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THE ARTS This PDF document was made available CHILD POLICY from www.rand.org as a public service of CIVIL JUSTICE EDUCATION ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS NATIONAL SECURITY POPULATION AND AGING PUBLIC SAFETY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SUBSTANCE ABUSE TERRORISM AND HOMELAND SECURITY TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE WORKFORCE AND WORKPLACE the RAND Corporation. Jump down to document6 The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. Support RAND Purchase this document Browse Books & Publications Make a charitable contribution For More Information Visit RAND at www.rand.org Explore the RAND National Defense Research Institute View document details Limited Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law as indicated in a notice appearing later in this work. This electronic representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for non-commercial use only. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please see RAND Permissions. This product is part of the RAND Corporation monograph series. RAND monographs present major research findings that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND monographs undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity. Reconstruction Under Fire Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency David C. Gompert, Terrence K. Kelly, Brooke Stearns Lawson, Michelle Parker, Kimberly Colloton Sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense Approved for public release; distribution unlimited NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH INSTITUTE The research described in this report was prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The research was conducted in the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the OSD, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community under Contract W74V8H-06-C-0002. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. 978-0-8330-4705-2 The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. R® is a registered trademark. AP Photo/Edward G. Martens © Copyright 2009 RAND Corporation Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND documents to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND documents are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND permissions page (http://www.rand.org/publications/permissions.html). Published 2009 by the RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 1200 South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202-5050 4570 Fifth Avenue, Suite 600, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2665 RAND URL: http://www.rand.org To order RAND documents or to obtain additional information, contact Distribution Services: Telephone: (310) 451-7002; Fax: (310) 451-6915; Email: order@rand.org Preface It is widely agreed that effective civilian relief, reconstruction, and development work can help convince people to support their government against insurgency. Knowing this, insurgents will target such work, threatening both those who perform it and those who benefit from it. Too often, the result is a postponement of efforts to improve government and serve the population until contested territory has been cleared of insurgents. This can lead to excessive reliance on force to defeat insurgents—at best, delaying and, at worst, preventing success. Unsatisfied with this general state of affairs, a RAND team with combined security and development expertise set out to learn how “civilian counterinsurgency” (civil COIN) could be conducted more safely in the face of active insurgency, when it can do the most good. Thanks to a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation, matched by support from the U.S. Department of Defense, the team has completed this inquiry and set out the results in this monograph. Its findings and recommendations should be of as much interest to practitioners, policy leaders, and scholars of civil COIN as well as to those involved in security. This research was sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community. iii iv Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency For more information on RAND’s International Security and Defense Policy Center, contact the Director, James Dobbins. He can be reached by email at James_Dobbins@rand.org; by phone at 703-4131100, extension 5134; or by mail at the RAND Corporation, 1200 S. Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202. More information about RAND is available at www.rand.org. Contents Preface.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii Figures.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Summary.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Acknowledgments.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii Abbreviations.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv Chapter One Introduction.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Conceptual Bearings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Nature and Importance of Civil COIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Civil COIN, Violence, and Risk.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Context.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Method and Organization of the Monograph.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Chapter Two Three Cases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Objectives and Criteria.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Nord-Kivu, DRC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Background.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Threat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Focus Areas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Nangarhar, Afghanistan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Background.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 v vi Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency Threat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Focus Areas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Al Anbar, Iraq.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Background.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Threat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Focus Areas.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Summary Observations and Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Chapter Three Integrated Analysis, Integrated Approach.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Civil-Military “Integration”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The Nature of Civil COIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The Practicalities of Civil COIN.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 A Network Model for Securing Civil COIN.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Co-location to Reduce and Manage Risk.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Integrating Security and Civil COIN Operations.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Current Efforts to Integrate and Secure Civil COIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Conclusion.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Chapter Four Security Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Modes of Providing Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Embedded Security.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Mobile Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Quick-Reaction Forces.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Information Sensing and Sharing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Non-Lethal Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Investments.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Summary.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Chapter Five Conclusions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary of Key Findings.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . General Principles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 110 117 117 Contents vii Further Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Application and Experimentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Concluding Thoughts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 About the Authors.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Bibliography.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Figures 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 4.1. 4.2. Democratic Republic of the Congo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Nord-Kivu.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Afghanistan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Nangarhar.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Iraq. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Al Anbar.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Life Cycle of Insurgency.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Closing the Capacity Gap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Livelihood: Production and Markets.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Civil COIN Architecture.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Inclusion of Security in Civil COIN Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Trade-Off Between Civil COIN Distribution and Security. . . . 81 Security Missions in COIN.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Typical Force Type and Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 ix Tables 2.1. 3.1. 3.2. 4.1. Focus-Area Analysis.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Military Coordination and Integration with Civil COIN. . . . . 60 Civil COIN Hubs and Nodes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Summary of Required Security Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 xi Summary The purpose of this study is to find ways to improve security for civil counterinsurgency (COIN)—essential human services, political reform, physical reconstruction, economic development, and indigenous capacity-building—in the face of insurgent threats. It was motivated by the authors’ concern that postponing or curtailing civil COIN because of security risks can deprive the overall COIN campaign of the benefits of such efforts in weakening insurgency. Before we present the analysis and findings, clarification of some basic concepts used in the study is in order. Insurgency is an armed internal challenge to a government that appeals to and exploits the support of important segments of the population. COIN is a government’s effort to keep the contested population from bowing to fear or embracing the promises of the insurgents. COIN has both military and civil sides. The former consists of using force to defeat insurgents directly and to show that the government can and will protect the population. Civil COIN combines the direct provision of services and the improvement of government in order to weaken insurgency’s appeal among the population. The United States may support COIN abroad for two reasons: to produce an outcome that is advantageous to U.S. interests or to leave in place a state that is worthy of and acceptable to its people, thus less susceptible to continued insurgency. Although military and civilian leaders agree that COIN’s civil side is at least as important as its military side, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan show that the United States is better at the latter than at the former. xiii xiv Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency There are two main problems with U.S. civil COIN: lack of resources and danger from insurgent violence. While acknowledging the first problem, this study tackles the second. It proposes four enhancements to civil COIN under fire: • a concept for setting priorities among civil COIN measures • an improved way to allocate security forces among various civil COIN activities, as well as between them and other COIN security missions (e.g., direct operations against insurgents) • new integrated concepts of operation (ICONOPS) that military and civilian leaders could employ during COIN campaigns to manage risk and produce best results for COIN as a whole • general requirements for capabilities and corresponding investments to secure civil COIN, derived from ICONOPS. These enhancements are based on a network model for securing civil COIN, which is informed by three cases: Iraq’s Al Anbar province, Nord-Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Nangarhar province in Afghanistan. The cases suggest how conducting civil COIN during active insurgency can help turn a population against insurgents by improving the effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach of government. We distinguish among four types of civil COIN: • indigenous capacity-building: public-sector reform and institutionbuilding, civil-service training, infrastructure refurbishment, human-capital development, and training public-service providers (e.g., teachers, doctors) • public-service gap-filling (as indigenous capacity is being built): public education, population-security functions, public-health services, justice and correction services, and administration • emergency humanitarian-relief delivery: supplying those in dire need with food, water, shelter, sanitation, and urgent medical care, whether by international or local agencies • economic development to create livelihood opportunities: job training and placement of ex-combatants, fostering direct investment, Summary xv and facilitating marketplaces, production areas, and distribution links. Of these, building capacity and creating livelihood opportunities are crucial when an insurgency is either young and relatively weak or old and relatively weak. When insurgency is at or near full throttle, gap-filling may be necessary if it will take longer to overhaul the indigenous government than it will for insurgency to succeed. Emergency humanitarian relief may be required when order, safety, and government services collapse to the point that large numbers of people are at risk of death or displacement. Because civil COIN activities are distributed in order to reach the population, they are inherently vulnerable and thus pose serious security problems. This is especially so because insurgents strategically target government efforts to win over the population. Indeed, the frequency with which insurgents attack schools, government offices, courthouses, pipelines, electric grids, and the like is evidence that civil COIN threatens them. Still, it is important to conduct civil COIN while insurgents remain active and dangerous rather than waiting until they are defeated by force alone. The reluctance to conduct civil COIN in the midst of active insurgency does not reflect on the courage of the civilians involved. Rather, organizations and governments charged with civil COIN often choose not to place their people at risk. Limited efforts are being made to address this problem. The use of COIN provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs), with mixed civilian and military personnel, is an important, if small, step toward securing civil COIN under fire. But the PRT does not encompass the facilities, assets, government services, and indigenous personnel that must be involved and eventually take over civil COIN, much less the access of the local population for whom services are intended. To protect PRTs is to protect only a thin crust of the total civil effort, leaving unsolved the problem of securing civil COIN in the large. Establishing priorities can help secure civil COIN by providing a basis for the allocation of security forces. Priorities depend on the history and culture of the country or province under threat; the insur- xvi Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency gency’s aims, maturity, strength, and level of violence; the gravest deficiencies in the effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach of government; and the services and corresponding capacity-building efforts that ought not be postponed until territory is secure. From Al Anbar, Nangarhar, and Nord-Kivu, a number of exemplary, high-priority civil COIN focus areas have been identified: land reform and arbitration, primary education, building and repairing roads, planting and operating orchards, creating industrial parks, improving electricity service, and reconstructing justice services. Examination of these areas reveals operational patterns of civil COIN that can inform concepts to reduce their vulnerability. As one might expect, efforts to serve people with disparate needs throughout a given territory tend toward a pattern of distributed, dynamic, complex networks, consisting of the following: • nodes: e.g., schools, clinics, training sites, production spaces, administrative offices, lower courts, and marketplaces distributed throughout and at the network’s periphery • hubs: e.g., universities, hospitals, transportation hubs, ministries, and higher courts at national or provincial centers • links and movements: e.g., personnel augmentation, refreshing of supplies, response to unforeseen needs, and special services. Conducting civil COIN in the midst of insurgency depends on securing such networks, which differs operationally from securing whole expanses of territory in which these networks function. The key to this is to integrate civil COIN activities and security measures. For this, creating a vocabulary common across civil COIN and between civil COIN and security is critical. Whatever their purposes—health, education, economic enterprise—most civil COIN endeavors can usually be stated in practical terms to which security planners and forces can relate: people, facilities, locations, supplies, links, and movements. As networks, civil COIN can be performed before securing an area completely, by accepting, managing, and lowering risk. Risk is the product of threat, vulnerability, and consequences. Eliminating risk by eliminating insurgent threats is a purely military mission—difficult Summary xvii to achieve in the absence of civil COIN and, in any case, outside this study’s scope. The formula for securing civil COIN networks in territory where threats persist is to reduce risk by reducing the vulnerability of those efforts that contribute most to the effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach of the government. In turn, reducing the vulnerability of a network of activities in a territory is potentially easier than eliminating the threat throughout that territory, especially against insurgents who are themselves networked and mobile. It can be done through a combination of adapting the way civil COIN is done and tailoring security to it. Because security forces are likely to be involved in other COIN missions (e.g., direct operations against insurgents and training local security forces), they should be allocated in a way that maximizes the payoff to COIN as a whole, taking into account that effective civil COIN can weaken insurgency and dampen violence. While allocating forces across COIN missions is a responsibility of force commanders, it must be done in concert with their civilian counterparts. These challenges demand an integrated approach at the operating level. One way to reduce vulnerability, and thus risk, is to lessen the complexity of civil COIN by co-locating activities in nodes—e.g., schools, clinics, courts, markets, and production activities—in the same area or compound. This will take flexibility and ingenuity on the part of those who plan and conduct civil COIN. Of course, co-location may attract threats because of the concentration of services and assets. Still, it can ease security requirements appreciably. Aided by co-location, securing civil COIN requires protection of local nodes, hubs, and movements among them. Currently, only protection of hubs—i.e., activities centralized at the national and provincial levels—is adequate. Local security is especially demanding because of the numbers and geographic distribution of nodes and the fact that this is where the population is directly served and at greatest risk. Local nodes can be secured by stationary indigenous police and guards who are backed by justice systems to convince the population that local forces are governed by the rule of law. At the local level, population security and civil COIN security are both needed and may be closely connected. The former is critical if the xviii Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency government is to convince the people of its ability and will to protect them; the latter is critical to enable the same people to get essential services (e.g., health, schools, justice, and access to markets), the need for which does not vanish when insurgent threats exist. In the midst of insurgency, securing access to essential services is a way of improving population security. Requiring people to travel long distances to obtain such services at centralized hubs is, generally speaking, responsive neither to their needs nor to their safety. Accordingly, the security of local nodes must include measures to protect the people who enter, use, and leave them, which may be the hardest aspect of civil COIN security. Movement security may be provided by fast, motorized forces. The complexity of movements can be reduced, and security enhanced, by close coordination of travel and supplies across all civil COIN activities—like co-location, but in motion. Depending on the difficulties and risks, international forces may have to provide for movement security until indigenous forces can. Critical to monitoring, managing, and lowering risk to distributed civil COIN activities is a combination of advanced information networking and quick-reaction forces (QRFs) to defeat unanticipated threats that exceed local security capabilities. Information sensing and sharing among civil and military authorities, both indigenous and foreign, is important for the coordination of civil COIN movements, integration of civil and security operations, alerting commanders to changes in threat level, and calling in QRFs. QRF capabilities are most likely to be furnished by international forces, at least initially, in that they have more advanced training, air mobility, command and control, and readiness. The better the QRF and information networks, the more reasonable the demand for forces to secure nodes and movements. In securing civil COIN, standard ways of engaging and defeating insurgents and of clearing territory will not suffice. Implementing complex and dynamic civil COIN activities in a distributed network with reduced vulnerability requires ICONOPS, as noted earlier. The use of embedded forces, movement security and QRFs, the frequent interaction among such forces, their relationship to civil activities, the allocation and adjustment of forces according to priorities and risks, and the Summary xix response to threats demand operating concepts that are not either civil or military but both. In light of the reliance of civil COIN on security, the demand