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HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. 2"Unified Vision 01 CENTER FOR ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES AND THREATS 7 February 2006 Winning in the Streets: A Concept for Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century By R. Scott Moore POC: R. Scott Moore Center for Adaptive Strategies & Threats Hicks & Associates, Inc. 4301 N. Fairfax Dr., Suite 210 Arlington, VA 22203 (703) 516- 3296 [email protected] The publication of this paper does not indicate endorsement by the Department of Defense, nor should the contents be construed as reflecting the official position of the US Government. HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Preface This work was conducted by Hicks & Associates, Inc., Center for Adaptive Strategies & Threats, under contract through General Dynamics Corporation to the Joint Urban Operations Office, Joint Forces Command, Suffolk, Virginia. The publication of this working paper does not indicate endorsement by Joint Forces Command, the Department of Defense, or General Dynamics Corporation, nor should the contents be construed as reflecting the official position of the US Government. The author of this concept is R. Scott Moore. Others who participated in this project were Gary Anderson and Janine Davidson. While these individuals contributed to the development of this concept, the author assumes sole responsibility for the content and for any errors of omission or commission. THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION. IT MAY BE USED BY RECIPIENT ONLY FOR THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH IT WAS TRANSMITTED AND WILL BE RETURNED UPON REQUEST OR WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED BY RECIPIENT. IT MAY NOT BE COPIED OR COMMUNICATED WITHOUT THE ADVANCE WRITTEN CONSENT OF SAIC. IN ADDITION, THIS DOCUMENT COULD CONTAIN TECHNICAL DATA, THE EXPORT OF WHICH IS RESTRICTED BY THE U.S. ARMS EXPORT CONTROL ACT (AECA) (TITLE 22, U.S.C. SEC 2751, ET SEQ.) OR THE EXPORT ADMINISTRATION ACT OF 1979, AS AMENDED (TITLE 50, U.S.C., APP. 2401, ET SEQ.). HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Contents Executive Summary 1 Introduction 3 Insurgency 6 Insurgency Defined 6 The Nature of Insurgency 7 Causes of Insurgency 10 Insurgency Strategy 13 Counterinsurgency 17 Counterinsurgency Defined 17 Counterinsurgency Strategy 18 Essential Tasks 20 Enablers 28 Use of Force 31 An Integrated Strategy 31 Implications for Urban Operations 33 Appendix A: Failed Counterinsurgencies 35 Appendix B: Successful Counterinsurgencies 37 Appendix C: Major Ongoing Insurgencies 39 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Executive Summary The purpose of this paper is to develop a strategic and operational concept for counterinsurgency operations with emphasis on how that concept may affect urban operations. The intent of this concept is two-fold. First, to take a fresh look at the insurgency and counterinsurgency of the past and present in order to identify those enduring traits that will likely continue to influence how these conflicts will be conducted in the future. Second, the concept examines the resulting frameworks and for their applicability to urban operations. In doing so the concept places urban operations within the context of a wider understanding of the nature and characteristics of counterinsurgency and, hopefully, offers a basis for developing future capabilities. Specifically, this concept seeks to achieve the following: Describe the nature and causes of insurgency and the characteristics of successful insurgency strategies. Identify the key challenges that have emerged as insurgencies increasingly move into urban areas. Define the key elements of successful counterinsurgency strategies. Identify the essential tasks and enablers for effective counterinsurgency strategies and campaigns, with attention to those of particular concern for urban operations. Insurgency is redefined as a protracted violent conflict in which one or more groups seek to overthrow or fundamentally change the political or social order in a state or region through the use of sustained violence, subversion, social disruption, and political action. As such is it comprised of three essential dimensions: behaviors, structures, and beliefs, each of which interacts to form both the causes and context of insurgency. Insurgents feed on the instability that accompanies these dimensions in regions prone to violence through a strategy that exploits deepseated issues, undermines enemy will, employs unconstrained violence, and, critically important, control urban areas. Insurgencies in recent years have moved into and seek to control urban areas. Insurgent movements increasingly rely on squalid conditions, corruption, crime, and social and political change represented by life in many of the cities of the developing for support, both moral and logistical. Heavily populated areas provide many of the resources for insurgencies once thought only to exist in remote areas or from external resources. Finally, political and economic control resides in key populated areas; to achieve success, insurgent movements must at least deny these areas to the existing government. To counter these trends, counterinsurgency must be seen as an integrated set of political, economic, social, and security measures intended to end and prevent the recurrence of armed violence, create and maintain stable political, economic, and social structures, and resolve the underlying causes of an insurgency in order to establish and sustain the conditions necessary for lasting stability. Most significant about this definition is its emphasis on resolving the underlying causes of the insurgency and redefining traditional ideas of victory; building lasting stability must be the strategic aim. 1 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Like insurgency, counterinsurgency must also be conducted in three dimensions. Additionally, the key counterinsurgency battlefield will reside in urban areas, for that is where the existing government and its supporters must build the critical structures and transform the beliefs of the populations. A successful counterinsurgency strategy accomplishes six essential tasks: establish and maintain stability, provide humanitarian relief, promote effective governance, sustain development, support reconciliation, and foster social change. While necessary to ensure lasting stability, they are not necessarily sufficient. To be effectively carried out, they must be enabled by clearly defined political and military objectives, civil-military unity of effort, integrated and accurate intelligence, and legitimacy. The essential tasks and the critical enablers carry with them a set of military tasks and capabilities. US military forces must be able to effectively and seamlessly tie all these elements together three dimensionally if they are to be successful. As insurgencies are fought in urban environments, they must be adapted to the challenges posed by this terrain, often using new civil and military capabilities not traditionally part of a warfigher’s arsenal. More important, US forces must be ready to conduct extended campaigns, controlling heavily populated areas with dispersed and decentralized forces, all the while resolving the underlying issues that lay at the heart of the insurgency. The ability to assume new responsibilities and to do so in urban and metropolitan areas where force may be only one, and perhaps not the primary weapon, at their disposal, will demand new and capabilities for the future. 2 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Introduction Recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq forcibly highlighted the need to reexamine the nature of the irregular conflicts, and especially insurgencies, facing the United States in the coming years and to identify the key elements of a strategy to address these emerging threats. The complex nature of the Global War on Terrorism and the associated ethnic, religious, transnational, and urban threats seriously challenge current military capabilities based on conventional warfare. The lack of an integrated and multi-dimensional approach to these new threats has, in recent years, too often led to confusion and disjointed responses. In the absence of an overarching strategic and operational concept, military and civilian planners default to their own experiences and ideas. While much tactical and operational effort may be well-grounded and locally effective, it remains particular to specific situations and conditions. A critical need exists for an overarching concept that draws from current and past operations, extrapolates them into the future, and provides a common framework from which to think about, plan, and conduct counterinsurgency operations today and in the future. As insurgencies increasingly move from the countryside to urban areas, frame their causes in absolutist terms, and employ weapons and methods whose reach extend far beyond the conflict zones, the need exists to reassess past lessons and to apply them to future threats. The strategic challenges posed by current and future insurgencies can no longer be confined to particular regions or countries, nor do they reflect competing political ideologies. Instead, they must be viewed as violent symptoms of much deeper structural, behavioral, and identity issues that pose serious risks to international security if not adequately addressed. Religious extremism, ethnic intolerance, and socio-economic imbalances have given birth to fanatical movements demanding radical change. In what may be a fundamental strategic shift, insurgents are increasingly operating within the protective walls of urban areas, able to blend into their surroundings and draw sustenance and support from populations who have become disaffected and isolated. In doing so, the insurgents have also significantly reduced the effectiveness of the highly lethal weapons, and the intelligence systems that support them, at the core of US military capabilities. Insurgencies, and the terrorism that accompanies them, pose complex challenges threatening political and social stability and defying military attempts to suppress or defeat them. Counterinsurgency is not so much a war to be won as a conflict to be resolved. Victory and defeat, at least as defined in classical military terms, rarely apply. Rather, the objective must be solving the causes of the conflict. Reform, development, cooption, inclusion, negotiation, reconciliation and transformed ideas offer pathways to successful counterinsurgency every bit as important, and perhaps even more so, than armed combat. Instead of, in Clausewitzian terms, forcing an enemy to your will, counterinsurgency hinges on convincing those who may turn to insurgency that their needs can better be met peacefully while ensuring the problems that gave birth to violence have been addressed. In essence, counterinsurgency is about making enemies irrelevant, not extinct. The focus of this counterinsurgency concept thus diverges from the traditional warfighting emphasis on defeating armed insurgents that so often dominates current doctrine. Rather than viewing counterinsurgency as a phased campaign moving from combat to security and stabilization operations to civilian reconstruction and nation-building, with the inevitable challenges of compartmented strategic planning and execution, this concept proposes an 3 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. integrated approach that meshes military and civil actions based on overlapping Essential Tasks. Not limited to physical defeat of insurgents, these tasks link military, political, economic, and social requirements into a cohesive whole. In doing so, the concept does not downplay military operations aimed at fighting and killing armed insurgents; combat and security operations remain essential components of any counterinsurgency strategy. Nonetheless, it is based on the realization that military force, especially in highly populated areas, can be a dual-edged sword; while tactically effective, the unintended effects on political, social and economic structures, as well as on human attitudes and perceptions can lead to operational and strategic defeat. This concept, therefore, offers a wider and more comprehensive approach for addressing not only the symptoms, but the underlying causes of the bloody conflicts that will confront much of the world for the foreseeable future. Equally important, the concept also examines the impact of the increasing urbanization of the world’s conflict zones, a trend that will likely continue well into the future. Whereas many insurgencies of the past relied on remote base areas and access to external support in order to organize, survive, and fight, modern insurgents and terrorists increasingly rely on the protection of urban areas and populations to garner strength and overthrow their enemies. Moving in and out of the cities, conducting urban terrorism against civil populations and leaders, and hiding within discrete ethnic and religious communities and groups, they combine tribalism, violence, subversion, and intimidation with the protection offered by the warrens of urban terrain that has replaced the remote mountains and jungles that once sheltered them. In essence, they ‘hide in plain site’ by inhabiting and intimidating squalid slums and identity groups, operating and gaining sustenance from within the masses of people who live in the cities and populated areas. For security forces, the challenges of rooting them out present new and immediate demands for which US forces are only partially prepared. The conclusions and principles presented herein derive from detailed analysis of nearly sixty counterinsurgency campaigns, successful and unsuccessful, conducted during the past century, as well as the lessons learned by American and Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Additionally, the writings and doctrines of individuals and institutions who meticulously recorded their experiences have been mined. Searching for generalizations and patterns revealed by not just to one or two specific cases, but by a broad sample of counterinsurgency campaigns, the concept identifies those strategies and practices that have proven most effective, then tests them against the historical record. While every conflict has its own unique causes and conditions requiring tailored solutions, they also exhibit fundamental characteristics that remain constant and which should guide how particular solutions to specific problems may be best crafted. If there are no immutable laws or empirical formulas for counterinsurgency success, there exist certain basic principles and traits that have marked and will continue to mark successful campaigns. As with all types of warfare, history provides insights and guidance that cannot be ignored merely because present-day and future insurgencies may differ in their details from those of the past. Although starting from an historical baseline, this concept also includes careful examination of the strategic changes clearly occurring today and which will continue to affect the future. Transnational conflict and weapons proliferation, religious and ethnic extremism, and mushrooming urbanization have changed the landscape on which insurgencies are being fought. 