ABSTRACT

Learning Lackluster Lessons: in the Algerian Revolution and the Iraq Surge

Patrick Kerry Ormsby

Director: Dr. David A. Smith Ph.D. Modern American History

The Algerian Revolution provided two distinct avenues for approaching irregular, population centric conflicts typical of the post-World War II world. Captain David Galula’s counterinsurgency campaign (1956-58) provided the blueprint for a hearts-and- minds counterinsurgency, while the Battle of (1956-57) displayed a more brutal approach that garnered short-term results at great strategic costs. Writers of modern American counterinsurgency doctrine purposefully drew from the former and inadvertently from the latter but removing the tactics making it “effective.” False historical narratives unfortunately clouded Galula’s campaign which had fundamental shortcomings undiscussed in his memoirs. Additionally, several noteworthy hearts-and- minds counterinsurgencies proved to bear more similarity with the brutal approach. The Iraq Surge (2007), the first practical application of modern American counterinsurgency doctrine and an example of progression in that it did not feature torture, owned fundamental flaws not only unique to it but also others eerily similar to those within French counterinsurgency campaigns in .

APPROVED BY DIRECTOR OF HONORS THESIS:

______

Dr. David Smith, History Department

APPROVED BY THE HONORS PROGRAM:

______

Dr. Elizabeth Corey, Director

DATE: ______

LEARNING LACKLUSTER LESSONS: COUNTERINSURGENCY IN THE

ALGERIAN REVOLUTION AND THE IRAQ SURGE

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

Baylor University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Honors Program

By

Patrick Kerry Ormsby

Waco, Texas

May 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One: Introduction 1

Chapter Two: World War II, the Algerian Revolution, and Independence 6

Chapter Three: Hearts and Minds Counterinsurgency: Galula in Algeria 32

Chapter Four: Population Control Counterinsurgency: Battle of Algiers 55

Chapter Five: Timeless Mistakes: The Iraq Surge 76

Conclusion: Full of Sound and Fury 97

Bibliography 106

ii

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the king said, very gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’ -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The War on Terror has dominated American foreign policy since September 11,

2001 and has shown little sign of halting. The lethargic pace towards an acceptable end to the War on Terror underscores how much has transpired over the past seventeen years.

Why had the execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006, the assassination of Osama-bin-

Laden in 2011, and the recent declaration of victory over the Islamic State (ISIS) failed to produce any meaningful advances? New adversaries, new tales of terror appear

seemingly every day. One thing, however is for certain and may explain the state of the

War on Terror. American forays into the Middle-East were not the pitched battles of yesteryear, fought between two armies standing in neat, orderly lines. After the fall of

Hussein’s Ba’ath Party in Iraq and his execution, opposition to American efforts began to take the form of an insurgency. Insurgency in the broadest sense represents a highly irregular style of warfare that pivots around guerrilla tactics and the use of a civilian population for cover, recruitment, and funding.

While hardly a new style of warfare, the United States government and military were left hopelessly unprepared to effectively combat the insurgency with the shock and awe tactics used during the initial invasion of Iraq.1 No discussion concerning what

1Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire by Jewish guerrillas for an old example of insurgency. “Shock and awe” was the lay term for the doctrine of rapid dominance which used technology 1

exactly to do after removing Saddam Hussein from power materialized before the

invasion, thus the prospect of performing a long-term stabilization operation was wholly

unplanned for.2 It became apparent that the civilian population was the center of gravity,

an idea that hearkened back to the controversial Vietnam War where American ineptitude

in waging population-centric wars was put on full display. FM3-24 was created by

General David Petraeus in 2007 to address this doctrinal void in counterinsurgency. He

and other framers called upon previous British and French experiences with

counterinsurgency for inspiration. They cited in particular the Malayan Emergency of

1948 and Algerian Revolution of 1954 respectively.3

These conflicts were singled out since revisionist narratives purported them to be

exemplars of limited, restricted violence. Instead of using brutal measures unbecoming of

a nation founded on democratic ideals, commanding officers of these wars creatively

engaged and won over a population from their insurgent brethren. General Templer’s

mixed policing and war making duties allowed him unprecedented authority in

combining the intelligence acquisition capabilities of native Malayans and the awesome

firepower of the British military. Joint civil-military powers were also a feature of

Captain Galula’s counterinsurgency experiment in Aissa Mimoun, a remote countryside

to gain complete control over the battlefield through superior intelligence, firepower, and speed to subdue opposition.

2Gian Gentile, Lecture for the Georgetown University Center for Security Studies, “CSS Lunch Series: Confessions of a Recovering Anti-Coindinista ft. Gian Gentile,” Duration 1:32:37, Published on YouTube by Georgetown University Center for Security Studies Feb. 28, 2017, 56:40-58:08, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFVsL_tnQAs. The pre-invasion thinking was that the Iraqis would embrace democracy and “run with it,” a conclusion that would be retrospectively laughable save for its tragic consequences.

3David Howell Petraeus and James F. Amos, Counterinsurgency: FM 3-24 (2006) (Washington D.C.: Headquarters Department of the Army, 2006), viii, accessed March 30, 2019, https://usacac.army.mil/cac2/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf. 2

of in Algeria. Both leaders recorded their experiences and in post-wartime

advocated for the efficacy of hearts and minds style counterinsurgencies. These

counterinsurgencies provided important lessons to the writers of FM3-24 and justified

their belief that adopting similar tactics was the best avenue for destroying the terrorist

threat in the Middle East.

The narratives constructed by Galula and Templer that were used as the basis for

FM3-24 were unfortunately based on ahistoricisms and leaps in logic. Galula’s narrative

failed to accurately reflect what happened in Aissa Mimoun according to French S.A.S.

records.4 His counterinsurgency operation had far more mixed results than his memoirs

claim. Templer’s narrative too fell like a house of cards with the recent declassification of

over 1.7 million “discovered” documents detailing brutalities suffered by natives in

Britain’s colonies during the Malayan Emergency.5 The Malayan Emergency in this

regard was far more reminiscent of than Galula’s more morally

upright counterinsurgency. FM3-24 writers therefore borrowed from the ugly, brutal

tradition of repressive counterinsurgency measures just as much as the more morally

acceptable avenues pursued by Galula.

The two narratives that formed the foundation of FM3-24 fail to faithfully create a

winning counterinsurgency doctrine either by the lack of results or unintended results

4“Section administrative spécialisée.” The S.A.S. was a military organization focused on serving the poor, unemployed, homeless, and otherwise at-risk sections of the population in an effort to secure more intelligence.

5Brian Drohan, Brutality in an Age of Human Rights: Activism and Counterinsurgency at the End of the British Empire (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017), 8-9. The British Government claimed to have no knowledge of these documents in an effort to avoid their eventual legal release according to the UK Freedom of Information Act of 2000 and were only released under court orders during a lawsuit filed by Kenyans against the British government for standing in violation of their human rights as subjects of torture. 3

stemming from brutal means. These narratives instead revealed two lines of thought

equally useless in defeating insurgents. One line of thought was well represented by both

the Battle of Algiers and the Malayan Emergency. That is, a counterinsurgent must

perform brutal atrocities to win short term, tactical victories and risk losing the war as news of their human rights transgressions reach the ears of civilians and political masters alike. Alternatively, a counterinsurgent can conduct themselves with a moralistic approach designed to faithfully limit the use of force and to win the hearts and minds of a population, not simply control them. The downfall of the latter line of thought arose directly from its creator’s experience in Algeria. Galula’s counterinsurgency was completely ineffective despite owning more moral high ground than its brutal cousins in

Malaya and Algiers.

The lessons learned from Algiers and Aissa Mimoun fail to detail any recipe for success against insurgents as General Petraeus and his fellow writers had hoped. The lessons were simply exhibitions of what not to do, leaving no definitive answer for what

will produce the desired political results. Regardless, Petraeus and others derived sundry

lessons from the Algerian Revolution as they saw fit, which in turn merely led to another

failed counterinsurgency experiment. The disastrous results of American forays into Iraq

and Afghanistan using FM3-24 speak to this reality.

This thesis will critically examine the historical basis found in the Algerian

Revolution for FM3-24’s usage in Iraq. Chapter Two will feature an Algerian history

leading up to and through the Algerian Revolution. This will represent an effort to

provide appropriate context for drawing conclusions from the Battle of Algiers and

Captain Galula’s counterinsurgency operation. Chapter Three will examine Galula’s

4 campaign in Aissa Mimoun. Such an examination will justify the notion that one cannot glean meaningful lessons about how to both morally and successfully execute a counterinsurgency from his approach. Chapter Four will analyze the Battle of Algiers to display ramifications of pursuing brutal, “effective” methods in defeating insurgents that was also typical of the Malayan Emergency. Chapter Five will take a closer look at how

FM3-24 represented a convoluted mass of ahistoric lessons by focusing on how it was implemented in Iraq. Overall, the Algerian Revolution provided examples of both a hearts and minds approach towards counterinsurgency and a more brutal, population control approach. Both methods in reality proved conducive for failure, which all but dooms implementors of FM3-24 to fail in their own campaigns since the doctrine is based on flawed, false narratives. FM3-24 was a misfire since its days on the drawing board, as suggested by the conflicts it is based on and how it fared in practice.

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CHAPTER TWO

World War II, the Algerian Revolution, and Independence

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away- -Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”

Americans tend to remember World War II as a great triumph of good against

evil, proudly remembering the central role the United States played in liberating Western

Europe and defeating the Japanese Empire through great heroism. The French experience in contrast was entirely different. Pummeled in six weeks by an industrial, highly mechanized German offensive that completely ignored ’s most prized defense, the

Maginot Line, the French Empire capitulated on June 22, 1940 with the signing of the

Second Armistice at Compiègne. A “neutral” Vichy government was established and mainland France divided by the Axis conquerors. Often overlooked by typical World

War II narratives however was how France’s colonies fared during this time, in particular

Algeria.

The fall of mainland France in World War II led to far reaching consequences in

Algeria. These consequences were exacerbated by the post-war French government’s countless refusals to rectify the basic economic and social grievances of every non-pied noir faction.1 During German occupation, quality of life for pied noirs fell slightly due to

1Pied Noir is a term for European settlers in Algeria, many of whom resided in Algeria for decades.

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rationings and shortages. Their Berber and Arab counterparts, however, fell upon

exceedingly difficult times primarily due to the severance of ties between themselves and

well over 100,000 Algerian wage earners in mainland France.2 Typically, more industrial

economic opportunities were available in metropolitan France for Algerians than in their

relatively agrarian homeland. The result was that many families had members joining the

unskilled labor force in France to financially sustain their families in Algeria. This

income supply was disturbed and ultimately shattered as the French government fell apart

in the face of German aggression, dampening economic opportunities. Any economic

gain was to the benefit of Germany and its widespread war effort with wage earners in

France and their families suffering as a result.

The pied noirs proved to be of little to no assistance to native Algerians, cooling

relations between the pied noirs and other Algerians. This and Operation Torch3 caused non-pied noir Algerians to reassess their fealty to both the French government and its people. It seemed that the ideal of equal citizenship was only given lip service.

Additionally, the Allies’ massive display of war material and the relative ease with which

Vichy France fell in Algeria revealed before their eyes the feebleness of France. Contact with American forces eventually revealed to Algerians both America’s Franklin

Roosevelt-inspired distaste for colonialism as well as the Atlantic Charter.4 This

2Anne Marlowe, “Native Son,” Tablet Magazine, January 5, 2012, accessed March 30, 2019 https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/87345/native-son. The nuances between Berber and Arab ethnicities might seem minor from a western perspective but truly are significant and originate from at least three points of contention which are claims as original inhabitants of Algeria, language, and adherence to fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. On wage earners, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York City, New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 42.

3Operation Torch was a joint U.S.-British invasion of North Africa during World War II, with initial landings along the coasts of Algeria and Morocco beginning on November 8, 1942.

4Horne. Savage War of Peace. 42. 7

document composed by both American and English leaders formally communicated a

post-war vision of the world and all but called for an end to colonialism in its eight

points.5 While dealing a blow to future British Empire holdings, Winston Churchill

figured such a sacrifice was worth bringing the United States into the war officially on

the Allied side.

Inspired by the Atlantic Charter, restless Algerians approached General Giraud, a leader in the new French government of Algeria, in 1943 with a list of grievances and possible reforms. His non-committal response, “I don’t care about reforms, I want soldiers first,”6 would preview the future tepid responses the French government would

give reform-minded Algerians between World War II and the Algerian Revolution. Given

that the country was in the midst of World War II and the Mediterranean theatre was

drawing more attention, the need for soldiers was pressing and Giraud’s words were

interpreted as a quid pro quo of sorts. Young Algerian men as a result fought and died

under the French banner over the course of World War II, perhaps most famously in the

Italian campaign under General Juin in the Battle of Monte Cassino. A pair of infantry

divisions, one Moroccan and the other Algerian, fought a vicious, grinding battle that

ultimately consumed the lives of around 2,500 soldiers by the end of January 1943.7

5Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, The Atlantic Charter (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1943), United Nations General Assembly, section 1, 2, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.unmultimedia.org/searchers/yearbook/page.jsp?q=atlantic&start=2&total=21&srstart=0&volu meFacet=1946-47&searchType=advanced&outline=false.

6Horne, Savage War of Peace, 42.

7Fred Majdalany, Cassino: Portrait of a Battle (London: Longmans, Green Co., 1957).

8

Believing that the spilling of Algerian blood was sufficient for reform talks to

begin, the then liberally minded produced a body of work detailing

Algerian grievances and demands.8 Abbas’ tone throughout his “Manifesto of the

Algerian People” was uncharacteristically persistent and demanding, completely refusing

the idea of assimilating Algerians into French culture. What was particularly surprising

about this was that Abbas was traditionally a French apologist and previously deemed

assimilation as the best option for French and Algerians alike. Instead, he demanded fair

and complete participation of Muslims in government, the establishment of a constitution

guaranteeing the liberty and equality of all Algerians, and outlawing feudal land rights

among other demands that were in line with the views of his more extremist rival Messali

Hadj.9 Promptly placing Abbas under house arrest until he recanted, the French

government declined to give any of these reforms consideration. This would mark the beginning of Abbas’ methodical alienation from French influence. It wasn’t until January

1944 that General Charles DeGaulle, then the leader of the Free French government,

promised Algerian Muslims would have equal rights with French citizens as well as

enjoy more representation in local government. These concessions represented little to

both Abbas and Messali, who believed that such concessions should have been in place

with the ideal of Algérie Française.10 Pied noirs, a steep numeric minority, were the most

8Abbas’ father led a decorated career reaching an apex when he earned the honor as the Commander of the which allowed Abbas a high-quality education that exposed him to the perks of colonialist France.

9Horne, Savage War of Peace, 42. Hadj was the leader of the nationalist party “Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques” otherwise known as the M.T.L.D. and was an early political rival of Ferhat Abbas and his U.M.D.A. party, the “Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien.”

10French Algeria, asserts that Algeria is as French as and ought to be defended as such.

9

powerful ethnic group wielding political and administrative power, resulting in laws and

policies designed to suppress native Algerian social, financial, and political mobility.11

DeGaulle’s promise noticeably was not fair representation, by the math there should have

been around nine times more Algerian representatives than pied-noirs. He instead carefully promised only more representation for native Algerians. Algerian soldiers, unaware of these happenings while fighting until the conclusion of World War II in 1945,

returned home to a state of subjugation after experiencing equality with brothers in arms

of other nations whose soldiers they fought beside. Growing disappointment with their

status as second-class citizens fueled the fires of the Algerian Revolution, an omen for

which was seen in 1945 in the town of Setif.

What was supposed to be a day of celebration in Setif turned into a bloodbath.

The cause for celebration was Victory in Europe Day, V.E. Day for short. V.E. Day

represented Nazi Germany’s formal agreement for unconditional surrender on May 8th,

1945. Cities across the world hosted large parades to commemorate the end of the bloody

and ruthless war. Under the guise of a V.E. Day celebration, 8,000 Algerians marched

into the town of Setif. The town could only boast twenty gendarmes due to slow

redeployments of troops from Europe back to Algeria.12 Preceding weeks had given the

sub-prefect of Setif, M. Butterlin, a sense of unease since murmurings of an organized

protest designed to coopt the V.E. Day parade were circulating. He thought it necessary

to ban any flag toting or politicization of the march. Completely disregarding this ban, the

11Horne, Savage War of Peace, 43.

12Kim Eduard, Armed Forces in Law Enforcement Operations? - The German and European Perspective (Berlin: Springer, 2011). Gendarmes are French policemen that can double as a proper branch of the French military primarily responsible for internal security.

10

crowd bore banners demanding the liberation of Messali Hadj, who had been placed

under house arrest, as well as a free, independent Algeria. Abbas by now had recanted

and was already freed from his house arrest, so his status was not a central point of the

protest. Perhaps most worrisome from a French colonialist perspective was that some marchers carried with them flags reminiscent of Abd-El-Kader’s colors, signifying a call

to revolutionary action.13 M. Butterlin ordered his gendarmes to seize the flags, which

caused a violent reaction from the crowd.

The identity of who fired the first shot is unknown, but what followed was well

recorded. The twenty gendarmes were soon overwhelmed by the marchers and violence

spread into neighboring villages and hamlets. General terror engulfed pied noirs as

previously amicable neighbors took part in the bloodletting. This scene continued for five days while the French army moved in to restore order. They discovered scenes of horrific brutality that amounted to around 100 pied noir deaths as a result of multiple atrocities.14

A methodical ratissage15 ensued to look for ring leaders and participants in the massacre.

Summary executions, air strikes on remote hamlets, and long-distance naval

bombardments claimed the lives of a reported 500-600 Algerians based on the French

Army’s estimations. Civilian vigilante bands were also formed by vengeful pied noirs as well. They took it upon themselves to hunt down and lynch Muslim Algerians without

13Horne, Savage War of Peace, 30. Abd El Kader was the leader of the Algerian resistance against French conquest under Charles X in 1832 for fifteen years who was legendary for both his young age, he was 25, and the impossible odds of resisting the huge French empire.

14Horne, Savage War of Peace, 26.

15Horne, Savage War of Peace, 26. Translates into “a raking over”, commonly used to describe pacification operations.

11

white bands around their arms to signal that the Army had confirmed their innocence.

