Applying law enforcement technology to counterinsurgency operations

Joint Force Quarterly, July, 2007 by Giles Kyser, Matt Keegan, Samuel A. Musa

Insurgent/Terrorist Mobility. Highly porous borders between Iraq and Afghanistan and their respective neighbors, combined with interprovince mobility and geographic tribal striations, significantly challenge coalition force capability to limit movement of terrorist/insurgent forces. Internal examples such as residents of Mosul arrested in Takrit, of Afghani fighters in Iraq, or even the arrest of a foreign fighter once detained on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the United States highlight the problem coalition forces face every day. (5)

Detainee Movement Requirements. Following the Abu Ghraib incident, political pressures created the impetus for the implementation of new detainee transfer processes. Unless significant reason is established at the battalion level permitting extended interrogation, detainees must transfer to the next higher echelon facilities within a short time. Command policy sets that period, and the enemy remains well aware of it by virtue of information gathered from those released. Currently employed technology does not allow the squad/checkpoint to have a clear detain/do not detain choice because certain technology only exists at the battalion level and higher, and even then only through cumbersome processes with latency constraints. Squad/checkpoint level confirmation, aside from a lucky hit on a watch list, is rare. The operational requirements of such immediate transfer, and the limited insight into detainee history at the point of encounter (the checkpoint or arrest point), effectively limit actual opportunities for detainee interrogation and information exploitation to only that which is gathered beyond the 18-hour window. Discussions with regional veterans indicate that the aforementioned limitations are known by the insurgents, terrorists, and criminals.

With this knowledge, insurgents, terrorists, and criminals understand that waiting the prescribed period closes the coalition force's limited window of opportunity to exploit their capture. The window closes because informal and formal communications methods warn a detainee's associates, who then "go to ground." The highly perishable intelligence that a detainee may possess decays by the time higher headquarters interrogates the suspect. More importantly, those within the detainee's network go into hiding as the fact of detention becomes apparent. In effect, the process cycle time itself suboptimizes the coalition forces' ability to act on perishable intelligence.

Having examined the four factors preventing friendly ability to develop situational awareness in an offensive manner, we need to look at solutions that might help overcome those constraints. Police methods such as those used in Chicago could assist our forces in executing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for this analysis, we focus on a simple police information technology solution. Biometric technology attached to a transactional database utilizing existing communications infrastructure could create a virtual surge extending the effectiveness of the individual warrior or policeman and lifting the burden of exposing the terrorist from the populace. Biometrically exposing an enemy heretofore invisible to the Western eye and protected by those around him whom he intimidates into silence offers the way to penetrate the insular demographic. Such a police solution could help to create a more secure environment for the Iraqi and Afghan people.