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More on Sri Lankan Counterinsurgency
The well-traveled Bob Kaplan weighs in:
"Clearly, then, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps should be studying the Sri Lankan civil war for valuable lessons about how to win a counterinsurgency, right? Actually—no. In fact, there are no useful pointers to be gleaned from the Sri Lankan government’s victory. The war was won using techniques like the following, which the United States could and should never employ.
"The insurgents are using human shields? No problem. Just keep killing the innocent bystanders until you get to the fighters themselves. There is no comparison between the few civilians that have been killed by American Predator drones in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, and the many that were killed by the Sri Lankan government. The Americans have carefully targeted select al-Qaeda members and, in the process, killed a few—at the most, dozens—of civilians among whom the fighters were surrounded. By contrast, the Sri Lankan military indiscriminately killed large numbers of civilians—as many as 20,000 in the final months of fighting, according to the United Nations...
"So is there any lesson here? Only a chilling one. The ruthlessness and brutality to which the Sri Lankan government was reduced in order to defeat the Tigers points up just how nasty and intractable the problem of insurgency is. The Sri Lankan government made no progress against the insurgents for nearly a quarter century, until they turned to extreme and unsavory methods. Could they have won without terrorizing the media and killing large numbers of civilians? Perhaps, but probably not without help from the Chinese, who, in addition to their military aid, gave the Sri Lankan government diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council."
Yep, this is vintage Kaplan:
Yep, this is vintage Kaplan: kill kill kill, and also mention the Chinese.
Visitor, you may be retarded
Visitor, you may be retarded if you think that's what he said.
Does anyone have any details
Does anyone have any details on the chinese involvment? If Sri Lanka is coming under their sphere of influence, thats a pretty big deal, especially in conjunction with the Iranian facilities and the building of the Chinese bluewater navy.
Echoes of Uruguay, almost...
Echoes of Uruguay, almost...
Well, Fnord, only in a
Well, Fnord, only in a generic sense. The sense in which the US supplies Israel with arms and UN sec council coverage is the sense in which China now seems to do that for every other country that isn't Israel. Shit, they wouldn't back off Sudan fer christsakes. The solid-gold test case for if you have any kind of interest you still want to walk away from it for face.
But in a non-generic sense I think your bluewater suspicions are on track. Perhaps more commercial routes/partnerships than military though. There was something about a port deal with Sri Lanka a while back. I assumed it was commerical, I can't imagine it was overtly military. With the tonnage of shit they move in every flavour they wouldn't need a 2nd reason even if they get one.
What's just as troublesome
What's just as troublesome is the aid the Sri Lankan government got from Pakistan. Not just military aid, but senior Pakistan Army officers in Colombo helping with the final stage of the war and a couple years back, PAF pilots flying bombing missions over Tiger-held territory.
Kaplan hits it right on the head. The SL government may have defeated the Tigers militarily, but morally, they are wrong and I don't think they really care about reconciling with the Tamil minority.
Maybe when the effing Bob
Maybe when the effing Bob Kaplan ever fights in a counter-insurgency he can start giving up tips on how he would do the job.
@SNLII: That's a little
@SNLII: That's a little unsophisticated of you. Where's the beef that I'm missing here?
To all you chinese
To all you chinese intelligence folks reading this: I really dont get your position on a lot of issues. However, making the sealanes to Africa your own i *do* understand. However, since you own practically half of the US, you might consider propping them up. Thank You.
SNLI: Where did *that* chickenhawk argument come from?
Fnord and TE, don't you get
Fnord and TE, don't you get the feeling that we're trapped inside an electronic CNAS press release? Does not the new pattern of this blog, with or without our man in Kabul, involve the following pattern: A CNAS thinker not named Exum mentions some sort of bumper sticker aphorism about national defense policy (drones, understanding Sri Lanka's COIN efforts, whatever Ricks is crazily saying today), which then invites a mirror atta boy addendum by Exum.
Several learned souls confront the sagacity of the bumper sticker bromide and Exum's sycophantic support for it. To then address this response, the blog will spend days footnoting the original notion by taking voices from within the CNAS echo chamber (look, a senior CNAS fellow agrees!) or is cherry-picked the larger think tank community and a few like-minded bloggers or speeches from those in uniform.
Perhaps what you're noting from me is an unwillingness to play the game. What, really, does Bob Kaplan know about fighting insurgencies? He's reported on them, but doesn't do so much of that now. Today, he dissects them into meaningless bullet points lacking in complexity but, unfortunately, tinged with didactic suggestions meant to educate those of us who don't seem to get it.
