Defining Insurgency

[John T. Fishel]

Steve, Bob's definitions are carefully crafted in the sense that they are not uniquely Western. Indeed, each of them relies on local interpretation and perception.

As an example that would fall within Bob's definition of legitimacy let me offer one indicator (variable) from Manwaring's original SSI study - "lack of perceived corruption." Corruption is commonly understood as the missuse of public position for personal gain and exists in all cultures. What is unique in each culture is their definition of missuse. So many things that a Westerner would see as corruption are perfectly acceptable in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Panama. I would also note that what is perceived as corrupt behavior also changes over time so something that was perfectly acceptable 20 years ago no longer is today. Still, there is a core to the notion of corruption that transcends culture. I believe that Bob has caught this kind of core in his definitions.

Cheers

JohnT

[Bob's World]

Steve, Bob's definitions are carefully crafted in the sense that they are not uniquely Western. Indeed, each of them relies on local interpretation and perception.

As an example that would fall within Bob's definition of legitimacy let me offer one indicator (variable) from Manwaring's original SSI study - "lack of perceived corruption." Corruption is commonly understood as the misuse of public position for personal gain and exists in all cultures. What is unique in each culture is their definition of miss use. So many things that a Westerner would see as corruption are perfectly acceptable in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Panama. I would also note that what is perceived as corrupt behavior also changes over time so something that was perfectly acceptable 20 years ago no longer is today. Still, there is a core to the notion of corruption that transcends culture. I believe that Bob has caught this kind of core in his definitions.

Cheers

JohnT

John and Steve:

Steve's concern is extremely valid and something we must always guard against. When we mirror image current U.S. values onto other, or Western ideas of what sovereignty means, or western middle class concepts of what effective government services look like we IMMEDIATELY head down the wrong path. What John grasped is exactly what I have tried to understand and capture.

This is why the most critical metrics are those that are gathered by getting out and getting a true sense of how the people FEEL about their governance. When I speak to Hazara or Tajik people who live in the north they FEEL very differently than the Pashtuns in rural southern provinces in Afghanistan. I think Americans are very sympathetic to the plights of others, I just don't think that in general, Americans are very empathetic. We just can't seem to relate, and tend to see everything as some shade of America, and think that people everywhere see us the way we see ourselves, and see and think about things in general the way we do. I mean, this isn't even true within America. Talk to a smart, educated, liberal living in a major city and then talk to a smart, educated, conservative living in a rural area. What is good governance to one is poor governance to another. Then within those broad area talk to members from different distinct segments. Talk to African Americans in that major city and they see it differently than whites, and talk to the Hispanic community in that rural area and they see it uniquely as well.

What I am trying to develop are tools that identify those key human
nature needs that seem to drive the type of political activism that we see with insurgency. Dr. Maslow is a great start point. Then look at case after case of insurgency in cultures all around the world and look past the focus on ideology and military tactics that dominate the histories and try to grasp what it is the government was doing, and how it was the populace was feeling. If this makes any sense, I think in that every culture is made up of humans, they share core aspects of human nature; but that because every culture is unique in its culture, history, geography, religion, demographics, etc etc; what may be great governance in one country is a disaster in another.

Example:
The President of the U.S. nominates Supreme Court Justices subject to congressional confirmation.

The same is captured in the Afghan Constitution. So it should be as effective as the US system, right?

Well, no. Patronage is such a pervasive all-powerful force in how EVERYTHING gets done in Afghanistan. A US president picks the best person who he believes shares his values and perspectives on key issues. That person then goes forward as a free-thinking individual with no expectation to provide an entry fee and regular monthly payments for this plush assignment, or any expectation to vote the way the President tells them to...In Afghanistan the latter is the norm. So by mirror imaging the US system in their constitution our advisers on Rule of Law probably thought that this was a huge coup to get the Afghans to buy into this great system. I suspect that the Afghans looked at what we proposed to them and thought "cha-ching! This will give the President complete control over the law, provide him with a rich flow of cash that he will need as President to perform his patronage duties, and also give him respected positions that he can award to his most loyal followers."