The number of Algerian lives lost during this five-day period was estimated to be around

6,000 according to Maitre Teitgen, the secretary-general of the Algiers prefecture in

1956-57.16 The brutality of this episode shocked many Algerians, who were further infuriated by the total lack of justice taken against the extra-legal killings.17

These contemptuous feelings, as well as the growing socio-economic gap between pied noirs and the rest of the Algerian population, would grow until reaching fruition on

All Saints’ Day in 1954. The complete lack of reform spurred on the Algerian

Revolution, which began with a fizzle more so than a bang. The All Saints Day attacks planned by the original nine leaders of the F.L.N.,18 who dubbed themselves the

C.R.U.A.,19 met either with little or no material success. These attacks were mainly focused on gendarme armories in order to build the F.L.N.’s stockpile of weapons, which at the time was restricted heavily to abandoned World War II weaponry. The lack of equipment was a problem the F.L.N. attempted to address by appealing to President

Gamel Nasser’s Egyptian government, who seemed like a fitting partner given his promotion of Pan-Arabism. It became increasingly clear that no help was coming until the revolution began to produce results, however. Egypt initially was uninterested in helping with the F.L.N.’s predicament without tangible results. The only operation that could be called a success was an effort to sabotage telephone lines in Kabylia under the

16Horne, Savage War of Peace, 27.

17Horne, Savage War of Peace, 27.

18“Front de Libération Nationale”

19“Comite Revolutionnaire d’Unite et d’Action”

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direct supervision of one of the members of C.R.U.A., a Kabyle by the name Krim

Belkacem.

Despite the ineffective nature of these attacks, the French reaction would lead to a

greater strategic victory for the F.L.N. than they would have gained otherwise in their

inauspicious offensive. The French response of mass incarcerations quickly got out of

hand, as the arrests were more indiscriminate than based off concrete intelligence. These

arrests included the secretary general of Messali Hadj’s M.T.L.D. whose members were

officially forbidden from taking part in politics. The French took this action under the

assumption that Messali and his followers engineered the All Saints’ Day attacks. This

would prove to start the pattern of French intelligence blunders. Hadj and his followers in

reality played no part in the All Saints’ Day attacks. They considered the F.L.N., on the contrary, rivals and made many attempts to disrupt their recruiting efforts.20 Vocal civilian activists concerned with the legality of these blind arrests were arrested as well, driving them into F.L.N. ranks upon their eventual release.21 Any prospect of bringing

Messali and his followers or liberally inclined, wrongfully arrested Algerians back into

the fold were quickly dashed by pied noir political action. Calls for order, punishments,

and strong shows of force featured heavily on the Algerian Assembly floor, drowning out the call for reform from moderate Algerian politicians like Ferhat Abbas.22

20Horne, Savage War of Peace, 84.

21Horne, Savage War of Peace, 97. Ben Khedda was among those who joined the F.L.N. after being released by French officials. Khedda adopted a leadership role within the F.L.N. as the war progressed.

22Horne, Savage War of Peace, 97-98. This pattern of using F.L.N. violence to delay reform would continue throughout the war, alienating potential allies.

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If regional politics and police action reflected pied noir sentiments well, the

directives sent from the national French government under Mendes-France were even

clearer. Mendes-France’s government before All Saints’ Day was already on the edge of

losing a vote of confidence due to his policies towards Tunisian and Moroccan

independence. He adopted the policy of granting more autonomy and in some cases full

independence to revolution-minded colonial holdings. This policy was seen as the best

option since Mendes-France executed a similar exit strategy for France from its

disastrous efforts to retain Vietnam.23 Many made parallels between his “lenient” policies

with former colonies vying for independence and the current predicament in Algeria.

Supporting an independent Algeria would amount to political suicide for Mendes-France,

who needed the pied noir faction to pass his vote of confidence. Thus, Mendes-France promoted the ideals of Algérie Française, insisting that would remain

firmly French despite his more liberally informed promise of reforms that had yet to be

implemented. Trying to balance liberal reforms to sway Algerian moderates with pied

noir desires to maintain the status quo plagued not only Mendes-France’s Algerian

policy, but all future French administrations as well. The dual, mutually exclusive aims

made formulating policy difficult for the French government, which would in turn lead to

disastrous consequences in terms of the military’s strategic objectives.

Mendes-France’s government lost the next vote of confidence on February 5,

1955 but not before appointing governor-general of Algeria, who was

also retained by the incoming prime minister, . Soustelle pushed for liberal

23Horne, Savage War of Peace, 98.

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political reforms in the same vein of Ferhat Abbas’ demands ten years earlier.24 Initially, the “Soustelle Plan” as it was called was met with enthusiasm by poorer pied noirs and the Algerian Assembly, particularly for its focus on integration. This term functioned as a buzzword for total implementation of reforms promised by Mendes-France’s government to pull Algerians out of economic ruin and onto equal socio-political standing with their

French counterparts. Integration represented the French government attempting to take meaningful action to address the complicated socio-political causes for native Algerian discontent. While such changes were promised during and after World War II, it was only a decade later when the French government took action and stopped paying lip service to reform.

Poor, rural Algerians and the F.L.N., however, saw this as more of the same empty promises and were soon proven correct. Jacques Soustelle made the decision to reassign the floundering commanders combatting F.L.N. irregulars. He replaced these conventionally trained officers with those recently returning from Vietnam, who had experience in guerrilla warfare from their time in the field.25 Quickness and spreading forces thin, which now numbered 100,000, were placed at a premium by these new commanders. These early changes proved ineffective at containing Krim’s irregulars however, whose headline-grabbing, destructive actions caused an uproar from pied noirs.

They called for Soustelle to focus on military matters more than his liberal reforms.

Complying, Soustelle instituted a measure of collective responsibility at the suggestion of

24Horne, Savage War of Peace, 108.

25Conventional refers to how regular wars are fought, between two states using equipment and tactics designed to shatter the opposing army on an open field of battle with well-defined areas of control and operational objectives leading towards victory.

15

the French Army. Collective responsibility in this case referred to forcing Algerian locals

in the vicinity of a terrorist attack to accept a degree of culpability for the attack. The

locals as a consequence were required to perform manual labor and other undesirable

tasks to repair the mess. The degree of culpability was a subjective decision made by

local commanders and thus punishments took a diverse character. They included anything from the aforementioned manual labor to, an uncomfortably common occurrence, the destruction of the village and relocation of its villagers.26 As the brutality of the F.L.N.

and French forces increased, a blind eye was turned to whether these villages were

actually evacuated before becoming dust.27 The Clausewitz principle of the escalation of

conflict continued undeterred, resulting in horrible massacres of pied noir and Algerians

alike as seen in the Philippeville Massacres, which ultimately turned Soustelle from

diehard liberal reformer into a complete nonbeliever in integration.28

All the additional commanders, their unconventional tactics, and troops (which

numbered 160,000 after the Philippeville Massacres on August 20th) were unable to

secure either an early strategic or military victory for France. The Philippeville Massacres

and other F.L.N. efforts to court favor with world powers catapulted the issue of Algerian independence onto the international level, with the United Nations considering the issue

26Horne, Savage War of Peace, 114.

27Horne, Savage War of Peace, 118.

28Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Project Gutenberg, Book One, Chapter One, Section Three, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1946/1946-h/1946-h.htm. Escalation of conflict as portrayed by Clausewitz is based on the idea that “he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the bloodshed involved, must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigour in its application. The former then dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed to extremities to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of counter-acting force on each side.”

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for discussion.29 These events finally brought the Algerian Revolution and all its brutality

into the French public’s eye. Prime Minister Faure, pressured by increasing unrest from

both pied noirs and mainland Frenchmen alike, called a general election for January 2,

1956. This resulted in the fall of Faure’s government and the rise of , who

immediately replaced Soustelle with General Catroux, the latest liberal minded leader to

take a hack at ending the Algerian Revolution on favorable terms.

Mollet and Catroux were roundly booed and abused on their inaugural trip to

Algiers. Catroux swiftly resigned with Mollet’s approval, and with Catroux went

Mollet’s plan for a liberal solution to end the war in Algiers. Prime Minister Mollet quickly found himself in the same predicament as Mendes-France, executing a war on the people of Algeria instead of executing a liberally minded rebuild and reconstruction of relations. As a last-ditch effort to save the integration process, Mollet appointed Robert

Lacoste, another liberally minded former French Resistance leader, to replace Catroux.30

Lacoste too would find that striking a balance between liberal action and military success

was an impossible job, particularly due to the growing influence of the F.L.N. in Algeria

and abroad.

29Horne, Savage War of Peace, 118-122. The Philippeville Massacres were a particularly violent scenes where F.L.N. leaders began to attack French civilians instead of limiting the bloodshed merely for the French military. Horrific reports of Algerian natives turning on pied noir bosses, friends, and families with murderous intentions. Soustelle reported that 123 people were killed by the F.L.N., 71 of whom were Europeans. He reported that 1,273 insurgents were killed but noted that the French reprisals were severe and would not claim knowledge about the number of Algerian civilians killed by the French. The F.L.N. reported over 12,000 Algerian deaths.

30John Talbott, The War Without a Name (New York City, New York; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1980), 60.

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A shift in F.L.N. leadership was evident in Krim’s rise to greater prominence

within the F.L.N., causing him to abandon his Wiyala Three leadership post.31 Debating

grand strategy and other strategic concerns drew Krim away from combat. Despite this,

his replacement in Kabylia named Amirouche proved that increased terror led to speedy,

more complete control of the population. The rise of Ramdane Abane further cemented

the movement towards more frequent and bigger terror attacks across the F.L.N. Abane

rebuilt the entirely annihilated F.L.N. network in Algiers. He used violence and brutality

to seize control of poor Algerian farmers and kill any French supporters in their numbers.

Particularly noteworthy was his brutal effectiveness in not only disposing of pied noirs,

but also Algerians with political influences who opposed the extreme measures of the

F.L.N.32 Finally, the F.L.N. brought Ferhat Abbas into the fold as he became increasingly

cognizant of the futility of pursuing his moderate policies in the face of escalating of

warfare.33

While the strides taken by both the inner and outer leadership may signal

cohesion of the F.L.N.’s leaders, as French intelligence purported, the reality was far

different. Rifts were beginning to appear between the inner and outer leadership cores of the F.L.N. The former was tasked with fighting the Algerian Revolution proper while the

31Horne, Savage War of Peace, 83. There were six autonomous Wilayas created by the F.L.N. to divide strategic, operational, and tactical decisions to best fit the local situation.

32Horne, Savage War of Peace, 133-136. With his M.L.T.D. barred from politics, it was Messali’s newly created, anti-F.L.N. M.N.A. “Mouvement National Algérien” and the P.C.A. “Parti Communiste Algérien” which were systemically brought into the fold and sent on suicide missions or eliminated altogether with some exceptions by the F.L.N.

33Horne, Savage War of Peace, 140. Part of his recruitment required Abbas to dissolve his U.M.D.A. party “Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien,” thus eliminating the final source of organized native Algerian political opposition to the F.L.N.

18

latter was supposed to drum up international support for the Algerian cause. Ethnic

animosity between the Kabyles and Arab members as well as the inner leadership’s

frustration with their counterparts’ failure to obtain significant arms support divided the two sets of leaders. A summit was called by Abane and Ben M’hidi in Soumann in the spring of 1956 to ease tensions. The result of this summit was a much more ordered,

military style hierarchy which was established to replace the C.R.U.A. and was referred

to as the C.C.E.34 The C.C.E., made up of Krim, M’hidi, Abane, and two other interior influencers governed over all the Wilayas, while the 34 member C.N.R.A. would adopt the C.R.U.A.’s political functions.35 These political functions most importantly included

the ability to negotiate with France concerning cease fires and independence. This new,

revitalized structure consolidated strategic and operational authority squarely within the inner leadership, allowing for more focused and effective revolutionary action.

French leadership was almost equally as divided as their F.L.N. opponents in

some respects. French high command, already feeling slighted by the French government

due to their tendency to grant colonies independence, began a trend of autonomy that

would continue throughout the Algerian Revolution. A combination of Nasser

nationalizing the Suez Canal and the seizure of a ship bearing arms intended for Algeria

from Egypt confirmed to the French a close-knit relationship between Nasser and

Algerian rebels through Ben Bella.36 This misconception was another intelligence

blunder on the part of the French military and government.

34“Comité de Coordination et d’Exécution”

35“Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne”

36Horne, Savage War of Peace, 158.

19

Without the benefit of hindsight, the French military began to act on such intelligence independent of the directives from their political masters according to the widely respected Algerian Revolution historian Alistair Horne. Receiving intelligence about the travelling plans of Ben Bella and several other members of the outer leadership, paratrooper leaders concocted a scheme to capture the “head” of the rebellion once and for all. The pilot of the plane bearing Bella and company to Tunis was a French reservist and complied with French military orders to land in Algeria instead. The ploy worked with Ben Bella and four of his compatriots detained and placed in French custody where they would remain for the rest of the revolution.

Pied noirs and mainland Frenchmen alike cheered the military’s daring, erroneously believing that the war was now drawing to a close. The French ignorance of the Soumann Summit proved costly in this regard since Bella had lost much standing as power was concentrated within the inner leadership. Beyond the lessening relevance of

Bella, the coup was a strategic failure. The Army elected a short sighted, tactical gain at the cost of long-term strategic failure. The move to redirect the plane was entirely illegal under international law, drawing the ire of the international community.37 Additionally, both Moroccan and Tunisian governments, originally advocating for the F.L.N. to negotiate for peace, balked at the move. These events made both countries more sympathetic to the F.L.N.’s cause, as they began providing safe haven and training grounds for Algerian insurgents.

37Horne, Savage War of Peace, 160.

20

Despite the international outcry and distancing of potential allies in Tunisia and

Morocco, the French military was emboldened to follow their own initiative, particularly

after the disastrous assault against Egypt. The international humiliation France faced

when their most experienced paratroopers combined with British and Israeli military

might failed to secure the Suez Canal or unseat Nasser left a lasting mark on the

paratroopers in Algeria. The embarrassing Suez Canal operation, from the Army’s

perspective, was the victim of politics and feeble political leaders. Military and political

defeat in Vietnam, the political feebleness in France’s handling of Tunisia and Morocco,

and the chastisement for Ben Bella’s capture gave the paratrooper regiments the daring to

voice resentment towards the French government. The paratroopers, their colonels

especially, drove military action away from conventional means towards subversive and population centric tactics. With frustration mounting among these outfits due to the aforementioned friction with the French government, scenes of F.L.N. brutality, and impossible rules of engagement their operations became more daring and bore elements of political motivation.38

General Raoul Salan in particular eagerly took the mantle of injecting political

ideology into the Army. Salan became the French Commander-in-Chief of Algeria in

December of 1956, but he was not received warmly by pied noirs. His cool reception was

the result of pied noir distaste for Mollet and Salan’s history as a general in Vietnam. The

fear was that Salan would push for the French army to depart Algeria just as it did in

Vietnam. Events quickly escalated as suspicions of Salan’s character grew, culminating

in an assassination attempt featuring a jury-rigged bazooka.

38Horne, Savage War of Peace, 164, 173-177. 21

Salan was undeterred, and his political abilities became particularly apparent as

Algiers became a hotbed for terrorist activity. The infamous Battle of Algiers was beginning as the growing F.L.N. network in Algiers began a campaign of high-profile bombings and assassinations. Abane, in response to an uptick in F.L.N. supporters meeting grisly ends by guillotine, demanded that the new Algiers network commit acts of terrorism as reprisals. Mass, indiscriminate bombings of restaurants and other public places regularly attended by pied noirs became the order of business under Saadi Yacef’s supervision. Assassinations also became more common, with Mayor Rue Michelet becoming the first murdered public figurehead, killed by none other than .39

La Pointe was a revered figure in the F.L.N. ranks and was one of the key personalities in

Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers. The French citizenry launched their own reprisals in the wake of these bombings and killings, often murdering many innocent Muslims as a result. Lacoste’s government, as a way of both meeting out justice and appeasing the mob, would execute more suspected terrorists, continuing the cycle of escalating violence. Realizing that the situation was spiraling out of control, Robert Lacoste invoked

the Special Powers Law, which gave an unprecedented combination of policing and

warfighting responsibilities to the military.

While Salan still had some time before he fully realized his political potential,

General Jacques Massu took the mantle of adopting both civil and military duties in

Algiers, which laid the foundation for a particularly ugly conflict to unfold. The French

Army became the largest police force in all of Algiers overnight and was tasked with

39Horne, Savage War of Peace, 187.

22

ensuring French dominance over Algeria. The first worrisome omen of how brutal this

conflict would become was indicated by the tactics employed by the paratrooper

regiments in Algiers. These tactics, inspired by past counterinsurgent experiences in

Vietnam, included poorly covered up legal and human rights violations. Strictly enforced

curfews, checkpoints, temporary detentions of suspected terrorists or those with

information on the F.L.N. were all reasonable actions within the bounds of restraint.

The following actions that French leaders in Algiers took were beyond these

mundane tactics though. Despite publicly denying such claims to satisfy their political

masters, they encouraged massive arrests in order to flood the justice system. The cogs of

justice slowed tremendously, thus allowing covert operations, such as those run by

General as discussed in Chapter Four, to covertly seize those who had

potentially actionable intelligence on the F.L.N. in Algiers. Upon their kidnapping, the

captured Algerians, who Aussaresses was confident were affiliated with the F.L.N.,40 had intelligence “extracted” from them by means of torture. Torture was a practice whispered about among military circles and police forces alike since the beginning of the

Algerian Revolution. After giving up their compatriots, the prisoners were then shot while “trying to escape” and buried in remote, unmarked graves.41 Other operations

focused on “enforcing” the curfew, shooting those violating it on sight during the night.

Finally, it what was one of the more disastrous cover ups by the French military, was the

“suicide” of F.L.N. leader Ben M’hidi upon his arrest and the breaking of the Algiers

40Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah (New York City, New York; Enigma Books, 2002), 121.

41Aussaresses, Battle of the Casbah, 114.

23

network.42 Other highly publicized, questionable deaths resulted in a massive outcry from liberal Frenchmen in mainland France, further escalating the Algerian Revolution.43

After trading blows for much of 1956, the vice grip of French paratroopers and

intelligence finally closed on the F.L.N.’s Algiers network in late August. Months of

mass resettlement, detentions, and torture led to the capture of Saadi Yacef and the

scattering of other F.L.N. leaders who managed to escape. Remaining members of the

C.C.E. fled to Tunis, fragmenting F.L.N. leadership even more. French intelligence never

caught wind of this split among F.L.N. leadership though. This lag of military

intelligence was due to incredibly ill-founded misconceptions about F.L.N. leaders, who

were assumed to be based in Nasser’s Egypt, were driven by a Communist ideology, and

were led by but a few men.44

Poor French intelligence led to more international blunders that further garnered sympathy for the F.L.N. The French, for example, alienated both old western allies as well as supporters in Northern Africa, like Tunisia under Habib Borguiba’s rule, by the tactical and strategic blunder at the town of Sakiet. While staying neutral, Borguiba did envision an independent Algeria yet realized the importance of the good will of the

western world.45 Tunisia as a result was officially neutral in the conflict while trying to

42Aussaresses, Battle of the Casbah, 131-132.

