Counterinsurgency and Peace Operations

t First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN Siniultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an ilnprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an itforma business © 2012 Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn for selection and editorial material; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn to be identified as editors of this work, and of the chapter authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Bembo by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear All rights reserved. No part of this bonk may be reprioted or reproduced or utilised in any fors or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopyiog and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval systens, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguir~g in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging­in­Publication Data The Routledge bandbook of insurgency and counterinsurgency / edited by Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyveateyn. p. Cm. Includes bibliographicsl references and index. 1. Iosurgency—Handbook.s, manuals, etc. 2. Insurgency—Case studies. 3. Guerrillas— History. 4. Counterinsurgency—Handboob, manuals, Ccc. 5. Counterinsurgency—Case studies. 1. PJch, Paul B., 1950— II. Duyvesteyn, Isabelle, 1972— III. Title: handbook of insurgency and counterinsurgency. U240.R69 2012 355.02’18—dc23 2011032272 ISBN: 978—0­415­56733­6 (hbk) ISBN: 978—0—203—13260­9 (ebk) PA T~ 2 4 5 r~ ~ re~Pon~ 0 OoUr000 FSG~ C013604J 6 . Prmted and bound sn Great Bntain by CPI Antony Rowe, Cbippenham, Wiltshire 7 CONTENTS List of illustrations Notes on contributors Preface and acknowledgements Viii ix xiii The study of insurgency and counterinsûrgency Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn 1 PART 1 Theoretical and analytical issues 21 2 The historiography of insurgency lan Beckett 23 3 Rethinking insurgency Steven Metz 32 4 Changing forms of insurgency: pirates, narco gangs and failed states RobertJ. Bunker 45 5 Cyberspace and insurgency DavidJ. Betz 54 6 Whither counterinsurgency: the rise and fail of a divisive concept David H. Ucko 67 7 Counterinsurgency and peace operations Thijs Brocades Zaalberg 80 v 7 COUNTERINSURGENCy AND PEACE OPERATIONS Thijs Brocades Zaalberg1 In the wake of the events of 9/11, the thin line that divided peacekeeping from counterinsur gency seemed to blur at an accelerated pace. The American­led offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in different Western troop contributing nations using the two denominators for similar military activities under unified command. In the decade that followed the toppling of the Taliban regime, the US4ed ‘counter—terrorist’ operation Enduring Freedom and the European­dominated International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) ‘peacekeeping’ mission evolved and gradually fused into a campaign that currently defines the popular perception of counterinsurgency. However, the close connection between fighting insurgencies and keeping the peace is cer tainly no twenty­first century phenornenon. History is littered with examples of quasi impartial (international) military forces trying to monitor peace agreements or to contain a conflict, only to end up fighting insurgent or separatist movements (Schmidl 2000). Well­known modern examples are the UN peacekeepers who fought Katangan secessionist forces in post­colonial Congo in the early 1 960s and the British troops deploying in Northern Ireland in 1969 as ‘peacekeepers’ to halt sectarian violence, but soon finding themselves countering an insurgency led by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. During the 1990s, when UN(­authorized) peace keeping in its many configurations temporarily becarne the dominant form of military opera tions for Western powers, the parallel occasionally popped up in the operational realm. The low­intensity conflict that erupted in Somalia after the 1992 international ‘humanitarian’ inter vention, bore some resemblance to counterinsurgency and triggered memories of the Congo experience witbin the UN community. At approximately the same time, halfvvay around the world in the Cambodian jungle, Dutch marines operating as peacekeepers under UN­command relied on the British Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine while performing ‘duties in aid to the civil power’ — public security tasks that were never part of their original UN­peacekeeping mandate (Brocades Zaalberg 2006: 109). Also British troops within NATO’s Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia in 1996 referred to counterinsurgency procedures that, according to the visiting British conffict analyst John Mackinlay, had proved effective in the past, but were officially set aside in the 1990s ‘in favour of peacekeeping’ (2009: 2). In his thought­provoking book The Insurgent Archipelago, Mackinlay argued in 2009 that the sinularities between insurgencies and the new internal wars on the one hand, and peacekeeping and counterinsurgency on the other hand, had always been quite obvious. He criticizes Western 80 Peacekeeping and counterinsurgency ~.. ­ insur mn and ors for ling of md the riission :ion of ­ is cer— ipartial t, only aodern olonial 969 as rgency peace— opera— n. The ~ doctrine writers, UN officials and fellow conflict analysts for ignoring the parallel and creating a conceptual blur. He quite franidy admits that, as a United Nations researcher in that period, he did not at the time see himself as ‘being on a journey through the evolutionary stages of insurgency’, but Mackinlay is nevertheless harsh on his expert colleagues. Allegedly, they con tributed to the terribly slow and inadequate response to the new internal wars that erupted at the Cold War’s end by missing the opportunity to husband existing knowledge on insurgency and counterinsurgency instead introducing a wide range of vague terminology for ‘so­calle.d peace support operations’ in response to ‘complex emergencies’. Mackinlay ascribes the lack of frmndamental debate on the conceptual overlap and the applicabiity of counterinsurgency lessons and theory during peace operations to the ‘excomniunication’ in the 1990s of the established circie of counterinsurgency experts and doctrine writers (2009: 2_3).2 Only after the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, Mackinlay added, could it any longer be denied that ‘confronting complex emergencies was simply counterinsurgency by another name’ (2009: 89). Mackinlay’s claim, which he makes in the margins of a much broader argument on so­called globalized insurgency, while not altogether untrue, is certainly inaccurate. Overall, it is correct that relatively few scholars and no doctrine writers have entered this conceptual minefield. But nevertheless, in the academic realm, the parallels between counterinsurgency and peace opera— tions have been both embraced and denounced by conflict analysts since the early 1 990s. This chapter seeks to explain why the idea of a fundamental overlap between counterinsurgency and peacekeeping was not always obvious, but nevertheless embraced, denounced and reinvented •by a select group of scholars. It does so by first addressing the key difference between the broad and narrow definitions of both peacekeeping ~nd counterinsurgency. Subsequently, it deals with the arguments of the most important enthusiasts and sceptics, the crucial distinction between tactical similarities and politico­strategic differences and the importance of conceptual and operational development in time. The chapter conciudes by addressing the question whether recent experience in complex operations such as in Afghanistan and Iraq has proved the enthusiasts’ argument correct. Have complex peace operations, particularly those that inciude (the ability to engage in) peace enforce— ment, always shown frmndamental similarities with counterinsurgency? 