How Insurgencies End

[William F. Owen]

Are you suggesting that all citizens, everywhere, have an absolute obligation to submit to authority at all times, no matter how capricious and abusive that authority may be?

No. I never said anything like that.
a.) Violence is instrumental, not moral or ethical.
b.) Almost no one ever sets forth policy they do not believe to be moral or ethical. Politics is what folks think is right.

If people are rejecting authority through the use of arms, they probably have some reason for doing so: it's not the sort of thing one does casually or on a whim.

Depends on the policy and the specifics. If my policy maker tells me to force defeat on them, then the destruction of their armed force - in line with policy - is my objective. I'll let the policy maker negotiate the peace.

[Dayuhan]

If my policy maker tells me to force defeat on them, then the destruction of their armed force - in line with policy - is my objective. I'll let the policy maker negotiate the peace.

Development of effective policy requires input from a variety of sources, including those who will be responsible for implementing the policy… and given the importance of developing effective, reasonable, and achievable policies in pursuit of political goals, why should we confine discussion purely to the military aspects of insurgency? How is a discussion of insurgency generically, or of any specific insurgency, complete without assessments of the policies adopted and of possible alternatives?

yes, we get it. The US conducted UW and threw out the illegitimate government the Pakistanis installed and installed the illegitimate Karzai government. That is history. It also creates a presumption of Illegitimacy for the Karzai government that is VERY difficult to overcome. Voting has not made a dent in overcoming that presumption.

Saying the Pakistanis installed the Taliban might be an oversimplification, but if we take it at face value it raises some interesting questions. The Taliban, for all their deficiencies, did manage to establish effective control over a significant portion of Afghanistan despite minimal resources and very limited external support. Even with far greater resources and much more foreign assistance, the Karzai government has been unable to do the same. Are the Pakistanis that much better than we are at installing governments? Or possibly they were backing a faction that already had substantial local support, rather than trying to create a new faction from scratch? Or possibly our very visible intervention and our very visible presence has worked against the effort to build perceived legitimacy, reinforcing the perception that the GIROA is a creation of and a representative of an occupying foreign power? Possibly none of the above, but if the Taliban were in fact installed by the Pakistanis it's worth asking how they largely succeeded where we have not.

I suspect that voting, and many other aspects of the system we installed in Afghanistan, were intended less to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghans than to establish legitimacy in the eyes of Americans. Our habit of building systems that conform to our preferences instead of building from existing local systems may be part of our problem

Mr. K is pushing for a big "Peace Jirga" and making all kinds of public statements and positions to try to create a perception of legitimacy. I wish him well in that endeavor, because it, more than any military action by the coalition, is the key to strategic success in Afghanistan.

How would you define “strategic success” in Afghanistan? I ask because I feel that there’s been a substantial level of goal escalation in Afghanistan. We didn’t go there because the government was “illegitimate”, which is hardly for us to determine. We didn’t go there to build liberal democracy or establish representative government. We went there to deny refuge to AQ. The other goals emerged later. They are admirable goals, but I’m not sure we’ve the capacity to achieve them and I can’t help wondering if we’d have been better off staying focused on the original purpose.

[William F. Owen]

Development of effective policy requires input from a variety of sources, including those who will be responsible for implementing the policy… and given the importance of developing effective, reasonable, and achievable policies in pursuit of political goals, why should we confine discussion purely to the military aspects of insurgency? How is a discussion of insurgency generically, or of any specific insurgency, complete without assessments of the policies adopted and of possible alternatives?

Strategy is the use of all instruments of power. However, without military power, the rest are generally useless. If you do not get the military bit right, you can do nothing else. Solving an insurgency means getting the military bit right, before anything else. Do some armies do it badly? Yes. That does not alter the reality.

There is a common fallacy that development helps end insurgencies. It simply is not true. Let's stop using the silly word insurgency.

Is there any coherent historical evidence that building public amenities has ever defeat an irregular force conducting a rebellion or revolt?

In Oman the strategy was quite clear. Destroy the rebellion, then do the development. Development was essentially a reward for backing the government.

In Northern Ireland, the UK spent billions on social development. The housing standards of the Catholic community improved dramatically, yet this made no actual difference to the IRA's armed struggle, or its stated objectives.

[Bob's World]

This thread is a pretty good "ecosystem" for why insurgencies tend to simmer along for years....

