I was a little nonplussed by Andrew Bacevich’s review of my recent book, The Accidental Guerrilla (Oxford University Press, 2009). Mr Bacevich is a highly intelligent and knowledgeable man whose work I have admired over many years (in fact, I quote him at length in two places in the book). He also has an incandescent wit, which he applies like a blowtorch to my book and to my personal character. While I beg to differ on the assertion that I have been guilty of moral cowardice or benefited personally from the war, I actually agree with almost all the points he makes in his review – indeed his argument, though framed as a critique of my book, is actually precisely the same argument I make in the book. I wonder, in fact, whether he has actually read the book, or whether some evil fairy or publishing-industry gremlin slipped another, completely different, book, like a changeling, into my book’s dust-jacket before he read it.

To be fair, as normally happens, he probably reviewed a galley (or perhaps an early incomplete draft) of the book, and he therefore may not have had a chance to read it in full, read the later chapters or look at the theory chapter. Mr Bacevich’s review focuses on the Iraq and Afghanistan chapters, but of course the book also analyses five other conflicts at some length (West Java, East Timor, Pakistan, Southern Thailand and radicalization in Europe), and there are three theory chapters also. I understand Mr Bacevich may have been pressed for time or short of space, and so I can completely understand a desire to focus on Iraq and Afghanistan. But whatever the reason, the fact is that the book Mr Bacevich criticizes so harshly is simply not the book I wrote...

Continue reading "Accidental Guerrilla: Read Before Burning" »

(This is an edited version of my statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan, chaired by Senator John F. Kerry, on 5th February 2009).

Senator Joseph Lieberman made a timely and well-argued call, during his recent speech at the Brookings Institution, for a comprehensive political-military campaign in the Afghanistan-Pakistan (AFPAK) region. Seven years into a long war, we need to be honest with ourselves about the harsh strategic choices we face. And we need to recognize that before we can expect long-term strategic progress, we first have to deal with an immediate, acute crisis that could derail the entire effort this year. Let me first discuss long-term strategic choices, then turn to the immediate crisis, and conclude with some remarks on Pakistan...

Continue reading "Crunch Time in Afghanistan-Pakistan" »

Spencer Ackerman, in yesterday’s Washington Independent, claims I told him the Iraq war was “f*cking stupid”. He did not seek to clear that quote with me, and I would not have approved it if he had. If he HAD sought a formal comment, I would have told him what I have said publicly before: in my view, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was an extremely serious strategic error. But the task of the moment is not to cry over spilt milk, rather to help clean it up: a task in which the surge, the comprehensive counterinsurgency approach, and our troops on the ground are admirably succeeding.

Anyone who knows me has been well aware of my position on Iraq for years. When I went to Iraq in 2007 (and on both previous occasions) it was to end the war, by suppressing the violence and defeating the insurgency. (Note: I said END the war, not abandon it half-way through, leaving the Iraqis to be slaughtered. When we invaded Iraq, we took on a moral and legal responsibility for its people’s wellbeing. Regardless of anyone’s position on the decision to invade, those obligations still stand and cannot be wished away merely because they have proven inconvenient).

Like every other counterinsurgency professional, I warned against the war in 2002-3 on the grounds that it was likely to be extremely difficult, demand far more resources than our leaders seemed willing to commit, inflame world Muslim opinion making our counterterrorism tasks harder, and entail a significant opportunity cost in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This was hardly an original or brilliant insight. Nor was it particularly newsworthy: it was a view shared with the rest of my community, and you would be hard-pressed to find any professional counterinsurgent who thought the 2003/4 strategy was sensible.

