Army's Next Crop of Generals Forged in Counterinsurgency by Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post.

An Army board headed by Gen. David H. Petraeus has selected several combat-tested counterinsurgency experts for promotion to the rank of brigadier general, sifting through more than 1,000 colonels to identify a handful of innovative leaders who will shape the future Army, according to current and former senior Army officers.

The choices suggest that the unusual decision to put the top U.S. officer in Iraq in charge of the promotions board has generated new thinking on the qualities of a successful Army officer -- and also deepened Petraeus's imprint on the Army. Petraeus, who spent nearly four of the past five years in Iraq and has seen many of the colonels in action there, faces confirmation hearings next week to take charge of Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia...

They include Special Forces Col. Ken Tovo, a veteran of multiple Iraq tours who recently led a Special Operations task force there; Col. H.R. McMaster, a senior Petraeus adviser known for leading a successful counterinsurgency effort in the Iraqi city of Tall Afar, and Col. Sean MacFarland, who created a network of patrol bases in Ramadi that helped curb violence in the capital of Anbar Province, according to the officers...

More at The Washington Post.

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Army Values

By Major Joseph A. Jackson

General Colin Powell’s recent visit to the Command and General Staff College reminded us that history, if not repetitive, is at least parallel in its dimensions. To fully grasp what leadership and the concept of a life spent in service to the Nation means, one need look no further than to the laurels and accomplishments that mark General Powell’s service. However, as General Powell mentioned, the attainment of accolades, high office, and material rewards reflect the simple, timeless, and real values that underpin our institution at the Command and General Staff College.

A veteran of two tours in Vietnam, General Powell shared the insights imparted by his journey through history. Then, as now, CGSC stands as a bastion of learning in turbulent and ambiguous times. Our institution does not promise that academics alone or a single methodology will ever triumph; rather it proposes that capable individuals grounded in relevant axioms can hone their mental agility and will deduce the clearest path to shape successful outcomes. We know that our values – Army Values – of which General Powell spoke, work because we have seen them in action. The values that were in instilled when General Powell’s class was in attendance then do not vary greatly from those we promulgate now. The testing grounds for these values are the rotations between Iraq and Afghanistan in places with names that sound decidedly foreign here in the Midwest -- Kabul, Ghardez, Baghdad, and Ar Ramadi. Forty years ago, Hue, Be Luong, and the A-Shau Valley of General Powell’s experience would have sounded equally as exotic. Conflict forces us to re-evaluate and reinvigorate ourselves with our core principles despite the time or place.

General Powell’s words and his selection of topics resonate beyond the vaulted ceilings of Eisenhower Auditorium. They resound in the classrooms where we students remain hard at work solving fictitious problems for service in a world of often cold, hard facts. Succinctly, General Powell charged us to remember that just as those leaders who preceded us, we serve in a time of great challenge. The challenges that General Powell’s generation faced were a nation divided politically over the morality of the war in Vietnam and a culture further separated by racial tensions. Today, we are a society wrestling with the moral issues of a protracted war abroad, domestic border security issues, and financial insecurity at home.

Yet, as tomorrow’s senior leaders, we see equally that along with these difficult issues there is great opportunity. As students we recognize that the dilemmas we face are not necessarily unique to our time but have parallels in our military history. The United States and its Officer Corps continue to serve as a model and a beacon for others to follow. Further, we acknowledge that we are a resilient and dynamic culture that prizes the timeless values of equality and the rule of law. Finally, General Powell’s visit reminds us to acknowledge that the common sense values of our institutions mirror the uncommon experience that is our composite American culture.

Major Joseph A. Jackson, US Army, is a student at the US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

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The Children of the Left

By Geoffrey C. Lambert, Major General (Ret.), US Army

From the 1960’s through the 1980’s, those of us in the US Army Special Forces, along with our interagency partners, successfully stunted communist-sponsored insurgencies throughout Latin America. One of our prouder moments was in 1967, when Bolivian solders, trained, equipped and guided by Green Berets and the CIA, captured and killed Che Guevara.

From Guatemala to Chile, we taught our allies to defeat insurgency by destroying key nodes and personalities in insurgent networks, countering communist propaganda, developing internal security measures and population control, sharing intelligence with regional partners, and suppressing leftist movements.