for ICONOPS, and the need to enhance certain capabilities (e.g., information networks and QRFs) for these purposes, the military should clearly designate civil COIN security as one of its principal COIN missions, as opposed to an implicit collateral duty. By elevating the importance of securing civil COIN, the military can, in turn, go a long way toward convincing organizations and governments involved in civil COIN to allow their people to work in dangerous areas. Similarly, civilian agencies involved in COIN ought to accept the principle of managed risk and adopt practices that facilitate security. Setting priorities and co-locating services are critical civilian responsibilities. Civil agencies need to work with the military in devising and implementing ICONOPS. Because civil COIN can help end hostilities, enabling it to take place during hostilities is a powerful argument for a more integrated civil-military approach. From these findings, we recommend that the U.S. government and others concerned with COIN consider adopting the following principles: • It is important to conduct civil COIN where the population resides and despite the persistence of violence. • Civil COIN priorities should be based on what contributes most to the effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach of the indigenous government and thus on the weakening of insurgency and reduction of violence. • Population security and civil COIN security should be pursued in conjunction with one another. • Civilian and military leaders should direct their planners and operators to develop ICONOPS to manage and lower risks to the nodes, hubs, and movements of civil COIN networks. • Civil COIN security should explicitly be made one of the principal missions of COIN security forces. xx Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency • Civil authorities should recognize the contribution of civil COIN to reducing insurgent strength and violence and should pursue ways to enable it to proceed despite risk. • Co-locating civil COIN activities should be explored by civil agencies to facilitate security. • Allocating security resources among missions should be done by civilian and military leaders together and should be based on where the greatest benefit to COIN as a whole lies. • Capabilities crucial to ICONOPS but currently inadequate should be enhanced or developed. • Information should be openly shared among the civil and military, indigenous and international agencies responsible for securing civil COIN. • Securing civil COIN, like civil COIN itself, should be, and be seen as, chiefly the responsibility of local government and forces, especially at points where the people are being directly served. Because this study was only an initial inquiry, there is a need for additional research and analysis of the following topics at least: • priorities, patterns, and practicalities of civil COIN • feasibility and options for co-locating civil COIN activities • options and requirements for local security, movement security, and QRFs • information requirements, architecture, and infrastructure • the adequacy of U.S. civilian and military institutions—doctrine, organizations, training, leader development and education, and personnel policies—for ICONOPS. We have not tested this study’s proposals in specific cases; nor have we specified ICONOPS in detail. It is important to work through analytically how these concepts and corresponding capabilities would apply in a given country, province, or district. Beyond that, it could be valuable to identify districts in Iraq or Afghanistan where ICONOPS may be tried by U.S. and local civil and military authorities. Such experiments could follow the disciplined process of identifying civil COIN Summary xxi priorities; establishing a common civil-military practical-operational vocabulary; planning securing for local nodes, central hubs, and movements; creating integrated information networks; organizing concerted civil-military decision-making; and identifying gaps in capabilities and procedures. We do not claim that this study’s findings are the final word on security for civil COIN—far from it. Rather, we hope that they will spur greater attention to meeting the need for a more integrated, balanced, and effective way of defeating insurgency. Acknowledgments This monograph would not have been possible without the help of numerous individuals. RAND colleagues Ahmed “Idrees” Rahmani, a Pardee RAND Graduate School Fellow, and Renny McPherson were instrumental in improving the draft Nangarhar and Al Anbar case studies, respectively; Clare Lockhart of the Institute for State Effectiveness contributed important analysis to the project; Madeleine Wells at RAND offered excellent research assistance; and Maria Falvo and Camille Sawak provided invaluable administrative support. We also thank the following attendees of our validation workshop, without whom we could not have refined our methodology or gotten the necessary initial feedback on its strategic and tactical implications: Donald Boy, U.S. Department of State; Alexandra Courtney, U.S. Agency for International Development; Larry Crandall, formerly of the U.S. Agency for International Development; Deanna Gordon, U.S. Agency for International Development; Thomas E. Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha; LTC Lynda Granfield, Provincial Reconstruction Team Commander in Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, during Operation Enduring Freedom; Ali Ahmed Jalali, former interior minister of Afghanistan and now a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University; Ronald E. Neumann, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan; MG (ret.) Rick Olson, former commander of the 25th Light Infantry Division; Thomas Parker, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Kaitlin Shilling, doctoral candidate, Stanford University; Mohammad Masoom xxiii xxiv Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency Stanekzai, Jennings Randolph Afghanistan fellow with the U.S. Institute of Peace and former minister of telecommunication/information and communication technology in Afghanistan; COL Richard Stevens, commander of the Combined Task Force Rugged and the 36th Engineer Brigade, 82nd Division; and LTC Frank Sturek, commander of Task Force Warrior in Afghanistan and currently with the Joint Staff, J-5. These military and civilian officials were generous in providing their time, ideas, and assistance to us. Tough reviews by respected peers are indispensable to RAND work. Accordingly, we asked MG (ret.) Eric Olsen and Adam Grissom to show no mercy in reviewing a draft of this monograph, and they obliged. Our work benefited greatly from their critiques. Abbreviations 4GW fourth-generation warfare AISA Afghanistan Investment Support Agency AQI al Qaeda in Iraq BCT brigade combat team C4I command, control, computing, communication, and intelligence C4ISR command, control, communication, computing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance civil COIN civilian counterinsurgency CNDP Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (National Congress for the Defence of the People) COIN counterinsurgency CORDS civil operations and revolutionary development support DDRRR disarmament, demobilization, repatriation, resettlement, and reintegration DoD U.S. Department of Defense DRC Democratic Republic of Congo xxv xxvi Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency FATA Federally Administered Tribal Area FM field manual HIG Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin ICONOPS integrated concepts of operations IDP internally displaced person IIP Iraqi Islamic Party IP Internet protocol ISF Iraqi Security Forces MSI Mutammar Sahwat al-Iraq NGO non-governmental organization PRT provincial reconstruction team QRF quick-reaction force RCD Rally for Congolese Democracy SAI Sahawa al-Iraq SIGIR Special Inspector General for Iraq Construction UN United Nations UNMIL UN Mission in Liberia USAID U.S. Agency for International Development WWII World War II Chapter One Introduction Conceptual Bearings As its title conveys, this monograph presents a search for ways to improve security for civil aspects of counterinsurgency (COIN)— essential human services, political reform, physical reconstruction, economic development, and indigenous capacity-building—so that it can take place while insurgency is active and dangerous. The importance of this search lies in the fact that civilian counterinsurgency (civil COIN), when combined with military operations, can weaken insurgency. Thus, COIN as a whole is more likely to succeed if civil COIN can be performed despite insurgent violence. Alternatively, delaying civil COIN until an insurgency has been defeated by military action alone may reduce the probability that it will, in fact, be defeated. A core premise of this study, from observing Iraq and Afghanistan especially, is that there is a large and pressing need to improve security for the people, activities, and assets involved in civil COIN. A core finding of the study is that it will take more than marginal enhancements of familiar operating concepts to meet this need: It will take new thinking about how to integrate the civil and military sides of COIN—new thinking of the sort the study offers. As important, we find, in general, that the effort required to provide security for civil COIN, if done smartly, will be more than repaid in civil COIN’s contribution to weakening insurgency and ending violence. Before proceeding, it may be helpful to clarify how the authors conceive of insurgency, COIN, and civil COIN. Insurgency is, in essence, an armed challenge to a government, from within its jurisdic- 1 2 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency tion, that seeks and capitalizes on the support of important segments of the population. It can be thought of as an attempt to win the people’s allegiance not through lawful, peaceful means but through a combination of fear and promise: fear that their government cannot protect them and promise that the insurgency offers a better future than the government does.1 While there may be instances in which insurgents topple a government with scant popular support, it is clear that popular sympathy for and cooperation with insurgents, along with enmity toward the government, can help an insurgency succeed.2 Insurgents exploit the people’s sense that their government is ineffective, illegitimate, or both. Accordingly, skilled insurgents offer the population a mix of intimidation, valued services, and vision for a better life than the government provides. COIN, it follows, is a government’s effort to keep the population from bowing to the fears or embracing the promises of the insurgents. Two factors are critical in understanding COIN. First, people must be free to choose. The population will not side with the government in the face of unchecked insurgent danger.3 It follows that, where insurgents have control of the population, the government must contest that control or be defeated. This study’s focus is on contested areas, where violence is a concern yet people can still choose. 1 Field manual (FM) 3-24 (2006, ¶1-2) defines insurgency as follows: “Joint doctrine defines an insurgency as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict (JP 1-02). Stated another way, an insurgency is an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control.” In subsequent paragraphs, it discusses characteristics of insurgencies not dissimilar to those in this short description. (JP 1-02 is USJCS, 2001 [2008].) 