How Insurgencies End

[Bob's World]

Bob, I envy your idealism, but "Poor Governance" is one possible cause of an insurgency/rebellion, and its irrelevant to the application of military force to serve policy.

It could be that the folks in the "rebel held" areas are better off with a higher standard of living. So what? You still go in there and kill and capture the rebels regardless. You then re-assert Government authority by being the ONLY authority, as in the only men with guns walking about with guns.

Yes, the people may or may not have a legitimate beef. Go vote in some other guys. That is there only legitimate recourse.

I know it comes across as idealism, but the real goal of this work is to get down to the bare elemental factors at work in these situations.

So, turning to your example:

A portion of my country is now "rebel held" or in other words, the "offical governance" from the capital has been at least supplemented, and perhaps totally supplanted by a new "legitimate" government (recognized by the populace, who bestow legitimacy, but outside the law, so therefore unofficial)

What to do? Are the rebels the problem, or are they merely a symptom of the problem? The easy answer is blame the symptom and the populace, and go in as you recommend and punish the populace for daring to support alternative governance; and eradicate the rebel force and its leadership. Ignore any failures of governance, and get on with your old ways. I have merely reset the conditions of failure with such an approach.

I probably will need to go in and deal with the symptoms, often quite harshly. My point is that you must also go in and engage your populace, understand their perceptions, and address those concerns as well if you want to have any hope of an enduring solution.


In Afghanistan most of the populace would prefer not to be under Taliban rule. That is a fact. It is also a fact that the majority of that same populace believes that they receive greater JUSTICE from the shadow Taliban legal system than they do from the Offical GIROA legal system. To disempower the Taliban GIROA must address the perceptions of poor governance; and that has very little to do with the multi-Billion dollar programs of services that the west is providing. You cannot buy your way out of an insurgency. Sometimes you must fight, but alway you must address the four causal perceptions I lay out above.

We are being led down a path of "Development-based COIN" by what Mr. Einstein would likely label "Intelligent fools." A separate group fitting that same description would have us go down a "War-based COIN" path.

I simply believe that an alternative path is more likely to produce the effects we seek.

[William F. Owen]

A portion of my country is now "rebel held" or in other words, the "offical governance" from the capital has been at least supplemented, and perhaps totally supplanted by a new "legitimate" government (recognized by the populace, who bestow legitimacy, but outside the law, so therefore unofficial)

What to do?

Kill off the competing Government. That is your job.

The easy answer is blame the symptom and the populace, and go in as you recommend and punish the populace for daring to support alternative governance; and eradicate the rebel force and its leadership. Ignore any failures of governance, and get on with your old ways. I have merely reset the conditions of failure with such an approach.

You DO NOT punish the populace. You used armed force against armed force. You kill and capture the enemy's armed force and leave the populace alone. You then re-establish control and authority, and IF YOU WANT, seek to resolve the political issues at the heart of the conflict.

In Afghanistan most of the populace would prefer not to be under Taliban rule. That is a fact. It is also a fact that the majority of that same populace believes that they receive greater JUSTICE from the shadow Taliban legal system than they do from the Offical GIROA legal system.

Sorry, but if folks believe they get greater justice from th Taliban, they they ARE UNDER TALIBAN rule as they defer to the Taliban as the arbiters of justice. That is how they become the de-facto power.

A separate group fitting that same description would have us go down a "War-based COIN" path.

I concur. That is why I subscribe to the "Kill the enemy - and only the enemy" approach to Irregular Warfare.

[Bob's World]

Ahhh, but this is Insurgency, not warfare. The "Armed Force" is your own damn populace. There is no way to attack the insurgent without inturn attacking the populace anymore than you can attack a cancer without attacking body it is growing within.

As to "greater justice" it is relative. They receive NO justice from the non-existent GIROA system. But remember, the applicaiton of Rule of Law that is not perceived as just is best called "Tyranny."

Taliban justice is harsh, but it is equally harsh and more readily available. So as I said, it is widely perceived as more just than what GIROA offers.