The dictators we supported grasped our instruction and went into action with total freedom of action, unfettered by moral or legal limitations. As a result, counterinsurgency turned ugly as anti-communist zeal led to the imprisonment, torture or death of innocents among the thousands that perished in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and throughout the region. Sadly, it wasn’t until the Carter Administration and the War in El Salvador that human rights became a cornerstone of U.S. counterinsurgency planning and execution.

Today, we see the Children of the Left, now adults, (whose parents were disenfranchised or worse) finding their voices in Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and elsewhere. As a result, Latin America is increasingly drifting towards building new economic, diplomatic and military relationships, diminishing US influence in the region.

As we continue our struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, expanding the effort to our allies and coalition partners, we need to remember the Children of the Left. Our 20,000+ prisoners in Iraq, the death of innocent civilians, the loss of face of the many men now unemployed in a culture that values the man’s role as bread-winner more that we can understand, and our status as occupiers and Crusaders collectively may result in conditions far worse than the situation in Latin America today.

As we begin our exit from Iraq and begin focusing on building host nation counterinsurgency capability in Iraq and other countries, analysis of long term implications of seeking only short-term gain may provide insight to allow us to match word and deed in the upcoming decades to minimize long-term blowback – blowback from the Children of the Crusade.

During Unified Quest 09, The US Army Title 10 war game, there was discussion of the long term effects of the US counterinsurgency effort in Latin America, which led to this commentary.

Nothing follows.

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Which “Ghosts” Should We Be Trying to Burry from Vietnam

A Response to Bob Cassidy’s Recent SWJ Post

By LTC Gian P. Gentile

The United States lost the war in Vietnam because it was unwinnable. One of the best books on the history of American involvement in Vietnam by historian George Herring stated just that. But we keep trying to rescue the Vietnam War from its impossibility by turning it into a “better war.” There was no “better war” in Vietnam.

America’s major involvement in the War in Vietnam starting with Westmoreland was as good as it could have gotten. Westmoreland along with the rest of the American Army prior to 1965 had developed a reasonable counterinsurgency doctrine that was understood by senior army leaders. That doctrine was premised on classic counterinsurgency theory. Arguably it was premised a bit too much on “counter-guerilla” warfare as part of an overarching counterinsurgency approach, but the basic tenets of good Coin practices were understood by the American Army on the eve of Vietnam: the importance of the people in COIN, the need to separate the insurgents from the people, etc. In fact Westmoreland’s approach as he started the major American involvement in 1965 was premised on the classical notion in COIN of “clear, hold, and build.” The strategy Westmoreland devised in 1965 was a reasonable one. He knew the population was the key along with government legitimacy but to get at those two keys he had to provide security. And that security was threatened by regular South Vietnamese communist military outfits and elements of the NVA Army operating in South Vietnam. The notion of having Westmoreland start of the campaign by dispersing American combat outposts of squad and platoon size throughout the countryside is nothing but chimera; they would have been crushed by a Vietcong and NVA enemy that could easily mass in company size and larger formations within South Vietnam. If Abrams would have been put in place as MAC-V commander instead of Westmoreland in 1965 he almost certainly would have adopted the same strategy. When General Abrams replaced Westmoreland in 1968 he did not radically and immediately alter course but instead shifted priorities and placed pacification of the population on top. What allowed Abrams to do this was the fact that the South Vietnamese Vietcong had been decimated by the Tet Offensive and no longer posed a determined threat to dispersed American troops. Abrams was also operating under the political direction to draw-down American forces in Vietnam which required a shift to focusing on South Vietnamese Army forces to carry out counterinsurgency operations with the American military in support with its new priority of the pacification of the countryside. By and large the American Army did the best that it could with the situation that it was presented and the mission assigned in a war that was fundamentally unwinnable. No amount of better “interagency cooperation and function (the term “interagency” by the way is a metaphor for America’s Sisyphean attempts to create imperial institutions along the lines of the old British empire) could have rescued it from its inherent impossibility.

Armies exist primarily to fight; that is their most important and basic core competency. The capability to conduct stability operations must flow from that core competency of fighting. Conventional wars are not things of the past. But in so saying this it does not mean that those of us who argue this point believe that the Soviet Union will soon emerge again so that we can go back to 1985 and prepare to fight them at the Fulda Gap reminiscent of the huge tank engagements at the World War II battle of Kursk. No, instead when we argue that conventional wars are not things of the past we mean that there is, to use scholar Frank Hoffman’s conception, hybrid enemies out there who can fight along the full spectrum of conflict. The recent Israeli experience in south Lebanon is a clear example of a “hybrid enemy” in Hizbollah who fought Israeli tactical combat units the way small units of German infantry fought the American Army in the Hedgerows of Normandy in World War II. The Israeli Army experience also shows what can happen to ground combat units when their army becomes overly focused on stability operations like the Israelis had in the years preceding in the Palestinian territories.