The "lessons" he pulls from the counter-insurgency operations and governmental civil policies in Sri Lanka perhaps aren't the ones we've sent our FID SFers to learn there. Perhaps the lessons they've learned would include the role geography took in the anti-Tiger ops; the tragic nature of the insurgency itself (tightly controlled by messianic figures who formed their own dictatorship increasingly unloved by the population they sought to control); the benefits of a global effort to roll up Tamil Tiger recruitment, financing and racketeering networks; and the prudence of fighting a good, old-fashioned enemy- and terrain-centric campaign against an armed foe without recourse to safe harbors.
In other words, perhaps there weren't so many lessons to be learned in Sri Lanka that will magically transfer in simile to Afghanistan, even if his last, breathless paragraph would have us assume it to be so.
But he's a CNAS bloke, and in the Plato's Cave of the new and hardly improved Abu Muqawama, he's a rather convincing shadow to those who run the projector.
It's not so much that I'm suggesting his chickenhawkery has no merit. It's that I wanted to shock everyone to consider, for a moment, exactly what credentials or competence he musters for his op-ed? Is it personal experience? Well, no. Is it some learned understanding of COIN beyond his own steno pad? Probably not.
So, why is he important here? I guess it's simply because what he says apes what already has been said by others here.
Is that good enough? No. They're belittling our intelligence.
Now, we're not owed anything by either this blog or the CNAS overlords who increasingly seem to dictate its content. But don't we owe ourselves more?
@SNLII - Well said. But it
@SNLII -
Well said. But it is just a blog. Even if Rachel Maddow reads it every day. And Kaplan is okay. You may not agree with his politics or analysis or accept his credentials to opine, but his last two books are highly readable and instructive of what the US military actually does in a thinking man's Tom Clancy kinda way.
SNLII - I understand where
SNLII - I understand where you are coming from, and I'm glad that your reasoning is more complex than what you initially indicated.
I too have paused to consider the "echo chamber" of CNAS and its effect on its blog. Sometimes it makes me uncomfortable, although I am reminded that Exum joined CNAS because it was compatible with his own views; therefore I should not be surprised that he approves of its product. There is a failure to diversify the knowledge base on this blog, but to be fair that failure becomes apparent only now that the previously unaffiliated sources have been gathered under the CNAS banner.
On a more specific note, I must confess that I don't understand your continued criticism of Kaplan's credentials - it seems you are better served by your on-point criticism of his commentary itself. But Kaplan IS important, because he is a noted commentator for a well-respected publication. My interpretation of Kaplan's article is that the rush to use Sri Lanka as a weapon against pop-centric COIN has gained popularity to the point where a mainstream author feels compelled to refute it. I am also mindful that Kaplan is not writing for you (or even me), but for an interested but less sophisticated audience. He is not worried about FID SFers but pundits who might try to exploit this situation. Perhaps his commentary has limited relevance for your purposes, but I see it as an indication (and on a layman's level, an not inadequate rebuttal) of a potentially harmful development.
What would you like to see in this blog moving forward?
The Belmont Club had a lot
The Belmont Club had a lot of good commentary and links to info back in May when the Tamil Tigers got eradicated. He has a post up today which is partly about Sri Lanka's campaign and Kaplan’s interview. The money graf is:
what I think may be the Abyssinian campaign of our time: Sri Lanka. The Abyssinian crisis of 1935 convinced many that the League of Nations had failed. Now Sri Lanka may have shown that force and territorial expansion is once again a viable force in international politics and that the UN, if not as moribund as the League of Nations, may be in danger of becoming so
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/07/02/does-business-as-usu...
It is amazing the difference in level of outrage about civilian deaths depending on who is doing the killing. US forces make every effort to avoid civilian casualties and get a lot of grief for every one that happens even when the deaths are the direct result of enemy action. The UN will do nothing about brutality by the totalitarian and thug states around the world. It is a washed-up institution full of poseurs and everyone knows it.
Off topic, apologies, but
Off topic, apologies, but maybe of interest:
"The first indication to the PAVN high command in Hanoi that it was in fact trapped in a protracted conflict came in the summer of 1979, when a major pacification drive, launched by PAVN forces using some 170,000 troops, proved to be inconclusive. It was only in the wake of that drive that PAVN settled down to the slow task of pacifying Cambodia."
http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-14730.html
"After the Second Indochina War, the dau tranh concept served the Vietnamese less well. It was employed, more by accident than by design, against the invading Chinese during the brief border war in 1979 and worked fairly well. It did not prove workable in Cambodia, however, and was for the most part abandoned there. Interestingly, many of its techniques were borrowed by the Cambodian resistance forces and used against the Vietnamese-supported Khmer People's Revolutionary Armed Forces (KPRAF), as well as against PAVN forces in Cambodia. Vietnam's experience in Cambodia inspired Hanoi to scrutinize the strategy more closely in order to assess its application to future needs. However, the strategy's past success weighed heavily in the assessment, and Vietnamese leaders in 1987 continued to place confidence in its viability."
http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-14725.html
PAVN Operations - Mi-24 gunship support and pallet-bombing from An-26 in 1984 (read down)
http://books.google.com/books?id=ITreS24OAxwC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=pavn+k...
