Selective Use of History in the Development of American COIN Doctrine

[iveschris]

Perhaps we've come down to whither doctrine.

Were the historical doctrine examples we've noted, beginning with Gentile's, trailing indicators or leading indicators of battlefield chalenges the respective armies faced?

How does doctrine influence on balance how the force faces its war? Imperial policing and the Boer War had a decisive influence on the British doctrine before WWI. To what extent did that doctrine influence the British response to what the army found in Flanders? By the end of 1915 much of the Old Army was dead.

Countering insurgents for the Army and Marines in Vietnam was countering guerrillas until after 1970. Did the consistent emphasis on find/fix/fight/finish doctrinal solutions address the tactical problems of the ARVN/US Army-Marine Corps? Both guerrillas and beginning in 1965 PAVN units offered lots of fighting but the tactical solution set based on the doctrine couldn't drive operational or strategic actions to defeat the enemy. Experimentation did finally address the "other war" with no small amount of borrowed military manpower.

[Pete]

MW and EBO both used very bad history to try and sell their wears.

Wares, Wilf, wares.

Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction by now should be antique.
If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do,
Why, you might be selling flowers, too.

[William F. Owen]

Wares, Wilf, wares.

ThanX mate! My dyslexia and spell checker never cease to amaze me. - but you understood what I meant?

[Pete]

... the British Army's decision to return to real soldiering on the frontiers of the Empire in the 1930s rather then study WWI for knowledge.

Wait a minute, I was under the impression that the field sports of British cavalry regiments during the interwar years encouraged bold maneuver and decisive action. Maybe the U.S. Army Armor Center and School should be moved to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where there are lots of wild boars.

[William F. Owen]

Wait a minute, I was under the impression that the field sports of British cavalry regiments during the interwar years encouraged bold maneuver and decisive action.

Do not even get me started. "Cavalry Traditions" are reason why Britain has only ever produced 2 good tanks in 90 years.

[Rex Brynen]

Do not even get me started. "Cavalry Traditions" are reason why Britain has only ever produced 2 good tanks in 90 years.

Perhaps three, if you include the Firefly variant of the Sherman. What were the other two?

[William F. Owen]

Perhaps three, if you include the Firefly variant of the Sherman. What were the other two?

OK, fair one. It was the best of the WW2 Shermans. (for some reason the US has never produced good tanks guns) The other two would be Centurion and Challenger-2.

I could have a real "Airfix versions of history" debate some of the others, but I do not wish to be that geek today!!

[Infanteer]

Interesting. As Bob's World alludes to, Afghanistan (and COIN theory in general) seem to suffer from a "Strategy of Tactics"; no amount of securing the population is going to win the war. We seem to take historical examples of tactical successes like Tel Afar to hold them aloft as avatars of how to prosecute campaigns and design strategy. Maneuver Warfare suffered heavily from this - some good leadership principles were bundled up into an entire flimsy doctrinal concept.

As an aside on uses of military history - which may or may not be relevant - I had a fellow soldier expounding COIN doctrine and pointing out how Vietnam was a failure and COIN is the response to this failure. Being contrary, I asked where failure was with a US Military which won most tactical engagements, destroyed the VC as a guerrilla force, stemmed the NVA tide and left South Vietnam in one piece; a South Vietnamese state that would fall to a conventional invasion as opposed to a insurgent army of sandal wearing guerrillas. He didn't have much to say (although there probably is alot) - the profession seems to have an unfortuate trend of accepting things at face value without a critical eye.

[Schmedlap]

3. What historical examples, if any, provide us with conflicts that share more parallels with Afghanistan and/or better lessons more applicable to Afghanistan? Why?

Well, at risk of being provocative and putting forth a suggestion that hasn't a snowball's chance of being implemented... perhaps the rule of Abdur Rahman? Massive forced resettlements. Hey, didn't that work in Malaysia, too?

[Granite_State]

Do not even get me started. "Cavalry Traditions" are reason why Britain has only ever produced 2 good tanks in 90 years.

The British cavalry has mostly gotten a bad rap for its 20th century performance. As an admirer of Allenby I'm sure you'd see that in WWI. Bad designers and some of the "RTC avant garde" had a lot more to do with poor British tanks than the cavalry.

Stephen Badsey has pointed out that the "cavalry spirit" shared many features with the much more celebrated auftragstaktik.

http://www.amazon.com/Doctrine-Refor...988342&sr=8-10
(Very expensive but worth it if the subject is of real interest).

[Pete]

Massive forced resettlements.

That's an idea. We could call it the Strategic Hamlet Program.

[tequila]

Well, at risk of being provocative and putting forth a suggestion that hasn't a snowball's chance of being implemented... perhaps the rule of Abdur Rahman? Massive forced resettlements. Hey, didn't that work in Malaysia, too?

Abdur Rahman didn't really face a non-tribalized insurgency. Breaking up tribal power structures worked for him in specific regional contexts because what Pashtun opposition there was to his rule often was sparked within specific tribal grievances, i.e. resistance to new forms of conscription. I doubt this would work against the Taliban. Also, again, not a snowball's chance in hell of actually being implemented, for good reason.