4 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. The media and modern telecommunications greatly expand conflict zones; what might have been viewed as local problems just few years ago now assume regional and even international significance. Seemingly unrelated insurgent and terrorist groups coalesce, even if only in the virtual world, to provide support, exchange ideas and methods, and spread their violence. If insurgents once fought under charismatic leaders from remote bases using captured, externally supplied, or manufactured weapons to free their countries, they now fight as loosely organized networks with the latest technologies gained from the open market, operate from urban hideouts, and strike at regional and international stability. Suicide terrorism crosses borders and oceans with relative ease while the threat of weapons of mass destruction provides small groups with powers once preserved for nations. Genocide has become a weapon of war as insurgent goals have become more absolute and unyielding. No longer can an insurgency in a distant country be ignored as inconsequential. To do so risks global peace. To ensure continuity and lessen the intellectual turmoil that grips current concept development, this paper has incorporated current and emerging concepts being developed by US Joint Forces Command, the military services, and other US government agencies, as well as those of allies, especially the British, Canadians, and Australians. It includes new, but generally accepted, terminology and integrates concepts being developed and staffed within DoD and the US government. There seemed no need to try to rename or reinvent sound ideas developed elsewhere and already generally accepted as valid. Additionally, the concept makes no attempt to re-examine recent advances in urban operations tactics, techniques, and technologies. These tactical solutions remain valid within the wider concept this paper discusses. In order to test the concept in light of recent experiences and to gain additional insights from individuals, both military and civilian, with recent experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well from subject matter experts, the study was subjected to intense review from military concept developers, subject matter experts, and members of all military services, both in private sessions and during discussions held during the Expeditionary Warrior 06 series of conferences, cultural intelligence seminars, and the exercise itself; during the latter, it was briefed to the Small Wars panel, a group of senior military and civilian experts, both active duty and retired, from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, whose insights and comments have been incorporated. This concept seeks to build a framework for thinking about and, more important, conducting counterinsurgency in the 21st Century. In doing so, it defines the fundamental nature, traits, and strategy of insurgency, the effects urbanization has had on insurgency, and the principles and characteristics of successful (and unsuccessful) counterinsurgency campaigns. The concept then identifies the essential tasks that must be followed in order to successfully resolve insurgencies and those fundamental tasks necessary to achieve successful outcomes. Although broad in scope, it is based on the conviction that insurgencies exhibit certain fundamental traits regardless of specific situations or conditions. It challenges the premise that urban insurgencies fundamentally differ from others; in truth, insurgencies have become inextricably associated with urban areas to such an extent that to try to develop a strategic or operational concept that separates the two would skew reality. Much of this concept, therefore, makes the fundamental assumption that insurgencies will increasingly occur in populated areas, towns, and cities and that all counterinsurgencies of the future will require US forces to operate in urban areas. Nonetheless, it 5 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. also discusses, where necessary, the tactical and operational implications of the urbanization of insurgency. The development of operational doctrine, tactics, and technologies needed to increase our capabilities for conducting counterinsurgency operations in urban areas continues to make significant progress and will be essential components of any future counterinsurgency campaign. Insurgency Insurgency Defined The term insurgency conjures often widely disparate interpretations, suffering at the hands of both experts and pundits. While the definition may be intuitively evident to those directly involved in these conflicts, commonly accepted meanings remain elusive, with predictable conceptual confusion. Insurgency continues to be used interchangeably, and imprecisely, with irregular warfare, unconventional warfare, revolutionary warfare, guerrilla warfare and even terrorism. Insurgents, similarly, have been called guerrillas, terrorists, revolutionaries, extremists, and irregulars. In a way, the interchangeability of terms is understandable, given the diverse nature and adaptability of those who wage insurgency. These internecine conflicts involve local or regional insurgents who increasingly operate from inside cities and populated areas, employ guerrilla and terrorist tactics, espouse revolutionary and radical causes, pose asymmetric threats to modern conventional forces, and have a transnational reach that adds new dimensions to the understanding of insurgency. Additionally, the use of the term insurgency creates legal confusion, as it infers a level of legitimacy that can pose political problems to ruling governments and counterinsurgent forces. All this adds up to level of conceptual confusion that often clouds how insurgencies are understood and combated. The Department of Defense defines insurgency as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.”1 While succinct, this characterization has changed little over the past several decades, orients on military and security actions, and fails to reflect the wider scope and complexity of insurgencies today, especially their protracted nature and their political, economic, and social dimensions. With its emphasis on subversion and armed conflict, the current definition confines insurgency to the realm of military and security operations. For these reasons, the following expanded definition is offered, one that more accurately portrays the nature and scope of insurgency in the 21st Century: An insurgency is a protracted violent conflict in which one or more groups seek to overthrow or fundamentally change the political or social order in a state or region through the use of sustained violence, subversion, social disruption, and political action. Insurgency seeks radical change to the existing political or social order through the use of sustained violence and political disruption. It is a long-term form of warfare in which military 1 Joint Publication 1-02, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms dated 12 Apr 2001 (amended to 25 August 2005) 6 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. actions are carried out by guerrilla cells and terrorists, often targeting civilians and infrastructure. But guerrilla attacks and terrorism comprise only one element, and sometimes not the primary one, of an insurgency. More important than the violence of insurgency are its political, economic, and social components. These are at the heart of the conflict, both its causes and its effects. Instead of defeating armies, insurgents slowly chip away at the authority and legitimacy of the ruling government and, in many cases, the intervening power. Thus subversion, social disruption, and political action often become more important than violence, however spectacular or horrendous. The expanded definition of insurgency reflects the multi-faceted character of insurgency and firmly places insurgency within the political and social realm in which it resides. While, as Clausewitz asserts, war is a continuation of politics by other means, insurgency takes that idea to a new level; it does not distinguish between the two: for insurgents, war and politics are inseparable. The Nature of Insurgency As the definition states, insurgencies are highly complex, violent, protracted conflicts that seek fundamental political and social change. Because the goal is to overturn real or perceived maladies endemic to particular conditions and situations by employing a wide range of violent, political, social, and economic means to achieve that goal, insurgencies seem to defy simple categorization. Each insurgency reflects unique conditions, characteristics, and dynamics that set it apart and make simple solutions based on doctrinal formulas difficult if not impossible. Nonetheless, most share certain common traits. Insurgencies are largely internal conflicts waged by indigenous movements for political, economic, or social control of a particular state or region. While other states may support insurgents, the impetuous for change lies not with invasion from without, but uprising from within. As populations in failing states migrate to urban areas, the state’s inability to adequately address the squalor of slums and the impact of modernization exacerbate historical and current grievances. Insurgent movements that once originated in remote rural areas now breed in cities, relying on complex man-made terrain and the mass populations inside to sustain them. Able to draw from loosely connected networks, often located outside the conflict zones, for expertise, clandestine funding, and ideological support they have thus grown far less reliant on external states for material assistance. Additionally, insurgent movements motivated by radical ethno-nationalist and religious beliefs, and sure of the righteousness of their causes, increasingly turn to subversion, violence, and terrorism to intimidate highly vulnerable, urban populations and gain a level of “support” more akin to that normally associated with local criminal gangs than populist movements. As the 21st Century progresses, tightly controlled insurgencies based on rural unrest are giving way to loosely organized networks of extremists hiding in ethnic and religious enclaves of densely packed cities. Like those of the past, today’s insurgencies must employ asymmetric methods to achieve their goals. The existing regime or intervening power possesses the military, political, economic, and social resources normally held by a state, even a weak one. The insurgency must form and grow, systematically weakening the state’s grip on power. In contrast to interstate warfare, with its clear separations (even if not always observed in practice) between military forces and civilian populations, insurgency makes few such distinctions. Insurgents survive by not being seen and by fighting in subversive and shadowy groups that only show themselves momentarily, and then blend back into the surrounding physical and human terrain. However, if once insurgents took 7 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. refuge in remote areas and relied on external support, they now hide virtually in plain sight in populated and urban areas. Remaining in the urban shadows, operating in dispersed and compartmented cells, drawing sustenance and protection through the support, acquiescence, or intimidation of the populace, and carefully, but visibly, directing violence at civil and military targets, they gain strength and wear down their enemies. As urban areas continue to sprawl and become breeding grounds of discontent, insurgencies increasingly seek to control this key terrain, or at least prevent government and security forces from doing so. Insurgencies need not gain decisive battlefield advantage in these areas, they need only do so locally and often temporarily and keep from being tactically overwhelmed. The longer they remain a threat, the greater their chance for success. At their most basic level, and whatever their particular traits or causes, insurgencies reflect a complex, three-dimensional web of actions, structures and beliefs.2 Within these dimensions, and, more importantly, their interactions, can be found the causes and the cures for insurgency. Each dimension shapes, and is shaped by the other. They cannot be separated and addressed individually; to do so could, as has, led to disastrous results. Each must be understood both as part of a larger whole and in its relation to the unique conditions and circumstances of the conflict. In short, these dimensions offer a framework for analyzing and comprehending insurgencies and crafting effective counter-strategies, not a formula to be blindly applied. Actions. Actions consist of those events, behaviors, and acts that characterize and form the visual tapestry of insurgencies. They encompass those individual and group behaviors, large and small, of all those caught in an insurgency, be they insurgents, military and security forces, aid workers, local or national leaders, or the populace. The most obvious actions center on is the violence of insurgency, which can run from individual acts of intimidation to terrorist bombings to full-scale attacks. But that is only one element of many. Actions may consist of the retaliatory or repressive acts taken by a government, perhaps incited by the insurgents, that stokes further violence or the behaviors of police or political leaders that, over time, convince populations to support the insurgency. They may include the precipitous event that sparks a sudden outbreak of violence, such as firing into crowds during a rally. For insurgents, they include subversion, political infiltration, and economic sabotage on the part of insurgents. Because they can be planned and executed, and, more importantly, seen and often measured, actions tend to overshadow the other dimensions of insurgencies. In the end, however, actions, by themselves, represent the daily, largely tactical, aspects of insurgencies. Their strategic impact lies within the structures and beliefs comprising the much deeper roots of the conflict. Structures. Structures are the conditions that frame an insurgency. Such terms as stability, instability, infrastructure, economic development, humanitarian aid, and security describe structural elements of insurgencies. Insurgents attempt to tear down existing structures, exploit those that are repressive, discriminatory, or corrupt, and build new ones in their stead. In Iraq in late 2005, the key structural issues centered on developing an indigenous and effective security capability and the framing and adopting a viable constitution; these structures became critical 2 This discussion is drawn from recent concepts of conflict and conflict resolution, notably those found in C.R. Mitchell, The Structure of International Conflict, New York: St. Martin’s Press (1998) and Hugh Miall, et. al., Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers (1999). 