Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat

Introduction to the Paperback Edition: A New Way Forward

In 2005, when we finished the manuscript for the hardcover edition of Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, the United States was just starting to come to grips with the complexities of a post-9/11 international security environment that presented an array of new security challenges. This complicated new world included hostile and weak states, as well as non-state armed groups that proved themselves willing and able to employ a range of deadly asymmetrical and irregular warfare tactics against the U.S. and its allies. As argued in the hardcover edition, the strategic challenges many of these groups pose for the U.S. and other states are in the first instance political challenges. Their primary objective is not to destroy the military forces of their state adversaries or to capture territory, but rather to capture legitimacy or control over local populations. Doing so gives armed groups the opportunity to achieve their political, economic, or ideational goals.

This book was written to fill a major gap in knowledge about armed groups. In essence, our theoretical approach was based on the proposition that before strategies can be devised to counter these non-state actors, one must first be able to accurately and effectively assess them. The six part framework in the book provides one such means for doing so. It discusses how armed groups fight; their motivations for fighting; the types of operations they conduct; their organization and command and control; the way they gather and use intelligence; and the role of outside actors in supporting their activities.

The armed groups profiled—from the Mujahideen and later Taliban/al Qaeda irregular forces in Afghanistan to the Sunni insurgents, Shia militias, and external Salafi Jihadis in Iraq—all have one thing in common. They use irregular warfare (IW) strategies and seek to employ all means, including catastrophic ones, to undermine the legitimacy and erode the will and influence of their state adversaries. In order to meet the challenges emerging from the changing nature of warfare, the strategies employed by states will have to change. Traditional methods associated with a state-centric approach must be broadened. The U.S. and other state actors must develop integrated political, economic, and irregular military responses that rely on an international and domestic whole of government approach, utilizing all available instruments of statecraft to address the major strategic challenges of non-state armed groups.

This new paperback edition of Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat provides an opportunity to revisit the complex security challenges covered in the hardcover edition and assess how successfully the U.S. and its allies have adapted to challenges posed by armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In doing so, we also note that since the completion of the book in 2005, there have been several significant changes in three of our case studies: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. These changes have manifested themselves both in the way that states have responded to the irregular warfare challenges of armed groups, and in the nature and level of the threat posed by armed groups to local, regional, and even global security.

This pattern of interaction and adaptation—of threat, response, and changing threat—between states and armed groups has had mixed outcomes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. On the one hand, the future looks a little brighter in Iraq. Several factors account for this, including the emergence of a new armed group, the Sons of Iraq (associated with the Anbar Awakening); changes in the Iraqi government; new U.S. doctrine and strategies, and a U.S. interagency response effort spearheaded by the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) and the Army. On the other hand, armed groups continue to destabilize Afghanistan and Somalia, and policymakers and strategists in the U.S. and abroad have been hard pressed to execute effective security, reconstruction, and reform efforts vital for defeating the armed groups in these regions.

Adapting to Armed Groups and Irregular Warfare: First Steps

We begin by highlighting the evolving civilian and military responses to the threats posed by armed groups. In the United States, the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense under Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has sought to significantly alter the way in which the American military thinks about armed groups and irregular warfare.¹ One significant manifestation of this in the Pentagon is the elevation in importance of irregular warfare as evidenced by Defense Directive 3000.07 (DODD 3000.07) issued on December 1, 2008.

In Department of Defense parlance, 3000.07 asserts that IW is as strategically important as traditional warfare, and that the Department of Defense must be prepared to conduct IW in de pen dently of, or in combination with, traditional warfare.² In other words, the Secretary of Defense has moved irregular warfare from a backburner issue to one that is front and center on the U.S. national security agenda. In doing so, Defense Secretary Gates has acknowledged that the U.S. needs to transform its approach to fighting and prevailing in the violent struggles that, since 9/11, it has engaged in against multiple armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

