Is Western counter-insurgency doctrine less than effective when dealing with jihadis?
Comparisons with other countries where the West is engaged in the training of armed forces facing insurgency can be instructive. Nigeria is a case in point. The country’s struggle against Boko Haram, a fundamentalist Islamic grouping affiliated with the Islamic State, has ebbed and flowed through its north-eastern region since 2009 with only limited military success, despite the protracted training and arming of its state forces by the UK, the US and others. Approaching the presidential election of 2015, a private military company (PMC) called Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment & Protection (STTEP) was contracted by the Nigerian government to raise and train a state military force that could push Boko Haram out of the region and reclaim an overrun swathe of the country as large as Belgium. This seemed to be a tall order, given its limited time, budget and resources. But this is exactly what the company managed to achieve, and in less than five weeks.
STTEP’s chairman, former South African Defence Force officer Eeben Barlow, is adamant that the reasons for the company’s success were centred around its intimate cultural knowledge of the operational theatre (STTEP’s men were all Africans); the application of an aggressive military doctrine known as ‘relentless pursuit’ aimed at the annihilation of the enemy; and the embedding of STTEP instructors alongside the Nigerian soldiers as they operationalised their mission. Barlow insists that capabilities taught by Western defence engagement programmes with the Nigerians had been ineffectual, as were UK counterinsurgency tactics taught to Sierra Leone’s soldiers in the mid-1990’s. Here, Barlow’s previous company Executive Outcomes took the fight to the enemy on behalf of Sierra Leone’s government using minimal resources, and in doing so prevented the near certainty of a genocide in the country’s capital city, Freetown. [emphasis added]
The fact that a mercenary (military contractor) company carried out an effective counter-jihadi strategy isn't the important part. The important part is killing jihadis. Relentlessly.
I've been on this point ever since I studied the Iran-Iraq War. And reflecting that view, a few years ago I wrote:
I mentioned my agreement with focusing on what we do to enemies rather than worrying about what they do to us.
Mind you, this is no excuse to ignore collateral damage to civilians. We must always vocally contrast our care to avoid civilian deaths (while we ruthlessly and relentlessly go after jihadis) with our enemies' eagerness to kill civilians.
And the humiliation aspect is no mistake. No, we didn't humiliate the Germans after World War II. But we did annihilate and humiliate the Nazis who led Germans to ruin.
There is no reason we can't make the same distinction between Moslems and jihadis (not just ISIL), especially given that so many Moslem states are on our side to fight the jihadis--an advantage we did not have as we fought German armies across Africa, Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany itself.
Late in the last century, I tried to get an article published that focused on the need (and ability) to kill "the new warrior class" of fanatics identified early in the 1990s [http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/Articles/1994/peters.htm.] I even quoted Osama bin Laden before he made his name on September 11, 2001.
So let's get to serious killing. The war will be long enough as it is.[*]
After showing weakness with the Biden skedaddle debacle in Afghanistan, we have more need now than ever to get on with killing jihadis with relentless pursuit.
Start now. The job doesn't get easier tomorrow.
Maybe, as the article states, the demonstration that America is unable to simply kill jihadis means mercenaries must be used. Perhaps that is so and America will ramp up the already long visible trend of the return of mercenaries. But the key is killing jihadis rather than trying to persuade them as the ultimate path to victory over jihadis.
But don't forget that if mercenaries are the future of fighting jihadis, the government loses its monopoly on military force to defend America.
Heck, I compiled a lot of posts on that subject, with commentary, which is available for just 99 cents!
*I clearly messed up the hyperlink in the original post and for this post simply put it in brackets above to sort of fix it.
