COIN Explained So a 5th Grader Can Understand It - Almost

[aesop081]

edit : Nevermind, misunderstood the post.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

I had a BMOQ-L candidate ask me a good question when I gave the COIN lecture to this course: "Is there ever an example of an insurgency actually winning and taking over as a legitimate government?".

My response: "Well yes, actually...perhaps you have heard of a little country called the United States of America".

Unless I have totally misread the candidate's question, I believe that there are plenty of insurgencies that were successful and formed a government (China, Vietnam, Algeria, Rhodesia, etc).

 

[dapaterson]

Unless I have totally misread the candidate's question, I believe that there are plenty of insurgencies that were successful and formed a government (China, Vietnam, Algeria, Rhodesia, etc).

In Vietnam, the VC were largely defeated; upon the US withdrawal and subsequent suspension of arms transfers the NVA was able to invade.  Not an insurgency, but an invasion and annexation.

 

[SeanNewman]

CDN Aviator,

The question was asked at the end of two-hours worth of academic lecture giving definitions of what an insurgency is, etc.

The two examples used are Ireland and Afghanistan.

T2B,

There certainly are many, but you can only teach a student so much on a limited schedule when they are also learning how to do a section attack and 10-man tent routine, all while half-asleep because they were up half the night preparing for an inspection ;D

I mentioned the US because it by far the most-known example of a successul insurgency that most people don't think about when they hear that word because they immediately skip to the stereotype of the guy from the middle east with a suicide vest.

Mr Patterson,

As per above, this was an intro to insurgency/COIN to these poor candidates and I was more than happy to have had them interested enough to even ask questions.

 

[dapaterson]

Mr Paterson,

As per above, this was an intro to insurgency/COIN to these poor candidates and I was more than happy to have had them interested enough to even ask questions.

Yes, good that people are interested and asking Qs (and not standing in the back of the class to stay awake), but things are rarely as simple as we make them out to be, and are rarely as complex as we make them out to be, either.


Besides, I understood your comment about the USA to be an example of a successful insurgency - displacing the British - 1776 and all that, not a discussion of the North Vietnamese Army invading the South.

 

[40below]

It's a fascinating discussion but I think it depends how you define "insurgency." I'm sure a few of you can, but leaving aside the American example and whether we really want to be arguing that once every 235 years the blue team gets to win one, I can't really think of any outside Northern Ireland and Algeria that couldn't also be classified (or dismissed) as a proxy war between forces armed and supported by opposing superpowers and their 'military advisors.'

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Petamocto,

Don't get me wrong - I like your example.  I'm just surprised that the candidate couldn't think of any successful insurgencies.

Dapaterson,

I believe that the establisment of North Vietnam can certainly be seen as a successful insurgency.  First against the Japanese and then against the French.  When the French finally lost they were, by then, facing a fairly conventional force, but it grew out of an insurgency.  They did establish a functioning government and set upon the path that was ultimately successful in unifying all of Vietnam under their rule. 

 

[Danjanou]

Unless I have totally misread the candidate's question, I believe that there are plenty of insurgencies that were successful and formed a government (China, Vietnam, Algeria, Rhodesia, etc).

Toss Rhodesia/Zimbabwe into the same category as South Vietnam, the Insurgents failed to win a military victory. The present result was more due to political posturing, an inept UN/Commonwealth monitored election and of course a fair deal of intimidation at the polling station. the Rhodesian Defence Froces had battled the ZANU/ZAPU Patriotic Front insurgents and their various backers to a standstill by 1978-79.

For purer examples of the insurgents winning by mainly military means try that favourite Canadian vacation spot Cuba. Fidel did it in 1959, and the guy he replaced former Sgt Batista pulled it on his predecessor Machado if memory serves. Stretching it a bit the locals took the place from the Spanish in 1898, mind they had a bit of help from a certain soon to be US President.  8)

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Toss Rhodesia/Zimbabwe into the same category as South Vietnam, the Insurgents failed to win a military victory. The present result was more due to political posturing, an inept UN/Commonwealth monitored election and of course a fair deal of intimidation at the polling station. the Rhodesian Defence Froces had battled the ZANU/ZAPU Patriotic Front insurgents and their various backers to a standstill by 1978-79.

