By Dave Anderson:
American, and thus ISAF counter-insurgency doctrine holds that the population is the ultimate prize between the counter-insurgent and insurgent forces. Whomever can make the population more loyal (willingly or unwillingly) to its positions, officials and intelligence collection networks will win under the American COIN doctrine. One component of the counter-insurgent strategy is to provide public services to the target population. These services include medical care provided by government and non-government entities.
NGOs in this scenario are political actors whose participation in providing services advances the political and military interests of the counter-insurgent force. In Afghanistan, the Taliban and other anti-government militias know this, and that makes NGOs political targets:
The New York Times reports on an NGO medical team that got whacked:
Returning home from a three-week trek on foot to deliver free medical
care to the remotest regions of the country, the aid workers � six
Americans, a Briton, a German and four Afghans � had just finished
eating when they were accosted by gunmen with long died-red beards, the
police said.
The gunmen marched them into the forest, stood them in a line and
shot 10 of them one by one
The goal of an insurgency is to force the counter-insurgent force to eventually realize that whatever gains they could realize will never be worth the costs of suppressing the insurgents. One way to do that is to force the counter-insurgent force to internalize all of the costs of running a full-spectrum counter-insurgency. A US Army medical team which spends two weeks in the back-woods of a northern province is much more expensive in expenditure and opportunity cost terms than a Mennonite backed medical team.
NGOs are a cheap, vulnerable and valuable adjunct to American style COIN. I am just surprised that NGOs are not hit more often as the return on investment is much higher than hitting a uniformed patrol.
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