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Learning to Eat Soup with a Spork: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Sri Lanka?
As I sort through my pile of vacation emails, I found this op-ed that my colleague MZ passed along last week. I don't know much about Sri Lanka, but I remember some of our readers clamoring for more coverage of the end of the long-running war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers and its lessons for counterinsurgency.
A couple things strike me about this piece, though:
--Its key point, "Perhaps the most important lesson is the debunking of the widely held belief that terrorism cannot be quelled militarily...All too often, the greatest obstacle to military success is the starry-eyed interference by third parties insisting that only diplomacy and negotiation can bring a true end to terror-based conflicts," puts this piece squarely in the Edward Luttwak school of thought. Luttwak also derides the brand of population-centric counterinsurgency found in FM 3-24 as essentially too wimpy for the task at hand and prescribes the use of force without much regard for collateral damage as the only real way to victory. That's all well and good, but I don't think that this "Real Men Do Civilian Casualties" line offers (or should offer) a compelling lesson for Western strategists dealing with insurgencies today and in the future. I don't think emulating the approach of Romans, Germans, or Sri Lankans is really an option that is open to us.
--The LTTE seems to have been centrally directed by its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in a way that the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan are not. The Iraqi and Afghan insurgences appear to be more cellular in structure and not impacted very much by the killing of individual leaders (though maybe we just haven't gotten the guys high enough on the food chain yet). Perhaps one explanation for why the Sri Lankan approach worked was because they had one obvious head of the snake to cut off, while the different enemy factions in Iraq and Afghanistan are a bit more amorphous.
--The authors caveat themselves at the end after starting their column by lauding the sweeping Sri Lankan victory. They warn that the LTTE's overseas supporters may well resort to terrorism to carry on the Tigers' torch. So maybe this military triumph hasn't solved everything after all.
If the enemy insurgents in
If the enemy insurgents in Iraq and Astan are as you say not "centralized" like the Tamil Tigers were, why then as a default, better yet dogma, do you automatically assume that population centric is the only way to deal with such a problem? So forget about Iraq and Astan right now, and let’s do a hypothetical for Somalia. Let’s say that the pirates become a huge problem again and the President wants to use some kind of military force to deal with them and not just on the water but inside of Somalia. And let’s suppose that the Somali enemy is organized like you describe the Iraqi and Astan insurgents of today, in small decentralized cells. Well then, Ex, because the default position for these kinds of situations is population centric coin our way ahead in this hypothetical would be to send in a bunch of combat brigades, disperse them out into the population to secure them, separate the insurgents from the people, and voila, no more pirates. Since this view has become so domineering, a zeitgeist so to speak, any other more limited option would seem to not be available.
Col. Gentile, Given my own
Col. Gentile,
Given my own USMC Reserve experience, I would argue that pop-centric COIN is not such a domineering zeitgeist as you suggest. I know that my own COIN training prior to deployment to Iraq for OIF 8.2 had, perhaps, 10 hours total training time at best over a 2 1/2 month workup, then maybe a week and a half during Mojave Viper. The rest of the time was devoted to standard kinetic and patrolling operations. I never heard "population centric" mentioned once. Our MITT team was separated out and never seen again, and we had zero training on how to interact with or train with Iraqi security forces. We spent the vast majority of our time prepping for the Range 400/DAC portion of Mojave Viper - that is, the straight-up kinetic fight. We heard the term "counterinsurgency" maybe three or four times total. All of those times were from our battalion commander or sergeant major - COIN did not percolate down as a priority to even the junior staff NCO level, much less the sergeant/corporal/lance corporal who actually executed the fight.
"Well then, Ex,.." Yeah,
"Well then, Ex,.."
Yeah, "Ex," get it right. Ibn, Abu, Bin, Bint, whatever....
The thing that has
The thing that has disappointed me about the public analysis of the Sri Lankan action is how so few commentators, especially on the COIN side (I recall reading a couple of things but don't recall where) have articulated what this victory actually was, the successful prosecution of a near conventional 'Phase 3' 'decisive operation'. From a pop-centric theory perspective the jury is well and truly out either way. The military has bought some space and momentum for the politicians to negotiate some form of settlement or they will almost certainly face a slow rebirth of the LTTE (or meet its son/daughter).
