Washington – Three years after insurgents appeared as a potent force in Iraq, the U.S. military has begun to expand its counterinsurgency training by focusing more closely on younger service members and junior officers.
The emphasis on training the lower ranks reflects the growing view among top commanders that the Iraq war cannot be won by military might alone and that U.S. troops at all levels must be taught how to win the allegiance of the local population.
After the armed resistance started in earnest, commanders and senior officers began receiving specialized instruction in defusing insurgencies.
But the principles have not always trickled down to sergeants, corporals and privates, who become the face of the American military to many Iraqis.
“Officer training is not enough,” said David Kilcullen, an Australian army counterinsurgency expert working as a chief strategist at the State Department. “Anything you do as an individual, private soldier can have a big impact on the war.”
A new Marine Corps manual designed for enlistees and junior officers is being distributed within the Army and Marines to fill the gap in military education.
The focus on the younger service members comes alongside development of a new counterinsurgency field manual for more senior officers due out next month.
“The Army is trying very hard institutionally to catch up, but the problem is after Vietnam it got out of the counterinsurgency business,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a former Army officer who has written extensively about how to defeat the insurgency in Iraq.
The new efforts have wide support but face challenges. Commanders are debating how to find time to train enlisted personnel who already are squeezed between multiple deployments abroad and shortened stays at home.
Counterinsurgency experts do not always agree on who should be trusted with sensitive decisions, such as how much force to use against local populations.
According to military tradition, officers – second lieutenants and up in the Army and Marines – handle the strategy. The enlisted ranks, including noncommissioned officers, take the lead in squad-level tactics.
These younger soldiers and Marines are taught first and foremost to protect themselves and their units. But counterinsurgency strategists emphasize that to win over locals, the military must learn in many instances to accept risk.
Marine Capt. Mark Liston, a veteran of two tours in Iraq’s Anbar province, spoke in depth about the importance of Marines having a lighter touch when conducting counterinsurgency operations.
“Destroy no more than the mission requires,” Liston said.
In an interview in Ramadi in July, Liston, who commands the Weapons Company of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, said his unit would kick down a door if it has an intelligence tip that an insurgent is inside.
But in most random searches, the Marines are supposed to knock.
“We talk to our guys about putting themselves in the position of having an occupying power in their country,” he said. “Would they understand if someone kicks down their door?”
The new Marine Corps guide, titled the “Small-Unit Leader’s Guide to Counterinsurgency,” cautions that callousness can develop in counterinsurgencies.
Enemy fighters, the guide says, work to make Americans hate the local population. And a counterinsurgency campaign seeks to avoid alienating the locals.
“In this type of warfare,” Marine Lt. Gen. James Mattis Jr. writes in the guide’s introduction, “empathy may be as important a weapon as an assault rifle.”
Even with basic education, some military officers believe it is unfair to ask the most junior enlisted ranks to make complicated decisions, such as how to enter a home in a hostile area.
“The person making the decision about kicking down the door or doing it more diplomatically is not someone fresh out of basic combat training,” said Col. Kevin Shwedo, who helps oversee Army Basic Training. “That individual does not have the experience level to make that kind of decision.”
But Col. Douglas King, who oversaw the creation of the guide, argues that even corporals leading squads and dealing frequently with average Iraqis need to understand how their jobs affect the larger mission.
“And if they don’t understand how to mobilize support, you will not be successful,” he said.
