House of Commons - Defence - Written Evidence

Select Committee on Defence Written Evidence

Memorandum from Dr Rod Thornton, Joint Services Command College

BRITISH COUNTER-INSURGENCY OPERATIONS IN IRAQ

While the British Army may have a rich history and varied experience of conducting counter-insurgency operations, its current mission in Iraq has been uniquely difficult. On the whole, however, the Army (and the Royal Marines) has performed very well in trying circumstances. The aim of this paper is to delve into some history in order to contextualize current British Army operations in Iraq and to point out how the difficulties encountered have been dealt with.

The first point to make is that the Army went into Iraq "cold" in counter-insurgency terms. It did not have all the advantages that were apparent for much of the Army's imperial policing history. For such counter-insurgency campaigns as were conducted took place in regions where British influence was strong. Wherever one looks in terms of the Army's counter-insurgency experience—from Cyprus to Malaya and from Palestine to the Naga Hills—there would be an extant police force and public administrations run by fellow-countrymen. There would be people who knew how to run the countries and how best to deal with the indigenous populations. Intelligence would be available, there would be a high degree of cultural awareness, and there would be many people who spoke the local languages. In essence, all the Army had to do was to use its military muscle in aid of a civil power who would know how to target such muscle. Hence, British counter-insurgency operations normally ended in success (with the obvious exceptions of Palestine and Aden for their own particular reasons).

Ironically, perhaps the only previous occasion when the British Army has been called on to fight an insurgency in a country with which it lacked familiarity was in Iraq itself in 1920. But even in this case there were many Army and Political Officers who were familiar with both the Arab culture and language. Such cultural awareness contributed greatly to the eventual quelling of that particular insurgency. The Army was also well served by its attempts to keep in place as much of the old Ottoman civil structures as it could and undermined any opposition to the British by employing "divide and rule" techniques that concentrated on tribal differences. Moreover, the way the Army dealt with the insurgency then was helped immeasurably by the general impression given that whatever the rebels did the British, as a great power, would prevail. The rebels, short as they were of weapons and ammunition, realised that they could not match an implacable foe who could simply bring in from abroad more and more men and materiel. In 1920 the insurgents buckled in the face of overwhelming British power. It is also noteworthy that British operations in Iraq were given legitimacy by a League of Nations mandate.

The British Army has been recently asked to go back into Iraq but this time lacking all the positives that were available in 1920. The Army now has a very limited pool of Arab speakers and culturally aware personnel. Officers could not maintain the old civilian structures since these were Ba'athist and the whole point of the exercise (as expressed ultimately) was to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his power structures. The Army could not try "divide and rule" amongst the tribes because it had to be seen as a neutral and impartial peacekeeper. The Army was faced by determined factions who, unlike their 1920s brethren, are not short of arms and ammunition. The Army was also denied the sense of superiority that so undermined the 1920s insurgency. One of the great tools used by counter-insurgency forces in the past is the message that "we are more powerful than you and we will outlast you". Such a message brings indigenous people to your side and away from that of the rebel because they can see which way the wind is blowing and where the future lies. But with Coalition governments pointing out that troops would be withdrawn as soon as possible it becomes very difficult for the population to throw in their lot and provide assistance to foreigners who may be here today, but gone tomorrow (the problem in Aden in 1967). Finally, unlike 1920, the Army has no legal authority to take action in Iraq. Soldiers feel they are operating in a legal vacuum. Thus many of the tools that were available to deal with the insurgency in 1920 are now denied to the Army. And yet despite all this, as one American analyst put it, the British Army, compared to the Americans, has achieved a "relative success" around Basra.[6]

Such a success is down to a professionalism gained from the experience of many decades of counter-insurgency warfare (and not just from Northern Ireland). This professionalism is based on two fundamental principles that the British Army has been using for the past 150 years: pragmatism and minimum force. The pragmatism is basically a result of the fact that the Army has always been small—c 200,000 for most of imperial history—while its main charge throughout that time was to control up to one third of humanity. Clearly with such an onerous policing role, nuance had to be employed and compromises had to be made.