This doesn't make the Afghan system wrong or require us to fix it. It is what it is. What our advisors need to do at the next constitutional convention that they hold post-reconciliation (power of positive thinking...) is to ask what types of selection processes make sense in this culture to achieve Justice, and what types of Checks and Balances make sense in this culture to prevent abuses of patronage-based corruption? How do we disassemble the Ponzi Scheme without disassembling the government? This is very doable, we just missed a critical step in our thinking.

So is there corruption in Afghanistan? OF COURSE! Is it a problem? Only when it exceeds the socially accepted norm in that country. What we failed to realize when we shaped their government for them is that we disabled the natural system of checks and balances that come form local shuras and Jirgas when we centralized all power in the Central government (translation to Afghan: in the President). We created a massive Ponzi scheme with no true checks and balances, and then committed ourselves to putting our army around it to protect it and pumping Billions of dollars and Euros into it to keep it functioning.

So I try to get past that and ID the base human need; and then craft a definition around it that emphasizes that it must always be assessed from the perspective of the governed, and by distinct groups within the governed. It's a work in progress.

[SteveMetz]

Steve, Bob's definitions are carefully crafted in the sense that they are not uniquely Western. Indeed, each of them relies on local interpretation and perception.

As an example that would fall within Bob's definition of legitimacy let me offer one indicator (variable) from Manwaring's original SSI study - "lack of perceived corruption." Corruption is commonly understood as the missuse of public position for personal gain and exists in all cultures. What is unique in each culture is their definition of missuse. So many things that a Westerner would see as corruption are perfectly acceptable in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, or Panama. I would also note that what is perceived as corrupt behavior also changes over time so something that was perfectly acceptable 20 years ago no longer is today. Still, there is a core to the notion of corruption that transcends culture. I believe that Bob has caught this kind of core in his definitions.

Cheers

JohnT

I often wonder about the notion of corruption and insurgency. Have we simply ingrained the connection because Thompson told us it was important, or has someone actually run the data to find out if there is a real, demonstrable correlation between corruption and insurgency. Was El Salvador less corrupt when the insurgency was broken than at the beginning? Colombia? The UK in Northern Ireland? Peru? Iraq?

Again, I don't have the data myself but my gut tells me that it wouldn't support the hypothesis.

[John T. Fishel]

It is not whether El Sal (to keep my typing down) was less corrupt at the end of the war but whether it was perceived by Salvadorans as less corrupt. But even that is the wrong approach. Perceived corruption is one of a number of variables that we argue make up the Factor we called Legitimacy. So, the real question was whether Salvadorans perceived their government as more legitimate than it was when the insurgency began. The evidence certainly supports that case. One of the reasons that can be adduced is that in the 1988 and 89 elections the Salvadoran voters threw the Christain Democrats out - largely over perceived corruption. The fact that another party could take over the government peacefully was a factor in bringing the FMLN to an agreement. They, of course, won the most recent elections and now govern the country.

Cheers

JohnT

[Entropy]

Ok, how about this for a definition:

"Insurgency is a condition where a government's legitimacy among a distinct population of the governed declines to the point where that population organizes and is willing to use violence against the government. Insurgency is differentiated from other forms of internal conflict by the strategy insurgents use, which is driven by the insurgent's inability to openly challenge the government. Insurgent strategy utilizes subversion, limited violence and political action."

So here's the idea, very simplistically:

- Strong government / weak opposition = insurgency
- Government and opposition roughly equal in terms of power = civil war
- Weak government / strong opposition = coup or a quick revolution/revolt.

In essence, I think Steve Metz and Col. Jones are both right, or at least their definitions don't have to be incompatible.

[Dayuhan]

It is not whether El Sal (to keep my typing down) was less corrupt at the end of the war but whether it was perceived by Salvadorans as less corrupt. But even that is the wrong approach. Perceived corruption is one of a number of variables that we argue make up the Factor we called Legitimacy. So, the real question was whether Salvadorans perceived their government as more legitimate than it was when the insurgency began. The evidence certainly supports that case.