1f yes, what are the key elements connecting them? Or is it safer to say that the notion of peace operations has come so far adrift during the previous two decades that many Western powers — for political reasons — have for a long time been able to present missions such as ISAF as peacekeeping rather than counterinsurgency? Has peacekeeping become a euphemism or have we entered, as some US counterinsurgency theorists have argued, the era of ‘hybrid—warfare’, wherein counterinsur gency, peace operations, state­building and fighting terronsm all blend into one?3 inter— Congo md the nmand 1 to the ~eeping ntation ding to it were that the ceeping Kï estern At opposite ends Following Mackinlay’s suggestion, it is hardly surprising that policy­makers, military leaders and conflict analysts treated peace operations and counterinsurgency as two separate and distinct campaign themes in the early post—Cold War years. At the time, the two disciplines appeared to be at opposing ends of the spectrum of conffict types that during the 1970s and 1980s had been lumped together under the now largely redundant term ‘low­intensity operations’.4 Moreover, whereas counterinsurgency seemed to have become a stale euphemism for violent suppression of popular resistance movements abroad, peacekeeping brought the promise of upholding what President George H.W. Bush called ‘The New World Order’ in a non­violent way. The paral lel — if recognized — would be neither logical nor welcome under the conditions prevailing at Cold War’s end. 81 T. Brocades Zaalberg The tendency ofpeacekeeping experts to ignore counterinsurgency was understandable con sidering its track record. Especially outside intervention on the .side of the counterinsurgent did not ‘inspire much enthusiasm for the prospects of success’ (Snow 1996: 62). This certainly does not imply that insurgencies are predestined to succeed. However, by the early 1 990s those iessons from successfbl counterinsurgency that had been learned by the European colonial powers and by the United States in Vietnam two decades before, were mostly forgotten or deliberately ‘unlearned’ within the Western military establishment. The Israeii military analyst Martin van Creveld wrote about the preceding episode in history: When the last colonies—those of Portugal—were freed in 1975, many people feit that an era in warfare had come to an end. Having suffered one defeat after another, the most important armed forces of the ‘developed’ world in particular heaved a sigh of relief~ gratefiilly, they feit that they could return to ‘ordinary’ soldiering, by which they meant preparing for wars against armed organizations sirnilar to themseives on the other side of the Iron Curtain. (Van Creveld 2000) The aversion of the post­Cold War peacekeepers to latch on to counterinsurgency theory and tactics was even more obvious when considering war­tom countries such as Namibia, Cambodia and El Salvador in the late 1980s. These bloody conflicts were in essence insurgen cies, wherein the superpowers supported either the rebels or the governments under attack in a counterinsurgency.5 Peacekeeping was a means of putting an end to these proxy wars through the deployment of neutral, lightly armed, blue­helmeted soldiers. These ‘knights in white armour’ (Bellamy 1996) were certainly not deployed to defeat insurgent movements and there fore unlikely to dweil ori counter­revolutionary warfare theory. Counterinsurgency violated the ftindamental principies of classical United Nations peacekeeping and therefore, from an early post—Cold War perspective, there was little reason positively to connect the two disciplines. Broad and narrow definitions Before addressing the conceptual overlap or the lack thereof it is crucial to understand the dual meaning of both peacekeeping and counterinsurgency.They are on the one hand catch­all phrases referring to a broad category of military and civffian activities, whiie on the other hand referring to a very specific concept or type of operation. Obviously, the fluidity ofboth concepts seriously complicated their comparison. Peacekeeping in a traditional and narrow sense is used for situations where parties to a con ffict, typically two states, agree to the interposition of UN troops in order to uphold a ceasefire.6 Although the term is conspicuously absent from the UN Charter, this type of’classic’ or ‘tradi tional’ peacekeeping evolved from military observer missions to monitor truce agreements in the late 1940s into the UN’s response to the Suez Crisis of 1956. Under Chapter VI of the UN Charter the 6,000­strong United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) became the mother of all ‘thin blue line’ peacekeeping missions. UNEF allowed the intervening French and British forces to withdraw and then patrolled the armistice line between Egypt and Israel, Similar UN interposition­niissions were established on Cyprus (from 1974), on the Golan Heights (also from 1974) and — under far more complex conditions — in Southern Lebanon (from 1979). The traditional principles of peacekeeping were thoroughly anchored in consent of the local parties involved, impartiality and the use of force restricted to self­defence by lightly armed forces. 82 Peaceleeeping and counterinsur,~ency ­ :_­. ­ did .oes ose nial or lyst ­ ­ ­ ~­ ­ ~­ ­ ­ iory ibia, :k in )ugh rhite iere­ Lated n an two ­~ ­ ­ ~­~­­­­ ­ 1 the :h­all hand cepts con­ :fire.6 radi­ ats in UN of all î rces ­ UN (also The )arties orces. ~.­ ~­j1 ­ ~­ ­ ~ ­ ~­. ~­ ­ ~ ­ ~:~­­ ­ Peacekeeping operations involving permanent members of the Security Council were mostly created outside the UN system.7 Peacekeeping was mainly about manning buffer zones between armies and monitoring military adversaries. It was predominantly limited to the military domain and allowed for littie civil—rnilitary interaction on the part ofpeacekeepers. Although there have been notable exceptions, such as the broadly niandated and violent Ope’rations des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC), the majority of all peace operations initiated during the Cold War feil into this narrow peacekeeping category. After 1989, the UN continued to use the term peacekeeping as a ‘catch­all’ phrase when both the scope and the number of new rnissions mushroomed. In order to meet the new post Cold War challenges the development of peacekeeping doctrine centred on interventions in intra­state conflict (civil wars) instead of conventional warfare between states. In 1992, UN secretary general Boutros Boutros­Ghali made a categorization for füture multinational inter­ ventions in An Agenda for Pe€we. The paper provided an analysis of and recommendations to the Security Council for ways to improve the UN’s capacity to establish peace. An Agenda for Peace combined older peacekeeping principles and more recent experiences such as in Namibia (1989—90), where an integrated civil—rnilitary mission consisting of 4,500 troops, 1,500 police and 2 000 other civilians ensured Narmbian independence from South Africa This resulted in the deflnition of four more or less consecutive phases of international action to prevent or control armed conffict: preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, peacemaking — inciuding the pos sibility of peace enforcement when consent of one or more of the warring partjes was lacking — and post­conffict peace building. This division in linear stages found its way into the doctrines ofmost Westem arrnies, and would remain the prevailing conceptual framework for peacekeep ing in its broad sense 8 Peacekeeping and post­conffict peace building proved relatively effective tools for control ling governxnents and forIner insurgent groups in a rather benign environment such as in Namibia, Mozambique, El Salvador and — to a lesser extent — Cambodia. The end to super­ power rivalry and war—weariness facffitated solutions in these long­lasting internal confficts. However, the end of superpower interference at the end of the Cold War also unleashed other powers, mainly ethnic nationalism, that would create new internal wars in the Bailcans and else where. In Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia ‘peacekeepers’ were injected into a combat zone without a solid peace agreement to implement and with no peace to keep. These operations would criss­cross diagonally across the consecutive doctrinal phases and categories distinguished in An Agendafor Peace — while simultaneously combimng elements of them all — as these missions inevitably moved beyond their limited, but vaguely deflned humamtarian goals. ­ In some cases, peacekeepers found themselves confronted with an insurgent­like adversary who thwarted their humanitarian mission or obs~icted the. ~ocal) peace agreement they were trying to uphold. Throughout the 1990s, responses to such challenges — the use or non­use of force — dominated the peacekeeping debate, especially after UN operations in Somalia (1993—5) and Bosma (1992—5) slowly went down the road of peace enforcement. When 18 American soldiers died in Mogadishu after a raid on warlord Mohamed Aidid, the Somalia operation went awry and became a peacekeeper’s doom scenario. It led the first British commander of UN forces in Bosnia, General Sir Michael Rose, to coin the phrase ‘crossing the Mogadishu­line’ between neutral peacekeeping and forceful intervention against one of the parties in a conflict. In the United States this incident created a strong aversion to peace operations amongst political and military leaders, many of whom already saw peacekeeping as an unwelcome diversion from the preparation for major conventional warf~re. In most European capitals, the failure of enforce ment measures in Somalia led to the questionable conciusion that they were on the right course by trying to stick as much as possible to a neutral position in Bosnia (Clarke and Herbst 1997: 83 T Bro~des Zaalberg LA 4.