“The war on terrorism began not as a crusade
about ideology but as a pragmatic war about war.
It must remain such.”
Professor Caleb Carr, Bard College(1)
Introduction
“Terrorism is a tactic used by individuals and organizations to kill and destroy. Our efforts should be directed at those individuals and organizations.”
Had it been one of the 41 formal recommendations, this statement from the 9/11 Commission about the nature of terror and how to go after it might have captured more attention in the media accounts of the Commission’s Report. Or maybe pundits thought it so obvious that further comment would be superfluous.
The absence of commentary here glosses over one of the more important points of tension in the report. This is the constant focus on multiple near-term, frequently violent acts whose cumulative effects are expected to contribute significantly to achieving a two-part, long-term, comprehensive strategy – eliminating the root causes of terror and sustaining success by “winning hearts and minds,” which is as demanding a management task as the tactical one.
The Commission itself sets the parameters for this tension by declaring the absolute absence of any “common ground” between al Qaeda and affiliated groups and the United States. This leads the Commission to advocate attacking both al Qaeda as a terror organization of individuals who commit terrorist acts and what the Commission describes as “a radical ideological movement in the Islamic world” – which is to say (as it does), Islamist terrorism.
Given the penchant of U.S. political leaders to be seen as “pro-active” – the short-term approach – this conflation of terror as discreet actions with a putative guiding ideology risks undercutting the educational, diplomatic, and developmental programs that require time to bear fruit. Yet given time, it is exactly because these programs contribute to sustainable improvements that those who benefit are more likely to be predisposed to consider favorably the contributing country’s structures and theories of governance. Moreover, the outcome of any subsequent comparison of competing world views should favor processes that transmute extremist ideology to something more “mainstream,” with a corresponding reduction in organized violence.
Unfortunately, the cumulative effect of the various short-term actions, especially military ones, rarely accomplishes the long-term strategy simply because of the human element. A change in priorities (or governments) and tactics by one side induces changes in the perceptions and behavior of the other side(s), which impels further adjustments by the first side. Should managing this tactical spiral come to dominate the efforts of policymakers, they risk loosing sight of the broader strategy – and even of the value system on which the strategy rests.
The tensions described in the Commission’s report – terror as tactic vs. terror as ideology, military vs. non-military responses – because they intersect on the temporal plane, suggest that remedial actions are possible on these considerations alone. Although these do suggest the broad range of options available, other significant parameters must be weighed to avoid an uncoordinated and piecemeal approach to resolving the real challenge: eliminating the conditions that encourage organized violence in general and terror in particular.
“Nobody quarrels or dies eagerly”
To the Western world, that observation by a local political leader in the war-torn Pakistani province of Baluchistan, is the “logical” (the “expected”) outcome of any discussion between “civilized” disputants. In many countries, however, the opposite expectation seems to prevail, at least before the cameras of the world’s press.
The statement also suggests that terrorism is nothing more than one possible – albeit violent – tactic that can be used to advance a position – e.g., gain or consolidate power, expel foreigners, subdue a population, obtain freedom for comrades, or secure eternal bliss. However, if national policy precludes any contact or any negotiation with those labeled as terrorists, governments give up all non-violent tactics. “Success” against those who employ terror then comes down to the capability to counter all attempts to employ terror – that is, physically defeating specific terrorists through capture or death. This is Professor Carr’s “pragmatic war about war,” for it essentially is a series of counter-tactical, intelligence-driven operations aimed at permanently eliminating terrorists.
To say that “nobody quarrels or dies eagerly” raises the question of why some feel forced to fight against government. If the fight is against one’s own government, reasons that actually cut across all ideologies (trans-ideological) are self-determination, dignity, and human rights. These actually might be satisfied by reducing the extent of government’s “presence” (its “footprint”) but leaving the existing structure.
Others who rebel seek control of the state apparatus, a change that also need not be ideological. The degree (depth) of change espoused indicates whether the fight is simply over who rules or over remaking society – the latter introducing ideology and constituting real revolution. This viewpoint suggests that when “real” revolution (as opposed to armed insurrection) occurs, it is largely intra-state. Conversely, conflicts between a state and a non-state entity, or conflict sponsored by one state on the territory of another, aim more often at altering policy or programs of the government under siege (including, if necessary, through regime change), than trying to completely overhauling the structure of the society.