It is true that the relationship between populace and government is driven by local perceptions of good governance, which may or may not have anything to do with Western standards.

It is also true that our capacity to understand these conflicts, and our decisions on intervention, or on how we wish to position ourselves with respect to any real or imagined confrontation between populace and governance, are based not on local perceptions, but on our perceptions - and those are very heavily affected by our concept of good governance.

When we discuss these matters in the abstract, of course we concede that it is local perception, not our perception, that matters. The moment we move to specific cases, and far more so when engagement is contemplated, our perceptions come into play. We often don't know the full range of perceptions prevailing in any given foreign populace, or how much of any given populace falls into what categories in that range of perception (speaking of "the perception" of "a populace", as if these were singular terms, is generally absurd). Rather than trying to find out, we often make assumptions based on our criteria... another good reason to think twice, thrice, and again before messing in anyone else's internal affairs.

[Bob's World]

One may want to consider that Sir Robert confused cause and effect. In that while he was working efforts to defeat the insurgent and separate him from the populace, other efforts were going on that vastly reduced the discrimination against the ethnic Chinese populace of Malaya, that restored to them legal means to influence and participate in government/politics, and removed the British High Commissioner out of the equation of exercising total British control of the government.

These same programs of defeating insurgents and separating the populace were then carried by him to Share with the Americans to use to produce similar success in Vietnam. Except, while still good programs, they did not produce success in Vietnam. I would argue that while certainly the insurgent in Vietnam had an edge in that we had created a formal state of North Vietnam to provide them the ultimate sanctuary and staging base with all the full protections that state sovereignty provide (when you have a credible, nuclear-capable big brother backing you up as they did), along with the sanctuaries of Laos and Cambodia as well; that he missed the point of what actually worked in Malaya.

That in fact, the efforts to defeat the insurgent and separate the populace were good, necessary supporting efforts, but that what actually ended "The Emergency" there was the addressing of the conditions of insurgency so that while the insurgents were still wanting to continue, they found that their base of support had melted beneath them.

In Vietnam we took Sir Robert's recipe for success and applied it with no success. The difference? We took none of the steps taken in Malaya to reduce the conditions of insurgency. We too mistook the supporting effort for the main effort, we made it a war, we fought it like a war and we ignored the main effort of addressing the conditions of insurgency and ultimately lost the war. The insurgent never lost his base of support. One has to look at Vietnam as whole, and over the course of the entire era of French Colonialism and American intervention; without overly focusing on the line drawn on the map to separate the state into two parts as a compromise; and then what happened during the American tenure for the final 10 years of what was a multi-generational conflict for the people of the region. We were trying to roll back communism, but the people were merely employing communism to roll back colonialism. Then as now we put far too much emphasis on the nature of the ideology employed than on the nature of the conflict itself.

Insurgent conflicts of today are not far different than the ones that followed WWI and the ones that followed WWII. While people took advantage of the power upheavals following those two conflicts to make large strides in throwing off colonialism; much of the governance, or certainly self-determination of governance remained heavily controlled/manipulated across the Middle East as part of our containment strategy on the Soviet Southern flank, denying them control of the Oil resources, warm water ports, and key maritime LOCs. Not colonialism, but certainly a denial of self-determination.

[John T. Fishel]

Bob, for a long time I thought as you do about the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam. But then I read Rufus Phillips' memoir/analysis, Why Vietnam Matters, and greatly revised my thinking. I recommend it highly to one and all.

Cheers

JohnT

[SteveMetz]

Insurgent conflicts of today are not far different than the ones that followed WWI and the ones that followed WWII.

That's where we'll disagree. I think we want to believe that because we kind of figured out what to do about those kinds of insurgencies.

[John T. Fishel]

but then, you knew I would be.