8 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. centerpieces of the conflict, and ones which the insurgents seemed determined to disrupt and eventually destroy. Much of the Western approach to insurgency focuses on the Wilsonian principles of economic development and democratic institutions, two structural imperatives deemed necessary to preventing or ending insurgencies. Insurgents counter with attempts to build alternative (usually radical) structures and to create an environment of instability that prevents structural reform from taking hold. Islamic Extremists, for example, offer their own structural solution: a caliphate that restores past glories, establishes Koranic rule, and ends repressive political regimes in the Islamic world, all of which are structural options. Today, urbanization and its associated poverty, unemployment, and social inequities provide the structural backdrop to insurgencies in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. All these structures, be they political, economic, social, or security, form the essential physical and conditional battlefields over which insurgencies are fought, as well as the outcomes once they end. Beliefs. Beliefs comprise those attitudes, perceptions, prejudices, ideologies, worldviews, cultures, and social and individual identities that fuel insurgencies. These are the psychological and sociological imperatives that drive and are driven by actions and structures. Beliefs encompass more than just the conscious decision or willingness to side with one faction or the other, to support an insurgency or the government. Sometimes coined “hearts and minds”, this expression does not adequately portray this dimension of insurgency; it largely misses the complex nature of beliefs and tends to reduce them to a sort of inanimate, and controllable, constant. Instead, beliefs represent the preconceptions and mental filters that determine how individuals and groups perceive the actions and structures that surround them. The concept of beliefs must be understood within a deeper context that goes beyond conscious, and momentary, reactions to particular events or information and gets to the unconscious, often visceral, responses drawn not just from momentary reactions, but centuries of cultural interpretation. The success of such news agencies as Al Jazeera in shaping opinions of US actions has far less to do with how the messages are crafted than with the receivers of the messages. Beliefs reside the very heart of an insurgency. Insurgencies reflect the complex interaction between actions, structures, and beliefs. Each conflict combines them in different ways; which dimension is paramount depends on the situation and conditions of the particular conflict, and may even change over time. But none can be divorced from the others; each must be assessed and understood both individually and, more important, as part of larger whole in terms of both how they affect and how they are affected by the others. In each insurgency, the complex and unique interaction between actions, structures, and beliefs determines the path of the insurgency and dictates the outcome. To understand the nature of insurgency demands that one think three-dimensionally. The interactions between actions, structures, and beliefs are being transformed by urbanization. In the past several decades, populations in emerging and developing regions have shifted from rural areas where farming held sway, to increasingly squalid cities. Modernization, globalization, mass telecommunications, man-made and natural disasters, and new technologies are rapidly changing, some might argue assaulting, traditional societies. If this increased urbanization has provided central governments more power, it has also created conditions that greatly endanger them. Corruption, inadequate social services, overcrowding, threats to traditional religious and 9 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. ethnic beliefs, economic stagnation, and crime have combined to fragment societies. It should be little surprise that insurgencies and separatist movements in the past fifteen years have largely originated in urban areas and that the outcomes of these conflicts often have been decided in the cities, not the countryside. The ability of urbanization to greatly magnify and accelerate the interactions between actions, structures, and beliefs has come to characterize insurgency. Causes of Insurgency Debates over the causes of insurgencies often focus on a few identifiable (and, by implication, repairable) issues, usually related to modernization, globalization, poverty, or political ineptitude. In the United States, in particular, lack of democracy and poor economic development are seen as key risk factors for insurgency. Thomas Barnett talks of the destabilizing effects of states and regions unable to tap into globalization and its economic and political benefits.3 Others, such as Samuel Huntington4, cite the violent disruptiveness of competing cultures, embodied in religious and ethno-nationalism and exemplified by Islamist radicalism and al Qaeda. Still others focus on repression, terrorism, crime and corruption, and discrimination, actions that incite popular unrest and feed insurgency. Although all these explanations provide useful insights into the causes, they fall short of explaining the underlying dynamics that cause insurgencies to erupt. Insurgencies originate within often cloudy sets of conditions in which actions, structures and beliefs swirl and eventually explode into sustained violence. It is the interaction of many causes that produces insurgency, not the presence of just one or a few, however compelling they may appear. Structurally, insurgencies most often occur in poorly developed or inequitable political, social, or economic conditions. They may be exacerbated by oppressive or corrupt regimes, ethnic factionalism, lack of natural resources or disparities in their distribution, social stratification, or military occupation. The disruptions caused by modernization or globalization often highlight indigenous political and economic weaknesses. Urbanization, with its associated political and social inequities, has grown to be a critical factor in fostering unrest. Cities generate violent criminal and extremist enclaves that fester amid poverty, deprivation, discrimination, and overpopulation. Structural disparities become magnified and distorted by competing worldviews, historical myths, long-held social prejudices, and radicalism, especially those espousing ethnic or religious intolerance and cultural exclusivity as solutions to problems they blame, sometimes justifiably, on others. These, in turn, are fueled and ignited by the actions serving as catalysts for insurgency and violence, the most prevalent in recent years being state violence and repression against a particular segment of the population, economic exclusion either by existing governments or by one political or ethnic group against another, acts of corruption and crime that no longer can be tolerated, or even single acts, such as arrests, political assassinations or overreactions to protests. Sometimes, insurgencies erupt spontaneously following a particular event or series of events, as occurred in Iraq in the summer of 2003. Others may be choreographed by charismatic leaders who offer insurgency as an alternative to the current intolerable situation, as was the case of Mao and Castro, and is now with Osama Bin Laden. By Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the 21 st Century, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (2004) 4 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Touchstone Books (1996) 3 10 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. themselves, however, even charismatic individuals are not sufficient causes of insurgency, and attempts by counterinsurgent forces to focus on these individuals can be both misguided and often counterproductive. Instead, insurgency reflects a complex interaction of actions, structures, and beliefs that, combined, form a witch’s brew of violence. This is not to say that one or a few factors, conditions, or individuals may not be more important than others. Each insurgency reflects particular deep-seated and often intractable maladies that fester and eventually can no longer be tolerated. Which dominates within them depends on the unique characteristics and conditions and the interactions between actions, structures, and beliefs. But these conditions and causes must be stirred, and that requires a far more complex interaction. In the end, it is the mixing of a host of factors- long term and immediate- that ultimately leads to the outbreak of an insurgency. Underlying, deep-seated issues, impelled to violence by the complex interaction of actions, structures, beliefs, feed on instability. Unstable states or regions, unwilling or unable to address their endemic problems, form an essential precondition for insurgency. Failed or failing states, often struggling to recover from bloody civil or interstate wars, cultivate the political, economic, and social volatility in which deep-seated maladies fester and then erupt into violence. Within cities and populated areas, instability feeds on poverty, crime, ethnically exclusive enclaves, and corruption. Unfortunately, instability too often is viewed solely as a structural problem related to economic development, democratic institutions, or social equality, perhaps because such conceptualizations lend themselves to concrete solutions. And while structural problems may indeed be critical pathways to insurgency they reside within a larger, three-dimensional maelstrom of dynamic factors that collectively define an unstable state or region. In the end, unstable structures may well be necessary causes of insurgencies, but they are not sufficient in themselves. How that instability manifests itself in actions and beliefs determines whether or not an insurgency will erupt and the nature of the conflict once underway. Historically, the most intractable and bloody insurgencies have been rooted in extremist and exclusionary beliefs about identity, especially ethno-nationalism, cultural exclusiveness, religion, or a combination of the three. Individual and group identity, and oft-associated radically held worldviews, attitudes, and historical myths (particularly if they involve past tragedies), rarely leave room for compromise. In those states or regions where instability reins amid state corruption or failure and includes maltreatment or inequities directed at particular ethnic or other identity groups (or, equally important, are perceived to do so), insurgencies, once begun, become bloody, no-holds barred, inflexible conflicts characterized by apparently indiscriminate violence directed at not just security forces, but entire segments of the population. The excesses of the Algerian terrorists in the 1950s, the Tamil suicide attackers in the 1990s, and the Sunni extremists in Iraq today serve as testimony to the character of such insurgencies. Equally tragic, they often lead to counterinsurgency tactics that can be just as ruthless and intolerant. Urbanization has exacerbated these extremist trends. As traditional societies confront the inevitable changes of modernization, they become ever more radicalized as they search for solutions to the squalid conditions, corruption, crime, and social and political change represented by life in many of the cities of the developing world. Poverty combines with inadequate services, lack of education, exclusion, crime, and often corrupt government to create situations in which single acts or individuals can incite violence. Additionally, heavily populated areas provide many 11 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. of the resources for insurgencies once thought only to exist in remote areas or from external resources. Large numbers of disaffected youth, many jobless and lacking opportunities, provide ready recruiting grounds for insurgent movements. Small arms proliferation, especially in postconflict regions, offers steady supplies of weapons. Segregated and often insulated religious and ethnic groups who inhabit cities offer protection, support, and hidden mobility. The Intifada in Palestine and the ability of insurgents to move and operate with relative impunity in Iraq’s cities provide two examples. In Iraq, urban areas such as Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah and Basra are centers of insurgency and unrest, built on the already existing political and social instability and spurred by radical religious leaders and endemic xenophobia. When looking at causes of future unrest and violence, increasingly the focus must be on the conditions that exist in the world’s growing urban areas. While in the past, insurgencies grew among rural peasants, they now mature among the world’s displaced and vulnerable urban populations. Figure (1) offers a visual framework for assessing the nature and causes of insurgency. It should not be viewed as a static representation, in which a menu of actions, structures, and beliefs offers a template for analyzing a particular insurgency. Instead, it should be seen as a dynamic illustration of the complex combinations of the many factors and conditions that can lead to and sustain insurgency. The elements listed under each dimension serve only as examples; they may be modified and added to depending on the particular situations and conditions encountered. Key to understanding this framework is the interaction of actions, structures, and beliefs. IT is the three-dimensional dynamics of these interactions that shape the causes and nature of insurgencies, and, as will be seen, the strategies for countering them. Causes of Insurgency Competing Beliefs Identities and Culture Worldviews Symbols Opinions and Perceptions Historical Narratives Complex interaction of structures, beliefs, and actions that leads to violence, especially during political, economic, and social instability. Unstable State or Region Unacceptable Structures Catalytic Actions Ineffective Authority Urbanization Military Occupation Natural Resources Modernization Poverty Social Stratification State Violence Intervention Deprivation Repression Corruption Discrimination Crime Figure (1) 12 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Insurgency Strategy Nearly 25% of insurgencies in the past century overthrew the existing political or social order; another 16%, while not gaining all their objectives, forced settlements that addressed at least some of the underlying issues.5 Strategic approaches adapted to unique conditions; nonetheless certain fundamental patterns emerged that have framed how insurgencies have been, and will likely continue to be