Crime and Punishment: Redux
The art of spying.
The nature of the insurgency has always been unusually difficult to conceptualise, though dave kilcullen certainly gave it a try (and a worthy one, indeed) in the Watcher's winning post for this week: A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy. I have been inclined - and very much intrigued - towards viewing the amorphous, fiendishly malleable insurgency as perhaps embracing several characteristics of criminal networks, which I shall further explain.
Having perused Martin Muckian's "Structural Vulnerabilities of Networked Insurgencies" in the Winter 2006-07 issue of Parameters (h/t to wretchard), here are a few salient points from the article that I would like to highlight:
The insurgency in Iraq can be safely assumed to be predominantly Sunni in nature, which already dictates several constraints on the effectiveness and fluidity of the network. Firstly, Sunnis are unarguably outnumbered by the sheer numbers of Shiites and Kurds and therefore, popular mobilisation is definitely not an option. There has been a sizeable number of Sunnis migrating (fleeing would encapsulate the mood much better, though) to neighbouring countries for fear of ethnic cleansing, and the number of mixed Shiite-Sunni neighbourhoods are dwindling as Iraqis segregate themselves almost automatically to avoid trouble with militias.
Adding to that, neither can the insurgents hope that the ideology of aQ can garner as much widespread support as before - not when these insurgents themselves are already contemplating a truce with us, and when increasing numbers of tribes in Anbar have switched over to our side and pledged to flush out those threatening to further fuel the ire of the Shiites, who are only beginning to show signs of dealing with their internal problems of the death squads and militias.
Furthermore, muckian's supposition that the shared narrative may consist of "nationalism" is flawed, in a sense that whatever it is the insurgents are fighting for, it is not for Iraq, but against the manifestation of such a nation-state. If it is not already blindingly evident, the eventuality will consist of a Shiite-dominated government (taking into consideration that the Sunnis have consciously rejected reconciliation).
As for the impetus engendered by "anti-occupation" sentiment, I do believe that the Sunnis realise that that itself is counter-intuitive: they know that the presence of the US in Iraq is the only safeguard against widespread genocide, and driving us out will only catalyse the inevitable prospect of Shia domination. If there's one thing the Sunni insurgency respects, it's self-preservation - the fragile status quo is a make-or-break scenario: if Maliki flounders this time, public opinion in the US will escalate into a thunderous cacophony that will not be ignored this time, and Bush will be forced to withdraw from Iraq.
muckian wisely calls for exploitation of cracks in the shared narrative, which has been preserved through the insurgency's lack of emphasis on "any political program related to the future of the country." That explains the Sunnis refusing to reintegrate or attempt reconciliation with the Shiites, for they fear the splitting of the Sunni bloc which would allow the Shia-dominated government to sideline them more effortlessly than before:As long as the network confronts issues that are within the shared story of the narrative, it can maintain its unity. If issues outside the narrative arise, however, such as the elections or an agenda for the future of Iraq, the network loses its cohesion as groups respond according to their own ideology. The network may be capable of reaching a consensus, but this takes time. This disjointedness demonstrates that the political cohesion of a networked insurgency is directly vulnerable in a way the Maoist revolutionaries were not.
The "narrative" of a story is an intriguing concept, a crucial cog in the machinery of propaganda. Narratives read much like a fictionalised piece of work, proceeds in a predictably linear fashion, shaped by selective usage of facts and deliberate manipulation of events: all these factors contribute to the crafting of an easily accessible, fluid plot whereby allies and enemies are clearly defined (usually without contestable attributes that may engender suspicion towards their intentions), and most importantly, where there is the perfect dream ending that will eventually manifest as long as the story is continued to be played out by its characters.
In the insurgency's narrative, there are serious flaws that exist and have been papered over for the sake of operational and ideological cohesion. As aforementioned, claims of "nationalism" will ring hollow in the face of the inescapable fact that any Iraq that's going to emerge is going to be a Shia-dominated one; "anti-occupation" clarion calls are counter-intuitive - which leaves them with Islamic extremism, or what one could call Saudi-propagated Wahhabism. Which returns to the regional context of a wider Shiite-Sunni conflict in the Middle East. How do we discredit this ideology and defang the insurgency?
Exploiting the divisions and questioning the devoutness of ideological adherents, for starters - firstly, the notion of aQ fighting "on the frontlines for the Sunnis" is grossly exaggerated and sickeningly hypocritical - it has always placed self-preservation above ideological purity. Also, seeds of doubt need to be sown via the sustained propagation of intel regarding Sunni insurgents who have accepted Iranian funding, who would then be accused of being agents of the enemy and thus purged from the insurgency. Not to forget - tribal ties being essential to the basic foundations of Arab society - as more tribes defect, the likelihood that they can protect families of defected insurgents from other insurgents is increased.
Challenging the concepts of "enemies" and "allies" in their shared narrative will ensure that Sunnis start questioning the motives of those who purportedly fight on their behalf.