2 Although the boundaries are fuzzy, insurgency can be distinguished both from revolution, which suggests a sudden, sweeping, and not necessarily violent popular rejection of the status quo, and from a coup d’etat, in which a group of individuals seizes control of government extra-constitutionally without the involvement of the population. Neither the democratic revolutions of eastern Europe of 1989 nor the ousting of Iran’s shah in 1979 was the result of insurgency. 3 For a detailed analysis of the effects of violence in such conflicts, see Kalyvas (2006). Chapter Seven of that book, “A Theory of Selective Violence,” provides a theory on when violence is most useful for all actors (government and those who fight against it). Introduction 3 Second, insurgents need support among the people to function, let alone succeed.4 As the prize of the contest between insurgency and COIN, the people must be convinced that the future will be better if they back the government than if they back the insurgents. COIN thus relies not only on allaying fear but also on offering hope, contingent on supporting the government.5 Insurgents can inadvertently help the government by repression, indiscriminant violence, or alien ideas (e.g., religious extremism) that sow doubt among the people that the future offered by the insurgency would really be better. But when insurgents avoid such excesses, the government may face a stiff challenge in convincing the people that it can redress their grievances and improve their lives. After all, the existence of broad-based insurgency implies serious popular dissatisfaction with governmental effectiveness and legitimacy. Conversely, when the population is satisfied with government and with the established process by which governments are replaced peacefully and constitutionally, insurgents will find little traction. Because the rise of insurgency implies defective government— corrupt, inept, unrepresentative, arbitrary—it is often necessary for the government to obtain foreign backing (e.g., from the United States). Such backing will be forthcoming when the fate of the country in question and the government at risk is important to the backer. Thus, COIN is often a combined indigenous-international undertaking. However, foreign support may be conditional upon the government improving itself, and foreign sources may provide assistance, and insistence, to this end. The foreign power that backs a defective government vulnerable to broad-based insurgency yet does not demand that government’s improvement may be bound for disappointment. 4 The classic exposition of this theory is found in Chapter One of David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (1964 [2006]). However, the most compelling expositions of this—based largely on the personal experiences of several insurgents and counterinsurgents from World War II (WWII) and the post-war period of anti-colonial revolutions—can be found in Hosmer and Crane (1962 [2006]). 5 To be complete, we should note that insurgencies can also be defeated through brutal means available to authoritarian governments but not to democracies. These methods will not be discussed here. 4 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency For the United States, the vantage point from which this study was done, the aim in engaging in COIN is normally two-fold: to produce an outcome that advances U.S. interests and to leave in place a state that is worthy of and acceptable to its people and thus less susceptible to insurgency. Backing ruthless, weak, or corrupt regimes for perceived strategic reasons often ends badly for the United States. (Think of Cuba’s Batista, Nicaragua’s Somoza, Iran’s Shah, Zaire’s Mobutu, South Vietnam’s Diem, and Palestine’s Fatah regimes.) By the same token, the United States cannot back with treasure and troops every worthy government that faces insurgents: It must have ample interest in the outcome. While the two U.S. purposes in COIN could be in tension, they usually are not. In general, the United States has a stake in the improved governments, especially friendly and important ones, that are challenged by insurgency. Legitimate and effective states tend to make able, more-reliable, and more-lasting allies. If this is COIN, from a U.S. viewpoint, then what is civil COIN? Customarily, COIN is viewed as having two sides: military and civil.6 The first consists of using security forces, indigenous or foreign, to defeat the insurgents directly and to allay the people’s fear for their safety, thus demonstrating the government’s ability and commitment to protect them. The military component, which indicates an emphasis on the security tasks and so may, in some circumstances, also include law enforcement and intelligence, is an indispensable response to insurgent violence. But even as government and foreign security forces are used to fight insurgents and safeguard the population, popular discontent with the government and support for the insurgents may persist. Moreover, if the government commits violence not only against insurgents but also against the population, this may feed the insurgency. Intimidation may be a good insurgent tactic because it exposes the 6 It is often said the effective COIN is 80 percent civil and 20 percent military (accredited to General Chang Ting-chen of Mao Zedong’s insurgent movement—see, for example, FM 3-24, 2006, ¶1-123). In Iraq and Afghanistan, these proportions are roughly reversed, owing to inadequate resources for civil COIN and the reluctance to pursue civil COIN while fighting persists. It is also asserted (by David Kilcullen, Australian adviser to GEN David Petraeus) that, in fact, COIN is 100 percent military and 100 percent political. There is much truth in this perspective as well. Introduction 5 inability of the government to provide protection, but it is generally not a good government tactic. In any event, the general consensus on COIN seems to be that the military component is usually needed but is seldom enough to defeat insurgents.7 This indicates a need to combine military operations with political and economic development as part of a single campaign to convince the people that the government is their better option. Insurgents are in the enviable position of being able to promise a better future without having a record of performance for which to answer.8 In contrast, the government does have a record—perhaps a badly blemished one, given the existence of broad-based insurgency. Thus, while the insurgents are competing with the government, the government must compete with its own image in the eyes of the population. Consequently, the government must compete by demonstrating that it can meet the needs of its people and is reforming itself. Governments that lack effectiveness and legitimacy yet show no improvement in the face of insurgency, perhaps relying entirely on a harsh response, may become more vulnerable, not less, as the insurgency gains strength and popular support, or fear. How, then, should civil COIN be pursued? On this, one can find three schools of thought, which are not mutually exclusive: • “carrots and sticks” • “hearts and minds” • transformation.9 7 In the annals of COIN, those campaigns inevitably cited as most successful—the British in Malaya and Kenya, for instance—involve balanced and integrated military and civil COIN. Good short summaries of these conflicts can be found in Chapters 46 and 52, respectively, of Robert Asprey’s War in the Shadows: Guerrillas in History (1975 [1994]). In-depth analysis of how the British structured their Malayan effort is provided in Robert Komer, The Malayan Emergency in Retrospect: Organization of a Successful Counterinsurgency Effort (1972). Perhaps the best-known general exposition of the British method is Sir Robert Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (1966). 8 When insurgents have formerly governed, their own lack of legitimacy and effectiveness can haunt them. The Taliban, for example, have virtually no support in Afghanistan outside of Pashtun tribal lands because of fresh memories of their excessively strict and not especially efficient rule. 9 See Gompert, Gordon, et al. (2008, Chapter Five, pp. 87–122). 6 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency The first way, as the expression implies, is to manipulate the provision of services and resources of the government and its foreign backers to reward those in the population who support them and penalize those who support the insurgency. The aim, obviously, is to get more and more of the population to reject insurgents and cooperate with the government—thus, to enjoy the carrot and avoid the stick. The second way is to earn the allegiance of the population as a whole by offering, more or less unconditionally, better services and safety than the insurgents do. The third way, briefly put, is to build a better state. There may be tactical or situational advantages in the first approach insofar as offering material benefits, conditionally or not, wins popular favor. However, the view taken here is that transformation is the most profound and valid approach to COIN: It is not enough to buy the allegiance of the population—it must be earned by correcting the government’s salient defects and addressing reasonable grievances of the population. Where both carrots and sticks and hearts and minds depend mostly on providing services, transformation stresses political reform, economic development, state capacity-building, and the fostering of civil society. It is meant to treat the root causes of insurgency and make clear that the government will be more worthy of popular support. For the United States, transformation of ineffective and illegitimate states is part of a larger strategy to lessen both state and non-state violence in the global system.10 If the embattled government is unwilling or unable to improve itself, its foreign backers may have to provide the resources, prodding, and guidance to induce such change. While transformation is under way, pressing needs of the population must be met—if not by the government, then by its foreign backers. Broadly speaking, then, civil COIN is a combination of the direct provision of services and an effort to overhaul government. In sum, civil COIN is the way a government’s capability and character can be improved in order to weaken and, in combination 10 The advent of this or a similar approach, called transformational diplomacy under George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is likely to survive and even flourish, by that or another name, with the change of U.S. administrations. Introduction 7 with military COIN, defeat an insurgent challenge for the population’s allegiance. The ability to conduct civil COIN during hostilities can help bring hostilities to an end. The Nature and Importance of Civil COIN Having explained these concepts, the rest of this monograph relies on a short-hand formulation to capture the qualities of government that make it resistant to insurgency and successful in COIN: legitimacy, effectiveness, and reach (meaning geographic coverage of legitimate and effective government).11 Insurgencies may arise, persist, and prevail because of government injustice, abuse, or indifference that causes segments of the population to regard the government, and reject it, as illegitimate or because government ineffectiveness allows insurgents to operate. The combination of government illegitimacy and ineffectiveness enables an insurgency to exploit popular discontent and obtain support for its operations, such as by furnishing sanctuary, supplies, funding, intelligence, and recruits.12 Reach matters because a government that is effective and legitimate only in its capital and some provinces can be highly vulnerable to insurgency elsewhere. Reach may be 11 Several COIN references use similar concepts. For example, the Army’s Counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24, 2006, ¶¶1-112–1-120) talks about legitimacy as the main objective and makes clear in the discussion of legitimacy that it is linked to the effectiveness of governance. Reach simply indicates that the government must be legitimate and effective throughout the country. 