Journal

by Adam Elkus

Download the Full Article: The Hezbollah Myth and Asymmetric Warfare

Since the early 1990s, military theorists examined ways that a rogue state, substate, or nonstate actor could frustrate a conventional force. The 2006 Israeli clash with Hezbollah came to be seen as the harbinger of an era of cheap missiles, stronger defenses, and danger to conventional forces. Hezbollah's supposed success furthered a growing notion that a strong high-end asymmetric warfare defense could make a country a poison pill for foreign intervention.

But this narrative does not capture the conflict's ambivalent results, exaggerating Israeli difficulties while overplaying Hezbollah's performance. The Hezbollah myth also masks the ability of a sufficiently driven and equipped state to use conventional military power to annihilate a weaker state or substate group. While the operational challenges of high-end asymmetric threats do pose dangers for conventional forces that deserve sustained analysis, the strategic question of whether high-end asymmetric warfare can effectively deter a conventional force hinges instead on the political context of the conflict and the adversaries who fight it.

Download the Full Article: The Hezbollah Myth and Asymmetric Warfare

Adam Elkus is an analyst specializing on foreign policy and security. He has published on defense issues in Small Wars Journal, West Point Combating Terrorism Center Sentinel, Defense Concepts, and other publications. He is currently the Associate Editor of Red Team Journal.

The Pentagon is Not Preparing for the Most Likely Conflicts

by Dr. Roy Godson and Dr. Richard H. Shultz, Jr.

Joint Force Quarterly has kindly granted Small Wars Journal permission to publish this forthcoming JFQ article.

Download the Full Article: A QDR for All Seasons?

The end of the Cold War and the massive changes in the conflict environment that ensued launched the United States on a transformational path in military force planning. In 1996, the first Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) set out a vision of the two regional contingencies model, with the Nation equipped and able to dominate in two major conventional wars at the same time. But the outlines of a different kind of conflict setting began to emerge as the United States attempted to protect its interests in several different regions. The first decade of the 21st century has shown clearly that the way the Nation thought about and prepared for war in most of the 20th century requires a major overhaul. But change comes slowly.

The years following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq were filled with adversity and indecision among the military leadership about how to overcome a different type of foe. The 2006 QDR appeared to be an attempt to refocus the Pentagon's warfighting approach to meet the challenge. In that assessment, the Department of Defense (DOD) acknowledged that a serious gap existed between the changed nature of conflict and the doctrine and means it had available for fighting it. DOD stipulated that irregular warfare (IW) had become a vital mission area for which the Services needed to prepare. Post-9/11 combat was depicted as "irregular in its nature." Enemies in those fights were "not conventional military forces." Rather, they employed indirect and asymmetric means. Adaptation was the way forward.

The 2006 QDR also set in motion IW initiatives inside DOD leading up to the December 2008 release of DOD Directive 3000.07, "Irregular Warfare." That directive was unambiguous about 21st-century conflict, declaring: "Irregular warfare is as strategically important as traditional warfare," and it is essential to "maintain capabilities . . . so that the DOD is as effective in IW as it is in traditional [conventional] warfare." Moreover, according to Directive 3000.07, the capabilities required for each type of fight were different.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had been among the most vociferous advocates, reinforcing the message in numerous statements, lectures, congressional testimony, and popular articles. Gates was by no means alone in the Pentagon and administration. But despite direction at the top, consensus was elusive. Many within the Joint Chiefs organization, Defense bureaucracy and industry, and Services viewed post-9/11 irregular fights as anomalies—ephemeral trends generated by particular circumstances. Furthermore, they held that conventional or general purpose forces could handle them.

Download the Full Article: A QDR for All Seasons?

Dr. Roy Godson is President of the National Strategy Information Center, a Washington, DC--based nongovernmental, nonpartisan educational organization. Dr. Richard H. Shultz, Jr., is Professor and Director of the International Security Studies Program in the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

The Clarion Call

by Colonel Charles D. Allen

Joint Force Quarterly has kindly granted Small Wars Journal permission to publish this forthcoming JFQ article.

Download the Full Article: Redress of Professional Military Education

In 1908, the American short story writer O. Henry penned "The Clarion Call." This title has become synonymous with a powerful request for action or an irresistible mandate. As the Nation looks to the institution of the U.S. Army during an era of persistent conflict and after 9 years of war, it is time to recapture professional military education (PME) as part of our profession.

The Army is arguably the largest and best educational and training institution in the United States. It has a strong, established educational program that seeks to provide the right Soldier with the right education at the right time. Without doubt, even as we have fought two wars, there have been laudable advances to include an expanded graduate school program, increased numbers of international fellows at our schools, and an effort led by the Chief of Staff of the Army to broaden the experiences of the officer corps with more opportunities to serve in think tanks, interagency positions, and world-class universities.

For the officer corps, this PME program is ingrained from pre-commissioning through promotion to general officer. Unfortunately, even with the advances mentioned above, what is presented in official policy as an espoused value does not always translate into what is valued within the Army in the real world. More importantly, the gap between espoused and enacted values is significant and growing. Without action to arrest this trend, the Army risks the professional development of its senior leaders as well as its competency as a force to meet the Nation's needs in the years ahead.

Developing promising senior and strategic leaders is an obligation of the military profession. At a recent Military Education Coordination Council meeting in Washington, DC, several uniformed members asked questions about the types of conflict that we should prepare our senior officers for. In the contemporary operating environment, the focus has understandably been on the curriculum within the colleges: what is taught, how it is delivered, and by whom (faculty) in order to provide relevant education to senior officers. Two essays from the National War College and Naval War College, respectively, captured the discussion of the joint PME and Service-specific senior PME content and methodology in a recent issue of this journal. As important as curriculum and faculty are, they are moot issues if those officers who have the greatest potential to serve as strategic leaders deem attendance at one of our war colleges unnecessary and are allowed to bypass it.

Download the Full Article: Redress of Professional Military Education

Colonel Charles D. Allen, USA (Ret.), is Professor of Cultural Science in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the U.S. Army War College.

The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

by Dr. Robert Bunker

Download the Full Article: The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

The recent release by WikiLeaks.org of over seventy thousand classified U.S. Military documents pertaining to the insurgency in Afghanistan has generated immense media and public interest and is being compared in scale to the release of the 'Pentagon Papers' in 1965 by Daniel Ellsberg. Immediate U.S. governmental condemnations concerning unnecessarily placing troops in harm's way, on the one hand, combined with war crimes accusations, on the other, have only served to heighten the rhetoric surrounding the posting of these documents on the Web. The criminal and unauthorized manner in which this massive volume of documents was leaked has only helped to further politicize and emotionally galvanize commentators taking sides on this issue.

The intent of this short essay is to move past the hype, rhetoric, and passions of the moment and get to the core of the issue at hand. The ugly truth has nothing to do with who released the documents, why they were released, or even what political outcomes and potential policy fallout will occur after the dust settles. The core issue at hand is that insurgencies, by their very nature, are inherently brutal. This point was recently driven home after doing a considerable amount of research and reflection on issues pertaining to insurgent use of targeted killing, via both the techniques of assassination and political execution, and engaging in subsequent discourse on this topic with insurgency warfare scholars and practitioners. Further sensitizing me to this truth is that, prior to the insurgent analysis, I was recently involved in an edited book project on Mexican drug cartels and the criminal insurgencies taking place within the lands of our Southern neighbor with over twenty-five thousand dead since December 2006.

Download the Full Article: The Ugly Truth: Insurgencies are Brutal

Dr. Robert J. Bunker holds degrees in political science, government, behavioral science, social science, anthropology-geography, and history. Training taken includes that provided by DHS, FLETC, DIA, Cal DOJ, Cal POST, LA JRIC, NTOA, and private security entities in counter-terrorism, counter-surveillance, incident-response, force protection, and intelligence. Dr. Bunker has been involved in red teaming and counter-terrorism exercises and has provided operations support within Los Angeles County. Past associations have included Futurist in Residence, FBI Academy, Quantico, VA; Counter-OPFOR Program Consultant (Staff Member), National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center—West, El Segundo, CA; Fellow, Institute of Law Warfare, Association of the US Army, Arlington, VA; Lecturer-Adjunct Professor, National Security Studies Program, California State University San Bernardino, San Bernardino, CA; instructor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; and founding member, Los Angeles County Terrorism Early Warning Group. Dr. Bunker has over 200 publications including short essays, articles, chapters, papers and book length documents. These include Non-State Threats and Future Wars (editor); Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency (editor); Criminal-States and Criminal-Soldiers (editor); Narcos Over the Border (editor); and Red Teams and Counter-Terrorism Training (co-author— forthcoming). He has provided over 200 briefings, papers, and presentations to US LE, MIL, GOV, and other groups in the US and overseas. He can be reached at [email protected].

al-Qaeda's Newest Jihad Zone?

by Malcolm Nance

Download the Full Article: The Strait of Hormuz: al-Qaeda's Newest Jihad Zone?

After the July 28 explosion alongside the Japanese oil tanker M. Star in the Strait of Hormuz initial speculation was that it had struck a derelict sea mine from the 1991 Iraq war, encountered a rogue wave from an earthquake in Iran or had a collision with a whale or submarine. Pundits and even some counter-terror observers, particularly those in the Gulf States, spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to explain it away with any possibility except the most obvious one - terrorism. That can no longer be ignored.

When news of the incident broke caution was called for in the region as to assigning a specific cause and terrorism was specifically rejected as likely.

Here in the UAE, skepticism is the preferred form of denial and critics of the suicide boat theory are being given strong voice. The very mention of the possibility of terrorism originating in or near the United Arab Emirates is met with hushes and alternative explanations, hence the whale, wave and submarine theories. The "T" word (Terrorism) is not welcome in public or political discourse. Some political pundits claim that conventional war with Iran is a greater threat to the Strait. That may be true solely in relation to Iran's nuclear ambitions, but a wave of successful al-Qaeda suicide attacks could destabilize the markets in a way that rising tensions with Iran cannot.

Download the Full Article: The Strait of Hormuz: al-Qaeda's Newest Jihad Zone?

Malcolm W. Nance is a counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant for the U.S. government's Special Operations, Homeland Security and Intelligence agencies. A 20-year veteran of the US intelligence community's Combating Terrorism program and a six year veteran of the Global War on Terrorism he has extensive field and combat experience as an field intelligence collections operator, an Arabic speaking interrogator and a master Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) instructor.

Right Doctrine, Wrong War

by Jason Thomas

Download the Full Article: The Cognitive Dissonance of COIN

The psychological investment in COIN is now so deep that the cognitive dissonance would be too great to change course or admit COIN is the right doctrine for the wrong war. Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that despite contrary evidence, people are biased to think of their choices as correct. Like climate change, so much has been invested in counterinsurgency with huge reputations at stake, that anyone who challenges COIN in Afghanistan could be labeled a COIN skeptic.

No matter how much we try to win the hearts and minds, no matter how many millions of dollars is spent on development and regardless of attempts to improve governance and eliminate corruption, the socio-cultural ecosystem of Afghanistan does not respond to the doctrine of counterinsurgency. While the pockets can be won the heart and minds in Afghanistan will always remain notoriously capricious.

There are many reasons to continually question COIN from every angle, but the two this paper is concerned with are i) whether COIN could be the right military doctrine being applied in the wrong campaign; and ii) preparing for the next major unconventional war -- as is often the case in political campaigns and war, we tend to find ourselves fighting on the issues, theories or practices in the last campaign.

This paper will attempt to "play the ball and not the man" by pointing to the range of reasons unique to Afghanistan on top of self-imposed obstacles that reinforce the hypothesis of right doctrine, wrong war.