43Adam Nossiter, “French Soldiers Tortured Algerians, Macron Admits 6 Decades Later,” New York Times, Sep. 13, 2018, accessed March 30, 2019, htps://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/europe/france-algeria-maurice-audin.html. “L’Affaire Audin” in particular caused an outcry due to his status as a science professor at Algiers University and his scholarly connections in mainland France who vigorously pursued details surrounding his untimely and coincidental death while in French custody. Recently, President has formally acknowledged the torture and execution of Maurice Audin.

44Horne, Savage War of Peace, 158,160.

45Horne, Savage War of Peace, 250. 24

broker a more peaceful resolution that would result in Algeria’s independence. A

Tunisian town in close proximity to the Algerian border, Sakiet was an ideal staging point for F.L.N. forces exiled from Algeria to strike at French border patrols and minor fortifications. After a particularly large and bloody ambush, French planes investigating the movement of the F.L.N. received small arms fire from the town and were forced to turn back. After warnings to cease were ignored, French bombers retaliated on what turned out to be a market day, bombing the town and hitting a well-marked hospital and a school in the process. British and American allies alike balked at the display, pushing international opinion towards a favorable stance for Algerian independence.

Despite the mounting strategic losses, the French military was emboldened by military victories against F.L.N. forces, providing them with measurable successes that seemed to suggest victory was in reach. After Sakiet, a series of fortifications were constructed and finished in September of 1957 by the French along the Tunisian border that proved to be all but impenetrable to F.L.N. military action from Tunisia. The Morice

Line consisted of 200 miles of electric fencing, mine fields, barbed wire, and manned outposts that would call in roving quick reaction forces as soon as F.L.N. forces or gun runners were spotted. This forced the F.L.N. to commit to disastrous, large, pitched battles to clear the defenses. Other successful ambushes that forced insurgents to fight a pitched battle were performed in the interior of Algeria as well.46 The “favorable” outcome of the Battle of Algiers, the success of the Morice Line, and the perceived

46Horne, Savage War of Peace, 252.

25

replicable outcomes of ambushes increased the confidence of the French military that

victory was not only attainable, but close at hand.

There was, however, an urgency to finish the conflict before the rebels were

rearmed and reinforced by outside powers.47 While the French government was always

vague in the mission of the French military, it became clear to military officials that

Mollet’s replacement, Felix Gaillard, was more than willing to negotiate peace with the

F.L.N. This was akin to surrender, and brought to mind when the military was “sold out”

by the French government in Vietnam by negotiating despite the great sacrifice by French

soldiers. Once Gaillard’s government fell in April of 1958 due to deals between France

and her western allies for more international oversight in the conflict, high ranking army

officials began to act on their suspicions.

The fall of Gaillard’s government brought down the Fourth Republic with it,

allowing DeGaulle’s reemergence into politics with the help of politically motivated

military leaders in Algeria. The political motivations were most readily seen on May 13th, when Generals Massu and Salan, the latter the primary instigator, watched the surging pied noirs seize the political, economic, and academic centers in Algiers. The Army simply stood by and watched under orders of Salan as crowds sacked the city center.

Rebellion touched elsewhere as well when Massu’s paratroopers seized control of

Corsica. Ensuing threats were made against mainland France. These threats, as then

President Coty discovered when his navy refused to retake Corsica from the paratroopers, were legitimate. The professional soldiers were in outright rebellion, prodded by their commanding officers. These high-ranking officials demanded that DeGaulle return to

47Horne, Savage War of Peace, 268. 26

power and lead France to victory in Algeria. DeGaulle, appointed on June 1, was accepted as the new prime minister to appease the French military.

DeGaulle became a headache for the army from the start. After a public offer of a truce was openly refuted by the F.L.N., DeGaulle began a systematic purge of the army to ensure that the rebellious generals and other commanding officers would not rebel again. General Salan was replaced by Paul Delouvier and General Challe. The former was instructed to guide civil affairs while the latter military affairs, but both under direct supervision from DeGaulle. DeGaulle had noticeably failed to announce a policy for ending the war, which was the first hint that his public proclamations about believing in

Algérie Française were vacuous. Even members of his cabinet had no idea where his thoughts lay in regards to the war, yet Delouvier’s observation that Algeria was bound to become independent was not wholly disregarded by DeGaulle.48

The F.L.N. took incredible losses as the French army tweaked operational tactics under General Challe’s direction, which was simply called the “Challe Plan.” Its operations were tested in Kabylia, around where Captain Galula was using his own counterinsurgent tactics. While very effective statistically in terms of eliminating the

F.L.N., the Challe Plan also featured such undesirable aspects such as civilian resettlement and open use of non-government sanctioned torture.49 Like the Battle of

Algiers, however, the Challe Plan was lauded internally and produced much fervor and confidence in the Army.

48Horne, Savage War of Peace, 312.

49Horne, Savage War of Peace, 340.

27

The jubilation quickly soured when DeGaulle noted that military victories were

not ends within themselves, but an effort to bring the F.L.N. to negotiations. Cracks

began to show between DeGaulle and the army as the initial offensive using the Challe

Plan concluded. DeGaulle, much to the military’s chagrin, was searching for a cease fire

with the F.L.N. as opposed to a total victory. When pushed by the military to reaffirm his

belief in Algérie Française, DeGaulle balked. Thereafter, his most direct commands and

instructions from then on were either deliberately misapplied or ignored altogether by the

Army.50 After returning from a tour of military installations in Algeria, DeGaulle

delivered a speech that made his stance on Algeria much less vague. The speech, referred to as the “Self-Determination Speech,” laid out a plan for Algeria as a nation to dictate its

future with France. DeGaulle put forth three options; secession, integration, and finally a

federal system featuring French help in terms of economy, education, defense, and

foreign affairs.51 DeGaulle preferred the final option, yet searched for other, more

moderate parties to negotiate terms with than the F.L.N. The time for a third party had

long since passed since Messali’s party broke down without its leader and Ferhat Abbas

and other moderates were either killed or F.L.N. converts due to French alienation.

The Self-Determination Speech fully reestablished the animosity between pied

noirs and French regulars with the French government. Ultranationalists among the pied

noirs began to arm themselves and act as vigilantes due to the French government’s

perceived spinelessness by apparently desiring to negotiate with terrorists. The Army did

nothing to stop the spreading ultranationalist violence. Massu was summoned back to

50Horne, Savage War of Peace, 344-347.

51Horne, Savage War of Peace, 346. 28

Paris, in part to explain the worsening situation but also to remove him from his position in Algeria. Such a move infuriated the paratrooper colonels, who refused to stop the ultras from seizing and barricading buildings around the center of Algiers. Additionally, the colonels were conferring with the ultras about another outright military rebellion. Yet when the time came to act, the paratroopers in Algeria and mainland France lost their nerve. The paratroopers resorted to a more passive rebellion, deliberately abandoning the gendarmes to restore order to the city by themselves, resulting in a brutal massacre of gendarmes at the hands of well-armed ultras. The ultras then reinforced captured buildings, beginning what was to be known as “Barricades Week”. While this rebellion was outlasted by the French government, the army had already begun to display their displeasure with DeGaulle and his Algerian policy.

The friction between DeGaulle and the army came to a head in 1961 with disastrous effect. The anti-DeGaulle sentiment had strengthened the previous year with the illegal return of the retired Algerie Franciase supporter, General Salan. DeGaulle’s influence on the ground diminished greatly, as Delouvier resigned from his position due to threats made by paratrooper colonels concerning his safety should he remain in

Algeria. These threats were backed by an organization referred to as the O.A.S.52 which was formed in January of 1961. The organization quickly took to sinister and subversive tactics such as murdering or bombing peace supporters. The O.A.S. was comprised of retired paras and were led by none other than General Salan himself, who insisted on keeping Algeria French at whatever cost. Eventually, even General Challe was motivated

52“Organisation Armée Secrète”

29

to join the dissident colonels and retired generals in rebellion. With a legitimate and well- respected leader, the O.A.S. and French paratroopers were ready to deliver on their threats to DeGaulle.

The Generals’ Putsch as it became known began on April 22nd and resulted in the immediate capture of Algiers. Beyond the paratroopers directly under the command of

the involved colonels, however, no other regulars elsewhere in Algeria lifted a finger in

support. This lack of response from his trusted friends troubled Challe and would become

a recurring theme of the Generals’ Putsch. The second and third day passed with only one

wavering colonel brought into the fold.53 The General’s Putsch, but not the O.A.S., was doomed after DeGaulle made an impassioned, televised speech pushing conscripts and regulars alike to refuse the rebellious leaders’ orders for the sake of France’s ideals.

Defections from the rebellion soared as well as animosity between the paras and conscripted troops. With decreasing support and hearing plans of escalating terrorist actions against both Muslim and Frenchman alike, Challe removed himself from the

O.A.S., turning himself in to French authorities on April 25th.

The aftermath of the Generals’ Putsch saw well over 200 officers arrested and over 14,000 men in total implicated in the rebellion. All paratrooper regiments that took part were disbanded, their officers discharged or sentenced to prison relative to their culpability in the affair, and the French army shattered to the point where high-ranking officers in metropolitan France signed resignation papers in disgust.54 It also cemented

the F.L.N.’s peace negotiation standing. Without an effective, united army featuring

53Horne, Savage War of Peace, 452.

54Horne, Savage War of Peace, 463. 30

professional soldiers, France could hardly expect to hold onto Algeria politically or

militarily. France as an international power also lost much standing abroad and amongst allies, making a rapid peace in their best interests. Despite this, negotiations proved to be a long, drawn out affair, featuring four rounds of talks that finally culminated on March

18th, 1962 with the Evian Accords. Algeria gained its independence with no strings

attached as a result.

31

CHAPTER THREE

Hearts and Minds Counterinsurgency: Galula in Algeria

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences. -Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Captain David Galula became the self-proclaimed herald of counterinsurgency warfare during the Algerian Revolution. His unit in the region of Aissa Mimoun, as his personal recollections allow, utilized the cutting edge of counterinsurgency in action. His analysis of what went right and wrong during his tenure, indeed his criticisms of

conventional warfare as a whole, formed the bedrock of counterinsurgency doctrine

since. Analysis of his memoirs with corroboration of other primary and secondary

sources reveal that Galula’s narrative, while not wholly inaccurate, was by no means

accurate enough to draw general conclusions about the effectiveness of

counterinsurgency’s best practices. A particularly damning charge laid against Galula

was that he failed to understand the Algerian people as a whole, making it impossible to form a specific enough program of counterinsurgency operations despite his claims.1 This

chapter will communicate the eight steps that Galula supplied to describe his

counterinsurgent efforts according to his memoirs. These steps will be analyzed one by

one in the chronological order he reported them. These steps were as follows: concentrate

sufficient forces to drive the insurgent underground, divide these forces in such a manner

1Anne Marlowe, “Native Son,” Tablet Magazine, January 5, 2012, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/87345/native-son.

32

that each detachment can oppose insurgent effort at each village, contact and control the

population, destroy local insurgent political organizations, set up new provisional

authorities via election, test local leaders by giving them concrete tasks and replace

incompetent ones while also organizing passive defense forces, group and organize

leaders into a national political party, and finally to win over or suppress the last

insurgent remnants. Analysis, with the aid of Gregor Mathias and Albert Camus’

writings,2 suggests that Galula’s chronological steps after step four failed to reflect the

situation on the ground and that a simplistic understanding of the Algerian natives

contributed to the overall failure of his counterinsurgency. Furthermore, because of both

his failure to garner desirable political results and the questionable applicability of over

half his steps, an effective, modern American counterinsurgency doctrine ought to avoid

treating Galula’s observations as law and refrain from including his philosophies without

critical thought.

Primary accounts of Galula’s time in Algeria originate from two sources which

are his own memoirs and SAS records. While the former is conveniently found in

Galula’s autobiographical account as well as his book codifying his theories, Gregor

Mathias’ analysis of SAS documentation stands in for the SAS documents themselves.

While not ideal, Mathias has received little criticism of the ideas he conveys in his work.

Others that are critical of counterinsurgency, Douglas Porch and Gian Gentile for

example, have received negative attention from critics on both sides of the argument

2Gregor Mathias is an history expert whose research into pacification campaigns during the Algerian Revolution found Galula to be less than accurate, Albert Camus was born in Algeria and belonged to a lower class pied noir family and pursued a non-violent end to the Algerian Revolution.

33

surrounding the veracity of the counterinsurgency narrative.3 The two still supply thought

provoking additions and criticisms of counterinsurgency doctrine, with Gentile in

particular receiving praise for his personal experiences with counterinsurgency in Iraq.

Galula’s autobiographical account is not without its flaws either. He freely admits

that he is relying on his own memory, and displays undertones of racial bias against

Arabs as well.4 Mathias’ analysis serves to corroborate Galula’s memory. Galula began

by asserting that no counterinsurgency doctrine existed in 1954, forcing him to put his

own counterinsurgency precepts into practice that was built on years of experience.5 The

very existence of a counterinsurgency on the surface seems contradictory. How can

doctrine acknowledge that every insurgency is fundamentally different and still supply

ubiquitous tactics? Galula was more likely decrying the varied tactical styles of his peers

in Algeria, with some practicing counterinsurgency operations similar to his own, others

mixing in conventional and counterinsurgent principles, and finally those that prosecuted the war conventionally.6 Galula held the last sort of leader with the most contempt.

3Douglas Porch is a professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School while Gian Gentile is a retired Colonel who served in western Baghdad during 2006 and is currently a senior historian at RAND Corporation. Marlowe, “Native Son,” Tablet Magazine. Mathias’ book does have translational issues associated with it yet his key criticisms are generally unaffected.

4David Galula, Pacification in Algeria: 1956-1958 (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2006), 2, 14. Gregor Mathias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2011), 61.

5Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 1-10. Galula’s personal deployment history extended from his days as a military attaché for the French Embassy in Beijing where he observed Mao Tse-tung’s insurgency, as a military observer for the United Nations in the Balkans during Greek insurgencies, and to his deployment in Hong Kong during the French war in Vietnam, Britain’s Malayan Emergency, and the Philippine Huk insurgency.

6Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 65.

34

Regardless, there was no concerted effort among all these commanders, an issue

which Galula believed a doctrine on the nature of counterinsurgencies could overcome.

Once the revolution concluded, Galula set to work on rectifying this lack of

counterinsurgency doctrine, writing out the eight steps he took in performing his operation. These eight steps will be presented and analyzed in chronologic order, and it is at this junction that Mathias’ critiques prove most telling about the efficacy of applying

Galula’s precepts to modern counterinsurgency.

The first step Galula took was to concentrate sufficient forces to drive insurgents underground. The presence of overwhelming force “made it impossible…for the rebels to

hold safe territorial bases, a sine qua non for the development of a sizeable regular

army.”7 If overt, conventional military action by rebel forces was still possible, then

pacification8 could not proceed since it requires a relatively stable security situation. It is

difficult to convince a foreign population to trust counterinsurgents if they are unable to defeat insurgents in open battle. Battlefield dominance was evident in Galula’s sector due to the diminishing number of insurgent kills, French wounded, and firefights during sector wide operations.9 Dominating the battlefield, however, did not eliminate the

pervasive influence of insurgents. This lesson was taught by a proto-counterinsurgent

7Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 61.

8Pacification is an umbrella term for describing operations designed to quell violence in a given area and to promote peace while a counterinsurgency operation could be considered a type of pacification operation.

9Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 74. Galula’s rendition of the pursuit of minor insurgent leader named Oudai reflected a diminished insurgent presence.

35

campaign by the French military earlier in the war that featured its own discombobulated

13-point plan according to Galula.10

The plan’s failure was explained and, according to Galula, rectified by his second

step in counterinsurgency operations. The second step Galula recorded was to divide

forces in such a way that each detachment could oppose insurgent activity and to install

such forces in each village. This was done to tighten control over the population by

restricting insurgent activity and providing a physical representation of French

counterinsurgency efforts to the Kabyle civilians.11 It was much more difficult to perform these actions when bases were placed at a distance from villages of interest for the military’s own security purposes. Insurgents could time their money collection and coercive operations in such a manner to avoid reprisal and civilians could easily circumvent rules. This force division was effective in spreading French influence and driving insurgents underground, yet it left his soldiers more exposed to ambushes and inhibited a detachment’s ability to mount retaliatory pursuits against insurgents.12

For modern application purposes, there are problems with generalizing Galula’s approach in his second step for modern applications that go unmentioned by Mathias.

Firstly, Galula made it clear that his platoons were occupying villages, therefore calling into question how many troops are required to occupy denser, more urban settings. Such a large population presents similar problems found in the countryside but on a much

10Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 19., Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 94.

11Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 98. Evidently Galula did not consider this a fundamental change to the way the military conducted itself and thus did not constitute doctrinal change proper.

12Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 125., Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 22.

36

larger scale in addition to unique challenges. The Battle of Algiers put the disparity

between urban and village counterinsurgencies best. Secondly, Galula was incredibly

lucky with regard to his area of operations since Kabylia was a heavily homogenous

region, a phenomenon no doubt amplified in the countryside. His assumption that the

insurgents hold an advantage since they were “Moslems” and “could swim better in

Moslem water than the counterinsurgent land mammal”13 failed to take into account

sociological differences among the various ethnic groups.

These sociological differences were significant, and failure to account for

sectarian tensions and violence were detrimental to achieving goals set out by counterinsurgent efforts.14 Beginning with this second step, cultural misunderstandings

started having an impact on Galula’s counterinsurgency operation. These effects compounded over time since each step depended on the success of the previous step.

Additionally, Galula’s steps become more population centric as his descriptions go on, further intensifying complications associated with cultural misunderstandings. To show the complexity of performing counterinsurgencies in a setting where many cultures clash

and perhaps shed some light on another avenue of analysis that explains in part Galula’s

failed counterinsurgency campaign, an analysis of the Algerian people will be provided.

13Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 70.

14David Ucko, “Critics Gone Wild: Counterinsurgency as the Root of All Evil,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 25, no. 1, May 2014, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2014.893972?scroll=top&needAccess=true. This was one of the arguments Gentile maintained years after his Wrong Turn book was met with little enthusiasm by scholarship, noting that both Douglas Porch and Gian Gentile’s works were emotionally charged polemics that offered no realistic prescriptions for counterinsurgency. Ucko does allow that they reframed the counterinsurgency debate

37

When one begins to seek out a history of the Algerian people, the seeker has already made a crucial mistake that lies in their unconscious assumptions of their search.

