Insurgency within an insurgency
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gian P Gentile
Niel:
At least with the slide I could understand your implied point to it.
But the implied point is the problem since it is fundamentally a slide that depicts the premise to population centric counterinsurgency and the usual critique of how the American Army doesnt get coin because we dont get the political aspect of it and only want to do tactics whereas the insurgent does and focusses on politics. Mao, Galula as opposite sides to the people's war construct would accept you slide and its implications. But why do you think it is relevant for today? Does the triangle for the insurgent fit the local villagers in the Korengal Valley?
Too, the implication to your slide for the "correct" action on the part of the American counterinsurgent is to invert our triangle so that the majority of our focus is on the political like the insurgents. But the flaw with this approach just like it is with the American Army's current flaw in how we have templated Galula and Thompson which is to treat counterinsurgency as a symetrical response to a perceived people's war. This is why I have argued that CE Callwell's book still has relevance and insights for today in that he saw small wars as essentially wars to create moral effects among local populations and leaders but saw the use of military force not in symmetrical but asymmetrical sense.
some thoughts from the other side, thanks for posting your slide.
As I was reviewing some Reconciliation and Reintegration (why can we not just say "forgive and forget"?) documents, it struck me that we really have is an insurgency within an insurgency here in Afghanistan. This may address your question to Niel as to the applicability of this slide.
The slide speaks fairly well to a Revolutionary Insurgency ( I break insurgency into three broad categories: Revolutionary -change the government; Resistance - remove an externally installed government; and Separatist- break of some segment of the country and form a new government) such as the Taliban leadership are waging in Afghanistan. This is the parent insurgency and the driving force that must be addressed to win in Afghanistan, and it is addressed far more effectively through political engagement that addresses major issues such as the widely perceived illegitimacy of the Karzai government through inherently legitimate political processes such as the Loya Jirga; than by any costly massive application of population-centric COIN tactics can hope to achieve.
Within this insurgency is the Resistance insurgency. This is the rank and file Afghan, who fights primarily because the coalition is here. He also fights because we are here and because he gets paid an honest day's wage as well to fight us. The model does not speak well to the 90% of the insurgency that is in your face, but it does not have to. This aspect of the insurgency is cured by simply sending the Coalition home.
The 10% of the insurgency that must be addressed to win is the revolutionary insurgency, and as I said, I believe Niel's model hits that fairly well.
Just an insight honed while red penciling a "forgive and forget" policy letter...
Victory lies in the understanding of the nuance and subtlety of war
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Firn
I enjoyed this post and share some feelings with you, which I echoed before. Just wanted to add that this revolutionary-resistance dynamic is often an intrinsic feature of many small wars. It is in fact even present in states and western military forces, were the primary object of many is not a lofty and distant politcal goal.
Firn
Look how calming of an effect our clearly expressed intent to leave Iraq and focus on Afghanistan has had on the broad, resistance base of that insurgency?
Herein lies one irony of our COIN efforts. I often here senior leaders talking to the importance of how we must impress upon the populace that we will not leave them...; when in theory, some 90% of the insurgency is motivated simply by the fact that we are here.:eek:
This is why Strategic Comms are so important as well. The peaceful segment of the society needs to be assured that they will not be abandoned to the insurgency; while the rank and file insurgent segment of the society needs to be assured that you have no intent to stay; mean while the head of the insurgency is running a revolution and delighting in your quandary as you lend your support to a government widely viewed as illegitimate.
Break this down:
Step one: Address the perceptions of legitimacy to crush the head of the snake.
Step two: Assure the largely peaceful segment of the society that you are committed to assisting the freshly legitimized (by the populace, not you) government gets their feet underneath them; while
Step three: Assuring the rank and file resistance fighter segment of the populace that the insurgent leadership is lying about your intentions, and in fact you are indeed leaving them, and leaving them with a government whose legitimacy they recognize.
All of this must of course be communicated in word and deed throughout the engagement.
But first you must address step one, and for some reason, that is the step no one ever wants to take.
Historical perspective, continued
Bob, thank you for the detailed response. I sensed it was something along those lines. My reason for asking is that you appear to be plowing ground that I plowed during the period 1974-1980 while course manager for the Navy’s COIN course.