So, WILF, next time your foot acts up, kill your foot, and only your foot, and see how the rest of your body feels about that. :-)

[William F. Owen]

Ahhh, but this is Insurgency, not warfare.

Huh?? So it's not War or warfare? It's not the re-distribution of political power or the setting forth of policy by other means? Mao, Bin Laden, Che, Yasser Arafat, Lenin and Trotsky ( and me) all strongly disagree.
Insurgency is most definitely warfare, and gets won the same way.

The "Armed Force" is your own damn populace. There is no way to attack the insurgent without inturn attacking the populace anymore than you can attack a cancer without attacking body it is growing within.

Huh?? That's just not true.
If they reject your authority, by use of arms, they are "fair game" - and not "your" population. It's been done successfully, and it works.
Very happy to use surgery on cancer.

It's "The trinity". Armed Force, People and Leadership. IRA supporters were not the IRA Armed Wing. While occasionally they were the same people, they became subject to military force when carrying arms. Same as of almost every Irregular Force I can think of.

So, WILF, next time your foot acts up, kill your foot, and only your foot, and see how the rest of your body feels about that. :-)

If it had gangrene or cancer, I would, and my body doesn't do politics - well mostly....

[Bob's World]

Yes, there is indeed a time when one must act inextremeis to brutally attack one's own political body. A gangrene foot. The American Civil War.

But every single case of insurgency does not rise to this level. In fact, very few do. Usually it is a relatively small band of militants supported by a much larger segement of the populace that is experiencing conditions of poor governance, so is susceptible to the insurgent's message and supportive to some degree of their cause.

Before you go to the scalpel and bone saw as your first COA (or your political equivalent, the military) I simply suggest that 8-9 times out of 10 the situaiton can best be resolved by making one's main effort addressing the conditions of poor governance; and the supporting effort either reconciling or rounding up those who refuse to submit to good governance.

As an American we recognize it as both a Duty and a Right for the populace to rise up in insurgency when confronted with poor governance. But I see this as an inextremis COA for the populace as well. So did Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He did not mean if your mail is slow, or your taxes high, or your electrical power is sketchy. He meant big, human dynamic issues like Legitimacy, Justice, Respect and Hope.

And for Dayuhan, yes, we get it. The US conducted UW and threw out the illegitimate government the Pakistanis installed and installed the illegitimate Karzai government. That is history. It also creates a presumption of Illegitimacy for the Karzai government that is VERY difficult to overcome. Voting has not made a dent in overcoming that presumption.

Mr. K is pushing for a big "Peace Jirga" and making all kinds of public statements and positions to try to create a perception of legitimacy. I wish him well in that endeavor, because it, more than any military action by the coalition, is the key to strategic success in Afghanistan.

[Dayuhan]

If they reject your authority, by use of arms, they are "fair game" - and not "your" population. It's been done successfully, and it works.

Are you suggesting that all citizens, everywhere, have an absolute obligation to submit to authority at all times, no matter how capricious and abusive that authority may be?

If people are rejecting authority through the use of arms, they probably have some reason for doing so: it's not the sort of thing one does casually or on a whim. Isn't it at least worth looking into the possibility of removing that reason, thereby resolving the conflict without the need to declare anyone fair game?

[William F. Owen]

Are you suggesting that all citizens, everywhere, have an absolute obligation to submit to authority at all times, no matter how capricious and abusive that authority may be?

No. I never said anything like that.
a.) Violence is instrumental, not moral or ethical.
b.) Almost no one ever sets forth policy they do not believe to be moral or ethical. Politics is what folks think is right.

If people are rejecting authority through the use of arms, they probably have some reason for doing so: it's not the sort of thing one does casually or on a whim.

Depends on the policy and the specifics. If my policy maker tells me to force defeat on them, then the destruction of their armed force - in line with policy - is my objective. I'll let the policy maker negotiate the peace.

[Dayuhan]

If my policy maker tells me to force defeat on them, then the destruction of their armed force - in line with policy - is my objective. I'll let the policy maker negotiate the peace.