The search for the history of an “Algerian people” assumes one, monolithic people who share a national identity and history. Ferhat Abbas, the son of a cadї,15 in 1936 before his conversion to the F.L.N. cause explained the pitfall of this assumption in response to a nationalist movement seeking to establish an independent Algeria:

Had I discovered the Algerian nation, I would be a nationalist and I would not

blush as if I had a committed a crime… However I will not die for the Algerian

nation, because it does not exist. I have not found it. I have examined History, I

questioned the living and the dead, I visited cemeteries; nobody spoke to me

about it. I then turned to the Koran and I sought for one solitary verse forbidding a

Muslim from integrating himself with a non-Muslim nation. I did not find that

either. One cannot build on the wind.16

How could this total lack of national identity possibly be reality? Abbas avoided the

Sunni-Shi’a split entirely by referencing the Koran only in relation to its law giving ability towards Muslim integration. Nor does he simply fill the national identity hole with the French identity since he was more than aware that France’s presence in Algeria was a relatively recent phenomenon. Instead, he explicitly mentions consulting both the living and the dead. After uncovering the history of the land of Algeria, it is little wonder why

15Horne, Savage War of Peace, 587. “Arab local governor.” Claude Collot, Les Institutions de l'Algérie Durant la Période Coloniale (1830-1962) (Paris, France: CNRS Editions, 1987). More specifically, the decree of February 6, 1919 sets out a more expansive set of civil duties for caїds in “commune mixte” including sitting in on djemma meetings (deliberative assemblies), drawing up lists of conscripts, and fighting forest fires.

16Horne, Savage War of Peace, 40.

38

the dead would be unhelpful in determining a national Algerian identity, as Alistair

Horne dubs Algeria as “a corridor of conquerors,” stretching back to a seven-century rule

by the Carthaginians, followed by rule under the Romans, then Byzantines, Arabs, Turks,

and the Spanish. Finally, the French in 1830 under Charles X’s rule invaded El-Djezair,

what would come to be called Algiers, more or less for trade opportunities as well as a

distraction from turbulent domestic issues.17 A popular resistance movement under

legendary Algerian figure Abd-el-Kader, however, soon began in the interior of Algeria

in 1832.18 This conflict in many regards acted as a foreshadowing for the later Algerian

Revolution of 1954, as it took the great empire of France fifteen years to squash the resistance using brutal methods to do so under General Pere Bugeaeud.19

Ferhat Abbas also insisted that he questioned the living about a definitive

Algerian nationality, finding nothing. Abbas’ vague reference to “the living” was

referring to the sheer diversity of peoples living in Algeria. Rich and poor pied noirs,20

Jews, a wide diversity of Arab ethnicities, and Kabyles, with the latter two often erroneously seen as one people and referred by outsiders as “the Muslims” or “Arabs”, all called the land of Algeria home. The Kabyles, residing primarily in the Kabylia region of

Algeria, and Arab peoples especially have a high degree of historical animosity, a fact ham-handedly manipulated at best or altogether forgotten at worst by French efforts

17Horne, Savage War of Peace, 29.

18See Chapter 2, footnote 12.

19Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2013), 20-21.

20See Chapter 2, footnote 1

39

during the Algerian Revolution.21 It is little wonder that no general sense of Algerian nationality ever arose, given the disparate and often conflicting factions of ethnicities whose only real common ground was the land itself. When Abbas referenced that he asked the living concerning the existence of the Algerian state, he implied that should he go out and ask a representative from each ethnicity what it meant to be an Algerian citizen, he would receive wildly different answers. Abbas as an Arabic, liberal intellectual may have some bias in this regard by willfully ignoring the past existence of an Algerian nation in order for those around him to gain equal citizenship with

Frenchmen, yet a similar view of Algeria was adopted by the French conquerors and subsequent settlers themselves.

The pied noir perspective is altogether different than their French mainland counterparts. The move out of France created an “us and them” sentiment with both groups acknowledging their shared history and ancestry, yet living on the frontier of sorts distinguished the pied noirs from their mainland cousins. The pied noirs, who by the time of the Algerian Revolution had resided in Algeria well over 70 years and beyond the first generation of original settlers, a national identity was elusive however, as David Carroll explores in his analysis of Albert Camus’ allegorical novel, The First Man:

To be an Algerian first man is to live in a land of different peoples so varied in

cultural background that, no matter one’s national heritage, language, religion,

and culture, it would be impossible to project a natural (original emphasis)

cultural, religious, or linguistic identity for all. It is to be first in a land where no

one is ever really first or where the claim to be first in any absolute sense is

21Anne Marlowe, “Native Son,” Tablet Magazine. 40

blatantly absurd, given the turbulent and constantly changing history of the land,

its many conquerors, immigrants, and inhabitants22

Camus, the most notable pied noir despite his humble beginnings, articulated the

similarities between colonizers and colonized in a manner that his fellow pied noirs

would balk at.23 Camus reflected the idea that there was no unifying Algerian nationality

by insisting that all were “first men” irrespective of nationality or ethnicity. No single

generation amongst any of the various cultures like Kabyles, one of the various Arabic ethnicities, or pied noirs had accomplished the feat of shaping a unifying national identity, to undoubtedly define what it is to be Algerian. Every generation of “Algerian”,

therefore, was doomed to be both the first and last of its kind; no united identity was

passed down from one generation to the next. Camus was universally scoffed at, not only

drawing the ire of the F.L.N. but his pied noir peers as well, who insisted upon the ideal of Algérie Française. Such an ideal essentially placed Algeria as one of the many departments of France, and thus the pied noirs were undoubtedly French at heart, passing along civilized French culture into Algeria. They also enjoyed a degree of autonomy from the mainland French government as a result of answering to the departmental government in Algeria.

The history of the Algerian Revolution as well as Camus’ other works spoke to a different reality concerning the inharmonious relationship between pied noirs and mainland Frenchmen. This reality described a growing rift between metropolitan France

22David Carroll, Albert Camus the Algerian: Colonialism, Terrorism, Justice (New York City, New York: Columbia University Press 2007), 159.

23Carroll, Albert Camus the Algerian, 1-2. 41

and Algerian Frenchmen to the point where one could argue that the pied noirs and mainland Frenchmen adopted a relationship similar to American colonists and their

English brethren during the eighteenth century. There were effectively two warring nationalist groups, the pied noirs and F.L.N., with a metropolitan French influence

represented by the Army.

Before reaching into the war-time period, much more proximal events occurred

between Abd-El-Kader’s last stand in 1847 and the beginning of revolution in 1954, including World War II and the Setif Uprising as expounded upon in the previous chapter. Now with this nuanced view of Algerians in mind, a more complete understanding of the successes and failings of Galula’s counterinsurgency campaign is possible. Galula’s description of his second step began to suggest his cultural ignorance

of Algeria, with his following, population centric steps bearing issues related to cultural misunderstanding as well as other factors Mathias critiques.

The third step Galula laid out for his counterinsurgency in Kabylia was to contact and control the population. A broad step, Galula subdivided this particular step into three parts. Trusting the population was the first part and was typified by placing soldiers into close contact with the population to familiarize themselves with the individual civilians.

Such a decision placed soldiers in heightened danger as the insurgents too are hiding amongst the people and do not have “a cross on the forehead”.24 Galula, however, viewed

such danger as a necessary gamble to become better at recognizing villagers and, by

deduction, insurgents by seeing who was missing or out of place. This process was again

24Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 25.

42

much harder to perform in dense, urban environments where becoming familiar with

hundreds of thousands of faces and names becomes a daunting task.

Familiarization’s intuitive importance makes this step even more crucial, yet

Galula’s vague, philosophically tinged advice for soldiers placed in close contact with the

population and insurgents alike hardly provided comfort. Championing the phrase

“…outwardly you must treat every civilian as a friend; inwardly you must consider him

as a rebel ally until you have positive proof to the contrary”,25 Galula’s paradoxical

approach provided little practical use. While the total separation of inward and outward

states of mind as well as the ability to act on one over the other is an issue of philosophy,

the practical application of the positive proof clause is difficult to ascertain. At what point

do suspects become friends willing to aid France? How does one find positive proof if

none of the civilian population can be trusted and one possesses only low-quality

actionable intelligence? These questions go unanswered and have all too real

ramifications.26

The second part of step three was to address the needs of the population. This

included providing healthcare, schooling, and organizing public works projects such as

construction. Galula oversaw the implementation of policies while the SAS dealt with the day to day affairs and needs of each project resulting from Galula’s policies. It is altogether easy to forgive Galula for his misremembering of the specific number of student enrollment, which was around 200 more than the actual number of 900 he

25Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 72.

26Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 20.

43

provided to his benefit. Other inflations that typify later steps are less forgivable and

more egregious. While this represented an optimal division of labor between SAS and

military, Galula tended to dominate the affairs and saw the more civil focused SAS as

subordinate.27

The third and final part of step three was to control the populace. This would

allow the counterinsurgent to isolate guerrilla from civilian. Galula performed this part by first taking a painstaking census of the populace and providing ID cards. The census not only allowed the French to become more familiar with the local population, but also provided a system for cross referencing future censuses to see who left home to join the

insurgency. Additionally, heads of households had to cooperate with French forces at the

risk of punishment, thus drawing the population closer to the counterinsurgents regardless

of their true loyalties.28 The census itself had several issues associated with it, which

Mathias mostly points out. Firstly, the lack of surnames and commonly reoccurring first names made formal identification of individual citizens difficult. Secondly, birthdays

were recorded previously in relation to religious or agricultural events, making the

recorded birthdays highly inexact. Thirdly, another issue Galula luckily subverted given

the Kabyle dominated population, women usually would balk at unveiling themselves for

a photograph taken by a Frenchman. Pervasive mistrust of authority caused chronic

underreporting of income and birthdates.29 A final issue concerned just how illiterate the

27For student enrollment errors see Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 28. and Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 164. For other more fundamental errors in population size, make up, and area of operation size see Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 11. For utter subordination of SAS and civil affairs to the military despite Galula claiming their equality see Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 15.

28Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 29.

29Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 29. 44

Kabyles were, with Galula and Mathias taking for granted that the Kabyles had no

written language, an incorrect assumption as Berber Tamazight was and still is a traditional written language in North Africa.30 While it is altogether possible that these

Kabyles had lost their traditional written language, Galula’s flat assumption that all

literate Algerians went to France where their education could be used to best does not

quite hold up. Those literate in French would have gone to France to take advantage of

their education but not those literate in Tamazight, an important factor given Galula’s

lamentations concerning communication restrictions with the population.

The fourth and most problematic step in Galula’s program according to Mathias

was destroying local insurgent political organizations. The aforementioned schools,

healthcare, and construction work caused French sympathies to arise within the

population, particularly since such boons as education and healthcare aligned with the

desires of the population. The F.L.N., noting the swaying population, tried to instill its

will by forbidding children from going to school and attacking those that did. Mathias

describes the issue with the F.L.N.’s course of action, calling it “awkward, as it went

against the interests of the people”.31 Galula, observing the large number of students and

their parent’s desire to continue to send them to school, perceived this situation as a

victory against the local F.L.N. government, the O.P.A.32

What Galula failed to mention, as Mathias noted, was that F.L.N. propaganda

reversed direction, telling people to send their children to school, which complicates how

30Anne Marlowe. “Native Son,” Tablet Magazine.

31Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 32.

32“Organisation Politico-Adminstrative”

45

success in the fourth step was defined.33 The unrepaired, unstaffed French school was

totally unprepared to take in all the students. The F.L.N. spun the situation in their favor by insisting that France could not fulfill its promises. This twist in propaganda changed how success in this fourth step can be defined. Educational measures now failed to reflect the power of the OPA since they coopted the French effort. Educational measures could still show the influence of counterinsurgents on the population to a small degree though.

The OPA battled Galula and the SAS in a conflict of propaganda until French intelligence could identify and capture some F.L.N. ringleaders with the help of citizenry.34 The

climate of each of the purged villages changed, with men smoking and friendly

conversations between French soldiers and locals, a fact Galula interpreted as not only a

counterinsurgent victory but a complete defeat of the OPA in his sector.35

With this perspective, Galula moved forward into his fifth step, yet it would seem

that was a premature move on Galula’s part as the OPA was not in fact entirely destroyed

as the results of his follow up steps indicate. The fifth step as outlined by Galula was to

set up, by means of elections, new provisional local authorities. This step failed in large

part due to cultural misunderstanding on the part of Galula, particularly in identifying

previous figures of authority in the villages whose will was still respected. A reoccurring

theme within Galula’s sector was that each village, save for one, proved exceedingly

difficult in cooperating and naming functional candidates to head the village’s new council. Galula’s insistence on holding elections, however, forced villagers to choose

33Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 32.

34Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 115-137.

35Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 39.

46

their leaders. This was done either through forced labor or subterfuge, the latter portrayed

by Galula in a particularly odd, self-congratulatory style when recounting a scene where he tricked the villagers into electing a temporary leader.36 Coincidentally, this particular

man proved the hubris involved in Galula’s fifth step and his means of forcing the

process.37

While Galula considered his actions a success, the SAS’ unit history spoke to a

different truth. The most well controlled village and supposed model for the community

building program Galula and the SAS were pursuing had leaders that were completely

unwilling to perform their assigned duties.38 Galula’s rush to implement reforms, a

weapon against the F.L.N., through a newly constructed council resulted in an unwilling

leadership that was completely unrepresentative of the village. No former djemma

members, the most respected elders in a village, were elected as delegates. This oddity was explained by SAS reports, “The people’s official explanation: the elders have all resigned or left. Most likely version: it seems that, according to well-known Berber behavior in such cases, the population we have chosen support us superficially to insulate the truly significant and influential people.”39 While it is mystifying why the S.A.S.

seemed to understand the cultural import of djemma leaders staying in charge more so

than Galula, it is even more mystifying how Galula proceeded with his steps despite

36Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 86-91.

37Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 92, 124.

38Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 41.

39Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 41.

47

considering that he was being double crossed.40 The election of unrepresentative, non-

djemma leaders was done by the people with their own best interests in mind. Outward

conformity to French counterinsurgent efforts, represented by poor choice in delegates,

was used to convince the F.L.N. of the village’s support or at least ambivalence to the

rebel cause.

The desired outcome of the fifth step never took root since the OPA still held

influence, with the step actually forcing the population under the influence of the still

present F.L.N. influence. Had Galula understood the importance of djemma leaders over

any democratically elected leader following the will of the French military, then these

episodes of incompetence and odd choices in elected leadership may have sent up more

red flags. Without such an understanding, little could be done via population control

methods such as blind arrests or interrogations since these would disrupt the perceived

progress of the community building process. Community building was placed at a

premium, so its halt would cause regression back to the situation in step four from

Galula’s perspective. The weakness of Galula’s community became evident once he and

his unit were transferred to another sector, as delegates and municipal workers began to

show OPA influence.41

Step six was to test the local leaders by giving them concrete tasks, replace the

worthless and incompetent, and identify the good ones, and organize passive defensive units. While this step seemed sensible, for Galula to derive such a maxim from his

40Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 179.

41Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 44-45.

48

personal experience in Algeria required much cognitive dissonance on his part. The tasks

given to local leaders, as Mathias noted, were in no way a test of their loyalty, but instead

their effectiveness. Galula found it unnecessary to test for loyalty since he believed the

OPA was eradicated, an arrogant and patently false assumption.42 The untrained and

unrepresentative delegates for the most part failed to accomplish sensible reform from

Galula’s perspective, causing questions to arise about what a good delegate looked like to

Galula. The subjectively good delegate did not appear to have much autonomy from

Galula, as one of the few functional council’s decisions to build a mosque, a “costly and unnecessary road,”43 and a town hall were all overturned by Galula in favor of more

practical projects.

While saying that “a certain degree of paternalism cannot be avoided initially

since the elected leaders are both unknown and untrained,”44 the implication that these

new delegates act as a puppet government under French influence does little to confirm

their legitimacy amongst their fellow villagers. Galula’s ham-handed attempt at

influencing policy stands in contrast to how delegates performed in other villages under his purview, taking “sensible” projects by themselves. Galula failed to explore why such a difference existed amongst his delegates and rectifying the issue through more meaningful and organic ways than simply exercising his own paternalistic tendencies.

This suggests that Galula simply equated both modes of arriving at the “correct” projects

42Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 44.

43Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 46., Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 161.

44Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 46.

49

to perform, a problematic idea if one is attempting to institute long lasting change and

eventually leave these delegates to their own devices one day.

The self-defense part of the step also saw issues due to continuing OPA influence and questionable degree of influence on the part of the French. Attempting to test the leaders by instructing them to form harkas, the SAS reports indicated that delegates either refused to do so for fear of being held responsible for desertions or did so under the promise of funding.45 One village in particular formed a militia without any qualms, yet

this was not a result of French influence. Instead, atrocities committed by the F.L.N.

spurred the population to defend themselves. Other militias were less concerned with

safety, and were more interested in money instead. It is also noteworthy that the very

village whose delegates did not want to be responsible for any desertions was the site

where previous attempts at forming a harka failed after four of the guards joined the

rebellion, taking their guns with them.46 Galula, on the cusp of grasping that maybe all

was not well with his artificial councils, recounted that the harka’s self-defense mission

required intelligence from village leaders. His instructions to the village leaders went

unheeded by all but one of the villages, giving Galula pause to wonder if he was being

double crossed, an idea he does not seem to carry into his following steps.47 Later SAS

reports, when reformation of the harkas was attempted, summed up the futility of the

attempt, “The idea of self-defense units as an indicator of pacification is not yet

accepted.’ It seems that in the minds of the mayors, self- defense involved the total

45Harkas were French backed, town-wide militias composed of local residents.

46Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 48.

47Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 49.

50

commitment and confidence in the future of France that was lacking.”48 Galula and others

would argue that the French government undermined their efforts by not fully adhering to

Algérie Française, yet failed to truly grasp the long reaching, political ramifications of

pursuing such an ideology would entail as Horne suggested.49

Such political misunderstandings continue into Galula’s seventh step with

significant consequences. The seventh step was grouping and organizing leaders into a

national political party. The purpose of this was to provide a third force for France to negotiate with and provide support against the F.L.N. The party itself, with the ideals of

Algérie Française at its core, was born out of the creation of committees of public welfare in each commune in Algeria, with Galula’s sector as no exception. The political climate in Paris and Algeria, however, was not conducive whatsoever to the rise of this political party. France was a center for growing civilian anger towards the French civil government due to economic strains, partly due to how much money was poured into

Algeria. Military unrest was also spreading due to the administration’s desire for negotiations when a military victory was about to be achieved from the military’s perspective. With the backdrop of Lacoste defying the French government and forming

Committees of Public Safety (CSP) and a military with both policing and military authority, the creation of this national Algerian party partly caused the fall of the Fourth

Republic as a whole.50 It was equally unhelpful that this national party was

unrepresentative of the Algerian people, as evidenced by Galula’s selection of equal

48Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 49.

