The Sunni tribal uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq, known as the Anbar Awakening, was the decisive event in the counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. To capitalize on discontent between the Sunni population and Al Qaeda, U.S. commanders on the ground in Anbar Province applied more creativity and opportunism than deliberate application of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, which at that time did not fully grasp the importance of traditional social networks and irregular forces. The U.S. military is now attempting to capture the lessons of the tribal uprising in Iraq and incorporate those lessons into theory, doctrine and practice. More immediately, the U.S. must determine the applicability of those lessons to ongoing counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts across the region.

The paper argues that traditional social networks and irregular security forces represent a critical source of intelligence, political support and security for governments attempting to increase state control and legitimacy during an insurgency. Moreover, U.S. Army Special Forces are uniquely qualified to leverage traditional social networks and irregular security forces due to their unique training regiment, organization and experience in their capstone mission of Unconventional Warfare (UW). Ultimately these two claims provide the background for a central argument: the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) should refocus the counterinsurgency role of Army Special Forces on leveraging traditional social networks and employing irregular security forces to expand host nation control and security in contested, ungoverned or insurgent controlled spaces.

This monograph explains that tribes and traditional social networks continue to provide a degree of social order in some of the world's least governed and most volatile areas. Capitalizing on that underlying social order is critical to stabilizing remote areas and undermining insurgencies, especially when the government lacks favorable force ratios for counterinsurgency. The United States historically employed tribes and irregulars successfully in support of comprehensive counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines and Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army Special Forces have demonstrated a unique ability to organize tribal networks for self-defense and lead irregular forces to secure remote areas and isolate insurgents. The U.S. must capitalize on this core competency that exists within the special operations community to effectively deal with the ungoverned spaces that abound in current areas of conflict and prevent them from becoming safe-havens for insurgents and violent extremists.

Read the entire monograph.

Some aspects to keep in mind as we think about what it means to be a profession include among other things --- the special skills and expertise, the ethics that define our behaviors, a commitment to continued education and development, self-regulation, and in our particular case, subordination to civilian authority.

To serve as a initial catalyst for a discussion, I have posted an interview that I recently conducted with the Army Center of Excellence for the Professional Military Ethic who are profiling a number of Army leaders on "The Army Profession". By sharing this dialog with you, I hope to expand awareness and initiate a substantive dialogue on this important subject. I welcome you to view my interview at YouTube and below as well as encourage you to provide comments.

I'm starting to think that I never will. The shortcomings that you cite seem, to me, to be not unique to COIN. But inability to "get" them seems to always be held up as evidence of not getting COIN.

Risk aversion, blind adherence to SOP, unwillingness to partner and embed, obsession with PowerPoint, excessive force protection, neglecting personal relationships, lack of coordination - it sounds to me like we don't get war. Of any type. I don't understand why our lack of knowledge is so often characterized as a more narrow deficiency of not getting COIN.

Col. Paul Yingling is one of the most thoughtful soldiers of his generation. In particular, his articles in Armed Forces Journal on the failures of military leadership and the compact between the United States and the men and women who fight the Long War have provoked much needed debate. The second of these pieces, "The Founders' Wisdom," a call for a return to a conscript military as the most effective and equitable way to raise forces for this struggle, has merited particularly close attention, rebuttal, and now, thanks to the folks over at Small Wars Journal, an invitation to further discussion. An offer I can't resist.

Yingling makes three arguments for abandoning the current All-Volunteer Force. The first argument is based on the experience of the two world wars of the 20th century and based upon Yingling's reading of the American tradition. Both these points are suspect. Take the analogy between the world wars and the Long War. The world wars were, relatively speaking, large and short, overwhelmingly conventional and decided by firepower. The Long War is, well, long, and though it has taxed the current force nearly to its breaking point, it is still rightly regarded as a series of small wars or campaigns. And the "American tradition" must account for the Civil War as well as the world wars. While the Civil War marked the first use of conscription in America, both Federal and Confederate armies were volunteers; conscripts accounted for about 6 percent of the total Union army.