The question of whether we were right to invade Iraq is a fascinating debate for historians and politicians, and a valid issue for the American people to consider in an election year. As it happens, I think it was a mistake. But that is not my key concern. The issue for practitioners in the field is not to second-guess a decision from six years ago, but to get on with the job at hand which, I believe, is what both Americans and Iraqis expect of us. In that respect, the new strategy and tactics implemented in 2007, and which relied for their effectiveness on the extra troop numbers of the Surge, ARE succeeding and need to be supported. In 2006, a normal night in Baghdad involved 120 to 150 dead Iraqi civilians, and each month we lost dozens of Americans killed or maimed. This year, a bad night involves one or two dead civilians, U.S. losses are dramatically down, and security is restored. Therefore, even on the most conservative estimate, in the eighteen months of the surge to date we have saved 12 to 16 thousand Iraqis and hundreds of American lives. And we are now in a position to pursue a political strategy that will ultimately see Iraq stable, our forces withdrawn, and this whole sorry adventure tidied up to the maximum extent possible so that we can get on with the fight in other theaters – most pressingly, Afghanistan.

On the ground, in both Iraq and Afghanistan over several years, I have fought and worked beside brave and dedicated military and civilian colleagues who are making an enormous difference in an incredibly tough environment. I salute their dedication – Americans, Iraqis and Afghans alike – and I hold all of them in the highest possible regard. These quiet professionals deserve our unstinting support. Besides having the courage to close with and finish the enemy, (an enemy capable of literally unbelievable depravity and cruelty towards its own people) they have proven capable of great compassion and kindness toward the people they protect. The new tactics and tools they are now applying – protecting the people 24/7, building alliances of trust with local communities, putting political reconciliation and engagement first, connecting the people to the government, co-opting anyone willing to be reconciled and simultaneously eliminating the irreconcilables with precision and discrimination – these techniques are the best way out of a situation we should never have gotten ourselves into.

These are not the policy positions of any party – I am not politically partisan, just a professional expressing my professional opinion. I was against the war on professional grounds but (also on professional grounds) I support the surge as the best means to end it favorably and humanely. I thought the initial plan was flawed, but my duty is to help fix it, not wash my hands of it. I thought the decision to invade was a mistake, but I put my life on the line to save the Iraqi people from the terrorists who tore their society apart after we failed in our obligation to stabilize it. And if you find those positions hard to understand, you probably haven’t been to Iraq.

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SWJ Editors' Notes:

Spencer Ackerman asks that we post a link to his reply - Sources Holler Back: Kilcullen Edition.

In the course of a piece I'm proud of about David Kilcullen's forthcoming strategy-level counterinsurgency handbook, I included a profanity-laden quote from him about the wisdom of the Iraq war. This was a mistake on my part and I take full responsibility for the fact that it overshadowed what I consider Kilcullen's valuable, serious, and hard-learned counterinsurgency insights.

In the course of our conversation about his handbook, Dave made these and other points about the war, which are included lower down in the piece. I included the profanity because I thought it underscored the depth of his commitment to try to dig American strategy out of the morass of Iraq, which I and many others view as uncomplicatedly admirable. What I should have realized is that the profanity overwhelms the broader points presented in the handbook and about Dave's personality and professional vision. For that, I apologize, not only to Dave, but to my readers, who I hope will pay attention to those broader points despite my error in judgment...

Grim at Blackfive.

... We can all be completely certain that his contribution to the efforts to stabilize Iraq and protect the Iraqi population have been tremendous. Dr. Kilcullen is a model of the honorable disgreement that best characterizes a free society. Good for him. Good for us, to have him as a companion.

And more by Erin Simpson (aka Charlie) at Abu Muqawama.

It is now, as Kiclullen wrote Charlie, "case closed, hatchet buried."

Continue reading "My Views on Iraq" »

Road-Building in Afghanistan
Part 1 of a Series on Political Maneuver in Counterinsurgency

Dr. David Kilcullen

As a tactics instructor in the mid-1990s, teaching British platoon commanders at the School of Infantry, I spent many weeks on extended field exercises in the wilds of south Wales and on windswept Salisbury Plain. Both landscapes are studded with Roman military antiquities, relics of ancient counterinsurgency campaigns – mile-castles, military roads, legion encampments – as well as the Iron Age hill-forts of the Romans’ insurgent adversaries. Teaching ambushing, I often found that ambush sites I chose from a map, even on the remotest hillsides, would turn out (once I dragged my weary, rucksack-carrying ass to the actual spot) to have Roman or Celtic ruins on them, and often a Roman military road nearby: call me lacking in self-assurance, but I often found this a comforting vote of confidence in my tactical judgment from the collective wisdom of the ancestors.

