Small Wars Journal - COIN Featured Article www.smallwarsjournal.com THE PEOPLE IN ARMS A Practitioner’s Guide to Understanding Insurgency And dealing with it effectively G. L. Lamborn Colonel, USAR (Ret.) June 2009 Small Wars Journal - COIN Featured Article www.smallwarsjournal.com DEDICATION This short work is dedicated to all who are giving their blood, sweat, and tears to achieve a better state of peace in which those who govern do so with humility and grace, thereby ensuring the security and dignity of those entrusted to their care. NOTE OF THANKS The author wishes to offer his grateful thanks to the following individuals for their help, expert advice, encouragement, and professional fellowship over the years. Several of the following individuals offered timely, insightful comments on this work while it was still in draft. All contributed over the years to the author’s understanding of what Dr. John Nagl rightly calls “the graduate school of war.” Dr. Arturo G. Munoz, RAND Corporation; Colonel Grant Newsham, USMC; Dr. John J. LeBeau, George C. Marshall Center; Dr. John Nagl, Center for a New American Security; Dr. David Kilcullen, The Crumpton Group; Captain David M. Lamborn, U.S. Army; and to a serving CIA officer who cannot be named. Special thanks go to Ms. Cassandra Sheehan for her help with the text, especially with regard to the footnotes and bibliography, and to Messrs. Robert Taylor and Marcus Cunningham, both of Booz Allen Hamilton, who proofread the manuscript on their own time. Thanks are also due to many others who, though not named, at various times in the author’s past have been of assistance. All are deeply appreciated. The observations and opinions in this work are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of any U.S. Government department or agency, nor any private corporation or group. The author takes full responsibility for any errors of fact. 2 Small Wars Journal - COIN Featured Article www.smallwarsjournal.com TABLE OF CONTENTS THE PEOPLE IN ARMS PART ONE: The Nature of Insurgency 1. Why should there be insurgencies? 2. All warfare begins with an idea 3. Forward or backward? 4. Insurgency and public opinion 5. A war of ideas 6. That nasty word “propaganda” 7. Political change and reform 8. An inept regime’s response 9. Who joins an insurgent movement and why? 10. Pity the poor insurgent! 11. Everyday life in ancient times 12. The DNA of the insurgent movement 13. Of jigsaw puzzles PART TWO: To Dry the Ocean 14. Securing a more perfect peace 15. Seeing all that is there 16. The central importance of Area Intelligence 17. A peek into the war planner’s tent 18. And then there is the Kabul regime 19. Military operations as political instruments 20. Of Captainship 21. Population and Resource controls 22. Coping with riots and disturbances 23. Bleeding away the enemy’s strength 24. Do you want to help the insurgency grow? 25. The Rules of Engagement 26. Civic Action – Propaganda of the deed 27. Exploiting tactical success ANNEXES A. Precepts for consideration and debate B. VC political mobilization in Phu Yen Province, Vietnam C. Why political warfare and propaganda are effective D. Learning to see ourselves as others (may wish to) see us E. Other places, other times, other wars 3 Small Wars Journal - COIN Featured Article www.smallwarsjournal.com THE PEOPLE IN ARMS A Practitioner’s Guide to Understanding Insurgency And dealing with it effectively If we should have to fight, we should be prepared to do so from the neck up instead of from the neck down. Jimmy Doolittle Since Clausewitz’s day, many thinkers, military and civilian, have written about the problem of insurgency or, as Clausewitz put it, “the people in arms.” Unfortunately, on the one hand, many of these works were written at the level of the political scientist or sociologist, and were therefore largely theoretical, and thus of little interest to the tactician. On the other hand, many works were purely tactical in nature – useful to the man at squad or platoon level, but lacking any broader theoretical context to explain why what is observed exists. These tactical manuals thus became “formulaic” – “in such and such a circumstance, do this.” But explanations of why a particular insurgency came to be, or its specific dynamics or vulnerabilities, have generally been given short shrift or ignored entirely. Thus, many tactical books are long on how to conduct “kinetic” activities, but woefully short on what really matters about dealing effectively with insurgencies. The theoretical books are long on what ought to be done, but often lack an operational perspective that would provide some idea as to how to go about doing what is recommended. Clausewitz himself admits (Chapter 26) that his understanding of “the people in arms” was limited, though he states that the importance of this form of conflict would grow with the passage of years. Clausewitz evidently did not understand that “the people in arms” was to become far more than merely a useful adjunct