With every good novel comes several sub-plots, and one of the major devices of the narrative in Iraq has been that of the flourishing of Shiite militias under al-Sadr. The Shiite bloc is just as vulnerable - if not more - as its Sunni counterpart, and this divisiveness has played itself out time and again among adherents of Sistani, al-Sadr and al-Hakim. Fortunately, the Shia in Iraq have done us a great favour in displaying such disunity, because it undermines any such shared narrative that any single actor may attempt to fabricate to galvanise support among the population against the government - al-Sadr's nationalistic appeal is waning in the face of Maliki's new enthusiasm, al-Hakim cannot hope to convince Iraqis to support his faction due to its Iranian affiliation.
The nature of the militias have ominously mirrored that of the insurgency to some extent, thus some of the measures that I will discuss later on may be considered to be of dual-purpose. Having found this article, The Structure of Criminal Connections: the Russian-Italian Mafia
Network by federico varese, here are some points that require emphasis:
This provides relevant material with regard to Iraq - in that insurgents and militias will find themselves running from one neighbourhood to another to avoid detection from not only the Iraqi Army, Police but also citizens as well (the Army has already enlisted the aid of civilians to identify insurgents and militiamen in a raid on a Mahdi mosque last week). This significantly deprives both insurgents and militias (henceforth referred to as IM) the number of civilians that could work as informants for them, and ups the risk of getting exposed by undercover Iraqi Police, who have been instructed to start moving in with families in neighbourhoods.A network’s vulnerability to disruption lies in what netwar expert Phil Williams calls critical nodes. A critical node is a person or cell whose function has a “high level of importance and a low level of redundancy.” This could mean a person with an important but rare skill. For example, British intelligence believes that there are only a handful of bombmakers producing the bulk of the IEDs. Or, it could mean a node which serves as the sole link between two organizations. Although these individuals may not be high-ranking, they play a vital role in the network, and their elimination will degrade the insurgency’s ability to operate more than the removal of its ostensible leadership. This understanding is key to combating a networked insurgency. A network may be hard to destroy, but it can be disrupted.
Also, varese draws our attention towards the concept of "preferential linking", a behaviour among criminals to seek out those who are more well-connected within the network and thus have more resources to carry out operations.
Even more intriguing is his observation that the Russian mafia network relies heavily on recruiting the aid of blood-related kin, especially women. Sharing kin relations makes linking less costly and also significantly reduces the chances of defection and betrayal.
This characteristic is relevant in Iraq, for tribal affiliations still remain the main form of allegiance for the insurgents. There is a very good chance that identifying a few insurgents will lead us back to a hotbed of accomplices in the same tribes (the six in Anbar) and thus allow for easier conceptualisation of the enemy.Furthermore, criminal actors who have more resources at their disposal (both material and non-material, such as contacts and information) are likely to attract more links. It is also likely that they would generally be unwilling to lose control over resources and contacts. One might well expect resourceful actors to want to minimize the sharing of their contacts with other members of the network.
Thus, therein lies the risk of being too prominent as a node for the IM, and this might prove to be a decisive factor when dealing with the militias, especially when al-Sadr is now calling for them to step down and lay low - his control and influence on the Shiite militias is tenuous at best, and they may retaliate instinctively for reasons that fail to consider the "welfare of the network" as envisioned by al-Sadr.
Indeed, a rule within Cosa Nostra is that individuals associated with the mafia cannot establish contacts at will: they need to obtain permission from those higher up to make a new link, a provision that show the mafia grasped Burt’s concept of ‘network constraint’.
As contacts are shared with other members of the network, the risk for the actor increases: police informants or potential turncoats might endanger the actor. Of course, the trade off that criminals must consider is that the more centralized the structure, the easier it is to destroy the network if the central actor is captured. On the other hand, the key player in a network might welcome the fact that, without him, others cannot make the network function: an individual’s perspective does not need to have the welfare of the network at heart. [emphasis added]
These autonomous operatives may very well expose themselves and the nodes they have linked to, thereby leaving the network vulnerable to disruption. By seeking to establish retaliatory and reprisal attacks against the Iraqi Army and Police, they might very well proceed to acquire the resources by themselves (therefore operating outside al-Sadr's control) and risk exposing the nodes who provide them with funding, intel and arms (materials for making IEDs in the case of insurgents).
A recent report highlighted a surge in marriages among Iraqis - it should be investigated as to whether the likelihood of IM attempting to marry into families to reintegrate themselves back into the population (the brides are also liable as suspects, since the Russian mafia certainly enlisted their aid extensively); alternatively, it could be that Iraqi Police are secretly part of this increase in married couples.
Crucial nodes were found to have made a significant number of phone calls involving intense conversations - this may very well play into the scenario in Iraq where the number of cellular phones is trending upwards, and will continue to do so for some time to come. muckian suggests that :One extreme proposal is to completely shut down the information technology grid in the insurgent areas—telephones, cellular towers, and so on. This could certainly have a disruptive effect on a networked organization, but more research is needed in this critical area.
