Population-centric Counterinsurgency Research Articles

Hidden hands: The failure of population-centric counterinsurgency in Afghanistan 2008-11

ABSTRACT The conflict in Afghanistan 2001–2021 pitched coalition forces into the midst of a civil war. Armed political rebellion of this sort presents practitioners with a deeply intricate problem; multiple, interdependent layers of conflict and competition creating an ever-shifting ecosystem of violent competition. But in their efforts to resolve the root-causes of political rebellion in Afghanistan, Western counterinsurgents unwittingly contributed a set of philosophical, constructionist and cognitive ingredients to the dynamics powering violence on the ground. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, this article explores aspects of the campaign in Helmand and Kandahar 2008–11 in order to better explore the intersection between COIN theory, COIN practice, and the layered complexities involved for stabilisation forces seeking to instrumentalise power and influence in another nation’s internal conflict.

Indian And Sri Lankan Counterinsurgency Campaigns: A Comparative Analysis

The South Asian region has been marred by various insurgencies, internal conflicts, and civil wars. Multiple conflicts are mainly discussed and deliberated in piecemeal and standalone case studies. This paper will carry out a comparative study of Indian and Sri Lankan insurgencies while facing protracted insurgencies with different natures, magnitudes, and cultural propensities. Some conflicts were bloody and ultra-violent, and some resistance movements and insurgencies (Indian) have spanned more than five decades. Though Sri Lanka had defeated the insurgents, it is imperative to analyze the causes and factors that led to its success. Both India and Sri Lanka adopted a response pattern in the form of Counterinsurgency, which brought forth distinct consequences. Counterinsurgency is complex irregular warfare involving various logical operations lines such as political, economic, information, psychological, and military operations. But the chief consideration is non-kinetic. The non-kinetic procedures are administered under the ‘Population centric Counterinsurgency approach, in which the counterinsurgent is more inclined toward securing and protecting the population. This paper will ascertain whether India and Sri Lanka have launched the ‘population-centric Counterinsurgency’ or ‘enemy-centric Counterinsurgency.’ Moreover, it will also draw the parallels and variations followed in the respective theaters of insurgencies by both countries and discover how successful they are in suppressing their separate insurgencies. Lastly, this paper will provide the intellectual foundation for understanding the counterinsurgency paradigm for the whole of South Asia.

Local Minorities in Counterinsurgency: U.S. Approaches to Baghdad and Saigon Regarding Marginalized Populations

In counterinsurgencies, minority groups such as the Sunnis in Iraq are important elements of the “population,” the social–political terrain where population-centric counterinsurgency is battled. Yet there has been little systematic analysis of minority groups in unconventional warfare and no investigation of the ways intervening forces, like the United States, have approached in-country allies in an effort to get host nations to address the strategic importance of minorities. Examining new data on alliance politics between the United States and local partners in Vietnam and Iraq, I find that while existing scholarship would suggest that in-country allies will resist U.S. pressure to engage with minority groups, local allies are surprisingly likely to comply, at least in part, in order to avoid U.S. unilateral engagement with local minorities and to influence the policies adopted. This process slowly undermines U.S. counterinsurgency efforts, speaking to the complexities of population-centric approaches and working through local proxies.

Population-Centric Counterinsurgency in the Age of Salafi-Driven Insurgencies

Abstract This article explores the relevance of the dominant, population-centered, counterinsurgency doctrine in an era dominated by Salafi-inspired state challengers. Building on Weinstein's (2007) argument, I argue that an insurgent group's emergent nature, shaped by its origin, affects how it will operate and the kind of strategy most likely to defeat it. I investigate the plausibility of my claims through an examination of Boko Haram. I demonstrate the disconnect between Boko Haram's Salafi ideology and its objective of establishing a caliphate, on the one hand, and the strategy of dialogue and socioeconomic reforms to end the insurgency, on the other. In light of this disjuncture, I argue that the key to Boko Haram's defeat lies in the mobilization of international military and intelligence resources to strengthen the Nigerian government's enemy-centered counterinsurgency operation against the group.