The notion that the Army’s new operational doctrine FM 3-0 treats conventional war and stability operations as equal is a bit off of the mark. In fact in the 11 pages in the chapter that deals with full spectrum operations 7 of those 11 pages are dedicated to stability operations, 2 to offensive operations, and 2 to defensive operations. How is that equal?

The American Army’s conventional warfighting capabilities are not a constant. Yet proponents of stability operations often assume that they are and from that point of departure keep hounding the American Army to get better at COIN and stability operations. Their premise is that up to about February 2007 in Iraq the American Army for the most part fumbled at COIN. This assertion is fallacious. Most American combat outfits have been conducting best COIN practices in Iraq since the middle of 2004. For examples of this go back into the past issues of Military Review and see that as far back as 2004 the experience shown in these articles was of American ground units who figured out very quickly that they were not in a “conventional fight,” that they were in a counterinsurgency and therefore learned and adapted very quickly to its necessities.

It is wrong to think that American Army’s conventional capabilities are at the same level they were in 2001, in fact they have atrophied severely. A recent study by three former Army Combat Brigade Commanders who served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 wrote an analysis for the Chief of Staff of the Army pointing out serious problems with the Army’s field artillery branch. After 6 years of counterinsurgency war a key means for the Army to fight conventional war through firepower delivered by artillery has become, to use the words of the colonels, a “dead branch walking.”

The “ghosts of Vietnam” actually rest in those who want to fight Vietnam all over again in Iraq. It is time for the American Army to start looking outside of its self-imposed Counterinsurgency box and toward a reasonable and realistic view of the future. For the American Army to remain in this box we are courting huge strategic risks.

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Remarks to the Heritage Foundation (Colorado Springs, CO)

As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Tuesday, 13 May 2008.

Excerpts (Emphasis by SWJ):

... There is a good deal of debate and discussion – within the military, the Congress, and elsewhere – about whether we are putting too much emphasis on current demands – in particular, Iraq. And whether this emphasis is creating too much risk in other areas, such as preparing for potential future conflicts; being able to handle a contingency elsewhere in the world; and over stressing the ground forces, in particular the Army.

Much of what we are talking about is a matter of balancing risk: today’s demands versus tomorrow’s contingencies; irregular and asymmetric threats versus conventional threats. As the world’s remaining superpower, we have to be able to dissuade, deter, and, if necessary, respond to challenges across the spectrum.

Nonetheless, I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called “Next-War-itis” – the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict. This inclination is understandable, given the dominant role the Cold War had in shaping America’s peacetime military, where the United States constantly strove to either keep up with or get ahead of another superpower adversary...

But in a world of finite knowledge and limited resources, where we have to make choices and set priorities, it makes sense to lean toward the most likely and lethal scenarios for our military. And it is hard to conceive of any country confronting the United States directly in conventional terms – ship to ship, fighter to fighter, tank to tank – for some time to come. The record of the past quarter century is clear: the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Israelis in Lebanon, the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Smaller, irregular forces – insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists – will find ways, as they always have, to frustrate and neutralize the advantages of larger, regular militaries. And even nation-states will try to exploit our perceived vulnerabilities in an asymmetric way, rather than play to our inherent strengths.

Overall, the kinds of capabilities we will most likely need in the years ahead will often resemble the kinds of capabilities we need today.

The implication, particularly for America’s ground forces, means we must institutionalize the lessons learned and capabilities honed from the ongoing conflicts. Many of these skills and tasks used to be the province of the Special Forces, but now are a core of the Army and Marine Corps as a whole...

For years to come, the Air Force and the Navy will be America’s main strategic deterrent. We need to modernize our ageing inventory of aircraft, and build out a fleet of ships that right now is the smallest we’ve had since the late 1930s. These forces provide the strategic flexibility we need to deter, and if necessary, respond to, other competitors...

A few words about global risk – the threats we face elsewhere in the world while America’s ground forces are concentrated on Iraq...

Today’s strategic context is completely different. While America’s military was being bled in Vietnam, a superpower with vast fleets of tanks, bombers, fighters, and nuclear weapons was poised to overrun Western Europe – then the central theater in that era’s long twilight struggle. Not so today...