But Yingling also extends his reading of this tradition: "[T]his approach demands popular participation in national security decisions and provides Congress with powerful incentives to reassert its war powers. Unlike the all-volunteer force, a conscripted force of citizen soldiers would ensure that the burdens of war are felt equally in every community in America." This is a revealing quote, echoing two laments often expressed by American officers...

Much more at AEI's CDS.

Topics include:

1) Do we have the guts to enforce the new Iran sanctions?

2) Is Afghan development assistance making the problem worse?

Do we have the guts to enforce the new Iran sanctions?

Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama succeeded in pushing another Iran sanctions resolution through the U.N. Security Council. That resolution gives countries the right (but not the obligation) to inspect ships suspected of carrying military and nuclear items the Security Council has banned from Iran. On July 1, Obama signed into law H.R. 2194, a statute that will allow the president to impose sanctions on people or companies anywhere in the world who deal with Iran's petroleum exploration and refining businesses. H.R. 2194 was a very popular bill; it passed 408-8 in the House and 99-0 in the Senate.

Obama now has all the sanction authority he could have hoped for. But now that he has these powers, will he have the will to use them? Employing the new sanctions will require Obama and the United States to experience some unpleasant side effects. The next phase of the tussle with Iran could involve a global game of chicken, and it's not clear who will blink first.

On July 6, the Washington Post ran a story about Iran's preparations for a naval clash in response to the ship inspection provision of the Security Council resolution. The article discussed Iran's "asymmetric" tactics against the U.S. 5th Fleet which could involve anti-ship missile attacks supplemented with suicide speedboat and aircraft attacks on U.S. warships near Iran. U.S. commanders, informed by war-games and training exercises, claim to be ready for these tactics.

A naval clash would seem to play to the U.S. military's strong suit. An Iranian attack would allow U.S. air and naval power to punish a broad range of Iranian military targets. The United States would seem to possess "escalation dominance" in this scenario.

But Iran's strategy would be primarily political, not military. Even one minor hit on a U.S. warship, one photograph of gray smoke coming from a U.S. hull, would exceed expectations and would be an Iranian moral victory. More importantly, Iran would hope to turn its losses into a propaganda victory -- an example of the U.S. bully beating up a small country. From an economic perspective, the Obama team would likely ponder the implications for the global economy of a naval battle in the Strait of Hormuz. For all these reasons, it might be in Iran's interest to arrange a provocation over the ship-inspection provision, engage the United States in a game of chicken, and see whether or not the Security Council resolution will have any meaning.

Iran is not the only one that can play chicken over this issue. China's oil companies will soon be the dominant foreign player in Iran's energy sector. H.R. 2194's sanctions will place these Chinese companies, and many other Chinese companies dealing with Iran, in Obama's gun sights. Will he be —to pull the trigger and risk a possible trade war with China, thus imperiling his goal of doubling U.S. exports over the next five years? Or will Obama use the bill's opt-out provisions, which the president noted in his signing statement, and render the statute something of a dead letter?

Sanctioning Iran is not free; it will require taking risks and possibly incurring economic and even military losses. Iran, and perhaps China, might soon test Obama's appetite for further escalation.

Is Afghan development assistance making the problem worse?

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, David Kilcullen, a close adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, predicted that the newly installed Afghanistan commander would focus "on [Afghan] government accountability, government reform [and] government human rights abuses." Kilcullen added, "Now the [NATO] strategy says the aim is to extend the reach of the Afghan government.... Thank God we haven't been very successful.... We would have extended the reach of a government people don't like." Indeed, a new survey of Afghans found that 28 percent of households, overwhelmingly in rural areas, had to pay bribes, mostly to police, and judges, or for other routine government services. Although far from popular, the Taliban are able to hang on because enough of the population views them as an antidote to a hopelessly corrupt government.

