COIN in a non-state environment

[M-A Lagrange]

Ok, I might come somewhere here to clarify my point.

Oh boy. I had a squad leader like that who worked for me back in my PL days in the mech infantry in West Germany. He would treat his guys like crap all week long, then on Friday afternoon he'd buy a case of sodas to share. He came to me one day asking me why none of his guys liked him, what with him buying them sodas and all.

Bob, I do think that respect is something important. If you treat your team as #### them you are a bad leader. I do agree with that. Being strong, violent and inflexible does not mean being unjust. But, as in Bible or in Koran you have to be the God that punish, not the one who loves. Well at least where I am.

Anyone who has at least a tour on the dark continent would appreciate where M-A is coming from. Yes, his appraisal has little to do with Muslims and their culture, or does it ?

As Stan does state, the problematic is how you get respect, not how people appreciate you. If I take a Muslim example, North Sudan, the services are delivered on a discriminative approach and used to undermine local powers or even a whole group of people because of the opinion of their leaders. While Sharia was a law made to protect women (At the begining of Islam), now it’s a tool use to justify any crazy abuse on women… (40 lashes because you wear a trouser when you are a women inNorth Sudan. )
In neighbouring Somalia, what makes you a power is not the money you distribute but the level of violence you can distribute. Somali fear Ethiopians. Not because Ethiopians are nicer but because they crush them without remorse anytime they put a foot in Somalia. And so do the Kenyans with the South Sudanese and Ugandans too.

M-A and Stan also have a valid, if often unwelcome, point when he mentions that we are not intervening in Massachusetts, and that when we go to places where different rules apply we have to deal with those different rules, especially if an extended intervention is contemplated and still more if we are considering "nation-building". It seems to me that a lot of our problems come from designing and presenting our interventions to appeal to our own domestic audience, rather than to the populace and the contending parties in the place where we're intervening.

As Dayuhan says, it’s not politically correct and may be not bankable on domestic audience but that’s how it works there.
And please, do not mistake me; I do believe that State and Nation State in particular have a role and a responsibility in protecting their citizens. I do believe that the scheme you developed Bob is very much applicable in a place like Irak.
But if you want to impose a webberian/modern state/administration on a population who lives without it, you have to look at what they do take as a mark of respect. Unfortunately, in such case Might is right.
But in more sophisticated environment as Kenya or Ivory Cost, Right is might. But we are starting in a complete different setting: nations with a functioning state apparatus.
The point here is what to do in a non state context. All states, even Europ started first by being unified under a strong, violent and unflexible military power which with time became a modern state. That may be the first step? To go further.