Army Irregular Warfare Center Prepares to Stand Down
By Bill Ackerly, Leavenworth Lamp
Since its beginning in 2006, the Army Irregular Warfare Center, originally the Counterinsurgency Center, has prepared more than 40 brigade combat teams, as well division and corps headquarters, for COIN operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. AIWC also conducted more than 50 irregular warfare webcasts for the community of interest and deploying soldiers.
Beginning Oct. 1, AIWC’s critical tasks and responsibilities will transition to other Army organizations as resources and priorities are realigned.
In recognizing AIWC’s numerous accomplishments during the last eight years, Maj. Gen. Thomas S. James Jr., director of the Mission Command Center of Excellence, said, “AIWC was the driving force that led to the analysis, development and integration of irregular warfare-related concepts, doctrine, training, leadership and education, ensuring the lessons we’ve learned permeate across the Army now through 2025 and beyond.”
The COIN Center was established in July 2006 by then-Commanding General of the Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, in conjunction with Marine Corps Deputy Commandant Lt. Gen. James Mattis. The COIN Center was designated in September 2010 as the Army’s focal point for irregular warfare and transitioned to its current organization as the AIWC.
AIWC was established with an initial heavy emphasis on providing first-rate, near real-time support to units preparing for combat. It quickly developed a flexible five-day COIN seminar for BCTs deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, AIWC leveraged the experience and insights of combat veterans to ensure relevancy of seminar content for deploying war-fighting units. The result was an interactive seminar model that was so successful it was requested by III Corps, V Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps, as well as non-deploying units.
AIWC’s primary responsibilities included developing doctrine; coordinating, analyzing and integrating irregular warfare doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities solutions across the Army; advising training centers and other programs; integrating COIN doctrine into training and education; and conducting outreach to the COIN community of interest.
In addition to its seminars and webcasts, other AIWC significant contributions since 2006 included facilitating the re-write of Field Manual 3-24, “Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies,” writing six Army techniques publications, and collaborating irregular warfare issues with military partners, such as France, Iraq, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore, Afghanistan and India.
AIWC has provided irregular warfare support and expertise through guest lecturers/facilitators at civilian and academic seminars, conferences and workshops, including the Center for the Study of Interagency Cooperation, Global Center for Security Cooperation, U.S. Institute of Peace and International Development, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Kansas State University, University of Kansas, the National Defense University and Massey University, New Zealand.
AIWC Director Col. Gus Benton II said, “As a SOF (special operations force) practitioner, it’s readily clear that the value of AIWC to the Army goes far beyond the number of events supported; the value is truly drawn from the numerous enlightening anecdotes offered by individual Army leaders up to corps commanders as to how their forces were shaped and prepared to operate successfully within complex COIN environments.”
As the COIN Center’s first director in 2006, retired Col. Pete Mansoor, said, the mission of the COIN Center was “to think about how we can change our organization (the Army); integrate new technologies; come up with better tactics, techniques and procedures; how to better train our doctrine; and understand the culture, languages and skills that we need to counter insurgency.”
And that is precisely what today’s AIWC has been doing ever since.
Comments
South Asia gets so little love in any study. I have always found that rather curious. One insurgency from south Asia gets put underneath "identity or ethnic issues" Here we have LTTE(I mean, who can resist insurgencies with a Navy?). The other insurgencies mentioned are based in Afghanistan (sort of South Asia), but mainly mentioned to show examples of external involvement.
India has had multitudes of insurgencies. Nagaland, Punjabi, Naxalite are all really interesting case studies. Pakistan has an ongoing low level insurgency in Balochistan. The insurgency in Bangladesh, led to Indian involvement and a division of Pakistan. That had major strategic consequences for the region.
In general, war is really understudied in South Asia by the west. Go conventional, and the Burma Campaign has to be the least studied of World War II.
For those who think that the need to study insurgency (and revolutionary warfare) is no longer necessary, I would call your attention to the project by the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) and American University in 1962 and USASOC and Johns Hopkins in 2009 on the ARIS project (Assessing Revolution and Insurgent Strategies). Below are the 46 case studies , 23 in Volume I (1962) and 23 in Volume II (2009) in the Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare. Note that these case studies are only illustrative and not a comprehensive list of all the insurgencies and revolutions that have occurred. They were chosen because they are worthy of study to prepare for likely similar events in the future . Note the five categories defined in Vol II below.
