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The idea for this thesis stemmed from a presentation I gave to Headquarters Multi-National Force-Iraq in March 2004 as it prepared to move to Baghdad from Camp Doha in Kuwait. I was a member of the directing staff at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, and the presentation was about British counterinsurgency doctrine. To prepare for it, I spent a weekend at home reading Army Field Manual Volume 1 Part 10 Counterinsurgency Operations and writing the script. What struck me from the whole experience was not that the Commanding General in Kuwait challenged the idea that his forces in Iraq faced an insurgency – “Damn it, we’re warfighting!” – but how well constructed and well-written the Field Manual was. The main outcome of this exercise was, as events transpired, that I actually read the Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine. As I have discovered, I was, and remain in a minority. (p.ii)
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In overall terms, the issue at stake for the British campaign in Iraq was that policy rather than doctrine or conditions on the ground determined how it developed. Until Iraq’s civil war took the campaign to the brink of defeat, the imperative was to hand over security to Iraqi forces as quickly as possible. This gave some credence to the reverse Ink Spot. When Bush and Petraeus turned the whole U.S. approach on its head, the weaknesses of the British method were exposed. While British forces had a base from which to operate, the Iraqi government was unable to demonstrate its ability to govern in Southern Iraq; the population was not secured from insurgents, the insurgents were the authority until defeated in April 2008; there was no ‘Controlled Area’, nor was there any attempt to consolidate or expand it. Petraeus introduced conditions-based transition, and emphasized that transition not based on security conditions would result in chaos. The British withdrawal from Basrah City in 2007 took little account of the actual security conditions in the city, and it left Baswaris exposed to militia violence and coercion. Whitehall did not agree to the conditions-based plan, and contrary to doctrine and Kitson’s guidelines for working with allies, MND(SE) deferred to London and not to the Coalition chain of command in Baghdad.]
A principal compounding problem in the campaign was the failure to identify the true character of the problem correctly. The question was raised at the beginning of this thesis; what happens when doctrine is relevant but it is not understood? In the case of Southern Iraq, it meant that otherwise highly competent, well-trained officers misjudged the problem they faced. In comparison to the violent insurgency which flared up in and around Baghdad, the relative early calm in the south fostered the view that Iraq was a stability operation akin to what went on in the Balkans model. Yet the presence from an early stage of militias, prepared to resort to violence in pursuit of their aims, met the doctrinal definition of insurgency. The fact that the Iraqi government and British forces were confronted by powerful, violent militias meant that a comprehensive campaign plan was required. Doctrine explained that a national plan should be nested within the objectives of the host nation and the multinational force. This was not the case in Southern Iraq. The Army did not understand its own doctrine, and did not follow its own precepts. This created a condition which was beyond the influence of those with experience from Northern Ireland or the Balkans. In campaign terms, the British operation became more one of making a manageable contribution to the Coalition effort rather than making a decisive contribution.
One counter-balance might have been the development of Theatre or Operation Instructions. They were of proven value in Malaya, Kenya and, eventually, Northern Ireland, where they set general doctrine in the context of the operational theatre. Yet no such doctrine was written for Iraq. Why? The campaign in Iraq was highly complex and multi-faceted with a wide range of cultural, political and ethno-sectarian influences. The political situation was particularly volatile. The U.S. taught every brigade and battalion its counterinsurgency doctrine from December 2004. By comparison, although every British brigade was taught the tactics for company-level operations, they were not taught doctrine in the same way as their U.S. counterparts. It took initiative from individual commanding officers once they had deployed to realize that something was missing from their preparation and called for in-theatre counterinsurgency education.
Practical constraints placed on the British force, in particular troop numbers, meant that from the very start, the British operation could only have a limited effect on the security situation. What followed was the Ink Spot in reverse: instead of building a security infrastructure from which governance could be established, the British operation consistently scaled down efforts from its high water marks of presence and influence in summer 2003. [...] By comparison, the U.S. not only trained and equipped Iraqi forces but its forces fought alongside them, and provided crucial enabling capabilities of intelligence, firepower and logistic support. When British forces adopted the same model in March 2008, it proved to be highly successful, just as it had been when used in the past. There was nothing new in embedding training teams with indigenous forces; Counter Insurgency Operations explained its importance, principally because of the success the approach had had in the campaigns in Malaya and the Oman. Attention to the doctrine and some knowledge of the lessons from history were missing from the campaign.
Doctrine has traditionally been viewed as ‘that which is taught;’ if doctrine is not taught, does the Army have a doctrine? Without the philosophy contained in doctrine being assimilated, where is the central idea? There was none. The view of what the campaign was changed with every new commander. Some came closer to recognizing the reality than others. There is, however, no evidence that there was anything wilful or incompetent in this; as the campaign rolled on, so successors had to live with decisions made or the effect of indecision from previous tours, often being desperately frustrated by the conditions which they faced. Continuity, the watchword in Northern Ireland, became institutionalized discontinuity as the campaign veered from being cast as nation-building, to peace support, to stability operations, to – eventually – counterinsurgency, and then counter-corruption, crucially, with no underpinning intelligence database, or established connections with the Baswari population. With every change came a further reduction in forces available to commanders in Iraq, not matched by a commensurate increase in the capacity or capability of the Iraqi security forces, nor linked to the security situation in Southern Iraq.
(all emphasis mine, pp.267-69)