Download the Full Article: The Cognitive Dissonance of COIN

Jason Thomas has completed an eight month mission in Afghanistan as the Regional Manager for a USAID implementing partner. The role involved delivering counterinsurgency operations with US and Coalition Forces in three Provinces in Afghanistan - Ghazni, Wardak and Logar. Before Afghanistan Jason had worked in the civil war area in Sri Lanka after establishing one of the largest private responses to the Boxing Day Tsunami in Victoria, Australia. This also involved negotiating with the Tamil Tigers and being the first Westerner allowed by the GOSL into the high security zones following the end of the civil war last year. Jason implemented the Kokoda Track Project in Boroondara in 2008 taking disadvantage youth up the Kokoda track with the support of the Victorian Police, Hawthorn Football Club and the Kokoda Veterans from the 39th Infantry Battalion - this has now been adopted by the YMCA as an annual event. He has worked as Director of Research in the New Zealand Parliament for ACT New Zealand, political advisor in the House of Commons and House of Lords, London and as well as being political strategist for CEOs and Boards of Australian ASX 100 companies. He was Queen's Relay Baton Runner for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, nominated for Citizen of the Year in 2005 and awarded a Paul Harris Fellow in 2006.

by Cora Sol Goldstein

Download the Full Article: President Obama: Look for a New Massoud

It is often said that foreign powers are condemned to fail in Afghanistan. This is an over-simplification -- the ancient history of Afghanistan is the history of successive and successful foreign occupations that radically changed the country and its prevailing ideologies. It is true that in modern times imperial powers have systematically lost their Afghan adventures. In all cases, the invading armies tried to deploy a reduced number of troops and attempted to keep their casualties low. They relied on their technological superiority in their efforts to impose a central government that could be controlled from afar. The U.S. is losing Afghanistan because it is adhering blindly to this model.

It is imperative to free American policy from the straitjacket of misconceptions that shapes U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Download the Full Article: President Obama: Look for a New Massoud

Cora Sol Goldstein is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach. Goldstein received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2002. Her book, Capturing the German Eye: American Visual Propaganda in Occupied Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) discusses the U.S. experience in postwar Germany. Her recent publications include  "2003 Iraq, 1945 Germany, and 1940 France: Success and Failure in Military Occupations," Military Review, July 2010 and "A Strategic Failure: American Information Control Policy in Occupied Iraq," Military Review, March-April 2008.

Down at the District

A Look at the

District Delivery Program

by MAJ Gail Fisher

Download the full PDF

In foothills of eastern Afghanistan on a brilliant

spring day, district elders from Sayyidibad crowd into a cold, sunlit room in

the cinderblock district center.  They listen to speeches from men smartly

dressed in western style just arrived from Kabul.  

An enormous wooden table sits squarely in the middle

of the room.   The district center was built only three years ago, but a

florescent light already dangles precariously from the ceiling, one end free of

its anchor.  Burnt-orange curtains, stained and torn, hang on the windows. 

Brightly colored plastic-wrapped snacks are brought in with tea, and the

Provincial Governor gives his speech over the rattle of opening snacks and

sipping of tea.

The Provincial Governor speaks of endless disappointments, the Afghan central

government's broken promises, and proposes a way forward in the district. 

Promise and caution comingle in the morning's remarks.

Download the full PDF

MAJ Gail Fisher is a U.S.  Army Reserve Civil Affairs

officer serving in the Future Operations Section of ISAF Joint Command, Kabul,

Afghanistan as a stability operations planner.

Strategic Communication &

Influence Operations

Do We Really Get 'It'?

by Dr Lee Rowland  & Cdr

Steve Tatham RN

Download the full article

The last 2-3 years have seen an explosion in interest in the application of influence

as a tool for achieving military objectives.  This is not new, the military

have always sought to exert influence -- albeit at times unwittingly.  However,

two significant events have brought the issue to further prominence - the publication

of JDP3-40 and the deployment of 52 Brigade to Helmand Province in 2007/8. 

This article does not intend to debate either in any detail -- a quick search of

inter and intra nets will provide plenty of information for the curious

reader -- but there are two issues worthy of slightly more discussion. 

The first concerns 52 Brigade's deployment.  When Brigadier Andrew Mackay

led 52 Brigade to Helmand Province he did so having examined previous kinetic based

deployments and concluded that these, for various reasons, had not achieved the

effects that he envisaged for his mission.  For him the consent of the population

was utterly key and would not, nor could it, be achieved by hard power alone or

even with hard power primacy; as he developed his operational design he felt frustrated

that existing doctrine did not adequately prepare him to operate within the influence

arena.  The second is that Andrew Mackay subsequently became one of the driving

forces behind JDP3-40 and in particular the forceful articulation of the 'centrality'

of influence.  However, the 'how to do it' guidance still lags behind the emphasis

on and enthusiasm for, its use.....

This paper seeks to provide greater clarity in two key areas -- Target

Audience Analysis (TAA) and Measurements of Effectiveness (MOE).

Download the full article

Lee Rowland is a former Royal Marines Commando. He holds a Ph.D. in Experimental

Psychology and was co-director for the M.SC. in Psychological Research in the Department

of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. He now directs the Behavioural

Dynamics Institute.

Cdr Steve Tatham is completing a PhD in Strategic Communication and was formerly

Director of Advanced Communication Research at the Defence Academy.

Thai Village Security Lessons for

Afghanistan

by Jeff Moore

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the full article

As General David Petraeus takes over military command in Afghanistan, a major

point of contention has arisen regarding village security forces -- are they to be,

or not to be?  Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his supporters are weary,

saying village security forces will become tools of warlords and undermine central

authority.  General Petraeus and his subordinates think they are valuable to

their COIN strategy.  A hyper-political debate, full of miss direction, is

likely to follow as both sides maneuver to control the issue.  Village security,

however, is essential to separating the people from insurgents, no matter what the

war.  Examples from Thailand's COIN successes can help show the way forward.

Download

the full article

Jeff Moore is an assistant professor at National Defense University's Irregular

Warfare Department.  He is latter stage PhD candidate at the University of

Exeter. His subject is Thai COIN strategies and tactics and his dissertation analyzes

lessons learned from Thailand's past successful and current COIN campaigns to reveal

patterns on how the Thai strategize and execute counterinsurgency.  Moore's

work experience includes executive protection details and protective intelligence,

corporate security in Southeast Asia, and defense contracting for various government

entities, including the U.S. Army G-3 in the Pentagon.

Army Capstone Concept & the Genesis

of German World War One Assault Squad & Infiltration Tactics 

The Historical Linkage

by Dave Shunk

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the full article

How German Captain Willy Rohr changed infantry tactics, weapons and doctrine

within the World War One German Army is a remarkable story.  He succeeded in

his task as a result of the German Army's ideas of operational adaptability, mission

command and decentralized authority.  This paper presents by historical example

the basic ideas and inherent power in the Army Capstone Concept based on the German

model.  But first, a few Capstone Concept definitions as a baseline reference....

Operational adaptability requires a mindset based on flexibility of

thought calling for leaders at all levels who are comfortable with collaborative

planning and decentralized execution, have a tolerance for ambiguity, and possess

the ability and willingness to make rapid adjustments according to the situation.

Operational adaptability is essential to developing situational understanding

and seizing, retaining, and exploiting the initiative under a broad range of conditions.

Operational adaptability is also critical to developing the coercive and persuasive

skills the Army will need to assist friends, reassure and protect populations, and

to identify, isolate, and defeat enemies. 5

So how did the Germany Army of World War One use decentralization, mission command,

and operational adaptability to create infiltration tactics and revolutionize infantry

tactics in World War I? The story revolves around a Captain Willy Rohr.

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the full article

Dave Shunk is a retired USAF colonel, B-52G pilot, and Desert Storm combat

veteran whose last military assignment was as the B-2 Vice Wing Commander of the

509th Bomb Wing, Whitman AFB, MO. Currently, he is a historical researcher and DA

civilian working in the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), Fort Monroe,

Virginia. He has a National Security Strategy MS from the National War College.

The Saudi Option

by Tristan Abbey and Scott Palter

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The year is 2012. Squadrons of F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s streak across the sky,

swamping air defenses and neutralizing other key Iranian installations. The next

wave targets the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the nuclear power

station at Bushehr, the conversion plant in Isfahan, and the heavy water plant at

Arak. Within hours the Iranian nuclear program is crippled. As the armada returns

to base, the head of state who ordered the attack readies to congratulate the pilots

who carried it out.

 "Peace be upon you all," King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz says to his men.

"Your bravery humbles me. The Saudi Kingdom will be forever grateful.

 *         

*          *

Since the Bush administration forced the issue of Iran's nuclear program to the

fore in 2002, debating the merits and perils of a preemptive airstrike has become

something of a favorite pastime. Amid all the chatter about narrow corridors and

Saudi "green lights" lies an inescapable truth: a surprise Israeli strike has never

been more unlikely.

The contours of the problem have remained largely unchanged over the years. The

United States risks too much by attacking Iran, while an Israeli strike is difficult

to achieve without American backing. None of the countries that could conceivably

grant Israel over-flight rights—Turkey, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia—relishes the thought

of being seen as complicit in a Zionist-Crusader foray against yet another Muslim

country. Logistical requirements, namely limited refueling capacity, restrict the

Israeli Air Force's options to but a single multi-squadron assault of questionable

long-term effectiveness. Tel Aviv, essentially, has one bullet.

Download the full article

Tristan Abbey is in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Scott Palter, a professional wargame designer and publisher, is President of Final Sword Productions, LLC. Both are senior editors at

Bellum: A Project of The Stanford Review.

Interviewing Tactics in Counterinsurgency

by Stacy S. Lamon, Ph.D., Nahama

Broner, Ph.D., John Hollywood, Ph.D., and COL Billy McFarland, USAR

Download the full article

There is a recent growing body of literature on strategic, operational and theoretical

approaches to interacting with insurgents, as well as official documentation on

the topic.  Though there is demand for it, often from junior officers, surprisingly

little attention is given to the applied, boots-on-the-ground questions of "How

do I do it? Who do I ask? What do I ask them?" and"How do I ask it?" 

Not since Galula's 1964 manual on counterinsurgency has a basic hands-on approach,

written for the user, been offered. Using techniques from criminology, police investigation,

military science, psychology, and social network analysis, as well as practices

learned in the field, this article provides a framework for organizing tactics of

how to conduct interviews in non-controlled settings with the uninvolved man or

woman in the street and the bystander or victim aware of insurgent activities, as

well as the non-combatant collaborator and functionary of an insurgency, and a framework

for interviews in semi-controlled settings such as government or police offices.

In effect, this article walks the reader through the interview process step-by-step,

question-by-question, from planning to execution to analysis.  In doing so,

it provides a basic tactical answer to the question "How do I do it?" -- This

is how it can be done.

Download the full article

Dr. Stacy S. Lamon, a clinical and forensic psychologist and research scientist,

is currently a senior development advisor to the United States Agency for International

Development (USAID) in Iraq. 

Dr. Nahama Broner as a senior research psychologist at RTI International and

adjunct Associate Professor at New York University researches violence (victimization

and perpetration), public health and safety risk management interventions of offender

populations, and the translation of research to practice.

Dr. John Hollywood is an operations researcher at the RAND Corporation, where

he studies intelligence collection and analysis methods to preempt violent attacks

in the areas of crime prevention, counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.

COL Billy McFarland, USAR, is the Assistant Chief of the U.S. Army's Foreign

Area Officer Proponent, the Pentagon office responsible for the design, support

and advocacy for the Army's Foreign Area Officers -- the language, regional and political-military experts serving commanders, Defense agencies, and Embassy Country Teams around the globe.