Strategic satisficing: Civil-military relations and French intervention in Africa

AbstractFew issues are more important yet less understood than outside interventions in intra-state conflicts. Under what circumstances do intervening states further their interests and when, contrarily, do they plunge into quagmires? France is a critical case. It is, statistically, the world’s second intervenor and earned the sobriquet of Africa’s gendarme through frequent interventions in African wars. The ability of such a medium-sized state to intervene with greater regularity and ostensible success than larger powers raises questions about how France manages its interventions. Do French interventions draw on the French Army’s distinctive ‘school’ of population-centric counterinsurgency, which emphasises the need to militarise governance in pursuit of comprehensive victories? Or do the French Fifth Republic’s civil-military institutions encourage policymakers to carefully regulate force’s employment in pursuit of limited ends? This study draws on declassified archives to test which approach most characterises French interventions. To preview my conclusions, strategic satisficing – the use of minimal force for short durations to produce satisfactory outcomes – distinguishes the Fifth Republic’s interventions from other powers’ practices and prior French counterinsurgencies. This particular form of interventionism enables France to influence a large number of intra-state conflicts and maintain a network of security agreements with African states.

Democratic Security Policy in Colombia: Approaches to an enemy-centric counterinsurgency model

Abstract: The purpose of this document is to reflect upon the Democratic Security Policy (PSD by its abbreviation in Spanish) that took place in Colombia under the presidency of Alvaro Uribe Velez, between 2002 and 2010. To this end, in the fight against the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC by its abbreviation in Spanish) and the National Liberation Army (ELN by its abbreviation in Spanish), the PSD is understood, in these terms, not so much as a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy, but on the contrary, as a predominantly enemy-centric model. It is also theoretically presented as a hybrid model between the scheme of compulsion and accommodation proposed by Hazelton (2011, 2013, 2017), and the authoritarian model that Zukhov (2012), or Byman (2016) approach, among others. In this regard, the work draws on data from the database on the internal armed conflict expressly facilitated by the Vice-Presidency of the Republic, and by a set of in-depth interviews with the main actors involved in the conflict during the time of the study, from the Government, as well as from the Military Forces, the guerrillas and the paramilitaries.

Population-Centric Counterinsurgency: The Conduit for Ending Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria’s North

This concept paper analyzed the existing counterinsurgency approaches of Nigeria government in combating an Islamist insurgent Boko Haram in Nigeria. Boko Haram violent armed uprising for the Islamization of Nigeria state in 2009 have cooled bloodily murdered thousands of people and displaced millions of others from their settlements. This has resulted in serious humanitarian situations. To combat the insurgency Nigeria government in collaboration and support of foreign government have adopted numerous counterinsurgency measures. However, despite the consistent counterinsurgency measures, prevailing evidence suggests that the insurgency is far away from being defeated. In contrast, the group sustained its violence attacks unabatedly. Therefore, this paper explored that the sustenance of Boko Haram insurgency in spite of the successive counterinsurgency measures eventuated from the adoption of enemy-centric approach in the combating activities. The paper revealed the repressive military action coupled with draconian laws and policies by the state created public dissension toward the counterinsurgency campaign, therefore, undermine the successes of the campaign. In conclusion, the paper recommends that to effectively tackle the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigeria government need to deviate from the enemy-centric approach and to the population-centric paradigm that should focus on addressing the socioeconomic factors fuelling the insurgent recruitment and support.

U.S. Strategic Culture and the Genesis of Counterinsurgency Doctrine

Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine is a very special strategy in the art of war, which involves significantly different tactics than does conventional warfare. U.S. doctrine for combat against insurgents has gone through several changes, the most dramatic of which occurred after 9/11, when the U.S. military faced a new kind of enemy: a global network of fighters, often described as a “global insurgency.” This paper traces the genesis and further development of modern U.S. COIN doctrine. It asks two main questions: How has U.S. COIN doctrine changed after the 9/11 attack? How have its methods, organization and execution changed during the War on Terror? The author assumes that the driving force behind the development of U.S. COIN doctrine is an inter-subjective interpretation of the enemy, the threats and the situation on the battlefield, which can be described as a “strategic culture.” This article uses strategic culture to analyze the genesis and development of modern U.S. COIN doctrine. It also traces the changes in military tactics, strategic priorities and operational procedures that have occurred since 9/11. The author suggests that there have been three phases in the development of U.S. COIN doctrine during the War on Terror: Shock and Awe, Population-centric COIN and Targeted COIN. These phases reveal how the U.S. military has reacted to the emerging challenges it faces. Keywords: United States; counterinsurgency; strategic culture; War on Terror; Afghanistan; Iraq DOI: 10.14712/23363231.2017.18