Both casebooks and other important references can be downloaded at this link:
http://www.soc.mil/ARIS/ARIS.html
Table 1: Contents of Volume I published in 1962
I. Southeast Asia
1. The Revolution in Vietnam: 1946–1954
2. The Indonesian Rebellion: 1945–1949
3. The Revolution in Malaya: 1948–1957
II. Latin America
4. The Guatemalan Revolution of 1944
5. The Venezuelan Revolution of 1945
6. The Argentine Revolution of June 1943
7. The Bolivian Revolution of 1952
8. The Cuban Revolution: 1953–1959
III. North Africa
9. The Tunisian Revolution: 1950–1954
10. The Algerian Revolution: 1954–1962
IV. Africa South of the Sahara
11. The Revolution in French Cameroun:
1956–1960
12. The Congolese Coup of 1960
V. Middle East
13. The Iraqi Coup of 1936
14. The Egyptian Coup of 1952
15. The Iranian Coup of 1953
16. The Iraqi Coup of 1958
17. The Sudan Coup of 1958
VI. Far East
18. The Korean Revolution of 1960
19. The Chinese Communist Revolution:
1927–1949
VII. Europe
20. The German Revolution of 1933
21. The Spanish Revolution of 1936
22. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956
23. The Czechoslovakian Coup of 1948
Table 2: Volume II, 1962-2009
The first section deals with revolutions that desire to greatly modify the type of government. They include:
1. New People’s Army (NPA)
2. Fuerzas Armada Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC)
3. Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
4. 1979 Iranian Revolution
5. Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional
(FMLN)
6. Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)
The second section describes revolutions where identity or ethnic issues are prime motivations for the warfare:
7. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
8. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
9. Hutu-Tutsi genocides
10. Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
11. Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA)
The desire to drive out a foreign power from their area constitutes the third section, with the cases:
12. Afghan Mujahidin
13. Vietcong
14. Chechen Revolution
15. Hizbollah
16. Hizbul Mujahedeen
The fourth section deals with the pressing rise of revolutions based upon religious fundamentalism:
17. Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ)
18. Taliban
19. Al Qaeda
The last section covers issues of modernization or reform, including:
20. Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)
21. Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
22. Orange Revolution of Ukraine
23. Solidarity
One has to love the smokescreens placed around an organization that was never designed to be a "program of record" but was only designed to "help" in the so called COIN fight.
The problem as was with a number of these such organizations that sprung up when someone had an idea and could lock the OCO funding was it never regardless of all the smoke never made it to the ground reality.
When these organizations sprung up one heard all kinds of PR and read all kinds of materials being pushed but in the end did it change the way BCTs were being trained at say the NTC? They would visit give great Powerpoint presentations and talk about their great work but when asked specific questions concerning events on the ground in say Anbar three days earlier what were the answers not much. some of the best work was being actually done by the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point on the insurgency and the individuals and the drivers than ever came out of the IWC but did we hear all kinds of PR from them ---no not really they just kept releasing analysis some of which has stood the test of time if one takes the time to go back and reread their work.
IE throughout the history of the NTC starting in 2006 through 2010 all innovation actually came from the COGs and the Operational planners starting with General Salazar who together with two civilians completely recalibrated the training scenarios to reflect actual events on the ground from the tactical perspective as well as the political perspective using his experience in Diyala Province. The integration with civilians orgs ie NGOs and say Human rights Watch came at the NTC, the complete rebuild of tribal training and interactions with the tribes was completed in late 2006 as well and became the standard,the immediate injection of new IEDs being used and their TTPs did not come from the JIEDDO or the Irregular Warfare Center it came from jihadi battle videos taken from the internet and implemented as soon as was possible into a ongoing BCT rotation.
The creation of a FM 3-24 and now the follow on FM has yet to be determined if a success or failure---if we look at now what is happening in Iraq and the failures in AFG one could conclude the FM were for the ground reality in both those countries---failures.
As with all of these OCO funded organizations ---they created a great empire but their lasting effects will not be missed as history has marched on as Iraq, Syria and the Ukraine has shown us a new form of UW in support of political warfare, and third party supported irregular warfare not talked about by the IWC nor their single achievement the FM 3-24.
Another OCO created failure was the Human Terrain Team concept---great salaries but did it achieve what was the initial reason for creating them--no not really as the CTC was doing much of what they were and actually the CTC produced better products overall for less than a third of the total cost for the HTT concept.
Nice to see the Army deciding saving money is better than saying empires.