The Belgravia Dispatch: Counter-Insurgency Tactics

September 15, 2006

Counter-Insurgency Tactics

With a bikers bandanna tied under his helmet, the Special Forces team sergeant gunned a Humvee down a desert road in Iraq's volatile Anbar province. Skirting the restive town of Hit, the team of a dozen soldiers crossed the Euphrates River into an oasis of relative calm: the rural heartland of the powerful Albu Nimr tribe.
Green Berets skilled in working closely with indigenous forces have enlisted one of the largest and most influential tribes in Iraq to launch a regional police force -- a rarity in this Sunni insurgent stronghold. Working deals and favors over endless cups of spiced tea, they built up their wasta -- or pull -- with the ancient tribe, which boasts more than 300,000 members. They then began empowering the tribe to safeguard its territory and help interdict desert routes for insurgents and weapons. The goal, they say, is to spread security outward to envelop urban trouble spots such as Hit.

But the initial progress has been tempered by friction between the team of elite troops and the U.S. Army's battalion that oversees the region. At one point this year, the battalion's commander, uncomfortable with his lack of control over a team he saw as dangerously undisciplined, sought to expel it from his turf, officers on both sides acknowledged.

The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, U.S. officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular U.S. military units on sweeping combat operations; and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people -- work that experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.

"This war was fought with a conventional mind-set. The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing," said the Special Forces team's 44-year-old sergeant, who like all the Green Berets interviewed was not allowed to be quoted by name for security reasons. "It's not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships." The real battles, he said, are unfolding "in a sheik's house, squatting in the desert eating with my right hand and smoking Turkish cigarettes and trying to influence tribes to rise up against an insurgency."

More here (be sure not to miss the chart on page 10). A judicious look at the "unsuccessful" column of the chart reads like a succinct precis of the blundering Rumsfeld approach, doesn't it? The past 12 plus months, of course, commanders have gotten more autonomy to fight the war smarter, but they are still grappling with the legacy of Rumsfeld's hubris-ridden collosal missteps, the continued poverty of strategic civilian leadership emitting from the top, and now too a low-intensity civil war afoot in strategic parts of the country. It's a grim picture, alas. One thing is for certain. The war might not yet be lost. But we certainly won't win it with the strategic civilian leadership currently at the helm. They are profoundly discredited, and with few new ideas. Our forces in the field desperately need higher quality leadership in Washington. It's a profound shame it's not being made available.

Posted by Gregory at September 15, 2006 05:32 AM

Comments

As I read your post, my memory flashed back to a summer or two toward the end of the Sixties when massive outdoor music "concerts" were all the rage following Woodstock. A few promoters, knowing that crowd control was important and that local police would never stay on task (because of the open sale and use of those funny cigarettes) sometimes arranged for motor-cycle gangs to be in charge of maintaining what passed for "order." (I'm sure there are no documents to support this little-known micro-fact of modern history. They may have been crazy but they weren't stupid.)

One of the footnotes (#18) made reference to a French "soldier-author [who] advocated a no-holds-barred approach to combating insurgency, including the use of torture." Others also "evinced the same views...Using these methods, the French succeded tacticlly, but failed strategically."

The average man on the street does not discern the difference between tactics and strategy. This simple reality is being nakedly and irresponsibly exploited by the administration. The president comes across as a sincere person who really wants to do the right thing. It makes me wonder if HE HIMSELF grasps the difference between strategy and tactics.

Posted by: Hootsbuddy at September 15, 2006 12:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

But Bush is a sincere Christian and that's all that matters.

Posted by: NeoDude at September 15, 2006 02:29 PM | Permalink to this comment

>I'm sure there are no documents to support this little-known micro-fact of modern history

Well, there is a little movie called Gimme Shelter...

Posted by: M.R. Moore at September 15, 2006 03:19 PM | Permalink to this comment

Did you see Marine Seth Moulton in the NY Times today?

Posted by: Chris at September 15, 2006 06:26 PM | Permalink to this comment

That's all right. The reinforcements have arrived.

