Classical Counterinsurgency with a Twist
BY Herschel Smith
17 years, 3 months ago
Anbar has been a classical counterinsurgency campaign with a twist. But in order to set the stage for the discussion, shall we consider the remote areas in the mountains of North and South Carolina? Any boy who has been raised to drive the backroads and traipse the winding trails through these mountains knows that there are certain places one doesn’t go, and certain things one doesn’t do.
There remain moonshine stills, people avoiding revenue collectors, and general rogue elements who like to go to the little local bar and clean their shotguns while they drink. Actually, they aren’t avoiding revenue collectors. The collectors just don’t go up there, and they shouldn’t. The adventuresome young one learns not to look too hard for trouble, and generally know who belongs where, and when. Anything or anyone out of place means trouble – time to go for the gun and let the dogs loose.
It is probably the same way in the sprawling urban areas, and this concept is important for considerations in classical counterinsurgency doctrine. An insurgency simply cannot survive without the willing acquiescence of the population, or at least the important and more powerful elements of the population.
Common sense, along with trusted communications from military personnel in the Anbar Province, convinced me to write Al Qaeda, Indigenous Sunnis and the Insurgency in Iraq, in which I claimed that much, if not most, of the insurgency was indigenous to Anbar. Bill Ardolino gives us an interesting interview of an interpreter working with the U.S. forces, reporting directly from Anbar. One interesting exchange took place that is relevant to this issue:
INDC: When I speak to Fallujans, many say that it was all outsiders causing the insurgency, but a lot of it was certainly driven by locals. What portion of the insurgency was really local? Most of it?
Leo: Yes.
INDC: So why are people afraid to say, “Yeah, we used to fight the Americans?
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