"What would you like to see
"What would you like to see in this blog moving forward?"
I wouldn't. I'd shut it down. If anything, this might be a cautionary tale of what transpires when an independent, unique voice sells out to The Man. My fears in the mid-1980s about REM never really came true, but it seems that the fate of Abu Muqawama has, unfortunately, taken a different turn.
I don't believe there's anything nefarious about it. One must remember that during his most creative years, Exum wouldn't even give his name (it was the worst kept secret in the world, but afforded plausible deniability, much as I employ) and clacked out his missives inspired by rage and yet informed by humor. Perhaps this was because he lived with "Londonstani" in a creepy tight little flat in London and they were immune, largely, to the bureaucratic fleshpots of DC.
It's not so much that young Exum is intentionally less interesting or objective. It's that now he spends his entire working life with Fick and Ricks and all the other savants gathered by CNAS to think big thoughts on their way to mid-level policy positions in the Obama administration.
CNAS is his fishbowl, so we should pardon the fact that he bumps into a lot of similar-looking swimmers and then relates it all for us.
It really doesn't matter if Son of Exum (a CNAS intern?) or The Person Who Goes By Denominator Even If Everyone Knows His Real Name filled in or not -- the format of the blog has been established.
If Exum wore a bracelet that read WWSNLIID, perhaps the talisman would guide him to just shut it all down. But I'm not so arrogant as to suggest, really, what he should do.
All I would say is that if the blog becomes less important and increasingly boring and self-referential, then he owes it to himself to shutter it. I might shed a brief tear, but then mutter, "Well, at least we had Hitchens."
Every really interesting
Every really interesting academic blog I've read in the past, regularly, seems to have about a 1-2 year shelf life, I'm not sure why that is. Personal or art blogs seem to be the only ones that last a long time with the same level of energy. Well, life just goes on around you, so describing it well, or painting or drawing well, whatever, can just keep going on, too.
I dunno enough about the DC world (thank goodness) to understand how being an, er, embedded part of it would change things, but, it does feel different around here, for some reason. I've kind of been posting out of habit, mostly.
Sorry, new CNAS bloggers, if that's kind of mean! It's okay, though, because most good, long term blogs rotate commenters in and out over a period of time, too.
SNLII, I agree on the cho
SNLII,
I agree on the cho chamber part, but thats not just CNAS - its much of the COIN community. Even if I mostly agree with them, I'd like to hear a dissenting voice or two, but too often they just get dismissed by the "in crowd."
As for Exum - he's gotten increasingly political in his commentary, which I don't care for. Tom Ricks can be even more so. It's not what I come here to read. But while I preferred the blog when it was on Blogger, I don't think he's sold out - I don't think his arguments have changed. And actually, previous contributors to this blog tended to name-drop with much greater frequency than Exum does, presumably to show they knew people. I'm glad thats mostly over.
I don't understand your problem with Kaplan's article. I think you're doing the same thing you accuse others of doing: shutting down an opposing argument without any (or at least very limited) analysis. There have been a lot of people suggesting that we look to Sri Lanka for lessons learned. I've heard this both in blogs and in by day job. I agree with Kaplan's point that however much the Sri Lankan approach may have worked, it's not an approach the US can (b/c of our size AND our support for human rights, or should take. I think Kaplan was being extremely fair when he pointed out it worked, but that we should ask ourselves twice whether its an approach we want to take.
So are no COIN theorists/analysts/thinkers who haven't served in uniform allowed to comment on COIN or war at all going forward? I guess I should go find a new career? Only problem is no one is hiring outside of government.
How on earth is Kaplan a chicken hawk here?
My task now is to produce a
My task now is to produce a compelling point-by-point refutation of Kaplan's effort? Really, Visitor?
Believe it or not (I sometimes don't), I have a full-time job! Suffice it to say that I was suggesting what others have indicated to have been important factors for the LTTE's demise. Partly I received some of this wisdom by (new idea here) actually taking to Sri Lankan commanders!
Rather than engage in Kaplan's guess work about why the counter-revolutionary forces were successful, I decided to simply ask them. They told me what they told a recent gaggle of SFers. They're not exactly shy about wanting to share best practices. Could it be that doctrine is keeping us from listening?
