EVENTS

Date:	Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Time:	4:30 PM -- 6:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

November 2005

New Perspectives on Insurgency

The United States has been engaged in the war in Iraq for more than thirty months now, but the nature of the war and the challenges it poses to coalition forces have not been consistent throughout that period. Initial resistance took the form of semi-organized, guerrilla-style raids, attacks, and ambushes, but the insurgents have changed their approach over time. With the exception of a handful of incidents of significant combat, the struggle has now primarily taken the form of an extensive terrorism campaign rather than a classic guerrilla war. This transition calls into question the utility of the historical models most frequently used to help understand the struggle and the possible techniques with which to fight it. What alternative historical models can be used to consider the conflict in its current form? In particular, what lessons can be learned from the American post–Civil War reconstruction period, when Southern elites were similarly reluctant to accept a changed social, economic, and political order? What lessons can we learn from other efforts to combat revolutionary movements relying primarily on terrorism in Europe, or in Central America? How will we be able to judge our success in this new form of struggle? These and other questions were discussed at a November 9 AEI panel discussion.

Frederick W. Kagan
AEI

This panel is designed to analyze different models for the ongoing conflict in Iraq, beyond the usual Vietnam comparisons. What other models are appropriate? Our panelists will address potential comparisons with the experiences in Ireland, Latin America, and the American Civil War.

Andrew Garfield
Lincoln Group

I have identified numerous key concepts regarding Iraq that I have observed in light of the experiences in Ireland. First, the war cannot be won through purely military means. There must be more emphasis on the type of overall strategy necessary to ensure victory. When military force is necessary, there should be a long-term effort, similar to what the British Army was forced to undergo in Northern Ireland, to ensure that the use of force becomes a last resort option. Second, the Iraq war must be a multi-agency effort. To accomplish that, however, requires tremendous political leadership. In the 1980s, it required the direct, personal involvement of Margaret Thatcher to bring that result about. Third, all operations must be underpinned by the best intelligence available. Nothing should be done without sufficient intelligence to ensure that the actions being taken will have the desired results. Fourth, we must develop a better understanding of the nature of the insurgency. It took the United Kingdom years to begin to understand how the IRA functioned. In addition, it is critical to understand how and why communities supported them. Fifth, coalition force numbers are likely insufficient for the task faced in Iraq. Iraq’s size and population makes it a much more difficult case than that in Ireland. Sixth, developing Iraqi institutions is critical to success in Iraq. These institutions, however, cannot be viewed as a panacea. Democratic governments must still respect the rights of minorities. This is as critical in Iraq as it is in Ireland today.

Kalev Sepp
Naval Postgraduate School

In Latin America, the twentieth century saw an important shift from rural insurgencies to urban. Fidel Castro’s guerilla movement, although popularly believed to be a rural movement, had a very large underground support network in the Cuban cities. In Brazil in the 1960s, Communist urban guerilla elements engaged in high-profile kidnappings and other terrorist acts. In response, the Brazilian government instituted a widespread crackdown, including the use of torture and death squads. Despite the government reaction, the guerilla kidnappings and other acts only succeeded in helping eliminate civilian sympathies for their actions.

In Peru, Alberto Fujimori became president and gave himself exceptional executive authority to fight indigenous urban-based terrorists. Between 1992-1995, he succeeded in almost wholly defeating them. However, in 1997, an urban terrorist group emerged which spectacularly seized the Japanese embassy.
 
Other countries were able to defeat their urban based insurgencies. In the El Salvador civil war, the primary insurgent umbrella organization was subjected to a major counterterrorist offensive in 1989. The outcome of that offensive was the complete decimation of the urban terrorist organizations. In Venezuela, there was an urban terrorist operation in Caracas during the 1950s and 1960s. A newly appointed, energetic police chief in the city succeeded in destroying this operation in approximately five years.

The lessons from Latin America are fairly simple: governments can defeat urban terrorist movements; the urban population subjected to a terrorist campaign will tend to remove itself from the conflict rather than joining the terrorists; and lastly, even in defeat, these terrorist groups sometimes manage to accomplish their goal of defeating a democratic government. They do so because the democratic government itself becomes less democratic or abandons democracy completely in order to defeat the terror. They do so, however, with popular support.

Thomas Donnelly
AEI

One striking experience coming out of Reconstruction from the U.S. Civil War is that problems began during the war itself. The difficulties flowed out of the fundamental debate over what the objectives of the war were. The war was intended to be a limited war, where the Confederate leadership would be defeated and the Union rapidly restored. This view did not survive the years of war and, as a result, the scope and goals of the war constantly expanded. This transformed the conflict from a limited war to, essentially, a revolutionary war where the South would not be the same upon the war’s conclusion. Through the middle period of the war, Lincoln and his generals came to believe that the only way to defeat the enemy was to completely destroy Lee’s army in the field. At the same time, Sherman’s march through the South targeted, not solely the Confederate military, but also Confederate society.

The radical Republican faction was constantly pushing Lincoln to more aggressively prosecute the war. They were, if you will, the neoconservatives of the day. They had a vision for the war and saw it both as an opportunity and a danger. This struggle between the war aims did a lot to frame the issue following the Civil War. Lincoln’s assassination ended the greatest chance for compromise between the two factions. Radical Republicans actually believed that Johnson, who took the presidency upon Lincoln’s assassination, might prove to be a stronger reconstructionist than they feared Lincoln would have been. That turned out to be false as Johnson’s view was significantly more moderate. As a result, Reconstruction came to be essentially taken over by Congress until Ulysses S. Grant’s administration. Despite these Reconstruction efforts, it was discovered that Southern society was very deeply ingrained. This fact was demonstrated in movements such as the Jesse James gang, Ku Klux Klan, and others. Similarly, Iraqi society is very deeply ingrained, and we should not ignore the potential for long-term conflict with various elements.

AEI intern Hunter M. Abell prepared this summary.