The candidate's frustration is understandable, but we need to find more creative ways for the Pakistanis to gain control of the ungoverned tribal region of Waziristan. We need to help them think out of the box. Many of the problems that Pakistan has with gaining control of the tribal regions are twofold. First, the organization primarily responsible for Waziristan is the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI is riddled with Islamic fundamentalists, and is notoriously independent. Consequently, the Pakistani President cannot count on them to carry out orders. Second, The Pakistani army is a conscript force made up of soldiers who largely represent the younger and poorer segments of the society. Many tend to side with fundamentalism, and are decidedly reluctant to kill other Muslims. Their more sophisticated officer cadre realizes that their charges can be pushed only so far for fear of mutiny. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the efforts of Pakistani security forces to secure the tribal areas and expel al Qaeda and the Taliban have been half hearted at best. Those who are veterans of Somalia saw similar Pakistani conduct in that conflict.

One out of the box solution for this dilemma would be to create a Pakistani version of the French Foreign Legion. For nearly a century and a half, French draftees were forbidden by law from serving outside of Metropolitan France. Consequently, the French built a colonial army around foreign volunteers and native colonial troops. The heart of this force was the Foreign Legion. Although the legion was sometimes derided as a mercenary force, the average French citizen was not concerned with its casualties or activities save for an occasional novel or film and the French lived with this force because it never saw the Legion with their borders. The exception to this was World War I when the nation was grateful for any foreign help it could get.

Just as many tribes in French colonies did not consider themselves French, the tribes of Waziristan do not consider themselves to be Pakistanis. A disciplined force of foreign volunteers equipped with vehicles and weapons appropriate to the terrain would likely be very effective, particularly if it could come with the money to fund development; in its later years, the French Legion has created a competent "heart and minds" capability that it uses effectively in the former French colonies in Africa where the Legions is frequently employed. Ironically, this is an area where foreign security companies might help. They have been largely counterproductive to the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq, but Waziristan is not a counterinsurgency, it is a war of pacification.

Assisting the Pakistanis in training, equipping, and funding a similar force would be money well spent by the United States. Unlike Afghanistan, where we equipped Muslims to fight the Soviets in the last century, we would be creating a largely western non- Muslim force that would let the Pakistanis fight Muslim foreigners on Pakistani territory using non- Muslim surrogates. This is what the military calls "economy of force". Instead of using American helicopter gun ships, drone aircraft, and precision guided missiles; the Pakistanis could use such devices with their national markings on their soil. The Chinese nationalists used the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" against the invading Japanese even as they were fighting a civil war against the Communists. Chinese of all political stripes helped the AVG by acting as spotters and rescuing downed airmen because these white foreigners were acting against a fellow oriental people who had invaded their soil. The Pakistani Foreign Legion option does not even ask for the native Pakistanis to go that far.

To be sure, some Pakistanis, as have many French, will object to using foreigners to fight their battles. That has not been a significant impediment to the French Legion. At least Pakistani sons will not be killing other Muslims, and dying in the process. Given the drawbacks of the American incursion option, this is a good alternative, and should be seriously considered by American and Pakistani policy makers.

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Officer and was an advisor on Iraqi ad Afghan security affairs to the Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2003-2005

Gates: NATO Must Increase Assets, Cut Caveats in Afghanistan

By Donna Miles

American Forces Press Service

HEIDELBERG, Germany, Oct. 25, 2007 -- Defense Secretary Robert M Gates urged European military leaders meeting here today to step up their countries' contributions in Afghanistan and eliminate restrictions on their forces that threaten the mission's success.

The NATO alliance has made huge contributions leading the International Security Assistance Force, Gates told officers attending the 15th Conference of European Armies. U.S. Army Europe sponsors the annual ground-forces conference.

He noted that NATO leads 25 provincial reconstruction teams that are helping the Afghans build infrastructure, while some allies are conducting decisive military actions that are thwarting Taliban efforts. Meanwhile, Gates said, NATO is helping to build Afghan security forces. The Afghan army is now 47,000 members strong and represents every major Afghan ethnic group.

However, Gates expressed concern that, without more mentoring and liaison teams and other resources, momentum won't continue. "Our progress in Afghanistan is real, but it is fragile," he told the officers.

