Categoría: Military History

THE MILITARY THOUGHT.

The military thought can be divide in professional and analytical or theoretic. Though departing from a common core of education, actions and interests, between the professional military thought and the analytical one are sufficient and important differences and functions, to distinguish them clearly in his sphere and his practice. Both forms of the military thought are two points of view, two approximations to that one, complementary, synergic (that act simultaneously and combined) and not antagonistic nor excluding.

The professional military thought is orientated towards the immediate thing: the methods, the tactics, the official procedures and rules from doctrine, manuals and regulations, the men, the equipment and the supplies and replacements. It is a whole world of interests, worries and obligations, often pressing and extreme. To link, to relate, to study and to operate on them simultaneously or successively, already takes the men sufficient time, interest and effort.

On the other hand, the Military man’s profession is a profession that every time is practically exercised during less time, thanks to God and by means of the civilization. But it does not exclude its unavoidable need for the survival and yet the bloom of the nations. The domain of the methods, tactics and weapons acquires by repetition, in the centers of instruction, the academies, the destinies. But, where to acquire «military experience»? Bismarck was saying that the intelligent man was learning with the other’s experiences. Paraphrasing the Iron’s German Chancellor (Prime Minister), we can complete that the «clever» learns with his own experience and the «idiot» does not learn with any.

The critical or analyst military thought is orientated towards the transcendence. The military study operates out over the combat and the maneuver. Absorbing their facts, elaborating experience and forming criteria, advice and procedure about the good «what to do». Its area are the militaries history and doctrine. That make concrete in the logistics, the operative strategy, the operations, the tactics, the fighting forms, the military strategy. The elaboration of the manuals and the regulations is one of the areas of contact and of joint action of both forms of military thought.

The positions of both forms of military thought are also independent. And they can manage to be self-sufficient and closed. Each one being waterproofed against the flow of knowledge and experiences that creates its another complementary form. This constitutes a serious problem for the military institution.

When does this happen? The Israeli military thinker Martin Van Creveld says that all the armies were tending to turn into «stiffened bureaucracies». And I add, moribund and slightly effective (according with the means that the society gives them; that who creates and nourishes them) for their fighting missions and to achieve their operative and strategic goals. They could continue killing, but they were doing it badly, slowly and expensively. Probably his excessive endogamia demands and forces them to allow that from out of the military organization innovating ideas are given to them. At least, the Americans did so and accepted them. And they tried to incorporate them into their doctrine, regulations and manuals. And, even they tried to put them into practice in their following conventional wars (not in the asymmetrical ones). We see the flexible and promising thing that is a child of a few years. And how is an elder, also healthy, nearly the death: rigid of body and soul, little opened to changes and experiences.

Even, sometimes, the theorist or studious, within the military profession, have problems in order that their ideas are accepted and applied. This one might be John Frederick Charles Fuller’s case. In the middle of the 20s of the 20th century, he compiled a series of lectures that he had given in military British academies and published the book The Foundations of the Science of War. It is a book not overcome yet about the principles of war and their practical application. Almost 65 years after its edition in 1926 it was re-edited by the Marines’ Corps. It is of difficult reading, because uses Spencer’s scientific concepts to justify his theoretical approximation. He was seeking to give his theory a scientific precision, which was removing the study of warfare from the frame, supposedly pejorative, of «art». Though all the social sciences, always and also, they are so, as the human soul is difficult to know, fix or quantify. It had many critiques and, lamentably, the own author later went back of the underlying ideas in the book. His work remained semi forgotten, though he contributed to the definition of the principles of war gathered immediately by the American Army. The critiques, in turn, had as bottom that he had an eccentric personality, in a social group (the military men) tremendously conservative and established by protocol. He had mystical streaks (Hindu philosophy, yoga) and flirted with the Nazi, being got by Hitler, since he was a general. In a Great Britain progressively threatened by the totalitarianisms, this position was out of place.

How is it possible to stop or even correct this powerful trend to the self-opinionated thought and to the degradation of the efficiency? Let’s see in a modern example, how the American Army and the Marines Corps approached their adjustment to the modern maneuvers warfare. Several are the theoretic ones, both civilians and military men, who helped to create a coherent, sufficient, practical and effective doctrine body for this new theory. We will emphasize the analyst and lecturer William S. Lind. Curious and significantly, Mr. Lind did not serve even one day in military active service and nobody has shot him neither. Though still there exist alive a good number of officials of old formation, anxious to remedy the latter practical deficiency of his «vital path». Another fundamental personage was the colonel John Boyd, who was a former fighter pilot of the USAF. Also is interesting the contribution of the colonel Michael Wyly, teacher of the Marines Corps. Chronologically in a second time row, stands out strongly, expanding the torrent of ideas of the theory in march, the colonel of the US Army Robert Leonhard.

Let’s have present also that, the violent dialectic between two national wills, as we might define the war, has at least two big authors or prominent figures. Whose respective ideas, approaches and facts are highly dissimilar. Nevertheless, only one of the actions turns out to be finally correct or, at least, winner. The divergent points of view are typical of many human actions: is there a crisis or we are OK? Or all is changing quite rapidly?

