Studying counter insurgency

Michael Ledeen:

As the Baker/Hamilton club considers our options in the Middle East, its members would do well to study the classic works on counterinsurgency. The first comes from a French lieutenant colonel, David Galula, who was a commander in Algeria in the 1950s. He later studied in America and for a short time consulted to the RAND Corporation. His classic work, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice," has become required reading for the more thoughtful members of the military community.

Originally published in 1964, it has been reissued this year with a dandy introduction by an American Army lieutenant colonel, John Nagl, who also has written a fine book on the same subject, "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam." Galula formulated five basic laws for fighting insurgencies:

(1) The population is the basic target, and all other basic principles flow from this one. Whichever side wins over the population will win the war. "Destruction of the rebel forces and occupation of the geographic terrain led us nowhere so long as we did not control and get the support of the population," Galula wrote about the Algerian conflict in a 1963 RAND report, "Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958," which was reissued this year.

(2) Support from the population can only be obtained through the efforts of the minority among the population that favors the counterinsurgent.

(3) This minority will emerge — and eventually become the majority — only if the counterinsurgent is seen as the ultimate victor. For us to win, the original minority will have to take risks, and it will only do that if we are known, respected, and seen to be winning. Above all, we must be able to protect them.

(4) The superiority of the counterinsurgent will almost never be so overwhelming that he can simply dominate the whole territory. The counterinsurgent has to concentrate his efforts area by area, and demonstrate staying power and resolve.

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This war is not like the one Galula waged in at least two crucial respects: It is much bigger than a single country, and ideology is much more important in vital areas of the battlefield. The insurgents in Iraq do not just depend on the Iraqi people for support, because they have enormous support in Syria and Iran. While the Syrians and the Iranians are supporting an anti-American insurgency in Iraq, they face the real possibility of insurgencies in their own countries. Indeed, the Iranians have had to contend with a nonviolent insurgency for many years now.

That fact — ignored by all the analysts with whom I am familiar — changes things. It means that while we are counterinsurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are potential insurgents in Syria and Iran. We should be fighting for popular support in at least four countries, where the people will be evaluating our likelihood of success across the entire battlefield, not just city-by-city or country-by-country. The peoples of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon — as well as those on the margins, who are not yet swept up in the war but may well be quite soon — are evaluating the battlefield very carefully, for they must be ready to jump on the winner's bandwagon.

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Ledeen's point about the vulnerability of Iran and Syria should not be dismissed. It should also be pointed out that the insurgents in Iraq have alienated the population. They rather than the US are both hated and feared. They hope that fear and coercion will carry the day for them. In other words they are not operating according to the insurgents script that has proved to be successful in the past.