It is also a discredit to both COINdinistas and COINtras that any military action anywhere in the world is used to either prove or disprove one of only two apparent ways that military operations can now be viewed.
Happy to be proven poorly read on this though...
I think an important
I think an important differentiating factor is the Sri Lankan experience at the business end of the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. There was a lot of death on display over that horrific period, and this will have weighed on the scales of 'acceptable civilian casualty" calculations going on in peoples' heads.
For Sri Lanka the tsunami resulted in about 35,000 confirmed deaths, 500k people displaced.
I think an impartial
I think an impartial observer would have to say that the Luttwak School has been proven as right in Sri Lanka as the FM 3-24 school has been in Iraq. In both cases those pesky folks on the ground may make them both look profoundly silly, or not.
"Perhaps the most important
"Perhaps the most important lesson is the debunking of the widely held belief that terrorism cannot be quelled militarily..."
Er... what ? This nimrod might have meant "insurgency", as Sri-Lanka didn't have much of an eco-terrorism problem and an insurgency is what you generally seek to quell rather than a type of attack, but that would make him a bigger liar, not a smaller one. Where is the widely held belief that insurgencies cannot be quelled militarily ? The fkn British Empire did pretty much nothing else but drink tea and knocked the living shit out of insurgencies for a couple of centuries.
You can solve a lot of things militarily, all the way up to and including overpopulation. Nobody's suggested you can't, it's a question of whether you should and what you give up in order to do so.
Here's what was on TV last night (flash vid, transcript).....
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/600091/n/Pakistan-s-Nightmare
Got yourself a little bit of Ahmed Rashid on your Pak nuclear weapons issue and you can visit an orphanage for kids from the Swat valley. Who, after having been on the receiving end of that military quelling of insurgents who use terrorist tactics, with little regard for the population, now have a clear favourite in who they support when it comes to the government vs the insurgents.
"The thing that has
"The thing that has disappointed me about the public analysis of the Sri Lankan action is how so few commentators, especially on the COIN side ...have articulated..."
You could have stopped stopped that right there. Pretty much lacking any analysis, let alone an assessment of a particular operation.
Gentile:In the
Gentile:In the Somali-example, that depends on your missiongoal. Is your goal to stop piracy for, say, the next 6 months, destroy as much of their infrastructure as possible and then retreat and see what they come up with to survive next? Or is your goal to adress the underlying causes of piracy. The first option to me sounds like taking painkillers for cancer, because those people are not going to just kill themselves and will do anything to stay alive. The smartest solution would be to hire the biggest pirates to hunt the other pirates and assist in rebuilding the country through non-violent means (remember those?).
The Sri Lankan "solution", apart from being close to genocide, is also quite different in that the tigers were stuck with no lines of retreat. In Af/Pak thats not the case. If you were fighting an insurgency on Long Island, or in Florida, you could just steamroll over them and Kill em all. Maybe even in Somalia, because there is no where to hide, and they dont have the strength to run very far most of them. I guess gas-chambers and slow methodical genocide is an option too. I cant believe that Im writing this in 2009.
On the brits and their
On the brits and their methods: I think Karthoum would play out differently this time, no?
Know your range. Know your
Know your range. Know your war.
Fnord, I think mission goal is the correct lens, but as far as swaying between pop centric (I'm waiting for someone to reference this and the death of the King of Pop in the same sentence today by the way) and line it up with a sledgehammer, I think it comes down to what kind of a war are we fighting?
Obviously your desired endstate is a starting point. Regime change or just change of tune? Second, and just as important, is understanding the support of the people, and culture for that regime, or that point of view taken by the regime that is of such importance that military force is an option. If the regime does not reflect the people, then I think you can go "pop". Neither the Taliban or Sadaam I think anyone would argue reflected near the popular choice of the majority of people they governed. However if the regime has the support of the people, the pop centric dance ain't working. Remove their leaders and they'll still want to kill you. At least until you break their will. That calls for much more traditional means.
If the regime is more or less a reflection of the people, but the POV to be changed does not, that's a dicey business. Example 1A is (probably/likely/possibly?) Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Clearly the current regime is pursuing that course. It is not so clear, however, that the people fully support that course. However, military action against the regime and targets related to their nuke program may swing a divided population squarely behind wanting nukes after having sufficiently stoked their nationalistic fires. Obviously COIN doesn't come into play unless you make the decision to invade, but if you did, the choice between competing COIN considerations and more conventional means may be very tough to discern.