of conventional operations, such as the partisan or resistance movements in Napoleon’s day or in Nazi-occupied Europe. From peasant uprisings and relatively unfocused tribal warfare in remote areas of the globe during the nineteenth century, irregular warfare has evolved into a distinct species of conflict with its own “rules” and dynamic. Unfortunately, many senior Western military officers, trained in the strategy and tactics of conventional warfare, are slowly (sometimes very painfully) learning that the “rules” of conventional warfare as taught at Sandhurst, West Point, or Saint-Cyr do not necessarily apply to insurgency. The author has been a student and observer, and sometimes a participant, in various insurgencies since his “initiation” in Vietnam in 1969. What is presented in this work is a distillation of those experiences and studies gathered over approximately forty years on four continents, to include some firsthand experience with the contemporary American struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as some experience in working with insurgent movements in the 1980s. This short work is intended to give the reader an understanding of the true nature of insurgency and a glimpse at the reasons why we have not always dealt with it effectively. If the reader gains some insight into insurgency, and can apply his knowledge intelligently, Jimmy Doolittle’s wish will come true: we will start fighting more from the neckline up – and less from the neckline down. 4 Small Wars Journal - COIN Featured Article www.smallwarsjournal.com PART ONE: THE NATURE OF INSURGENCY If you know that a thing is unrighteous, then use all dispatch in putting an end to it. Why wait until next year? Mencius The philosophers hitherto have only interpreted the world in various ways; the thing is, though, to change it. Karl Marx The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Patrick Henry 1. Why should there be insurgencies? We might reasonably start by asking what appears at first blush to be a simple question: “why should there be insurgencies?” Why, indeed, should there be violent efforts by a group or sect to achieve its stated aims by overthrowing a regime in power? The tendency of many professional military men in the West is to think that insurgencies are caused by “crazy” or “wicked” men purely to promote some subversive (usually evil) cause for their personal gain or glory.1 Moreover, Europeans and Americans tend to view insurgencies as criminal disruptions of law and order rather than as instruments to attain certain political ends. Whereas Westerners use the term “victory” as the desired end of a conventional war against another state, “restoration of law and order” or “pacification” are the phrases most often associated with defeating insurgencies. Even the terms used to describe the insurgents themselves, such as the pejorative terms “bandits,” “miscreants,” “terrorists,” or “delinquents,” is evidence that the Western mind still does not grasp the fundamental nature of insurgency. Let us begin with two propositions for consideration and debate: (1) “Where governmental authority is respected and popularly accepted, and administration is fair and effective, insurgencies are unlikely to appear – or if they do appear, they will quickly expire for lack of general support.” (2) “Where governmental authority is neither respected nor popularly accepted, and administration is corrupt and ineffective, insurgencies are more likely to appear – and if they do appear, may prosper if they gain widespread popular support.” We can (and should) debate these propositions and test them based on our knowledge of history and case studies in the twentieth century. Most insurgencies, and certainly those that ultimately proved successful, such as China, Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam, took place in lands where governmental authority was neither popularly accepted nor respected, and where administration, if it existed at all, was spotty, inefficient, or corrupt. We begin to perceive a curious “cause – effect” relationship between ineffective government and the rise of insurgencies.2 1 Although demonization of one’s enemies is common in warfare – “the bloody Hun” of World War I and the “dirty Japs” of World War II being just two examples – demonization may well be even more common in the world of insurgency as it manifests itself in unfortunate pejoratives of a cultural or racial nature. Sadly, demonization merely obscures the origin and aims of the insurgent movement, thereby making it (ironically) even more difficult to confront. 2 With the retreat of colonialism, the world is less likely to see anti-colonial insurgencies in the future. That said, so long as ineffective, exploitative regimes spawn revolutionary movements, the world is likely to see 5 Small Wars Journal - COIN Featured Article www.smallwarsjournal.com Perhaps we should first clarify what true insurgency is as contrasted with terrorism or ordinary criminality.