Terrorism or Insurgency:

America's Flawed Approach to the Global

War on Terror

by Jon C. Couch

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the full article

America is not fighting a global war on terror; rather, it is engaged in a global

insurgency whose participants are intent on destroying western culture and replacing

it with an Islamic Caliph -- or Islamic government.  For centuries, insurgencies

and other forms of strife have plagued the global community.  Likewise, terrorists

claimed center stage for high profile acts attributed to this asymmetric type of

warfare; most notably the bombings on September 11, 2001, as well as earlier attacks

on US embassies in Africa.  The problem is that the United States has incorrectly

coined the current conflict the global war on terror when the term global

insurgency more closely describes the conflict. The present global environment,

complete with the technologies available (to the United States and its enemies)

and the strategic decisions made by the United States of how to counter these threats

will shape America's future, positively or negatively.  If the correct threat

is realized and that threat's correct center of gravity chosen for attack, as well

as a correct long term strategies and policies chosen and applied, America could

very well succeed in this conflict. If, on the other hand, the incorrect threat

and center of gravity are pursued resulting in the wrong strategy being chosen;

America will fare poorly in the current conflict, and may very well lose the conflict.

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the full article

Jon Couch enlisted in the USMC in 1979. Mr. Couch originally trained to be

an amphibious Reconnaissance Marine and then in 1982 changed his job specialty to

Intelligence Analyst and later Special Forces Survival Instructor. Mr. Couch went

on to serve in aviation and logistical units before being medically retired at twenty

years active service. After retiring, Mr. Couch worked as a contractor at the Marine

Corps' MAGTF Staff Training Program. Since 2003, he has been working at the Joint

Personnel Recovery Agency as a Personnel Recovery Instructor, Observer-Trainer,

Supervisory Intelligence Analyst, and Course Manager for the Intelligence Support

to Personnel Recovery Course.

Recruiting, Development, and Retention

of Cyber Warriors Despite an Inhospitable Culture

by Lieutenant Colonel Gregory

Conti and Lieutenant Colonel Jen Easterly

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Recruiting, Development, and Retention of Cyber Warriors Despite an Inhospitable

Culture

Make no mistake, our nation faces persistent, widespread and growing threats

in cyberspace. Across the array of dangerous actors and their capabilities, we've

witnessed an evolution from data compromise and loss, to the disruption of information

networks to the physical destruction of information systems. Our military forces,

in particular, depend heavily on classified and unclassified networks for command

and control, intelligence, operations and logistics. These networks -- over 15,000

of them -- represent a very tempting target, and the number of attacks against them

has increased dramatically over the past several years.  The United States

Government recognized the clear and present danger posed by this increasingly perilous

threat environment and created United States Cyber Command. 

We are at a unique cusp in history, as we have the first-ever opportunity to

create a large-scale organization to fight and win wars in cyber space.  

This isn't a trivial undertaking; there are myriad details that must be addressed. 

In this article, we focus on what is arguably the most important -- the human dimension,

specifically how we attract, develop, and retain a world-class cadre of cyber warriors. 

By building the best possible team and creating an environment that attracts more,

we can lay the foundation upon which we can successfully build Cyber Command. 

However, while the Defense Department has endorsed Cyber Command, the kinetic warfighting

culture generally has not. Positive strides have been made recently to include the

development of the Navy's Information Dominance Corps and planned establishment

of the Army's Cyber Brigade.

However, building the most effective Cyber Command will require fundamentally

changing military culture -- specifically how we think about networks and how we

manage the talent that we need to leverage these networks for warfighting effects.  

Uncomfortable, but necessary change will be required, else we risk creating a large

bureaucracy, staffed with marginally effective individuals, a "Cyber Command" in

name only.  This article presents a viable way ahead and suggests actionable

solutions for building, developing and retaining a world-class team.

Download the full article: 

Recruiting, Development, and Retention of Cyber Warriors Despite an Inhospitable

Culture

LTC Gregory Conti is an Academy Professor and Director of West Point's Cyber

Security Research Center. He holds a BS from West Point, an MS from Johns Hopkins

University and a PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology, all in Computer Science.  

He is the author of Security Data Visualization (No Starch Press) and Googling Security

(Addison-Wesley) as well as over 40 articles covering computer security, online

privacy, and cyber warfare.  He is a frequent speaker at leading security conferences

including Defcon, Black Hat, RSA, and Shmoocon.  He recently returned from

a deployment as Officer in Charge of Cyber Command's Expeditionary Cyber Support

Element in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

LTC Jen Easterly is a member of the US Cyber Command Commander's Action Group

(CAG). She served as the first Commander of the Army Network Warfare Battalion from

July 08 - July 2010.  She holds a BS in International Relations from the United

States Military Academy and an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the

University of Oxford.

No, Really: Is the US Military Cut

Out For Courageous Restraint?

by Jason Lemieux

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No,

Really: Is the US Military Cut Out For Courageous Restraint?

General (GEN) Stanley McChrystal's recent dismissal has spurred a host of articles

that quote US troops complaining about his controversial rules of engagement (ROEs)

directives in Afghanistan. The reasoning underlying these complaints usually shows

a lack of understanding of counterinsurgency doctrine, an unwillingness to accept

its logic, or both.  The stubborn refusal of many servicemembers to accept

McChrystal's "courageous restraint" directive calls into question our military's

suitability for population-centric counterinsurgency.

By now, the reasoning behind the restrictive ROEs is well known: Insurgents depend

on support from the civilian inhabitants (whether the distinction between insurgents

and "civilian inhabitants" is always meaningful is another question) of their theater

of operations. GEN McChrystal termed it "Insurgent

Math": Every time you kill an innocent person, you create ten new insurgents.

GEN McChrystal further elaborated that, "Destroying a home or property jeopardizes

the livelihood of an entire family and creates more insurgents."

In a June 23, 2010 radio bit titled, "Troops Surprised About Gen. McChrystal's

Ouster," NPR correspondent Tom Bowman

told his

colleague that, "Now, clearly, you know, [the troops] don't want to kill innocent

civilians, but they believe their hands are tied in going after the Taliban." 

It's certainly true that a portion of the troops, perhaps the majority, have no

desire to kill innocent civilians.  What America is not being honest with itself

about, however, is that a significant minority don't really care how many civilians

are killed as long as they are allowed to do what they imagine to be their jobs:

Download the full article: 

No,

Really: Is the US Military Cut Out For Courageous Restraint?

Jason Lemieux served in the US Marine Corps infantry from 2001-2006. After

serving his third tour in Iraq under a voluntary ten-month contract extension, Lemieux

was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant. In December 2010, Lemieux will

receive his B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University. He is currently

a research intern for the Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and

International Studies in Washington, D.C. The views expressed here are his own.

A Game Theory Analysis

by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Chad Machiela

Download the full article: Gun Control in Counterinsurgency

Throughout 2006, Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) coalition forces and the farmers of the al Jazeera Desert of Iraq struggled to cooperate while pursuing separate goals. Consistently, the desire by MNC-I to impose populace and resource control measures to limit use of the area by insurgents clashed with the needs of the populace to survive and care for their families. One issue in particular resulted in the repeated arrest of farmers who intended no crime but to protect their families and left the farmers with no choice but to support the insurgents—the coalition's policy for gun control. Game theory provides commanders and policy officials a methodology to analyze the options available to disparate actors within a competitive situation or conflict, to predict likely adversary and population reaction to plans or policy, and to help develop courses of action beneficial to all.

The al Jazeera Desert is a sparsely populated region, bordered by Lake Thar Thar to the west and Main Supply Route (MSR) Tampa between Samarra and Tikrit to the east. Because of the coalition's top-down method of controlling Iraq, this rural area hosted no coalition forces. Coalition patrols instead focused on protecting MSR Tampa and the pipeline between the population centers of Samarra and Tikrit. Because the area was without cell coverage, residents could not call on security forces for assistance when threatened by insurgents or criminals, providing insurgent forces an ideal area for hiding, training, and reconstituting before traveling back into the larger population centers to resume direct conflict. Criminals flocked into the desert to remain out of the reach of government forces and prey upon the isolated farms.

In 2006 the coalition's populace and resources control measure for management of privately owned weapons was to allow each Iraqi household to maintain one AK-47 or AK-74, with two magazines with 60 rounds of ammunition. Ostensibly, this would allow the family to protect itself against local criminals and insurgents, while limiting the number of armed individuals who might oppose the forces of the coalition and the Government of Iraq. Instead this policy ensured that local residents were left helpless to resist the insurgents, who cared little about limits on gun ownership and generally travelled in armed groups of four to twenty.

Download the full article: Gun Control in Counterinsurgency

CW3 Chad Machiela is a Special Forces warrant officer assigned to 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), Joint Base Lewis McChord. He holds a M.S. in Defense Analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School and a B.A. in Public Law from Western Michigan University. The opinions expressed here are the author's own and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

Saving the COIN Baby from the Afghan Bathwater (and Vice-Versa)

by Dr. Tony Corn

Download the full article: Saving the COIN Baby from the Afghan Bathwater

When General Petraeus guided the elaboration of the new counterinsurgency field manual FM-3-24 in 2006, the main theater of operations happened to be Iraq, and the main operational priority was to analytically discriminate between global and local grievances in order to strategically disaggregate the transnational Jihadist from the "accidental guerrilla" whose space happens to be invaded. Given the urgency of the situation, there was no time to reflect on the "Grievance vs. Greed" debate that had been at the center of the civilian literature on civil wars in the previous decade. As a result, the COIN doctrine enshrined in FM 3-24 is as long on Grievance as it is short on Greed.

But while the Grievance paradigm was by and large adequate to understand the situation in Iraq five years ago, the Greed paradigm is more relevant in the case of Afghanistan - a country that has had a war economy since 1979, where warlordism and poppy cultivation play a central role, and which has achieved the dubious distinction of being the second most corrupt country in the world.

Add to that the "resource curse" represented by the massive U.S presence: beginning with Bush's quiet surge of September 2008, a series of military surges increasing the number of troops by more than 50,000 (plus an equal number of contractors) has been partly responsible for a fifty percent increase of corruption in the past two years.

Today, a good case could be made that the political divergences (Grievance) that once existed between the main protagonists (Kabul officials, regional warlords, Taliban of all stripes, not to mention Pakistani officials) have taken a backseat, and that a convergence of sorts has begun to emerge on a shared economic objective (Greed): milking the American cow for all it's worth, and for as long as possible.

Download the full article: Saving the COIN Baby from the Afghan Bathwater

Dr. Tony Corn is on leave from the State Department and currently writing a book on the Long War. This essay is a follow-up to two previous articles: "The Art of Declaring Victory and Going Home: Strategic Communication and the Management of Expectations," Small Wars Journal, September 2009, and "Toward a Kilcullen-Biden Plan?: Bounding Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan," Small Wars Journal, October 2009. The opinions expressed here are the author's own and do not reflect the view of the U.S. State Department or the U.S. Government.

by Captain John A. Kendall

Download the full article: Afghanistan: The Importance of Political Maneuver in Counterinsurgency Operations

Any commander operating in a counterinsurgency (COIN) environment is besieged by the constant need to make numerous and varied decisions critical to the successful execution of a COIN campaign. While all military and political campaigns are challenging due to the "fog of war", COIN campaigns can prove particularly difficult for military personnel due to a military culture that does not understand how to politically maneuver in semi to non-permissive environments. This paper demonstrates the need for military organizations to gain a better understanding of their operational environment before executing political maneuver in a full spectrum COIN campaign.

Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 7311 did not originally intend to conduct a full spectrum counterinsurgency(COIN) operation; instead it originally chose to expand Ghazni's Foreign Internal Defense (FID) efforts as part of a larger joint COIN campaign. The Detachment inherited the Afghan National Police Special Response Team (ANP SRT); a small yet well trained platoon of 19 ethnic Hazarans. While seeking to expand the ANP SRT's size and capabilities, the Detachment planned to simultaneously execute surgical strike operations against high ranking and mid level Taliban commanders as a means of validating the ANP SRT's capabilities. An emphasis on Foreign Internal Defense combined with Direct Action was a typical Detachment strategy during 2008 that has gradually shifted to FID and population security with the advent of Village Stability Operations (VSO).

