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Lessons from Algeria: counter-insurgency, commitment and cruelty

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By Ethan Brooks and Thomas Giles:

French troops in Oran, northwest Algeria, 1956. Photo: JP Vasse (CC)
French troops in Oran, northwest Algeria, 1956. Photo: JP Vasse (CC)

In the Algerian War of 1954-62, the belligerents tore apart a society that had coexisted for a century. The wounds they left were too deep to heal. But the continuation of theviolence after the war and the spiraling civilian-targeted terror campaigns conducted by both French colonists and Algerian independence fighters was not inevitable. Avoiding this type of outcome is the point of counter-insurgency operations today. More than sixty years later, we can see that no counter-insurgency campaign can succeed with aggressive ‘search and destroy’ tactics against embedded insurgentsif the ultimate aim is peaceful coexistence in a divided society. The United States failed to take this lesson to Iraq and as a result had to adapt during its operations. Any country considering a counter-insurgency operation in the future must weigh up the extra costs of attempting it without this tool. France’s experience in Algeria shows that restraint and long-term commitment are vital if conflicts are to be resolved without the kind of fallout seen in Algeria in the 1960s and Iraq since 2011.

***

Even today there are parts of France that have been part of the country for less time than Algeria was. Fully incorporated as an extension of metropolitan France from 1881 under the Second Republic, it was organized into départements like continental France and was complete with all the trappings of the French state.[1] After the war, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke of ‘Winds of Change’ drawing the imperial era to a close, but in French Algeria the reality was different. For the colons (the Europeans living there) Algeria could never be just another colonial outpost to abandon during the seemingly inevitable tide of decolonization.

The French Empire was a civilizational mission to make Algeria and the rest of the colonies part of France. By contrast, while India had been ‘the jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire and its loss in 1947 had meant a loss of prestige, Britain did not feel as if it was losing a part of itself. The opposite was true of France. In the words of the French Prime Minister at the start of the conflict, Algeria was “irrevocably French”.[2]

If we read history through the lens of its destination, the gradual build-up of Algerian nationalism after the First World War is plain to see. Our eyes are drawn to the violent elements we recognize as important later on. But this is a mistake. The savage war and terror campaigns can in no way be described as inevitable.

Up until the end of the Second World War, French Algerian society was able to function as normal. Terrible violence did occur in the Sétif massacre in 1945 that followed police clashes with Muslim Algerians celebrating the German surrender, but Algeria was to have another decade of the peaceful coexistence it had enjoyed for over a hundred years. The majority of Arab Algerians favoured – or at least saw as the only viable outcome – a variation on the status quo with more political rights and the accompanying economic benefits.[3] Demands for violent overthrow of French rule were limited to the fringes. Nor for that matter were the colons too worried about their future. The idea of having to flee for their lives across the Mediterranean with their worldly belongings in suitcases would have seemed absurd.

To find the cause of the horror story, we must point to decisions made by both sides. In this case, to blame are, on the one hand, the civilian-targeting tactics of the Algerian revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN), and on the other the unrestrained response of the French army and their failure to control the illegitimate combatants on their side. These combatants included the colon paramilitaries and the French intelligence services which operated in secret via proxies. Aggressive ‘search and destroy’ tactics cannot succeed in the long-term if the insurgents cannot be separated from the population. Hearts and minds cannot be won later on when the force aiming at ‘pacification’ is indistinguishable from the insurgents in the brutality of its tactics. Seen in this light, the bulk of the population can be seen as bystanders who were gradually sucked into the conflict as it grew in intensity. Civilian-targeting forced people to choose sides. The resulting divide was unbridgeable after the fighting. The only option for the Pied-Noirs and the Harkis (the Muslim Algerians who sided with the French) was to flee to France.[4]

The spark for the war came in November 1954 when the FLN carried out its first attacks, a series of over thirty bombings that left seven people dead, five of whom were European civilians. This shocked the French and triggered the deployment of paratroopers to Algeria. But even this event is easily exaggerated in importance. It was the response that leant the attack its significance.

At this point, the FLN was estimated to have only around 500 fighters and was only one small, albeit very violent, group within the broader Algerian independence movement. Before FLN ascendency, there were many moderate parties. These included the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA), which desired Algerian independence, but did not wish to achieve it by violence, the moderate republican party known as the Amis du Manifeste et des Libertés, and the Algerian Communist Party. The FLN rose to prominence because the French authorities allowed it to violently consolidate its dominance over other pro-independence groups, especially the MNA, a failure that stemmed from an unwillingness to distinguish between ‘good and ‘bad’ anti-French factions and engage with them politically before it was too late. Without the MNA, there was no Muslim Algerian voice arguing for a non-violent political solution. FLN dominance dictated the intensity of the conflict and the escalating response of the French authorities sealed Algeria’s fate. Fighting fire with fire, the French military establishment and the colons hit back hard, meeting the FLN’s terror war in Algiers with equal savagery.[5] The popularity of the FLN rapidly grew as ordinary Algerians turned against France.

While the aggressive French tactics were in part the result of existing military doctrine that advocated fierce repression, they were also a product of the military leadership. After humiliation in 1940 at the hands of the German Army, another defeat in Indochina in 1954, and the meekness that accompanied the Suez withdrawal in 1956, another military rout or feeble acquiescence would have shown France to be a cripple on the world stage.[6] The rot had to stop in Algeria. Left to their own devices by politicians in Paris stuck in the deadlock of the Fourth Republic, the generals took the responsibility for holding France together upon themselves. Political oversight should have led to tighter bounds placed on the use of force and long-term goals kept more clearly in mind. Without it, the army made its own decisions as to the lessons it believed it had learned in Indochina. Blaming defeat on a lack of toughness and panicked by the threat of communism, they resolved never to come second best in resolve or forcefulness again. The lack of restraint and the surprising cruelty of the French campaign was a direct result of this. A policy of summary killings, torture, intimidation and terror was carried out. By 1960-61, the FLN had been defeated militarily in Algiers and only small pockets of resistance remained. But during the fighting, aggressive tactics had turned the population of Algeria against the French.