For purer examples of the insurgents winning by mainly military means try that favourite Canadian vacation spot Cuba. Fidel did it in 1959, and the guy he replaced former Sgt Batista pulled it on his predecessor Machado if memory serves. Stretching it a bit the locals took the place from the Spanish in 1898, mind they had a bit of help from a certain soon to be US President.  8)

Cuba is a great example, but at the end of the day the Rhodesian insurgents were in power as the government.  It matters not that the Rhodesian government battled the insurgents to a standstill on the battlefield.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

I think that insurgencies spring from grievances among the population.  A successful counter-insurgency is not just about winning a popularily contest or having a majority of the people prefer the government.  If a certain proportion of the population has a grievance that they don't think can be resolved through law then you can have an insugency.  I believe that a successful counter-insurgency resolves the grievance to some degree in order to undercut the support of the insurgency.  I believe that viewing the military and political components of a counter-insurgency campaign as separate endevours is a mistake.  The military effort must support the political effort.

The Huks in the Philippines were basically tenant farmers who worked hard but lived very poor.  The Huk insurgency was eventually defeated through a number of innovative means, many of which were indeed military, but the Huk insurgent fighters were isolated once the Huks were given the land they had been working (it had been owned by the Church IIRC). 

The Malayan insurgency certainly had some outside influence, but the basic grievance was that ethnic Chinese were not part of the political process.  The British adopted a number of very innovative tactics, but once again the insurgency collapsed when the ethnic Chinese were brought into the policical process in a comprehensive manner.

If the insurgent's grievance doesn't resonate with a large enough chunk of the population then they are in for a hard slog from the beginning (Oman).  I'm not sure what "a large enough chunk of the population is."  I do think, though, the percentage is not necessarily as important as the concentration of dissent.  A national percentage of 5% may not be very much, but if it is concentrated in one region then you have  a problem.

I think this is why the national liberation movements circa 1940s to 70s were so hard to fight.  If the grievance is that the population does not want foreigners to run the country (European colonialism) it is pretty hard to resolve that grievance without handing power over.  I think that the British were generally more graceful about this process, while the European colonial powers generally went down the hard way.
 

 

[SeanNewman]

I'm just surprised that the candidate couldn't think of any successful insurgencies.

Oh my goodness Sir, by the time you see a young officer at your end they have already come through no less than five filters to ensure the rotten peaches don't make it.

You should see some of the short bus superstars that never graduate.

I can't even imagine working in St Jean let alone a Recruiting Centre, but by the time they get to BMOQ-L one has to remind themself that these guys were civilians four months ago.

 

[a_majoor]

One feature of insurgencies which seems to be glossed over a lot is the role of outside parties. We see lots of insurgencies snuffed out because they simply cannot grow powerful enough to defeat the established power of the State. The various South American ones in the 60's and 70's, the Tiananmen Square protests in China and various democratic revolutions in the late 90's early 00's (Orange, Cedar,  Green, etc) all faltered or fizzled because they did not have a powerful sponsor or safe area to support them or fall back onto.

Conversely I can't think of one successful insurgency which did not have an external sponsor and a safe area (or areas) to provide supplies and places of refuge to rest and regroup. Even the American Revolution had the sponsorship of France and a continental wilderness so vast that it made the force to space ratio ridiculous for the British. (I am always ready to be corrected, though)

The article simply takes this old truth and shows how it operates in the Internet age; the power of the State can follow you into virtual space, and unless you have some sponsor who provides the extra strength or logistical support, your insurgency will falter or fizzle. The Internet is not a "safe" area to retreat into for rest and resupply. Sadly, theorists who claimed the Internet would make things different made the same mistake of the "Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla by Carlos Marighella" in underestimating how rapidly the State could adapt, and how great the overmatch in resources between the insurgents and the State really is.

