THE ACCIDENTAL GUERRILLA
Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
By David Kilcullen
Illustrated. 346 pp. Oxford University
Press. $27.95
April 26, 2009
Local Wars
Reviewed by JANINE di GIOVANNI
David Kilcullen is a former officer in the Australian Army, a strategist
and a scholar. He is also an expert on counterinsurgency, or how to combat a
rebellion, and one of the few brave souls who had the ear of people in the Bush
White House and advised against the invasion of Iraq.
“It’s going to take a lot more than you seem to be willing to commit,”
he told the Americans. No one listened. After the invasion, Kilcullen watched
the growing mayhem with outrage and dismay. This time people listened.
The French writer on military affairs David Galula, who was known for
his theories on counterinsurgency, particularly during France’s Algerian war,
must have influenced Kilcullen while he was doing his Ph.D. in political
anthropology. Galula’s thesis is that one aim of war is to support the local
population rather than control the territory. Part of Kilcullen’s academic
research involved living and working alongside villagers in West Java, trying
to absorb the culture of Dar’ul Islam, a guerrilla movement hatched in the late
1940s (and later identified by some as an Indonesian clone and ally of Al Qaeda).
What Kilcullen wanted to do was to observe the movement the way the
locals did — not from the “official version I could find in books.” So he lived
in villages and conversed with his curious neighbors about blue jeans and the
Internet, until they trusted him enough to share information.
“You should talk to old Mrs. N, her husband was an imam who worked with
the movement,” was the kind of lead Kilcullen would get after a time. And with
patience and cunning, he built up the knowledge he needed. Later, Kilcullen
went on to advise Condoleezza
Rice and helped Gen. David
Petraeus implement the 2007
surge — which, up to a point, he believes has been successful, largely because
of his friend Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
His work in Iraq and Afghanistan involved much on-the-ground fact-gathering
— meeting with the people rather than locking himself in the Green Zone. His
ideas were linked to the research he did 10 years earlier in the Javanese
jungle: the theory that the war on terror has essentially two contrasting
aspects.
One is the larger international movement: the Long War, as the Pentagon
calls it, against Al Qaeda. The other, though largely ignored, is equally crucial:
the uprisings of local networks and fighters. These are small insurgencies
seeking autonomy that align themselves intentionally (or sometimes not) with
the larger movement.
These “accidental guerrillas” are the kind of individuals Kilcullen met
in Java, like Mrs. N’s husband, the local imam. Or the villagers in Uruzgan,
Afghanistan, who joined the Taliban in a 2006 offensive against an American patrol simply
for the joy of fighting.
“When the battle was right there in front of them, how could they not join in?” Kilcullen writes. “This was the most exciting thing that had
happened in their valley in years. It would have shamed them to stand by and
wait it out, they said.”
Kilcullen’s later observations in Iraq led to his conclusion that
America has not responded wisely to global terrorism. Washington was focused on
the big picture — Al Qaeda. It had ignored the separate, interlocking
struggles.
In “The Accidental Guerrilla,” Kilcullen draws on his vast experience
not only as a dedicated field researcher, but also as a soldier — he commanded
an infantry company in counterinsurgency operations in East Timor in 1999. The
most extensive sections of his book concentrate, naturally, on Iraq and
Afghanistan (which he still sees as “winnable” with a long-term commitment),
but his analysis leads him as well to smaller movements in such places as
Chechnya, Thailand, Indonesia and the Horn of Africa.
Discussing the tribal areas of Pakistan, Kilcullen shows how Al Qaeda
moved in by taking over communities — establishing bonds by marrying local
women, operating businesses, eventually recruiting the villagers as fighters.
To see Kilcullen’s theory at work, you need only to look at the Swat region of
northern Pakistan.
How does the initiation process of the accidental guerrilla happen?
Kilcullen likens it to a disease. Al Qaeda establishes its presence in a remote
area of conflict, then penetrates the population the same way influenza infects
a weakened immune system. Contagion occurs when the safe haven is used to
spread violence. When outside forces intervene, disrupting the safe haven, the
local population aligns with Al Qaeda. The terrorists’ effort is meant to be
long lasting, and it’s highly effective.
Kilcullen believes that to succeed, the West needs to remain agile, and
to protect the people who support the government, what he calls
“population-centric security.” “Effective counterinsurgency,” he writes,
“provides human security to the population, where they live, 24 hours a day.
This, not destroying the enemy, is the central task.”
But how does one go about doing this? Counterinsurgency, he says,
“demands the continuous presence of security forces”; “local alliances and
partnerships with community leaders; creation of self-defending populations”;
and “operation of small-unit ground forces in tandem with local security
forces.”
So the work of the international community, or NATO (which
Kilcullen also advises) or America comes down to basics: securing villages,
valleys, roads and population centers. But still, Kilcullen warns, it is
essential to reassure the native peoples that you are not there to occupy them.
The military must also protect.
He quotes a colonel in Afghanistan: “You can drill a well in a day, and
build a school in a month, . . . but it takes a long, long time to build a
road. When you start a road, you send a message that this isn’t a monthlong
partnership — it’s for the long haul.”
“The Accidental Guerrilla” is not an easy book. It’s best when Kilcullen
uses narrative to recount his personal experiences. Then, he becomes a military
adventurer, a modern Fitzroy MacLean: wandering through volcanic jungles; or
flying in a Blackhawk over northwest Baghdad when an improvised explosive
device detonates on the ground below, nearly plunging him to his death.
Kilcullen’s knowledge of warfare is highly sophisticated, but he does
himself and his readers no favors when he weighs his book down with acronyms
and digressions. For those not willing to put in the time and effort, reading
“The Accidental Guerrilla” could be like a junior high school student’s
attempting “Ulysses.”
Even so, this book is essential. One of the larger mistakes America has
made in its handling of the Long War against Al Qaeda was ignoring the details
of small conflicts that are so important to Kilcullen. What is needed, he
points out, is to develop strategies that deal both with global terrorism and
conflicts at the local level.
Kilcullen skillfully interprets the future of counterinsurgency, the
proper use of military force and what we must learn from our losses and
mistakes.
After reading “The Accidental Guerrilla,” one is left to wonder why the
Pentagon did not listen to his sage advice back in 2003, instead of that of all
those cheery optimists who predicted the Iraqis would greet the American forces
with flowers.
Janine di Giovanni is the author of “Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/DiGiovanni-t.html?ref=books
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