Slick Willie Kristol and Richie Lowry on the military in WaPo.

Jonah Goldberg on the superiority of Judaism to Islam on NRO.

Oh, and that Atlas Shrugs woman is attacking Ralph Peters. Seems Ms. Atlas knows more about war than Mr. Peters.

And the hits just keep on coming...

THUD

Posted by: Mark Raven at September 15, 2006 07:53 PM | Permalink to this comment

Successful counter-insurgencies are all alike; every unsuccessful counter-insurgency is unsuccessful in its own way.

- Gen. Leo Tolstoy

Posted by: monkyboy at September 16, 2006 07:32 AM | Permalink to this comment

> Successful counter-insurgencies are all alike; every unsuccessful counter-insurgency is unsuccessful in its own way.
> - Gen. Leo Tolstoy

monkeyboy, very humorous!!!

Posted by: tfalcon at September 16, 2006 10:20 AM | Permalink to this comment

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the Marine Corp Intelligence branch that recently declared that "the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001204.html

Is "Marine Intelligence" an oxymoron? Or is the Post reporter who wrote about the Marine Special Forces successful counte-insurgency efforts drinking some of the Kool-Aid?

Posted by: p.lukasiak at September 16, 2006 11:17 AM | Permalink to this comment

Luka, it's not quite koolaid. Gatorade? A more expensive, upscale, improved koolaid?

The first guy says we don't have the troops for a military victory and everybody's against us politically and socially.

The second guy says we're discussing an alliance with one of the biggest militias. This makes sense. We aren't strong enough to establish any sort of order ourselves, but maybe the strongest militia can do it with our assistance. It's a trade. We give them weapons, and maybe sometimes we send in troops that cooperate with them, and we can do airstrikes at the targets they light up. And in return they take over a large region and suppress violence. What a deal!

Posted by: J Thomas at September 16, 2006 02:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

I'm a little confused by the references to Rumsfeld here. I thought that Rumsfeld had advocated a restructuring of the military to place more emphasis on non-traditional capabilities like the Special Forces and to de-emphasize the conventional units. If conventional forces are getting in the way of what the Special Forces are doing in Iraq, isn't that -- in that very limited sense -- a sort of vindication of Rumsfeld's transformation efforts?

Posted by: Tyrone Slothrop at September 16, 2006 03:16 PM | Permalink to this comment

Marines aren't in SF, p luka. SF is Green Berets, part (sort of) of the United States Army.

Now, to address your comment, that report by Devlin concerns all of al Anbar. Its tone is overwhelmingly negative, as the situation is overwhelmingly negative. That does not mean that the report does not include some positive observations, or that positve work is done in parts of al Anbar. I suggest you read the materials you reference with far greater care.

Posted by: Chris at September 16, 2006 08:37 PM | Permalink to this comment

I thought that Rumsfeld had advocated a restructuring of the military to place more emphasis on non-traditional capabilities like the Special Forces and to de-emphasize the conventional units.

No. Rummy wanted lighter regular ground forces and more airpower, not an emphasis on special forces or counterinsurgency.

Posted by: David Tomlin at September 16, 2006 08:39 PM | Permalink to this comment

Ah, Tyrone makes a fine point.

Tyrone, they need to blame Rumsfeld so they don't feel like savages for advocating a war that has left 100,000 dead. It lets them sleep at night. Don't deprive these smart, noble men of their rest and comfort.

That being said, Rummy is a terrible SecDefense.

Posted by: Chris at September 16, 2006 08:40 PM | Permalink to this comment

As for Rummy and Special Ops

This is not to say that Kaplan's views are uncontroversial. To the contrary, his basic contention -- that the heart and soul of the American military is now its expeditionary component, above all the Marine Corps, and its commando component, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) -- is one that many senior officers and military intellectuals within the War Colleges and Service Academies would repudiate. But they would do so at their peril, since, as Kaplan himself notes, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's implementation of the Global War on Terrorism has made SOCOM "a war fighting command in more than name only," and, however imperfectly (Kaplan blames this on turf battles within the Department of Defense), "the executive arm for the War on Terrorism."

http://www.powells.com/review/2005_10_06.html

Posted by: Chris at September 16, 2006 11:43 PM | Permalink to this comment

OK, so Rummy made one stuctural change that increased the role of special forces. Nevertheless, the main thrust of his restructuring of the military was to emphasize air power and light conventional forces, and de-emphasize heavy conventional forces.