~ ~ 70) Simplistic historical analogies between Bosma and the Vietnam quagmire were used extensively by those warmng against more forceflul intervention (Ten Cate 2007) In short peacekeeping~ad~amt degenerate into counterinsurgency with its implication of partiality and armed intervention in an internal conflict Counterinsurgency like peacekeeping is also used in both a narrow and a broad sense It is a relatively recent label introduced in the 1 960s for the military pararmlitary politica! eco— nonuc psychological and civic actlons taken by a government and its foreign supporters to defeat insurgency with an insurgency being an orgamzed movement aimed at the overthrow of a govemment through use of subversion and armed co~ict. Neither the definition of insur gency nor that of countennsurgency therefore excludes conventional combat operations However, in doctrine, popular debate and academic discourse, the term insurgency is almost exclusively reserved for subversion and irregular warfare, particu!arly the use of guerrilla and terrorist tactics. Sirnilarly, the term counterinsurgency is used for any set of measures taken by a government and its foreign supporters to defeat an irregular opponent. Used in a broad sense, counterinsurgency may include a ~ly militarized and violent ‘enemy centric’ suppression of popular resistance movements. It may also inciude exemplary force and terronzing the population into withdrawing its support for the lnsurgents However counter insurgency is often regarded as synonymous with a more enlightened and subtle ‘population centnc approach to defeating insurgencies This classic countennsurgency doctrine is best known from the semi­theoretical handbook Defeating Communist Insurgency, written by Sir Robert Thompson after his expenence as an adrmmstrator in Malaya and an adviser in Vietnam It was the result of decades ofBritish experience in colonial policing culminating in Thompson’s famous five principles (Thonipson 1966). With communist revolutions sparking all over the world in the age of decolonization, this and other works of the time had a dear purpose: the defeat of Maoist­style, predominantly rural insurgent movements. French counterinsurgency practitioner and theorist David Galula had released a similar thesis two years earlier, propagating an approach aimed at protecting and winning over the people (1966). However, French coun terinsurgency only worked on a tactical level in Algeria — which featured as Ga!ula’s primary case — because of the massive resources used and the often brutal methods apphed It ultirnately failed on a politica! and strategic level because the French sought to maintain direct rule, as they had in Indochina. The French thus violated principle number one of classic counterinsurgency doctrine, which was to have a viable politica! goal. This is not to say that the British — who did accept decolonization as inevitable — were always subtle in their ways. Even during what is often considered the model campaign in Malaya in the 1 950s the colonial power had effectively created a police state albeit a police state with a conscience (Beckett 2001 92 see also Bennett 2007, 2009; Marshall 2010). The British typically avoided over­reliance on military means and the use of force and tended to see addressing the le~timate grievances on w~ch an insurgency fed as their centre of gravity. They were able to do so because they managed to create a rather sophisticated and balanced civi!—military system to counter insurgent threats (Kitson 1971). Current Western counterinsurgency doctrine is stil! predoniinantly based on the classic British and French theorists, although a recent school of ‘global counterinsurgency’ thinkers has tried to take the concept beyond its geographically limited ‘neo—classic’ parameters (Jones and Smith 2010). Obviously, a debate on the parallels between peacekeeping and counterinsurgency is only relevant if the broad and narrow definitions are clearly distinguished. The comparison between 1 ~‘ the brutal suppression of popular resistance movements with the neutral interposition by unarmed peacekeepers in an observer’s role is of course fruitless. The more likely comparison is that between the more enlightened ‘population centric’ version of counterinsurgency and what 84 Peacekeeping and counterinsurgency has become known as complex peace operations. The latter term refers to a combination of peacekeeping, peace building or state building and humamtarian action, performed by troops capable of enforcing the peace in cooperation with a host of civilian actors during or after intra state conflict. In order to distinguish between the broad and the narrow definition of the term, the terms ‘classic counterinsurgency (theory)’ and ‘classic peacekeeping’ will be used to refer to the narrow versions. Counterinsurgency and peace operations refer to the broader concepts. zere used In short, :iality and ense. It is ical, eco oorters to rthrow of of insur perations. • is alinost n­rilla and :aken by a nt ‘enemy force and counter— opulation .ne is best en by Sir ii lompson’s 1 over the Lrpose: the .nsurgenCy ropagating nch coun L’S primary ultimately ale, as they insurgency — who did hat is often effectively so Bennett means and insurgency tte a rather son 1971). ssic British rs has tried and Smith ncy is only ~n between )OSitlOfl by mparison is y and what Reinventing the wheel? :~ During the 1 990s, several counterinsurgency specialists argued that Western powers needed to draw on classic counterinsurgency lessons and theory when trying to impose peace in war­tom Somalia, Bosnia and future intra—state confficts. As we have seen, their argument went largely unnoticed as the peacekeeping specialists who reigned supreme in the years of Cold War trium phalism ignored counterinsurgency theory. However, this leaves the question whether the arguments brought forward by these counterinsurgency ‘enthusiasts’ were actually sound. Larry Cable was amongst the first to draw the parallel when he argued in an article in the journal Small Wars and Insurgencies that Ametican political leaders needed to ‘reinvent the round wheel’ in the post—Cold War order by embracing lessons from fighting insurgencies (1993). Kemarkably, he actually put littie effort into comparing counterinsurgency and peacekeeping or peace enforcement conceptually. As an authority on the development of US counterinsurgency doctrine in relation to the Vietnam War he simply deflned peace operations in such a broad way that they virtually fitted the definition of counterinsurgency. According to Cable, peacekeepers needed to show the ability and the will to use the minimum necessary deadly force in the accomplishment of their mission. As witnessed during UN operations in Cambodia, Kwanda and Bosnia, this view was hardly accepted in peacekeeping circies at the time. But Cable was inspired by more forceflil US­led interventiçns in northem Iraq and Somalia and argued that the insurgent, the counterinsurgent, the peace enforcer and the peacekeeper were operating under the same dynamics and all shared the same goal, namely political authority over a specified population in a defined geographical area. He even saw their basic tools of popular perception of legitimacy and a credible capacity to coerce as being essentially identical (1993: 229, 249, •255—6). Howev~for the sake of clarity (and contrary to Cable’s claims)~controffing and protecting territory an’~ populations was hardly considered a peacekeeper’s task at the time, not even during the massive US­led humanitarian operation in Somalia in 1992—3. But although Cable was inaccurate as far as peace operations in the early 1990s were concemed, his point was valid in view of later, more broadly mandated peace operations. In the latter half of the 1990s in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, peacekeepers wearing green hehnets would indeed come better prepared, equipped and mandated, allowing them to move to peace enforcement if nec— essary. Meanwhile, protection of the population gradually became a central and formal part of peacekeeping mandates in this period (Brahimi 2000). Both Cable’s inaccurateness and his prescience resulted from what seemed to be his lack of interest in UN peacekeeping as such. Instead, he was taking a broad historical perspective and pleaded for a more interventionist US foreign policy in a period when the Vietnam experience made the United States exceptionally wary of getting involved in ‘other people’s wars’. The United States had a long legacy of flghting small wars in the Phulippines and Central America and had been successftil in what Cable self­servingly called ‘peacekeeping’ during coercive interventions such as in Lebanon in 1958 and the Dominican R.epublic in 1964. However, the mantra ‘no more Vietnams’ had resulted in the rigid Weinberger­Poweil doctrine in the 85 T. Brocades Zaalberg mid­1980s. By embracing this doctrine the world’s sole reniaining superpower seemed to shun all but conventional warfare in support ofmajor national security threats.9 Fighting communist inspired insurgencies was reduced to military advice and material support and renamed Foreign Internal Defence. Involvernent of US tactical ground forces in this type of conffict in the Cold War’s ‘hot’ regions such as Central Ainerica was conmionly avoided. According to Cable, the concept of’limited war’ in support of policy had regrettably become ‘a mystery to most Aaneri cans’ (1993: 259). But as Cable’s article was being published in the autumn of 1993, urban gun battles raged between US forces and Somali fighters in the streets of Mogadishu. With the painful Somalia experience reinforcing the lingering American ‘Vietnam syndrome’, Cable’s cail for a revival of counterinsurgency methods to quell the intemal wars of the 1 990s generated very few followers in the United States or elsewhere. The tragic cases of Somalia and Bosnia heavily infiuenced Donald Snow when he argued quite the opposite of Cable in his book Uncivil Wars (1996). In