Populations ARE key terrain in COIN and UW. Until the war for influence, information, and ideology is given a footing more equal to the "shooting" war, we will not be successful in the GWOT.
HOOAH!

From my essay in SWJ Magazine Vol 5:
5. Civilians on the battlefield in counter insurgency are not only part of the battlefield; they are the objective. There are no collateral casualties. All non-insurgent casualties are friendly.
I gave a couple of lectures on COIN in Rwanda over the past couple of months, and lesson #5 as stated above, typically generated much discussion. Collateral casualties as a term is very much a conventional warfare metric to my mind. As long as we separate out casulties in the population as a 3rd category, it makes it nearly impossible to understand the secondary and tertiary effects such casualties generate. As a non-law enforcement type, it seems to me that in applying lethal we have to begin to look at it more as a police scenario.

Best

Tom