GREAT POWER COUNTERINSURGENCY

1. GREAT POWER COUNTERINSURGENCY SMALL WARS and SPECIAL OPERATIONS Michael McClintock Human Rights First November 2005

2. European Powers Colonial Small Wars and Pacification Irregular Warfare Behind the Lines Resistance/UW Decolonization and Revolutionary War United States Indian Wars Punitive Expeditions Constabulary Role Pacification/Small War (Philippines) Behind the Lines Resistance/UW Comparative Experience 1950

3. Sources: The Small Wars Model • Marshall Bugeaud, conqueror of Algeria • Maréchal Joseph Simon Galliéni/ Maréchal Luis Herbert Lyautey • C.E. Callwell’s Small Wars, Their Principles and Practices (1896) • Sir Charles W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing (1934) • U.S. Marines, Small Wars Manual (1940)

4. Small Wars Defined C.E. Callwell, 1896 • Small War: a campaign by a regular army against irregulars, or “forces in which their armament, their organization, and their discipline are palpably inferior to it.” • Foreign wars of this kind include “expeditions undertaken for some ulterior political purpose, or to establish order in some foreign land—wars of expediency, in fact.”

5. United Kingdom TE Lawrence Orde Wingate (Sudan, Palestine, Ethiopia, Burma) Special Operations Executive (SOE) United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) CIA (1947) Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare (1951) Guerrilla Warfare FM 31-21 (1951) A Related but Separate TrackIrregular and Special Warfare

6. Small Wars Doctrine after WWII • United Kingdom: Continuity from Small Wars to Low Intensity Operations • France: Small Wars and La Guerre Révolutionnaire • United States: Jumping the Small Wars Track • Behind the Lines Doctrine to Center Stage • OCPW/Special Operations Division (1952)

7. Basic Statements of UK Doctrine • Sir Charles W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing (1934). The objective is “the restoration of order through the use of minimum force.” • Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (1966), stressed tough administration, population control, and adherence to law. Decried use of high intensity military force or dirty tricks. • Sir Frank Kitson, author of Low Intensity Operations (1971), stressed practical counterinsurgency. There was little “special” about it: it was mainstream British army. (Kitson retired in 1985, Cmdr in Chief, UK Land Forces.)

8. Basics of UK Doctrine • Population control through strong civil and military administrative structures. • Strong foundation in law enforcement as tool and source of legitimacy. • Emphasis upon the primacy of intelligence. • Only limited role for elite commando-style strike force.

9. Basics of the French Small War • Quadrillage (an administrative grid of population and territory) • Ratissage (cordoning and “raking”) • Regroupement (relocating and closely controlling a suspect population) • ‘Tache d'huile' – The 'oil spot' strategy • Recruitment of local leaders and forces • Paramilitary organization and militias

10. French Colonial Maxims • By destroying the administration and local government “we were also suppressing our means of action.” • “The result is that we are today confronted by a sort of human dust on which we have no influence and in which movements take place which are unknown to us.“ • Algerian governor-general Jules Cambon 1894

11. French Colonial Maxims "A country is not conquered and pacified when a military operation has decimated its inhabitants and made all heads bow in terror; the ferments of revolt will germinate in the mass and the rancours accumulated by the brutal action of force will make them grow again.“ Maréchal Galliéni

12. French Political Warfare • The Doctrine of Guerre Révolutionnaire • The threat was ideological and global • Revolutionary warfare was total war • Counteraction required both military and political action • No measure was too drastic to meet the new threat of revolution.

13. A Political Approach • Psychological warfare, the 5iéme Bureaux • Counter-Terror • Counter-Organization • Indoctrination • Population Control • Specialized Administrative Sections (SAS) • A forerunner of CORDS • Adding indoctrination and control to resettlement • “helping these people while rooting out the rebels”

14. Two Sides of the UW COIN • Terrorism to Fight Terrorism • Para's 11th Shock Regiment/SDECE “Dirty Tricks” unit. • Dispositif de Protection Urbaine, DPU, organized pied noir "counterterrorists.“ • “The ‘Red Hand’ terrorist organization used ‘counterterror’ against the nationalists….” “[A] popular device…is the auto boobytrap technique…” Dept. Army Pam. 550-104, Sept. 1966

15. Battle of Algiers • January 1957; cordon and search. • Screening 100,000; 40% Casbah’s men; • 24,000 were detained; most were systematically tortured. • 3,000 “disappeared”; having died under torture or been secretly executed. • FLN’s Algiers infrastructure broken, briefly. • Frances’ claim to hearts and minds lost.

16. Battle of Algiers • Army’s most decorated officer, General Jacques de Bollardiére, confronts Colonel Massu over orders institutionalizing torture, as “an unleashing of deplorable instincts which no longer knew any limits.” • Issues open letter condemning the danger to the army of the loss of its moral values "under the fallacious pretext of immediate expediency" (imprisoned for sixty days). • Other senior officers join in protests as danger to army. • Paul Teitgen, Algiers Prefecture head, who had survived years in Gestapo custody and in Dachau, resigns, and speaks out on torture and refers to “war crimes.” • Conscript soldiers tell of their experiences. “Gangrene.”

17. Battle of Algiers • By 1960 "the enemy was able to re-establish his organization and once again to take control of the population...The victory...had gone for naught." Colonel Roger Trinquier, head of the Dispositif de Protection Urbaine, DPU and author of Modern Warfare. • French public and government disaffection with war leads to terrorism and military revolt. • May 1958 coup backed by Gen. Massu and Gen. Salan; Fall of Fourth Republic. • General Raoul Salan heads Organization Armée Sécret terror campaign against French State. • April 1961 General’s Coup.

18. Some Tactics Subvert Strategy • Army officers “agreed only with the tactical concepts of the doctrine, and either ignored or rejected their wider nonmilitary implications.” Peter Paret, French Rev Warfare, ’64 • Bombings, murder, and other terror tactics undermined legitimacy and generated resistance. • Torture generated hatred and resistance and was corrosive within the army and French society itself.

19. Unconventional Warfare Operations occur in areas dominated by hostile power and will generally be illegal. Organizing resistance forces Covert operations Guerrilla warfare/Terrorism Counterinsurgency Actions reinforced by legal authority and legitimacy. Organizing and training foreign troops and irregular forces. Organizing and leading foreign forces Can Counterinsurgency Strategy Tolerate Official Lawlessness?

20. “Foreign internal defense operations may require unconventional warfare techniques, e.g., guerrilla warfare, to deny support to the insurgents…” FM 31-22, Dec. 1981 Is Counterinsurgency Unconventional Warfare?

21. Where are We Now? • Waghlestein’s “the U.S. Army has an 1894 Doctrine for Counterinsurgency” • Special Operations and Modern Doctrine • Special Operations Role Expansion (while the regular army goes its own way) • Two Extremes with No Middle Way: High Intensity Warfare and Special Warfare Combined (wither the Small War)

22. Unconventional Warfare Counterinsurgency Commando support, high-intensity warfare Counterterrorism Counter-narcotics Civil Affairs Logistical support for foreign allies Training foreign regular armies Training foreign special ops forces Joint and combined exercises Peacekeeping Special Operations Forces Role Expansion