Full transcript.

Gates Urges Military to Focus on Current Wars - Josh White, Washington Post
Gates Says New Arms Must Play Role Now - Thom Shanker, New York Times
Gates Urges Focus on Needs in Iraq, Afghanistan - Julian Barnes, Los Angeles Times
Gates on Low-Intensity Warfare - Max Boot, Contentions
That's Why Abu Muqawama Loves You, Bobby - Abu Muqawama
Gates’ Speech at Colorado Springs - David Betz, Kings of War

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“Burying the Ghosts of Vietnam”

By Bob Cassidy

The recent spate of posts and editorial pieces that have amplified the emerging debate between counterinsurgency advocates and big conventional war advocates, coupled with Phillip Carter’s 12 May Washington Post Online post, “Vietnam Ghosts,” compelled me to post these links (below) to three studies that were published between 1970 and 1980. These studies testified to why the U.S. Government (USG) and the U.S. military failed to achieve their objectives in Vietnam. Also, because the USG and the U.S. military failed to heed, absorb, and institutionalize the lessons derived in these analyses during the two decades following the last study (BDM), the USG was initially ill prepared to counter the insurgencies it confronted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, the 28 November 2005 Department of Defense Directive (DODD) 3000.05, Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations DODD 3000.05, the extant work by USSOCOM and the USMC on the re-emerging notion of irregular warfare (IW JOC), and the latest version (February 2008) of the U.S. Army’s capstone manual, FM 3-0, Operations, together prescribe an emphasis on irregular warfare, stability operations, and counterinsurgency, equal to that of regular, conventional, war. These documents help provide the requisite philosophical and doctrinal balance for a military that must be able to conduct both counterinsurgency and conventional big wars.

Since it generally requires up to 12 years, ultimately, to prevail when prosecuting counterinsurgency, and, because it takes between five to ten years to change military cultural preferences, the USG and U.S. military can ill afford to revert to an almost exclusive military cultural focus on big war, as they certainly did following Vietnam. To recapitulate the essence of these three studies in distilled form, the USG and the U.S. military did not succeed in Vietnam because they failed to integrate the interagency within a unified effort and purpose to prosecute the counterinsurgency in Vietnam, they failed to understand the nature of the war they were fighting, and the U.S. military’s cultural preference, and almost sole focus, for big conventional war precluded (impeded) it from adapting to prosecute counterinsurgency successfully. While U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have witnessed some significant successes during the last two years, it is still not completely certain that the American military’s culture, doctrine, and organization changed with sufficient celerity to ultimately succeed. But, it currently seems that these changes were effected just in time. However, in future permutations of this long irregular war, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and their ilk, will not likely elect to fight the U.S. with methods that approximate “head-on tank battles.” For this reason, it would be exceedingly prudent to sustain the recently achieved co-equal emphasis on both irregular and regular warfare that has been absent heretofore. Perhaps, now, the USG and the U.S. military, with their concomitant organizational and cultural preferences, are genuinely on the verge of expunging the ghosts of Vietnam.

Links:

1. A Study of Strategic Lessons Learned in Vietnam (Omnibus Executive Summary) - BDM Corporation, 9 March 1981.

2. The Unchangeable War - Brian M. Jenkins, Rand, November 1970.

3. Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam – R. W. Komer, Rand, August 1972.

Post-Script: Note Appendix A (Asymmetries in the Second Indochina War) and Appendix C (Characteristics of the American Way of War) in the Executive Summary of the 1980 BDM report, A Study of the Strategic Lessons of Vietnam. Some of these salient points, surprisingly, still resonate today if one takes a hard, introspective look, at the American military and the enemies it faces.

SWJ Editors' Links:

The Ghosts of Vietnam - Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club
Discuss at Small Wars Council

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Force Structure for Small Wars

by Andrew C. Pavord, Small Wars Journal

Download interim version of article as PDF

Since 9/11 the armed forces of the United States have paid a steep price to acquire proficiency in counterinsurgency operations. After going through a painful learning process the Army and Marines published the now acclaimed counterinsurgency manual and implemented a new approach in Iraq that is delivering impressive results. It is now a logical time to consider how to redesign combat units to reflect these lessons and prepare for the small wars of the future.

