Barlow on COIN and Failure
Some astute observations on COIN practice from the founder of Executive Outcomes, Eeben Barlow:
….Governments, despite often being the prime reason why an insurgency starts, are often only too keen to make the armed forces responsible for establishing workable governance in areas that have become positively disposed towards the insurgency.As it is an internal problem, countering the insurgency is essentially a law enforcement responsibility. The problem is that often the law enforcement agencies do not realise that an insurgency is developing and through ignorance and denial, mislead government – and the nation – on the seriousness of the situation. This provides the insurgents with numerous advantages, most crucial being time to organise, train and escalate the insurgency.The end goal of the insurgency is political in nature and therefore, the main effort aimed at countering it ought to be political and not militarily. This “passing the buck” approach places the armed forces in a position they can seldom if ever win as the military’s role is not to govern but to ensure an environment in which governance can take place.An insurgency is neither a strategy nor a war. It is a condition based on the perception(s) of a part of the populace that poor governance exists, that government only governs for its own benefit and that they – the populace – are being marginalised or politically suppressed. In reality, an insurgency is an internal emergency that, left unchecked, can develop into a civil war. The insurgency itself is a means to an end and it is an approach aimed at either weakening or collapsing a government’s control and forcing a negotiation in the favour of the insurgents.
Read the rest here.
As a rule, countries whose citizens are happy, prosperous and free seldom suffer an insurgency unless they are foreign proxies. Oligarchies however, are frequently the cradle of insurgency and revolution.
July 31st, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Regarding: “As a rule, countries whose citizens are happy, prosperous and free seldom suffer an insurgency unless they are foreign proxies. Oligarchies however, are frequently the cradle of insurgency and revolution.”
What should we call the current amount of unrest domestically and globally? Civil disobedience that borders that gray line? and why does it seem to grow and not diminish, despite govt efforts?
I would offer that the only real difference between civil-disobedience and insurgency is merely degrees of separation
July 31st, 2012 at 4:14 pm
Hi Dr. Tucker,
.
Good question. Here are my thoughts….
.
Where protest is peaceful and legal, I would call it “politics”.
.
Where elected, bureaucratic and economic elites are trying to restrict, narrow, deter with illegal use of force under the color of authority or criminalize previously acceptable peaceful protest, I would call that symptoms of increasing oligarchic behavior, since the essence of oligarchy is forceful exclusion of the mass from both the benefits and the decision-making power in society by a minority
.
Civil disobedience on a large scale is a symptom that something is wrong with the body politic. Seeing it as being on a spectrum with insurgency as you suggest is sensible. I think that stage it is a tipping point – the situation can be either escalated or de-escalated based on the interplay between rulers and protesters. If the regime escalates in a way that contradicts rather than reinforces their own claims legitimacy, they make violent insurgency more probable. Protesters that escalate into violence without sufficient provocation marginalize themselves, sometimes becoming small terrorist bands (Weathermen, Baader-Meinhoff, Red Brigades) without widespread support