Counter-insurgency, then and now
A Question of Command by Mark Moyar
Reviewed by Brian M Downing
In Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, an operation on the fictional island of Anopopei comes to a successful conclusion, but owing to the campaign’s intricacies, no one is quite sure why. Headquarters writes a report crediting the commanding general and in time it becomes official history. Many campaigns might be a bit like Anopopei.
Counter-insurgency thinking is once again much discussed, as it was 50 years ago. In the early 1960s, the United States was reeling from Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in Cuba and uncertain how to deal with Maoism and its apparent offshoots in Southeast Asia. The John F Kennedy administration sought a way to prevent more Cubas and thought it had found the answer in the doctrine of counter-insurgency.
Ideas from counter-insurgencies in Malaya, the Philippines and Algeria informed US special forces and Central Intelligence Agency operations in Laos and Vietnam throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Though successful in places, supporters ran into problems with nationalism, corrupt officials and institutional barriers in the US military. The Vietnam War led to the military being vilified at home, brought disciplinary problems inside the once proud institution and ended ignominiously. Counter-insurgency foundered as generals felt that expertise in it would encourage politicians to put it to use in another quagmire.
In recent years, the US has found itself facing sizable insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and smaller ones in Somalia, Yemen and the Philippines. Veterans with experience in counter-insurgency are few and far between – and mostly long retired. The military is racing to build doctrines and cadres for these new wars.
Moyar, a professor at the US Marine Corps University and author of a re-examination of the Vietnam War, presents a perspective on counter-insurgency that will find audiences in and out of the military. He posits three counter-insurgency schools. The Population-Centered approach seeks to understand the roots of an insurgency and then develop and implement programs to win popular support. The Enemy-Centered approach seeks to break the will and capabilities of insurgents, principally through the use of political and military power.
Moyar presents a third way. The Leader-Centered approach sees insurgent warfare as a contest between opposing elites – insurgent and counter-insurgent – to win popular support. There are social grievances, often profound ones, but grievances are seen as the issue in a violent, organizational contest – a point that nicely distinguishes the author from many who see insurgents as having the high ground on grievances.
The basic principles of such warfare are straightforward and largely undisputed: construction of local intelligence networks; cooperation between political and military personnel; local popular support; local self-defense forces; and the protracted presence of counter-insurgency programs and personnel. The elite with superior personnel in the field – those with initiative, flexibility, creativity, judgment, empathy, charisma and sociability – will put these principles to work and emerge victorious. This muddles the counter-insurgency approaches, but that’s social science and Moyar’s argument merits better consideration than quibbling about definitions.
The bulk of the book comprises nine case studies ranging from the American Civil War (parts of which were indeed insurgencies) to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moyar’s accounts are necessarily brief but no one will doubt he has done a great deal of research, though points of disagreement are inevitable.
An obvious problem in his cases will occur to many. Moyar sees insurgent warfare as a contest between two elites, but his cases examine, almost exclusively, only one side of the contest. Most accounts give vignettes of counter-insurgent leaders and important engagements, leaving readers to conclude that they outwitted their insurgent foes and that the superior elite won out. That might be unavoidable given the subject matter and some issues are too pressing to wait a decade or two until more data accumulate. But more emphasis on the complexities of insurgent warfare would have been helpful.
Where do we get such men?
Moyar sees leadership as part nature and part nurture but believes that military organizations – or at least the US military – can groom sufficient numbers of officers with the critical attributes to win. He provides an appendix with a series of questions aimed at identifying ideal officers for counter-insurgency.
We would do well to dismiss the caricature of American high-ranking officers as unimaginative martinets, but there are institutional obstacles to developing the type of officers Moyar advocates. There has long been conflict between advocates of counter-insurgency and those who see conventional orientations (armor, mechanized infantry, air superiority) as the appropriate posture for the US military. Counter-insurgency advocates lost out during the Vietnam War, but apparent successes in Iraq and years of directionless efforts in Afghanistan have given them the upper hand in the Pentagon.
Nonetheless, the military is an organization with a strong preference for predictable methods and unwavering respect for the chain of command. The independence and creativity of counter-insurgency efforts, tailored to conditions in specific locales and not to expectations back at headquarters, will not interact smoothly with the organizational structure. Special forces personnel in Afghanistan complain of having to clear even small operations with higher-ups – a time-consuming and stifling procedure.
Advisors in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, owing to their remoteness from Saigon, enjoyed a great deal of leeway, but today’s communications allow local ops to be supervised by provincial commanders, officers and embassy personnel and consultants in Kabul, and even their superiors back in the US. Generals do not easily relinquish operational control.
Moyar’s emphasis is on senior officers – General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam, General David Petraeus in Iraq and Afghanistan. Counter-insurgencies, however, depend greatly on junior officers – lieutenants and captains are critical – who deal with locals, build intelligence networks, provide the backbone for militias in their early stages and see to it that aid arrives in the villages. It is the brass that Moyar sees identifying the new breed of officers and deploying them throughout the theater of operations. But no general, however astute and persevering, can impose his ideas and expectations all the way down the chain of command to the company and platoon levels, and training programs back at Fort Bragg and Marine Corps Base Quantico cannot produce this new breed in large numbers.
