Guerrilla War in Iraq: Some Lessons, Part 2

The early sensitivity among some US defense leaders about using the term “guerrilla war” for what is happening in Iraq almost certainly stems from the knowledge that the term evokes, for many Americans of a certain age, memories of Vietnam. When one thinks of guerrilla wars of the 20th century, most people (in the Western world at least) will think of the French in Algeria (and earlier, in Indochina), the US in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and perhaps Castro in Cuba. In every one of those cases, the insurgents won. Now that General John Abizaid has openly begun talking about a guerrilla war, it is also appropriate to address the question of how one fights such a war, and how one wins.

For the insurgents do not always win a guerrilla war. The British in Malaya after World War II, the US and Philippines forces in the Philippines against the Hukbalahap rebellion, Omani forces against the Dhofar rebels in the 1970s, and Morocco’s war with the POLISARIO in the Western Sahara all demonstrated successful counterinsurgent warfare, and only the last still lingers as a largely diplomatic problem.

To oversimplify some complex history, the difference between the first group of insurgencies and the second is that in the first group, in most cases, the insurgents either initially had, or over time managed to win, the support of the bulk of the population; in the latter group, the counterinsurgent forces were able to isolate, either geograpically or politically, the insurgency.

This is of course oversimplified (particularly in Vietnam, which the US did not fight as a counterinsurgency and which ended as a fully conventional war by 1975), but the fundamental lesson has to be that for an insurgency to succeed against a militarily superior force it needs a broad base of support. That base need not be present at the beginning, but if the insurgents can provoke a response which targets the population generally, they may win popular support as the counterinsurgency tactics make life difficult for the masses.

In Part I of this two-part Dossier, we examined the nature of the insurgency (so far) in Iraq, and as noted then, the insurgency does not seem to enjoy the advantages of most successful insurgencies at this time. But that does not mean that it cannot attain broader popular support if the US and coalition forces misjudge or mishandle their counterinsurgency campaign. This second part examines some of the things that might be done, and the lessons of past insurgencies as to what must be avoided.

It has often been noted that the “principles of warfare” are easily stated and seem self-evident, yet applying them in a given simplication is extremely difficult. Similarly, the principles of counterinsurgency warfare are obvious enough: isolate the guerrilla from the populace, win over the “hearts and minds” of the people, dry up the support of the insurgency, and then eliminate the insurgents without alienating the local population. Successful counterinsurgencies work that way. How to create such a favorable situation for the force fighting the insurgency is a rather different matter.

If we look at the successful insurgencies mentioned in the introduction, we can see in most cases how the insurgents were able to win over popular support and the counterinsurgent force was therefore unable to isolate the guerrillas. In the Algerian case, the French were the colonial power and were essentially fighting against an independence movement which enjoyed broad popular support. In the Indochinese case the situation was further complicated by the fact that the French had been driven from Indochina by Japan, that the West had flirted with Ho Chi Minh’s liberation movement against the Japanese, but that in the end the French colonial regime returned to find an insurgency already in place and already experienced from the war against Japan.

Fidel Castro’s success in Cuba did not involve a major power and was thus a classic case of an insurgency toppling a weak and corrupt regime. The unpopularity of the Batista regime and its corruption combined with the fact that Castro successfully concealed the Marxist-Leninist credentials of his movement until it was in power won it broad popular support at the time, though that dissipated once Castro was in power.

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan is a somewhat different case. The Soviets never had much support in the countryside and were seen as an occupying non-Muslim power in a traditional Muslim country; US and Pakistani support for the insurgents meant that they enjoyed a source of arms and training many insurgencies do not have. Even so, the Soviets controlled all the major cities of Afghanistan up to their withdrawal in 1988, and Kabul itself did not fall until 1992, four years after the last Soviet troops withdrew. That is twice as long as Saigon held out after the Paris Peace agreement, and a reminder that the insurgents won in Afghanistan essentially be wearing down the Soviet will to fight at a moment when the Soviet Union itself was on the brink of collapse.

Vietnam is a still different case. It is often pointed out that the US actually defeated the Viet Cong as a fighting force by about 1968, but then found itself fighting a conventional war against North Vietnamese regulars. But North Vietnamese regulars had been in the field from 1965 onward, and the very first real US battle in the war (Ia Drang) was against North Vietnamese regulars. Vietnam was never a purely guerrilla war, but rather a war fought on the theories of Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap, emphasizing the use of the guerrillas alongside regular forces and with the war evolving from a guerrilla conflict into a conventional one. It was tanks, not guerrillas in jeeps, that rolled through the gates of the Presidential palace in Saigon.

