs, and between your operations against them. The complexity added by how your actions and the actions of the criminal street gangs affect local residents and businesses also cannot be ignored. What results is a complex web of relationships in which actions by any one player affect the others in the web. Because of this complexity, operations must be tailored to fit the environment as it exists at that time. When any operation is concluded, the environment within which it has been executed changes. This change may necessitate new types of operations to be successful. Use your intelligence gathering to assess your impact on the environment after each operation. Ask, “Based upon what we have done, how have things now changed? What must we now do to keep pressure on the gang?” Your strategy has a determined goal; your operations must remain agile enough to constantly evolve but must always drive you toward the determined strategic conclusion.

Avoid the Vacuum. In traditional Maneuver Warfare theory, it is advised to locate and eliminate an enemy’s center of gravity. Doing so eliminates leadership or command and control, throwing the opposing force into confusion and collapse. For policing, however, this approach is problematic. The apprehension of gang leaders often results in a power vacuum within the gang that leads to internal violence for control of the organization and/or external violence from rivals who recognize vulnerability. In counterinsurgency operations, there is a similar difficulty in destroying the insurgent center of gravity, though for differing reasons. To combat insurgent groups, special operations forces have created joint special operations task forces (JSOTF) that combine multidisciplinary intelligence, surveillance, and operations (Faint & Harris, 2012; Flynn, Juergens, & Cantrell, 2008). Working in concert, the JSOTF uses a targeting model known as Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, and Analyze (F3EA). Utilizing a decentralized, mass intelligence-gathering capability, operators are able to find the enemy, fix their location, and quickly move in to finish that enemy off. Information gathered on-scene is exploited for new intelligence and then analyzed to drive the next operation. This cyclical pattern has proven tremendously effective in dismantling insurgent networks by targeting and eliminating mid-level planners and operators. This type of counternetwork operations is ideal for combating criminal street gangs because it prevents a power vacuum and the resultant violence created when an organizational center of gravity is removed. Granted, the most ideal operations result in the simultaneous apprehension of gang leaders and mid-level operators, but such large-scale sweeps are difficult to accomplish and take time to execute. The F3EA model allows for immediate operations against the street gang, resulting in immediate results. Once the mid-level operators and rivals for power within the gang are removed, the leader(s) may be apprehended with decreased opportunity for either increased violence or overall gang resurgence.

Be There. There is no substitute for physical presence. Get out and be seen. Meet with your local advisors at their locations. Be seen by the population. Make sure your officers are seen. Encourage them to get out of the car and talk with people. Information is gathered when questions are asked, so encourage officers to speak with people. Let everyone know you are there and are interested. Don’t expect arrests alone to raise your public profile. You must show the local residents that you are there for them, too—that you are interested in their well-being. As your public profile rises and people begin to know and trust you, information will begin to flow in.

Prepare for Your Handover from Day One. No command lasts indefinitely. Ensure that the strategies you have in place, the organizational culture, and the operational practices you have implemented last longer than you do. Lead by example, cultivate buy-in, and ensure that any transition in command is as seamless as possible.

Maintain Proactive Patrolling. Be sure your officers are not static. Constant movement raises perceptions of officer presence and keeps officers alert. Utilize tactics that supplement regular patrol presence with periods of heightened presence, or double up cars into tandem patrol units. Do not wait for spikes in criminal activity to do this. Rather, do it on a regular basis on an irregular schedule. Remain unpredictable and keep the initiative.

Be Prepared for Setbacks. Crime will still occur on your watch, people will still be shot, and the public’s confidence in your efforts may become strained. These are realities in law enforcement. Do not let these things convince you that your strategic plan has failed or that your supervisors and officers are not worthy of the strategic plan. Organize your intelligence, debrief your people, adapt the strategic plan, and carry on your operations.

Develop Meaningful Metrics and Evaluate Them Regularly. Quantitative data is most often preferred because the figures are often unambiguous. As a result, the common belief is “the more quantitative data the better.” The result is that success is measured by a large number of easy-to-collect data. Progress is measured in number of traffic citations issued, arrests made, street stops conducted, etc. The problem with these types of measurements, however, is that they encourage the type of increased activity that can lead to rights abuses and detract from your legitimacy. As your legitimacy is compromised, so are your intelligence-gathering capabilities and your operational efficacy. Develop more useful metrics, such as the number of successful tips voluntarily reported to police or rates of gang-upon-gang violence. Develop qualitative metrics with your trusted community advisors and rate public perception of safety and law enforcement efficacy. It is counterintuitive that the common goal of almost all community policing-styled theories is to focus officer activity toward enforcing “quality of life” offenses yet utilize no qualitative data to measure success. Law enforcement agencies are naturally averse toward using qualitative data because the belief is that they are difficult to accurately measure; opinions vary on this. The problem, however, is not one of accuracy but one of perspective. When the opinion of your officers and your trusted community advisors are aligned, then your qualitative data is meaningful and useful. This alignment is a direct result of building your relationships with your trusted community advisors and designing a strategy that addresses their concerns in a manner that both fulfills their needs and accomplishes your law enforcement goals. Develop these metrics and measure your progress against them regularly to ensure you are moving toward the strategic goal.