This 2008 move to change how the American military thinks about irregular warfare and armed groups is an outgrowth of earlier efforts, which began with the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review’s (QDR) acknowledgment that the U.S. was not likely to be embroiled in a conventional war in the near term. Instead, the U.S. was and would continue to be engaged in a long war, a war that is irregular in its nature, in which the adversaries included dispersed, global terrorist networks.³ To meet these new challenges, U.S. military forces must prepare to address irregular warfare … in which enemy combatants are not regular military forces of nation-states.⁴

The QDR’s admonishment that the Pentagon must pay greater attention to irregular warfare was addressed in the new Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) released by the Army and Marine Corps in December 2006. That field manual, the first of its kind in more than twenty years, focused on how to fight today’s irregular wars. It began by acknowledging that counterinsurgency operations often start badly because an accurate assessment of a burgeoning insurgency is neglected, and because of the false belief that armies trained to win large conventional wars are automatically prepared to win small, unconventional ones.⁵ The U.S. strategy in Iraq, following the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, is illustrative of these two pitfalls. To succeed in irregular warfare, FM 3-24 indicates, it is necessary for military forces, and their civilian counterparts,⁶ to overcome these institutional impediments and to adapt more quickly than the insurgents to the changing nature of the fight.⁷

Taken together, the strategic and doctrinal changes embodied in 3000.07, the 2006 QDR, and FM 3-24, among a number of other important steps, all reflect noteworthy adaptations and new thinking on how U.S. forces and those of its allies can more effectively meet the challenges of the transnational armed groups they are fighting around the world. However, the proof of whether these initial changes are effective must be determined on the ground. These changes all sound good in theory, but how have they worked out in practice?

Iraq: Encouraging Developments

In 2009, the impact of these Defense Department changes is evident in that conflict which looked least hopeful in 2005—Iraq. When we finished the book, Iraq had just undergone its first national elections and was sinking rapidly into two bloody wars. One was in Anbar Province, where al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had combined with homegrown Jihadis, former Baathists, and local tribes to pit their forces against those of the U.S. Marine Corps. In 2003, ill-conceived American policies had facilitated the formation of this coalition of armed groups. These policies included de-Baathification, cashiering of the Iraqi military, and not providing Anbar’s Sunni population with the resources and support that would have assuaged their great sense of loss and apocalyptic belief that the night of the long knives was coming at the hands of the Shia, now in power in Baghdad.

Then there was the second, primarily sectarian war, which was raging on the streets of major cities such as Baghdad, where Sunni and Shia populations lived in close proximity to one another. In such areas, militias and death squads engaged in a no-holds-barred bloodbath to gain political control.

In the first of these internal wars, in Anbar, the Marine Corps turned the situation around. While the Sunni triangle in general and Al Anbar Province in particular were ground zero for a bruising insurgency in 2004 through 2006, Marines were able to reassess, change their strategy, and respond effectively, so that by 2007 they had reversed the situation.

A key element of this transformation was Marine engagement with the Sunni tribes—the Anbar Awakening—that had become hostile to their al Qaeda partner in the insurgency. This was due to al Qaeda’s attempt to impose their extreme ideology on the population. In particular, al Qaeda had employed a brutal murder and intimidation campaign in Anbar from 2004 to 2006 that targeted important sheikhs and their kin. However, rather than coercing the sheikhs and their tribes, these brutal mea sures had the opposite effect, as did the imposition of al Qaeda ideology. That ideology is based on a strict and austere interpretation of Islamic law, which differs significantly from the moderate approach Anbar Sunnis follow.

These actions by AQI caused the sheikhs and their tribal followers to abandon the insurgency and align with the Marines. As a result, by mid-2007 the major fighting was over and the Marines could transition to Stability and Support Operations (SASO). A new era of cooperation dawned between the tribes of Anbar and the U.S. military, and the violence decreased significantly as a result. The Sunni tribes opted out of the armed struggle and entered the political arena; however, the outcome of this transition remains uncertain.

With respect to the second war, by the early days of 2006 it seemed that Shia and Sunni militias were poised to tear the very fabric of Iraqi society apart. The deliberate attack on the Shi’a Al Askari, or Golden Mosque, in Samarra by Sunni extremists as part of an escalation in sectarian violence seemed destined to transform the already bloody conflict into an outright civil war. Indeed, as a reflection of the country’s uncertain future, we made the title of our chapter on Iraq a question: From Dictatorship to Democracy?