Bringing that home to LTTE, if the Tamils supported the LTTE, and their cause, especially given the convential style aspects of the war they were fighting, then to defeat them, you need to crush their will to fight. This has happened in Sri Lanka, but the wildcard is that there are so many expats around the world, what will they do? How can you crush their will to continue the fight by whatever means they have to continue? This is interesting, because historically I'm not aware of a war fought along those lines where so much of the population was outside the borders of the land they were fighting for. That might be one for someone to look up (although Palestine might be one to come to mind).
My congratulations to the
My congratulations to the COINtras - I am fully convinced that a third world country of virtually no strategic importance, fighting a terrrorist/insurgent group that is geographically and culturally isolated, can employ draconian measures with a measure of success.
Now, if only any of that was relevant to a heavily scrutinized global superpower fighting halfway around the world against insurgencies that span entire regions.
I'm really disappointed that this has even become as issue of discussion. Has everyone forgotten about the way the Syrians worked over Hama? There have been other instances where massive force has effectively ended rebellions...but none of them have been generalizable to 21st century Western militaries. They are judged by a different standard. So none of this Sri Lanka talk is breaking any new ground.
No matter how you try to
No matter how you try to dismiss what happened in SL out of hand, it's just not going away, is it?
COIN is already moving past dogma (that happened after the success of the surge) and becoming a fanatical cult.
(@Tequila - USMC ain't the Army. The Army loves it's dogmas, which in their confusion they call doctrine).
Too bad for COIN, because if it doesn't work ---and it won't if the insurgents have any kind of willing base amongst the people- then COIN will end up going the way it always does- into the back of the archives -proponent or not.
If the support for the Talib on either the north or south side of AFPAK is truly based on force and terror - and you can make an argument that it is- then COIN will work. If we can face the costs. I think maybe we can.
If the support for the Talib runs deeper, then we're probably fucked, and it will cost us terribly in theater and possibly at home. I'm far from sanguine that the Republic can stand many more shocks. And to win, we're going to have to stop morphing into the Euros - and we are. If you want to know our future look at these useless people at NATO. The Army leadership doesn't have the moral backbone to tell the politicians kindler, gentler warfare is a myth, or to tell the lawyers to get the hell out of our business. So it's quite likely we'll go that road, and end up someones vassal state.
If you really reject total ruthless warfare then you will lose to an enemy that doesn't. And the honorable thing to do is to dismantle our alliances, disband and inform the American people that they either need to learn to defend themselves, or bitch out and get a new daddy. Whose name is HAN BTW.
And some more heresy against progressivism - we are NOT progressing as a species. Which means we haven't evolved warfare into something kindler and gentler. What we are doing is losing. Sareth Fonseka, Bomber Harris, the Romans at Syracuse, the British in Ireland under Cromwell ...they won their wars.
Oh, I forgot Moqtada Al Sadr, and JAM. Followed by a certain kinetic G.O with the initials "R.O". Meanwhile, we handed out money and candy and everybody smiled for the media.
Don't get me wrong, there's a place for COIN. Just not everywhere, to include insurgencies.
Fnord, the SL's listened to Europe for decades, and suffered. They listened to the US for awhile and that did help with cutting off the diaspora money. But to end it they went and shacked up with the Chinese. Which will cost them, but it's probably worth the price.
I am really seriously thinking we should promise the Chinese anything they want to include Hawaii if they will intervene in Pakistan at some level. I think the Paki's may have thought of that as well...you notice Musharraf stated his motive for storming the Red Mosque was to placate China. Sure, the Pakis will take our money and laugh at us.
But they got real serious when Han started losing patience.
Hopefully for civilization the worlds new policeman will step up again. They can't want us in the neighborhood forever. One last mess to clean, then it's time for Patrolman Sam to retire and go fishing in Arizona.
T.E Shaw, Sri Lanka had
T.E Shaw,
Sri Lanka had enough importance to attract the Arabs (Serendib) OK largely for the spice trade, the Turks, The Portugese (Fonseka means Portugese ancestors), the Dutch (who fought a war against the Brits over it - lost) , the Brits who first conquered the inland (not easy) ending the 2,000 year Sinhalese kingdom, and the Brits kept it until the end of the Empire. Oh the USA thought enough to kind of dabble in it, even though we are reaching exhaustion soon. Hell SNLII and certain other serious people seem kinda familiar with it. And lets not forget India.