Keep Local Initiatives Small. Part of your strategy should include programs that directly connect your officers with the community. These efforts should seek to establish rapport, build trust, and create understanding between your officers and local residents. Programs may also be developed that encourage local youth to work with police, be these programs law enforcement related or be they agency participation in community-sponsored sports programs or similar activities. Keep these programs or your involvement in them small, inexpensive, and highly sustainable. It erodes public confidence when police participation is missing or subtracted due to time or budgetary constraints. Create positive engagement with the community in a manner that is built to last.

Put a Premium on Leadership. Develop your own leadership capabilities and the leadership capabilities of all of your field commanders, supervisors, and officers. Leadership development should be an organizational imperative, and agencies should create internal leadership development programs. If such programs simply are not a reality in your agency, encourage your people to develop their own leadership capabilities by offering whatever support and developmental programs you can. Lead by example, mentor subordinates, and encourage participation in outside programs. Create a leadership and command “library,” and encourage your people to read the materials. Moyar (2009) argues that leadership is not only the single greatest determining factor in success between combating groups, he offers ten leadership attributes that he believes history has consistently shown to be most important for leadership success:

1. Initiative – The ability to act without specific guidance from above and the propensity to act energetically and aggressively

2. Flexibility – The ability to switch rapidly from one thought or action to another

3. Creativity – The ability to solve new problems or the ability to create new solutions to existing problems

4. Judgment – The use of logic and intuition to evaluate information and make sound decisions

5. Empathy – The ability to appreciate the feelings and opinions of others

6. Charisma – The collection of personal factors that draws others to you

7. Sociability – The ability to connect with others in a one-on-one interaction

8. Dedication – The wherewithal to put in hard work and remain consistent and focused in any endeavor

9. Integrity – Acting in accordance to what is right, even at personal cost; maintaining ethics and principle

10. Organization – The ability to maintain personal discipline, coordinate people and actions, and accurately account for resources (pp. 8-11)

Maintain the Initiative. We use phrases like proactive patrolling and visible deterrence to imply that we maintain the initiative, but the reality is that much of what we do in regard to criminal street gangs is reactionary. Operations targeting drug sales and investigations following shootings are reactionary measures to what the gangs are doing. We must do a better job at grabbing the true initiative. To do this, we must develop adaptive strategies that evolve as the environment in which we operate does, we must use our intelligence to drive our operations, and we must put a constant pressure on the criminal street gang that disrupts, destabilizes, and dismantles their organization. As organizations, gangs are adept at adapting to law enforcement efforts. Our strategy and our operations must not allow for any adaptation to occur. A constant, destabilizing series of law enforcement operations puts the street gang in a reactive posture and, thus, directly affects their ability to coordinate their criminal endeavors and to conceal those endeavors from law enforcement. Inefficiency leads to chaos; chaos leads to collapse. The successful employment of each of the above Articles creates and allows for the continuation of the initiative.

A Strategy Already at Work

The adaptation of counterinsurgency strategy to policing criminal street gangs has already taken place. In 2009, Massachusetts State Police troopers Michael Cutone and Thomas Sarrouf, two Green Berets and Iraq War veterans, initiated what would become Counter Criminal Continuum (C3) Policing in Springfield, Massachusetts (Hibbard, Barbieri, Domnarski, & Cutone, 2011). Using lessons learned from time spent working with residents in Iraq and their knowledge of counterinsurgency strategy, the troopers created a set of eight guiding principles and focused their community-collaborative efforts on an eight-block section of gang-infested neighborhood in northern Springfield (Goode, 2012). Nearly three years into the strategy, results show decreases in violent crimes, property crimes, and weapons offenses (Massachusetts State Police, 2012). The program has expanded in scope from its initial eight blocks to 30 blocks. Calls for police service have risen in the area where the strategy has been implemented, something proponents say indicates increased community involvement, a greater willingness to report crime, and stronger perceptions of police legitimacy (Goode, 2012).Most interestingly, Cutone and Sarrouf provide a direct comparison between C3 Policing principles and those of traditional community policing. They note that community policing is a “philosophy and organizational strategy” that requires the inclusion of additional resources to put into operation. By comparison, C3 Policing is an operational strategy that uses existing resources to “work smarter” (Massachusetts State Police, 2012). C3 Policing and the results observed thus far show that the principles inherent to successful counterinsurgency strategy can be implemented in domestic municipal law enforcement efforts with success.

