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IS THE INSURGENCY IN IRAQ MOVING INTO LEVEL III?
By Tim Smith

** Mao Zedong would call it "the War of Movement" **

United for Peace of Pierce County (WA) April 25, 2005

The U.S. Government continues to say we are wining in Iraq, but all the indicators seem to point in another direction.

Discussions on .mil websites and discussion boards fail to recognize some of the basic precepts of an insurgency and overlook the painful lessons learned from Vietnam. The insurgency in Iraq is moving to Level III or -- as Mao Zedong would call it -- "the War of Movement". Here is a brief synopsis of the three levels of an insurgency[1] -- you be the judge.[2] This is Intel Analysis 101, and the military seems to be failing the course yet again.

1.

[Excerpt]

Appendix D

THE MASS-ORIENTED INSURGENCY: HOW IT ORGANIZES, HOW TO COUNTER IT

Global Security
[Circa 1996]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-20/10020apd.htm

This appendix describes the mass-oriented insurgency, the most sophisticated insurgency in terms of organization and methods of operation. It is difficult to organize, but once under way, it has a high probability of success and is the type of insurgency most likely to require external assistance to defeat. Consequently, it is the form of insurgency U.S. forces may most often encounter.

This type of insurgency originated in China under Mao Tse-Tung. Mass-oriented insurgency relies on the mobilization of very large numbers of people into an alternative government with many highly specialized political and military agencies. It bases its mobilization on a clear identification of social dysfunctions and an appealing program for fundamental political change. The element of popular participation is such that the method can be consistent with U.S. values and objectives. Thus, the United States may support or oppose mass-oriented insurgency. It is not always against such a movement.

Mass-oriented insurgency combines political and military resources to attack and destroy the existing government. Therefore, organized military action will probably be a necessary part of a program to counter it. U.S. armed forces must understand mass-oriented insurgency's organizational and operational methods, if they are to oppose it successfully.

The evolution of any phase in a mass-oriented insurgency may extend over a long period of time. A successful insurgency may take decades to start, mature, and finally succeed.

The classical phases of a mass-oriented insurgency are:

Phase I: Latent and incipient
Phase II: Guerrilla warfare
Phase III: War of movement

An insurgency may not require all phases for success, nor are these phases separate and distinct from each other. Regardless of the number or the duration of the actual phases the insurgency undergoes, its leadership necessarily will initiate some type of final consolidation activities. These may include removing potential enemies or establishing additional control mechanisms. At a minimum, they will probably include educating the society about its new government.

LATENT AND INCIPIENT PHASE

This phase ranges from circumstances in which insurgent activity is only a potential threat (latent or incipient) to incidents and activities which occur frequently and in an organized pattern. This phase involves no major outbreak of violence or uncontrolled insurgent activity.

Starting from a relatively weak position, the insurgents plan and organize their campaign and select initial urban or rural target areas. They make basic decisions regarding ideology and determine fundamental leadership relationships. They also establish overt and covert organizations. If the insurgents' movement is illegal, the organizations they create are normally covert; if their movement is legal, they may establish overt organizations. A covert control element should exist in either case. Throughout this period, the insurgents use PSYOP to:

--Exploit grievances.
--Influence the populace.
--Heighten expectations.
--Promote the loyalty of insurgent members.

As the insurgents consolidate their initial plans, their organization coalesces into a shadow government. After this, they concentrate on:

--Gaining influence over the populace.
--Infiltrating government, economic, and social organizations.
--Challenging the government's administrative ability.
--Recruiting, organizing, and training armed elements.

Various elements may attack government forces. They may also carry out intimidation activities and some minor military operations. These tactics gain additional influence over the populace, provide arms for the movement, and damage the government's public image by demonstrating its inability to provide adequate security. In this first phase, the groundwork is laid for broad external support needed to expand the insurgency.

GUERILLA WARFARE PHASE

The movement reaches the guerrilla warfare phase when it gains sufficient local external support to begin organized guerrilla warfare or related forms of violence against the government. Activities begun in Phase I continue and expand. Insurgent control, both political and military, over territory and the populace intensifies.

The insurgents form a government of their own in insurgent-dominated areas as the military situation permits. In areas not yet controlled, insurgent forces make efforts to neutralize actual or potential opposition groups and to increase infiltration into existing government agencies. Intimidation through induced fear and threat of guerrilla action increases.

The insurgents' major military goal is to control additional areas; the government must then strain its resources to protect many areas at the same time. Insurgent forces attempt to tie down government troops in static defense tasks, interdict and destroy LOC, and capture or destroy supplies and other government resources.

WAR OF MOVEMENT PHASE

Mass-oriented insurgency moves from phase II to phase III when it becomes primarily a conventional conflict between the organized forces of the insurgents and those of the established government. However, some insurgencies may be successful even before they reach this stage.

Activities conducted in Phases I and II continue and expand. Larger units fight government forces, attempting to capture key geographical and political objectives in order to defeat the enemy.

2.

U.S. MILITARY WORRIED OVER CHANGE IN IRAQ ATTACKS
By Bryan Bender

** Sectarianism adds to fears of long U.S. role **

Boston Globe
April 24, 2005
Page 1

Original source: Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- Insurgents in Iraq have staged increasingly sophisticated attacks in recent weeks, according to U.S. military assessments, moving beyond roadside bombings and suicide attacks to mount large-scale assaults against U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians.

The greater coordination and larger scope of the attacks has prompted some commanders to reexamine their belief that the insurgency was on the wane, even though the number of daily attacks has fallen since the landmark Jan. 30 election, according to leading U.S. military officials.