This article will argue that counterinsurgency brigades should be added to the U.S. Army’s force structure. Lacking forces specially trained and equipped for counterinsurgency, the Army has fought the war on terror with conventional units adapted to counterinsurgency operations. For most units, the transition from conventional organization and tactics to the very different and challenging tasks of counterinsurgency was traumatic. The costs of poor organization for counterinsurgency, in terms of battlefield mistakes and the misallocation of resources, were substantial. To provide the optimal force for fighting insurgencies the Army should develop Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) that are specifically organized, equipped, and trained for the complex challenges of counterinsurgency operations.

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Prison Break: Maybe the Army's Not So Hidebound Afterall by Fred Kaplan at Slate.

On April 23, I wrote a column (Gates Celebrates Dissent) that turns out to have been mistaken—that, I've since found out, underestimated the U.S. Army's capacity to reward its creative dissidents...

I concluded the column: "[A]s long as junior officers see (as Gates put it) 'principled, creative, reform-minded leaders' like Paul Yingling assigned to lowly positions, the military will not nourish many more."

It turns out that I was wrong on two points. First, contrary to my implication, Yingling's battalion was not sent to prison-guard duty as a punishment. There isn't much demand these days for artillery fire in Iraq or Afghanistan. Still, artillery battalions have to do something...

More crucial (and here is where some good news enters the picture), "detainee operations" in Iraq have become a lot more important—and more innovative—than they used to be. With no fanfare, they have become a key element in the broader counterinsurgency campaign. If Yingling was singled out for his current job, it was in recognition—not in grudge-slinging defiance—of his talents. And, in fact, it seems that he was singled out.

This morning, I spoke with Maj. Gen. Doug Stone, commanding general of Task Force 134, which runs detainee operations in Iraq. On the speaker phone with him was his deputy commander, Paul Yingling.

About a year ago, Stone told me, he and Gen. David Petraeus realized that something had to be done about the detention centers in Iraq. There were two centers, holding a total of 26,000 detainees, and the few jihadists among them were indoctrinating a large share of the rest. "It was becoming Jihadi U. in there," Stone said.

Stone set out to apply counterinsurgency principles inside the centers' walls...

More at Slate and Abu Muqawama.

More on "counterinsurgency inside the wire" at MountainRunner.

Update: With a hat tip to David Ucko - Bloggers' Roundtable With Gen. Douglas M. Stone, Washington Post transcript.

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From the Human Terrain System,

It is with deep sorrow that we must inform you of the tragic death of Michael Bhatia, our social scientist team member assigned to the Afghanistan Human Terrain Team #1, in support of Task Force Currahee based at FOB SALERNO, Khowst Province.

Michael was killed on May 7 when the Humvee he was riding in was struck by an IED. Michael was traveling in a convoy of four vehicles, which were en route to a remote sector of Khowst province. For many years, this part of Khowst had been plagued by a violent inter-tribal conflict concerning land rights. Michael had identified this tribal dispute as a research priority, and was excited to finally be able to visit this area. This trip was the brigade's initial mission into the area, and it was their intention to initiate a negotiation process between the tribes.

Michael was in the lead vehicle with four other soldiers. Initial forensics indicate that the IED was triggered by a command detonated wire. Michael died immediately in the explosion. Two Army soldiers from Task Force Currahee were also killed in the attack, and two were critically injured.

During the course of his seven-month tour, Michael's work saved the lives of both US soldiers and Afghan civilians. His former brigade commander, COL Marty Schweitzer testified before Congress on 24 April that the Human Terrain Team of which Michael was a member helped the brigade reduce its lethal operations by 60 to 70%, increase the number of districts supporting the Afghan government from 15 to 83, and reduce Afghan civilian deaths from over 70 during the previous brigade's tour to 11 during the 4-82's tour.

A copy of Colonel Schweitzer's comments can be found at the Human Terrain System web page.

We will remember Michael for his personal courage, his willingness to endure danger and hardship, his incisive intelligence, his playful sense of humor, his confidence, his devoted character, and his powerful inner light. While his life has ended, he has not disappeared without a trace. He left a powerful effect behind, which will be felt by his friends and colleagues and by the people of Afghanistan for many years to come.

Steve Fondacaro
Program Manager

Montgomery McFate
Senior Social Science Advisor

Human Terrain System
US Army TRADOC

“The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/ISAF strategy becomes better attuned to the population’s concerns, views, criticisms, and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan.”

