Surferbettle,

And a Merry Christmas to you and yours. Promise I'll read your enclosed study before the New Year.

Don't disagree with anything you wrote (seriously); however, my point has been and remains that building schools doesn't counter active insurgencies. Over a longer time line (assuming they're well managed and have adequate teachers) they will enable more capable socieities by developing the human potential (I'm a believer), but ss we both know it is hard for kids to go to school when there is still a shooting war going on, it is bad enough when there is simply gang warfare in the vicinity of the school (Chicago, Miami, LA, etc.).

Let's focus first on how to deal with the active insurgency. From your previous post,

What is needed is organizational techniques to match the rebel drive--effective intelligence coupled with a discriminating use of force capable of obtaining compliance from the population.
IMO we need to focus on this first, then rapidly shift into infrastructure development as security conditions permit, and infrastructure development must be tied to political mobilization. To defeat an insurgency, which is political warfare at the grass roots level, you have to organize the populace at the grass roots level to counter the insurgents. Building a school and a road or giving out jobs without tying it to actively counter organizing politically against the insurgents is, again IMO, in COIN is simply a neutral activity at best.

Dr. Kilcullen obviously explains it much better in his book, but his example of building a road in one province as a tool to actively organize the people against the Taliban (I need to review my notes, but in general it was more than building a road, there was a reason behind it beyond economics). He demonstrates it can be effective. In short I think you can be effective with your approach if you connect all the dots and tie those efforts to the greater cause. Bill