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.
Comments
The article is simply…
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Wars are the most rewarding…
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To me, what Task Force 134 has done under Gen. Stone is as important as it is under-reported. For more information on the innovation seen in US detainee ops, I would highly recommend this transcript of a 18 Sept 2007 roundtable with the General: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/18/AR200709180196…
A corrections system that is seen as legitimate by those it is supposed to serve (the public & the state) is one of the key facets to enabling society; it is also one of the least understood, resourced and appreciated.
Its process can be seen in different ways, and in many states its function is very different. In brutal and repressive regimes it is a manner to enforce political will upon the populace; this was certainly the case under Saddam Hussein. While problems remain with regard to detention, incarceration and rehabilitation in Iraq's system, it has made some major strides - in no small part due to the efforts of U.S. personnel from DoD, DoJ and others involved in Security Sector Reform and Rule of Law efforts.
I recently had an opportunity to talk to one of the first folks to come in to Iraq in 2003 with the mission of getting Iraq's prisons on track, the assessment his team made on the state of Iraq's penal system ranged from the absence of anything but the walls of existing facilities to the fact that Saddam had issued a general pardon that included real threats to public security, criminals even he saw as a threat. This does not include a lack of corrections professionals across the breadth and depth of a system that had decayed under Saddam for the purpose of regime survival.
I also recently interviewed some of the personnel involved in SSR and RoL out in Mosul in the 06/07 time period - they made some big strides in a process that ranges from the arrest, to building a case, to bringing the accused through detention to trail, to making available judges that are more resistant to corruption (either from threat to them or their family, or from resisting bribes), to the conviction or acquittal of a charge, to the actual incarceration, potential rehabilitation, and reintegration into society. They did so at a time when we were beginning to understand the linkages in the political & judicial systems, and what role we were going to have to play in order assist the process of legitimacy.
The judicial process not easy, and is full of potential pitfalls, as we have seen in other countries where corruption, or inadequate attention and resources create exploitable flaws in the system. This process often ranges across multiple branches of government in order to ensure fairness and the absence of power constituted wholly in the executive; but just as in adjacent units on a battlefield, this creates boundaries that must be coordinated and understood less there be seams created that can be exploited by those with their own objectives.
Certainly from a military point of view, this is not what we'd call sexy (I use this in the sense of somebody brought up to appreciate the well synchronized physical actions on the OBJ with coordinated fires as a major indicator of a well trained and disciplined unit). Nor is it what we might consider the accepted role for military forces - but it is key role in building host nation legitimacy, and as such in countering insurgency. While in a perfect world we might have the capability and capacity resident elsewhere, and as such allow the military to focus on tasks that are exclusively such, the current conditions don't accommodate it. While there are based on the conditions I think a significant number of Inter-Agency folks involved in SSR & RoL in Iraq, the capacity requirements for this key mission require the military participate on a much broader scale.
This mission requires leaders and soldiers up to the challenge of thinking and learning - who by virtue of our core values represent morality in wartime conditions. LTC Yingling's BN and many other units participating in SSR and RoL activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, are as important to achieving our political objectives and securing our long term interests in Iraq and the region through the health of Iraq as a functioning society as any other effort currently underway there.
It is certainly not an easy mission to undertake, and my hat is off to them in being involved in a task that while not the same as the real challenges of their MOS and unit METL, is every bit as critical and at this moment in Iraq and Afghanistan may do more more to serve our interests and protect more lives then the one they were trained to do when they first began their military service back in CONUS.
Best, Rob