From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Nov 17 2009 - 08:13:22 EST
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/34457/26
November 16, 2009
Why Most Counterinsurgency Wars Fail
*Why Most Counterinsurgency Wars Fail
By Ivan Eland*
In recent history, very few counterinsurgency wars have ended in success.
Guerrillas are often outgunned by a wealthier invading power, but they do
have two powerful advantages. One is that they are fighting on their home
turf, which they usually know much better than the invader. Guerrilla
warfare at the strategic level is defensive, even though at the tactical
level, raiding insurgents are many times on the offense. As a result of
being on the strategic defense, the second advantage is that the attacking
power will find it difficult to overcome the "foreign invader" label among
the population of the invaded country. Thus, because winning the support of
the local population is the most important—and difficult—objective in any
counterinsurgency war, most such campaigns end in failure.
But there have been a few notable exceptions. At the turn of the 20th
century, the United States refused independence to the Philippines after the
Spanish-American War and then outfought Filipino guerrillas to make U.S.
colonial rule stick; a U.S.-supported Greek government beat back communist
insurgents in the late 1940s; and the British beat back Marxist guerrillas
in Malaya in the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Although it might be
tempting to assume that the only way to beat guerrillas is to use ruthlessly
brutal tactics, this predominated in only the first of the three episodes.
The United States used concentration camps, torture, and a scorched-earth
policy in taming Filipino guerrillas. But even here, such drastic and
unacceptable methods may not have been what tipped the outcome to a
counterinsurgency success.
The common thread in these three success stories seems to be that either the
guerrilla movement was divided or did not win the overwhelming support of
the local populace. In the case of the Filipino insurgency, Emilio
Aguinaldo, the guerrilla leader, never really had the support of most of the
Filipino population. Similarly, in Malaya, the rebellion occurred only in a
minority of the minority Chinese population, thus allowing the British to
eventually stamp it out. In Greece in the late 1940s, the opposition
movement was divided, allowing the U.S.-backed Greek government to prevail.
How do these conclusions apply to current counterinsurgency wars? In both
the rugged terrain of Afghanistan and the urban landscape of Iraq, guerrilla
groups have taken advantage of familiar environments to effectively harass
the U.S. superpower. In addition, the United States, in some sense, has been
more restrained than the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents toward the local
populations. The Taliban is known for its harsh methods of justice and
killing, and some of the Iraqi guerrillas have slaughtered civilians with
suicide bombs. In contrast, in both nations, the United States has built
infrastructure projects and handed out candy to children. Yet the United
States has failed to win the hearts and minds of either population, because
of excessive collateral killings from air and ground attacks. At the end of
the day, even a foreign invader who tries to be more sharing and caring is
still regarded as a foreign invader.
In Somalia, the militant Islamist Shaabab movement had little public support
until the United States, as part of its global "war on terror," began
funding unpopular and corrupt Somali warlords to promote "stability"—turning
the local population toward the movement and away from the perceived
meddling superpower and its Somali government lackey. Then, making things
worse, a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion provided only some temporary
stability as long as Ethiopian troops were willing to occupy the country.
The cross-border invasion by Ethiopia—long regarded by Somalis as their
archenemy—to quash the militant Islamists only enhanced the radicals’
standing in Somalia once Ethiopian forces withdrew. In short, history shows
that the presence or influence of foreigners only feeds the flames of any
insurgency, which can then be portrayed as a defense of the nation against
outside aggression.
But isn’t there hope for Iraq and Afghanistan because opposition forces are
divided and often unpopular? Not really. In Iraq, the United States was able
to take advantage of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq’s brutal killing of civilians to
divide the Sunni guerrilla movement and bribe the Awakening Councils to
battle the group. The problem in Iraq is that as U.S. forces draw down, the
now reduced guerrilla war could turn into a civil war among the Sunni,
Shi’ite, and Kurdish ethno-sectarian groups. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is
unquestionably brutal, but Afghans do regard the United States as a foreign
occupier, are suspicious of the U.S. long-term military presence, do not
support a surge in U.S. forces, do not think it will defeat the Taliban, and
thus support negotiating with the insurgents. In short, the prognosis is not
good in either case.
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