The British have a long history of stealing/saving (depending on your perspective) historical monuments from other cultures. The Elgin Marbles are a case in point.

However, I think we can all agree that we reached a new high of historical preservation/theft with the acquisition in 2003 of the buttocks from the iconic statue of Saddam Hussein by a (now former) SAS soldier, which he wants to auction to raise funds for wounded UK soldiers.

But now apparently the Iraqi government has demanded its return, claiming that the former dictator’s shiny metal ass is…wait for it…“a cultural antiquity”.

I have no doubt that in some ways it’s a very serious issue with lots of valid argumentation on both sides…but sometimes you really do just have to laugh!

So this evening, I was reading through the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Annual Report 2010–2011 (you know, just casually). As I delved inside, I became particularly intrigued by the sheer number of agencies who were tasked with protecting the UK from cyber attack, or at least some particular portion of it.

Now I’m no cyber guru, but it seemed to me baffling that we could have created such a uniquely complicated tangle of overlapping authorities spread across a whopping 18 (!) different agencies (nominally headed by the Cabinet Office):

It would seem that I am not alone either.

Of course, this is slightly old news, but the government’s response to the issue is definitely not. It appears now that government has begun to attempt to unravel this convoluted web (sorry for such a terrible pun!) of agencies through the establishment of a new, centralised (at least partially) cyber security hub (full report here), which it announced in November.

My knowledge of this topic area is very limited, but I was interested to know from some of the cyber aficionados (and others too) as to their thoughts on these issues:

- Is it right for multiple agencies be employed across the private and public sector to formally help protect the UK from cyber attacks? It seems that, done right, this could lead to an synergistic, mutually supportive system whereby the different agencies provide interlocking safety nets that stop threats more effectively than a single brittle barrier. But done wrong, it could be a chaotic shambles where no one really takes overall responsibility, coordination breaks down and massive gaping gaps are left open for cyber attackers to exploit.

- Is the government right to try to scoop it all up under the jurisdiction of one centralised centre? This seems like a good idea on the surface, but will having one central agency like this ultimately lead to bureaucratic inefficiency? In fact, is this even really viable as an idea, or will the other entities – particularly within the private sector - continue to flourish at such a rate that the centre will quickly become all but obsolescent?

Any thoughts?

As reported in recent days, Hamas this week announced a shift in its ‘emphasis from armed struggle to non-violent resistance‘. This development ties in to the discussion prompted by the last KoW post that dealt with the Israel-Palestinian conflict. One question discussed then was the level of threat posed to Israel by the groups and states surrounding it.

Obviously Hamas’ declaration will inform this debate. Since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006 there has been speculation that the group, now with formal power, would moderate its aims and tone down its rhetoric. After all, Hamas emerged as a radical splinter from a more moderate movement; who is to say it cannot evolve in the opposite direction. But is this what is happening?

Clearly, it will depend on who you ask: much like everything else in the Middle East, or in politics in general, Hamas’ announcement of a shift away from violence will be interpreted differently depending on pre-existing convictions and party lines. For example, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev has already warned that ‘No one in the international community should have illusions as to Hamas… This is a movement that is terrorist to the core’.

What Regev and other concerned analysts base themselves on is of course Hamas’ rhetoric about destroying Israel and its actions oriented toward that goal. Treating these two aspects separately, the violence has lately tailed off, though it is uncertain whether this reflects reduced capability or an actual change of heart. Regardless, Hamas’ previous violence against Israel would not in itself preclude more constructive engagement in the future – after all, PLO followed this very path.

It is really in the rhetoric where Hamas has boxed itself into a corner, on three counts. First, its conciliatory statements clash with several other declarations, such as the pledge during Hamas’ anniversary celebration this very month, that ‘armed struggle’ is the ‘strategic choice for liberating Palestinian land from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea’. It is difficult to see comments such as these as anything but a declaration of endless and existential war against Israel.

Second, there is of course the infamous Covenant, a 1988 document released by Hamas upon its creation and which is deeply anti-Semitic (almost ludicrously so – it blames Jews for, inter alia, the ‘French Revolution, the Communist revolution, and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there’). Unless Hamas somehow renounce their covenant, or it somehow comes to be viewed as irrelevant to its actual political goals, any type of rapprochement between Israel and Hamas looks highly unlikely.

Third, and as Glenn E. Robinson explains in his cogently argued chapter ‘Hamas as a Social Movement’ (in Quintan Wiktorowicz’ book Islamic Activism), Hamas has long framed its struggle as a combination of direct action and patience (or sabr) – both are used toward the end of defeating Israel. Meir Litvak picks up on this too, pointing to Hamas’ pragmatic use of hudna (or short-term ceasefires) as a means of regaining strength during times of weakness and continuing the armed struggle by other means. What both authors suggest is that when Hamas appears conciliatory, it is in fact being deceptive. Thus, the recent prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit, the captured Israeli soldier, does not indicate an ability to negotiate with Hamas, but its pragmatic use of non-violent means to make its violent campaign more effective. And the same, so the argument goes, applies to Hamas’ apparent renunciation of violence.

This analysis may very well be correct, but the problem is that it is also self-fulfilling. The reason Hamas frames concessions or passivity as part of sabr or hudna is so that it can present even weakness and accommodation as part of the bigger struggle (‘it’s all part of the plan’). Thus, the group can maintain its hard-core credentials whether it decides to attack or lay low. But because this combination of struggle and patience can justify any activity on the part of the group, it is also largely meaningless – at least in terms of understanding the group’s behaviour.

Indeed, referring to these frames when analysing Hamas’ behaviour can only lead to one conclusion – the one arrived at by Regev above. If we dismiss every instance of moderation or conciliation as examples of hudna or sabr, the inevitable conclusion is that engagement of any type is self-defeating. But this is also an argument that is impossible to disprove, at least within its own logic.

This is not to say that Hamas’ rhetoric of moderation is sincere. Maybe this is a short-term ploy to amass strength during a time of weakness. But what we need is an analytical lens that does not ineluctably lead us to this conclusion. Better to welcome Hamas’ apparent shift from violence, take it at face value, seek to derive as much advantage from it as possible, all while – of course – keeping up our guard. Look out for fresh opportunities rather than repeat tired bromides: will this shift split Hamas, are there intra-group dynamics that can be seized upon, even exploited?

