FID or COIN? does it matter

[Dayuhan]

The distintive line is when the level of violence exceeds the capacity of the civil governance, requiring them to bring in the military (much like our MSCA construct for all other forms of civil emergencies) as last in, first out, and always under civil control as a crucial augmentation.

Reasonable, but this does set the bar at very different levels depending on the capacity of civil governance. France, for example, can manage its periodic urban riots without military support (e.g. not insurgency) while a nation with less advanced police capabilities might have to call out troops (e.g. insurgency) for the same level of disorder. It may not be possible to establish an absolute line of demarcation that is relevant in all cases, but it's a distinction we have to be aware of. I'd say we also have to be more aware of the distinction between insurgency and armed competition for control of an ungoverned space or to fill a governance vacuum. You can't have an insurgency without a government, and calling something "a government" or "the government" doesn't necessarily make it that. If it does not or cannot govern, it's not a government, regardless of what we call it.

As to what we do when we deploy, that is like going to the neighbor's house to help him with a domestic dispute. Start thinking of it as your problem to solve, and you are in for a world of bad higher order effects. We'd never do it in our neighborhoods at home, yet we do it every time when we go to our global neighbors as a country. Problem is because we think of these things as "foreign wars" and not "foreign domestic/civil disputes."

Certainly true in some cases, less so in others. I'm not convinced that our deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan can be reasonably characterized as intervention in someone else's domestic dispute. In both cases we went in for our own reasons in pursuit of our own policies. Our intention in both cases was not to settle a domestic dispute but to re-order the "households" in a manner that suited our interests. In both cases our actions generated a dispute, but that begs the question of whether a dispute that results from outside intervention is truly domestic.

[Bob's World]

Agree on both points. Absolutely every government and every populace is unique in its dynamic in terms of conditions, cultures, capacities, etc. But that does not change the underlying human dynamic at work. What would be unacceptable violence or corruption in one, is no big deal in another. What can easily be handled by one civil government requries military or even foreign support in another. These are things that must be understood; but I find that they are also things that overwhelm and distract novices on insurgency from what the real mission at hand is that must be addressed. People start addressing the symptoms that are in their face, rather than seeking to understand those symptoms as to how they relate to the root causes and address those instead.

As to Iraq and Afg. True enough that we ripped out the old and put in the new. That changes the facts, but not the dynamics. It is still the government of those respective countries; but they were governments that both were horribly and accurately perceived as lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the governed. Goal number one should be, if you truly are just there to help and don't plan on staying, to target and address that legitmacy perception problem. Hard nut to crack when you are standing there with your army and your hand up the president's backside making his mouth move. But what you must do first all the same. This requires relinquishing CONTROL, and control is the cornerstone of 60 years of Cold War engagement, so the good Cold Warriors really choke on this one key point.

All the military can do is help shape conditions; the key to success is the political problem of governmental legitmacy and creating or enforcing structures recognized by that populace for giving them certain input and control on their standards for shaping and thereby legitimizing the government. It may not be a vote. It may by a Loya Jirga. Each populace is unique in how it bestows legitimacy. Not ours to quesiton or override.

[Dayuhan]

It is still the government of those respective countries; but they were governments that both were horribly and accurately perceived as lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the governed.

I guess that's the key question: is it "the government" or is it not? To me government is that which governs, meaning that which actually carries out the functions of governance, not necessarily that which sits in the presidential palace or wears the presidential t-shirt. If we are the ones carrying out the core functions of governance, then like it or not, we're the government.

Another key factor in this equation is the prevailing perception of the conflict among our antagonists and among the various segments of the populace. When our antagonists in Afghanistan fire a rifle or plant an IED, do they perceive themselves as striking a blow against the Karzai government, or against the US? Do they recruit new followers to overthrow the Karzai government, or to expel the US? When Afghan civilians discuss the conflict, do they frame it as "the Taliban vs the Karzai government" or as "the Taliban vs the Americans"?

If we are to any appreciable degree doing the actual governing, if our antagonists perceive the conflict as primarily against us, and if the Afghan populaces see the conflict as primarily an engagement between us and the Taliban - and I suspect that all three conditions prevail to varying extents - I can't see how we can honestly tell ourselves, or anyone, that we are "doing FID". Of course we can call it that if we want. We can call it dancing the tarantella if we want... that won't make it anything other than what it is.

I guess I could agree that the Afghan conflict is a COIN operation conducted with the goal of eventual transition to an FID operation, but I don't know if we can honestly call it FID at this stage. Unless of course I have the acronyms all wrong, which is entirely possible.