Conclusion

The similarities between criminal street gangs and insurgent fighters are recognized by both military and law enforcement. For law enforcement agencies, the need to create and maintain legitimacy in procedural justice is backed by a growing body of study and underpins the need to maintain crime control strategies that include the local community. The current population-centric approach to counterinsurgency warfare closely resembles contemporary community policing efforts and provides law enforcement with the opportunity to look to counterinsurgency operations for lessons learned. The adaptation and application of these lessons learned, combined with what law enforcement already knows about policing criminal street gangs, allows for the creation of general principles, or “Articles,” used for guiding operations against criminal street gangs. Intelligence must drive operations and operations must develop intelligence. These operations must be executed by highly agile teams whose decisionmaking capabilities have been pushed down to a command immediately above their operational level. This does not preclude the need for strategic oversight by higher command or for passing all intelligence up the chain for further analysis. However, tactical operations must be fused directly to intelligence gathering and analysis at the team level in order to yield the most robust results. When taken in summation, these articles provide for the creation of strategic planning and tactical operations that are capable of effectively disrupting, destabilizing, and dismantling criminal street gangs.



References

Burgoyne, M. L. (2011). The right tool for the job: An evaluation of the effectiveness of counterinsurgency principles against criminal insurgency. Small Wars Journal. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://smallwarsjournal.com/sites/defau ... %20Right%2....

Calese, G. D. (2005). Law enforcement methods for counterinsurgency operations. Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Faint, C., & Harris, M. (2012). F3EAD: Ops/intel fusion feeds the SOF targeting process. Small Wars Journal. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/f3 ... %80%9Cfeed....

Flynn, M. T., Juergens, R., & Cantrell, T. L. (2008). Employing ISR: SOF best practices. Joint Forces Quarterly, 50(3), 56-61.Goode, E. (2012, April 30). Combating gang warfare with Green Beret tactics. The New York Times, p. A10.

Hibbard, B. G., Barbieri, G., Domnarski, M., & Cutone, M. (2011). Counter Criminal Continuum (C3) policing in Springfield, Massachusetts: A collaborative effort between city and state police to reduce gang violence. The Police Chief, 78, 30-36.

Kelling, G., & Coles, C. (1997). Fixing broken windows. New York: Simon & Schuster.Kilcullen, D.

_____. (2010). Counterinsurgency. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lawrence, T. E. (1917). Twenty-seven articles. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_27 ... ._Lawrence.

Massachusetts State Police. (2012). Massachusetts State Police: Special projects team. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://mspc3policing.com.

Moyar, M. (2009). A question of command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Musa, S., Morgan, J., & Keegan, M. (2011). Policing and COIN operations: Lessons learned, strategies and future directions. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press.

Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime. Science, 277, 918-924.

Sunshine, J., & Tyler, T. R. (2003). The role of procedural justice and legitimacy in shaping public support for policing. Law & Society Review, 37(3), 513-547.

Tyler, T. R., & Huo, Y. J. (2002). Trust in the law: Encouraging public cooperation with the police and the courts. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

U.S. Army. (2006). FM 3-24 counterinsurgency. Ft. Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army.

Watson, J. (Writer). (2010, July 12). Cops show Marines how to take on the Taliban [Television broadcast]. Los Angeles: National Broadcasting Service.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/co ... attlespace

We have posted Michael L. Burgoyne's excellent thesis as a separate page due to its length, but I hope that readers will click through to the link and comment here to discuss his work. The thesis can also be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here. The opening portion is included below:

Abstract

Powerful criminal groups are developing into serious threats to nation states. Increasingly intense violence in Mexico is of particular interest to the United States. Coming on the heels of insurgency experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is predisposed to apply its tested counterinsurgency doctrine to the problem. This study addresses the effectiveness of counterinsurgency principles against criminal insurgencies through a case study analysis of Colombia’s fight against the Medellin and Cali Cartels and Rio de Janeiro’s efforts against favela gangs. U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine proved to be highly effective against Rio’s gangs, however, the campaign against the Medellin and Cali Cartels indicates that an enemy focused approach may be more appropriate against a drug trafficking organization. The results of this study show that while much of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine is applicable to criminal threats, several adjustments to campaign planning and threat analysis tools will be required to ensure its effectiveness against emerging criminal national security threats.

