|
WAR
& ARMED CONFLICT
Draining the Swamp:
The British Strategy of Population Control
Lt. Col.Wade Markel, 2006
Army strategist
serving with the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command's
Futures Center. His most recent operational assignment was
as Chief of Strategy and Policy in J-5, Combined Forces
Command-Afghanistan. He is a 1987 graduate of the US
Military Academy and holds a Ph.D. in history from Harvard
University
"...Instead of concentrating
immediately upon the areas where the insurgency was
strongest, Sir Gerald Templer... focused on building
support for the government where the insurgency was
weak. Such a policy had the
advantages of gradually accreting strength to the government
through enhanced economic activity. It also created the
appearance of momentum, and it created a favorable contrast
with conditions in areas troubled by insurgents... the vital
element in... counterinsurgency efforts was the
effective internment of the subject populations, and not
efforts at social amelioration. While we would like to
believe that "winning hearts and minds" is both
important and effective, these examples suggest that the
effort is neither essential nor decisive. Instead, what
will determine success in counterinsurgency is how
effectively the insurgent may be denied access to his
base of support... "
[Courtesy:
US Army Professional Writing Collection, Spring 2006
]
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Draining the Swamp - Photo
Illustration by
tamilnation.org |
"The first reaction to guerilla warfare must be to protect
and control the population."- Brigadier Richard L.
Clutterbuck, from The Long, Long War: Counterinsurgency in
Malaya and Vietnam "What the peasant wants to know is: Does the government mean
to win the war? Because if not, he will have to support the
insurgent."-
 Sir Robert Thompson, from Defeating Communist
Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to
remember that you came to drain the swamp." - Anon
Thirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the United
States and its Army again find themselves confronted with a
tenacious insurgency, this time in Iraq. Given our decidedly
mixed record in counterinsurgency operations, we tend to
look elsewhere for successful models.
Many look to the
British, especially their exemplary and thorough victory in
Malaya, to provide such a model.1 Commentators cite the
British Army's superior organizational adaptability and
flexibility, strategic patience, their predilection for
using the minimum force necessary, the relative ease with
which they integrated civil and military aspects of national
power, and the apparent facility with which they adapted
their strategies to local circumstances of geography and
culture. We would indeed do well to emulate the aforementioned
characteristics of British counterinsurgency practice, but
there was more to British success in Malaya than a good
attitude. The key element of their success was the effective
internment of the Chinese "squatter" population, the segment
of Malayan society from which the insurgents almost entirely
drew their strength.2
By interning the "squatters" in
fortified "New Villages," the British and their Malayan
allies were able to deny the communist insurgents access to
recruits, food, and military supplies. It also allowed them
to narrow the scope of their intelligence efforts, as the
insurgents had to maintain contact with their base under the
very noses of the Anglo-Malayan government. This strategy was liable to abuse. In Kenya, against the
contemporary Mau Mau rebellion, the British employed the
same strategy as they had in Malaya, in this case interning
basically all of the ethnic Kikuyu. The system of detention
camps and fortified villages quickly degenerated into what
historian Caroline Elkins has called "Britain's Gulag in
Kenya."3
Eventually, the ensuing scandal forced Britain to
grant independence even more rapidly than the accelerating
pressures of decolonization would have anyway. Still, the
colonial administration was able to defeat a much larger and
more widely supported insurgency, more quickly, than it had
in Malaya. A strategy of population control was not invariably
effective, however. In Vietnam, the Diem regime's
British-advised and American-supported attempt to implement
this strategy, the Strategic Hamlet program, not only failed
to weaken the insurgency but actually exacerbated popular
resistance.
