provide protection in many locations, it all but invites the irregular enemy to concentrate
its forces against isolated garrisons and destroy them in detail, one by one.
As always in strategic history, the contexts of a particular war are of vital importance.
However, just as there are general principles of advice for irregulars, so there are well-
established principles for the guidance of the authorities who must oppose the insurgents.
Although every historical case of insurgency is distinctive, it will share sufficient
characteristics common to all such conflicts for a set of general principles to be relevant.
The extensive historical experience of many countries can be summarized in a short-
list of essential ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. There is a grand-strategic, which is to say not only a
military, approach to counter-insurgency (COIN) and counter-terrorism (CT) which
approximates best practice. It will not always succeed. Principles cannot reliably be
applied in practice, and sometimes the military, or the socio-cultural, or the political
contexts are just too unfavourable for any COIN efforts to succeed. Nevertheless,
historical experience does suggest how COIN should be approached. The following are
the most important principles:
- The civilian, not the military, authorities must be in overall charge.
- There must be unity of command and therefore of effort over civilian and military
authorities. - The people have to be protected. This is job one in COIN. The allegiance of the
civilian population is the stake in the conflict. - The regular belligerent must behave lawfully. A significant part of the official story
is that the established authorities represent order over disorder, due process for
justice rather than arbitrary behaviour, and respect for people as contrasted with
disdain for them. - Intelligence is king. An irregular force will be defeated only if it is betrayed by
people close to it, or if the regular belligerent is able to infiltrate its ranks, though
such infiltration is typically difficult for physical and cultural reasons. Irregular war-
fare is also significantly transcultural (Strachan, 2006), as in Iraq and Afghanistan
in the 2000s. - Take ideology seriously. Every insurgency mobilizes around a big idea, a cause, an
ideology. It will always be political, though it may be clothed in religion. Strictly
speaking, in Islam there is a unity of the political and the religious. Since morale is
a key to the fate of an irregular, or regular, force, loss of ideological conviction must
have devastating consequences. - The irregular enemy is not the target in COIN; the minds of the people are the
zone of strategic and political decision. If the people can be protected well enough
for them to support the COIN effort, or at the least to acquiesce in its behaviour,
the insurgents must lose. Modern irregular warfare is all about the allegiance, or
tolerance, of the civilian population. Regular troops tend to rush about the country
chasing elusive guerrillas. They do not always understand that high body counts of
irregular fighters are likely to be strategically irrelevant, because COIN cannot
usually achieve a military victory. It is far more important to protect civilians than
it is to kill insurgents. If the latter are isolated from the sympathy of the former, they
are doomed to fail. - Cultural understanding is highly desirable, even essential. It will be perfect, or
252 War, peace and international relations