David H. Ucko

Sean Naylor has a lengthy piece in the Army Times on the conduct of counterinsurgency operations in the Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan. The piece is extremely interesting because it hints at the lack of agreement across rank as to what counterinsurgency entails or should look like. In this case, you have a very negative bottom-up [...]

This story in the Washington Post today, “Pakistan’s Zardari resists U.S. timeline for fighting insurgents“, provides a clear indication of why the Pakistan piece of the new Afghan strategy is likely to be such a headache and is very much worth the read.
It complements an article I came across earlier in the week: “The Unravelling [...]

Counterinsurgency theory emphasises that understanding your environment – its politics, economics, history and culture – matters, a lot. Counterinsurgents must understand the area’s formal and informal structures and actors, the relation between them, as well as the fears, aspirations and mindsets of the people among whom they will operate. These types of exhortations are made [...]

Maj. Niel Smith, formerly of the US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center, has written a very important article for the Small Wars Journal on the integration of counterinsurgency in the Army’s professional military education (PME). In it, he argues that:
Counterinsurgency instruction remains uneven in quantity and quality throughout Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) [...]