Out of the Mountains

by David Kilcullen

  In urbanized areas, IEDs are extremely effective in denying access to strongholds, creating urban no-go areas, or blocking specific routes a force may wish to use. They can be used to channel ground forces into an ambush or lead them into a sniper’s killing area, bog them down so that an adversary can escape, or provoke troops hit by an IED to retaliate by shooting into surrounding buildings (colloquially known in Baghdad as the “Iraqi death blossom”), killing or wounding—or at the very least, radically pissing off—local people. More strategically, IEDs can defeat a force by targeting commanders and bases in the field, or political leaders at home (whose will and confidence can be undermined through loss of public support after a major bombing). There have been dozens of examples of all of these uses of the IED in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it isn’t unique to these countries, or to counterinsurgency: the October 1983 suicide truck bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks and a French compound during peacekeeping operations in the urbanized, littoral environment of Beirut is a case in point. The bombing, carried out by Islamic Jihad (later Hezbollah), killed 299 U.S. and French soldiers and six Lebanese civilians, as well as the two bombers, and led to the withdrawal of international peacekeepers from Lebanon.61 Criminal organizations have also used IEDs (including in several cities in Mexico).62 In February 2013 President Obama issued a National Counter-IED Policy directing U.S. military and law enforcement agencies to work together both domestically and overseas to counter this threat, and in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, the emphasis on IEDs as a domestic threat is only likely to increase.63

  To protect themselves, small teams in a future urbanized environment will need to move inside a “triple bubble” comprising three layers of defense: organic capabilities and techniques that reside in the team itself (including counterambush and countersniper capabilities), resources it can draw from its parent unit (mortar and artillery fire, counter-IED, high-risk search, and signals intelligence), and force-level capabilities (including shipborne counterbattery fire, air defense, and cybersecurity). Six defensive disciplines will define these bubbles: counter-IED, counterambush, countersniper, counterfires (i.e., protection against mortars and rockets), counterdrone (increasingly necessary as nonstate groups field their own uninhabited aerial systems), and cyberdefense. Engineering capabilities (for hardening structures, building defensive strongpoints, clearing routes, designing obstacles to counter enemy mobility, and civil engineering) will probably be held at the force level, but like other capabilities they will need to be modular and readily distributable to teams as needed.

  Because the dense urban maze of the future environment will make observation very difficult, fire support will need to be networked, with every team linked into a communications and location-tracking system that lets it call for fire from its parent organization, tie into overhead systems (drones, piloted aircraft, or blimp-like aerostats), and direct the fire of every other small team that’s in range and can support. This may look something like the mesh networks that emerged during the uprisings in Syria and Egypt, mentioned in Chapter 5. Redundant mesh-network communications systems (perhaps with the ability to rapidly deploy mobile secure cellphone networks) will be particularly important, since radio signals in cities tend to suffer from multipath propagation and attenuation (they bend around buildings, get absorbed by structures, and don’t travel as straight or as far as in open areas). Fires will need to be jointly coordinated, including naval gunfire, ground-based artillery and mortars, and air strikes, and besides precision (the ability to hit what you aim at) they’ll need much greater discrimination (the ability to know what you’re aiming at and decide whether or not to shoot). Less-lethal systems (such as the variable-explosive bomb and low-collateral-damage bomb the U.S. Navy developed for Iraq) will most likely require further refinement, so that air forces can engage targets in flimsily constructed areas without harming innocent bystanders.64

  Lest we think that the main role for air power in urban warfare is solely for tactical close air support, however, I should point out that air forces bring critically important capabilities to the urban littoral that no other service can provide. We’ve already discussed the difficulties of sea-based logistics and surface amphibious warfare and the importance of air assets in modern littoral operations. Air power can compensate for these difficulties by allowing rapid, large-scale troop movement into air points of entry and by providing long-range resupply. Unlike surface forces, aircraft can exploit the third dimension to gain an overhead view of complex urban terrain, letting them escape the tyranny of short-range, disaggregated engagements that afflicts ground and (sometimes) naval forces. Aircraft aren’t subject to the constraints of coastal hydrography and can range across the coast at will, while providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support to surface forces. In urban areas where communications are attenuated by the density of buildings and structures, air forces can provide overhead command, control, and communications, and preserve situational awareness. They can isolate an urban area (or a portion of a larger city) from outside reinforcement, conduct precision strikes, and run battlefield air interdiction operations. Most important, they can control the airspace over a littoral operation, providing air superiority over the landing area—a critical prerequisite for surface operations.

  For both air and surface forces, many capabilities described above have been in service for some time or are already in an advanced stage of development. Not all armed forces have access to them, however, and as nonstate armed groups continue to develop better capabilities (driven by the democratization of weapons and communications technologies discussed in Chapter 4) there will be a need for innovative technologies, new techniques, and fresh tactics if military forces are to prevail against the evolved irregular threat.

