Understanding Counterinsurgency

This textbook offers an accessible introduction to counterinsurgency operations, a key aspect of modern warfare. Featuring essays by some of the world’s leading experts on unconventional conflict, both scholars and practitioners, the book discusses how modern regular armed forces react, and should react, to irregular warfare. The volume is divided into three main sections: Doctrinal Origins: analysing the intellectual and historical roots of modern Western theory and practice Operational Aspects: examining the specific role of various military services in counterinsurgency, but also special forces, intelligence, and local security forces Challenges: looking at wider issues, such as governance, culture, ethics, civil-military cooperation, information operations, and time. Understanding Counterinsurgency is the first comprehensive textbook on counterinsurgency, and will be essential reading for all students of small wars, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, strategic studies and security studies, both in graduate and undergraduate courses as well as in professional military schools.

This textbook offers an accessible introduction to counterinsurgency operations, a key aspect of modern warfare. Featuring essays by some of the world’s leading experts on unconventional conflict, both scholars and practitioners, the book discusses how modern regular armed forces react, and should react, to irregular warfare. The volume is divided into three main sections: Doctrinal Origins: analysing the intellectual and historical roots of modern Western theory and practice Operational Aspects: examining the specific role of various military services in counterinsurgency, but also special forces, intelligence, and local security forces Challenges: looking at wider issues, such as governance, culture, ethics, civil-military cooperation, information operations, and time. Understanding Counterinsurgency is the first comprehensive textbook on counterinsurgency, and will be essential reading for all students of small wars, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, strategic studies and security studies, both in graduate and undergraduate courses as well as in professional military schools.

This book examines terrorist and insurgent organisations and seeks to understand how such groups persist for so long, while introducing a new strategic doctrine for countering these organisations. The work discusses whether familial or meritocratic insurgencies are more resilient to counterinsurgency pressures. It argues that it is not the type of organization that determines resilience, but rather the efficiency functions of social capital and trust, which have different natures and forms, within them. It finds that while familial insurgencies can challenge incumbents from the start, they weaken over time, whereas meritocracies will generally strengthen. The book examines four of the most enduring and lethal insurgent organizations: the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia, and the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. The author breaks down each group into its formative strengths and vulnerabilities and presents a bespoke model of strategic counterintelligence that can be used to manipulate, degrade and destroy each organization. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, terrorism, intelligence, security and defence studies in general.

The first book of its kind, Hearts and Minds is a scathing response to the grand narrative of U.S. counterinsurgency, in which warfare is defined not by military might alone but by winning the "hearts and minds" of civilians. Dormant as a tactic since the days of the Vietnam War, in 2006 the U.S. Army drafted a new field manual heralding the resurrection of counterinsurgency as a primary military engagement strategy; counterinsurgency campaigns followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that counterinsurgency had utterly failed to account for the actual lived experiences of the people whose hearts and minds America had sought to win. Drawing on leading thinkers in the field and using key examples from Malaya, the Philippines, Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Hearts and Minds brings a long-overdue focus on the many civilians caught up in these conflicts. Both urgent and timely, this important book challenges the idea of a neat divide between insurgents and the populations from which they emerge—and should be required reading for anyone engaged in the most important contemporary debates over U.S. military policy.

David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare, a ground-breaking theorist whose ideas "are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the west" (Washington Post). Indeed, his vision of modern warfare powerfully influenced the United States' decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the Surge," now recognized as a dramatic success. In Counterinsurgency, Kilcullen brings together his most salient writings on this vitally important topic. Here is a picture of modern warfare by someone who has had his boots on the ground in some of today's worst trouble spots-including Iraq and Afghanistan-and who has been studying counterinsurgency since 1985. Filled with down-to-earth, common-sense insights, this book is the definitive account of counterinsurgency, indispensable for all those interested in making sense of our world in an age of terror.

This study examines how terrorist groups transition to insurgencies and identifies ways to combat proto-insurgents. It describes the steps groups must take to gain the size and capabilities of insurgencies, the role of outside state support, and actions governments can take to prevent potential insurgencies from blossoming. The most effective U.S. counterinsurgency action would be to anticipate the possibility of insurgencies developing; it could then provide training and advisory programs and inhibit outsides support.

this is the full color edition.Marine Corps Operating Concepts for a Changing Security Environment describes Marine Corps forces that will be organized, based, trained and equipped for forward presence, security cooperation, counterterrorism, crisis response, forcible entry, prolonged operations and counterinsurgency. The Tentative Manual for Countering Irregular Threats: an Updated Approach to Counterinsurgency Operations, and Countering Irregular Threat-A Comprehensive Approach, elaborate on counterinsurgency operations at higher echelons of command. However, counterinsurgency is warfare characterized by small unit action. This handbook provides a guide for the small unit leader.Purpose: This handbook provides the tactics, techniques, and procedures that may be applied by small unit leaders engaged in counterinsurgency. It is principally focused at the company and below. It describes the nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency, common insurgent approaches, preparation for counterinsurgency, mobilizing the populace, information and intelligence operations, and operations in a counterinsurgency environment. The handbook is not prescriptive but meant to inform. The specific aspects of each conflict combined with small unit leader judgment and initiative will drive how to apply the ideas within the handbook. Understanding Insurgency: Insurgencies date to the earliest forms of government and will continue to exist as long as the governed harbor grievances against authority that they believe cannot be resolved by peaceful means. What is an insurgency? The Department of Defense (DOD) defines insurgency as "an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict." Simply put, an insurgency is a struggle between a non-ruling group and their ruling authority. Insurgents use political resources, to include the increased use of the media and international opinion, as well as violence to destroy the political legitimacy of the ruling authority and build their own political legitimacy and power.1 Examples of this type of warfare range from the American Revolution to the present situation in Iraq. The conflict itself can range from acts of terrorism to the more conventional use of the media to sway public opinion. Whatever form the insurgency takes, it serves an ideology or political goal. What are the root causes of an insurgency? For an insurgency to flourish, a majority of the population must either support or remain indifferent to insurgent ideals and practices. There must be a powerful reason that drives a portion of the populace to armed opposition against the existing government. Grievances may have a number of causes, such the lack of economic opportunity, restrictions on basic liberties, government corruption, ethnic or religious tensions, or the presence of an occupying force. It is through this line of thought or ideal that insurgents attempt to mobilize the population. Understanding Counterinsurgency: What is counterinsurgency?-DOD defines counterinsurgency as "those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency. Also called "COIN." The United States uses a wide breadth of national capabilities to defeat insurgencies through a variety of means. The Department of State (DOS), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) use country teams to generate strategic objectives and assist the host nation government. The military may support those efforts by employing conventional forces, in combination with Special Operations Forces (SOF), in a variety of activities aimed at enhancing security and/or alleviating causes of unrest.

Controversial new history of counterinsurgency which challenges its claims as an effective strategy of waging war.

Learning to Forget analyzes the evolution of US counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine over the last five decades. Beginning with an extensive section on the lessons of Vietnam, it traces the decline of COIN in the 1970s, then the rebirth of low intensity conflict through the Reagan years, in the conflict in Bosnia, and finally in the campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately it closes the loop by explaining how, by confronting the lessons of Vietnam, the US Army found a way out of those most recent wars. In the process it provides an illustration of how military leaders make use of history and demonstrates the difficulties of drawing lessons from the past that can usefully be applied to contemporary circumstances. The book outlines how the construction of lessons is tied to the construction of historical memory and demonstrates how histories are constructed to serve the needs of the present. In so doing, it creates a new theory of doctrinal development.