Hearts and Minds?

[marct]

Bonjour Francois,

It's nice to see another Canadian here .

So according to the author the key is to create what he calls contingent incentives. You need to give the people, or part of the people, something your opponent cannot give, something they cannot have if your opponent wins. This give them a reason to support you and take personal risks to make sure you win. Winning heart and mind is not about random acts of kindness.

A good point with a good illustration. One of the keys with peasant revolt type insurgencies, and the VC case would probably fall into that category along with Cuba and Bolivia (and probably the English Peasant Revolt), seems to center around land tenure / use. It's a case where a large part of the population make their individual livelihoods off of the land and control of that land is of central importance to a majority of the population.

The same isn't true when you are dealing with industrial societies. Control of the land isn't crucial, it's control of the production and distribution processes (the Marxists always forget about distribution). So most of what should have been called "insurgencies" in industrial states, weren't. Some examples: the organization of the 5th Comintern and its ties into "organized labour" unrest, the Fascist takeover in Italy in the early 20's and the Nazi takeover of Germany in the '30's, etc.

So, now we come to the information age when most people make their livelihood off of information processing of some kind (including via state sponsored welfare or employment) or raw materials production (e.g. oil) rather than via producing either agricultural produce or manufactured goods (they are cheap and readily available). The rallying cry is no longer "own your own land" or "control your own labour" but, rather, "control your information processing" (i.e. ascription / interpretation of meaning).

It's in this area that AQ and the Muslim Brotherhood have been so successful. They have created an international "I/O" campaign, for want of a better phrase, that is highly suited to the current economic reality of many people. This is also one of the places where the Western nations have fallen flat on our collective faces.

And indeed, you haven won their hearts and minds if they're still shooting at you. But lets say you're dealing with an insurgency, and by definition insurgents are few and highly-motivated. The objective isn't to win their hearts and minds, it's to win the hearts and minds of the people they rely on for support, who are weaker (psychologically) and are the means of support for the insurgent. Its my contention, and others, that the objective is not the insurgent; it's the population as a whole.

I would certainly agree with that SE! A large pat of the problem, as I see t, is that the West (loosely construed) hasn't produced a global I/O campaign that can take on the AQ/MB campaign head on. While the I/O target has to be the "population as a whole", it might also be useful to have a coherent message

Marc

[Merv Benson]

Cell phones have been effective in Iraq in getting around the intimidation factor in reporting enemy activity. As this post points out calls to the tip lines are up 66 percent in October and November. Perhaps we need to find a way to increase distribution of cell phones to get even greater cooperation.

Marc also makes and interesting point on communist problems with distribution. One of my law professors explained it by using the number of eggs and slices of bacon needed in NY City for breakfast on a daily basis. If a central authority had to come up with that number the chance that they would get it right is remote, yet, with no one person doing a calculation the right number gets there everyday in a demand economy.

[Mike in Hilo]

We've got to be a bit cautious regarding this book..lots of good stuff, but the conclusions are sometimes facile...It was written after the Govt of VN implemented the Land to the Tiller Program, which gave government land titles to the sharecroppers, many of whom had been beneficiaries of the VC land reform. And so, the book attributes the 1970 turn around (for the better) in security in Long An to the GVN's finally "getting it" and addressing this long-standing grievance. Others might also attribute it to attrition of enemy main forces in two years of failed enemy-initiated offensives, and to the spring 1970 expulsion of 3 enemy divisions from the border sanctuaries by our incursion into Cambodia.

(By 1970, by the way, land tenure was no longer the issue...The newer "grievance" was war weariness, and the VC line was we won't ever give up, so the only way to achieve peace is for you to help us win more quickly, and then, we promise you it'll be just like the good old days....As it happens, the "good old pre-violence days" were back under the French....There is usually no shortage of grievances, but if necessary, the clever insurgent will create them.....)

Anyway, the Long An I observed on-and-off 1973-75 (VN sans a US military presence) was one with lots of relatively secure areas and some very significant swaths of territory under only nominal GVN authority..Often, terrain was the determining factor (The Plain of Reeds swamp was a significant infiltration route). But in other locations, the continuing presence of the VC Infrastructure in the hamlets determined who the people would assist. The presence of that VCI cell right in your hamlet 24/7 is a constant reality. And a gruesome killing even in a neighboring village can have a paralyzing effect. (Which is why Thompson claimed the indig really has no freedom of choice). Jedburgh is exactly right, survival is prime. And the situation was indeed nuanced. The identities of the VCI were often known--they were often the family members of VC combatants. For various reasons, the authorities would not round them up, and if they did, after a quick payoff they'd be back in the village in a couple of days.

Cheers,
Mike.

[Steve Blair]

Eric Bergerud's "Dynamics of Defeat" is a more recent and better balanced look at the problems of pacification/COIN in Vietnam.

[JKM4767]

Never forget, an Iraqi is loyal to who can protect/won't kill them. Many US units have been careless in their approach to kill/capture, thus turning those they meant to protect against them, or just passive enough to not help. 99% of these people just want to be left alone and don't really care about "the crusaders cause". Sometimes I think, if we just did enough not to piss them off, it might work better. How many times have I "cordoned and searched" a little village of mud huts with 50 families because of "actionable intel". Many. How many times did we find anything or detain/kill anyone. Rarely. How many of those times did we piss off the inhabitants? Probably all of them. Unfortunately, I think this is happens more often than not. I am not anti-offense, but I am pro-smart. It would be different if I went there almost everyday just to "visit" then ran an OP, as opposed to going there only when I want to search all the houses and round up all the elders to "talk about security".

[Mike in Hilo]

I concur wholeheartedly regarding Dynamics of Defeat, having known Hau Nghia, the province adjacent to Long An...This was one province where the insurgency was unusually tenacious and intractable as it acquired much of the character of a deeply entrenched family feud.

