THE US EMBRACES OPEN SOURCE WARFARE?

The US military is on the slow path to the realization that nation-building -- from reconstruction to other forms of traditional COIN dogma that serve to return legitimacy to the government -- doesn't work. Politics and populations in our new global environment fragment faster than they can be assembled into cohesive entities. What does work to slow the spread of temporary autonomous zones and open source insurgencies are open source militias. While messy (and many times as bad as what they replace), these militias do work:

• Colombia. The AUC blunted the spread of the FARC and other revolutionary groups.
• Sao Paulo, Brazil. Neighborhood militias have purged neighborhoods of the PCC (a criminal drug gang).
• Iraq. Anbar awakening and other militias have radically diminished al Qaeda's operational sphere.

Open Source Militias

In each case, militias developed organically based on local loyalties that have nothing to do with the central government. Their emergence is spontaneous and a surprise to the government or the foreign military occupation. They develop according to a now familiar pattern:

• Expansion. Guerrillas or criminal gangs move into a new area in which they have no organic support. They impose their own form of governance which is at odds with local needs.
• Reaction. These external guerrillas/gangs intimidate/kill local leaders. A militia is formed to force the encroaching groups out.
• Domination. The local militia begins to run the neighborhoods/area. Soon, they tend to adopt many of the same financial systems of the guerrillas/gangs (from drugs to extortion) and enforcement measures (assassination, torture, etc.). However, they remain less hostile to the government and commercial interests than the guerrillas/gangs.

An Expansible Strategy?

The rapid emergence of these local militias in Anbar came as a surprise to both the Iraqi government and the US military. Despite the lack of loyalty these groups have to the Iraqi government (and the previous involvement of many of these groups in killing US troops), the US military embraced them -- in that have been given a degree of autonomy as well as arms and training. The result has been the return to a slow burning war, a status quo of sorts, that will continue to operate at levels of violence not seen since early 2006. The success of this approach, as opposed to the boondoggles we've experienced in conventional operations, has led the US Special Operations Command to recommend in a new briefing (leaked to the press), that the US replicate the "militia strategy" in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the report makes the following errors:

• The wrong militia. The US, due to political restrictions, wants to focus its efforts on the Frontier corps (which is actually more of a paramilitary). This militia is too tightly connected to the government and has a record of atrocity that makes it unlikely to generate any meaningful form of local loyalty.
• Bad timing. This process works according to its own rules, it cannot be forced. The guerrillas (a combination of different flavors of Taliban, tribes, and al Qaeda) will eventually overreach. This process is in motion, but the reaction that forms local militias will not occur until much later (the government and the US are still considered the primary enemy).
• Government opposition. The organic rise of local militias will be an affront to the Pakistani government since it represents a near permanent loss of control over these regions. They will resist it (despite their preoccupation with oppressing Pakistani civil society). Unlike the Iraqi government, they will not roll over on this.

Final Note: The use of a plethora of militias to fight a global open source insurgency from Nigeria to Mexico to Iraq to Pakistan is effective within a grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work). Most beneficially, it eliminates the need for nation-building, massive conventional troop deployments, and other forms of excess. Some questions remain: can the US manage something this complex or this messy? Will the rest of the US military/contractors sit idle (and as a result fall victim to budget cuts) while light weight special operations forces (and their allied private military corporations) take center stage?

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

This sounds like a revival of the medieval Chinese baojia system.

According to Wikipedia:

quote:

Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty created this community-based system of law enforcement and civil control that was included in his large reform of Chinese government (“the New Policies”) from 1069-1076. A bao consisted of 10 jias, which in turn consisted of 100 households that were trained and supplied with weapons. The leaders of the baos were given authority to maintain local order, collect taxes, and organize civil projects. The idea of the system was that it would diminish the government’s reliance on mercenaries, and that it would instead assign responsibility of law enforcement to these civil societies.

:end_of_quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baojia

For another viewpoint, see "PROCLAMATION OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY":

quote:

. Pao chia was the administrative system by which the Kuomintang reactionary clique enforced its fascist rule at the primary level. On August 1, 1932, Chiang Kai-shek promulgated the "Regulations for the Organization of Pao and Chia and for a Population Census in the Counties" covering the provinces of Honan, Hupeh and Anhwei. The "Regulations" provided that "the pao and chia are to be organized on the basis of households; there is to be a head of each household, of each chia, which is made up of ten households, and of each pao, which is made up of ten chia". Neighbours were required to watch and report each other's activities to the authorities, and all were punishable when one was found guilty; various counter-revolutionary measures for exacting compulsory labour were also laid down. On November 7, 1934, the Kuomintang government officially announced that this system of fascist rule was to be established in all the provinces and municipalities under its rule.