Also, no Hazarajat to use as outside-enemy/conquest/looting opportunity to unify the Pashtuns. I don't think the Hazaras are willing to play this role again.

Unless you wanted to redefine Afghanistan as a country of Tajiks, Farsiwan, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, and put the Pashtuns on the bottom? Many Pashtun seem to think this is happening anyway, so why not confirm their conspiracy theory, substituting the south and east for Hazarajat, and indulge in mass killing, enslavement, and expulsion of the Pashtun population at the hands of a newly-unified coalition of Tajik/Hazara/Uzbek warlords? Very Victorian-era of us, I would think!

Oh, right, we're supposed to be the good guys. Also the Soviets tried a version of this already and it didn't work that great for them. The existence of Pakistan also makes this scenario utterly impractical as well.

[Schmedlap]

I guess I should clarify that I threw this out there as devil's advocate in hopes of drawing out some less traditional ideas (not so much courses of action - but just ideas, factoids, etc).

Abdur Rahman didn't really face a non-tribalized insurgency.

Some would argue that this is not a non-tribalized insurgency. And some, such as Tom Johnson and Chris Mason argue (below), argue that the Taliban is a Pashtun phenomenon.

The Taliban and the other Islamic extremist insurgent elements operating on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border are almost exclusively Pashtuns, with a sprinkling of radicals from nonborder ethnicities. The implications of this salient fact—that most of Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s violent religious extremism, and with it much of the United States’ counterterrorism challenge, are centered within a single ethnolinguistic group—have not been fully grasped by a governmental policy community that has long downplayed cultural dynamics.
- from Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, "No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier," International Security, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Spring 2008) p. 42

Rahman perceived his problems to be along tribal and ethnic lines. The following passages are from Thomas J. Barfield, " Problems in Establishing Legitimacy in Afghanistan," Iranian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, June 2004.

… Abdur Rahman looked upon the tribal rebellions that had led to the British withdrawal as a greater danger to him than they were to the British. Had the rebellious Tajiks or Ghilzais that attacked Kabul had leaders with more vision, or more ambition, they could have seized power … Rahman made sure they would not have the chance to change their minds.
- p. 278

Rahman set out to ensure that large swaths of the country that were more or less autonomous were put under central control. Specifically, he was concerned that many areas had the ability to raise armed forces that could challenge the state that he was creating. That seems to be a similar problem today among the Pashtun areas where the Taliban has its sanctuaries. Rahman saw those areas as a risk to the government because of the political coalitions that could form along kinship lines (or, in today's case, perhaps allegiances to warlords that roughly coincide with ethnicity/tribe).

Abdur Rahman destroyed this autonomy by sub-dividing provinces into smaller units and by appointing new governors who were personally loyal to him rather than immediate relatives... Large numbers of defeated Ghilzais were uprooted and exiled to northern Afghanistan.
- p. 278-9.

You point out...

Breaking up tribal power structures worked for him in specific regional contexts because what Pashtun opposition there was to his rule often was sparked within specific tribal grievances, i.e. resistance to new forms of conscription.

I don't think that is the only plausible explanation. Again, quoting Barfield...

From 1881 until 1888 Abdur Rahman directed most of his campaigns against the Pashtuns, particularly the Ghilzai. Yet for the next 90 years, the Pashtuns as a whole would see themselves, and be seen by others, as the privileged ethnic group in the country. For if the Pashtuns were the prime victims of Abdur Rahman’s early wars they were the beneficiaries of his later ones. For example, his suppression of the Ghilzai revolt coincided with his recovery of Afghan Turkestan in 1888. This allowed the amir to punish large numbers of rebellious Pashtuns from the south by exiling them to Turkestan, a territory then inhabited primarily by Uzbeks and Tajiks. The deported Pashtuns were given rich agricultural lands and access to pastures for sheep-raising in a territory that had been depopulated by wars.
- p. 279

This seemed to pay off in the long run. After Amanullah was overthrown…

Nadir Khan… raised an army of eastern Pashtuns from both sides of the Durand Line to support him in part by portraying the Tajik ruler of Afghanistan as a usurper who had no right to rule over Pashtuns. That the Ghilzais would rally around the idea of preserving Pashtun privilege by restoring another Muhammadzai leader to power, rather than attempting to seize power themselves, shows how effective Abdur Rahman had been in his policies of co-optation.
- p. 280

Again, playing devil’s advocate, in hopes that someone will see something in here to bite onto at a micro or macro level and spur a discussion to hopefully flesh out something useful.

Lastly, if this clarification helps at all, while I am playing devil's advocate, there are some suggestions that I think are sufficiently absurd and can be assumed to not be part of any argument that I am making. In particular, this one...

.... so why not confirm their conspiracy theory, substituting the south and east for Hazarajat, and indulge in mass killing, enslavement, and expulsion of the Pashtun population at the hands of a newly-unified coalition of Tajik/Hazara/Uzbek warlords? Very Victorian-era of us, I would think!