In response to the sectarian conflict, the new counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine in FM 3-24 has been used to good effect in conjunction with a number of other important changes, including an increase in the size of the U.S. force, termed The Surge, and has fostered a shift in tactics from kill and capture to population security. We must also emphasize the importance of new senior military leadership. Much has already been written about the role General David Petraeus played in fostering change in the course of the Iraq War.⁸ We agree that he made a key difference. Collectively, these developments led to significant changes in the course of the sectarian war.

In sum, over the last four years the security situation in Iraq has shifted from a predominantly armed struggle to a political one. That is not to say, of course, that the situation cannot be reversed. Splinter groups and those committed to horrific violence still persist in carrying out reckless attacks. However, the longer Iraqis invest in the political struggle and the political process, the harder it will be to go back to the armed conflict of 2004–2007.

Afghanistan: Stalemate and Quagmire?

The second case study in which we examined violent irregular conflict involving U.S. forces and armed groups was in Afghanistan. When we completed this book in 2005, the Taliban and al Qaeda had been driven into the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border regions. There they managed not only to survive but also to regroup and continue the fight. Inside Afghanistan, two military operations were underway to stabilize the country. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), led by the United States, was principally a combat operation that focused on fighting and defeating Taliban and al Qaeda forces crossing the border from their sanctuary in Pakistan to attack targets in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan.

The second operation, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was created by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1386 on December 20, 2001. Initially under the command of the U.S., NATO took over ISAF in August 2003. The ISAF mission focuses on providing security and law and order; promoting governance and development; assisting in reform of the justice system; training national police and army forces; and assisting with local efforts to contend with the narcotics industry. By 2009, the UN had extended the ISAF area of operations to all geographical sections of Afghanistan. NATO’s 26 member nations provide the core of ISAF’s 56,000 troops. The largest components of that force are from the following members: the U.S.—24,000; the United Kingdom—8,300; Germany—3,400; Canada—2,800; France—2,700; Italy—2,300; the Netherlands—1,800; and Poland—1,500.

Since 2005, things have gone from bad to worse in Afghanistan. New challenges have emerged from the resurgence of not just the Taliban but also the neo-Taliban, located in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qaeda has likewise been able to recreate itself in the sanctuary of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area. Since the end of 2006, the attacks perpetrated by these armed groups have increased in number and intensity, and they have adopted tactics similar to those used extensively in Iraq, including suicide operations and IED attacks.

If 2007 was the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since 2001, as reported by the Afghanistan Study Group,⁹ 2008 was even deadlier for OEF and ISAF forces. Not only did the number of attacks against them increase but so did their casualties. Moreover, the Taliban and al Qaeda were also escalating operations that killed large numbers of noncombatants. Illustrative was the IED that killed nearly 100 civilians and policemen near Kandahar in the winter of 2008. Outside observers such as Tom Koenigs, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan, noted a dramatic rise in the number of suicide attacks in the southern half of Afghanistan, which have been attributed to returning Al Qaeda advisors.¹⁰

In effect, as of 2009 the conflict zone has widened to encompass not just Afghanistan but the border provinces of Pakistan, including the FATA, the North-West Frontier Province, and the Swat Valley. Within this secure sanctuary, Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, along with al Qaeda, increasingly work together to launch attacks across the border.

These developments have greatly affected the cohesion and effectiveness of ISAF. The mission has become increasingly divisive for NATO members, several of which find themselves facing escalating Taliban and al Qaeda attacks for which they are not prepared. The underlying reason for this lack of commitment on the part of many NATO members has to do with divergent views over whether, and if so to what extent, Afghanistan should be perceived as a major threat to their security. Not all see Afghanistan as a test of the alliance’s will to stand up to the dangers of international terrorism. As a result, only six NATO members have agreed not to place restrictions on their troops such that, as of 2009, the U.S., British, Canadian, French, Dutch, and Danish forces bear the brunt of the most dangerous combat tasks. In contrast, Germany wants to focus on reconstruction, development, and security force training, leaving the fighting to other members of ISAF, and German troops are prohibited from conducting extended patrols in which they might end up in combat with the Taliban. Other alliance members likewise attach various limitations on where and how their troops may be used, most importantly refusing to allow them to engage in fighting.