So long as there are festering grievances, the seeds for insurgency will exist and sprout like weeds, but unless something prevents or interferes with the ability of the State to suppress the insurgency, then the State can act like a homeowner applying "Rounduptm" on the lawn.

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting take on Ralph Peters in this rebuttal. I have always admired his work as being well grounded and forward thinking, he has either slipped off the rails a bit or may be seeing something we are not (maybe the drug issue?).

http://canadiancincinnatus.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/05/ralph-peters-is-wrong-about-afghanistan-and-general-mcchrystal-is-right.html

Ralph Peters is wrong about Afghanistan and General McChrystal is right

I have the greatest respect for the New York Post columnist and former US Army intelligence officer, Ralph Peters. Normally he is spot on. But in this article he errs in his analysis. For instance, Peters says:

“Bewildered by the lack of local support for our efforts to "help," Gen. Stan McChrystal and his staff decided that our problems in the Taliban stronghold, Kandahar, are all about electricity shortages.

So, with the fate of our ballyhooed Kandahar offensive in doubt before it starts, the general wants to spend $200 million on generators and diesel fuel to improve the power supply.

It's a desperate ploy to make our politically correct counterinsurgency doctrine succeed: If we do nice things, the locals are supposed to rally to us and solve our problems with a minimum of violence. The only problem is that it doesn't work.

Would Kandaharis like to have more juice in their shambolic power grid? You bet. But the Eliot Spitzer Law of Foreign Affairs applies: You can't buy enduring love, just quick sex. And in Afghanistan, quick sex can get ugly.”

Peters’ error is to assume that all the warm and fuzzy “hearts and minds” stuff is a bunch of PC hooey and we should get on with killing our enemy as robustly as possible. This thinking follows Ulysses S. Grant’s rule of war, “I find out where the enemy is, and I hit him there with everything I’ve got.” In conventional war, this is very true.

But counterinsurgency (COIN) operations are a very peculiar sub-species of war where a lot of the rules governing conventional warfare do not apply. The hearts and minds stuff is important because in a guerilla struggle, the side that the locals support will inevitably be the winner. They will support the side that offers them the best deal, in the form of security and living conditions, and who are perceived by them to be the strong horse. To that side, they will provide the aid and – most importantly - the crucial intel that allows the side receiving the information to target the enemy effectively. Guerrillas can no more operate among a hostile populace than the occupying army.

History is replete with examples of this sort. The most instructive is the Vietnam War, which is really a tale of two generals. When General Westmoreland was in command, the US Army crashed through the jungle in battalion sized formation, deluded itself with juked-up, body count stats and blasted the country indiscriminately with huge free-fire zones. Westmoreland was a pompous martinet who was more interested in his reputation in the Pentagon than he was in winning. After the Tet offensive proved that the emperor had no clothes on, he was replaced by the taciturn but effective Creighton Abrams. He immediately scaled back the bombing (at least in the South, the country he needed to win – he hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail much harder than Westmoreland ever did), eliminated the free-fire zones and concentrated his efforts on low-profile village security efforts. In his Saturday morning intelligence briefs, his philosophy was bad news first, good news later - if there’s time. And Abrams was spectacularly successful. How many of you know there were another three Tet offensives in his watch? You probably don’t because they all fizzled. By the time the US pulled out, the communist guerilla war was completely defeated. Don’t be deceived by the “US lost Vietnam” mantra. It is totally without foundation. The North captured the South the same way that Germany captured Belgium in 1940 - with a mechanized conventional assault. My point is that if you read what Abrams did, it bears a striking resemblance to what McChrystal is doing today.

Another example is the Surge in Iraq. The clear-and-hold strategy employed so successfully by General Petraeus is what McChrystal is replicating in Afghanistan.

