WASHINGTON (Vince Crawley / The Washington File, AINA) - The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have published an updated field manual for fighting insurgencies that stresses cultural awareness, personal contacts, reconstruction strategies and close cooperation with nonmilitary agencies.
The manual, titled Counterinsurgency, updated for the first time in 20 years, includes new lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, as well as a historical overview spanning more than a century that calls attention to important aspects of past insurgencies.
Its publication was overseen by Army Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who recently was recommended by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to replace General George Casey as senior coalition commander in Iraq.
The manual stresses that constant learning is the key to defeating an insurgency. "The side that learns faster and adapts more rapidly - the better learning organization - usually wins," says the new manual.
The field manual has been unusually popular for a military doctrine and training publication. Although packed into a bulky 14-megabyte computer file, it was downloaded 600,000 times in the first four days after its December 15, 2006, public release, said Conrad Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute. Crane was the manual's lead author and has done extensive research into the history of counterinsurgency missions and military reconstruction.
The field manual includes "significantly increased emphasis" on cultural awareness for U.S. troops, Crane said in an interview. For example, he said, the key author for the manual's Chapter 3, "Intelligence in Counterinsurgency," was a cultural anthropologist and includes in-depth discussions of how military staffs should map out the social structures of the country or location where they are working.
The manual's introduction warns that, throughout history, governments targeted by insurgents have been slow to recognize what is taking place, and their counterinsurgency actions typically have shown poor results at the beginning. The manual uses the acronym COIN for counterinsurgency.
"Western militaries too often neglect the study of insurgency," the manual says. "They falsely believe that armies trained to win large conventional wars are automatically prepared to win small, unconventional ones. In fact, some capabilities required for conventional success - for example, the ability to execute operational maneuver and employ massive firepower - may be of limited utility, or even counter-productive in COIN operations. Nonetheless, conventional forces beginning COIN operations often try to use these capabilities to defeat insurgents; they almost always fail."
The manual includes a detailed guide on how to plan and conduct counterinsurgency operations. It also includes historical vignettes and appendices on how to analyze social networks, working with linguists and interpreters and legal considerations.
"Counterinsurgency (COIN) is an intelligence-driven endeavor," the manual says at the beginning of Chapter 3. "Intelligence in COIN is about people. U.S. forces must understand the people of the host nation, the insurgents, and the host-nation (HN) government. Commanders and planners require insight into cultures, perceptions, values, beliefs, interests and decision-making processes of individuals and groups."
The manual includes lists of successful and unsuccessful practices. Successful practices include:
Emphasize intelligence. Focus on the population, its needs and its security. Establish and expand secure areas. Isolate insurgents from the populace. Conduct effective, pervasive and continuous information operations. Provide amnesty and rehabilitation for those willing to support the new government.
Place host-nation police in the lead as soon as possible. Expand and diversify the host-nation police. Train military forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations. Embed quality advisers and special operations forces with host-nation forces.
Deny sanctuary to insurgents. Encourage strong political and military cooperation and information sharing. Secure host-nation borders and protect key infrastructure. Unsuccessful practices include: Over-emphasize killing and capturing the enemy rather than securing and engaging the populace. Conduct large-scale operations as the norm. Concentrate military forces in large bases for protection. Focus special operations forces primarily for raiding. Place low priority on assigning quality advisers to host-nation forces. Build and train host-nation security forces in the U.S. military's image.
Ignore peacetime government processes, including legal procedures. Allow open borders, airspace and coastlines. In addition, the manual lists seeming paradoxes about counterinsurgency operations. For example, the manual says, "Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is."
Also, "Tactical success guarantees nothing," the manual says, adding, "arguably, the decisive battle is for people's minds." The manual also stresses that even personnel at the lowest level of the chain of command must be prepared for decision-making responsibilities that can influence the outcome of the campaign.
"In many ways, the conduct of COIN is counter-intuitive to the traditional U.S. view of war," the manual says, "although COIN operations have actually formed a substantial part of the U.S. military experience." (With permission to repost from the Assyrian International News Agency http://www.aina.org)
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