I'm playing devil's advocate, not Hitler's advocate.

[Entropy]

Well, a couple of thoughts on this:

First, insurgent violence highly correlates with areas with a significant Pashtun population.

Secondly, one effect of the Soviet invasion, occupation, withdrawal and subsequent civil war was a break-down in tribally loyalty structures. A generation of boys grew up divorced from the traditional tribal governance structures which weakened those structures. Not too surprising considering that 1/3 of the population became external refugees, another several million internal refugees and over a million were killed outright.

I haven't heard much talk about it lately, but one strategy we've been using in some areas of Afghanistan for the past several years is to attempt to rebuild broken tribal structures in order to displace other structures that developed during the period of the Soviet occupation and civil war.

[Schmedlap]

... one effect of the Soviet invasion, occupation, withdrawal and subsequent civil war was a break-down in tribally loyalty structures.

That's where I was going with my parenthetical...

Rahman saw those areas as a risk to the government because of the political coalitions that could form along kinship lines (or, in today's case, perhaps allegiances to warlords that roughly coincide with ethnicity/tribe).

[William F. Owen]

The British cavalry has mostly gotten a bad rap for its 20th century performance. As an admirer of Allenby I'm sure you'd see that in WWI.

Correct. I'm very much admire Allenby, but he was good because he was good. Nothing to do with Cavalry

Bad designers and some of the "RTC avant garde" had a lot more to do with poor British tanks than the cavalry.

Almost. I'm doing my Masters on this very subject. No firm conclusions yet but the "mechanising of the cavalry" is an issue. They see tanks as armoured horses. That may have had negative flow down effects.

http://www.amazon.com/Doctrine-Refor...988342&sr=8-10
(Very expensive but worth it if the subject is of real interest).

Thanks!

[tequila]

Schmedlap,

Actually I agree with Barfield in most aspects. I think that that Abdul Rahman fought tribalized insurgencies, mostly because he was focused on unifying/controlling the Pashtuns for the first part of his reign. This required breaking Pashtun tribal leadership and forcing large numbers of tribesmen into the army. He then focused on conquering non-Pashtun parts of Afghanistan, focusing on the north and especially Hazarajat, which had the side benefit of increasing his control of the Pashtuns by granting them lands, property, and slaves at the dispensation of the central government.

However, this isn't the situation facing the current GiRoA. The Taliban may be a mostly ethnic Pashtun phenomenon, but they are not a tribal phenomenon - quite the opposite I'd argue. Indeed as Entropy pointed out, the Soviet occupation and the civil war broke tribal power structures far more thoroughly than even Abdur Rahman could, except in parts of the east.

Abdur Rahman faced the problem of unifying the country, which he did first by breaking rivals in his own Pashtun ethnic group, focusing their loyalty instead on himself and his government. Then he used them to brutally conquer and impose his will on the Hazarajat and the north, consolidating his rule by handing out the benefits of conquest. It's a time-tested method of building a kingdom. He did not, however, face problems from Pakistan (controlled by his erstwhile backers and allies, the British) or outside his own borders as the GiRoA do now, nor the problems of legitimacy.

Basically, Abdur Rahman had a different problem set than GiROA does at the moment. GiRoA faces, I think, a major legitimacy issue throughout the Pashtun south and east. It is viewed as a foreign puppet regime made up of the Pashtuns' traditional adversaries (i.e. the targets of Abdur Rahman's conquests), without the compensation of either strength in the ability to protect or punish, nor the wealth to hand out patronage and benefits. We cannot alter the former perception, being part of the problem ourselves, but anything that increases the latter should be done.

[Entropy]

That's good analysis Tequila.

[Schmedlap]

That's good analysis Tequila.

Agreed. Good concise compare/contrast. Gold star.

[slapout9]

I haven't read Galula so I can't say whether his writings are exclusively an answer to Maoist revolutionary doctrine. However, history has lots of examples of unconventional warfare that had nothing to do with Mao. Three instances of UW in which the unconventional forces operated in support of larger conventional efforts were the Confederate John S. Mosby's battalion in Virginia during the American Civil War, the SAS and OSS Jedburgh operations in 1944 in France in support of the Normandy landings, and U.S. Army Special Forces as they were originally conceived when founded in the 1950s, stay-behinds in Germany who would promote insurgencies behind Soviet lines in the event WW III broke out. In the 1980s SF adopted the crossed arrows insignia of the old Indian Scouts, poachers turned gamekeepers who if I'm not mistaken were founded by the Army officer George Crook in the 19th century.

The Revolutionary War is almost a carbon copy of the old 7 steps from hell Special Forces model.

George Washington was the guerrilla force leader and he hired General Von Steuben to advise and train, not fight the US guerrillas. (The First Green Beret!) Because of the heroism and legitimacy of many US guerrilla members, they emerged as leaders for the demobilization step. The demobilization step is where we (US) seem to fail alot. We are good at starting and fighting, not so good at ending.

America often gets into trouble following other peoples models, we should look at our own first.