Whatever Hamas’ intentions, there is a long way to go before we can start thinking of negotiations like those between PLO and Israel. One giant stumbling block will be Hamas’ covenant and anti-Semitic rhetoric, which make permanent conciliation all but impossible. But rather than have these challenges obscure possible opportunities, let’s find opportunities to deal with the challenges.

Carl Prine had some not-so-kind words to say (5,500 of them) about my (1,500 word) article on Foreign Policy’s AFPAK Channel and about arguments he ascribes to me that I did not make.

I am going to address these issues point by point (in 1,400 words). I will address the arguments rather than the people making them in the hope they might extend the same courtesy to me and others in the future. It is important that we strive to have civil debate and discussion. Vitriol clouds otherwise reasonable arguments and entrenches people in their differences.

The core argument of my FP article was that we would be ill-advised to let our counter-insurgency capabilities and lessons wither because insurgency is not going to wither. While it is important to critically appraise the policy and strategic failures of the last decade, it is also important to learn the right lessons and maintain the right capabilities to deal with future irregular armed actors that challenge American interests. That is the discussion we must have, rather than keep rehashing the angry debates of the last decade that have produced more heat than light.

Neither Prine nor Major Mike Few have disagreed with that core argument either in Prine’s blog post or Major Few’s more level-headed response in FP.

Now, onto the angry debates of the last decade…

A) Service: Prine objects to my use of the word “served,” to describe my position with the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS). When I worked for HTS, BAE Systems hired people into the training program. We then went through the U.S. Army hiring process while in training. Those of us who made that cut “transitioned” to become Department of the Army Civilians before we deployed.

I took the same oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution that Prine and Major Few did. And I put my life at risk in service of that oath. I worked as an Army employee in Helmand, Afghanistan, carrying a weapon, wearing ACUs, going on foot and vehicle patrols alongside soldiers, and I saw combat. I have seen first-hand the human costs of war. I certainly saw it as service to my country, but others may make up their own minds as to what is and is not “service” as they understand it.

B) Not a newbie:  Because Prine has not heard of me before and did not like my article, he called me “new to the field” and ill-read in an effort to discredit me. Let me set the record straight. I have been close to these issues for the last decade as a student, scholar, and most recently practitioner of sorts.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to the study of insurgency/revolutionary warfare and counterinsurgency a decade ago by the great Sam C. Sarkesian (who sadly passed away this year) as a student at Loyola University Chicago, which is when I bought and first read the Small Wars Manual.

After a few years in DC, I went to London and received my MA from the King’s College War Studies Department where I was fortunate to engage with and learn from David Betz (who blogs here at KoW), John Mackinlay, Theo Farrell, and Michael Rainsborough, which is why I was amused when Prine suggested I familiarize myself with David’s and John’s work.

Contrary to Prine’s remarks, not only did I read John’s book, The Insurgent Archipelago, in draft and published form, but I am thanked in the acknowledgments. I had to read Callwell, Galula, Thompson, Kitson, Mao, Giap, Marighella, Debray, and several others in an excellent course run by David and John at King’s on the evolution of insurgency and counter-insurgency.

And as far as some of the other thinkers named at LoD, I drew heavily on Leites and Wolf in one of the studies I carried out for Task Force Helmand as an HTT Social Scientist. I adapted the report and presented it recently at the biennial conference of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, the world’s premiere organization for civil-military affairs. It is currently being adapted for publication. My other work has focused largely on Islamism and terrorism.

I won’t go through my own experience and familiarity with the other scholars on Prine’s extensive list. I don’t think I should have had to mention all of these people in my original article to avoid ridicule. Moreover, I had a word limit. Bloggers often don’t.

Equally relevant is my direct experience on the ground, in support of operations in Central Helmand Province, a very troubled place. And I do appreciate Prine’s kind words about a recent talk I gave last month on that troubled place (audio here).

Needless to say, I recognize COIN theory is not “new” as such. However, in 2006 and 2007 it was framed as “new thinking,” by many observers, officers, and scholars, including one of Prine’s favored scholars (who I also enjoy reading), Steven Metz.

C) Honest misunderstanding: Prine misunderstood what I wrote when I said Colonel Gian Gentile, COIN critic extraordinaire, “represents the first, second, and final strands of anti-counterinsurgency discontent” (I refer readers back to my article for the context). This is a fair mistake. I could have written it more clearly. I was referencing the prior paragraph where I presented “five inter-related drivers” of anti-COIN discontent.

Colonel Gentile’s critiques, which I have read for years with interest (if not always agreement), generally focus on the first, second, and last of these drivers. Prine disagrees with some of these – particularly the relevance of numbers (1) and (4).

D) Armor: I am also tweaked for noting that both Major Few and Colonel Gentile are armor officers, but not noting the same about LTC (ret.) Nagl. I did know Nagl’s branch and perhaps could have noted it, but Prine is reading way too much into this.

Major Few is not as public a figure as the other people mentioned in the article. I was providing background and one of the few things his Small Wars Journal bio states is that he is “an active duty armor officer.”

For the record, I saw armor used to great effect in Helmand by the US Marines, the Brits, and the Danes. I also served under and with some amazing British armor officers and had some fun riding around with armored cav units.

E) Defense Industry: I concede the points Prine makes in his 860+ words on contractors, costs, and the defense industry. His remarks bring context and perspective to the one sentence I devoted to the subject in my article.

F) Operations and Strategy: Prine states that when I draw on Theo Farrell’s “Campaign disconnect: operational progress and strategic obstacles in Afghanistan, 2009-2011″, I am proving my ignorance of military affairs. I disagree. One of the signal failures of our Afghanistan campaign is that despite substantial operational progress, we have not gotten much closer to what we could view as a victory. In other words, we have secured a lot of key populated rural valleys and district and provincial capitals and held them with the Afghan National Security Forces. But, as Farrell argues, there is an “operational-strategic disconnect” in our Afghan campaign.

G) We don’t disagree on much: Finally, Prine and Major Few make a mistake when reading my article. They overlook the central argument and focus on my critique of Few’s unfair and unkind words about the morality of those who have participated in or developed the ideas behind counter-insurgency, in the defense industry and think tank communities. One might even argue that he was demonizing them, which is what I stated in my much-maligned comment to his blog post. He mistook this observation for a personal attack on him (when actually, the subject of my remarks was his attack on third parties).

