...the evidence suggests that the main lesson to be drawn from the British practice of counterinsurgency is that physical control of the contested segment of the population is essential. Further, that control is greatly facilitated when the insurgency’s support is concentrated among a small and relatively unpopular minority of the population. When that condition obtains, as it did in Malaya and Kenya, a strategy of population control can succeed. When conditions are different, as they were in Vietnam, this strategy will fail. In Iraq today, the situation resembles that which obtained in Malaya and Kenya more than it resembles conditions in Vietnam. A strategy of population control could therefore be applied, provided it was modified to account for local circumstances and the evolution in international mores....
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