Mexico is currently engulfed by rampant violence that has taken over 40,000 lives since 2006.[1] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to the drug fueled violence as an “insurgency,” while others have called it a “criminal insurgency.”[2] Criminal threats to state stability are becoming more common; Japanese Yakuza, Chinese Triads, Italian mafia, Russian mafia, and Colombian Bandas Criminales all represent dangerous evolving criminal organizations.[3] These unique apolitical security threats are not a new phenomenon, but they are rapidly developing into one of the most dangerous challenges in the globalized world. One of the greatest national security threats facing the United States today is the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Mexico where Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO)[4] and enforcer gangs have ignited a countrywide war.[5]

Mexican criminal organizations have evolved into existential threats to the Mexican state and are now growing in the United States.[6] Initially transportation elements subordinate to the powerful Colombian cartels, Mexican DTOs capitalized on effective interdiction in the Caribbean and the demise of the Medellin and Cali Cartels to increase their control of the drug trade. This increase in criminal power coincided with an equally important political upheaval in Mexico.

The election of President Vicente Fox of the PAN party in 2000 effectively ended the one party system throwing long standing arrangements between PRI leaders and DTOs into chaos. Institutionalized corruption and government control of the illicit economy collapsed into violence as DTOs went to war with each other and the state to increase their control of territory and lucrative drug routes.[7] Following his election in 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderón embarked upon a campaign against organized crime employing the “full force of the state in order to safeguard the liberty and security of its citizens.”[8] However, there remains no end to the violence in sight; 2010 was the most violent year yet with 15,273 homicides.[9] Calderon’s strategy has been applauded and criticized in both Mexico and the United States. Equally, the U.S. response to the crisis has been the subject of intense policy debate. Much of the frustration with the government response stems from confusion regarding the nature of the conflict.

Carl Von Clausewitz warns that “the first, the supreme, the most far reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.”[10] Coming on the heels of the development of a robust counterinsurgency doctrine, many U.S. defense and law enforcement scholars have designated the Mexican conflict an insurgency.[11] Accordingly, counterinsurgency methodologies have been recommended as the proper response.[12] Conversely, other scholars like David Shirk and former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Robert Bonner have called for a law enforcement response.[13] Far more than a mere academic semantic debate, the term insurgency impacts which agencies and methodologies government forces employ against the problem. These types of “wicked problems” are defined by “one’s idea for solving it.”[14] An incorrect diagnosis of the problem and its solution can have far reaching repercussions.

Whatever its nature, the United States has vital interests in Mexico. The United States has spent 90 billion dollars on border security since 2001[15] and spends over 15 billion dollars annually on drug control.[16] Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner with 393 billion dollars in trade in 2010.[17] The United States appropriated 1.5 billion dollars to support the Mérida Initiative, a multinational security agreement that focuses on operational support to law enforcement and institutional professionalization.[18] Given the importance of Mexico to the United States and the scope of the conflict, it is imperative that the U.S. strategy fit the problem.

Before the United States embarks on an expensive counterinsurgency campaign or advises foreign governments on their own campaigns, the efficacy of counterinsurgency principles against economic or criminal groups should be evaluated. Criminal insurgency is a unique type of threat. This study addresses the question to what extent counterinsurgency principles, as outlined in Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency, are effective against criminal insurgencies; specifically, in Colombia’s fight against the Medellin and Cali Cartels and Rio de Janeiro’s efforts against favela gangs?

This study argues that the analysis of powerful criminal organizations using an insurgency framework is useful and that the Colombian cartels and Rio’s favela gangs can be appropriately described as criminal insurgencies. Several counterinsurgency principles listed in FM 3-24 were effective in both case studies including understanding the environment, intelligence driven operations, long term commitment, small unit empowerment, learning and adapting, and supporting the host nation. In addition, counterinsurgency methodologies, as found in U.S. doctrine, were highly effective against Rio’s favela gangs. However, the methodology employed in the case of the Medellin and Cali Cartels indicates that an enemy focused approach can be effective against a DTO. Furthermore, a DTO’s financial center of gravity seriously degrades the effectiveness of some of the principles found in COIN doctrine. Finally, several factors and techniques not specifically referenced in COIN doctrine can be critical in the case of a criminal insurgency, such as vetted units, anticorruption measures, financial targeting, divide and conquer approaches, and social and cultural root causes. This study will briefly review the evolution of the concept of criminal insurgency. The study will then examine the Medellin and Cali Cartels followed by Rio’s favela gangs. Each case will include a brief historical summary, an analysis using an insurgency lens, and an examination of the government response based on COIN principles. Finally, implications for security policy and recommendations will be provided.