Oh, the Chinese thought enough of it to give them the aid and the political juice to finally end it, yes with crushing force.
Thats kind of a who's who of Empires the last 1000 years or so? Why? Ports. Trade routes. Location, Location, Location.
So the history shows neither cultural or geographical isolation. Being surrounded by oceans doesn't isolate you.
Elf, I think you might like
Elf, I think you might like this one on the brits in Sri Lanka:
http://exiledonline.com/when-pigs-fly-and-scold-brits-lecturing-sri-lanka/
This one is quite on topic as well:
http://exiledonline.com/sri-lanka-war-nerd-update-prabhy-dies-yellow/
Thanks Fnord. Oh and
Thanks Fnord.
Oh and forgive me for not mentioning the Vikings, er the Norwegians... ;-) More cultural contact...
and how can anyone forget Arrack. That alone should warn the world there's a new player in town...
"To give you an idea of how
"To give you an idea of how important Ceylon/Sri Lanka was back then, try this on: in 1802, when French armies were kicking British and Prussian and Italian and Russian ass all over Europe (weird how nobody remembers that, huh?), the Brits were so terrified they tried to give Napoleon all their colonies except Sri Lanka and Trinidad. Those were the two they needed to keep."
Insignificant. Harrumph.
War Nerd explains the origins (maybe) of the Malay Muslims, the Tamils...
Me own personal favorite - The Sri Lankan Moors. Whose native spoken language is Tamil, BTW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Sri_Lanka
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Sri_Lanka
On topic: Elf, they were
On topic: Elf, they were stuck on the tip of an island just blasted by a natural disaster. Its what you yanks call shooting fish in a barrel, no? I doubt you will run into that kind of opportunity in Af/Pak. So the Blackfivers dreaming about going Sri Lankan on their ass are channeling Hollywood, not Luttwak methinks.
OT: From a conflict pov, the Vikings had a great time cooperating with the early muslims with looting the Italian and Irish catholics. Used to have swap points in Portugal: "Ill trade you two crucifixes from Sicily for a Irish girl". Good times, good times. Also see Varangian Guard... (Little known fact is that Denamrk/Norway used to have a colony not far from Sri Lanka in the 17th century as well.)
"Hell SNLII and certain
"Hell SNLII and certain other serious people seem kinda familiar with it."
Hey, I figure this blog has jumped the shark, absent myself, then reluctantly return to see what damage Gian is doing, and I'm considered now one of thoes "serious people?"
SERIOUS?
Good gravy! Why not question my parentage, Elf? Low blow. Very low.
Obviously, Gian, you missed my earlier epistle on the subject of pirates. What we need to win against the Somali pirates is a population-centric sea-based counter-insurgency initiative.
To wit, I propose the following innovations to our USN, which now seems pointlessly involved in policing the world's LOCs; ensuring US hegemony in the commons of the sea, air and space; and otherwise doing what navies always have done instead of what 5GW-for-the-oceans says that should be doing:
1. Establish the ocean version of COPs. We'll call it these seagoing outposts "Combined Redeployable Anti-Pirate Stations," or "CRAPS." These floating CRAPS now address a pop-centric means of living amongst the people, so long as the people live on the waves. If the insurgents are asea, then we shall be too in our big floating CRAPS. I, personally, would love to "go purple" and work jointly on one of these big COINdinista big floating CRAPS, seeing as I might have some experience considering my previous battalion, which excelled -- albeit on shore -- at being one big Army green CRAP effort.
2. Central to our new CRAP reorientation of our traditional, hidebound Navy to become a phalanx of seamen-as-armed-social-workers, we'll need an oceangoing version of PRTs, in order to spark economic development and woo those sitting on one side of the fence (or, to continue the nautical metaphors, standing on one side of a reef) over to our side. To that end, I hereby propose the USN's own "Maritime Overseas Reconstruction and Empowerment Boat Stations" -- or, "MORE BS." MORE BS will combine all the federal agencies into a civilian force multiplier, bringing all aspects of our "soft power" to truly help swirl about the oceans our CRAPs. We'll work with NGOs that specialize in helping "mainstream" pirates to less lethal jobs and coordinate the spending of taxpayer money on initiatives that truly will "incentivize" pirate behavior for the good. Eventually, whenever someone tells you that the key to beating an insurgency is winning over hearts and minds, just beam probably and knowingly whisper, "MORE BS."
