Global Guerrillas

CONTAINING IRAQ

Most of the good thinking on the war in Iraq is moving towards "containment of a chaotic civil war" (actually its worse than a civil war, see my December 2006 brief) instead of counter-insurgency. Counter-insurgency to prop up a democratic government can't work in an environment where there isn't a center (the middle class has already departed the country in a massive 2 million refugee rush for the border) and everyone remaining is a member of a radicalized faction. Anyone still thinking about counter-insurgency today is a year or more behind the power curve of the war.

How we got to this point

This transformation of the war wasn't an accident. It was accomplished by a global guerrilla attack on a social systempunkt that made possible a cascade of failure in Iraqi social systems (see my brief on al Qaeda's Black Swans written in February of last year):

The first attack, a successful one, on the Askariya shrine in Samarra, caused so much friction in Iraq's social systems, the country will likely end up in civil war. This would put the entire US venture in the country at immediate risk as the situation deteriorates.

That psychological tipping point shattered the Shiite bloc, which was already full of fault lines due to the reliance on loyalist paramilitary forces to build the Iraqi military. Since then, it has been a race to primary loyalties well below the level of state, religion, or ethnicity. It has even manufactured militant messianic cults, as the recent fighting around Najaf proved.

How to contain it

How do we contain this chaos (?) has become the question upon which the entire global economy rides. The spread of this war would eliminate Iraqi oil production entirely and put at risk the production available from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran. It would also set-up the US, which should be the main force for global cooperation, for an extremely hard landing both domestically and internationally, which may take a decade or more to recover from.

The first and foremost approach to doing this is to lessen the potential of state vs. state warfare. A war between the US/Israel and Iran would quickly destabilize every state in the Middle East and allow them to fall prey to open source war like Iraq. The best method for lessening the chance of this war is to open connections with both Iran and Syria (with Syria as the prime target) to reduce their connectivity to non-state groups. This not only reduces internal dynamics (that breathing your own exhaust creates) it can also help to make it more difficult for global guerrillas to generate an attack (another black swan -- I'm thinking of attacks that could do this, are you?) that serves as a pretext for regional war. Other ideas can be found in a report by Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack at the Saban Center (Brookings) called "Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from and Iraqi Civil War.". This report is just the start, much more thinking needs to be done.

4GW FORCES AND GREATER MIDDLE EAST WAR

Valdis Krebs, an expert on social network analysis and a friend, has built an interesting interactive map of the social relationships between various groups in the Middle East. It provides a visual representation of the open loop system leading us to war described in my earlier brief. His analysis is brief and to the point:

...sadly those lack of loops [connections] have things going in the wrong direction. I have been updating my Mideast Network Map based on the News. Now the network map self-organizes into what will likely be the "sides" in a greater Mideast war... With two opposing clusters we have more loops WITHIN the clusters and less and less loops between the clusters --> leading the two clusters [now echo chambers] to foment themselves to greater conflict. Disconnection is dangerous. Yet, the pattern of disconnects AND connections that allow two opposing clusters to emerge is most dangerous! The tipping point to war?

What's most interesting to me is the role that is being played in this map by non-state 4GW forces in shaping these clusters. To see this on the Valdis' map, pull the US/Israel to the left and al Qaeda/Hezbollah/Hamas to the right. In this orientation, it becomes clear that the ongoing war between non-state 4GW forces (more autonomous than proxies) and Israel/US is the driver pulling the clusters apart. There are no signs that this conflict will abate. Just the opposite, it looks like it will escalate, and as a result, an inevitable misstep will put the states connected to these clusters into direct conflict.

On a side note, the map also makes a clear case that any and all attempts to connect to Iran and Syria in order to denigrate and/or neutralize connections to the non-state nodes, is paramount to avoiding a larger conflict.

UPDATE: Martin Van Creveld just wrote an article that says something similar. He suggests that efforts should be made to peel Syria away from the emerging bloc (leaving just Iran and 4GW forces):

The common wisdom these days appears to be that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have formed a new axis of evil against the United States and Israel. Given this past summer’s war in Lebanon, there is undeniably something to this view, but it is far from the whole truth — and it is in our own self-interest to acknowledge that our enemies are not necessarily all of the same stripe. The key to the trio is Syria.

JOURNAL: Open loop systems and war with Iran

Here's a systems view of the escalating tensions between the US and Iran and why it will likely result in war. The current situation is open loop -- an open loop system is one where all participants are regularly adding inputs without any consideration of the output/outcome. Feedback loops, like direct diplomatic contact or the use of international bodies/mediators to adjudicate disputes, that could typically serve to mitigate further deterioration have been intentionally turned off by those that want this conflict to occur. As are result, inputs from allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia (both fearful of growing Iranian power), impetus from guerrillas/militias forcing sectarian conflict, fears over ongoing nuclear development, mutual military preparation for conflict, and a need to assign blame for escalating counter-insurgency failures continue to drive it forward. At some point in the not too distant future, unless the feedback loops are reinstated, the system will inevitably produce an outcome that will force a war.

