Knowing the enemy

Rowan Scarborough:

Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Andrea J. Dew have done more than write a book on America's new enemies. The two authors have done a public service.
Anyone interested in the current struggle against Islamic extremists would better understand the fighting after reading "Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias." The authors are academicians, but the book is not a tedious professorial term paper. Instead, it is a plain-English, but detailed, explanation of who these Islamists are and why it is so difficult to defeat them.
The military has taken to calling its new foes "non-state actors," but the problem is more complex. To understand the enemy, Mr. Shultz and Ms. Dew first explain the clan and tribal systems that dominate Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. They write of the tradition of Jihad (tribes fight ferociously and forever). And finally, Islam's history of rejecting invaders, no matter how noble their cause. Historically, their tactics shun distinct battle lines and conventional formations. Instead, they rely on ambush, planted bombs and sabotage to wear the invaders down.
It is too bad "Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias" did not come out while the Bush cabinet planned war in Iraq. For whatever reason, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, et al, never took into account the possibility of a robust post-Saddam Hussein insurgency, aided by outsiders. Instead of immediately launching counter-insurgency operations and Sunni-Shiite diplomacy in 2003, the Americans went looking for weapons of mass destruction and tried to start an interim government. Unbothered, thousands of Saddam loyalists plotted the next war. And in the south, a little known cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, created an anti-American militia. We are living with those planning mistakes today.
The book reminds us of what history clearly shows: Whenever an Islamic country is pierced by invaders, two developments follow: the tribal or clan ethos of fighting; and outside actors. In Somalia, an anti-American warlord mobilized an insurgency that began ambushing and murdering United Nations troops. Al Qaeda terrorists arrived, teaching the militias new tactics for shooting down low-flying U.S. helicopters. "The form of warfare they practiced had little in common with the principles set down by the founding fathers of modern Western warfare," the authors point out.
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The point is, Somalia and Afghanistan showed these conflicts are never fought in isolation. Yet few, if any, inside the administration predicted the jihadist template for Iraq.But it happened. Rising up were homegrown insurgents built around tribal and clan leaders, and augmented by foreign jihadists and outside actors Iran and Syria.
Planners should have done research. Mr. Shultz and Ms. Dew write that the Iraqi way of fighting has its roots in the ancient tactics of Bedouins, the nomadic Arabic tribes who settled in Iraq. "Bedouin social customs and tribal structure were ideally suited for the key operational feature of irregular warfare — the raid," the authors write. "Avoid the opponent's strength and exploit targets of opportunity through highly mobile and unpredictable attacks."
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... War planners must first recognize the enemy will not fight fair, so to speak. Then they must study its cellular structure, and identify its leaders and where they operate. This was not done in Iraq early on. The insurgency's Sunni component set up shop in areas north and west of Baghdad and operated with near-impunity for two years....
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It describes about what I expected when we went to war and defeated Saddam. What needs to happen is not to shrink from this type of warfare, but to find a way to defeat. We have to ake away the hope of these people that they can win. If we do not, we will be seeing more of these wars and the world will be worse off.

I have ordered the book and will revue it when I get a chance.

Josh Manchester has an interesting article on stateless war fighting organizations. He throws Blackwater into the mix.