conducted. Early in the century, Russian Bolsheviks under Lenin postulated a strategy based on careful cultivation of an elite cadre of revolutionaries and subversion of the existing political and social power structure as precursors to successful insurgency. Built around urban workers, the strategy sought a sort of coup de main in which the ruling elite would be quickly overthrown, but only after exhaustive political preparations undermined it. Notably, Lenin did not envision a lengthy war of attrition. Mao Tse-tung, while also laying the essential political and social groundwork, advocated a strategy of protracted rural guerrilla warfare, using a three-phased approach, that moved from organization of political cadres and small guerilla bands to what he called “mobile warfare”, which called for widespread guerrilla warfare to confound and wear away the enemy to, once the enemy had been sufficiently weakened by political, social, and military attrition, decisive conventional warfare. A highly flexible strategy that emphasized prolonged political and social action to gain popular support and undermine the current regime, with military operations largely in a supporting role, Mao has too often been misconstrued, with his phases templated by counterinsurgency analysts in search of formulas for victory. Ho Chi Minh modified Mao’s approach to meet the circumstances in Vietnam, combining insurgent and conventional operations into a political-military strategy anchored on the support of the rural population and integrated military units able to move between guerrilla and conventional warfare. Like Mao, he anchored his strategy on careful cultivation of a popular base of support, but was more willing to employ local terrorism to induce it. Castro and his lieutenant, Che Guevara, eschewed the need for political and social mobilization before conducting military operations. Instead, their foci strategy emphasized violence as a precursor to popular support, inciting an uprising once the weaknesses of the government became apparent. The foci strategy, like that of Mao and Ho, emphasized establishment of remote bases in regions inaccessible to conventional military forces. Carlos Marighella, the Brazilian revolutionary, adapted Castro’s ideas to the cities, believing that urban terrorism would prompt harsh retaliations from security forces, thus alienating the populations and leading to a general uprising. In the Middle East, a similar strategic approach emerged, first in Algeria in the 1950s and later in Palestine, but one that sought to influence world opinion in hopes of gaining international support and thus force the occupying forces to withdraw. The loosely networked terrorist insurgencies that have emerged in recent years molded new technologies to this approach, especially in terms of communications and terrorist capabilities, to gain international attention (and often support), influence and mobilize populations, and strike at enemies both inside and outside the co0nflict zones. Today’s insurgencies are more akin to the foci approach in their use of violence, while adopting (sometimes consciously) the urban terrorism advocated by Carlos to gain world attention and mobilize populations. Each of these strategic approaches reflected the particular demands and requirements of the conditions in which the insurgents found themselves. Insurgent strategies varied with the specific 5 Based on statistical and case study analysis of 58 insurgencies in the 20 th Century. 13 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. conditions and situations in which they occurred. Additionally, insurgents continually adapted to changing circumstances and the enemies they confronted. Nevertheless, over the course of the 20th Century, certain common traits and strategic pathways emerged that continue to be at the heart of insurgency strategies today and likely will continue to in the future. Most fundamental, insurgencies prey on and exploit deep-seated issues and the complex interplay between them. As earlier stated, insurgencies are symptoms, not drivers, of much deeper illnesses. Neither the violence of the insurgency, however horrific, nor the rhetoric of the insurgents, often incomprehensible, should mask the reality of the causes that underpin them, even if many insurgent groups appear to be less interested in redressing grievances than making the most of them. Insurgents fight for reasons that are often valid and which resonate in the conflict zones, and sometimes well beyond them. Admitting this fundamental truth provides no more legitimacy to an insurgent movement than poverty does to violent criminals. However the insurgents may be viewed, and whatever their methods, the underlying causes will eventually have to be addressed if the insurgency is to be resolved. Insurgencies exploit these causes to gain recognition and popular support, to discredit their opponents, and to lend credence to their activities; and many are genuine reflections of existing problems demanding resolution. Ignoring them only reinforces the insurgency’s appeal. Exploiting these causes, insurgencies strive to undermine the existing political, economic, or social order. Their objective is to loosen the grip of the ruling authorities and their security and military forces, as well as those of any intervening or occupying power, by creating uncertainty, demonstrating how ineffective the current political, social, and economic order is, and subverting any efforts the counterinsurgent forces may make to address underlying causes. Guerrilla attacks, sabotage, civil disorder, and intimidation of the civil population create instability and uncertainty, while local cadres, and terrorist and guerrilla cells, create a parallel, shadow political and economic structure to fill the void. All the while, rumors, propaganda, and competing ideologies prey on pre-existing attitudes, prejudices, cultural biases, and fear to create a climate of distrust, uncertainty, and fear that supports the insurgency. Some theories of insurgency equate this use of beliefs to gaining and maintaining popular support. Such an explanation is far too simplistic, however, and largely based on Western misunderstanding of the Maoist concept of insurgency. Much more than popular support, insurgency seeks to establish a moral ascendancy that, either through persuasion or coercion, ensures that, at a minimum, the population does not turn against the insurgents and if not willingly, at least through intimidation, remains passive or provides grudging support. In most conflicts, the majority of the population attempts to remain clear of the conflict; such detachment works in the favor of the insurgency. For that reason, insurgencies, especially in recent years, tend to resort to unconstrained violence, at least when measured in terms of international norms of armed conflict. This should not be confused with random or indiscriminate violence, for insurgent attacks are both purposeful and select in their intent, even if often horrific and apparently unconcerned with civilian deaths. But insurgent violence rarely conforms to the constraints levied on conventional military forces and police, who, by law, both international and domestic, must abide by basic humanitarian standards. Insurgent violence often will target the population in an attempt to intimidate, undermine morale, or discredit the ruling government. It may also specifically strike at particular individuals and groups, a strategy seen increasingly in ethno-nationalist and religious conflicts. 14 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. In addition, it may be directed at economic or political structures to prevent them from being rebuilt or developed. As insurgencies increasingly are conducted in urban areas, the potential for spectacular violence also increases. In the past three decades, insurgency violence has targeted populated areas, terrorizing and cowing the citizenry and largely neutralizing the highly destructive, but too often indiscriminate, weaponry of modern armies. Global terrorism added a new, transnational dimension, the shock effects reverberating not only in the immediate vicinity of the attack, but across a much wider audience. Terrorism’s reliance on ever more stunning and bloody attacks in order to gain media attention attests to its primary aim. Insurgent violence, whatever its tactical objective and however apparently random, nearly always seeks to influence attitudes, perceptions, and will, locally, regionally, and globally. It is unconstrained in a legal, and often accepted moral sense, but hardly imprecise. Insurgents seek to overcome the numerical, technological, and organizational advantages normally held by military and security counterinsurgency forces by isolating small detachments and striking quickly. Ambushes, improvised explosive devices, kidnappings, apparently random bombings, and selective shootings, for example, prove extremely difficult to combat and can be morally and physically debilitating to the victims. When directed at military or security forces, such tactics incite security forces to overreact, wear away morale, provide weapons and equipment that may be left behind or captured, and keep the counterinsurgency effort offbalance. Rarely will insurgents attempt decisive tactical victory in open battle; to do so invites disaster. Quite often casualties inflicted on counterinsurgent forces may actually be relatively low, if continuous. Despite the constant attrition, military casualties rarely compare to those sustained in conventional battles, let alone campaigns or wars. In fact, insurgencies today, having moved into populated areas, are changing the equations of dead and wounded. Military forces suffer far less than civilian populations. The rates of American casualties in Iraq, for example, remains at less than one half that suffered during the conventional combat leading to the fall off Baghdad.6 In contrast, civilian casualties have grown exponentially as terrorist attacks in urban areas take a horrific toll. The point is not to minimize the danger to or the sacrifices of American troops, but to emphasize that the effects of insurgent attacks are cumulative, and intended to wear away popular will and polarize the Iraqis rather than decisively defeat security forces in battle. Where once Mao cautioned about such tactics, insurgents now embrace them. The intentional targeting of civilians in populated areas intimidates populations and leaders, creates instability, and strikes at government control. While the carnage they inflict may be unconstrained in its tactical effects and in terms of international norms, it nonetheless reflects a carefully crafted campaign of purposeful violence aimed at the actions, structures, and beliefs of the enemy forces and regime and the wider population, as well as the regional and international audience that modern telecommunications have made participants in the insurgency. Insurgent strategies are protracted ones. Few if any, insurgencies possess the capabilities necessary for quick, decisive victory. Instead, their only hope rests in continuing the insurgency for a long as possible, wearing away at their enemies. To this strategic imperative must be added the sobering reality that insurgencies often reflect such deep-seated issues, especially, as earlier discussed, those associated with ethno-nationalism and identities, that they prove to be highly Based on statistics compiled by Anthony Cordesman, “US and Coalition Casualties and Costs of War in Iraq,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 21, 2005. 6 15 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. resistant to defeat or resolution. Insurgents may be suppressed, but unless they are eradicated or their demands met, they rarely voluntarily give up the fight. If insurgencies based on ethnonationalist or religious causes tend to be the most intense and intractable, they also tend to be the most successful, perhaps because they involve issues that cannot be compromised. In particular, these have also often been insurgencies seeking to overthrow the rule of a colonial or occupying power or attempting to secede from the rule of a different ethnic or religious group. More than one insurgency has flared, been suppressed by security forces, and then reemerged a few years later to carry on the struggle. Finally, and a relatively new development, control of urban areas has become a key element of insurgent strategies. Unlike the insurgencies of the post-World War II era, in which remote sanctuaries provided safety to insurgents (with the notable, and perhaps prescriptive, examples of such conflicts as in Brazil and Algiers), urban areas have become insurgent centers of gravity. Not only do they provide sustenance and enable terrorists and guerrillas to plan operations in relative safety, they are the breeding grounds for many of the underlying causes of unrest and thus form the essential political, social, and economic battlespace that must be controlled. This does not mean insurgents must physically or continually occupy a city or town; they merely have to make doing so untenable for government and security forces. Through apparently random attacks on heavily populated areas (such as markets or religious sites), police stations, and infrastructure, insurgents create and sustain instability. Additionally, they need only intimidate urban neighborhoods through threats and occasional assassinations to ensure needed support and anonymity. In Iraq, insurgents play a sort of cat and mouse game with security forces, moving in and out of urban areas at will, creating instability and intimidating populations and police while striking at key government facilities. Cities like Ramadi, Baghdad, and Karbala have become urban cancers that continue to fester and seem to defy efforts to cure them. Insurgency Strategy Beliefs Three-dimensional merging of actions, structures, and beliefs that wears away the will of an enemy. Revolutionary Ideology Fear and Uncertainty Culture and Identity Attitudes and Perceptions Opinion and Rumor Exploit Deep-Seated Issues Undermine the Enemy Employ Unconstrained Violence Conduct Protracted Conflict Control Urban Areas Actions Structures Guerrilla Attacks Terrorism Sabotage Civil Disorder Intimidation Crime Propaganda Local Cadres Shadow Government Terrorist Cells ‘Military’ Units External Support Figure (2) 16 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. In successful insurgencies, these components are superimposed on the underlying causes and dimensions of insurgency, forming a complex strategy that addresses the particular circumstances and conditions of the conflict. Strategic approaches may thus differ, and have in the past, as witnessed by the differences between Mao’s and Castro’s methods, for example, yet retain a common framework. Figure (2), expands the earlier graphic to illustrate the essential elements of an insurgency strategy. In the end, it is the ability of insurgents to seamlessly combine the three