By 1974, the COIN instruction was a residual effort consisting of two classes. First, we taught a two-week seminar about 12 or so times a year. The target audience was the Navy Special Warfare Community and Marine equivalent. However, Army (and some Air Force) reserves flocked to our course because it gave them an ACDUTRA opportunity that was educational. Many of the Army officers were from Reserve Civil Affairs units, so we had a wide variety of knowledgeable folks who passed through our doors. We picked their brains on the way through.
Second, we taught a unit-specific weekend course as part of the Naval Reserve training structure.
Shortly before I arrived on station the staff had flown in Roger Darling for a presentation and video taping session. We then “taught” Darling with little idea of what he was really saying.
One day a student, Tom Grassey, wandered into my office and said we had no clue, we had no one’s attention, and we had no credibility. At the end of his two-week stay we basically said to Tom that if you know so much go out and research the subject and come back and inform us.
A few months later he did just that. One of his points was that we needed to put aside the word “insurgency” and call it what it was, revolution. That opened things up for us. We had been stuck with the terminology of the 1960’s—Left, Mass and Right Strategy. Grassey also pointed us to the construct of “unjust treatment,” which he took from Aristotle.
That led us to David V. J. Bell and his treatment of resistance and revolution. I commend his book to you.
We taped Tom and he published his findings in the Naval War College Review under the title, “Some Perspectives on Revolution.” At the same time, Roger Darling was re-titling his “Military Review” article to be “Revolution Examined Anew.” We gradually renamed our course; it ultimately became a “Political Warfare Seminar," and added the American Revolution as a case study.
We synthesized Darling and Grassey into a unified scheme for qualitative analysis, and added Bell to speak to the distribution of justice component.
Up thread I have a link to a key chart I derived which, at the time, was our understanding of the spectrum of revolutionary conflict and violence. The predicate was that any government has two fundamental tasks, the dispensation of justice (Aristotle, Bell) and the management of violence. The revolutionary goal was to get the government to focus on the latter task.
I have seen little in the intervening 30 years since I last taught the subject that substantially changes what we wrote and taught at Coronado at the close of the Vietnam War.
Sounds like I have a little resarch and reading to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Oredigger61
Bob, thank you for the detailed response. I sensed it was something along those lines. My reason for asking is that you appear to be plowing ground that I plowed during the period 1974-1980 while course manager for the Navy’s COIN course.
By 1974, the COIN instruction was a residual effort consisting of two classes. First, we taught a two-week seminar about 12 or so times a year. The target audience was the Navy Special Warfare Community and Marine equivalent. However, Army (and some Air Force) reserves flocked to our course because it gave them an ACDUTRA opportunity that was educational. Many of the Army officers were from Reserve Civil Affairs units, so we had a wide variety of knowledgeable folks who passed through our doors. We picked their brains on the way through.
Second, we taught a unit-specific weekend course as part of the Naval Reserve training structure.
Shortly before I arrived on station the staff had flown in Roger Darling for a presentation and video taping session. We then “taught” Darling with little idea of what he was really saying.
One day a student, Tom Grassey, wandered into my office and said we had no clue, we had no one’s attention, and we had no credibility. At the end of his two-week stay we basically said to Tom that if you know so much go out and research the subject and come back and inform us.
A few months later he did just that. One of his points was that we needed to put aside the word “insurgency” and call it what it was, revolution. That opened things up for us. We had been stuck with the terminology of the 1960’s—Left, Mass and Right Strategy. Grassey also pointed us to the construct of “unjust treatment,” which he took from Aristotle.
That led us to David V. J. Bell and his treatment of resistance and revolution. I commend his book to you.
We taped Tom and he published his findings in the Naval War College Review under the title, “Some Perspectives on Revolution.” At the same time, Roger Darling was re-titling his “Military Review” article to be “Revolution Examined Anew.” We gradually renamed our course; it ultimately became a “Political Warfare Seminar," and added the American Revolution as a case study.
We synthesized Darling and Grassey into a unified scheme for qualitative analysis, and added Bell to speak to the distribution of justice component.
Up thread I have a link to a key chart I derived which, at the time, was our understanding of the spectrum of revolutionary conflict and violence. The predicate was that any government has two fundamental tasks, the dispensation of justice (Aristotle, Bell) and the management of violence. The revolutionary goal was to get the government to focus on the latter task.
I have seen little in the intervening 30 years since I last taught the subject that substantially changes what we wrote and taught at Coronado at the close of the Vietnam War.
You're right, we are definitely coming at this from similar perspectives. I look forward to finding some of those old pieces and working through them.