On the other hand, the situation in Vietnam
differed significantly from that in Malaya and Kenya. In
contrast to the insurgent movements in those two countries,
isolated both from external support and concentrated in a
socially distinct minority, the Viet Cong enjoyed robust
external support from North Vietnam and at least minimal
legitimacy among the ethnically homogeneous South
Vietnamese. Indeed, it was Diem's power base, the minority
Catholic community, that was in danger of being isolated. As troubling as it might be, the evidence suggests that the
main lesson to be drawn from the British practice of
counterinsurgency is that physical control of the contested
segment of the population is essential. Further, that
control is greatly facilitated when the insurgency's support
is concentrated among a small and relatively unpopular
minority of the population.4
When that condition obtains, as
it did in Malaya and Kenya, a strategy of population control
can succeed. When conditions are different, as they were in
Vietnam, this strategy will fail. In Iraq today, the
situation resembles that which obtained in Malaya and Kenya
more than it resembles conditions in Vietnam. A strategy of
population control could therefore be applied, provided it
was modified to account for local circumstances and the
evolution in international mores. Draining the Swamp: Controlling the Chinese "Squatters" in
Malaya According to U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl and
others, British authorities in Malaya took some time even to
realize that they were beset with communist "alligators"
before realizing that only "draining the swamp" could
eliminate them. This they did by systematically
concentrating the Chinese squatter population, roughly
500,000 of Malaya's 1950s population of approximately
5,000,000, into fortified and tightly controlled "New
Villages." Denied effective access to supporters and
supplies, the insurgency melted away. Physical control and
security thus put the British in an advantageous position
that their subsequent and much-praised military and
intelligence operations merely exploited. Over the period
between the implementation of the Briggs Plan in 1951 and
the granting of Malaya's independence in 1957, this strategy
of population control broke the back of the communist
insurgency. According to Lieutenant General John Coates of the
Australian Army, the Malayan insurgency benefited almost as
much from British inattention and ineptitude as its own
inherent strength. In his operational analysis of the
Malayan Emergency, Coates discovered that the British mostly
relied on the communists' commitment to disarm and join the
political process in the immediate postwar period. Officials
blithely ignored barely concealed subversion until the scope
and scale of communist attacks compelled the government in
London to intervene. By that time, insurgents were killing
almost 200 civilians, police, and officials a month.5 British inattention had obscured the insurgency's
weaknesses.
Most important, the Communist Party was never
able to broaden its appeal beyond the Chinese squatters,
comprising about one tenth of Malaya's population.6 The
squatters, as their name suggests, lived in ramshackle
communities in the jungle, on land to which they had no
legitimate title.
The indigenous Malays bore little love for
the Chinese, originally imported by the British to work in
Malaya's rubber plantations and tin mines under stringent
limitations. Moreover, while all ethnic Chinese resented the
Malays' entrenched advantages, those in the urban and
entrepreneurial classes had little yearning for a socialist
utopia. Even most of the squatters were far more concerned
with material improvements in their lives than with
establishing a new political order.7 Thus the communists were left depending upon a minority of a
minority to accomplish the revolution.For that reason, it was relatively simple to isolate the
insurgency physically and politically.
Sir Robert Thompson,
a Malaya veteran who later went on to advise the Diem regime
in Vietnam, noted how important it was that Malaya's short
border with friendly Thailand could be sealed easily.8
Within Malaya, it was a matter of denying insurgents access
to potential sources of support. Understanding that
squatters constituted both the insurgency's base of support
and its Achilles' heel, the Anglo-Malayan government moved
to bring them firmly under government control. Sir Harold
Rawdon Briggs, appointed Director of Operations in 1950, is
generally credited with realizing that controlling the
population was essential to defeating the insurgency. Over
the next two years, the British relocated the entire
squatter population into approximately 423 "New Villages,"
intended to be inaccessible to the communist guerillas.9 The government did more than put barbed wire and
entrenchments between the insurgents and the squatters; it
neutralized the desire to support the insurgents. Briggs
conceived of the counterinsurgency campaign as a
"competition in government," which informed the location,
design, and organization of the New Villages.
First, the
government attempted to minimize disruption to community
life. Whenever possible, the British relied upon
regroupment, in which existing communities were consolidated
and fortified, resettling or moving everyone only when
absolutely necessary. In either case, life in the resulting
New Village represented a significant improvement over the
squatters' ramshackle jungle dwellings.
The government
provided better infrastructure, ensuring access to medical
care and education. Another key difference was that the
squatters now had a formal right to the land on which they
lived. These small but significant steps eliminated many of
the grievances which had animated the squatters, thereby
depriving the insurgents of considerable support.10 There is nothing controversial about combating an insurgency
by improving the lot of the population, but there was a
substantial element of repression to the strategy as well.
Access to each New Village was tightly controlled. Villagers
were subject to search upon exit and entry. Smuggling food,
medicine, or other militarily useful items was subject to
severe punishment.
Frequently it did not come to that.
Instead, those caught smuggling often led the authorities to
the guerillas in order to avoid punishment. Enforcing these
and other emergency regulations was the responsibility of
the police, mostly ethnic Malays, who were not inclined to
align themselves with the Chinese, let alone with the
communists.
