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Best way to fight an insurgency
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DukeC View Drop Down
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Posts: 1564 		  Quote DukeC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Best way to fight an insurgency
    Posted: 03-Jun-2007 at 00:07
What do you think is the best way to fight an insurgency, with conventional or special forces?
 
During the 1960s both Britain and the U.S. were faced with determined guerillia forces attempting to overthrow friendly nations in SE asia. The U.S. responded in Vietnam with heavy conventional forces including the heaviest bombing camapign in history. The results are well known.
 
By contrast in Malaysia and Borneo the British kept the level of conflict as low as possible. Small, 3-4 man SAS and SBS teams patrolled border areas and determined infiltration routes and guerilla bases. Larger SAS and Gurkha units were called in to attack guerilla buildups and to capture insurgent leaders. Ultimately the strategy suceeded.
 
I think counter-insurgency demands a flexibility that isn't possible with conventional forces, and placing them amongst a hostile population raises the level of conflict due to resentment. Better to use fewer, more skilled units that have less of an impact on local sentiment and can target centers of resistance instead of bashing away at the entire opposition structure.


Edited by DukeC - 03-Jun-2007 at 00:08
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Posts: 2120 		  Quote Maharbbal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jun-2007 at 01:01
Hum it is the mistake Rumsfeld did back in 2003. Bagdad is an urban jungle not a real jungle and you need troops to police people.

Special ops are used intensively but with moderate success.

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jun-2007 at 01:57
It depends on the insurgency. The Malayan emergency was based in the minority ethnic Chinese community, the Malays had little interest in it, the Brits were able thus to turn them against the insurgents. Vietnam example was the locals wholeheartedly were behind the insurgency. This gave the insurgency the support it needed, whereby in malaya they could find little or no support form the majaority of the population.
 
The way to defeat insurgecies which have general local support is to target the lcoal population. They are the center of gravity so to speak. Keeping morals aside for a moment, this targeting can be anything, from bribes down to near genocide, basically you have to eliminate the locals as a means of support. IMO the best measure are those whereby you are both harsh and kind in your dealings, in other words offer a juciy fat carrot and a very big stick, to convince them that it is in their interests to be o your side rather than the insurgents.
 
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Posts: 232 		  Quote aghart Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jun-2007 at 07:14
Originally posted by Sparten

It depends on the insurgency. The Malayan emergency was based in the minority ethnic Chinese community, the Malays had little interest in it, the Brits were able thus to turn them against the insurgents. Vietnam example was the locals wholeheartedly were behind the insurgency. This gave the insurgency the support it needed, whereby in malaya they could find little or no support form the majaority of the population.
  
 
 
Also remember that the British were able to keep the insurgency quite small ( that is their greatest achievement in that conflict) and then strangle the life out of it.  It took 20 years but it was a textbook operation.
 
In Vietnam the conflict had escalated well beyond that stage when the first US troops arrived. The VC were launching battalion sized attacks against  fortified locations even in the 1960's, it never got to that stage in Malaya.
 
The US failure in Vietnam was political. The US military dominated in the war, The US won the battles  (by and large) on the ground  but lost the war in Washington.
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Posts: 1962 		  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jun-2007 at 09:24

The USA did defeat a very nasty insurgency during the American Civil War by using a combination of methods related by Sparten and Maharrabel.  Like the Iraqi insurgents, the confederate Bush Wacker insurgents  were a coalition of independent groups that committed numerous atrocities against civilians and also attacked military targets.  To defeat them, Abraham Lincoln.....

-Used very skilled diplomacy and political / economic rewards and pressures to reduce the legitimacy of the Confederate government.  Almost all nueterals in the area then side with the Union.  Even Pro Confederates support Union every time they use union currency or land titles.   (talk, talk, talk)
 
At the same time, a two part military strategy is pursued.  (force, including unsavory force)
1.) The Union Army secures major towns and roadways by using massed numbers and mass fire power.  This slowly deprives lightly armed Bushwackers freedom of movement etc.  
2.)  Irregular,  Pro Union Jay Hawker militias roam rural areas in small groups on vengeance missions.   They attack Bushwackers and their civilian supporters in their safe areas by using many of the same dirty tactics that the Bushwackers use.   Naturally, Union press only reports Bushwacker atrocitities.   Jayhawker atrocities are also "deniable" because they are not commited by Union Army.
 
