[Originally published in the Randolph Herald.]
There is a major difference between the conduct of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Critical to the process is correctly identifying the problem and then using the appropriate tools to combat it.
Terrorism has rarely if ever been defeated with military power. Historically, the best tools to use against it are police and intelligence organizations. They are often successful.
Insurgencies have rarely been defeated. This is particularly true when the insurgents are being fought by a foreign government as with the French in Algeria and Indonesia, with the British in Aden, Kenya, Cyprus and Malaysia and with us in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Even under the best circumstances, as in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers, who began their insurgency in 1976, were only defeated in 2009 and then, if truly defeated, by the Sri Lankan government itself!
We went to Afghanistan in 2001 to deal with a terrorist threat. We destroyed the Al Qaida camps and put them on the run. We did serious damage to their hosts, the Taliban. We were still fighting terrorism.
When we invaded Iraq in 2003, there was absolutely no terrorism involved in the equation. We won a brief war and then entered into a counterinsurgency. The insurgents were joined by a terrorist group under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who had managed to coalesce a number of Kurdish Islamists and foreign fighters around him. They were ultimately recognized, if somewhat reluctantly, by Al Qaida Central as Al Qaida in Iraq.
They came to Iraq because they were attracted by a target-rich environment that gave them a perfect training ground and recruiting tool for future militants, as well as increased fundraising potential. They worked within the framework of the Iraqi insurgency against US forces. The primary US strategy in Iraq was to conduct a counterinsurgency operation.
By 2009, a number of spontaneous developments had calmed the situation in Iraq, permitting us to refocus on Afghanistan, which, we were told by both Bush and Obama, was the primary scene of the struggle with terrorism.
Yet, Afghanistan 2009 and 2010 is another US counterinsurgency in which our conventional forces have no involvement with counterterrorist operations—simply because Al Qaida has left Afghanistan, primarily for Pakistan and abroad.
What brought us to the Middle East was our concern about terrorism, yet our military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are concerned primarily, if not exclusively, with insurgency.
Counterinsurgencies, however carefully they are run, are magnets for the recruitment and training of terrorists and for fundraising on their behalf. Just look at our recent missteps in Afghanistan and the numbers of noncombatants killed.
Our struggle is for hearts and minds. In fact, moderates, the overwhelming majority of Muslims, hold the key to the success or failure of Al Qaida and militant Islam. Whoever wins them over will win the battle. Moderates are potentially the most effective enemy of and counterbalance to the fundamentalists.
Everything we do in our counterinsurgency operations has the potential to make our struggle with terrorism more difficult because it has the potential to alienate moderates. The mere presence of the US military, let alone their counterinsurgency operations, represents an advantage for Al Qaida that it simply could not create on its own.
The facts that rankle all Muslims include: US military presence in the Muslim world, with the concomitant occupations; the killing of Muslims; US support of repressive and despotic regimes; and the unbalanced US approach to the Palestine problem. These facts all remain, yet all can potentially be changed, particularly and most simply our military approach.
The question is, when and why did we decide that it was OK to run counterinsurgency operations when our original motivation was solely to deal with terrorism? Precisely what do we hope to accomplish with this approach?
We can disengage militarily. The internal US political response to this strategy is a repetition of the “failed state” argument, which holds no water. Terrorists don’t need failed states and they have proven it in Europe and the U.S. Furthermore, there is every indication that the Taliban has had it up to the ears with Al Qaida and would never permit them to re-open in Afghanistan.
If we were to address those problems enumerated above and created by our policies in the Muslim world, we would cut the legs from under Al Qaida and all the other Muslim fundamentalist terrorist groups simply because they would lose the support, even the grudging tolerance, of moderate Muslims.
That’s why Al Qaida approved so strongly of the Bush approach and of the Obama adoption of the Bush strategy.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. A longtime resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.