Nor did the US fight Vietnam as a counterinsurgency. Though the Kennedy Administration had been fascinated with counterinsurgency doctrine, most of the war in Vietnam saw the “pacification” side of the issue relegated to the sidelines as the Army fought a war based on conventional forces and tactics and extensive bombing. As with the Soviets in Afghanistan, the war’s end really was won politically as much as militarily, by wearing down the American will to fight.

But what about those insurgencies in which it was the counterinsurgents who won? What was different?

Most combine two major factors leading to success: efforts to win popular support through reforms while trying to isolate the guerrillas from the population.

In Malaya the British were able to combine a movement towards independence and local government with success in isolating the guerrillas geographically. The narrow isthmus of Kra made it impossible for the Communist guerrillas to create supply lines from potential allies in China or Indochina, and the fact that the Malay Communists were almost entirely ethnic Chinese in a majority Malay country also made it easier to isolate them from the majority.

Something similar happened with the Hukbalahap in the Philippines. Though the nature of the country, with many separate islands and jungle cover, made it classic guerrilla country, it was also conducive to isolating the rebels and barring foreign sanctuary or support. The fact that the US granted the Philippines independence at the end of the war against Japan also undercut any anticolonial element in the insurgency, and efforts by the Philippine government to win popular support added to the success.

To take a Middle Eastern example, the Dhofar rebellion against the Sultan of Oman had its roots in the complete lack of development of the country in the regin of Sultan Sa‘id bin Taymur. But the deposition of the Sultan by his son Qabus (Qaboos), the present Sultan, on the eve of full independence as the British prepared to leave the Gulf in 1971 began a period of extensive reform and development in the country which helped isolate the rebels. It was also possible to isolate them militarily with the assistance of British, Iranian and Jordanian troops, and to gradually force the rebels back on the South Yemen border.

The Western Saharan case is a more classic one of simple isolation by military means. Morocco, after some faltering early years in fighting the POLISARIO, hit upon an old North African and French approach of holding only the “Sahara utile” or useful parts of the territory, namely the cities and phosphate mines, and the fish-rich seacoast. By building a network of berms or sand walls, held by the Moroccan Army, the Moroccans essentially left the POLISARIO in possession of empty desert. Although that did not constitute victory (the issue is still a thorny diplomatic one), it essentially resolved the military insurgency and POLISARIO’s remaining strength is almost entirely concentrated on diplomacy.

The Lessons for Iraq
These historical examples are of course instructive, but Iraq is not any of these countries and its population, geography, and modern history are quite different from the other cases. How does the US, the coalition, or any other international force which might replace them, deal with the continuing Ba‘athist insurgency?

There are indications that the Ba ‘athist loyalists may also be enjoying some support from Sunni Islamist movements, both indigenous and from other Arab countries. Even so, that means that the insurgency to date seems clearly limited to the Sunni Arab minority that dominated the old regime. Sunni Kurds are generally hostile to these Arab groups (though there are Islamist Kurds who are strongly anti-American), and the Shi‘ite minority, while not by any means welcoming coalition occupation, will never cede power back to the hated minority that once oppressed them.

On the other hand, any hopes of success on the part of the insurgents probably requires that they win support in other ethnic/religious communities besides their own. A key to defeating the insurgents requires that that not happen.

The analysis provided in Part I of this Dossier suggested that the insurgents have few of the advantages that are usually enjoyed by successful insurgencies: their leadership is on the run; their ideology essentially merely restorationist; their objectives require a broader base of support than they now enjoy; geography gives them few advantages; they lack external support; their timing is questionable (they launched the guerrilla war before the US had begun reducing forces); and so on.

But guerrilla wars are not won solely on the battlefield. If the US fails in Iraq, it will not be because of any intrinsic military genius on the part of the old Ba‘athists, but because they could provide the nucleus for a much broader opposition to continued US occupation.

And that may be the critical word. So long as the US presence is perceived as an occupation, so long as many Iraqis believe that the US came for its own reasons and intends to stay, the insurgents may be able to gain credibility and appeal to a broader base. Many Iraqis are suspicious of US motives, believing that oil and military bases (classic imperial motives) rather than a will to spread democracy, lie behind the occupation. The Iraqi Governing Council named by the US was indeed broadly representative, though the substantial presence of former exile opposition figures backed by the US led to suspicions among many Iraqis that the US intends to impose its own candidates, rather than accede to a democratic choice.