contrast to Cable, Snow, as an American political scientist, took the nature ofinternal conffict rather than the kind of the inter vention as his point of departure. This led him to conclude that insurgency and classic counter insurgency practice and theories from the Cold War years held liniited applicability to what he called ‘new intemal wars’. Apart from Snow’s claim that outside n~iilitary involvement in coun terinsurgency — particularly physical intervention on the side of the government such as in Vietnam — had failed rather miserably, intervening forces in the 1 990s were faced with a totally different type of conffict from the so­cailed wars of national liberation (1996: 85; see also Gent 2005). Central to Snow’s argument was the fact that the lynchpin tying together Cold War insurgency and counterinsurgency — the assumed moderating irnpact of the struggie for popular support (‘a cominon centre of gravity’) — was sadly missing in places such as Somalia, Kwanda and Bosnia. The ‘new conibatants’ narrowed their appeal to their own specific ethnic group. The conversion of other population groups by winning their ‘hearts and minds’, through the use of ideology, politics and good government, seemed not even an afterthought amongst the warring parties. Moreover, their ideological and political objectives were mostly vague and they seenied less interested in the installation of a new government than in the profit they could derive from continuing instability and lawlessness (Snow 1996: 107) ~ Snow therefore strongly wamed against ‘dusting offVietnam­era notions of insurgency and counterinsurgency’, which he claimed — in sharp contrast to Mackinlay — ‘was largely being done’ in order to understand and solve these situations (1996: 7). However, he failed to clarif~r who in policy, military or academie circles was actively using this important historical and theo retical knowledge to inform peacekeeping initiatives. Considering that so littie experience and doctrine from irregular warfhie was actually used at the time, his advice seems superfluous. Nevertheless, Snow was wiffing to admit that from a peacekeeper’s perspective there was sonie overlap in the activity involved. A more coercive form of intervention in an internal war like NATO’s Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia, which he called ‘peace imposition’, had ‘almost all of the characteristics of intervention in a counterinsurgency’. Indeed, ‘the closest cor relation between traditional insurgency­counterinsurgency and new internal war is found at this level’ (Snow 1996: 152).h1 Thomas Mockaitis also approached the comparison from this angle despite reaching a differ ent conciusion. Being a true believer in the classic British counterinsurgency model and military culture, he became the most passionate advocate of the strong link. Mockaitis was an American bistorian who was an expert on the British colonial and post­colonial experience and had much more faith in the lessons from colonial policing and fighting Maoist­style insurgencies than Snow and most other contemporaries (Mockaitis 1990, 1 995a, 1 995b). When first introducing the connection in the margins of an article on peacekeeping in intra­state conffict in 1995, 86 .1 Peacekeeping and counterinsurgency Mockaitis cautiously avoided using the term counterinsurgency. Instead, he referred to the British concept of ‘aid to the civil power’ as a framework for future operations falling between peacekeeping and peace enforcement, conciudling that ‘the British approach to handling unrest is eminently compatible with the UN Charter’. British soldiers had been constantly reminded that their tasks was ‘not the annihilation of an enemy but the suppression of a temporary dis order’, using a minimum of force. Meanwhile, the British had long understood that civil unrest was not primarily a military problem and therefore ‘winning the hearts and minds’, civil—mili tary cooperation, state­building and internal security operations had always gone hand­in­hand in the empire (Mockaitis 1995a: 122—3). Three years later Mockaitis took this argument further when he stressed that intervention to end civil conffict ‘more closely resembles counterinsurgency than it does any other form of rnili tary conffict’ (1998: 43). On the basis ofthe same Somalia and Bosnia cases, but now augmented by the recently rediscovered UN mission in Congo in the 1 960s, he suggested that peace enforcement, which he essentially defined as intervention in an active conffict, was simply ‘a new name for an old game’. Therefore, instead of building on classic peacekeeping, robust peace operations needed to be reconfigured on the basis of counterinsurgency operations. Heavy handed American, French and Soviet­Russian practice needed to be avoided, but from an analysis of the British experience in flghting insurgencies there ‘might emerge a new model for peace operations to end civil conffict’ (1998: 43). Mockaitis’ conclusion was persuasive and he and others recycled similar arguments several times,’2 but his analysis had some weak points. It paid littie attention to the fact that the British approach and its success was as much about control and coercion as it was about ‘winning the hearts and minds’ and ‘minimum use of force’.13 Moreover, Mockaitis hardily measured the three cases against the criteria of what actu— ally constituted counterinsurgency, its definition and its ‘classic’ principles. Most of all, his article lacked a thorough treatment of the crucial issue ofimpartiality and consent, which is at the heart of any peacekeeping debate. • to shun irnunst Foreign :he Cold able, the t Amen rban gun Xï ith the Lble’s cali ;enerated .e argued as an :he inter— counter what he in coun ach as in s a totally also Gent Dold War r popular Rwanda ac group. rough the Longst the and they hey could gency and ;ely being 1 to c1arif~’ and theo nience and ~perfluous. was some al war like ition’, had :losest cor— und at this ag a differ nd military i American [had much ~ncies than ntroducing :t in 1995, t 1: [ The end of impartî a~ity? Peace operations and countennsurgency were both about ending civil unrest and armed con ffict. Much of the military activity involved was formally about ‘establishing a safe and secure environment’. However, a counterinsurgent could, by definition, not be irnpartial as defeating an insurgency remained his strategic objective. Even ifhe chose to address the le~itimate griev— ances on which it feeds as his centre of gravity, this remained a means to an end — and one that even the British hardly attained without causing heavy attrition amongst enemy forces. The renowned counterinsurgency practitioner and theorist Frank Kitson, who had actually been the first to establish the link between counterinsurgency and UN­style peacekeeping in his seminal book Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peace­keeping (1971), was also the first to draw attention to this fundamental difference. Although he saw ‘a surprising sintilar ity in the outward forms of many of the techniques involved’, the essential dissimilarity was that the peace­keeping force acts on behalf of both parties to a dispute, at the invitation of them both, and therefore must as far as possible carry Out its task without having recourse to warlike action against either of them ... 1f the body [sponsoring the forcej is responsible for the government of one of the sides the operation becomes one of ordinary war. (1971: 25, 144, 146) 87 T Bromies Zaalberg • • • • A veteran of campai~s in Malaya, Kenya and Northern Ireland, ~~on warned that despite outward sirnilarities, UN—type peacekeeping was a r.otally different activiry from what uscd to be known within the British empire as ‘keeping the peace or duties in aid of the civil power’. Both these tasks were concerned with operating on behalfofa government against people who wanted to upset its authority. In other words, ‘keeping the peace and duties in aid of the civil power were polite terms used to describe mild forms of countering subversion’ (1971: 25). Impartiality became even more challenging during the 1990s (Duyvesteyn 2005). Peace enforcement doctrine held that force could be applied inipartially ifit served to ensure compli ance with a mandate based on a UN Security Council Resolution, but such mandates were • • : always open to different interpretations (Berdal 2000: 62). Moreover, whereas there was for— mally no enemy to defeat on a strategic level, the ‘surprising similarities’ mentioned by Kitson were pnmanly noticeable on the tactical level where the notion of nnpartiahty often had dif ferent implications for the peacekeepers on the ground. The proverbial ‘strategic corporal’ involved in a ‘three block war’ in Mogadishu in 1993 might indeed experience intensive fight ing, even if the overall mission to which he contributed was about creating a safe environxnent for the impartial delivery of humanitarian aid (Krulak 1999). During other operations, local warlords who feit excluded from a peace deal or who, because of their loose attachjnent to the formal wamng parties did not feel the urge to comply could well act as enemies of the peace The end ofirnpartiality seerned to come in sight in the Balkans in 1995 when American mili tary assistance and training to the Croatian army combined with NATO airstrikes against Bosnian Serb targets were used to tilt the balance of power in favour of the Bosnian Croats and Muslims. However, even in Bosnia the cursor was only temporanly shifted towards e~licit partiality. The forcefial intervention at the expense of the strongest party mainly served to facii tate the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in December that same year. The subsequent implementation of this peace agreement was overall impartial. It nevertheless proved a grueffing process for the peacekeepers rnvolved The formerly wamng parties overtly complied with the military part of the peace agreement but those who opposed the agreement s political amphca tions shifted their subversive and sometimes insurgent­type efforts into the civilian sphere in 1996. Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats did not obstruct the reintegration of the ethnically cleansed Bosnian state — one of the primary goals of the peace agreement — in the military sphere. Here, 60,000 IFOR peacekeepers armed with tanks and artillery keeping watch. Instead it was obstructed primarily by their police forces and civil adniinistrators, often themnselves former wartiors who tried to maintain control and keep communities segregated. These ‘anti Dayton power structures’ used subversive and even insurgency­like methods when they found the international comrnunity’s weak spot: the large gap that emerged between military and civil ian implementation of the peace agreement (Brocades Zaalberg 2006: 245—63). The most important element of Mockaitis’ argument in 1998 was therefore his call for a ‘Malayan Emergency—style’ comprehensive, fülly integrated civil—military approach (Mockaitis 1998: 54). He could have gone further than referring to historical precedents by addressing the causes and effects of the emerging gap between military and civilian (police and adniinistrative) capabilities in Bosnia. This would have strengthened a pivotal argument at a time when NATO was trying to limit its peacekeeping role to military activity. Particularly in the United States, the straightjacket of the Weinberger­Poweil doctrine drove political and military leaders to keep civil and military efforts segregated by pressing upon their heavily armed peacekeepers that their mission was limited to stopping the fighting, thereby providing a shield behind which civilian peace­ or state­building activities could occur. All other activity, such as policing or police monitoring, arresting war criminals and generous support to civilian implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords was demgrated as mission creep the real or perceived progression of 88 Peacekeeping and counterinsurgency hat despite Fiat used to vil power’. eople who of the civil 1: 25). 05). Peace ire compli idates were re was for­ 1 by Kitson en had dif c corporal’ nsive fight ivironment tions, local nent to the •the peace. erican niili ikes against Croats and trds explicit ed to facili subsequent 1 a gruelling ed with the cal implica n sphere in e ethnically the military itch. Instead themselves These ‘anti— they found ry and civil is cail for a (Mockaitis dressing the cninistrative) hen NATO nited States, .ders to keep ers that their hich civilian or police ation of the ogression of 1 the military role beyond its onginal military parameters NATO s pnmary mission became a complete success, but a weak civilian component and the lack of an effectively coordinated civil—niilitary effort caused the peace process as a whole to stagnate. The large specialized mili tary units that deployed to conduct Civil­Military Cooperation (CIMIC) NATO­style proved littie more than a fig leaf for the civil­military gap (Brocades Zaaib erg 2006: 275—84). The Sta bilisation Force (SFOR) that succeeded IFOR only slowly changed its role to more active support for the understaffed and poorly organized international civilian effort to reintegrate the divided state. However, NATO’s failure to do so at an earlier stage, when the formerly warring parties were stil awed by its display of power and had not yet discovered the force’s weak spot, had a devastating long­term effect on the viability of Bosnia as a state. As in classic counterinsurgency theory, the need for a comprehensive approach had surfaced during several successful UN operations But with NATO taking over the military side of peacekeeping in Bosma — the world s peace­buiLding laboratory of the time — Western military forces weary of donning the blue helmet had rapidly uniearned this crucial lesson.14 They had initially latched on to what they knew best — the principles of conventional warf~re and the idea that military affairs could be divorced from civilian matters — and tried to project them onto robust peacekeeping rnissions. Now they gradually accepted that focusing on strictly military bjectives was counter­productive and complex peace operations required a combination of police, administrative, social, economic and military measures. A better understanding of classic counterinsurgency theory would certainly have sped up this leaming process and possibly the integration of the war­tom state. Nevertheless, despite its failings, NATO had played a crucial role in at least controffing the explosive situation in Bosnia and managed to do so for a large part because it remained more or less true to the peacekeeper’s impartial role. Closing the civil—military gap: towards a comprehensive approach At the close of the twentieth century, the counterinsurgency parallel became even more rele vant during the powerflil international peace operations in Kosovo and East Timor. Mockaitis’ c1~im that peace operations should be all about ‘aid to the civil power’ became reality in the course of these trusteeship­like experiences. After a short de facto military interregnum in both ~: theatres in 1999, where soldiers entered a complete power vacuum and more or less substituted for civil authorities, the key task of military peacekeepers became one of supporting a UN mançlated international interim administration and its executive police. Peacekeepers became the military cork on which these two massive state­builchng exercises by civihan international organizations floated. Soldiers temporarily became govemors and engaged in reconstruction on alii­nited scale, but their primary tasks became protecting the international civilian interim gov erninent against what were often called spoilers (Stedman 1997) This was a pohte term often u~ed ~t the time for the nisurgent—style operators in both Kosovo and East Timor that were ~ ­undermining the peace settiement in similar ways to those used in Bosnia. Both rmssions suffered from a very weak civilian component in their early stages but much iniproved civil­niilitary cooperation prevented them from failing at an early stage. Lieutenant General Sir Mike Jackson, the first NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) commander in 1999, coop erated intensively with his civilian counterparts in the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (VNMIK) to prevent the Albanian anti­Serb guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) redirecting their insurgency against the international interim government that had not dehvered what they had fought for: full independence from Serbia. KFOR and UNMIK only just suc ­ ceeded, but could not prevent the Serb minority that dominated northern Kosovo from sub verting the peace agreement by establishing an effectively autonomous Serbian zone. As a ­ 89 T. Brocades Zaalberg veteran from Northern Ireland who, as a division commander in Bosnia in 1996 had been trou bied by IFOR’s exaggerated fear of ‘mission creep’, Jackson clearly used counterinsurgency terminology when formulating the cornmander’s intent. He wrote to his subordinate NATO brigade and battalion commanders: 1 seek a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign at low level, creating trust and mutual understanding. As relationships build, so will the fiow of information allowing KFOR to pre­empt conffict ... It is an operation amongst the peopie, whose perception is the Centre of Gravity: that all inhabitants of Kosovo are better off with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo and KFOR than without, that we jointiy offer a better f~iture. (Brocades Zaalberg 2006: 332) In his book The Accidental Guerrilla, David Kilcullen suggests that the UN­mandated peace operation International Force East Timor (INTERFET) could also have generated an immedi ate backlash leading to an insurgency had law and order not been quickly established in the wake of the collapsed regime by an impartial and culturally sensitive force. Kilcullen carefrilly avoids calling the Australian­led peace operation — in which he served as a company commander — a counterinsurgency operation, which it was not. Instead he embraced another term that became increasingly popular to bridge the ever narrower gap between the two concepts when he wrote that ‘[d]espite some unrest after independence, INTERFET has been seen as a model for stabilization operations’ (Kilcuilen 2009: 196—7). Whereas peace operations in Kosovo and East Timor appeared to be on the road to counter— insurgency at the turn of the century, the