This study is “policy-evaluative” and will examine the implicit theoretical assumption that criminal insurgencies can be defeated by current counterinsurgency doctrine.[19] Given the importance of the security threats involved, it is important to ask “will the policy produce the results that its proponents promise?”[20] Investigations such as RAND’s recent counterinsurgency report[21] and the Fishel-Manwaring SWORD model have scientifically evaluated the effectiveness of counterinsurgency strategies; however, current literature has not adequately addressed the use of counterinsurgency doctrine against criminal threats.[22]

This project uses a structured comparison of case studies with the goal of identifying the value of current counterinsurgency principles in the unique circumstances of a criminal insurgency.[23] Political scientist, Stephen Van Evra notes that when working with policy prescriptive studies, researchers should study cases whose background characteristics parallel the characteristics of the current or future policy problems.”[24] As such, two cases were selected that closely resemble current security concerns in Mexico: the Colombian defeat of the Cali and Medellin Cartels and the Brazilian fight against favela gangs.

Both of these cases were considered government victories because the threats to national security were defeated. This study assumes that both of these cases are government victories and focuses on the methodologies utilized. In Colombia, the powerful Medellin and Cali Cartels were dismantled leaving residual criminal groups. This study does not expand its time horizon to include efforts at community policing in Colombia after the fall of the Medellin and Cali Cartels. Expanding the case to include these initiatives would result in difficulty managing the distinction between criminal insurgency and crime as well as between counterinsurgency and normal governance. Furthermore, the security problems in Cali and Medellin after the fall of the major DTOs closely resemble the characteristics of the Rio case study.

The Rio case study, however, is a more defined phenomenon with less possibility of intervening variables arising from traditional insurgent groups like the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and ELN (National Liberation Army) present in Colombia. In Rio, gangs that had successfully succeeded from government control were displaced and control was reestablished.[25] Since 2008, the government has cleared some 25 communities and reasserted state control over 280,000 citizens.[26]

To maintain a disciplined configurative approach the cases are evaluated using an insurgency analysis framework outlined by insurgency expert Bard O’Neill and the 13 principles and imperatives of counterinsurgency as found in Field Manual 3-24. One of the strengths of utilizing a case study methodology is that it serves “the heuristic purpose of inductively identifying additional variables and generating hypotheses.”[27] The detailed case study approach allows this study to go beyond O’Neill’s framework and the 13 principles to identify other factors that are important to the problem.



[1] BBC, “Mexico’s Drug Related Violence,” August 26, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10681249. Also see Los Angeles Times, “Mexico Under Siege Website”, http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war.

[2] Hillary Clinton, Speech to Council on Foreign Relations, (Washington, DC, September 8, 2010), http://www.cfr.org/publication/22896/co ... inton.html; and John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “State of Siege: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, 2008, http://www.swj.com.

[3] Max Manwaring, Gangs, Pseudo-Militaries, and other Modern Mercenaries, (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2010), 21-22.

[4] The term Drug Trafficking Organization of DTO will be used to denote organizations who have a primary business model based on drug trafficking. Although most DTOs also engage in extortion, protection, prostitution, and human trafficking this study will use DTO to differentiate between smuggling organizations and mafia type organizations.

[5] Robert J. Bunker, “El Imperativo Estratégico de Estados Unidos Debe Cambiar de Irak-Afganistán a México-Las Américas y la Estabilización de Europa,” Small Wars Journal, 2011.

[6] U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Threat Assessment, (National Drug Intelligence Center, August, 2011), 8, http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs44/44849/44849p.pdf.

[7] George Grayson, Mexico: Narco Violence and a Failed State?,(New Brunswick: Transaction, 2010), 39-52.

[8] Gobierno Federal, “Modelo de Operación Estratégica y Táctica Frente a la Delincuencia Organizada,” April 30, 2009, http://www.pgr.gob.mx/prensa/documentos.asp.

[9] Sara Miller Llana, “Mexico drug war death toll up 60 percent in 2010. Why?” Christian Science Monitor, January 13, 2011.

[10] Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, trans Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1997), 88.

[11] Matthew D. LaPlante, “Army official suggests U.S. troops might be needed in Mexico,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 22, 2011; John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “State of Siege: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, 2008; Sullivan and Elkus “Cartel vs. Cartel: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, 2009; Sullivan and Robert Bunker, “Cartel Evolution Revisited,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 21, (March 23, 2010).

[12] Bob Killebrew and Jennifer Bernal, Crime Wars: Gangs, Cartels and U.S. National Security, (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2010). Also see Representative Connie Mack, Prepared Remarks before House Foreign Affairs Committee, “Merida Part Two: Insurgency and Terrorism in Mexico,” October 4, 2011.

[13] Woodrow Wilson Center Mexico Institute Presentation, Shared Responsibility, (Washington, DC, October 22, 2010). Robert Bonner, “The New Cocaine Cowboys,” Foreign Affairs 89, (2010).