3. Because it's so vital that we leverage all aspects of US soft and hard power to win at this CRAP effort, I think we also should establish at Leavenworth a joint center of excellence in seagoing counter-insurgency. An admiral needs to bring in a staff to wirte a new manual to guide our pop-centric ocean COIN operations, borrowing liberally from great seagoing tacticians of the past such as Mao and Galula, who guarded a well in the mountains of Algeria from all three insurgents who lived with 100 miles of his outpost. I think we should call these savants who gather and preach the new Navy COIN message the Joint American Center of Knowledge for Armed Services Support, or "JACKASS." These COINdinistas will finally bring the concept of "strategic corporals" to the Navy, which unfortunately has managed over the past two centuries to win every major struggle for control of the seas through the now outdated use of fire, communication and maneuver -- so out of style today. Because it's the Year of the NCO, we will count on these new "strategic corporals" at JACKASS (Joint American Center of Knowledge for Armed SErvices Support Enlisted Supervisors) -- or "JACKASSES" -- to really spread the CRAP message.
To you, Elf and Gian, I bid you come aboard one of our big, shiny new purple CRAPs as we float out to meet the pirates. What you smell from the CRAPs is sweet success, so I bid you a hearty JACKASS "ahoy" as we set sail for adventure!
@returns, I would never
@returns,
I would never question an Irish silicon sector (boston div) A.I. construct, Sir. Seriously, er I mean....
"To you, Elf and Gian, I bid you come aboard one of our big, shiny new purple CRAPs as we float out to meet the pirates. What you smell from the CRAPs is sweet success, so I bid you a hearty JACKASS "ahoy" as we set sail for adventure"
Oddly, I got a similar job offer awhile ago....No CRAP. There's something very wrong with me in that I kinda wanna walk away from my cushy civilian gig and do it....but that would be MORE BS. And indeed, if I went in at my last rank, it would be "JACKASSES".
=========
Fnord, you forgot to mention Vikings founded Dublin, mixed in (and are thus responsible for our bad drinking habits), are the parent race of the Russians (the drinking, again)...
You must not have seen the average Irish barmaid ankles if you'd trade them for a Sicilian crucifix. You sure you didn't swap the two...
I actually did know about the Varangian Guard. I've always wondered if they stuck around for the end in 1453. Now that was a fight, by Odin. Where are fanantical axe wielding mercs when you need them?
Has anyone else noticed either this blog is rubbing off on COL Gentile, or maybe he's just getting fed up? Welcome to the sarcastic snarkers Sir. No, you haven't snarked quite yet..but your curious.... it's kinda like that bar you go into just to get a beer (yeah) and don't want the guys to see you going in....
I mean it sucks, but in a good way...
:D
I apologize for the many
I apologize for the many typos and creative misuses of grammar and syntax during the confection of my previous post.
Such sloppy typing doesn't befit any man seeking to command one of our fine floating CRAPS asea.
I'll be the first to admit
I'll be the first to admit that South Asian terrorism and insurgencies unfortunately aren't my specialty, but it strikes me that possibly the greatest reasons why the insurgency suffered such a defeat might be because they decided to attempt to shift from the asymmetric model to the conventional model. It's true the Chinese Communists managed to do it and possibly some of the Afghan groups managed it, but those are only two examples neither of which was on an island nation. Besides that, if the population and diplomacy isn't so important then perhaps the author of the op-ed would like to explain the Afghan and Vietnamese experience in the 60s and 80s?
SNLI: Hah! What you make of
SNLI: Hah! What you make of the new idea of aid-deliverin navy units? Its becoming doctrine, just you wait and see.