In conclusion, over the last four years armed groups that now span the Afghan-Pakistan border have established networks and cooperative relationships among themselves and with various other regional actors. The conflict in Afghanistan has devolved into a complex, protracted, irregular war that the U.S. did not anticipate and NATO is not prepared to fight. The Afghanistan mission is a crucial test of whether the Atlantic allies have the political will and capabilities needed to combat armed groups.

The specter of a resurgent neo-Taliban and al Qaeda threatening the survival of Afghanistan and Pakistan has confronted President Obama with his first major national security crisis. To address a conflict that has morphed into a regional conflagration, he has taken two immediate steps, while also ordering a comprehensive review of U.S. and NATO strategy and operations. The first of these initial moves involved the announcement on February 17, 2009 that the administration was adding some 17,000 new U.S. troops to its forces in Afghanistan. They were earmarked for the southern region of the country where the fighting is heaviest.

Next, there was an abrupt change in the U.S. command structure in Afghanistan. On May 11, Defense Secretary Gates announced that he had requested the resignation of General David D. McKiernan. In his place he nominated Lt. General Stanley A. McChrystal, who has played a key supporting role in the improving situation in Iraq. Gates gave the following rationale for such a drastic step: We have a new strategy, a new mission, and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership is also needed.¹¹

What that new strategy will entail remains to be determined at the time of this writing. There is considerable talk of a much broader approach than that of the Bush administration. This would entail increasing the number of actors involved beyond the Karzai government, NATO, the UN, and Pakistan. Potential regional partners in this new strategy include Iran, India, Russia, and China. Likewise, there has been discussion of the allies reaching out to moderate Taliban forces, such as they are, to explore a cease-fire and the possibility of an Afghan coalition government.

There is a clear logic to the changes proposed by the Obama administration given the fact that seven years into the conflict the situation on the ground has turned into a stalemate. In such situations, external powers will, over time, come to see themselves as being caught up in a costly, protracted war with few decisive victories to assuage their own domestic audiences—a quagmire of sorts. The risk for Afghanistan is that now the international community may become increasingly fatigued, distracted by new problems, and, as several past cases illustrate, may eventually withdraw in defeat.

Somali Devolution and Piracy in the Horn of Africa

Finally, we should note briefly that the security challenges posed by armed groups in Somalia and the Horn of Africa persist and that, sadly, there is little good news here. Indeed, despite the efforts of its neighbors, Ethiopia and Kenya, and U.S. military advisors in the region, Somalia has remained the quintessential failed state. In fact, two new destabilizing elements have emerged in Somalia: one, the headline-grabbing pirate groups; and two, Somali jihadi groups such as the Islamic Courts Union.

The first of these developments, pirates operating off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, present a unique challenge to regional stability for several reasons. According to the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy database, attacks on merchant vessels off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden have been on the rise since 2006, and millions of dollars worth of ransoms have been paid for the return of hijacked cargo and crews.¹² Although we did not discuss piracy at length in the original edition of this book, it is important to local, regional, and even international security for two reasons. First, the Somali pirate crews are highly organized, using flotillas of mother ships and skiffs to locate likely targets, and they are proving very difficult to deter, despite a high-profile and highly successful hostage rescue by U.S. Navy Seals in spring 2009. As the attacks on passenger ships and oil tankers alike have shown, this highly lucrative way of life is a significant maritime security threat and is not going away anytime soon.

Second, and even more troubling, there is speculation about the nexus between Somali pirates and violent religious extremists such as al Qaeda. This is fueled in part by the rise to power of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in May 2006. Although evidence of an al Qaeda link to the pirates remains tenuous, the free flow of money, goods, and people provided by the pirates certainly makes them appealing conduits for violent extremists who are looking for ways to move personnel and resources across the Gulf of Aden and into the Horn of Africa undetected. This is not surprising; since the end of the Cold War such cooperation between diverse types of armed groups has become an increasingly common phenomenon.

