What Motivates the Insurgents?

The other day, while reading some of the very useful articles in the Iraq & the Middle East section of the Defense and the National Interest website, I came across this little gem:

The Theory of Counterinsurgency in Six Easy Paragraphs
By William Christie
Defense and the National Interest (31-Jan-06)

Essentially, the article explains what motivates your average person to join an insurgency against an oppressive regime, foreign invading army or just a heavy-handed government. While nothing that this brief article says should come as a surprise to anyone with even a basic understanding of human nature and psychology, its focus, logic and easy-to-follow presentation make it both unique and valuable. Certainly its conclusions are even easier to accept in a situation where a foreign (and non-Muslim) invading force occupies the land of a proud (and Muslim) people.

On a somewhat different note, it's something of a relief to see that the word "insurgent" has become the word of choice to describe, even in military and defense related publications, Iraqis who are violently resisting the U.S. occupation of their country. For the first year or so of the occupation, it seemed that the word "terrorist" was used all too frequently—and almost exclusively in the few U.S. Marine Corps publications that I read—to describe anti-American Iraqi guerrillas. Possibly the fallacy of using such a label on people engaged in fighting U.S. military forces (not committing random acts of violence against civilians) finally dawned on senior U.S. commanders.

All that having been said...it seems that the title of the article in question (i.e. The Theory of Counterinsurgency in Six Easy Paragraphs) is a bit off the mark, since a theory of counterinsurgency would explain how to deal with, squash and defeat an insurgency (i.e. how to counter an insurgency). However, what the "Six Easy Paragraphs" really explain is what motivates an insurgent...but not how to deal with (i.e. counter) one. Am I missing something here? Anyway, if you want to learn about the challenges of counterinsurgency warfare, get a copy of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, by John A. Nagl, Phantom Soldier: The Enemy's Answer to U.S. Firepower, by H. John Poole, War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare, by Robert Taberand, Mao Zedong's On Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, by David Galula. These books make it clear that President Bush and his advisors, especially the military ones, should have known what Iraq had in store for them.

As I explained in a lengthy column back in October 2004, entitled The Catch-22 in Iraq, the war in Iraqi is essentially unwinnable. Here's an excerpted paragraph which explains why the option to "win" just simply isn't there anymore in these types of situations:

In the past, one way out of this Catch-22 was to simply get brutal. When the Romans faced insurgencies, they would just go in, massacre or enslave the entire population and raze their cities to the ground. In recent centuries, Western imperialist powers tried using brutality to squash rebellions as well, but usually with mixed results. America certainly wasn't above all this, since in its first days as an imperialist power in the waning years of the nineteenth century, it had some success using brutal tactics against insurgents in the Philippines. Indeed, in a few short years U.S. forces killed an estimated 250,000 Filipinos—mostly civilians. If your only source of information is Fox News, you'll probably never find out the general tactics of the U.S. forces that were trying to "pacify" the Philippines were summary executions, the ransacking of villages, and forced relocation to concentration camps for those lucky enough to survive. However, even though going brutal sometimes led to "success" in the past, it's not so easy to get away with such tactics in the age of mass media, global human rights organizations and world public opinion. So, since the Bush Administration's stated goal is to build a "free and democratic" Iraq, the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" approach isn't much of an option.

So that's pretty much where things stand today, although now we've got the very disturbing Sunni-Shi'a bloodletting going on...which is undoubtedly a result of the "Divide and Rule" strategy of the kuffar. Needless to say, I find the calls for Muslim Unity coming from the Shi'a much more appealing than the takfirs being cast upon the Shi'a by (some) Salafis and their neo-Khawarij off-shoots. The latter are just unwittingly doing the work of the enemies of Islam...who, along with Satan, are laughing with delight all the way to the oil well.

Deen On...