--Michael Vinay Bhatia, November 2007

More:

Medway Scholar Killed in Afghanistan Combat - Boston Herald
Afghan Bomb Kills Scholar from Mass. - Boston Globe
Brown Grad Killed in Afghanistan - Providence Journal
Medway Native Killed in Afghanistan - Daily News Tribune
Michael Bhatia - The QWU Blog
Meet Michael Bhatia - Foward Movement
In Memory of Michael Vinay Bhatia '99 - Brown University
The Cost of Being There - Complex Terrain Laboratory
Michael Bhatia Killed in Khost - Ghosts of Alexander
Social Scientist Killed in Afghanistan - Kings of War
'Human Terrain' Social Scientist Killed in Afghanistan - Danger Room
Fallen American - Forward Movement
In Memory of Michael Bhatia - Coming Back to Kabul
Human Terrain Team Member Killed - Historicus

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Leaving the Green Zone

By Sam Brannen

In the middle of Baghdad sits one of the United States’ greatest strategic liabilities in the Iraq war: a four square-mile swath of territory called the Green Zone (the “International Zone” when in polite company). Still crowded with the gaudy war memorials and palaces of Saddam’s regime that are too big to tear down, it is for many Iraqis the icon of U.S. occupation and a telling window into a post-surge security environment that looks more likely to loop back than move forward. The onetime seat of Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Green Zone is now shared by the sprawling Embassy Baghdad, the core of Iraq’s central government, and thousands of international contractors, including the infamous Blackwater security details. Green Zone denizens live in trailers, sometimes stacked one on top of the other, accustomed to the blare of the incoming round siren and ducking for cover in evenly spaced cement bunkers that are a bizarre juxtaposition to swimming pools, palm trees, and marble buildings.

Outside the Green Zone, American troops are fighting pitched battles in the high-density urban slums of Sadr City. Their objective is to reduce the mortar and rocket fire that has lately rained down on the Green Zone. By installing a massive cement wall to cut Sadr City in half, U.S. forces are attempting to corral militiamen and mortar teams out of range. As soldiers build the Sadr City wall, they fight for every inch in a slow grind that recalls trench warfare, taking casualties and under constant fire.

It is worth asking whether the Green Zone would be attacked absent such a pronounced U.S. presence tucked behind elaborate security checkpoints and layered defenses...

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UPDATE: Via Voice of America and Associated Press - US military officials in Iraq say the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq has not been captured. They denied reports from an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf, who told Iraqi state television on Thursday that Abu Ayyub al-Masri had been detained in a raid in the city of Mosul.

"Neither coalition forces nor Iraqi security forces detained or killed Abu Ayyub al-Masri. This guy had a similar name," said Maj. Peggy Kageleiry, a US military spokeswoman in northern Iraq. She said no additional details were being immediately provided.

Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said the confusion arose because the commander of Iraqi forces in northern Ninevah province was convinced that he had arrested al-Masri — also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

-----

The London Times, Associated Press and Reuters are reporting that al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri has been captured by Iraqi troops in Mosul. The capture was also reported on Iraqi television though there has been no official denial or confirmation from Multi-National Forces-Iraq or the Pentagon. Al-Masri took over al-Qaida in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed 7 June 2006 in a US airstrike northeast of Baghdad. From the reports:

"The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, has been arrested, the Arabic television station al-Arabiya reported on Friday, quoting the Iraqi Defense Ministry."

"Arabiya said Muhajir had been detained in a joint Iraqi-U.S. operation in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The US military said it had no information on the reports at this stage..."

"US officials said al-Masri joined an extremist group led by al-Qaida's No.2 official. He later joined al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and trained as a car bombing expert before traveling to Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003."

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway probably has it right as to the significance of al-Masri's capture:

I doubt this will make any terrific difference. We’ve captured or “otherwise dealt with” more number twos and number threes than you can shake a stick at over the years and buried this guy’s predecessor under a ton of rubble. Still, if true, it at least means the Iraqi security forces are getting better.