In hindsight, it is difficult to imagine how France ever thought it could keep a peaceful hold on Algérie Française. The Arabs in Algeria were denied many of the political rights that the Europeans had and as a result felt treated as second-class citizens, but the anger and hatred that existed by 1962 did not exist in 1954. French rule could never have lasted in the long-term. However, the massacres, continued terror campaigns and the heart-breaking exodus of colons that followed Algerian Independence in the years 1961-1962 could have been avoided had a different approach been taken.

In looking back at the Algerian War, the goal is not to see how France might have held onto Algeria had it made better decisions. The goal must be to understand how western countries can carry out effective counter-insurgency efforts and avoid the level of suffering and bloodshed that is indelibly linked to Algeria’s independence experience. After the civilian-targeted violence of the war, there was no possibility that Muslim Algerians and the colons could continue to live together as they had done before. The precedent set by both the FLN and colon paramilitaries of targeting civilians with reprisals meant that the cycle of retaliatory massacres was and would have remained intractable.

Any mission that seeks to uphold a central authority against violent challengers must be willing to see the job through without allowing the fight to become personal in the way it was for the French in Algeria. Maintaining this sort of distance above the fray requires enormous sacrifice, restraint, and a willingness to let crimes against you go unpunished. On this last count the United States struggled in its Iraq mission and became the target of violence aiming to provoke a response similar to that of the French in Algeria. The sixty years that have passed since the Algerian War have seen many more counter-insurgency operations, including several in North Africa and the Middle East. Since the Arab Spring, we have seen that nearly every country in the region could find itself needing military help to avoid a drawn-out civil war and mass killings. Given this, it is probable that new counter-insurgency operations will be undertaken. Nor are they likely to be as easy as France’s mission in Mali, where the insurgents were mostly rural and the rebel fighters were geographically, religiously and ethnically distinct from the rest of the population. This especially applies today as events in Syria, Iraq and Libya progress. A lack of long-term commitment wrecked the mission in Iraq. The results of that failure are all too clear today.

Ethan Brooks is in his third year of a BA in International Politics at King’s College London. Thomas Giles is in his third year of a BA in War Studies, also at King’s.

NOTES

[1] Evans, Martin. Algeria: France’s Undeclared War, 2012, p.19

[2] Merom, Gil. How Democracies lose small wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon and the United States in Vietnam, 2003, p.90

[3]Evans, Martin. Algeria: France’s Undeclared War, 2012, p. 101

[4]Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace. p. 537.

[5] Branche, Raphaëlle. La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie. France: Gallimard (2001), p. 423-24

[6] De Saint Marc, Hélie. Mémoires les champs de braises. France: Perrin (2002), p.173

Policing and counterinsurgency: A case from Manchester

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By Alex Calvo:

17380698376
Photo by Oggy Roberts.

On 07 August 2013, Greater Manchester Police posted a note on Facebook describing a sexual assault in the city centre two days earlier.[1] It explained that a 27-year-old woman had been sexually assaulted at knife-point at about 0245 on a ‘night out with her friends’ after she ‘became detached from the group’. As she walked, ‘she noticed a black man… who followed her’ and who later ‘shouted to attract her attention and then produced a flick knife, grabbing her by the wrist and leading her down an alleyway at the side of the bar’. He then proceeded to sexually assault her while he ‘continued to hold the knife to her neck’ but was ‘distracted by a passing car, which prompted the man to run off.’ The post described the attack as ‘an isolated incident’ and asked ‘people to remain on their guard while out and, where possible, try to stick together in groups and to well-lit and well-populated areas’.

 

Although the post by the police only provides an outline of the incident, the following conclusions may be tentatively drawn:

1. The assailant did not seem to have been aiming at any victim in particular, but rather seemed to be on the lookout for vulnerable targets.

2. The victim was seen as vulnerable because she had been separated from the group she was originally in.

3. In addition, although this is not stated, she may have been intoxicated, or at least under some degree of influence of alcohol or drugs, thus compounding her vulnerability.[2]

4. The aggressor took her to somewhere dark and hidden:, an alleyway. He did not initiate the sexual assault until he was someplace he considered ‘safe’.

This latter point prompts the question of how to prevent the use of such spaces for criminal activity, with some possible alternatives being:

  1.  Closing them, so that they cannot be used to commit crimes.
  2.  Lighting them, where there is a direct line of sight from populated areas.
  3.  Overtly monitoring them through CCTV or other ‘electronic intelligence’ [ELINT] means.
  4.  Using them as ‘hunting grounds’, covertly patrolling or monitoring them in real time.

The above alternatives can be compared to similar dilemmas in COIN, for example concerning the night and forested areas. It is easy to see both as favouring action by insurgents, but there is no reason why this should be so. Often the difference is rather psychological. Counterinsurgents tend to see the night and the forest as favouring the insurgent, allowing him to hide. Looking at it objectively, however, the counterinsurgent can take advantage of vegetation and darkness in the same way, if he stops seeing them as his enemy and starts seeing them as his ally.

However, taking advantage of the night, for example, demands changes in the way operations are conducted. Whereas fixed day patrols allow insurgents to either control the population at night (a common pattern in, for example, Vietnam) or to attack counterinsurgents at will, the latter can hunt down guerrillas in the dark if they stop seeing it as their enemy, and benefit from their technological superiority and even better partner with the local population.[3]
The night as such is neutral, but if seen as an enemy then it will actually become one.