The second new challenge to Somali stability emerged in 2006 in the form of the Islamic Courts Union. This loose coalition of Islamist factions briefly swept into Mogadishu with the promise of restoring Islamic law (Sharia) and order, after more than a decade of failed attempts to create a stable central government. Although the Somali government, with significant assistance from Ethiopian troops (encouraged and supported by the U.S.), was able to drive the ICU from Mogadishu in 2007, the ICU has proved tenacious, particularly in the southern regions around Mogadishu. Much like the original Afghan Taliban, the ICU’s appeal to local sub-clans comes from its ability to provide stability and security in areas where there has been little of either for de cades. However, the price for this stability is not just the imposition of harsh punishments for such indiscretions as watching the Somali soccer team on TV; yet more violence and an international terror dimension are part of the package. For example, the al Shabab group, an armed group that affiliates itself with the ICU and uses ruthless violence to achieve its goals, has asserted that it will violently oppose any Somali government that refuses the imposition of its ideology on Somalia. Moreover, the role of outside actors looms large in the future of Somalia, with Osama Bin Laden urging violent jihadists to join the ICU’s cause and overthrow the Somali government.¹³

There is no easy solution to the instability and insecurity created by the sea-based pirates and the land-based militias. However, examining them helps to clarify the clear and present danger that armed groups present to states at the internal, regional, and international level, and how difficult they are to defeat.

Institutionalizing the Study of Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups

In closing, it is important to note that since the hardcover edition of this book was published, important initiatives have been implemented to promote the systematic research into, and teaching of, the armed group phenomenon, particularly in the Professional Military Education colleges and schools in the United States.

The first of these initiatives began in 2005 when the Washington, D.C.-based National Strategy Information Center (NSIC) commenced a three-year project to develop armed group curricula and to prepare PME faculty to teach the subject in the nation’s professional military schools.¹⁴ This private sector effort, initiated by Dr. Roy Godson and Dr. Richard Shultz and funded exclusively by philanthropic foundations, was the beginning of PME curriculum transformation. As of the end of 2008, NSIC’s project has made significant gains with respect to: 1) designing a full-length course on armed groups and irregular warfare for the PME schools and their counterparts in related U.S. government agencies; and 2) beginning to integrate the subject matter of that course into the curriculum of those institutions through two faculty development workshops. Attended by over fifty faculty members, the workshops have sought to enhance and deepen participants’ understanding of the armed group phenomenon and approaches for meeting its challenges, and to examine ways to refine and adapt the syllabus so that it can be taught in the curriculum of their home institutions.

To institutionalize teaching about armed groups and irregular warfare in the PME system, NSIC assisted the Strategy and Policy Department of the Naval War College, with the full support and authorization of the NWC leadership, to establish a Center on Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG) at the Naval War College. Dr. Andrea Dew is a founding co-director of CIWAG, together with Dr. Marc A. Genest, who is also the Forrest Sherman Professor of Public Diplomacy in the Strategy and Policy Department at the U.S. Naval War College. The long-term objective of CIWAG, as stated in its charter, is to promote and support research and teaching on irregular warfare and armed groups, including case study development; to disseminate cutting edge analysis via symposia and workshops, providing a forum for dialogue at the Naval War College between U.S. and international practitioners and scholars; and to expand outreach and networking activities to establish and sustain a community of interest devoted to the study and teaching of irregular warfare and armed groups.

Since the publication of Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat in 2006, it has become increasingly clear that the international security environment of the twenty-first century will be characterized by a burgeoning array of armed groups employing irregular warfare strategies to erode the will and influence and undermine the legitimacy of state actors. Analyzing irregular warfare as the strategy of choice of armed groups is the essential starting point if effective means are to be developed to cope with these major strategic challenges. We hope that this book will continue to be a useful starting point for doing so.

Introduction to the Paperback Edition: A New Way Forward

1.   The 2008 DOD directive defines irregular warfare as: A violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population(s). Irregular warfare favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capacities, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will. Department of Defense Directive, Number 3000.07, December 1, 2008, 1 (accessed April 26, 2009); available from http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300007p.pdf. Also see Robert Gates, A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age, Foreign Affairs (January/February 2009).

