Clear-Hold-Build-Fail? Rethinking Local-Level Counterinsurgency
Clear-Hold-Build-Fail? Rethinking Local-Level Counterinsurgency by David Ucko, War on the Rocks.
Counterinsurgency theory underlines the uniqueness of each insurgency, yet also advances an approach that is to apply across time and space. Termed clear-hold-build, the approach involves clearing contested territory through security operations and then holding that territory so as to isolate and defend it from insurgent influence. The build phase, finally, involves economic, developmental or governance-related activity intended to increase the legitimacy of the counterinsurgents and the government they represent. Done successfully, clear-hold-build allows the government to increase the territory under its control. According to the most common simile, government control spreads like oil- or ink-spots across absorbent paper. The insurgents, meanwhile, lose both physical space and their link to the population, without which they are gradually rendered irrelevant or are simply defeated.
On a very abstract level, the sequencing and logic of clear-hold-build are sound. Yet, as any student or practitioner of counterinsurgency knows, implementing this approach is anything but easy…
