Dr Holt's suggestion:
would be fine - if it were a 99% Astani effort and grew out of the villages themselves. The major problem in Astan is political, not military.(p.2)
I propose a synthesis drawing on several COIN models: 1. the classic Thompson/Briggs [Nagl, 2002: 28-29; 70-71] politics first/the population is the center of gravity approach; 2. the village militia of the Marine Corps Combined Action Program/Platoons in Vietnam, 3. culture as a key “force-multiplier, 4. basic lessons learned from the Philippine Insurrection to the Present as noted in FM 3-24, 5. the “inkspot approach” of Galula and others, and 6. the need for a unified military and civilian structure similar to CORDS [Civil Operations and Rural Development Support] system that included 7000 advisors by 1969.
The Marine CAP program, and the majority of the CORDS programs, were good concepts - keeping in mind that CAP was a pilot program[*]. CORDS, as part of the larger South Vietnamese Pacification program (which included SVN CAP units as an integral part), has a greater number of "lessons learned".
If I were a political officer indigenous to a country plagued by an insurgency, I would adopt both as the central focus of my "COIN" effort - and find a military officer who agreed with me.
I suspect that events will gallop by before anything like Dr Holt's suggestions could be implemented. E.g, the SVN Pacification program (in various iterations) had a bit more than 15 years of historical development.
[*] We have to guard against the tendency to assume that, if a program works in 10 places (actually about 100 places in CAP's case), it will work in 10,000 places - must be at least that many villes and hamlets in Astan.
Regards
Mike
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