Usually the police detachment would also include
one or more ethnic Chinese Special Branch officers,
responsible for ferreting out subversive elements within the
community itself. The police detachment also would be
responsible for defending the community, assisted by a "Home
Guard" drawn from the community itself. The formation of
this Home Guard not only removed a manpower burden from
government forces, it also actively involved squatter
communities on the side of the government. The army assumed
responsibility only for operations outside the wire, being
distributed so as to be able to rapidly reinforce villages
in the event of attack. Overseeing the integration of the
different elements were top-flight administrators, many of
whom spoke Chinese and had been drawn from throughout the
British Empire.11 The government then focused on destroying the insurgency,
conducting a campaign of indirect approach. Instead of
concentrating immediately upon the areas where the
insurgency was strongest, Sir Gerald Templer, Briggs'
successor, focused on building support for the government
where the insurgency was weak. Such a policy had the
advantages of gradually accreting strength to the government
through enhanced economic activity. It also created the
appearance of momentum, and it created a favorable contrast
with conditions in areas troubled by insurgents.
Of course,
this policy affronted businessmen and officials in areas
where the communists were strong. When, in response to their
entreaties, the government attempted to attack the guerillas
directly, such operations were rarely decisive.12 Establishing the New Villages required not only physical
infrastructure but a legal one as well. The Emergency
Regulations of 1948 and 1949 that established the New
Villages gave the government significant powers: control of
food, which it could ration or restrict as a form of
collective punishment; unlimited police powers of search and
seizure; the ability to detain suspects indefinitely or
deport without trial; and, obviously, the right to forcibly
resettle populations. Death was the penalty for many of the
more serious infractions of these regulations. Such measures
affront modern sensibilities and undoubtedly led to some
abuses. For instance, Anglo-Malayan government did impose
collective punishment, albeit sparingly. One of Sir Gerald
Templer's first acts as High Commissioner was to impose a
22-hour-a-day curfew on the rebel stronghold of Tanjong
Malim, simultaneously halving its food ration.13 Even
unwitting mistakes could have drastic consequences. General
John Coates regrets the fate of Malayan aborigines,
resettled to protect them from insurgent intimidation,
noting in passing that "thousands died."14 On the other hand, the procedural protections to which
Western society was accustomed, even in 1950, would have
proved unworkable against an insurgent campaign of murder
and intimidation. As the quotation from Sir Robert Thompson
at the beginning of this article indicates, the government's
determination to win, and its willingness to take the
measures necessary to prevail, will often determine the
allegiance of the uncommitted. While such broad and severe
measures were essential to controlling the insurgency,
Malayan veteran Brigadier Richard Clutterbuck argued that it
was equally important that these powers were formally
spelled out and impartially applied. Such formalities
replaced the potential perception of government actions as
arbitrary and abusive with an understanding that the
government was strict but effective. They also ensured that
the Anglo-Malayan actions went no further than the British
government and elites within Malayan society were willing to
support.15 The tight control over the Chinese squatters was the
decisive element in British strategy. It enabled the other
aspects of that strategy which recent analysts have praised
so much. In the words of Thompson, describing the general
application of such a strategy, "The 'hold' aspect of
operations is undoubtedly the most crucial and the most
complex, involving as it does the establishment of a solid
security framework covering the whole population living in
the villages and small towns of a given area."16 Access
control and surveillance identified insurgent supporters.
Officials could then exploit these individuals to find their
contacts both in the jungle and in the villages, enabling
the intelligence-directed operations, for instance.
Isolating the population forced the insurgents to reveal
themselves if they wanted access to that population, and
greatly complicated the insurgent task in mobilizing the
population. The results speak for themselves. By 1957, insurgent
strength had declined from its estimated peak of 8,000 in
1952 to a total of 2,000, of which only about 200 were
active combatants. Attacks plunged from a monthly peak of
about 100 in 1952 to about 20 in 1957. The insurgency, of
course, did not merely wither. Exploiting the favorable
conditions created by population control through offensive
operations to kill or capture insurgents still took several
years. Because the government had control of the population,
however, the insurgency could not make good its losses. But
while victory could be measured in 1957, the decisive point
had been reached in 1952. As Clutterbuck put it, "The
government had won a major victory, though this was not to
become apparent until the middle of the following year
[1953]."17 Incurring Moral Hazard: Suppressing the Mau Mau The British applied the same strategy in Kenya to combat the
Mau Mau insurgency, which officially lasted from 1952 to
1956, but they applied it with a far heavier hand. Like the
communists in Malaya, the Mau Mau in Kenya drew their
support almost exclusively from one ethnic minority, the
Kikuyu. As in Malaya, the British overlooked the Mau Mau's
considerable growth in strength and support until several
spectacular murders forced the colonial administration to
acknowledge its existence. At that point, the government
overreacted. Sir Evelyn Baring, the newly appointed
governor, imported the Malayan model wholesale in order to
combat the insurgency. Unfortunately, Baring's government
applied it without the sensitivity and restraint that had
characterized Britain's conduct of the Malayan Emergency. At
one point, almost every Kikuyu male of military age had been
detained, with the remaining Kikuyu interned in fortified
villages. These villages resembled Malaya's New Villages,
but without the amenities. An earlier passage in this
article noted Caroline Elkins' characterization of the
resulting system as "Britain's Gulag in Kenya."