"But Kaplan IS important, because he is a noted commentator for a well-respected publication"
Well, chicken or egg? Is Kaplan important because he writes for the Atlantic and is a CNAS fellow? Or is he so important that CNAS had to have him?
Sometimes the latter in DC is true, but more often than not the former is so. I, personally, believe in Kaplan's case that he's a well-established, very influential and highly informed analyst by dint of hard work and intelligence. But why should we assume that he's an expert on Sri Lanka's insurgency and the government's efforts to quash it?
Because he's Kaplan? That's not good enough for me. And what he prescribes as the best medicine for US Marine and Army experts is exactly the opposite of what we've done, perhaps because we don't much believe it's in the best tradition of objective inquiry to simply put hands over ears and eyes in an effort to learn about a subject.
Well, at least not after the Bush Administration.
Regardless, Kaplan's closing bromide -- all insurgencies are like this -- isn't true, and I'm a bit surprised that he, as a reporter with some pedigree documenting the phenomenon, would've typed it. Not all insurgencies end the same way. They're not all brutal slugfests or endemic wars amongst the people.
The vast majority of insurrections over the past two centuries were fairly quickly repulsed, often in their nascent stages, largely because the hegemonic power decided to opt for Sri Lanka's methods early against small bands of terrorists often led by charismatic leaders difficult for aggrieved peoples to easily replace.
This brings to mind a short
This brings to mind a short article by terrorism-expert Bruce Hoffman on his interview with a Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) officer. In it, the officer rather frankly and calmly described an instance where he had a prisoner who knew the location of a bomb, but refused to reveal it. In somewhat disturbing detail, the article describes the torture used by the officer that finally forced the prisoner to talk. In my opinion the relative success of Sri Lanka goes a long way to describing both the multiufaceted nature of the world, and of counterinsurgencies. Sometimes brutality might produce results, sometimes talking and drinking tea produces results.
Because I actually talk to
Because I actually talk to Sri Lankan officers about their counter-revolutionary methods (heavens, what a concept!), I learned today that the government in the wake of the military actions is working to woo Tamil parties and other disgruntled minority organizations back into the fold.
Yesterday, Presidential Committee on Development and Reconciliation hosted 18 major Sri Lankan parties. Before the crushing of the LTTE and during the controversial counter-revolutionary operations, several parties had declined to meet in these sorts of fora. But the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), United National Party (UNP) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) blocs actively joined in this time.
There's much work to do. More than 300,000 displaced people continue to subsist in camps. Large parts of formerly LTTE territory east of Elephant Pass has been decimated.
Fnord: Does anyone have any
Fnord: Does anyone have any details on the chinese involvment?
I do. I interviewed Kaplan and published the transcript yesterday. He elaborated on that question for me.
I'm even less persuaded now,
I'm even less persuaded now, Michael.
What's doubly, grimly,
What's doubly, grimly, hilarious, is that our own little domestic unpleasantness was settled in exactly the same spirit. As Lieber wrote:
The more vigorously wars are pursued the better it is for humanity. Sharp wars are brief.
I mean, this is just the father of the modern law of warfare we're talking about, here. But wait! We certainly can't go learning any lessons from the 1860s, any more than we can from Sri Lanka. Nope. Nothin' important happened back then. No lessons at all.
In fact, it's probably best to just dump the whole 19th century down the ol' memory hole. People were, like, really mean, back then. No - history was invented in 1945, in San Francisco, by Alger Hiss. Anything before that - jahiliya. Sri Lanka - major jahiliya. No lessons there! There must be some other droids you're looking for.
Of course it's perfectly easy to translate Sri Lankan methods to Afghanistan. Population relocation, for example. Are we really suggesting that the US military isn't capable of clearing, say, the Korengal, and relocating the villagers to secure temporary housing? Or permanent housing, for that matter? Maybe the new, improved Afghanistan will need some national parks.
Furthermore, instead of decapitating your troublemakers with Buddhist ceremonial daggers, or whatever they do in Sri Lanka, you can just arrest them and detain them indefinitely without charges. Has just the same tactical effect, costs a good bit more, causes much less moaning and groaning amongst the cocktail-party set.
SNLI is right about the other thing, too. As HST put it: you can't wallow with the eagles at night and soar with the pigs in the morning.