A conventional operations example from WWII of the kind of mentality change necessary is provided by the allied experience in the South-East Asian theatre, where the Japanese were initially seen as particularly adept at jungle fighting but such perception gradually gave way, as training proceeded, to the view that allied troops could master the techniques necessary and even bring them to a greater degree of perfection than the enemy. General Slim succeeded in getting soldiers to view the jungle not as an enemy but instead as a friend. [4]

On the other hand, the second approach was the driving force behind the deforestation program in Vietnam, where instead of mastering combat in the jungle the strategy was partly to eradicate wide swathes of that terrain, in order to more easily locate and destroy the enemy.[5] Just like lightning dark areas, the idea was to make the enemy visible. Both darkness and the jungle, though, can hide attacker and defender, having no natural affinity for either.

Although criminality and insurgency cannot simply be equated, and we have to be careful in not simply uncritically translating concepts from one to the other,[6] they share a number of traits in common, making comparative studies worthwhile. One of them is that they cannot take place far away from the population, while, at the same time, they need safe havens (sometimes in the midst of the population, sometimes in isolated, remote areas, ‘isolated and remote’ not always in the literal meaning of the words). Thus, the presence of dark, unused alleys, near main streets, is a clear invitation to opportunistic crime. It may be interesting to study and map their use, employing geographical information systems. Both criminals and insurgents need to prey on the population, but at the same time they need to operate far from the eyes of the authorities. We could note how, in the case described, the attacker used the threat of force (in the shape of a knife) on a street, but did not engage in a more serious crime, potentially attracting a much more serious sentence, until he felt he could not be seen by anybody other than the victim. Thus, if caught before getting to his sanctuary, it may have been very difficult for the prosecution to prove that he intended to carry out a sexual assault, rather than a simple robbery or threat.

Another revealing bit of information in the Facebook posting by Greater Manchester Police is the fact that the aggressor ran away when a car passed by. Again, this illustrates how we are probably facing someone looking for an easy way to commit a crime, minimizing the chances of detection and punishment, and preferring to retreat to strike another day when the slightest threat appears on the horizon.

Going back to the four alternatives listed above, the first (closing off potential safe havens) may offer a relatively simple way of diminishing the scope for opportunistic crime. Sometimes this is easy and does not significantly interfere with economic and social activities. An example of this is the proper fencing of building sites, so that criminals may not take their victims into them at night. However, other grounds may not be so easy to seal off without major disruptions or great expense, an example of this being gardens and other green areas. Whereas large gardens are often fenced and closed at night, this is often not the case with smaller green areas, which tend to be unlit and close to streets. In counterinsurgency we often find similar dilemmas, with some areas employed by the enemy declared free-fire zones while others are either too heavily populated or essential in economic terms to be open to such possibility.

This brings us to the third and fourth options discussed above (overt monitoring with CCTV or other ELINT means, and use as hunting grounds). As explained, the night is neutral, and so is darkness and vegetation cover, just like criminals and insurgents can hide in them, so can police officers and counter insurgents. In Vietnam, for example, one of the key elements of the US Marine Corps’ Combined Action Program were night patrols. Those patrols were designed not to be detected by the enemy, that is, to initiate contact, not fight engagements

at the time and place chosen by insurgents, as was rather the rule in day-time patrols. This was important for different reasons, such as fewer casualties (for two reasons: the side initiating a fight tends to enjoy the benefit of surprise and retain the alternative to disengage) and moral ascendancy over the enemy (going from ‘prey’ to ‘hunter’). The night has a further advantage: by day, normal chores by civilians going about their ordinary business means that patrols will surely be detected. Actually one of their purposes is to reassure the civilian population and show that the authorities are present in the area. This reassurance, while essential in a counterinsurgency context (where the population is the ultimate arbiter of success and which is essentially an exercise in nation building) provides the enemy with an information advantage, with civilians often coerced into providing intelligence or just ‘sitting on the fence’, or insurgents disguising as civilians. On the other hand, a curfew provides the chance to ‘leave the fish without the water’ and make it possible to detect insurgents without the risk of inadvertently harming civilians.

There are, though, two key differences between the military and the police in this regard. First of all, while banning movement at night is possible in a counter insurgency scenario, this is not usually the case in a stable area under normal policing operations. In addition to legal and constitutional restrictions, it could have a very negative impact on the local economy, in particular in tourist or leisure areas such as the zone where the described incident took place, where many local businesses make a living precisely at night. Second, while the military may have the option of choosing whether to conduct visible patrols or undetected night patrols, both the applicable law, custom, and citizens expectations tend to restrict such possibility for the police. In most jurisdictions, at least in broad terms, the prevailing approach is reactive, that is officers must wait until a crime is committed to investigate and arrest those allegedly guilty. They may (and this is one of the key purposes of visible patrols) provide a measure of deterrence by ‘showing the flag’, making it clear to potential criminals that they are present in the area, but the circumstances in which they may hide in order to observe the commission of crimes and proceed against those responsible for them tend to be restricted, and often limited to fields such as drug trafficking and organized crime, where infiltration and sting operations are common. In the law of armed conflict, just belonging to the military means you can be killed or made prisoner (subject to the relevant Rules of Engagement), whereas in the criminal law, while belonging to a criminal enterprise is often a crime in and by itself, the rule is that one must carry out at least certain preparatory acts before one can be charged with a crime. Thus, someone walking in a city centre in the early hours, looking for isolated, vulnerable targets, to commit rape, would not generally be considered to be committing a crime. He would, on the other hand, be committing a crime once he employed force, or the threat of force, to move that target to an isolated area, where to conduct a sexual assault,[7] and hence the possibility of monitoring such areas.

A third factor to take into account is that, whereas insurgents will tend to react to patrols by attacking them, with either the authorities finally pushing them out from a given area or refraining from entering it,[8] the same does not apply to opportunistic criminals, who will simply seek a way not to be detected. Their goal is not to master territory and exclude government institutions, but to exploit a portion of the civilian population.

