Clear and Hold

Interesting article in Friday’s Washington Post on what may be some developments in US counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq. Some in Congress have taken this article by Andrew Krepinevich seriously, and are pressing the Army to modify its practices. My thoughts on Krepinevich’s plan are here.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) added his voice to those calling for a new focus. He said the emphasis up to now on rooting out insurgent strongholds through widespread, short-duration raids — what he termed “sweeping and leaving” — is not working.

“Rather than focusing on killing and capturing insurgents, we should emphasize protecting the local population, creating secure areas where insurgents find it difficult to operate,” the senator said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. He added that such an approach would require more troops and resources, arguing against the idea of reducing U.S. forces in Iraq next year.

The persistent ability of enemy groups to move fighters around the country — eluding raids or replenishing their ranks after taking casualties — has put pressure on the Pentagon to demonstrate that U.S. tactics are effective. U.S. commanders have acknowledged a measure of frustration at needing to send forces back to some cities and towns where insurgents had returned after being chased out months earlier. But they insist progress is being made.

They also say they already are pursuing a version of the strategy advocated by McCain and other critics. Indeed, for months now, senior officers at the U.S. military command in Baghdad have been using the term “clear and hold” as a shorthand description of their counterinsurgency strategy. The same term was applied by Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Jr. to his Vietnam pacification strategy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which followed the “search and destroy” campaign of his predecessor, Gen. William C. Westmoreland.

It’s all well and good that the Army is making some changes, but I remain skeptical. For example, this

But in practice, critics say, U.S. forces have tended to place more emphasis on clearing than holding. And senior officers and administration officials conceded in interviews this week that the holding aspect has received less attention, in large part because of a shortage of available troops.

U.S. commanders have avoided seeking more American forces for such defensive missions, waiting instead for additional Iraqi military and police forces to emerge from training. With those personnel now exceeding 211,000, the shortage is easing, officials said.

“The difference now is, we have Iraqi forces that can do the holding,” said a senior administration official involved in policymaking on Iraq. “We didn’t want to use U.S. forces to do a lot of the holding because it gave the impression of occupation.”

reveals a basic misunderstanding of the relationship between clear and hold operations. I’m not surprised that the Army prefers to do the clearing and leave the holding to Iraqi forces, but that’s really not how it’s supposed to work. Holding is critical to being able to clear, because holding creates stable areas and friendly locals who supply counter-insurgent forces with intelligence. In other words, the forces that do the holding will have the greatest capabilities for clearing. A situation in which clearing and holding are the responsibilities of separate units are likely to be a lot less efficient. Also, part of the point of an oil spot strategy is not so much to destroy enemy insurgents in their hideouts as to force them to attack friendly targets at bad odds.

Finally, the focus of the Army on clearing doesn’t really get to the main problem with current US doctrine, which is that it just doesn’t have a good sense of how important holding is. It still wants to hand that operation off to someone, anyone, who can do it. The excuse that “we don’t want to make this look like an occupation” is absurd and embarrassing. Also, given the focus on the Syrian border, I’m still unconvinced that the Army is prepared to accept that the centers of supply and support for the Iraqi insurgency are inside Iraq, just as the center of gravity for the Viet Cong was its supply network in South Vietnam rather than the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In fairness to the Army, the politics of the Iraqi occupation make an internal focus difficult; the Administration seems committed to the notion that whatever problems exist are the result of foreign fighters and Syrian influence.

All that said, this is probably a positive development. Counter-insurgency wars can be won, even by foreign occupiers. I’m skeptical about this one, but, if the battle is going to continue into the forseeable future (and I suspect that it will), we might as well use the best tactics available.

Courtesy of OPFOR.