My FP article is not about Major Few, but this seems to have gotten lost in their responses. In fact, there is so little daylight between my own argument and Major Few’s in his response on FP.com, that I am having trouble figuring out where we disagree aside from the tone we prefer to use when we communicate with others on professional matters (no matter how personally we feel about them).

But I hope this will change in the future when we inevitably encounter each other’s work.

Correction: The “new thinking” quote was in the forward to Metz’s report, written by Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr., the director of the Strategic Studies Institute. Another of people framing modern COIN as somehow “new” can be found here.

_________________________________________

The views and opinions expressed here do not represent those of the Department of the Army, Training and Doctrine Command, or the Human Terrain System.

It is ironic that my article, which lamented the ‘heated and overly personalized polemic’ about counterinsurgency, has now dragged me deep into it. I say ‘dragged’ because it is with reluctance that I reply to Carl Prine’s latest broadside against the article and my subsequent defence of it (following his initial assault). The reason I do so is Prine’s renewed attempt to undermine my integrity as a researcher – something I take seriously. Sure, my analysis can be wrong, but to accuse me of ‘cherry-picking the evidence’ is quite low. Prine, where I am wrong, kindly assume cock-up rather than conspiracy.

But that is exactly the point: Prine’s pre-existing bias about my work produces an almost ideological response. Prine refutes my suggestion that, having coined the terms ‘COINdinista’ and ‘COINtra’, he has come to view the counterinsurgency debate through this reductive lens. The terms were mere jest, he says; or perhaps he was ‘before the COINdinista and COINtra stuff before he was against it’. Regardless, Prine’s insistence in gluing his caricature of me to his caricatures of Nagl, Kilcullen and McMaster belies an undifferentiated understanding of our respective scholarship and an insistence on rejecting his prime ‘adversaries’ as an indistinguishable whole – as COINdinistas.

My crime, apparently, is writing a book on counterinsurgency that included a two-page foreword written by arch-nemesis John Nagl. This is sufficient for Prine to misinterpret the rest of my work as surge propaganda, even when my position is not so far removed from his own. For example, Prine seems to concede that local factors along with US inputs accounted for the decline in Iraqi casualties in 2006-2008, but when I say the same, he reads it as ‘COIN porn’. Prine notes that ‘tactical innovations likely helped matters’ and I write that ‘U.S. inputs were not the only or the main factor’ but nonetheless an important one. Prine, however, interprets my words as meaning ‘it was the “Surge” all along’. Clearly that is not what I said.

Why the distortion? It has to do with perspective. Prine is upset about those who glorified US inputs during the surge and overlooked local factors. I am concerned about those who consider only local factors and overlook US inputs – because I fear this will result in valuable lessons being lost and because I believe the two to be inextricably intertwined. Given our differing starting points, he approaches my scholarship with suspicion and a lot of sneer, even more so because he is convinced I am a card-carrying COINdinista with an agenda to sell.

Yet despite his suspicions and misgivings, his analysis must in the end base itself on what I actually wrote and it is here that he gets himself into trouble. The article in question is far more balanced and nuanced that he realises and if he just gave me the benefit of doubt, I suspect he would find many of my views not so far removed from his own. Anyone who reads my article carefully (please do) and then reads Prine’s tearing apart of it will notice his many factual mistakes and somewhat febrile (I used the word once, Carl, not twice so here is another one to make up the difference) interpretation of the subject-matter. Again, this is all part of this problem of polarization that stunts this conversation, not just between Prine and I, but in general.

IDPs, Surge and Security

That is not to say there are no substantive differences. One relates to the significance of IDP and refugee returns for the surge. In the article, I pointed to the 34,000 Baghdadis who had returned to the city by 2009 to challenge the notion that Baghdad had been stabilized through ethnic cleansing. If this were the case, these returning Baghdadis would probably not want to return and, if they did, they would again face their cleansers and violence would continue. To my mind, a better explanation lies in the security gains that occurred during the time of the surge. In other words, it wasn’t simply that ethnic cleansing had divided the two communities and thereby created a peaceful ‘separation of forces’.

Prine takes me to task for focusing on these 34,000 instead of the three million Iraqis still displaced by the fighting. Prine argues that the return rate is puny and therefore not indicative of anything. Worse, he argues that by focusing on the 34k I am ‘cherry-picking the evidence’.

First, I will concede I made a mistake: I wrote 34,000 ‘Baghdadis’ when in fact the statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) spoke of 33,196 families, that is to say nearly 160,000 individuals. Prine might argue that this number is still too small to say anything about why these people left and subsequently returned to the city. Yet the IOM study also notes that in 2009, more than 78% of the ‘nearly 140,000 IDP families still displaced from Baghdad’ intended to return to the city. That accounts for another 700,000 returnees, excluding the 160,000 already mentioned (i.e. a total of 860,000 people). Suddenly we are no longer talking about ‘nearly 34,000 IDPs’.

On the basis of interviews with displaced Iraqis, the IOM also shows that most of those who returned to Baghdad did so because of ‘improved security’ (and IOM isn’t even a COINdinista organization!). So, as in the article, if Baghdad was stabilized through ethnic cleansing in 2006-2007, why did 860,000 Baghdadis feel safe to return or intend to return by 2009, citing ‘improved security’? Furthermore, 87.1%’ of the returnees said they would like to ‘return to their original homes within Baghdad governorate’. Maybe it is because security had actually improved, not through ethnic cleansing, but because the surge and other local factors, from late 2006 onwards, had stopped the cycle of violence.

Now, Prine will still compare the number of actual and future returnees to the millions of Iraqis still displaced. But Prine is talking about displaced people from Iraq as a whole, whereas I was talking specifically about Baghdad. Why? Not because I was cherry-picking, but because this was an article about the surge and the surge occurred mostly in Baghdad. The broader problem of Iraqi refugees and IDPs is serious and any pretense that all was milk and honey in post-surge Iraq would truly be obscene. But I never made that case and this was not my focus.

(Even then, there are some interesting commonalities: the UNHCR in 2011 found that ‘the majority of Refugees Returnees site [sic] the improved security/ political situation in their area of return as the primary reason for permanent return to Iraq’. Again this challenges the notion that the completion of ethnic cleansing caused violence to drop: if security was merely a product of combatants having been separated, conflict would naturally ensue as soon as this separation ceases to be. But I digress).