A long feature story in the New York Times this week described how al Qaeda is expanding its presence in rural Yemen. Powered by popular contempt for a corrupt Yemeni government, the piece speculated that Yemen's ungoverned tribal areas could soon equal or surpass the Pashtun Afghan-Pakistan tribal areas as al Qaeda's preferred haven.

The 9/11 attacks traced their origins back to an irresponsibly governed Afghanistan. More recent terrorist attempts on the U.S. homeland have been traced back to the ungoverned parts of Yemen. Is there anything the U.S. government can do to mitigate the terrorist threats lurking in the world's ungoverned territories?

A 2007 study by the Rand Corp. analyzed the terrorist threat from ungoverned territories and produced recommendations for how the U.S. government should respond. The report studied ungoverned spaces on four continents, including the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa.

After cataloging and analyzing risk factors from all the case studies, the authors discussed recommendations for a U.S. government response. The recommendations sound strikingly similar to those the U.S. government is currently employing in Afghanistan: strengthen governance, extend the reach of government, emphasize security assistance, invest in infrastructure, improve agency cooperation, deny terrorists local sources of income, and so on. In other words, nation-building, with more effort and resources on the ungoverned spaces.

The report gave passing attention to the possibility that U.S. development assistance might make the problem of corruption inside an ungoverned society worse. Were this to occur, it would boost the popularity of insurgent groups, including those who harbor anti-American terrorist organizations.

U.S. policymakers should be open to the possibility that the more development aid the United States pushes into Afghanistan, the more corrupt the government in Kabul becomes and the more the Taliban gain. In an even more cruel irony, adding more roads, airports, telecommunications capacity, and banking services to a partially ungoverned Afghanistan increases the usefulness of the country to transnational terrorist organizations, when compared with much more primitive backwaters such as Somalia.

As far as Afghanistan is concerned, it is charitable to conclude that Rand's recommendations have yet to be proved. They might even be making the situation there worse. If so, unsettling conclusions follow. At a minimum, what to do about ungoverned territories remains an open question.

... Counterinsurgency doctrine is interpreted, expanded and sometimes challenged in the proliferation of publications and blogs dedicated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One widely read blog is known by its URL, taches d'huile (oil spots), named after the anti-guerrilla tactic invented by French general Joseph Gallieni in the late nineteenth century. Gallieni's idea was that, rather than pushing forward across a broad front, the occupying army would gradually and evenly expand its control outward from a central stronghold, as oil spreads on paper. Other prolific bloggers include Abu Muqawama (nom de plume of Andrew Exum, an ex-Army Ranger who is completing a doctoral thesis on Lebanese Hizballah) and former Washington Post journalist Tom Ricks. Among the authors of books and articles are a number of active and retired military officers who publish in a range of venues, from Military Review and Small Wars Journal to think tank occasional papers series and, increasingly, university and trade press monographs. Crucially for counterinsurgency doctrine's cachet, many of these authors are soldier-scholars. Among those brandishing doctorates are Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster (North Carolina, history), retired Col. Conrad Crane (Stanford, history), retired Col. Peter Mansoor (Ohio State, military history), retired Lt. Col. John Nagl (Oxford, international relations), retired Col. Kalev Sepp (Harvard, history) and retired Lt. Col. David Kilcullen of the Australian army (New South Wales, politics). Then there is Gen. David Petraeus (Princeton, international relations), the motivating force behind the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, the only general of the post-September 11 wars whose name is bruited for the presidency...

More at Middle East Report.

If confirmed by the Senate, Mattis will succeed Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Mattis currently is commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command.

If confirmed, the general would have responsibility for operations from Pakistan to Egypt and Oman to Kazakhstan. He would be the combatant commander for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mattis served as the commander of the Marine forces that were first in Afghanistan in 2001. He also served as the commander of the 1st Marine Division during the initial push into Iraq in 2003. He left that job to serve as the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

He has served as the four-star commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command since 2007.

The general has received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal twice, the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star with a "V" device for valor. He is from Pullman, Wash., and has been in the Marine Corps since 1972. He served as a battalion commander in Task Force Ripper during Operation Desert Storm.