:end_of quote

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_62.htm

[jesus reyes]

Let Plan Colombia bloom a thousand times. Send the bill to the Chinese.

[enigma_foundry]

Yes, this relates to a post I'd made about the Role of Cities (this connects to the Chinese system referenced above)

http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2006/10/28/cities-are-from-mars-neighborhoods-are-from-venus/

The other item that should be discussed is the issue of primary loyalties, and how that relates to the structure of a city. Cities are, in reality, collections of neighborhoods each with it’s own identity. This is much more true in traditional European cities, and is also very true in older cities of the Middle East. These primary loyalties grow out of the development of the city based on primary ergonomic factors: the need for humans for supporting networks (such as water distribution) and the comfortable walking distance of average adult person.

"Leon Krier had identified a radius of about 2,000 feet as describing the maximum size of a neighborhood, which had originally developed around wells or other public water gathering points, but today is more likely to be centered on a public mass transit points, markets or even institutions, such as places of worship, or even libraries. As the Global Guerilla stresses rise on these neighborhoods, I believe they will prove much more resilient as sources of legitimate power and authority than most observers presently realize, and one of the ways to make the chaos of the USA’s exit be less chaotic may well be to empower these agencies, rather than try to fight them. Once they are in a position of power, more responsibility and negotiating sophistication may grow within those emergent structures. But they need to experience power in order to understand the nature of their responsibility.

Yes, there exist risks in this approach, but it may be the last best chance to avoid the continuance of what is now a total civil war. I don’t think this will change the eventual out come, but it may make it just a little less bloody, and the achievement of even a small decrease in the human cost of this failure is a small victory."

[lambert]

Ah, yes. I wondered if this idea would work domestically. Why would be need a police department if we have militoas? Right wing, Christianist militias, of course. Since it would seem that the "light weight" US forces involved would be, say, Blackwater....

[AE]

The greatest problem with open-source militias, is that they're not tied to any coherent overall strategy.

I have more thoughts on it here:

http://rethinkingsecurity.typepad.com/rethinkingsecurity/2007/11/the-evolution-o.html

[adam]

AE,

"The greatest problem with open-source militias, is that they're not tied to any coherent overall strategy."

I agree completely. Mind you, its true on the other side of the fence as well.

If we take Bin Laden's recent letter to his followers (23rd October 2007) as an example he's worried about this in Iraq, especially in the light of the US retreat, and the possible collapse of the anti-US unity. Bin Laden notes that, from al-Qaeda’s position, the war in Iraq is over and they won. Bin Laden then says that the toughest fight is yet to come - the creation of an Islamic Iraqi state.

To reiterate the 2003 al-Qaeda strategy on Iraq:
(1) Beat the US invasion by prolonging the war, making it expensive, and (almost incidentally) killing unacceptable numbers of US troops
(2) Preparing to fill the vacuum that the US will leave. This is the "greater struggle"
(3) Filling the gap and creating an Islamic state.

To take Bin Laden at his word: 1 is done. 2 is the problem. 3 remains a dream for now.

Bin Laden is well aware that Islamic guerilla movements have a less than perfect record in consolidating victory after the event, for example in Afghanistan the entire thing went pear-shaped after the Russians left. Bin Laden blames the Muslims for a lack of unity (which is fair, divide and rule is the watchword of colonial diplomacy) and has already started to warn them about post-war infighting.

So if the US has been reduced to backing groups that are directly against their own strategy, Bin Laden is worried that his groups will do the same. Just another of those ironies of Iraq.

[franklloydwright]

I disagree with your characterisation of the AUC’s development in Colombia. In many parts of the country, such as the department of Putumayo, the AUC was the external actor, which arrived with the full support of government forces. Though supported by large land-owners, the AUC’s main sources of income were drug-trafficking, extortion and “taxation” from the start. Finally, I would argue that the AUC’s “success” in blunting the FARC has been overstated.

Your description of the “domination” stage of the militia process seems correct with regards to the AUC, but begs the question what has been achieved here, if all that happens is the substitution of one criminal organisation for another? Surely the answer is strengthening of state institutions and rule of law. In the Colombian case, the FARC have been pushed onto the back foot by a combination of improved intelligence and mobility for the government forces. But despite their unpopularity among the broader population, the FARC have weathered the government offensive, and for the moment this remains a tactical withdrawal. A long term solution can only come when the state can protect its citizens from murderous law-breakers of all political stripes.

Clearly this is a huge task, but the population has to believe the state is on its side, and that the state is willing and able to bring justice – otherwise you just set the stage for another generation of retaliatory violence. Part of what drives the Colombian war is four-decades’ worth of revenge killings – (ie my father/uncle/siser was killed by the FARC/AUC/whoever, so now I support the AUC/FARC/etc.”) Swapping one set of killers for another as the dominant local power is not the solution.