Bushwackers and their supporters are then crushed by diplomacy, regular forces and irregular forces.  Increasingly residual resistance lingers for years, but the mass Bushwacker resistance movement is defeated in a relatively short time (two-three years).
 


Edited by Cryptic - 03-Jun-2007 at 09:58
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Jun-2007 at 10:18
Originally posted by aghart

Originally posted by Sparten

It depends on the insurgency. The Malayan emergency was based in the minority ethnic Chinese community, the Malays had little interest in it, the Brits were able thus to turn them against the insurgents. Vietnam example was the locals wholeheartedly were behind the insurgency. This gave the insurgency the support it needed, whereby in malaya they could find little or no support form the majaority of the population.
  
 
 
Also remember that the British were able to keep the insurgency quite small ( that is their greatest achievement in that conflict) and then strangle the life out of it.  It took 20 years but it was a textbook operation.
 
In Vietnam the conflict had escalated well beyond that stage when the first US troops arrived. The VC were launching battalion sized attacks against  fortified locations even in the 1960's, it never got to that stage in Malaya.
 
The US failure in Vietnam was political. The US military dominated in the war, The US won the battles  (by and large) on the ground  but lost the war in Washington.
Yes sir. But If you remeber the old adage, war is a political activity. If doing what is militraily necessary is not polictically possible, the conflict is already lost.
 
The Brits in S Africa carried out a near genocisal campign against the Boers. the civlians were identified as the enemy from an early stage, and placed in concentration camps. A third of the population died. The insurgency, was crushed.
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Posts: 591 		  Quote Peteratwar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2007 at 03:24
One thing a successful insurgency needs is a safe haven. In Malaysia the insurgents did not have one.
 
In Vietnam, they certainly did in North Vietnam and Cambodia.
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Posts: 1564 		  Quote DukeC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2007 at 03:27
Originally posted by aghart

 
In Vietnam the conflict had escalated well beyond that stage when the first US troops arrived. The VC were launching battalion sized attacks against  fortified locations even in the 1960's, it never got to that stage in Malaya.
 
IIRC it was the Strategic Hamlet program which helped turn the VC into the threat they became in the early 1960s. It was poorly managed, and arms that didn't go directly to VC friendly villages were captured from "loyal" settlements. After the first year of the program, many VC units were better armed than regular South Vietnamese army units. The same thing is going on in Iraq, many of the units being trained and armed by the U.S. are engaging in the sectarian violence and insurgent attacks. 
 
The US failure in Vietnam was political. The US military dominated in the war, The US won the battles  (by and large) on the ground  but lost the war in Washington.
 
The U.S. was fighting the wrong war, it wasn't about communism, it was about independence. The Vietnamese were willing to pay almost any price to get their country back. It eventually became impossible for the Johnson administration and the Pentagon to deny that fact.


Edited by DukeC - 04-Jun-2007 at 03:28
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2007 at 10:16
^
Very true. The US failed to realize the core of the appeal. Still they could have had it their way, if they had been allowed to invade tha north and destroy its support structure.
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Posts: 1564 		  Quote DukeC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2007 at 12:26
Originally posted by Peteratwar

One thing a successful insurgency needs is a safe haven. In Malaysia the insurgents did not have one.
 
In Vietnam, they certainly did in North Vietnam and Cambodia.
 
They had Indonesian territory and the backing of Sukarno.
 
The conflict didn't escalate because the British confined the fighting to the border areas and kept it isolated from population centers. The local people didn't resent the presence of foreign troops and the damage they did because they often didn't even know they were there, and any damage done was restricted to unihabited jungle. The British Parliment was keep out of the loop to a certain degree also.
 