Historian
David Anderson, in his Histories of the Hanged, asserts that
the colonial regime "became a police state in the very
fullest sense of that term."18 In the end, Britain's
domestic reaction to revelations of the nature and scope of
the brutality accelerated Britain's retreat from empire,
much as revelations of torture soured the French public on
the war in Algeria. For all that, Baring's government had
effectively crushed the Mau Mau by then, and had done so
using the colony's internal resources. Britain's suppression
of the Mau Mau thus teaches us how a population control
strategy can get out of hand. It also supports the troubling
conclusion that it is control of a given population, and not
cultural sensitivity toward it, that was the decisive aspect
of the British practice of counterinsurgency. Britain's victory in Kenya was due in no small part to the
structural vulnerabilities of the insurgency. At first
glance, the Mau Mau may seem to have posed a much more
formidable threat than the squatters in Malaya. The Mau Mau
had gained a much stronger hold over Kenya's 1.5 million
Kikuyu than the communists had over Malaya's ethnic Chinese.
Elkins asserts that almost all of those 1.5 million people
had taken some form of the Mau Mau oath to expel the British
or die trying. Actual combatants numbered around 20,000 at
the peak of the insurgency, though how many of these were
effective fighters remains open to question.19 Yet the Mau
Mau's success in mobilizing the Kikuyu apparently came at
the cost of alienating Kenya's other groups. To be sure,
their goals of ejecting the British and redistributing
British-held land enjoyed wide support.
The Mau Mau,
however, failed to advance a political program for what
would replace British domination, or even a strategy for
ejecting them. This failure prevented them from drawing
support from other segments of Kenyan society, who dreaded
the prospect of Kikuyu domination even more than they
detested the British overlordship.
Finally, in contrast to
the Malayan communists, who could draw upon their World War
II experience of guerilla warfare against the Japanese, the
Mau Mau lacked either the experience of or any preparation
for guerilla warfare. Their attacks thus consisted mostly of
small-scale massacres of isolated white settlers, and, more
frequently, Africans. Structurally, the Mau Mau could wreak
havoc, but not forge a revolution.20 The Mau Mau's failure to broaden their appeal allowed the
British to isolate the Kikuyu from the rest of Kenyan
society, and to draw resources from that society to suppress
the rebellion. Drawing on the example of Malaya, Baring
enacted wide-ranging emergency regulations to enable him to
combat the insurgency. He established a network of fortified
villages for the purpose of isolating guerilla fighters from
their base of support. As in Malaya, these villages were
supposed to represent an improvement over previous
communities. Unlike Malaya, there were not enough resources
available to realize this intent. The inhabitants of these
villages, mostly women, children, and the elderly, were
forced to build the villages themselves. Conditions in those villages were brutal. The Home Guard,
recruited from Kikuyu loyalists or ethnic rivals of the
Kikuyu, treated the inhabitants as spoils of war. Rape,
murder, and other forms of despoliation and maltreatment
were not uncommon.
As for the men, most were either fighting
in the jungle or under detention. At the high point of the
insurgency, 70,000 Kikuyu were in detention camps, where
conditions were even worse. While one might question
Caroline Elkins' tenuously supported estimate of 100,000
deaths, it is probable that a great many civilians lost
their lives in detention camps and fortified villages. These
conditions constituted a very real stain on Britain's honor,
and the revelations over the extent of the abuse occasioned
public outrage. The Macmillan government, already
unsentimentally committed to wholesale decolonization,
accelerated Kenya's autonomy as a result of popular uproar
over the so-called "Hola River Massacre" in 1959, in which
several inmates were murdered.21 Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of this system of abuse
was that it arose through neglect, not intention. Even the
impassioned Elkins is unwilling to attribute the cruel
conduct of the Kenyan counterinsurgency primarily to malice
aforethought, attributing much of the result to the lack of
resources. Unlike Malaya, Kenya could not claim to be part
of the Cold War.
