Sorry for light posting. I’m in Afghanistan with David B, where we are being hosted magnificently by the PRISM Cell – a sort of internal thinktank/devils advocate for the UK military. While here, I’m doing some research for a couple of pieces, all in the broad area of influence in war. I’ll have more thoughts on that soon – but as a starter for ten, I’d like your thoughts on the ‘millstone’ strategy: ‘Hang their barbaric actions like millstones around their necks’, as General Petraeus put it in July.
On the one hand, it’s a way to highlight the different values and attitudes adopted by ISAF and the Afghan security forces. On the other, the Taliban don’t seem all that shy about their terrorist tactics and their brutal social justice (which may even find favour with some locals in need of timely, cheap justice). Why spread their message for them?
What do you think? Either way, I’m keen to know what theory underpins Petraeus’ approach – is it a gut feeling? Is it better for group cohesion to point to the abhorent behaviour of outgroups, or to focus on spreading the positive values of ingroups. There’s some interesting research on that, but as yet, I’ve not found anyone here who is aware of it.
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Actually, the millstone strategy fits well with what Col. John Boyd promoted with his strategy for dealing with guerrillas. Here is a quote from his Patterns of Conflict paper. His emphasis on isolating the enemy morally, while increasing your moral standing amongst the population is just one part. The other parts of his strategy are also pertinent as well.
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Break guerrillas’ moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.
*If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides! -Page 108, Patterns of Conflict, Col. John Boyd
I am fine with that strategy, as long as we are ready and willing to hang our crueleties around our necks in an equal manner. While the western Media easily outpowers that of the Taliban, Social Media as a means of asymetric infoops can turn the tide, so we should rather first.
Something that has struck me in recent months is the lack of evidence of an information war. But absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, and I wondered if it was just a lack of media attention. (The only evidence I’ve seen was a cartoon on War is Boring claiming that the only posters you can see were either advertising election candidates or mobile phones).
Yet the ‘information war’ – playing up the positives of the security forces and the negatives of the insurgents – was a major part of the counterinsurgency effort in Malaya according to Thompson, and more recently in Sierra Leone in 2001 and Michael Smith has mentioned its importance in his analysis of UNTAET in East Timor.
I am on my daily dog walk and thus limited to my Iphone but as to Ms. Stoltenow’s comment while of course death and destruction to non-combatants is in every case to be regretted and minimized, her suggestion, whether intended or not, that that is on an equivalence–moral, legal or whatever, with the tender mercies of the AQ and Taliban is ludicrous. As to those few situations where “our” forces commit criminal acts that in some manner rival the actions of our enemy, those can hardly be conflated with the routine and quite calculated practices of our enemies.
A Small Wars Journal piece, Throwing the Book at the Taliban: Undermining Taliban Legitimacy by Highlighting Their Own Hypocrisy [.pdf] by USAF Col. Greg Kleponis should be relevant here.
As I understand it, there are three codes the Taliban may be supposed to fight under: their own “Jihadi Layeha” instructions, as promulgated (and varied) from time to time by Mullah Omar, the Pashtunwali code of honor, and the code of Islam itself, i.e. the Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet.
A quick keyword search on Pashtunwali and Sunnah, however, will not give you the key to how these systems interoperate, any more than a similar search would tell you how the ideals and realities of Catholic Christianity and Irish nationalism would play out together during the Troubles in Belfast.
Charles – many thanks for the link.
I also thought that SWJ article was appropriate here (I will probably post on it tonight).
However, to paraphrase an old political argument. The Taliban may be dirtbags, but unfortunately, they’re Afghan dirtbags. And unlike AQI, which showed little interest or competence at governance, the Taliban actually have been accepted as an honest broker.
Unfortunately, (another cliche), if we want a better reception, we need to fight a better war (or force the enemy to fight a worse war)
I don’t mean to trivialise, but what could the Taleban and associated criminal gangs possibly do to fight a worse war than what they’re doing now, with the massive, deliberate brutality against civilians, and massive losses in fighting ISAF?
@Cincinnatus: First of all, I am still a Mr. and have no intent to change this ;-)
And with regards to how to use the media I am very much willing to agree that we disagree. To that just one remark: who would you consider to be the most critical audience? To me its the home turf. Might be a German Sonderweg, but what do we have to loose when being open about our mistakes?
I do apologize for my hitting the wrong key on my morning jaunt. As to the substantive point, I have no difficulty whatever with airing out our “mistakes.” But I stand by my point that it is wrong on every level to conflate such mistakes with the quite intentional atrocities of our enemies that are the subject of this thread.
Well, there are female Saschas around, mostly spelled Sasha. No big deal.
And as for the conflation: Its the audience, which decides. And if we want them not to conflate, probably the best option is to be transparent AND use discrimanatory power and by that pull the glue from those who use any actual or perceived cover up to conflate.
And yes, this might be as painful and asymetric as the real fight.
In my defense, the wife of my friend and usual host when I visit the UK is Sascha (with a “c”) as is a female student in one of my classes this term.