The Detachment's elation over the successful capture of Taliban commander Mullah Faizoni in late July would transition to frustration over its inability to capture/kill Taliban Intelligence Chief Sher Agha. To reacquire the target, the Detachment conducted limited engagement of Espandi Village in order to generate additional atmospherics. It assessed that a larger COIN operation should be left to the conventional forces and Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) as the battle space owner was the final approving authority for all kinetic operations. Yet, when its limited engagement produced no results, the Detachment realized that in order to obtain long term effects as codified by the SOF imperatives, it needed to conduct a combined political maneuver.

Download the full article: Afghanistan: The Importance of Political Maneuver in Counterinsurgency Operations

About the Detachment: ODA 7311 has deployed to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedoms VIII, XII, XIV and is set to return for OEF XVI. It was my privilege to have served with them during OEF XII as their Detachment Commander. This article was written in their honor and is especially dedicated to SFC Bradley S. Bohle, SFC Shawn P. McCloskey and SSG Joshua M. Mills who were KIA on 15 September, 2009 while conducting combat operations in Nimruz Province, Afghanistan.

by Nathan Freier

This paper is being published simultaneously in Small Wars Journal and the PKSOI Bulletin, an on-line publication of the United States Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute.

Download the full article: MIA in QDR: A Unifying Vision for Land Forces

The post-9/11 period has witnessed a marked improvement in corporate defense perceptions about the utility of U.S. land forces. Although they have sacrificed a great deal in the field, the Iraq and Afghan wars have been good to the Army, Marine Corps (USMC), and Special Operations Forces (SOF) from a defense policy perspective. With counterinsurgency (COIN), counterterrorism (CT), stability operations (SO), and security force assistance (SFA) currently dominating the defense agenda, even passive observers recognize the near-term value of land power. Today, land forces are central to solving the United States' most pressing near-term national security challenges. Consequently, the land combat function has benefited from steadily rising stock prices within the Department of Defense (DoD).

The current era of land force ascendancy has witnessed significant changes in mission. For example, land force competency in irregular warfighting has risen substantially while service competency for high-intensity traditional conflict has atrophied. The Army, USMC, and, to some extent, SOF, have radically adjusted their operational worldview to account for previously under-valued "irregular" missions like CT, COIN, SO, etc. The army now openly acknowledges in its capstone doctrine that stability and civil support are core army missions, alongside more conventional offensive and defensive operations. For its part, the USMC — while often decrying the loss of some of its expeditionary capability — has become increasingly comfortable operating in force ashore for extended periods. Both the Army and USMC have also accepted new responsibilities in SFA.

SOF, too, has witnessed significant change in focus and operating principles. "Direct action" (DA) SOF forces — long accustomed to operating autonomously — have learned to operate in close proximity to and in close coordination with large conventional ground forces sharing the same battlespace. Army SOF specifically — an organization whose pre-9/11 sine qua non was largely foreign internal defense (FID) and SFA — now, by necessity, is more accustomed to serial employment in DA. And, in recent years, the scale of DA and SFA requirements necessitated that Army SOF cede many of its traditional FID and SFA responsibilities to general purpose ground forces (GPF). This has resulted in a number of "in stride" GPF innovations like the Army's new Advisory and Assistance Brigades (AAB) and the Marine Corps' Security Cooperation Marine Air Ground Task Forces (SCMAGTF).

Whether or not any of this amounts to a bellwether for the future of land operations remains a hotly debated issue across defense-interested communities. Some traditionalists see unacceptably high-risk in these trends; whereas less traditional military thinkers argue that contemporary strategic conditions necessitate a new, more unconventional focus for land forces, leaving many aspects of the next generation traditional warfight to the Air Force and Navy.

Some influential thought leaders see recent irregular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as concrete demonstrations of the utility of robust (if not less traditionally-oriented) land forces. Still others see the uneven history and raw cost of Iraq and Afghanistan as data points militating against future large-scale U.S. interventions. The author argues that future land interventions are unavoidable. But, the circumstances under which they occur, the operating concepts employed in their execution, and the objectives pursued throughout their course may be substantially different than those that shape current warfights.

Download the full article: MIA in QDR: A Unifying Vision for Land Forces

Nathan Freier joined the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute as a Visiting Research Professor in August 2008. He is also a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He joined CSIS in April of 2008 after a 20-year career as a field artillery officer and strategist in the United States Army.

by William S. McCallister

Download the full article: Afghan Governance Considerations

President Karzai appears to follow an imperial-confederacy form of governance which assumes that disparate Afghan territories are controlled by autonomous groups and where quid-pro-quo and patronage relationships assist in imposing order and stability. The system of government in Afghanistan is therefore an ad hoc combination of political expediency and private enterprise. It is efficient in its own way, but can also lead to flagrant abuses and corruption. The following are a number of considerations that might shed light on the Karzai government's approach to counterinsurgency.

I start with a two assumptions. First, the tension between the Karzai government and the various groups competing for influence and resources is an expression of power. Second, competition takes place within an established power-sharing system that includes urban and rural, sectarian, political, economic and tribal/qawm groupings.

Download the full article: Afghan Governance Considerations

William S. "Mac" McCallister is a retired military officer. He has worked extensively in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. While on active duty, McCallister served in numerous infantry and special operations assignments specializing in civil-military, psychological and information operations.

A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq

SWJ Book Review by Lieutenant Colonel Adam Strickland

Download the full review: A Third COIN Course of Action

A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq by Mark Moyar, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009, 368 pp., $30.

Years from now, local economists and civic leaders may well curse the name Dr. Mark Moyar for the irreparable harm he did to the local Washington, DC economy in 2009-2010, and blame him for creating the conditions necessary to finally inhibit the unfettered flow of government money to local defense corporations asserting special skills or knowledge applicable to counterinsurgency. Over the past decade, thousands of retired and former military professionals have created new-identities for themselves as counterinsurgency or counterterrorism experts around the Metro DC area regardless of their lack of experience, training, or education in those fields. This re-branding created financial and professional opportunities that were only possible due to the absence of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism knowledge within the Department of Defense and individual military branches in the period immediately before and after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; thus, we in the military have no one to blame but ourselves. Thankfully, after hundreds of books and thousands of articles produced by self-proclaimed counterinsurgency experts, that were truly more akin to travel monologues detailing individual lessons learned during extensive periods in-theater ranging from 10 days in Kabul or Baghdad to a 12 months combat deployment in which the author was fortunate if he ever left the immediate 5 miles around his Forward-Operating-Base, we finally have a book worthy of careful examination and an all-important second-read.

Download the full review: A Third COIN Course of Action

Lieutenant Colonel Adam Strickland is a Marine Infantry Officer with previous combat tours in Iraq. During his last tour, he engaged daily with former insurgents, members of the former regime, and civic leaders as part of Marine counterinsurgency efforts in Anbar Province, Iraq. He is a graduate of USMC Command and Staff College, the School of Advanced Warfighting, and MIT's National Security Studies Seminar XXI Program. He is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in 2011 in support of continuing USMC counterinsurgency efforts.

Reflections on the Car Bombing in Ciudad Juarez

by John P. Sullivan

Download the full article: Reflections on the Car Bombing in Ciudad Juarez

In an apparently significant acceleration of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP), Mexican cartel violence embraced the car bomb in an attack on Federal police in embattled Ciudad Juárez last Thursday, 15 July 2010. Not only did the attack employ a car bomb (apparently a primitive improvised explosive secreted inside a car not the fully-integrated variant found in Iraq, and the AfPak theatres known as a VBIED), but it also was an ambush that directly targeted police. This TTP is a classic insurgent attack method that promises to be part of Mexico's future engagements in its on-going criminal insurgencies.

Download the full article: Reflections on the Car Bombing in Ciudad Juarez

John P. Sullivan is a regular contributor to Small Wars Journal. He is a career police officer and currently serves as a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism (CAST). He is co-editor of Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorism Network (Routledge, 2006) and Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses (Routledge, 2010). His current research focus is the impact of transnational organized crime on sovereignty, intelligence, terrorism, and criminal insurgencies.

by Colonel Steven Boylan

Download the full article: A Way to Accomplish Interviews for Commanders and Staff

The path to successful interviews and media relations is an art, not science. It is a combination of building blocks based upon common sense, relationship building with the media (and individual reporters), practice, rehearsals and a degree of confidence and desire to engage.

There are a number of ways to conduct interviews. Nobody has the market cornered on good ideas and what works for one person will not work for another. The key is to be flexible, understand the environment in which you are about to enter and get experienced Public Affairs Officers in the mix early. Above all, common sense must prevail. The golden rule, if you do not want to see it in print; do not say it. I have told many over the years, if you are okay seeing what you said on the six o'clock news in your home town or on the front page of the paper for your family to see, then you are probably okay. That is not a guarantee, but for the most part you will be fine.

For the inexperienced individual being interviewed, always consider everything you say to be on-the-record. That is advice we as public affairs officers give to those we interact with, especially if we are not there to assist and if they have never talked with the reporter prior to the interview. That is the safest approach to take. In addition, keep it simple, do not use jargon and stay in your lane are all part of the mantra you hear.

Download the full article: A Way to Accomplish Interviews for Commanders and Staff

Colonel Steven Boylan, who will be retiring this fall is currently an Assistant Professor in the Command & General Staff College, Department of Command & Leadership. He has more than 15 years of public affairs experience at two - four star commands in the Army and Combined and Joint assignments. He has been the principal PAO for senior leaders since 1999 to include General David Petraeus for approximately three years. His last public affairs assignment was as the Battle Command Training Program senior public affairs observer/trainer and PAO.

by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling

Download the full article: The All-Volunteer Force: The Debate

I'd like to share with SWJ readers the debate I've been having with current and former senior defense leaders on the deficiencies of the all-volunteer force.

This past February, I published "The Founder's Wisdom" in Armed Forces Journal. While the article addressed many aspects of Congressional and popular oversight of national security issues, the issue that provoked the strongest reaction was the portion concerning the all-volunteer military.

Raising an Army is not merely a matter of labor economics - finding the right combination of wages, benefits and marketing strategies to fill job vacancies. Raising an Army is a profoundly political act with profoundly political consequences. The issues of who fights and who pays for America's wars are ultimately questions about our conceptions of justice and civic obligation. My hope is that our debate about the merits of the all-volunteer force will move beyond questions of wages and benefits, and focus on these larger issues of justice and civic obligation.

As this "short-term struggle" approaches its tenth year, cheerful portrayals of the AVF are no longer plausible. It's time for the United States to reconsider the wisdom of the all-volunteer force.

I look forward to the always superb commentary by SWJ readers on this debate, and I hope that Dr. Gilroy and Mr. Ford will join us.

Download the full article: The All-Volunteer Force: The Debate

Lieutenant Colonel Paul L. Yingling is an Army officer who has served three tours of duty in Iraq and is currently a professor of security studies at the George C. Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany. The views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Army or Defense Department.

by Gary Anderson

Download the full article: An Afghan Nahal?

It has become an article of faith in the Muslim world to despise Israel, and anything that it has accomplished. But one thing that Israel was able to do was to create a nation out of motley array of people with vastly different cultural and political backgrounds. Part of that was pure survival instinct, and much of the national glue came from the Army in which all Israelis are obligated, at least on paper, to serve. National service truly has provided a "school of the nation" for Israel. However, other Israeli organizations have helped greatly with the nation-building effort. One of those Israeli institutions might serve as a model for assisting us and the Afghan national government as we take on the daunting task of pacifying Kandahar. This organization was called The "Fighting Pioneer Youth"; NAHAL is the Israeli term.

These armed young collective settlers spread out like an ink blot, creating a ring of fortified farm collectives between the growing Jewish population and potentially hostile Arab settlements. This concept also denied Arab guerillas large sanctuary areas from which to stage attacks. The Palestinians don't like to admit it, but the NAHAL movement was a very effective nation- building and counter-guerilla tool; it kept young people employed and out of trouble as well.

Download the full article: An Afghan Nahal?

The author served as a UN observer in Lebanon and Gaza while on active duty in the Marine Corps and has been to Afghanistan several times while conducting a study of Taliban decision making. He also served on a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.