As already noted, and stressed by a number of authors, we have to be careful with analogies between counterinsurgency and policing, and cannot simply automatically translate concepts from one field to another. However, at the same time we can observe some similarities or at least employ the comparative method to shed light on certain key concepts. For example, the reliance by criminals on pre-determined hidden areas where to conduct the acts attracting the heaviest penalties (in the case study considered here an unlit area where to sexually assault a victim dragged at knife point from a street), is to some extent similar to insurgents’ reliance on a ‘logistics nose’. This term denotes the gradual piling up of material in an area chosen to fight a battle, with troops following supplies instead of the other way around, as is the norm with conventional forces.[9] There are different reasons why insurgents may choose to act this way, but one in particular is interesting when it comes to comparing insurgency with crime, namely reducing the likelihood of detection. Once weapons and ammunition are in place, troops, disguised as civilians, can travel to the hidden depots and if challenged claim that they are simply civilians, otherwise they can take up arms, conduct an attack, and then go back to being civilians.[10] Furthermore, insurgents have the initiative, by choosing when to move into the areas where their weapons and other supplies are awaiting them. Similarly, a criminal who has pre-selected a spot where to commit his crime, but who is awaiting in another area, may look to all intents and purposes as an ordinary citizen. Even if his behaviour is suspicious, it may be difficult to prove that he intends to commit a crime, or at least the more serious crime he has in mind. Thus, in the case described, the author first followed the victim, then threatened her, and did not commit the more serious crime (sexual assault) until he had forced her to move to the area he had previously chosen and which he thought was away from prying eyes.

Concerning his weapon, he may have been carrying it from home, but it is also possible that he had hidden it nearby and only took it once he detected a vulnerable target. That way, if challenged by the police, no weapon would have been found on him.

Finally, with regard to the advice provided by the police in their Facebook note, namely to ‘stick together in groups and to well-lit and well-populated areas’, we can also find analogies in counterinsurgency, where often authorities will seek to concentrate the population, or restrict its movements, to more effectively protect it, as done by US forces in the Philippine-American War. However, one of the key distinctions between policing and counterinsurgency is the degree of coercion allowed, clear from the fact that the Greater Manchester Police are only advising people to stick together and remain in well illuminated areas where others are present, having no legal powers to compel citizens to do so. This difference, however, may be just one of degree, as the limited success or even backfiring of mandatory policies such as the Strategic Hamlets Program in Vietnam shows, although a similar approach worked in the Malayan Emergency. In practice, authorities in both policing and COIN scenarios may be forced to rely on persuasion, rather than coercion, in order to bring about the social changes necessary to deprive criminals and insurgents of the social milieu from which they pray. In the case of rural insurgency, for example, the introduction of new technologies and improvements to transportation infrastructure, or a wider social and economic trend towards urbanization, may provide an incentive for the population to re-concentrate out of their own volition, thus making it easier to provide security. In the case of policing, the development of new leisure and entertainment models[11] may reduce the scope for the kind of opportunistic sexual crime described in the note by Greater Manchester Police.

Conclusions: As noted by different authors, we have to be careful not to confuse policing
with COIN and carelessly apply concepts and lessons from one field to the other. However, at the same time, we have to be aware of some overlapping notions which at the very least may facilitate both scholarship and practice. Greater Manchester Police has explained to the public a case which shows some of this overlap and which can be the basis to discuss some of the strategies that may be used in both policing and counterinsurgency..

From the outline of the case, it seems that the aggressor was on the lookout for vulnerable targets, the two key criteria being isolation and (perhaps) intoxication. Once he located one, he used the threat of force to take her to a dark alleyway, where he hoped to be able to assault her at no risk of detection.

This brings up the issue of how to prevent the use of such spaces, a concern in both the fight against crime and insurgency. Four possible alternatives are closing them to the public, illuminating them permanently, monitoring them continuously and overtly by electronic means, and doing so covertly (or patrolling them also covertly) thus turning them into hunting grounds. In examining these alternatives, similar dilemmas found in COIN are useful, and scholars and practitioners in policing and counterinsurgency may benefit from regular exchanges of views.

__________________

Alex Calvo is a guest Professor at Nagoya University, interested in military history, international law, geopolitics, and defence and security policy. You can follow him on Twitter @Alex__Calvo

 