Thus Governor Baring had to make do with
the colony's own financial and human resources, especially
the fairly racist and highly self-interested white settler
population. These settlers were more likely to take
vengeance than to ameliorate legitimate grievances. The much
larger population to be controlled also placed a much
greater strain on available resources.
Most important,
Baring had considerably less room to conciliate the
insurgents. In contrast to the situation in Malaya, Baring
was responsible for maintaining Britain's somewhat unjust
colonial domination, a goal to which few Kenyans could
subscribe from altruism. Thus instead of enlisting support,
Baring had to buy it with whatever he could expropriate from
suspected rebels. All this made the conflict especially and
unnecessarily cruel.22 Even so, these tactics broke the Mau Mau. With independence,
power passed peacefully to Jomo Kenyatta. While Kenyatta had
been falsely imprisoned for fomenting their rebellion, he
had in truth steadfastly refused any connection with the Mau
Mau, even while in prison. Out of prison and in power, he
continued to grant former Mau Mau neither credit for
independence nor a share of power in post-independence
Kenya. Kenya remained a member of the Commonwealth of
Nations. With constrained resources and flawed instruments,
Baring had defeated an insurgency of larger scope and
greater appeal than the one that had challenged the British
in Malaya. He had also deeply compromised Britain's moral
status.23 Vietnam: The Failure of the Strategic Hamlet Program One place where a strategy of population control did not
work was Vietnam. Of course, given the war's ultimate
result, it is hard to argue that anything else did, either.
In the early 1960s, things looked different, however. Hoping
to replicate Britain's success in Malaya, South Vietnamese
President Ngo Dinh Diem initiated the Strategic Hamlet
program under the direction of his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu.
Diem relied heavily on advice he got from Sir Robert
Thompson, who had played a prominent role as a member of Sir
Gerald Templer's administration in Malaya. Thompson and
others would later argue that Diem implemented the plan
poorly, striving for quantity over quality. The speed and
scope with which people were transferred into these
fortified camps ensured that the process not only alienated
the peasantry whose support Diem was trying to gain, but
also was ineffective in the end.24 In any event, America
abandoned the Strategic Hamlet program with the Diem regime
after the November 1963 coup, narrowing its focus to the
formidable challenge of defeating the People's Army of
Vietnam and main force Viet Cong maneuver formations. This
approach, often referred to as the strategy of attrition,
proved an even bigger mistake in the end. Yet while no counterinsurgency strategy attempted in Vietnam
proved ultimately successful, those which eventually showed
promise contained many of the same elements. The Marine
Corps' Combined Assistance Platoon program, largely
successful where applied, focused on providing security to
villagers by embedding Marine squads in local village
militias, and the Civil Operations and Revolutionary
Development Support (CORDS) program of US Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) achieved limited success
by coordinating security and civic action at the village
level in a manner reminiscent of Malaya's New Villages.25
Yet if these initiatives produced any success, it was not
enough to enable South Vietnam to gain the internal strength
and cohesion required to resist North Vietnamese conquest
indefinitely. The most compelling explanation for the failure of the
Strategic Hamlet program lay in Vietnam's vastly different
recent history, geography, and demography. In contrast to
the relatively weak Malayan communists or the Mau Mau, the
Viet Cong could build on the remnants of the Viet Minh
insurgency that had defeated the French.
Moreover, the Viet
Cong were vigorously and continuously supported by North
Vietnam, unlike the Malayans and the Mau Mau, who largely
had to fend for themselves. Most important, it was the Diem
regime, and not the insurgents, that drew its strength from
a distinct minority of the population, the Vietnamese
Catholics, while the communists took special care not to
alienate the Buddhist majority. Indeed, deriving their
lineage from the Viet Minh, the National Liberation Front
proved better able to lay claim to a legitimizing
nationalist ideology. Conclusion: Applying the British Model Today The results of this comparative historical analysis are
troubling. In Malaya, Sir Harold Briggs and his successor,
Gerald Templer, combined a strategy of population control
with an effective "hearts and minds" campaign to better the
living conditions of the Chinese squatters, breaking the
back of the insurgency in about five years. In Kenya, Evelyn
Baring executed a far crueler version of the strategy
employed in Malaya. There, the violence and brutality of
repression clearly outweighed the feeble and poorly
resourced attempts to win Kikuyu "hearts and minds."