49Horne, Savage War of Peace, 174-178.

50Horne, Savage War of Peace, 267-270.

51

numbers of Muslim and European representatives in his CSP.51 While looking sensible in

a vacuum, this setup in reality was a very modest reform since Muslims represented a

vast majority in Algeria and whose underrepresentation in civil government was a driving

cause of unrest in Algeria in the first place. When the local organizations and national

party featured the ethnic elite (pied noirs) as well as empowered Muslims who directly

benefit from French occupation, it was no surprise that the party pursued policies with

Algérie Française in mind. This artificial, unrepresentative party as a “third force” had an

ever-decreasing constituency as well, since F.L.N. actions since the beginning of the

revolution were aimed at terrorizing and murdering publicly acceptable moderates.52

Additionally, French military action elsewhere also drove these moderates towards

extremism, with the French government’s slowness in instituting meaningful reform as

seen in the previous chapter also contributing. This is all to say, creating an effective

national party artificially, like creating village councils artificially, was anything but a

simple task and caused more issues when prematurely assembled with little forward

thought in mind.

The eighth and final step of Galula’s counterinsurgency was to win over or

suppress the last insurgent remnants. This step was designed to mop up any remaining

F.L.N. members in the area, which to his credit Galula did a fantastic job of, adjusting tactics and acquiring intelligence as needed.53 A criticism one could levy against this step

was its generalizability. This step, a mirror of the first step, depended upon actionable

51Mathias, Galula in Algeria, 50.

52See footnotes 20-21 in Chapter 2.

53Mathias, Galula in Algeria,. 51-54.

52

intelligence and in Galula’s case was performed in a village setting in a sector where

F.L.N. fighters were present in small numbers before Galula even arrived. The relative ease Galula had with this step was in part explained by how little rebel activity there was in Kabylia by this time anyway, which was why Kabylia was picked out as a relatively secure area for testing counterinsurgency practices in the first place.54

The failure of the fourth step evident in the difficulties associated with his fifth step suggests that Galula, through his neat, eight steps counterinsurgency of counterinsurgency, failed to accurately reflect the state of his counterinsurgency operation. This in turn makes generalizing his experiences and applying the derived maxims elsewhere hard to justify. Beyond suggesting that one should carefully ensure local insurgent government are destroyed before holding elections, Galula’s experience does not display the correct way to do counterinsurgency, just one of the many wrong ways. While the early steps showed promise as good starting points for a counterinsurgency, one must avoid equating speculative extrapolation with reality. The success of one step in no way validated following steps, resulting in this particular experiment of counterinsurgency to fail. Like with scientific experiments, there is merit to modifying the design previous design and running the counterinsurgency experiment as outlined by Galula again with greater caution. The problem with the metaphorical science experiment, however, is that human lives are lost with mistakes in a counterinsurgency experiment, and thus a point of diminishing returns exists between counterinsurgency results and casualties. Galula’s failure to recognize where exactly his

54Horne, Savage War of Peace, 104, 146. 53

counterinsurgency failed is therefore problematic, as lives are wasted by those wishing to

repeat Galula’s process as laid out in his memoirs.

Galula’s counterinsurgency efforts in Aissa Mimoun, in conclusion, are difficult to draw generalizations concerning how future counterinsurgencies ought to be performed. While Galula does allow that his experiences are really only specific to his counterinsurgency, his presentation of sequential steps offers an example for study by those wishing to craft general counterinsurgency doctrine. Despite claiming that his experiences were specific to his counterinsurgency, he developed counterinsurgency doctrine based on his Algerian experience after the revolution.55 Regardless of intent,

Galula presents a heavily biased, inaccurate description of the execution and success of

his counterinsurgency in Algeria as corroborated by concurring SAS documentation. The

specific environment Galula executed his counterinsurgency in limits the generalizability

of his maxims too. Experiences in a relatively calm, ethnically homogenous, low

population density area of Algeria translate poorly into a robust doctrine designed for all

types of counterinsurgencies. Despite the homogeneity, Galula additionally displayed

several instances of cultural bias as well as cultural ignorance, further limiting the

validity of Galula’s maxims. Therefore, any future counterinsurgency doctrines based on

an assumption of Galula’s faithful retelling must account for these drawbacks. The

Algerian Revolution provides another more infamous case study of counterinsurgency

based on French thought born out of Vietnam beyond Galula’s experiences, this time in

the densely populated, urban setting of Algiers.

55Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 1. 54

CHAPTER FOUR

Population Control Counterinsurgency: Battle of Algiers

This is man in his entirety, blaming his shoe when his foot is guilty. -Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

The Battle of Algiers was a pivotal episode in the Algerian Revolution. The

French scored a massive tactical victory in the thorough purging of the F.L.N. cell in

Algiers. Utilizing counterinsurgent population control methods similar yet distinct to

Galula’s, the French set a precedent for urban, high population-density counterinsurgency. Whereas Galula’s counterinsurgency efforts involved census taking and establishing positive relationships with the population, French counterinsurgency efforts in Algiers added torture. This form of counterinsurgency bore its own incredible drawbacks, however. The widespread use of torture in particular was justified as a necessity by the French Army, yet the rest of the world and even mainland France citizenry heartily disagreed. Irrespective of one’s view on whether torture provides actionable intelligence, it appeared to be an effective tool in Algiers. Its long-term strategic ramifications were not considered by the high-ranking officers in the Algerian theatre however. Indeed, the use of torture, summary executions, and covering up murders reminded many at the time of the Third Reich’s occupation and subsequent repression of France. There was some evidence for the French government’s involvement in promulgating the use of torture, but the French Army’s failed cover up led to a massive public outcry both in France and the international community that the F.L.N. would use in propaganda and future negotiations for foreign aid and peace with France. This chapter 55

will focus on comparing counterinsurgency efforts in Algiers and Kabylia, showing that

counterinsurgency operations in the former proved far more successful in the short term.

The tactical, strategic, and ideological drawbacks of widespread torture will be

considered as well to caution one against declaring counterinsurgency featuring torture an effective doctrine. Analysis of these drawbacks will use General Paul Aussaresses memoirs and the directed The Battle of Algiers, with an eye on how

these drawbacks influence modern American counterinsurgency doctrine.

Aspects of countryside and urban counterinsurgency operations are so similar that excerpts from Galula’s memoirs would fit neatly in Aussaresses’ and vice versa. Both commanders, for instance, employed census-taking measures, numbering houses, and

interrogating residents to ascertain the size of their families and the names of its

members.1 This exercise was followed up by cross checking to see what family members

were unaccounted for. These names were then added to a list of suspected F.L.N.

sympathizers. The importance of a propaganda machine was another commonality, with

Aussaresses utilizing air dropped leaflets. Much like Galula, Aussaresses became

personally familiar with the local populace in an effort to secure informers, depending on

the population to turn in their own. Finally, both appreciated displays of force and the importance of appearances since Aussaresses directed tailors to sharpen up paratrooper uniforms.2

1Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Counter-Terrorism and Torture (New York City, NY; Enigma Books, 2002), 87.

2Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 90. 56

Beyond these tactics, the two counterinsurgency efforts take on their own distinct style for a variety of reasons, including the settings of these operations. The settings of the two counterinsurgency operations were significantly different despite the similar tactics in use. These differences stem from Kabylia’s rural, light population density compared to the cramped, close quarters of heavily urbanized Algiers. Far more manpower, coordination, and native Algerian police assistance was required in Algiers as a result. There were more houses to number, more families to add to a census, longer lists of suspects, more places to hide, and more potential for F.L.N. activity. This last point in particular was one that Aussaresses stressed, writing “The FLN could easily intimidate the countryside but was having difficulty organizing within urban areas. That was precisely where terrorism was going to develop.”3 Actions in cities and towns were more

likely to garner international attention, as evidenced in the Philippeville Massacres during

United Nations negotiations. Also unlike Galula, Aussaresses had to establish working

relationships with police forces and integrate both them and their vast swathes of

intelligence into the French Army’s policing and military actions. Aussaresses stressed

the importance of his relationship with the local police force and its leaders, if not for

actionable intelligence then to avoid judicial repercussions for the more unsavory aspects

of his tactics.4

Before giving the topic of torture and its effectiveness its due analysis, how the counterinsurgencies’ leaders differed in their military service history will shed light on

3Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 26.

4Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 72, 74.

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how torture became a part of Aussaresses’ lexicon of tactics and why he was chosen in

spite, or because, of his tendency to resort to such brutal means. While both officers

arrived at similar conclusions concerning their tactics, the two men did so from fairly different backgrounds and perspectives. Galula, across his writings, was certain to supply his readers a history of his advisory roles across Asia and Eastern Europe where he observed several different insurgencies.5 He cited all these experiences presumably to

legitimize the tactics used in his sector in Kabylia in addition to the steps analyzed in the previous chapter. Aussaresses, on the other hand, kept his personal military history

expositions to a minimum. He allowed that he served across World War II and Vietnam,

alluding that his comrades in the Action Service of the S.D.E.C.E.6 performed covert

missions including spy work, sabotage, and assassinations.7 He avoided outright claiming

he directly took part in assassinations, but his insistence that he was considered an

“expert in dirty tricks and sabotaging”8 speaks to his heavy involvement in the

intelligence branch of the French military as the source of his covert operations

experience. His appointment to General Massu’s staff by the general himself in the wake of the French military absorbing law keeping duties in Algiers in January of 1957 indicated Aussaresses’ expertise.9 Galula never mentioned receiving a similar

correspondence from Massu, suggesting that Aussaresses, whether due to the

5See footnote 5 in Chapter 3 and Gregor Mathias, Galula in Algeria Counterinsurgency Practice Versus Theory. (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2011.) 2.

6“Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage”

7Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 5-9.

8Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 8.

9Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 64.

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relationships in the intelligence community or contacts he developed in Algeria, was

considered a superior candidate. The two commanders’ successes in their respective

assignments, Kabylia and Phillipeville, may also have played a part, reinforcing the idea

that the results Aussaresses’ achieved through his version of counterinsurgency was

preferred over the mixed results of Galula’s philosophy.

A driving force behind Aussaresses’ success in combatting the F.L.N. in Algiers

was his willingness to use torture and summary executions, the final significant

difference between his counterinsurgency and Galula’s. Torture and summary executions were employed heavily by Aussaresses and his task force in Algiers. Galula, despite his insistence to the contrary, used psychological torture at least once according to his memoirs. Torture was so widespread, according to Aussaresses, that “Almost all the

French soldiers who served in Algeria knew more or less that torture was being used but didn’t question the methods because they didn’t have to face the problems directly.”10

Galula’s insistence that he was unaware of torture, even if one discounts his use of a non- functioning boiler in conducting psychological torture,11 rings somewhat hollow should

Aussaresses’ observation prove true. There are some conditional terms like “Almost all”

and “more or less” that allow for wariness in generalizing Aussaresses’ observations to

every corner of Algeria though, including Kabylia. Regardless, torture and summary

executions played an integral role in Algiers to “acquire credibility [since] the

paratroopers had to be even more extreme than the FLN…prove that the government was

10Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 18.

11David Galula, Pacification in Algeria: 1956-1958 (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2006), 118. 59

fully determined to prevail and we were its enforcers” and to avoid the imperfect, slow acting judicial process which allowed many F.L.N. associates to either escape from holding camps or be found innocent by simply renouncing their previous confessions.12

To use Aussaresses’ own terminology, torture and summary executions achieved the

French government’s desired results in the quickest, most efficient manner. These brutal tactics reeled in huge catches of intelligence that resulted in the death or expulsion of almost all F.L.N operators in Algiers, including Ben M’Hidi and Alia-la-Pointe as famously depicted in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle for Algiers. Torture and summary execution, therefore, appear to garner the results that Galula failed to achieve in his own counterinsurgency.

The topic of torture, however, does not end simply with these intelligence and tactical victories. Its long term, strategic effects must be considered before passing positive judgment upon its efficiency and whether its application is appropriate given these considerations. Galula’s counterinsurgency operation, according to the historical record, failed while Aussaresses’ succeeded in driving out the F.L.N. and establishing

French dominance. This fact alone, for many, would be enough to justify the use of torture, blocking out all other considerations. “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it” as

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman put it.13 One must be comfortable with

implementing proven doctrines and sets of tactics to achieve the quickest victory at

12Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 83, 120.

13Kyle Gaffney, “Sherman’s Letter to Atlanta: A Neglected Classic in American Military Thinking,” Task and Purpose, April 27, 2018, accessed March 30, 2018, https://taskandpurpose.com/sherman-letter-atlanta.

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minimal cost. This argument is framed with a sort of passionless, objective logic and

stated as simple fact.

Ironically, torture proved to be the undoing of France instead of its twisted savior.

Those that justify the use of torture in counterinsurgency operations own both a short- sighted, oversimplified view of war and an inappropriate focus on the importance of tactics in the grand scheme of war. The great military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz, to the latter point, wrote “Strategy has in the first instance only the victory, that is, the tactical result, as a means to its object, and, ultimately, those things which lead directly to peace.”14 Tactics and the victories achieved through them are means by which strategy

seeks to meet political goals. Considering tactics in a vacuum therefore, as those who

support torture and other brutal methods insist, cuts out how these tactics effect the grand

scheme of a war. To this point Clausewitz writes “War is a mere continuation of policy

by other means…the political view is the object, war is the means, and the means must

always include the object in our conception.”15 The foundation of the argument for

torture, therefore, is brought into question. Arguing for torture with only operational,

results driven considerations in mind is a distinction without a meaning since the purpose of war is to achieve a political objective. War and politics are inseparably linked.

Removing considerations of political ramifications from war by placing an overwhelming emphasis on tactics is to remove the whole purpose of war, setting the terms of the

operational, results driven argument outside the realm of reality. Political consequences

14Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Project Gutenberg, Book One, Chapter Two, Section 34, Accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1946/1946-h/1946-h.htm.

15Clausewitz, On War, Book One, Chapter One, Section 24.

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of employing torture, therefore, must always be considered. With the Algerian

Revolution in mind, the political ramifications of torture and similar tactics were

disastrous.

A direct line from the public relations nightmare that came from the reports of

torture and questionable deaths of high-profile prisoners like Ben M’Hidi and non-

combatants like Maurice Audin16 can be made to the rise and fall of multiple French

governments. Guy Mollet’s government, for example, fell in 1957 soon after the Battle of

Algiers concluded due to his government’s inability to handle the war in an acceptable

manner to the French people. The prime minister seat laid dormant for 22 days, with the

successor abdicating soon after forming a government because of his inability to pass a

cohesive program for handling Algeria. Felix Gaillard’s government then failed due to an

agreement he was cornered into making which allowed U.N. allies to oversee the conduct

of the French military in Algeria, a direct consequence of the proliferation of rumors that

the practice of torture continued.17 The political considerations of torture were not taken

into account given that three governments along with the Fourth Republic as a whole fell

due to dissatisfaction with the “Algerian problem.”

Clausewitz’s Trinity bears an introduction in order to gain perspective of how

political ramifications can affect multiple aspects of a war. Public horror at the revelation

of torture caused an imbalance in what Clausewitz called “a wonderful trinity”, which

describes the characteristics of war in terms of three distinct parts.18 These three parts are

16See footnote 42 of Chapter 2.

17Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York City, New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 250.

18Clausewitz, On War, Book One, Chapter One, Section 28. 62

the public, the government, and the military. These aspects of war interconnect in

fascinating ways, with reciprocal relationships forming a triangle. The military, “chance”

as Clausewitz writes, influences the very policy formed by the government that guides

how they wage war for example. The military also has a reciprocal relationship with the

public, with public opinion influencing military doctrine while the military in turn can

influence public opinion heavily depending on how the war is progressing. Finally, public

opinion has a profound influence on government policy, with the government in turn

justifying its policy choices to the people. Using the Platonic tripartite image of the soul,

Clausewitz places the emotions and passions that empower public policy under the

purview of the public. This is analogous to the appetitive part of the Platonic soul, the

military itself analogous to the subservient, defense minded spirited part of the soul, and

finally the government as the master of the military that is analogous to the intellect.

Using this construct, the appetitive drive behind war, the people, no longer desired the expensive, bloody conflict due to the latest revelation of the use of torture, the practice of which was decidedly against the ideals of French humanism as Aussaresses noted.19 Such a souring of public opinion would profoundly affect government policy as well as military doctrine according to the Clausewitz Trinity.

The imbalance of the tripartite model extends well beyond the emotional drive for the war running dry, however. Torture, in addition to removing the public’s emotional passion for war, was also but a symptom of an even greater imbalance in the Clausewitz

Trinity between the civilian government and the military. The French military began questioning its political masters’ decision-making ability before the Algerian Revolution

19Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 21. 63

even started, with the seeds of dissent planted in the retreat from Vietnam and the

subsequent independence given to various other colonies under Guy Mollet’s

government. Government after government introduced new plans to solve the issues of

Algerian economic, social, and political inequality but to no avail. While the government

continued to fail to implement adequate change, the military meanwhile felt that much

progress was being made in defeating the F.L.N. on the battlefield. When whispers of a

retreat akin to Vietnam began to emerge, there was a significant proportion of the regular

military, concentrated in the paratrooper divisions, that were aghast at the possibility of

leaving Algeria. Algeria to them represented another piece of France that the government

was simply willing to give away, seemingly abandoning allies and the spirit of France at

the same time. Instead of acting under the direction of the government, the military began

encroaching on the government’s responsibility to direct policy through their unilateral

actions in Algiers and beyond, culminating in the General’s Putsch. The use of torture was a choice made by the military in spite of government protests as Horne suggested.20

Aussaresses’ memoirs, however, point to an altogether different, more nuanced reality than the military simply deciding for themselves what the political objective of waging war in Algeria ought to be despite French government calls for peace negotiations. Mollet’s government originally sent the French military to Algeria to ensure it stayed French. That vague, open ended political objective allowed future French governments to publicly disavow torture while seemingly encouraging its use in private.

Indeed, some of the conversations and scenes Aussaresses communicated were absent

20Horne, Savage War of Peace, 195-198.

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entirely from Horne’s master history of the revolution, which speaks to just how erratic the French government was when instructing the military. One example was in the aftermath of a regimental commander meeting where General Massu put forth the question of whether or not to execute a group of captured killers called “Notre-Dame d’Afrique” to visiting government official Max Lejeune.21 Lejeune answered anecdotally in a manner to assure plausible deniability, yet the anecdote he used interestingly enough was the controversial, internationally illegal capture of the plane bearing Ben Bella and other F.L.N. leaders from Morocco to Tunisia. While Horne insisted that the capture of

Ben Bella’s plane was evidence of rogue action taken by the military against government wishes in an attempt to make a short-term gain on ending the war, Lejeune allows that

“It’s regrettable for the French government that Ben Bella should still be alive. His arrest was a mistake. We intended to kill him.”22 He went on to posit that the French government was handing down orders to shoot the plane down until it was revealed that the pilots and crew were French. This scene, as well as its implications for the fate of the

“Notre-Dame d’Afrique” killers, represents a dramatic departure from both Horne’s historical observations and the French government’s public stance on torture and executions.