The Hamas’ defense in the Gaza strip

It is not easy to manage and defend the repulsing urban zones. Its employment demands high requirements to the Hamas combatants:
An enough motivation, which encourages them to follow the armed way and risking their lives for its cause. That appeases and rationalizes them the inevitable fear for the fighting in the nearby distances with a superior enemy, until the seniority offers to them new impulses. A good training in the infantry fighting, which gives them trade and confidence. A successful cooperation between the small units that garrison the zones, that guarantees them a cohesion without fissures in their tenuous and lean deployment and that allows and facilitates the command conduction and the accomplishment of his plans. To get iron nerves tempered by everything previous, that accustom them to fight in solitary or in small groups, refusing to flee in face of the implacable threat of the heavy Israelis military fire.

To all this «professional» tension that these irregular fighters support, there joins the tension created by a civil fierce fight. That they keep, for their will, intermingled with their unarmed families and homes, which turn out to be equally threatened and attacked. For all this, among the two tens of thousands of existing Hamas militias, not more than 20 % of them can in these moments use this kind of defensive fight.

These urban irregular enemies protect themselves extending their defensive positions beyond what would be necessary in a conventional defense. Covering this way a major occupied surface. In the defense zone they establish several reinforced delaying points. These protect the most critical positions of the zone, incorporate in the defense the buildings with steel structure , specially resistant, and form fire bags to ambush the Tsahal soldiers that gets through. But there are very few resistant buildings in the crushed and mistreated Hamastan. The resistance nests have in the Gaza zone more importance, provided that the occupation of the zone of defense is more tenuous, they cannot strengthen the positions too much for not stand out them to the Tsahal, the sights are more short and exist numerous approximation routes. They depend on the delaying points and they fall back to them, if are invaded or destroyed. Numerous alternative or exchange positions exist, more of the habitual in this kind of fight. This allows to deceive the Tsahal about the forward limit of the defense position, its real extension, the limits of the sectors that form it, the intentions of the rebel command of the zone about its defense and to disperse the heavy fire of the attacker. In the edges of the urban zones they never establish these fixed positions. Those are occupied by combat advanced parties which mission is to receive the possible explorers or civil observers, to avoid surprises and to deceive about the real tracing of the defensive zone. The occupants of combat advanced positions, distributed in pairs of sentries and some very small mobile patrol, fall back in their moment towards the more interiors delaying points.

These Hamas urban «fortresses» are diffuse, secret and imperceptible to the strangers. Only in a few hours their previous works are reinforced and occupied. It is necessary to enter in the houses to detect perforated walls and to find alleys under a furniture or a carpet. Its communication routes need more working time to get done, but also are less evident. Their firing positions are not complex. They need a few interlaced firing sectors, an immediate protection against the Israelis irruption in mass or with commands, a few covers against the heavy normal fire and a sufficient concealment that keeps them away from the sights of the enemy probable successive positions and his approximation avenues. The obstacles and the mines, even false in certain percentage and always distantly to not betray them, will serve to break in parts the enemy assault and to offer to them more static targets, for example for the mortars, which will have registered its fires. The destruction that generates the ample heavy fire support without aiming to a precise target, reinforces the rebel combat positions, surrounding them with debris that divide and impede the accesses of the military, except when they are reached by a ordnance direct impact. To operate this defensive net structure the Hamas militias have prepared numerous and narrow tunnels, dragging trenches and gaps in garden walls and interior walls of the buildings. In such a way that, away from the enemy sights, allow them to occupy the combat and observation positions at wish, to defend them more or less time or not, to move among them and to reinforce the most threatened or pressed positions.

Generally the Hamas irregulars would try to shoot from the front, with isolated or couples snipers preferably armed with the SVD sniper rifle, at individual and small groups of Tsahal infantry soldiers. And to attack from the flank or the rear at the enemy units that penetrate in their defensive zone, which already are disintegrated in squads or platoons with one or two armored vehicles in close fire support. Those prepared communications aforementioned allow them to appear, always in small number, behind or at the flanks of the Israelis units, while these stop, regroup, ask or receive instructions, or decide where to advance, and to erode them, causing some casualties. For example, from a basement or a floor, through an irregular hollow in a yard or garden wall, under a parked or destroyed vehicle in the street, where emerges a narrow tunnel with a covered and disguised mouth. From these positions the armed rebels fire some RPG-7V rockets or several short blasts, always aiming, of the Soviet RPK light machine gun or the obsolete RPD, but which always appear with irregular rebels. The interior houses courts serve them to place the mortars, which constitute their the only «heavy fire» fighting source, protected by a near infantry position. They fired them with the maximum angles on the abundant, large and always excessive Israelis concentrations. The usual mortar is the 82 mm. Russian modern M-1937 model. Here that the attacker presents three times more men (in fighting means the proportion must be 20 to 1) neither favors nor facilitates their labor. But this offers the persecuted Hamas defenders more targets against use their exiguous fire power. Especially because, in a given moment, is small the attackers’ proportion that are putting in real distress the defenders. Similar positions, protected by the houses and the interior courts environment and surrounded by innocent and unarmed inhabitants, are those that they use to stubbornly launch their free flight rockets, the Kassam and the Iranians, more modern and with more operational range which receive dismantled, on the Israeli nearby populations at the north of the Gaza strip.

The crucial moment for the defense comes when the Hamas zone commander decides to evacuate it, after having stopped and delayed the enemy assaults for some time. Trying to cause him losses as high as possible, but without been exposed excessively to a fighting in the close distances, or to be outflanked or to lose his freedom of action. This is inexorably tied to the transfer of space to the Israelis enemies. For it, the Hamas militias avoid and get through in opportune moment (using the night or a stop in the enemy attacks), the direct assault of their enemy, not his extensive or vague bombardment, without precision. The militias have enough exit tunnels directed to not very nearby buildings (often official and even respectable (mosques), offices, companies and some houses) or dry riverbeds (wades) and not evident bushes in the open land. From there they could disperse through the outside in very small groups towards friends reception positions, in the first moments. The protection of the evacuation is therefore vital and both entrances or exits from these tunnels are always covered by resistance nests, which take to end their rigid defense.

