MESSY AND SLOW:

Professor Nagl's War (PETER MAASS, 1/11/04, NY Times Magazine)

Maj. John Nagl approaches war pragmatically and philosophically, as a soldier and a scholar. He graduated close to the top of his West Point class in 1988 and was selected as a Rhodes scholar. He studied international relations at Oxford for two years, then returned to military duty just in time to take command of a tank platoon during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, earning a Bronze Star for his efforts. After the war, he went back to England and earned his Ph.D. from St. Antony's College, the leading school of foreign affairs at Oxford. While many military scholars were focusing on peacekeeping or the impact of high-tech weaponry, Nagl was drawn to a topic much less discussed in the 1990's: counterinsurgency.

At Oxford, he immersed himself in the classic texts of guerrilla warfare. There are different schools of thought, but almost every work in the canon imparts the message that counterinsurgency is one of the hardest types of warfare to wage. Nagl read ''Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice,'' by Col. C.E. Callwell, a British officer who in 1896 warned of ''protracted, thankless, invertebrate war'' in guerrilla terrain. Nagl also read ''Small Wars Manual,'' published in 1940 by the United States Marine Corps, which cautions: ''Every detachment representing a tempting target will be harassed or attacked. The population will be honeycombed with hostile sympathizers.''

The more Nagl read, the more he understood the historical challenge of insurgency. Julius Caesar complained that his legions had trouble subduing the roving Britons because his men ''were little suited to this kind of enemy.'' In the early 1800's, Carl von Clausewitz wrote of ''people's wars'' in which ''the element of resistance will exist everywhere and nowhere.'' The book that most forcefully captured Nagl's imagination was written by T.E. Lawrence, popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, the British officer who, during World War I, led Arab fighters against the Turkish rulers in the Middle East and described the campaign (taking liberties with the facts) in his counterinsurgency classic, ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom.''

Lawrence's is one of the few books in the canon written from the point of view of the insurgent. (Another is Mao Zedong's ''On Guerrilla Warfare.'') In a near-hallucinatory state, suffering from dysentery and lying in a tent, Lawrence realized the key to defeating the Turkish Army. ''Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head,'' he wrote. Lawrence's guerrillas, by contrast, ''might be a vapour.'' For the Turks, he concluded, ''war upon rebellion was messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.''

In his own research, Nagl focused on two modern insurgencies in Asia. In Malaya in the 1950's, the British successfully suppressed a Communist revolt (comprised mostly of ethnic Chinese) by generally steering clear of excessive force and instituting a ''hearts and minds'' campaign to strip the insurgents of public sympathy. In Vietnam in the 1960's and 1970's, the United States military took a different approach and failed. The Americans resorted to indiscriminate firepower and showed little concern for its effect on the civilian population. Comparing the two efforts, Nagl demonstrated that a key issue for a counterinsurgent army is to calibrate correctly the amount of lethal force necessary to do the job with the minimum amount of nasty, counterproductive side effects. Even if using force with restraint meant the mission would take more time or reduce the level of force protection, it was still an indispensable step: a successful counterinsurgency took care and patience. When Nagl's doctoral thesis, ''Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam,'' was published in 2002, it carried the subtitle ''Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife.''

Nagl's scholarship helped earn him a post as a professor at West Point. But when I met him last month, he was testing his theories far from the classroom. Nagl is now the third in command of a tank battalion in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, which extends north and west of Baghdad. The counterinsurgency expert is, for the first time in his life, practicing counterinsurgency.

Over the course of two weeks I accompanied Nagl as he did everything from overseeing raids to detaining Iraqis, meeting local sheiks, doling out grants to schools, attending a memorial service for a fallen soldier, picking up bits of human flesh after a car-bomb attack, playing ultimate Frisbee with fellow soldiers and dodging rocks and bullets that Iraqis were firing at him and his soldiers. In the first of many discussions we had, I described him as an expert in counterinsurgency, and this made him laugh.
''The 'expert' thing just kills me,'' he said. ''I thought I understood something about counterinsurgency, until I started doing it.'' [...]

The formation of ''indigenous'' forces, as they are called, is considered a paramount element of successful counterinsurgency. In his book, Nagl emphasizes that one of the many shortcomings of American policy in Vietnam was America's inability to build a capable South Vietnamese fighting force. ''Vietnamization,'' when it finally came along in 1969, was too little, too late. During one of our discussions, Nagl explained the use of Iraqi forces as a matter of efficacy and necessity.

''There are lots of reasons why Iraqis are going to be better at it than we are,'' he said. ''They know who is supposed to be where and what they are supposed to be doing. They can see patterns of behavior that are irregular in a way that our untrained eye cannot. They can talk to everybody in a way that we cannot.''

