The folks at Abu Muqawama offer up an extensive counterinsurgency reading list — but their bare bones essentials list comprises just three items:
- David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice
- David Kilcullen, “28 Articles“, Military Review, May–June 2006
- Kalev Sepp, “Best and Worst Practices in COIN“, Military Review, May–June 2005
Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare is based on an earlier study he did for RAND, Pacification in Algeria: 1956–1958, which opens with this short history of his military career:
I left Hong Kong in February 1956 after a five-year assignment as military attaché. I had been away from troop duty for eleven years, having specialized in Chinese affairs since the end of World War II. I was saturated with intelligence work, I had missed the war in Indochina, I felt I had learned enough about insurgencies, and I wanted to test certain theories I had formed on counterinsurgency warfare. For all these reasons I volunteered for duty in Algeria as soon as I reached France. When my four-month leave was over, I was assigned to the 45th B.I.C. (Colonial Infantry Battalion) to which I reported on August 1, 1956. I was to spend two years in Algeria, first as a company commander until April 1, 1958, then as a deputy battalion commander until August 1, 1958.
Kilcullen’s “Twenty-Eight Articles” offers these bits of advice:
- Know your turf.
- Diagnose the problem.
- Organize for intell
- Organize for interagency operations.
- Travel light and harden your combat service support (CSS).
- Find a political/cultural adviser.
- Train the squad leaders — then trust them.
- Rank is nothing; talent is everything.
- Have a game plan.
- Be there.
- Avoid knee-jerk responses to first impressions.
- Prepare for handover from day one.
- Build trusted networks.
- Start easy.
- Seek early victories.
- Practice deterrent patrolling.
- Be prepared for setbacks.
- Remember the global audience.
- Engage the women, beware of the children.
- Take stock regularly.
- Exploit a “single narrative.”
- Local forces should mirror the enemy, not the Americans.
- Practice armed civil affairs.
- Small is beautiful.
- Fight the enemy’s strategy, not his forces.
- Build your own solution — only attack the enemy when he gets in the way.
- Keep your extraction plan secret.
- Whatever else you do, keep the initiative.
In Best Practices in Counterinsurgency, Kalev I. Sepp, Ph.D. provides a list of Successful and Unsuccessful Counterinsurgency Practices:
Successful
- Emphasis on intelligence.
- Focus on population, their needs, and security.
- Secure areas established, expanded.
- Insurgents isolated from population (population
control).- Single authority (charismatic/dynamic leader).
- Effective, pervasive psychological operations
(PSYOP) campaigns.- Amnesty and rehabilitation for insurgents.
- Police in lead; military supporting.
- Police force expanded, diversified.
- Conventional military forces reoriented for
counterinsurgency.- Special Forces, advisers embedded with
indigenous forces.- Insurgent sanctuaries denied.
Unsuccessful
- Primacy of military direction of counterinsurgency.
- Priority to “kill-capture” enemy, not on engaging
population.- Battalion-size operations as the norm.
- Military units concentrated on large bases for protection.
- Special Forces focused on raiding.
- Adviser effort a low priority in personnel assignment.
- Building, training indigenous army in image of U.S. Army.
- Peacetime government processes.
- Open borders, airspace, coastlines.