[Bob's World]

Well, as I told MG Carter this morning, we are really dealing with two insurgencies. The rank and file fighter is primarily fighting a resistance movement. They fight because we are here and because they can draw an honest wage for an honorable Pashtun profession to do so. I would like to think that I would be an insurgent if I were Afghan.

This is the bulk of the insurgency, but it is not the aspect of the insurgency that the COIN effort must focus on to resolve. The COIN effort must go after the top of the insurgency, the senior leadership that are much more the Revolutionary insurgents; who believe they have a superior legitimacy than Karzai does. Once this is resolved, and no amount of population centric tactics nor killing of insurgent fighters will resolve it; you can then take a much more palatable position in support to the emergent, legitimate government, and reduce presence in a manner that takes the steam out of the larger, rank and file, resistance insurgency. Not "go after" as in KILL (though some may well just have to eat that bullet); but go after as in targeting the causal factors of illegitimacy and lack of mechanisms recognized and trusted by the populace for shaping government.

Just like the key to the problems in Southern Philippines lay in manila; the problems in Southern Afghanistan lay in Kabul. All of the outside parties in both who like or hate the conditions in those respective captitals (the FID and UW actors) conspire to shift focus to the manifestations of violence among the affected populaces. Smoke and Mirrors.

[Dayuhan]

Well, as I told MG Carter this morning, we are really dealing with two insurgencies. The rank and file fighter is primarily fighting a resistance movement. They fight because we are here and because they can draw an honest wage for an honorable Pashtun profession to do so. I would like to think that I would be an insurgent if I were Afghan.

I suspect that most insurgencies bifurcate in this manner to some extent... how many of those who fought in “communist” insurgencies were actually communists?

This is the bulk of the insurgency, but it is not the aspect of the insurgency that the COIN effort must focus on to resolve. The COIN effort must go after the top of the insurgency, the senior leadership that are much more the Revolutionary insurgents; who believe they have a superior legitimacy than Karzai does. Once this is resolved, and no amount of population centric tactics nor killing of insurgent fighters will resolve it;

What will resolve it? Would any change in governance that we promote satisfy or de-motivate the core insurgent leadership? Might it not be more effective to try to de-motivate the rank and file and disaggregate them from the core ideologues, who are too heavily invested in the insurgency to back away?

you can then take a much more palatable position in support to the emergent, legitimate government, and reduce presence in a manner that takes the steam out of the larger, rank and file, resistance insurgency. Not "go after" as in KILL (though some may well just have to eat that bullet); but go after as in targeting the causal factors of illegitimacy and lack of mechanisms recognized and trusted by the populace for shaping government.

Sounds great, I approve, but where do we find an “emergent, legitimate government”? Now that we’ve thrown our weight behind the Karzai government and the process that put it in power, how do we reverse that support without setting ourselves up as the arbiter of legitimacy? I like the idea of reducing presence; I’m sure we all do... but I’m not seeing how we get to that emergent, legitimate government that will allow us to do that.

If we had no stake in the matter, we could simply withdraw, let Karzai fall, and deal with whatever replaces him. In the real world, though, that will probably be the Taliban, which puts us right back where we were before, in a position that didn’t work out well last time around.

It would of course be lovely if Karzai would hold a real Loya Jirga and abide by the outcome... but I don’t see that happening. More than likely he’ll pack it with his people and try to manipulate it to put a stamp of approval on his rule; I doubt that he and his inner circle are going to stage anything that would undercut their own power. I wouldn’t bet a half a groat on us being able to outmaneuver him in that kind of scenario.

As far as FID vs COIN goes, I’d submit that we are doing neither. We’re doing regime change. It’s what we started out doing, and we’re still doing it.

Regime change has 3 fairly obvious stages:

First you have to remove the old regime, something we’ve proven we can do.

Second, you have to develop a new regime. This is a lot more complicated: any regime put in place by an outside power is going to face serious legitimacy issues, and if we wait for a new regime to emerge on its own we face a long period of instability and competition for power, with a strong possibility that whatever regime emerges will be unfriendly. We’ve chosen the former method, which is why we find ourselves backing regimes with massive legitimacy issues.

Third, we have to manage the transition by which the new regime becomes a government. This is a key distinction. Just because we’ve put a regime in place doesn’t make it a government, even if we call it that. It’s not a government until it can govern, and until the people it proposes to govern accept it as their government.