12 In Understanding Proto-Insurgencies: RAND Counterinsurgency Study—Paper 3, Daniel Byman (2007) identifies the following as the primary indicators of the potential for (Islamic) insurgency: current degree of unrest and violence, state weakness or illegitimacy, level of anti-Western sentiment, identification with the global Muslim nation, and strength of local insurgency potential. In a list of indicators of the likelihood of insurgency, he includes how flexible the government is regarding the grievance the group seeks to exploit, whether the government recognizes the need to meet some of the grievances being advanced, how capable the administration and bureaucracy are, whether they can deliver services, whether they can collect taxes, the level of corruption, the level of popular faith in the bureaucracy and the police, whether the government is willing and able to distinguish between peaceful opponents and violent ones, and whether its policies allow moderate politicians to flourish. See also Gompert, Gordon, et al. (2008, pp. 431–438). 8 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency gained by extending the central government’s writ or by having legitimate and effective provincial, district, and local government. Together, the qualities of effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach correspond to genuinely strong states, which control their territory not by coercion but by the cooperation of those they govern and serve.13 In contrast, governments that exclude or mistreat certain ethnic, sectarian, regional, or economic groups, or that exploit those groups to benefit favored groups, may find that opposition mobilizes and turns violent. Governments that permit infrastructure to decay, that fail in their stewardship of state resources, and that sneer at the rule of law are handing insurgents the means and space to function. As we will see, in such cases as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), government failure is so comprehensive that warlords, gangs, militias, and even military units of the state exploit opportunities for gain, with or without any ambition to govern.14 Because insurgencies depend on governmental failings, successful COIN must include measures to improve the capability, performance, accountability, and thus public acceptance of the government against which insurgency has formed.15 Lacking such civil measures, COIN is reduced to a form of attrition warfare, which may be lost if fought on behalf of an unfit government against an enemy with expanding sympathy among the people.16 Armed forces can fight an insurgency that results from the failures of government, but they cannot remedy those failures. While force may be needed against a full-blown insurgency, 13 Strong states should not be confused with autocratic ones. A state’s true strength depends not only on the ability of its government but on the allegiance and energy of its people— typical of democracies but not of autocracies. See Ullman (undated) for a particularly cogent analysis of what constitutes state strength. 14 There are also cases, like Somalia today, in which ideologically motivated insurgents compete with or cooperate with purely materialist and opportunistic elements. 15 This key proposition is borne out by the vast majority of COIN studies, recent U.S. and allied experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, and an assessment of factors determining outcomes in some 90 COIN campaigns since WWII (Gompert, Gordon, et al., 2008, pp. 373–396). 16 The failure of the United States and the Iraqi government to win over the Sunni population from 2003 to 2007 resulted in COIN—if one can even call it that—that consisted predominantly of military operations against an insurgency that enjoyed wide public support. Introduction 9 it is rarely sufficient and may even fan insurgency if not combined with efforts to redress government deficiencies that provided insurgents their motivations and opportunities in the first place. France in IndoChina and in Algeria, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and the United States in Indo-China could not prevail despite superior force, at least partly because the governments lacked legitimacy, wide public support, and nationwide reach.17 Even backed by foreign powers, regimes “on the wrong side of history” are more vulnerable to insurgency and to defeat. History suggests that the potency of insurgency is inversely related to the quality and accountability of government. Of some 89 insurgencies since the end of WWII, significant patterns can be observed:18 Autocratic and colonial regimes are more likely than democratic ones to be challenged by insurgencies. While insurgencies waged against democracies consistently fail, those waged against autocratic (or colonial) governments succeed as often as not. While insurgencies against popular and competent governments usually fail, those against unpopular or incompetent ones usually succeed. For this study, we maintain that government legitimacy and effectiveness offer resistance to insurgency.19 To the extent that democratic states can be considered legitimate and that government competence can be equated with effectiveness, it can be inferred that legitimacy and effectiveness do indeed work against insurgency. It is also noteworthy that insurgencies are as likely to fail as to succeed in the event of direct foreign intervention, implying that such intervention does 17 The French colonial government in Algiers, the Soviet-backed government in Kabul, and a series of U.S.-backed governments in Saigon had two things in common: poor performance and a widespread, well-deserved perception of being puppets. 18 Gompert, Gordon, et al. (2008, pp. 373–396). The success and failure of insurgencies are correlated with numerous factors, including those mentioned here. 19 This does not mean that effective and legitimate governments are invulnerable to insurgency, or that ineffective or illegitimate ones are bound to face insurgency; rather, it means that government effectiveness and legitimacy tend to be antidotes to insurgency. 10 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency not necessarily compensate for a government’s lack of effectiveness and legitimacy.20 In considering the qualities of government, it is important not to be limited to the national level or to formal Western concepts. Because of geography, history, ethnicity, or culture, many countries and societies do not lend themselves to centralized rule. Central governments may lack physical or political reach—e.g., nationwide infrastructure or authority—making them less responsive and thus less relevant to much of the population than provincial, district, or local tiers of government may be. In COIN, it is the entire governing structure that will be viewed by the population as legitimate and effective or not.21 When people look to entities other than central government for essential functions, unofficial authorities (e.g., tribal and village elders) may be the best bulwark against insurgency. Often, attempts to expand and exert central-national control may not work and may even backfire—Sunni and Kurdish Iraq, the eastern DRC, and much of Afghanistan being cases in point. The central government may be viewed as an unwelcome outsider—even foreign. While we are certainly not advocating decentralized government everywhere, striking the right balance among levels, in keeping with particular historical and cultural patterns, may be crucial in reducing the potential for insurgency. The basic purposes of civil COIN are, or ought to be, to make weak states stronger and bad states better. Effective civil COIN can make it harder for insurgents to motivate their fighters, find new recruits, and gain the population’s political and material support. Civil COIN that repairs infrastructure can improve the workings of government, the livelihood and commerce of the population, and the operations of COIN security forces. Better census and personal-identification systems can help tell insurgents from law-abiding citizens. Access to communication infrastructure can weaken insurgents’ monopoly over information 20 Gompert, Gordon, et al. (2008, pp. 242–243) examine the likelihood of successful COIN as a function of the scale of foreign military intervention and finds, if anything, a negative correlation. 21 This does not preclude altering existing governing and political structures to improve effectiveness and legitimacy as part of an effort to forestall or defeat insurgency. Introduction 11 and ideas. Efficient and fair justice systems can ensure that innocent persons are not detained, that threatening persons are detained legally, and that citizens can trust the police. Inclusive politics and representative government can offer non-violent recourse to the aggrieved and discontented. In spite of the strong case for civil COIN, experience in Afghanistan and in Iraq reveals that the United States is far better at using force against insurgents than at addressing government failures that give rise to insurgencies. Civil measures to improve government—reconstruction, development, capacity-building, and reform—remain the weakest part of COIN as practiced by the United States.22 This, despite the fact that COIN analysts and practitioners—proponents and critics, civilians and military officers—agree that civil COIN is, if anything, the more important side of COIN. In Afghanistan, the greatest advantage the government and its Western allies have over the Taliban, in the view of a top U.S. commander, is not firepower but the potential to improve the lives of the people.23 Beyond the fact that turning bad governments into good ones is just plain hard, there are two main reasons for weak civil COIN: • shortage of deployable civilian capability for this purpose • dangers posed by insurgent violence. A spate of studies and appeals has lately dealt with the shortage of civil talent and resources.24 This study is not intended to add to that work. Rather, it deals with the second cause of inadequate civil COIN: insurgent violence. Its purpose is to discover ways to perform civil COIN despite violence—to achieve “reconstruction under fire.” 22 See, for example, Bowen (2009) for a detailed exposition of U.S. failures in concept and practice in civil COIN. Gompert, Gordon, et al. (2008) assess U.S. civil COIN capabilities as severely short of personnel and funding. 23 24 Comments shared with author, Afghanistan, February 2008. See, e.g., Hunter, Gnehm, and Joulwan (2008) and Project on National Security Reform (2008). 