Change FM 3-24: Enemy Template in Small Wars
One of the key things missing in FM 3-24 is an enemy template. Remember those things? At NTC and JRTC, we’d count T-72s, BMPs, and BTRs to try and determine if we were facing the Russians forward security element, recon forces, or main effort. They provided a foundation for our thinking.
You won’t find such a section in FM 3-24. Magically, over the last ten years, we wished the enemy away believing that through our own sheer will-power we could separate the people from the enemy.
It’s time to be honest. We need to put the template in the manual.
Here’s a start. Nearly four years ago, I described in detail the enemy disposition and composition in the village of Zaganiyah in my article, The Break Point. It shows how AQI, just like many other social movements, mobilized, organized, recruited, trained, financed their operations, developed doctrine, planned, and executed the clearance of the village ultimately establishing a shadow government complete with judicial, military, arms economic arms.
It is one way to understand the enemy template.
Recently, Octavian Manea brought together a group of experts to ask them if counterinsurgency leads to a culture of entitlement?
Because we fail to recognize the enemy, what is missing in this conversation is the economic competition between the state and counter-state (or Shadow Government) which many continue to ignore or simply wish away. AQI has one (still does) and so does the Taliban. They provide competing "security forces, providing essential services to the population, promoting good governance, and encouraging economic development."
In Zaganiyah, we were in a bidding war with AQI. Everytime we would flood the market with state backed goods, they would drop their prices in order to show the citizens that they could outgovern the Iraqi government. At the same time, we had to shut down the AQI Walmart and try to rework property and land rights issues.
It's time to start listening to the guys who have actually done the work!
If we continue to only think in terms of what Americans are doing and ignore the other 99% of the people (not tell them what they should be thinking with information operations) then we're never going to get better.
We'll continue to waste time, money, and lives.
But, don't take my word for it. This is nothing new and was around long before FM 3-24. Some of the current modern thinkers who talk about it are Gordon McCormick and David Kilcullen and Steven Metz.
I learned from Bob Andrews and Leites and Wolfe. And so it must go. We must take our experience and teach it to the next generation refusing to brand ourselves knowing that war is much bigger than one person or one ideology.
Let’s make the change and put the enemy template into FM 3-24.