  Most important, military forces that have gotten used to standard-length operational tours in Afghanistan or Iraq will need a change of attitude. In a complex fight in the urbanized littoral, there will be none of the fixed installations, lavish intelligence infrastructure, or constant cellphone and Wi-Fi coverage of counterinsurgency operations. The garrison mind-set, with its short-duration operations and frequent access to bases with hot showers, air-conditioned dining halls, and sleeping cots, will need to give way to a mobile, improvisational, expeditionary mentality. Troops will have to become hikers again, not campers.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1.This account draws on my field notes for September 10, 2009, written the morning after the ambush from personal observation during the firefight, discussions with patrol members and a film crew at the landing zone approximately forty-five minutes after the ambush, and a conversation with civilian and military members of the patrol the following night at the United States Embassy compound, in Kabul.

  2.Mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) were introduced into Iraq and Afghanistan beginning in 2006, in response to the escalating threat of roadside bombs. There are several variants; our patrol had four Category 2 MRAPs, each with a crew of two plus eight fully equipped infantry in the troop-carrying compartment, and three Category 1 vehicles, with smaller capacity but marginally less atrocious maneuverability.

  3.Rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are Soviet-designed shoulder-launched rockets intended to destroy buildings and lightly armored vehicles. The weapon is recoilless, directing its blast backward through a rear-facing venturi. Unless carefully sited with a clear area behind the firer, this back-blast can kick up a large cloud of dust, giving away the weapon’s position. These disadvantages are more than compensated for, however, by the RPG’s low weight, low cost, and rapid rate of fire. Along with the Kalashnikov assault rifle, the RPG is one of the most common weapons used worldwide by guerrillas and those who fight them.

  4.Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1898), 199–200.

  5.This character
istic was something the Taliban shared with the mujahideen of the Soviet-Afghan War, who, as Ali Jalali and Les Grau showed, had a strong tendency to set patterns and repeat the same maneuvers in the same places over and over again. See Ali Ahmad Jalali and Lester A. Grau, The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 1998). For a detailed explanation of pattern setting in the Afghan approach to conflict, see also Rob Johnson, The Afghan Way of War: Culture and Pragmatism, a Critical History (London: Hurst, 2011).

  6.The delgai, or small group, is the basic operational unit of main-force (i.e., regular, full-time) Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan. It comprises eight to twenty guerrillas under a commander, and may—for reconnaissance, or in an urban environment—be further broken down into cell groups (otaq). Several delgai may loosely cooperate under a regional commander for a specific operation such as a large-scale ambush or major ground assault.

  7.The battle of Wanat, which occurred in July 2008, has been extensively discussed in print and in the electronic and online media, and is likely to be seen as one of the defining battles of the Afghan war, at least in the eastern part of the country. The most comprehensive accounts of the battle are Douglas R. Cubbison’s untitled working paper on the battle, completed in 2009, and Combat Studies Institute, Wanat: Combat Action in Afghanistan 2008 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2010).

  8.See Alissa Rubin and Sharifullah Sahak, “Taliban Attack Afghan Guards in Deadly Raid,” New York Times, August 20, 2010.

  9.Ibid.

  10.Combat Studies Institute, Wanat, 49.

  11.Ibid., 4–5.

  12.Author’s discussion with German officers, Kabul, March 2008. This story was confirmed by General Kasdorf, head of the German Army and former Bundeswehr commander in Afghanistan, in discussion with the author in Washington, DC, October 2011.

  13.Author’s interview with Aegis RLT, Baghdad, June 30, 2007.

  14.Analysts including Hilton Root, Paul Collier, Anke Hoefflery, and others have described this phenomenon for African development and in the historical patterns of civil war, while Andrew Wilder, Sarah Chayes, Clare Lockhart, Anand Gopal, and Carl Forsberg have noted its prevalence in Afghanistan. See Hilton Root, Alliance Curse: How America Lost the Third World (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008); Paul Collier and Anke Hoefflery, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 56, no. 4 (August 2004): 563–95; Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (New York: Penguin, 2007); Clare Lockhart, “Learning from Experience,” Slate, November 2008; Anand Gopal, Battle for Afghanistan: Militancy and Conflict in Kandahar (Washington, DC: New America Foundation, 2010); and Carl Forsberg, Power and Politics in Kandahar (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of War, 2010).

  15.U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, FM 3–24/MCWP 3–33.5, Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Army, 2006), paragraph I-2, page 1–1.

  16.See David J. Kilcullen, “Counterinsurgency Redux,” Survival 48, no. 4 (December 2006), and “Countering Global Insurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 4 (August 2005).

  17.I draw this formulation from Jeffrey Gettleman, “Africa’s Forever Wars: Why the Continent’s Conflicts Never End,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2010.

