There was a disconnect, when the Army first released its interim manual for fighting insurgencies, two years ago. The book said to stay off of big bases, and to emphasize “secrecy and surprise.” American operations often went in the completely opposite direction.
The field manual has now been finalized. But, as the L.A. Times notes, many of those gaps between theory and practice remain.
The U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency doctrine takes issue with some key strategies that American commanders in Iraq continue to use, most notably the practice of concentrating combat forces in massive bases rather than dispersing them among the population…
The authors of the manual say the new doctrine is not meant as a critique of the Iraq strategy… [They] rather were saying they simply did not want people to hole up and become “fobbits.“
“You put a protect force in that lives in the neighborhood. They stay 24/7 to protect the people,” Keane said at a briefing this week. “That piece is what we have never been able to execute in Baghdad…“
The new doctrine, which was begun in January and released in draft form in June, cautions that campaigns against insurgents are “often long and difficult” and that progress is hard to measure. Conventional militaries often stumble in the beginning of an insurgency but can succeed if they learn, adapt and push ahead against it, according to the manual.
“The military forces that successfully defeat insurgencies are usually those able to overcome their institutional inclination to wage conventional war against insurgents,” the doctrine says…
Overall, the doctrine says, a counterinsurgency operation is “a struggle for the population’s support.” To win that confidence, militaries must learn about the culture and people they are trying to protect as well as fight the insurgents who are attempting to destabilize the country, it says…
“I do not know how they will translate this to the field,” [one author] said. “But I do think this will be No. 1 on the reading list.”
By the way, I’m in the middle of going through the new field manual. It’s fascinating — and an easy read, not at all jargon-filled. I’d encourage everyone to check it out for themselves.
UPDATE 7:20 PM: Eason Jordan’s new IraqSlogger site is trying to launch with a little controversy, by questioning why this new manual was posted on public sites — and highlighting online Jihadists’ reactions. “How would a U.S. soldier… feel knowing the hot-off-the-presses counterinsurgency manual is available to the ‘bad guys’ at the same time it is available to the ‘good guys?’” the site asks.
It doesn’t matter if the whole US military ever figures out how to fight and win an insurgency if the politicians and the American public aren’t willing to accept such a voluntary endeavor.
Insurgencies last 10–20 years, the American people have no history of tolerating a long campaign like that. I would argue it takes the entire US Government, NGO’s and the American public to win an insurgency. That process takes some real leadership and creativity.
Iraq is not a typical popular insurgency anymore; it’s more like Lebannon or Yugoslavia with external influences, and everyone fighting everyone else, with the US trying to keep some sort of Central Government functioning. If we can’t salvage the whole of Iraq, try to salvage pieces of it.
When was it in recent history that an invading army defeated a well organized insurgency?
The Nazis had a policy of killing ten civilians for every German soldier killed by the French, Greek, Polish and other insurgence, but they never defeated the “underground” forces.
Even in the Philipines where the US forces conducted scorched earth tactics — the insurgence in the south were never defeated.
Yes because the LA Times and other media outlets should really be talking about field manuals and stuff… during times of war and stuff… Why not leaflet drop the mauals over all of Iraq? I’m sure it’s cheaper.
Link to the pdf is not working for me.
Try this link…
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24fd.pdf
Fixed the link. Sorry ’bout that…
nms
Calm down guys, field manuals are designed to be teaching tools, not hard and fast operational instructions. Ops data is always kept tightly under wraps.
Furthermore, most of the conventional thinking on counterinsurgency is based on theory that has been in the public domain for decades. Even though it would be pretty cool if the government classified my master’s thesis, I think the cat is pretty much out of the bag on that one.
Heck, even if we wanted to classify it, we probably couldn’t since most of the big names in insurgency/COIN aren’t American (think Lawrence, Galula, Calwell, Mao, etc). General Sherman was our only COIN expert and we generally don’t talk about him because he fought dirty.
I went through the FM earlier today and it doesn’t really have anything too critical. It mostly emphasizes the key lessons of COIN: 1) know the local population and don’t treat them like a the enemy, 2) leadership by civilian servants in the field can be very helpful, 3) balance the long-term needs of your troops with the needs of mission and 4) insurgency is a thinking man’s game that is all about communications.
I don’t see how any of that isn’t already apparent to the insurgents.
Check out an article in the Dec. 18 issue of “the New Yorker”; it discusses an interesting new approach to counter-insurgency ops that’s bubbling around in DoD and State, based on a more anthropoligical (i.e. cultural-based, grounded in local knowledge and engagement) approach to the problem, as well as the problem of counter-insurgency in a modern globalized media environment. It also discusses its proponents’ critique of current ops in Iraq and Afghanistan. All-in-all, a very interesting read!!
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