Commentary

An easy choice for Gates. Mattis seemed otherwise headed for retirement, a waste given the requirement for a strong choice at Centcom. Mattis' most urgent task is Centcom's diplomatic duties - in particular, establishing and extending relationships with political and military leaders around the Persian Gulf. Gen. Petraeus will handle Afghanistan and Gen. Austin will handle Iraq. Mattis will handle everything else, with Iran likely his top concern. The first step for Mattis on Iran is establishing his relationships with the GCC countries.

Understanding Al Qaeda's True Center of Gravity

A Book Review of:

Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat, by Commander Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, USN

Reviewed by: Malcolm Nance

What steels the heart of educated men to slaughter innocent passengers and fly

a jetliner full of people into a skyscraper?  What power does a few minutes

internet chat with a dissident cleric hold that can make an officer of the United

States Army abandon his professional and military oath and gun down his fellow soldiers

in cold blood?  What desire makes other terrorists physically ill with jealousy

that they themselves were not chosen to die in a suicide attack?  Pondering

these questions gives one a glimpse of the dark heart and evil commitment of our

enemy, Al Qaeda.

The level of moral corruption necessary to abandon one's entire upbringing and

commit an overt act of murderous treachery as a form of worship is often beyond

comprehension of the common man. The question, Why Do They Fight? is often

asked but rarely answered with clarity. From soldier to flag officer, responses

range from measured to the dangerously xenophobic. Unfortunately, many of our warrior's

beliefs about the terrorists are misguided, ill-informed and too often openly racist.

Many of our citizens and soldiers alike, succumb to the habit of making assertions

about our enemy with no basis in fact or reality.

A new book from the US Naval Institute, Militant Islamist Ideology:

Understanding the Global Threat written

by Cdr. Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, USN has the answers necessary to recalibrate our

misperceptions of the present terrorist opposition.  It is an excellent compendium

of historical, religious and ideological insights that reveals the terrific corruption

of Islam that makes up the Islamic militant worldview.  It is a book well suited

to giving our warriors a grounded understanding of not only who we are fighting

but what belief system make them so desperate to engage in asymmetric combat at

the cost of their own lives.

Sun Tzu' trusted maxim applies neatly to our struggle against Al-Qaeda: If

you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred

battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will

also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb

in every battle. 

As American war-fighters, we know ourselves.  After 20 years of being punished

by the terrorists' asymmetric hand, we have become masters of understanding How

They Fight. I know corporals with a near encyclopedic knowledge in the techniques

of IED placement, the difference between the explosive capability of Russian and

Chinese made RPG-7 rocket rounds and how many warning pigeons sent into the air

by insurgent sympathizers will signal of an impending ambush..  When it comes

to Terrorist Tactics, Techniques, Procedures, we now stand second to none.

It is with regret that the terrorist enemy has painfully shown us the cost of

our cultural arrogance and ignorance of their willingness to fight hard and to the

death; the butcher's bill thus far is a brigade's worth of dead and a divisions'

number in wounded.  It has taken America a decade of daily losses to finally

feel somewhat comfortable with the newly rediscovered warcraft of counter-insurgency. 

However, our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines still do not seem to know virtually

anything factual about the motivation and goals of our enemy. Our military leadership

appears to not care greatly about the drive behind our enemy's heart or even how

to exploit their ideological vulnerabilities. As a nation we increasingly ignore

the terrorist mindset until it shows up on CNN.  This indifference to Al Qaeda's

love of their game, (a Kill-Humiliate-Punish-Inspire strategy) quite often leads

to dramatic and lethal surprises when confronted with their stealth, inventiveness

and adaptability.  

Militant Islamist Ideology contends that militants who call themselves

Muslims globally have used deliberate corruptions of Islam, particularly in the

ways they interpret and parse the Qur'an, to justify their terrorism and mass murder. 

Although the militants refer to themselves as performing "jihad," or armed struggle,

and call themselves "jihadists," the author makes it clear in precise religious

detail that the exact traditional definitions within the Qur'an and the Hadiths

reveal these militants to be engaged in illegal terrorism and war on society. 