‘Legitimacy is the Main Objective’: Legitimation in Population-Centric Counterinsurgency

This article seeks to contribute to the understanding of the role of legitimacy and different forms of legitimation in population-centric counterinsurgency. An analysis of the logic underlying this counterinsurgency concept sheds a light on the former as it identifies legitimacy as the crucial mechanism through which a collaboration strategy seeks to obtain control over the local population. An exploration of Weber’s primary types of legitimate authorities provides the insight that counterinsurgents might operationalize legitimation through either rational-legal ways or by co-opting local power-holders who hold a position as traditional or charismatic leaders. The exact choice of strategy depends on the pattern of legitimacy in the target society and therefore so-called cultural legitimation is pivotal.

India: Fleeting Attachment to the Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy

India’s success in dealing with insurgency movements was based on adherence to four key rules of engagement: identifying a lead counter-insurgent force, launching population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, non-use of excessive force and confining the role of the COIN operations to preparing a ground for a political solution. While the country does not yet have a COIN doctrine, these four rules of engagement do constitute what can be referred to a COIN grand strategy. Analysis of the several continuing insurgencies, however, reveals the country’s inability to adhere to the grand strategy. Political considerations, incapacity to manoeuvre through the demands of various stake holders, and even the wish to expedite the decimation of insurgent outfits through a force-centric approach has produced a long history of failures in dousing the fires of discontent.

Znaczenie międzynarodowego prawa humanitarnego w zwalczaniu powstania w świetle wybranych populacjocentrycznych doktryn przeciwpowstańczych

W realizacji przyjętej przez państwa zachodnie tzw. populacjocentrycznej strategii zwalczania powstania (counterinsurgency, COIN) niezwykle istotną rolę odgrywa międzynarodowe prawo humanitarne (MPH), przestrzeganie i stosowanie tego prawa jest bowiem jednym z gwarantów osiągnięcia sukcesu w populacjocentrycznych operacjach przeciwpowstańczych – zdobyciu poparcia ludności, co pozwala na odcięcie powstańców od pomocy udzielanej przez tę ludność i ostateczne stłumienie powstania. Dlatego w doktrynach przeciwpowstańczych takich państw, jak Wielka Brytania i Stany Zjednoczone, a także w doktrynie COIN przyjętej przez NATO, obowiązek poszanowania i przestrzegania prawa humanitarnego stanowi czynnik niezbędny w każdym działaniu, w którym prawo to może znaleźć zastosowanie (np. podczas akcji zbrojnej przeciw powstańcom czy w przypadku ich schwytania). Każda z tych doktryn zawiera więc postanowienia dotyczące zasad i norm MPH, choć doktryny te różnią się między sobą szczegółowością odniesień do MPH, nie wszystkie też zagadnienia wchodzące w zakres regulacji tego prawa zostały w doktrynach poruszone.

Moving Beyond Population-Centric vs. Enemy-Centric Counterinsurgency

Historically, insurgency is one of the most prevalent forms of armed conflict and it is likely to remain common in the foreseeable future. Recent experiences with counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan offer many lessons for future counterinsurgents, but the discourse on the subject continues to be mired in a traditional dichotomy pitting population-centric approaches to counterinsurgency against enemy-centric approaches. Historical analysis suggests that this traditional dichotomy is not a sufficiently nuanced way to understand or plan for such operations. Instead, discussions of counterinsurgency should focus on two dimensions: actions (use of physical force vs. political or moral actions) and targets (active insurgents vs. insurgent support). This perspective divides the space of possible counterinsurgency efforts into four quadrants, suggesting that effective counterinsurgency campaigns find a balance of effort across the four quadrants that is well matched to the specific context.

Affective Technologies of War

This article analyzes the gendered performances of American military women during the US-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Through an examination of Lioness teams and female engagement teams—all-female teams used to navigate “cultural norms,” present the US military as humanitarian, and facilitate engagements with occupied civilian women—the article argues that the affective labor of women soldiers and marines was strategically instrumentalized for population-centric counterinsurgency warfare. In addition to the gendered labor women perform as counterinsurgents, the article also considers the emotional and often maternal labor military women perform among their comrades, as a means to develop relationships as well as to protect themselves from sexual violence. Ultimately, this article is invested in developing a conversation about women's military participation that considers how gender matters to war, how gendered subjectivities are constituted by, and instrumental in, US imperialism, and what potentially subversive subjects may emerge as a result.