These parameters – intra- vs. interstate or state vs. non-state and rebellion vs. revolution – help refine (or define) the circumstances that enable various extremist ideologies to develop or, ideally, expose the lack of ideology other than personal aggrandizement. But these are refinements. The path to resolving armed conflict always begins with an appreciation of both the tactics being employed – e.g., widespread, systemic use of terror – and the goals and the presence or absence of a controlling ideology. Such an examination need not always begin with a blank slate; tactics, goals and motives can be adapted from place to place and time to time.
There is an additional caveat: the requirement to recognize what has been adapted and what is original in each case. An undifferentiated approach here risks over reaction, leading to curtailing citizens’ rights unnecessarily, or under reaction, exposing citizens to unnecessary danger.
Case Studies
What follows is a look at three current or past armed conflicts – Nepal, Vietnam, and Iraq – that illustrate different combinations of tactics and ideology in armed conflict. Why these three and not others? Vietnam sets the stage as a war where the U.S. misread the ideological basis and employed inappropriate tactics. In Iraq, the U.S. may be “detecting” an “ideology” that isn’t functional – and thus again applying inappropriate responses. In Nepal, where an evolved classic revolutionary ideology is paired with classic insurgency, the U.S. sees only a failed state in-the-making and a potential haven for international terrorists – and errs again.
Iraq, with 140,000 U.S. and 22,000 other foreign troops, is Washington’s chief foreign policy focus. What difference would it make to see Iraq as caught up in “pragmatic” rather than ideological strife? Tomorrow, when foreign troops in Iraq are significantly reduced or gone, will real revolution modify if not replace “pragmatic” strife in Iraq. The interplay of three critical variables – the possibility that Iraq will succumb to ideological violence, Washington’s penchant for oversimplifying and misestimating situations, and Iraq’s central role in the global energy economy – will determine what course (and intensity) war in Iraq might take as well as the duration of the U.S. presence. This suggests a need for policy makers to understand the characteristics and context of “revolutionary” war, which is where Nepal, viewed not through the failed state but through the revolutionary war eyepiece, comes in.
The heat of conflict is often the incubator of error. Under stress, we tend to lose perspective and revert to ingrained habits of thought and action. Most analysts and policy makers require a degree of disengagement to grasp more completely the nature and pervasiveness of the political, social, and economic imperatives fueling different conflicts and see the continuities, connections, and dissimilarities with other armed conflicts. In the spirit of promoting such disengagement from ingrained expectations, we begin with Nepal.
Setting the Context of War and Peace– Nepal
The U.S. has had formal diplomatic relations with Nepal only since 1947. Over these 57 years, Nepal has swung from a constitutional monarchy in the 1950s to authoritarian rule in the early 1960s and back to constitutional monarchy in 1990. Six years later, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launched an armed “peoples” insurgency, demanding a wholesale change in the government. For the first half-decade, police were the main governmental security force used against the insurgents.
Although a change in government in July 2001 led to two rounds of peace talks, overall, since the June 2001 massacre of most of the royal family by the crown prince, security in Nepal has deteriorated and governance has become erratic. States of emergency have been declared and rescinded, parliament and local leaders have been dismissed peremptorily, and factionalism has paralyzed the main political parties. While prime minister during the second half of 2001, the current incumbent, Sher Bahadur Deuba, unleashed the Royal Nepalese Army against the Maoists. When peace talks broke off in November 2001, heavy fighting ensued. Deuba remained in office until October 2002, when King Gyanendra sacked him for proposing that new parliamentary elections be delayed for a year.
Since then, King Gyanendra has appointed and then removed two governments. In late June 2004, a third “all-party” regime came to power on a platform emphasizing a dual political track: restarting peace talks with the Maoist insurgents that were last broken off in August 2003, and conducting elections.
Not everyone in Nepal supports the latest efforts to re-start negotiations. While the 2001 discussions ostensibly faltered over the Maoist’s demand for an assembly to rewrite Nepal’s constitution, some observers believe that the negotiations were nothing more than a strategic pause used by the insurgents to rearm and consolidate their control of three central districts – following which they resumed significant operations.
The same analysis is applied to the negotiations that began in January 2003. By this time, two other areas – the West and Far West – were effectively controlled by the insurgents. Following the collapse of the truce in late August 2003, in early September the Maoists resumed widespread attacks, including assassinations and bombings in the capital, Katmandu. The intensity of this latest campaign can be measured by the fatalities: of approximately 10,000 who have died since 1996, more than 3,300 have perished in just the last eleven months.