[14] Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4, (1973), 161.

[15] Martha Mendoza, “$90b spent on border security, with mixed results,” Associated Press, June 26, 2011.

[16] Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy, National Drug Control Strategy FY 2011 Budget Summary, (Washington, DC: 2010). http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default ... budget.pdf.

[17] U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics 2010, http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/sta ... 012yr.html,

[18] U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, The Merida Initiative: Expanding the U.S./Mexico Partnership, March 3, 2011. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/plrmo/157797.htm,

[19] Stephen Van Evra, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1997), 91.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Christopher Paul, Colin P. Clarke, and Beth Grill, Victory has a Thousand Fathers, (Santa Monica: RAND, 2010).

[22] John T. Fishel, and Max G. Manwaring, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited, (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press, 2006) and “The SWORD Model of Counterinsurgency: A Summary and Update” Small Wars Journal, 2008 also “Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency: Toward a New Analytical Approach,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 3, (Winter, 1992), 272.

[23] Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 75.

[24] Van Evra, 85.

[25] Security operations in Rio are ongoing. This study focused on favelas that had already been occupied under the UPP program.

[26] UPP Website.

[27] George and Bennett, 45.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-ef ... insurgency

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The Logic of Violence in Criminal War
by Robert Bunker
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByMkTUI ... view?pli=1

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http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602091h.html

Hoje marca o bicentenário da catástrofe que se abateu sobre o culminando Grande Armée , uma vez que se retiraram da Rússia. Este fim de semana passado, um dos descendentes do imperador francês, Charles Napoleão, viajou para Minsk, na Bielorrússia para participar de cerimônias de comemoração do desastre no próximo Beresina travessia do rio, onde milhares de pessoas morreram - muitos por afogamento - em uma goleada, final de pânico em tempo de congelamento . Bonaparte tinha marchado profunda na Rússia, com quase meio milhão de soldados, ele voltou com menos de 25.000.

Dado que Napoleão foi o grande capitão de seu tempo - talvez de todos os tempos - e que seus exércitos tinham conquistado e mantido maior parte da Europa, os trágicos acontecimentos na explicação da demanda Beresina. Sua derrota é algo de um enigma, também, como a Grande Armée ganhou batalhas da campanha travada em Smolensk e Borodino. Tempo severo inverno, o culpado comumente assumido, não pode explicar o resultado ou; a primeira geada não chegou a atormentar a retirada até poucas semanas antes da travessia Beresina.

A resposta para o enigma é que Napoleão e suas forças foram espancados por aquilo que um jovem russo hussar, Denis Davydov, chamou de "enxame indestrutível" de cossacos e outros invasores que constantemente atormentado as colunas francesas em marcha. Eles também atacaram implacavelmente, repetidamente, e ao efeito fatal no Grande Armée de linhas de abastecimento. Como David Chandler, um eminente historiador de campanhas de Napoleão, colocou: "ataques de cossacos e bandas partidárias fez mais mal ao Imperador que todos os esforços dos exércitos regulares de campo da Santa Rússia".

Davydov, que provavelmente inspirou personagem de Tolstoi "Denisov" em Guerra e Paz, havia feito lobby seus superiores difícil para a criação de uma pequena força de trás das linhas-atacantes. Geral Bagration Pyotr, não muito tempo antes de sua morte na batalha de Borodino, deu Davydov permissão para lançar o seu enxame - embora ele destacou apenas uma única tropa de cavaleiros para acompanhá-lo. Isso era tudo o que precisava Davydov, embora, como ele pegou cossacos, libertou os soldados russos feitos prisioneiros, e recrutou camponeses dispostos ao longo do caminho. Logo os franceses que não conheceu descanso. Nas próprias palavras de Davydov, que "não tinha escolha a não ser recuar, precedido e rodeado por guerrilheiros."

O bicentenário Beresina nos proporciona um momento para contemplar um dos maiores da história fiascos militares a partir de um ponto de vista alternativo: como um resultado impulsionado não pelo choque de centenas de milhares de soldados concentrados fortemente em algum campo de batalha apertada, mas sim como o resultado de constante ataques alfinetada de todas as direções, montada por um punhado de irregulares. Que agiu como um enxame de abelhas.