Some tactical and operative conclusions for this defense fighting.

The ground defense of Gaza is very difficult to maintain through the time. The strip lacks geographical space to be able to establish a flexible defense deployed in depth. This is necessary to give power, solidity, continuity and support to the rejection fight.

On the other hand, the external supply of weapon, ammunitions and military equipment to Hamas is strangled by Israel. That has bombarded accurately the zone of communication tunnels around Rafah, at the south of the strip, which were concealing crossing the border with Egypt. To guarantee its complete sealing, the Tsahal has established, at least, two «military locks» managed by mechanized infantry and tanks, near Netzarim and Tel Katifa and transversely to the land strip. Which practically prevent the transit (traffic is merchandising) of military equipment proceeding from Egypt.

Hamas’ «military» structure socially agrees with the local Palestinian clans. Its tactical top unit is a reinforced «battalion» of about half a thousand men, for giving it a practical «name». In its elite units, Hamas tries that the formation, training and equipment of the infantry militias are homogeneous. The mutual support of the sectors of the defense during an Israeli assault, is this way difficult and precarious. It is more difficult yet to realize counterattacks, not sectorial countershocks, over the ground Israeli penetrations against the Gaza strip.

Those will attack following 2 or 3 different and convergent directions. Seeking to disperse the Palestinian rejection fire, to disturb the command conduction of the defense and to break the coherence and consistency of all the position. With the first assaults, as unexpected as possible, on the edge of the populations, to obtain a few advanced depart positions and to be already on their interior. To continue then their difficult systematic work of advance and sweep. There are two Israeli indispensable infantry mechanized brigades in this operation: the Givati and the Golani. The first counts with small units trained for the assault with limited objectives in urban zones. The Golani is famous for her fight against the Syrian tanks in the war of the Yom Kipur of 1973, blocking their pass across the Golan Heights, to the plains of Galilee, and forming part of a tactical task force of combined arms of the Tsahal. The Golani has 4 or 5 battalions well trained in the urban war, using training camps very similar to the Palestinian populations.

Hamas, in its desperate fighting, is going to look for the serious enemy erosion (Israel is very sensitive to the men’s loss) in the numerous isolated microcombats that will happen during the irruption and the Israeli advance in the populations. But without being able to give a tactical transcendence, far from it operational, to its present military struggle.

The best thing that Hamas can do now is to leave this Numantian combat, without military hope. Looking for protect and keep its militias and people and to be prepared for another better occasion. Where, its blood’s effort in Allah’s path, this is the sense of the military «yihad», would be more useful and productive tactical and operatively

The Biological Warfare

ITS REAL POSSIBILITIES AS TERRORISTS’ USABLE WEAPON AND IN THE MODERN WARFARE. ITS INSTRUMENTS AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT.

The biological warfare is the military use, as war weapon, of the living pathogenic, animal or plant organisms, and of the natural poisonous products, called toxins. Since the germs and the bacteria are used in it, it is also called germ warfare, though this term only incorporates a part of the biological agents capable of being used aggressively against the men.

The military use of the pathogenic microbes.
The pathogenic organisms, which produce diseases in the man, can classify in 4 big categories or types: the fungi, the bacteria, the virus and the rickettsia, an intermediate entity between these 2 last ones, in its nature, size and characteristics.
The bacteria are unicellular organisms of spherical (they take the suffix coco in the name), cylindrical (the bacilli) or spiral (the espirilium) forms. They reproduce by transverse repeated division and, often, the partial microbes remain united forming a chain. Many of them can move by means of their whips or eyelashes (shorter). According to Lauria, the virus is a genetic element constituted by ribonucleic acid and desoxirribonucleic acid, suitably to move from cell to cell and capably of synthesizing with the available amino acids its particular proteins, which will form then the infective viral particles. It is not known neither its origin nor the date of its appearance, since the existence of fossils virus is ignored. Elford, in 1931, managed to measure its size, which varies between 10 and 300 microns. Also the virus classify in vegetables, animals and bacteriafhagous, every type with their specific characteristics. Their vital cycle has, among others, 5 important phases for us: fixation to the cellular surface, penetration inside the cell, multiplication of the virus at the cost of the components of that one, liberation of the new viral individuals and their dispersion in the environment.
The military employment of the pathogenic microbes is difficult, because they are living organisms. The military usual vectors, the conventional (explosive grenades) and the reactive artillery (rockets with ballistic path, without autonomous direction) and the air bombs, turn out to be too aggressive and destroy them before their dispersion in the target. To eliminate these serious limitations, bombs with ceramic cases have been developed, which has been tried satisfactorily with flies infected with the bacterium yessinia pestis, the causer of the bubonic pest. Also it has been tried its dispersion through the air, using dispensers means of several types. But its control and the estimation of the effect on the target are very difficult. During the 40s of last century, biological desiccated and freezing of the microbes technologies were improved. With them it was seeking to prolong their life and to increase their resistance, allowing them a major storage time, their dispersion using explosives and to achieve a longer exposure in the environmental conditions.
Their real employment by means of not military transmitters has been more common. In 1763, during the war in North America between Great Britain and France for the control of all the European colonies, the military British command decided to try to infect with smallpox the hostile Indians. With this motive 2 sheets and a handkerchief from the room of infected by smallpox in a British hospital, were delivered to 2 Indian chiefs. The disease spread soon among the tribes.
Soon after the suicidal air raids on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, in September, 2001, some packages and letters supposedly containing anthrax spores, active or in vitro, acquired or stolen in pharmacological investigation laboratories began to appear in the USA, in the post offices and the addresses. The collective paranoia of these tragic moments helped to increase the extension and the importance of these facts. And it constituted a multiplier of the propaganda perverse effect in any type of individual or collective terrorism aggression. Whose purpose is the terror extension, generally using violent indiscriminate actions and the threats of repeating them. That do that all the members of the attacked collectivity considering themselves to be possible or probable, according with the cases, goals of these future actions.
 