Prine also criticizes me for not responding to some of his other charges, so I will do so now.

DC Politics and the Surge

Prine says that I do not get DC politics. What I wrote was that ‘parochial concerns… within the American political scene’ colour the prevalent understanding of the surge, as it was an idea promoted by the Bush administration and resisted by Democrat lawmakers. Prine counters and suggests these Democrats eventually went along with it, lending their support to the military rather than to George Bush. I agree, though the noisy grandstanding by Democrats during the spring and autumn 2007 Petraeus hearings should not be forgotten. Even so, nothing here challenges the original point, namely that Democrats are less likely and Republicans more likely to view the surge favorably, even today, because of domestic party-political reasons. Views on the surge are therefore influenced not only by what happened in Iraq but by, as I put it, more ‘parochial concerns’. This, as I argued, makes it more difficult to have an honest discussion of the surge. Apologies, if this was not clear in the text.

The ‘old COIN bromides’

I do not actually mention the Malayan Emergency in my article yet both Col Gian Gentile and Carl Prine react to it by attacking my previous scholarship on this campaign. Very odd. Prine says I present a ‘fairytale’ version of the campaign. Gentile makes all sorts of outlandish assertions as to what I do and do not say about it. Neither of them appears to have read anything I have written on the topic. Until their allegations are more specifically based on what I actually say – and not their interpretation of it – I do not know how to respond. Certainly I have never denied, as Prine seems to suggest, that the British used violence in its campaign against the rebels, even a lot of violence at times. I do not know where Prine gets this idea from.

As to the ‘verities’ derived from this and other campaigns, substitute ‘minimal use of force’ for the ‘appropriate use of force to meet mission objectives’ and the increase in violence during the surge becomes more consistent with the counterinsurgency principles. This also goes some way toward explaining my view on the use of force in most of the Malaya campaign. Still, I will concede I should have made that substitution from the outset.

The rest of Prine’s latest text repeats accusations I feel I dealt with adequately in my last post.

That leaves just one last, last word on this issue

Prine accuses me of including a ‘nasty slur’ and the ‘cheapest ad hominem attack imaginable’ in my last post. Frankly, I do not know what he is talking about. For those of you who read the post, where is this attack? Help me out… This is actually important to me, because ad hominem attacks are not my style. To the contrary, I wanted to make it clear in my last post that ‘I still like Prine’.

On this topic, though, Prine is at his best when he attacks the arguments I and others make, not when he targets my earnestness and integrity as a researcher. I enjoy discussing my research, fiercely even, and am not married to any of my preconceptions or findings. But I find it less fun to be accused of cooking the books, purposefully manipulating information and deceiving my readers. It does not provide for a constructive discussion but entrenches pre-existing positions and creates enmities. It follows that whatever ‘slur’ Prine divined from my text was certainly not intended and I would greatly appreciate it if, in any follow-up to this post, my integrity as a researcher is not once again dragged through the mud.

Carl Prine is a consummate critic. Using a pseudonym, he long dominated the comments section at Abu Muqawama and then at Ink Spots, where he sniped at blog posts and commentators alike but also provided lengthy and often insightful analysis of the issues being discussed. He has since dropped his pseudonym but continues to offer sharp commentary and criticism over at Line of Departure. Occasionally, his readers are treated to an evisceration of an article, or more specifically an author. The titles will be as uncompromising as the content: ‘Starbuck is Wrong’, ‘Finel is Wrong’, and so on. Prine writes and argues well and is widely read, but sometimes his tongue seems far sharper than his eye. Now that your humble author is in his firing line, let’s take a moment to reflect on what he has to say about the surge and counterinsurgency.

First some background: this all relates to an article of mine published this week in PRISM, the journal of the Consortium of Complex Operations. Titled ‘Counterinsurgency after Afghanistan: A Concept in Crisis’, the article sought to do three things: to assess the increasingly disparaging narratives about counterinsurgency in the United States and beyond; to tease out the concept’s contributions and limitations; and to chart a way that would see us retain the valuable lessons of the last decade of operations.

Carl Prine severely dislikes the article and penned a lengthy critique. He has many problems with it, but in the haste to provide his readers another ‘assault and battery’, he misreads that which he is reviewing and contradicts both himself and the scholarship that he cites. In typical Prine style, let’s go through it point by point.

Prine misrepresents the COIN debate

Straight off the bat, Prine argues that my article makes points that ‘almost everyone already shares, even the most revisionist of the many critics’ of US operations. Prine’s own post would seem to contradict this claim – after all, he thinks I am ‘mostly wrong’. As to the notion of a consensus on this topic, Prine himself notes (just two sentences earlier) the ‘increasingly shrill debates over COIN, the Iraqi “surge” and the “strategy in Afghanistan’. So in fact the debate is far from settled (something further illustrated by the discussions on Small Wars Journal, World Politics Review, and beyond). This is precisely what prompted the article: an attempt to chart a middle course and establish common ground between two polarized camps, so as to reach multi-causal explanations for complex problems.

Prine sees COINdinistas under the bed

Prine suggests that I am incapable of charting such a course because I have a ‘career stake’ in promoting counterinsurgency (given the book I wrote on the topic in 2009 and the ‘counterinsurgency-friendly’ people I interviewed for it). This raises two points. First, the book was on the rise of counterinsurgency within the US military, which it welcomed as a necessary innovation given previous narrow and reductive thinking about war and the benefits of ‘transformation’. That does not, and has never meant, that counterinsurgency is itself an infallible concept, particularly given the fact that it means so many things to so many people. It should also not mean that I am now too biased to have a worthwhile opinion on the matter. Indeed, if someone who has written on the topic is automatically dismissed as ‘tipping the scales’, as Prine suggests, who should we trust instead?

In the end, trust comes down to arguments and evidence – and we’ll get into that in a moment. But this relates also to Prine’s effort to tar me as biased based on the people cited in my book. Why does Prine concentrate on the sources for a book written two years ago when reviewng an article published this week on a different (albeit related) topic? Because doing so helps Prine class me as a ‘COINdinista’ (a term Prine coined for those who ‘like’ counterinsurgency) and as a ‘COINdinista’, everything I say can be dismissed using rote arguments and accusations of buy-in. Suddenly I am a pamphleteer, a propagandist and echo chamber for the ‘dominant narrative’ spun by power-hungry generals and politically-motivated pundits.

