How Not To Do Counter-Insurgency

By Steve Hynd

The whole idea of "people-centric" counter-insurgency is to separate insurgents from the "sea in which they swim". Here's how NOT to do that:

At least two Afghan villages have been blanketed with leaflets warning that if an American soldier kidnapped by the Taliban two weeks ago isn't freed, "you will be targeted."

Villagers near the border of two volatile provinces, Ghazni and Paktika, tell CBS News' Sami Yousafzai that aircraft dropped the leaflets during the past several days.

Military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias confirmed that the leaflets were produced at Bagram Air Base, the primary U.S. installation in Afghanistan, and distributed in the region. She told CBS News correspondent Mandy Clark, however, that they were distributed by hand, not aircraft.

The papers show on one side an image of a soldier with his head bowed so that his face is not visible (above). A message in the local Pashtun language over the image says, "If you do not free the American soldier, then�"

On the other side, an image shows Western troops breaking into a house. The rest of the message is printed across the photo: "�you will be targeted".

According to the military, the translation of the last word in the sentence is "hunted," not targeted, but CBS News' independent translators say the word also means "targeted".

This is a question of due diligence. Another leaflet bears the message "One of our American guests is missing." with the back reading "Return the guest to his home. Call us at�." The second leaflet is an astute appeal to Pashtun honor codes about protecting guests (the same ones that led the Taliban to refuse to hand Bin Laden over without clear evidence, thus precipitating the Afghan invasion, in the first place). The first is a stupidly inflammatory piece of crap someone didn't spend enough time on which will drive those same honor-bound villagers into the arms of the Taliban all on it's lonesome.

And yet again we see that, even though it looks good on paper, the US military's ability to actually do COIN is suspect at best. The trouble is, just as in sales and marketing, a satisfied "customer" might tell four people, but a dissatisfied "customer" will tell ten.