The toxins as a warfare weapon.
The toxins are poisons naturally produced by the plants or the animals, so much the big or visible as the microscopic ones or microbes.
The toxins have certain advantages for their employment as war weapon. They are natural, not more or less complicated, costly and unstable synthesis chemical products. This facilitates their production in pilot or manufacturer plant scale. Some of the biological toxins are among the most poisonous products that are known. Their effect is made without the presence of the producing agent. This one, as an alive organism, presents problems in its manipulation, as being more unstable or perishable than toxins. That is to say, they can be preserved and spread easier, by means of explosive special grenades or with aerosols or atomizers dispensers, boosted by inert or neutral gases.
The enterotoxin B of the golden estafilococo is the responsible of the majority of the food human poisonings. This bacterium can grow in multitude foods and on having done produces the toxin, which is consumed by the consumption. In general, the enterotoxin B is not lethal, but a dose of only 50 micrograms already causes vomits and diarrheas in the adults. The deliberate use of this toxin is possible. For example, during a siege by the irregular rebels, always relaxed and no hermetic, to military defensive positions, and trying to scourge and to debilitated the vital enemy resistance. The sharp sound effect produced by the operating toxin is called almost onomatopoeicly «the whistling sound».
A more terrible toxin, which it is possible also to find in the food, is the butolinic A toxin, produced by the clostridium butolinic bacteria. It is the most powerful known poison, a microgram kills an adult. The normal appearance of the bacterium associates with the badly preserved food, as the expired or badly sterilized during its manufacture tinned vegetables. It is a neuroagent that causes that the nervous system accumulates in excess during its functioning the acetilcolin, in a similar way that do the of nervous type agents used in the chemical warfare.
The castor toxin exists in the seeds and the leaves of the common castor plant. Its use by the secret service Bulgarian agents known as the umbrellas’ assassins, was confirmed in the 70s. In the free ends of those were concealed a mechanical launcher, which was projecting a pellet impregnated with the castor toxin and capably in the short distance of going in the naked meat. Two Bulgarian dissidents fled from the communist regime in their country, were positively identified of having being murdered this way in London.
 

Its appearance in the History. Modern situation.
From very ancient the pathogenic agents and the toxins have been used with military purposes. The poisoning of the enemy water fountains or to throw the infectious patients corpses over the enemy defensive walls, are military methods used by Alexander the Great or the Mongolian. It is only in the modern times when the use of biological agents in the war has acquired a stigma character. This way, no modern nation has admitted its employment in combat against her enemies.
We have an extreme example of how the use of biological agents by profane persons can go away of control, in the siege of the Genoese city of Kaffa, today called Feodosiya, placed in the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. During in it the biological harmful effects were reasonably circumscribed inside the walls of this city. In the middle of the XIVth century the Mongolian were besieging the city. The Mongolian were throwing over her walls, using catapults, the dead men’s bodies by the bubonic pest. It is thought that some Genoese ships that departed from the city towards their metropolis, could carry the plague’s bacillus, which was habitually lodging in the rates. Hereby the bubonic pest could reach Italy, and begin the massive and fulminating epidemic known in the History as the Black Death, which almost depopulated the European continent in that century.
From the 80s of last century, the genetic engineering and the biotecnology have turned into technically industrial instruments destined to improve the life conditions of the humanity. One of its possible applications is the development of vaccines against the pathogenic agents, both the natural and the reinforced by genetic actions on the first ones. This can allow the most developed countries to acquire a certain more or less widespread immunity, which is never absolute, against these biological attacks. Whereas their potential enemies, less technologically developed and with fewer economic resources, except the crude oil producers during the expansion phase of the sales cycle, would be defenseless against the biological military agents.
Its military use is punctual and restricted.
The effective, precise in the time and controlled use of biological agents in the modern combat is difficult and its results are also too vague. For the majority of the biological agents, its own nature does that its controlled launch on a target is difficult. Between the effective action on the enemy and the beginning and the development of the disease, it exists an unavoidable delay, due to the inevitable incubation periods, that goes from the hours to days; which is never acceptable in a mobile military operation. Always exist the natural and the acquired immunities (by vaccination or more or less controlled exposure), that prevent from specifying the real probable results, the number of enemy casualties derived from a biological attack. The theoretical estimated effects are diminished by certain climatic conditions, the rain, the fog, the solar luminosity and the extreme temperatures, or altered by the winds, which drag them of the surface target.
For all this, nowadays the military use of biological agents has a restricted employment in the special operations and the more or less concealed harassment of the enemy, technique where the time is not a rigid and critical parameter. This way, the goal of debilitating the enemy, more than eliminate him totally, does that the calculations of the conflicting forces correlation have to be neither so exact nor so punctual in time. The dissemination of the biological agents becomes directly, without the employment of the heavy ammunitions used as vectors. And the time between the exposure and the development of the disease, betrayed by its symptoms, constitutes then a planning factor within the attacking plan.
 