In terms of knowing your
In terms of knowing your limited objectives, a primary objective for the Sri Lankan govt/military was to stop their Kfirs being blown up by microlights. That's not happening now, so they're much happier.
as an aside, please note that now the Sri Lankan cricket team is not playing for the 'lads at the front' they lose to Pakistan (who are)
Fnord, you would be proud to
Fnord, you would be proud to know that in our reorganization of a Navy that's never lost a war we've seen that we just can't do business as usual. Instead, we've come up with a reform that will FINALLY turn our Navy into floating social work agencies. Because we've unfortunately invested so much infrastructure and money into our hegemonically dominant submarine force, we've had to revamp the entire underwater effort to remain relevant.
We're calling this major class of non-warships the "Durable Underwater Mobile Boats and AId Support Ships," or DUMBASS.
Dumbass ideas and the commanders who propose them are what's going to truly win the next war. With a bunch of DUMBASS admirals casting off our big, floating CRAPS toward the pirates, armed with a new MORE BS commitment to civil-military empowerment and well-trained and ideologically committed JACKASSES to get out the message and indoctrinate a new generation of seamen, how can we fail at sea to match the great CRAPtastic job we did on land in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Snli: Lol. Seriously, its a
Snli: Lol.
Seriously, its a bit of a good idea, no? I mean, if the mission truly is hearts and minds, then the US Navy is one of the best tools for delivering rapid aid to catastrophe areas (Aceh/Kashmir). Weve been through this before, I know, but do you seriously think its a bad idea? And if so, why? If youre going to be COINquistadores with a happy face, it seems like a natural strategy.
Sarah Palin & John McCain
Sarah Palin & John McCain just took over battlestar galactica on my tv screen, after having drugged the president and dropped the VP in heavy water. hoho.
COINster. COINster. It
COINster. COINster. It allows you to do what ya gotta do to the Takfiri-sters, while painting a beautiful picture of Strategic Corporal Social Workers with guns Saints, making progressives think their warm and fuzzy fantasyworld is real. Because like so many messianic lunatics they get very nasty if reality starts to erode thru the magic wallpaper of warm and fuzzy world, even if you should point out it's war. Let them lurk in their underwear in the basements in a good mood. Because they have money (for now), internet connections and they vote. The media will be happy to know we're towing the magic happy rope line, will crawl out of our asses and go and cover important matters like the coming canonization of St Micheal Jackson, protector and friend to children, patron Saint of Neverland. Everything should work just fine until the current bubble bursts. And at that point (and uh, Fitch issued a warning on China's currency today) we can introduce them to the Rapture of world economic collapse so rapidly they won't have time to protest.
Just humor them. If they don't know the truth, and most importantly have an alternative reality to retreat to, they will be happy, and we can take care of business out of sight.
No, really. Now let me go brush my new fuzzy pink combat booties and trick out my M4 with flowers and bunny pictures. Tee Hee! I love everyone....
Grant and Boon both touched
Grant and Boon both touched on this, but I don’t think it has been sufficiently emphasized- the Sri Lankan military defeated an LTTE that wore uniforms and openly carried weapons. The Tigers were much closer to a conventional military than they are anything we’re facing in AFPAK. The real test for Sri Lanka’s COIN strategy is going to be in the next decade or so. The LTTE, or whatever organization succeeds it, will probably stop pretending to be an honest-to-god military and morph into a conventional insurgency. Then we’ll see how effective Sri Lanka’s enemy-centric approach is.
Just learned a new term,
Just learned a new term, aggragator. Anyway,for those of you who dont normally read Ghosts of Alexander, Kandahars policechief and his seven aides just got gunned down by the afghan army.
http://easterncampaign.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/kandahar-police-chief-ki...
"Then we’ll see how
"Then we’ll see how effective Sri Lanka’s enemy-centric approach is." - El-Pinko-Grande
That doesn't sound very promising.
"The media will be happy to know we're towing the magic happy rope line, will crawl out of our asses and go and cover important matters like the coming canonization of St Micheal Jackson, protector and friend to children, patron Saint of Neverland" - Elf
Ouch! Seriously, though, what *was* that (cable) media freakout? Is it some kind of spasm that has to happen every ten years or so when a particular celebrity passes on? We are a bizarre people, sometimes....
@ fnord - aggregator, like a
@ fnord - aggregator, like a blog aggregator?
Madhu, re aggagator, it
Madhu, re aggagator, it seems to be a fashiontem for a info-collector. Its like paradigm used to be a hip term for mindset.