connection stiJl did not attract much attention. Coun terinsurgency remained a rathe~ obscure campaign theme and the dominant international security debate of the time was focused on ‘humanitarian intervention’, the active intervention to relieve human suffering without consent or in absence of the sovereign state. The prevailing debate within peacekeeping circies concerned the duty to protect civiians and therefore came to share a crucial theme with counterinsurgency (Brahimi 2000). But even the British armed forces, despite the experience of men like General Jackson, witnessed a dear lack of interest for counterinsurgency in the course of the 1 990s. With the end of the ‘Troubies’ in Northern Ireland in 1995 and new confficts in the Balkans creating the assumption that the friture mostly lay in peacekeeping, attention instead turned to what the British came to cail ‘peace support operations’ (Alderson 2009). Around the turn of the century, the tendency to segregate rather than integrate the two themes in doctrine and acaden­iic discourse continued to be explicable. Whereas impartiality may have been precarious, especially in the Kosovo crisis when NATO waged a prolonged air campaign against the Serbs, the actual operations on the ground were essentially impartial aflalrs. In both cases, peacekeepers were implementing Security Council resolutions based on peace agreements between warring parties — a crucial element missing in counterinsurgency. Peace keepers had actually fired very few shots in anger as consent of the parties on the strategic level was maintained. Moreover, peace operations and counterinsurgency required a different mix of external and indigenous capabffity. ‘Nation—building’ specialist James Dobbins was the first to point Out this crucial dissimilarity. Wliereas the restoration ofpeace in a society that has lost the capacity to secure itseifrequired the deployment of foreign forces, ‘[o]utside forces have a much harder time suppressing a weil­entrenched local insurgency, and can seldom succeed unless they are acting in support of an increasingly capable and legitimate indigenous ally’ (Dobbins 2008: 12). Peacekeeping was by definition an outsider’s job, while counterinsurgency was essentially about the local government. 90 t Peacekeeping and counterinsurgency However, one dominant development made the two concepts increasingly hard to distin guish in futute opelatiuns. The broad definition of pcacckccping allowed it to function like a sponge, absorbing an ever wider range of activities the post­conffict environment in the Balkans, East Timor and various African states. In the early 1990s, anibitions had expanded to promoting democratic governance systems and market­oriented economic growth, reforming and rebuild ing the judicial sector and police as well as the armed forces and reconciliation efforts (Paris 2010). Around the tum of the century, peacekeeping increasingly took place in a power vacuum left by collapsed or retreating govemments, making state­building its essence. In close coopera don with military peacekeepers, the predorninantly civilian ‘post­conffict peace builders’ adopted a broad­based inter­agency response in an attempt to address the underlying political, economic and social problems. The increasing importance of this comprehensive approach to post­conffict operations obviously had much in comxnon with Thompson’s cail for a coordi nated government machinery in order to implement a comprehensive plan along civilian and military lines of operation. However, compared to the ‘coordinated government machinery’ of colonial days, its modem variant proved infmitely more complex as it took place in a multi agency, multinational and — on the level of the many individual national contributors — whole of government environment (Brocades Zaalberg 2008). A substantial difference also remained between foreign soldiers supporting a UN­mandated international interim government and acdve (military) support to a colonial or indigenous government beset by an insurgency. Nevertheless, the comprehensive approach emerged as a crucial binding fhitor. had been trou unterinsurgency )rdlnate NATO lerstanding. o pre—empt Centre of ans Mission 2006: 332) ­mandated peace ated an irnrnedi— stablished in the ilcullen carefülly ~any cornmander iother term that ) concepts when 1 seen as a model road to counter— attention. Coun ant international ­tive intervention e. The prevailing d therefore came :he British armed ick of interest for des’ in Northem the future mostly ii ‘peace support .ntegrate the two lereas impartiaiity a prolonged air y impartial affairs. is based on peace isurgency. Peace— the strategic level adifferent mix of as was the first to ty that has lost the )rces have a much icceed uriless they y’ (Dobbins 2008: icy was essentially Peacekeeping âs a euphemism? l~i g ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ii ~ ~ ~ ~ ~. ~ ~ ~ ~ After 9/11, the connection between peace operations and counterinsurgency grew in signifi— cance in the operational realm. As part of the so­called ‘Global War on Terror’ US and coalition forces first ousted the Afghan Taliban regime in 2001 with support of local opposition groups and then successftffly took on the Baath regime in Iraq in 2003. Rapid offensive success was followed by what in colonial days would have been called protracted ‘pacification campaigns’ in both countries. The unpopular notion of counterinsurgency was initially not invoked in either theatre and was notably missing from the discussion (Mackinlay 2009: 3). In the early twenty first century the descriptive terrns such as ‘stabilization operations’ or ‘stability and reconstruc don’ became accepted for this type of mission that fel somewhere between occupation duty, peace operations, state­building, counter­terrorism and counterinsurgency, but often combin ing elements of them all. ­ The case of Afghanistan shows an interesting evolutionary process. Two separate operations, one launched by the United States as counter—terrorism and the other by European NATO partners under the guise of peacekeeping and post­conflict reconstruction, evolved along two very different tracks from 2001 onwards. Only after 2005 did they gradually flise into what was first and foremost an extremely complex counterinsurgency campaign, a reality that was grudg— ingly and belatedly accepted in the capitals of most European troops­contributing nations. After the forcefiil removal of the Taliban regime four years earlier, the United States contin ued to search for its leaders and al­Qaeda flghters as part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). With southern and eastern Afghanistan as its primary ‘hunting ground’, the US dominated counter—terrorist operation took a predominantly enemy­centric approach. When this yielded little effect, American troops gradually incorporated tactical level counterinsurgency methods (Wright 2010). For instance, the development of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) model was aimed at spreading the influence of the Afghan government. These small, integrated civil—military teams engaged in capacity building and conducted ‘hearts and minds’ 91 T. Brocades Zaalberg projects airned at removing the causes for conifict and Support to inSurgents. Nevertheless searching and destroying the Taliban leadership and their foreign jihadist allies remained the primary US focus (Jakobsen 2005). Meanwhile, the ambitious international state­building enter palse in Afghanistan lacked uni~ of effort and suffered from a semius lack of personnel and sinds, pa~y because the United States had shifted its attention and resources to the upcoming war in Traq in the course of 2002. In Afghanistan, the small Furopean_dominated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployed under a UN mandate to Kabul in order to support and pro~ect the new Afghan gov ernment headed by Interii­n President Haniid Karzai. ‘Whereas the task to separate, monitor and demobjljze armed factions was stili a niodest element of the ISAF mission, military support to the state, its civil adruinistration and security forces, was its essence. This was no impartial mission, as only consent of the new Westem_backed authorities was sought. ijgweyer, with the ~ ~ effort to present ISAF as a peace operation when it assumed co~and of the operation in 2003. As long as armed oppos~jon ag~.inst the Western_backed Karzai government in Kabul was minimal and the job of the average NATO ‘peacekeeper’ on patrol in the capital differed little from that in Kosovo, the misuse of the term went largely unnoticed. Similarly, the Btitish and Dutch g0vern~en~ got away with casting their role in the occupation of southern Iraq in the light of peace support and stabilization as long as they were not co~onted with setlous civil unrest and armed revolt. For the Dutch battlegroup operating in the relatively benign province Al Mutha~a until i~ withdrawal in 2005 this was more or less possible, but the Btitish forces in Basra and Maysan could hardly dis~iise after 2003 that their so­called stabffization operation was in fact an occupation turned into a counterinsurgency campaign (Brocades Zaalberg and Ten Cate 2011). This trend towards increasingly ou~ard similatitjes between peace support