Anatomy of a surrogate: historical precedents and implications for contemporary counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism

Abstract

This article examines the ways and means in which states employ irregular and indigenous personnel in a counter-insurgency (COIN) or counter-terrorist (CT) campaign, in the historical and contemporary context. The authors clarify the terminology surrounding this neglected area of COIN/CT theory, and identify four types of indigenous assistance – individual actors (trackers, interpreters, informers and agents); home guards and militias; counter-gangs; and pseudo-gangs. This article concludes that while the use of such indigenous irregulars has its advantages for the state and its armed/security forces (particularly as far as intelligence, local knowledge and undermining the insurgent's cause is concerned), it can also have serious practical and ethical implications for a COIN/CT campaign, and can have unexpected and unwelcome consequences including violations of laws of armed conflict, the undermining of governmental authority and the prospects of endemic internal strife and state collapse.

Keywords:

• counter-insurgency
• counter-terrorism
• laws of armed conflict
• state stability
• militias
• counter/pseudo-gangs

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Huw Bennett, Dr Warren Chin, Dr Jonathan Hill, Ms Jessica Lincoln, Mr Bill Park and Mr Chris Tuck of the Defence Studies Department (DSD). King's College London, for their assistance on case studies related to this article. Thanks are also due to Dr Alex Marshall of the School of Historical Studies, University of Glasgow, for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this work. Dr Nathalie Wlodarczyk kindly provided a copy of her PhD thesis on the Kamajors in Sierra Leone. The analysis, opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the JSCSC, the Defence Academy, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) or any other UK government agency.

Notes

  1. Long, ‘The Anbar Awakening’, 67–94.

  2. The COIN definition is taken from FM3-24, Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2006) and AFM1/10, Counter Insurgency Operations (London: MoD, 2001). Charles Townshend distinguishes between anti-terrorism (defensive measures) and counter-terrorism (offensive measures), in Terrorism: A Brief Introduction, 114–139, but the authors prefer to treat these two aspects as part of one strategy.

  3. Krulak,‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War’: 18–22.

  4. Tierney, Chasing Ghosts: Unconventional Warfare in American History, 36, 39, 53, 91–95.

  5. Cassidy, ‘The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency’, 47–62; Tierney, Chasing Ghosts, 128–129, 137–139.

  6. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919–60, 85–86; Trench, The Frontier Scouts.

  7. Anglim, ‘Orde Wingate and the Special Night Squads: A Feasible Policy for Counter-terrorism?, 28–41.

  8. See Warner, Shooting at the Moon: The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos; Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001; Turner, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality.

  9. Woodworth, Dirty War, Clean Hands. ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy.

 10. Walker, Aden Insurgency. The Savage War in South Arabia, 184–185, 190–191; Urban, Big Boy's Rules: The Secret Struggle against the IRA.

 11. Kitson, Gangs and Counter-Gangs. This was General Sir Frank Kitson's first book. Col. Paul Melshen (USMC Reserve), ‘Pseudo Operations: The Use by British and American Forces of Deception in Counter-Insurgencies’, 10–11, 351–360; Hubbard, ‘Plague and Paradox: Militias in Iraq’, 345–362.

 12. Cline, Pseudo Operations, passim; Melshen, ‘Pseudo Operations’, passim. See also Melshen, ‘Pseudo Ops: Defeating Insurgents from Within’, 98–101. Paddy Woodworth comments on the lack of academic attention to pseudo and counter-gangs in his review of Beckett's Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, in Survival, 43, no. 4 (Winter 2001):157–158.

 13. See Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam, 91–96, 214–218, 225, 353–354.

 14. ‘Turkey reluctantly prepares for attack on Kurds’, The Independent on Sunday, 28 October 2007; Cline, Pseudo Operations, 14; ‘Police role in Algerian killings exposed’, The Observer, 11 January 1998.

 15. Urban, Big Boy's Rules, 101; ‘Al Qaeda leaders admit: “We are in crisis. There's panic and fear”’, The Times, 11 February 2008; ‘Bin Laden says mistakes made in Iraq’, Jane's Terrorism & Security Monitor–Asia, 6 November 2007, 1–3.

 16. Grivas, Guerrilla Warfare and EOKA's Struggle (London: Longman 1964), 42; Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence, 574–578.

 17. O'Brien, ‘Special Forces for Counter-Revolutionary Warfare: The South African Case’, 79– 80.

 18. FM3-24, section C21; Tripodi, ‘Peacemaking through Bribes or Cultural Empathy? The Political Officer and Britain's Strategy towards the North-West Frontier’; ‘Outrage over betrayal of Iraqi interpreters’, The Times, 7 August 2007.

 19. Chin, ‘Examining the Application of British Counterinsurgency Doctrine by the American Army in Iraq’, 4; Bennett, ‘The Other Side of the COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Army Counterinsurgency in Kenya’, 638–639.

 20. Trinquier, Modern Warfare. See also General Paul Aussaresses' highly controversial 2006 memoir The Battle of the Casbah.

