Insurgency/Counterinsurgency Task Force

A significant force management challenge for the United States is maintaining large combat forces engaged in counterinsurgency operations in the United States’ sphere of interest. The cost of maintaining these forces in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan in relation to actual money spent, natural resources, international political capital, and human lives is enormous. From a financial perspective alone, by September 30, 2010, $1.05 trillion dollars will be spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.[1] A central reason for this great cost and force management challenge is that the United States often enters these conflicts in a reactive manner and then displays little expertise in dealing with the issues. A possible solution to this problem is creating an insurgency/counterinsurgency task force which would assist the United States government in conducting preemptive counterinsurgency measures as a means for preventing debilitating conflicts like those mentioned above.

The first step in this process is recognizing that the United States has a problem. The United States was heavily involved in supporting the Mujahideen insurgency against Russia in Afghanistan from 1979 until 1989. After the Russians withdrew, the United States closed its eyes to the inevitable power struggle between competing factions, some with extreme religious and political views, which led to the eventual rise of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda then used their close relationship with the Taliban, a relationship forged over years of hard combat against Russia, to facilitate the 9-11 attacks against the United States. The subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and the ensuing counterinsurgency war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a direct result of failed insurgency/counterinsurgency vision and strategy in post-1989 Afghanistan.

A similar problem existed with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Once the United States military removed Saddam Hussein from power, the United States leadership did not envision a possible insurgency from his supporters, even though history teaches that such an outcome was likely. The United States military then bungled counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, as it did in Afghanistan since 2001, at the costs of thousands of American lives and billions of dollars. In both cases, the United States government and military displayed an inadequate understanding of insurgency/counterinsurgency theory and practice that led to severe consequences for the United States which include - besides the human and financial costs already mentioned - a weakening of the United States’ standing and legitimacy in the world community.

A possible solution to this problem is developing an interagency, joint task force whose charter is to address the issues of insurgency/counterinsurgency for the United States. This task force would be composed of experienced specialists knowledgeable in various aspects of insurgency/counterinsurgency such as historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, financial experts, linguists, intelligence analysts, scholars, media experts, and military personnel. Each discipline would have multiple specialists to ensure they have adequate expertise in the various regions and countries of the world the United States will likely become involved in. For instance, the task force might need scores of historians, dozens of sociologists, and a hundred analysts to effectively cover all the concerned areas of the world that range from the Middle East to Latin America.

There would be a large, standing core of full time specialists focused squarely on the issues of insurgency/counterinsurgency. However, various specialists and experts would be called upon as needed, as contractors, to help the task force. Importantly, the task force would be inclusive of the various United States agencies to capture the community’s collective expertise and get them, as institutions, to “buy in” to the task force. Such agencies would include the CIA, DIA, Department of Defense, DEA, and State Department to name the most prominent.

Creation of a task force with a diverse background of specialists is one part of the solution. To be an effective entity, all members of the task force would have to receive common, centralized training at an insurgency/counterinsurgency education center so they would work in union towards a common concept of an insurgency/counterinsurgency philosophy. Importantly, the education center would be an integral part of the task force and, over time, members of the task force would rotate through both operational and educational positions ensuring a more complete understanding of the insurgency/counterinsurgency issue. Furthermore, service at the education center would be a prized assignment as the task force as a whole would value most a fundamental understanding of insurgency/counterinsurgency and the ability to convey this to others.

So, what does the United States gain from such a task force once it is up and running? We can take Iraq for an example. Once the United States leadership decided to invade Iraq in 2002, this leadership would have directed the task force to study the potential for insurgency after the overthrow of the Hussein regime. The task force could have predicted that the Sunni population, which comprises a fifth of the nation, would have an inherent interest in waging a guerrilla war to retain its former standing and influence. If the task force predicted such an outcome, as many independent experts did, then the task force would have subsequently advised the national leadership how to address the expected resistance movement.

The task force’s value, then, is not just in its predictive ability, but in its ability to give expert advice on how to confront an insurgency. As the Iraqi insurgency developed into a coherent movement, the task force would have provided the United States government with expert advice on how to proceed. Without such a task force, deadlyr mistakes by the United States, which could have been avoided, stoked the insurgency in Iraq like a hot poker in a dying fire. The resulting chain of events reflected a political, military, and intelligence community leadership with little or no understanding of insurgency/counterinsurgency issues. An understanding that protecting the populace is more important than protecting yourself could have prevented such catastrophic blunders as Blackwater employees killing innocent people in an unrestrained manner. Understanding that prisons are an extension of the unconventional battlefield could have prevented the embarrassing, criminal, and counterproductive Abu Ghraib incident. Understanding that disbanding the entire Iraqi army and criminalizing Ba’athists could lead to an entrenched insurgency that would eventually kill thousands of American soldiers could have been snipped in the bud. The task force could have saved thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, saved the United States billions of dollars, and bolstered the United States' position in the world community.

In conclusion, the creation of a unified insurgency/counterinsurgency task force would better equip the United States to address the issue of insurgency/counterinsurgency wars which have been the dominant form of warfare since the end of World War II and which give every indication of continuing in the future. The current United States involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, and Mexico - to name just a few – underline the seriousness of the issue. An insurgency/counterinsurgency task force would provide an expert, experienced, diverse organization that could help the United States leadership avoid and prevent future counterinsurgency conflicts and help to more effectively resolve them when the United States does become involved. When one looks at the tens of thousands of American lives lost in costly guerrilla wars, from Vietnam to the present, and the impact on the United States economy and world standing, the importance of an insurgency/counterinsurgency task force becomes apparent.

[1] http://www.costofwar.com/ by the National Priorities Project

MAJ Lyon, Student, CGSC, Fort Belvoir, VA

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.