DE BORCHGRAVE: Unwinnable insurgencies?

You mentioned the Malayan Emergency, but only in passing. You may have wanted to mention that the British only used Special Operations Forces like the SAS and those from Commonwealth nations like Rhodesia's Rhodesian African Rifles and C Sqn, 22 SAS as well as the Australian SAS Regiment. The HUGE mistake we made in Afghanistan was using conventional units that do not ever fare well against insurgencies (as evidenced by the French in Algeria and French Indochina) and adding insult to injury in that regard we tied the conventional units hands even further by putting them in a Coalition structure. Coalitions are great in conventional wars, but in a dynamic and constantly changing warfare environment, it constrains units that already have their hands tied by their respective Rules of Engagement and Tables of Operations and Equipment. The only type of unit that is adaptable enough is a Special Operations unit or units constituted along the lines of the Special Air Service (the US Army's long disavowed 1st Special Forces Operational Detatchment - Delta, or Delta Force, is organized and trained according to the SAS model, as is the Navy's DEVGRU, also known as SEAL Team 6), or a Pseudo-terrorist unit along the lines of Rhodesia's much ignored and never emulated Selous Scouts, to infiltrate and destroy Terrorist cells from the inside out. The thinking that 400,000 troops are needed to stop the Afghan insurgency is a result of outdated conventional military thinking where you establish checkpoints along roads and send company sized units on patrols and sweeps of villages and neighborhoods. It relies on displays of force and attacking strength to deter. It does absolutely nothing to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and proactively disrupt their plans or operations, which is exactly what we need to do. Its what the British and participating Commonwealth forces did to the MRLA in Malaya and its the reason that the Malayan Races Liberation Army remains the only modern insurgency that has been soundly defeated. If the political will of the west at the time had been supportive and truly against communism in all its forms (as Thatcher and Reagan were), Rhodesia would also be among that number, as the Rhodesian Army operated along unconventional lines out of neccessity and was not afraid to cross borders to attack terrorists, like the famed Green Leader raid, as our forces in Afghanistan seem to be terrified of doing. We ought to demand that either Pakistan actively constrain the Taliban or we do it for them. We will not win this war unless we abandon the old ways of military thinking. The enemy does not care, and the only way to defeat them is to shift our thinking away from conventional warfare and become much more aggressive in combating irregular forces than we are.

Wrong! The United States did not lose to the Ho Chi Minh insurgency in Vietnam. Republicans won the war in Vietnam (Thank you President Nixon!) and the Democrat-led Congress, never tired of finding new opportunities for defeat, cut off all aid to the Democratic Republic of South Vietnam, which was invaded and subsequently conquered by Marxist North Vietnam. I guess that's a victory of sorts for the Democrats.

As a graduate student focusing on insurgency, it is quit easy to poke holes in this article. I would say this article is insular and narrow; however, that gives the author credit for doing research that he obviously didn't do. Firstly, and probably most controversial, is Vietnam; by 1970 the Viet Cong insurgency ceased to exist. The South Vietnamese were defeated by a conventional invasion by North Vietnam in 1975, not an insurgency. Here is a list of 20th century insurgencies where the counter-insurgent force was victorious, whether through counter-insurgency tactics, brute military force (includes use against civilians), negotiation, or a combination thereof: Northern Ireland (British win: COIN strategy, intelligence collection, negotiation) Malaya (British win: isolation, COIN strategy) Mau Mau Uprising, Kenya (British win: brute force, economic strangulation) Boer War, South Africa/Rhodesia (British win: brute force) Shining Path insurgency, Peru (Peru wins: leadership destroyed) Huk rebellion, Philippines (Government wins: force, reforms, negotiation) Greek Civil War (Government wins: force, external assistance) UPA resistance in Ukraine (Soviets win: brute force, took a decade) Tibetan insurgency (China wins: brute force) Dhofar rebellion, Oman (Britain: isolation) Guevera's Bolivian expedition (stupid insurgency strategy, leader killed) And dozens of others that most people haven't heard of.

The British Empire crushed the communist insurgency in Malaya through the use of tactics we regrettably now find distasteful. Any American law student, if he or she remembers their criminal law class, had citation cases from the British Empire of "King-Emperor vs. (Insert Malaysian Communist Insurgent name)." Why the citation in American criminal law books? The British made the possession of ammunition, even one shell, a capital offense. I imagine if we had the national "intestinal fortitude" to try and execute suspected insurgents for the possession of merely ammunition, we would see a dramatic reduction in those joining the insurgency. Absent such will power, we will not see a Pax Americana like that of the Pax Britannica. Blake Konczal - Fresno, CA

Insurgencies prevail when the indigenous populations can't be dissuaded from supporting them. America's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and what we may do in Pakistan, are senseless, because our objectives (security for America's access to oil, removing potential threats to Israel, spreading the "gospel" of religious neutrality, sexual equality and gay rights, which we label "democracy") have little to no constituency in any of these countries and a plurality of opposition. It doesn't matter we arm Sunni to fight Shiia, or switch sides, as we have done in Iraq, or whether we arm Pashtuns to fight Tajiks in Afghanistan, as we did in the 80's, or the reverse, which we do now, or whether we support the Bhuttos or the Zias or another family in Pakistan, none of them are interested in supporting our "cause" or our "values" except insofar as needed to get our money and spilled blood for something they want. Some day we will leave all these countries (through national bankruptcy, if not sooner), and what we will leave behind will not be very different than what was there before we entered, except for the path of death and destruction we have left that will be remembered for generations. Obama campaigned in the spring as the man of change, who would end this insanity, but now he promises more, but "smarter" wars, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, even now in Georgia, because he begins with the same presumption as McCain, Bush and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, that we actually have a constituency in these countries that want us there. We can find small minority groups, who need us to protect them - the Muslims in Bosnia and Serbia, the Kurds in Iraq, the Georgians in the Caucasus, even Arabs and Kurds in Iran, but these groups will never govern their countries, except by force, as the Alawhites in Syria and the Tikritis in Iraq ruled their countries by the brute force of the Baath Party. And thus, in every country that we place troops because "democratic forces" can't survive without us, we will continue to be hated and we will continue to have to fear retributive attacks.

carpet bomb all tribal areas to dust. then leave

I'm a little perplexed as to M. de Borchgrave's inference that the Huk rebellion was somehow victorious since as he put it "Hukbalahap, or People's Army Against the Japanese, is still killing an average of one Filipino soldier a day." My knowledge of other inserructions may be somewhat feeble but as an old Philippines hand this makes no sense to me. Maybe he is confusing the NPA (New Peoples Army) the Huk's presumptive successor, which is more or less just a provincial nuisance these days (but admittedly a power to be reckoned with in the 80's)with the Huks which disappeared as a viable fighting force after Magsaysay took power in the 50's. I wonder where he got these statistics? I hope he's not confusing the various Muslim insurgent groups which are totally unrelated to these Marxists groups?