The thing is, viewing the debate in terms of ‘COINdinista’ and its antonym, COINtras (a term also coined by Prine), is deeply unhelpful. This is an overly reductive dichotomy: counterinsurgency is not a flavour of ice-cream or a sports team, to be liked or disliked, but an ambiguous term with many meanings and facets. It should therefore be eminently possible to appreciate counterinsurgency for its contributions, all while critiquing its limitations. Indeed, this is the only way of getting beyond this tired polarization that has stifled the debate to date.

Prine doesn’t like nuance

Prine doesn’t seem to like this. He also criticises my apparent desire to ‘have it both ways’ with regard to ‘the surge’, because I argue that it is difficult, or at any rate too early, to identify one singular factor that caused the decline in casualties in Iraq at that time. It is necessary to understand the admixture of influences, including US inputs and local factors, that led to this decline. Still, the evidence so far strongly suggests that while the surge was not ‘the only or the main factor’ it was nonetheless important and provides some very relevant lessons. Its effect varied across time and space – another reason why a blanket dismissal seems so tendentious – but there is ample evidence of it having, together with other factors, affected the calculations of local actors on the ground, resulting in new political opportunities and partnerships that were fully exploited.

Prine misuses his own statistics

Speaking of the surge, Prine tries to use a Pentagon and Congressional Research Service report from 2008 to show ‘a downward slump’ in casualties beginning in December 2006, ‘three months’ before Petraeus arrived. This, Prine says, shows that Petraeus was incidental to the stabilisation of Iraq during this time: ‘by the time Petraeus arrived three months later to begin Surgifying Baghdad and environs, that toll had dropped by nearly a third’.

Now, if Prine’s loyal readers were to consult the actual report, they would see that whereas there were certainly fewer casualties in January 2007 than in the previous month, we are still talking of more than 3,500 deaths in that month alone (p. 19). Second, Petraeus arrived in early February, not March, which invalidates the point being made – though this is really a technicality. Third, even if there was a decrease in casualties in these early months of 2007, Iraq still faced, until August 2007, between 2,000 and 3,700 casualties per month. It would be interesting to hear how the people mired in that violence would react to Prine’s description of it as a ‘downward slump’ in casualties.

Still, the more fundamental point here is not to get hung up on when Petraeus arrived and whether there were 3,000 or 2,000 casualties that month, but on the subsequent reduction in casualties, by November 2007, to the 750 range and below. Thus, whereas Petraeus’ arrival signalled continuity as well as change, the ‘long-term effect [even the medium-term effect] of the shift in strategy’ was ‘undeniably stabilizing’ (a quotation from the article that Prine attacked).

So Prine’s question of ‘why the surge get credit for trends that preceded it’ is misleading. It betrays an expectation that if Petraeus did not change everything, he changed nothing at all – again leaving little space for nuance. With the surge, Petraeus elevated practices that some commanders had come to beforehand through ad hoc adaption. He incorporated these practices, along with other tenets, into a strategic-level campaign plan that was closely tailored to the political conditions, challenges and opportunities on the ground at that time.

Prine confuses history with historiography

Still, Prine is right when he points to the lack of detail in the article on the Iraq and Afghan wars. Yet as any author of a journal article or a book will know, it is simply impossible to do everything and therefore necessary to focus on specific aspects (even if this means skirting over others). In this case, the article was about the popular US historiography of the surge and of counterinsurgency, not a history of politics in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such it deals with the narratives that are emerging in the US defence community about counterinsurgency, what it achieved, what it is and how it should be remembered. This is not, in other words, an article for those seeking to learn more about Da’wa-ISCI politics, the Sadrist militias in Basra and so on. Yet this does not mean that ‘Ucko’s Afghanistan and Iraq contain no Afghans or Iraqis’ or that I do not ‘care about Iraqi or Afghan politics’; these topics are simply dealt with in other articles.

But I still like Prine

I didn’t care for Prine’s review of this article, but Prine remains a vital voice in the debate on counterinsurgency. His passion in challenging the conventional wisdom and detailed understanding of the topics on which he writes usually provide for breaths of fresh air in a debate too stodgy, insular and self-referential. His wide area of expertise, stretching far beyond Iraq to large parts of sub-Saharan Africa and probably beyond, allows him to draw from a far wider canvas than most others.

Prine is a much-needed critic and he comes armed with a sharp pen. But the quality of his argumentation is undermined by the occasional ad hominem attack and his ‘pointlessly obstinate’ approach toward some issues (his words, not mine). My recommendation: your readers demand blood, but make sure they get a full serving of brains as well.

It was Victor Hugo who said:

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come. 

That may be true, and if it is, I can tell you one thing: armies like to fight. And that is what we have seen lately–fights– surrounding a couple of ideas in particular.

Ferguson v Mishra

The Ivory Tower Soap Opera Award must go to the ongoing spat between Niall Ferguson and Pankaj Mishra.  It started in the London Review of Books with Mishra’s review ‘Watch This Man’. (I won’t summarise it; it is well worth the read: involves allegations of racism, of Leftist conspiracy, and much more…and lawyers might be involved soon.)  The battle then raged in the LRB’s Letters sections here and here.  The latest news is that it may move from writing to writs, as Ferguson has threatened legal action.  Goodness only knows where it will lead.

Gentile v Ucko

A much smaller, but somewhat more interesting spat (given that one of the protagonists is a KOW contributor), is one that is brewing between David Ucko and Gian Gentile over an idea: counterinsurgency.

Ucko published an article in PRISM which assesses the idea of counterinsurgency after Afghanistan.  Frank Hoffman blogged about it over at Small Wars Journal and then a nasty little scrap ensued in the comments section.  (Again, check them out for yourself.  Quite worth a read…no lawyers yet marshalled, though). 

In this fight, it isn’t just two armies, there are more.  Gentile throws a punch at his old sparring partner, John Nagl, while he is mixing it up with Ucko.  And then they are the bystanders.  Check out what commentator ‘carl’ had to say about Gentile’s reactions to the Ucko piece:

Sometimes you seem mostly upset because as a historian you think the wrong interpretation of events has been made. Other times you seem mostly upset because Big Army has been dissed. Other times you are upset that anybody out there can think that small wars can be won. Most times you seem upset about all of it.