Talk of a five or ten year occupation also adds to the perception that the US is nor really eager to hand over power to an elected Iraqi government. And if the US is perceived as an imperial power, instead of a liberator, then a far larger proportion of the population may be willing to rally against the US presence. The US must not forget that Iraq had a colonial past, that it fought to rid itself of both Turks and British, and that the Iraqis are a sophisticated, well-educated, and independent-minded people who have created functional governments in the past and can do so again. Iraq did not enter history with Saddam Hussein at its head.

The first goal of any counterinsurgency strategy must, then, be to make absolutely clear that the US is not in Iraq to stay, but rather to preside over a transition to Iraqi rule. Other than a commitment to making that rule genuinely democratic and representational, the US should not seek to veto Iraqi choices, except to exclude senior figures of the old regime.

Early on, senior US officials remarked that Iraq’s Shi ‘ite movements seeking an Iranian-style government would not be allowed to create one. Since the Iranian system as currently consituted places restraints on genuine democracy by creating independent, unelected bodies such as the Council of Guardians, that is a a position consistent with seeking a really representative government for Iraq. But it should not then be enlarged to include a prohibition on Shi‘ite clerical movements in politics. In fact, as noted in earlier issues, the Shi‘ite clergy are virtually the only element of Iraqi civil society that has the infrastructure and breadth to provide certain types of services in the Shi‘ite regions, and they are already doing so in many areas (such as the courts).

There are Shi‘ite clerics, both from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Da‘wa party, as well as an independent, on the Council. But there are also Shi‘ite figures such as Ahmad Chalabi, a secularist, who tend to be seen by many Iraqi Shi‘ites as a figure with deeper roots in Washington than in Iraq. This adds to the suspicion that the US is less interested in a freely chosen Iraqi leadership than in imposing its own candidates, though it is too early to judge if that is actually the case.

Another area of concern is the continuing problem of restoring full prewar power, water, fuel and other supplies. These are irritants which make daily life in Iraq difficult, and while they may not be unusual in a post-conflict situation, they are increasingly irritating to the populace four months after Baghdad fell. To some extent they have been exacerbated by the insurgents (through attacks on pipelines for example), but then it is in the insurgents’ interest to undermine confidence in the occupying power.

In short, if the US hopes to be able to isolate, contain, and thus destroy the insurgency, it must make certain that the other communities of Iraq are not drawn into alliance with it. If the Shi‘ites decide that the only way to oust the US from Iraq is through alliance with the devil of the Ba‘athists, that would give the insurgency a breadth that it does not now enjoy.

A related problem is isolating the insurgents within their own “Sunni triangle”, where they do apparently enjoy considerable popular support. The proper approach here would appear to be as follows. First, the US must persuade the Sunni triangle, and the rest of the country, that the old regime is not coming back. The deaths of ‘Udayy and Qusayy Saddam Hussein helped, but it will take the death or capture of Saddam himself to underscore the point. Secondly, the US must persuade the Sunnis, as well as the rest of the country, that the US is genuinely sincere about leaving as soon as Iraq can govern itself. Thirdly, it needs to provide security and services in the Sunni triangle as well as elsewhere, to demonstrate that the insurgents, not the US, are interfering with the comfort of the population.

There are two dangers to avoid. The first is being drawn into a situation where raids and retaliation against the insurgents also target innocent people, destroy their homes, or round up large numbers of people on suspicion. Israel’s policies in the West Bank (collective punishment of whole neighborhoods, for example, for terrorists who lived there) helped spread the resistance and fuel the intifada. One must not, to echo a famous Vietnam alleged quote, destroy a village in order to save it. The insurgents will try to provoke overreactions which win them more support. The US must avoid that.

The second danger to avoid is to let the US become isolated, rather than the insurgents. There is some evidence that US forces are increasingly operating in convoys between garrisoned positions, which suggests that it is the US forces who are under siege. Of course, the US must provide for its own force protection, and so long as attacks continue it must take a defensive posture. But over the long term it begins to look to the population that the US forces are the ones besieged. That gives the insurgents a perceptual advantage.

As the US continues to occupy Iraq, its approach to the insurgency — and to Iraqi attempts at self-government — will likely be critical elements in its ultimate success or failure.

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