Targetting the leadership

Whilst undertaking PhD on the operational history of the People's Liberation Army, the resaerch showed that all but one (I stand corrected) of the PLA generals granted Marshals of the PLA in 1956 were with the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in 1927 - 1929. I believe all but one did the Long March, and nearly all were survivors of the military officers from the 1928 Canton Commune and 1927 Nancheng Uprising.

Given the current policy of killing Taliban and Al Qaeda Commanders ,to 'chop off the head of the snake', as the Chinese would say, how do insurgent leaders manage to survive? I spoke to a group of insurgents that survived 25 plus years in the jungle, and with my studies if the PLA in the early years, am starting to look at the question of how insurgent leaders survive. Other than Hyder's work, have any open source studies been done on this, as it is something that has intrigued me for many years? I am shortly to have a serious operation so will have plenty of time to read.

(Copied from an old thread)

The brilliant 'Traffiking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation' by Michael Kenney. Published by The Pennsylvannia State University Press 2007 (ISBN 0=27102931-5). Best chapters are on how "narcs" and terrorists learn. For this reading list I expect the process of adaptation is more valuable.

Three reviewers cited on publishers website:http://www.psupress.org/books/titles...1-02931-3.html

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Pablo-Osama-Tr...7934337&sr=1-1

Note available in e-form (Kindle), paperback and hardback.

I am sure we have discussed attacking leadership before in several threads, but cannot readily locate them. Understandably how they can avoid us is not explicitly discussed for obvious reasons, so looking at the threads on fugitive hunting may give clues.

Secondly, others have commended Mark Bowden's book on the Colombian cartels, IIRC Hunting Pablo or similar (See Post 11, tks to Slap).

Ah, try this one:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=4025

Somewhere, maybe on SWJ, is a US military study on manhunting (See Post 12, thanks to Slap); perhaps Slap and others can point better than I?

GI, you may want to start here. Goes into some nice detail about what a Leadership attack really is or should be as opposed to simply killing the so called leader.



http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/...rt/Tolbert.pdf

Why would you not kill enemy leaders given the chance to do it? I've never ever seen any convincing argument against it. IMO it's merely an issue of time and resources.

The argument is, if you knock off all the leadership, there isn't anyone with the authority to surrender their forces to you. What I am trying to establish is how they survive more so than knocking them off. At one stage the group I interviewed ate jungle roots and vegetables. They always carried salt in a bag around their necks as salt isn't available in the jungle.

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Originally Posted by William F. Owen

Why would you not kill enemy leaders given the chance to do it? I've never ever seen any convincing argument against it. IMO it's merely an issue of time and resources.

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You seem to assume that their replacements are inferior.

An army has always intelligence dossiers about the enemy leaders that it faces.
There's a VERY GOOD reason not to kill an enemy leader if this dossier says that he's relatively incompetent (or even merely predictable!) and you trust the dossier.

Another reason not to do it is cost. Few things are cheap in life, and killing an enemy leader has its costs as well. Maybe you would compromise an intelligence source (remember Yamamoto) or agents.

And then there's of course the problem of backlash.

Oh, before I forget. Sometimes you happen to serve a nation that pays attention to the rule of law and not all enemy leaders are fair game.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

You seem to assume that their replacements are inferior.

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I assume not such thing.

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An army has always intelligence dossiers about the enemy leaders that it faces. There's a VERY GOOD reason not to kill an enemy leader if this dossier says that he's relatively incompetent (or even merely predictable!) and you trust the dossier.

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Competency isn't the issue. This is the old Effects Based Operations argument that assumes such things are known. They cannot be. Who would replace Bin Laden? or Mullah Omar. Killing leaders is usually going to be better not worse course of action

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Another reason not to do it is cost. Few things are cheap in life, and killing an enemy leader has its costs as well. Maybe you would compromise an intelligence source (remember Yamamoto) or agents.

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That's an Operational judgement. It doesn't mean you should not track with the aim of targetting and then kill when appropriate or just kill when the target comes up.

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And then there's of course the problem of backlash.

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The enemy may hate you for doing it? I'm talking about killing in line with policy. That means killing the military leadership.

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Sometimes you happen to serve a nation that pays attention to the rule of law and not all enemy leaders are fair game.

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Maybe an issue. What's the policy? Who wrote the ROE?
If you are playing for keeps, why impose rules that make winning less likely?

If you have NATO nations who will not kill Bin-Laden unless he has a gun in hand, then how is this useful?

So in short, you assert that on average the replacement of an enemy leader hurts said enemy (loss of competence, transition problems) more than it hurts yourself.

You have no empiric evidence, no compelling theoretical argument why the imbalance should look like this and not the other way around.

You assert that it's not possible to get a proper judgement on whether the enemy general is a greater dud than his replacement general would be.