Mee-ow.  And who says intellectuals are boring?

Disasters always seem to happen at the same time. During the same week that our flat had been flooded by a clogged sewage pipe, my wife and I found ourselves sitting in our third floor hotel room near Clapham Junction, mouths agape as we watched the carnage of the third night of the London riots (the worst night) playing out across the television.

Our location was no coincidence. We had started on the ground floor, but the area outside had already seen rioting and the hotel staff had kindly moved our room. So there we sat, in a horrified daze, as the reports and pictures of hooded rioters smashing their way through our local high streets streamed in:

 ‘Buildings were torched, shops ransacked, and officers attacked with makeshift missiles and petrol bombs as gangs of hooded and masked youths laid waste to streets right across the city…The sheer number of incidents – including in Hackney, Croydon, Peckham, Lewisham, Clapham and Ealing – seemingly overwhelmed the Metropolitan police’.

The next evening, we sat in front of the same television and watched with trepidation for the coming carnage. Like millions of others, we waited, breath held. And waited. And waited. Reports of a few minor incidents trickled in but nothing resembling the pandemonium of the previous night. Finally, my wife conceded: “This is boring, let’s watch something else.” It was a peculiar epitaph to a terrifying episode.

My point here is not so much to critique our society’s morbid fascination with watching violence (nor even to query why Wandsworth Council had failed to clean out the tree-roots from our apartment building’s pipes for over forty years). Instead, I would like to float one possibility about why the London riots – which had seemed so irresistible on the third night – fizzled out so quickly, namely that the rioters failed to excel in the areas traditionally associated with durable insurgencies and the police employed appropriate counterinsurgent methods.

This is not to say (as others have done, both academically and in the blogosphere), that the riots can be understood as an insurgency – they were evidentially not – merely that we can glean at least another dimension of understanding by analysing them through a counterinsurgent lens.

Take popular support. The rioters did have some support, particularly within lower-income council estates. Moreover, the act of looting seemed to hold a degree of universal appeal: numerous people joined the riots entirely on impulse, perhaps based on the lure of ‘sticking it to the man’ or merely the chance to grab free stuff. The case of Natasha Reid, who looted a television (despite already owing a larger one), was iconic.

Generally, however, the rioters failed to secure much backing. Their wanton violence and terrorism caused fear, revulsion and anger: the image of a Croydon furniture store transformed into a gargantuan bonfire or an injured boy being mugged by youths feigning to give assistance were particularly striking. Two examples show the public’s reaction. The first were the civic rallies, where members of the public grouped together to clean up the damage, signal their opposition and even establish vigilante groups. The second was a YouGov poll:

‘Asked if the police should be able to use various tactics in response to riots provoked some pretty gung ho responses – 90% of people thought they should be able to use water cannon, 84% mounted police, 82% curfews, 78% tear gas, 72% tasers, 65% plastic bullets, 33% live ammunition. 77% thought that the army should be brought in’.

(Yes, you read it right – one-in-three people wanted the police to start gunning down civilians in London’s streets!)

This had a huge impact. While the rioters were initially able to conceal their planning within local estates and private homes, the absence of a wider popular base meant they could not fade back into the population for sanctuary afterwards. Just five days after the third night, the disgusted public had called in to report 1,271 people and 745 arrests had been made. Some rioters were so ashamed of their own actions that they turned themselves in. This helped break the back of the movement.

Next, there’s unifying cause. The rioters came from all walks of life, many shared no common social, cultural or economic background, and they lacked a unifying cause. Numerous grievances and short-term goals existed, including poverty; funding cuts to lower-income groups (such as the removal of educational allowances); racial profiling; the death of Mark Duggan; and an opportunistic greed for stolen goods. However, the riots failed to provide a vision about how these grievances would be addressed, or supply any ideology to drive longer term action. This robbed the movement of momentum.

The rioters also lacked clear leadership. Some were loyal to existing gangs, who had formed temporary truces but were never going to be able to transcend factionalism in the longer term. Most, however, held no ties to any leader or group. Without a central leadership, there was no one to plan, rally or coordinate future actions. This meant that once the initial spontaneity was lost, the movement rapidly lost the cohesion and organisation it needed to endure.

Then there’s the terrain. To some extent, the rioters capitalised on the complexity of London to hit different areas across the city without warning. They utilised the streets to surge back and forth, amassed where the police were weak and quickly moved on when the police increased their presence. However, their ability to hide later was hindered by the urban environment. In many cases the police already knew where the troublemakers had come from and were quick to track them down in the days that followed. Similarly, the hostility of the populace prevented even previously unknown participants from hiding for long.

Copy-cat riots did occur in other UK cities and these had the potential to disrupt the level of policing available for London and sap overall public will. Generally, though, the riots were condemned outside of London and the rioters were left firmly isolated (except perhaps for a rather tongue-in-cheek endorsement from Colonel Gaddafi).

Finally, there’s the counterinsurgent effort. Generally, the police did a good job. For example, by encouraging the public to stay clear of the streets, they reduced the availability of ‘human terrain’ and forced the rioters to engage in conventional set pieces. Towards the end of the third night, the police used ‘shock and awe’ tactics (such as armoured van charges), which helped to break up large crowds of rioters and on the fourth night they deployed massively increased numbers of riot police to deter and break up attempts by rioters to undertake large-scale actions. During the days, they conducted systematic search and apprehend missions that were based on local intelligence, public tip offs, facial recognition software and dogged policing. This all prevented the movement from securing a critical mass (e.g. by securing a set area of territory or specific population to hide in). While it is true that the police’s use of rigid formations disappointed the public – who could see their local communities being torched and looted while the police seemingly did nothing – it was nonetheless the correct approach. By remaining in organised groups, they maintained cohesion and avoided being surrounded by the rioters and suffering the same tragic fate as PC Blakelock during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots.

Three months have passed since that explosive week, and we have learned one incredibly important lesson: always check the pipes thoroughly before moving into a new apartment. That seems to be about the extent of it though. There has been shockingly little discourse about how the riots were fought and why the government was able to restore order so quickly. This is a missed opportunity. In 2004, John Nagl suggested that the British were successful in restoring order to Malaya because we learned from our mistakes. Perhaps it is time we re-examined the 2011 London riots, this time to learn from our success.