Observations of Turkish Islamist

Politics:

Islamic Democrats or Enemies of

Turkish Secularism?

by CDR Youssef Aboul-Enein,

MSC, USN

Download the full article:

Observations of Turkish Islamist Politics

Having just returned from Istanbul as part of the Industrial College of the

Armed Forces Industry Study Group, I was exposed to diverse opinions from

Turkey's media, political groups, and social advocates whose political

persuasion range from Kemalist and Leftist to Islamist.  This essay takes this

week-long experience and attempts to make sense of where the Turkish Islamist

experiment has been and where it is going in the 21st century. This

thought piece is also timely given the recent attempts by Turkish Islamist

groups combined with Palestinian supporters attempting to run the Israeli

maritime blockade of Gaza using Turkish flagged ships. 

Turkey is a key member of NATO and stands poised to undertake the first

successful experiment in Islamic democracy; it is a political vision abhorred by

al-Qaida, yet could serve as a model for Arab Islamist political groups like the

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  The Peace and Justice Party (AKP) is using the

democratic process to reorganize the social contract that has left two

institutions as dominant over the executive and legislative branches in Turkey.

Those two institutions are the military and the judiciary, whose senior

leadership view themselves as the protectors of the legacy of Turkey's founder

Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938). Yet Ataturk cannot be described as a secularist but

one who admires laicism, a form of secularism that leaves no room for religious

expression in public life.  Laicism was inspired by the French Revolution and

views expressions of God or the divine on currenc or, in opening legislative

sessions as intolerable.

Download the full article:

Observations of Turkish Islamist Politics

Commander Aboul-Enein is author of

Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat, published this

summer by Naval Institute Press.  He spent one week this spring in Turkey as

part of the Industry Study Program of the Industrial College of the Armed

Forces.  Commander Aboul-Enein learned much during this trip and thanks the

college, and Colonel Deborah Buonassisi, USAF, for an amazing intellectual

experience.  Finally, he wishes to thank Dr. Christina Lafferty for her edits

and discussions that enhanced this essay.

by Dr. Matthew B. Arnold and Dr. Anthony Vinci

Download the full article: The Need for Local, People-Centric Information Does Not End in Afghanistan

Appreciating local contexts and applying that understanding strategically is something Americans are accustomed to doing in the domestic forum. Presidential campaigns, for instance, regularly collect information about the local level, down to individual small towns in rural America or urban neighborhoods, and use this knowledge to design national campaigns. Yet, when we look at the rest of the world we have tended to discount the local perspective and instead focus on the national level.

Our latest generation of counterinsurgency experts, like generations before it, has had to relearn the lessons of local-level understanding in order to compete with insurgents. People-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) appears to have been one part of an effective strategy in Iraq and now the US' strategy in Afghanistan is predicated on its acceptance. The people-centric approach to COIN demands appreciating the local realities amongst which insurgents and counterinsurgents must fight, viz. understanding life at the village and neighborhood level. This means talking to local people, from farmers and truck drivers to village elders and merchants. It also involves asking the right questions about local dynamics, such as who provides social services, what the crop of choice to grow is, or how tribes interact with one another. This approach allows counter-insurgents to protect the local populace, assuring provision of basic social services, and to work with and through local leadership to ensure that actions taken are mutually beneficial to local communities and hence widely accepted.

But, the need for local, people-centric information does not end in Afghanistan. In an era defined by weak states with limited governance and the 'localization' dynamics that often make communities look inward for problem solving, adequately understanding foreign countries requires a more consistent emphasis on local socio-political dynamics. The counter-insurgency demands of Iraq and now Afghanistan provoked the initial development of an interest in localized, people-centric information. In the future, there is a need more broadly for such a localized approach to be consistently applied within the US government's presence abroad.

Download the full article: The Need for Local, People-Centric Information Does Not End in Afghanistan

Dr. Matthew B. Arnold served in Afghanistan in 2009-10 as a socio-political advisor for the US Department of Defense and was seconded to French forces in Kapisa Province. Prior to that he worked as an aid worker for the United Nations in assorted countries in Africa and Asia. He has a PhD from the London School of Economics and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

Dr. Anthony Vinci received his PhD in International Relations from The London School of Economics. Dr. Vinci is the author of 'Armed Groups and the Balance of Power: The International Relations of Terrorists, Warlords and Insurgents' as well as articles in journals including Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Journal of Strategic Studies. He has studied emerging threats and US responses to those threats on the ground throughout Africa and the Middle East. Currently Dr. Vinci consults on national security issues.

The views expressed are the authors' personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of the Human Terrain System, the US Army Training and Doctrine Command or the US Department of Defense.

Mentoring on the Edge

or, "What you Don't Learn in a Classroom"

by Colonel John Bessler

Download the full article:

Mentoring on the Edge

The 'Afghan experience' for those who serve overseas can be vastly different

from the one about which the American public sees, hears, and reads.  The same

can be said for those who do the writing and reporting.  It is comparatively

simple to travel to Afghanistan, observe and interview selflessly-serving

patriots at work, and write a blog or an article about the challenges ISAF and

the coalition faces; it is quite another to be intimately involved in a mission

extending over many months.  It's easy to watch; it's tough to "do."

This article attempts to bridge that gap.  As one of the many who have

mentored, assisted, trained, and fought with the Afghan National Security Forces

(ANSF), I hope to provide some perspective to the stories in the paper or

blogosphere.  From mid-2008 through 2009, I commanded all the ANSF mentors and

trainers in the Western Provinces of Afghanistan, in an area about the size of

Mississippi, and served as the senior US officer west of Kabul and north of

Kandahar. 

In my role of commanding the mentors and trainers embedded in all three

Afghan security organizations (Army, Police, and Border Police), we contended

with competing priorities, the tyranny of distance in counterinsurgency (COIN)

environment, answering to a NATO higher headquarters, and responsible for four

vast, remote and primitive Afghan provinces, in an economy of force mission.  We

experienced firsthand the day-to-day frustration and the almost crushing

inertia, friction, and fog of war that comes with working in a coalition; as a

result, I feel uniquely branded by my experiences.  Hence the article's title,

"Mentoring at the Edge of Civilization -- What You Can't Learn in the Classroom."

This story mostly takes place in Badghis Province.  Badghis is the one

province in Afghanistan in which no part of the Ring Road is paved.  Just east

of Herat City, the all-weather road turns to gravel, then dirt, then into a

potholed path.  It improves slightly over the 8200' Sabzak Pass (courtesy of the

Spanish), then returns to a bone-jarring, winding dirt path through several

villages enroute to Qala-E-Naw, and all the way into Ghormach District/ Farayab

Province in Regional Command-North.  It doesn't return to all-weather road until

about Meymanah, where a Chinese company is currently laboring to finish the job.

Download the full article:

Mentoring on the Edge

COL John Bessler became the Deputy Director of PKSOI in May 2010. Prior to

that he served as the Division Chief, Security, Reconstruction, and Transitions

for PKSOI in August 2009 after 14 months in Herat, Afghanistan, where he

commanded the Afghan Regional Security Integration Command, Western Provinces (ARSIC-West).

In that position, he worked and fought side-by-side with Afghan and NATO forces

while training Afghan Army and Afghan Police forces during 2008 and 2009. He

worked intimately and regularly with NATO forces both in a mentoring as well as

in a combat capacity, and even more routinely with United States Agency for

International Development (USAID) and Department of State representatives, four

Provincial Reconstruction Teams from as many countries, as well as routine

contacts with DIA, CIA, the Joint Interagency Task Force (Counter Narcotics),

and Special Operations Forces (USA and USMC.)

Applying Iraq to Afghanistan

by Bradford M. Burris, Major, Psychological Operations, United States Army

Download the full article:

Applying Iraq to Afghanistan

Editor's Note:  this article was submitted

to us in early May, so the recent change in leadership at ISAF were not known to

the author at the time.  We feel the analysis remains relevant so we are

publishing as is, and a re-write/ update  is not what MAJ Burris needs to be

doing in his last days before he's off to Afghanistan to do that "applying."

Now that the new US strategy for

prosecuting the war in Afghanistan has been determined, military leaders and

media pundits are turning their attention to discussions of the best manner in

which to implement and execute the strategy.  As the military develops plans

supporting the strategy and journalists search for stories about the plans, both

will ask three questions:  first, what made US forces successful during the Iraq

war; second, do those successes provide lessons learned for Afghanistan; and

finally, how could US personnel translate those lessons to future military

operations regardless of the culture and geography?  This essay is certainly not

the first to investigate these three questions; however, it is unique because it

supports no political or military agenda regarding the war in Afghanistan.

Although this essay will not provide an

analysis of strategic motives, take a position on operational decision-making,

nor make political comparisons between Iraq and Afghanistan; it will explore the

American policies that fomented transition of the Al Anbar province from what

was once referred to as the "wild west" to what experts now call a model for

stability operations.  I will use process-tracing to identify relationships

between US military activity and sustainable security in Anbar, present a theory

explaining the correlation between US policy and provincial stability, present

the general similarities at the provincial level between the situation in Iraq

and Afghanistan, and extrapolate the positive lessons learned from the Anbar

experience to the current US involvement in Afghanistan. 

To frame the discussion of current

situation in Afghanistan, I will draw heavily from General Stanley McChrystal's

initial situational assessment provided to the US political leadership in August

2009.  The result of my analytical research will be to provide US policy

recommendations that are both specific enough to be effective at the provincial

level in Afghanistan, as well as broad enough to be effective in U.S. military

operations regardless of geographical location.  In order to maintain academic

rigor and to encourage professional military discourse, I will also address the

counterarguments to the assertions laid out in this essay. 

Download the full article:

Applying Iraq to Afghanistan

Major Bradford M. Burris

entered the United States Army in 1996 and has since commanded three times.  He

commanded a Field Artillery training battery from March 2001 until June 2002. 

He commanded Headquarters Battery, 2nd Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Regiment

from November 2002 until March 2004 during which time he deployed in support of

Operation Iraqi Freedom.  He commanded Alpha Company, 8th PSYOP BN (Airborne)

from July 2007 until November 2008 during which time he deployed to numerous

U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility locations.  He is currently earning

a Master of Science Degree in Defense Analysis at the United States Naval Post

Graduate School.

Shaping the Information Environment

in Afghanistan

Understanding and Addressing Counter-Insurgency

Information Challenges through Bottom-up, Collaborative planning in the Future Operations

Cross Functional Team, ISAF Joint Command

by CDR Ingrid Rader, U.S. Navy,

et al

Download the full article:

Shaping

the Information Environment in Afghanistan

Afghanistan from the perspective of an International Security Assistance Forces

(ISAF) Joint Command (IJC) communicator or information professional: a multitude

of languages, tribes and sub-tribes; a literacy rate of only about 35%, and a generally

xenophobic population with a preference for face-to-face engagements with associates

they trust.  These characteristics significantly challenge coalition forces'

effective information and communication activities.

Of course, as is usually the case with indigenous people, the Anti-Afghan Forces

(AAF) -- which include Taliban fighters, insurgents, criminals and, in some cases

corrupt officials -- enjoy obvious advantages.  They live among the people.

They know the terrain.  They understand the social dynamics.  They communicate

their messages quickly and effectively in a way that can resonate with the audiences

they know intimately.  These are advantages that ISAF communicators simply

do not possess.

In Afghanistan, western airborne television broadcasting capabilities, leaflet

dissemination, or glossy media products may do more harm than good if they are not

thoroughly planned and carefully tailored.  Indeed, they might inadvertently

serve as ammunition for the adaptable, flexible and responsive enemy propaganda

machine. 

That environment, the limitations it represents, and other myriad other factors

demanded that the IJC FUOPS CFT information and communications planners re-evaluate

and redefine more effective ways to approach information operations (Info Ops),

psychological operations (PSYOPS) and public affairs (PA).  

