New Guidance on Counter-Insurgency

[jcustis]

Now COMISAF COIN Guidance states claims 8 years of successful kinetic actions have made the problem worse. Essentially in that killing the enemy alienates the population. So does that mean the population all support the Taliban and don't like seeing them get killed or does it mean that negligent use of fire power risks killing the population?

In fact the document explicitly states that large operations risk killing civilians.

The document also clearly states, in the third paragraph, that we will not win simply by killing insurgents.

Wilf, are you arguing that the so-called pop-centric COIN is less likely to utilize force?

I've taken it to mean that you can't rely on force alone, and that you have to get good at applying a whole range of TTPs in order to present more options, thus allowing you to focus on the population at the same time that you are continuing to target the knuckleheads. And there is nothing at all in the tactics of FID, SA, COIN, whatever, that says you have to put all of your eggs in one basket. That wasn't done when we got sharper in Iraq, and it need not be done in Afghanistan either. That's why we can employ CA as economy of force operations of a sort.

And with respect to villages and things that go bump in the night, if you are tucked in your FOB and COP and distant from the population, you can try to target the BGs and chase them all you want, but you still have to be connected to the people, in whatever massed areas they are (and the roaming Bedouin-types too). This is for the aspect of FIND, as well as anything else.