The secretary repeated the message he delivered yesterday to NATO ministers during their conference in Noordwijk, Netherlands: NATO needs to commit more resources to ensure the mission succeeds.

"At this time, many allies are un—to share the risks, commit the resources and follow through on collective commitments to this mission and to each other," he said. "As a result, we risk allowing what has been achieved in Afghanistan to slip away."

Another big problem is caveats, restrictions imposed by individual countries on how their forces can be used within NATO. Gates said this problem is "symptomatic of a deeper challenge facing NATO."

He compared the problem to a chess game in which one player enjoys full liberty of motion and another can move only a single space in a single direction. "One player is clearly handicapped," he said. "Similarly, restrictions placed on what a given nation's forces can do and where they can go put this alliance at a sizable disadvantage."

Gates said he recognizes countries' need for political oversight of their deployed ground forces and that each NATO country has a different political and economic landscape.

"While there will be nuances particular to each country's rules of engagement, the 'strings' attached to one nation's forces unfairly burden others and have done real harm in Afghanistan," he said.

Gates urged conference participants to get their governments to take another look at these restrictions. "As you know, better than most people, brothers in arms achieve victory only when all march in step toward the sound of the guns," he said.

"To that end," he said, "I'm asking for your help to make caveats in NATO operations, wherever they are, as benign as possible -- and better yet, to convince your national leaders to lift restrictions on field commanders that impede their ability to succeed in critical missions."

Links:

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Gates Blasts NATO Members' Afghan Policies - Voice of America

Gates Prods NATO States on Deployments to Afghanistan - Associated Press

Gates asks European Armies to Push Politicians on NATO - Reuters

NATO 'Failure' Endangering Australian Forces - The Age

NATO Must Help Diggers in Afghanistan, says PM - Herald Sun

Gates: National Interests Hamper NATO in Afghanistan - AFP

Recipe for Disaster in Afghanistan - Toronto Star

Time for NATO to Step Up, in Afghanistan, Hillier Says - Ottawa Citizen

U.S. Prods NATO Over Afghan Security - Christian Science Monitor

What GAO Found:

DOD has taken several steps to improve planning for stability operations, but faces challenges in developing capabilities and measures of effectiveness, integrating the contributions of non-DOD agencies into military contingency plans, and incorporating lessons learned into future plans. These challenges may hinder DOD's ability to develop sound plans. Since November 2005, the department issued a new policy, expanded its military planning guidance, and defined a joint operating concept to help guide DOD planning for the next 15--20 years. These steps reflect a fundamental shift in DOD's policy because they elevate stability operations as a core mission comparable to combat operations and emphasize that military and civilian efforts must be integrated. However, DOD has yet to identify and prioritize the full range of capabilities needed for stability operations because DOD has not provided clear guidance on how and when to accomplish this task. As a result, the services are pursuing initiatives to address capability shortfalls that may not reflect the comprehensive set of capabilities that will be needed by combatant commanders to effectively accomplish stability operations in the future. Similarly, DOD has made limited progress in developing measures of effectiveness because of weaknesses in DOD's guidance.

DOD is taking steps to develop more comprehensive military plans related to stability operations, but it has not established adequate mechanisms to facilitate and encourage interagency participation in its planning efforts. At the combatant commands, DOD has established working groups with representatives from several key organizations, but these groups and other outreach efforts by the commanders have had limited effect. Three factors cause this limited and inconsistent interagency participation in DOD's planning process: (1) DOD has not provided specific guidance to commanders on how to integrate planning with non-DOD organizations, (2) DOD practices inhibit sharing of planning information, and (3) DOD and non-DOD organizations lack a full understanding of each other's planning processes, and non-DOD organizations have had a limited capacity to participate in DOD's full range of planning activities.

Although DOD collects lessons learned from past operations, planners are not consistently using this information as they develop future contingency plans. At all levels within the department, GAO found that information from current and past operations are being captured and incorporated into various databases. However, planners are not consistently using this information because (1) DOD's guidance for incorporating lessons into its plans is outdated and does not specifically require planners to take this step, (2) accessing lessons-learned databases is cumbersome, and (3) the review process does not evaluate the extent to which lessons learned are incorporated into specific plans...