 21. On Abu Ghraib and other abuse cases, see Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 270–282, 290–297.

 22. Moyar, Phoenix, 64–68; Peretz, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising, 90–91; ‘Informer in pay of Israel unbowed by brother's bloody fate’, The Guardian, 4 August 2004.

 23. See Toolis, Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul, 195; Taylor, Brits: The War against the IRA, 270–277; Urban, Big Boys' Rules, 227–237. ‘The leader, his driver and the driver's handler: Chauffeur recruited as MI5 agent’, The Guardian, 9 February 2008.

 24. Moyar, Phoenix, 70–5. Although proclaiming amnesties for those who collaborated with the British and the RUC, the IRA usually executed so-called ‘touts’. See Collins (with McGovern) Killing Rage, 200–204, 216–218.

 25. For a memoir by an FRU veteran, see Lewis, Fishers of Men; Baer, See No Evil, 104.

 26. Conversation with US Special Forces officer, 19 December 2007; Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, 90–91.

 27. Alexander and Keiger, ‘France and the Algerian War: Strategy, Operations and Diplomacy’, 6–7.

 28. Mahadevan, ‘Counter Terrorism in the Indian Punjab: Assessing the ‘Cat’ System’, 19–54.

 29. Taylor, Brits, 128–37; Urban, Big Boys' Rules, 36–37, 101. See Harnden, ‘Bandit Country’: The IRA and South Armagh.

 30. The quote comes from ‘Kurtz’, a Mossad officer in le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl, 250. Although a work of fiction, it illustrates some of the issues raised in this paper.

 31. Taylor, Brits, 288–94; John Ware, ‘Time to come clean over the army's role in the “Dirty War”’, New Statesman, 24 April 1998, 15–17.

 32. Anderson and Killingray, Policing and Decolonization: Nationalism, Politics and the Police, 1917–65, 208; Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland, 121; Walker, Aden Insurgency, 141–145, 245, 254–255.

 33. Hodes and Sedra, The Search for Security in Post-Taliban Afghanistan, 72–73; Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 132–133.

 34. McCuen, The Art of Counter-revolutionary War, 107; Joes, Resisting Rebellion. The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency, 105–121.

 35. Downes, ‘Draining the Sea by Filling the Graves: Investigating the Effectiveness of Indiscriminate Violence as a Counterinsurgency Strategy’, 420–444; Herring and Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and its Legacy, 180–181.

 36. Greenhill and Staniland, ‘Ten Ways to Lose a Counterinsurgency’, 402–419; Kitson, Bunch of Five, 294–295.

 37. Maley, The Afghanistan Wars, 13–15, 170–171; Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, 158–161; Ives, US Special Forces and Counterinsurgency in Vietnam.

 38. Porch, ‘Bugeaud, Gallieni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare’, 380–392; McCuen, Counter-Revolutionary War, 107–111; Joes, Resisting Rebellion, 109–110.

 39. Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962, 254–255. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, 240–241.

 40. Marks, ‘Thailand; Anatomy of a Counterinsurgency’, 35–52. See also, by the same author, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, 68–69.

 41. ‘Kagame under siege’, Africa Confidential (AC), 42/13, 29 June 2001; ‘Sudan targets Central Africa’, AC, 47/24, 1 December 2006; ‘Warriors by proxy’, AC, 48/13, 22 June 2007; ‘The Ogaden's Trickling Sands’, AC, 48/19, 21 September 2007.

 42. Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia, 203–204; Kaiser, American Tragedy, 152; Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, 183–184, 308.

 43. Moyar, Phoenix, passim; Joes, Resisting Rebellion, 114–116; Gilbert, ‘The Cost of Losing the “Other War” in Vietnam’, in ibid. (ed.), Why the North Won the Vietnam War, 177, 195, fn.81.

 44. ‘Iraqi villagers battle to hold off Al-Qaeda’, Sunday Times, 23 December 2007; Marks, Maoist Insurgency, 279–280.

 45. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 124–127, 241–243. See also Anderson, ‘Surrogates of the State: Collaboration and Atrocity in Kenya's Mau Mau War’, in Kassimeris, The Barbarisation of Warfare, 159–174.

 46. Williams, Patriots and Partisans ; Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 239–241.

 47. Dalloz, The War in Indochina, 1945–54, 109–111; Horne, Savage War, 223, 387–397; Faivre, ‘La Bataille en Guerre Révolutionnaire. Algérie 1954–1962’, 212.

 48. ‘Death of a Tiger’, The Economist, 10 November 2007; ‘In the front line of Putin's secret war’, Daily Telegraph, 27 March 2007; ‘The warlord and the spook’, The Economist, 31 May 2007.

 49. Reid-Daly, Pamwe Chete: The Legend of the Selous Scouts, 354–359; Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency, 204–215.