Posted by: David Tomlin at September 17, 2006 01:37 AM | Permalink to this comment

No, Mr. Tomlin, you are incorrect. Secretary Rumsfeld's "main thrust" was exactly the opposite. He specifically believed that operational concepts and warfighting philosophies, not the use of existing technologies in different ways, would be the focus of 'Transformation".

Where did you come by your assertion?

As to your confusion, Mr. Slothrop, it's understandable, as you are new(er) here. You see, in order to support the delusions of the author of this site, one must constantly interject false attributions to the Secretary, regardless of their relevance or accuracy.

Posted by: Tommy G at September 17, 2006 04:01 AM | Permalink to this comment

Despite Rummy's failings, the transformation of the US military into a smaller, lighter, more agile and more flexible force was the right thing to do. The last thing we need in Iraq now is more tank divisions or heavy mech infantry. The military we had in 2003 was structurally better for counter-insurgency ops than the military of the 1991 Gulf War. The problem has not been the size or structure of the force, but the method in which it has been used.

Compare Iraq with Afghanistan, where we have been using a counter-insurgency approach effectively. Unfortunately, the billions pledged by the world community to Afghanistan for rebuilding has largely not materialized and the PRT's, while effective, have not been enough and have neglected rural areas. More focus must be put into providing farmers alternatives to poppy.

Finally, one of Rummy's priorities over the years has been increasing the size and capability of the various special forces. Unfortunately, this is no easy task since the training is so intense and select. There just isn't an infinite pool of personnel who have the mind and body and will needed to join and complete SOF training. The first premise of the SOF community is that SOF cannot be created in a crisis.

Posted by: Andy at September 17, 2006 02:32 PM | Permalink to this comment

Andy, I agree with you in theory. We don't particularly need a heavy slow army at the moment.

But there's a question how to get from where we were to where we need to be. Shinseki was working on a similar transformation model, and he was going around and getting input from all the military experts and revising the plan. That was kind of a slow process because it's something where you can't afford to make a mistake. It was going to involve
a lot of studies, and training small-scale units various ways and testing them, and then a buildup when they were sure they had something that worked.

Rummy didn't do it that way. He decided he already knew how to make it work, and he was going to make the military do it his way. We'd better hope he was right because if he made a mistake the army will still be dealing with it 20 years later. It hasn't particularly been tested -- iraq was not much of a test.

It appears Rummy was thinking only about defeating third world armies, and not about anything else. Now we're finding that beating third world armies is probably not the central issue.

I think Rummy correctly diagnosed one of the problems. His solutions are probably inadequate but some of it hasn't been tested yet. It's possible his tranformation ideas can be adapted to work.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 17, 2006 03:16 PM | Permalink to this comment

J. Thomas,

I don't want to get sidetracked too much, but the biggest issue with transformation as been oppostion from senior leaders in the military and the entrenched defense industry - along with their allies in Congress. Generals who spent their whole 30 year careers in the heavy conventional forces are not apt to support cutting that back. It's human nature for them to want to support a legacy force structure because that's what they grew up with. Take a look at the Crusader program, for example. It was obviously a Cold War legacy system that we didn't need, yet it still took a huge amount of effort to kill it.

Unfortunately, the military does not reform itself or change easily in peacetime. The "joint" doctrine was forced down the military's throat in the 1980's by Congress and it was good and right that it was. Parochial interests and competition among the services meant that a joint doctrine would have to be imposed from above. I think the same is largely true of transformation today. There are visionary leaders in the military, but they do not hold the key leadership positions.