Nonetheless, the Mau Mau were essentially broken in four
years.
This comparison suggests that the vital element in
both counterinsurgency efforts was the effective internment
of the subject populations, and not efforts at social
amelioration. While we would like to believe that "winning
hearts and minds" is both important and effective, these
examples suggest that the effort is neither essential nor
decisive. Instead, what will determine success in
counterinsurgency is how effectively the insurgent may be
denied access to his base of support. The question is
whether this analysis has any bearing on our current
situation, especially in Iraq. It may not. The situation there differs considerably from
that which obtained in 1950s Malaya and Kenya. Iraq's
military geography is considerably more challenging. Like
Vietnam, and unlike either Malaya or Kenya, Iraq shares long
and porous borders with neighboring states-in this case
Syria and Iran, neither of which favors the emergence of a
democratic, Western-oriented Iraq. Foreign fighters flow
over these borders virtually unhindered.
There are also a
lot more people in Iraq. There are almost as many Sunni
Arabs as there were Malayans. Moreover, unlike Malaya's
small and easily sequestered villages, Iraq's population
largely resides in relatively large, contiguous urban areas.
Samarra, Falluja, and Tal Afar, all scenes of recent combat,
each number about 200,000 or more.
The United Nations
estimates that Iraq is about 79 percent urbanized.26
Breaking these cities down into manageable and defensible
units would present considerable challenges in
implementation. At a more fundamental level, even with our
Iraqi partners, we don't have enough administrators, police,
and soldiers with a sufficient working knowledge of Iraqi
society and culture. Such administrators and police were
critical to Britain's victory in Malaya in the 1950s. Most important, there is one critical difference-and it is
that our current strategy is showing signs of succeeding.
Iraq's third successful election in the course of one year
provides evidence that we and the Iraqis are successfully
isolating the insurgents politically, if not physically.
In
particular, vigorous Sunni participation indicates a move
away from violence toward participation in the political
process. The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq states
that progress on the political front has led ordinary Iraqis
to provide better intelligence on insurgent activity.
According to the Brookings Institution's December 2005 Iraq
Index, such tips reached an all-time high in November.
More
important, the Iraqis' increasing commitment to the
political process has led to an increasing and tangible
commitment to the Iraqi state. In a key indicator,
recruiting for Iraqi security forces continues to outpace
requirements. Moreover, according to Lieutenant General
David Petraeus, those security forces are increasingly
capable of independent operations.27 Iraq resembles Malaya in one critical respect, however: the
insurgency is concentrated in one social minority, the Sunni
Arab population, and lacks broader appeal to Iraq's other
constituent elements.28 Clearly, not all Sunnis support the
insurgency, either actively or tacitly, but there is reason
to believe that some Sunni elites are attempting to leverage
the insurgency to lay claim to a disproportionate share of
Iraq's political power and wealth.29
And while recent polls
indicate that a majority of Iraqis want an end to the US
occupation, that shared aspiration does not necessarily
translate into support for the insurgency. The evident aims
of the insurgency-a return to Sunni dominance, perhaps
tinged with the imposition of a harsh Sunni religious
orthodoxy-inspire opposition rather than support among
Iraq's majority Shia population and ethnic Kurds. Unfortunately, another key similarity is that the insurgency
has steadily gained in strength and effectiveness, just as
the Malayan insurgency grew in the years before 1952.
Estimates of insurgent strength have climbed from about
5,000 in the summer of 2003 to a current figure that hovers
between 15,000 and 20,000, though the increase does appear
to have leveled off recently. Moreover, the insurgency
continues to grow in sophistication and effectiveness.
Average daily attacks have reached a high of between 80 and
100. While monthly US casualties are below their peaks in
April and November 2004, the general trend has been upward,
as it has for the number of Iraqi civilian dead.30
Just as
the British experienced in the early stages of Malaya, we
find ourselves clearing an area of insurgents only to find
ourselves returning to the same place to fight a different
group of insurgents later on.31 These facts may dictate a
willingness to consider a modified strategic concept of
intensified population control. Now is not the time to implement such a strategy, however,
and we should refrain from doing so as long as current
methods continue to show signs of progress. In the short
term, a policy of internment might well engender more
support for the insurgency. International opinion would not
stand for interning Iraq's Sunni Arab population, and US
soldiers might well balk at forcing civilians into
internment camps. Unless explained very effectively to
Americans, it probably also would erode domestic support for
the war. It is an option-but one that need not be exercised
immediately. If events recommend a change in strategy, however, it might
be possible to entice Sunnis into internment voluntarily, as
an alternative preferable to being continually fought over.