This essay attempts to share those lessons.  It describes how the ISAF Joint

Command Future Operations (FUOPS) Cross-Functional Team (CFT) integrates synchronized

communications into planning and guidance in the complex Afghan environment. 

Additionally, in documenting the challenges the FUOPS CFT information communication

planners initially struggled with, the essay, as well, aims to provide insight for

IJC-bound Info Ops and communications planners and other interested professionals. 

Here, we will describe our methodology in planning synchronized communications in

the 72 hour -- 60 day horizon and discuss the factors that contributed to the positive

achievements of the team.

Download the full article:

Shaping

the Information Environment in Afghanistan

The entire FUOPS Synchronized Communications

Team contributed to this article.

Lieutenant Colonel Tomasz Grudzinski,

Polish Army, (Info Ops Planner)

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gowan,

U.S. Army (PA Planner)

Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Manos,

U.S. Army (Info Ops Planner)

Major Niels Vistisen, Danish Army

(PSYOPS Planner)

Commander Ingrid Rader, U.S. Navy

(Info Ops Team Lead)

Edited by LTC Ed Ledford

On a balmy night in July 1927, armed only with revolver, three rounds, and some gumption, Coast Guard Ensign Charles Duke single-handedly boarded a rum-runner, took charge, and ran her aground in New York Harbor.

The 800-pound Gorilla and Stability

Operations

by James P. Hunt, Major General,

USAF

Deputy Commanding General, MNC-I, April

09 -- Jan 10

Download the full article:

The 800-pound

Gorilla and Stability Operations

It's early 2010, Baghdad, Iraq.  At the New Embassy Complex, three Foreign

Service officers wait for the start of their meeting with officers from United States

Forces-Iraq.  It's a small room, seating about ten people, but with only three

Department of State representatives there should be plenty of room for the military

participants.  The door swings open, and twenty officers walk in the room and

scramble for seats.  One opens up a satchel and pulls out sets of briefing

slides—it looks like there are close to fifty slides for the briefing.  After

lots of shuffling around, an officer starts the presentation.  Today, he's

talking about how the military will support the Provincial Reconstruction Teams;

he goes through the entire military planning process:  Mission analysis, courses

of action, the results of the military's war gaming, and which course of action

the military supports. 

Throughout the hour-long meeting, the Foreign Service Officers listen politely

and ask a few questions.  They ponder the complex diagrams, troop-to-task calculations,

logistics concepts.   Their few questions are answered in sentences filled

mostly with abbreviations or acronyms.  It's as if questions or discussion

will ruin the rhythm and timing of the briefing.  At the end of the meeting,

the senior military officer comments, "Thanks for listening to us today.  We

think we've got a good plan here and are ready to support you.  After all,

civilians are in the lead for improving civil capacity in Iraq, and we're here to

help.  Please let us know what you think, but we're ready to execute right

away..."

After the military team leaves, the Foreign Service Officers look at each other

and sigh.  They've just attended a meeting describing the military support

they'll be receiving without being part of the planning dialog that led to the military's

support plan.   The stacks of briefing slides wind up in the burn bag. 

They'll meet with the military planners again in a week, but next time the military

will bring a 100-page operations plan full of objectives, metrics, and implementing

instructions.  The Embassy was not part of the process that led to the plan

and wasn't asked specifically what support it needed.  They don't necessarily

understand the plan, would spend staff hours they simply don't have to make significant

changes to the plan, and would probably rather just be asked "how can we help?" 

The military officers walk away frustrated because the civilians are not jumping

with joy over their excellent briefing and plan that took many man-hours to build

and sense their civilian counterparts would rather have no plan at all. 

Download the full article:

The 800-pound

Gorilla and Stability Operations

Maj. Gen. James P. Hunt was the Deputy Commanding General, I Corps, U.S. Forces-Iraq,

Baghdad, Iraq, from April 2009 to January, 2010.  General Hunt was second-in-command

and was responsible for the Corps' coordination and integration at the tactical

and operational level with interagency partners, including the U.S. Embassy-Iraq,

the U.S. Agency for International Development and non-governmental organizations.

Maj Gen. Hunt was born in California and entered the Air Force in 1976 as

a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He has held staff positions at the numbered

air force, major command, Air Staff and Joint Staff. The general commanded an F-117

squadron, a U-2 operations group and three wings, including an air expeditionary

wing in Afghanistan.  He is a fighter pilot with over 3,000 hours in the F-4,

F-15, F-117, and U-2 aircraft.

by Alfred Paddock, Jr.

Download the full article: PSYOP: On a Complete Change in Organization, Practice, and Doctrine

On Monday, June 21, 2010, Admiral Eric T. Olson, commander of the US Special Operations Command, announced a decision to change the term, "psychological operations" (PSYOP) to "Military Information Support" and "Military Information Support Operations" (MISO). He stated that henceforth the term, PSYOP, will be eliminated from usage in the military.

Admiral Olson commands all of the military services' special operations commands. He and General George Casey, Army chief of staff, agreed on the decision, which the Secretary of Defense approved. As Admiral Olson states, "This will be a complete change in organization, practice, and doctrine."

The bulk of our PSYOP forces is in the Army. Its only active duty organization, the 4th PSYOP Group, is located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Its commander, a colonel, reports to the commander of the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), a lieutenant general. In addition, there are two PSYOP groups in the Army Reserve.

Admiral Olson's memo announcing this decision states that the active duty PSYOP community is very receptive to this change. "Very" is the operative word. Based on my discussions with some active duty personnel over the past couple of years, I don't believe this to be the case. Of course, all of them knew that I was writing an article for publication, and asked for non-attribution.

Download the full article: PSYOP: On a Complete Change in Organization, Practice, and Doctrine

Alfred Paddock, Jr., was on active duty in the U.S. Army, 1957--1988, and served three combat tours in Laos and Vietnam with Special Forces. He also was the Director for Psychological Operations, Office of the Secretary of Defense. In June 2009 he received the inaugural Gold Award of the MG Robert A. McClure Medal for Exemplary Service in Psychological Operations, recognizing his lifetime of achievements and outstanding service to the Psychological Operations Regiment.

The Branch Formerly Known As PSYOP

Names Influence

By Edward Lopacienski, MAJ, PO

This article does not refute the directive to change the name of ARSOF's Psychological

Operations force or its refined task, but strives to support the change to one that

is suitable of the branch's purpose before finalization is determined.  With

the encouragement of COL Dave Maxwell and other senior leader mentors, I'm sharing

these thoughts with the greater community for consideration in establishing a more

appropriate brand and name for the US Military's foremost experts in influence warfare.

It could very well be perceived that we are being deceptive with this name change. 

Names, more specifically brand names, are crucial in establishing an organization's

effectiveness and competitive place in its operating and target market environments. 

The branch identity can still be shaped, and should assume a name that enhances

the PSYOP force rather than serve as an equivocal impairment the PSYOP label is

determined to have on the community.

Re-branding the branch is now an order, and should be embraced with initiative

versus sitting back and waiting for a decision on what it will become.  It's

a well established principle within the marketing and public relations communities

that re-branding an established organization is a risky venture at best.  Re-branding

risks forsaking the development and retention of a truly professional and consistent

brand identity that is clearly recognized and understood across the many environments

it operates within.   Organizational self identity and target market environments

have direct impacts on the organization.[1] 

Re-branding risks stakeholder and audience doubts about the company/organization.

It can create confusion about what the organization does.  Such a change creates

confusion about what the new brand does and how it can help target markets and stakeholder

support.  Changing names/brands can create indecision about working with the

re-branded organization, and may even create distrust.[2] 

A perception of what a company does and what it is perceived at doing can create

a gulf between an organization and its own environments.  Cautionary principles

aside, re-branding must choose a successful standout identity.[3]

The Death of Haji Abdul Jabar and the Future of the Alikozai Tribe

by Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Gaydon and Captain Jonathan Pan

Download the full article: Three Cups of Tea and an IED

Haji Abdul Jabar pulled out his pistol and with tears in his eyes, he pointed to his head shouting, "If you go, I will pull the trigger!" Jabar was the District Governor of Arghandab District, Kandahar Province, who served as the logistics chief for Mullah Naqib, the legendary mujahedeen commander who checked multiple Soviet advances into Arghandab in the 1980s.

Jabar's emotional outburst occurred when he discovered that the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment was being relocated out of Arghandab in December 2009. Jabar had developed a close bond with many soldiers and officers of 1-17 Infantry but above all, he treated Captain Jon Burton, the battalion's civil-military officer, as his own flesh and blood. As a hardened mujahedeen, his tears resounded deeply with Burton, who admired the old warrior for his tenacity, honor, and above all his passion for the people of Arghandab. Burton refused to answer any phone calls after Jabar's death but recently he had the following to say,

Like Greg Mortenson's best seller, Three Cups of Tea, our relationship with Jabar was forged over chai during the late summer and fall of 2009. When we first met Jabar, he was courteous but reserved. He had seen coalition forces come and go from Arghandab and many promises remain unfulfilled. But this time, it was different. The Stryker Brigade had teamed up with the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to permanently station a combined civil-military team at the Arghandab District Center. The team was devoted, often fanatical in their efforts in building positive momentum with Jabar in the lead. Such dedication has led to legendary Burton-Jabar lore.

Download the full article: Three Cups of Tea and an IED

Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Gaydon is the commander of the Brigade Special Troops Battalion of 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Task Force Stryker). He is also dual-hatted as the Governance, Reconstruction, and Development Fusion Cell Lead.

Captain Jonathan Pan is the Economic Development Officer for of 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Task Force Stryker).

by Dr. Alfred H. Paddock, Jr.

Download the full article: American Guerrilla: A Review

In American Guerrilla: The Forgotten Heroics of Russell W. Volckmann, Mike Guardia seeks to demonstrate the contributions of Russell Volckmann and his guerrillas in the successful outcome of the US campaign to retake the Philippines from the Japanese during World War II; and, secondly, to establish Volckmann as the true father of Army Special Forces--"a title that history has erroneously awarded to Colonel Aaron Bank." He does an adequate job with the first goal, but his second attempt is flawed.

Guardia tells the story of Volckmann's adventures in the Philippines in a workmanlike manner, and he deserves plaudits for uncovering his "war diary" from the Volckmann family, as well as some of his other primary source research. However, in stating that "the historiography of the guerrilla war in the Philippines is comparatively narrow," he omits some important published sources in his bibliography. These include "Lieutenant Ramsey's War," by Edwin Price Ramsey and Stephen J. Rivele, and "The Intrepid Guerrillas of North Luzon," by Bernard Norling. Norling, a history professor at Notre Dame University for over 35 years, also co-authored other books on resistance movements in the Philippines. His work on the subject is authoritative.

While Guardia confines his tale to Volckmann's role in northern Luzon, the story of Wendell Fertig's accomplishments in the Japanese-occupied island of Mindano is also impressive. At its peak, Fertig commanded an army of 35,000 men, and headed the civil government in one of the largest islands in the world. His accomplishments are told in a novel-like fashion in John Keats' "They Fought Alone: A True Story of a Modern American Hero." Both Volckmann and Fertig later would play leading roles in the development of Army Special Forces.

Download the full article: American Guerrilla: A Review

Dr. Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., was born February 11, 1937, in Moscow, Idaho, and raised in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He holds a BA degree in political science from Park College, and MA and Ph.D. degrees in history from Duke University. Dr. Paddock completed a 31-year U.S. Army career as a colonel in October, 1988. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the U.S. Army War College. His military career included command and staff assignments in Korea, Okinawa, Laos, Vietnam, and the United States. During the 1960s he served three combat tours in Laos and Vietnam with U.S. Army Special Forces "Green Beret" operational units.

by Colonel Victor M. Rosello, Colonel Dave Shunk and Colonel Michael D. Winstead

Download the full article: The Relevance of Technology in Afghanistan

With the US Army's renewed focus on Afghanistan, it looks at creating conditions to more effectively bring stability to a country that historically has had little stability. Conventional wisdom posits that to have any chance of success, a "surge" similar to the one in Iraq is needed in Afghanistan. After all, quantity has a certain innate quality all its own, particularly when numbers are essential to securing vast areas under insurgent control. To its credit, quantity can also be accompanied by innovative technological advances that enhance the existing quality of the deployed force. But, can technologically lethal advancements profoundly influence success? As the US Army fields new and more advanced technologies in the application of lethal force in Afghanistan, this question is at the center of much debate. But perhaps, the answer is staring directly at us in the form of previous lessons and the cold, stark reality of the Afghan strategic landscape. Success may hinge on the ability to learn from the past and to properly address the effects of this landscape.