Davydov conceito de operações pressagiava uma abordagem completamente diferente para assuntos militares, um que iria crescer cada vez mais valioso com o avanço da tecnologia. Os guerrilheiros russos de 1812 atacaram comboios de vagões franceses. Cinquenta anos depois, na Guerra Civil, invasores confederados interrompido linhas ferroviárias, impondo quase fatais atrasos no avanço das forças federais. Na Primeira Guerra Mundial, TE Lawrence e seus irregulares árabes invadiram a linha ferroviária de 800 quilômetros de extensão de Damasco a Medina, contribuindo poderosamente para o eventual colapso turco. No mar na II Guerra Mundial, os pacotes de U-Boat lobo invadiram comboios aliados, quase vencer a guerra do Hitler.

Durante a Guerra Fria, e sobre para a era post-9/11, o enxame - ataque simultâneo de várias direções - tem sido o método de luta favorito de insurgentes e terroristas. Os vietcongues invadiram zonas de helicóptero e de patrulhas a pé americanos no Vietnã. Hezbollah fez o mesmo para a Defesa de Israel (IDF) no sul do Líbano durante a longa guerra para expulsar o IDF - e, em seguida, fez novamente durante o conflito de 2006 lá. O Exército Livre da Síria hoje regularmente atinge muitos lugares ao mesmo tempo, também, dando o problema do regime de Assad um militar não pode resolver. Estratégia naval iraniana abraça swarming, bem como, a idéia de atacar os relativamente poucos grandes vasos do 5 ª Frota de todas as direções, com centenas de pequenos barcos carregados de explosivos. Mesmo no ciberespaço se vê enxames na forma de milhões de acessos aos sites individuais, provenientes de todo o mundo, que muitas vezes caracterizar debilitante "distribuídos de negação de serviço" ataques. Se a Al Qaeda eram sempre para desenvolver uma capacidade de enxameação sustentada nos Estados Unidos, e não apenas de montagem raros, únicos ataques, as consequências seriam verdadeiramente terrível.

Enxames assunto, e têm feito muito para moldar o mundo. Como meu colega David Ronfeldt e tenho observado em nosso estudo da RAND de enxames, o fenômeno começou há muito tempo. Os mongóis eram particularmente adeptos desta forma de guerra, depois de uma doutrina que, na verdade, o nome "Swarm Crow". Edward Luttwak, em sua magistral Estratégia Grande do Império Bizantino, observou que o sucesso dos bizantinos para proteger as bordas do império durante quase mil anos depois da queda de Roma tinha muito a ver com o seu emprego de táticas defensivas enxame. Mas Davydov, em uma breve campanha lançada só depois que ele superou a resistência burocrática, ajudou a derrotar um dos maiores da história aventureiro conquistadores, dando-nos, talvez, o único exemplo mais dramático de enxame já vi.

Claramente, os insurgentes, terroristas e outros irregulares - incluindo "chapéu preto" hackers - que causam mais de malícia do mundo hoje são altamente sintonizados com táticas enxame. Além de ser o bicentenário do desastre de Bonaparte no Beresina, hoje também marca o quarto aniversário do enxame pequeno terrorista - composto por cinco equipes de dois homens - que atingiu Mumbai simultaneamente em vários pontos diferentes e segurou o refém cidade por três dias. Quase 200 foram mortos, e centenas de outros ficaram feridos, como levou dias para Indian antiterroristas forças para massa e mover-se em vigor para lidar com eles. Mesmo enxames pequenos são mortais.

Aqueles que têm que lidar com enxames falhará se confiar simplesmente no bater pesado de forças maciças. Enxames facilmente escorregar socos tais, e rebateu de forma urticantes. Não, a resposta deve ser a de aprender a "enxame os swarmers". A Marinha do Sri Lanka fez isso contra o Mar Tigres Tamil alguns anos atrás, mudando a uma frota de embarcações leves, velozes que provaram ainda mais ágil do que as de seu inimigo. O Sri Lanka rapidamente provou ser capaz de atacar os Tigres do Mar de muitas direções. E em Gaza, onde os líderes do Hamas acho que eles dissuadido os israelenses de montar uma invasão por terra, o IDF foi absolutamente pronto para morar a partir de várias direções ao mesmo tempo, refletindo tanto um refinamento das táticas utilizadas enxame a última vez que invadiram Gaza há alguns anos e as lições que aprendeu com o Hezbollah.

Relatório oficial Denis Davydov sobre suas operações durante a guerra contra Napoleão concluiu que seu "enxame indestrutível" foi provavelmente a mudar a face da guerra. Aos trancos e barrancos ao longo dos últimos dois séculos, ela começou a fazer exatamente isso. Mas agora o período de progresso irregular é mais, a advertência dos enxames próximos que ameaçam varrer tudo antes deles.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... ler_swarms

Rommel, Erwin - Infantry Attacks



http://wnlibrary.org/Portabel%20Documen ... ttacks.pdf

At some point, Hamas and Israel will have had so many armed confrontations that they’ll have to stop naming the operations and just give them numbers. But don’t think these future conflicts will be indistinguishable from what’s happened so far. At some point, these flare-ups could get worse—a lot worse.