In Vietnam the U.S. forces were often doing as much damage to the population they were supposed to be defending and motivated many civilains to suport the VC.
 
Very true. The US failed to realize the core of the appeal. Still they could have had it their way, if they had been allowed to invade tha north and destroy its support structure.
 
Memories of Korea meant that wouldn't have been allowed, China is even more sensitive of it border with Vietnam than it is with the Yalu river boundary. 


Edited by DukeC - 04-Jun-2007 at 12:27
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Posts: 952 		  Quote Paul Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2007 at 14:16
Britain also deployed nukes ready to use on bombers based in Singapore, the only nation to deploy nukes in a comflict since WWII. So hardly a low key escalation.
 
Another tactic Britain used was to pay hefty bribes to insurgent leaders to swap sides.
 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2007 at 15:22

Korean war memories aside, the Chinese would not have wanted to fight another war with the US. Especially after the Sino-Soviet split. But the korean experience did prevent the politicians from making such a decision. Again, political consideration being paramout, as they should be since as stated above war is a political act.
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Posts: 1564 		  Quote DukeC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jun-2007 at 15:37
Originally posted by Paul

Britain also deployed nukes ready to use on bombers based in Singapore, the only nation to deploy nukes in a comflict since WWII. So hardly a low key escalation.
 
This is the first I've heard of it, so it was pretty low key.Wink
 
I wonder what the targets would have been, Indonesian centers?
 
Another tactic Britain used was to pay hefty bribes to insurgent leaders to swap sides.
 
Britain has usually been creative in the way it fights.
 

Originally posted by Sparten

Korean war memories aside, the Chinese would not have wanted to fight another war with the US. Especially after the Sino-Soviet split. But the korean experience did prevent the politicians from making such a decision. Again, political consideration being paramout, as they should be since as stated above war is a political act.

They might have not wanted to, but I think it would have been likely for the Chinese to get involved if the U.S. had invaded North Vietnam. Espcially if they had come as far north as the Red River. U.S. leaders were very cautious about getting pulled into a large ground war in Asia, kind of ironic.
 
 


Edited by DukeC - 04-Jun-2007 at 15:41
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Posts: 591 		  Quote Peteratwar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Jun-2007 at 06:37
Originally posted by DukeC

Originally posted by Peteratwar

One thing a successful insurgency needs is a safe haven. In Malaysia the insurgents did not have one.
 
In Vietnam, they certainly did in North Vietnam and Cambodia.
 
They had Indonesian territory and the backing of Sukarno.
 
The conflict didn't escalate because the British confined the fighting to the border areas and kept it isolated from population centers. The local people didn't resent the presence of foreign troops and the damage they did because they often didn't even know they were there, and any damage done was restricted to unihabited jungle. The British Parliment was keep out of the loop to a certain degree also.
 
 
No the Malaysian insurgents did not have Indonesian teritory to fall back on. That is across the sea and nothing like having a land border to fade across to where there are strong back-up regular forces in support
 
Also note, the native population were moved from their original villages into new ones which were better built and more defensible. They were also given the chance to own their own land


Edited by Peteratwar - 07-Jun-2007 at 06:48
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Posts: 1564 		  Quote DukeC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jun-2007 at 20:55
Originally posted by Peteratwar

 
No the Malaysian insurgents did not have Indonesian teritory to fall back on. That is across the sea and nothing like having a land border to fade across to where there are strong back-up regular forces in support
 
They operated out of Indonesian territory on Borneo and also from an island off of Singapore. It's only a fairly narrow straight that seperates the island of Sumatra from the Malay peninsula.
 
Also note, the native population were moved from their original villages into new ones which were better built and more defensible. They were also given the chance to own their own land
 
Something the U.S. also did in Vietnam with the Strategic Hamlet program. The U.S. also implemented a large conventional build-up, and had thousands of "advisors" in action before any large units began to appear there in 1965.


Edited by DukeC - 08-Jun-2007 at 20:56
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Posts: 277 		  Quote TranHungDao Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jun-2007 at 16:25
There is really no way to fight an determined insurgency.  If people don't want you there, then there's nothing you can do about it.