NOTES

1             Post on the Facebook page of Greater Manchester Police, 7 August 2013, available at https://www.facebook.com/GtrManchesterPolice/posts/375618175841541
2          The issue of intoxicated victims of sexual assault is controversial, a recent campaign by the British National Health Service having attracted criticism by those who considered that it amounted to blaming victims. L. Buchan ‘Cambridge University student Jack May started the petition last week calling for the removal of a Home Office alcohol awareness poster bearing the statement: “One in three reported rapes happens when the victim has been drinking”’, Cambridge News, 31 July, available at http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Cambridge-students-petition-against-Home-Office-alcohol-awareness-poster-gains-more-than-23000-signatures-20140731064700.htm#ixzz3AIYiJkbm’
[3]          As done by the US Marine Corps in Vietnam. A. Calvo, “Preventing the Barbarization of Warfare: The USMC CAP Program in Vietnam”, Small Wars Journal, 15 December 2013, available at http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/preventing-the-barbarization-of-warfare-the-usmc-cap-program-in-vietnam
[4]         R. Lyman, Slim, Master of War, (London: Robinson, 2004), p. 143.
[5]          As well as its food supplies, this tool being controversial right from the start due to the risk of alienating peasants. G. A. Cosmas, MACV: the joint command in the years of escalation, 1962–1967, (United States Army in Vietnam) (Washington: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2006), p. 90.
[6]         ‘At first glance, counterinsurgency (at least the “soft,” population-centric American version) bears a fair amount of resemblance to community policing: It’s all about changing the dynamic in the communities where insurgents operate, encouraging troops to “walk the beat” and bringing in social services. And many of the tools of the modern counterinsurgent — forensic exploitation, pattern analysis and social-network diagramming — would be familiar to any detective. (The Law Enforcement Professionals program for combating roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan even called on retired agents from the FBI, the DEA, and the ATF to help take down insurgent networks.) … But to the COINdinistas I would say: Be careful what you wish for. Counterinsurgency is still a tool for dealing with political emergencies, and it involves a heavy degree of population control. And at home, it’s a bridge too far. “Policing can be informed by counterinsurgency – and they are in fact similar at some points,” said John P. Sullivan, a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and an expert on transnational gangs. “But at others they really diverge. So you need to be very, very careful.”’, N. Hodge ‘”Counterinsurgency” to Fight U.S. Crime? No, Thanks’, Wired, 24 November 2009, available at http://www.wired.com/2009/11/counterinsurgency-to-fight-us-crime-no-thanks/
[7]        Which raises another operational and ethical question: if the police detected such an incident, should they intervene before the victim was assaulted, thus sparing her the ordeal but probably failing to secure a substantial conviction against the aggressor, or wait until he initiated the assault, raising the chances of conviction and diminishing the likelihood of future attacks but subjecting the victim to much greater harm?
[8]       ‘Patrolling demonstrates dominance. A patrol is an affront that challenges the manhood of the local insurgents, who will strike back. … One of two outcomes follows. Either the patrols persist until the insurgent shooters are killed or forced to flee. Or the patrols cease going to those areas where they are persistently shot at.’ B. West, The Wrong War: grit, strategy, and the way out of Afghanistan, (New York: Random House, 2011), pp. 151-152.
[9]         L. Sorley, A Better War, (Orlando: Harcourt Books, 1999), p. 21.
[10]          ‘They drive up on their cycles without weapons, so we can’t shoot. Twenty minutes later, they hit us from across the canal with AKs and a few RPGs.’ B. West, The Wrong War: grit, strategy, and the way out of Afghanistan, (New York: Random House, 2011), p. 232.
[11]         A historical example of social change putting an end to a form of crime may be the spread of sports, summer camps, cinema, and lads’ clubs in late XIX Century Manchester and Salford, contributing to the decline in ‘scuttling’. A. Davies, The Gangs of Manchester, (Preston: Milo Books, 2008), pp. 337-342 and 353-354

COIN, resilience, and a new approach to conflict: Interview with Victoria Fontan

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By Joana Cook, Managing Editor, Strife:

V.Fontan
Professor Victoria Fontan

Victoria Fontan is a Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica and author of “Decolonizing Peace” (2012) and “Voices from Post-Saddam Iraq” (2008). She is now undertaking her third PhD in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

*

Joana Cook: Thank you for speaking with us today. You have had an expansive and extensive career and I wanted to talk about your focus on Iraq. Can you elaborate more on the reason that Iraq has become the focus for you and about your roles and experiences in Iraq?

Victoria Fontan: Iraq came to me by accident because I was finishing my research on Lebanon and I had just defended by PhD thesis and the Iraq War happened. I thought I would find in Iraq the same type of Shiite, as my first doctorate was on Hezbollah and I thought that in Iraq there would be exactly, or similarly organised political/spiritual networks, and that these would revive Shiite-based socialism in the area, and I arrived and I found everything but that. I stumbled onto Fallujah, because at the time I was there as a researcher for a journalist at The Independent, and while there, saw a U.S. raid on the city. That’s when I realised that was going to be my focus, and I’ve never stopped going to Fallujah.

What was interesting that day, is that there was an American soldier who had died the night before, and his colleagues were actually raiding the streets to find the culprits. Going house to house in Fallujah, they arrested a woman who was a schoolteacher because she had a Kalashnikov and she didn’t want them to come into her house, and I could see the theatre of war right in front of me. As the raids finished at the end of that street, an old man, a shop keeper, gave a bottle of water to the soldiers and said ‘you must be so thirsty after all of this’, as if we had just snapped out of this scene and now everybody was friends again. I thought ‘wow,this is a fascinating topic’ and I focused on the perception of humiliation in the escalation of violence, between soldiers and Iraqi’s, because everybody is a loser in war and I think that soldiers need to understand why they are facing these situations.

Can you elaborate more on this theme of humiliation, which was quite prominent in your earlier work as well and link it with your current research focusing more on counterinsurgency (COIN) and civilians?

The perception of humiliation on both sides actually leads to a complete falling out in communication.  It is a tactic used against the opponent. COIN comes in because, in 2003-2004, I thought that the only way to prevent humiliation, or the perception of humiliation, would be to win hearts and minds. At the time I had found the Mateus and Petraeus earlier reports from US Army Field Manual, 3-24 and I was fascinated. I thought this is it; this is the answer, and I really thought it was going to save lives. I carried on and was in Baghdad during the ethnic cleansing during 2005-2006, those two summers. I saw that it was a lot more complex than [humiliation, violence and tactics], but I couldn’t put my finger on [what] it [was]. At the same time I went into the UN and realised that, because I was evaluating the electoral cycle (for the first three elections), I realised that we actually created the situation of sectarianism, through our democratisation process, and so COIN and liberal peace together created this mess. ….From a COIN perspective, [I was] really disappointed, because I believed in it. When the Americans established the human terrain system in Afghanistan, and had anthropologists on the ground to actually [communicate better with] the population, I thought that was brilliant.

Tell us more about this new kind of connection between COIN and resilience you are currently researching. What do you see as the new material or angle that can be brought to the field from this perspective?

