Counterinsurgency/COIN Literature & Discussion (merged)

[TangoTwoBravo]

To me, an ideal 1st Basic Engagement for a young soldier would look a little like this:

    a.  Year 1 - Joins his Regt as a recruit and is trained with a cohort of other new recruits (a depot style but at the unit).  He would belong to a sub-unit or unit that is in the Reconstitution phase, that is they just got back from a tour.  In that year he takes all of his DP1 training and gets some PCF courses added in (type and number depending on branch).  For the Cpls to WOs they will be teaching but at least they will be at home and not on task to some school. 

    b.  Year 2 - Goes through an intensive Training year with his sub-unit and/or unit, ending in a CMTC serial

    c.  Year 3 - Goes on deployment with his sub-unit (including pre-deployment training)

He'd be with the same bunch through these three years.  By the time they go on deployment they should either be a highly cohesive team or be ready to kill each other.  If we have some foresight as a system we should be able to predict which line of operation the task force will be deployed to.  We could then inject some foreign language training throughout the two years of lead-in.  The year at the Regt tends to fill up, but a couple of month-long blocks could be found.  If you do not have foresight as a system then you will always be too late and catching up.

You could pick a few key "world" languages and split your group up (Farsi, Spanish, Arabic, French etc) so that you at least have a few guys who could carry out a conversation.  You could identify those with linguistic talent in the first year and develop them further.

Cheers,

2B

 

[commando gunner]

What? You mean that all the money spent on second official language training is not proving operationally valuable? Fancy that....

There are two language paths that need to be followed, 2nd Ol in order to increase promotion/per scores and then the operationally useful ones.  For the average guy there really is not time for both -even if the facility was offered on a wider basis as suggested earlier in this topic- and guess which one makes a career difference....

 

[Journeyman]

He'd be with the same bunch through these three years. 

Except that this ignores the reality, pointed out in other threads, that we no longer send cohesive units anywhere any more.

Deployments are "based on" a battalion, but that may be only two companies, which may be amalgamated from the whole battalion. The rest of the battle group will be "plug & play" from across the CF. While everyone knows the theories of building unit cohesion, we certainly haven't been practicing them during the past decade's rotations

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

The sub-units can certainly be cohesive and have been together for more than the immediate pre-deployment period.  There will always be individuals coming and going, but a critical mass for a deploying sub-unit is within the realm of the possible even with our current force generation model.

 

[Chimo]

Perhaps when we are all qualified BBB in our official second language we can start to worry about learning a useful language. 

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Chimo are actual serious.  Because if you are, tell me how being up on French will better us in Afganistan.

 

[Chimo]

CFL you hit my point exactly.  ;D

 

[Haggis]

Chimo are actual serious.  Because if you are, tell me how being up on French will better us in Afganistan.

Mastery of French is mandated by the Commisioner of Official Languages.  French language training is wll funded.  Mastery of French is a stepping stone to promoton.

Pashtun, Dari and Arabic are not.

Which will save more lives?

Which will get more votes?

Rant ends.

 

[devil39]

A very incisive parable that outlines the requirements of counter-insurgency.... in six paragraphs.

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/six_easy_paragraphs.htm

This is certainly a topic worth thinking of and worth getting our minds around.  Whether we are fighting counter-insurgency or conducting nation-building in failed and failing states, I believe the requirements will be much the same.

http://www.d-n-i.net/ is a very good source for 4GW info and along with http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/ are some of the greatest sources of progressive counterinsurgency thought.

I will copy the parable here with all due acknowledgement to William Christie and d-n-i.net

 
The Theory of Counterinsurgency in Six Easy Paragraphs

By William Christie

January 31, 2006

Special to Defense and the National Interest


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A neighbor and I were discussing my previous commentary, Still Looking Out From the Forest of Iraq: At Iran.

“I know the media’s all hot about Iran,” he said. “But I’m a lot more worried about Iraq.”

“You’re not alone,” I said. “Even when the military officers I correspond with talk about Iran, their minds are still on Iraq.”

“I don’t know who to believe,” he said. “If you listen to the press, it’s all bad and the military and government are selling you a bill of goods. If you listen to the military and government, we’re winning and the press is only looking for the bad.”

“They might both be right,” I said. “In counterinsurgency you can win all the battles and still lose the war.”

He asked me to explain that, and I said I’d try and put a few thoughts down on paper.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I know you writers like to write. How about something short.”

“That’s a tall order,” I said. “It’s a subject that doesn’t led itself to short.”

“I have a job and a wife and kids I like to spent time with,” he replied. “I need short. And how about something I can relate to?”