When Alexander tried
When Alexander tried scorched earth in Afghanistan he shifted strategy after figuring out that wasn't working. My thought: It's different on an island where there's no place to run, no place to hide.
@Thanos, Re- Island,
@Thanos,
Re- Island, etc....
Yeah, after they got squeezed into it. At one point they had a substantial portion of the country. Also - yeah, the LTTE had an Army...but they always continued to carry out (or try) terrorist operations, to include in the capital of Colombo. The SL authorities just got better at it. They also used police units - CT - very effectively. And yes, when the SLA encountered the "Regular" LTTE (still mixed in amongst civilians) they employed traditional fire and maneuver. And firepower. And won.
If the LTTE had been able to continue a reign of terror in the capital, also the rest of the country, to include any rival Tamil factions whether peaceful or violent, they would have.
Uh, the Alexander I read called all the tribal chiefs to a meeting, where they probably thought they were gonna get paid off as they were under the Persians. Then he murdered them, and told the tribes to pay the Greeks tribute from now on.
AEI vs CNAS AEI = Democracy
AEI vs CNAS
AEI = Democracy and free markets at gunpoint. If you don't like it, lump it. Kinetically.
CNAS = Welfare state by Armed social workers. If you don't like it, we'll go kinetic.
Oddly, it may work as well as what happened in Iraq -they grew balls and stood up. With a little help, and a lot of not so gentle encouragement. Mostly from each other.
Just out of interest: those
Just out of interest: those defending the need to kill massive amounts of people to win --- care to shed any light on why the Ethiopians got their butts kicked out of Somalia? Were the Ethiopians really that interested in doing pop-centric COIN?
"...Kandahars policechief
"...Kandahars policechief and his seven aides just got gunned down by the afghan army"
Or contractors. Or a private Afghan militia. Or SOF trained Afghan irregulars. Or SOF trained Afghan proxies. Or someone.
An the upshot of all those possibilities is that everyone agrees that foreigners are to blame. Foshizzle.
Anyone find out who was in custody yet ?
You are missing the forest
You are missing the forest for the trees. the main lesson to take away from the Sri Lanka success is their successful use of the DIME to defeat the insurgency. they diplomatically cut the Tigers off from their former supporters, isolating them... they used an information campaign to mobilize the ethnic Sri Lankans and they cut off support from anti-war agencies such as the IRC, UN, and mainstream media by not allowing them on the battlefield (which is the opposite of what we do)... they also cut them off economically by getting other countries to block the diaspora from funding the terrorist.. the military portion came after they met conditions for success by the D,I, and E. contrast that with our methods and you will see why we have such a difficult time with COIN. we allow trans-national terrorist to cross borders and kill our soldiers, we allow Saudi Arabia to fund AQ (yes we know they are doing it), we embrace the media while they stab us in the back, and we put ineffective economic pressure on our enemies such as Iran by putting tiny economic restrictions that target Iran's nuclear industry while Iran is free to sign a multi-billion dollar energy development with China allowing them to defy our sanctions (this is a triple win for Iran.. they beat us, get more energy, and still get nukes).
any suggestion that these options aren't available to us is pinheaded and naive. comparing Sri Lanka to the Germans is such a stretch of logic that it hurts your credibility.
@ Major Dabney, Exactly!!
@ Major Dabney,
Exactly!! We should have Sareth Fonseka as a commenter on these pages. Seriously, AM needs to find an SL type to write about what they learned....
And Dr Dabney has exactly pinpointed our problems. We need to start taking war seriously, it's not just another Govt program.
Not having been to AFPAK but humbly....I submit the below.
Now I am not advocating from here that we use artillery to drive the Taliban away from the Afghan civilians. But we have other methods to peel them away. Frankly we need to hit these assholes in Korengal in their fucking money, tie barb wire around the fucking villages, and then every drop of water and every morsel of food comes from us. Been done before, and will work. Something like this needs a look. Everything I see, read and hear from my friends indicates this is as much organized crime by tribe as it is religious or ideological. Start fucking them in the wallet, and see how fast things change.
