Iraq: Military Analysis of the Iraqi Insurgency

Counter-insurgency strategy

I’ve thought long and hard why our uniformed military forces lack ’finesse’, and consequently why we are so incredibly incompetent at CI and low-intensity conflict.

May I suggest our doctrines are based on myths...

Contrary to our highly skewed version of WWII,ie. we won it, as eloquently pointed out above, any informed military historian will point out we were in reality little more than bit players...the Soviet Union and China engaged and occupied more than 70% of all German and Japanese forces throughout the war.

WWII started the process of what has become entrenched over decades into the current philosophy of ’force protection’.

We first developed it in WWII and it has become ingrained, use all available firepower (air support, artillery, support and heavy weapons, etc) to annihilate the enemy, use firepower in preference to any other alternative, this is not a correct interpretation of the use of maximum/concentration of force at the decisive point and time...

Reconnaissance by fire is a classic delusion, we never learned the lesson in Korea/Vietnam and we still do it today, hah !

The above causes a subconcious motivation to avoid engagements of more finesse and the supremacy of the average individual Combat Infantryman.

The above overall doctrine works when in engaged in large scale formal conventional military operations, ie. Gulf War I & II. A tenuous analogy could be made between the Blitzkreig doctrine/success across the steps of Russia in WWII by Germanies Werhmacht colliding with the reality of Stalingrad...loss of maneuver and the overwhelming application of firepower became irrelevent and in the latter counter-productive...

Now re CI, Low Intensity (LI) ops:

The requirements for any CI/LI Op to succeed, the following conditions must be met:

Flexible, Light Infantry, Combat Infantry and Special Forces count, armor does’nt, in fact armor is wedded in the false desire of Force Protection/Overwhelming Firepower discussed above. Armor is blind re a single insurgent, cannot pursue individuals effectively, especially urban, is a relatively easy target to surprise ambush successfully. Most importantly though, armor OFFENDS, ARMOR is all about domination & humiliation, ARMOR screams INVASION and OCCUPATION in the mindset of the populace, all counter-productive to ’Hearts and Minds’.

The occupying force must outnumber the insurgents by a ratio of a minimum of 10:1, we don’t.

We must OWN the countryside and the urban areas (cities) in order to be able to deny the Insurgents any freedom of movement, ie. ideally they form up in a group of 3-4 we ambush them and capture or kill them, we don’t, we have NO freedom of movement at all outside our fortified cantonments (every move is susceptable to ambush, IEDS, harassing fires, etc). We don’t, and it’s gettin’ worse.

The vast majority of the population must be actively supporting our forces and actively informing on and providing Intelligence on the Insurgents as well as
actively denying such support and succour to them.
We don’t, and it’s gettin’ worse.

A government, administrative and regional political body supportive of and by the populace and the ’Coalition of the Willing’. Huh !, Nope !

Overall situ comment and Analysis:

The Coalition numbers 148,000, the poulation of Iraq = 25 Million. Some assumptions, 100% of Northern Iraq is 100% friendly, pro-actively so (totally unrealistic, however). That means 25Million-35%, therefore we’re left with 60% Shia of all factions and 15% Sunni. Let’s assume All the Sunni are now actively friendly (totally unrealistic, however). That leaves the Shia, of which 15 % are Moqtada Al-Sadr supporters, lets assume that all other Shia are actively friendly (totally unrealistic, however). That means ’best case’(sic) we are facing a highly organised, politically/religuous contiguous group tempered over decade as a result of active and passive suppression under Saddam.

Now, if only 1%(unrealistically low, however) of the Sadr block is pepared to take up arms, we’re facing 37,500 Insurgents ! We would require therefore a minimumof 375,000 Light Infantry and Combat Infantryman ! We don’t have them.

By contrast Vietnam’s Viet Cong was drawn from a pool of only 250,000 cadres with 50,000 active, armed insurgents at any one time...and we could’nt defeat them with over 500,000 US forces, not including allied and ARVN forces, and using UNRESTRICTED TOTAL FORCE...

Our lifeline for reinforcement and logistical support through southern Iraq from Kuwait, none from Turkey, Jordan, Iran or Saudi Arabia. An escalation of the insurgency from any quarter that breaks that link and we are looking at 148,000 troops in a modern Custers Last Stand, the retreat from Chosin in Korea would become an historical footnote in comparison...

We have a historical fascination with killing our enemies, in a CI/LI campaign where the above conditions are not met, high enemy casualties are self-defeating. Every time we kill an insurgent we create 1-3 more family members or other associates who become prepared to take up arms or at the least actively support the Insurgency, ie. Intelligence, funding, logistics (arms, ammunition, food & shelter), concealment (within the broader community).

Briefly, we have’nt faced any level of structured support from sympathisers in the neighbouring nations, yet. We have’nt yet triggered the violation of the Najaf and Karbala Holy sites and the resulting popular firestorm, yet. We have’nt triggered the ’Israel is actively with us’ and complicit in the crimes of the occupation, yet (John Israel, CACI, Abu Ghraib, Task Force 121, etc...)

In my humble analysis, we need to cut and run, now.

New Phoenix program, Private Contractors, Force 121, CIA covert Ops, Israeli Covert participation, etc

Ops/programs such as ’Phoenix’ only contribute to success when successful pre-requisites for CI/LI have not been been met (see above), as they were’nt set in Algiers, Vietnam, etc, and as they are’nt in todays Iraq.

In the current unfavourable CI/LI environment they are in fact fuel on the fire and result in an exponential acceleration in the overral strength of the Insurgency.

With all due respect, expecting brutal cultural/religuous humiliation/degradation to result in a body of terrorist/insurgency infiltrating agents and informers is naive in the extreme. What it results in is an ever increasing series of unsuccessful penetration attempts as well as a supply and dependency on false or selected innacurate/manipulated intelligence managed for our consumption by the terrorists/insurgents. Don’t you think the ’bad guys’ have noticed who and when people have been detained/disappeared ?

The terrorists are NOT ragheads, the CIA in conjunction with Pakistans ISI created and tempered Al Qaeda in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union, they are at least as good as our CIA and arguablly superior truly motivated and committed offspring.

The insurgents are not novices, they also have been tempered under decades of Saddam.

Our HUMINT and attempts at penetrating the terrorists/insurgents are burdened by insufficient language/religuous/cultural/tribal skills and understanding and an Arab/Islamic american citizenry that we prefer to alienate and ostracize rather then succour and recruit...

Same old mistakes by the same old combination of Chichenhawks and Convential Warfare wedded Officers who refuse to learn the lessons of military history or accept professional/specialist advice... :(

And our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, et al in uniform pay, yet again the ultimate price for the Bush Administrations folly... :((