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Laboucherie, Iraq, Strategy and Tactics

There is an interesting article on DefenceTech.org about Lieutenant Colonel David Laboucherie of the Queen's Royal Hussars, who is currently operating in Maysan province in south-eastern Iraq.  In part, it is interesting because it concerns one of the more successful elements of the current operation in Iraq.  But I was struck by how the writer, David Axe, had made the fundamental error of confusing strategy and tactics.

He writes about how Laboucherie has gone about gaining local respect, has been tolerant of the locals', erm, alternative means of conflict resolution (occasionally, noisily shooting lots of bullets in roughly each others' direction without great effect) and how he has learned lessons from the Northern Irish conflict.  He describes the extremely mobile deployment and light logistical footprint of Laboucherie's patrols, which seem to owe a debt to developments during the North African conflict in 1942-43. But Axe then goes on to suggest that the same tactics could work in places such as Bahgdad.  This is Axe's mistake.

Laboucherie has decided on a strategy.  His ultimate strategic goal is to choke off the flow of men and materials from Iran.  That strategy involves the need to win over local authority figures in the militia, religious establishments and the like, and, by acting sensitively around locals, to garner at least tolerance from the population.  The fact that part of the implementation of his strategy includes tactical aspects such as resupply of fast-moving patrols by helicopter, limited use of only very light armour contingents, and an emphasis on proven, low-technology solutions to challenges where appropriate is less important in determining the lessons to be drawn.  In areas with less homogenous populations, or with substantial conurbations, different tactical implementations must be considered.

Robert Leonhard, in his book The Art of Manuever:Manuever-Warfare Theory and Airland Battle says that the only battlefield system which has been unchanged for millenia is the human soul.  Force protection and the attrition of the enemy - the overwhelming concerns of American military thinking right now - are not means to defeat an enemy in themselves, although they may eventually, indirectly lead to victory.  To defeat an enemy you must persuade him that he has lost.  In manuevre warfare, for example, this can mean achieving breakout and operating in the rear of the enemy's formations.  But Leonhard makes it plain that the point of such manuevre is to persuade the enemy that he has lost and remove his ability to continue fighting at the logistical and moral levels.  It is not simply to kill him in large numbers.

In counter-insurgency - as is proven in Afghanistan and Iraq right now - merely killing the enemy in large numbers is rarely sufficient.  Instead, it is necessary to deny the enemy a safe operating base, to remove his ability to rely on local populations for support (whether he uses coercion or persuasion) and to render his operations politically unprofitable.  Of these, the latter is the most important.  Lenin, a key figure in creating the ideological and political frameworks of the modern terrorist struggle, said that "the present-day terrorists are really 'economists' turned inside out, going to the equally foolish but opposite extreme"*.  He condemned as foolish acts of terrorism that did not pursue specific and well-defined political objectives, and which was not directly controlled by a political organisation.  Pursuing a strategy in Iraq that merely allows newsreaders to quote optimistic body-count figures is an insufficient response to a political problem.

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* (Lenin, Revolutionary Adventurism in Collected Works, Volume 6 Moscow; 1961; p192.)