Tuesday, March 10, 2009

A Good Insight

I saw this in an EMail just now and thought it was a good insight about conducting Counterinsurgency (COIN).
The revolutionaries are not usually grievance driven but ideology driven. Whereas the terrain that they fight their war on is the human terrain and they leverage the grievances of the population to obtain their goals.   So in one senses removing the grievances of the population you occupy terrain.   The more terrain you occupy the less the revolutionaries have to maneuver on.
UPDATE

The author of the quote is Paul J Tompkins, Jr, who has extensive experience in this area.

Regards  --  Cliff
at

1 comment:

  1. The New Englander3/10/2009 03:39:00 PM

    The quote makes sense in light of the success we had with the surge elements that were in the small outposts in Baghdad, getting away from the big FOBs and right into the human terrain.

    Also fits with what it looks like we're trying to do in Afghanistan by plussing up the troop numbers.

    best,
    gp

    ReplyDelete

Please be forthright, but please consider that this is not a barracks.