Background / Reference Links:

DoD Directive 3000.05: "Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations", November 28, 2005

NSPD-44: Mananagement of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization

Joint Publication (JP) 3-0: Joint Operations

JP 3-07.3: Peace Operations

JP 3-08: Interagency, Intergovernmental Organization, and Nongovernmental Organization Coordination During Joint Operations Vol I

JP 3-08: Interagency, Intergovernmental Organization, and Nongovernmental Organization Coordination During Joint Operations Vol II

JP 3-57: Joint Doctrine for Civil-Military Operations

Joint Operating Concept (JOC): Military Support to Stabilization, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations (Version 2.0)

Transcript of Defense Dept. News Briefing with Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon

Iraqi Government Must Solidify Accomplishments, General Says

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2007 -- The Iraqi government needs to act now, not later, to solidify gains made in the war-torn country, the coalition commander in northern Iraq said today.

Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon told Pentagon reporters via a teleconference from his headquarters near Tikrit that a key to success in northern Iraq "will be the government's ability to capitalize on the current concerned citizen movements, leveraging them as a bridge to Sunni inclusion and reconciliation."

Mixon, commander of the 25th "Tropic Lightning" Division, will turn command of Multinational Division North over to Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling of the 1st Armored Division shortly. The general looked back on his 15-month deployment to the country and noted many positive outcomes.

He said the greatest example of success is with the Iraqi army. When the 25th Infantry Division arrived in August 2006, all of Iraq's army divisions in Multinational Division North were operating under coalition control. "In other words, I had command of those divisions," he said. "By contrast, today all four Iraqi army divisions are under Iraqi control, and they now routinely conduct unilateral and joint operations."

Another example is in Ninevah province. The province, which includes Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, is under the protection of the 2nd and 3rd Iraqi Army Divisions. These units conduct security operations largely independent of coalition forces.

"This has allowed me to reduce our day-to-day security presence in ... Mosul to just one (U.S.) infantry battalion," he said. "Just a year ago, we had three times this force operating in Mosul."

In Salahuddin and Diyala provinces -- areas that have experienced awful fighting against al Qaeda in Iraq -- Iraqis are in the lead in establishing operations centers in Samarra and Baqouba, the general said.

"These Iraqi-controlled centers serve as command and control nodes for Iraqi army and police forces and the integration of civilian agencies," he said. "These fully functional centers operate 24/7 and have proven to be invaluable as hubs for information and security operations in these two key cities."

Coalition and Iraqi attacks against terrorists in the area have paid off, he said. "The addition of two surge brigades in our area helped us regain the initiative from al Qaeda in the northern Baghdad belt and in Diyala province, which ... was our most volatile province," Mixon said.

Intelligence-driven raids have captured or killed dozens of terrorist cell leaders and disrupted extremist financial networks in Mosul and Samarra. "In all provinces, the enemy is off-balance and unable to plan, finance or execute coordinated operations to near the level it had prior to the surge," the general said.

The total number of attacks in Multinational Division North have dropped for three consecutive months and are on track to drop again for October, Mixon said. "These security successes have restored the confidence of the Iraqi people, who are now stepping forward in many communities, setting aside tribal and secular differences and sharing a common duty of fighting terrorism and rejecting extremism," he said.

He said similar progress has been made in governance and in the economy.

But there are still problems, he acknowledged. "Successful operations in Anbar and Baghdad have driven more enemy forces into the northern region, which remains a coveted terrorist sanctuary and breeding ground," he said.

The command has long and porous borders with Iran and Syria that offer easy access for foreign fighters. Severe unemployment in the region creates an enormous disaffected military-age male population. "In short, Multinational Division North remains a fertile ground for an active insurgency if we allow it to continue," he said.

Northern Iraq is at a crossroads, Mixon said. "While some areas, some as Ninevah, are ready for transition, others, such as Diyala, will require robust coalition presence for the foreseeable future," he said. "Our efforts, particularly during the surge, have brought precious time for the Iraqi government to move forward in the political processes and to make even greater improvements in the Iraqi security forces."

The government must act now to solidify the gains, he said, by building on the Iraqi citizens' optimism created by the security environment. "A key to success will be the government's ability to capitalize on the current concerned-citizen movements, leveraging them as a bridge to Sunni inclusion and reconciliation," he said.