With Clausewitz’s Trinity in mind, such double talk of encouraging yet disparaging torture at the same time presents issues that would fundamentally divide both the French government and military. The French government, by giving a vague political

21Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 117-118.

22Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 118.

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objective and attempting to play both sides of the torture debacle, further strained the balance of Clausewitz’s Trinity when any administration, DeGaulle’s included, made honest attempts at peace negotiations. Aussaresses’ retelling of General Massu’s meeting with Max Lejeune fails to wholly prove his point that “By asking the military to reestablish law and order inside the city of Algiers, the civilian authorities had implicitly approved of having summary executions. Whenever we felt it necessary to be given more explicit instructions, the practice in question was always clearly approved.”23 The political aim of keeping Algeria French was a vague task that the French military believed necessitated the use of torture. The implicit approval of one deputy staunchly against Algerian independence does not necessarily equate to government-wide approval of torture and executions through the transference of police powers to the military.

Regardless, at this time in the Algerian Revolution, the French government had not entertained the idea of negotiating peace. The aims of the military and government therefore remained the same.

A gradual shift within the government towards peace began to occur as more administrations rose and fell due to the Algerian problem. The military, not wishing to repeat the embarrassment of Vietnam, Tunisia, and Morocco and seeking to defend

French pride, problematically did not follow suit. The policy of the government was no longer being implemented by the military. Instead, the military followed the old policy of

Algerie Franciase, which in terms of Clausewitz’s Trinity amounted to the military attempting to annex policy decisions from government hands. The changing political aims despite past promises of keeping Algeria French was indicative of a government

23Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 117. 66

that realized its original political aim was unachievable or achievable only through the hard to justify means the military had decided upon. Coherent strategy in order to achieve malleable political goals was an impossible task for a military already distrustful of government intentions and efficacy, thus justifying the military’s refusal to follow new government policy. Clausewitz’s Trinity had become so imbalanced that the military and government were following two separate policies that the respective groups believed to be just. These policies, however, were mutually exclusive. The F.L.N.’s vision of peace required the independence of Algeria, while the military’s policy strictly forbid such an occurrence. The friction between the government and the military resulted in the

General’s Putsch, the fall of the Fourth Republic and the ascendency of DeGaulle who now bore the unenviable responsibility of navigating a rogue military with its own

political aims, a populace and world forcefully against the continuance of the war, and a

government whose recent history was characterized by turmoil.

Before moving onto the how a modern counterinsurgency operation can devolve

into the French experience of urban counterinsurgency in Algiers, it would be beneficial

to summarize the line of reasoning so far. The various differences between General Paul

Aussaresses’ urban counterinsurgency operation and Captain David Galula’s rural

counterinsurgency efforts account for the former’s relative success with regards to

achieving operational objectives. The means by which Aussaresses pursued the

elimination of the F.L.N. from Algiers was one such difference since he utilized brutal

methods including torture, summary executions, and murders staged as prisoner escape attempts. This particular difference is highlighted because it bore implications beyond the tactical and operational levels, affecting both the French political aims of the war as well

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as the strategy used to achieve such an end. These terms are familiar to a reader of Carl

Von Clausewitz, both a military historian and Prussian General in the 19th century.

Clausewitz’s military philosophy, particularly his so-called Trinity, also best described

both the far-reaching effects of torture on the war effort as a whole. It also diagnoses

what the controversy and subsequent fallout of torture in the Battle of Algiers was

potentially symptomatic of. The revelation of torture extinguished the public support for war, while it was symptomatic of a fundamental disconnect between the policy making government and the policy implementing military. The unjustifiable, open ended political aim of holding Algeria under French rule caused the French government to change course, striving for peace negotiations with the F.L.N. who desired unconditional independence. The military viewed torture and summary executions as justifiable tactics necessary to wrest control of Algeria away from the F.L.N. and thus completing the political objective of holding onto Algeria from their perspective. Instead of following their governmental master’s course towards peace, the military instead maintained its course towards the elimination of the F.L.N. and French domination over Algeria using brutal tactics. The military forced its will upon the Fourth Republic through rebellion, ultimately upsetting the balance among Clausewitz’s Trinity.

While one can tease out a variety of original causes for the disconnect among the three parts of Clausewitz’s Trinity, a variety of factors were at play that can be instructive to a degree today. The factors of a weak, ineffectual government with unrealistic political aims, a politicized army, and a strategic vacuum all typified French counterinsurgency efforts in Algiers. While claiming torture to be inherently undesirable whether for moral or practical reasons has some foundation, it is far too simplistic to point the finger of

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blame squarely at the military for losing the Algerian Revolution through the utilization

of brutal tactics. Certainly it played a part, but it would be sophistry to assert in the same logic that tactics cannot win wars but they can lose them. This in no way justifies or

encourages the use of torture, the very opposite in fact. The gains made by tactics must be

wielded by a coherent strategy that in turn pursues the completion of a grander, political

objective. The political objective, in this case, being continued French control over

Algeria.

Avoiding the whiggish assertion that all history moves toward an end

characterized by liberty, the recent history of decolonization, whether forced by allies like

the United States or necessity as in Vietnam, stacked the odds against France holding

onto its colonial foothold in Algeria. That is, the conditions of the time were not

conducive towards preserving colonial holdings, not that an illusory characteristic of

history as a whole made French efforts impossible. The difficulty in achieving their

political objective was compounded by poor recent precedent in regards to conquerors

maintaining control over lands not native to their own. It bears reminding that France was

emerging from the brutal repression of a Nazi regime that used eerily similar tactics

found in Algiers. The French public as whole, not simply left intellectuals although they

were perhaps most outspoken, was sensitive to comparisons between their military and

that of their previous Nazi overlords. This may account for the powerful public response

that was at least partially responsible for the shift in public policy towards negotiations for peace.

Realizing that the policy was unachievable, the government also failed to recognize how the vagueness of such an objective left coherent strategy almost

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impossible to formulate. The original political objective supplied to the military by the

French government of keeping Algeria French was so incredibly vague that a strategic

vacuum emerged that the military was required to fill with best guesses based on spotty

intelligence that allowed for much confirmation bias. The military, to display just what is

meant by a “strategic vacuum”, pursued a variety of avenues to achieve the political

objective. Defeating the F.L.N. became the primary strategy by which the military would

ensure French control over Algeria. The issue with such an approach was that the F.L.N.

was a manifestation of deep seated social, economic, and political injustices at the hands

of pied-noirs and the French government. Destroying the F.L.N., therefore, would result

in the destruction of only an iteration of Algerian resistance, not Algerian resistance per

se. Regardless, the operational avenues pursued to starve both the F.L.N. and its

suspected ideological source were ineffective. Under the notion that the F.L.N. was but

the next in a long line of communist uprisings, the military began to suspect P.C.A.24 and communist sympathizer involvement and subsequently incarcerated those who expressed communist leanings. The issue with this, as Horne suggested, was that the F.L.N. was in no way a communist inspired movement and treating it as such revealed a bias within the

French military more so than anything revelatory about the F.L.N. 25 These farce

communist ties additionally led French intelligence to conclude that the true center of the

F.L.N.’s power resided in Nasser and his Egyptian holdings, assuming that Algeria

belonged to the pan-Arabic movement. Again, the narrative told by Horne points to an

24“Parti Communiste Algérien”

25Horne, Savage War of Peace, 136.

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entirely different conclusion, which was that the interior leadership in Algeria predominantly guided the revolution and that Nasser’s involvement was a tough sell that failed to result in much material support.26

Several isolated incidents allowed the military to maintain these ideological

beliefs and formulate poor strategies. One of the incidents included the capture of the ship Athos bearing a huge cache of guns headed for Algeria, the broadcasting of pro- independence propaganda from Radio Cairo, and the printed, ideological support given by P.C.A. members in Algeria and left leaning support in mainland France. The Athos in all actuality was amongst the first ships of its kind that was the result of extensive campaigning throughout the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Nasser remained largely indignant at supplying the Algerian Revolution at the risk of ruining his ability to receive swathes of cash for his loyalty from both the United States and Russia.27 The pan-Arabic

Radio Cairo was one of the few allowances made by Nasser, and communist support for the Algerian Revolution was coincidental with both group’s disdain for colonialism.

Interestingly, the French mainland’s Communist Party was either ambivalent and even supportive of the French government’s repressive efforts in the Algerian Revolution at the time, something that should have acted as a red flag for assuming that the Algerian

Revolution was a communist revolution at its heart.28 The P.C.A. itself was also almost

universally distrusted by the F.L.N.29 Any gains made by the military in these pursuits,

26Horne, Savage War of Peace, 158.

27Horne, Savage War of Peace, 85, 129, 158.

28Horne, Savage War of Peace, 137

29Horne, Savage War of Peace, 136-138.

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seizing weapons as a gain is something Aussaresses himself decries,30 therefore really

failed to make the military come any closer to securing French control over Algiers. The

military, on the contrary, was emboldened by its battlefield successes and other signs of

progress towards achieving their goal of eliminating the F.L.N. These signs of progress

included the building of the Morice Line and the elimination of the F.L.N. from Algeria

as a result of the Battle of Algiers.

With the belief that their strategy of eliminating the F.L.N. would accomplish the

political goal set out by the French government, it was little wonder why the military was

puzzled and frustrated by the change in the political objective towards peace negotiations

involving the independence of Algeria. It is here that the political nature of the army that

had begun in Vietnam began to run counter to the political objectives of the government.

The weakened French government could no longer exert control over a military that had

begun to realize its political potential. The relevance this had on the practice of

counterinsurgency was significant since its operational objective in Algiers was

formulated with an unclear strategy in mind in an effort to achieve a goal deemed

untenable by the French government. Normally a military would adjust to the demands of

the negative reactions of both the public and government, particularly since the latter typically guided foreign policy decisions. The French military’s relative incompetence in formulating achievable political objectives was perhaps best emulated by the fate that befell General Salan and the most dedicated adherents to Algerie Franciase within the paratrooper regiments. Salan was most flushed with political vigor in the Generals’

30Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, 115-116. 72

Putsch against the DeGaulle’s administration.31 Regrettable consequences would come

from Salan’s dedication to the political ideation of Algerie Franciase since, despite his

exile from Algeria and forced retirement from the French military, he illegally returned to

Algeria to head a joint militant pied-noir, ex paratrooper organization called the O.A.S.32

The methodology of this group carried Aussaresses’ logic concerning the justification of assassinations, tortures, and executions to achieve a given objective no matter the cost in sacrifice for the French government to its logical conclusion. The only deviation was that

Salan and his co-conspirators no longer operated under the orders of a French government, but instead prosecuted their dirty war in the name of French pride under their own discretion. The O.A.S. followed Clausewitz’s Law of Escalation to its ultimate conclusion as well, matching the F.L.N. in utter brutality. Such brutal operations included targeting their own countrymen for assassination and sabotage, knowingly killing innocent Algerians, and committing acts of terrorism with plans for terrorist acts on the

French mainland.33 The O.A.S., by matching the F.L.N.’s brutality, became its own ideologically empowered organization that blurred the lines between freedom fighter and terrorist. The military’s political ambitions resulted in the uncontrollable escalation of warfare, placing the French military on the same level as their adversaries they held in such abject disdain. Perhaps best describing how politically blind the military was, these ex-military ultranationalists began their operations at a time when the Algerian

Revolution was all but over, with soldiers recalled from deployments, pied-noirs

31Horne, Savage War of Peace, 439.

32“Organisation Armée Secrète”

33Horne, Savage War of Peace, 480-504. 73

instructed to pack their bags or dig their graves, and the Evian Accords in the near future,

ending the Algerian Revolution and granting Algerian self-determination. The descent

into extremism was a futile exercise that only inflated body counts for no appreciable

reason or realistic political objective. Thus, the military’s increasing belief in its own

political capabilities resulted in wanton acts of terrorism and brutality in pursuit of a

futile political objective the public had no desire for, that the government had given no

orders for, and unjustifiable to all but the most hardline French extremists.

This chapter set out to describe French urban counterinsurgency in terms of

General Paul Aussaresses’ experiences in Algiers and by negation with Captain David

Galula’s experiences in rural counterinsurgency in Kabylia. Among these differences

included the use of brutal tactics including torture, summary executions, and falsified

prisoner escapes covering up murder. While brutal, these tactics contributed to the

operational success Aussaresses achieved in comparison to Galula. The implication that

these brutal tactics were best suited to win counterinsurgencies was put to the test when

adding political considerations into the equation. It was determined that the use of torture and similar tactics resulted in a profound strategic and political loss for the French. This loss was described in terms of Clausewitz’s Trinity, which showed that the public lost its desire for war, the government reversed course on its political objective of holding onto

Algeria, and the military upset the natural order of following government policy by

following the original political objective all due to the use and revelation of torture and

tactics of its ilk. The newly formed political objective of the government and that of the

military’s was shown to fundamentally stand in contrast to each other, thus resulting in

the upending of the government at the hands of an increasingly politically minded

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military. Factors contributing to the formation of these complex relationships and reactions included a weak government that was not respected by the military, overconfidence in the formulation and ability to achieve political objectives, the absence of effective strategy to achieve political goals, and the politization of the military. These factors manifest themselves in a different but similar fashion in failed American counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Timeless Mistakes: The Iraq Surge

‘It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand (You see she didn’t like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas- only I don’t exactly know what they are!’ -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Criticism surrounding the United States’ counterinsurgent efforts in Iraq and

Afghanistan has taken several forms since 2004. Some critics focused on the theoretical background behind FM3-24 that inspired the surges of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 and

2009 respectively. Others instead took aim at the results these surges produced whether planned or unplanned. The previous chapters of this thesis outlined the historical, theoretical underpinnings of FM3-24 found in the Algerian Revolution. The outcome and methodology of these counterinsurgencies represented a poor model to replicate. This chapter will focus on the pitfalls both old and new that American counterinsurgency efforts experienced during the Iraq Surge specifically. This is because of the two, the Iraq

Surge was considered a success whereas the Afghanistan Surge was universally considered a failure. Examining literature surrounding the Iraq Surge therefore will be fruitful in exploring the best example of modern American counterinsurgency. John

Nagl, one of the primary framers of FM3-24, and his self-criticisms of his own attempt in

2004 at translating counterinsurgency theory into practice will provide an important lens through which to see shortcomings of American counterinsurgency that were not found in the surges. The Iraq Surge and Nagl’s experience reveal a doctrine fundamentally inappropriate for use in Iraq due to a disconnect between strategy and policy, a far more

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complicated conflict than outlined in FM3-24, and intrinsic limits that a foreign military

force can achieve in nation building operations. The analysis of Nagl’s experiences and the Iraq Surge will follow their chronological order, a convenient method to showcase

how American counterinsurgency adapted and failed to adapt between operations.

Both Nagl’s operation and the Iraq Surge was preceded by a more expansive,

shorter conventional operation called Operation Iraqi Freedom. This coalition of

American, British, Australian, Polish, and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces invaded on

March 20th, 2003 ostensibly to remove Saddam Hussein from power because of his

refusal to disarm chemical and nuclear weapons his government allegedly owned.1 The

Peshmerga’s involvement reflected the brutality of Saddam’s ethnically Sunni

government, whose history of genocide against the two other ethnic groups, the Kurds

and Shi’a, was well documented.2 The veracity of the pretenses for the invasion fall

outside the scope of this thesis, but Operation Iraqi Freedom concluded in victory for the

coalition after slightly more than a month of major combat actions across Iraq. The fall of

Baghdad in April marked an informal end to the operation once Saddam Hussein went underground until his capture and trial in December of 2003 and his execution in 2006.

The formal end of the operation came when President George Bush declared victory on

May 1st, 2003.

1Daryl Kimball, “Disarming Saddam-A Chronology of Iraq and UN Weapons Inspections From 2002-2003,” Arms Control Association, July 2003, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/iraqchron. Such suspicions did not come out of thin air, with a unanimously passed UN Security Council resolution serving as a final warning to Saddam making such suspicions legitimate even though hindsight tells a different tale.

2Ken Roth, “War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention,” Human Rights Watch, January 25, 2004, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/01/25/war-iraq-not-humanitarian- intervention.

77

The occupation of Iraq began in earnest and was not expected to last too long

since the long subdued Iraqi people were expected to gladly adopt democracy and that

any pushback was from jihadists and Ba’ath Party holdouts.3 The Iraq Army was

disbanded and members of Saddam’s Ba’ath Party were barred from politics.4 Several provisional governments were set up until a full parliamentary election took place in

January of 2005. A low Sunni turnout guaranteed an administrative change. The Shi’a- dominated National Iraqi Alliance party took a majority, with the Kurdistan Alliance and

Shi’a-dominated Iraqi List parties as large minority parties. None of these parties were

Sunni supported, challenging the legitimacy of this government as suicide bombers and planned attacks on polling stations plagued the election.5 Nor was the United States

military immune from attacks from both Shi’a and Sunni insurgents abhorring foreign

interference with Iraqi affairs. The new, majority Shi’a government quickly took to

repressing Sunnis, utilizing both legal and extralegal methods, like infamous Shi’a death

squads, to do so.6 Both Sunni and Shi’a militias began to form to protect neighborhoods and families while battling the opposing ethnicity and the United States’ presence. Such

3CNN, “Bush: 'Democracy Will Succeed' in Iraq,” CNN.com, November 19, 2003, accessed March 30, 2019, http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/11/19/bush.speech/index.html.

4Coalition Provisional Authority, Coalition Provisional Authority Order 1, May 2003, accessed March 30, 2019, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB418/docs/9a%20- %20Coalition%20Provisional%20Authority%20Order%20No%201%20-%205-16-03.pdf., Coalition Provisional Authority, Coalition Provisional Authority Order 2, May 2003, accessed March 30, 2019, http://www.casi.org.uk/info/cpa/030523-CPA-Order2.pdf.

5CNN, “Attacks in Iraq on Election Day,” CNN.com, January 30, 2005, accessed March 30, 2019, http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.attacks/.

6Stephen Biddle, Julia MacDonald, and Ryan Baker, “Small Footprint, Small Payoff: The Military Effectiveness of Security Force Assistance,” Journal of Strategic Studies 41, no. 1-2, April 12, 2017, 116- 117. 78

was the complicated, civil war ridden conflict that developed in the Iraq occupation phase

of the Iraq War.