One of the things I always hear asked is how can the US win in Afghanistan when the Soviet Union, with its atrocity-filled, no-holds-barred approach, couldn’t? What these people don’t get is that the Soviet Union failed because of its atrocity-filled, no-holds-barred approach. There are many examples in history of countries who failed COIN warfare for the same reason. Another example is Nazi Germany in Yugoslavia in World War II. Every Nazi reprisal on civilians strengthened Tito’s resistance.

Another instructive example is Northern Ireland. As long as the Republic of Ireland was poor, the Troubles in Northern Ireland kept going. But when Ireland slashed its top marginal tax rates and became more prosperous than the North, the IRA shriveled up into an ordinary run-of-the-mill mafia. Why fight the poorer Protestants when there is money to be made at home? What General McChrystal is trying to do with things like building power plants is to create a functioning economy. When people see hope, they are less likely to side with apocalyptic religious lunatics.

Of course, the elephant in the room, one Peters did not mention, is the heroin industry. Something like 90% of the world’s heroin is grown along the Helmand River. This is their only cash cow, and NATO is at least nominally hostile to this industry. This is a big problem and the real force behind the Taliban in Helmand and Kandahar Province. As I have said before, in Afghanistan, you can have a War on Terror or a War on Drugs, pick one. You can’t have both. Unfortunately, McChrystal’s hands are tied on this issue. If the US loses Afghanistan, it is because it failed to make a clear choice here.

 

[a_majoor]

The other side of the coin. Winning is quite possible, if we only have the wit and will to do so.

http://canadiancincinnatus.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/05/ralph-peters-is-right-about-afghanistan-this-time.html

Ralph Peters is right about Afghanistan (this time)

Last week, I disagreed with Ralph Peters’ New York Post column lambasting General McCrystal’s Afghan strategy. This time I think he is right on the money when he states that it is a mistake for the US to try and erect a modern nation state in Afghanistan out of a bunch of independent tribes.

“Our obsession with creating a centralized, Westernized state extends to our efforts to build an Afghan military. Our model is the romanticized WWII squad in which every possible ethnic group's represented, all Americans.

But people fight for different things, and Afghans aren't interested in fighting for a foreign-backed government or for ethnic groups other than their own.

The Brits cracked the code on how to get tribesmen to fight for them: You give them a substitute tribe that's an extension of their hereditary tribe. The Indian Army's regimental system fit the bill perfectly: Recruited from an exclusive tribal network or ethnic group, the regiment could count on soldiers performing well to avoid shaming their families (think Gurkhas). Plus, the regiment offered its own tribal rituals.

If you want to succeed in a tribal society, you exploit tribal identities. Our officials insist that would undercut our goals. Well, perhaps our goals should be more realistic.”

He agrees with my analysis that one of the keys to victory is to work with the tribal structure of Afghanistan rather than against it. As I have said before, the word of the day in Afghanistan should be suzerainty, not sovereignty. NATO - and Hamid Karzai – should be content with the nominal allegiance of the Afghan tribes. As long as they are not hospitable to international terrorist organizations, the tribal leaders should be given a modest amount of military and development aid, and then let alone. If they let in the Taliban or Al Qaeda, that’s when you slap them upside the head. Otherwise stand back (but watch carefully).

The other key, which Peters has not mentioned, is the War on Drugs. As I have also said before, you cannot win a War on Terror and a War on Drugs at the same time in Afghanistan. It is no coincidence that the two provinces that give NATO 80% of the trouble (Helmand and Kandahar) is where 90% of the poppies grow. If you want to win the War on Terror in Afghanistan (which I define as the denial of Afghanistan as a base of operations for international terrorists) you have to turn a blind eye towards the drug trade.

But unlike Peters, I am an optimist, in that I believe Afghanistan is the easiest country in the world to conquer - as long as you are not interested in governing it.

 

[SeanNewman]

That is sort of the concept to some extent now (or at least as of 09 before the US starting taking everything over).

