Rule of Law and COIN environment

Rule of Law and COIN environment

warfare is the only fun of the powerful, which they share with ordinary people LTC Foltyn 2

The topic of this Congress: Current International Crises and the Rule of Law The Rule of Law meets IHL in particular topics such as obligations of occupying powers etc., but the importance of RoL is wider and the role of military lawyers might be higher, than most of us think. If we want our soldiers to built RoL, they should uderstand, why it is so important. In 30 minutes I will try to show, how to explain it.

Rule of Law: do we understand its role? Rule of Law is a complex issue It s hard to find the right balance among all the instruments we have but the basic problem is, that many soldiers don t (or don t want) to understand, that in COIN Ops some civil activities (incl. RoL) are military tasks But in COIN environment such tasks are more important than killing or detention of insurgents.

In the Maslow s pyramid of needs the safety is the second most important (after physiological needs)

Roots of reasons, why is Rule of Law so important The basic role of any state is to hold monopoly on violence In Hobbes triangle of reasons for use of violence are Aggresion to to gain (competition) fear, safety (diffidence) reputation (glory)

Hobbes-Pinker s Violence triangle Bystander LAW predation Aggresor retaliation WAR Victim

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main idea (LTC J. Kutger, USAF, 1960) The long list of unsuccessful operations conducted against guerrilla activities is a product of the inflexibility of many military leaders as well as their intransigent attitude concerning the abandonment of conventional tactics. This military arteriosclerosis has existed down through the ages...

symmetric solution of asymetric problem The solution in Vietnam is more bombs, more shells, more napalm...till the other side cracks and gives up. MG William E. DePuy, 1st Infantry Division, 1966 I ll be damned if I permit the United States Army, its institutions, its doctrine and its traditions to be destroyed just to win this lousy war. (a noname senior officer about Vietnam war)

another way how not to do that H. Guerney, leading UK administrator in Malaya (1949) police and army are breaking the law every day, but it doesn t matter because Chinese (population) notoriously inclined to lean towards whichever side frightens them more and at the moment seems to be the government. Army must be stronger than the bandits (INS) and inspiring greater fear.

but there are still officers who understand, what is their task You cannot win a war like this purely through military means. The military is merely there to maintain law and order and provide a conductive atmosphere for political development. gen. P. Walls, Rhodesian COM of Combined Operations

Hearts and minds - nothing new (gen. Templer, who invented the term Hearts and minds ) the combination of instruments the key to defeating the insurgents lay in administrative; political; economic; cultural; spiritual; and military factors Compare ISAF good governance: Participation Rule of law Transparency Responsiveness Equitable and inclusive Accountable Consensus oriented Effective and efficient

R. Thomson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (1966) An insurgent movement is a war for the people. government measures must be directed to restoring government authority and law and order through the country, so that control over the population can be regained and support won. This cannot be done unless a high priority is given to the administrative structure of government itself, to its institutions and to the training of its personnel. Without a reasonably efficient government machine, no programs or projects, in the context of COIN will produce the desired results.

Hearts and minds Hearts means persuading people their best interest are served by your success; Minds means convincing them that you can protect them, and resisting you is pointless. D. Kilcullen, Twenty-Eight Articles When we don t offer safety RoL (remeber Maslow s pyramid), we can hardly win hearts and minds.

Combined Action Company program (CAC) - L.W.WALT - squads of Marine volunteers deployed into the countryside to assist local part-time militia men known as Popular Forces Task: help to protect the villages, get to know the people, find the local Communist infrastructure and put it out of business, if these people could be located and won over, the Communists would be hit where it hurts. Number of "secure" villages rose between 1965 and 1967 from 87 to 197, number of Vietnamese in "secure" areas rose from 413000 to 1.1 mil.

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice D. Galula, (1964) A revolutionary war is 20% military action and 80 % political reflect the truth. the political power is the undisputed boss is a matter of both policy and practicality. What is at stake is the country s political regime, and to defend it is a political affair. (89)

an other right approach The key strategic thrust is to provide meaningful, continuing security for the Vietnamese people in expanding areas of increasingly effective civil authority It is important that command move away from the over-emphasized and often irrelevant body count preoccupation gen. Abrams, One War: MACV Command Overview, (1968-72)

From Search and Destroy to Hearts and Minds, Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (R. Stubbs): More troops using the wrong strategy simply means more alienation, more insurgents, and the inevitable call for yet more troops. When the strategy is wrong doubling the effort only squares the error. Crucial is the retraining of the police and home guard to increase the size and expand the skills of the civil administration.

Britain longest war, Northern Ireland, 1967-2007 (col. R. Iron) remove the social and economic causes of the insurgency. work with successive Irish governments to evolve a political framework acceptable to both nationalist and unionists populations. create and maintain a legal framework that treats insurgents as criminals; reduce their legitimacy in the eyes of the population.

5 principles for COIN Ops R. Thomson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (1966) the government must have a clear political aim; the government must function within the law; the government must have an overall plan; the government must give priority to defeating the political subversion, not the guerillas; in the guerilla phase of an insurgency, it must secure its base first;

Case study - Afghanistan (Rule of Law in Taliban s perspective) 1. Do we remember how the Taliban movement begun? Mula Umar and his madrassah students (less than 50!) helped some individuals against criminals in post-najibullah anarchy; 2. Why they were successful? They brought some kind of justice ; 3. What are we bringing to Afghans? compare to Taliban we brought to Afghans centralized western styled courts system, but nearly not justice on the basic level

FINAL THOUGHT We do not solve completely new problems, we just repeat old mistakes. We should change our traditional style of thinking and accept the fact, that in 4GW environment: establishing and maintaining of the Rule of Law is a military task, and not just a some kind of high level appendix to conventional style of warfare. Thank you for your attention. LTC Otakar Foltýn Army of the Czech Republic e-mail: otakarf@seznam.cz

questions? Přednáška voj.aspekty -kolaps a regenerace, pplk. Foltýn 24

Even soldier is a human A soldier has to be much more than a man with a rifle whose only objective is to kill. He has to be part diplomat, part technician, part politician and 100 percent a human being. General Lewis Walt, USMC