 50. Biddle, ‘Allies, Airpower and Modern Warfare: The Afghan Model in Afghanistan and Iraq’, 161–176; Giustozzi, ‘Auxiliary Force or National Army? Afghanistan's “ANA” and the Counter-Insurgency effort, 2002–2006’, 45–67.

 51. Joes, Resisting Rebellion, 32, 118–120; Evans, ‘Documents implicate Colombian Government in Chiquita Terror Scandal’, National Security Archives Electronic Briefing Book, No. 17, http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB217/index.htm.

 52. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies, 248; Gberie, A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone, 14–15, 83–86.

 53. Tierney, Chasing Ghosts, 62–70; Vatchagaev, ‘The Increasingly Deadly Struggle for Power between Kadyrov and Alkhanov’, Chechnya Weekly, 7/37 (28 September 2006), online at http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid = 2372587; Anna Politkovskaya, ‘Karatel'nii Sgovor’ (‘A Punitive Agreement’), Novaya Gazeta, 28 September 2006.

 54. ‘Between peace and justice’, The Economist, 21 July 2005; ‘The perils of “parapolitics”’, The Economist, 22 March 2007; Rushby, ‘The opium warlords’, 116–122; Wright, ‘The changing structure of the Afghan opium trade’, 6–14.

 55. First Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission , 20 April 2004, 29–33, online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/20_04_04_imcreport.pdf; Knights, ‘Increased factional fighting pulls Basra towards chaos’, 38–43.

 56. Horne, Savage War, 255–257. Tripp, A History of Iraq, 163, 234, 256.

 57. Marshall, ‘Managing Withdrawal: Afghanistan as the Forgotten Example in Attempting Conflict Resolution and State-Building’, 68–89.

 58. ICG Middle East Report No. 67, Where is Iraq heading? Lessons from Basra (25 June 2007), 14–17; ‘Short of kit, short of support: how the Army failed in Basra’, The Times, 18 March 2008.

 59. American reporter Bernard Fall (1926–67) makes this point in his introduction to Trinquier, Modern War, viii; Horne, Savage War, 538.

 60. Lewis, Operation Certain Death, 302, 402–403. See also Wlodarczyk, ‘Magic and War: The Role of Ritual and Traditional Belief in the Kamajor Civil Defence Forces in Sierra Leone and Beyond’.

 61. Hoffman, ‘The Meaning of a Militia: Understanding the Civil Defence Forces of Sierra Leone’, 639–662; ‘Courting disaster’, Africa Confidential 47/8, 14 April 2006; ‘Hinga's death hits home’, Africa Confidential 48/5, 2 March 2007.

 62. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions , 253–254.

 63. On Rwanda see Gen. Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, 245–249; ‘Glittering towers in a war zone’, The Economist, 9 December 2006.

 64. Kitson, Bunch of Five, 29–65, 135–139; Connor, Ghost Force: The Secret History of the SAS, 150, 164; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 257–269, 284–290.

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 67. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 284–286; Jones, SAS: The First Secret Wars, 72–84; Melshen, ‘Pseudo Ops’, 99.

 68. McCann, Counterinsurgency, 102, 232; Connor, Ghost Force: The Secret History of the SAS, 164; Jeapes, Secret War, 39; LM/MO2/210/76, Minute by Col. W.J. Read, 30 January 1974, DEFE24/573, TNAUK.

 69. Jeapes, Secret War, 39. Minute by H. Blanks (UK Ministry of Defence), 3 June 1974, DEFE11/737, TNAUK; de la Billière, Looking for Trouble, 267–268.

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 71. Dale, ‘A Comparative Reconsideration of the Namibian Bush War, 1966–89’, 201. John W. Turner, Continent Ablaze: The Insurgency Wars in Africa 1960 to the Present, 39, 77–78.

 72. Sanders, Apartheid's Friends. The Rise and Fall of South Africa's Secret Service, 203–204.

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 76. Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency, 118–124. See also Reid-Daly, Pamwe Chete, an earlier version of which was published as Selous Scouts: Top Secret War.London: Galago, 1982.

 77. O'Brien, ‘The Use of Assassination as a Tool of State Policy: South Africa's Counter-Revolutionary Strategy 1979–92 (Part II), 107–142; Sanders, Apartheid's Friends, 151, 198–219, 255–279.

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 80. Flower, Serving Secretly, 124, 137. Sanders, Apartheid's Friends, 325–326; Gould, ‘South Africa's chemical and biological warfare programme 1981–1995’, 35–42.

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 82. Woodworth, Dirty War, 44–46, 91, 94–96, 134, 177–187, 382–399, 423–424.

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100. The future loyalty of the Sunnis cannot be taken for granted. See Interview with Sheik Ali Hatem on Al-Jazeera television, 23 July 2007, online at http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1547.htm.

101. ‘Une alliance politique entre chiites et sunnites irakiens contraire les ambitions territoriales et pétrolières kurdes’, Le Monde, 15 January 2008; ‘Un ≪prince≫ contre Al-Qaida’, Le Monde, 15 February 2008.