In many respects, the war against the Taliban is no different to a war on gangs such as the Hells Angels. Both rely on a breakdown in the socio-economic conditions that force sections of the community to make unfortunate decisions. Where the community is ravaged by violence, drugs and intergenerational deprivation, how do you stop people supporting the Taliban or their local gang? This is how I began to look at the struggle against the Taliban during my time in Afghanistan.
Counterinsurgency is the military's version of what criminal and social justice systems have been doing for years. Whether it's Afghanistan or the Bronx, the population is the prize and it is no longer acceptable just to shoot the bad guys.
Counterinsurgency has become a blindingly complex approach to winning the war in Afghanistan. Fighting the Taliban has become a multi-layered offensive that combines the maintenance of security, the restoration of law and order, community and tribal mapping ('human terrain analysis'), rebuilding social, health and educational facilities, establishing systems of governance and straight-out capturing and killing the enemy. Counterinsurgency is only effective by winning on all these fronts...
More at The Interpreter.
Comments
The difference between the Taliban and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation is you will probably get served with legal papers in the mail, for defamation. No seriously one is an insurgent group the other a legal corporation.
http://diffusionblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/battle-of-brands-contest-for-…
http://www.newswek.org/2010/07/17/how-legal-pot-could-harm-the-cartels…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/california-dems-endorse-p_n_63…
The US is broke, with another war to fight on the border, whether Holder and his FBI, DEA foot soldiers lets it slide or not, is up to him, if he does not want to cut off the logistics and reduce the projected US military KIA rate, that is up to him. A penny for your thoughts and a cup of tea for your Kingdom.
The way we figure it is legal to sell it and legal to defend yourself with a firearm and use lethal force. Work the rest out. It is called the greenlight.
KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents
p.298 The Plot to Destroy Mexico.
To plunge Mexico into civil war and destroy its government by armed force. In the words of a Mexican servant of the KGB, it would make of Mexico "another Vietnam".
Brother Slapout9,
Reference..."if you take out the drugs, sex and violence they are pretty much Republicans"...
So, you are telling me that all Republicans are potential Hell's Angels? I am trying to imagine my Dad (platoon leader and Co Commander in S-VN, Parrots Peak -Michelin Rubber Plantation '68-'69 and successful businessman)riding a Hog, sporting his colors while his girlfriend is free-breasting and enjoying the open road.
What are Democrats? Easy Riders?
Enjoyed the post :-)
r/
MAC
slapout9, you're ignorant of recent moves made by the HAs. During the previous decade, there were a number of outlaw mc gangs forcibly incorporated into the HAs.
how do can you possibly reconcile murder, racism, drug production/trafficing, sex trade and neighborhood intimidation schemes, with law abiding citizens that vote Republican?
You must know HAs are staunchly anti-black, there are no black members. Most, if not all clubhouses, prohibit blacks from parties.
Anyway, the fact that someone like yourself somehow condones this type of criminal organization and criminal activity, on sociological grounds, pretty much affirms the point Jason Thomas is making.
As an LE type I can tell you that nobody makes or forces somebody to join the "Hells Angels" they do it because they want to....they like it. It is more a lifestyle then anything else. And no amount of social engineering support will change that,so it is not a very good analogy IMO. My experience with theses types is that if you take out the drugs,sex and violence they are pretty much Republicans. They have real jobs in the community,they vote and raise families. They will and have fought for their country,they are very pro America. They just want to be left alone.
However there is a lesson to learn here. The UW model(the one minute guerrilla warfare course) on how we should fight such small wars is a much better method to follow than COIN. If you want to change a country and could recruit these guys (Hells Angels)the war would be over in about 30 days. Also Maslow could have learned something from them on how you establish and maintain a hierarchy of needs.
We all seek to understand that which we do not in the context of that which we do. We look for similarities that may well be very real, and draw conclusions from the same that are dangerously flawed.
Conventional warfighting militaries faced with insurgency do this, and cast the problem in the context of warfare, and threat-focused defeating of the insurgent.
Law enforcement types will be more likely to see the legal similarities, and cast the problem in the context of gangs (as in this example)
Development community sees it in the context of shortfalls in that area. Same for the governance crowd, that tends to focus on ineffectiveness rather than on populace perceptions of the same.
All of this is natural, and all of this leads to the jumble of COIN theory and engagement we are all bombarded with (and likely frustrated by).
I know I was, am, and will continue to be. This is a journey. Where I am now in my journey is to focus myself, and ask others to shift their focuse as well, to the study of insurgency itself.
Bike Gangs are not "insurgents" They are outlaws for social and economic reasons. Insurgency is political and a result of governance forced upon a popualce that does not in turn feel that that governance is really out for their best interests. Those who have read my latest know how I think it is primarily the perceptions of Legimacy, Hope, Justice and Respect that must be understood and addressed. Probably not a bullseye, but it is definitely 'on the paper' (and I think pretty close to the bull).