by exploiting deep-seated issues, undermining their enemies, employing unconstrained but purposeful violence, protracting the conflict until their enemies are no longer psychologically, of not physically, capable of continuing, and, perhaps most profound in terms of changing realities, control heavily populated areas that results in insurgent victory. Counterinsurgency Counterinsurgency Defined The characteristics, nature, causes, and dynamics of counterinsurgency largely mirror-image those of insurgency. As with insurgency, the term counterinsurgency suffers from imprecision and confusion. It has, in the past several years, been used interchangeably with stability operations, foreign internal defense, couterguerrilla operations, and, most recently, countering irregular threats. In addition, it has been included as a subcomponent of small wars, unconventional warfare, asymmetric warfare, low-intensity conflict, and military operations other than warfare. While intuitively, most who conduct any or all of these types of operations know counterinsurgency when they experience it, each of these terms denotes a distinctly, if sometimes interrelated, type of conflict or military strategy that, while perhaps a component, does not define counterinsurgency as a whole. For example, small wars encompass a wide range of military operations that may include counterinsurgency, but also interventions, peacekeeping operations, crisis actions, and irregular warfare. On the other hand, counterinsurgency may encompass or, conversely, be a component of, depending on the strategic situation, efforts to combat terrorism, suppress guerrillas, restore security and stability, assist with foreign internal defense, and reconstruct post-conflict societies. It is easy to see where confusion may begin. Because of these interrelationships, a clear definition of the term counterinsurgency becomes necessary. The current Department of Defense definition of counterinsurgency reads as follows: “Those military, paramilitary, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.”7 While more expansive than the doctrinal definition of insurgency in its acknowledgement of political and economic components (see page 3), its emphasis on defeating an enemy betrays a military bias. Additionally, it does little to aid in understanding the nature of counterinsurgency or its expected end state. Given the nature, characteristics, and strategy of insurgency, any definition of counterinsurgency must acknowledge the complexity of the conflict in which it is engaged. For these reasons, the following definition of counterinsurgency is offered. 7 Joint Publication 1-02, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms dated 12 Apr 2001 (amended to 25 August 2005) 17 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Counterinsurgency is an integrated set of political, economic, social, and security measures intended to end and prevent the recurrence of armed violence, create and maintain stable political, economic, and social structures, and resolve the underlying causes of an insurgency in order to establish and sustain the conditions necessary for lasting stability. The expanded definition both acknowledges the causes and dynamics of insurgency and the three-dimensional complexity of dealing with them and places military and security operations firmly within the wider context of the conflict. Perhaps most important, not only does it define what counterinsurgency is, it also establishes how successful counterinsurgencies must end. In that sense, it is a prescriptive definition, and necessarily so; understanding counterinsurgency must begin with comprehending not only its components, but its ultimate objective. Counterinsurgency Strategy Of the counterinsurgencies conducted during the past century, nearly 40% succeeded in either suppressing the insurgents to a point that proved manageable for local security forces or ending the insurgency altogether. In general, two strategic approaches have been taken. The first, a predominantly military one, focuses on the military defeat of the insurgents. While occasionally successful in ending violence, this approach requires both overwhelming force and a willingness to apply extreme measures against not only the insurgents, but the population as a whole. Most result in repressive and authoritarian regimes; many installed by military coup. While the insurgents are crushed or, more likely, reduced to criminal levels, the conditions that spawned them remain largely unaddressed. Counterinsurgency becomes an exercise in military force and security. Examples of this type of approach include Argentina in the late 1970s and Guatemala during the same period. While in both cases the insurgents were all but eliminated, the political and social repercussions continue to resound. Often, as was the case in Ireland in 1916 and more recently, in Palestine today, military solutions, even if effective in the short term, inflame the insurgency once it recovers. The second strategic approach, and the one that proves most successful at achieving long-term stability, seeks to resolve the conflict in all its dimensions. In this approach, counterinsurgency is not about defeat of an armed enemy; rather, its primary objective centers on establishing lasting stability in a state or region. Lasting stability, however, does not just mean that the actions of the insurgents have been suppressed or defeated; that is only part of the challenge. It includes longterm solutions to both the symptoms, and, more important, the causes of the insurgency. It requires violence and subversion be brought to a level manageable by local security and police forces; political, economic, and social structures be robust and mature enough to address the problems that gave rise to the insurgency; and beliefs be transformed from the hatred, mistrust, and prejudices that fueled the conflict. In short, the root causes underpinning the insurgency must be addressed and solved. Victory resides not simply in the defeat of insurgent forces; it must be understood as a much broader outcome that reinstates and then maintains stability, precluding the insurgency from reemerging not because its fighters have been killed or suppressed, but because the conditions for an insurgency no longer exist. If an insurgency is caused by actions, structures, and beliefs that feed on instability, then counterinsurgency must combat those causes in all their dimensions. 18 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Achieving success in counterinsurgency may be one of the ultimate paradoxes; successful counterinsurgency often means meeting the demands of the insurgents, or, more accurately, the causes they espouse, without giving in to their methods. This should not be taken to mean that insurgents must be appeased or tolerated, nor should their methods be legitimized. But the actions of insurgents should never overshadow the underlying structures and beliefs that nurture them. While the first may need to be defeated, the latter must be resolved if counterinsurgency is to succeed. Addressing those causes must not be seen as capitulation; rather, it should be viewed as a realistic and effective strategic approach to ending the insurgency without legitimizing the insurgents’ methods. Examples of this approach include the British in Malaya in the 1950s and the US-supported counterinsurgency in El Salvador in the 1980s. In both cases, the insurgents were marginalized, and ultimately co-opted, by a strategy that addressed the political, social, and economic causes of the insurgency. Successful counterinsurgency strategies tend to last, on average, more than nine years. During that period significant military and security efforts are required to keep the insurgent threat at bay while the underlying causes can be addressed. Even when an insurgency has been largely resolved, continuous and sustained effort may be needed to ensure it does not reemerge and that political, economic, and social conditions and attitudes sustain stability. Like a chronic disease, insurgencies and the conditions that caused them may never be fully eradicated, and thus the need for continuous vigilance. Notably, successful counterinsurgencies rarely involved negotiated settlements. However, this should not be taken to mean that insurgents must be forcefully eliminated or that attempts to negotiate with insurgent groups are fruitless. On the contrary, while formal agreements between the state and an insurgent movement may be rare, quite often, political accommodations result in insurgent groups either being co-opted or, more likely, ending armed conflict and becoming part of the legitimate political process. Thus, amnesty programs, formation of new political parties that include the insurgents, or at least the groups they represent, and inclusion of former insurgent leaders in local and national political processes are as much a part of counterinsurgency strategies as are military operations. As insurgencies move into urban areas, control of populated and urban areas becomes imperative. But unlike for insurgents, for counterinsurgency forces- both civil and militarycontrol must be continuous and all-encompassing. It also must be visible, requiring continuous presence of security and police forces to ensure safety and prevent intimidation. Control also demands provision of all essential services and utilities as well as freedom of movement, the latter a dual-edged requirements that can also allow insurgents mobility. Finally, control also must be psychological; the populations must not only see it, they must also accept it. They must perceive that their needs and requirements are being met; that the causes of the insurgency no longer apply to their neighborhoods, towns, and cities. This can be extremely difficult in divided societies or when the security situation demands temporarily repressive measures, but without that acceptance (which, as will be discussed in a later paragraph, does not necessarily mean popular support), but for a counterinsurgency, without control of the populated areas, success will be difficult if not impossible. 19 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Successful Counterinsurgency Transformed Beliefs Popular Acceptance Secure Identities Changed Attitudes Reconciliation Lasting Stability Rebuilt Structures Sustained Action Stable Authority Rule of Law Social Services Professional Security Forces Restored Infrastructure Economic Growth Open Media Security Operations Law Enforcement Intelligence Operations Economic Development Political Processes Education and Training Capacity Building Figure (3) Figure (3) illustrates the objectives and outcomes of a successful counterinsurgency strategy. Note that, like insurgency, it is three-dimensional and interactive. Actions must be sustained and not only seek out and destroy insurgent militants, but also address, on a daily basis, the basic needs of the population and the underlying causes of the insurgency. Social, political, and economic structures must be rebuilt while the beliefs that gave rise to the insurgency must be transformed so that distrust and hatred no longer dominate. The ultimate objective of counterinsurgency strategy is lasting stability, but not one that is imposed and maintained by force or repression. Stability must provide the structures necessary to peacefully address issues that may continue to arise; those structures must be understood, institutionalized, and fully accepted by the population, who now feel they benefit from them. The following paragraphs outline the Essential Tasks and critical enablers of a successful counterinsurgency strategy that, over time, can achieve that stability. Essential Tasks An effective counterinsurgency strategy consists of several Essential Tasks, each of which defines a set of necessary conditions and associated tasks for achieving them and that, when integrated, provide a pathway for resolving the insurgency.8 Essential Tasks determine objectives, integrate tasks and actions, and enable decision-makers to assess progress and change direction if necessary. Rather than being conducted sequentially, they are mutually supporting and integrated; they can not be neatly phased or performed exclusively by particular types of units or organizations. None exist in isolation; the effects of the actions taken in each should be 8 This discussion and the Essential Tasks to follow are derived from empirical research into past counterinsurgency campaigns. Notably, they also reflect and parallel the Essential Task Matrix set forth in US Joint Forces Command J7 Pamphlet, US Government Draft Planning Framework for Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Conflict Transformation published in December 2005. 20 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. mutually supporting. For example, combat operations not only restore security, they promote stability, support governance, and not be conducted in such a manner as to hinder reconciliation between factions. An operational component is rarely purely military or civil; it is an integrated combination of both. The idea that responsibilities for certain Essential Tasks or associated tasks can be neatly separated between military forces and civilian agencies do not reflect the practices of the past nor will likely be those of the future. Counterinsurgency, like insurgency, is too complex an undertaking for such demarcations. The following Essential Tasks are most often associated with successful counterinsurgencies and offer an essential framework for planning and executing counterinsurgency strategies. The tasks listed under each are those that comprise the essential elements that must be carried out and have historically been carried out, either wholly or partially, by military forces involved in counterinsurgencies. The tasks lists should not be considered exhaustive; additionally, each task consists of numerous subtasks that are not listed here and which must be assumed based on the particular circumstances of an insurgency. Additionally, they represent those tasks that have most often been carried out, It should also be noted that, while these Essential Tasks apply, in general, to any insurgency environment or set of conditions, they must be adapted to the specific situations in which they will be applied. Failure to do so will result in seriously, and perhaps fatally, flawed counterinsurgency strategies. Establish and Maintain Security. This Essential Task consists of three interrelated subcomponents: restoring security; disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration; and maintaining stability. In most counterinsurgency strategies, restoring security initially assumes primary importance, particularly in those cases where insurgent attacks or the effects of violence pose human security risks or threaten the existence of the government. Restoring security, however, encompasses more than just defeating or eliminating guerrillas and terrorists or the forcible imposition of order. It