John Nagl’s counterinsurgency experiment in 2004 revealed that while some

aspects of counterinsurgent thought had changed since the Algerian Revolution, modern

counterinsurgency still functioned on flawed assumptions that were present in the

Algerian Revolution as well. Unlike Galula and Aussaresses, Nagl formulated his

personal counterinsurgency through research and comparative analyses between the

British and American military. The former had adopted an aura of counterinsurgent

excellence due to the many experiences Britain had in population centric warfare. British

exceptionalism as its referred to was born out of colonial stabilization conflicts in

Malaya, Palestine, and Kenya among others. Nagl, therefore, spent much of his time

contrasting the organizational aspects between the American and British militaries in his

highly lauded Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. He concluded that British exceptionalism was due to their willingness to learn from past conflicts and adapt their

perspective on irregular conflicts accordingly instead of clinging to a formulaic,

prescriptive doctrine. This allowed for a gentler approach to counterinsurgency than what

the French attempted in Algiers and was more akin to Galula’s style of winning hearts

and minds using the rule of law and limited force.

While one might intuitively think that fighting many population centric wars

makes Britain’s exceptional reputation realistic, recent developments led to

overwhelmingly negative conclusions that strike at the core of Nagl’s learning

organization hypothesis. The narrative that Britain pursued counterinsurgent policies

focused on a hearts and minds, Galula-like approach was dispelled by the Foreign and

79

Commonwealth Office migrated archives scandal. This archive was called “migrated”

since it consisted of colonial documents collected by British officials soon before

officially granting independence to former colonies. Along with the order sent by the

Secretary Iain MacLeod to collect such documents in 1961 right before Kenya’s independence was also the directive that any documents that might embarrass the

government, military, police forces, informers or compromise sources of intelligence

were to be destroyed since they were of little value to future governments.7 The

remaining files were sent back to the United Kingdom and hidden by the British

government until a lawsuit by former Kenyan insurgents who accused the British

government of human rights violations finally forced the release of the files. The contents

painted an entirely different, brutal picture of British counterinsurgency. The released

files, to take a small sampling, included intelligence reports on the elimination of colonial

enemies in Malaya, the murder and torture of Kenyan insurgents, and particularly

gruesome scenes of colonial authorities burning captured insurgents alive.8 If documents

such as these were not considered embarrassing or damaging enough to be destroyed, it

makes one wonder what the character of the destroyed documents was. Many suspect reports detailing a 24-person massacre of civilians in Malaya, documents giving specifics into what transpired in a known torture center in Aden, and all documents pertaining to

7Anthony Cary, The Migrated Archive: What Went Wrong and What Lessons Should We Draw?, section 3, 1, February 4, 2011, accessed March 30, 2019, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/625667/c ary-report-release-colonial-administration-files.pdf.

8Ian Cobain, Owen Bowcott, and Richard Norton-Taylor, “Britain Destroyed Records of Colonial Crimes,” The Guardian UK, April 17, 2012, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes.

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the former colony in British Guiana were among the destroyed documents.9 Such

suspicions were legitimate since “[The] document record is a fragment, a glimpse of

government records that colonial officials thought the public might one day be allowed to

see. These documents present a pruned, manicured image of what colonial officials

wanted to leave behind.”10

The myth of British exceptionalism in counterinsurgency continues to unravel as

more documents from the archive are released after inspection, yet this demythologizing

has a direct impact on Nagl’s counterinsurgent philosophy and implementation. Nagl, to

his credit, supplies his own criticisms of his book after trying to implement its precepts

during a tour in Iraq in 2004. He attributes his failings to underestimating the difficulties

to win and hold the support of a population, a brash assumption that using

counterinsurgency would intrinsically solve the difficulties a conventional force has in

dealing with irregulars, and finally an underestimation of the importance of local forces.11

Nagl, to the first point, writes “I note that the British did a better job of gaining the trust

of the Malay population, but I don’t properly emphasize that when the insurgency began

they had been in the country for well over a century, developing long term relationships

and cultural awareness that bore fruit in actionable intelligence.”12 Nagl here found that

even he could not fully distill maxims independent of context that would lead to success

9Cobain, Bowcott, and Norton-Taylor, “Britain Destroyed Records,” The Guardian UK.

10Brian Drohan, Brutality in an Age of Human Rights: Activism and Counterinsurgency at the End of the British Empire (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017), 9.

11John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press 2005), xi-xiv.

12Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup, xiii.

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in any isolated counterinsurgency. That is, the contextual significance of Britain’s long-

term relationship with the Malayan people was massive while no parallel in either

Vietnam or Nagl’s time in Iraq existed.

Nagl had no way to know that British forces not only had this advantage, but

obtained actionable intelligence forcibly through torture and other brutal means detailed

in the migrated archive. Armed without the knowledge of what was central to British

intelligence gathering made it almost inevitable that Nagl’s attempt at a gentle, hearts and

mind approach would fail to achieve similar results as Malaya. It is also worthy to note

that British exceptionalism has not translated into results in the 21st century either,

particularly in conflicts where foreign aid for the insurgents existed, the insurgency was

popular, or when coercive techniques could not be utilized since the British manipulated

the rule of law in their favor in their colonies.13 Their disappointing performance in the

Helmand Province of Afghanistan in 2014 represented just one in the latest line of

counterinsurgency failure on the part of the British in the modern era where they no

longer fight with the advantage to change laws at will.14

The latter two points of self-criticism on further examination spoke to the

limitations of counterinsurgency’s philosophy and historical narrative. Nagl actually

considered the idea that counterinsurgency was all but impossible for a foreign force to

carry out for a native government, but instead “create the conditions that will enable local

13Zachary Morris, “British Counterinsurgency: Returning Discriminate Coercion to COIN,” Small Wars Journal, accessed March 30, 2019, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/british-counterinsurgency- returning-discriminate-coercion-to-coin.

14Morris, “British Counterinsurgency: Coercion,” Small Wars Journal.

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forces to win it for them.”15 This amounted to an acknowledgement of a severe limitation.

A counterinsurgent army could perform its job perfectly, yet such efforts could very

easily go to waste if the host state is weak or illegitimate. Additionally, Nagl

inadvertently puts into question Lewis Sorley’s so called “Better-War” thesis about

Vietnam found in his book A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy

of America's Last Years in Vietnam, which had a profound influence on the 2007 Iraq

Surge.16 Sorley’s thesis posited that Vietnam could have been won if counterinsurgent

doctrine was followed from the start since the United States military was scoring military

victories with it late in the war. Nagl’s words, oddly since he and Sorley were both

diehard proponents of counterinsurgency, contradict this thesis, “This is perhaps the most

basic flaw in the book…that defeating the Communist insurgents in Malaya was easy

once Sir Gerald Templer and Harold Briggs showed the British army what to do, and that

the American army could similarly have won in Vietnam if only it had adopted earlier the

changes [of counterinsurgency]…”17 Nagl found that simply making the attempt at counterinsurgency does not guarantee its success and that many factors must align for even a chance at success to materialize.

There is one additional flaw of note that Nagl failed to address and that was present in Galula’s own counterinsurgency as well. Cultural assumptions without cited research stuck out when reading “Those who contend that ‘American forces have lost the

15Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup, xiv.

16Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, “Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages,” Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2009, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125487333320069331.

17Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup, xii.

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support of the Iraqi population and probably cannot regain it’ are incorrect; in fact, the

majority of the Iraqi population prefers the American vision of a democratic and free Iraq

to the Salafist version of Iraq as Islamic theocracy.”18 The only citation Nagl provided in

this passage was for the embedded quote that he argued against, not for his claim that an

Iraqi population prefers American democracy and freedom. It should not be simply assumed that American delivered democracy is preferred against the style of governance

Iraqis have lived under for generations. While an American might gloss over Nagl’s claim that an Iraqi population prefers democracy due to its inherent advantages and take it for common sense, it is less clear that an Iraqi would desire both them and their country recast in the image of America replete with American ideals, morality, and virtues.

Whether or not Iraq could even be fully recast in the image of America or sustained for a duration of time is a different matter altogether.

Nagl, armed with his new self-criticisms and experience actually running a

counterinsurgent operation, was tapped along with others to create FM3-24, whose

precepts the Iraq Surge of 2007 was based off of. Curiously, however, both of these

surges share similar flaws with Nagl’s original thinking pre-deployment as well as flaws

similar to French counterinsurgent efforts on the strategic and political levels too.

The Iraq Surge was considered a success by some and a failure by others

depending on the strategic effect of interest. Irrespective of the strategic effects, most

agree that the political objective behind the Iraq Surge was to promote stability so

effective nation building could begin. Iraq was plunged into a civil war between a

majority Sunni and minority Shi’a with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the dismissal

18Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup, xiv. 84

of the Iraqi Army. Removing the third-party, al-Qaeda terrorist influence seemed to be

the best course of action. Three strategic objectives to work towards this political

objective align with the historical record most closely. These were to decrease sectarian

violence between Shi’a and Sunni, heighten involvement of local forces, and build

infrastructure and political capabilities.19 The Iraq Surge focused on achieving these in

the capital city of Baghdad and upon further inspection did promote security for

reconciliation between Sunni and Shi’a political elements but completely failed in

providing a foundation for nation building to occur.

Decreased sectarian violence was a very common argument for the success of the

Iraq Surge, yet upon closer inspection there were many factors at play beyond the scope of the counterinsurgency. A noticeable decrease in sectarian violence in early 2007 was a

historical fact that was attributed to the Iraq Surge, which began concurrently. Reports,

however, suggested that attributing this phenomenon to the surge was dishonest at best.

Instead, it appeared that the climax of the sectarian violence in Baghdad occurred just

before the Surge had begun, and the down trend in violence was correlated with a

diminishing number of Sunnis around to be killed in the first place. Many had already

been killed or fled the city, leaving behind ruined inhospitable neighborhoods.20 Counter- arguments to interpretations of these reports fell flat, using the logic that murders were still occurring in these neighborhoods so obviously people were still there.21 That counter

19Matthew Buchanan, “A New Way Forward or the Old Way Back? Counterinsurgency in the Iraq Surge,” (master’s thesis Western Carolina University, 2018), 38, accessed March 30, 2019, https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/wcu/f/Buchanan2018.pdf.

20Buchanan, “New Way Forward”, 40-43.

21Nick Schifrin, “Campaign Analysis: The ‘Surge’ in Iraq 2007-2008,” Orbis 62, no. 4, October 2018, 622. 85

argument was predicated upon a strawman since the original argument acknowledged

that violence did not disappear but fell drastically. The irony of using lessening murder

rates to prove that people still reside in neighborhoods worth living in should not be lost

on the reader either.

The Anbar Awakening was another reason for decreased sectarian violence

inappropriately credited to the Iraq Surge. The Anbar Awakening described the peace

established between well over 30 Sunni tribes and coalition forces. These tribes were

previously in the fold with al-Qaeda, and whose change of heart was attributed to their

realization that they could not hope to beat the Iraq Surge without great cost.22 While criticism of this perspective in 2007 boiled down to a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics and war making were intertwined in counterinsurgency, more recent critics have identified another likely cause for the desertion of these Sunni tribes.23 These tribes

chafed under their strict al-Qaeda leaders, who more so pushed the Sunni tribes out than

the coalition had attracted the Sunni tribes in.24 The Anbar Awakening’s relative

independence from the Iraq Surge has been agreed upon since the days when it was

entirely chalked up to the Iraq Surge’s brilliance.25

The second strategic effect of strengthening local forces, a key cog in a

counterinsurgency, also held mixed outcomes despite it too being championed as

22Schifrin, “Campaign Analysis,” Oribis, 623.

23David Ucko, “Critics Gone Wild: Counterinsurgency as the Root of All Evil,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 25, no. 1, May 2014, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2014.893972?scroll=top&needAccess=true.

24Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 51.

25Schifrin, “Campaign Analysis,” Orbis, 624.

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incontrovertible evidence of the Iraq Surge’s success. The Iraq Surge achieved this effect by creating, arming, and training a militia called the Sons of Iraq. This militia was an attempt at creating a viable force to hand off security responsibilities to once the Iraq

Surge had run its course. Simply the creation of a trained militia fighting against

insurgents was enough to credit the Iraq Surge with having a positive strategic effect on

the overall nation building efforts in Iraq.

This quick box checking style of analysis again fell under the scrutiny of deeper observations. The Anbar Awakening increased recruitment of ex-Sunni insurgents into the ranks of the Sons of Iraq. This was viewed as problematic for a slew of reasons.

Those looking beyond the scope of American involvement posited that the United States was arming future rebels.26 This was an altogether rational conclusion given that this

majority Sunni militia would be present in Baghdad once Americans departed and left the

predominantly Shi’a government in charge.27 The first and second strategic effects of the

Iraq Surge, decreasing sectarian violence and strengthening local forces, while functional

during the Iraq Surge would instead work against each other in post-Surge Iraq. Honest

reconciliation became doomed once one side held significant leverage over the other.

While not only providing an environment for reconciliation to take place, these strategic

effects additionally depended heavily on such a reconciliation in order for their long-term

success. Long-term successes were the only things hoped for from the Sons of Iraq since

their tactical, short-term effectiveness left much to be desired. Indeed, according to

26Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 44.

27Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 45.

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statements taken from Americans, the militias displayed little adequacy in taking over

security missions from American troops.28 It was hard to justify the Sons of Iran as a

paragon for Iraq Surge success in hindsight.

The last strategic effect of the Iraq Surge was to provide government legitimacy

through improving infrastructure and political capabilities of the Iraqi citizenry. Iraq

Surge supporters again point to this strategic aspect as a great success as suggested by the

appearance of markets, schools, providing medical care, and other humanitarian efforts.

While intuitively positive, another closer look at these phenomena in their proper context reveal a more mixed narrative.

The United States attempted to ensnare the hearts and minds of Iraqi citizens by jumpstarting the local economy, providing medical care, building programs, and providing water and electricity. Each of these attempts were hindered by significant difficulties that made their overall effect on public Iraqi opinion of American forces miniscule. For example, the sudden economic growth experienced by Afghanistan once the Iraq Surge had provided security from al-Qaeda had an important asterisk. That is, the economy did boom but there was no cross-sectional economic boom that would suggest that reconciliation was within the realm of possibility.29 Sunnis would shop only in Sunni

neighborhoods while Shi’as would shop only in Shi’a neighborhoods. This segregation

did carry a sense of stability per se, yet the longevity of this stability would be tested

since reconciliation required the two disparate groups to interact.

28Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 48.

29Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 51.

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Similarly, humanitarian efforts were hindered by the military arm of the Iraq

Surge and the destruction necessary to purge as many insurgents as possible from

Baghdad. Medical aid was given yet not enough due to security concerns. These security

concerns extended to not only attacks on areas where the United States was providing

medical aid, but also on Iraqi citizens who were suspected of colluding with the United

States.30 Therefore, paradoxically an Iraqi citizen seeking medical aid increased their

chances of dying at the hands of insurgents wanting to make an example out of those who

interacted with the counterinsurgents. Also, insurgents would assault these humanitarian

efforts, causing more death and destruction not only by their own hands but when

American reinforcements and air support came to relieve their beleaguered soldiers as

well.31

Security concerns also plagued efforts to supply Baghdad with functional

electrical, running water, and sewage utilities and severely hampered the government legitimization process they were intended to encourage. The failure to repair the electrical system in Baghdad was particularly damaging since a functional electrical grid was central to providing water and sewage services as well.32 The ongoing fighting again made the rewiring efforts only temporary despite initial success. The electrical system was not only impacted by gunfights between insurgents and counterinsurgents, but also concerted efforts by insurgents to sabotage electrical facilities.33 Focused attacks on

30Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 52.

31Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 51.

32Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 57.

33Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 56.

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sewage plants and water purification facilities also slowed progress and made the task of

repairing water pipes a whopping 14.4-billion-dollar effort as indicated by a 2008 World

Bank evaluation. For reference, the United States military had spent $8 billion thus far on

rehabilitating Iraq’s national water treatment plants alone.34 Such an undertaking was thus out of the reach of the United States military’s available funds at the time, suggesting that the staggering destruction and cost of rebuilding was not properly planned for.

This chapter thus far has outlined issues pertaining to the relationship between the strategic and political goals of the Iraq Surge. The simple existence of decreasing sectarian violence, the Sons of Iraq, and billions of dollars put into Iraq’s infrastructure made it appear that counterinsurgency precepts were effectively implemented. The context removed any meaningful positive effects of these aspects of counterinsurgency in

Iraq however. Stated a different way, the counterinsurgent efforts were not working towards the desired political goal of a stable Iraqi government. While it is true that short- term stabilization was established by effectively insulating the civil war from al-Qaeda, this result was meaningless if a unified Iraqi government was unable to form. Shi’a and

Sunni adversaries had no interest in reconciling their differences to form a representative government and instead used the short-term stabilization to size each other’s capabilities up.35 Therefore, American soldiers were fighting to legitimize a future state whose

existence was not at all assured. Instead of working towards the political goal of a stable

government, the long-term success of these measures depended on a stable government.

34Buchanan. “New Way Forward,” 57.

35Buchanan, New Way Forward, 49. 90

Counterinsurgency’s use, therefore, drove a wedge between strategic and political gains,

making it a poor doctrine to follow in the case of Iraq.

Why the Iraq Surge had failed to complete the larger political objective of

establishing a stable Iraqi state was the subject of some debate. The failure of the Iraq

Surge to make significant political strides caused some of the more ambitious revisionists

to remold the original purpose of the Iraq Surge to make it appear more favorable. The

argument was that the Iraq Surge was meant only to buy time for reconciliation between

Shi’a and Sunni parties fighting a civil war, not necessarily to nation build. These

historians attempted to remove the Iraq Surge from its political objectives and call it a

strategic success despite the perceived failure of politicians to morph military gains into

political capital. This echoed the sentiment justifying torture in the Battle of Algiers, with

the argument that the French got the job done quicker and more efficiently with torture

while turning a blind eye to the tremendous political consequences of torture’s use. To quote one example, “those criticisms are valid only if we misinterpret the Surge’s strategy. The Surge’s goal was to create a window for political reconciliation by reducing

the violence…if [it] required an army of former Sunni insurgents, temporary alliances,

and a narrow timeframe—so be it. The Surge helped reduce the violence and open the

window for reconciliation: strategy achieved.”36 This argument assumed that

counterinsurgency operations could be called successful in spite of political ramifications

that could negatively impact a desired political outcome. Such an argument was frankly

preposterous. Strategy was meant to serve a political objective, not hinder it.

36Schifrin, “Campaign Analysis,” Orbis, 630.

