Interview with Colonel Peter Mansoor

Interview with Colonel Peter Mansoor

by Octavian Manea

Download the full article: Interview with Colonel Peter Mansoor

“Local relationships are really the key in winning a counterinsurgency.”

It is usually said that insurgencies and counterinsurgencies are always competitions for legitimacy. Could you explain this?

Insurgency and counterinsurgency are essentially struggles for legitimacy and for competing visions of governance and the future. The goal of the insurgents is political power and in order to gain political power they need to show the people that either they have better programs for the future or that the government is incapable of protecting them. Counterinsurgency is a struggle for winning the trust of the population. To win, a COIN effort needs to show the people that continuing existence under the government is preferable to a not-so-certain future. The struggle for legitimacy and for competing political programs is really at the heart of COIN and insurgencies.

Why is the “population” the center of gravity in a COIN campaign?

The issue is that guerillas don’t wear uniforms, but rather civilian clothes and fight among the people. It is very hard to come to grips with who is the enemy and therefore killing or capturing them is difficult at best. The Western approach to COIN is to protect the population and by doing so make it very difficult for insurgents to live among them. By isolating the insurgents from the people, their strength decreases. Living among the people and protecting them normally leads to better intelligence which leads to identifying and targeting insurgents. Moreover, by decreasing the insurgent’s support among the people you can reach out to the reconcilable elements.

Download the full article: Interview with Colonel Peter Mansoor

Interview with Colonel Peter Mansoor conducted by Octavian Manea (Editor of FP Romania, the Romanian edition of Foreign Policy).