In an interview on Terrorism

Kilcullen writes from both a theoretical and an experiential point ofview. His background is in anthropology and he’s interested in ‘full spectrum strategies’, that is, taking everything into account from social situation and tribal dynamics up to what the US calls kinetic operations. He is interested in why we’ve had guerrilla warfare and insurgencies in the middle of what seemed to be a regular fight, a conventional war. Why did it happen in Afghanistan after the Taliban seemed to be defeated? He writes about the War on Terror writ large, looking specifically at Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia on which he is an expert. Kilcullen also has a continuing relationship with the military, which allows him access to the battlefield.

So why do we get guerrilla war in the middle of conventional war?

One argument is that the US continually misidentifies the insurgents with legitimate and local aims with the wider network of al Qaeda – we treat them all the same instead of trying to peel off those with local issues and grievances. So we can blame the US. If we had dealt with the local grievances we wouldn’t have this insurgency problem. The US had a ‘one size fits all’ attitude to jihadist groups for a while. Many groups had no intention of carrying out attacks on us.

Kilcullen provides a good look at counter-insurgency tactics too – he was one of a group who advised General Petraeus in Iraq and helped developed the current counter-insurgency theory. So what’s going on now are attempts to peel off insurgents from the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, following their ability to peel off some insurgents from the al Qaeda guys in Iraq.

And it works, doesn't it?

The trouble is that in Afghanistan the people who are willing to have conversations with the US and are willing to do deals are those who have lost influence and power. So if you make an agreement with them they may only have 200 in their tribe rather than thousands handing over their arms. It was the same thing in Iraq, where the US was having conversations with leaders who were only willing to talk because they had already lost out to al Qaeda. The al Qaeda people seem to have made a more successful appeal to the younger generation than the US did. I’m not saying that offering amnesty doesn’t work, but in Iraq it was more that al Qaeda was so awful, committed so many terrible atrocities, that people turned against them because of that – not because of US efforts.

Kilcullen talks about the need to Clear, Hold and Build. You provide security first and you have to be there persistently. You can’t clear out the bad guys and then leave, because they will be back. This is something that can take years. You also train the locals to hold, to take over when you do leave. Kilcullen is big on population-centric warfare rather than enemy-centric warfare. So you secure and protect the population rather than going after the enemy. After you have held, then reconstruction and development, the build, can begin. This gives people a reason to support you and to support local governance that will take your place when you leave.

That sounds good.

But where insurgency is succeeding it is very difficult to make an appeal over that success. You have to make the argument that you are going to win and that you will win and stay around and not just leave soon, like in 2011 for example!

So, more troops for longer?

Yes. The average time for a counter-insurgency to take effect is eight to ten years. You might get the wrong idea in Iraq because you might count from 2003, but, in fact, the counter-insurgency didn’t start until 2006-7, so the US should have a full presence until 2013 or so. Let alone Afghanistan, where they’ve only just started.