The majority of the posts
The majority of the posts concerning the Sri Lankan/LTTE conflict appear to have neglected or ignored the root causes of the that conflict. The LTTE formed as a direct result of discriminatory actions by the majority Sinhalese government. These included forced cultural immersion in Sinhala, the outlawing of the use of Tamil, and restrictions on Tamils getting university education and employment. The recent successes of the Sri Lankan military notwithstanding, there is no evidence to suggest that the Sri Lankan government has yet to give any serious attention to these issues; in fact, the current evidence is that the anti-Tamil discriminatory practices will continue, and the chances of bringing the disenfranchised minority in from the cold are slim.
In these circumstances, therefore, the likelihood of the emergence of another insurgent group, with similar aims ie respect for Tamil culture, limited autonomy and the like are very strong. The actions taken by the SL government have significantly reduced the options for any such group, but as we have seen elsewhere around the world, it is now much easier to get the means to conduct terrorist attacks with minimal external support. And, if you look at the origins of the LTTE campaign, the early 1980's were marked by the early use of terrorist attacks on tourist sites and then the increasing use of suicide bombings against government targets.
FM3-24 makes clear that context is the key; and any cogent analysis of the Sri Lankan campaign should proceed on that basis, and it is premature to draw any real conclusions or lessons from it in relation to current or future US or coalition operations.
@Silverknot If the Tamils
@Silverknot
If the Tamils have no outside help, funding, or information campaign.. how effective can their insurgency be? They could resist as long as they did because of the outside help they received. The Sri Lankans have effectively cut that off. That is the key to winning COIN. Sometimes, there is no way to address "root causes". There are some insurgents that you can't work with no matter what. Sri Lanka separated the ones they can work from the ones that they can't at the start of the war. There are now fewer ones that they can't deal with and the survivors learned a powerful lesson.
There is a hard and soft approach to root causes. FM 3-24 tends to ignore the hard approach and is written from a western point of view. While it may seem harsh to us, taking the hard approach to root causes doesn't mean it won't be effective. Some cultures don't react well to the soft approach and will see you as weak if you attempt it.
It is too early to tell if the Sri Lankans will or won't be successful with "phase IV and V" operations.
@ Maj Dabney I think that we
@ Maj Dabney
I think that we are in violent agreement. No one can deny the effectiveness of the recent Sri Lankan approach; but it has taken 25 years to achieve this military success, and at an enormous cost, in both human and financial terms. COIN campaigns will require elements of both hard and soft actions in order to fully succeed; most insurgent groups will contain elements that will only be eradicated by either kill or capture. My point about context, and the relevance of FM3-24, is that it is difficult to imagine the circumstances in which US forces would be authorized and willing to use some of the techniques that the Sri Lankans have used. Mr Kaplan made a similar point in an earlier post today. If a US administration decides as a matter of US national interest to deploy US forces into another country in support of that country's COIN campaign, or as a result of an intervention in a failing or failed state, those US forces will be judged on their actions by western standards. US doctrine will guide those actions, so the relevance of the recent Sri Lankan COIN campaign for US forces is somewhat limited.
@ Silverknot I can't
@ Silverknot
I can't disagree with you. However, that amounts to letting the terrorist set the conditions for battle. IMO, you are either serious about winning or not. By playing by their rules, they have the advantage. We should send a clear message, as the Sri Lankans have, that we will no longer tolerate playing by anyones rules but ours. While it may appear harsh, by taking a strong approach to COIN, you send the message to the terrorist that the price to pay is higher than they will be willing to pay. That no condition they set will stop you from defeating them and that ultimately they will lose. In the long run, this will actually save more lives. Courage, of course, is a requirement.
Post WWII human rights legislation have enabled OOTW. Terrorist supporting countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia know they can sponsor "non-state" actors to do their bidding. Anti-war human rights groups and the UN play a willing role in the enabling of these groups. The US should wake up to the reality that we are Gulliver and have been tied down by the Lilliputians. This is no more our reality than we allow it to be.
As we have demonstrated in the Civil War with Shermans March and in WWII by dropping nukes, there are extreme methods that have been employed successfully and that ultimately created an environment that prevented war (when employed by serious leaders). The caveat to that is that Russia hasn't been very successful with the hard approach in Chechnya.
I'd like to reiterate, the Sri Lankans were successful because they took an approach that synchronized the DIME to support their COIN efforts and didn't rely only on COIN.
Learning eat soup spork
Learning eat soup spork counterinsurgency lessons sri lanka.. Huh, really? :)
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