The Case against Megacities

ABSTRACT: Certain kinds of urban areas may become increasingly common for armed conflict in 21st century. However, current notions that megacity will emerge as a primary battlespace for advanced armies is an unproven hypothesis. US strategists need to avoid rushing to replace population-centric counterinsurgency with a paradigm of population-centric megacity operations. A preferable path is to develop a long-term and systematic interdisciplinary urban warfare lens based on careful research and analysis that is both historically informed and future-oriented. ********** It has generally proved easier to demonstrate that defense has played an important role in many aspects of city than to show that city has played a role in military science. G. J. Ashworth, War and City (1991) One of major weaknesses of recent American strategy is its relative neglect of an urban imperative. The study of urban warfare continues to remain little more than a sub-field of strategic studies with a literature largely unrelated to world of contemporary security policy. (1) For these reasons, it is a great pity publication of US Army's June 2014, Megacities and United States Army: Preparing for a Complex and Uncertain Future is such a disappointing attempt to invigorate relationship between strategy and city. (2) The report's central premise that megacities--defined as cities with populations over ten million--now represent the epicenters of human activity on planet and, as such, they will generate most of friction which compels future military intervention is a selective interpretation of highly complex process of 21st century global urbanization. Moreover, suggestion that scale of megacities defies military's ability to apply historical methods and therefore is fundamentally a new operating environment to which Army must shape itself and discover new approaches is exaggerated. Such a view overlooks continuing value of a body of post-Cold War military research, some of which was, ironically, commissioned by US Army itself. A final flaw in Megacities and United States Army is its typology, which by focusing mainly on a systems-analysis methodology illuminates document's neglect of relevant research material on cities emanating from long-established field of urban studies. (3) In light of above weaknesses, this article argues US Army would be ill-served to concentrate overly on megacities as a primary strategic environment for three further reasons. First, megacities are not necessarily principal urban areas in which American forces may be called upon to fight in future. Rather, middleweight and smaller cities remain just as likely to provide important operational environments in years ahead. Second, megacities are not suigeneris', they do not represent a novel military phenomenon. The military processes of operating in any city are drawn from fundamentals of urban warfare tried and tested by land forces since at least middle of twentieth century. Future technological developments notwithstanding, most fundamentals of urban warfare are likely to remain relevant for general-purpose forces even in a conglomeration on scale of a megacity. Third, US Army needs to embed study of megacities into a rigorous program of long-term urban war research that is both interdisciplinary in theory and interagency in practice. Such a program must systematically integrate military concerns with relevant aspects of municipal management, urban geography, and city planning. Cities as Strategic Sites: The Growing Importance of Middleweight City In terms of demographic disposition, greatest revolutionary shift of first quarter of twenty-first century is movement of people from countryside to city. In 2007, half world passed benchmark of fifty percent of its population being located in urban areas while urban demography now grows at some 65 million every year--a breakneck rate of speed equivalent to creation of seven new Chicagos annually. …

From Medusa Past Kantolo: Testing the Effectiveness of Canada's Enemy-Centric and Population-Centric Counterinsurgency Operational Strategies

Canada's counterinsurgency in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, involved two distinct operational strategies: an initial enemy-centric strategy and, after 2009, a population-centric strategy. Using insurgent-initiated attacks against civilians as a measure for the level of control and security provided by the counterinsurgency, this article tests the effectiveness of these two strategies using a quasi-experimental research design. This article finds that a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy that aimed to provide security to the population rather than destroy the insurgency resulted in the most controlled and secure environment for the civilian population. To the extent that a secure civilian population is important for successful counterinsurgency, the post-2009 population-centric operational strategy of the Canadian Forces, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and the United States increased the chances of a successful counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

Women as ‘Practitioners’ and ‘Targets’

Feminist scholarship has shown how gender is integral to understanding war, and that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was partly legitimated through a reference to Afghan women's ‘liberation’. Recognizing this, the article analyses how gender is crucial also to understanding the practice of ‘population-centric’ counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Because this type of warfare aims at ‘winning hearts and minds’, it is in engaging the population that a notable gendered addition to the US military strategy surfaces, Female Engagement Teams (FETs). Citing ‘cultural sensitivity’ as a key justification, the US deploys all-female teams to engage with and access a previously untapped source of intelligence and information, namely Afghan women. Beyond this being seen as necessary to complete the task of population-centric counterinsurgency, it is also hailed as a progressive step that contributes to Afghan women's broader empowerment. Subjecting population-centric counterinsurgency to feminist analysis, this article finds that in constructing women both as ‘practitioners’ and ‘targets’, this type of warfare constitutes another chapter in the various ways that their bodies have been relied upon for its ‘success’.

