Saturday, March 05, 2005
Heart and minds in Iraq
Successful counterinsurgency has always been much more about winning the minds than hearts. The side that coerces more effectively over the long haul will win, almost regardless of the "starting" relative political positions of the two sides. A civil insurgency and its response is dynamic, not static, and the political opinions that triggered the conflict change under the pressure of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Often these changes occur because of ineffective coercion by one side or another. In Iraq, it is now apparently the insurgency that is failing to coerce effectively, and political opinion is moving in favor of the counterinsurgency even if it did not always belong there.
As I have written before,
Got that? If one side in the war specifically kills non-cooperators and infrequently kills innocents and the other side in the war kills indiscriminately, it always pays to cooperate with the side that kills specifically and with precision. The side that kills indiscriminately (because of bad intelligence, heavy-handedness, or rank incompetence) will kill you, or not, regardless of your cooperation, so you might as well cooperate with the side that will kill you only if you don't cooperate.
This basic idea is lost on most people, including virtually all journalists who write about counterinsurgency. After the first phase of the war, the side that coerces most efficiently will gain the advantage. Then political opinions will change to accomodate the ebb and flow of the war.
This may be what is happening in Iraq. Today's Daily Star -- the English-language paper of Lebanon -- has an article that Iraqis are turning on, and turning in, the insurgency to a significantly greater degree than has been the case for most of the period since the regime fell.
In Iraq, it is the insurgency that is killing indiscriminately and the counterinsurgency that is making every effort to spare the innocent. Even if a young, unemployed Sunni might have supported the insurgency in the first instance, there is no reason to cooperate with the insurgency if your friends are more likely to die in the random detonation of a car bomb than from the bullet of a Marine.
Hearts, of course, play a role. The Americans have the terrific disadvantage that they are invaders, no matter what euphamism we might apply. Fortunately, the enemy is so vile that it can make even an occupying army seem inoffensive. Counterinsurgent propaganda seems to be having an impact:
There are certainly those who have argued the opposite even recently -- that the insurgency has so infiltrated the counterinsurgency that it is aware of our actions before we carry them out. If you believe that this infiltration has occurred, the "Iraqization" of the conflict is never going to be possible, and American soldiers will be stuck there for a long time.
My own view is that there has certainly been some infiltration of the counterinsurgency -- how could there not have been -- but that the insurgency has spoiled its early intelligence advantage by killing indiscriminately. This failure, plus the ability of the counterinsurgency to "route around" infiltration (see my posts on "pop-ups" and the impact of anonymous text-messaging), suggests that the insurgency in Iraq is in strategic retreat, a condition that will not change without a seismic shift in politics against the government or a dramatic change in the tactics of the insurgency.
As I have written before,
Insurgencies and governments alike coerce by punishing cooperation with the other. Insurgencies often have an advantage in this because they usually have better local intelligence than the central government. This means that insurgencies will punish non-cooperators more accurately than the counterinsurgency. More accurate punishment translates into more effective coercion, because the civilian caught in the middle will always decide that it is better to cooperate with the party that is more certain to punish him if he doesn't cooperate.
Got that? If one side in the war specifically kills non-cooperators and infrequently kills innocents and the other side in the war kills indiscriminately, it always pays to cooperate with the side that kills specifically and with precision. The side that kills indiscriminately (because of bad intelligence, heavy-handedness, or rank incompetence) will kill you, or not, regardless of your cooperation, so you might as well cooperate with the side that will kill you only if you don't cooperate.
This basic idea is lost on most people, including virtually all journalists who write about counterinsurgency. After the first phase of the war, the side that coerces most efficiently will gain the advantage. Then political opinions will change to accomodate the ebb and flow of the war.
This may be what is happening in Iraq. Today's Daily Star -- the English-language paper of Lebanon -- has an article that Iraqis are turning on, and turning in, the insurgency to a significantly greater degree than has been the case for most of the period since the regime fell.
As more people lose loved ones to relentless violence, Iraqis have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the insurgency, even staging a rare public demonstration condemning militants as terrorists after a deadly car bombing. While it may be too early to say public opinion has shifted, one thing is clear: Many Iraqis have grown tired of two years of constant insecurity, and some are directing their anger at insurgents for the first time.
"I demand that they be put in the zoo along with the other scavengers, because that is where they belong," says one Mosul resident whose brother was killed in a recent attack.
In Iraq, it is the insurgency that is killing indiscriminately and the counterinsurgency that is making every effort to spare the innocent. Even if a young, unemployed Sunni might have supported the insurgency in the first instance, there is no reason to cooperate with the insurgency if your friends are more likely to die in the random detonation of a car bomb than from the bullet of a Marine.
Hearts, of course, play a role. The Americans have the terrific disadvantage that they are invaders, no matter what euphamism we might apply. Fortunately, the enemy is so vile that it can make even an occupying army seem inoffensive. Counterinsurgent propaganda seems to be having an impact:
Popular anger against insurgents has been driven, in part, by government propaganda. Last week, U.S.-funded Al-Iraqiyya television aired a series of confessions showing alleged insurgents calmly talking about how they had beheaded dozens of people, kidnapped others for ransom, and raped women and girls before killing them.
"People are realizing that the captured insurgents are not super heroes. They are timid people who kill for money and they have nothing to do with Jihad," said Karim Humadi, head of programming for Al-Iraqiyya.
There are certainly those who have argued the opposite even recently -- that the insurgency has so infiltrated the counterinsurgency that it is aware of our actions before we carry them out. If you believe that this infiltration has occurred, the "Iraqization" of the conflict is never going to be possible, and American soldiers will be stuck there for a long time.
My own view is that there has certainly been some infiltration of the counterinsurgency -- how could there not have been -- but that the insurgency has spoiled its early intelligence advantage by killing indiscriminately. This failure, plus the ability of the counterinsurgency to "route around" infiltration (see my posts on "pop-ups" and the impact of anonymous text-messaging), suggests that the insurgency in Iraq is in strategic retreat, a condition that will not change without a seismic shift in politics against the government or a dramatic change in the tactics of the insurgency.
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