Development of effective policy requires input from a variety of sources, including those who will be responsible for implementing the policy… and given the importance of developing effective, reasonable, and achievable policies in pursuit of political goals, why should we confine discussion purely to the military aspects of insurgency? How is a discussion of insurgency generically, or of any specific insurgency, complete without assessments of the policies adopted and of possible alternatives?

yes, we get it. The US conducted UW and threw out the illegitimate government the Pakistanis installed and installed the illegitimate Karzai government. That is history. It also creates a presumption of Illegitimacy for the Karzai government that is VERY difficult to overcome. Voting has not made a dent in overcoming that presumption.

Saying the Pakistanis installed the Taliban might be an oversimplification, but if we take it at face value it raises some interesting questions. The Taliban, for all their deficiencies, did manage to establish effective control over a significant portion of Afghanistan despite minimal resources and very limited external support. Even with far greater resources and much more foreign assistance, the Karzai government has been unable to do the same. Are the Pakistanis that much better than we are at installing governments? Or possibly they were backing a faction that already had substantial local support, rather than trying to create a new faction from scratch? Or possibly our very visible intervention and our very visible presence has worked against the effort to build perceived legitimacy, reinforcing the perception that the GIROA is a creation of and a representative of an occupying foreign power? Possibly none of the above, but if the Taliban were in fact installed by the Pakistanis it's worth asking how they largely succeeded where we have not.

I suspect that voting, and many other aspects of the system we installed in Afghanistan, were intended less to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghans than to establish legitimacy in the eyes of Americans. Our habit of building systems that conform to our preferences instead of building from existing local systems may be part of our problem

Mr. K is pushing for a big "Peace Jirga" and making all kinds of public statements and positions to try to create a perception of legitimacy. I wish him well in that endeavor, because it, more than any military action by the coalition, is the key to strategic success in Afghanistan.

How would you define “strategic success” in Afghanistan? I ask because I feel that there’s been a substantial level of goal escalation in Afghanistan. We didn’t go there because the government was “illegitimate”, which is hardly for us to determine. We didn’t go there to build liberal democracy or establish representative government. We went there to deny refuge to AQ. The other goals emerged later. They are admirable goals, but I’m not sure we’ve the capacity to achieve them and I can’t help wondering if we’d have been better off staying focused on the original purpose.

[Dayuhan]

A portion of my country is now "rebel held" or in other words, the "offical governance" from the capital has been at least supplemented, and perhaps totally supplanted by a new "legitimate" government (recognized by the populace, who bestow legitimacy, but outside the law, so therefore unofficial)

Just because an area is "rebel held" doesn't mean the populace recognizes or approves of rebel control. They might just be more afraid of the rebels than of the government. More likely than not the populace is divided, with some supporting the Government but afraid to say so, others supporting the rebels, and others (likely a majority) just trying to keep their heads down and avoid getting messed up.

In Afghanistan most of the populace would prefer not to be under Taliban rule. That is a fact. It is also a fact that the majority of that same populace believes that they receive greater JUSTICE from the shadow Taliban legal system than they do from the Offical GIROA legal system. To disempower the Taliban GIROA must address the perceptions of poor governance; and that has very little to do with the multi-Billion dollar programs of services that the west is providing. You cannot buy your way out of an insurgency. Sometimes you must fight, but alway you must address the four causal perceptions I lay out above.

I have to wonder who's the "you" in that picture. Also, as in so much of the discourse I read on Afghansitan, if I didn't know better I would walk away with the impression that the GIROA was a pre-existing entity and that we intervened to help it manage an insurgency. That's not the case, something we forget at our peril. I doubt very much that the failings of the GIROA are the core issue in this fight: the core issue is us, our presence, our attempt to impose conditions on Afghhan governance, and the reality that the GIROA is, for better or worse, our creation.

It was recently said somewhere on SWJ (I think on this thread, not sure) that the days when we can simply install a dictator and be done with it are done. I agree, those days are gone and well gone. I suspect that we're in the process of discovering that we can't "install" a democracy either, and that our problems with installing dictators didn't happen only because we were installing dictators, but because it's not always possible for one state to install a government of any sort for another.