Killing leaders will indeed suppress current capabilities. It will at the same time largely add fuel to the larger causal issues of the insurgency, so that when it brews back up with new leaders it will be even more powerful of a threat the next time you have to deal with it.
There are no historical examples of where merely killing insurgents or their leadership has solved an insurgency, but it will suppress one. (threat-centric COIN)
Similarly there are no historical examples where an external party can come in and essentially buy off the populaces support to a government that they perceive as illegitimate. (Population-centric COIN) They'll take your money and smile, sure, and cut your throat with that same smile on their face.
These are both very symptomatic approaches that are far more likely to create short term, measurable effects than they are to create any kind of enduring solution.
A "Populace-Centric strategy" however, as often proposed by yours truely, suggests that we must look past our tactical noses and recognize that the enabling of effects that support and have the blessing of the populace are the key to success. Governments will come and go, we should not lash ourselves too tightly to any one of them. Threats will come and go, let them. The popualce, however, endures, and is the basis of our relations with any nation. We've been able to ignore them historically, and make good use of "Friendly Dictators" to service our national interests. It's a new world. We need to get out of the Dictator support business, and get into the populace empowerment business. The governments those empowered populaces devise will most likely be quite willing to work with us.
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