Having had some exposure to insurgency and counterinsurgency (a couple of anti-infiltration tours off South Vietnam and a tour in country), it seems to me the United States is in the early stages of such warfare in Iraq. Using one categorization of the often indistinct stages of insurgency, what is happening in Iraq appears to be a mix of initial organization, incipient guerrilla warfare, and low-level terrorism. From news reports and official pronouncements, it appears that organized, autonomous cells in a few municipalities are conducting the hit-and-run attacks in Iraq. As yet, there appears to be no regional or national direction of these strikes. More likely than not, however, a wider pattern of coordination will emerge as these municipal cells seek to expand their militant operations in area and type. Along with greater organization inevitably will come some infiltration; some of the Iraqis who come forward to help the coalition will be the enemy.
Any good counterinsurgency book or appropriate service manual will provide ways to oppose infiltration as well as present a generic list of methods that can be adapted to the peculiarities of Iraq to defeat the insurgency. Here are four of the more important of those hard-learned lessons. First, steal the insurgents' ideas—or at least part of them. Such thievery might include the setting of a date for coalition withdrawal, if certain conditions are met. Second, provide the people with security and hope. Attaining such security might mean the temporary imposition of rigid controls on the internal and external movement of people, nationwide identity papers, heavy police presence, armed militia, a domestic intelligence service, and perhaps the temporary resettlement of some of the populace to secure areas. The hope we are holding out to Iraqis is the promise of a future better than their dreadful past; they quickly need some concrete evidence that this will be so. Third, establish a unity of effort. There should be a single individual responsible for coordinating a combined civil-military counterinsurgency program. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, at present does not have control over the armed forces of the coalition. Fourth, do too much early rather than more later, because that "more later" may be too little, too late. We cannot let the insurgency get ahead of the counterinsurgency. Today, we may be playing catch up in Iraq.
What does all of this mean for the Navy? The prudent naval planner should be going through the "what ifs." What if the insurgency grows rather than shrinks? What if it expands to the inland waterways and to the ports with strikes from the water or from the shoreline directed at shipping, dams, locks, irrigation systems, bridges, power lines, pipelines, hydroelectric power plants, and so forth? The possibility of such an expansion of the insurgency should cause some contingency planning that addresses waterborne traffic control, river and harbor patrol craft, detection and clearance of demolitions, language training, the outfitting and training of Iraqi forces afloat, air support, ground-force involvement, and Coast Guard participation, to name but a few of the relevant considerations.
An insurgency needs to be stopped early in its development. The cost of not doing so will be very high.
Commander Gravatt spent 24 years in the Navy, including a tour as an advisor with the Republic of Vietnam Navy. He now is a lecturer in naval history with Auburn University’s community outreach program.