12 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency To isolate analytically the problem of insecurity, the study assumes that adequate civil capabilities will be available.25 For that matter, better security for civil COIN could help make available more resources for it. In Afghanistan, there is significant U.S. and European civil COIN capacity in the country that is not deployed where it could do the most good because of safety concerns. For example, German civilian police trainers do not, as a matter of policy, go into dangerous areas where Afghan police most need training.26 In Iraq, there has been great reluctance on the part of the United Nations (UN) agencies, the World Bank, and European countries to commit personnel (and, thus, aid resources), for fear of civilian casualties.27 A RAND study found that there is more or less sufficient capacity-in-being to meet current civil COIN needs among the United States, its major partners, and international institutions but that insurgent violence inhibits the deployment of this capacity.28 In sum, civil COIN is critical both for refuting insurgent claims and addressing popular perceptions that the government in place is illegitimate and ineffective throughout its territorial jurisdiction. To be genuinely and lastingly successful, civil COIN must do more than appeal to popular affection and manipulate popular choices: It must remedy the failings of government that spawn and feed insurgencies. Civil COIN, Violence, and Risk Insurgents use violence over a continuum of conditions that fall between their firm control of territory and government’s firm control of territo25 That this study does not belabor the problem of inadequate deployable civil COIN resources does not mean that the authors do not see it as a very large problem. 26 According to senior U.S. officers in eastern Afghanistan (conversations with author, 2008). 27 While insurgent violence was at its worst in Iraq, it took the approval of the World Bank Board of Governors for staff to serve in the country, and then the World Bank sent only one staff member; author interactions with World Bank staff in Iraq, 2006–2007. 28 Gompert, Gordon, et al. (2008, pp. 249–277). Introduction 13 ry.29 At the one end of the continuum, violence may be used to tighten the insurgent grip on power (e.g., the Maoist approach to population control). At the other end, violence may consist of discrete actions (e.g., bombings or assassinations) meant to shake people’s confidence in their government (e.g., al Qaeda in Iraq’s market bombings in Shi’ite neighborhoods). In between these two extremes, insurgents and government security forces vie for control. Just as insurgents may operate anywhere along this continuum, so must government and its international allies be able to carry out basic functions and services across as much of the spectrum as possible, despite insurgent threats. It is true that conducting civil COIN is virtually impossible if insurgents have control. Yet, to conduct civil COIN only if government has control and violence has ended is to deny the population the benefits of government because of unsecure conditions and, in turn, to sap public confidence in government. The reason for this is simple: Humans have basic needs—for decent medical treatment, primary schools, local markets to buy food and sell goods, able and honest administration—that do not vanish just because insurgent violence makes it more difficult and risky for those needs to be met. Failure to provide basic services can compound the loss of confidence in government brought about by insurgent attacks. Therefore, meeting those needs even where and when violence exists can earn the government the people’s cooperation against insurgents. Conducting civil COIN in contested areas and in violent times forces insurgents to face simultaneously the physical power of security forces and the political power of government that is increasingly able and worthy of popular support. Civil COIN can be risky not only for its providers but also for the people who are served by it. This latter risk is the more important of the two from the perspective of succeeding in COIN. Providing sufficient security to permit inhabitants to risk going to schools, markets, work, health clinics, and the like is a prerequisite for any effort to win their allegiance. Our contention is that, with the right approach, 29 A good description of this spectrum of contested violence and the purposes of violence across it can be found in Kalyvas (2006). Developing a theory of purposeful violence in such circumstances is the major theme of the book. 14 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency these services can be provided and people can avail themselves of them prior to a given area being entirely secured. This means that being able to manage risk to the population and to the civil COIN providers is essential. Risk is a function of threat, vulnerability, and consequences.30 Risk increases when any one of these three variables increases while holding the other two constant and is zero if any one of them is zero. Performing a civil COIN activity that is not vulnerable, not threatened, or unimportant has little risk. These circumstances would occur, for example, in areas of a country where the insurgents do not operate (low threat), where government security forces have firm control of an asset (low vulnerability), or in the case of efforts that are of little value (low consequences). Managing risk is a function of setting priorities that permit an efficient allocation of resources to achieve COIN goals, with a clear understanding of risks to be managed. This requires an understanding of the components of risk—threat, vulnerability, and consequences—but also of what is to be gained by taking risks. For example, consider the following: • Building and running a school—an important service—may be vulnerable but worth doing if the threat is low. • Even if the threat is high, offering job training at a defensible site may be justified (low vulnerability). • For the same level of vulnerability and threat, building and operating a hospital may be more worthy than opening a soccer stadium, as the consequences may be similar for the two projects in terms of monetary or human losses, but the gains to be achieved in terms of legitimacy and effectiveness may be higher with the hospital than the soccer stadium. Unlike the concept of eliminating risk in a given territory by eliminating the threat, the concept of “civil COIN under fire” requires the 30 The risk literature in some places uses this formulation (see, for example, Willis et al., 2005, pp. 5–11, for a technical exposition of this approach) and, in other places, views risk as a function of threat and vulnerabilities. As discussed here, the issue of consequences is central to our problem and so is included. Introduction 15 managing of risk despite threats within that territory. A premise of this study is that risk to civil COIN can be not only managed but substantially reduced by focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on reducing vulnerabilities. By analyzing which civil COIN measures provide the greatest benefits in terms of legitimacy, effectiveness, or reach and should therefore be given highest priority, and then allocating security assets to reduce the vulnerability of those measures and to the people who rely on them, risk is managed and COIN goals furthered by enabling the most-beneficial activities to proceed despite insurgent threats. Further, if this approach is successful, it will lead to reduced threats as the population turns away from, and hopefully against, the insurgents. An alternative to reducing risk by reducing vulnerability is to seek to decrease threats through a sequential approach that first secures an area then conducts civil COIN. Current U.S. COIN doctrine is derived from a theory that views COIN in stages whereby, simply put, troops make an area safe for civilians to address the needs of the population for essential services and better government.31 While intuitively appealing, sequential COIN has a serious flaw that becomes apparent as the essence of insurgency is contemplated. Treating COIN in stages leads to concentrating civil measures in areas where insurgents have been weakened (or were never strong). Yet, the need to contest insurgent appeal and influence may be greatest where insurgents are most active and thus dangerous. To delay efforts to improve a government’s responsiveness to its citizens until insurgents are defeated militarily is to forfeit the advantages of citizens’ cooperation in trying to defeat insurgents—e.g., by denying insurgents sanctuary and providing information to the government. In the field, U.S. military and civil authorities do not apply the sequential theory strictly and inflexibly by delaying all attempts at civil COIN until a territory is risk-free. This reflects their appreciation of the importance of civil COIN in gaining public support and strengthening 31 FM 3-24 (2006, ¶¶5-51–5-80). 16 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency security.32 It also reflects pressures to address the needs of the people despite danger. U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan have favored attempts to deliver essential services and build local capacity before fighting ends.33 While this judgment is correct, it leaves serious risks to civil COIN personnel and activities of the sort that this study seeks ways to alleviate. Herein lies the dilemma: If strictly applied, sequential COIN reduces the risk to civil COIN but also delays it and hence reduces its value in defeating insurgency. Yet, conducting civil COIN measures while insurgents are active and dangerous increases the risk to those who implement and benefit from these measures. This study develops an alternate way of thinking about this problem—resolving this dilemma—that seeks to secure service networks, rather than territory, thus managing risk to civil COIN differently and, we contend, more effectively. Before returning to the discussion on reducing vulnerabilities, we must recognize that military forces also perform other tasks besides securing civil COIN, such as operations against insurgents and training indigenous forces. That this study is concerned with security for civil COIN does not imply that other military missions are any less important. There is thus a need to balance all military missions in allocating forces so that the net payoff to the overall COIN campaign is maximized. These ideas—managing risk, setting civil COIN priorities, reducing vulnerability, and optimizing benefits for COIN as a whole—thread through this study and lead in subsequent chapters to new operating concepts and capability requirements. If current practice may not adequately address vulnerability to civil COIN, how could it be done differently? Answering this question requires looking at both the way in which civil COIN activities are conducted and how they can be secured. There are several ways 32 Among the most articulate proponents of this approach is GEN Peter Chiarelli, who, as the commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division and of the Multi-National Corps–Iraq, tried to implement these approaches. See, for example, Chiarelli and Michaelis (2005). 