NOTE: This mechanism puts the January 20th, 2007 attack on US forces in Karbala into perspective. During this attack, guerrillas posed as US military personnel (complete with GMC SUVs, US weapons, radios, IDs, US military camo, and a command of English) entered the provincial governor's compound. They took four US soldiers hostage and killed another through a grenade attack on the governor's offices. They then escaped the compound with Iraqi military in loose pursuit. The four US soldiers captured in the attack were later found with the abandoned SUVs dead, killed execution style. As Bill Rogio maintains, this was likely an Iranian operation (Qods) similar in form to the Hezbollah attack that set off the recent war in Lebanon. Expect more of this escalating tit for tat in the future.

JOURNAL: Lo-Tech GPS Jamming

GPS World has an investigative story that details the discovery that a VHF/UHF TV antenna in combination with a commercially available pre-amplifier can jam GPS signals (via dropped satellites) over a wide area.

JOURNAL: Targeting PMCs

Iraq. Here's an interesting data point on the level of tactical sophistication the US military is up against in Baghdad. Robert Young Pelton, the author of "Licensed to Kill", has the details on a series of attacks that targeted Blackwater USA on Tuesday (23 January 2007). Here's a recap:

• Hook. A State Department official protected by a Blackwater PSD (personal security detail) convoy was attacked.
• Line. QRF (quick reaction force) ground teams were dispatched from the Green Zone to relieve the convoy. These teams were ambushed. One retreated and the others were halted.
• Sinker. Two Blackwater Boeing Little Birds (small helicopter gunships) were dispatched to provide support. One was shot down and the other was damaged and forced to return to base. Recovery teams found the four bodies (one more died on the other helo that returned to the green zone) from the helicopter crash were stripped of their weapons.

UPDATE: Ansar al-Sunna followed up the attacks with a fast media loop by posting pictures of the four dead men's ID cards on their Website. The 1920 Revolution brigades got cell phone video of a smoldering chopper to al-Jazeera.

THE LOST GENERATION OF WARFARE

The generational framework for modern warfare was first introduced by Lind (et. al.) in the seminal article in the Marine Corps Gazette: "The Changing Face of Warfare: Into the 4th Generation." It made the argument that warfare, since the foundation of the modern nation-state at the Treaties of Westphalia and until the recent present, could be divided into three successive generations of state vs. state warfare. These were:

• The 1st generation. Mobilization. Decisive battles. Linearity of approach to maximize firepower and control.
• The 2nd generation. Firepower. The defensive. Attrition. Rail logistics. Indirect fire. Industrial scale mobilization and command structures. Trench warfare.
• The 3rd generation. Maneuver. The offensive. Disorientation. Aircraft. Motorized transport. More fluid command structures. Blitzkrieg.

The Lost Generation

As per the framework, states that used the most recent form of warfare could reliably defeat those states that still clung to the previous generation. This continued to hold true until the final thrust at the end of WW2 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved that nuclear warfare was the new salient generation. Lind and his cohorts ignore this generation of warfare, since with its advent the generational advancement of inter-state warfare breaks down. The technologies of this "lost" generation of warfare quickly progressed to MIRVed (multiple independent re-entry vehicles) ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) that could mobilize for global war in minutes, maneuver to enemy rear areas in fractions of an hour, and unleash firepower that could destroy the entire urban infrastructure of a state. At that point, the trends of interstate warfare reached their logical conclusion in their negation. The well founded fear of this form of warfare made hot war between the great powers unthinkable.

JOURNAL: Open Source War in Parameters

There's a good article by Martin Muckian in Parameters that recaps some elements of global guerrilla theory. He completes the article with four recommendations for fighting open source opponents (I've attached a critique of each):

• Attack critical nodes (ie. bomb makers). Unfortunately, this underestimates the fluidity provided micro-markets in finding and growing talent.
• Attack the insurgencies weakness in political cohesion by forcing it to respond to issues that are beyond its scope. This is easier said than done since the only real way to disband the insurgency via this route is to realize the plausible promise upon which it is founded (a US withdrawal, the collapse of the Iraqi government, or a civil war).
• Reduce crime to choke sources of funding. This is extremely problematic since the basis of much of the crime in Iraq is due to systems disruption and crime is a source of funding for loyalist paramilitaries too.
• Attack the information technology infrastructure of the network. This translates into going after cell phones and Internet access. This, like the concept of oil spot isolation, kills the economy and the community commons in a semi-modern society faster than the insurgents can do it themselves.

In all, it's good to see these ideas begin to change the discussion. However, much more emphasis is needed. A research company?

JOURNAL: Blackwater in Sudan?