Judging from the technology of wiretapping, we could probably monitor cellular calls within Iraq and from there, track the suspected nodes down to their locations and then take them out.
This new paradigm of counter-insurgency (and possibly counter-militia) certainly has revealed new possibilities in conceptualising the predicament in Iraq; by viewing the IM as akin to a criminal network, we can then proceed to disrupt it rather than attempt to completely destroy it via familiar means.
Narratives and nodes - that is what we should be considering in the weeks to come.
2 spoke up:
Thinking in Netwar terms is one helluva job! You start by throwing out uses of large force structures, save for those things that are National entities and even *then* you may not want to start on the large scale stuff first. I looked at this conception a few times and exactly *how* the US Armed Forces are implementing it is a constantly morphing thing as *real* Netwar hasn't happened yet. But the precursors allow for informed speculation.
I did a first grasp at it with this piece on a possible War with Iran which never really satisfied my foggy brain. Far too conventional!
So my mind played with that and some different views on how Netwar against a Nation State could be applied using Iran as the ongoing example for fun and frivolity. That started to get more of the feel of across-the-board internetworked warfare using a full-spectrum analysis of societies, culture, tribes, and traditions implementing a different way to approach warfare.
Of course this automatically leaped out as why the Letters Language is so important: by understanding multiple, simultaneous networking capability, the means of warfare just become one additional network to existing civilian modes. That is why modern Privateers would be pointed and deadly... they are not building warfare down, but building their existing social, commercian and economic networks and applying warfare with them. Just one more tool in the toolbox, but one that then allows different approaches to problems.
I synopsize military transformation and what it is doing with Netwar here. And then look poorly on anyone who has been retired from the military since before 2001 for not being able to keep up with the integral changes going on in the military, since this is something tha TRADOC needs to catch up with. I honor their past service, but they are *not* relevant to modern warfare circa 21st century.
Popping over to Iran again, I look at Cold War concepts of containment and put forth that as they do not act as a Rational Nation State there is no basis for Cold War outlooks. Indeed, they can use their own strange idea of Netwar to further their ways by using force in a non-traditional way to achieve their ends.
On another long-term look ahead for Iraq, I give opinion on why Netwar must change our fundamental concepts of what post-war restructuring of a Nation must look like. Because reconstruction via Netwar is *also* a means for INTEL, recon and larger scale cross-network integration via social interplay.
Thusly, when I run across Tigerhawk wanting to 'mobilize the West', I find 20th century concepts of *mobilization* deficient and find 19th century conceptions of warfare far more adaptable to the modern Netwar era.
Now when Wretchard put out a piece on two-sidedness of things, I do take exception and put forth the first article to start interlocking all of the above. Netwar, by being a multinetwork, cross-network application of force structures dare not *ever* be limited to two sides as it has a full spectrum of capability. Now if only modern western culture could leave Hegelian conceptions aside, get away from thesis/anti-thesis=synthesis as it is a dead end when applied against more than thesis/anti-thesis problems.
To help apply all of this the US is now putting forth the first integrated, 21st century weapons systems which will be highly interwoven across multiple capabilities. But, in the end, the Constitutional limits placed upon the National military structure is a harsh requirement that it is not applied against non-Nation State actors taking up war. While some military application can be done, the entire ability to assess, analyze and strike highly distributed foes that work on financial, trade, custom, culture and other networks to wage war cannot be done from the Nation side downwards, due to the restrictions placed on the military. From the Civilian side given warrant to go to war, however, there are virtually no restrictions upon a Free People to do damn fool things on their own cognizance of having to pay whatever price there is if they are caught at it. By not being held to a hierarchical, top-down enforcement structure, Civilians can look to wide ranging conceptions outside of those structures and seek to implement them if given Warrants to do so.
That then got me to the Inteldump analysis and thinking a bit more on Iraq. And that finally allowed for my first look at the overall Strategy in Iraq from which I have opined to those who cannot find it for want of a flashlight of the 1 million candle power variety. For sheer variety to demonstrate how the entire shebang can be seen from a viewpoint that is absolutely not warfare based and yet be not only frivolous but *pointed*, I summarized the resulting external chaos to help those coming in late to the Play of the Middle East.
Netwar: the moment you think you have it pinned down as one thing, it morphs before your eyes into something else. Identify what it was and did and that gives you little idea of what it will be and can do. Now if only Congress could let go of all warfare concepts that have the Cold War chill to them... For all their prattling on about not having any powers of war, they really don't seem too interested in actually *using* the powers they have, and cast covetous eyes elsewhere for power that is not theirs to have.
Now if only I could understand Netwar as well as the folks that practice it.
a jacksonian, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I'll have to take some considerable time tomorrow to go through all those links!
As always, a pleasure to have your company.
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