Pursuant to Bill's on Quid pro Quo
Bill, I've not been to Iraq. My COIN experience is VN-specific--in the Middle East I was just another embassy bureaucrat...So--at the expense of sounding facile, I'll touch on what was done in VN, where local participation in self defence was the quid pro quo:
Pacification was a package designed to tie the villagers to the government...A community that was reclaimed from the communists for the GVN got its "pacification projects" all right, schools, wells, access roads, etc....But the emphasis was on people-participatory activities that had a security component (As John Vann, who more than any other individual made CORDS work, was fond of saying, "Security may be 10% of the problem, or it may be 90%. But it's always the FIRST 10%, or the first 90%."). So in the newly pacified village, teenagers too young to be drafted and the elderly were immediately organized into the village-based People's Self Defense Force under the village chief. This was a political concept designed to tie the people to the government through this "act of commitment" rather than to provide real defense from enemy attack. (I found that organizing villagers to participate in GVN DEVELOPMENT activities did NOT constitute a similar "act of commitment" on the part of the villagers, mainly because both VC and villagers saw such activities as harmless to the VC.) At the same time, of course, draft age males were inducted into the RF/PF (territorial forces). Did this entail a risk of the ranks being infiltrated by VC?--definitely--and this did happen. However, the key to making this work was supervision/leadership. The RF officers were ARVN officers--vetted outsiders presumably loyal to the GVN. And paramilitary RD Cadre, the same guys who organized the villagers for community development projects, were outsiders tasked with keeping an eye on the village authorities to minimize accommodation with the enemy. (These guys weren't too good--good concept on paper, but falls apart if you've not got top notch people.) Village autonomy was a much vaunted concept in CORDS, but in my experience, having good CENTRAL government officers right there on the ground to provide both leadership and close supervision was a sine qua non to successful "pacification" and to avoiding wholesale local "deal-making" with the enemy. (Excessive local autonomy in a country ripped apart by centrifugal forces only exacerbates the problem--this was one case where the Vietnamese saw it correctly even though the US did not.). And how much better when we could afford to have a small US contingent embedded with the local forces living right there in the hamlet--I mean the USMC CAP effort in I-Corps! In French Algeria, of course, the locally organized village self-defense contingents had French officers.
Now another way of looking at the quid pro quo issue is found in a component of the Malaya model, where the inhabitants of the New Villages lived under seriously constrained movement. There, an uptick in villager-provided, actionable intel led to loosening of those constraints. For example, curfew hours would be shortened. More drastically, food was doled out by the authorities: village recalcitrance led to an immediate decrease in each family's food ration; local cooperation (e.g., good intel, decrease in terrorist incidents) led to an immediate increase in the food ration. Is the Iraqi economy still socialized to the degree that food is government provided? If so, this may be one angle (though I'd shudder at the thought of our politically correct press fastening upon such "collective punishment").
To all y'all, A Happy New Year.
M.
Waging Peace in the Philippine
http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/i...nes.php?page=1
Quote:
Today, a crucial but little-known battle in the expanding war on terror is under way on Jolo Island. Designed to "wage peace," as Linder says, it's an innovative, decidedly nonviolent approach by which U.S. military personnel—working with aid agencies, private groups and Philippine armed forces—are trying to curtail terrorist recruitment by building roads and providing other services in impoverished rural communities. The effort, known to experts as "the Philippines model," draws on a "victory" on the Philippine island of Basilan, where U.S. forces in 2002 ended the dominance of Abu Sayyaf without firing so much as a single shot. "It's not about how many people we shoot in the face," Linder said. "It's about how many people we get off the battlefield."
On Jolo, U.S. military engineers have dug wells and constructed roads that allow rural farmers for the first time to transport their produce to markets. This past June, the Mercy, a U.S. Navy hospital ship, visited Jolo and other islands to provide medical and dental care to 25,000 people, many of whom had never seen a doctor. American military medical and veterinary teams have held mobile clinics, where Special Forces, speaking native Tausug and Tagalog, gathered information from local residents as they consulted on agriculture and engineering projects. American soldiers are even distributing a comic book designed for ethnic Tausug teenage boys thought to be at risk of being recruited by Abu Sayyaf. The story, Barbangsa: Blood of the Honorable, tells of a fictional young sailor named Ameer who defeats pimply-faced terrorists threatening his Philippine homeland.
We can do it when we maintain the moral high ground with the right people, the right strategy, and patience. There isn't a whole of sexy stuff taking place here, but the focus is on the people, and it is working ever so slowly.
fyi, here is the final version of my paper about Kilcullen
By the kind invitation from the SWC Moderators, here is the final version of my paper on Kilcullen:
Why We Lose: Part four of a series about the US expedition to the Middle East
January 4, 2007
4,100 words
URL:
http://www.defense-and-society.org/f...06_part_IV.htm
Comments are welcome and appreciated. First, here are a few important points about this paper.
1. This paper looks at Kilcullen’s "28 articles" from the perspective of 4GW theory, mining his recommended tactics for insights as to what strategy might work best in such wars. That is, this article discusses 4GW strategy. As we all know, strategy should drive tactics.
2. This paper does not consider or evaluate the utility of his advice to company commanders.
3. This is just a sketch (only 4 thousand words), and cannot do justice to the breath and depth of Kilcullen’s large and subtle body of work (4 major papers on counterinsurgency, many on related topics).
4. This article is in effect a chapter of a book. Like folks originally read Dickens (or Dick Tracy comics), this is a larger work published in serial form. Many logical and natural question when reading this are dealt with elsewhere, esp. in my analysis of Lind’s FMFM-1A and my “Militia” article (links to previous articles appear at the end).
5. Two comments from Kilcullen’s works I believe apply to all of us writing about 4GW:
From “Countering Global Insurgency”:
Quote:
This appendix IS NOT A BLUEPRINT FOR COUNTERINSURGENCY IN IRAQ. As described in the main paper, such a template does not exist, and in any case the situation is rapidly changing requiring constant innovation.
From “3 Pillars of Counterinsurgency”:
Quote:
These thoughts are tentative; they need a large amount of work. The “three pillars” model is clearly incorrect — all models are, in that they are systematic oversimplifications of reality. But this, or something like it, might be a basis for further development.
And time is of the essence: regardless of the outcome of current campaigns, our enemies will keep applying these methods until we show we can defeat them. Thus, this is one of the most important efforts that our generation of national security professionals is likely to attempt. Our friends and colleagues’ lives, the security of our nation and its allies, and our long-term prospect of victory in the War on Terrorism may, in part, depend on it.
6. Last, here is an acknowledgement from the end of this paper:
Quote:
Also, my thanks to the participants of the Small Wars Council, whose criticisms were so helpful in refining this article. This site deserves attention by anyone seeking information or discussion about the small wars that dominate today’s military scene.