As to the more substantive difference we may have (and I do not think we disagree on the larger point of the thread), my comments have been directed at your original post. As I hope you will agree, it is a bit different (or at least in keeping with the important aspect of perspective that you and others cite in this thread, it could be perceived differently) from your last post.
I completely agree that a counterinsurgent force must always be mindful of the way its operations are perceived by others, and especially the indigenous and innocent people who inevitably are victimized in such conflicts. Obviously, for them it is often quite irrelevant that harm to them from the COIN force was unintended or in the case of the intentional, criminal.
This does not, however, mean that the violence involved is the “same” as your original post suggested (at least to me) when you used the phrase “our crueleties” (sic) in the second post to the original of this thread. I think it fair to say that this stands is stark contrast to the way you frame this in your latest post.
While both the perceptions about COIN force violence that goes awry and the sad reality that results to innocent people should never be taken for granted or ignored, that does not morph such incidents into “cruelties” of the kind inflicted quite intentionally by the insurgents. I know this may be difficult for some post-modernists to stomach, but at least to some of us dinosaurs there still are forces of good and evil in the world.
The millstone strategy will only work if ISAF can protect the population from Taliban abuse. If ISAF can’t, then publicizing the Taliban’s brutality will likely only remind Afghans that they’d best find some accomodation with their local Taliban. In places where ISAF/GIROA has control, reminders of Taliban abuses might help stiffen the population’s resolve to resist Taliban reinfiltration, but would backfire in contested or Taliban-controlled areas.
I agree that is something we struggle over here with. I am currently working on something that addresses where the Taliban fill the current space not filled by the government. That is the area of local dispute resolution and the indiginous mechanisms that surround them. The idea that the nascent civil legal system that is in some places both alien to the culture and largely absent is to be relied on is folly. We must leverage the indiginous legal systems that have been in place for thousands of years, that are legitmate in their form and also restore the place of tribal elders. This should be considered. There are difficulties but indiginous legal systems coinciding with civil legal frameworks is nothing new. It is done in the USA (Alaska), Canada, Australia (Nunga Courts) and in Papua New Guinea to name a few. This is just removing another lever of the Taliban.
Sir:
More on PRISM cell, please…..
Role, mission, philosophy…..
respectfully,
JP – it’s a very small outfit that sits within the 2* HQ at Regional Command (South). The role is to provide some free-minded thinking on strategy and operations, and to reach out into academic and other communities to do so. It dates, I think, back to GEN David Richard’s time in Afghanistan.
Any insights into this?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090306195.html?hpid=moreheadlines
First time poster here:
I think, with regards to the “millstone” strategy there are a number of reasons that it might be ineffective, possibly counter productive.
a) As you rightly suggest, the Taleban rule through fear, they do not seek “hearts and minds” for governance, rather; complete subservience to their authority.
b) You do a better job than they could of explaining the consequences for “collaboration”, as you said “why spread their message for them”.
c) I think in some ways very few Afghani civilians will have yet to make up their minds as to whether the Taleban are repressive and brutal – anyone who lived in the country prior to 2001 will have been well aware of the nature of the regime.
d) Does carrying out propoganda exercises demonising the Taleban risk associating the “truth” of the message with an inherent distrust of propoganda emerging from coallition troops?
I would contend that a more effective approach is to combine propoganda with a sense of “authority”, rather than discussing the enemy, trying to encourage a sense of identity through information dissemination. The truth is that the Taleban are either popular with villagers or they are not, propoganda on its own is a simplistic way to look at this – information warfare is not going to persuade villagers to make decisions that will in many cases have dire consequences should the Taleban emerge victorious after the main body of coalition troops is no longer on the ground. The truth of the matter is that rather than believing that information warfare itself can limit the ability of the Taleban to operate with local support, the practical realities of whether Taleban are still present or not are far more important to villagers and tribespeople who have been used to decades of continual conflict – they’re not easily convinced of anything but have learned not to risk brutal reprisals.
The key to winning support from regional populations in Afghanistan is through demonstrating a lasting ability to hold and sanitise contested territory, reiterating an unwavering commitment to the war effort (Barack Obama’s plan to bring troops home in 2011 is an absolute boon to the enemy, and a powerful disincentive to cooperate with forces who will have no ability to protect you past that point), the Afghans have learned to trust no one. The thing I find very ironic is that to talk about successful propoganda operations working in Afghanistan when in both the US and UK support for the war is waning suggests to me that a far more practical use of funds would be to spend the money demonstrating to the domestic audience just what the consequences of a withdrawl (and inevitable collapse of Karzai’s govt) would be for the population both in Afghanistan and via the proxy of “al quaida” closer to home..
R
“I would contend that a more effective approach is to combine propoganda with a sense of “authority”, rather than discussing the enemy, trying to encourage a sense of identity through information dissemination.”