 I think the innovative angle is how organic thinking gives us a fuller picture. It’s almost as if regular COIN looks at the tip of the iceberg, and the rest really tries to look at things more holistically. Holistically doesn’t mean looking at everything, every interconnection like some of the works that have been done at the moment in COIN, but trying to look at us and our initiatives and societies and situations as systems, systems of resilience, and resilient cycles. If we look at it that way it gives us not only a fuller picture, but an understanding of when to intervene and when not to intervene…. If you intervene, let’s say when you are in a conservation phase, there’s no space for innovation, no space for new connections. So obviously you’re going to fail miserably, and in retrospect this is one of the main mistakes that occurred in Iraq as well.

We haven’t seen levels of violence in Iraq like we currently are since 2008, and perhaps using this approach that you’re now exploring, can you comment more specifically on some of the dynamics we currently see in Iraq and more broadly how we see that affecting Sunni-Shiite tensions?

It’s unprecedented this Sunni-Shiite conflict, in French we call it guerre fratricide, it’s basically brothers killing each other. I think that the situation never really changed, it’s just our outlook, because really since 2008 it looks worse to us because maybe the numbers of bodies are piling up. But if you’re looking at the repression in the prisons, if you’re looking at the state’s structural violence, it’s actually always been there and I think that the government has been feeding this escalation to such a level that we only see the tip of the iceberg, but really the entire society has been divided, since probably the establishment of those personal ID cards which reflected a person’s religion, by stating the person’s family lineage and neighbourhood.

This has had tremendous consequences for the establishment of The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) because they started in 2007, al-Qaeda is actually absorbed by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI )and then [as] the years [have gone] by, whatever we tried to do in COIN has failed.  It’s as if we’ve given the wrong antibiotic and now we’ve created a resistant bug. I think that the strength of ISIS is it goes across states, it is transnational; it is also going back to a paradigm that exists outside the state. Before al Qaeda would say ‘We just want to take over the government and become a Caliphate and that’s it’, but it’s not an aphorism, it’s completely unprecedented.

You did mention the transnational nature of it, and specifically we’ve seen ISIS coming up a lot more in Syria. Can you briefly comment on your perceptions of the situation in Syria right now and perhaps how these dynamics will continue to evolve?

I remember last summer Syria was more a recreation ground for ISIS in Iraq, and the people from ISIS I met were saying that they were going to spend two weeks in Syria and it was going to be bonding time between them as a group, to go and actually fight for real somewhere else. So I think that to a large extent this is how it started.  The operations in Iraq are different; you plant bombs, you’re not really in it, actually not really giving your person to the fight, to the struggle. Of course this created tensions on the ground because they were so motivated, that they actually succeeded and advanced rapidly, they took over so many towns, and then Jabhat al-nusra was like, ‘Wait a second, al Qaeda, this is our fight, you have to [leave]’. That’s when they said ‘no, no, we are here for the greater Syria and the entire region.’

I think that the funders such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are very clever…. I think it’s going to depend on the [regional] funders more than anything else and who they’re ready to back up; this will be at the core of it. Especially groups like Islamic Front who were former Jabhat al-nusra who became more and more structured…. every funder is trying to create its own brand of al-Qaeda, but ISIS somehow comes out right now as the most ideologically sound, and religiously sound as well. They make mistakes, for instance they beheaded the wrong [target], about a month and a half ago, and then they apologised on the internet …. That’s very smart. By doing that the population sees that they might have a future with them. Right now though it’s also a propaganda war, we don’t know how they are going to fare until we actually understand how the local population reacts to them.

Thank you very much for all of your insights. As a final point on resilience, would you like to leave our readers with a final thought to ponder on?

The most important aspect  [of resilience] is to understand that whenever an obstacle comes our way, we have to make it become part of our landscape and not consistently try to destroy it.  We have to find a use for it within our landscape, which comes from this competitive symbiosis that author Rafe Sagarin talks about. Once we think outside the box and look at the larger picture what we will see…. if the different actors that seek to exist outside the state understand they are much better off together than against each other it creates the potential for a completely different kind of future. I think that this is the key for understanding resilience, how we can work together, and we have to work together from an organic perspective.

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You can find more information on Victoria Fontan’s research on her website: http://www.victoriacfontan.com.

From riots to vigil: The community, the police and Mark Duggan’s legacy

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By Jill Russell

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January 11th’s vigil in Tottenham, a response to the findings in the Coroner’s Inquest that the shooting of Mark Duggan was lawful, was promised to be a peaceful though disappointed demonstration in response to the official findings.

I would go. It was a public order event to observe and in support of any work I find this eyes-on style offers more insights, views, knowledge and awareness than can be anticipated. Being directly related to my riots research my attendance was imperative. But not knowing how things would turn out on the day, I noted to a friend as I made my way to North London, it was either the best or the worst idea I could have had.

This the last in the series of thought pieces on my way to a historical treatment of the 2011 London riots, I have chosen the vigil as the moment to open the piece whose focus is the local Haringey and Greater London communities which identified with the personal tragedy of the Duggan family. More than an understanding of them as an independent subject in the story, adding the people and the rioters also has the effect of completing, if not perfectly, the picture of the event. Looking upon a complete, if abstracted, landscape one is compelled to consider such issues as the greater meaning of the events. For me, the most satisfying path forward leads to better policies and approaches, and so the final section of this piece dovetails into my thoughts on those.

As it turned out, returning to the vigil, although confronting contentious and difficult issues the event was mild, almost pleasant. Of course, as the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and Haringey Police must have scrambled to prepare given the short notice, to complicate matters there was also a home football match scheduled for the day. Between both events, the surrounding area was awash in hi-viz yellow. At the vigil site outside the police station I would dare say that it felt as if there were as many if not more workers, observers, police, clergy and pastors, and members of the media than demonstrators. Above all, there was palpable in the atmosphere a commitment by all present to maintain as much geniality as was possible given the context.

