Insurgency is a term used by a group in power to define a group
that is doing everything it can to be in power, at least in terms
of self-governance if not to be totally in charge. Both sides
learn quickly that any weakness displayed by the other side must
be exploited ruthlessly and to the maximum extent. It’s a type of
warfare that by its very nature is “dirty” — and definitely not
for those committed to high moral and legal principles.
Perhaps the purest example of recent insurgency is the Tamil
Eelam and their Liberation Tigers in Sri Lanka. Just this past
week the Tamil Tigers finally lost control of a small portion of
territory it had held for many years. The central government
announced that the 26-year insurgency had ended. Perhaps the
fighting has ceased, but the struggle for the rights of the
minority Tamils dominated by the majority Sinhalese will
certainly go on.
Sri Lanka and the rebellious Tamil Tigers represented a paradigm
of insurgency, but they certainly are not alone. The Eastern
Congo has had rebellions in different forms going on for 49
years. Even intervention by the United Nations on several
occasions hasn’t been able to tamp down permanently the various
uprisings.
The FARC in Colombia after many years still operate with the aid
of drug trafficking. The Moros in the Philippines, interrupted by
several peace agreements, have been fighting central government
control in one form or another since the arrival of the Americans
in 1898. Insurgencies come in many different forms, some
religiously based, some ethnically based, some strictly
politically based. Counter-insurgency, therefore, must be equally
attuned to these often complex differences.
The Taliban are a wholly different order of insurgency in that
they exist in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. With its majority of
Pushtun members the Taliban is dominated by a tribe that
constitutes 40 percent of the population of Afghanistan and
approximately 75 percent of those inhabitants living on both
sides of the eastern and southern border with Pakistan.
Basically all these Pushtun are of the same religious orientation
— if different in practice and sub-tribal affiliation. All
Pushtun share an independence of political spirit. Essentially,
therefore, the Afghan Pushtun tribal leaders can choose whether
they want to follow the Pushtun-led government in Kabul or the
Pushtun-led oligarchy of the Taliban.
One must step out of the traditional context of
counter-insurgency when dealing with the Taliban. There is no
military action of any sort that can be taken against the Taliban
that doesn’t have a political ramification, either in the broad
context or simply local impact. Assaults in a given clan area
have ramifications in neighboring clan areas.
There is one school of thought that holds the essence of
counter-insurgent warfare is to brutally wipe out the rebellious
group in such a way as to deny the possibility of revival. This
takes a great deal of killing and subsequent control of the
insurgent base so as to deny resumption of the rebellion.
An alternative view holds that insurgencies never can be
countered with military force alone; that the ultimate key to
counter-insurgency is “winning the hearts and minds” of the
population through economic, political and social actions.
Combinations of all of the above have been tried with varying
results wherever insurgency has arisen. There is no strict
approach that can be applied to counter-insurgency. The lessons
of Malaya could be applied only in part in Vietnam. The lessons
of Vietnam could only be applied in part against the Philippine
Moros. In the same way the lessons of Iraq are only applicable in
part to Afghanistan. And nothing but annihilation seems to have
worked in Sri Lanka.
Insurgency thrives on this diversity of character. It is
simplistic to justify the replacement of the American commander
in Afghanistan by arguing he supported conventional tactics as
opposed to the new one who is devoted to special operations.
To counter any insurgency, Taliban included, it is necessary to
design a wholly unique strategy with supportive tactics. Next, a
military, political and economic commitment of an indefinite
period of time is required. For an outside force such as the
United States military or NATO to assume this open-ended
responsibility is clearly impractical.
The solution requires a working alliance between Islamabad and
Kabul with the West’s material support in the background.
Changing field commanders may give the appearance of doing
something — but unfortunately it’s only a partial response, at
best.
Ultimately the threat to the United States and Europe is from the
international terrorist syndicate of al Qaeda and its foreign
allies. They must be America’s principal objective. Targeting the
non-Pushtun al Qaeda as distinct from the Taliban is key to the
beginning of the destruction of Osama bin Laden’s organization in
the region.