The Sunni Arab community is not monolithic. As several
analysts have pointed out, tribes are actually the dominant
organizing unit for Iraqi society.32 Some Sunni tribes can
undoubtedly be won over to support of the government, just
as the British managed to fracture ethnic solidarity among
the Chinese in Malaya.
By submitting to a regimen of tighter
control, such communities could avoid becoming a
battleground and get better access to reconstruction aid.
Rather than being imprisoned in internment camps, the Sunnis
would be joining "gated communities" with enhanced security
and perhaps better access to reconstruction support. The key
is keeping such communities small enough to deny insurgents
the ability to infiltrate them and coerce support from the
inhabitants. In effect, these Sunni communities would be
opting out of the war. Such "opting out" would work in our
favor, by progressively narrowing the insurgents' potential
base of support. Foreign fighters would have fewer places to
hide, as they would no longer be able to simply move in
anywhere and coerce the silence of neighbors. Though this
strategy would not eliminate insurgent freedom of action, it
would narrow its scope, allowing US and Iraqi security
forces to concentrate their assets on unsecured areas.
Moreover, just as it did in Malaya, the establishment of
secured communities should facilitate the collection of
intelligence. Controlling this population would
simultaneously strike at the source of the insurgency and
contribute to convincing large sections of the Sunni
minority that their war is over.
Such a system would
comprise an important element of our continually evolving
strategy, whose security component is "clear, hold, and
build." The core of US strategy would still remain fostering
democratic political institutions, effective security
forces, and a robust economy. We neither can nor should impose this strategy upon the
Iraqis. It must be their choice, and it probably should be
their choice of last resort. Only the Iraqis could hammer
out the necessary compromises to ensure that a strategy of
stringent population control gains and retains popular
legitimacy. Our role would be to help the Iraqis develop a
workable plan, and to support them in its execution.
If this
strategy were to be implemented, however, it would be vital
that we help provide the resources necessary to prevent the
strategy from degenerating into mere repression, as it did
in Kenya. It should go without saying that this strategy
would have to be very carefully explained to the American
public, to the world, and especially to the Iraqis, so that
everyone would understand why they are doing it and what
they hope to achieve. The time may come when the Iraqi majority is no longer
satisfied with the extent of voluntary cooperation offered
the Sunni Arab community. If the insurgents continue to
strike at will, and if the Sunni community persists in its
active and tacit support of the insurgency, the Shiite and
Kurdish majority may cease to tolerate a situation in which
their alternatives are enduring torment and terror
indefinitely or submitting to domination by a detested
minority.
If that point is reached, involuntary internment
may prove to be the least bad remaining humane alternative.
International opinion, which views with equanimity the
minority's imposition of collective terror upon the
majority, will undoubtedly oppose such a strategy as
"collective punishment." What the British practice of
counterinsurgency suggests, however, is that it just might
work.
NOTES 1. In this vein,
General Peter Schoomaker commended
Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl's outstanding analysis of the
British Army's performance as a learning organization during
the Malayan Emergency,
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Westport:
Praeger, 2002), to the House Armed Services Committee in the
summer of 2004. Nagl's prescient study rose to prominence
once we found ourselves embroiled in Iraq. For other
references to the British model, see Robert M. Cassidy,
The British Army and counterinsurgency: The Salience of Military
Culture," Military Review, 85 (May/June 2005); or James D.
Campbell, "French Algeria and British Northern Ireland: legitimacy and the rule of law in low--intensity conflict"
Military Review, 85 (March/April 2005).
2. See, for example,
Richard Clutterbuck
-
The Long, Long
War: Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), p. 64.
3.Caroline Elkins
- Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (New York: Henry Holt, 2005).