The Belmont Club had a lot
The Belmont Club had a lot of good commentary and links to info back in May when the Tamil Tigers got eradicated. He has a post up today which is partly about Sri Lanka's campaign and Kaplan’s interview. The money graf is:
what I think may be the Abyssinian campaign of our time: Sri Lanka. The Abyssinian crisis of 1935 convinced many that the League of Nations had failed. Now Sri Lanka may have shown that force and territorial expansion is once again a viable force in international politics and that the UN, if not as moribund as the League of Nations, may be in danger of becoming so
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/07/02/does-business-as-usu...
It is amazing the difference in level of outrage about civilian deaths depending on who is doing the killing. US forces make every effort to avoid civilian casualties and get a lot of grief for every one that happens even when they are the direct result of enemy action. The UN will do nothing about brutality by the totalitarian and thug states around the world. It is a washed-up institution full of poseurs and everyone knows it.
buck smith
War is named and coded as it
War is named and coded as it proceeds. The French became quite good at selling population centric counterinsurgency (although they referred to it a bit differently back in the day) as their operational method because it soothed political tensions back home and eased relationships between the army and the government. As to the conduct of what they were actually doing on the ground in Algeria, Madagascar, Morocco, by generals such as Layutey and Gallieni, well, it wasn’t exactly what they said they were doing. I say this because in the conduct of war, wars are named and labeled by the participants who carry it out. Kaplan wants the population centric coin effort to continue in Astan as he most likely has his eyes on other troubled spots in the world to do more of this kind of ostensible coin operations when the actual desire is simply American men on the ground with guns in their hands. So this is a logical tactic for Kaplan to use, to discredit any consideration of even the possibility of alternatives to pop centric coin, so that he can help keep his team on the march.
SNLII: I'm even less
SNLII: I'm even less persuaded now, Michael.
Well, I wasn't arguing with you. I was helping out Fnord who asked for more info about China's involvement in Sri Lanka.
Kaplan: ""I think deep down
Kaplan: ""I think deep down the real reason the Obama Administration fired McKiernan and wants to bring in McChrystal is because McChrystal is a man hunter. He got Zarqawi in Iraq. And Obama desperately wants to kill Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri to show that they can do this better than the Republicans. ""
so might as well
so might as well blog-comment for a bit....also a contrarian who first thinks A, and then B, and wishes to retract above comment about the direction of the blog, which likely will be re-retracted in future. In other words: it's not you, it's me.
Happy fourth.
"I say this because in the conduct of war, wars are named and labeled by the participants who carry it out. Kaplan wants the population centric coin effort to continue in Astan as he most likely has his eyes on other troubled spots in the world to do more of this kind of ostensible coin operations when the actual desire is simply American men on the ground with guns in their hands." - gian p gentile
@ gian: I don't understand the last part? The actual desire by who, exactly? So, I'm a dunce, and this is probably obvious to EVERYONE ELSE reading, but you mean that people are trying to fit a round peg in a square hole and you are afraid it's going to be all COIN, COIN, COIN from now on? Do people become that invested in one theory? Well, I suppose they do, in medicine, once a fad starts and the funding starts flowing into the fad, it's hard to sometimes get funding to study something outside the fad. Academic research can be very trendy, at times.
or square peg in round
or square peg in round hole....
@ fnord So, there is this
@ fnord
So, there is this South Asian (American) blog I used to read pretty regularly in the past, and they are discussing the same article and the Chinese angle! Huh, who knew? The comments regarding Kaplan's article are pretty amusing....i
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/005844.html#comment243179
"Also I have a problem with something in the second paragraph of Kaplan's Atlantic article that VV linked to :"The Tamil Tigers, moreover, had a brilliant, charismatic leader by the name of Vellupilai Prabakharan, who was venerated by many ethnic Hindu Tamils to the same extent that radical Muslims have venerated Osama bin Laden." That makes the LTTE sound religious, which it certainly wasn't." - from commenter Ashvin
...and this comment from the
...and this comment from the same thread linked to above pretty much ties together my comments in a kind of wierd, tangential, nothing to do with the subject of the post way.....
"One of the most alarming thing about US public discourse, is the enormous influence preponderance and influence of such hacks; the fact that they are so 'influential' is a major problem in how FP issues are understood in American by the public and by policymakers. It isn't as though there aren't knowlegdeable thinkers or writers in the US, America probably has the best tertiary sector in the world in most subjects and enormous resources in terms of the experts in most regional studies and social science fields; the problem is that most of them either aren't in the public discourse or are ignored."
Huh. Somehow, this is all related. And, I am in NO WAY calling anybody a hack.
Happy Independence Day,
Happy Independence Day, y'all....
I don't think the blog is that bad over now on CNAS....I do miss Charlie, Londonstani, et al. And the white background is hard on the eyes. But still worth reading..
BTW
Am I the only person in the military community, to include veterans...who doesn't know all these supersecret identities?
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