Setting up effective, local security forces

[davidbfpo]

My reply to Bill Moore's question (Post 37):

what significant change and challenges do you think we would face with our FID doctrine if the focus shifted from the rural to the urban?

I was not thinking of just the USA intervening and my SWC reading does not make me familiar with US FID doctrine. Caveats aside here goes.

An urban setting for an insurgency / terrorist campaign absorbs manpower like a sponge, so using and adapting a local security element to the 'sepoy model' makes a lot of sense. You referred to 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland (1969-1998), at one stage the UK had 30k soldiers there - Operation Motorman, when police primacy had not been reached. Nearly all of them in two cities, Belfast & Londonderry.

Secondly by time FID is deployed the host nation will have lost considerable control and governance will be weakened. Think of the favelas in Rio and some "no go" areas elsewhere. Citizen involvement in providing information to the state will be low, especially if intimidation is prevalent - not necessarily violent nor observable. In one period in 'The Troubles' Loyalists used cameras without film to intimidate; imagine the impact today of mobile-phones.

F3EA will be problematic until many other factors act as enablers: informants, intelligence, surveillance etc. Enough time may not be given.

Pinpoint accuracy of weapons systems, especially the use of explosives, will be limited in densely occupied spaces. They might not even be allowed by the host.

Finally image is important, even crucial. Not for the 'armchair" observers, but the people affected by the presence of FID-users. It simply is a very different image if the security forces appear similar, even if with a few expatriate officers & NCOs.

[davidbfpo]

Abu M has a comment on urban operations today, prompted by a David Kilcullen article and the footnotes point to a SWJ article.

So first the link to AbuM:http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawam....html#comments

Then the Kilcullen piece:http://gt2030.com/2012/07/18/the-cit...an-resilience/

The SWJ article 'Command of the Cities: Towards a Theory of Urban Strategy':http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...urban-strategy

[davidbfpo]

A number of posts, including my own, have been on a related topic of future 'Small Wars' moving from the rural to the urban setting and may sit better in their own thread. Later I will try to identify previous threads on the theme.

[Bill Moore]

My reply to Bill Moore's question (Post 37):

I was not thinking of just the USA intervening and my SWC reading does not make me familiar with US FID doctrine. Caveats aside here goes.

An urban setting for an insurgency / terrorist campaign absorbs manpower like a sponge, so using and adapting a local security element to the 'sepoy model' makes a lot of sense. You referred to 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland (1969-1998), at one stage the UK had 30k soldiers there - Operation Motorman, when police primacy had not been reached. Nearly all of them in two cities, Belfast & Londonderry.

Secondly by time FID is deployed the host nation will have lost considerable control and governance will be weakened. Think of the favelas in Rio and some "no go" areas elsewhere. Citizen involvement in providing information to the state will be low, especially if intimidation is prevalent - not necessarily violent nor observable. In one period in 'The Troubles' Loyalists used cameras without film to intimidate; imagine the impact today of mobile-phones.

F3EA will be problematic until many other factors act as enablers: informants, intelligence, surveillance etc. Enough time may not be given.

Pinpoint accuracy of weapons systems, especially the use of explosives, will be limited in densely occupied spaces. They might not even be allowed by the host.

Finally image is important, even crucial. Not for the 'armchair" observers, but the people affected by the presence of FID-users. It simply is a very different image if the security forces appear similar, even if with a few expatriate officers & NCOs.

I agree with this, the urban environment definitely presents its unique challenges. When I refer to foreign internal defense (FID), I'm generally refering to a few (maybe a couple hundred) advisors and trainers, so in theory it wouldn't be our guys dealing "directly" with these challenges. That is why I said it wouldn't be that much harder for "us".

As for future wars moving ever more into the urban domain it definitely seems probable.

[Mike in Hilo]

1) The 1964 episode received wide publicity through National Geographic Mag, which featured it in the January 1965 issue of the magazine. The story focused on successful US Army SF efforts to defuse the situation, without which events would likely have spun out of control.

2) Re: those we're arming and training being opposed to the government we're trying to keep in power: Sounds like Sunni Sons of Iraq and their relationship with the Maliki government....

Cheers,
Mike.

[davidbfpo]

This quote is from an academic conference on 'War and Peace' @ Leeds University recently and one paper appears very relevant:

Nir Arielli (Leeds) gave a fascinating paper on the role played by Italian colonial troops in the suppression of anti-Italian colonial revolt. The key forces in the brutal repression of the revolt against Italian rule in Libya were in fact Eritrean (and Somali) Ascari. The question of the part which colonial forces have played in small wars and counter-insurgency operations is one which has been little studied and which offers the potential for new insights into social and political dynamics of empire as well as military structures...

Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2017/07/12...ds-15-16-june/

The author is a Professor @ Leeds University and his bio indicates this article contains more:

'Colonial soldiers in Italian counter-insurgency operations in Libya, 1922-32', British Journal for Military History, 1, no. 2 (2015), pp. 47-66.

Link:https://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/profile...43/nir_arielli

The BJMH paper is available free via and will be read soon:http://bjmh.org.uk/index.php/bjmh/article/view/29/21

Note Italian recruited Ascari (Askari) also featured in the 1936 invasion of Abysinia and the opposition to the 1941 Allied invasion of Abysina (Ethiopia), Eritrea and Italian Somailand; as covered in the book reviewed in:An obscure 'small war' in WW2

There is a reverse aspect, the violent suppression in Abyssinia of opposition to Italian occupation and a new book covers that. From the publisher's summary:

In February 1937, following an abortive attack by a handful of insurgents on Mussolini’s High Command in Italian-occupied Ethiopia, ‘repression squads’ of armed Blackshirts and Fascist civilians were unleashed on the defenceless residents of Addis Ababa. In three terror-filled days and nights of arson, murder and looting, thousands of innocent and unsuspecting men, women and children were roasted alive, shot, bludgeoned, stabbed to death, or blown to pieces with hand-grenades (est. 19k died). Meanwhile the notorious Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, infamous for his atrocities in Libya, took the opportunity to add to the carnage by eliminating the intelligentsia and nobility of the ancient Ethiopian empire in a pogrom that swept across the land.

Link:http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/...baba-massacre/

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to WoTR for this commentary cum book review of Walter C. Ladwig III, The Forgotten Front: Patron Client Relations in Counterinsurgency (Cambridge University Press, 2017):

The King’s College London professor takes direct aim at FM 3-24, and the West’s thinking on counterinsurgency, specifically its naiveté that the patron and client will share common political goals if the patron is doling out large sums of cash to the client.
(Later) Ladwig shines a bright light on some of the deficiencies in counterinsurgency literature and the United States’ naiveté about its relationship with its clients. His goal is to improve the West’s performance in future counterinsurgency battles.

Link:https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/ho...ency-campaign/

[davidbfpo]

Not sure what to make of this. It is a short Q&A with the brigadier that mainly concerns leadership and selection.
Link:https://thearmyleader.co.uk/speciali...ry-leadership/

[davidbfpo]

Thanks to MWI @ West Point for the pointer to this article in JFQ and from MWI's pointer:

This highlights a substantial problem with Western SFA: it is too focused on building an army in the absence of a viable state that has the institutional capacity and political willpower to sustain that army.

Link:https://mwi.usma.edu/cant-build-army...ce-assistance/

Link to JFQ:https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/...gdp0w4FR7UKGk/