Counterinsurgency polling

The Toronto Star:

Here's a novel idea: armies don't need to be great big killing machines.

They can also conduct public-opinion polls.

This, it seems, is the modern way.

"It's not pure war-fighting any more," says Lt.-Cmdr. Wynn Polnicky, part of the 2,500-strong Canadian military contingent currently waging war in southern Afghanistan against a shadowy force of fundamentalist Islamic rebels known as the Taliban.

"It's pretty clear we have an insurgency here, but what really matters is what people think. So, just ask them. It's not an earth-shaking idea."

Or maybe, in a way, it is.

Traditionally, armies have tended to train most of their attention – not to mention almost all of their gun sights – on the firearm-toting fighters located on the opposite side of the front line, otherwise known as the enemy.

In Polnicky's view, however, it is not just the enemy that you need to be concerned about.

It's everybody else.

"You're not just trying to knock over the bad guys," he says.

"You're trying to create an effect. We're here to make Afghanistan a functional country. That's what we want to measure. Is the government better? Is security improving? Is the economy improving?"

In other words, what do people think about what is going on around them?

If ordinary Afghans are feeling upbeat about the trajectory of their lives, then that's good news for the country's rulers, as well as for people such as Polnicky, who are fighting on the Afghan government's side.

But the opposite applies as well. If people are discouraged about their lot, then the Taliban can surely take heart.

Either way, it is surely better to know what people are thinking than to flounder in the dark, and right now almost nobody except the Afghan people themselves has much idea what the Afghan people are thinking.

Polnicky wants to find out, and he means to do it by modern, scientific means – in other words, by conducting a poll.

In fact, by conducting a series of polls.

"What we're intending to do is to line up local polling companies," he says. "They're probably more aware of Afghan culture than we are."

...

In counterinsurgency warfare the people are considered the center of gravity. They are what the fight is ultimately over. However, polling may not give you that much information even if it is negative, because the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq is not trying to win hearts and minds, it is trying to intimidate. Most polling has shown that al Qaeda has the support of around five percent of the population in Iraq, but this lack of support has certainly not "intimidated" al Qaeda.