Capture, Detain and COIN: merged thread

[Presley Cannady]

Very odd and mostly wrong assumptions. Irregular warfare requires effective methods of detention and exploitation. Not having them is a sever disadvantage.

1. Are the assumptions that unreasonable? A majority of detainees end up released after vetting, and I've seen little evidence that detention specifically plays a major role in sapping the enemy's strength.

2. In your estimate, how much of battlefield intelligence is sourced from detainee take? Ballpark, 10 percent? 20? 50?

because they will see you as a weak enemy and not fear trying to kill you again.

How does the impression of weakness weigh against, say, the experience of surviving--and not necessarily intact--a firefight against your forces? The state of Shu Han met the enemy brutally while pacifying the Nanzhong rebels, yet released her captives after each fight, presumably on the theory that even insurgents get weary, quit, and bitch about the inevitability of it all to their neighbors and families. I'm curious how well this theory holds up outside of that particular case, but I know of no comparable counterinsurgency in history.

[William F. Owen]

1. Are the assumptions that unreasonable? A majority of detainees end up released after vetting, and I've seen little evidence that detention specifically plays a major role in sapping the enemy's strength.

Can't speak for A'Stan specifically. If the person captured is a true civilian it will have no impact. If he's a player, why let him go? So as he can kill another of your guys two weeks later?

2. In your estimate, how much of battlefield intelligence is sourced from detainee take? Ballpark, 10 percent? 20? 50?

Cannot speak for A'Stan, but in the case of UK in Cyprus, Kenya, Oman and a few other places, intelligence gained from captured personnel was substantial.
If you cannot detain and interrogate, then you are giving up something normally extremely valuable.

I'm curious how well this theory holds up outside of that particular case, but I know of no comparable counterinsurgency in history.

OK,let me ask, what you do when you capture a guy planting an IED, or in a a cellar building IEDs? Let him go? Just from a point of view of logic, how much sense does that make?

Based on the fact that COIN is actually just Irregular Warfare, it clearly makes more sense to detain than not to detain. We can argue about the status of detainees and on what grounds they get detained, but simply having no detention policy is very clearly something that will make you less effective. Even FM3-24 gets it this bit right... as much as it can!