Kilcullen Redux

Just got back from spending five days watching Dr. David Kilcullen in action at Joint Urban Warrior (JUW) 08, a US Marine Corps and US Joint Forces Command cosponsored program. Dave's SWJ blog entries and links to his other works (SWJ Library) are among the most visited and linked to items on the site.

I have some JUW items to blog about later, for now I'll leave you with a "wavetop" snapshot of the who and what and a slide from one of Dave's briefs to mull over. The slide depicts a framework for understanding (or more precisely "how to think about") the transition of responsibility and authority of security, essential services, humanitarian assistance, economic development, and political governance from a coalition to host nation - the snapshot and slide are at the end of this post.

With that -- we give you Kilcullen redux:

Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt

Some aspects of the war in Iraq are hard to fit into "classical" models of insurgency. One of these is the growing tribal uprising against al Qa'ida, which could transform the war in ways not factored into neat "benchmarks" developed many months ago and thousands of miles away. I spent time out on the ground during May and June working with coalition units, tribal leaders and fighters engaged in the uprising, so I felt a few field observations might be of interest to the Small Wars community. I apologize in advance for the epic length of this post, but it's a complex issue, so I hope people will forgive my long-windedness. Like much else, it's too early to know how this new development will play out. But surprisingly (surprising to me, anyway), indications so far are relatively positive...

Understanding Current Operations in Iraq

I've spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I've been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I'd like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what's happening, right now, in Iraq.

This post is not about whether current ops are "working" — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I'm not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations...

New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict

I asked the SWJ to pass along that I've been continuously in the field of late and haven't posted to the blog as much as I would have liked to. I am still very much engaged in the Small Wars Journal community and will be posting here again soon. In the meantime I offer up this article published in the June 2007 issue of the Department of State's eJournal. I might add that there are some excellent articles in this issue of eJournal -- well worth following the link and taking a look around...

Religion and Insurgency

A few commentators have panned the new counterinsurgency manual for insufficient emphasis on religion. There is a grain of truth in this criticism but, as a practitioner, the evidence I see does not really support it. Rather, field data suggest, some critics may misunderstand both current conflicts and the purpose of doctrine. Worse, they may be swallowing propaganda from munafiquun who pose as defenders of the faith while simultaneously perverting it. (Did I sound like a politician there? Never mind. I will show factual evidence for this assertion, so the resemblance is fleeting...I hope)...

The Urban Tourniquet -- "Gated Communities" in Baghdad

Gated communities in counterinsurgency are like tourniquets in surgery. They can stem a life-threatening hemorrhage, but they must be applied sparingly, released as often and as soon as possible, and they have side-effects that have to be taken into account. They are never a first choice. But, given the dire current situation in Baghdad, the "urban tourniquet" is the lesser of several evils, because it breaks the cycle of sectarian violence that has caused so much damage and human suffering in Iraq...

Edward Luttwak's "Counterinsurgency Malpractice"

I spent a few hours recently, reading Edward N. Luttwak's article in Harper's Magazine, "Dead End: Counter-Insurgency as Military Malpractice", and carefully thinking over his argument. It was a pleasant holiday from the reality of war here in Baghdad, and a reassuring reminder that there are still havens of calm (like CSIS, where Dr Luttwak is a Senior Fellow) where one can consider issues thoroughly and arrive at firm conclusions. From my viewpoint, here in Iraq, things somehow never seem quite so black-and-white...

From the Advisors -- Bombs in Baghdad

It has been an interesting few weeks here in Baghdad. Myself and the other advisors felt that a comment on recent developments might be in order. It is still early days for Fardh al-Qanoon (a.k.a the "Baghdad Security Plan") and thus too soon to tell for sure how things will play out. But, though the challenges remain extremely severe, early trends are quite positive. Counter-intuitively, the latest series of car bombings includes some encouraging signs...

Guardian Article Misrepresents the Advisers' View

Today's Guardian article ("Military Chiefs Give US Six Months to Win Iraq War") misrepresents the Baghdad advisers. So much so, it makes me doubt the reliability of the single, unidentified source responsible for much of the article's reporting.

I hope SWJ colleagues will forgive this more "personal" post than usual, but as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser I have a duty to set the record straight on this.

There is a real country called Iraq, where a real war is going on, with real progress but very real challenges. We are not going to "win the war" in six months -- nor would anyone expect to. But the Guardian seems to be describing some completely different, (possibly mythical) country, and some imaginary group of harried and depressed advisers bearing no resemblance to reality...

The Baghdad Marathon

It has been a busy few weeks. Operation Fadr al-Qanoon (which the media calls the "Baghdad security plan") is shaping up. Progress is measurable, but this is a marathon, not a sprint, and it's still too early to know how it will turn out.

The message for all of us, as professionals who do this for a living, is patience, patience, patience. The war has been going for nearly four years, the current strategy less than four weeks. We need to give it time...

Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency

Discussion of the new Iraq strategy, and General Petraeus's recent Congressional testimony have raised the somewhat obvious point that the word "counterinsurgency" means very different things to different people. So it may be worth sketching in brief outline the two basic philosophical approaches to counterinsurgency that developed over the 20th century (a period which I have written about elsewhere as "Classical Counterinsurgency"). These two contrasting schools of thought about counterinsurgency might be labeled as "enemy-centric" and "population-centric".

The enemy-centric approach basically understands counter-insurgency as a variant of conventional warfare. It sees counterinsurgency as a contest with an organized enemy, and believes that we must defeat that enemy as our primary task. There are many variants within this approach, including "soft line" and "hard line" approaches, kinetic and non-kinetic methods of defeating the enemy, decapitation versus marginalization strategies, and so on. Many of these strategic concepts are shared with the population-centric school of counterinsurgency, but the philosophy differs. In a nut-shell, it could be summarized as "first defeat the enemy, and all else will follow"...

Don't confuse the "Surge" with the Strategy

Much discussion of the new Iraq strategy centers on the "surge" to increase forces in-theater by 21,500 troops. I offer no comment on administration policy here. But as counterinsurgency professionals, it should be clear to us that focusing on the "surge" misses what is actually new in the strategy -- its population-centric approach.

Here are the two core paragraphs from the President's speech, outlining the strategy (emphasis added):

"Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations -- conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents...

A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy

The President's new Iraq strategy has prompted much discussion, informed and otherwise. I'm not going to add to it here. Rather, I want to tentatively suggest a framework for thinking about Iraq, which (if you accept its underlying assumptions) might prove helpful in evaluating the new strategy and the enemy's likely response.

I developed this framework about two years ago, while writing the October 2004 version of Countering Global Insurgency, mainly the appendix on Iraq. I have since presented it in various forums, including during the Quadrennial Defense Review in 2004-5, the Eisenhower Series in early 2006, during a series of lectures at the Naval War College and at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, and during the Irregular Warfare conference in Summer 2006. I also briefed it to the Pentagon's "Plan B" team in November 2006...

COIN Seminar with Dr. David Kilcullen - 26 September 2007 briefing slides

COIN Seminar with Dr. David Kilcullen - 26 September 2007 seminar report

Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency

Your company has just been warned for deployment on counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. You have read David Galula, T.E. Lawrence and Robert Thompson. You have studied FM 3-24 and now understand the history, philosophy and theory of counterinsurgency. You watched Black Hawk Down and The Battle of Algiers, and you know this will be the most difficult challenge of your life.

But what does all the theory mean, at the company level? How do the principles translate into action - at night, with the GPS down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don't understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos? How does counterinsurgency actually happen?

There are no universal answers, and insurgents are among the most adaptive opponents you will ever face. Countering them will demand every ounce of your intellect. But be comforted: you are not the first to feel this way. There are tactical fundamentals you can apply, to link the theory with the techniques and procedures you already know...

Counterinsurgcy Redux

Counterinsurgency is fashionable again: more has been written on it in the last four years than in the last four decades. As William Rosenau of RAND recently observed,

insurgency and counterinsurgency...have enjoyed a level of military, academic, and journalistic notice unseen since the mid-1960s. Scholars and practitioners have recently reexamined 19th- and 20th-century counterinsurgency campaigns waged by the United States and the European colonial powers, much as their predecessors during the Kennedy administration mined the past relentlessly in the hope of uncovering the secrets of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. The professional military literature is awash with articles on how the armed services should prepare for what the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) refers to as "irregular warfare," and scholars, after a long hiatus, have sought to deepen our understanding of the roles that insurgency, terrorism, and related forms of political violence play in the international security environment.

This is heartening for those who were in the wilderness during the years when Western governments regarded counterinsurgency as a distraction, of interest only to historians. So it is no surprise that some have triumphantly urged the re-discovery of classical, "proven" counterinsurgency methods. But, this paper suggests, some of this enthusiasm may be misplaced. In fact, today's insurgencies differ significantly — at the level of policy, strategy, operational art and tactical technique — from those of earlier eras. An enormous amount of classical counterinsurgency remains relevant. Indeed, counterinsurgency provides the "best fit" framework for strategic problems in the War on Terrorism. But much is new in counterinsurgency redux, possibly requiring fundamental re-appraisals of conventional wisdom.

Joint Urban Warrior 08 - "Wavetop"

JUW 08 was marked by the exceptional quality of the guest speaker presentations - all spot on in providing the context and food for thought in meeting the program's objectives. Kudos to Major General John Allen (USMC), Brigadier General Itai Brun (IDF), Colonel J.B. Burton (USA), Lieutenant Colonel Joe L'Etoile (USMC), Dr. Dave Kilcullen, Mr. Greg Bates and Mr. Bill Smith.

Another highlight was the broad range of expertise, experience and professionalism brought to the event by participants to include senior mentors, "players", subject matter experts from numerous organizations and agencies, facilitators, team leads and the "iron majors" from the US Army Command and General Staff College and US Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Active attendance peaked at just over 180 participants to include 55 representing 18 countries and NATO ACT.

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SWJ Editor's Links:

Tactical Jenga - Jules Crittenden, Forward Movement

Discuss - Small Wars Council