Counterinsurgency: a mere means

By Lars Moen

The United States still fights a 'war on terror', and constructing stable and peaceful societies, the goal of counterinsurgency (COIN), is no more than a mere means to defeating terrorists. It is not an end in itself. The 2010 US Department of Defense’s National Security Strategy and Quadrennial Defense Review Report stated that the main focus remains to 'disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its allies'. This is not a problem as long as the US and the local population share the same interests. However, this is not always the case. The US reveals its 'Janus face', in Jonathan Gilmore’s words, when the 'war on terror' framework takes precedence over the COIN programme, and the local population is left disempowered.[1]

The perhaps clearest example of this is that the US and the host nation have a monopoly on assigning the 'insurgent label'.[2]  In Afghanistan, the United States and the Afghan government decide who is a legitimate target and who is not.[3] They do not take into account that the local population may voluntarily support an insurgency in opposition to an unpopular government.[4] US and NATO troops were deployed to support Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration, which was 'tainted with corruption and election rigging'. The legitimacy of this government was highly questionable, and its opposition was widespread. It nevertheless cooperated with the US military in identifying Afghan insurgents.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

In May 2009, US planes dropped five 500-pound and two 2,000-pound bombs on Garani village in the Afghan province of Farah. The result was tragic. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Afghan Independence Human Rights Commission counted over 80 civilian deaths. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) admitted that only 26 civilians were killed, 78 were insurgents.[5] The large proportion of ‘legitimate killings’ may have justified the air strike, but the question is: Was the insurgent label rightfully placed on the 78? Through their ‘labelling monopoly’, the US military and Afghan government appear to have claimed the right to identify individuals as it suits them. This is a right to decide who is a legitimate target and who is not. In other words, it is a right 'to take life or to let live', which implies sovereign power, according to Michel Foucault.[6] 

Gilmore suggests that the reason for US alliance with the Afghan government is about more than just ensuring a peaceful and stable environment for the Afghan people. In a 2006 report, the US Department of the Army emphasised its focus on helping Afghanistan develop a liberal democracy and a free market economy, and not necessarily the political and economic system the Afghan people would prefer.[7] Although the US Army emphasised the importance of cultural sensitivity in the 2012 report mentioned above, the report also contained traces of the opposite. One example is the 'Soldiers’ CIVCAS Smart Card' which encourages soldiers to '[t]reat civilians as you would want you and your family to be treated if the roles were reversed'. Soldiers should, in other words, see themselves in the civilians; they should understand the civilians to hold the same values as themselves. Critics may therefore be right to question whether COIN in reality is about promoting US interests and values rather than actually helping the local population.[8]

So-called ‘foreseeable accidental’ taking of civilian lives also suggest that the interests of the local population are secondary to the 'war on terror'. Neta Crawford questions how an accident can be foreseeable.[9] She emphasises the importance of distinguishing ‘genuine accidents’ from ‘systemic collateral damage incidents’.[10] The Garani case, mentioned above, was an example of the latter, according to Crawford.[11] A GPS guided 2,000-pound bomb is accurate to an average of 30 feet (9 meters) but its lethal radius is more than 41,400 square feet (or about 3,800 square metres).[12] According to a US Admiral, the safety distance is at least 4,000 feet (1.2 kilometres).[13] The use of such weapons, likely to cause more harm than destroying its target, certainly questions US intentions in Afghanistan.

US Air Force demonstrating the accuracy of a 2,000-pound bomb.

What is viewed as 'necessary' should be reconsidered, Crawford argues.[14] Labelling foreseeable killings of civilians as accidents may justify their consequences and thus undermine the COIN programme. And when the US and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) made such reconsiderations, the number of civilian deaths declined, as we see in the table below.[15] 

Unfortunately, the 'war on terror' norms of ‘uncompromising destruction of the enemy’s forces’ are hard to overcome.[16] This is the problem of norms that Foucault identified, and Judith Butler later adopted. Labelling civilian casualties as ‘necessary’ helps normalise these tragedies. They are described as necessities and exceptions but, according to Foucault and Butler, today’s exceptions are tomorrow’s norms.[17] There is, indeed, reason to believe that civilian casualties have been normalised already. And killing the very people one is meant to protect may obviously jeopardise the whole COIN programme.[18]

Within the US military it seems like John McCain’s words from 2001 may still be influential.
The US Senator said that '[i]ssues such as Ramadan or civilian casualties … have to be secondary to the primary goal of eliminating the enemy'.[19] The values the US Army promotes in 'The Soldier’s Creed' (video below) certainly seem more consistent with McCain’s aggressive rhetoric than the people-centred COIN programme.[20] And there is no consensus between senior US military officers on the role of high-impact war-fighting. This opens for an inconsistent interpretation of the COIN policy.[21] Commitment to 'kinetic' operations, involving the use of lethal force, is still prominent within the institutional culture of the US military, according to Gilmore.[22] Increased care for civilians often means that US soldiers must take greater risks.[23] It is therefore not unreasonable to expect commanders to value the safety of their soldiers higher than the objectives of development and society building.[24]  As Gilmore argues, '[a]t worst counterinsurgency’s human security discourse may simply represent the 'velvet glove' surrounding the 'iron fist' of traditional war-fighting'.[25] 

Based on my own conversations with former ISAF soldiers, I can with no doubt conclude that they lacked both respect for the Afghan people they were meant to help, and belief in their COIN mission. They explained that the cultural barriers simply seemed too high. When seeing a local man unable to figure out how to use a flush toilet, one of the soldiers concluded that 'these people cannot be helped'. This questions the pre-deployment training and cultural preparation ISAF soldiers received. And in her book The Tender Soldier, journalist Vanessa M. Gezari reveals that many of the social scientists involved in the COIN programme had never been to or even studied Afghanistan.

To sum up, the problem with the COIN programme is that it appears to be a mere means to winning the 'war on terror' and to promote US and Western interests. It is also questionable whether soldiers and commanders are properly trained for and truly believe in the COIN programme.

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[1]  Jonathan Gilmore, “A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism: Counterinsurgency, Human Security and the War on Terror”, Security Dialogue 42, no.1 (2011): 33-34.
[2] Ibid., 22.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 27.
[5] Astri Suhrke, “From Principle to Practice: US Military Strategy and Protection of Civilians in Afghanistan,” International Peacekeeping 22, no. 1 (2015): 110.
[6] Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976 (New York: Picador, 2003), 240-241.
[7] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 32-33.
[8] Ibid., 32.
[9] Neta C. Crawford, Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 8.
[10] Ibid., 11.
[11] Ibid., 20.
[12] Ibid., 15.
[13] Ibid., 16-17.
[14] Ibid., 24.
[15] Suhrke, “From Principle to Practice," 115.
[16] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 23.
[17] Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 67; Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”, 38-39, 58-59.
[18] Crawford, Accountability for Killing, 30.
[19] Ibid., 11.
[20] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 27.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 28.
[23] Crawford, Accountability for Killing, 32.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Gilmore, "A Kinder, Gentler Counter-Terrorism," 28.