You have a dozen smart people all talking past each other. And while this is occuring, the insurgent out working among the populace; targeting manifestations of the squabbling COIN force (the HN government at all levels, civil and security; their puppet master external FID forces, civil and military, et. al.) wherever they are most easily and visibly affected; cajoling and coercing support from the populace as necessary; all the while working to build perceptions of their own legitimacy, to provide justice, to provide respect to the disrespected (your tribe is excluded from success under this government? Join the Taliban and be somebody!); addressing feelings of hopelessness (you don't have a vote that counts? here, take this IED, or this ICOM radio, or this AK and "vote" with it and be heard!).

No, insurgencies don't end when the insurgent wants them to Outlaw, they end when the populace in the main feels that governance is good. The new insurgent's spark falls on wet tender, and the old flame of insurgency sputters and dies.

Security is a critical enabler, and development is nice as well; but neither will end an insurgency; in fact, if they are applied without justice and respect by a government perceived to be illegitimate they will actually make the insurgency worse.

Securtiy without Justice is Tyranny.

Development without equity is Apartheid.

Governance without Legitimacy is Despotism.

And a populace experincing the above without a voice is Hopeless.

THIS is what causes insurgency. Apply the facts and cultures of your many various case studies to this Devil's brew and test them for yourself.

Legitimacy, Justice, Respect, Hope. This is what's in Bob's kitbag for COIN.

Bring your large foreign armies only if you want to control the outcome of some foreign insurgency; but when you do that understand that THAT isn't COIN. That is a decision that the Foreign Poliy of your nation as manifested in some country is more important than the will and good governance of the populace of that same nation. Not saying don't ever do that. I'm just saying call it what it is, or you might just wind up buying into your own spin.

[Dayuhan]

And while this is occuring, the insurgent out working among the populace; targeting manifestations of the squabbling COIN force (the HN government at all levels, civil and security; their puppet master external FID forces, civil and military, et. al.) wherever they are most easily and visibly affected; cajoling and coercing support from the populace as necessary; all the while working to build perceptions of their own legitimacy, to provide justice, to provide respect to the disrespected (your tribe is excluded from success under this government? Join the Taliban and be somebody!); addressing feelings of hopelessness (you don't have a vote that counts? here, take this IED, or this ICOM radio, or this AK and "vote" with it and be heard!).

One of our weaknesses in these fights is often our tendency to focus on the insurgent organization, their driving ideology and their command structure. The insurgents, on the other hand, are acutely aware of and able to gain leverage from local grievances that we often overlook.

In my neck of the woods, when the new People's Army wants to move into an area, they don't come in preaching Communism - that would be pretty pointless. They focus on local grievances and local issues, which generally proliferate in poorly governed countries, and use those as a lever to gain the local support and recruit the troops that they need.

Resolving those local issues will not convert the core ideologues. It can, however, isolate them from their sources of support, remove their recruitment leverage, and whittle them down to a force that is either manageable or will simply die off for want of influence. The local grievances may not be the ideological core of the insurgency, but they are what allows the insurgency to spread and survive.

No, insurgencies don't end when the insurgent wants them to Outlaw, they end when the populace in the main feels that governance is good.

Agreed, but I'd substitute "adequate" for "good". People are actually fairly tolerant of mediocre governance (otherwise the whole world would be rebelling) and generally have to be pushed pretty hard before they take up arms and rebel. A bit of hope, a possibility for improvement, any sign that there's a chance things will work out without a fight, people can manage. Push their back up to and through the wall, they will fight back. As long as people feel that governance is theirs, not someone else's, is not a direct threat to them, and that there's some hope for improvement, they aren't that likely to engage in armed resistance.

In many areas ownership of governance is as or more important than quality: people's tolerance for bad governance is a lot higher when they feel that the government in question is theirs. That's something intervening powers often overlook.

[Surferbeetle]

Dayuhan-Steve,

Thanks for the article/case study; still working my way through it but it's well written and there is much to think about.

For the math & ecosystems crowd:

The SWJ thread Mathematics of War might be of interest.

Thermodynamics is an interesting subject which has spawned many ideas and mathematical descriptions outside of it's typical application. Following that pathway the definitions of closed and open systems are instructive to consider:

Closed System from wikipedia

In thermodynamics, a closed system can exchange heat and work (for example, energy), but not matter, with its surroundings.

...while an open system can exchange all of heat, work and matter

I find it to be of greater use to consider the concept of Control Volumes when considering the flow or ponding of water through pipes or channels or the flow or ponding of insurgents through a village or province. A control volume is just an imaginary cube in which one can slow time and reduce the number of variables moving through it in order to think about what is occuring in the space. When using this concept it is important to state assumptions concerning which variables are being examined and how they interact. Just because one assumes that only a few variables can predict how the system responds to inputs does not mean that this simplification accurately models reality.

