Monday, May 16, 2011

More books I should have read before I deployed

It was pointed out to me on Sunday, not so subtly, that I have not been posting very often, or at least not as often as some people would like. So, I figure I'll keep my audience happy and write something...

Currently reading David Galula's Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958 which is a narrative of Galula's time as a company commander in the French army in...you guessed it, Algeria from 1956-1958. For those of you who are not aware, Galula was a French officer who spent time in Beijing, Hong Kong, the Balkans, and the Phillipines where he was able to witness and study the rise of the communist party in China, the war in Indochina, and the Greek civil war. After returning to France he volunteered to go to Algeria which was dealing with a growing insurgency led by the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale or Jabhat at-Taḥrīr al-Waţanī). Galula would eventually find his way to the United States where he wrote two books, the above mentioned narrative of his time in Algeria and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, a very good analysis of how to defeat an insurgency. I read the latter book back in November/December after borrowing it from a friend and have no desire to return it (consider it stolen Kyle, it may be returned when I no longer feel it necessary to refer to it).

Anyway, I am no where near complete with Galula's time in Algeria but there was one interesting technique that Galula's company used in their area of operations (a mountainous region east of Algiers) that appeared to have a lot of success in helping defeat the insurgency in the area. Galula would have groups of villagers no smaller than 4 arrested for minor offenses and would then have the villagers interrogated for a few days before release. The purpose of the interrogations was to determine who was members of the insurgent cells. Since the insurgents were collecting a "tax" from each villager it was fairly apparent that everyone knew who was an insurgent and who wasn't. The detained villagers were free to provide names and locations of the insurgents to the French without fear of reprisal because any one of the detained individuals could have provided the information...the insurgents couldn't seek revenge without killing/torturing everyone who had been detained and if they did that entire villages would turn their collective backs on the insurgency.

This of course made me think if this tactic could have been used by 1-14 in our last deployment. 1-14 had no ability to attempt this, no detainment facilities and a status of forces agreement that wouldn't allow it. The Iraqi Army also likely could not have attempted it, but the local police might have been able to. The towns of Jalula and Qara Tapa were likely too large for this but the town of As Sadiyah (in reality a series of villages that became a town) and the tribal regions of Tibij and Nidah could have worked.

Iraq in 2009-10 of course was not Algeria in 1956-58 and attempting to detain groups of civilians for the Iraqi version of jay walking may only have led to anger, loss of respect for the local security forces, and potentially riots. It may not even have been viable. In As Sadiyah the Iraqi Army already had a good grasp of who was in each cell (at any one time there were two cells operating in the town) and every few months would roll up most if not all of at least one cell (which would then eventually be replaced). The Nidah Tribal Region had no police force to speak of since the Mandali police refused to go into the area; it was not really necessary anyway since after this asshole was detained attacks dropped significantly and most of the attacks that did occur could be attributed to the tribal dynamics in the area.

By the end of the deployment we had what I believed a pretty good picture of the Al Qaida/Kurwi tribe insurgent network operating out of Tibij and achieved that picture through patient HUMINT operations, no random detainments needed. The only problem was the location of all the individuals (about 2-3 cells worth). Detaining villagers and interrogating them for a few days on the locations of these individuals likely would have backfired on us. The Kurwi were practically all related in that area and interrogations likely would not have resulted in any success. Even if someone were to give up locations and movement patterns I have no doubts that the Kurwi would be willing to kill everyone who was detained if a large number of of the network suddenly wound up captured. Kill everyone who talks and people will stop talking. It was a tactic they had used in the past against informants/sources which of course led to a difficult HUMINT environment for 1-14 when we arrived.

But you never know if an idea will fail unless you try it. I can only imagine the Squadron commander's face if I actually proposed detaining villagers to gain information...and I think the Iraqi brigade intel officer would have just laughed at me.

I need a new insurgency to deploy to in order to test these theories.

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