Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 2, April–May 2009, pp. 159–174
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The storming of Falluja, Iraq, by US Marines in April 2004 and the attack on Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces in January 2008 are defining battles of this young century. Enemy fighters hid in dense populations and challenged US or Israeli forces to attack. In both cases, a thousand or so innocent civilians were slain or wounded, with serious political effects. The threat of Sunni leaders to leave the Iraqi Governing Council was enough to induce Washington to halt the assault on Falluja. Israel was widely denounced for the carnage in Gaza even though Hamas had blatantly provoked attack by launching rockets against Israeli towns, and then ducked behind the very Palestinian people who counted on it for security. In both cases, superb armies with precision weapons relied more or less entirely, for lack of better alternatives, on the use of deadly force against extremists who, dressed like everyone else, hid in tenements, mosques and hospitals.
We have had a glimpse of ‘war amongst the people’, in Rupert Smith’s arresting words, and it isn’t pretty, visually or strategically. Burrowing into the population and luring attack is becoming a favoured enemy strategy. Extremists are using populations both for cover and for painting intervening forces as aggressors, a two-for-one trick they learn from each other. This is not mere asymmetric warfare, but warfare turned on its head. The inferior force can survive to fight again only by melting into the population it pretends to defend, yet it can win by inducing the superior force to harm that population. The extremists’ real purpose in hiding among civilians is not to deter enemy attack but to ensure that enemy attack kills and maims civilians. The population is not just a medium for tactical defence but a means of strategic offense.
The rise of global media is indispensable in the conception and execution of this strategy. Hostile propagandists have a field day when US, Israeli or NATO soldiers kill or hurt innocent people.The gunman in the school window is less interested in stopping approaching troops than in getting them to kill schoolchildren. The real target of the shooter in the minaret is the billion Muslims worldwide who may be outraged by footage of worshippers bloodied by infidels. Yet, to treat this as an information-operations challenge is to misinterpret and underestimate it. The West’s disadvantage is not one of propaganda but one of strategy and, for all the firepower of its forces, one of capabilities. Lacking good alternatives to deadly force, US and allied forces are hamstrung in carrying out their missions and larger purposes in the face of this strategy. Progress in Iraq shows that US forces are getting better at counter-insurgency and other types of irregular operations. But they lack adequate options to act forcefully against insurgents in urban areas without risking death or serious harm to ordinary people.
In counter-insurgency, the population is not only the field of battle but also the prize. Success depends on earning the acceptance and, better...
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David C. Gompert is Senior Fellow at the RAND Corporation. He has been Senior Advisor for National Security and Defense in the CPA-Iraq, Vice President for RAND’s National Security Research Division, a senior official at the US National Security Council and State Department, and a corporate executive in the information industry.
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