by Jim Rose in war and peace Tags: counter-insurgency tactics, France, Iraq

Compare occupied France with Iraq when the U.S. military were in that country:

American forces in Iraq bunker down and move around in armoured convoys.

German officers walked around occupied France with no more than side-arms because any mischief would be dealt with by savage reprisals.

Perfectly ordinary regular armed forces, with no counterinsurgency doctrine or training whatever, have in the past regularly defeated insurgents, by using a number of well-proven methods.

The simple starting point is that insurgents are not the only ones who can intimidate or terrorise civilians.

For instance, whenever insurgents are believed to be present in a village, small town, or city district, the local notables can be compelled to surrender them to the authorities, under the threat of escalating punishments, all the way to mass executions.

That is how the Ottoman Empire could control entire provinces with a few feared Janissaries and a squadron or two of cavalry.

The Ottoman troops were simply too few to hunt down hidden rebels, but they did not have to: they went to the village chiefs and town notables instead, to demand their surrender, or else. A massacre once in a while remained an effective warning for decades.

Terrible reprisals to deter any form of resistance were standard operating procedure for the German armed forces in the Second World War.

Occupiers and tyrants can be successful without need of any specialized counterinsurgency methods or tactics if they are willing to out-terrorize the insurgents and rebels so that the fear of reprisals outweighs the desire to help the insurgents and rebels.

The U.S military were not without their own subtleties. They learnt that Iraq resistance fell off in a district if power and water and other utilities and facilities were more reliable.