As opposed to the metaphorical whack-a-mole, we decided to limit the amount of places we concentrated on, and stayed with only a handful of places (if that).  Then, with one "model village" that was almost entirely one tribe, we (through an Afghan filter) started pouring in the resources there under the auspices that we would be in this together against the bad guys.

As long as they kept the desirable behaviour, money kept going for what they wanted.  Then that message was reported heavily using as many ways to pass the message that we could, stating "If you want your village to benefit like _____, then this is what you have to do...". 

Tying this back to the article, again what's important here is that this one chunk of a district was one tribe, and they were a bit ticked off that they didn't have any official representation as a district leader.

 

[a_majoor]

Cultural factors that we can exploit. While Jihad may not be a fashion accessory as the author implies, mockery and disdain at its lack of value might serve to drive wedges between the jihadis and their support base:

http://volokh.com/2010/07/24/will-jihad-jump-the-shark/

Will jihad jump the shark?
Stewart Baker • July 24, 2010 5:06 pm

We’ve seen a rash of homegrown Islamist terrorists in recent years, and there has been a lot of agonizing about why.  One explanation that I haven’t seen elsewhere still strikes me as plausible: The attraction that adolescents and the disaffected feel toward groups that their parents and teachers fear.  If you’re feeling marginalized, after all, why not choose the margin?  And while you’re at it, why not choose a marginalized group that inspires fear and unease on the part of mainstream society?  At least then you’ll get a kind of respect.

In the past fifty years, adolescents have joined a host of marginalized groups their parents found dangerous – juvenile delinquents, mods and rockers, punks, skinheads, and Goths.  So why not jihadis?  Islamist terror certainly scares authority figures; why wouldn’t Western adolescents and misfits be attracted to violent Islamism — at least as a symbolic stance?

I’m sure that’s not the only explanation for the appeal of homegrown Islamist extremism to a handful of youngsters in this country.  Some of it has to do with ties to a home culture among second generation immigrants.  But second-generation adolescents may also be tempted to affiliate with a strong, feared movement tied to their background.

Most of us think that Islamic terror is just too serious to be trivialized into a pose for disaffected Western youth.  But we may have underrated the effects of a decade of political correctness and anti-Americanism in popular culture, where the search for transgressive shock value never ends.

Take M.I.A.’s new album.  It lacks much of the raw energy and boogey rhythm that enlivened her first two albums, so transgression is pretty much all she has to fall back on.  And transgress she does.  One cut, “Illygirl,” manages to rhyme (and identify the singer with) three cultural lodestars –  her “tight jeans,” “Bruce Springsteen,” and the “muhahedin.”

For M.I.A., in other words, Islamic terrorism is already a kind of life-style fashion item, a marginalized-and-proud, third-world stance that can be easily worn to parties in Brentwood by a wealthy former British art student.  And if it works for M.I.A., why shouldn’t it work for an immigrant kid in New Jersey?

Let’s assume that this is part of the appeal that Islamic extremism holds for Westerners.  What does that mean for policymakers?  It doesn’t mean that these “Springsteen mujahedin” won’t turn out to be very dangerous.  But it might suggest a different approach to the problem of turning them away from terror.  Some of them will just plain outgrow their infatuation.  Others will turn out to be unreliable fighters, prone to abandon the cause when they get tired or frightened by the risk.  And best of all, if the tight-jean mujahedin lose their power to shock, they’re likely to go the way of the mods and the rockers.  So maybe we should be looking for ways to speed that process by making all these Western jihadis look, well, silly and unfashionable.

Mockery may turn out to be the key to breaking the movement.  That’s what finally destroyed the mystique of the KKK. (Steven Levitt tells the story in Freakonomics — how Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan, learned its secrets, and leaked them all to  “The Adventures of Superman” radio series.  One Klan member who came home to find his kids playing “Superman against the Klan” later said “they knew all our secret passwords and everything… I never felt so ridiculous in all my life.”)

Maybe it can happen to Al Qaeda too.