The government must confront corruption and the financing of terrorist criminal activity to further the legitimized government and to keep pressure on the enemy, Mixon said. "A key step in 2008 will be provincial elections in the northern provinces as the nation builds toward a representative government," he added.

Mixon said he is proud of the job his soldiers and their Iraqi partners have done. "My soldiers know that we have made a difference, and that our sacrifices have not been in vain," he said.

The presidential primaries are quickly approaching and yet no candidate has put forward an innovative plan for salvaging the Iraq crisis. Mr. or Mrs. Presidential Candidate, peace in Iraq is possible, but only if true national reconciliation occurs. US-led Coalition efforts to build national unity have thus far produced limited results. Future attempts at this should be —to adopt more unconventional concepts and focus on the few bonds that still connect Iraq's different groups. One of these links is the Iraqis' love for soccer and their national team.

Soccer is Iraq's only true national sport. The passion it generates is twice that of the Super Bowl or the College Football national championship. Soccer has always been one of the few bonds between Iraq's peoples and this was evident when Iraqis defied terrorist attacks this past summer to celebrate Iraq's improbable capture of the 2007 Asian Cup soccer championship. Images of weeping and joyful Iraqis underscored that reconciliation is possible.

The Asian Cup presented the US-led Coalition with an ideal opportunity to help build national unity and improve its own standing with the Iraqi people. Defeating an insurgent force, especially when the dominant power is foreign, is virtually impossible without some support from the local population. Often the phrase "winning hearts and minds" is bantered about, but this term is outdated in Iraq, where the Coalition is unlikely to win many friends. However, communicating respect is still possible and could potentially garner success in helping build Iraqi unity. Unfortunately, the Coalition did not capitalize on this opportunity. In a time when innovative strategies and thinking are needed, the 2007 Asian Cup represents a missed opportunity.

Sadly, this was not the first time the Coalition failed to grasp soccer's ability to bring Iraqis together. Prior to the Iraqi Olympic soccer team's semifinal run during the 2004 Athens games, preliminary plans were made to improve the Iraqi team's training grounds and demonstrating Coalition support for the Iraqi effort. Bumper stickers in Arabic supporting the Iraqi team were to be created and placed on Coalition vehicles and handed out to Iraqi adults and children. The plans were never implemented, as the Coalition leadership believed the effort was a waste of time and resources. The Iraqi team's great success in Athens brought much joy to Iraq, though many Iraqis expressed disappointment over the lack of Coalition backing for their team.

The 2007 Asian Cup was no different. Instead of working with the Iraqi authorities to develop a strategic plan to leverage the tournament to build national unity, support for the government, and communicate Coalition respect to the Iraqis, the Coalition did little beyond issuing a few press releases that received only scarce media attention. In contrast, the Emir of Dubai garnered extensive media coverage for flying the Iraqi team out of Jakarta on his private jet and giving the team $5.4 million to honor Iraq's victory.

The Coalition likely adopted a low profile approach to not take any attention away from the Iraqi element of the story. But this type of thinking has undermined Coalition efforts in Iraq for over four years. Instead of being viewed as a participant in the Cup celebrations, the Coalition was seen as an uninterested outsider huddling behind barricades while Iraqis celebrated. Most Iraqis see the Coalition as a "them" and not a partner they can trust. Such labels make winning a counterinsurgency almost impossible and the continuation of this perspective will likely ensure the defeat of Coalition efforts in Iraq.

But the future holds a third opportunity. In 2009, the Iraqi team will represent Asia in the Confederations Cup in South Africa. One possible opponent for Iraq could be the United States, which won its regional championship this past July. If the match occurs, it will receive worldwide attention with many expecting a politically charged battle. But this does not have to be the case. Rather, the US-led Coalition and its member states' national soccer organizations can begin helping the Iraqi soccer federation now. This will communicate respect to the Iraqi people and help build the potential game as one of hope and cooperation instead of tension and aggression. The time for low profiles is over. Hopefully the Coalition will seize this opportunity so that the third time really will be the charm.