But I suppose if you want to do the best job that you can...  Then use everything at your disposal, i.e. special forces, conventional forces, armor, air power, ...

In one extreme end of the spectrum, one way to go about it is you can kill everyone (because you can't tell insurgent from innocent civilian...), which would certainly put an end to the insurgency.  But that's hardly a solution.  Confused

In the other extreme end...  The only way that I see an insurgency can be defeated is in the distant future when you have technologies such as smart and armed nanobots and/or androids which are cheaply made, smart as a whip, and can be sacrificed without the public at home getting pissed off.  Or better yet, if you develop a technology for force fields that can protect a soldier from an IED, snipers, wmd's including nuke, biological agents, chemical agents...  Believe it or not, scientists actually are working on forces fields as we speak.  But it'll be a very, very long time coming.

Until then, don't bother holding your breath.  Dead
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Jul-2007 at 10:48

Hearts and minds. You cannot win an insurgency unless the local population shares the same goals as you do. In Iraq and Afghanistan, most people want democracy, and in the early years of the post Saddam Iraq, most people supported (or at least tolerated) western intervention.

 

But the people will not tolerate too many deaths, even if they are by accidents. NATO reliance on air power and the subsequent civilian deaths are undermining the good work done to rebuild Afghanistan.

 

And the local people need to have a basic level of security to live their lives. Poor planning by the US administration and the resulting collapse in security in Iraq has completely undermined Americas efforts.

 

Technology will help fight an insurgency. But the age of terrorism has shown that an unsophisticated terrorist can still hit a more sophisticated superpower. In fact, the more sophisticated the superpower, the more vulnerable they are. The age of globalisation and the internet offers new ways to attack a superpower.

 

And if the bulk of the people are opposed to you, no amount of high technology will win.

 
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Posts: 65 		  Quote YohjiArmstrong Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22-Aug-2007 at 20:25
Turning to Mr. Galula...

Most important is to gain the support of the populace. Not only does this require being nice and (re)construction but also medical and professional aid. Most importantly though people must be defended. One of the successes of the war in Malaya was the way that the British protected the friendly locals. Similarly David Galula fortified and defended villages when he fought in Algeria with excellent results. This includes creating self contained safe areas. One fo the big failures in Iraq for instance is that electricity is so often down. This is because it is impossible to protect, coming off a centralised system.

Secondly is to shut down the "market" in which insurgents can operate. This includes bribing insurgents to your side, buying up weapons, removing the goods the insurgency uses to fund itself and isolating it from specialists (i.e. bombmakers).

All that said insurgencies are unique to their setting, their is no single "Quik-fix".
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Posts: 185 		  Quote Jonathan4290 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Mar-2008 at 20:56

The main problem of conventional forces, aside from the further damage to civilians already listed, is that conventional forces = more numerous, easier targets = more deaths = more publicity at home. In the case of Vietnam, no one can dispute that if the USA had stayed there was no concievable way that The North could defeat the USA - the North just outlasted the American public's political will to win the war. The North, thinking it was finally the time to conventionally defeat the USA, was constantly defeated.

Perhaps special forces' true value is that they are easier to deploy away from the media's eyes and are given less attention which allows them to stay and get the job done.
 
Reiteration: insurgencies are very unique and the tide of victory and defeat may go back and forth for years before a result is achieved.
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I have made this point in other threads before:  Interventionist insurgent wars are unwinnable....Algeria, Viet Nam, Afghanistan (USSR version), and perhaps Iraq which is as yet undecided.
 
Domestic insurgencies are a different matter:  The IRA in Ireland; the communists in Greece, the dim-witted "Red Brigades" in Germany and Italy; the insurgent movements in Latin America (so thoroughly squashed in Brazil, Chile and Argentina).  Cuba, an island without contiguous access to other geographies, and thus no real effect, may be an exception.
 
The best way to avoid insurgent wars is to not get into them.
 
     
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