Despite what critics see as a recurring pattern – warfare-peace talks while consolidating gains-warfare – since resuming office in late June, Prime Minister Deuba has offered concessions to jump-start new talks. He agreed to form a “consensus-based” constituent assembly and has entertained possible UN intervention in the peace process – the latter a reversal of his predecessor’s position. But he has withstood pressure to dissolve his fledgling administration in favor of an interim government, one in which the Maoists would participate, at least as long as the insurgents continue their attacks against the army, police, and civilians (Southeast Asia Intelligence Review, July 5, 2004). Moreover, by mid-July, the Maoists were insisting that no peace talks could take place unless the UN were involved.
Misinterpreting the Context – Iraq as Pragmatic Paradigm
Most people in the U.S. and the world understand the linkage between the terror attacks on September 11, 2001 and the subsequent war against the Taliban and al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. There is less clarity about the U.S.-led 2003 war against Saddam Hussein’s regime, especially the claim that this war was the “central front” of the “global war on terror.” In particular, most Iraqis rejected this conflation of Saddam’s brutal rule, which they were happy to see end, with the U.S. fixation on terrorist activities. These divergent views quickly undercut the Bush Administration’s expectations that Iraqis would continue to regard the invading troops as liberators rather than occupiers, and that winning the peace would be as simple as winning the war. Moreover, the influx of “foreign jihadists” into Iraq on the pretext of taking up the challenge (and the opportunity) presented by an “infidel” army occupying some of Islam’s holy cities brought wide-spread, random terrorism into the everyday life of Iraqis.
In searching to explain the growing resistance, the White House has tried to cast the opposition in generalized ideological terms: “they” hate western and U.S. values, freedoms and democracy and want to re-impose a Ba’athist authoritarian regime in Iraq. This explanation immediately fails on three counts.
First, it collapses localized, nationalistic sentiment against the presence of armed foreigners – and the suffering and death they inflict on innocent men, women, and children – into the “globalized” (transnational as opposed to subnational) yet limited opposition to the pervasive U.S. worldwide presence. In other words, the Bush Administration has tried to elevate an affinity for coordinated tactical action by groups and movements with different objectives into a monolithic threat to the foundations and continued existence of the U.S. as a nation. (This mirrors the early Cold War erroneous strategic presumption that Chinese and Soviet communism were and would remain monolithic.)
Second, and related to the first, homogenizing the opposition tends to encourage an equally undifferentiated response. Nuanced actions have a better chance of exploiting varying motives for opposing foreign forces and for targeting “collaborating” Iraqis. Opposition to foreign troops, in the White House context, can often be completely non-ideological whereas civil strife, whether or not it evolves into full scale civil war, can be very ideological.
Third, the White House formulation juxtaposes democratic ideology and authoritarianism. The latter is not an ideology; it is a method of practical political-governance that can be linked to an array of “-oligies” for justification.
Why does this matter? Because defining the opposition’s range of motives for armed conflict also defines (sharpens) the range of responses to the conflict. For instance, the choice of armed conflict as the means to liberate an area or population from foreign occupation and oppression results in guerilla or “partisan” warfare, which is essentially apolitical. When the U.S.-led military coalition came to be seen as occupiers, Iraqis, lacking the military ability to defeat the coalition, initiated guerilla warfare to force out the foreigners. This was more a pragmatic, not an ideological, choice. Similarly, there is little evidence of an ideological basis behind the anti-U.S. stance of most Iraqis.
Theoretically, partisan warfare can be undercut by shifting the public face of occupation to a cooperative indigenous regime (much as the U.S. is doing in Iraq). The flaw in this approach is the regime’s lack of legitimacy among key population segments, a handicap that can be surmounted (if at all) only when the regime becomes demonstrably and consistently uncooperative with the foreigners.
The reality of partisan warfare, however, points to far different – and far bloodier – resolutions: partisans are eliminated or foreign forces leave. Both are policy options, and to that extent mirror the approach of the “foreign jihadists” attracted to Iraq by the U.S.-led intervention. Their objective is to effect a change in U.S. foreign policy and international programs (along with the seemingly all-encompassing presence necessary to implement these programs), not to change U.S. society and culture.(3)
Conversely, armed conflict waged to alter a society and culture by creating or diverting a system of administrative controls paralleling and competing with an established (“official”) governance system is, in Bernard Fall’s terminology, truly “revolutionary war,” war in which ideology looms large.