My objection to the “doing FID” approach is that it assumes that this step is complete, that there is an actual acknowledged functioning government in place, and that we are simply helping that government defend itself against insurgents. That may be what we want to see, but it may not accurately describe what’s going on. If the regime we’ve put in place does not govern and has never been accepted as legitimate by those it proposes to govern, it’s not a government. If there’s no real government, we certainly can’t be “doing FID”. We can’t be “doing COIN” either, because you can’t have COIN without an insurgency and you can’t have an insurgency without a government. Is this really an insurgency situation or is it a continuing armed competition to fill the vacuum left by the removal of the Taliban? I know we say that vacuum has been filled by the Karzai government... but is that claim realistic? If we’re not doing FID or COIN, what are we doing? As I said above, I think we’re still doing regime change... or trying to.

Just like the key to the problems in Southern Philippines lay in manila; the problems in Southern Afghanistan lay in Kabul. All of the outside parties in both who like or hate the conditions in those respective captitals (the FID and UW actors) conspire to shift focus to the manifestations of violence among the affected populaces. Smoke and Mirrors.

Possibly true, but not reassuring. If those in Manila or Kabul don’t have the will or capacity to solve their problems, and we have no means to replace them or to create that will and/or capacity, we’re left with few effective ways to pursue our objectives.

The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that we need to be a whole lot more careful when considering regime changes, and a whole lot more conscious of how difficult it is to fill the gap left by the removal of a regime with a credible and legitimate successor. We seemed to have overlooked that last time around, though I don’t see how.

[Steve the Planner]

Bob:

I've been lost in a particular assignment for the last few weeks (and next month), but I just wanted to say that, while there are plenty of smart folks on this Board, including in issues way outside of my expertises, your inscrutible wisdoms always end up flowing to my lane.

MikeF has a link going on TRADOC education, and in the back of my mind, I was thinking about your comments on the Civil Rights movement, etc... Once you have truly immersed into a few deep blood-letting domestic policy issues, you really understand what you are talking about re:interfering in domestic conflicts with your next door neighbor.

Tom Ricks is still covering Iraq; The Unraveling against the growing perception that Iran is exercising increasing influence on Iraq. In fact, on so many levels, that is a difference without a distinction to many residents of much of these historically intertwined countries, which, like close relatives, can sometimes find themselves drunk after a big family dinner and with guns drawn in the driveway.

In so many of our conflict areas, these kinds of underlying conflict risks are not going to be resolved, just minimized or managed when they can be. And get out of the way (give up control) when the big waves come.

Like Iraq, our continued presence and influence, if unchecked by SOFA, would have been increasingly problematic if we were still there today, just being americans, but parked in the middle of their street.

Figuring this stuff out at the "street" level is an important viewpoint to grasp and plan what we are trying to do, and how to do it.

Steve

[Infanteer]

Well, as I told MG Carter this morning, we are really dealing with two insurgencies. The rank and file fighter is primarily fighting a resistance movement. They fight because we are here and because they can draw an honest wage for an honorable Pashtun profession to do so. I would like to think that I would be an insurgent if I were Afghan.

This is the bulk of the insurgency, but it is not the aspect of the insurgency that the COIN effort must focus on to resolve. The COIN effort must go after the top of the insurgency, the senior leadership that are much more the Revolutionary insurgents; who believe they have a superior legitimacy than Karzai does. Once this is resolved, and no amount of population centric tactics nor killing of insurgent fighters will resolve it; you can then take a much more palatable position in support to the emergent, legitimate government, and reduce presence in a manner that takes the steam out of the larger, rank and file, resistance insurgency. Not "go after" as in KILL (though some may well just have to eat that bullet); but go after as in targeting the causal factors of illegitimacy and lack of mechanisms recognized and trusted by the populace for shaping government.

This makes sense to me sitting where I am. I regularly get fed stuff on TBSL this and HVI that which bears little relevence to what I watch unfold in and around the villages. Unlike a Bosnia or a Iraq, where a more base, intercine violence occured which required a strong security force presence to prevent revolutionary elements from exploiting or thriving, there is a much more "violence as usual" feel around here. No mass graves or targeted killings, just 100 little wars for 100 various reasons that we've stumbled into - despite being as friendly as hell, many of these folks simply don't want us clattering around their countryside and think it is logical and acceptable to take a whack at us.

To date, the best explanation of COIN is "a violent political campaign" and right now we're working with a fickle electorate.