What Daesh fears — the tip of the spear
Duong Van Mai reflected: “There were many mistakes made by the Americans (in the war), but their biggest mistake was that they tried to create for (South Vietnam) an army in their own image that was used to fighting a rich man’s war, and (we) were too poor to sustain that kind of army or that kind or war.”
If one is to learn by history rather than be damned to repeat it, then either by luck or judgment Daesh has realized it needs to fight its wars in territories containing a majority-Muslim population where a poor man’s army has been created in the image of armies of richer nations. In Iraq, northern Nigeria and even the Philippines, Daesh found the perfect conditions for it to sustain prolonged operations against rich man’s image armies.
Like Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu, Daesh realizes that when it holds ground as a small force, it will inevitably be overrun. But it also realizes that the image of a small force holding out against a seeming leviathan provides a persuasive recruitment tool that can entice misguided, bored or restless young men and women who are susceptible to a glorified storyline and a call to arms.
In Iraq, Daesh originally took on a poor man’s army that was in a rich man’s image, created by the US after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This eventually resulted in Daesh creating its own state, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced.
The world then took years to regroup several armies, militias and air forces, and to bring what amounted to a real rich man’s army to the battlefield in order to inflict on Daesh a military defeat.Terrorists’ military strategy thrives against second-rate versions of ‘rich man’s armies,’ but cannot win against focused and well-equipped special forces.
Howard Leedham
In the Philippines, Daesh, under the guise of the Abu Sayyaf Group and Maute, took an entire city on the island of Mindanao, and held it against the might of the army for five months. It was able to do so because despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s best efforts from the moment of his inauguration to rapidly modernize his armed forces to match a new mission, history had placed him at such a distinct disadvantage that, through no fault of his own, he was placed in an unwinnable race against time to defend his own backyard.
The terrorists in Mindanao doubtless recognized that Duterte’s new doctrine threatened to decrease their effectiveness, so they seized the closing window of opportunity, and with it the city of Marawi. They were able to do so in part because since the end of World War II, the US had created for the Philippines an army in its own image.
The country’s army was designed, with the best of intent, to be an additional US corps for post-World War II projection of American force and jungle warfare, rather than with any thought of modern counter-terror and internal security missions.
When it comes to conventional war, no one does it better than the US. The size, precision and technology are undefeatable, for as long as it remains focused. America’s only vulnerability is its political will to stay the course.
And in almost every modern war, such will has forced the world’s most powerful military to withdraw its troops due its internal political pressures, leaving an inevitable vacuum to invariably be filled by an underfunded army created in America’s image. This is precisely the pattern of events that followed the 2003 invasion and subsequent abandonment of Iraq by regular US forces.
When it comes to unconventional war, it is the small, first-world countries — such as the UK and France — with their own domestic terrorist threats that have fared best. They were forced to put to one side the doctrine of large-scale deployments due to lack of space to do it, and lack of budget to pay for it.
So instead, they concentrated smart counter-insurgency, “tip of the spear,” highly trained operatives to achieve not a quick outright victory over threats to their sovereignty and citizens, but defeat of their adversaries by means of a gradual operational degradation, to a point where no youngster would want to join a terrorist cause that is proven to demonstrate such ineffectiveness.
And when the upper hand is gained over the terrorist, the prevailing small force expects no parade or fanfare. The victors simply accept the equation of “threat equals capability plus intent,” and provided they degrade one of these ingredients, the resulting threat becomes containable.
The UK, man for man, has arguably one of the most effective special forces in the world. The underlying reason, beyond the tenacity of the men and women who survive its tough selection, is that a stunning 10 percent ($4.6 billion) of the entire defense budget is allocated to a special force manned at levels that could be accommodated in three big airliners.
The reason for this is that the UK has recognized it cannot be a rich man’s army in size, but it can afford its own adequately funded surgeon’s knife or “tip of the spear” when it comes to taking on terror groups in Malaysia, Ireland and the Middle East.
With the battlefield defeat of Daesh in Iraq and Marawi, the organization now eyes its next targets in terms of terror attacks and territorial dominance. On the streets of Europe it may deliver sporadic and cowardly attacks, but in order to take and hold ground it has to achieve territorial gain, otherwise its “caliphate” becomes a hollow pipe dream.
So it will undoubtedly seek out predominantly Muslim regions, in countries with poor man’s armies built in a rich army’s image, where it can plan and execute its next physical battles in order to take and hold ground, be it for months or years.
Countries that amend their military doctrine to focus allocation of adequate budget to their special forces in order to hone the “tip of the spear,” rather than create poorly paid and equipped battalions, are on the first and accelerative step to effective deterrence.
Those governments that do not heed the words of Duong Van Mai are likely to find themselves completely vulnerable to an avoidable but savage fight against terror on their own sovereign territory.
• Howard Leedham MBE is a former British special forces commander, and now managing partner at security consultant Consilium.
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