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Empowering the Sunni faction of the civil war with a temporary alliance and recruitment

of ex-insurgent Sunni into the American approved Sons of Iraq militia did just that. It

made the big picture political objective, forming a stable Iraqi state, more difficult once

the Shi’a and Sunni were insulated from the al-Qaeda terrorist threat.37 Military and

political action cannot be considered in isolation from each other in a counterinsurgency.

One must only look back at the ramifications of widespread torture in Algiers to understand that.

While it was wrong to reduce the goals of the Iraq Surge to make it appear more effective, it was also altogether unhelpful to view the Iraq Surge as a reason to completely do away with population-centric styles of warfare. Counterinsurgency was designed to adapt to a given conflict where insurgents dominate the battlefield. By

following counterinsurgency precepts in Iraq, the chances of building a stable nation

were oddly lessened. This begged the question of why. Redefining the goal of the

counterinsurgency was not a valid path of analysis as noted previously.

The key appeared to be that the counterinsurgency did not adequately take into

account the entire political situation since a civil war was also raging. This sentiment was

strengthened by Gian Gentile, whose polemical opinions on counterinsurgency had

sobered since the height of the counterinsurgency debate.38 Gentile, in a lecture at

Georgetown, when reflecting on how FM3-24 divides a population “in every conflict no

matter the cause” as 10% against the insurgency, 10% supporting the insurgency, and

37Buchanan, “New Way Forward,” 43-46.

38Ucko, “Critics Gone Wild,” Small Wars and Insurgencies.

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80% waiting to be swayed said “I had just spent the year in West Baghdad, and there

wasn’t a line here [for the 10% supporting the insurgents] and here [for the 10%

supporting the counterinsurgent]. There was one line: Sunni and Shi’a.”39 The Iraq Surge

could not address the dividing line between Sunni and Shi’a since such a divide was not accounted for in counterinsurgency doctrine. The only population divisions that

counterinsurgency doctrine could recognize was between those that supported al-Qaeda,

those that supported the United States, and those waiting to be swayed. The civil war

however muddied these neat divisions, making counterinsurgency’s use inappropriate

given the added complexities of the conflict. If before the surge had started there was at

least a verbal agreement between the Sunni and Shi’a to reconcile, the Iraq Surge would

have stood a far better chance to achieve the counterinsurgency’s goal of building a stable

nation.

The absence of a legitimate government also revealed the limits that a foreign

counterinsurgency could achieve by its own merits. While Nagl approached the idea that

foreign forces cannot succeed in counterinsurgencies by themselves, in the Georgetown

lecture Gentile faced that premise head on, assenting with the notion that only a host

nation can perform counterinsurgencies successfully.40 It was imperative, therefore, that

the United States and the repressive Shi’a government of Iraq had the same objectives in

mind over the course of the counterinsurgency. This was not the case, as Iraqi leaders

39Gian Gentile, Lecture for the Georgetown University Center for Security Studies, “CSS Lunch Series: Confessions of a Recovering Anti-Coindinista ft. Gian Gentile,” Duration 1:32:37, Published on YouTube by Georgetown University Center for Security Studies Feb. 28, 2017, 19:20-20:57, accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFVsL_tnQAs.

40Gian Gentile, “CSS Lunch Series,” 1:10:10-1:11:05.

93

continued to enforce sectarian policies in an effort to secure power. The Prime Minister at the time, Nuri al-Maliki, was openly against United States stabilization efforts that empowered Sunnis and encouraged sectarian violence through Shi’a death squads and the formation of a “shadow” government to repress Sunnis.41 The United States’ strategy assumed that a common enemy would unite the two sects to the benefit of the counterinsurgent, whereas in reality nothing of the sort was evident. Additionally, in order to alter the Iraq government’s divergent goals, the United States “would have required aggressive US monitoring and systematic enforcement of US preferences via conditionality. Yet, the US SFA [security force assistance] program displayed little of either for most of its duration.”42 Therefore, the money and training assistance the United

States gave to the Shi’a government was not used for the purpose the United States had in mind. Moreover, the United States was powerless to change course since troop withdrawal began in earnest, lessening the amount of security the United States military could provide as leverage for negotiating with the Iraqi government. Therefore, no matter what victories were won, if a host nation refused to acquiesce with counterinsurgent demands then those victories mean very little.

Modern American counterinsurgency between the time of Nagl’s operation in

2004 and the Iraq Surge of 2007 had changed little. While on a far larger scale than

Nagl’s operation, the Iraq Surge encountered many similar issues. There was little thought given to whether or not the hosts actually desired democracy. This could be seen

41Biddle, MacDonald, and Baker, “Small Footprint, Small Payoff,” 115.

42Biddle, MacDonald, and Baker, “Small Footprint, Small Payoff,” 118.

94

with Nagl asserting that Iraqis preferred democracy without any research to back his

point and the failure of the Iraq Surge to gauge the aims of the Shi’a government.43 Both displayed the limits of military force, as Nagl reflected that “the best [foreign forces] can hope for is to create the conditions that will enable local forces to win [the counterinsurgency] for them.”44 The United States in the Iraq Surge attempted to address

this problem by pouring billions of dollars into security force assistance programs, yet the

outcome was an army “whose battlefield performance was consistently – sometimes

catastrophically – poor in spite of massive US assistance.”45 The reason for the

underdeveloped army was precisely because the United States and Iraqi government had

two entirely different visions for post-Iraq Surge. To this point, FM3-24’s framework did

not conceptually mesh with the reality of a civil war in Iraq nor did it allow

counterinsurgent forces to paternalistically guide host government towards democracy. It

simply assumed, like Nagl, that host nations inherently desired democracy.

Coincidentally, both Galula’s and British counterinsurgencies, those which FM3-24 was

based off of, featured paternalistic policies heavily with Galula even outright claiming

that it was impossible to avoid.46 The British counterinsurgencies also displayed an

incredible amount of diffuse coercion and brutality which was unknown to Nagl and

other FM3-24 writers at the time. It was sensible, therefore, that both the Iraq Surge and

43Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup, xiv.

44Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup, xiv.

45Biddle, MacDonald, and Baker, “Small Footprint, Small Payoff,” 116.

46Gregor Mathias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory, (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2011), 46. 95

Nagl’s counterinsurgency held similar flaws since they were both based on historically inaccurate narratives.

96

CONCLUSION

Full of Sound and Fury

This thesis critically examined both French and American counterinsurgency efforts in Algeria during the Algerian Revolution and in Iraq during the Iraq Surge respectively. Framers of FM3-24 were inspired by the narratives surrounding David

Galula’s problematic counterinsurgency campaign as well as, incidentally, the extraordinarily brutal Battle of Algiers. Concluding with the manner in which American counterinsurgency practices progressed or failed to progress will shed light on some avenues for improvement to future American counterinsurgencies.

While none of the conflicts this thesis considered could be called undoubtable successes, there were several aspects of the Iraq Surge that represented corrective strides

from counterinsurgency practices of the French during the Algerian Revolution. Firstly,

the Iraq Surge featured a specific political goal that strategists believed counterinsurgency was adept at addressing. Irrespective of which narrative one chooses, that is whether the political goal of the Iraq Surge was to simply buy time for reconciliation or if it instead was meant to address the broader political goal of building a stable Iraqi state, a concrete political goal at least existed. During the Algerian

Revolution, no such goal existed besides a half-hearted pledge to the ideals of Algérie

Française. Maintaining French control over Algeria while actively refusing political reforms that moderate Algerians proposed both before and during the early years of the

Algerian Revolution was a self-defeating and short-sighted policy that military might

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could not correct. “What-if” history can be unwieldy if misapplied to argue for a specific alternate history and assign absolute causation in a vacuum, yet it is useful for reframing one’s perspective and doing away with historical determinism. It is hard, with this in mind, to imagine that 1950s and 1960s Algeria would be embroiled in a revolution if

Ferhat Abbas’ moderate reforms were given due consideration. The Algerian Revolution was by no means fated to happen.

Keeping with the theme of moving away from some self-defeating aspects of the

French counterinsurgencies, the Iraq Surge abandoned the use of widespread torture in order to make significant intelligence advances at the risk of drawing public and international ire. The Iraq Surge had plenty of its own self-defeating tactical and operational blunders, yet the abandonment of torture by counterinsurgents in Baghdad was a development between the French and American counterinsurgencies. While

Guantanamo Bay had been operating and coming under scrutiny for years, it was unclear whether the Iraq Surge or American counterinsurgents in general had much if anything to do with Guantanamo Bay or the happenings within it.

There were, however, a host of novel obstacles that befell the Iraq Surge as well as several that one could glean from the Algerian Revolution too. These novel obstacles included such issues as a small operational timeframe, an uncooperative host nation, and civil war. Unlike the Algerian Revolution’s counterinsurgencies, the Iraq Surge was crafted and executed with a very limited time window in mind with exit strategies and dates for recall already in place early on. This was not conducive for a successful counterinsurgency operation which involves years if not decades of “muddling along” as

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General Stanley McChrystal put it.1 Nagl too saw the need for both cultural and political familiarity that was unique to the British in Malaya that the United States sorely lacked in

Iraq.2 It would appear that money and strategic execution cannot make up for time and

familiarity, thus attempting to do counterinsurgency cheaply and quickly resulted in

failure during the Iraq Surge.

This leads into the second point, that the Iraq host nation was uncooperative,

making such muddling along ultimately pointless. The French during the Algerian

Revolution blatantly ignored the opportunity to build a stable Algerian government

despite moderate reformers approaching them. The American experience in Iraq on the

other hand had just the opposite problem. Nagl and then secretary of state Donald

Rumsfeld naively believed that Iraq citizenry would unquestioningly accept democracy

as the superior form of government. This assumption proved both erroneous and

disastrous in equal measure. The newly Shi’a dominated government had little if any

interest in reconciling with their long time Sunni oppressors nor gave much indication

that they were willing to empower Sunnis. The United States conjured a vision of a

cooperative, allied Iraqi government which simply was not the reality of the situation.

Moderates were few and far to come by, with the United States presence near universally

undesired by Sunni and Shi’a alike.3 No amount of muddling theoretically would make a

1Paul Szoldra, “General McChrystal Told Pompeo To 'Muddle Along' In Afghanistan, Leaked Audio Reveals,” Task and Purpose, published December 6, 2018, accessed March 30, 2019, https://taskandpurpose.com/mcchrystal-afghanistan-muddle-pompeo.

2John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2005), xiii.

3Stephen Biddle, Julia MacDonald, and Ryan Baker, “Small Footprint, Small Payoff: The Military Effectiveness of Security Force Assistance,” Journal of Strategic Studies 41, no. 1-2, April 12, 2017. 116- 117. 99

hostile government merely tolerating a foreign military’s presence at best more friendly

to counterinsurgent nations and align their political goals.

The Iraq civil war was central to the new obstacles afflicting the United States

during the Iraq Surge compared to the Algerian Revolution. The makeup of the civil war

made counterinsurgency itself a wholly inappropriate strategy to pursue to achieve either

the political goal of buying time for reconciliation or the large political goal of creating a

stable, allied Iraqi government. The allegiances of the population did not match the

descriptions found in FM3-24, leading to unequal benefits for the Shi’a and Sunni

political constituencies. Such disparities in political benefits ultimately made

reconciliation even more impossible, with the Shi’a officials placed in positions of great

power angered through the creation of Sunni militias. Therefore, by following the main

thrusts of FM3-24, the Iraq Surge was completely counterproductive in achieving the

larger political goal of creating a stable Iraqi state which speaks to the utter

inapplicability of counterinsurgency tenets as they stand now to civil wars.

Despite the aforementioned new obstacles, there were several big picture issues

with French counterinsurgency that Nagl and designers of the Iraq Surge were unaware

of and did not address. While creating a concrete political goal, counterinsurgency ultimately worked against achieving the desired political result in the Iraq Surge. Torture during the Battle of Algiers and empowering a repressive Shi’a government while maintaining a Sunni militia presence in Iraq served the same, dire consequences of failure. Both were the result of either a vague political goal or an inappropriately designed strategy to reach a political goal. An issue with formulating, interpreting, and

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working towards a viable political goal using counterinsurgency was an obstacle that stretched between the Algerian Revolution and the Iraq Surge.

The measures of success were also similarly flawed in both the Iraq Surge and

French counterinsurgencies. Both considered the spread of democracy as an easily measurable phenomena, using elections, apparent decreases in violence, and public works as evidence of a burgeoning democracy. Galula and Iraq Surge leaders alike saw the mere existence of elections as evidence of a thriving democracy, a very simplified and ultimately incorrect notion to have. The elected officials were either purposefully chosen as to not anger the F.L.N. in the case of Galula’s counterinsurgency while the heavily

Shi’a dominated government that was elected was the very same that encouraged murders of Sunnis. Similarly, both counterinsurgencies viewed decreases in violence as a clear sign of victory over the F.L.N. and al-Qaeda respectively. This resulted in Galula continuing onto further steps in the case of and strategist calling the Iraq Surge a success.

The populations, in truth, had either appeased the wishes of the F.L.N. in Algeria or were simply biding time until the pre-determined public date of troop withdrawal from

Baghdad passed.4 The Battle of Algiers also measured success by simply destroying the

F.L.N.’s Algiers network by brutal means, when in reality it was these very means that

proved to be the undoing of the entire war effort.

Finally, both American and French counterinsurgent efforts undertook a

population-centric style of warfare without taking the time to understand the populace.

4For F.L.N. appeasement by Algerians, see David Galula, Pacification in Algeria: 1956-1958 (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 2006), 2, 14. Gregor Mathias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2011), 179. For biding time waiting for U.S. troop withdrawal, see Nick Schifrin, “Campaign Analysis: The ‘Surge’ in Iraq 2007- 2008,” Orbis 62, no. 4, October 2018, 629. 101

The failure to understand the fundamental animosity between those of Kabyle and Arab ethnicities within F.L.N. leadership led to intelligence blunders on the part of the French military. More broadly speaking, the French truly failed to realize that such a split existed in the larger populations of Kabyles and Arabs as well. Knowledge of such animosity undoubtedly would have been beneficial to the greater French war efforts, particularly the various counterinsurgency operations. The United States corollary to this was the failure to understand the depth with which the Shi’a-Sunni split ran. Had the United States understood the deep-seated hatred between Shi’a and Sunni both in relation to the oppression of the latter over the former as well as the ever-present religious differences, then maybe a more finely crafted strategy would have been the result. Instead, the United

States opted for a poorly adapted counterinsurgency campaign. The United States, to borrow from Nagl, decided to eat soup with a knife when a spoon was far more appropriate.

This all leads one to consider how the United States might avoid seemingly ageless pitfalls as well as new obstacles found in the Iraq Surge. Henry Ucko in his review of John Gentile’s Wrong Turn and Douglas Porch’s Counterinsurgency defends counterinsurgency by asserting that “expeditionary counterinsurgencies” that feature a host nation, like Iraq, and a counterinsurgent nation, like the United States, can work as long as their goals are partially or wholly overlapping.5 Ucko notes that it is incredibly important not to do away with counterinsurgency as a whole since irregular conflicts like it will continue to occur whether or not the United States decides to take part. The United

5David Ucko, “Critics Gone Wild: Counterinsurgency as the Root of All Evil,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 25, no. 1, May 2014, 177 accessed March 30, 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2014.893972?scroll=top&needAccess=true. 102

States therefore must be prepared to learn from its mistakes in an effort to not repeat such

dismal results.

Gentile himself agrees with this assertion in his Georgetown lecture yet offers an

interesting and poignant rebuttal as well. He argues that the United States ought to not

only be careful in selecting a host nation that aligns with its political goals, but also far

more selective in the enemies and political goals worthy of such a Herculean effort as counterinsurgency. Gentile correctly posits that counterinsurgency was a massive, far reaching strategy that was applied in Iraq to meet an extraordinarily limited goal.

Defeating al-Qaeda ultimately did not necessarily require building an entire Iraqi government, nor was any consideration given for what would happen after the Saddam regime fell. Gentile goes so far as to say that al-Qaeda and, by extension, ISIS in the present day are not exactly existential threats to the fabric of the United States. That is, while their existence may represent a security risk that could very well see American civilians lose their lives, it is the harsh reality that ISIS and al-Qaeda do not pose an existential threat to the United States. He seemed to be in agreement with those assembled that defeating ISIS and al-Qaeda is not necessarily the problem. It is what to do after in a political power vacuum that troubles the United States. The implication is that if there were threats to the United States’ national security on a level deserving of building a brand new, allied, foreign government then counterinsurgency is a viable strategic option. In this case, the near unlimited financial resources and decades worth of time needed to successfully carry out an expeditionary counterinsurgency would be spent without question.

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Counterinsurgency will play a part in conflicts in the foreseeable future so preparation for them, including a doctrine “to remind ourselves of the full complexity of

these challenges [of fighting a population-centric war],”6 is required. This doctrine,

however, ought to take an honest, critical look at its predecessors like the Algerian

Revolution to derive some lessons while understanding that such lessons are not prescriptive or repeatable by any means. Additionally, a counterinsurgency ought to be performed with the fullest intention of seeing it through to the end with the foreknowledge that this will take several decades at the very least along with gigantic sums of money. Therefore, such counterinsurgencies ought to be used sparingly, mobilizing all the resources the United States has available only in the cases where a host country shares the same political desire to do away with an unequivocally existential threat to the very fabric of the United States. Additionally, an honest ethnographic, sociological effort to understand the host nations and their constituencies must be conducted. This ought to be done to avoid intelligence blunders akin to the French in

Algeria or the naïve thought that Sunni and Shi’a alike would accept democracy.

Summarizing, if these steps are not taken and counterinsurgency continues to be used, much of the same results as seen in Iraq will ensure. That is, Americans will fight battles in unknown corners of the earth for host nations that merely tolerate and utilize American resources for their own gain. These battles result, therefore, in nothing save for the wasteful expenditure of American treasure and, most importantly, American lives for no discernable or favorable result. “Muddling about” in the truest, most pernicious sense.

6Ucko, “Critics Gone Wild, 177. 104

The conditions that allowed modern American counterinsurgency to develop and

flourish within the minds of military and civilian leadership convey dire implications for

the future though. The fanciful attraction of counterinsurgency as a more restrained form

of warfare has great political appeal, particularly in a liberally minded democratic

republic. Indeed, it launched David Petraeus’ admittedly short-lived political career that

still saw him take the mantle of Director of the C.I.A. Petraeus and his version of counterinsurgency may have lost their momentum, yet the American political and military institutions remain intertwined. Will counterinsurgency’s successes and failures spawn a new mode of thinking built on lessons of the past to bring an acceptable

conclusion to the War on Terror? Alternatively, will these lessons prove to be lackluster

and vacuous, signifying nothing but delusions of success and progress?

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