Im not sure how closely you have been following US ops in Iraq for example but the under Patereus, the surge post 2006-2007 did an excellent job out of a bloody situation. There are a number of things that I would like to highlight but first I hope both of you actually watched the two videos of about an hour each before making comments.
I think that there is always something to learn. And particularly since the Americans have a fine military machine it is always interesting to learn how they adapt and their plusses and minuses. Particularly fascinating is how they reduce everything to a scientific and statistical approach to have a deterministic method on how to proceed rather than making some empty rhetoric and going iwth the flow. Bush was an aberration in the American military strategy not the norm.
One interesting explanation is the diffrentiation between Insurgents and terrorists and ofcourse the way you tackle that - using counterterrorim or counterinsurgency.
Traditionally people confuse the two because in a way people think terrorists and insurgents are really kind of similar, but Kilcullen and these COIN experts draw a functional distinction. A terrorist group draws its ability to operate, its freedom of movement, in a military sense its center of gravity, from the tightness of its network: Clandestine cells that are secret, that operate together, that have access to resources and conduct terrorist activity. They don't have any social base to work from as support.
Insurgents are not like that. Insurgents draw their freedom of movement and their strength and their ability to operate from their ability to manipulate and mobilize a social base. So the terrorist hides within the broader society. The insurgent manipulates and rides a social wave. The social wave can be because of grieances of the local population or the backlash from the local population and then create that cycle of recrutriment and backlash
So when you talk about COIN and population centric operations, then protecting the population becomes an INTEGRAL part of the military ops. Not some whishy washy HR issue. Protecting the population and working with it is necessary to stop the insurgents frrom intimidating the locals. The population don't have to love you, but they should learn to respect you. And eventually make the population self defending getting the locals involved in security ops.
I particularly liked the description of "chicken hawks"(arm chair startegists who focus on hawkish heavy handed tactics without feild experience) he uses to dismiss using a brutalising way of doing COIN particularly when a forieng country which is a democracy is intervening in another country like the US is doing. In otherwords, brutalising your way through an insurgency is more difficult than going via a population centric COIN strategy. More importantly 80% of COIN have been won. And after looking at what things work, these people have come down with a summary of what worked and what didnt.
What we are looking at in naxal areas, NE and Kashmir is COIN ops. The army is well versed in COIN ops and hence has a good rapport with the locals particularly in Poonch and Rajouri areas. J&K police also has a an alirght COIN force and have worked in partnership with the army.
The CRPF however seems to be ill-trained with COIN startegies. Particularly when you look at naxal areas. Enemy centric stategies will not work because what we are facing in the naxal areas is an insurgency. And brute force will be counter productive which the Americans learnt the hard way. Also the IAF has not been used effectively till now. Itsnot about just bombing insurgents hideouts. IAF plays an important role in logistics and manovering in the hinterland andmoving around troops. So Air force is also an important role in COIN but not in the traditional role of just bombing all of over the place.
There are many other nuggets of wisdom but I strongly suggest going through the videos, atleast the first one to undestand what we are talking about.
A summary from a COIN paper from the brookings institute
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Fi..._davidson/0608_counterinsurgency_davidson.pdf
Principles of American COIN
(1)A long-term political strategy focused on creating a viable, sustainable stability – through building or enhancing local government effectiveness and legitimacy – while marginalizing insurgents and winning over their sympathizers.
(2)An integrated civilian-military effort based on a common assessment of the situation and which synchronizes development, governance and security efforts to support the political strategy.
COIN is said to be 80% political, 20% military. COIN is an operational concept that proceeds along four lines of operation – combat operations, the provision of essential services to the population, the training and equipping of host nation security forces, and the strengthening of the economy and government of the host state.
(3)Population-centric security founded on the presence of security forces (military and/or police), local community partnerships, self-defending populations, and small-unit operations that keep the enemy off balance and make the people feel safe. Counterinsurgency focuses on the population, rather than the enemy, because while the enemy is fluid, the population is fixed.
(4)A strong emphasis on building effective and legitimate local security forces, balanced by the ability to provide direct security to the population (engaging the enemy in direct combat where needed) while these security forces are being built. Effective counterinsurgency requires indigenous security forces that are legitimate in local eyes, operate under the rule of law, and can effectively protect local communities
against insurgents.
(5)A region-wide approach that disrupts insurgent safe havens, controls borders and frontier regions, and undermines terrorist infrastructure in neighboring countries (which requires alliances with regional allies to be most effective). The most favorable environment to the counterinsurgent is an isolated environment.
(6)A Host Nation government, that has a basic level of legitimacy among the population and is willing to make appropriate adjustments to address root causes of the insurgency.
Success in COIN is enhanced when a host nation is willing to examine and recognize local grievances. The basic pre-existing bureaucratic structures of governance should be built on and enhanced by the intervening advisors to build a viable peace based on the rule of law.
Host governments not willing to address grievances or adjust practices based on external assistance will contribute to the problem, not the solution in an insurgency.