Download the full article: The Relevance of Technology in Afghanistan

Victor M. Rosello is a retired Army colonel, military intelligence officer, Latin America Foreign Area Officer, and Desert Storm/Just Cause combat veteran currently serving as a military writer for MPRI with the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), TRADOC, Fort Monroe, Virginia. He has a Latin American Area Studies MA from the University of Chicago.

Dave Shunk is a retired USAF colonel, B-52G pilot, and Desert Storm combat veteran whose last military assignment was as the B-2 Vice Wing Commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, Whitman AFB, MO. Currently, he is a historical researcher and DA civilian working in the ARCIC, Fort Monroe, Virginia. He has a National Security Strategy MS from the National War College.

Michael D. Winstead is an active duty colonel, West Point graduate, infantry officer, and Desert Storm combat veteran currently serving on his second tour in Afghanistan. His awards include the Soldier's Medal, Bronze Star (2 OLC), and Purple Heart. He has an MMAS from the School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

A Review Essay

by Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Armstrong

Download the full article: Gators, Leathernecks, and Full Spectrum Operations

Gary J. Ohls, Somalia... From the Sea (Newport Paper #34), The Naval War College Press, Newport RI, 2009. 249 pp. appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography, available for free download here.

Much like the country of Iraq, the United States has faced the challenge of Somalia for two decades. Long before today's concerns about piracy and terrorist support, as the United States military built up is presence in the region during Operation Desert Shield, Somalia insisted that some of that capability be dedicated to its own problems. An alert was sent to Central Command warning them that internal clan conflict had the potential to endanger American citizens, and the embassy in Mogadishu. From that message the United States became involved in Somalia for four years of operations. Those operations involved urban warfare, population security, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, infrastructure reconstruction, joint and interagency work with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and American military involvement with internal politics. The series of Somalia operations are a veritable menu of the kinds of missions that have become central to the U.S. approach to counterinsurgency a decade later in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gary Ohls' book Somalia... From the Sea, published by The Naval War College Press, offers a comprehensive and well considered account of U.S. operations in Somalia in the early 1990's. The mission was centered on the capability of the United States Navy and Marine Corps to conduct global expeditionary operations and provides an important illustration of amphibious forces. The account, nearly 250 pages long, is broken up into nine chapters and several appendices which are structured around the five separate operations which the Americans and United Nations carried out in Somalia. The appendices are very helpful, with explanations of abbreviations as well as short explanations of strategic concepts. Colonel Ohls, USMC (Ret), has a PhD in history from Texas Christian University and the research demonstrates the academic rigor of his background using original sources, reports, interviews of participants, as well as news coverage.

Download the full article: Gators, Leathernecks, and Full Spectrum Operations

Lieutenant Commander Benjamin "BJ" Armstrong is a Naval Aviator who has served as an Amphibious Search and Rescue and Special Warfare Pilot and an Advanced Helicopter Flight Instructor. He holds a MA in military history and has written on naval history and irregular warfare. He is a regular SWJ contributor and has had articles and reviews appear in numerous journals, including most recently in Defense & Security Analysis, USNI's Proceedings, and Naval History Magazine.

by Colonel Dennis P. Chapman

Download the full article: Our Ambivalent Iraqi-Kurdistan Policy

Twenty-three years ago I was nearing the end of a miserable Plebe year at West Point, having endured for ten months innumerable humiliating rebukes from upperclassmen and a severe and nearly constant state of mortification deriving from the great many embarrassing blunders, nearly all of my own making, that I had suffered since first passing through the Academy's gates the summer before. Throughout this year of horrors however, I had had one small comfort -- I had fallen in love with a hometown girl whom we'll call "Eva." Eva and I had been friends in high school and a stream of letters and phone calls through my dark time had deepened feelings, at least on my on end. In our correspondence Eva had given every indication of sharing my feelings and I had naturally very much looked forward to a reunion with her over the Christmas holidays. Things started out well enough -- a couple of dates, a cuddle, a kiss -- and then nothing. Eva became nearly unreachable and always unavailable. Disappointed and hurt I made my sad way back to my hard life on the Hudson only to find, to my surprise and joy, Eva once again renewing the connection! Another stream of letters and calls, more hopes for a joyful reunion and a happily ever after -- and, upon returning home for summer leave, another disappointment -- a date or two and another disappearing act. Needless to say, I'd have been better served had I taken the advice of the upperclassmen, who, when demanding to know "How are they all?" expected but one answer: "They are all fickle but one, Sir!" For my dear Eva was nothing if not fickle.

By now the patient reader will be wondering just what any of this has to do with Iraqi Kurdistan or our policy toward it. The answer is simply this: The United States has been nothing if not fickle in our treatment of the Kurdistan Region since 2003. By this point, seven years after the 2003 invasion, the Kurds of Iraq can be forgiven if America begins to look to them less like Lady Liberty, holding high aloft her shining torch as a beacon of freedom and justice, and more like my fickle friend Eva. Congress passes resolutions to commemorate Kurdish accomplishments but provides little or no practical help; American commanders rush to Erbil when Kurdish help is needed on thorny problems, only to disappear again as soon as the problem is gotten under control; Iraqi Kurds flock to America's colors during a long and difficult war, only to be turned away at our borders by immigration authorities too ignorant or naí¯ve to see the difference between the Kurdish parties -- our allies -- and our many enemies throughout the region. In short, we have not been able to make up our minds as to just what our relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan ought to be.

Download the full article: Our Ambivalent Iraqi-Kurdistan Policy

Colonel Dennis P. Chapman commanded a U.S. Military Transition Team embedded within an all-Kurdish Iraqi Army Brigade based in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region. He deployed with the brigade during their participation in the Baghdad Security Plan (at the time of the U.S. surge). Colonel Chapman completed a one-year military fellowship with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) where his principal research focus was the security services of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq. He is the author of a book on Iraqi Kurdistan, Security Forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, forthcoming soon from Mazda Publishers.

Why Studying History and Human Motivations is the Key to the Future of Warfare

by Major Grant Martin

Download the full article: The Need for the Return of History

As I was reading David Brooks' March 25 New York Times op-ed, The Return of History, I couldn't help but play a game I have come to enjoy ever since reading Eric D. Beinhocker's book The Origin of Wealth. What I do is every time I come to the word "economist" when reading a work on economics, I substitute the words "military theorist" in my mind, and every time I come to the word "economics" I replace it with the words "the study of warfare". Since the switch seemed to fit so well with Beinhocker's book, I was not too surprised when it seemed to fit Brooks' article as well.

At the risk of appearing to plagiarize and with apologies to Mr. Brooks, I have replaced most of the words in his article below that dealt with economics with a word or words that had more to do with warfare. I have left his words in italics, except for the title of books, and put my words in regular font.

What I think the scholar of military studies might find interesting is a possibly different perspective with which to look at warfare: one that more closely resembles trying to understand human economic behavior. For if we can understand economic behavior better using certain perspectives, is it possible that we could use some of the same perspectives to understand human behavior in warfare, or at least behavior in insurgency environments?

Download the full article: The Need for the Return of History

Major Grant Martin is an Army Special Forces officer currently serving in Afghanistan with the NATO Training Mission. The opinions expressed herein are his alone and do not represent the official position of the Department of Defense or the United States Army.

Choosing More Appropriate Tools to Understand the Population

by Paul Meinshausen and Dr. Schaun Wheeler

Download the full article: Choosing More Appropriate Tools to Understand the Population

This article makes the argument that intelligence preparation and strategy for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan should not be based on assessments of tribe -- ever. Tribal "affiliation," "influence," "identification," and "dynamics" poorly correspond to actual local conditions. Information about tribes inaccurately and insufficiently assesses Local Population (LP) behavior and degrades ISAF's ability to make appropriate decisions by distorting and obscuring real indicators of behavior. To understand and influence LP behavior in Afghanistan, ISAF should discontinue its focus on tribes and instead increase focus on the access to locations, resources, information, and expertise that constrain LP capabilities, and the availability of institutions, routines, face-to-face interactions, and costs and benefits that constrain LP intents.

Download the full article: Choosing More Appropriate Tools to Understand the Population

Paul Meinshausen is an intelligence specialist currently deployed to the Combined Joint Intelligence Operations Center - Afghanistan, at the International Security Assistance Force Headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan. A subject matter expert on interactions between local populations and insurgencies, he was a 2007-08 Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, and received an M.A. in Eurasian Studies from Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

Dr. Schaun Wheeler is a cognitive anthropologist for the Department of the Army, specializing in assessments of local populations and their effects on insurgent and counterinsurgent operations. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Connecticut.

The views presented here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the United States Department of Defense or its components.

Some Thoughts on Aid in COIN Operations

by Colonel Gary Anderson

Download the full article: Some Thoughts on Aid in COIN Operations

Some observers call the American led counterinsurgency efforts, past and present, in Iraq and Afghanistan, "a strategy of tactics". They argue that the American effort on the ground was and is too focused on doing population control village-by-village and district by district, that they forget the big picture of eliminating corruption nationwide and solving the big social and political problems that plague those countries.

I have no argument that, to date, we have failed to create the kinds of reforms within the Karzai regime that will cure wide ranging corruption and poor governance that have allowed the Taliban to make a comeback. However, counterinsurgency (COIN), like politics tends to be local.

Just as a mid-term election in the United States can force an American president (as well as Congress) to change course, many American soldiers and State Department civilian officials in Afghanistan believe that a large number of local successes against the Taliban will force change within the Karzai regime -- that Karzai and the national government will feel pressured by rising local stars to reform from the bottom up.

Until then, the most our tactical commanders and Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) leaders can do at the local / tactical level is use combat power to provide security and buy time for the Afghans to create effective security mechanisms and use aid in a way that best enhances the COIN fight by convincing the population that there is a viable alternative to what the Taliban offers.

Download the full article: Some Thoughts on Aid in COIN Operations

Colonel Gary Anderson is a retired Marine infantry officer. A a Marine and as a civilian he has seen service in Lebanon, Somalia, and did research for several Defense Department studies in Afghanistan; he also did humanitarian service in Bangladesh. He recently returned from a tour with an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq. He teaches at the George Washington University's Elliott School.

by Michael Yon

Download the full article: Dispatch: Gobar Gas

Brunei, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam

08 June 2010

A Gurkha Idea

Among the more interesting coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan are the legendary Nepalese Gurkhas. Trained and fielded by the British, as they have been since colonial days, Gurkhas are a fascinating admixture: today, they are elite soldiers used to traveling the world. But many of them grew up barefoot and poor in remote and primitive mountain villages in the high Himalayas—places that closely resemble parts of Afghanistan, geographically and culturally. Forefathers of some of today's Ghurkas fought in the Afghan region during earlier wars. Gurkhas understand impoverished life in a harsh environment, though Nepal has enjoyed material progress in recent decades that is mostly unrealized in Afghanistan. Unlike forces from Europe or America, who often regard Afghanistan as an outpost of 13th Century life, Gurkhas can provide a link between primitive Afghan standards of development, and the possibilities for progress, with insights and connections that might elude most Westerners.

The insights of a Gurkha veteran named Lalit, whom I met in the jungles of Borneo, at a British Army man-tracking school, were particularly valuable. One day in the jungle Lalit began a conversation by announcing that many of Afghanistan's household needs could be solved if Afghans would adopt "Gobar Gas" production. Gobar Gas could improve the lives of Afghans as it had that of the Nepalese, he said, as he began to explain with great enthusiasm.