Cheers,
Mike

[Francois Boudreau]

We've got to be a bit cautious regarding this book..lots of good stuff, but the conclusions are sometimes facile...

I'm not knowledgeable enough to argue over Vietnam, but I find the idea of contigent incentives very interesting. Like others, I have doubts about the impact of random acts of kindness. Even economic development is suspicious, especially if the other side can provide it too. As mentionned, survival is prime. If I was living in a country with an insurgency, I would just duck and wait for the storm to past. Unless it's clear to me that it's in my personal interest to take risk and support one side. So I think it's important to remind the population why they should join your side instead of staying passive, and when possible to create incentives for them to join.

I'll check Dynamics of Defeat when I have a chance. I'm shipping for boot camp soon so my free time will colapse I fear.

It's in this area that AQ and the Muslim Brotherhood have been so successful. They have created an international "I/O" campaign, for want of a better phrase, that is highly suited to the current economic reality of many people. This is also one of the places where the Western nations have fallen flat on our collective faces.

Can you expand on this, I'm not sure I understand. Especially the link with the economic reality of those people.

[jcustis]

Never forget, an Iraqi is loyal to who can protect/won't kill them. Many US units have been careless in their approach to kill/capture, thus turning those they meant to protect against them, or just passive enough to not help. 99% of these people just want to be left alone and don't really care about "the crusaders cause". Sometimes I think, if we just did enough not to piss them off, it might work better. How many times have I "cordoned and searched" a little village of mud huts with 50 families because of "actionable intel". Many. How many times did we find anything or detain/kill anyone. Rarely. How many of those times did we piss off the inhabitants? Probably all of them. Unfortunately, I think this is happens more often than not. I am not anti-offense, but I am pro-smart. It would be different if I went there almost everyday just to "visit" then ran an OP, as opposed to going there only when I want to search all the houses and round up all the elders to "talk about security".

I often wonder how the spectre of Haditha has shaped the situation on the ground.

[Smitten Eagle]

I often wonder how the spectre of Haditha has shaped the situation on the ground.

Or Abu Ghraib, or the rape/killing done by the 101st Airborne recently.

You piss off one Ubaydi or Tikriti or whatever, and you piss of the entire Ubaydi/Tikriti tribe. All of a sudden everyone wants a piece of you.

[marct]

Hi Francois,

Can you expand on this, I'm not sure I understand. Especially the link with the economic reality of those people.

Sure. The basic idea is that cultures are centered around how their members make their livelihoods - with a time lapse. This tends to define what are key resources or wealth. In agricultural societies, that tends to be land, while in manufacturing / industrial societies it is machinery/labour/capital. What happens when the general form of livelihood is based on "knowledge" / information processing - the construction of "meaning" loosely construed?

Basically, the MB is a fairly classic example of a type of group called a "revitalization movement" (the term was coined by A. Irvin Hallowell). These types of groups are usually found when one meaning structure collapses, and they all hearken back to a mythologized "Golden Age". They also usually, although not always, impose a form of "thought control" on their members and attempt to impose it on their environment.

Okay, so we are now in an international economy that is centered on control of certain types of raw materials and on the manipulation of "data" to produce "knowledge" - basically an information economy. We also have a group that is predisposed towards forms of thought control, and a global cultural situation where older meaning structures have pretty much collapsed and new ones are not fully articulated (the shift from the Industrial economy to the information economy in the West, etc.).

This is the short form of what I was talking about . I'll be writing this up in longer form over the next couple of months, but that's the basic idea -AQ, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has an expectation that hey will be engaged in a for of symbolic warfare as well as kinetic operations. They have a coherent ideology (aka symbol system), salafaism or wahhabi Islam, that they define as the "Truth". There is a very poor opposition to this ideology since little of it is articulated in a way that can be understood by most people, so AQ is able to create an I/O campaign that is always two steps ahead of the West.

Marc

[Merv Benson]

Their information campaign is pretty effective when they are on the attack, but it was woefully inadequate when the Taliban were being over thrown and when Ethiopia was roaring through Somalia. Zawahiri's scramble to urge jihadis into Somalia came at a point when the remains of his allies were backed into a corner by the sea in Ras Kamboni.

There is a lesson here in the ineffectiveness of information ops in the face of sustained use of force.

[Bill Moore]

It is premature to speculate on the outcome of the conflict in Somalia, and we only defeated the Taliban conventionally, they are now coming back in force unconventionally. I think IO is still critical for a sustained victory.

[ilots]

Their information campaign is pretty effective when they are on the attack, but it was woefully inadequate when the Taliban were being over thrown and when Ethiopia was roaring through Somalia. Zawahiri's scramble to urge jihadis into Somalia came at a point when the remains of his allies were backed into a corner by the sea in Ras Kamboni.

There is a lesson here in the ineffectiveness of information ops in the face of sustained use of force.

I don't thing you could have read that in a way further from the truth. Their IO was almost none existent during the fall of the Taliban, however their IO has had amazing effects in the post OEF invasion period - as the increase of insurgent relevance (and operations) has reflected. Likewise, "Hey, Jihadis head to Somalia" really is NOT an IO campaign. If any lesson should be learned (as we also learned in OIF) is that IO must be incorporated as early as possible to be effective, not as a post operation action, emergency action, or stop-gap - the idea is to alter the battlespace prior to the battle. Further, the global propogation of the jihadist ideology, even among disparate groups, is a reflection of the effectiveness of their IO ability.

I would further opine, as history has shown (and in Somalia the future also likely will) that in the "face of sustained force" (as we used in OIF and OEF) IO is critical to a terrorist organization and/or insurgency when it comes to maintaining their ideology, legitimacy, relevance, support, and core movement, in spite of tactical defeats.