33 This observation is based on the lengthy experience of one of the authors as an official assigned to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Introduction 17 that vulnerability could theoretically be reduced. One principal way is to develop an integrated civil-military approach—at the operating level—to permit civil contributions to COIN while territory is still contested and dangerous. This is not to deny that there may be levels of insurgent violence or control that preclude civil COIN measures: There is a threshold of risk, specific to each conflict, above which civil COIN cannot and should not proceed. However, reducing the vulnerability of high-priority civil COIN efforts would improve the overall effectiveness and results of COIN. To this end, the study seeks ways to combine COIN’s civil and security efforts through what we call integrated concepts of operations (ICONOPS). As the term implies, ICONOPS entail altering approaches to both civil COIN and military COIN so that the latter can improve the security of the former and the former can, in turn, contribute to security. This will not be easy. There is a natural tension between efficacy and security of civil COIN. Because they tend to require extensive, regular, direct contact with the population, civil measures—done right— are often exposed to danger. Preoccupation with security may restrict civil activities and contacts with the population to the point that much of their value is lost. The creation of citadels within which the deliverers of civil COIN services are protected comes at the expense of those who need the services. Moreover, because security forces have other missions as noted earlier, only limited forces are likely to be available to protect civil COIN from insurgent threats. Recognizing these trade-offs between security and civil COIN, the aim, once again, should be to manage and reduce risk and thus to optimize COIN on the whole. This will involve adjusting, and compromising, both customary ways of carrying out civil COIN and customary security operations for the sake of getting the greatest benefit to the over-arching goal of winning the struggle for the population’s support.34 34 In the language of management science, we are looking for solutions on the efficiency frontier of the civil-security feasible set. That is, those solutions which are best in the sense that no other solutions are better in terms of both security and civil COIN. 18 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency Context It is important to recognize that the challenge of civil COIN exists in a wider context, some aspects of which bear consideration before addressing the challenge. First is the recognition that actions taken in the course of a COIN campaign, including foreign intervention, are not politically neutral. Providing forces for security, building infrastructure, offering public services, and other COIN efforts may benefit certain areas over others, certain leaders over others, and certain groups over others. Political judgment, inherently subjective, will influence what efforts are conducted, where, when, and for whose benefit. Instead of trying to account for possible partiality in examining how to secure civil COIN, we assume that the responsible local and international authorities duly and reasonably weigh these considerations. Second, while the methods of this study are focused on the delivery of needed services or creation of desirable conditions in a given location within a given nation, many of the challenges, as well as the effects, will be beyond the control of local commanders and civilian leaders. For example, improving the livelihood of farmers in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, requires addressing irrigation issues there, which, in turn, requires working out water rights issues with Pakistan. This is something that cannot be done by the provincial governor, local military commander, or civil COIN personnel on the ground. Furthermore, water used in Nangarhar would not be available to other Afghan provinces, so coordination with other actors inside of Afghanistan would also be needed. Much as with political implications, the assumption here is that leaders on the ground are aware of these transnational and regional issues and will address them properly. Third, the term civil COIN notwithstanding, it is possible—in fact, quite common—for such efforts to be undertaken by military forces. U.S. armed forces, in particular, are both well-resourced and resourceful. They possess both “can-do” culture and “can-do” versatility, as well as abundant resources. They are more accustomed and better equipped than civilians to operate in the presence of insurgent violence. Because of the shortage of civilian resources, the military regularly conducts civil COIN. In any given campaign or territory, U.S. or Introduction 19 other military forces may be present sooner and on a much greater scale than civil agencies. Obviously, the problem of “civil COIN under fire” is substantially removed if not done by civilians when security conditions are such that they could be harmed. If that were a satisfactory approach, this study could end here. As a general rule, however, reliance on military forces to perform inherently civilian work is not satisfactory. For one thing, military personnel are not as proficient or productive at civil tasks as civilian professionals are. Moreover, the U.S. military is now faced with an expanding range of military missions, so saddling it with civilian work can be a serious drain on forces. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it is estimated that 20–25 percent of the time of U.S. troops is consumed by civilian work.35 The chronic reliance of the U.S. government on military forces to do inherently civilian tasks has undermined efforts to increase funding of non-military agencies—e.g., the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—for civil COIN. Finally, using military forces, particularly foreign ones, for civil COIN is not a good way to bolster the effectiveness and legitimacy of indigenous civilian government, in fact or in the people’s eyes. The use of military forces to perform civil COIN must not be excluded. The military is often a viable option—in some cases, the only option. Insurgent threats may be so severe that certain essential services can be performed only by troops. However, just as the availability of military forces for civil COIN should not deflect the United States from building adequate civilian capabilities, neither should it deflect its interest in making it safer for civilians to conduct civil COIN despite the risk of violence. Government organizations, be they military or civilian, are not the only actors that are likely active in a country torn by insurgency. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are often working in coun35 Based on author discussions with senior U.S. officers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Washington, 2008. This number is not arrived at scientifically, except insofar as the estimates of these officers clustered in this range. The estimate conforms with work done by one of the authors and Adam Grissom that bases the requirement for civil COIN on the largely successful civil operations and revolutionary development support (CORDS) campaign of the United States in Vietnam (see Gompert, Gordon, et al., 2008, Chapter Five). 20 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency tries beset by insurgency, as they are in other sorts of crises and conflicts. The reasons for and utility of NGO involvement go beyond this study; their relationships with indigenous and intervening governments are complex—politically neutral, formally arm’s length, operationally overlapping, sometimes harmonious and sometimes tense. This raises the questions of whether government efforts to secure civil COIN should encompass the operating patterns and needs of NGOs.36 For purposes of this study, even though government security does not necessarily or formally extend to NGOs, neither should it exclude NGOs that need and want security. Efforts to protect governmental COIN may also afford better security for NGOs. Thus, NGOs can be within the security umbrella if their activities are helpful, if they so request, and if they conform to that framework—and otherwise not. In sum, the study assumes that civil COIN is managed in a fairhanded way such that transnational aspects are addressed, civil work is done by civilians rather than troops, and NGOs, while not a formal responsibility of government, benefit from better security. Although the setting for this study of security for civil measures is COIN, the concepts and requirements may be relevant, with some adjustments, to other sorts of complex operations in which civilian personnel and projects may need to function despite security threats. Rescuing failed states, post-war rebuilding, peace operations, and humanitarian intervention all may involve hostilities yet also require similar civil measures to those associated with COIN: building indigenous capacity, filling service gaps in the meantime, creating conditions for industry and commerce to develop, and, when necessary, providing emergency relief. 36 We refer here to NGOs operating independently, as opposed to those operating under government contract, in which case they would be presumably be afforded the same security as government employees. Introduction 21 Method and Organization of the Monograph To inform the analysis of civil COIN under fire, we examine three cases, summarized in the next chapter: • Nord-Kivu in eastern DRC • Al Anbar in western Iraq • Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan. In these cases, civil measures to meet public needs and gain popular support should help isolate and weaken insurgency. Yet, in all three, violence has endangered and restricted civil COIN, which, in turn, has impaired efforts to improve security. The cases were examined with three questions in mind: • How important is civil COIN? • What areas of civil COIN are priorities? • How, in practical terms, should civil COIN be conducted? These question bear on efforts to make civil COIN secure. The importance of civil COIN is what justifies the allocation of security assets to permit it to happen despite the danger of violence. Priorities are important in determining which efforts to secure. And the practical implementation is important in order to devise new concepts of operation and capabilities to provide security. These cases are not meant to apply or validate the concepts identified in this study. Rather, they are to provide a real-world feel for why and how civil COIN is done and how insurgent threats might endanger the people and activities involved in it. Informed by the cases and other knowledge of COIN, this study offers a flexible, general architecture for conducting civil COIN in the presence of threats. That architecture calls for integrated civil-military operating concepts, from which specific security techniques and capability requirements are identified. Although our findings have not been thoroughly tested, we exposed them to workshops of knowledgeable practitioners and analysts, who found them to be generally sound. 