During Lalit's time in Afghanistan, he found nobody who had heard of Gobar Gas—even though Gobar Gas has been a quiet engine of ground-level economic transformation in Nepal and numerous other poor Asian nations.

After the man-tracking course ended I returned to Afghanistan, this time to the desert-like areas of Ghor, Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where most people have no electricity and often spend hours daily scrounging for bits of wood or whatever other fuel they can find on the deforested plains. Lalit was right about two things: No Afghan I met had heard of the Gobar Gas -- by any name. Nor had most American development people on the ground. Second, Gobar Gas looked like a serious solution in some areas to the lack of available fuel to meet daily needs. Given its track record and its perfect applicability to Afghanistan's state of development, this was a match made in heaven. I flew back to Nepal to talk with Gobar Gas experts and users.

Download the full article: Dispatch: Gobar Gas

Michael Yon is a former Green Beret who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael's dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work is published at Michael Yon Online and has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.

by Hannah Gurman

Download the full article: Tribal Engagement and the Heavy History of Counterinsurgency Light

For months now, James Gant has been dreaming of returning to Afghanistan, where he served for nearly four years since 2003 as a Special Forces officer for the U.S. Army. "I feel like I was born there. The greatest days of my entire life were spent in the Pesch Valley and Musa Qalay and with the great Sitting Bull." In a short time, Gant's dream will come true. Although the army originally ordered him to Iraq, where Gant served from 2006-2007, it has now re-written his orders. Soon, he will return to Afghanistan to re-unite with Sitting Bull and pursue an alternative strategy to defeat the Taliban.

Gant first met Sitting Bull in April 2003, when he and his team of nine soldiers, mostly Special Forces officers, were deployed to the Konar Province of Afghanistan on orders to "kill and capture anti-coalition members." After successfully fighting off an attack in the first months of their deployment, they made their way over to the village of Mangwel, where they met the tribal doctor who agreed to introduce Gant and his team to the tribal elder. When they sat down, Sitting Bull, whose real name is Malik Noorafzhal, asked Gant why none of the other US forces passing through his village had ever stopped to talk to him. It was the beginning of Gant's self-described "journey of discovery" through which he and his team threw their fate in with Sitting Bull's tribe, fighting and negotiating alongside them to resolve decades-long land disputes between local tribes and build their capacity to defend themselves from the Taliban.

Gant has received much praise in the military for his work with the Afghan tribes. One senior military officer dubbed him "Lawrence of Afghanistan" after the larger-than-life British officer who fought alongside Arab tribes in their rebellion against the Ottoman empire. The similarity is evident in a personal photo of Gant in Afghanistan, in which he is wearing a long black robe and headdress, looking straight into the camera with a serious gaze and a strong sense of purpose. While the analogy to Lawrence was originally intended to underscore the incredible promise of Gant's vision and influence, it unwittingly reveals the links between Gant and the darker side of the history of counterinsurgency.

Download the full article: Tribal Engagement and the Heavy History of Counterinsurgency Light

Hannah Gurman is an assistant professor at New York University's Gallatin School and is in the early stages of a larger research project in an attempt to (re)institutionalize counterinsurgency in the U.S. military and foreign policy establishment.

by Major Jim Gant and William "Mac" McCallister

Download the full article: Tribal Engagement: The Jirga and the Shura

According to NATO's military chief of intelligence in Afghanistan, the Taliban now maintain shadow governors in thirty-three out of thirty-four provinces. While we like to see the world in black and white, the complexities of relationships and alliances in the village and valley make it anything but a straightforward contest between two parties. The U.S. strategy of stripping away Taliban loyalists is not easy in a very complex socio-political landscape. This landscape includes different types of traditional authority, local rivalries and the various configurations of social power in each village and valley.

The rubber of U.S. strategy meets the road in the village assembly. It is in the local assemblies where Coalition Forces speak directly with the local inhabitants and indirectly with the shadow governors of the Taliban. Identifying ahead of time the familial, sectarian, security, economic and political alliances represented in a given village or valley assembly will assist in identifying how these alliances might influence group decisions. We must also contemplate, identify and differentiate between two very different village assemblies: the jirga and shura.

Download the full article: Tribal Engagement: The Jirga and the Shura

Major Jim Gant is currently assigned to the Afghanistan Pakistan Hands (AFPAK Hands) Program as a Tribal Engagement Advisor. AFPAK Hands is designed to develop cadres of officers (and civilians) from each of the military's services who agree to three to five year tours to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. He will be returning to Afghanistan in the near future.

William "Mac" McCallister is a retired military officer. He has worked extensively in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has applied his study of tribal culture in assessing reconstruction efforts, as well as insurgency and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror.

Grand Strategy with Chinese Characteristics

by Dr. Tony Corn

Download the full article: Grand Strategy with Chinese Characteristics

As countless observers have pointed out, the American-Chinese rivalry in the early 21st century bears more than a passing resemblance to the Anglo-German antagonism that led to World War I. In these conditions, it is not surprising if a consensus has emerged, among International Relations (IR) academics, around the proposition that the U.S.-China relation is bound to be the most important bilateral relation in the coming decades.

Yet, the degree of certainty regarding the salience of this bilateral relation is only matched by the degree of uncertainty surrounding its dynamics and its eventual outcome. When it comes to answering the question "Is a conflict inevitable?," all three IR schools (realism, liberalism, constructivism) hedge their bets by offering both a pessimistic and an optimistic variant -- a tacit admission that, on the most burning issue of the day, the predictive value of IR theory is close to nil.

For the outside observer, the most disconcerting aspect of this academic debate is that optimists and pessimists alike share the same unexamined notions of conflict and war, as if "conflict" was a self-explanatory concept, "war" was a trans-historical category. In particular, both proponents and critics of Power Transition Theory (PTT) -- the most popular theory about China in academe today - keep arguing about the factors conducive to the initiation, timing, severity, and consequences of "major wars" without giving much thought to either the singularity of Chinese strategic culture or, a fortiori, to three global developments of the past fifty years: the waning of "major wars," the declining "fungibility" of military force as such and, last but not least, the transformation of "war" itself.

In the military world, by contrast, the defining feature of the present era is precisely the impossibility of coming up with "a coherent concept of war to animate and focus our military efforts" (LTG David Barno, Ret.). Since 9/11, the strategic debate in America has been marked by a "war over war" and a seemingly endless proliferation of war modifiers: unconventional war, irregular war, asymmetric war, wicked war, criminal war, war of the third kind, non-trinitarian war, new war, counterwar, war amongst the people, three-block war, fourth-generation war, compound war, netwar, insurgency, global guerrilla, econo-jihad, not to mention information warfare, financial warfare, resource warfare, lawfare, cyberwarfare and chaoplexic warfare.

Few strategists, to be sure, are likely to subscribe to British General Rupert Smith's view that "war no longer exists." But while conventional, state-on-state, force-on-force, war, is unlikely to disappear any time soon, the fact remains that never before has the concept of War been surrounded with so much "fog and friction."

Download the full article: Grand Strategy with Chinese Characteristics

Dr. Tony Corn is the author of "World War IV as Fourth-Generation Warfare," Policy Review, web special, January 2006. He is currently writing a book on the Long War. This essay was written on the margins of the 2010 U.S. Army War College Annual Strategy Conference on "Defining War for the 21st Century." The opinions expressed here are the author's own and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of State.

by Russell Hampsey

Download the full article: Rediscovering the Art of Psychological Operations

Psychological Operations (PSYOP) professionals have too long taken a cautionary approach to the counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Afghanistan. The forces waging COIN on a daily basis; Brigade, Battalion and Company sized units deride PSYOP as the "no" man. While the rest of the military has become learning organizations it seems PSYOP units are stuck trying to execute major combat operational war campaigns that are better suited for an enemy that is national and enjoys first or top tier second-world infrastructure. Commanders on the ground strive for responsive, timely, and relevant programs designed to influence the insurgent and selected Afghan target audiences that support or are ambivalent to the insurgents. PSYOP limitations in executing these tasks have relegated the branch to the second string. The PSYOP community must reinvigorate its agility and come prepared to fight the COIN strategy in Afghanistan.

There are underlying issues that have led the community to this undesirable point. PSYOP professionals have been in a 9 year struggle with the Information Operations (IO) field for primacy in addressing foreign target audiences. Field manuals and regulations tell you that PSYOP communicates with foreign audiences when influence is desired and Public Affairs communicate with foreign press and leaders when presenting informational releases. The PSYOP problem lies in the responsiveness in the field. In Afghanistan innovative PSYOP products that are not preapproved are scrutinized and boarded until their usefulness is irrelevant. In the meantime commanders look to the IO team to get message out, even if the risk is a less than optimal product. Preapproved product is great for standing messages such as tips lines, rewards programs and informational data e.g. tune in to x radio station; it is useless against a enemy that bases it entire campaign on influence and intimidation. It is time to get PSYOP back in the fight.

Download the full article: Rediscovering the Art of Psychological Operations

Russell Hampsey is a retired Psychological Operations Officer and is currently working for the ISAF Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team in Regional Command East.

Discourse on Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami

and Its Founder Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi

Uncovering the Philosophy and Nuance

of America's Adversary in Pakistan

by Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein,

MSC, USN

Download the full article:

Discourse on Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami...

Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has expended extensive efforts in imposing their

vision of Sharia on Pakistan's public life since the founding of the state in 1947. 

They stand opposed to any secular ideas introduced into Pakistan and are intolerant

of other Muslim belief systems that do not espouse their views. JI, like other Islamist

groups, confuse secularism as a modern form of religion versus as a mechanism to

manage Pakistan's diverse ethnic and religious (Muslim and non-Muslim) groups. 

In order to interact effectively with Pakistan, America's leaders must gain an understanding

of the core struggle between two of Pakistan's founders:  the secular vision

of Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), and the Islamist vision of Abu al Ala al-Mawdudi

(1903-1979).  This essay is a distillation of a dozen books written by Mawdudi

and published in Arabic, and attempts to get into the mind of an important ideologue

of modern radical Islamist movements.  Mawdudi's books are referenced in this

essay.  Commentary and analysis of Mawdudi's work, as well as comparisons are

listed at the end of this work.

Download the full article:

Discourse on Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami...

Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein is author of

Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat recently published

by Naval Institute Press.  He is currently studying at the Industrial College

of the Armed Forces in Washington DC.  Commander Aboul-Enein wishes to thank

Dr. Christina Lafferty for her edits and comments that enhanced this work. 

In addition, he wishes to thank the Bolling AFB Library and the National Defense

University Library both in Washington DC for their assistance and for providing

a place to write this piece.  The views represented are that of the author,

and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government.

Hints for the Counterinsurgency (COIN) Strategy in Afghanistan

by Sean McKenna and Russell Hampsey

ISAFCAAT-E Memorandum Special to Small Wars Journal

Download the full memorandum: "The COIN Warrior" Waging Influence

The purpose of this document is to flatten the information sharing process across the force and provide information that we have seen throughout the Afghan Theater. The intent is to provide information to personnel in their pre-deployment training at the National and International Training Centers, as well as forces currently operating in the Afghan COIN Environment. The information contained in this document can be utilized as a pocket guide for continual reference.

Since the announcement of the Counterinsurgency Strategy with the publishing of the Integrated Civilian-Military Campaign Plan (ICMCP) we have advised and assisted numerous units from Regional Commands to Platoon sized elements. There are a few common threads that resonate throughout the lower echelons of command and we identified a need to address these universal issues.

This document is not a panacea, but should provide personnel at all levels with insight as to several techniques and ideas to put into their tool kit to improve their repertoire especially at the battalion, company, and platoon levels. The counterinsurgency environment in Afghanistan requires a customized approach in every village and valley; you are only limited by your imagination and ability to influence.

Download the full memorandum: "The COIN Warrior" Waging Influence