News Links

Man Held is Not Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq - Freeman and Sabah, Washington Post
US Military Denies Iraq Report of al-Qaida Arrest - Associated Press
Leader of al-Qaida in Iraq Has Not Been Captured - Voice of America
Iraq al-Qaeda Chief Not Captured - BBC News
Al-Qaeda in Iraq Leader Arrested In Mosul - Freeman and Sabah, Washington Post
Al-Qaeda in Iraq Leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri Captured - James Hider, London Times
Iraqis Report Capture of al Qaeda in Iraq Leader - CNN News
Iraqi Army Says Iraqi al-Qaida Leader Arrested - Associated Press
Al Qaeda's Leader in Iraq Arrested - Reuters
Al-Qaeda Iraq Leader 'Arrested' - BBC News

Blog Links

US Military Denies al Masri in Custody - Bill Roggio, The Long War Journal
Abu Ayyub al-Masri Arrested - James Joyner, Outside the Beltway
Al-Masri the Egyptian Falls - Richard Fernandez, The Belmont Club
Favorable Indicators - Jules Crittenden, Forward Movement
Abu Ayyub al Masri Reported Captured - Bill Roggio, The Long War Journal
AQI # 1 Busted - Dr. iRack, Abu Muqawama

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Guerrilla Warfare and the Indonesian Strategic Psyche
by Emmet McElhatton, Small Wars Journal

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Some analysts of Indonesian affairs have tried to rebut “the conventional wisdom that Indonesia is simply a violent society” and reject “arguments that locate the origins of violence in cultural characteristics that highlight the irrationality of the Indonesian crowd”, asserting instead that military and political elites, predominantly Javanese by implication, use this convenient cultural epithet to mask their role in the instigation, manipulation and coordination of politically expedient violence. Of course all national or ethnic cultures have violent facets, a reflection of both their humanity and their will to survive the depredations of other cultures – even that most civilised of cultures, the Melians of Thucydides’, defended themselves heroically when crunch, in the form of Athens, came calling. This accepted, then Indonesians should not be singled out with a “more violent” tag any more than other comparable societies. Also a reading of all but the most partisan histories of post-war Indonesia demonstrate clearly that the many violent episodes that blot the collective memory are a series of power struggles between opposing elites with the common denominator an Indonesian Army unrestrained in its willingness to use extreme violence to maintain its notion of order.

Acknowledging this, we need also note that there are some aspects to Indonesian social, and particularly martial, culture that do indicate a different approach to violence and its utilisation than the strategic culture of, for example, New Zealand would countenance. For the purposes of this brief survey I will consider the notion of Javanese culture as the dominant force in Indonesian strategic culture and then examine this through a consideration of Indonesian guerrilla warfare theory.

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UK Troops and US Marines Join Forces to Tackle the Taliban in Garmsir

By MoD Defence News via British Defence Staff - United States (BDS-US)

UK troops working as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in southern Afghanistan have been taking part in a joint operation with US Marines aimed at disrupting Taliban activity in the volatile Garmsir area of Helmand province...

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Are you deploying to an Iraq Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) or embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team (ePRT)? If so, then the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute has a course you should take. The Iraq PRT Orientation course provides members of Iraq Provincial Reconstruction Teams, and associated personnel, with critical skills needed to function in an interagency organization in a combat environment. The Small Wars Journal has posted a course brochure received earlier today via e-mail. The brochure contains a course outline, dates for the 5-day course (yes only 5 days, but better than no days we guess) and contact information. The FSI web page contains information on additional courses you may be interested in.

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13 May 2008 - After the Iraqi Offensive: An Address by Colonel H. R. McMaster (Public Event). Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. The government of Iraq has made great strides both militarily and politically over the past year and a half. After dramatically reducing al Qaeda in Iraq’s operational capability, the Iraqi Security Forces have successfully undertaken operations to reclaim segments of Basra and Sadr City from Shiite extremist elements. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al Maliki has won increasing support from the major Sunni, Kurdish, and Shiite blocs due to his leadership in this offensive. Moreover, in a sign of bottom-up reconciliation, nearly 90 percent of Sunnis polled declared their intention to participate in the October provincial elections. How will Iraqi political dynamics evolve as operations against Shiite extremists continue? How will the security situation in Iraq evolve as the July drawdown in U.S. forces approaches? How have recent events in Iraq influenced our understanding of nation-building strategy? Having recently returned from working with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus in Iraq, Colonel H. R. McMaster will address these and other questions at AEI on May 13. Following his address, Michèle Flournoy of the Center for a New American Security and AEI’s Thomas Donnelly will join Colonel McMaster for a discussion of these issues.