So here is a theory of counterinsurgency. In six paragraphs and the form of a parable. Set in the rural South, where we both live.

The house next door to you is sold, and the people who move in are white supremacist skinheads. You discover that they’ve started up a methamphetamine lab in their basement. You think about calling your County Sheriff’s Department, but you’re not so sure. The cops strike you as generally overweight and none too swift. The only time you ever see them is in the mall, two cruisers parked side by side, the deputies gossiping and waiting for the next radio call instead of being on patrol. You’re afraid that if you tell them about your neighbors the news will leak out and you’ll get your house burned down one night. After all, you have a wife and kids and a mortgage.

But one day the SWAT team shows up to serve a warrant and kicks down the neighbor’s door and drags them off to jail. You’re incredibly pleased and highly relieved. You vow that the next time the Department is doing some charity work you’ll write a check. And you tell one of the deputies that if he sees you out in the yard to stop and you’ll let him know what’s going on in the neighborhood.

Now let’s shift that scenario to a slightly alternate universe where the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply. The Sheriff’s Department gets the word that someone in the neighborhood is cooking meth. They don’t know who, but since no one in the neighborhood is telling them anything they think everyone might be white supremacists. So one night they kick down your door looking for the meth lab. They point guns at your kids and your wife and scare them half to death. While searching your home they break your furniture and throw your belongings everywhere. And they slap you around trying to get you to tell them where the meth lab is. By now you’ve forgotten all about your scary neighbors—you just want to get even with those cops.

Even worse, let’s say that the cops find out exactly where the meth lab is. But they’re afraid of the neighborhood, and they don’t want to get shot at taking down the lab. So they call in a fighter bomber and drop a 500 lb guided bomb on your neighbor’s house. That takes care of the meth lab, but it also blows down one wall of your house, breaks every window, and destroys the car you need to get to work every day. You don’t know what you’re going to do.

A couple of nights later, another neighbor comes to your door and says he’s making a bomb to blow up the next patrol car that comes down the road. And would you help him dig the hole for $100?

You’d probably do it for nothing, wouldn’t you?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

William Christie is a former Marine Corps infantry officer who left the Corps as a First Lieutenant in 1987. He is the author of 5 novels, including most recently The Blood We Shed, currently in hardcover from ibooks. And Threat Level, which will be published in October by Pinnacle Books/Kensington Press. He can be reached at christieauthor@yahoo.com.

 

[zipperhead_cop]

Guess he should have dropped the dime in the first place.  Then he could have avoided all that other crap.

 

[devil39]

Yup.  But it is all about context.  It is a parable you see...

You think about calling your County Sheriff’s Department, but you’re not so sure. The cops strike you as generally overweight and none too swift. The only time you ever see them is in the mall, two cruisers parked side by side, the deputies gossiping and waiting for the next radio call instead of being on patrol. You’re afraid that if you tell them about your neighbors the news will leak out and you’ll get your house burned down one night. After all, you have a wife and kids and a mortgage.

I come from a cop family so I wouldn't buy that stereotype.  But many would.  That is part of the problem isn't it?

 

[m410]

When the meth lab or jihadis move next door, DO SOMETHING (like call the cops or deal with it yourself) or risk your family's safety.

 

[teddy49]

I think you're missing the point.  I think he's trying to get people to visualize Buford T Justice and his idiot son when he's talking about the deputies.  And to be honest, from what I've seen of the US Military in Iraq, that's about the best analogy I can think of.  As they tear through Iraq hunting for the Bandit and the Snowma...I mean Zarqawi and Al Quaeda.  It's certainly a lot more complicated than that, but from the from the perspective of Ahmed and Sunnah Q. Iraqi, that's pretty much how it looks.

I've said it before and I'll say it again here.  The US's biggest impediment to getting a handle on this thing, is their force protection policies.  As long as they live inside a fort, separated from the people of Iraq in who's interest they're supposed to be working, and are only annoying visitors to their patrol areas, they'll never get anywhere with it.  How can you give a tip on the bad guys to the security forces, if every time you come with in 10 meters of them, they threaten to shoot you.  I certainly don't know all the answers, but I do know that the first part of the solution is to move out of the forts, to somewhere that's accessible, in the community.  I'm thinking like Platoon Houses dispersed around the company patrol area.  Then the platoon lives in that neighborhood.  Get's to know the people who live there.  Maybe buys it's food and sundry items at the local markets.  Conducts visible, but not threatening foot patrols in those areas.  Kind of like a cop on the beat.  When the people on the street feel safe enough around you to call you, Lieutenant Bloggins, or Mister John instead of "the Americans" then you'll start to get info on the bad guys.  But as long as you're just the alien looking guys who drive around town, in alien looking vehicles, pointing guns at everyone you see, it's not gonna happen.