and countetin_ surgency especially bothered the Canadian post—conifict researcher Ronald Paris. In reaction to a wave of criticisrn and cynicisni surrounding peace­builcling — Paris argued that multinational peace operations had becon­ie carelessly confiated with the US­led Global War on Tenor. Biforts to stabilize Iraq after the invasion bore some resembiance to liberal peace—building strate_ gies pursued elsewhere by the UN, but this certainly did not put them on an equal footing (Paris 2010: 347—8). Paris basedmost of his ar~jment on the compatison with the more controversial Iraqi case, but he may well have accentuated the gradual expansion of 1S~’s mission and geo graphical scope. Under a broadened UN niandate, the NATO­led force expanded its operations through the deployment of PRTs to the north and the west of Afghanistan in order to ~ow the central government to exert its authority Here, as in Kabul, these small and lightly armed mili tary units, often augmented with some civilian staff; met with littie resistance from former war lords, other ‘local power brokers’ or remnants of the Taliban. Only when NATO ~aduaiiy took over from OEF and started to move a substantial force of over 10,000 heavily armed troops into the heartiand of the revitalized T~ban movement in the south in the course of 2006, did Alliance troops become openly involved in sustained fighting with the Islamic ~ndamentalist insurgents. Nevertheless, the Btitish, Canadian and Dutch gove~en~ — who were the main troop_conttibutors in the southern provinces — tended to present their niission as peace support or stabffization operations in search of a reconstmction effort centred on their PRTs. Thejr failure to present the extended ISAF operatjon in more realistjc terms — the notions of insur gency and countetinsurgency continued to be avoided in order to ensure political and public support — proved particularly injudicious when the Taliban launched a ferocious offensive against NATO forces in the spting and sumnier of 2006 (Alderson 2009; Dimitm and De Graaf 2010). 92 Peacekeeping and counterinsurgency insurgents. Nevertheless, hadist allies remained the ional state­building enter us lack of personnel and ~sources to the upconiing ty Assistance Force (ISAF) :ect the new Afghan gov to separate, monitor and .ssion, military support to e. This was no iinpartial )ught. H~wev~~i~e ‘90s,ittook NATO littie of the operation in 2003. wernment in Kabul was i the capital differed little Sirnilarly, the British and n of southern Iraq in the fronted with serious civil elatively benign province 31e, but the British forces ed stabilization operation 1 (Brocades Zaalberg and e support and counterin nald Paris. In reaction to argued that multinational Global War on Terror. :ral peace­building strate— on an equal footing (Paris di the more controversial ISAF’s mission and geo e expanded its operations stan in order to allow the II and lightly armed miii istance from former war when NATO gradually 000 heavily armed troops i the course of 2006, did ie Islamic flmndamentalist its — who were the main mission as peace support d on their PRTs. Their s — the notions of insur isure political and public ed a ferocious offensive 9; Dirnitru and De Graaf Whereas most other European troops contributors continued to view ISAF in peacekeeping terms, the political and military leaders of the countries fighting in the south slowly and sometimes grudgingly came to accept the mission as a counterinsurgency. Luckily, their tactical commanders on the ground had mostly preceded them.’tm Meanwhile, the US government had started to shift jts niain effort in Afghanistan from an enemy­centric counter­terrorist approach to a broader population­centric counterinsurgency strategy under the fiag of both OEF and ISAF. When the Aniericans adapted in a similar, but much more flmndamental way, in Iraq and injected extra troops and civilian capacity, their qualified yet remarkable success in 2007 and 2008 helped rid counterinsurgency of most of its negative colonial and Vietnam­era connota tion on both sides of the Atlantic (see also Chapter 6 in this volume). ‘The Surge’ was clearly not the only factor in stopping the downward spiral of violence in Iraq since the occupation of 2003—4, but it is safe to say that the methods introduced and broadly promoted by a new gen eration of counterinsurgericy thinkers and practitioners successftilly built on classic doctrine and theory. Particularly the writings of Galula iafiuenced this group, some of whom were on the e~iitçrial team of the highly praised US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3—24). Afghanistan became the next testing ground for this neo­classical counterinsurgency hand hoolç (Jones and Smith 2010). Under the umbrella of ISAF, European coalition partners that had rapidly ‘upscaled’ from a peacekeeping rnindset and accepted the counteririsurgency mission ~n~gçd with a rapidily expanding US military force that was ‘scaling down’ from its fighting n]entality. Strategic success — which had not yet been secured in Iraq — seemed illusive for ISAF whose mission remained tç support a dysfunctional Afghan government. Nonetheless, as coun termsurgency quickly regained its former status as an important campaign theme there was a p~evailing tendency — particularly arnongst newcomers to the field of irregular warfare — to ë~mbrace the earlier mentioned, somewhat naive notion of the concept as being predominantly abou~t ‘winning the hearts and minds’ and ‘minimum use of force’.16 FM 3—24, as a major ~e~tatement of doctrine, however, ofteii ended up being confused with historical practice. :EOnly against the background of this revived, positivist and at times historically selective con ç~ption of counterinsurgency, can we understand the latest contribution on the conceptual ~vedap with peace operations. Karsten Friis has been the first peacekeeping specialist to argue ~j~the basis of a structural comparison that the two concepts ‘are converging on each other’ ~Q~j0: 50). While consciously steering away from mandates and political motivations, he com ~ed the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations capstone doctrine and FM 3—24 as well as operations He correctly concluded that the doctrmnes shared commonalities in their practical foçus on civilian solutions, the protection of civilians, civil—mnulitary and international unity of ­ ~ host­nation ownership, inteffigence and their acknowledgement of the ~tations of the use of force However Fnms overemphasmzed the soft side of countennsurgency doctnne and ip~rations. He showed little awareness of classic counterinsurgency writings and left out any ence to the key role of coercion, harsh emergency legislation, rigorous population­control :hça~utes and what British doctrine stil calls ‘neutralizing the insurgent’ in defeating insurgen ~jes. Like many contemporaries, he stripped counterinsurgency from its raw components, ­thereby making the parallels with peacekeeping highly visible, yet not entirely convincing. The ~i~(isï arities tended to lose their relevance without the context of both historical practice and ­ ­‘whatactually happened during recent confficts. Prijs made an important contribution to the debate, but his analysis seemed to fall victim to ­• :~wh~t he himself rightfully called the tendency amongst students of the two disciplines ‘to stay ~~alytically within separate circies, contributing to different literatures and publishing in differ entjournals’ (2010: 49). This may also explain his claim that the two concepts have rarely been 93 T. Brocades Zaalberg compared and the similaritjes are ‘often ignored’. As we have seen, this is only partly true, but like the few scholars who actually did enter the comparative minefield before him in the previ ous two decades, Friis failed to either notice or to mention their work. He missed the opportu— nity to build on previous findings and actually engage in acadernic discourse. Without ariy reference to these earlier writings and littie attention paid to the actual operational experience ofpeacekeepers and counterinsurgents, conflict analysts — like the policy—makers, military leaders and doctrine writers they often criticize — continued to reinvent the wheel. Conciusjon Mackinlay has been correct in arguing that counterinsurgency theory and doctrine could have helped shape a more realistic approach to peace operations in the 1 990s. The heady optimism that followed the end of superpower rivalry had unleashed tremendous international political ambitions in peace operations that mostly surpassed the existing conceptual thinking in the area of war and peace studies. It created both historical anmesia and doctrinal myopia that led to the neglect of counterinsurgency theory and doctrine. But his suggestion that the two had always been interchangeable and that this was only accepted after Afghanistan and Iraq has been shown to be incorrect. Instead, the two campaign themes that seemed so distant in the early 1 990s gradually expanded into each other’s spheres. This rapprochement has been primarily the result of three prevailing trends. First, peacekeeping forces in their various forms started to operate under ever more robust maridates to put an end to internal confficts. Their military