Those identified as the street pastors stood out as an intellectually inspiring and engaging image. There not with a position on the vigil, it seemed their purpose was to provide a caring and sympathetic voice and ear to attendees who might be distressed. Their sweet countenances were an unexpected though much appreciated sight. In addition to other members of the clergy participating in the event itself, the senior chaplain to the MPS, the Reverend Jonathan Osborne, was there and by my observation his presence seemed to be for the police themselves. In all, the spiritual component had a positive influence upon the atmosphere.

A similarly important image was the demeanour of the police. Against the chants of “No Justice, No Peace” and those calling for an end to violence and injustice, the officers tasked with the public order function stood back and maintained a low-key presence. They strove quietly for the objective of facilitative, even in the face of anger towards them, and they succeeded. [1]

In all, it was a much more than simply the passage of time since when last these groups assembled outside the Tottenham police station.

Thus, the event, without the sturm und drang of violent chaos but nevertheless full with the pathos and problems expressed on those turbulent August nights, provides an apt vantage point from which to highlight what I have found to be important to consider about this side of the riots.

At the outset I should point out the certain limitations to sourcing for this side of the story. I have sought out what there is by way of published material, and hounded as well as many of those individuals willing to talk with me. Lacking hubris, I do not claim to fully know the this side of the story. But there are impressions which have emerged from the research.

Complicating any understanding, one must accept that there is no single identification or entity which represents the community or all of the rioters, even as my purview is limited to London. For example, while there are shared broad or meta motivations – anger with the police, despair over dismal future prospects, an overwhelming sense of unfairness in society, the hypocrisy within the economic landscape – the proximate initiative to act on those nights was nearly uniformly independent and hyper-local. [2] Such heterogeneity characterizes the actors at the granular level.

What does become apparent is that emerging from this mix was – and remains – a shared understanding of the Mark Duggan shooting, the immediate aftermath, the riots and the response. The direct anger with the police and the next layer of political authority is palpable. Said one rioter on one of the Guardian/LSE’s ‘Reading the Riots’ videos, ‘It was a war, and for the first time we was in control…we had the police scared.’ (@9:55m) But more, beneath, either because it is as yet unacknowledged or remains simply unspoken, is dissatisfaction with society at large for having forsaken them as well. The riots and attacks upon the city itself were seen by the participants as an act of revenge, whether for poor treatment at the hands of police or society.

Whereas the Guardian/LSE’s effort was of dispassionate outsiders looking in, Fahim Alam’s “Riots Reframed” documentary is the voice of the participant as creator of the narrative. Although much about the film and its contents is difficult to contend with – there is so much anger, disappointment and alienation – the fact of its creation is the embodiment of optimism.’Riots Reframed’ is a work of thoughtful art and discussion, including not only voices from the community, but respected scholars and leaders (to include KCL’s own Professor Paul Gilroy.) It is in fact an opening for dialogue, as its contents and existence must signal a fundamental hope that things can improve. At the very least, what becomes quite clear is that these were not mindless, thoughtless, merely criminal events. [3]

Thus, whether we can understand that side fully it still must be accepted that there was more meaning in the actions of the rioters and looters than mainstream commentary has been willing to admit. Even the ‘common looting‘.

Moving from the nature of the group to the events themselves there are points I have consistently found compelling throughout my research. The first concerns the diplomatic brinksmanship that occurred that fateful Saturday night in front of the Tottenham Police Station. On that first night, when anger and disorder erupted out of the frustrated demonstration, one must wonder what might have been spared had the family and the police representatives been able to find enough common ground to retire to the station for a cup of tea while they awaited the arrival of officers of sufficient rank for the family’s peace of mind. [4] I attach responsibility for this to those in a community leadership position. They did not serve the family or community well in their recommendations for a rigid stand not to engage that evening. I am not suggesting or asserting malice in this act. Rather, my point is to highlight the risks of such brinksmanship, as this case more than demonstrates the ramifications of failure.

From this perspective I have to believe that community leaders should follow the ethos set out for the police in public order, approaching their interactions in such events from the starting point of being a positive and productive force, of facilitation. And in that many of them have extant relationships with the police it becomes almost a duty for them to use their ‘good offices’ in such situations.

I make the point about this because, amidst the discourse on powerlessness in the community, it was on that night the Duggan family who held the strongest position. In that moment their satisfaction was vested with the interests (and hence power) of the entire community.  Power can be used to crush your opponent or raise up all. Inadvertently the former occurred, but who would not have chosen the latter? Furthermore, by correctly framing the relationships in this case the police can understand better the (potential) nature of such situations.

Another key point relates to the depths of cynicism that taint perceptions of the police on that first night. The rumour that the police had beaten a young woman was believed and spread as the rallying cry for disorder and violence. Making the entire matter very compelling, there seemed to be direct proof, a video which captured the event. However, the “girl in the video” as the spark of events must be questioned and examined with a critical eye. All evidence seems to suggest that this was not appropriately a casus belli for the riots; it was more Gulf of Tonkin than Pearl Harbour. To begin, it is nearly impossible to see what is happening in the video – the viewer is moved more by the shouting female narrator than what is actually visible. As well, the timing is wrong: it is dark and the police are in full public order kit.[5] The disorder has thus already begun. I understand that a young female suffering police brutality has terrific cachet as a framework to justify the anger, but it is far better to render events accurately.