Its difficult and improbable use by terrorists and madmen.
Attempts have been, as the already indicated about the anthrax spores and this that we report now. In 1980 the French police assaulted a home of the Red German Army Fraction in Paris, placed in n º 41 A, Chaillot street. Those which chiefs committed simultaneously suicide later in their isolation cells in Germany. There they found a simple but effective installation «washing-up basin» type for producing the butolinic A toxin.
A natural repugnance exists in the men to experiencing the diseases, specially the infectious, the disfigurement ones and the extreme debilitating. It is only enough to see the announcements about all kinds of health centers, which offer something like a youth elixir, similar to that Ponce of León looked for in The Florida in the 16th century. The age is inevitable and implacable, but it is sought to keep, almost by all the means, the use and enjoyment of the maturity, which deterioration is one of the most fearsome effects of the diseases. The infectious serious diseases are in the habit of passing with external catastrophic symptoms. The man s attacked from inside in his aspect, in his integrity and in his capacities, by a painful and even disgusting way, up to his infamous death. This is not the death more or less adorned by us, to make it glorious and less disgusting, which is waited for the soldiers in the battlefield.
The manipulation of the pathogenic microbes and their poisonous derivatives imply high pharmacological and chemical technology operations. Here any leak or impurity leads to the failure of the experiment or to an affection of the manipulators (the most nearby and exposed possible carriers). And already we know something of how these pathogenic dwarfs and their organic products operate over us.
The fundamentalist Islamic fanatics do not find in the Noble Koran nor in the Prophet’s sunna any inducement, stimulus or excuse for their employment in the war. The microbes and their humors are in the category of the pork, the dog, the aquatic animals without fins, of the banned by Allah, all of them impure and detestable for the faithful Muslim. When the Book descended from Allah, the “ansars” or Islam’s devout could acceptably died by the sword, the mace, the axe, the lance and the arrows, in defense of the Umma or universal Islamic community and to extend its domains, applying the Jihad or sanctified war in many aleyas or verses of the Koran.
One also speaks about the possible utilization of the most attainable and known for the biological warfare means by the madmen. But a mad is not an demented. The demented has degraded his cognitive and volitional powers, by the physical deterioration of his cerebral tissues, due to the age or certain diseases (ictus, cerebral arteriosclerosis). The mad, for his part, has a portion of his feelings, ideas and concepts affected, upset and missed. But the madman is capable of reasoning specially in the topics that I will call «objectives», which are outside of his deliriums and mental affections. The madman can believe that his more or less individual terrorist actions, will be important to subvert the political regime of a country. But the mad can know how to mix sugar and potassium chlorate (the pills to disinfect the throat) to make a domestic explosive. Though the ETA (BASQUE SECESIONIST REVOLUTIONARY GROUP) adds sulphur to it, here it is not needed and only reduces the weight efficiency, since the chlorine takes charge connecting with the potassium and forming potassium chloride. In any case, the sulphur can be obtained, as component of the gunpowder, if there exist sensitive products restrictions, treating with commercial chlorhidric acid the sodium bisulphide, a photographic developer. Or how to concentrate the cars batteries liquid, to obtain sulphuric acid, base to obtain nitric acid (for the cotton powder or without smoke powder) and nitrates (the oxygen supplier in the smoke gunpowders, base of the pyrotechnic. And the madman also has very much, a lot of fear, probably more because a hypochondriac specific component, about the degrading diseases, stigmatized by the social group.

Military Operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A Fourth Generation (asymmetrical, Guerrilla) War in Central Asia.

How do Western and Pakistani Armies develop their military operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda?  What is the idiosyncrasy of the 40 million Pasthuns who live in the territories infected by them? How is the Pashtunwali or honor’s code of their tribes? How can be better attacked the presence, a perfect control does not exist, of the rebels and terrorists in the wide zone on both sides of the «Northwest border» Afghan Pakistani? The instruction, the omnipresent use of the heavy fire support and the mentality of the great modern armies, do they facilitate the efficient military operations against indomitable fanatic religious rebels in their own lands?