CPT BILL PUTNAM is a U.S. Army Reserve Military Intelligence officer. He has spent 21 months in Iraq managing the MNF-I STRATCOMM contract in 2006 and running the Coalition's Open Source Intelligence, which produces the "Baghdad Mosquito," in 2003-2004. CPT Putnam has a master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics, and is currently working Afghanistan-related issues at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

First up, from the very subjective and politically influenced Wikipedia, a hyperbole misrepresentation:

Hearts and Minds was a euphemism for a campaign by the United States military during the Vietnam War, intended to win the popular support of the Vietnamese people.

Many feel that this was no more than pro-war propaganda, and rang hollow compared to anti-war publicity efforts. Over the years, "Hearts and Minds" became a shorthand reference for disingenuous and misguided attempts to use a military to make a subjugated population behave more like its conquerors. The 1974 film Hearts and Minds showed the potential contradictions of the term, and for some the term "Hearts and Minds" remains symbolic of the fictional nature of militarist propaganda.

Counterinsurgency: FM 3024 / MCWP 3.33.5 defines the true meaning of the phrase hearts and minds as the two components in building trusted networks in the conduct of COIN operations:

"Hearts" means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. "Minds" means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts. Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks, which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents.

I think Dr. David Kilcullen defined hearts and minds as two components of COIN operations quite nicely during a COIN seminar at Quantico, Virginia, several weeks ago.

In addressing the reality of hearts and minds Kilcullen explained how the following 1952 statement by General Sir Gerald Templer, Director of Operations and High Commissioner for Malaya, has been misinterpreted:

"The answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the Malayan People"

General Templer did not mean (or say) that we must "be nice to the population" or make them like us. What he meant, and his subsequent actions played out, was that success in COIN rests on the popular perception and this perception has an emotive ("hearts") component and a cognitive ("minds") component.

Kilculen continued - what is essential here is making the population choose. The gratitude theory -- "be nice to the people, meet their needs and they will feel grateful and stop supporting the insurgents" -- does not work. The enemy simply intimidates the population when COIN forces / government are not present resulting in lip-service as the population sees COIN forces / government as weak and easily manipulated. In time, this leads to hatred of COIN forces / government by the population. On the other hand, the choice theory -- "enable (persuade, coerce, co-opt) the population to make an irrevocable choice to support COIN forces / government usually works better. The population typically desires to "sit on the fence" and not commit to supporting any side in an insurgency / COIN environment. COIN forces / government need to get the population off that fence and keep them there. This requires persuading the population, then protecting them, where they live. While this cannot be done everywhere, it must be done where it politically counts.

The components of "Hearts" and "Minds":

Hearts: The population must be convinced that our success is in their long-term interests.

Minds: The population must be convinced that we actually are going to win, and we (or a transition force) will permanently protect their interests.

Essential to these two components is the perceived self-interest of the population, not about whether the population likes COIN forces / government. The principle emotive content is respect, not affection. Support based on liking does not survive when the enemy applies fear, intimidation trumps affection. Disappointment, unreliability, failure and defeat are deadly -- preserving prestige and popular respect through proven reliability, honoring promises and following through, is key. Smacking the enemy hard (kinetic operations), publicly, when feasible (and no innocents are targeted) is also key. The enemy's two key assets are cultural understanding of the target population, and longevity (he will be around when we leave). Close cooperation with the host nation -- to design messages and demonstrate long-term reliability -- are critical.

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Related:

The Strong Horse in Counterinsurgency - The Captain's Journal

Note: Links provided within excerpts inserted by SWJ.

Excerpt on Doctrine

... An interim army counterinsurgency manual was released in October 2004, a year and a half after the start of the war, but it was an intellectually sterile document. Work on a much-needed revision did not begin until a year later, when two of the military's most respected commanders, Lieutenant Generals David Petraeus and James Mattis, took charge of the process. Petraeus, now the four-star commanding general of all U.S. forces in Iraq, was then the commander of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and Mattis held a parallel position at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Virginia. The writing team they assembled included many of the best and the brightest within the army and the Marine Corps; Conrad Crane, the director of the army's Military History Institute, was charged with supervising the effort. The writing process -- which included a February 2006 conference at Fort Leavenworth where outside counterinsurgency experts, human rights groups, and military journalists were brought together to comment on a working draft -- was unprecedented in its openness...