This idea here? Off the paper. I understand why you took the shot, there are similarities, but not ones that help to resolve such problems in a meaningful way. My take.
COL Gentile,
First, I'm still trying to get the coffee out of my nose that I coughed up after COL Maxwell's comment. Additionally, I'm struggling not to make a porn joke about FM 3-24.
Second, IMO, your entire post is correct. I remain pessimistic that we (US/Int'l Community) can affect large-scale change in a short time period. Now, small scale interventions (FID, social entrepreneurs, etc) affecting change over decades or centuries is another matter.
Finally, I actually liked the article from a "virgin" perspective. Hell's Angels and other gangs can be a useful analogy; HOWEVER, the distinctions are important and key critical.
- Hell's Angels started as a social club for WWII veterans trying to find an outlet for adrenaline. They "radicalized" as drugs and money began to flow in. *
- Similarly, La Nuestra Familia, one of the major gangs in NorCal, started as a violent gang back in the 1960's with efforts to force equal rights for Hispanic-Americans in a similar fashion as the Black Panther. They were further militarized in the 1980s as disenfranchised Vietnam Vets sweltered into their ranks and the drug trade flowed.**
-Contrastingly, the Taliban is a quasi political-religious-ethnic insurgency that seeks to overthrow the Karzai government.
Mike
Gian,
Unfortunately, I think the answer is in your comment:
"Furthermore, if the Taliban are like the Hells Angels well that is not a happy prospect for American strategy in Afghanistan because the Hells Angels have been around since 1948: And they are still here and active! So does that mean in order to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan we have to be there for a generation?"
As bad as it sounds and that it goes against all sense of "winning", we may be stuck with having to live with and try manage the problems (or allow the Afghan government to manage its problems) especially given the complexity of the nexus of the challenges in Afghanistan; e.g., Pakistan ISI-Taliban connection, the India-Pakistani conflict being indirectly played out in Afghanistan at least as a periphery of that conflict, the Iranian situation, Chinese economic expansion on the Global chess board - influencing Indian actions while China aligns with Pakistan and attempts to get to the southern and western waterways through Burma in the east and Afghanistan/Pakistan to the west of India. Sometimes I think the Taliban problem is the least of the world's worries.
Or to take a longer view, Mike, if you put the end point of the civil rights movement in the 1960s as the point where the United States finally (although certainly not completely) put to bed, so to speak, the major and fundamental social and political problem since its inception, then what does that tell us about our prospects in Afghanistan? I mean shoot, start with Jamestown in 1607 up to the Civil War 1861-1865 then onwards to the 1960s you are talking about 350 years plus. Why do we think that clever and innovative social science methods such as Human Terrain Teams or even a Global CORDs (Kilcullen's recommendation in his new book) for Afghanistan can solve its problems and transform (or build) its institutions in a matter of months or even years?
Furthermore, if the Taliban are like the Hells Angels well that is not a happy prospect for American strategy in Afghanistan because the Hells Angels have been around since 1948: And they are still here and active! So does that mean in order to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan we have to be there for a generation?
This whole fascination and fetish with Counterinsurgency becomes more and more surreal every day (like clocks dripping down the wall in a Salvador Dali painting). Now as this article shows we have our experts telling us that the way to think about the problem in Afghanistan is to think of our own problems at home. But hence the rub: Afghanistan is not our home, and it is not in our interests pursuant to the President's policy objectives to carry about societal rewiring in that place.
Yesterday a NY Times piece suggesting that Mortensons book can in fact become weaponized by the American military in Afghanistan and now an expert telling us to think of the Taliban just like they were the Hells Angels.
When will our senior generals and flag officers start to pull the curtain back and expose the falsity of the man (the theory and practice of population centric counterinsurgency) behind the curtain? Perhaps my friend and colleague LTC Paul Yingling should consider writing "A Failure of Generalship, Version 2" in this regard.
gian
This kind of reminds me of a sign I saw that said:
"Don't bother us. We are like virgins writing sex manuals."
which of course can be used to interpret this piece, FM 3-24, and some of our attempts at "armed nation building" in many different ways because the author is right - this is all "blindingly complex." (by the way what was it we were told would make us go blind??? :-))
Will,
Depends on how you look at it. One could argue that, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Supreme Court decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education in 1971 brought a much needed sweeping "radical social re-engineering" to my part of the world quelling a burgeoning non-violent insurgency.
Best,
Mike
You might like to see this response to Jason's piece, featured on The Interpreter: http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2010/07/16/Reader-riposte-What-hubr…
Of course, there are similarities between countering gang culture and countering an insurgency. I suspect Jason has mischaracterised the process in both cases. The suitability of means always depend on the end that one wishes to achieve, and counterinsurgency warfare need not create nirvana out of a living hell. In fact, I can't think of an occasion in the history of counterinsurgency warfare where anything like 'radical social re-engineering' as ever been successfully achieved yet I can think of many insurgencies that have suffered defeat.