A patchwork of Iraqi security forces is being created. In addition to the beleaguered police, there are, most notably, the new Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, or I.C.D.C. The first battalion of the new Iraqi Army went through a nine-week training course late last year, but within two months of its graduation, nearly half of the battalion's 700 soldiers had quit because their pay, about $60 a month, was too low. Although pay scales are now being reviewed, the army remains embryonic and is unlikely to assume significant counterinsurgency missions for some time. The I.C.D.C., on the other hand, already numbers more than 10,000 and is regularly engaged in joint patrols with American troops. Still, members of the I.C.D.C. appear far from ready to take over the hard-core missions being carried out by the occupation force.
Last month, I went to a base in Balad, about 50 miles from Camp Manhattan, where the Fourth Infantry Division's First Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment, was training a class of about 50 I.C.D.C. recruits. Each course takes two weeks, the first week in the classroom and the second week in the field. The battalion had already trained three classes, but not without hitches. The first commander and deputy commander of the I.C.D.C. in the area were fired after it emerged that they were extorting kickbacks from the recruits. One recruit was found to be trying to organize other recruits into an anti-American cell that would use its training to mount attacks against the occupation force; he was thrown into prison. ''In every class there are people we're concerned about,'' an American officer told me. ''There are people in the I.C.D.C. now who we're concerned about.''

The classroom was situated in a concrete airplane hangar in which Iraqi and American flags hung from the ceiling. The recruits, wearing red baseball caps with ''I.C.D.C.'' printed in English and Arabic, ranged in age from their late teens to their mid-40's. Because the American trainers were having a hard time recalling the recruits' Arabic names, the Iraqis were given English nicknames. (One of the recruits, a pudgy Iraqi in his 20's, was called Flounder, after the character in the movie ''Animal House.'') When I visited, they were being trained to say, in English, ''Raise your hands!'' and ''Drop your weapon!'' -- a strange choice in a country where few people speak English.
The recruits came from local villages, and most of them had joined the I.C.D.C. for two reasons: because they wanted better security and because they needed the money. When the classes started in October, the first group of recruits faced harassment from other locals -- sometimes even from family members -- who threatened to kill them if they worked with the Americans. According to Lt. Col. Aubrey Garner, the battalion commander, the quality of recruits has increased and threats against them have diminished as the local population realizes the money is useful and the Americans are not going to leave tomorrow. Yet Garner harbors no illusions about his I.C.D.C. recruits.

''We had this idea that we could train them and they could start independent operations quickly,'' he said. ''But what we learned is that a two-week training regimen isn't going to turn them into soldiers like we have.''

Because the I.C.D.C. has been so slow to mature, American officials decided in December to form a special I.C.D.C. battalion composed of veteran fighters from the militias of the five major Iraqi political groups. This special battalion is intended as a strike force of determined soldiers who will focus on capturing or eliminating insurgents. The plan drew instant criticism from some Iraqis who say they believe the new battalion will focus not on fighting the insurgency but on eliminating the enemies of their political patrons. Al-Yawar, the Sunni tribal leader, is one of the plan's harshest critics.

''It means civil war in the future,'' he said. ''If they do this, there will definitely be warlords.''

The creation of a strong security force can backfire in unexpected ways. In the Middle East, as in most of the third world, security forces do not behave terribly well. In Egypt, to take just one example, the army and other security forces have an abysmal human rights record. True, the American military has more of a guiding hand in Iraq, but that doesn't guarantee much. The American-trained and -equipped Salvadoran Army, which was an effective fighting force in the 1980's in the sense that its soldiers were excellent killers, eliminated not only the leftist rebels who were its official enemies but large numbers of ordinary civilians and political activists who were not bearing arms. Moreover, in countries that lack strong political leaders -- and Iraq today is such a country -- strong military leaders have a habit of exercising political control in a fashion that does not favor democratic development or political reconciliation.

For these reasons, it seems unlikely that Nagl and soldiers like him will soon be able to cede their role as the principal counterinsurgency force in Iraq. And while they wait, their work will probably not get any easier. [...]

The insurgency has weaknesses. Its ranks are composed of ex-Baathists, Islamists, small numbers of foreign fighters, criminals and dirt-poor men who agree to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at a passing convoy for $500. It is not cohesive. Nor does it have a positive vision, or any vision, of how Iraq should be governed if the occupiers are driven out. Particularly with the capture of Saddam Hussein and close associates of his, whatever central leadership may have existed has been badly crippled. The American military is hoping that a headless insurgency with dwindling finances will melt away under the pressure of continued raids and precise airstrikes.

Yet the insurgency's weaknesses are, in a looking-glass fashion, also its strengths. A senior adviser to Gen. John Abizaid, the head of Central Command, advised me to read an article in the winter issue of The Washington Quarterly by Steven Metz [PDF], the director of research at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute. Metz is highly regarded in military circles. In the 1990's he presciently warned that insurgencies would soon return to challenge the United States.