Finally and most importantly the influence of community sentiment must shape understanding and responses. The grievances of the immediate and greater London communities of concern here cannot be dismissed. The issues within the community, the added burdens of budget reductions and cuts to services, the brewing antipathy to how stop and search was conducted, were known to Boris Johnson and David Cameron. A strong response may have been the obvious answer, but the better one was for these leaders to recognize that party affiliation notwithstanding all members of society must be able to rely upon their government. Reasonable and fair are neither signs of weakness nor do they promote future bad action. [6]

What could the political leadership have done differently at the time? I think an amnesty was in order. This path, not harsh justice was the choice of greatest benefit to all. The repercussions of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graibh are the lessons that matter here – don’t sully your own character, don’t create disaffected citizens. Boris could have pulled it off with a charming nod to the police effort – by containing the riots in the least confrontational, less aggressive approach (supported by the overall casualty statistics), the former served their public order function while setting the stage for healing and reconciliation in the aftermath.

I take the position that this was the best policy because the unavoidable truth made clear with ‘Reframed’ and other similar efforts is that the emotion and desires of the riots did not deserve incarceration.[7] In fact, too many of them need release from the prisons of poverty, maleducation, and un(der)-employment. Responding to the riots offered a powerful moment to act with generosity, so contrary to expectations that it would have had the capacity to achieve much progress against the issues. Great leaders seize such moments because they recognize this potential.

If we have dealt with the past and the present, what should be considered for the future? Returning to the opening scene and last Saturday’s vigil, for its public order efforts the MPS should take note of the result. A careful reckoning of what was done will serve future public order efforts well. Nevertheless, even an initial cursory review makes clear that their approach to the event and demeanour went a long way to maintaining as pleasant an atmosphere as possible.

The Street Pastors are a fantastic idea for public order and their future use should be considered. Not just for events with a religious facet, such as a vigil, this role could serve profitably across a much broader spectrum of public order activities. Protest is inspired by varying levels and forms of distress, and it seems to me that the pastoral function could serve quite well. More than that, the presence of the MPS senior chaplain suggests this resource has potential value for the police themselves in public order events. Certainly, when it is your function to stand amidst crowds at various moments of anger and emotion, at times directed at you specifically, a pastoral voice could serve as an influence of equanimity. And it bears considering whether such a presence, by humanizing the police might reduce tensions in public order events. Where NATO helmets and shields are seen as elements which can put negative distance between the police and protesters, it must be equally plausible that other visual cues can have beneficial effect.

On the broader issues of social justice, how does anything move forward from this moment, how will progress be pursued? Where the Coroner’s Inquest judged the shooting to have been lawful, that the officers honestly held belief stands, community dismay, especially locally, is understandable. Nevertheless, as difficult as it clearly must be, they will have to move to the more productive stance that even when things are done correctly tragedy and the wrong outcome can still occur. From there, the path forward is clearer, which is how to improve where that ‘honestly held belief’ lands with respect to members of the public (e.g., being able to know with reliability that Duggan was not the sort to resist in such a moment). What can the community do? What can the police do?

There are any number of tactical, doctrinal, strategic and policy recommendations I could make on the policing side of the issue of police and community relations. But if I understand the context, the environment, the tone of the situation correctly, no first move from the authorities will overcome scepticism. Yes, to any community initiated overtures it will be imperative for the police will have to respond well and with timeliness. But the first and critical barrier will only fall to action and intention from within the community.

Contrary to all that might seem fair or just, healing and progress on this will only come at the end of the community’s outstretched hand. Nobody can say that they want no policing, so improving the relationship between the police and those whom they serve is necessary. The community and its consent are critical elements in British policing generally, and in this instance specifically, and so any progress will come in large measure from that quarter. By their positive and constructive actions the members of the community can lead the way to the greatest change.

Some – OK, many – will decry this as unfair and question why it should be their burden to go first. In my mind I am chastised by one young Londoner in the documentaries who commented that the ‘police are not for us’. To that I will say that it is for you to make them yours. It is time to overturn the ‘culture of distrust’. Mentioned above, as on that first fatal night, it is a matter of which side holds the power. Here as well, it is the community which has the greater power in this matter. But furthermore, if this tragedy can have any meaning, wouldn’t its best be to serve as a bridge to a better state of relations between police and community so as to avoid such tragic errors in the future? More importantly, I return your attention to the vigil. The reasonable discourse on the issues between police and community opened on Tottenham High Road is an opportunity. This is a moment to act.

When you are shouting about undue police violence while standing amidst a smiling constables giving directions you have to ask whether it isn’t time to give at your own end as well.

 

Jill S. Russel is a regular contributor to Strife, Kings of War and Small Wars. She is currently doctoral candidate at King’s College London looking at military history.

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NOTES:
[1] Commentators should stop using the ‘softly, softly’ description – it is snarky and derogatory of a stance that is not only necessary but often proven effective stance.
[2] Do I really need to acknowledge that there might have been a purely criminal element? But they were not the leaders, nor the inspiration, nor even likely the majority of those present on London’s streets those nights. It is obfuscation to lay the blame for this upon criminality – comfortable, perhaps, but not at all useful.
[3] Another documentary that I found interesting was ‘Perfect Storm’ to be found at http://wideshut.co.uk/perfect-storm-the-england-riots-documentary/ There are very many independent documentaries about the riots, some quite compelling others less so, some searching for a truth others attempting to build a narrative. What is clear is that these events have inspired very real urges to consider the events and create something by which to understand or explain it. It is clearly an important phenomenon.
[4] MPS, Four Days in August: Strategic Review into the Disorder of August 2011 – Final Report, p. 32 discusses the events surrounding Chief Inspector Adelekan’s efforts to engage the demonstrators.
[5] MPS, Four Days in August, p. 42, ‘By 2045hrs all the officers were deployed in full protective kit….’
[6] Before he made his fame as the father of modern British policing, Robert Peel was responsible for the rationalisation of the criminal law which, though aimed at its muddling nature, had the effect of making it more fair and defensible. Douglas Hurd, Robert Peel: A Biography, pp. 74 ff.

[7] There were clear dividing lines, thresholds below which it could be profitably argued taht emotion, not criminality, was at work.