It's the Tribes (merged thread)

[jonSlack]

This is the type of product we should have about anyplace we are and any and all places we may go in the future.

[marct]

This is the type of product we should have about anyplace we are and any and all places we may go in the future.

It reminds me of some of the material from the 1960s on Vietnamese tribes. I agree, it is the sort of material that should be available.

Marc

[goesh]

Anyone for making like a British press gang of old and 'pressing' a few Anthropologists into service in the interests of national security and strategic planning?

[tequila]

I don't think the problem is a lack of knowledge. The problem is a lack of willingness to listen to and use that knowledge. See: State of Denial, Cobra II and Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

This is not just politically in the White House, but also institutionally on the part of the military and the Department of State.

[Shek]

I don't think the problem is a lack of knowledge. The problem is a lack of willingness to listen to and use that knowledge. See: State of Denial, Cobra II and Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

This is not just politically in the White House, but also institutionally on the part of the military and the Department of State.

So if this type of information were available in 2003 to the extent possible (i.e. some of the information from the report is based on post 2003 actions), is your thought that it wouldn't make a difference? Also, it would seem that you are arguing as well that there can't be any bottom up influence on decisions.

I don't disagree with the thought that senior policy makers aren't attuned to the details, and that that has hurt us, but at some point the rubber meets the road and rhetoric gives way to the practical. Had someone made this kind of information available to me in 2003-4 while I was in Iraq, I could have been much more effective in fighting the insurgency in spite of any national level policy that disregarded this type of information.

[Jedburgh]

Here's a very brief summary of the key points of Iraqi Arab tribal structure from the Congressional Research Service:

Iraq: Tribal Structure, Social, and Political Activities

For centuries the social and political organization of many Iraqi Arabs has centered on the tribe. Socially, tribes were divided into related sub-tribes, which further divided into clans, and then into extended families. Seventy-five percent of Iraq’s estimated 26 million people are a member of a tribe. They are more strongly bound by these tribal ties and a strict honor code than by ethnic background or religion. This report describes the political orientation of several Iraqi Arab tribes, including the Shammar, Dulaym, and Jibur tribes. This report will be updated as warranted. For further information on Iraq and U.S. policy, see CRS Report RL31339, Iraq: Post-Saddam Governance and Security, by Kenneth Katzman.

[John T. Fishel]

Back in ancient times when I was a current intel analyst on the Army Staff, CIA produced a classified basic intelligence document on nearly all the countries of the world - it had everything you ever wanted to know, and a lot you didn't. Then, sometime in the 70s or 80s they stopped producing it. Meanwhile, the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, on a DA contract, produces the Area handbook Series - Country Studies. They are good but not at all up to date. (El Salvador is current as of 1988!) DOD does produce some Country Handbooks - marked FOUO - with lots of pictures of military hardware. And that seems to be where we stand on basic intelligence, so we have to contract out for a study like this one - long after we really need it.
In the Spring 2005, the Security and Defense Studies Review (the e-journal of the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies of NDU) published a special issue devoted to the ongoing UN PKO mission in Haiti. See link:

http://www.ndu.edu/chds/journal/indexarcspring05.htm

The study is being published this summer by NDU Press/Potomac Press under the title, Capacity Building for Peacekeeping: The Case of Haiti, with all the chapters that were in Spanish or Portuguese (about half) now translated to English - as soon as I finish the final edits. The final article/chapter (at the link in English) by my colleague Andres Saenz and me addresses, in part the issue of this forum - the dearth of basic intelligence and recommends several fixes. But even if implemented beyond my wildest dreams, the problem remains: "You can lead the horse to water, but you can't make him drink." (It really is as true of horses as it is of people.)

[Jedburgh]

So if this type of information were available in 2003 to the extent possible (i.e. some of the information from the report is based on post 2003 actions), is your thought that it wouldn't make a difference? Also, it would seem that you are arguing as well that there can't be any bottom up influence on decisions.

I don't disagree with the thought that senior policy makers aren't attuned to the details, and that that has hurt us, but at some point the rubber meets the road and rhetoric gives way to the practical. Had someone made this kind of information available to me in 2003-4 while I was in Iraq, I could have been much more effective in fighting the insurgency in spite of any national level policy that disregarded this type of information.

I second Tom as to the availability of this type of info on Iraq both pre-Desert Storm and pre-OIF. The pre-OIF info was even more detailed, because we had people on the ground inside Iraq reporting on many fine elements of information post-Desert Storm - especially during the OPC and UNSCOM periods in the early to mid 90s. In '03 there was a helluva lot of good, solid info of this nature readily available to those who were willing to look for it.

As regards "bottom-up influence on decisions", if you have the time I highly recommend the book Knowing One’s Enemies – Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars, published by Princeton University Press in 1986.

The book isn't a Small Wars piece; it looks at pre-war intel for WWI and WWII. It consists of sixteen essays that review intelligence collection, analysis and decision making at the national level in various countries at critical junctures in their history (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, Great Britain and Italy before WWI and Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the US before WWII).

To the point that has been raised here, the book clearly illustrates that even when a nation is in possession of sufficient intelligence of a quality to make effective policy decisions, it can all drop in the crapper due to the inherent biases, proclivities and abilities of key policy makers. The harmful effects of internal disputes within intelligence agencies, and turf battles between competing agencies, are also laid out in careful detail. It is a must-read classic in the field of strategic intelligence.

[Shek]

Tom and Jedburgh,

Thanks for the responses. I guess I was unclear in my prior post - I don't harbor any thoughts that such information would have changed the administration's decision making (and I am not that surprised that it wasn't factored in); I was merely stating that at the tip of the spear, such information would have made a difference if it had been readily available down to that level. That being said, I don't know if it would have gained enough traction to have created enough of a bottom-up "revolution" to have changed the grand strategy in Iraq. For example, I might have been able to have built relationships with all of the power players in my AO (I didn't realize the extent of how tribal relationships permeated all of Iraqi society, to include in the urban areas), but I would have still been limited in being able to harness those relationships bcecause of a lack in reconstruction funds to provide mutually beneficial projects.

Also, thanks for the book recommendation - unfortunately, my Amazon wishlist has now grown over 200 books long now - the mind and wallet are willing, but the schedule is not able

[Shek]

Does anybody have this book? It looks like a potentially promising purchase, but I'd be curious to see if the 30 years since it was first published has outstripped its relevancy. Thanks.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/086...=3BV4R4OFS2ZIM

[SWJED]

24 May The Belmont Club post - More on Anbar.

... Isn't this what we are seeing in Anbar? A tribe that is allied with the US is much more similar to Hezbollah than it is to a nation-state.

Here's the real takeaway though: this never would have happened without some sort of American presence in Iraq. It was not diplomats that turned the tribes, it was military officers. That is the secret that will be hard to swallow: we are in an age wherein the opposite of the 'exit strategy' will have to be the lynchpin of strategy: presence, not early exit, is what is required in these broad swaths of the world that where instability threatens US interests. The key will be not to figure out whether to be there or not, which is the current debate. The key will be to figure out how much to be there and in what form: soldier, diplomat, spy, or some other category that has yet to be determined: perhaps a combo of all three, or perhaps some privatized version of any one of them.