Thus, historically, whatever force multipliers the Army could make use of it did. These would range from a variety of methods for lowering tension to using force in very focused ways that leveraged what was available. Thus officers would, for example, negotiate with insurgent opponents whenever they could, regardless of their political hue. They would also invest effort into "turning" rather than killing individual opponents simply because the mathematics of such an approach worked in their favour. They also sought intelligence voraciously. Good intelligence allowed for the targeting of limited force in the right areas against the right people. This intelligence could come from the very top of insurgent organizations or be picked up from the very bottom by soldiers on patrol. Indeed, patrolling on foot, while principally having a deterrent effect, also allowed the Army to exhibit a friendly and unthreatening posture. Such "coal face" interactions acted as the sharp end of a `hearts and minds' policy and encouraged local people to volunteer intelligence about the insurgents.[7]

Good intelligence allowed the principle of minimum force to be applied. With a lack of numbers, the Army has always known it could never kill all of its insurgent opponents. Thus it concentrated on killing those that mattered while avoiding killing those that did not and the innocent. Through such an approach overall consent could be maintained within indigenous communities. Throughout the Army's counter-insurgency endeavours, if power was seen to be used with responsibility then it helped to get the general populace on the side of the Army and government. After all, for the British, counter-insurgency was not so much a battle to eliminate opponents, but rather a "battle for men's minds", as Gen. Frank Kitson once put it. This battle was a zero-sum game. The more the people were drawn towards the government side the more support they gave it passively in that they stayed out of hostilities and the more support they gave actively in the form of intelligence; while, on the other hand, the less support they gave the insurgents in terms of shelter and succour. Thus the Army, trying very hard to maintain consent, has always avoided the use of heavy weapons that brought about casualties indiscriminately. Thomas Mockaitis summed this attitude up in terms of the use of airpower, for instance, throughout later imperial policing duties: "significantly", he observed, "the British were willing to forego the military advantages of the aeroplane in order to preserve the principal of minimum force".[8]

But force has to be used. There is here an age-old formula noted by Maj-Gen. Sir Charles Gwynn in his seminal pamphlet of the 1930s, Imperial Policing. "Excessive severity", he wrote, "may antagonise the neutral or loyal element, add to the number of rebels, and leave a lasting feeling of resentment and bitterness. On the other hand, the power and resolution of the government forces must be displayed".[9] Respect had to be gained. Obviously, though, very careful thought has to go into the displaying of "power and resolution"; especially when the army is a small one. Ill-thought through offensive action, in the British book, risked making the situation worse, not better. As an example, Lt-Gen. Alymer Haldane, the commander of British forces in Iraq in 1920 stressed the political consequences of outright failure. "Regrettable incidents", he wrote, "or failure to complete what one sets out to do have political effects out of all proportion to their military importance . . .`Legitimate gambles' are not to be thought of; a sound straightforward course of action should be followed, even though promising less brilliant results".[10] Historically, the Army has thus been careful about its use of force both because of the effect it may have in terms of a loss of consent and, if it does not achieve results, in the loss of that vital component of control, respect. In counter-insurgency terms, this has always been a cautious Army.

There is also another point to remember about the British use of minimum force: it is part of the British liberal tradition. The same early 19th-century liberal Protestant philosophies that led to the ending of the Slave Trade, when combined with the Romanticism then prevalent in society, created in Britain an Army suffused with what came to be called "Victorian values". Officers were looked upon as paragons of virtue who were in the vanguard of the spreading of Britain's enlightened imperial message to all corners of a dark world. And, as such, these officers had to avoid undue loss of life. Hence the opprobrium heaped on the Army, unique in Britain, after incidents when it did misbehave; such as after the Indian Mutiny (1857), Amritsar (1919) and Bloody Sunday (1972). Thus restraint has always been a watchword for British forces certainly because it was pragmatic, but also because it was expected. As one author put it, throughout British imperial history, "If troops were called out to preserve or restore order, their officers went into action guided only by a forcible but indistinct sense of social constraint".[11] Thus the restraint—as compared with US forces—so apparent in Iraq is not the result of "training" (as Lord Gardner and others would aver),[12] it is the result of a general British approach and has been apparent for many years in both conventional conflict (Second World War and Korean War) and insurgencies. One American journalist many years ago summed it up: when commenting on the restraint exhibited by British troops in Palestine in the 1940s, she averred that "Our boys could never do it".[13] Indeed, in our own era, one only has to consider the kind of rhetoric used by American leaders—both political and military—which is so different from our own, to understand the differences in the levels of restraint expected from troops on the ground.[14]