encompasses all actions taken to defeat insurgents, end factional violence, suppress civil unrest, and eliminate criminal activity. In addition, it includes measures taken to provide for the immediate physical welfare of the population and its essential institutions and infrastructure, to include providing humanitarian relief and restoration, protection, and provision of essential political, legal, economic, and social services. Measures associated with restoring security will be conducted in urban environments, requiring improved capabilities and training as well as special considerations and competencies for both the use of force and for enforcing the law. Restoring security in urban areas can be extremely difficult, and tends to be a manpower intensive process that places as great an emphasis on basic small-unit skills as on technologies. It also places a premium on training, situational and cultural awareness, precision engagement, and restraint in the use of force. Insurgents must be separated from and rooted out of populated areas, a difficult and dangerous process. Lavish use of firepower, while perhaps tactically effective if insurgents can be positively identified and located, can easily lead to humanitarian and political consequences that pose strategic dilemmas. Once cleared of insurgents, urban areas must be continuously patrolled in order to keep insurgents out; these operations require the most of small unit leaders operating in dispersed elements and consistently able to make decisions of operational and strategic impact. This places a premium on rapidly disseminated intelligence, reliable communications in urban environments, and decentralized command and control. Small 21 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. units, isolated by buildings and narrow streets and surrounded by apathetic or even hostile populations, can be highly vulnerable and must have the tools, at the lowest levels, to deal with unforeseen situations. The bloody actions of Marines in Ramadi in April 2004 attest to the difficulties of maintaining security in urban areas. Many of the current tactical and operational initiatives being developed by the services and Joint Forces Command are addressing these challenges and need little further amplification here. In fact, counterinsurgency and urban operations have come to be nearly inseparable. In addition to tactical and operational prowess, however, restoring security also demands the capability to simultaneously re-establish and maintain basic humanitarian services and to shield the population, as much as possible, from the effects of the insurgency. Civil-military operations, to include temporary governance if necessary, as well as supporting relief efforts will be critical components of urban security operations. Restoring security is as much a humanitarian imperative as it is a combat one. To accomplish this strategic task requires the following general operational tasks be accomplished. Conduct combat, security, peace enforcement, and civil disturbance operations. Conduct distributed urban combat and security operations. Combat terrorism. Provide physical security to individuals and groups. Secure and protect key political, military, economic, and cultural sites and infrastructure. Secure and protect populated areas. Suppress crime and conduct law enforcement operations. Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration are an integral component of establishing and maintaining security and consist of a range of actions and tasks intended to collect and dispose of the weapons and ammunition that inevitably litters conflict zones and disarm (the process of collecting and disposing of weapons), demobilize, and reintegrate former insurgents and combatants, as well as security operations intended to prevent the reintroduction and proliferation of small arms. Disarmament and demobilization of armed factions, former insurgents and soldiers, and controlling the ownership and use of weapons by general population is an essential step in ensuring that the ruling government maintains a monopoly of the use and means of force. Disarmament does not necessarily equate to collection and disposal of all weapons in an area or country; rather, it establishes control over the possession and movement of small arms and light weapons, as well as ammunition and explosives. Disarmament requires clear sets of regulations and laws for owning weapons, as well as means of enforcing those laws. Weapons smuggling can become a lucrative business during insurgencies and must be suppressed, thus borders and key ports of entry must be secured. Equally important, captured and former insurgents or armed forces must not only be disarmed, they must be detained, processed, and eventually demobilized and reintegrated into society. Reintegration is an essential step in ensuring they assume productive roles in building economic and political structures and, more important, transforming beliefs. This is especially important in post-conflict situations in which the presence of weapons and former military personnel can destabilize conditions. In addition, in most conflict zones, unexploded ordnance poses a significant threat to both security forces and the poilsulation; these must be found and neutralized. Finally, a key component of disarmament includes rearmament of police, security forces, or local militias in a manner that provides for 22 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. local security and doers not assist in arming or rearming insurgents. Operational tasks associated with disarmament and demobilization include the following. Locate, identify, and eliminate arms and ammunition stockpiles. Seize illegal weapons and arms caches. Prevent the importation or smuggling of weapons into the conflict zone. Conduct voluntary disarmament and weapons registration programs to collect, secure, control, and eliminate small arms and light weapons and other associated military equipment. Disarm and demobilize individuals and groups. Develop and enforce arms control measures. Conduct ordnance disposal and demining operations. Identify, detain, and process insurgents, former soldiers, and fighters. Reintegrate former soldiers and fighters and released insurgents. Rearm and reequip police and security forces and local militias. Operations associated with maintaining stability seek to create and maintain an environment in which governance, political and economic development, and rebuilding may occur without threat of political turmoil, violence, crime, or social conflict. Stability not only requires that insurgents be neutralized, it also encompasses establishment of local governance and security capacities, prevention of crime, resettlement or return of populations to former combat zones, freedom of movement for commerce and travel, protecting human rights, and establishing civil authority. Because the key battlegrounds of insurgency are increasingly urban, the ability of counterinsurgency strategy to establish physical control over densely populated areas and then address the infrastructure, crime, governance, and health issues that plague them in conflict zones will be crucial. While insurgents create instability simply by moving in and out of urban areas, conducting attacks on key facilities, or intimidating indigenous police forces and populations, those engaged in counterinsurgency do not have that flexibility. To effectively maintain stability, counterinsurgent forces must control urban areas by providing continuous security, sustaining political and legal capacities, restoring social and sustain civil service, and addressing social problems in the urban areas. The population must see and believe that the security forces and civil authorities are both legitimate and permanent. Maintaining stability is a continuous process that strives to ensure daily lives are no longer threatened by insurgent violence and warfare and assume relative normalcy. Most important, successfully maintaining stability in urban areas requires an integrated effort of military and security forces, government agencies, local authorities, the many private and non-governmental agencies and organizations that so often operate in conflict zones, and, most important, the local populace. It is a continuous and long-term set of tasks that can often be frustrating and dangerous. Maintaining stability includes the following subtasks. Conduct peacekeeping, security, and law enforcement operations. Conduct urban security operations. Provide public safety. Establish effective local political and legal capacities. Train and support indigenous security and police forces. 23 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Neutralize criminal gangs and armed groups that continue to create instability. Rebuild, maintain, and sustain essential services. Transport and secure food, water, medicines, and other essential commodities. Secure borders and key entry/transshipment points. Ensure freedom of movement and transportation of commercial goods. Protect civil and human rights. Provide human security, to include establishing and operating refugee camps. Conduct humanitarian assistance operations. Support government, NGO, and IGO humanitarian relief efforts. Provide Humanitarian Relief and Essential Services. This is the process by which both military and civil authorities, as well as local institutions, international organizations, and NGOs provide immediate relief and rebuild damaged and destroyed critical infrastructure while fostering and supporting local and national capacities to maintain necessary commercial, transportation, utility, communications, and social service networks and capabilities. If properly carried out, this task should also enhance the effectiveness of security forces by minimizing vulnerability of the civil population and reducing the negative, and often destructive, effects of military operations. Reconstruction should be the first step in establishing long term stability, economic development, and transitioning to local and national governance. Like other Essential Tasks, providing for social well-being begins in the populated areas or with services and infrastructures that affect them, and must include not only repairing or building physical structures, but securing them as well. In urban areas, even small amounts of damage can substantially affect large populations; losses of electricity, water, sewage, or other essential services can disrupt the lives of thousands or millions of people. Critical to effective reconstruction is the need to carefully coordinate programs with the needs of local and regional authorities; effectively carried out, reconstruction should be largely a “self-help” process. Subtasks associated with conducting this task include the following. Provide humanitarian relief; operate refugee camps. Provide emergency services and operations. Establish and rebuild local medical capabilities. Support NGO/IGO humanitarian efforts. Ensure freedom of movement; enable local commerce. Protect human and civil rights. Perform civic action and reconstruction projects. Repair, rebuild, and maintain critical infrastructure, to include bridges, roads, airfields, railroads, dams, utilities, communications, social services, sanitation, and medical facilities. Construct housing; rebuild political, cultural and religious centers. Foster local and regional rebuilding. Foster and support local reconstruction projects. Provide emergency services and operations. Establish and rebuild local medical capabilities. 24 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Provide expertise, training, support, and staffing for key capabilities, especially medical, engineering, utilities, transportation, and logistics. Rebuild or reestablish political, social, cultural, and religious capacities and centers. Open and provide security along commercial and transportation routes. Promote Effective Governance. Beginning locally and extending to the national level, counterinsurgency operations must nurture the development and sustainment of effective political and legal institutions capable of providing governance within the rule of law, meeting the basic social needs of the populace, and providing both internal and external security to the country. The key is ensuring governance provides a binding “social contract” in which the political leadership and bureaucracy sees as its primary task enhancing the welfare of the populace while the citizenry perceive the government- at all levels - as effectively representing their interests and thus worthy of their support and allegiance. In today’s insurgencies, establishing effective governance must begin in the key towns and cities, and spread from there; for the congested populated areas have become key nodes for both insurgency and counterinsurgency strategies. This precarious balance is supported by the following tasks conducted by civil and military counterinsurgency forces, as well as international, regional, and non-governmental organizations. Provide temporary governance in the absence of political institutions. Develop local and national political capacities capable of effective governance. Support representative government at the local and national levels. Conduct, supervise, and safeguard elections. Establish legal and judicial structures and institutions. Effect and enforce the rule of law. Arbitrate and mediate local disputes and agreements. Support or conduct war crimes tribunals. Provide legal and political expertise, training, and education. Sustain Economic Development. A long-term and continuous line of operation, sustaining development draws from and builds on other efforts, especially those associated with maintaining stability, conducting reconstruction, and establishing effective governance. It primary objective is to create and support structures, practices, and attitudes that facilitate economic growth and long-term prosperity. While military and security forces certainly play a key part in protecting economic growth and ensuring conditions ripe for its development, the bulk of the associate tasks fall to civil leadership and agencies, and quire often to individuals and corporations. Nonetheless, in those cases in which violence continues or towns, cities, or regions suffer from the political, economic, or social vacuum that often resides in the wake of insurgency and warfare, military and security forces may be required to conduct tasks directly associated with development. The may include the following tasks. Secure and protect economic and commercial activities, to include local commerce and trade as well as commercial lines of communication. Operate government or commercial economic activities or infrastructures, to include finance systems. 