2.   DODD 3000.07

3.   Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review, 2006, 1 (accessed April 10, 2009); available from http://www.defenselink.mil/qdr/report/Report20060203.pdf.

4.   Ibid.

5.   Department of Defense, Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, December 16, 2006, ix (last accessed April 26, 2009); available from http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/Repository/Materials/COIN-FM3-24.pdf.

6.   The irregular warfare challenges emerging from armed groups and various kinds of states and political movements necessitate an integrated approach in which military and nonmilitary and development and civil society tools are employed in a synergistic manner. This approach is needed because non-state and state actors employ a range of irregular warfare techniques to gain control over local populations by eroding the power, influence, and will of their state adversaries. While the Department of Defense, as this section highlights, has taken important steps to address these irregular challenges, the civilian agencies of the U.S. government have been slower to adapt.

7.   DOD, Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24.

8.   See Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008. (New York: Penguin Press, 2009) and David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

9.   Revitalizing our Efforts, Rethinking our Strategies, Report of the Afghanistan Study Group, Center for the Study of the Presidency (January 30, 2008).

10.   Tom Koenigs, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan, UN Mission report, 2007; available from http://www.unama-afg.org/docs/_UN-Docs/UNAMA%20-%20SUICIDE%20ATTACKS%20STUDY%20-%20SEPT%209th%202007.pdf

11.   Ann Scott Tyson, Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Fired, Washington Post (May 12, 2009).

12.   For statistics on maritime piracy, see reports from The International Chamber of Commerce International Bureau at http://www.icc-ccs.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=12.

13.   See, for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7952310.stm, March 19, 2009 (accessed May 22, 2009).

14.   Throughout its forty-three-year history, the National Strategy Information Center has been at the forefront of innovating and institutionalizing education on major dimensions of security and intelligence studies. In the 1960s, NSIC, in cooperation with New York University and others, pioneered university education on security studies. In four-week seminars, hundreds of young faculty members were introduced to the subject matter of security studies. Subsequently, the alumni of these programs established courses and university security studies programs and centers. In 1979, NSIC created the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence (CSI). The Consortium was the first nongovernmental center to conduct research on effective intelligence practices and U.S. requirements. During the 1980s and early 1990s, this effort resulted in the eight-volume series Intelligence Requirements. Through the 1980s, CSI also convened weeklong seminars for university faculty on how to teach a full-length course on the subject. The Consortium trained hundreds of university faculty and institutionalized teaching and research on intelligence in universities and professional academic associations. Finally, with the end of the Cold War, NSIC, in conjunction with the directors and senior faculty from the major security studies programs in American universities, carried out a major review and revision of the curriculum. The results were published in Security Studies for the 21st Century (London: Brassey’s, 1997).

Reproduced with kind permission from SITE Institute (The Search for International Terrorism Entities), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides information related to terrorist networks to the government, news media, and general public. www.siteinstitute.org.

CHAPTER 1

War After the Cold War

How has war been fought since the end of the Cold War? In this chapter we argue that the way war has been waged has changed, and with two important exceptions, war has not conformed to Western methods of combat. Indeed, even the groups involved and the tactics they use have changed. But in the 1990s and even after 9/11, policymakers and commanders have not fully grasped the importance of these changes. And as the insurgency in Iraq demonstrates, to not understand how war has changed can have dire consequences.