However, it was the abjuring of this general British policy of restraint (as usual when dealing with the Irish) that caused problems in the early years of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Here was another example of the Army going in "cold" when it was dispatched there in force in 1969. The Province lacked a functioning police force and the Army took over that role. Thrown in at the deep end, the Army, egged on by an equally out-of-its-depth government in Westminster, responded too aggressively. Officers tried to get around problems by "cracking down". This appeared in its most egregious form with Bloody Sunday in 1972, but was also evident in the number of arbitrary arrests (Internment, 1971-74) and in sweep operations that took in house searches targeted only at Catholic areas. The gains made in weapons seizures were greatly outweighed by the antipathy generated in Catholic communities. Consent was lost and the insurgency worsened until the Army toned down its approach and "police primacy" was restored in 1977. The lesson was that the Army's use of harsh measures early on created a situation that took many years to rectify in order to engender a workable level of consent in the Province.

When the Army came to operations in Iraq, therefore, it displayed its characteristic caution. During the war itself, when the Army was faced with forcing its way into Basra, it held back. This was an act criticised by US officers at the time, but it allowed the Army, after negotiations, to eventually enter a city that was intact and where there had been few casualties.[15] Thus there was less local hostility and more consent once troops moved in. Such consent is vital if, as was the case, the Army had to become the police force once it entered Basra and other towns. The level of consent allowed troops to carry through their usual measures—such as foot-patrolling. In a consensual environment they can do this without the usual protection of body armour and helmets. Such insouciance creates the impression that everything is normal, that the threat is diminished and everyone can go about their normal lives. It also reduces the sense of distance between soldier and civilian and makes soldiers seem more accessible to the local populations. It is a technique the Americans try to utilise but their sense of `force protection' normally militates against it.[16] The British philosophy has always been that physical barriers prevent soldiers from picking up the "on the street" intelligence that can protect them from attack. In essence, the people protect them. The American philosophy is that physical barriers are necessary to provide protection from the people. What has been noteworthy is that British forces in Iraq have not tried to force the pace of intelligence gathering. There has always been, in historical terms, the temptation, when moving into an intelligence-poor environment, to "encourage" the flow of information through the harsh interrogating of people picked up on the street. This was tried in Northern Ireland and proved counter-productive. The Army seems to have learnt its lesson.

The British Army's caution stands in contrast to American actions. US warfighting at whatever level is based on the principle of using lots of force so that the job is over with quickly and peace, the natural order of things, can return. The use of such force in the war itself left a legacy of bitterness that made their later counter-insurgency task that much more difficult. They had lost the "battle for men's minds" very early on with their aggressive pushes north. Even after the war was "over" there are examples of the unwise use of force by US troops. For instance, one may be able to trace all the subsequent problems the Americans had in Fallujah to a particular incident where US forces displayed a singular lack of restraint. Just after the war itself had finished and when there seemed to be no opposition in Fallujah, US Marines opened fire on a crowd outside their barracks who were peacefully protesting over a fairly trivial local matter. The fact that many unarmed people were killed can be said to have turned the whole of Fallujah against US forces. Down the line and months later US forces had to move into Fallujah to root out the insurgents who had set up base there. The destruction of that city in the process is redolent of an attitude during the Vietnam War. To paraphrase an officer from that time, "we had to destroy the city in order to save it".