25 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Prevent or suppress illegal smuggling or criminal activities that compete with economic growth. Support or enforce tax and revenue collection. Provide logistics, transportation, or other capabilities necessary for the effective movement and marketing of goods and services. Encourage and support property ownership. Restore and protect urban commerce centers and manufacturing. Protect harvests and agricultural development. Support Reconciliation. In order for the conditions that underpin insurgency to be resolved, the psychological and social wounds that inevitably accompany internecine warfare must be addressed. The goal of reconciliation is to reunite populations and countries that have suffered the divisive effects of insurgency. Hatreds, distrust, and lingering animosities between the populace and security forces and insurgent groups, between ethno-nationalist or religious factions must be peacefully addressed. Revenge following conflict almost invariably incites new violence. Those who have suffered atrocities will seek to have individuals punished, even as amnesty programs go into effect. Displaced persons will be returned to the areas in which they once lived. Minority or separatist groups who may have supported the insurgency will need to be assimilated as the counterinsurgency effort succeeds. Reconciliation is a long-term and continuous process that includes, for military forces, the following tasks. Capture and detain terrorists and war criminals. Conduct investigations, truth commission, war crimes trials, and military tribunals. Arbitrate and mediate local disputes. Resettle and support displaced persons and populations. Enforce reparations and restitution. Build local capacities for conflict and dispute resolution. Support IGOs, NGOs, and government agencies dedicated to reconciliation. Foster Social Change. In the end, reconciliation is also about political and social change. As earlier discussed, rarely do insurgencies erupt in stable and effectively governed societies or countries; while insurgent methods and goals may not be legitimate, the causes from which they emerged usually have at least some kernel of validity. For that reason, counterinsurgencies that seek to maintain the status quo have little chance of success; pre-existing social conditions and structures, as well as attitudes, will need to be changed. This does not necessarily translate into democratic, Western ideals of political liberalism, which are often anathema or incomprehensible, at least when not translated into the cultural context in which they may be applied. Unfortunately, social change can, and likely will be, disruptive, especially to traditional societies, if carried out haphazardly or arrogantly. Change must occur within the cultural norms of the society and thus cannot be imposed. Nonetheless, implementing social change is a key part of counterinsurgency as it ensures that the other Essential Tasks are founded on a solid and sustainable base. Tasks that may involve military forces include the following. Encourage long-term grassroots political and social reform. Enforce civil and human rights and the rule of law. 26 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Prevent re-emergence of factions and extremism. Avoid the use of repression or other totalitarian measures. Provide for general education of the populace. Ensure all Essential Tasks are integrated and support change, without creating additional disruption or instability. These Essential Tasks, as is evident from their overlapping components, cannot be addressed separately or as phases in a sequential campaign or strategy. While some may need to begin before others (restoring security, for example, is normally a prerequisite for effective governance) they overlap and remain continuous; in many insurgencies, their relative importance and the sequence in which they are being carried out may differ between provinces and even towns or cities. Nor can they be deemed solely military or civilian responsibilities in either their planning or execution; there are no neat lines of demarcation. The Essential Tasks are not checklists that guarantee success; they offer a framework for a long-term (on average, in excess of nine years) strategy that must be conducted three-dimensionally, with each task being mutually supporting and carried out so that each actions supports and is supported by structures and beliefs. Applied within the conditions and particular situations of each conflict, they offer a proven guide to resolving the insurgency. Finally, it should be noted that certain aspects of counterinsurgency that have become mantras of recently developed US military concepts and documents are not included.9 These include combat operations, information operations, training security forces, civil security, and civil action. While these are important, they are, in reality, subtasks that are part of the Essential Tasks and the enablers (discussed in next section). Counterinsurgency Strategy Beliefs Three-dimensional merging of actions, structures and beliefs to resolve root causes. Structures Popular Opinion Identity and Culture Perceptions and Attitudes Historical Narratives Perceptions and Trust Establish and Maintain Security Provide Humanitarian Relief Establish Governance Sustain Development Support Reconciliation Actions Foster Social Change Military/Security Operations Stable Government Social Services Rule of Law Security and Police Forces Infrastructure Economic Development Education Civil and Human Rights Law Enforcement Intelligence Operations Humanitarian Relief Local Governance Training Capacity Building Information Operations Figure (4) 9 In particular see, see the recently published draft concepts contained in Marine Corps Operating Concepts for Changed Security Environment (especially Chapter 6, “Countering Irregular Threats: A New Approach to Counterinsurgency”) and the Army’s draft FM 3-07.22, Counterinsurgency Operations. 27 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Figure (4) offers a visualization of an effective counterinsurgency strategy showing how the Essential Tasks interact within the three-dimensional dynamics of actions, structures and beliefs. Within the actions, structures, and beliefs can be found many of the tasks to be accomplished; each task, in turn, is a component of one or more of the Essential Tasks. The diagram represents a dynamic process, not a static checklist that builds the necessary synergy and initiative to not only overcome the insurgents and their strategy (see figure (2)), but to resolve the underlying causes of the conflict and ensure they do not reignite violence. Enablers While the Essential Tasks, integrated and continuous, are necessary if a counterinsurgency strategy is to succeed, they are not necessarily sufficient. Certain factors must be present to enable counterinsurgency forces (civil and military) to effectively execute the strategy. These enablers cut across all the Essential Tasks. Historically, they have proven to be the critical factors in framing success; their absence has largely meant failure. They must be integrated into each essential task when developing counterinsurgency plans. Clear Objectives. Counterinsurgency demands a clearly defined, unambiguous, and executed set of political and military objectives. The pathway to resolution should be identified at both strategic and operational levels. The strategic objectives must remain constant and not be swayed by the inevitable tactical and operational changes that will occur. Historically, of those counterinsurgency strategies that failed, all but one lacked clear objectives or suffered from strategic and operational confusion; of these that succeeded, nearly 90% benefited from clear goals that were fully understood by those planning and executing the strategy. It is not enough that the objectives be stated by political leaders; they must be communicated to all levels and all units, organizations, and agencies involved in the counterinsurgency. Well-written statements that fail to filter to the operational and tactical levels are of little value. Finally, objectives must closely coordinated between US and host nation leaders, both civil and military, at all levels to ensure they are agreed and compatible. Military forces should be [prepared to carry out the following tasks. Establish clear and unambiguous strategic and operational objectives. Communicate objectives to all levels (strategic, operational, and tactical) and across agencies. Ensure US and government strategic, operational, and tactical objectives are compatible and mutually supporting. Ensure Coalition and host-nation agrees with and supports objectives at all levels. Civil-Military Unity of Purpose. Civil authorities, military commanders, and, equally important, the many non-governmental agencies and organizations (humanitarian, contractor, etc.), whether indigenous, US, or neutral organizations, must coordinate to achieve the objectives of the counterinsurgency effort. While ideally, one civil or military commander may be optimal, the civil-military complexities of counterinsurgency require that, at a minimum, careful coordination must be the norm. Unity of purpose must extend to all levels of the counterinsurgency. It is achieved through the use of civil-military coordination centers and 28 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. processes, integration of civil and military organizations, such as the recently developed Provisional Reconstruction Teams deployed in Afghanistan, and common planning processes and procedures. Particularly problematic will be the many civilian and non-governmental workers who have come to inhabit conflict zones; while the vast majority is well-intentioned and many are highly competent, they tend to work outside of governmental or other controls. Nonetheless, unity of purpose is not the responsibility of any single organization or agency, it is the duty of all engaged in counterinsurgency, who must work towards a common set of objectives. This enabler consists of the following tasks. Conduct interagency planning. Coordinate and integrate civil and military operations (to include those of NGO/IGO) at strategic, operational, and tactical levels. Develop and maintain a common civil-military operational picture. Establish joint, interagency (to include NGO/IGO), and coalition communications capable of operating in modern large cities. Ensure national, provincial, and local coordination with other agency, NGO/IGO, and civil authorities. Integrated Intelligence. Few would argue that accurate and timely intelligence is crucial to successful counterinsurgency. However, intelligence is far more than a process for determining locations or movements of insurgent, finding individuals, or developing targeting data. It extends beyond the realm of military concerns to encompass a wide range of information and intelligence related to political, social, economic, and security issues. Indigenous attitudes, perceptions and mores, social hierarchies, and community needs may be more important than the location of a particular insurgent or group. In urban areas, intelligence must be able to understand and continually assess the attitudes of the many groups living together, determine their physical needs, and, if necessary, provide precision tracking and targeting of individuals and small groups. Insurgents make little distinction between the many elements, neither should those conducting counterinsurgencies. For that reason, counterinsurgency intelligence must orient in more than one direction; in addition to assessing the enemy, it must also assess civilian, often be highly decentralized, yet able to be shared both up and down the chain, but also laterally and across organizational boundaries. And, like all aspects of counterinsurgency, intelligence must be fully integrated, not only between military and government forces, but also with civilian agencies and, if at all possible, with indigenous leaders and the non-governmental actors throughout the conflict zone. Integrated intelligence demands the following. Provide military, economic, political, cultural, and social intelligence at all levels. Conduct urban intelligence operations. Integrate police, security force, and military intelligence collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination. Coordinate and share information and intelligence with other agency, civil, and NGO/IGO authorities. Fuse intelligence at all levels; provide immediate access to small units and police. 29 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Legitimacy. Legitimacy must be achieved both internally and externally; that is, the counterinsurgency must be seen as legitimate by the populace that must international community (and, by extension, the domestic population of an intervening state). It is a critical component of transforming beliefs and thus cuts across all Essential Tasks and as well as three dimensions of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Often equated with “winning hearts and minds” and information operations, legitimacy is a far more complex entity. Internally, legitimacy often is equated to popular support, although that term may be too simplistic. Popular legitimacy involves a more complex dynamic than the sort of popularity contest implied by phrases like “winning the hearts and minds”. Information campaigns and local civil affairs projects, often the mainstay of operational and tactical operations designed to win over populations, must be inextricably linked to the essential counterinsurgency objective of transforming beliefs. Legitimacy within the conflict zone occurs when populations, and their leaders, understand that the counterinsurgency effort benefits them more than any alternatives. It is thus as much a result of actions and structures and cuts across all Essential Tasks. Popular support can not become a distinct entity used as weapon or to justify action that otherwise may not be legitimate. No matter how well-crafted, information operations and strategic communications cannot overcome poor strategic logic. Externally, legitimacy centers on domestic (in the case of supporting or intervening states), regional, and international acceptance that the counterinsurgency effort is justifiable, worth the costs, and conducted in accordance with accepted norms and laws. Internationally and in the United States, these norms largely derive from traditional concepts of Just War. To this end, the counterinsurgency must be conducted in accordance with insurgents. Failure to do so by counterinsurgent forces can pose significant strategic risks. Modern communications, the political necessity for counterinsurgencies to be conducted by coalition forces, and the constant, but sometimes forgotten, reality that US forces will operate in foreign lands, has raised international legitimacy to level that often demands close scrutiny of even small unit actions. While frustrating to those engaged in daily operations, this reality has become an essential component of any effective counterinsurgency strategy. Transform the attitudes and beliefs of the population. Understand the impact of counterinsurgency actions and structural changes on local beliefs and perceptions, especially in heavily populated areas. Conduct operations in accordance with international laws and norms. Execute operations with maximum transparency to local, government, US, and international observers. Conduct strategic communications and operational and tactical information operations. In the end, internal and external legitimacy is far less a function of public information or psychological operations, as helpful as they may be in fostering it, than a reflection of the cumulative effects of a well-conceived and integrated strategy that the majority of the populations, both inside and outside the conflict zone, see as effective and conducted within the bounds of international, domestic, and local norms, and directed at resolving the problems that led to the insurgency. 