Interpreting the Context – Vietnam as Conceptual Paradigm
Until Iraq 2003-2004, Vietnam was the last war involving U.S. troops that included a significant revolutionary war component. Bernard Fall, author, journalist, professor, theorist and practitioner of partisan warfare, in a 1964 lecture at the U.S. Naval War College, suggested that revolutionary war differed from all other forms of guerrilla (or small) wars in that its goal was to advance “an ideology or a political system.”(2) Fall’s research about conditions in Vietnam convinced him that the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese (NV) approached the war as a struggle for control of the local and regional administrative structures of governance whereas U.S. civilian and military leaders saw armed conflict as the primary challenge. This mismatch in perceptions – an example of conceptual asymmetry – was reflected in events on the ground. The VC-NV concentrated on securing political levers while the U.S. emphasized a military “solution.” The U.S. failure to apprehend fully and consistently the secondary purpose of armed engagements in the VC-NV agenda resulted in a practical asymmetry in which superior U.S. firepower could win every battle yet lose the war.
Fall himself attests to the extent of this conceptual misjudgment of the depth and extent of political action and intimidation by the VC-NV. Based on some truly intuitive insights that guided his investigations before the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, Fall developed three criteria of effective administrative control (as differentiated from what is often intermittent military control) which convinced him that the French position in the North’s populous Red River Valley was about to collapse. The criteria identified the loyalties of de facto village chiefs in a region (which could be gleaned from reviewing the many obituaries of incumbents who lacked protection and plotting locales to determine patterns); where the government says it has teachers (in Vietnam teachers were centrally appointed); and which communities were paying taxes into central coffers.
New research in 1958 and 1959 convinced Fall that the VC-NV had effectively isolated Saigon from the rest of South Vietnam by a “wall of dead village chiefs” – as many as eleven each day by 1961. But as Fall relates, not until 1963 did the U.S. Agency for International development (USAID) realize that Fall’s focus on tax receipts would apply to South Vietnam. What USAID discovered was that only three of 45 areas were free of VC-NV tax collections.
Nepal Today
The Maoist insurgency bears few external points of similarity to Vietnam – e.g., external “supply” is limited to small arms and ammunition acquired in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, which lies just south of Nepal. There have been reports of links to “fraternal” Maoist-oriented insurgent movements in India, notably the People’s War Group in Andhra Pradesh state (BBC News, April 8, 2004). On the other hand, the Nepalese Maoist leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal (also known as Prachanda), reputedly admires and conceptually has modeled his tactics on Peru’s Maoist revolutionary Sendero Luminoso movement.
With increasing frequency over the last eleven months, the Maoists have concentrated their attacks on the administrative structures of the government. Two pitched battles in March 2004 involving multiple hundreds of rebel fighters were aimed at government officials and district offices, telecommunications nodes, branches of the national bank, and police and army headquarters and barracks. These attacks, along with a succession of raids on schools, bridges, post offices, and the power grid and bombings and landmine detonations, have created a sense of deep insecurity among Nepal’s population (Southeast Asia Intelligence Review, March 29, 2004).
As in Vietnam, the people in the rural areas and, increasingly, even in the cities, are caught between a government whose presence in the majority of districts is intermittent and usually confined to daytime and insurgents who rule the night. Those who can, flee: an estimated 400,000 people have been directly displaced by the fighting.
Again as did the VC-NV, the Nepalese Maoists have established parallel administrative structures, so-called “people’s governments,” in areas where there is little if any government presence. In these areas, businesses and even non-governmental groups operate at the pleasure of the insurgents, who also impose taxes. These areas also support “re-education” or “corrective learning” sites where individuals kidnapped from contested or government-controlled districts undergo re-education or “corrective learning.” Rough estimates are that 16,000-17,000 people have been indoctrinated in just the last ten months (Southeast Asia Intelligence Review, July 5, 2004). Significantly, given Fall’s criteria, the Maoists concentrate on seizing teachers and students for re-education.
Although the struggle in Nepal is obviously ideological, U.S. involvement seems skewed toward promoting a military solution. This is evident by the paradigmatic response adopted by the Administration to all post-September 11, 2001 armed conflicts: increased training and money to purchase military equipment to countries willing to “cooperate” in the U.S.-defined “Global War On Terror” (GWOT), and the elevation to standing U.S. policy of preventive war against countries unwilling or unable to do battle in the GWOT.
For Nepal, this has meant an increase from $237,000 in U.S. military aid (4) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 to $9.5 million in FY2003. In FY2002, Nepal became eligible to receive, on a grant basis, “Excess Defense Articles” from U.S. stockpiles. Through a combination of available assistance programs, Nepal’s military acquired 20,000 U.S. M16 rifles and an unknown quantity of night vision devices. (Of course, every time an army post is overrun or an arsenal looted, this new equipment ends up in the hands of the insurgents, to be turned on government forces.)