Population-centric counterinsurgency and the movement of peoples

The theory of population-centric counterinsurgency rests upon the untenable premise that the population within a theater of operations is fixed in place. By showing that people tend to move away from contested rural areas towards the relative safety and prosperity of counterinsurgent-controlled areas, this article demonstrates that this crucial premise is empirically false. Furthermore, a theory of counterinsurgent resource deployment, population movement, and incumbent strategic ineffectiveness is presented. Ultimately, the application of counterinsurgency resources actually dislocates the population from their place of residence and causes them to move into cities. When the urban areas' ability to absorb newcomers is overwhelmed, localized negative externalities emerge and can give rise to crime and insecurity. Such increased insecurity then creates an incentive for the counterinsurgency to retrench its resource use into the cities. As more physical territory is conceded to the insurgency, the relative strategic effectiveness of the counterinsurgency declines.

Bandwagonistas: rhetorical re-description, strategic choice and the politics of counter-insurgency

This paper seeks to explore how a particular narrative focused on population-centric counterinsurgency shaped American strategy during the Autumn 2009 Presidential review on Afghanistan, examine the narrative's genealogy and suggest weaknesses and inconsistencies that exist within it. More precisely our ambition is to show how through a process of ‘rhetorical re-description’ this narrative has come to dominate contemporary American strategic discourse. We argue that in order to promote and legitimate their case, a contemporary ‘COIN Lobby’ of influential warrior scholars, academics and commentators utilizes select historical interpretations of counterinsurgency and limits discussion of COIN to what they consider to be failures in implementation. As a result, it has become very difficult for other ways of conceptualizing the counterinsurgency problem to emerge into the policy debate.

A Corrective for Cultural Studies: Beyond the Militarization Thesis to the New Military Intelligence

This paper theorizes a new military intelligence and offers a modest corrective to the orthodoxy of the militarization thesis prevalent in cultural studies and the critical human sciences. The biopolitical orientation of population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare in Afghanistan reveals the multidirectional travel of rationalities and forms of coherence between modern liberal ways of rule and Western-bloc expeditionary ways of war. Through the work of Michel Foucault, and drawing on Michael Dillon and Julian Reid’s analysis of the biopoliticization of war (2008), COIN is interrogated as a continuation of biopolitics by other means. Conceptualizing a continuum of “fast” and “slow” military violence to produce islands of security and stability, COIN generates a mix of persuasive material forces that, while not kinetic or combat-oriented, are internal to the battlespace of military warfighting. The aim of this theoretical intervention is to trouble our understanding of military violence and power. Rather than subscribe unconditionally to the idea of a domineering military contaminating domestic civilian environments, the paper establishes a different trajectory: perhaps there is always-already a spirit of counterinsurgency internal to the art of biopolitical governmentality, which in turn conjugates contemporary military ways of war.

Learning as we go: the US army adapts to counterinsurgency in Iraq, July 2004–December 2006

The US military went into Iraq with no clear understanding of or preparations for counterinsurgency. This fact, combined with poor postwar planning and failure to recognize the early development of the insurgency, severely hamstrung the American effort to secure and stabilize the country. Nevertheless, the US Army demonstrated the ability to adapt effectively from the bottom-up at the operational and tactical levels during General George Casey's tenure as commander of Multinational Force-Iraq from 2004 to 2006. Yet despite the success of population-security measures and the development of counterinsurgency doctrine, the military's top leaders in Iraq resisted the implementation of a true population-centric counterinsurgency strategy, opting instead to focus on a ‘transition’ exit strategy. It was not until after the transition approach collapsed amid the chaos of 2006 that counterinsurgency, and the utility of force in securing the will of the population, was embraced by America's strategic leadership.