In his article, Metz wrote that disunity among the Iraqi insurgents is not as much of a disadvantage as it might seem: ''Unifying the various strands of the Iraqi insurgency behind any one strategy or objective, at least in the short term, will certainly be difficult if not impossible. Yet, this same complexity means that quashing the insurgency will be just as difficult or impossible.'' Metz also noted that insurgencies, like those in Colombia and Sierra Leone, often use money to attract fighters, rather than ideology.

In the end, it is not the guile or ingenuity of the insurgents that will determine whether they succeed -- their hit-and-run tactics are similar to those seen by Julius Caesar, after all, and they employ an attritional strategy that guerrillas have used for centuries. Instead, the deciding factor will be the guile and ingenuity of the counterinsurgents. If the history of counterinsurgency demonstrates anything, it is that Nagl and officers like him will have to be wily, tenacious and perhaps a little lucky to win. In Iraq today, it would not be unreasonable to consider the American counterinsurgents -- though they are equipped with enough firepower to destroy every building in Iraq and enough technology to listen to any whispered conversation -- the underdogs.

Even if the insurgency is kept at a low boil, what will happen when an interim government takes control of Iraq in July? Will the government have enough legitimacy? If American forces take a back seat to Iraqi security forces, as they hope to do, will fighting break out among Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds? Will the security forces be strong enough to keep order? Or will they be so strong that they turn Iraq into a dictatorship that exterminates insurgents and civilians alike?

These are risks that Nagl, at least, is willing to run. When I asked, one morning, whether the war was worth its human and financial costs, he described the goal of the occupation as freedom for blighted Iraq. He concluded by enthusiastically using a four-letter word that soldiers utter more frequently than ''the'' or ''and,'' followed by, ''yeah, it's worth it.''

Long but worthwhile profile that makes no bones about how hard it will be to wipe out the Sunni insurgency. Terri Gross interviewd the author, Peter Maass, on Fresh Air today--that's worth a listen too.

MORE:
-ESSAY: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (John A. Nagl, Spring 1999, World Affairs)
-AUDIO INTERVIEW: Journalist Peter Maass (Fresh Air, January 13, 2004)
-Going in small in Afghanistan.: A Monitor reporter joins with small teams of US troops trying to
distance border villagers from insurgents in a key battle zone in the war on terror. (Ann Scott Tyson, 1/14/03, Christian Science Monitor

The 10th Mountain Division mission into uncharted territory of Paktika Province illustrates a stark dilemma facing US forces as they push deeper into Afghanistan's lawless borderlands: How to persuade Afghans to risk their lives and divulge guerrilla whereabouts in return for a promise of security and development.

"The citizens here have had one choice: We're with the Al Qaeda, or we're dead," says Lt. Col. Mike Howard, the top US commander in Paktika. Villagers in the border districts of Gomal, Barmal, and Gayan are "completely ungoverned" and easily bribed or forced to supply guerrillas with food, shelter, and proxy fighters, he says. "Our challenge is to give them [another] choice."

To do this, US ground troops are expanding their presence in Paktika and other troubled regions of eastern and southern Afghanistan, policing more widely and aggressively. The US strategy means shifting away from large-scale sweeps and slow, top-down planning ill-suited to fighting insurgents, some officers say. Instead, smaller, more agile units - including Special Forces teams linked with Afghan militia - are branching out to win over villagers and flush out guerrillas. [...]

To elicit information, the Americans offer the villagers immediate benefits: On-the-spot medical treatment, an invitation to a border clinic at Shkin, and free blankets and radios. For useful intelligence, the reward is often cash. Cooperation, by fostering security, will enable international aid groups to move in, they stress.

"We can help this area even more" than Shkin, which has gained a new clinic, a well, and businesses, the soldier says.

The villagers' reaction in this wheat- and corn-farming community is ambiguous. "Under the Taliban, things here were peaceful and good. Now, it is also good," says a tribesman named Maraha, as his neighbors squabble over the blankets. "We just want help," he says, adding that the village has no doctor and the local school was burned down.

This passive outlook bolsters the impression of US soldiers that Paktika villagers, whipsawed by decades of war, "will help whoever is in town at the moment," says platoon leader Lt. Bob Stone.

The tribal leader, Haji Sarver, blames any violence in the area on "people coming from Pakistan." He acknowledges, however, that many residents of the Gomal area "live in both Afghanistan and Pakistan."

"That's the reason these people are unbelievable," an Afghan interpreter tells me bluntly in English.

The mistrust goes both ways, however. Villagers are unsure when or if the Americans will return. A string of vehicle breakdowns, including a broken Humvee sling-loaded by helicopter down the road, underscores that US forces can police here only so often.

"If these villagers tell us something, maybe people will come the next day and kill them. Everyone is afraid," says Hamid, still limping slightly from his Khan Pass wound.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 13, 2004 07:56 PM