Information operations in Iraq

Military Review, May-June, 2004 by Norman Emery

Mid-level Baathists ... are conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us.

--General John Abizaid (1)

AN AMERICAN infantry team rolls through an Iraqi town in the Sunni triangle, an area west of Baghdad in the fertile Euphrates River valley. The team is distinctly identifiable to the residents as a foreign force. The soldiers dismount and secure the area and with little warning, kick in the door, roust the residents out of the house, and search and ransack the home. The search finds nothing.

Hot, homesick, and angry young soldiers sometimes overreact and "humiliate the men, offend the women, and alienate the very people who are supposed to be providing intelligence about terrorists and Baathist holdouts." (2) The typical result of such searches is that no weapons or targeted individuals are found. The team releases the family to return to their ransacked home and moves to the next target or back behind the protective wall of U.S. forces where they await the next mission, which might be based on late or dubious information.

Did the team arrive late, was the target tipped off, or was the target even legitimate? Most likely the information was valid, but the guerrillas' information network provided advance warning so the target could react. Iraq's population has little reason to cooperate with U.S. forces or to not cooperate with the guerrillas. Failure of U.S. forces to adapt in mindset, organization, and command and control (C2) adversely affects their ability to win the counterinsurgency battle.

U.S. forces need to understand how control of the population is a strength for the guerrillas and how to make it a weakness. U.S. forces must perform basic problem-solving to develop a solution rather than treat a symptom. Once military commanders and planners understand how Iraqi guerrillas differ from a conventional foe, they can affect the guerrillas' operations (IO) strategy to the unconventional problem.

Information operations are "actions taken to affect an adversary and influence others' decision-making process, information, and information systems, while protecting one's own information and information systems." (3) Understanding how Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz's trinity-people, army, and government-differs in low- and high-intensity conflicts and why rational people continue to support guerrillas instead of the liberating U.S. forces is important. (4)

Trinitarian Model of Conflict

Analyst Gordon McCormick developed a trinitarian model of conflict to demonstrate how people, the army, and the government play different roles in low- and high-intensity conflict. (5) For high-intensity conflict in this model, the conventional force defeats its adversary's military; the government falls, and directs the population to cooperate with the enemy; and the people comply. Examples are Germany and Japan surrendering during World War II.

High-intensity conflict is the most efficient and logical method of war for a state with a force advantage, such as the United States. The United States has relied on it force advantage since the 1990 Persian Gulf war, when it applied the Powell Doctrine, which dictates the "use of overwhelming force in the military encounter-rather than a proportional response." (6)

A guerrilla force does not have the strength to fight a state or invading force directly and relies on actions in the information environment to gain an advantage. (7) In a low-intensity conflict, guerrillas have the information advantage. They can see the state's military forces and remain unseen themselves and choose when and how to engage opposing forces. The guerrillas approach the trinitarian model of conflict in the reverse order of a high-intensity conflict approach: first, they confront the people; then, the state; and finally, the army. (8) The guerrillas gain the confidence of, or at least control of, the population, allowing them to attack the state on their own terms. If the state falls or compromises, the guerrillas do not have to engage the state's military forces. Guerrilla methods erode the state's information-collection process because it is a zero-sum game: what the guerrillas control, the state does not.

The Insurgent Payoff Function explains how Iraqi guerrillas can be so strong and why rational people would choose to support them over U.S. forces. (9) This model substitutes U.S. forces in Iraq for the regime or state. In

(E[V.sub.i]-E[C.sub.i]) >/< (E[V.sub.r]-E[C.sub.r]),

where E = expectation; [V.sub.i] = the value of joining the insurgency; [C.sub.i] = the cost of joining the insurgency; [V.sub.r] = the value of joining the regime (U.S. forces); and [C.sub.r] = the cost of joining the regime (U.S. forces), as long as the value of assisting the guerrillas (E[V.sub.i]) exceeds the cost (E[C.sub.i]), and that value is higher than support for U.S. forces, the guerrillas will control the population.

Even a neutral population represents passive support for guerrillas because the guerrillas need information dominance to remain invisible to U.S. forces. Tacit support of guerrillas can occur if the population feels the state cannot protect it. Guerrilla assassinations of public figures who cooperate with U.S. forces serve to strengthen that support. The Iraqi population then believes U.S. forces will depart prematurely, so it remains quiet, which amounts to passive support for the guerrillas. Insurgents want the population to keep silent, and bribe or coerce it do so. To increase [V.sub.r] and minimize [C.sub.r], the United States must change the way it interacts with the Iraqi population.