22 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency As for the structure of this monograph, Chapter Two summarizes the cases and identifies civil COIN priorities, expressing them in practical and operational terms that facilitate integration with security. Chapter Three lays out a general architecture and ICONOPS. Chapter Four delves more deeply into security techniques and capabilities. Chapter Five offers findings and recommendations. Chapter Two Three Cases Objectives and Criteria New concepts are needed to enable effective civil COIN under fire. At the same time, concepts that are informed by experience are more likely to work than those that are not. Therefore, before considering options for securing civil COIN, we examined three actual cases of large-scale and protracted insurgency with a view to gaining a better understanding of civil COIN purposes, priorities, and modalities. Though information and insights about civil COIN from these cases are neither exhaustive nor definitive, we consider them indicative and thus useful for analysis of operating concepts and capabilities. The chosen cases involve significant violence and government failings. In all three, ethnic and regional tensions are at work. In two of them (Nangarhar and Al Anbar), religion (fundamentalist Islam) is also a factor in insurgent motivations. In the same two cases, substantial U.S. and allied forces have been engaged in military-COIN operations and in building up indigenous security forces.1 In each case, civil COIN priority focus areas are identified (nine in all), which, if handled well, could increase the effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach of government, thus earning the population’s support 1 In the third country, the DRC, a substantial UN peacekeeping force is present. However, its role is not that of an active participant in the way in which U.S., NATO, and coalition forces have been in Afghanistan and Iraq. 23 24 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency and reducing both the motivations and opportunities for insurgency.2 Because the civil COIN focus areas chosen are important to this study, we want to be clear about the method by which they were judged to be of high priority. The case experts, with both specific field experience and general knowledge of COIN, were each asked to recommend three civil measures that would have particularly strong effects on public perceptions of government responsiveness to their needs and to their hopes for a better future. While there could well be other high-potential focus areas for each of the three provinces, the authors accepted these on their merits and because, taken together, they seem to be broadly representative of civil COIN.3 In order to integrate civil and security measures, it is necessary to examine them on the operational level. For each of the focus areas, we examine how civil COIN is or should be carried out. For example, providing more-accessible primary education involves building or repairing structures (schools), training people (teachers), delivering supplies (books), and providing routine service (classes). Similarly, creating and operating marketplaces, energy plants, or production facilities requires improving physical infrastructure, training workers, furnishing equipment, distributing materials and goods, and providing accessible services. 2 We do not assert that these are the most important focus areas for counterinsurgents to address. Such an assertion would require more detailed understanding of the current situation and insights into the counterinsurgent’s priorities than we can claim. Importantly, such an assertion can be properly made only by those senior officials responsible for efforts in these places. Furthermore, as conditions have significantly changed in at least one of our three areas (Al Anbar) since we began this research, the dynamic nature of these assertions must be acknowledged. However, we do assert that the focus areas put forward for analysis here are important and would contribute to the counterinsurgents’ goal of establishing effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach. In addition, focus areas were coordinated among authors to allow a rich exploration of the ICONOPS discussed in Chapters Three and Four. 3 Of $13 billion in funds obligated under the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund through 2008 (excluding funds for security capabilities), the sectors corresponding to our chosen focus areas—justice, electricity, oil, transport, private enterprise, and education—constituted about 80 percent. This suggests that the focus areas from our cases are representative of civil COIN. See Bowen (2009, p. 24). Three Cases 25 While the purposes of such objects and activities are crucial to the success of COIN, it is their practical nature that forms the basis for providing security. For instance, providing basic health services requires local clinics and trained doctors; the corresponding security problems may include protecting buildings from attack and enabling people to transit safely to and from training sites. From the standpoint of planning and providing security, it is not essential to know whether a building is a clinic or a courthouse or whether the people entering and leaving are doctors or judges. Although vulnerability is not very different from one building to the next, the threat might be different and could change the security challenge. Insurgents consider some buildings, activities, or people to be more important targets than others because of their potential effects on the population’s loyalties. For example, schools that foster principles at odds with the insurgent ideology, or teach what insurgents think should not be taught, may be at greater risk of attack than a hospital that provides all with equal access to treatment.4 Yet, the fact that like structures, objects, and activities, in practical terms, lend themselves to like security measures greatly simplifies the otherwise complex challenge of securing civil COIN. In addition to understanding the “nuts and bolts” of civil COIN measures, it is important to understand how they may be organized and performed operationally to achieve the desired results. Each focus area involves a different pattern of centralized, decentralized, and mobile activities, people, and assets. For example, in overhauling a flawed justice system, judges may be trained in the national capital, courtrooms may be built in towns, materials to build courthouses may be shipped, higher courts may be situated in provincial capitals, and judges and attorneys may move among courthouses. At the end of this chapter, we mine the focus areas for indications about the organization and operation of civil COIN. 4 Frequent attacks on local schools in Afghanistan suggest that the Taliban find them especially abhorrent or threatening to their cause, both because of what is taught and because they signify government presence and authority. 26 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency Each of the three cases involves analysis of the causes and nature of insurgency in a given region or province in order to identify civil COIN measures that would make an appreciable contribution to the effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach of the government.5 For this, we first review the background, causes, and conditions of each conflict. This provides insights into the needs of the population that motivate and may be exploited by the insurgents, as well as the government’s weaknesses that provide insurgents with opportunities to acquire the means and freedom to operate. From this, it is possible to identify civil COIN focus areas of priority concern. Improvements in these areas would improve the population’s view of the government’s effectiveness, legitimacy, and reach; undercut the insurgency’s cause and ability to operate; and, potentially, improve security. Accordingly, each case follows a standard analytic sequence: • • • • background (history, geography, resources, demographics) context (social, economic, and political indicators) threat (insurgent ends, ways, means, and threats) focus areas. The descriptions that follow are summaries of more-extensive expositions that will be available in a forthcoming companion volume. Nord-Kivu, DRC Background Despite having bountiful natural resources, the DRC has the attributes of a failed state: dysfunctional government, rampant corruption, ethnic tensions, chronic violence, abusive security forces, and severe under­ development. These conditions have both fostered and been perpetuated by conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives.6 The logical 5 This analysis is based on a review of appropriate literature. Of particular importance in developing this method were FM 3-24 (2006); Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2008); and Fund for Peace (2008). 6 Freedom House (2007). Three Cases 27 case study for insurgency in the DRC is Nord-Kivu, which exemplifies the conditions listed and is the epicenter of the current insurgency. Situated in the north-east part of the DRC, Nord-Kivu borders Uganda and Rwanda (Figures 2.1 and 2.2). The region consists primarily of fertile land that is excellent for farming and pasturing, as well as mineral-rich forests. Nord-Kivu is relatively isolated from Kinshasa because the Congo’s jungles, mountains, rainfall, and poor roads make long-distance travel difficult. Due to its proximity, Nord-Kivu has strong political, ethnic, and economic ties to Kampala and Kigali. The ethnic makeup of Nord-Kivu’s 4 million inhabitants is predominantly Nande (approximately 50 percent) and Hutu (approximately 30 percent). The remaining 20 percent of the population is Figure 2.1 Democratic Republic of the Congo CENTRAL AFRICAN RE PUBLIC EQUATEUR Bolomba SA Bulungu Kenge Kikwit BANDUNDU Ilebo San KASAI Bena Mweka Z Kolwezi e ze N I A T T I Kasenga M Likasi Lubumbashi Solwezi SOURCE: United Nations Cartographic Section (2004c). Kipushi Sakania Ndola ZA MBI A Lake Bangweulu I The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. UNITED NATIONS RAND MG870-2.1 Lake Mweru MALAW Luena b am Rukwa Sumbawanga L ak e M al aw i Lobito Map No. 4007 Rev. 8 January 2004 U Dilolo TA N ZA N I A Kabamba Moliro Pweto v ua i ka CONGO Lu any Saurimo Tabora UNITED REPUBLIC OF Mbeya Katanga Plateau a ANGOL A Mpala Moba Manono KATANGA Kamina Lulu Luanda DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE Kigoma ng go Kapanga Lake Victoria BURUNDI Makobola Ta ai an Kahemba Lualaba Kabinda Mwene-Ditu RWANDA Kigali Bujumbura KIVU kuga Kalemie Lu Kabalo Lake Edward Lake Kyoga Kampala Jinja Butare Uvira Kongolo Mbuji-Mayi Ka s Kw N'zeto SUD- Kasongo Mamba Lubao Tshikapa Lake Kivu MANIEMA Lusambo Kananga Goma Bukavu Kilembwe Kibombo ORIENTAL OCCIDENTAL Lubutu U Punia Kindu Lodja KIVU U KASAI S NORD- Peneluta L a ke HA Pointe-Noire KI N S BAS-CONGO Cabinda Mbanza(ANGOLA) Boma Matadi Ngungu Kole u kur i lu Kw Kinshasa la Ikela Lac Mai-Ndombe Bandundu L u ke nie Ka s ai Lo di lin (C on g o ) Kutu 200 mi Ubundu a aba Bolobo 300 km me Ekoli uap mi ma ak a Inongo T sh Lo Kasese U GA N D A O Boende Mbandaka Liranga Beni Butembo Kisangani Yangambi Lake Albert Bunia N ga Basankusu lon Lu Gulu Ituri Aruwimi Basoko Banalia Bafwasende M i A or Lop ali Mungbere B M o Ki b Watsa Isiro PROVINCE ORIENTALE M Oubangu CONGO Brazzaville ATLANTIC OCEAN C i Ouesso g on Buta Aketi Lisala Bumba al Lu 200 100 Imese Impfondo Faradje U ele Businga ala ong SUDAN Juba Bondo il Lu 100 Bangassou Gbadolite Gemena National capital District capital City, town Major airport Libreville International boundary District boundary Main road Secondary road Railroad 0 Zongo Libenge CONGO 0 Ubang i Bangui DEMOCRATIC Yaoundé REPUBLIC OF THE Department of Peacekeeping Operations Cartographic Section 28 Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency Figure 2.2 Nord-Kivu SOURCE: ICG (2007, p. 21). RAND MG870-2.2 primarily Hunde, Nyanga, or Tutsi.7 There are historical tensions among the Banyarwandans8 and Nord-Kivu’s “indigenous” population that were sparked by the Banyarwandans’ migration to Nord-Kivu in colonial times.9 These ethnic tensions in Nord-Kivu were further exacerbated by Mobutu Sese Seko’s “divide and rule” s...