 

[a_majoor]

Good news/bad news kind of post. The ability to use social media to track people is obviously something we would like to exploit (and forcing them off socila media in order to hide might also be a big benefit in fracturing their networks and communications); but the ease of which a careless or inattentive soldier could leak information this way is a bit unsettling:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/geotags-and-social-networking.htm

Adam Savage, of  “MythBusters,” took a photo of his vehicle using his smartphone. He then posted the photo to his Twitter account including the phrase “off to work.”

• Since the photo was taken by his smartphone, the image contained metadata reveling the exact geographical location the photo was
taken.

• So by simply taking and posting a photo, Savage revealed the exact location of his home, the vehicle he drives and the time he leaves for work.



• “I ran a little experiment. On a sunny Saturday, I spotted a woman in Golden Gate Park taking a photo with a 3G iPhone. Because iPhonesembed geodatainto photos that users upload to Flickror Picasa, iPhoneshots can be automatically placed on a map. At home I searched the Flickrmap, and score—a shot from today. I clicked through to the user’s photostreamand determined it was the woman I had seen earlier. After adjusting the settings so that only her shots appeared on the map, I saw a cluster of images in one location.

Clicking on them revealed photos of an apartment interior—a bedroom, a kitchen, a filthy living room.
Now I know where she lives.”

Wired Magazine in 2009
Read the full storyhere:
http://bit.ly/bJqYmm

 

[a_majoor]

DARPA works on social networking. I suspect there are plenty of real world applications outside the military....:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/nerds-no-more-darpa-trains-troops-to-be-popular/#

Nerds No More: Darpa Trains Troops to Be PopularBy Noah Shachtman  March 10, 2011  |  4:59 pm  |  Categories: DarpaWatch

The Pentagon’s biggest geeks are getting ready to turn you into the ultimate social animal.

Darpa, the military research division that helped create cyberspace, now wants to master meatspace’s tricky interpersonal dynamics. The program is named, innocuously enough, “Strategic Social Interaction Modules.” And it “will provide warfighters with the basic human dynamics skills they need to enter into any social encounter regardless of the culture, group, or situation,” according to a Darpa announcement.

“After such training,” the agency adds, “soldiers will be able to approach and engage strangers in unfamiliar social environments, orient to unfamiliar patterns of behavior, recover from social mistakes, de-escalate conflict, rigorously practice transition in and out of force situations and engage in the process of discovering and adapting to previously unknown ‘rules of the game’ encountered in social engagements.”

To our ears, that sounds an awful lot like the plot to The Game, Neil Strauss‘ best-selling tale of transformation from awkward writer to professional pick-up artist. The book inspired a VH1 reality show, starring “Mystery,” Strauss’ guru of seduction. Mystery’s methods for turning virgins into lady-killers were deceptively simple: dress outrageously, memorize pickup lines and strategically put women down (especially if they’re sexy).

Presumably, Darpa will take a slightly different approach in its social skills training.


It’s been years since the military cognoscenti realized that the key to unconventional conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan is grokking their social and cultural networks. But gaining that understanding hasn’t been easy. The Army’s flagship project for mastering this material — the Human Terrain System — stumbled badly in its early years. Hundreds of people hired for the program were unqualified, according to HTS’ former chief.

But while HTS relies on a relatively small number of social scientists to take Afghanistan and Iraq’s pulse, hundreds of thousands of average infantrymen patrol the battlefields, often with little or no experience interacting with a foreign culture. For many troops, going to war is their first trip outside the country.

Darpa wants to aid these “young, inexperienced warfighters” by enabling them to “achieve positive outcomes during the difficult social encounters inherent in current military activities.” Darpa’s solution, though, is just what you’d expect from the agency that helped bring you everything from the Predator drone to the computer mouse: “an innovative computer-video training simulation for social interactions.” Because interacting with actual humans? That might be just a little too nerve-wracking.

[/snark] I suspect the real reson the computer-video training simulation approach was chosen is simply to ensure a consistent reaction at all times (not depending on the whims of the actor)