On the other hand, between FY2001-2003, non-military aid increased by only $1.5 million, from $30.2 to $31.6 million – even though virtually every observer, donor, and interested party calls for negotiations as the only viable way forward. This message was delivered most recently in May 2004 by the Nepal Development Forum, a consortium of 20 donor nations and six international organizations. In its summary announcement pledging $1.6 billion over the next three years, the group called for restoring democratic processes, improving the government’s human rights record, and resolving the armed conflict through non-violence (Washington Times, May 29, 2004).
Iraq Today
Similarly, in Iraq, the U.S. is deeply engaged in training and equipping Iraqi security forces – army, police, facilities protection units, and border police – to operate in a society with an essentially unchanged social and economic structure (preferably with less crime, corruption, and cronyism) but a very different distribution of political and military power. (This is a “comfortable,” acceptable course because it mirrors the transformation of the 13 British colonies into the 13 United States; not until three-quarters of a century later were the social and economic regimes transformed – violently.)
The real test for Iraq is just beginning with the creation in August of the 100 member “national assembly” that is to prepare for the 2005 elections and overwatch the interim administration. But like the interim administration, the assembly (and the 1,000 delegates to the national conference from which the 100 came) was not elected and thus suffers from a lack of legitimacy among Iraqis. What the assembly does and does not do will influence the Iraq public’s approach to and acceptance or rejection of the January 2005 election of a transitional government. If rejected, Iraq’s political future, its integrity as a unified state, and even its (to date) relative liberal social trajectory may take a sharply different course from that envisioned in Washington.
Conclusion
In the end, ideas (the “-oligies”) are not defeated by military conflict or by labeling adherents of an ideology as terrorists. Wars – particularly those fought after the mid-19 th century – essentially are waged to destroy an opponent’s bureaucratic organizations, military and non-military, that create and control the use of military power in the service of a given ideology. (However, knowing an opponent’s ideology (e.g., Maoism) or a professed affinity for an earlier “ideological” struggle (Peru’s Sendero Luminoso) can provide a starting point for understanding not only military tactics and applicable countermeasures but also the strategy employed in undercutting the appeal of insurgent economic, political, and societal programs.)
Ideas are defeated by other, “better” ideas. The challenge lies in getting the “better” ideas heard, with adequate time and adequate security – safety, food, shelter, employment, more equitable income distribution, “retirement” – for comparison and adaptation to the prevailing culture (and vice-versa).
In this sense, both Nepal and Iraq appear to be at a crossroad where the visible choices and destinations are political. But for Nepal, the real, immediate, and foreseeable destination espoused by the Maoists is a comprehensive transformation of one of the world’s poorest and most rural societies as a whole. And right now, given broken government promises (land reform and redistribution), repression, and widespread human and civil rights violations by the army, the people may opt for the insurgents.
In Iraq, the focus is squarely on the pragmatic tasks of reforming the government, of moving from an interim administration and interim “national assembly” to elections for a transitional government, a constitutional convention, and a permanent government by 2006. The danger Iraq faces is the failure to hold the country together through each transitional phase. How well it succeeds in this realm will be a major factor in further change, either for “better” or “worse.”
Perhaps the main lesson from the above – and from the GWOT – is the need for U.S. policymakers to maintain the distinction between armed conflict for political (policy and programmatic) or tactical ends and armed conflict for more comprehensive ideological goals – and tailor U.S. responses accordingly. Above all, the U.S. should strive to prevent a political dynamic from assuming ideological depth, for the latter is more costly by far.
Endnotes
1) Quoted in a Washington Post opinion piece, July 28, 2004). Bard College is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Carr is professor of military history.
2) In colonial and U.S. history, guerrilla war has been a recurring reality, so much so that in the early 20 th century the Marine Corps developed a field manual on “Small Wars.” In fact, every lieutenant of infantry, whether Marine or Army, used to learn how to fight “small wars” simply because that’s what squads, platoons, and companies do to survive. At this level, techniques for surviving are of more importance than theories and ideology.
3) Fall’s December 10, 1964 lecture was first printed in the April 1965 Naval War College Review and reprinted in the Winter 1998 issue of the Review. The latter is on-line at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/navy/art5-w98.htm.
4) Military aid includes International Military Education and Training (IMET), Foreign Military Financing (FMF), and Economic Support Funds (ESF), which enables recipient governments to divert their own money from non-military to military spending.
