Insurgency is not complexity. It is actually quite simple. What makes insurgency appear complex is a range factors:

1. It is an illegal challenge to government, and governments not want to accept much if any responsibility for such illegal challenges always look for causes and cures outside their own domain of responsibility.

Why this makes things complex: If I lose my car keys inside my house, but insist on only looking outside my house for these keys, where I am sure someone else has hidden them I have created a complex, unsolvable problem that will vex me considerably.

2. Western perspectives on COIN are derived from intervention operations in the affairs of others, initially as colonial powers, and then more recently to maintain Containment based control measures or simply in places where the residual disruptions of colonialism and containment are still strong. Such efforts typically:

a. Ignore the effects of the intervening party on creating the conditions that give rise to the current insurgency.

b. The intervening party tends to intervene because they believe their interests are best served through the certainty of sustaining the sitting government in power.

c. The intervening party is by definition from some other land, people and culture.

d. The intervening party is by definition on the side of the law, and the insurgent and his supporters are by definition outlaws.

e. Experts tell us (over and over and over) that it is "complicated" or "complex"; and since I can't find my damn car keys anywhere, and I know I am "right" and because I know I am smart, my failure must be due to some overwhelming complexity.


We need to step back from this planning assumption of "complexity." It has become a "fact" and frankly I believe that it is a position that was reasonably come to, but that lacks merit when one makes the effort to remove themselves from the biases associated with history and nature of such intervention operations.


The law is very complex (I am still recovering from the mental abuse of law school). Justice, however is very simple. Even the smallest child appreciates instinctively when they have experienced either justice, or injustice. It is how one feels about how the rule of law is applied to them. While there are certainly variations shaped by personal opinion, understanding of the facts, culture, position, etc; these all fall within a fairly narrow band that we all instinctively understand.

How to bring the rule of law to a place like Afghanistan is indeed a daunting challenge. It is both complex and complicated. It is also not required for effective COIN.

What is required is to seek to bring perceptions of Justice to that segment of the populace that is the base of support (the bulk of that popular iceberg that floats beneath the surface of any such movement) for the insurgency (that glaring tip that protrudes disturbingly from the surface).

We know as fact that this populace perceives that they receive greater justice from the Taliban application of the rule of law (a harsh, outdated form of Sharia held in great disdain by the West) than they do from GIRoA's application of the rule of law (a West-approved, modern, kinder, gentler form of law). Why is that??

For one, it is certain. For another it is timely. For another it is available. Does anyone believe that it is easier or safer for a Taliban tribunal to travel to some village, hunted by the full strength and capacity of the ISAF coalition, to enforce the law than it is for a GIRoA tribunal protected by the same??

No. What makes it complex and complicated is that we focus on the wrong things. We believe that we must first secure the village before we can bring justice to the village. We believe, in essence, that we must "destroy the village to save the village." That is some sad, misguided thinking that sounds wrong because it is wrong.

No, we must bring justice to the village in order to be able to secure it. This means we must secure the justice system to allow it to exist and function in a hostile environment, just as the Taliban do. If the system proves itself to bring better law and greater justice under the law, then it will out-compete and prevail over the Taliban offering. Simple.

How do we do this?

1. Shift development efforts to building secure justice centers in key locations. These must not only house adequate office and court space, but also living space for the justice staff (think about our own bases there and the US Embassy in Kabul)

2. Then we must shift security to prioritize securing these facilities and providing secure means for the populace to file their cases and to travel to the justice facilities.

3. We must focus capacity building on training the staff, from the highest judge, to the lowest clerk, how how to perform their jobs. Not how to apply our law, they have their own.

4. We must pay these brave citizens a wage that makes taking on such dangerous and essential duties worthwhile; and that also immunizes them from excessive corruption that could rob the legal system of justice. If a certain amount of corruption is part of local justice, then that from of corruption must be protected and allowed no matter how much it offends our modern sensibilities.

5. Next, we must take this show on the road. There must be a trusted and regular circuit court system that brings justice to the people. This too must be secured for it is a high value target for any insurgent. The operations of such a circuit court system should be so important that one might assign, say the entire Stryker BDE in RC-South to the sole mission of supporting circuit court operations. (Realizing that this would take them from the mission of protecting the convoys necessary to support our massive bases and Clear-Hold-Build operations; but then these would become much smaller and have a lower priority under a new "Simple" approach.)

6. Police are a critical part of such a justice operation. Prioritize police (who exist to promote justice) over the building of a national army (who exists to suppress the populace). They probably need to be recruited from across the land, employed locally, and organized in such a fashion as to owe their patronage to the level they operate, and not to Kabul.

Insurgency is simple. Justice is simple. What appears to be "hard" is our stubborn clinging to the archaic biases of our colonial history of such interventions. We do not need to control the outcome, we merely need to be seen as the one who helped bring about a new, and better stability. Such a perception among the people will ensure our influence with whatever government ultimately emerges.

And if that government commits itself to injustice as well? It too will soon fall prey to insurgency.