15 May 2008 - Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (Public Event). Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. In Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (AEI Press, May 2008), AEI scholars Thomas Donnelly and Frederick W. Kagan pose a series of urgent questions for policymakers: What is the strategic role of American ground forces? What missions will these forces undertake in the future? What is the nature of land warfare in the twenty-first century? What qualities are necessary to succeed on the battlefields of the Long War? What is the ideal size and configuration of the force--and how much will it cost? On Thursday, May 15, Donnelly, Kagan, and Kathleen Hicks of the Center for Strategic and International Studies will discuss these and other questions about the size, shape, and costs of the land forces the United States will require in the years ahead.

17-19 June 2008- 3rd Annual North American Security Colloquium: Wars Without Borders (Public Event). Kingston, Ontario. Sponsored by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, Queen's Centre for International Relations, Defence Management Studies at Queen's University, and the Canadian Forces Land Doctrine and Training System. The conflicts today in Iraq and in Afghanistan are examples of what some leading scholars and many commanders have termed “continuous wars among the people.” This type of conflict is developing or occurring in other regions of the world, in Africa and in Latin America for example. In many of these situations traditional and legal borders no longer define or contain the conflict, nor do obvious sovereign entities control belligerents. International commitments to control these conflicts necessarily demand complex, multi-dimensional diplomatic, military, police, and humanitarian responses. What has been learned about such conflicts from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may to some degree be transferable to conflicts in other regions. Assuming that the international community may well face future operations characterized by regional, borderless “wars among the people”, the centres at Queen’s University and their partners propose convening a distinguished group of approximately 200 experts from academic, military, governmental, and international institutions to examine how best to prepare commanders, military units and governments to plan for and conduct complex, multi-dimensional stability campaigns in this new environment.

16-18 September 2008 - The U.S. Army and the Interagency Process: A Historical Perspective (Public Event - Conference / Call for Papers). Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Sponsored by the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute. The symposium will include a variety of guest speakers, panel sessions, and general discussions. This symposium will explore the partnership between the U.S. Army and government agencies in attaining national goals and objectives in peace and war within a historical context. Separate international topics may be presented. The symposium will also examine current issues, dilemmas, problems, trends, and practices associated with U.S. Army operations requiring close interagency cooperation.

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National Public Radio's Guy Raz has a combination article, audio report / interview and link to a recent Army AAR (The King and I) that has been circulating via e-mail throughout the military community.

From Army Focus on Counterinsurgency Debated Within:

An internal Pentagon report is raising concerns about whether the Army's focus on counterinsurgency has weakened its ability to fight conventional battles. The report's authors — all colonels with significant combat experience — say the Army is "mortgaging its ability to (successfully) fight" in the future.

The report, recently obtained by NPR, is the latest twist in an ongoing debate within the Army over whether it is now too focused on counterinsurgency training. The counterinsurgency doctrine emphasizes the use of minimal force, with the intent of winning the hearts and minds of a civilian population...

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent a subtle but firm message to the Army a couple of weeks ago when he announced that Gen. David Petraeus — a staunch counterinsurgency advocate — has been nominated to take the helm of Central Command, where he will oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The post is arguably the highest-profile assignment in the U.S. military today.

"I would say that Gen. Petraeus' promotion is an affirmation of the fact that the counterinsurgency doctrine he wrote and the counterinsurgency strategy that he implemented in Iraq was successful," says Lt. Col. John Nagl, one of the Army's top experts on counterinsurgency doctrine...

Col. Sean MacFarland was among the first to successfully apply counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq in 2006. And yet he was a co-author of the recent internal Army report suggesting that the Army is far too focused on counterinsurgency training. This singular focus, he writes, is weakening the Army.

The report cites field artillery as an example of an area that has suffered from inattention. Since 1775, artillery units have served as the backbone of the U.S. Army. But today, a stunning 90 percent of these units are unqualified to fire artillery accurately — the lowest level in history.

MacFarland declined to be interviewed for this story. But views like his have been amplified publicly by an iconoclastic, Berkeley-educated officer, Lt. Col. Gian Gentile.

"Due to five years in Iraq and six years in Afghanistan, I believe that the U.S. Army has become a counterinsurgency-only force," Gentile said recently during a public lecture in Washington. He also declined to comment for this story.

Gentile, who served two tours in Iraq, is perhaps the most outspoken internal critic of what he calls the Army's dangerous obsession with counterinsurgency...

In a recent posting on a counterinsurgency blog, Col. Peter Mansoor, a top aide to Petraeus who also helped write Field Manual 3-24, accused Gentile of "misreading the history of what's happening in Iraq...

Much of this debate has played out here on SWJ and the Council. Expect more in the coming months...

Discuss at Small Wars Council

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