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.
About the Author(s)
Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel who has been a civilian advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.
Comments
Interresting article which points several challenges of "development/humanitarian" aid in COIN.
I just would like to give some precisions on the Do No Harm concept. Because, like the author, I am fed up with the misuse of it.
Do No Harm is NOT a development concept or a managerial concept or an environment concept or anyother thing! Do No Harm is a basic principle of action for humanitarain aid developed to make sure that your actions are not harming the people you rescue through humanitarian aid. It does not target economie, management, tree, water or flowers. Do No Harm is just the idea that when you bring something to the people it has to protect them and not create conditions for them to suffer more. The basic example is when you create a project for water, you make sure that the water point is not in the middle of a landmine fields or so far away that women got rape...
The rest is risk and feasability management.
Do No Harm is the fact that when a patrol finds some children abandon in tremendous conditions, they alert immediatly UNICEF or an NGO in the near by area and make sure that they deliver aid to the children. Why they do not intervene immediatly, just to keep the children safe from repreasal. But that does not mean they cannot give food or blankets to an NGO with the strict order to go to that place and distribute it asap...
Solar lights or other fancy technologies are useless and reserved to lost nerds in war zone (where they do not belong to).
Do No Harm is preserving life and not environment or economical wealth of any group. Yes it does take some double though before doing anything. But what does not?