Serious Standoff

So far the duels between the Israeli military and Hamas and other armed factions in Gaza have been tactical skirmishes. Neither side has had any notion that they are trying to grab some kind of decisive advantage that would change the standoff that has prevailed—and hardened—since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007.

After all the back and forth of the last few weeks, Israel can claim that it has decimated Hamas military infrastructure and depleted its war stocks. So what? Hamas can rearm. Hamas can preen that it wrestled some concessions from Tel Aviv, that it garnered pats on the back from Egypt and Turkey and that its stock is on the rise on the Arab Street. Again, so what? The people of Gaza are still caught in the crossfire and saddled with a corrupt regime that can’t deliver peace or jobs. So the two sides are back to the status quo, but with more innocents killed and maimed on each side.

Don’t get complacent. There are plenty of reasons to worry that the stasis will not hold forever.

History Lesson

The Peloponnesian Wars were another nearly endless conflict. That ancient Greek struggle was protracted because neither side could hit at the other’s strength. Sparta could march its armies to the gates of Athens, but it couldn’t breach the walls. At the end of the campaign, all they could do was head home. Athens could sail its fleets to Sparta’s coast, but couldn’t land troops for fear of annihilation at the hands of the Spartan infantry. So Athenian armadas sailed out and sailed back.

While today’s conflict between Israel and Palestine resembles that endless ancient war of nerves and attrition, it may not stay that way forever. And the most likely catalyst to spark change is Iran.

Iran continues to send technical, logistical and financial support to Hamas, throwing more fuel on the fire every time the embers start burning low. In the future, however, Tehran may be able to play a more decisive role than instigator-in-chief.

What happens when Iran is able to field a nuclear capability that checkmates Israel’s nuclear deterrent? Tehran doesn’t have to have a nuclear arsenal that matches Tel Aviv’s. It just has to have enough capability for the Israelis to fear that an exchange could leave them suffering as badly as the Iranians. That situation might take the Israeli nuclear capability off the table as a credible deterrent to a widespread armed conflict.

So in the future, a flare-up between Hamas and Israel might produce a very different result. Hamas might turn to other nations and ask for armed support. With regimes like Turkey and Egypt becoming much more pro-Hamas and anti-Israel, they just might get it. If those countries see the Israeli nuclear deterrent as being offset by Iran, they might be more willing to pitch in with additional materiel. This is the making for a conventional war on the scale of 1967 or 1973—but with many more conventional weapons being thrown around among much more heavily populated areas.

And who knows where it will stop? It is widely believed that, if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, so will other regional powers who will not want to be left behind. The list of next-in-line nuclear powers might include Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. If the next conventional war in the Middle East were to break out in a “proliferated” environment, who knows where that might lead? One research study that looked at this scenario suggests this would be a highly unstable situation—to put it mildly.

Time-Bomb About to Tick

The U.S. government cannot just shake its head and continue to believe that process can substitute for progress in the Middle East. The Obama administration appears to believe that as long as we are talking, negotiating, sanctioning, showing up and sending out press releases everything will be okay. But that notion is not okay.

The dynamics in the region are changing. Rapidly. And they are changing in way that makes peace and stability more fragile while reducing the prospects for economic, religious, and political freedom to little more than a forlorn hope.

James Jay Carafano is director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ ... nesus-7782

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http://rogueadventurer.com

Top 10 guerras e batalhas Esquecidas

http://alizul2.blogspot.com.br/2012/06/ ... otten.html

ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant - o modelo romano de contra insurgência

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/th ... oman-model



A idéia de que é possível estudar a guerra sistematicamente, a partir de uma perspectiva histórica, já apareceu em tempos antigos, mas recebeu pronunciado respaldo teórico e prático no início da era moderna. O objetivo das teorias militares, que tinham começado a desenvolver desde o período renascentista, foi examinar o que a forma mais eficiente de organização seria para construir, treinar e implantar um exército, a fim de alcançar o objetivo final da operação de uma força militar - vitória. Muitos pensadores militares alegaram que a teoria militar deve ser criado através de um estudo da história militar. A discussão entre as várias escolas de pensamento era (e ainda é) se a teoria militar pode ser universalmente aplicado. Mas, ao mesmo tempo, há um consenso geral de que a história militar deve ser estudado a fim de definir a teoria relevante militar, e que a investigação histórica é a base da teoria militar ao longo da história desde que era guerra que forneceu lições claras. [1]

cont.

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Que lições da derrota francesa em 1871 ter para o Exército dos EUA hoje?
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/of ... army-today