No More War

The twentieth century was ravaged by three global wars—World War I, World War II, and the Cold War—each extremely costly in blood and treasure. After each came the hopeful refrain—no more war. After each, national leaders hoped that new disputes among nations could be settled through impartially negotiated agreements brokered by new or revived world bodies—the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN). Indeed, both the League and the UN hoped to chart a new course for the world, one in which the idealism of the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant would be realized. In Perpetual Peace Kant called for a world legislature, a universal republic based on a universal code, that would extricate states from constantly [being] menaced by war.¹

Following World War I, the war to end all wars, the League was created to fulfill Kant’s vision. The opening lines from its 1924 charter proclaimed:

The High Contracting Parties, in order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just, and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments … agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.²

Sadly, this vision would remain unfulfilled. Instead, ugly surprises followed in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in the great bloodshed of World War II. Again, in its aftermath, another international organization—the United Nations—promised to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.³

From its inception the UN failed to approach, let alone to achieve, those lofty aspirations. Instead, four decades of Cold War ensued, until the collapse of the moribund Soviet regime in 1991 brought an end to the Cold War and renewed hope that this would be the end to modern war. A new world order was immediately declared imminent, one in which the resort to war would quickly wane. As President George Bush told the Congress on March 6, 1991:

Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a world order in which the principles of justice and fair play … protect the weak against the strong…. A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders.⁴

The optimism was once again misplaced. War did not end. Instead, the 1990s left a terrible legacy of violence, bloodshed, and destruction in its wake. However, these wars were different. Indeed, the wars of the 1990s, with the exception of Desert Storm, were a complete departure from the modern understanding of armed combat as it was practiced in the twentieth century.

Bloody Mogadishu

The front cover of Newsweek read: Fire Fight from Hell.⁵ The Los Angeles Times described it as the horror in Mogadishu … a bloody military operation that culminated with dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragging the body of a U.S. soldier through the city’s streets.⁶ And the New York Times showed its readers chilling pictures sent out by a handful of Western journalists in Mogadishu and television footage on CNN that showed a frightened, wounded Blackhawk helicopter pilot.⁷ These were the press reports, at once staggering and terrifying, that followed a sixteen-hour shootout between elite American professional soldiers and fierce Somali warriors in the urban canyons of Mogadishu on October 3–4, 1993.

Accompanying the front-page story in the New York Times was one of those photographs you can never forget. Such graphic images become symbolic not just of a specific event but of an entire intervention or war. The photo was of a dead U.S. soldier surrounded by raging Somalis kicking and spitting on the corpse. That picture, which appeared in newspapers across the globe, was a horrifying harbinger of war in the aftermath of the Cold War.

In the wake of these graphic newspaper reports, many asked the same question—how could this happen? For Washington policymakers, Somalia was inexplicable and unimaginable. Operation Restore Hope had been the Bush administration’s attempt to bring food and a semblance of order to the violent chaos in Somalia. The situation the United States found itself mired in was hardly what it had expected. The desperate sixteen-hour mêlée of October 3–4 was not how the humanitarian effort was supposed to turn out.⁸

When President Bush deployed troops to Somalia in his final days in the White House, it was not to take part in the carnage that had ripped that country apart. He sent American soldiers to do God’s work. Others in his administration referred to the operation as the Immaculate Intervention.⁹ The mission was clear, said Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and it was not to get into a war.

In Washington the objective was purely humanitarian—to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and restore order. Indeed, the Somali intervention was to be the model for using military forces in the post-Cold War world. It was a peace operation in which the objective was not to fight war but to stop it. Order would replace chaos through the presence of U.S. forces, and then the aid workers and doctors could move in to begin the rebuilding process.

These lofty goals, however, turned out to be a figment of Washington’s imagination. In Somalia in 1993 there could be no such thing as a purely humanitarian intervention. Rather, if the United States were to rescue the victims of that carnage it would have to tame the very clan militias that were responsible for dismembering Somalia. And simply put, that meant combat.

The October 3–4 battle in Mogadishu pitted two very different combat methods and traditions against each other. On the one hand, the American forces deployed to Somalia were modern soldiers, heirs to Western military traditions established by Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian veteran of the Napoleonic wars. On the other hand, the Somalia forces were tribal warriors, heirs to their own clan system of warfare, with tactical, command, control, and organizational traditions that were very different from their Western foes.

To understand both perspectives and how these perspectives influenced the way these combatants fought, it is necessary to understand their traditions. For the Western soldiers Clausewitz’s famous book On War, written from his own experiences, remains the classic exposition on modern war for modern armies.¹⁰ Clausewitz prescribed both a purpose and a set of specific methods for conducting war. According to the distinguished