Implementing a Population-Centric COIN Strategy
Implementing a Population-Centric Counterinsurgency Strategy
Northeast Afghanistan, May 07 — July 08
by Major Nathan Springer
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This paper will examine the successful implementation of population-centric counterinsurgency strategy in northeastern Afghanistan through the lens of my experiences executing it in my area of operations as an Army Troop Commander from May 2007 — January 2008 and as the Squadron Fires Effects Coordination Cell (FECC) Officer in Charge, responsible for the squadron's application of non-lethal effects in the northern Konar provincial districts of Naray and Ghaziabad and the eastern Nuristan provincial district of Kamdesh. I will recount how my unit, 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry, 173rd ABCT, arrived at the decision to apply a population-centric strategy and will outline the differences between an enemy-centric and population-centric focus, the transition points between the two strategies and within the population-centric strategy, and implementation of the population-centric strategy by line of operation. Finally, I will describe a battlefield calculus in terms of the time, patience, and personal relationships required to immediately empower the traditional Afghan leadership and population, from the village and the tribal levels on up, and at the same time marginalize and isolate the insurgency.
I have had the privilege of deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan where I witnessed the implementation of two disparate strategies within the context of the War on Terror. My first deployment, OIF II in 2004-05, was set in Iraq's Sunni Triangle within a Squadron Area of Operation (AO) that stretched from Samarra north to Tikrit. My Squadron implemented an enemy-centric strategy. The enemy-centric strategy worked well in the most volatile central and southern portions of our expansive AO but we failed to recognize the situation was different in our northern AO. I didn't know it then but our Squadron missed a potentially game-changing 'transition point' in that portion of our AO. A transition point is a key juncture where the operating environment necessitates the implementation of a new strategy or the adaptation of an existing strategy to accommodate the fluid conditions on the ground. It would take a deployment to Afghanistan in 2007-08 and the implementation of a population-centric strategy for me to fully digest this and to assign full relevance to transition points, whether they represented a 180 shift from a wholly enemy-centric to a population-centric strategy, like our missed opportunity in Iraq, or the simple recognition of the transition points within our population-centric strategy in Afghanistan.
Download the full article: Implementing a Population-Centric COIN Strategy
Major Nathan Springer, U.S. Army, is Chief of Operations of the U.S. Army / U.S. Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