Most of the personnel on counter-insurgencies are not officers; they are enlisted men and women – privates, corporals and sergeants. It is they who will have far more interaction with villagers than all the generals and colonels in field headquarters or back in Kabul ever will. Most enlisted personnel are young – many under the age of 22 – and carry along on their deployments many predispositions and prejudices of upbringings back home. This raises the possibility if not the near certainty of misunderstandings and conflicts with villagers.
In Afghanistan today, many soldiers are on their fifth combat deployments, and long experience from Anbar to Kunar has taught them that many locals are sympathetic to insurgents – a perception, right or wrong, that will be exaggerated and make them less likely to interact with locals in the manner prescribed in field manuals and expected by distant officers. Generals cannot prevent it, and inasmuch as most of them have never served in combat as junior officers, they might not even understand it.
Problems in implementation: Nation, tribe and region
Even the best-led counter-insurgencies encounter problems with nationalism, tribalism, corruption, geography, international support for respective sides, cultural antagonisms and popular support back home. Though not absent in Moyar’s case histories, they are not sufficiently treated and we are left to believe the proper personnel can deftly overcome them.
Nationalism is usually considered the exclusive asset of insurgents, but it presents opportunities for counter-insurgents as well. The Vietcong insurgency was based on local grievances. The introduction of American ground troops in 1965 resonated with the return of French troops 20 years earlier and infused the insurgency with nationalist energies. But complexities abounded.
The US was able, in certain places, to build counter-insurgency programs that successfully detached local populations from the insurgency. US programs built irrigation systems, schools and roads, which eased nationalist resentments but at the same time underscored the corruption and ineptitude of South Vietnamese officials. It was clear to most villagers that the latter hoarded resources and used them for personal gain. Acceptance of American personnel increased but loyalty to the Saigon government did not.
Programs in Afghanistan face similar problems. Eight years after the Taliban’s expulsion, Western forces have failed to live up to earlier promises to help rebuild the country and then leave and they now face nationalist-based hostility – a sentiment strengthened by civilian casualties over the years. Further, Western forces are increasingly seen as acting with northern peoples to impose their rule on the Pashtun regions.
Tribalism presents a different environment from the ones in many counter-insurgency cases. Negotiating with tribal elders has advantages in that deals can be struck and then, through authority and entreaty, be imposed on sub-tribes and clans. In many parts of Afghanistan, however, tribal authority has been badly damaged by decades of war, leaving many to accept the Taliban as the new ordering body. Even where tribal elders remain influential, Kabul and Western forces are not held in high regard, though elders will listen to programs that benefit them.
Success with one tribe will not necessarily spread into adjacent regions in the classic oil-spot technique. Success with one tribe may lead to enmity from another. Such was the case in the early 1980s when the cooperation of tribes in Paktia province led to attacks from tribes in nearby Wardak. This is not to say that tribal diplomacy will make little headway, only that success can sow the seeds of opposition. And the Taliban are adroit enough to cultivate that opposition. Indeed, they have a formidable head start in tribal negotiations, and a daunting cultural advantage as well.
The Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the ongoing one there now might offer insights on the relative importance of international context and leadership. The mujahideen forces that fought the Soviet Union and its Afghan allies to a standstill had little in the way of coherent leadership. There were several major resistance groups under which there were scores of bands only barely organized. Many groups, such as Hizb-i Islami (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar), fought each other as much as they fought the Russians. Command was determined by seniority and zealotry and kinship, not by organizational method. The Soviet Union initially relied on brute force but in time adopted counter-insurgency principles while the Kabul government negotiated with tribal elders and got many to side with it.
Critically, the Soviet Union and its ally in Kabul had little if any international support. The mujahideen enjoyed generous support from the United States and Saudi Arabia; Pakistan offered sanctuaries and funneled arms and money to the fighters; and much of the Islamic world sent money and volunteers. Unable to maintain public support for the war, the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989 and cut off subsidies to Kabul a few years later. With neither effective leadership nor common cause, the mujahideen suffered large-scale desertions and began to fight each other.
Perhaps paradoxically, the international context today greatly disfavors the successors to the mujahideen. The Taliban are opposed by most foreign powers, including the US, India, Iran, Russia, China and the former Soviet republics to the north. Only far-flung donors and Pakistan support the Taliban. The latter now faces international pressure to nudge the Taliban toward a negotiated settlement.
Emphasis on leadership will come naturally from military institutions. And no one who has seen a tactful captain encourage a reluctant militiaman or dress down a thieving police chief will doubt the importance of savvy officers. But minimizing the intricacies that counter-insurgencies present will not adequately inform policy makers and publics about the wars they have embarked upon and will likely embark upon in the future.
Nor, outside of inspiring young officers, will it be especially helpful to personnel who face educations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Most of those who have already served in counter-insurgency operations have already learned those hard lessons.
A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq by Mark Moyar. Yale University Press; 1 edition (October 20, 2009). ISBN-10: 0300152760. Price US$30, 368 pages.
Brian M Downing served with indigenous forces during the Vietnam War and is the author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.