Grégor Mathias has recently published a groundbreaking book examining David Galula’s operations in Algeria. The book, aptly titled Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory, is based on careful archival research and previously untapped sources describing Galula’s own experience with counterinsurgency. Given that much of today’s counterinsurgency theory is based on Galula’s own writing, the task of assessing his approach to these types of operations seems long overdue.

This gap has been amply filled by Grégor Mathias – a researcher at the Service Historique de la Défense and professor at the Collège Foch – Haguenau in France. The book has already attracted some attention over at Small Wars Journal (thanks to Mike Few) and is sure to fall on fertile ground both among counterinsurgency proponents and detractors.

Given the above, I was honoured when I was asked to write a foreword for this new volume. Available as of late October, the book’s publishers have now agreed to feature its foreword here on Kings of War – to trigger a discussion about the book, about Galula as a commander, and about what his record says about the counterinsurgency principles we have inherited from him.

The foreword follows…. and you can buy the book itself here.

Foreword to Grégor Mathias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice versus Theory (Praeger & ABC-Clio, 2011), 143p.
by David H. Ucko

Mark Twain apparently quipped that while the past does not repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. So, thirty years after it had left the jungles of Vietnam and forgot all about insurgency, the US military again faced the same problem, though in Iraq this time, following its invasion of the country in 2003. Counterinsurgency had been under-researched if not deliberately neglected between these two wars, so it was only natural that when it came to studying and learning about this concept many officers and scholars would turn to the 1950s and 1960s for advice. For better and for worse, insights were drawn from Vietnam and made to apply to the war in Iraq, though notable attention was also given to other countries’ experiences with these types of campaigns: the British in Malaya; the French in Algeria.

This intellectual re-discovery of counterinsurgency elevated an unlikely group of experts, mostly forgotten since their heyday of the 1960s. Foremost among this group stood David Galula, a French military officer whose combat experience in Algeria and writings on counterinsurgency were viewed as particularly instructive to understanding the challenges of modern counterinsurgency. When doctrine writers from the US Army and Marine Corps got together to write their new counterinsurgency doctrine in 2006, David Galula’s influence was evident, not least because his Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice was one of three works cited in the field manual’s final preface.

To those in the US military seeking to gain a better understanding of counterinsurgency, Galula offered an accessible guide to the difficulties and dilemmas typical of these campaigns. From his experience in Algeria he derived and illustrated various counterinsurgency principles that have not only been found to apply elsewhere, but were now picked up on and reiterated in the most recent of doctrine. These touch upon the importance of achieving a nuanced political understanding of the campaign, operating under unified command, using intelligence to guide operations, isolating insurgents from the population, using the minimum amount of force necessary to achieve security, and assuring and maintaining the perceived legitimacy of the counterinsurgency effort in the eyes of the populace. Galula’s writings offered a clear illustration of how these time-tested principles could be implemented based on his own experience in Algeria.

Counterinsurgency Warfare soon earned the reputation of a classic in the field, though it would be fair to say that far more people had heard of the book than actually studied it; indeed, it is another of Mark Twain’s sayings that a classic is a ‘book which people praise and don’t read’. Far less attention still has been paid to Galula’s own life and practical record as a counterinsurgent, of which little is known besides that which he himself shared in his books. The result of this curious neglect has been a tendency toward hagiography in much of the writing on Galula, underpinned by a fundamental uncertainty of how this maverick officer himself handled the problem of insurgency in his day.

This is where Grégor Mathias steps in, providing us with a carefully researched, densely packed and in many ways unique account of David Galula’s own practical experience with counterinsurgency. The picture that emerges is of a remarkable and intellectually hungry French officer; a polyglot; a traveller; explorer; and keen learner. His most formative experience with counterinsurgency was his command of a French company in the Djebel Aïssa Mimoun subdistrict of Kabylia, Algeria, in 1956-57, though as Mathias makes clear, much of what he later taught derived equally from his time as a military attaché in China during the civil war, as a member of the UN commission in Greece during its civil war, and from his visits to Indochina and the Philippines, where he observed ongoing counterinsurgencies without himself participating.

It is said that it is a curse to live in interesting times, yet Galula appears to have taken this fate in his stride. Indeed, his international exposure and encounters not only help explain his fine grasp of political violence, but also provide a fascinating narrative intertwined with major historical events. Still, perhaps this book’s greatest service to counterinsurgency scholars today is to provide a more comprehensive account of how Galula fared when seeking to put into practice the very theory for which he is now so famous.

It soon emerges that even for Galula, it was far easier to derive principles from ongoing campaigns than to make sure they were properly implemented. Indeed, Mathias’ account reveals a company commander grappling with many of the same dilemmas facing today’s military leaders – in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. While Galula was comparatively successful as a commander, his time in Algeria clearly shows the limited ability of an outside force to exert legitimate influence and pressure on a local population. It also shows the difficulty of honouring the principle of civil-military unity of command when there are tangible differences in priority and approach between these two sets of actors. Like many commanders today, Galula struggled with troop shortages, wrestled with a domestic press unconvinced of his operational gains, and outright stumbled in the delicate transition from French to Algerian control and governance. Not all of Galula’s setbacks can be placed at his own doormat: after all, a company commander can only wield so much control. Even so, perhaps one of the more interesting insights in Mathias’ account regards the difficulties of determining ‘success’ in counterinsurgency campaigns and the related tendency, one certainly shared by Galula, for unwarranted optimism in the face of short-term gains.

If Galula’s own record mirrors many of the frustrations felt by today’s commanders, does he nonetheless merit the reputation and influence that he has now earned, posthumously? Certainly. His writing offers one of the most lucid and accessible treaties on counterinsurgency, helpful to any student and practitioner seeking to understand the difficult dilemmas common to these campaigns. His principles, while difficult to implement, nonetheless provide a foundation upon which to base action. That Galula’s own record as a counterinsurgent is more mixed should not surprise, but rather act as a helpful reminder that this form of warfare is never easy, but rather ‘messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife’.[1] Arguably, it is precisely because Galula struggled with the same challenges that we see today that makes his record and his writings so relevant.