You are entitled to your opinion, but there's no way how such an unfounded opinion could convince me.
Military history knows many examples of totally inept leaders whose elimination would have been a stupid move. More often than not, their opponents had learned about their incompetence and had to expect that an assassination would be disadvantageous.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

You are entitled to your opinion, but there's no way how such an unfounded opinion could convince me.

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Not seeking to convince you. I just do not see good enough reasons not to it.

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Military history knows many examples of totally inept leaders whose elimination would have been a stupid move. More often than not, their opponents had learned about their incompetence and had to expect that an assassination would be disadvantageous.

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OK- all good.
Then you should teach that attacking Enemy Divisional or Corps HQs is a bad idea because you may kill a bad leader.
In irregular warfare, if you have leader who you "think incompetent" (what does the enemy think?) then assign no resources to tracking or targeting him.

In contrast I would teach the exact opposite of targeting all levels of any type of enemy military leadership where ever and when ever they can be found, because I do not want to find out how competent they are. I just want them dead.
Happy to kill civilian leaders in line with my policy makers direction.

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Originally Posted by GI Zhou

The argument is, if you knock off all the leadership, there isn't anyone with the authority to surrender their forces to you. What I am trying to establish is how they survive more so than knocking them off. At one stage the group I interviewed ate jungle roots and vegetables. They always carried salt in a bag around their necks as salt isn't available in the jungle.

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GIZhou, this may be a little more along the lines of what you are looking for. Contains tried and true LE techniques for identifying attack points in the enemy organization.


http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...c=GetTRDoc.pdf

Also recommend "Killing Pablo" by Mark Bowden and his other book "Stalking The Jihad" which use my 3F technique....follow the Family,Friends and Finances of the organization.


Usually there are two parts to targeting leadership.....one is figuring out which leaders or leadership functions are critical..... than figure out how to find those people often called Manhunting or Fugitive Tracking in my world. There is another paper called Manhunting that was published by The Naval Research Institute that I posted here awhile ago but I cant seem to find it yet. Will look when I get a chance.

GIZhou, found it link below to PDF file. Manhunting..... from the Naval Postgraduate School.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/...arks_jun05.pdf

Folks might take a gander at Stephen T. Hosmer, Operations Against Enemy Leaders (RAND 2001), which is summed as follows:

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Operations targeted against senior enemy leaders have long been viewed as a potential means of shaping the policy and behavior of enemy states. As a result, the United States has launched a variety of overt and covert operations in efforts to attack enemy leaders directly, facilitate their overthrow by coup or rebellion, or secure their ouster through external invasion. This book examines a number of leadership attacks from World War II to the present to offer insights into the comparative efficacy of various forms of leadership attacks, their potential coercive and deterrent value, and the possible unintended consequences of their ill-considered use. The book concludes that direct attacks, coups, and rebellions have met with only limited success and, even when successful, have sometimes yielded counterproductive results. Moreover, neither direct attacks nor coups have been of significant coercive or deterrent value, although rebellions have at times provided useful negotiating leverage. By contrast, external invasions have proved to be more efficacious both in shaping the targeted countries’ policy and behavior and in exerting coercive effects. The book concludes by outlining the likely conditions under which future leadership attacks are likely to be sanctioned and by delineating the prerequisites of effective use of air power in such contexts.

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External invasions do not necessarily mean occupation and regime change. A subset is the punitive raid with regime removal.

Regards

Mike

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Originally Posted by slapout9

GIZhou, found it link below to PDF file. Manhunting..... from the Naval Postgraduate School.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/...arks_jun05.pdf

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Matey,

Thanks, I will down load this into my data bank. The Malaysian security services rounded up their families and detained them, in contravention of international law, but this failed to work. The group I interviewed were allegedly communist, but were seen locally as more independence fighters (which is what I view them as), so had a lot of local support. This was crucial and in the end they did not surrender, it was a negotiated settlment.

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Originally Posted by GI Zhou

The group I interviewed were allegedly communist, but were seen locally as more independence fighters (which is what I view them as), so had a lot of local support. This was crucial and in the end they did not surrender, it was a negotiated settlment.

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Sounds like you did it right IMO.;)

GI Zhou stated in the opening post:

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Given the current policy of killing Taliban and Al Qaeda Commanders ,to 'chop off the head of the snake', as the Chinese would say, how do insurgent leaders manage to survive?

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Thought about this from a UK law enforcement viewpoint and have a jumble of thoughts - mainly from my time hunting fugitives.

Maintain distance from associates
Minimal communications and none electronic
Use cash only for transactions
Create false identities able to withstand scrutiny
Keep all true ID documents separate from person
No photographs of you and close family (You'd be amazed how many fugitives do not have a reasonable, current photo)
Create a hiding place close to residence used


I am sure if you read through SOE / OSS training manuals for behind the lines activity the principles have not changed.