30 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Use of Force Many concepts and doctrines of counterinsurgency proclaim that an essential element of any counterinsurgency strategy must be the minimal use of force. While generally true in a strategic sense, the level and type of force used is a more complex issue and largely situation dependent. Random and indiscriminate use of force, or the use of improper and unnecessarily destructive means, can be counterproductive, especially when the damage inflicted excessively affects the civil population. This is particularly critical when conducting military operations in urban areas, where even the slightest mistakes can be catastrophic in terms of lives lost and, in the long run, strategic harm. At times, however, as when insurgent forces have been positively located and can be brought to bay, or when they control key areas, especially provincial capitals or critical facilities, overwhelming force at the tactical and operational levels may be appropriate. The willingness to use force sometimes sends a psychological message that can be decisive in shaping beliefs. When determining the level and types of force to be used by military and security forces, its use should be discriminate and strike at only those insurgent targets or elements at which it is aimed. Nonetheless, at the point of application it may be overwhelming (indeed, some might argue should be). The type, level, and timing of any use of force must be viewed three dimensionally. Not only should military actions be directed at insurgents, but their impact on political, economic, and social structures and, more important, how they shapes the beliefs of insurgents, the population, and those scrutinizing the insurgency from afar must also be carefully considered. The strategic effects of the use of force often far outweigh their tactical utility. This does not mean that overwhelming force should be eschewed- at times and within certain cultural or social constructs, it may be the best recourse. Restraint can be, and has been in the past, as strategically damaging as heavy-handedness. Indeed, timid use of force, as was the case in Fallujah in April 2004 when lack of action by US forces led to perceptions of their defeat among insurgents and the local populace, can be counterproductive if not well-thought out. An effective counterinsurgency strategy does not avoid combat or the use of force, but combat cannot become the primary tool, nor can it be wielded indiscriminatingly or without anticipating its long-term effects on all aspects of the counterinsurgency effort. An Integrated Strategy Insurgencies are highly complex, violent, protracted conflicts that seek fundamental political and social change. Because their goal is to overturn real or perceived maladies endemic to particular conditions and situations by employing a wide range of violent, political, social, and economic means, insurgencies seem to defy simple categorization. Nonetheless, insurgencies possesses unique conditions, characteristics, and dynamics that sets it apart and makes simple solutions based on doctrinal formulas difficult if not impossible, they also share certain common traits. Insurgency strategies generally pursue five operational objectives, each intertwined with the other, that exploit underlying causes, undermine their enemy’s will, employ unconstrained (but purposeful) violence, and wage protracted multi-dimensional warfare. Notably, they also increasingly are moving into urban areas, and thus posing unique operational and tactical challenges to US forces. Successful counterinsurgency requires a strategy in which the Essential Tasks- from restoring security to effecting reconciliation- are carefully choreographed with each other and enabled by 31 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. clear objectives, unity of purpose, sound intelligence, and internal and external legitimacy. The strategy must be planned and executed as a fully integrated combination of continuing actions, rebuilt structures, and transformed beliefs that eventually lead to lasting stability. Counterinsurgency is neither for the faint of heart nor for those who neatly compartment roles and responsibilities. IT is far more than a military campaign aimed at eradicating guerrillas and terrorists. Historically, military forces engaged in counterinsurgency have carried out tasks across all Essential Tasks, many of them not traditionally associated with the use of force. More recently, civil agencies and other workers have found themselves performing tasks that have changed the definitions of combatants and place them directly in the path of combat and violence. While the preferred option may be to neatly compartment military and civil responsibilities, such an approach has rarely been effective. Successful counterinsurgency results from a long-term, continuous, and integrated civil-military strategy that builds lasting social, political, and economic stability in a state or region while resolving the underlying causes that that led to insurgency. An Integrated Counterinsurgency Stra tegy Enablers Clear Objectives Unity of Purpose Intelligence Legitimacy xx xx xx x Provide Humanitarian Relief xx xx xx x Promote Governance x x x x Sustain Development x x x x Support Reconciliation x x x x Foster Social Change x x x x Essential Tasks Establish and Maintain Security X Enf orced Stabilit y X Lasting St abilit y Figure (5) Figure (5) provides a graphic of an integrated counterinsurgency strategy that combines essential tasks and enablers. It should not be viewed as a phased approach or a checklist for developing static plans. Rather, it illustrates the necessary meshing between Essential Tasks and enablers. Additionally, it shows what must be accomplished in order to achieve lasting stability. Those strategies that approached counterinsurgency as a solely military problem and focused on finding and eliminating insurgents while imposing security succeeded in suppressing violence only so long as military force could be brought to bear- they rarely addressed the underlying causes. As evidenced by such counterinsurgency strategies as those conducted in Argentina and Guatemala in the 1970s, the resulting enforced stability often proved as dangerous as the insurgency itself. Those counterinsurgency strategies that incorporated each of the enablers into the Essential Tasks, such as those in El Salvador in the 1980s and Malaya in the 1950s, have succeeded in achieving lasting stability. The strategies meshed civil and military Essential Tasks, executed them with a singular purpose, developed a wide-ranging intelligence capability and, perhaps 32 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. most important, sustained their legitimacy while executing a three-dimensional plan that understood the effects of actions on structures and beliefs. Implications for Urban Operations This counterinsurgency concept has attempted to provide a broad framework for understanding insurgency and crafting an effective counterinsurgency strategy, with emphasis on the implications for urban operations. As a guide to thinking about the problems of insurgency and counterinsurgency, it does not delve into tactical, technical, or strictly military operational issues. Placing urban operations within these broader topics should not be taken as implying that such operations are somehow a subset of a wider counterinsurgency strategy. Rather, the two cannot be separated; any discussion of counterinsurgency must include urban operations. The principles and concepts presented in this paper apply to all counterinsurgencies, esp0ecially those conducted in urban areas. This is, therefore, not a concept for urban counterinsurgency, as it is a concept for thinking about the new realities of insurgency as a whole and how to resolve them, a concept that must inevitably take into account the urban battlespace on which future conflicts will likely be fought. The physical centers of gravity of future counterinsurgency campaigns are migrating to the cities and populations centers of conflict zones, and will continue to do so in the future. As with all insurgencies, past and present, the critical battlegrounds have always been associated with populations. If once Mao saw this essential terrain as being located among peasants in the countryside, the demographics of the twenty-first century are clearly moving it to the world’s urban areas. Within the urban zones breed the conditions and radicalism that spawn violence and challenge the ability of emerging or failing states to provide any meaningful solutions. Additionally, urban terrain offers the revolutionary movements that inevitably grow out of these swirling structures and beliefs to grow, operate, and hide, protected by the complex terrain and its inhabitants. Control of the urban terrain is thus key to sustaining insurgencies, countering them, and, ultimately, resolving them. Within each of the Essential Tasks discussed in the preceding pages, the subtasks listed must be performed in urban areas. US forces must be as adept in their execution in the close confines of the city as they are in the open countryside. Additionally, they must be fully integrated. Thus, military forces may find themselves simultaneously conducting combat and security operations, restoring essential services, protecting populations, providing local governance, disarming both combatants and local citizens, rebuilding infrastructure, and reconciling ancient grievances in communities that have lived within a few feet but often would not interact with their neighbors. All these tasks will be performed in an environment in which the terrain consists of maze-like streets and avenues and stout building, each of which could be a fortress unto itself and which often will negate the high-technology equipment with which US military forces are increasing equipped. Units may be dissipated by the urban terrain, as occurred in Ramadi in April 2004, out of contact with other units who may be only a block or two away, but might as well be miles. Daunting enough in situations in which firepower and combat are the norm, urban operations are greatly complicated by the three-dimensional nature of counterinsurgency. As was discovered in Somalia and reiterated in Iraq, attempting to fight insurgents who dwell in cities is both bloody work and often, when measured in destruction and the attitudes of populace, self-defeating. 33 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Indeed, the challenges of counterinsurgency in urban terrain are not new. Marines fought insurgents in the streets of Haiti in 1915 and Hue in 1968. The French confronted terrorists in Algiers in the 1950s; the British faced much the same in Oman two decades later. As the US military looks to the future, it can expect to fight its insurgencies largely in the cities, and thus must learn from the past. This reality demands military forces capable not only of engaging the enemy, but doing so within the confines of urban areas in such a manner as to be precise, while preventing the kinds of damage and killing that inevitably alienates beliefs. It is no longer enough to train and equip forces to fight and defeat enemies in cities; they must be able to do so with minimal force and with an eye to the long-term effects of doing so, while at the same time, conducting a wide range of operations intended to marginalize and then defeat the insurgency by making it irrelevant.. Destroying a town to save is no longer and option, if it ever was. Indeed, the counterinsurgency ideal would be to root out and neutralize enemy insurgents while causing no damage, improving the economic and political infrastructure within the cities, and gaining the trust and respect of the thousands of inhabitants of the battlespace. In addition, US forces must be ready to provide humanitarian relief, establish essential services, and assume at least temporary governmental control in large urban areas, and to retain control, both physical and moral, of those areas for months if not years in conjunction with civil authorities. Future capabilities must be created that allow highly decentralized, often small units to locate and engage enemy forces and perform a wide range of both military and civil functions while retaining a continuous presence. Success in counterinsurgency and its urban character must be based on a set of capabilities that do far more than enable forces to fight in the streets. In the end, victory or defeat will depend on who is capable of winning in the streets across all dimensions of insurgency. 34 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Appendix A: Failed Counterinsurgencies Ireland 1916-1922 Angola 1961-1975 China 1927-1949 Guinea 1962-1974 Palestine 1945-1947 Vietnam 1962-1975 Indonesia 1945-1949 Mozambique 1964-1975 Indochina 1946-1954 Cambodia 1970-1975 Algeria 1954-1962 Nicaragua 1978-1979 Cuba 1956-1959 Afghanistan 1979-1989 35 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. 36 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Appendix B: Successful Counterinsurgencies Haiti 1915-1934 Brunei 1961-1975 DomRep 1916-1924 Yemen 1962-1970* Morocco 1921-1926* Uruguay 1963-1972* Iraq 1922-1932* Guatemala 1966-1984* Nicaragua 1926-1933* Thailand 1967-1983 Palestine 1936-1939* Dhofar 1970-1976 Greece 1944-1949 Philippines 1972-1996 Lithuania 1945-1950* Argentina 1976-1980* Philippines 1947-1954 El Salvador 1979-1992 Colombia 1948-1958* Nicaragua 1981-1988 Malaya 1948-1960 Peru 1982-1997 Kenya 1952-1960 * Denotes those counterinsurgency strategies that were primarily based on military defeat of the insurgents and resulted in enforced stability. All either established or retained colonial or repressive regimes. 37 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. 38 HICKS AND ASSOCIATES, INC. Appendix C: Major Ongoing Insurgencies Philippines 1972- México 1994- Burma 1976- Chechnya 1995- Colombia 1984- Uganda 1995- Sri Lanka 1985- Nepal 1996- Intifada (Israel) 1988- Afghanistan 2002- Aceh* 1989- Sudan 2003- Kashmir 1989- Iraq 2003- Algeria 1992- Thailand 2004- * Recent agreements between the Aceh insurgents and the Indonesian Government indicate that this insurgency may be close to resolution. 39