Serously, take a look at the anthropological literature - which of course is clear as mud - but may provide some different ways of looking at the problem,

Marct, where are you when we need your input????

Cheers

JohnT

[Bob's World]

Steve,

Actually, I don't think we figured out what to do with those insurgencies very well at all. I think it is the belief that we have that causes us so much difficulty with the current crop. Certainly much study has taken place, yet we'll still list the Philippines or Algeria as multiple insurgencies, with a mix of failures and successes; rather than recognizing instead what looks to me like a long train of efforts by government to address the symptoms of a problem by suppressing the organizations that emerge from it; only to find what you are calling "resurgency."

I too believe in resurgency, but we associate different factors to why it happens. I believe it happens because the root cause of insurgency is government. When government is out of touch with various segments of its populace in certain fundamental human nature (rather than Western nature) ways, conditions of insurgency exist that are easily exploited by external or internal actors. This continues until such time as those conditions are addressed.

This is why when an insurgent "wins" it does not automatically end the "insurgency." The successful insurgent becomes immediately a struggling counterinsurgent until such time as the conditions of insurgency are addressed. Those who fail to address those conditions suffer the same fate that they dished out to their predecessor. Most insurgents have no interest in bringing good governance to the people, they merely take advantage of poor governance to put themselves into the power position. The American experience is unique in that regard. But for the moral stand of one man, America would likely have become a Kingdom and suffered an even rougher transition to stability than the one we took.

The big difference in insurgency today are the tools of globalization. These do not change the nature of insurgency, IMO, but they do certainly change the impact of insurgency, the resilliance of insurgency and the TTPs that are apt to work.

One could contribute to suppressing an insurgency in the 1950s by "separating the insurgent from the populace," today such separation is virtually impossible. Not only are they connected to the populace, but they are connected to the world. In essence, government can no longer ignore the people and suppress their voice. Governments must actually answer to their people.

This same factor has also rendered obsolete the tried and true policy TTP of "friendly dictators". Now these populace are able to reach out and touch the external parties that enable their governments to act with impunity. The US still has far too many friendly dictators on the books, and the fact that we are attacked most by the populaces of our allies rather than the populaces of our enemies is a powerful metric that we would be wise to quit ignoring. Attacking the foreign enabler government is often easier than attacking the domestic impune government. This makes AQ's UW efforts fairly easy. A shift in focus from helping governments suppress their populaces to one of helping populaces address their governments is more in line with our principles as a nation and would take away much of the impetus behind international acts of terrorism that exists today.

Even the current administration is careful not to call out these allies when speaking about civil rights abuses. The hypocrisy is deafening in its silence.

[SteveMetz]

It is not whether El Sal (to keep my typing down) was less corrupt at the end of the war but whether it was perceived by Salvadorans as less corrupt. But even that is the wrong approach. Perceived corruption is one of a number of variables that we argue make up the Factor we called Legitimacy. So, the real question was whether Salvadorans perceived their government as more legitimate than it was when the insurgency began. The evidence certainly supports that case. One of the reasons that can be adduced is that in the 1988 and 89 elections the Salvadoran voters threw the Christain Democrats out - largely over perceived corruption. The fact that another party could take over the government peacefully was a factor in bringing the FMLN to an agreement. They, of course, won the most recent elections and now govern the country.

Cheers

JohnT

Point taken. The Western notion of legitimacy largely functioned in El Salvador because it was of Western culture. My problem with legitimacy as it is used in Western counterinsurgency thinking is that it is a culturally Western perspective--the lingering of the colonial mindset. (And I've argued with Max over this because he believes there is a trans-cultural concept of legitimacy and I don't).

But I'm still struggling with the idea that it doesn't matter whether corruption, repression, etc--all of the stuff we consider part of "good governance"--really has to change. But we just need to help "the people" be more accepting of it.

Think of where that leads logically. Among Afghan males, the repression of women and pedophilia are perfectly acceptable. In some cultures, genocide against an "out" group is acceptable. So setting acceptability as the standard is, to say the least, problematic.