Counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen is perhaps best known as one of the intellectual forefathers of the Iraq surge. More recently, he played a key role in drafting a new civilian counterinsurgency guide for senior policymakers; he has also weighed in on the drone war over Pakistan. His new book, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, is partly a memoir about his experience in "small wars" around the globe -- and partly a how-to guide for fighting them. We recently spoke with Kilcullen about the growing war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, technology's role in counterinsurgency -- and the need to stay out of any more "wars of choice," like Iraq.
Danger Room: What is an "accidental guerrilla?" And when did you first encounter these guys?
David Kilcullen: Well, in late 1996, I was doing fieldwork in the jungle, in a mountainous part of West Java, working on my doctoral dissertation on an Indonesian Muslim-separatist insurgency. At that time AQ [al Qaeda] were pitching these guys on joining the "global jihad" (so-called), and trying to reinvigorate the old local guerrilla groups as global terrorist groups. I had a midnight visit from a couple of local boys, accompanied by two Arabs, who turned up carrying long knives and quizzed me about America's role in the world, Israel-Palestine, Christianity versus Islam, etc. Luckily, the answers I gave them seem to have been adequate because I didn't end up getting kidnapped or beheaded. But it was a bit of a wake-up call -- my first taste of the fact that local insurgent groups in the Muslim world are sometimes infected with outsiders -- "minders" or agitators like these two Arabs -- and that we are dealing with two classes of enemy here, not a single undifferentiated threat.
DR: Okay, so that's the first time. When did the concept of the "accidental guerrilla syndrome" really start to click?____
DK: It was field observation over ten years or so, but the name came to me one afternoon near the Khyber Pass, during some work in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan]. My local escort commander pointed out to me that he and his guys were the real foreigners on the Frontier, whereas the AQ guys had been embedded there for a generation. He said no outsider could tell the locals apart from the terrorists except by accident. And when outsiders intervene to deal with the global terrorists hiding out in areas like the FATA, it turns out people get upset, and the local community coalesces around rejecting outside interference, and closes ranks to support the terrorists. (Who knew? they don't like being invaded or told what to do by foreigners, go figure! )
This has happened in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Europe -- basically everywhere I've worked since 9/11, I have observed some variation on this pattern. I call the local fighters "accidental guerrillas," because they end up fighting on behalf of extremists, not because they hate the west but because we just turned up in their valley with a Brigade, looking for AQ. And I calculate 90 to 95 percent of the people we've been fighting since 9/11 are accidentals, not radicals. In Iraq our strategy was to win over the accidentals, while ruthlessly hunting down the very small number of people who proved themselves irreconcilable -- and it worked. In Iraq in late 2006, a typical night involved 100-125 dead civilians in Baghdad alone. Now a bad night is 1 or 2. That's an amazing turnaround, achieved by only fighting the people we actually need to fight, and making peace with everyone else.
DR: Counterinsurgency is often thought of as low-tech war. But as you note, the counterinsurgent has new tools at his disposal, from biometrics to drones to new spy gear. How important are these technologies?
DK: Extremely important. Close-access SIGINT [signals intelligence] technologies and counter-IED technologies are probably the most critical tools. Unmanned aerial vehicles like Predator, new communications technologies like software-defined cell-net radio systems, surveillance gear like the RAID tower and persistent satellite surveillance, plus biometrics technology like BATS [Biometric Automated Tool Set] and HIIDE [Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment] also give us a real technology edge, provided they are used right. And air superiority, though often taken for granted by ground guys, is absolutely critical. But the key is still the individual counterinsurgent, on the spot, armed and aware, with a close relationship with the local community based on trust. He's got to have the ability to be there when the population needs help -- and to prevent insurgent intimidation and violence. Technology enables that, it doesn't replace it.
DR: In your field notes from Iraq, you describe the phenomenon of the "urban submarine": driving around in an armored box ("They can’t see us and we don’t seem human to them. We are aliens — imperial stormtroopers with our Darth Vader sunglasses and grotesque and cowardly body armor.") How do you persuade military commanders to change their approach?
DK: Well, we did very effectively persuade our field commanders to change their approach in Iraq in 2007, just by demonstrating that getting out of the vehicles made them safer. Once they dismounted and lived in their areas, the locals felt like they knew them and could deal with them. Our guys were less vulnerable to IEDs when working dismounted, the sniper threat also dropped off, and the fact that they were living in the areas where they worked made them safer because they didn't have to face the deadly daily commute from the FOB [forward operating base]. So field commanders were easy to convince - it was risk-averse parent bureaucracies that needed more persuasion.
DR: You describe the risk of special operations become a "cosseted elite": How do you get them back from direct action to doing the less sexy –- but arguably more important –- missions of foreign internal defense, or FID?
DK: Too many SOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command] guys are tied up in direct action, and a lot of people are busy trying to be JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] when the situation demands FID, unconventional warfare, and security force assistance. This isn't SOCOM's fault, it's an oversight issue. In 1986 Congress set up an office in OSD [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] that was supposed to oversee this stuff.
DR: You've argued that the United States has been in the business of counterinsurgency, in some shape or form, for a very long time. But is this something we have ever been good at?
DK: Yes, actually, though this kind of war takes a lot longer, and soaks up a lot more resources, than is often realized. We have a long history, since before the American Revolution, of warfare against non-state actors -- from Native American tribes, through Civil War irregulars, through small wars in the Philippines, the Caribbean and Latin America, right up until Vietnam and today. The military -- with some notable exceptions such as in Vietnam in 1965-68 or in Iraq in 2003-2004 -- generally does OK, and it always learns and gets things right eventually. But the critical shortages (both in resources and understanding) typically lie in civilian agencies -- aid personnel, administrators, diplomats, spooks, engineers -- who deliver the critical non-military effects.
Having said that, just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should. One of my main points in the book is that the global enemy, AQ, has an explicit strategy of trying to tie us down in a series of exhausting and unsustainable interventions all over the world. If we do intervene, we know how to do so, and that will tend to involve counterinsurgency -- but I would strongly recommend against playing into the enemy's hands by launching any further "wars of choice" like Iraq.