capabilities increasingly allowed them to threaten with, or resort to, the use of force against non­compliant parties in a conflict area. Subsequently, counterjnsur_ gency seemingly developed in the opposite direction as the neo­classic counterinsurgency theory tended to promote ‘the softer side of COIN’ and a too rosy view of what had been the key to strategic success in this type of conflict came to prevail. Second, the expanding role of peacekeep ers and counterinsurgents in state­building drove them ever closer, especially in the wake of the ‘Global War on Terror’. As both disciplines became married to these mostly civilian­led state building enterprises, demands for the often heralded, but often poorly implemented comprehen_ sive approach increased. It is against the background of this development that counterinsurgency specialist David Ucko wrote in 2010 about Mats Berdal’s book on two decades of post­conflict peace building that, although it mentioned counterinsurgency only once, it nonetheless said more good things on this topic than many books with counterinsurgency in their title.’7 This brings us to the final trend, which simultaneously functions as an important qualifier for the actual amount of overlap between peacekeeping and countetinsurgency. Even the post­ ‘9/11’ developments did not prove the argument of ‘enthusiasti’ like Mackinlay entirely right. The conceptual blur that occurred in this period was created by the often euphernistic and opportunistic use of the term ‘peacekeeping’, which — even in its more forceftil incarnatjons — should formally have been reserved for missions deployed at the request oflocal parties after the negotiation of peace settlements to (civil) wars. The ‘Global War on Tenor’ and ‘Regime Change’ resulted in two external invasions aimed at toppling governments, policies that revital ized the internal armed conflict in Afghanistan and generated an insurgency and a civil war in Iraq. These ‘conditions of birth’ were important, as the task of picking up the pieces and putting the two countries back together again through an explosive combination of state­building, peace support, counterinsurgency and counter—terrorism — or what has become known as hybrid warfare — was certainly no impartial affair. Therefore, despite the substantial convergence in methods and means, complex peace operations should stil be treated as a different category from counterinsurgency. 94 Peacekeeping and counterinsurgency Notes ly partly truc, but him in the previ issed the opportu .irse. Without arsy :ational experleflce ets, military leaders [octrine could have he heady optimism ternational political thinking in the area (opia that led to the the two had always ~raq has been shown t in the early 1990s First, peacekeeping ates to put an end to :eaten with, or resort aently, couflteriflSUr Lterlnsurgency theory ,. ~: had been the key to ag role of peacekeep ly in the wake of the stly civilian—led state— emented comprehen iat counterinSurgency :cades of post­conflict nonetheless said more title.17 •mportant qualifser for :ency. Even the post .ckinlay entirely right. ften euphemistic and ~rceftil incarnationS — )flocal parties after the Terror’ and ‘Regime ts, policies that revital— ~ncy and a civil war in the pieces and putting tion of state­building, come known as hybrid ;tantial convergence in as a different category r~ f 1 The author wishes to thank Isabelle Duyvesteyn, Gijs Rommelse and Richard van Gils for helpful coniments on an earlier version of this chapter. 2 Mackinlay wisely avoids directly claiming that the catastrophes in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda could have been averted if the UN and NATO had embraced a counterinsurgency approach, but the sugges don is nevertheless there. 3 Kilcullen ascribed the concept of hybrid warf~re to Erin Simpson and Frank Hoffman. 4 During the 1990s, peace operations and counterinsurgency would be incorporated in the similarly generic concept Military Operation Other Than War (MOOTW). 5 In countries such as South Africa, former insurgents and counterinsurgents even merged into one nationsl fighting force. Together with the post­1990 political environment this resulted in a strict anti counterinsurgency position that, according to Anita Grossman, his seriously hampered South African National Defence Force’s ability to perform peace operations in otherwise insurgent conBicts in Aftica (Grossmann 2008). 6 There is no fornni definidon of peacekeeping or peace operations, as both terms are absent from the UN Charter and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO) only provides a cat egorization of five ‘peace and security activities’: conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and peacebuilding (Bellamy and Williams 2010: 14—15). 7 For example the highly successful ‘Multinational Force and Observers’ (MFO) for the Sinai was estab lished under US leadership in the 1980s, while the bêtter­known, but ill­f~ted ‘Multinational Forces’ (MNF) in Lebanon (1982—4) was a combined American­British­French­Italian initiative. 8 See: US Anny Pield Manual 100—23: Peace Operations (December 1994) 2; British Army, Wider Peace keeping (London: Ministry of Defence, 1994); The Royal Netherlands Anny, L.andmacht Doctrine Publi catie III: Vredesoperaties (1999). 9 Named after Casper Weinberger, Secretary of Defence during the Reagan administration, and Chair man oftheJoint Chiefi of Staff General Colin Poweil during the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. 10 Snow’s argument fits in with the ‘new wars’ thesis, which held that this mode of warfare drew on both guerrilla and counterinsurgency techniques, ‘though the main target for attack is usually the civilian population and not other militia groups or government forces’ (see also Kaldor 1999; Münkler 2005; Van Creveld 1991). ii Regrettably, Snow hardly went into the practical details of tactical level peacekeeping to prove this point. 12 For instance Richard thethe callKosovo for lessons from counterinsurgency experience to • inform current pracdceLovelock in 2002. underwrote He stated that experience suggests that the comprehensive civil—military of the British counterinsurgency approach is ‘fiindamental to contemporary peace support operations’ (Lovelock 2002; see also Ellis 2004; Mockaitis 1999). 13 A similar argument on the British Army’s minimum force pbilosophy triggered a heated debate on the • acttsal British methods in the late colonial period (see Bennett 2009; Thornton 2009).. 14 Examples of relatively successflil integrated UN civil—niilitary peace­building operations are its mission in Cambodja, Eastern Slavonia and more recently in Liberia. The latter mission, according • tö a recent report commissioned by a Dutch NGO, represents ‘the most developed version of UN reform as an integrated peace support mission’ (Frerks et al. 2006). For ‘peacebuilding laboratory’ see Berdal (2009: 12). 15 The Dutch government initially avoided all reference to COIN and emphasized post­war reconstruc tion instead. Whereas the first Dutch ISAF Regional Command South Commander Major­General Ton van Loon avoided using the term counterinsurgency in the Netherlands, he freely used the term counterinsurgency in the United States in 2007. Two years later, the second Dutchman in this position, Major­General Mai­t de Kruif, did not feel constrained when he discussed the Afghan counterinsur gency campaign in the Netherlands and even the Dutch minister of defence would occasionally refer to the mission as counterinsurngency (see Brocades Zaalberg and Ten Cate 2011; Dimitru and De Graaf 2010). 16 1 have to admit that as a newcomer to the fleld in 2004, T sometimes fell into this trap when writing a chapter on counterinsurgency for my dissertation Soldiers and Civil Power (see also Hack 2009). 17 David Ucko, ‘Is “Counterinsurgency” an Empty Concept? Can we do better?’, contribution to the weblog Kings of War, 26 March 2010 (www.kingsoewar.org.uk). 95 T. Brocades Zaalberg Reconunended readings Cable, Lany (1993) ‘Reinventing the Round Wheel: Insurgency, Counterinsurgency and Peacekeeping Post Cold War’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 4 (2): 228—62. Prijs, Karsten (2010) ‘Peacekeeping and Counter_Insurgency — Two of a Kind?’, International Peacekeeping, 17 (1): 19—66. Kilcullen, David (2009) The Accidental Guerrilla: F(ghting Small Wars in the Midst ofa B(g One. London: Hurst and Company. Kitson, Frank (1971) I.ow Intensity Operations: Subve,yion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping. London: Faber & Faber. Mackinlay, J. (2009) The Insurgent Archipelago: From Mao to Bin Laden. London: Hurst and Company. Mockaitis, Thomas R. (1995) ‘Peacekeeping and Intra­State Conflict’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 6 (1): 112—25. Mockaitis, Thomas R. (1998) ‘From Counterinsurgency to Peace Enforcement: New Names for Old Games?’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 10 (2): 40—57. Paus, Ronald (2010) ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’, Review of International Studies, 36: 337—65. Snow, Donajd M. (1996) Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New International Conflicts. Boulder and London: Lynne Rieumer. 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