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Indigenous Forces and Sanctuary Denial: Enduring Counterinsurgency Imperatives

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Indigenous Forces and Sanctuary Denial: Enduring Counterinsurgency Imperatives SMALL WARS JOURNAL www.smallwarsjournal.com Indigenous Forces and Sanctuary Denial: Enduring Counterinsurgency Imperatives LTC ROBERT M. CASSIDY SWJ Magazine -- INTERIM New! & Improved? ☺ (BETA) This is an interim edition of an article that has been peer-reviewed for its content and quality, and accepted for publication in SWJ Magazine. The article, its author, and its audience deserve better editing and formatting than we have provided at the moment, i.e. none. It is being released in this format because the Small Wars Community of Interest needs this material, and this is the way we can get it out without further delay (which, in some cases, has already been substantial). The throughput of our publishing has not kept pace with the enthusiasm of our audience and the productivity of our contributing authors. We’re working on that, but the author’s ideas are ready now. So this article is provided “as is” for the moment. Revised versions of this article for edits, format, and presentation will be posted when they are available and as site improvements are made. SWJ Magazine and Small Wars Journal are published by Small Wars Journal LLC. COPYRIGHT © 2008 by Small Wars Journal LLC. Permission is granted to print single copies for personal, non-commercial use. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-Commercial –Share Alike 3.0 License per our Terms of Use. We are in this together. No FACTUAL STATEMENT should be relied upon without further investigation on your part sufficient to satisfy you in your independent judgment that it is true. Contact: [email protected] Visit www.smallwarsjournal.com Cover Price: Your call. Support SWJ here. Indigenous Forces and Sanctuary Denial: \ Enduring Counterinsurgency Imperatives LTC ROBERT M. CASSIDY U.S. Army officer and fellow with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies ABSTRACT: This article examines the twin imperatives to employ indigenous forces and to deny sanctuary in order to succeed in counterinsurgency. It examines American counterinsurgency doctrine from the Vietnam era and from the current era to glean enduring tenets for these two essential components of any counterinsurgency campaign. The article concludes with a distillation of some best practices for using indigenous forces to deny sanctuary and suggests some operational concepts for denying sanctuary in this long war. “Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced.” - The March of Folly1 The war against Al-Qaeda and other non-state armed groups is a perennial and global counterinsurgency. However, history shows that insurgents require sanctuary and external support to succeed. The converse is also most often true – counterinsurgents cannot prevail if they allow the existence of insurgent sanctuaries. U.S. and coalition partners are fighting a war against insurgents animated by ideas stemming from a fundamentalist interpretive Islamist ideology. Non-state groups affiliated with al Qaeda are indeed leveraging a paradigm shift in irregular war to supply trained fighters across borders to fight as insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. This article sets out to briefly examine past U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and present U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine to glean the practices and principles for employing indigenous formations to help deny sanctuary. I focus on two American eras of great ferment in counterinsurgency doctrine – the Vietnam era and the current era of counterinsurgency. This quick glimpse at the doctrine from these two periods will, to be sure, reveal more congruence than incongruence, even though forty years have elapsed between that era and this one. More saliently, this article concludes by associating enduring doctrinal imperatives with historical best practices to illumine some more successful and aggressive counterinsurgency methods, ones which are germane to denying the enemy sanctuary in this perennial struggle. If American-led coalitions cannot deny or eliminate the sanctuaries of the global insurgent network and its supporters, we will not prevail in this conflict. Past and Present U.S. Counterinsurgency Doctrine on Indigenous Forces Inspired by the German Army’s World War II jagdkommando anti-partisan doctrine, the U.S. Army’s 1951 FM 31-20, Operations Against Guerrilla Forces, prescribed the organization, training, and functions for a prototypical indigenous counter-guerrilla unit of platoon size. Intended to operate independently for prolonged periods, specialized anti-guerrilla units were to be armed with light automatic weapons and radios for night operations such as raids and ambushes. This manual also recommended that anti-guerrilla units should consider masquerading as guerrillas to deceive irregular adversaries. FM 31-20 included indigenous formations in a separate category of forces and encouraged U.S. commanders to employ local civilians as intelligence agents, propagandists, administrators, guides, policemen, and special anti- guerrilla units. This manual further observed that indigenous forces were invaluable because, in addition to freeing U.S. forces for other duties, local forces’ familiarity with the population, terrain, and language “endowed them with a unique ability to uncover enemy guerrillas.”2 In 1961, the U.S. Army published a new chapter of counterinsurgency doctrine, entitled “Military Operations against Irregular Forces,” as Change 1 to its FM 100-1, Doctrinal Guidance. This addition to the then evolving doctrine essentially cascaded from the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (OCOPS) handbook on counterinsurgency entitled, “Counterinsurgency Operations: a Handbook for the Suppression of Communist Guerrillas and Terrorist Operations.” This chapter recommended the maximum use of indigenous forces and manpower as Soldiers, policemen, and militiamen. It likewise advocated employing and maintaining troops in the same general operational area as much as possible, over time, to reap benefits that come from the knowledge and familiarity of local political and military topography. The 1963 FM 31-22, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Forces also prescribed several major roles for indigenous paramilitary forces. Among these were the protection of villages, the performance of security functions at fixed and static sites, the enforcement of curfews, and the prosecution of food denial measures. Moreover, the doctrine considered that any employment of local forces would yield political, military, and intelligence advantages. The 1963 U.S. Army FM 31-16, Counterguerrilla Operations, also assigned native police and paramilitary forces the functions of population control and pacification. This manual deemed these functions as the best use of the local knowledge and linguistic skills that inhered in indigenous troop contingents.3 During the course of the Vietnam War, the United States Army experimented with a variety of techniques and approaches for improving the pacification effort by prudently employing indigenous forces. During the late 1960s, several U.S. Army units provided operational training and assistance to their counterpart organizations in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and to other paramilitary forces. For example, during 1968, the 4th Infantry Division used 27 civic action teams, which lived in hamlets and helped train Popular Force (PF) units and helped generate skills and support toward the goal of self-help and security. During 1967, the 173rd Airborne Brigade created Security Training Assistance Group teams that trained local troops and conducted combined operations with People’s Self-Defense Force Units.4 The U.S. Army’s and Marine Corps’ 2006 doctrine (FM 3-24) for counterinsurgency also emphasizes the requirement for training and employing indigenous security forces. This manual stresses that “helping others to help themselves is critical to winning the long war” and prescribes the development of indigenous security forces that “can take over primary responsibility for combating the insurgency.” Although it may seem quicker for American forces to counter insurgents themselves, the doctrine in FM 3-24 avers that it is better to strengthen and to assist local forces. This most current counterinsurgency doctrine underlines the need for assistance from the military, along with other government agencies and coalition partners, to organize the host nation security forces required to establish and maintain security and stability within their borders. This assistance may include developing, training, equipping, and employing indigenous security forces and it entails the combined employment of coalition and local security forces to help prosecute the counterinsurgency. This latest U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine underscores the importance of training the host nation to conduct counterinsurgency, declaring that training indigenous forces for counterinsurgency is a required competency for reserve and regular formations, from all the services. Training indigenous forces therefore is a critical path to success in counterinsurgency.5 There are three chapters in FM 3-24 that emphasize the importance of local forces in the context of countering insurgents. The very first chapter observes that “nothing is more demoralizing to insurgents than realizing that people inside their movement or supporters are deserting or providing information to government forces.” One highlighted successful practice is to embed advisors and Special Forces. Further still, the manual identifies the development of host-nation security forces
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