A tale of two insurgencies
Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies
James S. Corum
March 2006, US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 54 pages
(Free download at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=648)
Empowering Afghans to be responsible for their own security is a theme very much discussed in the wake of the Manley report. Training Afghans is a key part of any Canadian drawdown or exit strategy.
James Corum, in a monograph prepared for the U.S. Army’s War College, delves into the past to glean from two British case studies some timely lessons about training indigenous forces.
For example, improving performance of the Afghan National Army is not the bright light at the end of the tunnel, he reveals. “In many, if not most, counterinsurgency campaigns, the police have been the major element of force employed by the government.”
It is, perhaps, no surprise that Malaya (1948-60) provides a successful example of development of an indigenous police force. In contrast, the proportion of one British soldier per ten inhabitants on Cyprus (1955-59) was not enough to defeat a much smaller insurgent force when an expanded indigenous police force was not developed.
On Cyprus the creation of an indigenous auxiliary police force, formed mainly from the Turkish ethnic minority with minimal training, contributed to putting all Greek Cypriots on the side of the insurgents. Indeed, the selection and subsequent behaviour of the police auxiliaries further eroded the trust between the two communities sharing the island. “Employment of untrained, poorly disciplined Turkish police auxiliaries against the Greeks, coupled with the threat of Turkish mobs unrestrained by the police forced the whole Greek community to unite against the British.”
Some mistakes continue to make the international community “pay and pay.” The lack of a sufficient indigenous police force to deal with counterinsurgency was a contributing factor in the inter-communal conflict that led the international community to place UN forces shortly after Cyprus became independent. Those forces remain there today (see Vanguard, March/April 2007).
In contrast, in Malaya, police personnel from both Chinese and Malaysian background were sent to England for courses of up to a year, even at the height of the insurgency. Creating a Malaysian Special Branch Training School was one of the many transformations that Sir Arthur Young, “one of the top policemen in the Empire” brought to “the demoralized and disorganized police force.”
The British police training program in Malaya was expensive, Corum notes, but success in Malaya was already evident when the Cyprus insurgency started.
The Canadian Army Lessons Learned cell (ALLC) offers a more current perspective of a Canadian “operational mentor and liaison team” (OMLT) working with the Afghan National Army in Volume 13, No. 2 of The Bulletin, available in hard copy and no doubt soon to appear downloadable at http://armyapp.dnd.ca/ALLC/Downloads/bulletin.asp?tree=downloads
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Penguin, 2006, 349 pages, $18.50
Whether you’re seeking insight or intelligence, Greg Mortenson’s determination to make a difference in Pakistan’s Northern Area, Waziristan, and Afghanistan’s Wakham Corridor will be of interest.
Lost in Pakistan’s Karakoram, Mortenson was taken in and saved by the people of Korphe, an isolated village. In gratitude he led the construction of a school for this hamlet after first connecting the village with a bridge across the Shigar River gorge. Both were accomplished through a combination of local labour and outside funding that Mortenson raised. The school was the first of fifty-five that owe their construction to him.
If the real enemy along this turbulent frontier is “ignorance,” as Mortenson suggests, then this man’s work, which continues today on an expanded scale through his creation of the Central Asia Institute, is a remarkable success. The book tells much of his life and fundraising efforts, but it also offers interesting insight into the challenges he confronted to establish these schools.
It also offers plenty of valuable human intelligence: Mortenson was taken hostage in Waziristan, now suspected to be a key Taliban refuge. The number of Westerners to have seen this area recently is quite limited, and their reports, no doubt, are even more restricted.
If you order through www.threecupsoftea.com, a percentage of the price will go to a girls’ education scholarship fund in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Reviewed by Roy Thomas, MSC, CD, MA (RMC)