The social and military situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban and al-Qaeda form two vertically organized movements and from below to up. The ideological and geographical nearness allows them to collaborate tactically. That does that its cells do not know exactly which are the higher chiefs. They only know where they have to go to receive support or to send or to receive information or to communicate with another «peer» cell. The commands of these movements act by exception, not by presence or by deliberate action. This allows them to operate well, without the intervention of its high commands. The death of the mullah Omar and two or three chiefs in an American bombardment, would concern little its efficiency, its real military irregular levels of action. The «martyrdom» of the aforesaid or Bin Laden or his «managing director» al-Zawahiri would perform almost equal importance as their existence.
The operative key of the Taliban resides in their innumerable local chiefs (sheiks), with their small guerrillas bands. They are the persons in charge of intimidating, teaching, scaring, attacking and occupying more or less temporarily some of the numerous settlements and hamlets. According to the pressure degree that they should exercise on the villagers in order that they inform them, hide them and support them. Evidently its elementary degree of operative development keeps the movement at the defensive. Without being able to dispute to any of the present Armies in these areas, any territory or village. Without being able to realize other attack actions beyond ambushes, assaults to very small enemy isolated units, harassment by medium range fire, kidnapping, short duration isolated incursions and ways and paths mined. Ideologically concentrated in the conversion to their movement, to their semi nomadic cells, of the most related or nearby Pashtuns. In a minor and less extensive degree, operate the more independent cells of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Their usual procedure for assault a weak defended or without fighting spirit position is this: at dawn they bombard with the fixed rocket launchers heavy fire, then they approach to use mortars, finally, the assault it is realized by several independent squads, that converging advance shooting AK and RPD or PK machine gun bursts and their RPG and RL personal grenade-launchers.
Afghanistan almost lacks asphalt roads: there are only two. The most important gives itself a round turn all over the country, joining the principal populations, Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, etc. So they called it Ring Road. Then there is the North-South Road, which follows this tour, at the east of the country. They are not great thing. The asphalt have between half and one inch of thickness; the heats soften it and pot-holes and bubbles are easily formed. But, under a protuberance can hide an explosive device. It is necessary to cross slow the roads, looking at the soil and looking over the horizon, searching for carelessness observers, not very distant. The Taliban have the habit of recording on video the ambushes, to hang them on Internet. They are not in the habit of using cables activators; these are expensive and weigh, and the rebels are in isolated zones and the logistics is weak and complicated. The devices are activated by the pressure of the vehicle or by an frequency  transmitter with a given range; even serves an electronic opening door device. With the frequency inhibitors, the soldiers try to offset the radio waves in the probable frequencies used in the zone. Being the most expensive and complicated transmitters, that with more range, power and frequencies range. It is the game of the cat and the mouse. The problem is that the guerrillas of an area receive a radio activator that uses an unforeseen frequency.
As for the usual attack by the light and medium weapons fire, the guerrillas do not approach too much. They are less trained and equipped than that the professional military men. They act roughly scourging. Their more frequent weapon, the AK in its variants 47 and M are not precise beyond 150-175 m., in linear shooting. The mortars fire turns out to be imprecise and can be eluded against a mounted patrol. Nevertheless, against the civilians and the vehicles and goods traffic these assault skills are sufficient and effective. The most  terrifying and effective weapon of the Taliban is the illuminated fanatic suicidal. That looks for, as passport to the Houris’ Garden (it is not an eternal prize!!), to carry with him the major number of dead and mutilated enemies. But the attacker could be a religious madman, but is not an idiot. The suicides do not attack the military prepared or fortified positions. Endowed in their defensive perimeter with complicated wire fences, pits, walls, spaces between obstacles, alarms. Because they know that the explosion will vanish in the air and that they will not let him to approach the sentries outposts, because already they are waiting for him. The principal weapon of the suicide is not his explosive belt or jacket. They are the surprise, the freedom of action and the initiative.
The units of the Allied armies (in Afghanistan) or of the Pakistani army act employing battalions and regiments. With the battalion forces they try to sweep a zone in a direction, in whose opposite limit they have deployed a military «bolt». With a regiment they are in the habit of carrying out a search and annihilation operation in a given area. They are probably too much forces. The highland guerrillas have a natural weapon which lack the soldiers trained in «our way «: the patience and sobriety. In Vietnam they were lonely raised to the trees, and there were silently and stilly waiting, until the crossing of the soldiers who were sweeping the operational zone. Covering with mud the roof of an Afghan hut, it prevents the observation of its interior by the thermal vision airborne devices, crewed or not.
In 2002 the Pakistani began to send troops to the Waziristan and other Pashtuns zones, reaching progressively 80 thousand deployed men there. In their operations, destroyed Taliban training fields and captured many terrorist chiefs. But their regular war tactics and techniques, alienated them the favor or the neutrality, according to the cases, of the tribes, since there were taking place very easily civil innocent victims with them. Finally, in the autumn of 2005 the Government reached an agreement with the tribe chiefs or Maliks, moving back from the zone. It was a low intensity conflict: in the last 2 years 700 military men died. The problem was that it was clearly seen that the military men could not dominate the Pashtuns areas and clean them of terrorists. Since then, the reprisal raids are sporadic and punctual, over detected and given targets, which not always is obtained or destroyed.

The geographical space of the Pashtuns tribes (Afghans and Pakistani).