The Virginia-Pilot reports that Blackwater USA, the private military company that advertises itself as a "a turnkey solution provider for 4th generation warfare" and a potential provider of a service termed "Janjaweed-be-gone" may be making headway in its quest to deploy to the Sudan. Last year, the $600 m a year company formed Greystone Limited in order to put a better marketing spin on its efforts to private the security of UN humanitarian missions -- given that this new company can draw on Blackwater for capabilities, it would be able battalion-sized unit and even its own home-brewed aircraft gunship in support of any contract it lands. So far, the effort by Greystone to land a contract to provide security to one of the world's worst humanitarian disaster zones, hasn't made any headway. The first indicator is a potential contract with the regional government in southern Sudan:

Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, head of mission in Washington for southern Sudan’s regional government, said he expects Blackwater to begin training the south’s security forces within the next few weeks.

However, this contract (if it exists) appears to be far from Dafur, which has become a display case for the moral bankruptcy of the state-run international system. Instead, it appears to involve the standard fare: oil. This is a tussle over lucrative blocks of oil between the autonomous southern Sudanese government (SPLA) and its independent oil company partner (White Nile) vs. the formal Sudanese government and France's Total.

For good recap of the rise of the modern mercenary industry, lots of globe-trotting tales of life at the "edge of the empire," and to get a feel for the personalities/ambitions of people like Erik Prince (the CEO of Blackwater) go read Robert Young Pelton's "Licensed to Kill."

THE OPEN SOURCE WAR ONLINE

A good indicator of how effective we will be against open source guerrillas in warfare, is seen in the current battle against Internet crime. Over the past decade, the threat has progressed from casual hackers breaking systems for the joy of it into a thriving open source criminal industry replete with micro-markets (bazaars) for project development. A good overview of how rapidly we are losing the war was recently provided by Neil Schwartzman, in his article, "Trench Warfare in the Age of The Laser-Guided Missile." The title is a little confusing, but the meat the article is right on target.

Here's some background. The similarity in the dynamics of these online criminal networks to what we are experiencing in the real world in Baghdad, is pretty clear. Contrast the structure of a Phishing network provided with Christopher Abad with the marketplace for IEDs in Iraq. In each case, a dynamic marketplace is used to produce virtual teams for entrepreneur financiers to accomplish specific attacks. Also, in each case, the rate of innovation from open source tinkering with basic technologies and skills is rapid and ongoing.

Self-Replication Changes Everything

Despite the similarity in how the threat has developed, the open source security networks used to fight these criminals (governments have been largely absent from this fight) have been successful until relatively recently (their rapid development of counters to new threats serves as a interesting point of comparison to the institutional response to Iraq and other places). Unfortunately, as Schwartzman points out, the integration of spamming, viruses, worms, phishing, and botnets have produced a substantial improvement in method for online crime.

Firstly, these new combinatorial networks now form a complete cycle that connects innovation with substantial financial rewards. Secondly, this new network configuration now makes it possible to gain huge leverage through self-replication. Self propagating bot networks now number in the millions of computers (and growing) and the sophistication of the attacks these networks can power is quickly overwhelming any effective response. NOTE: open source guerrillas have a less effective, but still very powerful, means of self replication through the use of systems disruption (see State Failure 101 for details).

Response?

It will be interesting to see the response that is generated by this new online threat. If history serves as a guide, balkanization/fragmentation may be the result rather than the integrated government/private partnerships that Schwartzman advocates:

The fight against computer-aware criminals is now at a critical juncture demanding we de-silo the false barriers between types of threats and the people who deal with them, because the nature, power and scope of the blended attack (spyware, spam, viruses, phish and bots) that currently exists is actively threatening the very foundational infrastructure and continued viability of the entire Internet.

As we look forward, we can expect to see the threats we see developing online bleed into the real world relatively soon. The technology and the methodologies are now powerful enough to do real damage to existing systems through brute force systems disruption.

JOURNAL: Surge?

The latest US "strategy" for Iraq, a small increase in manpower focused on controlling sections of Baghdad, has generated substantial debate/commentary in the US. The reason for this has vastly more to do with domestic political issues than anything substantive in the military sphere. To wit, almost nothing in the current plan -- from troops to tactics -- has changed in any meaningful way. Further, the general situation of country-wide chaos will not change due to any efforts to pacify select Baghdad neighborhoods (and even the ability of US troops to do that is questionable given the dynamics of the current war -- see the brief "Clear and Hold" for more).

Of course, the failure of these periodic efforts may be due to an inability to revisit a key assumption upon which the present US effort is based: that strong states tend to form naturally if provided the right minimalist conditions. I believe the opposite is true: that states, once broken, tend to remain hollow and in perpetual failure. The reason is that in the current environment minimalist conditions yield social disintegration (we see will this minimalist/disintegration paradigm repeated world-wide, even in the absence of war, as globalization continues to rapidly grow and spread -- which fatally undermines any argument that the success of globalization means that "we win," if "we" means the US and nation-states in general) and the ascendent military power (copiously documented on this weblog) is in the hands of those would disrupt the state rather than form it. If this revised assumption is correct, it is safe to conclude that building a stable Iraq would require a level of effort that is beyond our ability to provide (see the brief "Playing with War" for more).

Note: every US action in Iraq should also be analyzed within the context of a war with Iran (see the April 2006 brief "Collapsing Iran" for why).