Approach the problem from the perspective of the insurgent and population to help define priorities and the balance of ...Read more >

Counterinsurgents have raised and employed irregular security forces in many campaigns over the last century. Irregular security forces are indigenous forces, not part of the regular police or military organizations of the host nation, that are recruited locally to provide a basic level of security in a given ...Read more >

The Maoist insurgency follows on a long history of peasant and tribal rebellion against predatory state structures on the subcontinent. It originated in its present form in a small village in Naxalbari, West Bengal, where in 1967, villagers armed with bows and arrows resisted police and feudal landlords with bows and ...Read more >

As a result of the United States overwhelming military superiority, its recent adversaries have chosen to apply both unconventional and asymmetric tactics aimed at undermining popular support and confidence in a nations ruling body. ...Read more >

I would like to offer a synopsis of my thoughts on what the re-write of FM 3-24 should encompass. These thoughts take their cues from my own intellectual journey through lessons the military supposedly learned about Vietnam, other examples of COIN operations, my peers stories about Iraq and other places, and my own experiences in South America and ...Read more >

This article is conceived and written at the end of my six month deployment to ISAF Joint Command CJ35 FUOPS, as a psychological operations planner, in the spring of 2010. In the beginning I was greatly frustrated with two things. Firstly, the internal works of the command, its meetings and its ...Read more >

The conduct of counterinsurgency operations is a difficult and complex undertaking that requires flexibility, adaptation, and a holistic approach. The recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the United States to devote considerable resources towards finding the best ways toward winning the COIN ...Read more >

General Petraeus will be in Washington next week where he will inevitably continue to extol the progress of counterinsurgency (COIN) in southern Afghanistan, the Talibans heartland and where our war to achieve sufficient stability to enable us to leave will be either won or ...Read more >

That is a bit like asking, In making a cup of tea, which action is the game-changer: the heating of the water, the addition of the tea bag, or the correct amount of steeping? If you dont heat the water, or dont add the teabag, or under or over-steep, you dont get a drinkable cup of tea. In addition, if you do things in the wrong order, it may turn out ...Read more >

The United States Army uses a concept called the Center of Gravity (CoG) to help determine where the focus of efforts should be during warfare. For instance, during recent U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) practical exercises, students many times identified an enemys most powerful corps or armored division as the Operational CoG that must be defeated in order for U.S. forces to be successful in a conventional ...Read more >

Insurgencies are dynamic, not static. The idea of dynamic insurgencies was previously developed by Mao Zadong. In his book1, Mao described guerrilla warfare as a pyramidal process divided into three linear but not definitive ...Read more >

In April 1962, I participated in a RAND Symposium on Counterinsurgency held in Washington, D.C, along with my old boss from the 195456 days in South Vietnam, General Edward G. Lansdale, and a number of ...Read more >

This guide provides practical advice to assessment strategy planners and practitioners. It aims to fill the gap between instructions provided in handbooks and field manuals, and the challenges faced when adapting these instructions to specific operations. Its purpose is to complement, not replace, the more detailed planning or instructional ...Read more >

Ever since President Obama announced that the US would begin drawing down its forces in Afghanistan, the news and commentary on our counterinsurgency efforts have reenergized the discourse on COIN, strategy, and the future of that now painful cliche called population-centric ...Read more >

Ask 25 experts for their perspective on counterinsurgency and one will hear answers that group into 3-4 broad categories. Ask those same experts about what causes insurgency, and one hears terms like complexity, wicked problem, or they are all ...Read more >