Senior military strategists, speaking privately, also said they worry that insurgents are making inroads toward sparking a full-blown sectarian war and offered cautions about recent predictions that the United States could significantly reduce its forces from the current 142,000 within a year.

"One of the insurgency's strengths is its capacity to regenerate," said retired Army General John Keane, who returned recently from a fact-finding mission in Iraq. "We have killed thousands of them and detained even more, but they are still able to regenerate. They are still coming at us."

Keane took issue with those military officials who have suggested that the insurgency was waning because the number of attacks across the country had declined to about 50 a day, compared with more than 200 per day last year, according to Pentagon figures.

"It's always dangerous to look at [the numbers of] enemy attacks," said Keane, a Vietnam veteran and member of the Defense Policy Board, which advises Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "They can be very misleading, as much as the body counts in Vietnam. . . . It can lead to wrong conclusions."

On at least two occasions this month, sizable numbers of insurgents have tried to overrun U.S. bases, a departure from the hit-and-run tactics that rely on roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as single suicide bombers.

In one failed attempt, three suicide truck bombers, backed by dozens of insurgents, tried to breach the perimeter of a U.S. base on the border with Syria before being repelled by Marines. At least 40 insurgents launched an assault on the heavily defended Abu Ghraib prison complex south of Baghdad, where many captured guerrillas are being held. U.S. forces fought off the attackers after several hours of fighting.

In another audacious strike, insurgents shot down a helicopter Thursday, killing 11 foreign contractors, including six Americans.

The violence continued yesterday, as bomb attacks across Iraq killed at least 16 people, including a U.S. soldier.

Since the election, U.S. officials in Iraq have avoided making public declarations about the state of the insurgency. In the past, military commanders have issued triumphant statements when the number of insurgent attacks fell, only to see the number skyrocket again in subsequent months.

Iraqis sympathetic to the insurgency, meanwhile, assert that fighters have increased their ability to strike effectively against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government. The propaganda of insurgent supporters has grown increasingly strident, accusing the current Iraqi government of extending an illegal U.S. occupation.

One group that calls itself the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance posts a daily "Iraqi Resistance Report," translated into English on its website. Each report details attacks against U.S. and Iraqi government forces claimed by the resistance, and the numbers often wildly exceed U.S. reports.

"Right now, everybody's worried about it, so we're watching to see if that trend continues," a senior coalition military official told reporters Friday in Baghdad.

Rumsfeld's top spokesman, Lawrence DiRita, raised the prospect Thursday that insurgents may be "marshaling their dwindling capacity" in undertaking more organized attacks, but acknowledged that was simply speculation.

"The Iraqi government, as well as the commanders, are working very hard to make sure that they can truly understand [if] there something more here that we need" to learn about the nature of the insurgency, he told reporters.

Still, U.S. military commanders remain confident that the U.S.-led counterinsurgency strategy has made significant inroads in recent months.

There have been these developments:

--A U.S.-led invasion of Fallujah last November deprived insurgents of a key sanctuary.

--The creation of an Iraqi government and political system has inched forward.

--U.S. and European instructors are training greater numbers of Iraqi security forces, who now surpass the number of U.S. troops.

--Continued insurgent attempts to stop the distribution of oil, Iraq's main commodity, have largely failed.

The progress has led some top U.S. military officials to predict that many U.S. troops could soon hand off security duties to the Iraqis and that many Americans could then begin contemplating a return home.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army General George W. Casey, predicted in late March that ''very substantial reductions" in U.S. troops could be made by early next year. Asked this month whether large troop reductions could be made by next year, the Army's top officer, General Peter Schoomaker, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute that "there is an opportunity if things continue and if we continue to see the kind of great progress that's taking place."

But military specialists say that such glowing assessments do not provide the full picture, that loyalists of Saddam Hussein, foreign terrorists, and criminals that make up the insurgency continue to pose a significant threat.

Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority, seen as a main recruiting pool for the insurgents, has largely remained on the sidelines of the political process, a possible harbinger of future civil strife.

Thousands of Shi'ite Muslims have been killed and wounded in insurgent attacks, and the numbers continue to rise.

Indeed, while attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by 22 percent since the Iraqi elections, according to the military, attacks on Iraqi civilians and security forces have risen sharply, although coalition officials could not provide specific numbers on the Iraqis.

The threat of a civil war pitting Sunnis against Shi'ites was on gruesome display last week, as reports and photographs surfaced of the bodies of possibly hundreds of Shi'ites being pulled from the Tigris River. Some were dismembered, and others had been burned beyond recognition.

The insurgents have also slowed the economic and physical reconstruction of the country. Their attacks have added to pressure on such U.S. allies as Spain to pull their troops out of the country prematurely. And they have eroded at least some of the American public support for the mission, polls have suggested.

"They have really evolved from the suicide bomb," Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, recently told the Council on Foreign Relations. "We will probably see better organized attacks, but fewer of them."

Keane said: "Despite the fact that attacks are down and the psychological and political momentum is showing some success, we have to understand the insurgency is resilient, dynamic, and capable of significant surprise. They could undermine political support and political will. The military commanders are very much aware of this."

Echoing Keane's concerns, retired Army General George Joulwan cautioned against declaring military victory too soon.

"Never underestimate the enemy," he said in an interview. "The worst thing we can do is paint too rosy a picture. The insurgents may not be able to defeat us on the battlefield, but they have developed their strategy. Can we prevail in the end, yes. But I think it is going to take a long time."

--Thanassis Cambanis contributed to this report from Baghdad.