THE ETHICS OF COUNTERINSURGENCY – A SENSITIVE ALTERNATIVE TO WAR?

Ten New Zealanders died in Afghanistan between the 27th of September 2001, when New Zealand's government agreement to send troops into the country alongside the United States, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and April 2013, when New Zealand officially withdrew from Afghanistan. However, the majority of the Kiwi deaths in the war were not of ordinary soldiers, but rather of members of a specialised contingent: the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).

PRTs were an invention of the United States, first established in Afghanistan in early 2002. Each team was stationed to a province of the country, with the objective to "assist the host nation in developing its governance capacity, improve its security sector and cooperate in reconstruction and development of the infrastructure"  [source]. This declared aim places the PRTs squarely in the realm of the tactical technique of counterinsurgency. 

The New Zealand PRT was stationed in central Afghanistan, in Bamiyan province.

What is counterinsurgency?

Counterinsurgency (COIN) is quite easily defined as a concept- it is a method of fighting against insurgency, which itself is generally defined as a rebellion against the recognised government of a country, be it in the form of war, occupation or an otherwise armed offensive. Its method is what sets counterinsurgency apart from normal warfare- its strategy is "people-focused", rather than enemy-focused: aiming to win the loyalty of the general population of a warzone, in order to legitimise the recognised government and undermine the influence of rebels. Counterinsurgency teams are facilitated by the military, and do contain military personnel, but are also composed of academics, interpreters and sometimes specially-trained female soldiers, who have operated in Afghanistan since 2010 in 'Female Engagement Teams' (FETs). 

The strategies for US counterinsurgency are fourfold, and all feed into the ultimate goal of COIN operations, which is to restore control to the state's government, withdraw international forces from its borders and gradually change military enforcement of peace to a civic one. The four COIN pillars are as follows:

1. Political - The teams work to provide a framework for reconciliation and reform.
2. Economic -Providing and restoring basic civil necessities, and building the foundations for a market economy in the state.
3. Security - developing the state’s military, legal, judicial, and civil systems.
4. Information - Countering insurgents’ ideology and promoting the legitimate government's influence. 

The activities of COIN teams are often summed up by the phrase "winning hearts and minds". The objections to COIN as a military tactic often begin with that very clause. 

Image Credit: thedisorderofthings.com.

What's wrong with counterinsurgency?

As a combat strategy, COIN would appear to be a much more ethical option than standard engagement. Instead of treating civilians as a peripheral issue at best and "collateral damage" at worst, COIN places the ordinary people of a conflict zone at the centre of consideration. However, there are some major critiques of the strategy which call its apparently stainless ethics into doubt. 

The first comes from the American Anthropological Association. The criticism came as a response to the launch, in February 2007, of the US 'Human Terrain System' (HTS)- a program whose precursor, we can speculate, was the PRT scheme above. The HTS teams employed sociologists and anthropologists alongside its military personnel, and expected the academics to collect ethnographic information from the villages where they were stationed, and rapidly turn it into operational advice for the armed forces. The AAA denounced this employment as an "unacceptable application of anthropological expertise", and against anthropological ethics. Anthropologist David Price  raised the question: is counterinsurgency a weaponisation of culture? The AAA stated as much in their statement on the HTS scheme, which should stand as a significant argument against the practices of COIN teams. 

Colonel Gian Gentile. Image Credit: New York Times

The second critique was raised by former West Point history professor Col Gian Gentile. Gentile is one of the most visible critics of the US focus on counterinsurgency, and has claimed that the strategy is ineffective. He is quoted in commenting on B.H. Liddell Hart's object of war (producing a better state of peace at reasonable cost):

 

"The U.S. experience in Afghanistan is a failure as against Liddell Hart’s metric, as it was too expensive in terms of lives lost and dollars spent, for what is at best a corrupt and failing state"

 Up to the end of 2017, nearly 2,300 American lives had been lost in Afghanistan alone, and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the effort, Gentile predicted that the only way that COIN could have the desired effect in Afghanistan would be if the US were to stay there for "generations...70, 80, 90 years". Gentile recommends, at least, a removal of the objective of COIN toward state-building and its 'people-focus', with a shift toward sharp counter-terrorist action and post-conflict reconstruction. Simply, Col. Gentile argues, COIN doesn't work- and the ethics of wasting counterinsurgents' lives in the elongated process of battle should not be discounted.  

NZ Sgt Kamal Singh with local children in Bamiyan province, 2008. Image credit: New Zealand Herald.

Is COIN an ethical choice for warfare?

The critiques above notwithstanding, there is still some evidence to suggest that counterinsurgency, in its manifestations like HTS and, closer to home, the PRTs, is a 'gentler' and more constructive military strategy than conventional warfare. Raza Khadim, who worked as an interpreter for the New Zealand PRT, said that "hundreds of things done by the PRT have changed lives", and claimed that the loss of Kiwi lives had made Afghanistan a better place for "hundreds of thousands" of people. Khadim lists a number of projects- mostly in vital infrastructure, but also in democracy promotion (the first female governor in Afghanistan was elected during the PRT's tenure)- that were completed by the New Zealand PRT. With the knowledge that similar teams were at work in more than 20 regions of Afghanistan throughout the war, it is perhaps too dismissive to say that COIN is a strategy that should be abandoned for ethical reasons. COIN teams ensure that cultural sensitivity is given a role in conflict, and that civilian lives are (at least theoretically) treated as being as precious as the counterinsurgents' own. Indeed, after New Zealand's withdrawal from Aghanistan, 23 interpreters and their families were invited to settle in New Zealand permanently. While COIN's merit is questionable on the macro-level when submitted to purely philosophical ethical standards as well as rational realist ones, on the micro-level the system seems to work. Navigating this reality might be the next step in refining COIN to be the modern, ethical mode of war it has always had ambitions to be. 

Bronwyn Burns-Tilney, 2018