Rummy was originally brought on to transform the military to the post-cold war world. That ended relatively quickly though, since we've been at war since 2001. I agree that Rummy and the others responsible for the Iraq strategy have failed miserably. However, I still support the transformation of the military to meet 21st century threats.

Posted by: Andy at September 17, 2006 07:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

Andy, I agree with you right down the line. However, what has worked in the past has been to let the "reformers" build a small force and then let them try to test it, and when it works out they get more resources while the old stuff remains and slowly dwindles.

So for example Mitchell got the chance to sink a couple of ships from the air, and got to build small aircraft carriers, and they took it from there. The entrenched battleship commanders were still commanding battleships when Pearl Harbor came.

I say this is the right way to do it, as long as we can afford doing it this way. When the time comes that we don't have the money for a winning army, then we can settle for a great gamble on untried methods, and throw out the stuff that we can't afford that we know couldn't win anyway.

There's reason to think this is the wrong transformation. Do we really need a small elite army that can only fight third world armies? We're totally dependent on communications that in a few years might be disruptible. We're depending on mobility to keep our casualties low, but if that turns out not to be enough we'll be losing men we can't replace in any reasonable time. We're depending on air power which in turn depends on massive quantities of aviation fuel, fuel which is getting more expensive and harder to come by every year.

Part of the reason our military is resistant to change is that they have something that's been working, and they hear lots of crackpot schemes to throw it away and replace it with something or other which might fail totally. This time one of them got through and we just have to hope it will work.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 17, 2006 08:51 PM | Permalink to this comment

J Thomas,

I agree.

A lot of this comes down to what kind of wars the people in charge of procurement think we'll be fighting in the future. Unfortunately, limited resources in equipment, personnel, training etc. means we must pick and choose carefully. The majority consenses seems to focus on small, regional conflicts that require forces that can deploy quickly. One of the lessons of Kosovo, for example, is that Army units, specifically the Apaches, could not deploy and operate quickly enough. Mobility generally means lighter and smaller forces and equipment. The emphasis is currently on getting to the fight much faster.

I agree with your points on testing new methods prior to implementation. Unfortunately, our broken procurement and R&D system makes this difficult. The F-22 program, for example, was originally begun in the 1980's with production slated to begin in 1994. Over a decade late the planes are finally rolling out with the buy reduced from 750 to 183 along with skyrocketing costs (not to mention the sacrifices made to pay for those 183 planes). It's hard to build a small force and test it when it takes 20 years to develop, produce and field a weapons system.

DARPA has been a good source for inspiration as a military technology venture capitalist fund. There are units in the services that are allowed the creativity to develop tactics to meet threats. What's missing is a similiar creative organ at the operational and strategic level. Joint Forces Command is starting to fill that role - we'll have to see how successful it is at generating and testing new ideas and concepts.

Posted by: Andy at September 17, 2006 09:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

Andy, it's obvious to everybody that a 20-year development cycle is unusable. By the time the project is ready to deploy it's completely pot luck whether there's still a mission for it. This is daft.

That started from the cold war, where it didn't matter whether many of our weapon systems worked or not provided we didn't get into a hot war with the russians. So we could have fun spending the money and it didn't matter. But that's no longer the case.

I would suggest a modular approach. If for some unknown reason you think you need a new fighter plane, put out a contact for no more than 3 years for a new airframe that will work with the current engine, instrumentation, weapons, etc. And a 3 year contract for a new engine and if it can't work in the existing airframe, make a testbed for it. And so on. Produce a collection of pieces that may have value whether the full project works or not. And after the various pieces are ready you can spend up to 3 years adapting them to work together better. Then we pay for a few a year to be produced, and also pay to maintain an assembly line that could produce many more on short notice.The ones we do make serve as test cases to show up problems on the lines. Probably these would be automated lines since we wouldn't want to keep trained men waiting in case they were needed.

But as usual, we can't expect the people who've been doing a 20 year development cycle to change quickly. Maybe start out that way with simpler unmanned systems, and gradually give more and bigger contracts to the companies that are successful at that.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 18, 2006 01:33 AM | Permalink to this comment