Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
Cavguy, one of the hardest things about COIN planning or execution - really the core of what you are struggling with, I feel - is how to measure progress.
How do we know we are winning (or losing, or merely treading water)? In my time as a COIN planner this was one of the things that I struggled with constantly.

You can't simply count standards captured or ground gained. What indicators are there that you can monitor, that are genuine measures of progress, and (perhaps most importantly) that you can brief to the boss?

Our tendency is to measure those things that are measurable: number of attacks, number of schools built, number of weapon caches discovered. But these don't always serve as reliable measures of effectiveness. We tend to discount professional military judgment because it doesn't brief well and is not quantifiable. But experienced counterinsurgents learn to judge progress by using a whole range of subtle indicators; sometimes they may not even be able to articulate what it is that informs their judgment, but that does not necessarily make it any less accurate. Again, you may be doing ten things and may not be sure which are effective and which are not - you can only judge the end product.

So how do you articulate that in a form that is understandable and briefable?

Another problem is the slow pace of counterinsurgency. Even when you are doing the right things, progress can be glacially slow, or even invisible. The little arrows that we placed along red-yellow-green spectra to brief our progress barely moved during my tour in Afghanistan. Does that mean we were doing things wrong? Or that we just needed to be patient to see the fruits of our labor? The glacial pace, unfortunately, means an incorrect strategy can be defended and a correct strategy abandoned prematurely with ease. It takes a great deal of moral courage to be convinced you are doing the right thing when the progress reports don't support you.

I think this is why the debates about COIN theories are so much more virulent and inconclusive than the corresponding 'conventional' theories. You get much clearer and quicker feedback in 'big wars'; in COIN you often have to take it on faith that you are doing the right thing.
You are on the mark as usual...