Like the Romans, counterinsurgents through history have engaged in road-building as a tool for projecting military force, extending governance and the rule of law, enhancing political communication and bringing economic development, health and education to the population. Clearly, roads that are patrolled by friendly forces or secured by local allies also have the tactical benefit of channeling and restricting insurgent movement and compartmenting terrain across which guerrillas could otherwise move freely. But the political impact of road-building is even more striking than its tactical effect.

This is my first Small Wars Journal post for several months; since leaving Iraq last year I have been working mainly on Afghanistan, in the field and in various coalition capitals. This brief essay (brief by my risibly low standards, anyhow!) describes recent road-building efforts in Afghanistan. A follow-on piece will explore the broader notion of political maneuver in counterinsurgency, using road-building as one of several examples...

Continue reading "Political Maneuver in Counterinsurgency" »

Some aspects of the war in Iraq are hard to fit into “classical” models of insurgency. One of these is the growing tribal uprising against al Qa’ida, which could transform the war in ways not factored into neat “benchmarks” developed many months ago and thousands of miles away. I spent time out on the ground during May and June working with coalition units, tribal leaders and fighters engaged in the uprising, so I felt a few field observations might be of interest to the Small Wars community. I apologize in advance for the epic length of this post, but it's a complex issue, so I hope people will forgive my long-windedness. Like much else, it’s too early to know how this new development will play out. But surprisingly (surprising to me, anyway), indications so far are relatively positive...

Continue reading "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt" »

I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I’ve been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I’d like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what’s happening, right now, in Iraq.

This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I’m not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations...

Continue reading "Understanding Current Operations in Iraq" »

I asked the SWJ to pass along that I’ve been continuously in the field of late and haven’t posted to the blog as much as I would have liked to. I am still very much engaged in the Small Wars Journal community and will be posting here again soon. In the meantime I offer up this article published in the June 2007 issue of the Department of State’s eJournal. I might add that there are some excellent articles in this issue of eJournal – well worth following the link and taking a look around...

Continue reading "New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict" »

A few commentators have panned the new counterinsurgency manual for insufficient emphasis on religion. There is a grain of truth in this criticism but, as a practitioner, the evidence I see does not really support it. Rather, field data suggest, some critics may misunderstand both current conflicts and the purpose of doctrine. Worse, they may be swallowing propaganda from munafiquun who pose as defenders of the faith while simultaneously perverting it. (Did I sound like a politician there? Never mind. I will show factual evidence for this assertion, so the resemblance is fleeting…I hope)...

Continue reading "Religion and Insurgency" »

Gated communities in counterinsurgency are like tourniquets in surgery. They can stem a life-threatening hemorrhage, but they must be applied sparingly, released as often and as soon as possible, and they have side-effects that have to be taken into account. They are never a first choice. But, given the dire current situation in Baghdad, the “urban tourniquet” is the lesser of several evils, because it breaks the cycle of sectarian violence that has caused so much damage and human suffering in Iraq...

Continue reading "The Urban Tourniquet – “Gated Communities” in Baghdad" »

I spent a few hours recently, reading Edward N. Luttwak’s article in Harper’s Magazine, “Dead End: Counter-Insurgency as Military Malpractice”, and carefully thinking over his argument. It was a pleasant holiday from the reality of war here in Baghdad, and a reassuring reminder that there are still havens of calm (like CSIS, where Dr Luttwak is a Senior Fellow) where one can consider issues thoroughly and arrive at firm conclusions. From my viewpoint, here in Iraq, things somehow never seem quite so black-and-white...

