Guerrillas, terrorists, and intelligence analysis: something old, something new

Military Review, July-August, 2004 by Lester W. Grau

THE UNITED STATES and its coalition allies are currently engaged in counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. While these are clearly different countries and insurgencies, they have some common features. The guerrilla war in Afghanistan grew from the remnants of the Taliban movement--a loose confederation of Pashtun tribesmen under an overarching Islamic fundamentalist banner. The Taliban's Islamic Emirate was devoted to Pashtun dominance and the restoration of 12th-century Islamic practices.

Foreigners from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and other Sunni Arab and non-Arab cultures joined the Taliban. Even Chechens, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan adherents, and Uighurs from China joined the foreign contingent, often as part of al-Qaeda. The Taliban was not a guerrilla force; it was a conventional force that fought and deployed in linear fashion using light-cavalry tactics based on pickup trucks and leftover Soviet equipment. U.S. Special Forces, working with the main ground forces of the Afghan Northern Alliance and strike aircraft, quickly dismantled the force.

The primary Taliban combatant was not the Mujahideen warrior who had fought the Soviets for over 9 years, although many of the commanders were. The primary Taliban combatant was a young man who had grown up in refugee camps while his male relatives were fighting the Soviet 40th Army.

Today, the Taliban is a fragmented force consisting of independent bands that call themselves Taliban but have little allegiance to the original Taliban leader. These Taliban, unable to match Western coalition forces in technology or conventional combat, have reverted to terrorism and guerrilla warfare. Al-Qaeda has withdrawn from most of the direct combat and has assumed an advisory and training role.

The guerrilla war remains local, Pashtun, Sunni, and disjointed, and with little apparent hierarchy and organization. The war is primarily rural, and the guerrillas enjoy sanctuary along Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. Funding is local, with some outside donations, but the bulk now comes from the drug trade. Maintaining the drug trade often justifies guerrilla activity.

The current Iraqi guerrilla war grew from a defeated hierarchical party-state structure. The army officer corps, Baathist party, and Fedayeen militia were secular state institutions drawn primarily from the ruling minority--Sunni Arab peoples. Much of the hierarchy and interrelations of the state structure remain intact in the remnant guerrilla organization. Foreign combatants, including al-Qaeda members and Chechens, have entered Iraq to fight the coalition. They do not blend in well, however, and many have since left or assumed specialized support roles such as bomb manufacturer, suicide bomber, or instructor.

The Iraqi combatants have little experience in fighting as actual guerrillas, but some do have counterinsurgency experience against Kurds and Shia Iraqis. The insurgency has a strong urban component, particularly in Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, Al Sulaymaniyah, Samarra, and Tikrit. The rural guerrilla war is primarily restricted to the Sunni triangle west-northwest of Baghdad. The urban guerrillas rely primarily on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) because their marksmanship is not good. Iraqi guerrillas lack a ready sanctuary, but they are well funded with billions of U.S. dollars held by Iraq's former leaders. They have ready access to large stocks of weapons and explosives.

The military intelligence effort devoted to combating either insurgency has little in common with conventional intelligence operations in support of conventional maneuver war. Intelligence preparation of the battlefield, order of battle, templating forces, signals intelligence; measurement and signature intelligence; and electronic intelligence take different forms or are not applicable. The S2 or G2 has a different type of war and needs to take a different approach to dealing with it, much as the U.S. approach to peacekeeping evolved during the past decade. (1)

The S2 and G2 are involved in a form of police investigative work, specifically police investigations dealing with gangs and narcotrafficers. Association matrixes, network analysis, cultural analysis, genealogy, event-pattern analysis, language-pattern analysis, traffic-flow analysis, and financial-transaction analysis are police tools that should be staples of the intelligence effort in a counterinsurgency. (2) Adopting these tools does not imply adopting accompanying restrictions on combat lethality or local rules of engagement that apply to police forces.

Afghanistan now has an elected civilian government, and there will be one in Iraq. Converting former police states to those governed by rule of law will cause many problems, but new Afghan and Iraqi police forces are being trained and equipped to deal with local problems. The collection efforts of local police forces must also be integrated into the intelligence process. The military and police conduct covert and overt collection for different functions and under different rules. Still, raw data and intelligence produced might be mutually supportive.