4. Experts in the field seem to realize this, but write only
very obliquely about the subject. In Kalev Sepp, "Best practices in counterinsurgency.: An article from: Military Review " Military Review, 85
(May-June 2005), 8-12, Dr. Sepp lists population control as
a "best practice," but limits his discussion to identity
cards and other administrative measures. In John A. Lynn,
"Patterns of insurgency and counterinsurgency.(Warfighting)" Military
Review, 85 (July-August 2005), 27, the author briefly
acknowledges the role that physical isolation and internment
played in the Malayan Emergency without touching on its
propensity for abuse. 5. John Coates, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1954 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 1992), pp. 2-3. Richard Clutterbuck, an Army officer
seconded to the Special Branch during the emergency, also
thought that the Anglo-Malayan government had been slow to
recognize the problem. 6. For the story of Lai Tek, see Clutterbuck, pp. 18, 29.
7. Coates, p. 86.
8. Sir Robert Thompson,
Defeating Communist Insurgency: The
Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, 1966), p. 19. 9. Clutterbuck, p. 57.
10. Coates, p. 82.
11. Coates, p. 83; Clutterbuck, pp. 61-62.
12. Clutterbuck, p. 113.
13. Ibid., pp. 80-82. Coates and Nagl also cite this
incident. 14. Coates, p. 92.
15. Clutterbuck, pp. 36-41.
16. Thompson, p. 121.
17. Statistics are taken from Clutterbuck, p. 87; the
quotation is from p. 64. John Coates confirms the assessment
that internment was the decisive element in victory (p. 83),
as does Sir Richard Thompson. 18. David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (New York: W. W. Norton,
2005), p. 5. 19. The figures are from Elkins. Anderson, while
acknowledging that support for the Mau Mau was widespread,
doubts that it ever attained quite these proportions.
20. Anderson (p. 4) notes the weaknesses of the insurgents,
especially the failure to appeal to other ethnic groups.
21. Elkins makes frequent reference to Baring's reliance on
Malayan precedents for emergency regulations (p. 55) and
"villagization" (p. 235). For the cosmetic nature of efforts
at social amelioration, see p. 115. For the use forced labor
to build the villages, see p. 129. She and Anderson concur
that shame at these practices accelerated British
withdrawal; Elkins (p. 356), Anderson (p. 329).
22. Elkins makes frequent reference to the expediencies
forced on Baring by pecuniary necessity, including the
involvement of illegal settler operations in "screenings"
for Mau Mau suspects, the prevalence of forced labor (p.
129), the squalid nature of life in the fortified villages
(p. 237), and so forth. 23. I should note that Britain may well have been able to
achieve the same result, at lower cost and much less loss of
life, by negotiating with Kenyatta in 1954 instead of
imprisoning him. 24. George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 with Poster (3d ed.; New York: McGraw
Hill, 1996), pp. 98-99. 25. For a nuanced discussion of the history of
counterinsurgency strategies in Vietnam, see Richard A.
Hunt,
 Pacification:
The American Struggle for Vietnam's Hearts and Minds (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995).
Many readers will no doubt be aware of Lewis Sorley's
argument that a strategy of population security had largely
proved successful within South Vietnam by 1972; see his book
A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1999). 26.
United Nations Settlement Program, Iraq
27. George W. Bush, National Strategy for
Victory in Iraq (Washington: The White House, November
2005), pp. 9, 21. The Brookings Institution's Iraq
Index:
Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in
Post-Saddam Iraq , 19 December 2005,
supports the claim of increased intelligence from civilians;
see table, "Tips Received from Population," p. 25.
28.
Anthony Cordesman
- "The Developing Iraqi Insurgency:
Status at End - 2004," draft paper, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, 22 December 2004, p. 12.
29. See Frederick W. Kagan,
"Blueprint for Victory," The
Weekly Standard, 31 October 2005 ;
Gary Schmitt, "Why
Iraq's Sunnis Won't Deal," The Washington Post, 13 September
2005, p. A27. 30. Estimates of insurgent strength are drawn from the
Brookings Institution, Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of
Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq, "Estimated
Strength of Insurgency Nationwide," 4 August 2005, p. 15.
The assessment of effectiveness follows that of Cordesman.
31. See stories on the border village of
Qaim, "Insurgents
Assert Control Over Town Near Syrian Border," The Washington
Post, 6 September 2005; and on Samarra, John R. S. Batiste
and Paul R. Daniels, "The Fight for Samarra: Full-Spectrum
Operations in Modern Warfare," Military Review, 85 (May-June
2005) 32. William S. McCallister, Charles Kyle, and Christopher
Alexander,
"The Iraqi Insurgent Movement," Naval Post
Graduate School, November 2003 |
