Yates — For the First Time Since Vietnam
Topic(s): "War on Terror" | Comments Off on Yates — For the First Time Since VietnamThis was released on the website of the Federation of American Scientists
on Thursday. http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi3-07-22.pdf November 13,
2004
For the First Time Since Vietnam, the Army Prints a Guide to Fighting
Insurgents By DOUGLAS JEHL and THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 – For the first time in decades, the Army has issued a
field guide to counterinsurgency warfare, an acknowledgment that the kind of
fighting under way in Iraq may become more common in the years ahead.
The Army field manual on counterinsurgency operations is the first since the
early Vietnam era, and the first ever intended for the kind of regular Army
units now embroiled in battles in Iraq, as opposed to the Special Operations
forces who have taken the lead in previous counterinsurgencies.
Under orders issued in February, the manual was prepared on an accelerated
basis by the Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and was
distributed to all officers, in Iraq and elsewhere, beginning last month. An
introduction says the “aftermath of instability” in Iraq that followed the
toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime underscored the need for an updated Army guide to counterinsurgency warfare.
Until now, formal American military doctrine for fighting insurgencies has
been so limited that many Marines were deployed to Iraq with copies of the
Marine Corps’ “Small Wars Manual,” issued in 1940. The most recent Army
guides on the subject, written principally for Special Operations forces,
were prepared in 1963 and 1965, in the early stages of the Vietnam War. Like
the Army, the Marine Corps is also updating its manual.
The new Army guide contains instructions on such matters as searching a
family car and setting up a hasty checkpoint. Other passages address the
role played by “transnational insurgents,” like the foreign fighters in
Iraq, and emphasize the role of intelligence, rather than Vietnam-era search
and destroy missions, in finding insurgents.
The guide also includes a stark warning about the dangers of prolonged
counterinsurgency operations, saying that the longer American forces take
the lead in such efforts, the greater the resentment they breed among the
host-country population.
“A long-term U.S. combat role may undermine the legitimacy of the H.N.
government and risks converting the conflict into a U.S.-only war,” the
manual says, using an abbreviation for host nation. “That combat role can
also further alienate cultures that are hostile to the U.S.”
In some ways, military officials said, the guide just reflects tactics,
techniques and procedures that troops in Iraq and Afghanistan already use,
such as armoring vehicles against improvised explosives.
But for a hierarchical organization like the Army, the distribution of the
guide is a sign of the importance being attached to the issue.
Army officers who have recently returned from yearlong duty in Iraq
applauded the doctrine, but said its methods were nothing new to field
commanders, who have been employing and refining such tactics for months.
The guide’s distribution in October came nearly 18 months after the Iraq
insurgency began in May 2003, following President Bush’s declaration of an
end to major combat operations. Army officers have acknowledged that the
Army was ill-prepared to contend with the new environment.
“The important point here is that the Army has again, a bit late, recognized
the importance of counterinsurgency, and is working to improve its
capability to fight and win low-intensity conflicts,” said an Army officer
who recently returned from Iraq and demanded anonymity because of the
sensitive nature of the issue.
The document is unclassified, but the Army has limited its distribution to
Defense Department personnel, “to maintain operations security,” the
document says. A copy of the document, dated October 2004, was posted
Thursday on a Web site run by the Federation of American Scientists.
Officially, the document is a “field manual interim,” a new designation
that allows the Army to accelerate its normal schedule for preparing
doctrine. The guide’s principal author, Lt. Col. Jan Horvath of the Army,
said in a telephone interview that it was completed in just five months; the
Army usually insists on developing new doctrine over a period of three
years.
“The stunning victory over Saddam Hussein’s army in 2003 validated U.S.
conventional force T.T.P.,” the document says, using an abbreviation for
tactics, techniques and procedures. “But the ensuing aftermath of
instability has caused review of lessons from the Army’s historical
experience and those of the other services and multinational partners.”
According to the field manual, known as F.M.I. 3-07.22, the impetus for its
creation “came from the Iraq insurgency and the realization that engagements
in the Global War on Terrorism (G.W.O.T.) would likely use counterinsurgency
T.T.P.’s.” It says its purpose is to review “what we know about
counterinsurgency” and to explain “the fundamentals of military operations
in counterinsurgency environment.”
Even before the document was published, military officers said that the
Army’s main training centers at Fort Polk, La., and Fort Irwin, Calif., had
begun to consider lessons and comments from soldiers engaged in the Iraq
counterinsurgency.
One purpose for the manual, Colonel Horvath said, was to update archaic
language and concepts. The “Small Wars Manual,” which many Marines carried
to Iraq, includes sections on the “management of animals” like mules, and
assertions like a warning that mixed-race societies are “always difficult to
govern, if not ungovernable, owing to the absence of a fixed character.”
The Army did issue a manual in 1990, F.M. 3-20, on the subject of military
operations in low-intensity conflict, and that document included a section
on counterinsurgency. But Colonel Horvath said that his commanders,
including Lt. Gen. William Wallace, a top Army commander during the invasion
of Iraq who now heads the Combined Arms Center, had found it to be
inadequate.
Senior Army officials said that events on the ground in Iraq and in
Afghanistan made it clear months ago that the service had to revamp its
doctrine for fighting insurgents.
“We needed to update the counterinsurgency doctrine,” General Wallace said
in an interview in late summer, as the document’s authors were putting on
the finishing touches. “That hadn’t been looked at since the post-Vietnam
era.”
General Wallace, who commanded the Army’s V Corps during the Iraqi war, said
that Army authors worked closely with the Marine Corps and with the British
military, which has extensive counterinsurgency experience in places like
Northern Ireland. But General Wallace cautioned that successful
counterinsurgencies required calibrating the right degree of force with
economic development and political institutions.
“We’ve got to strike the right balance,” General Wallace said. “Security has
to be there for the economy and government to work. But having an economy
and government is essential for security.”