For this reason, Mathias’ account is also a helpful corrective to some of the overblown and under-researched portrayals of Galula in recent years. Neither Galula’s writings, nor his experience in Algeria, were ever going to provide us with the right answers, but rather help us ask the right questions. As Mathias persuasively shows in this book, there is no master-key to these types of operations and Galula’s principles provide no checklist for success. This is something the French counterinsurgency expert would no doubt have agreed with: counterinsurgency, he noted, ‘may be sound in theory but dangerous when applied rigidly to a specific case’. (96)

All of this – Galula’s mixed record and his tentativeness in proposing his concept – should instill a much-needed measure of humility about what is possible in counterinsurgency operations, and through military intervention writ large.  For this very reason, it is incumbent on those militaries with expeditionary ambitions to study the history of their intellectual forefathers, to learn from their experiences, and try not to repeat their mistakes.

As part of my teaching this term, I came across a very interesting book by Charles Lindholm and José Pedro Zúquete: The Struggle for the World: Liberation Movements of the 21st Century (Stanford University Press). The book ties in with the course’s broader focus on social movements, how and why they are formed, their worldview and how and why they choose to use violence.

What is refreshing about The Struggle for the World is that its authors cut a broad swath. Their case studies on liberation movements include not just al-Qaeda and its ideology (a topic no doubt of some interest to our readers) but also the Zapatistas of Mexico, the Bolívar revolution, European populist-nationalism and even the ‘slow-food‘ movement of Carlo Petrini. I recently met a member of the slow-food movement in Brooklyn and mentioned that I’d just read an interesting book where this organisation was compared to al-Qaeda. I’m not sure it went down very well. No doubt, my attempt at distilling the essence of the argument, then as now, will not do justice to the actual book.

What Charles Lindholm and José Pedro Zúquete note is that each of these movements are in their own way struggling for a new world – a world that is more authentic, more traditional and more just than the one we live in today. Each one, to varying degrees, perceives the world as threatened by an overbearing system – the evil forces of globalization, of capitalism, of neo-liberal consumerism, of commoditization, neo-colonization etc. With one foot in tradition, the ancient and often mythological, and the other in the future, representing salvation and justice, these movements struggle as heroic underdogs against a global conspiracy of greed, selfishness and apathy. Their method of doing so, of drawing the battle-lines and constructing a narrative, is in many ways similar.

In each case study, we see movements harking back to the ancestral, which in turn makes the struggle part of the longue durée of history. Myths and histories are created to give the struggle depth and foundation and to make victory seem possible – if not today, then certainly tomorrow.

In each case study, the prevailing system (the enemy) comes to be seen as part of a global conspiracy enabled by the acquiescing masses, who go along with the status quo out of ignorance, cowardice or apathy. This notion ties back to a previous post of mine on another social movement, the Weather Underground, and the tendency by militants to equate ‘silence’ with ‘violence’, or ‘non-participation’ with ‘capitulation’ . Where a movement is convinced not only of the justness of its cause but of the devastating implications of not saving the world, a sense of urgency soon follows. The ignorant masses must be awoken, made to be seen the light. This evolution is particularly clear in the al-Qaeda case study. Here the drawing of stark battle-lines legitimises violence against the innocent, for to this worldview the notion of an ‘innocent bystander’ is a contradiction in terms.

Whether or not violence is involved, the location of a dichotomy, between the small ‘us’ and the large ‘them’, involves the participant in a identity-furnishing quest to redeem the world, to fight – against the odds – for a better world. This is another strong contribution of the book: by relying on ‘archival anthropology’ (and without getting all theoretical and self-referential about it), we are provided a glimpse into the worldview of activists and militants of different movements. In so doing, it is possible for the reader to walk, well maybe not a mile, but a few yards in the shoes of both leaders and followers. Often this process is both illuminating and humanising.

One interview is with a ‘jihadi activist’ and highlights very effectively how a ‘counter-identity’ was formed, one ‘that condemns the Western values that were once longed for’. I believe it deserves to be quoted at length because it successfully shows how intense dichotomies between ‘us’ and ‘them’ can be created, on the personal level:

I wanted to conform to the image of the average Frenchman, to be like them, to make myself in their image. But at the same time I had the feeling that this was more or less impossible: they didn’t want me, even if I had citizenship and all the rest. They looked down on me, they treated me like I was nothing, they despised me. This contempt was killing me. Were we really so despicable? … I went back and forth between what I was and what I wanted to be: a little Frenchmen. Whereas I was an Algerian … Islam was my salvation. I understood what I was: a Muslim. Someone with dignity, whom the French despised because they didn’t fear me enough… Now we are respected. Hated, but respected.

The source cited for the interview, John Rosenthal’s ‘The French Path to Jihad’, itself relies on Farhad Khosrokhavar’s Quand Al-Qäida parle: Témoignages derrière les barreaux, and provides the critical continuation:

I understood that I was different, that I was not French, that I would never become French and that I had no business trying to become French either. I took it well. I was proud of my new Muslim identity. Not to be French, to be Muslim, just that: Algerian too, but, above all, Muslim. That was my reconquest of myself, my burst of lucidity, my awakening. I was rid of the malaise from which I had suffered and all of a sudden I felt good about myself: no more impossible dreams, no more desire to become part of this France that did not want me. And, above all, I started to nourish a tremendous hatred toward the Fascist regime that had rejected the vote of the Algerian people for Islamic rule.

Many of the voices cited share an urge to form a better world. In some cases these hopes are perverted by alienation and anger to produce terrorism. In the other cases, there is something honorable about the desire at least to take a stand. The absolutist terms and transformative agendas are inherently dangerous, often conflict generating, but in many instances the prise de conscience also comes across as respectable. The ambivalence is difficult but inevitable. As Leszek Kolakowski put it,

the victory of utopian dreams would lead us to a totalitarian nightmare and the utter downfall of civilization, where the unchallenged domination of the skeptical spirit would condemn us to a hopeless stagnation, to an immobility that a slight accident could easily convert into catastrophic chaos (p. 6).

Put differently, there is something faintly depressing about Francois Furet’s lament: ‘Here we are, condemned to live in a world as it is’ (p. 8)

As suspected, I have probably again failed to convey the full value of the book and am now at a length where a blog post should rightfully end. Hopefully I may have whetted the appetite of our readership to consider a closer look. You can buy the book here.