Excerpt on Hearts and Minds

Counterinsurgency refers to military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by governments or occupying forces to quell a rebellion. It is fundamentally a contest between insurgents and the government for control and the support of the population (with intervening outside powers sometimes attempting to tip the scales one way or the other). The COIN FM is not an academic document, but it is deeply informed by classical counterinsurgency theory, which emerged in response to the wave of wars of "national liberation" that followed World War II. Within that tradition, there are two competing schools of thought about the appropriate way to conduct counterinsurgency warfare: "hearts and minds" and "coercion." The COIN FM sides definitively with the former...

Excerpt on "Gloves On"

The most powerful critique of the COIN FM's approach comes from the "coercion" school of thought on counterinsurgency, which sees legitimacy as an unattainable -- and wholly unnecessary -- goal. In the 1960s, the RAND analysts Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf argued that counterinsurgents should worry less about winning popular allegiance and more about raising the costs of supporting the insurgency. As Edward Luttwak put it in a recent essay, "The easy and reliable way of defeating all insurgencies everywhere" is to "out-terrorize the insurgents, so that fear of reprisals outweighs the desire to help the insurgents." In contrast to the COIN FM, the coercion school sees no need for conventional armies to remake themselves into kinder, gentler nation builders; instead, they can win by doing what they do best: employing overwhelming firepower to destroy the adversary and using armed coercion -- including harsh collective punishment -- to convince the population to shun the insurgents. "The teething-ring nonsense that insurgencies don't have military solutions defies history," the widely read military analyst Ralph Peters has written. "Historically, the common denominator of successful counterinsurgency operations is that only an uncompromising military approach works -- not winning hearts and minds nor a negotiated compromise." Ultimately, the thinking goes, military sticks are much more important than civilian carrots...

Excerpt on a Recipe for Failure

When faced with a growing Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the immediate response of Pentagon officials and the U.S. military was denial. By the late summer and early fall of 2003, however, the reality signaled by daily attacks and a wave of massive bombings had finally sunk in. The military initially responded with a "search and destroy" approach to counterinsurgency, which fell uncomfortably, and dysfunctionally, between the extremes of hearts-and-minds and pure coercion. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who led U.S. forces during the first year of the war, was both inept at and uninterested in counterinsurgency. Efforts to protect the Iraqi population were ad hoc, varied tremendously from unit to unit, and were underresourced; most units defined the requirements of counterinsurgency solely in terms of "the enemy" and deployed overwhelming conventional firepower to kill or capture a growing list of "former regime elements," "anti-Iraqi forces," "bad guys," and "terrorists." Although troops took steps to minimize the risks to Iraqi civilians, many innocent Iraqis were shot at U.S. checkpoints and alongside convoys; many others were caught in the crossfire during daily raids and major offensives in Fallujah, Najaf, Sadr City, and elsewhere. Detention centers swelled as thousands of military-aged men were arrested in indiscriminate sweeps of Sunni towns, and evidence of abusive interrogations -- most notably at Abu Ghraib -- surfaced with gruesome regularity...

Excerpt on Eating Soup with a Knife

Whether or not the directives of the COIN FM succeed in Iraq, the general model it embraces probably represents the best of many bad approaches to counterinsurgency. But one should not confuse "best" with "easy." Even under ideal circumstances, the clear, hold, build paradigm is difficult to pull off. The oft-cited textbook case of the British counterinsurgency in Malaya in the 1950s in fact offers a cautionary lesson. The communist insurgents in Malaya were from a clearly distinguishable and unpopular ethnic Chinese minority and were fighting on a peninsula where it was relatively easy to isolate them. And it still took the British army a dozen years to win...

Much more at the COIN of the Realm -- read it all - and as a SWJ afterthought -- this quote from a recent COIN seminar -- courtesy of Dr. David Kilcullen:

"[This] is a political as well as a military war...the ultimate goal is to regain the loyalty and cooperation of the people."

"It is abundantly clear that all political, military, economic and security (police) programs must be integrated in order to attain any kind of success."

General William Westmoreland; Commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam; published those words in a 1965 COMUSMACV directive. The point being, understanding by leaders (and others) is not enough. Everyone needs to understand that a framework, doctrine, systems, processes and structures are required to enact this understanding. And even then, COIN is most difficult at best...

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