From Pakistan, looking from the Punjab (or «the land of the five rivers») towards Afghanistan, appears the great bed of the Indus river. This acts as geographical border with the Pashtuns lands, forming an enormous natural moat, which never stopped their raids. Then appears an irregular mixture of plains and mountainous spurs, in lands that turn out to be fertile when they can be watered, shaped by the first heights of the Suliman great mountainous chain. Beyond, the big mountains crown. Towards the north, forming perpetual snow zones, there are Alpine type pastures and heights forests, up to reaching the spurs of the massive chain Hindu Kush. Towards the south, spread the lowest Waziristan mountains, in which appear rocky outcrops at more than 3000  m. of altitude. Descending more toward south, are bush covered spurs and gullies, up to the desolation of Zheb and Mekran areas, already near the Indian Ocean, in the Baluchistan.
These intricate heights provide a wall that prevents massive invasions from one or another side of them, provided the passes are dominated. The most famous still nowadays is Khiber, since it opens the way between Kabul and Peshawar.
In the Baluchistan live the Baluchi, Braui and Pashtun (in the northern part) etnia tribes. In the South and North Waziristan’s regions the Pashtuns are more concentrated, forming a real Pakistani Pashtunistan. Within the great pashtun etnia, the Mahsuds (these specially inclined to break the agreements and treaties) are in the Waziristan central zone, the Wasirs and the Afridis live in the zone of Tirah and the Mohmands, at the north of Tirah. The zone of Chitral, at the north of the border, is formed by the Bajaur, Dhir and Swat districts. The Waziristans are the most problematic, independent and turbulent tribes. Their lands are poor and rough, in which scarcely they find an elementary sustenance. Formerly, up to the first third of last century, they were in the habit of descending occasionally in armed raids up to the Indus valley. To obtain value goods, mounts, jewels, foreign women, attacking and harvesting its inhabitants, which were Hindu of race and religion, and therefore, unbelievers. More to the south-east of the lands of these tribes, without coming yet to the Indus valley, are the lands also mountainous of the Khattaks, Bangashis and Yusufzais, all also Pashtuns. Tribes that produced first class Sepoys for the semi irregular British units operating in these zones.
The Afghan heights around the border with Pakistan are the other great slope west of the mentioned mountainous chains, crowned at the north of the country by the great Hindu Kush. The absence of European explorers in the Afghan side (Afghanistan was an independent country opposite to Russians and British), does that they are less studied and very little known by non specialist people.
In Afghanistan, the Pashtuns are at the south and south-east, reaching 35% of the population and around 12,5 millions persons. Another important Afghan etnia are the Uzbecs (10%) and the Tajiks (25%), which live in the north of the country, bordering the Tajikistan and Uzbekistan independent republics. In the center live the Hazaras (20 % of the population), related with the Persian and in the south are the Baluchis (10 %), related, in turn, with the Pakistani Baluchistan tribes. The flow of Afghans, specially Pashtuns, towards Pakistan or coming back home, when the military conditions are smoothed, does that the figures, lacking for decades of an official census, are variable and vague.
In Pakistan are 4 great etnias: the Pashtuns, the Punjabis, the Sindhi and the Baluchis. Precisely, the country is nowadays divided in four big provinces: Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the Northwest Border, each one formed by numerous administrative districts. There exists an autonomous tribes zone, that goes between the last province and the border with Afghanistan and that is governed by the central federal authority. The tribal zone possesses 7 tribal agencies and 6 small districts. The individuals of Pashtun etnia are approximately 25 millions in the country.
After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the dispute arose with Afghanistan for the possession of the wide frontier tribal zones, which was looking for its exit to the sea. Both countries almost came to the armed conflict, until they signed in 1963 an agreement of borders determination. The borders existing during the British domain were ratified in it. And Afghanistan stayed as an interior country, without access to the sea routes.

Social anthropologic particularities of the Pashtuns tribes.

The internal relations of the groups, families and local families groups and clans, are characterized by incorporating into them certain rites, rules, attitudes and taboos. These gather, value and quantify their vital needs, their primary emotions and their beliefs. The Islam is rigorously followed in the wide zone we treat. They are all of the sunni branch, that accepts the Koran and the Prophet Sunna, his acts and remarks (hadices) due gathered by his disciples, as the orthodox sources of Allah’s revelation to the men. The differences reside in the rigor with which they examine and accept the sources of the Sunna. This assumption forms a part of the social inculturation, strengthening and cohesion of these groups.
These societies agree and are ruled by an authority, more or less respected and obeyed. The more be perfected and advance towards the exterior the society, the power of this authority will become strong and grow and will spread in influence areas. The smaller and isolated is the group, the authority power will be more moderating and integrating, acting as the first between the «equal ones». In these last cases, the meeting of the active members (men, hunters) of the clan in assemblies, “jurgas” (in its language), etc., has supreme and sanctioning value of the deviant or solvent conducts for the group. Evidently, in these local councils, the prestige and the power of each individual member counts, and in them some are more «equal» than others. These local chiefs or Maliks are like favored negotiators with the different governments, who enjoy a personal more than institutional authority, and whose agreements can be ignored by the adult males, if are not confirmed by the assemblies.
Their code of customs and honor is the Pashtunwali. It establishes to the individual certain rights and demands from him certain social duties towards the family, the clan and the tribe. The basic disputes on women, gold or valid money and lands are in the origin of the durable hatreds in these tribes. And that must be kept up to avenging the perceived affront. The own fragility and weakness of the society demands the appearance of the protective values. These might be the hospitality, the loyalty, the friendship, the scorn of the strange, the revenge of affronts and damages, the individual and collective honor. Each of them protects and enlarges in some measure or shade the small human group. As we will see the relations they are interpersonal, in the areas of the family, the clan and the region. They are projected by the opportunity, the nearness, the exchange of goods and the relation. And become strong with the loyalty, the respect of the accepted procedures and the treatment time. And depending on the accumulation of these elementary successive acts. A stranger can aspire this way to his integration, in a personal manner. And not for the quality or importance of his category or institutional position.
The hospitality takes implicit the reciprocity, when one travels, is alone and is not aggressive. This sometimes is perfected by the endowment of an escort to the traveler through insecure zones. The violation of this «escort» by an assault supposes a serious affront for the clan that provided it. The loyalty between the members of the group, sometimes very unstable, cohesion it. The honor inflates the self esteem and appearance before everybody. The revenge, in absence of a real justice, search to punish and then to repair the damages and affronts real or perceived. The scorn of strange not adorned with good qualities or menacing the group, seeks to prevent a priori their integration in it, as a passive defense form. The friendship embraces the ties with the equals and within the group. If someone joins these elementary groups, he is object of loyalty and friendship in a personal way. These values would increase by his performance, ways and personal behavior. It would be the case of a native forces chief, accepted by them for the pays, the honor and the status that they offer and project on the regional clans. The acceptance is not with the cargo, but with the person.
Another characteristic of the social organization of these frontier semi independent tribes is that they stimulate a relative endogamia. With it they seek to isolate, to protect, to support or to increase their idiosyncrasy, influence and patrimony. But, without been biological harmful its use. As it would be between the members of the same family or small or nearby clan. In effect, the marriages not only suppose and carry individuals exchanges between the families of the married. They also produce exchanges and flows of gifts, visits, relations and power plots. In a few little evolved societies, living in a difficult way and, sometimes surrounded temporarily by hostile, the matrimonial relations produce a «revenue», an increases of social positions, influences and goods, which are very estimated by the families.