For my money, Governance is but one variable in the open system that is conflict. I use the heuristic that all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Ecosystem models from wikipedia

[Dayuhan]

Strategy is the use of all instruments of power. However, without military power, the rest are generally useless. If you do not get the military bit right, you can do nothing else. Solving an insurgency means getting the military bit right, before anything else. Do some armies do it badly? Yes. That does not alter the reality.

There is a common fallacy that development helps end insurgencies. It simply is not true. Let's stop using the silly word insurgency.

Is there any coherent historical evidence that building public amenities has ever defeat an irregular force conducting a rebellion or revolt?

I agree that underdevelopment is overrated as a cause of insurgency, and development overrated as a remedy. Poor design or implementation of "development" projects, in fact, have often provoked or exacerbated anti-government violence.

It is hard not to notice that insurgencies do most frequently emerge in underdeveloped environments. That does not necessarily mean that underdevelopment causes insurgency. It seems to me more likely to suggest that many of the same factors that produce underdevelopment - including but not limited to weak or absent justice systems, unaccountable and abusive elites, and persistent use of state power for personal gain - also drive insurgency.

People don't take up arms against a government for no reason, and the reasons tend to be fairly direct and fairly personal. A farmer might grumble and complain that an irrigation system no longer works or the road he uses to get his crop to market is impassable, but he's not likely to start ambushing soldiers. Throw him off his farm, that changes.

People fight their government because they're angry or scared, often both. If you can determine why they are angry or scared and remove the cause of the anger and fear, you may not need to get the military bit right because you may not need to employ it in the first place.

To break it down to the level of the individual insurgent (ultimately what it's all about), suppose a clan takes up arms against the government because the provincial police chief's son raped one of their daughters and the justice system proved inoperative. Do you send in the military to shoot the whole clan, or do issue a contrite apology, fire the police chief, and haul his son off to the local dungeon?

Before you think of sending troops in to suppress an insurgency, why wouldn't you ask why these people are fighting (not the leaders, but the people actually doing the fighting), and whether that cause can be removed without having to send in troops?

[William F. Owen]

I
People fight their government because they're angry or scared, often both. If you can determine why they are angry or scared and remove the cause of the anger and fear, you may not need to get the military bit right because you may not need to employ it in the first place.

People fight to alter the political power that effects their lives.
If you can solve the problem with politics, then great.

To break it down to the level of the individual insurgent (ultimately what it's all about), suppose a clan takes up arms against the government because the provincial police chief's son raped one of their daughters and the justice system proved inoperative. Do you send in the military to shoot the whole clan, or do issue a contrite apology, fire the police chief, and haul his son off to the local dungeon?

Huh? Sorry, is that a question?
OK, so what's the political danger of prosecuting the Police chief? What tribe or clan does he belong to? Solving that problem is entirely political. It's not a military problem. What would you do in New York City?

....but if the clan comes through the jungle carrying weapons, then you inflict harm upon them, until they surrender.
What is so hard to understand about the simple dynamic of using armed force against armed force that threatens the state or "your" control of the state?

[Dayuhan]

What is so hard to understand about the simple dynamic of using armed force against armed force that threatens the state or "your" control of the state?

What I don't understand is why we should assume that the only possible response to armed force is the use of armed force, rather than starting with an attempt to determine whether the problem can be resolved through political measures short of armed force.

Sometimes people resort to violence because they have real grievances and have been given no recourse other than armed force. When that is the case, why escalate an armed confrontation into what can become a prolonged and destructive conflict if you can resolve the issue by addressing the grievance? And if we look at it from our usual position of assisting foreign power, shouldn't we be reluctant to provide military assistance to assist a government in the suppression of armed resistance that it has provoked through its own conduct?

[William F. Owen]

What I don't understand is why we should assume that the only possible response to armed force is the use of armed force, rather than starting with an attempt to determine whether the problem can be resolved through political measures short of armed force.

Why should I reward the use of political violence? Would you let a murder go unpunished?
If they haven't given them what they wanted when they didn't have guns, why would you when they did?
If someone assembles an armed force to be used to extract political concessions, the first demand you make is for them put down their arms or else. It's good housekeeping.

Sometimes people resort to violence because they have real grievances and have been given no recourse other than armed force.

Sometimes and maybe....and if the Government thought their grievance legitimate, then they should have dealt with it. It's almost always political suicide to reward violence.