  Chapter 1

  1.For a cogent set of criticisms, see Stephen Graham, “Olympics Security 2012: Welcome to Lockdown London,” Guardian, March 12, 2012.

  2.Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans. C. E. Wilbour (New York: Carleton, 1862), 134.

  3.Some parts of this chapter and the next appeared in David Kilcullen, “The City as a System: Future Conflict and Urban Resilience,” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 36, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 19–39.

  4.For a comprehensive survey of the role of war in contemporary geopolitics—and a strong argument that interstate war is becoming increasingly rare—see Christopher J. Fettweis, Dangerous Times? The International Politics of Great Power Peace (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010).

  5.Since the mid-nineteenth century the United States has engaged in only six conventional wars. But over the same period, interventions involving irregular warfare, stability operations, or counterinsurgency have included the Mexican War of 1846–48, the Indian Wars against Native American peoples throughout the second half of the nineteenth century; the Philippine Insurrection of 1899–1902; the 1916–17 punitive expedition into Mexico; the intervention in Russia in 1918–20; the banana wars in the Caribbean (including interventions in Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic) during the 1920s and 1930s; the post–World War II occupation and reconstruction of Japan and Germany; several wars in Indochina, including Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam; engagements in Thailand, Lebanon, Panama, Pakistan, Grenada, Somalia, Liberia, El Salvador, and Colombia; peace operations in the Balkans; and of course the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Long though it is, this list is only a small selection of dozens of such engagements over the past 150 years.

  6.For a detailed study of these operations, see the excellent account in Brian McAllister Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

  7.See Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1992), 722–24.

  8.More broadly, a Defense Science Board summer study in 2004 found a long-standing five-to-seven-year cycle of repeated interventions in small and medium-scale stabilization operations since the end of the Cold War, imposing an increasing burden on the U.S. military. See Defense Science Board, 2004 Summer Study on Transition to and from Hostilities, online at www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA430116.pdf, 14.

  9.I am of course aware that there are many competing definitions of irregular warfare. In this book, I use the term simply to mean any conflict where one or more of the actual or potential protagonists is a nonstate armed group.

  10.United States Department of Defense, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, January 2012), 3 (emphasis in the original).

  11.See Nick Turse, “The New Obama Doctrine,” Nation, June 14, 2012, and Leon Wieseltier, “Welcome to the Era of the Light Footprint: Obama Finally Finds His Doctrine,” New Republic, January 29, 2013.

  12.A total of forty-nine coalition members participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom under the command of Multi-National Force—Iraq between 2003 and 2010; of these, however, a much smaller number (between three and five, depending on the year of the conflict) provided actual combat troops at battalion scale or larger, and at the height of the fighting (in October 2007) the U.S. troop presence of 171,000 accounted for 94 percent of the total coalition troop presence of 182,668. See US-Iraq War: Coalition Forces in Iraq, Procon.org, available online at http://usiraq.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000677. By contrast, fifty coalition members participated in Afghanistan under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force between 2001 and 2012, and of these, between eight and ten (again, depending on the year concerned) provided battalion- or larger-sized combat units, all of which operated outside the capital city. See ISAF, Troop Numbers and Contributions, online at www.isaf.nato.int/troop-numbers-and-contributions/index.php.

  13.See Iraq Body Count, “Civilian Deaths from Violence in 2007,” figures in final table, online at www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2007.

  14.David Kilcullen, “Don’t Confuse the ‘Surge’ with the Strategy,” Small Wars Journal, January 19, 2007.

  15.Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007).

  16.Harry Holbert Turney-High, The Military: The Theory of Land Warfare as Behavioral Science (North Q
uincy, MA: Christopher, 1981), 34, quoted in Lawrence H. Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 47–48. Likewise, the historian Philip Bobbitt considers warfare to be one of the three key influencers (along with law and commerce) upon the formation and shape of the state throughout history. And Lawrence Keeley argues convincingly, in War Before Civilization, that “a society’s demography, economy, and social system provide the means for, and impose limits on, military technique.” See Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (New York: Knopf, 2002).

  17.Keeley’s groundbreaking 1997 study integrates research from several different statistical sources to suggest that somewhere between 90 and 95 percent of all known societies throughout history have regularly engaged in organized warfare. See Keeley, War Before Civilization, Chapters 2 and 3.

  18.Even piracy, an apparent exception to this general pattern, turns out on closer observation to be a phenomenon that clusters in and around coastal towns and on the sea routes between such towns.

  19.See Micheal Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618–1991 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992); see also Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Viking, 2000). Mazower estimates total battle deaths in the range of 48 million for both world wars; some estimates range as high as 76 million.

  20.This estimate represents the median prediction of the United Nations population progression model, as reported in United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, online at http://esa.un.org/wpp/Documentation/publications.htm.