Winning and losing at counterinsurgency

IN THE NEWS
If you don't read this blog regularly, let me explain something about the format. I have regular "canonical" or "official" posts, pieces of a longer argument that I'm trying to make about counterterrorism. It's a "back to basics" discussion, in which it's important to finish the general principles of strategy before diving into the specifics of particular types of warfare--like how to beat al Qaeda. I'm slowly making my way to a discussion of the theory and practice of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary warfare. That step will put us ifnally into the terrain of both guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency, terrorism and counterterrorism.

Meanwhile, I comment on the news, which makes it hard not to jump ahead to some of the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism discussions. It's too hard to avoid commenting on the day-to-day events, particularly when they illuminate an important point.

We're fighting a counterinsurgency war in Iraq. It's not really counterterrorism, in the same sense that we're fighting a terrorist organization, al Qaeda, around the world. Public support--the famous "hearts and minds" campaign--is far more important in counterinsurgency, for example, than in counterterrorism. Guerrillas need a larger base of supporters than terrorists do. There are other differences, both in general theories of how to fight revolutionary warfare by the AK-47 or the suicide bomber, and in particular cases. Insurgents in Iraq, by and large, want the US to leave. Al Qaeda terrorists, in contrast, desire their own version of the neoconservative vision of a transformed Islamic world.

Having said that, two items in the last few days of news are worth noting, for how they point in the direction of the right and wrong ways to go. The first is Iraqi interim president Ghazi Alawi's announcement of an amnesty for supporters of the insurgency. This is a promising sign, and I believe that the skeptics about Iraq--normally right about what's going wrong there--by and large have interpreted this and other Alawi policies incorrectly. If you read the news items about the amnesty carefully, you'll notice immediately that he is trying to drive a wedge between the fighters in the insurgency and their political base--the people who provide the guerrillas intelligence, safe houses, money, recruits, and other vital resources. This is counterinsurgency 101, and it's a necessary step if you want to dry up Mao's famous sea of the population in which the guerrillas swim. (See the history of the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines for an example of how such an amnesty can work.) In short, this isn't a craven move, though there's reason, this early in the game, to look a bit askew at this announcement, as perhaps nothing more than a bit of PR intended as much for domestic consumption in Iraq as for an international audience (just not the United States). However, the amnesty, a priori, is not a bad idea.

The second item is far more negative. If you have RealPlayer installed, you might click at this link, skip an hour ahead in the streaming video, and listen to Seymour Hersh's recent speech to an ACLU conference. Hersh has opinions, as you'll hear. Whether or not you agree with them, Hersh stands as an unerringly accurate chronicler of important events in Iraq and Afghanistan, often breaking stories ahead of the rest of the mainstream press. (He also takes time to report on content in depth, unlike the frequently superficial reporting in The New York Times, Newsweek, and other news outlets. (Not so much a function of length, by the way, as the actual content-per-page ratio.)

Aside from summarizing what we know already about the torture and other abuses during interrogations--the vast majority of which are being inflicted on people who don't have any involvement with the insurgency--Hersh talks about, for the first time, a US government recording of young boys being sodomized in Abu Ghraib.

Hersh doesn't provide details in this speech, and in any case, it's too early to say anything more about this accusation than a very credible journalist has made it. However, let's assume for the moment that it's correct. Let's leave aside even how morally repulsive, if that's word is even strong enough, such actions would be. In purely practical terms, they would be the surest way to lose the counterinsurgency war in Iraq.

As I said, I haven't plunged into the details of counterinsurgency warfare. You'll find out that I'm not a faint-hearted person. For example, many well-intentioned people who talk about the "root causes" part of counterinsurgency are, frankly, speaking nonsense. You can defeat guerrillas without having to eradicate all poverty and injustice from a society. Bare-knuckled military operations, and even aggressive interrogation programs like the Phoenix Program in the Vietnam War, are necessary tools.

But, given how the politics of a particular district, town, or even street has to guide counterinsurgency operations, you have to wield these sharp instruments with care. A doctor, scalpel in hand, can save a person's life. The same doctor, drunk or stoned, will kill the patient. And someone who isn't a trained surgeon, or just doesn't care what happens, is simply a butcher.

Comments

[Oscar]

To use common bridge expression, "Hersh stands as an unerringly accurate chronicler of important events in Iraq and Afghanistan" is a bit of an overbid. That said, his accusations are disturbing, but I gather they are under investigation as well, so we should find out more....