That'll never happen, because it will mean more casualties, do to higher vulnerabilities.  In the short term, significantly more casualties.  But last time I checked, you didn't fight wars to prevent friendly casualties, you fought it to win.  This war is more than a contest of combat power, it's a battle for hearts and minds.  But you don't make friends by kicking people in the teeth repeatedly, and then wondering why they don't like you.

Again, I don't have all the answers, but I think for anything to happen, there has to be a move in this direction and away from living in forts festooning yourself in equipment that makes you look inhuman, and pointing guns at all the brown people you see.

Just my $0.02

 

[m410]

Well Teddy, that's getting at the crux of the issue.  And it's a lesson that Americans and others have learned and forgotten from past counterinsurgencies.  Its best example was the Vietnam War USMC Combined Action Platoon.  Apparently the Combined Action Program exists in some form in Iraq, but I imagine, like in Vietnam, at too small a scale.  Google has more.

Iraq may be harder to template with CAP because it is more urban, but what about Afghanistan?  While Canadian forces are prideful for getting in amongst the locals, do we live amongst them, arm and train local militias, and provide a secure environment where they can rat out the bad guys, provide their own local security, and deny a haven to our mutual enemies?  We seem to be working primarily with the Afghan National Army, which means a centralized organization which can't provide Jafar the Villager the immediate protection he needs to tell the Taliban to take a hike back to Pakistan.

Do we have the guts to put sections and platoons out in the wind for weeks and months at a time?

 

[GAP]

Do we have the guts to put sections and platoons out in the wind for weeks and months at a time?

Good Point. Great idea, but just a minute...that's my son/daughter and I want them to be reasonably safe. The Canadian public, with their present mindset, would never stand for the potential lifethreat. Look at the response to IED's going off, and you want to put my Johnny/Jenny out among those people where anybody can get at them?? No Way!! 

So what do we do? We attend shureas, we help, we maintain non threatening contact, etc. More importantly, we let the Afghan Army/Police become the front person. That's who Jafar the Villager is going to have to deal with long after we have gone home. One thing that helps the population visualize the authority lines, would be for the Police/Army to be consistently uniformed. Let them form an "Identity", cure the "roadblock corruption" mentioned about the police. There is no lack of stamina and guts to confront the Taliban as seen in the initial 'Good Friday' firefight, it just has to be co-ordinated with their allies and visually identified to the populace.

Hearts and minds. The parable kinda said it all, we just have to adapt it :-*

 

[pbi]

You guys should get out more. Living and operating "beyond the wire", including platoon and coy-size FOBs is exactly how LCol Ian Hope, CO of the PPCLI BG, has been doing business. He (and his soldiers) understand perfectly the type of war they are in. And,by the way, that's pretty much the way US forces in OEF have been operating, as well.

Cheers

 

[Journeyman]

A very incisive parable that outlines the requirements of counter-insurgency.... in six paragraphs.

You know Devil39.....if you're not careful, people may start to think you're more than just another pretty face 

 

[Centurian1985]

Are our troops conducting house-to-house searches for weapons as well?

 

[m410]

You guys should get out more. Living and operating "beyond the wire", including platoon and coy-size FOBs is exactly how LCol Ian Hope, CO of the PPCLI BG, has been doing business. He (and his soldiers) understand perfectly the type of war they are in. And,by the way, that's pretty much the way US forces in OEF have been operating, as well.

Cheers

I admit I'm not there yet, and I know LCol Hope doesn't have his BG lined up in rows of cots in hard quarters at Kandahar Airfield.  I have seen the Outside the Wire CTV embed report with C Coy, which shows a company FOB (and is presented as a novel idea).  But a company FOB in one village is still hugely different from a Combined Action Program of section level semi-permanently augmenting local militia in dozens of villages.  Is CAP in its Vietnam form untenable in Afghanistan?  Was it a stupid idea, now and then?  Is platoon and company the more effective size?  Are we the wrong people for CAP?  Have we got another way to solve the problem of Taliban observers in shuras who note what people say and then come back once the infidels are gone?

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

In my opinion, section-sized "houses" are probably too small.  In-theatre we have platoon-houses and company level FOBs.  The troops work closely with ANA and ANP out in the rhubarb.  Perhaps I'm too close to make an unbiased call, but we have the right troops.