Militant Islamist Ideology also provides an excellent primer on the ideologs

of the past and present that impact the philosophy of many modern era militants,

particularly Sayyid Qutb, Abdullah Azzam and Osama Bin Laden.  More importantly

he shows how they developed their corrupt worldviews.  He takes great pains

to show that the terrorists' religious rebellion is heretical to traditional Muslims

and has absolutely no religious, spiritual or political standing in Islam. 

The book is very well written and uses a clear, crisp style that masterfully

balances detail with readability.  It reveals the inner dynamics of the myriad

of religious justifications that both Sunnah and to a lesser extent, Shiite militant

groups use to qualify their choice of terrorism.  Additionally, the author

forges a new pathway to understand the transition of groups from the generally peacefully

Islamic to the more oratorical/socially active radical Islamists to the radical

armed Militant Islamist and back.  He writes: "It is important to begin by

defining the differences between "Islam," "Islamist" and "Militant Islamist." 

Disaggregating these three terms will begin the process of understanding the nuances

needed to pursue this long-term campaign." 

Militant Islamist Ideology is an outstanding work that joins a growing

rank of books in the field of defining and helping us understand the heart of the

enemy and to forming a framework needed to counter militant ideologies.  These

include West Point's Combating Terrorism Center's

Militant Ideology Atlas,

Jarret Brachman's

Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice, Brynjar Lia's

Architect of the Global Jihad and my own

An End to Al Qaeda.

The only point of contention is that Cdr Aboul-Enein's work contains a slight

contradiction by labeling armed militants who he asserts have invalidated their

claim to Islam and as Muslims as "Islamic militants."  They do not deserve

the title. I agree with the author and majority of the Muslim world that armed terrorists

should be stripped in toto of any validation the word "Islamist" entitles

them. This takes away nothing from the book, as it is well in synch with the new

National Security Strategy of the United States. He does offer some starting points

to challenge them; most based on the militants own stated vulnerabilities. 

When Cdr. Aboul-Enein says that, "Militant Islamist Ideology can only be fought

only by using Islamic argumentation and exposing Militant Islamist views as narrow

and doing a disservice to Islam," he is right on the mark.

Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat is a must read for all war-fighters, academics

and citizens who seek a greater understanding of the motivation of militant extremists.

Malcolm Nance is a contributor to the SWJ Blog (bio)

and the author of, most recently, An End to al-Qaeda: Destroying Bin Laden's Jihad and Restoring America's Honor.

He is a retired US Navy intelligence specialist, an Arabic speaking interrogator

and a master Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) instructor.  He

now works as a counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant.

The original title of the French version of this manual is "Doctrine de contre

rébellion".

In order to avoid confusion and possible misunderstanding with our allies, the French word "contre rébellion" is translated as "counterinsurgency". Although the American and

British meaning of this term better corresponds to the French notion of "stabilisation" (stabilization phase), counterinsurgency in this document, should exclusively be understood as referring to the tactical level of operations.

In the same manner, the French word "rébellion" which characterizes an armed

organization using guerrilla warfare and/or terrorism is translated as "insurgency".

Doctrine for Counterinsurgency at the Tactical Level.

Are all the strategic objectives in Afghanistan clearly defined and acheivable by military force?

Of the operational activities that might support our strategic objectives that require civilian expertise, why in nine years have we not sent adequate civilian agency representation and funding?

If military operations in Afghanistan require a single commander, why does the civilian side of the COIN campaign have authority divided between at least a half-dozen senior officials without anyone having a deliverable "final say" reporting to the President?

If Pakistan's "partnership" is officially a requirement for strategic success (and it is), why would Pakistan be a "partner" in helping stabilize an independent regime in Afghanistan that would terminate Pakistan's ability to use Afghanistan as "strategic depth"?

Is the Taliban more important to our national security than is al Qaida?

Much more at Zenpundit.