That was a very vague statement, what I meant was the strategic use of state symbolism, highlighting significant infrastructural developments, encouraging the sense that there is a powerful and growing national establishment is key to winning the information war. This is especially important given that it may be largely invisible in many areas of the nation. Demonising the Taleban is unnecessary, it’s demonstrating that there is something permanent, powerful and tangible “in control” that holds the key to slowly encouraging the populace to embrace a national identity.
It’s all about making people feel that YOU and not the enemy are in control – the more one highlights “their” crimes the more you are inadvertantly persuading the audience that you are in fact not winning. I’d sooner suggest that the media is used to convey a slightly more optimistic sense of calm and control because that is key to alleviating the fear that is absolutely central to the Taleban modus operandi.
The bottom line is that every report of violence benefits those who are seeking to destabilise the state, having complete control of the airwaves should be making the Taleban’s job harder (with a sense of national stability), not broadcasting their “acheivements”.
It is all fine to vilify the Taliban (as long as not too many Afghanistani’s read Time)… after all, it is good for the purpose of selling the war back home (which is every bit as important as the Hearts and Minds struggle in Afghanistan), as well as forcing Karzai to commit to an Afghanistani political future that does not include power-sharing with the Taliban.
The flip-side of the coin is that we’re stereotyping the enemy as being too evil for negotiation (one of Irving Janis’ symptoms of groupthink). That could turn out to be a slippery slope.
More thought needs to be given to the people who are already IN the Afghan government (and what the Afghan population in general already think of them) before trying to set out the moral high ground or (as Quintin wisely points out) permanently rule of negotiations with Taliban members. At the moment this story appears more aimed at continuing to ‘sell’ the war in the West, (something certain academics and think-tanks are now it seems devoting themselves to full time) ,rather than contemplating or seriously trying to mend/alleviate the very deep pit we’re already stuck in as a result of past choices. ‘Stratcomms’ at most, not strategy.
If we had to consider two successful COIN wars: the Malayan Emergency and the destruction of the Tamil Tigers (are there any other instances?), we notice that a major feature of the COIN success was due to the failure of the insurgents to be Mao’s “fish that swims in the water”. During the Malayan Emergency, the insurgency was largely viewed by the Malay population to be an ethnic Chinese vehicle, and in Sri Lanka, the LTTE was viewed to be a Tamil organisation by the native Singhalese.
This failure of the “fish to swim” need not be limited to differences in nationality. It is equally possible for the insurgent to fail in this regard by attempting to prescribe values for the society that are alien to or unacceptable for that society. In my opinion, such is the case of the Taliban who operate on the periphery of the cultural and tribal structures that had served the Afghanistani so well during the Soviet-Afghan War.
I believe that given the war-like nature of the Afghanistani tribes, there are obvious opportunities to polarise the individual tribes against the Taliban (on condition that we do not move to alienate the tribes from one another). This should be achieved by highlighting the Taliban’s rejection of tribal structures and value systems, and by emphasising the pride that the Mujahideen veterans should feel regarding their achievements during the Soviet-Afghan War – how they should value the tribal structures and culture that was so hard-won, and resist the erosion thereof.
I further believe that the above does not create a requirement to highlight Taliban brutality: for instance in the Time article that accompanies the original post, it is the husband of that poor girl who performs the brutality, not the Taliban as such. To clarify, I do not wish to imply that the Taliban are not brutal… but am simply pointing out that brutality is not the exclusive property of the Taliban. It is well documented that there are components within this society (Taliban or not) that are brutal by nature, and this message of brutality will be lost on them. Furthermore, by concentrating on this brutality, we’re missing out on opportunities to highlight the tear-down that the Taliban are hoping to bring about within the tribal structures. By moving away from a brutality-based message, we have the added bonus of dodging that groupthink symptom mentioned in my earlier post. I recognise that the negation of this brutality may be a bitter pill for us Westerners to swallow, but that is sometimes how it goes in those mountains.
Returning to the subject of bringing that polarisation about: we need to remember the illiteracy index. Propaganda will therefore have to be tailored accordingly. Fortunately, we have a big multi-media industry in the West and they are past masters at getting audiences to believe anything.
Interesting post, but the whole infrastructure of ‘the tribes’ (as understood by 19th century Western anthropologists) with truly influential tribal elders/maliks is sadly mostly already gone in Afghanistan, and on the way out in FATA in Pakistan, if it ever really existed in the first place-atomized by war and modernization. The qawm structures remain, but it is these same structures that the Taliban themselves are most skilled at navigating, and that we stand almost no chance of really culturally understanding in the time remaining to us (though Afghans themselves may find an answer). We had the whole ‘let’s mobilize the tribes’ debate about a year ago. On qawm structures, see Abdulkader Sinno.
Excellent point Pericles and one in which I am currently addressing. This erosion of the social fabric has had some very bad consequences. This has allowed the influence of extremists to infiltrate the villages and communities. Their fathers and grandfathers aren’t encouraging them to become suicide bombers. It is the deterioration of the generational authority structures which has led to this.