Continue reading "Edward Luttwak’s “Counterinsurgency Malpractice”" »

It has been an interesting few weeks here in Baghdad. Myself and the other advisors felt that a comment on recent developments might be in order. It is still early days for Fardh al-Qanoon (a.k.a the “Baghdad Security Plan”) and thus too soon to tell for sure how things will play out. But, though the challenges remain extremely severe, early trends are quite positive. Counter-intuitively, the latest series of car bombings includes some encouraging signs...

Continue reading "From the Advisors -- Bombs in Baghdad" »

Today’s Guardian article (“Military Chiefs Give US Six Months to Win Iraq War”) misrepresents the Baghdad advisers. So much so, it makes me doubt the reliability of the single, unidentified source responsible for much of the article’s reporting.

I hope SWJ colleagues will forgive this more "personal" post than usual, but as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser I have a duty to set the record straight on this.

There is a real country called Iraq, where a real war is going on, with real progress but very real challenges. We are not going to "win the war" in six months -- nor would anyone expect to. But the Guardian seems to be describing some completely different, (possibly mythical) country, and some imaginary group of harried and depressed advisers bearing no resemblance to reality.

Continue reading "Guardian Article Misrepresents the Advisers' View" »

[Note: While I have received official approval to offer personal comment at SWJBlog, the following post has not been vetted or screened in any way. It represents personal opinion only, and is strictly Unclassified and based solely on open source material.]

It has been a busy few weeks. Operation Fadr al-Qanoon (which the media calls the “Baghdad security plan”) is shaping up. Progress is measurable, but this is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s still too early to know how it will turn out.

The message for all of us, as professionals who do this for a living, is patience, patience, patience. The war has been going for nearly four years, the current strategy less than four weeks. We need to give it time.

Continue reading "The Baghdad Marathon" »

Discussion of the new Iraq strategy, and General Petraeus’s recent Congressional testimony have raised the somewhat obvious point that the word “counterinsurgency” means very different things to different people. So it may be worth sketching in brief outline the two basic philosophical approaches to counterinsurgency that developed over the 20th century (a period which I have written about elsewhere as "Classical Counterinsurgency"). These two contrasting schools of thought about counterinsurgency might be labeled as “enemy-centric” and “population-centric”.

The enemy-centric approach basically understands counter-insurgency as a variant of conventional warfare. It sees counterinsurgency as a contest with an organized enemy, and believes that we must defeat that enemy as our primary task. There are many variants within this approach, including "soft line" and "hard line" approaches, kinetic and non-kinetic methods of defeating the enemy, decapitation versus marginalization strategies, and so on. Many of these strategic concepts are shared with the population-centric school of counterinsurgency, but the philosophy differs. In a nut-shell, it could be summarized as "first defeat the enemy, and all else will follow".

Continue reading "Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency" »

Much discussion of the new Iraq strategy centers on the “surge” to increase forces in-theater by 21,500 troops. I offer no comment on administration policy here. But as counterinsurgency professionals, it should be clear to us that focusing on the “surge” misses what is actually new in the strategy – its population-centric approach.

Here are the two core paragraphs from the President’s speech, outlining the strategy (emphasis added):

“Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations -- conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

Continue reading "Don't confuse the "Surge" with the Strategy" »

The President’s new Iraq strategy has prompted much discussion, informed and otherwise. I’m not going to add to it here. Rather, I want to tentatively suggest a framework for thinking about Iraq, which (if you accept its underlying assumptions) might prove helpful in evaluating the new strategy and the enemy’s likely response.

I developed this framework about two years ago, while writing the October 2004 version of Countering Global Insurgency, mainly the appendix on Iraq. I have since presented it in various forums, including during the Quadrennial Defense Review in 2004-5, the Eisenhower Series in early 2006, during a series of lectures at the Naval War College and at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, and during the Irregular Warfare conference in Summer 2006. I also briefed it to the Pentagon’s “Plan B” team in November 2006.

Continue reading "A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy" »