This is what British troops conspicuously avoided doing: restraint led to the establishment of a workable degree of consent. And British officers have been determined to keep it that way. The general pace of British counter-insurgency operations has again caused friction with American senior officers (whose orders British officers should have been following) in August last year. When US forces moved into the holy city of Najaf to attack Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, Shia forces in the UK zone launched attacks in sympathy. British forces were besieged in bases in both Amara and Basra. These battles were of much greater intensity than anything experienced during the war itself. But what was different for the British was that they basically acted as "Aunt Sally's" and took all the militia could throw at them without resorting to indiscriminate weaponry such as artillery, fast-jet air strikes or helicopter gunships. Innocent casualties were avoided so that, at the end of the "rebellion", while many fighters might be dead, overall consent still existed among the local Shia population because "collateral" damage was minimal.[17] Negotiations were also entered into with rebel leaders (against US orders) to help in the reduction of tension. Moreover, to keep the fighting out of the headlines where it might prove inflammatory, the press of any hue was prevented by the Army from operating in the areas in question. This kept the problem bottled up and local from where it could be sorted out locally.

There was an obvious downside to this approach. Here were young, keen British soldiers being involved in some of the biggest battles since the Korean War and yet they were getting no publicity. This severely effected soldiers' morale. Risking death every day and getting no thanks for it in the UK is the epitome of a "thankless task". And while these soldiers could act as Aunt Sally's they were also capable of focused aggression; using bayonets, for instance, rather than helicopter gunships.[18] As one analyst put it, "the British approach requires considerable bravery since it doesn't involve the precautionary measure of killing anything that might be a threat".[19]

What also needs to be appreciated is the task the Army is having to carry out in an extraordinary legal vacuum. If you are sent in by political masters to remove a regime then, of course, British soldiers have to become the new regime. They have to maintain order and become the police force; but a police force that has to work within the constraints of English Common Law while having no back-up in terms of the availability of courts and prisons. This is an invidious position to be in. Restraint has to be used because there seems to be no legitimacy for the Army's actions at all, let alone overt and aggressive counter-insurgent activity. Added to this is the fact that there are elements of the British press corps who, unhappy with the invasion of Iraq in the first place, are looking for any act of malfeasance by overstretched soldiers to pounce on.

British forces have been successful in Iraq. They have done well in a difficult environment. They have been tough but measured in their actions. They have used the experience gained from many decades of counter-insurgency work that has been passed on from generation to generation within the Army's regimental structures. They may have moved slowly and cautiously on occasions but this has been to everyone's benefit; not least the innocent Iraqis who may have been caught up in any unrestrained use of force.

King's College London

February 2005

6 Robert Scales, "Culture-Centric Warfare", Proceedings, Vol 130, No 10 (October 2004) p 35. Back

7 As Scales goes on, "Great Britain's relative success in Basra owes in no small measure to the self-assurance and comfort with foreign culture derived from centuries of practicing the art of soldier diplomacy and liaison". Ibid, p 35. Back

8 Thomas Mockaitis, British Counter Insurgency, (London: Macmillan, 1990) p 35. Back

9 Charles Gwynn, Imperial Policing (London: War Office, 1934) p 5. Back

10 Lt-Gen. Sir Aylmer Haldane, The Insurrection in Mesopotamia, 1920 (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1922) pp 334-335. Back

11 Lawrence James, Imperial Rearguard: Wars of Empire, 1919-1985 (London: Brassey's, 1988) p 43. Back

12 "Letters to the Editor", "Deteriorating Situation in Iraq", Professor Sir Timothy Garden, et al, The Times (19 April 2004). Back

13 Quoted by Bernard Fergusson, The Trumpet in the Hall (L: Secker and Warburg, 1970) p223. Back

14 Two examples may colour this characterisation. After US troops were killed in Somalia in the early 1990s on a peacekeeping mission, even the great liberal, President Bill Clinton, is quoted as saying, "When people kill us they should be killed in greater numbers". Quoted in George Stephanopolous, All Too Human (NY: Little Brown and Co, 1999) p 214. Also Lt-Gen. James Mattis, who led US Marines into Baghdad, has said recently that, "It's fun to shoot some people". Esther Schrader, "General Draws Fire For Saying `It's Fun to Shoot' the Enemy", Los Angeles Times (4 February 2005). Back

15 As one US general quoted in the Washington Post put it, "My impression is that they [the British] are much more sensitive to the fact that the fight is about the population in the cities, not the enemy forces in the city . . . Americans tend to see the fight as a medieval clash of the titans, with the population on the sidelines, while the British view it as a fight between two sides for the support of the people". Vernon Loeb and Thomas E Ricks, Washington Post (9 April 2003). Back