How is it necessary to confront the approximation towards the frontier tribes and foment their pacification? So that they isolate and expel the violent radical elements. And assume a more lasting and strong ties with the central authorities of both implied countries.

The highland villages are numerous, small and spread for both sides of the common border. In them can be camouflaged a small group of «regulars» Taliban, waiting that the jerky military flood passes away. Apart, the Taliban enjoy a complicated system of natural caves, reinforced by communication tunnels, endowed with extended zones for waiting and the storage of all classes of goods. This system is used to facilitate the traffic between both countries, without having to use the frontier passages or the most habitual and known gorges, as «parts» of the complete journey. And as temporary refuge, when the Allies carry out reprisal or rebels searching operations, on Pashtun zones where they have been more active. Taliban are Pashtuns. Only are distinguished from the local tribes by their major religious proselytism and military activity. Some of the villagers whom the soldiers meet in their patrols and searches, could be «part-time» Taliban and sympathizers. Two or three men of a native group that pass along a rural way, can be a  Taliban team moving across.
Here it is possible to exploit an atavism that survives in all the collectivities. And that is shackled by the civic and moral education in the so called educated nations. And that is the egoism, as original fruit of the defense need and of the chronic shortage of original resources. That generates in the most primitive societies a distrust towards the non nearby neighbor, who is collectively estimated as a competitor and a probable enemy. The Taliban are foreign in Pakistan, and committed in a foreign war. Apart from their select and absorbent radical interpretation of the sunni Islam. Following the mentioned general guidelines it is easy and simple, though laborious and necessarily progressive, to achieve that the Pakistani Pashtuns close up their lands to the Taliban. Avoiding this way the spread of their doctrine and methods. And the extension of their operative refuges towards the west of the Indus, which always will prevent their possible eradication of Afghanistan.
The military operations in the modern wars (of third generation) demand to detect the most rapid and precisely a mechanized enemy, along all his deployment, up to his reserves. Then attacks him with ground and air heavy fire, including tactical rockets. But here the enemy is evasive, dispersed, worse armed, bad trained, unruly. He is native, is tough and scanty, hides easily, is a born predator, usually does not defend his positions. The operations of the military big units and units let escape the guerrilla teams, through infinity of tactical «interstices» or microvacuums of military «combat capacity». It is necessary to operate with nearness at his microtactical military level. To the diffuse, tenuous, but omnipresent «swarm» of the Taliban is necessary to interpose a civic military «swarm». Formed by voluntary elements, more qualified, professional and trained than the guerrillas.
It is necessary to create small «action units», for combined “social military” actions. That are capable of reaching the Taliban habitat and to expel them from it, progressively and firmly. Interposing between them and the tribes, his real guerrilla habitat. Units that, in its basic or standard model, would be formed by a squad of infantry light local loyal trained forces, a squad of professional foreign infantries and a group of civil technical personnel for tribe promotion and education with suitable material. Its logistics and support will be based on ground units and heliborne forces, centrally controlled from 2 or 3 near operative bases. And complemented by mobile columns in vehicles or of cavalry, forming a support patrols’ network in a region.
Once made firm these small flexible units, can arrive there major forces and brigades of work and education, to go garrison the zone and stimulating its social improvement. It is necessary to possess money to buy the will of collaborators and sympathizers. This can become facilitating work and social distinction to them. And to realize the necessary plans of development.
To eradicate the opium crops can be an independent strategic goal. And it is necessary to value very well its opportunity and possibility for every small zone. It is necessary to offer the natives an alternative of peace, progress and well-being, within their beliefs and ways, in order that they expel the Taliban.

The defense of the military positions in the asymmetrical counterinsurgency warfare.

The effective defense of the billeting, redoubts and military camps from the attack and harassment of the irregular armed rebels is based on three operative qualities: the initiative, the mobility and the offensive action. These, in turn, are directly determined by the mentality and the combative disposition of the military men (which depend fundamentally on them) and by the military capacity or available means in the operations zone (that depend fundamentally on the politicians and the public managers).

The countless military, social, ethnic and economic guerrilla targets in an asymmetrical conflict.
Almost by definition, the military and police available means in a war against the irregulars are very scanty, and even they can be scandalously insufficient. And this does not depend so much of them not on the established authorities, but it is a direct function of the strategy inherent in a guerrilla right development process. The number of possible, potential goals and targets, which offers an organized modern, more or less developed society, to the operative solvent strategy of an armed insurgency is almost countless and inexhaustible.
Let’s see an expressive, but not exhaustive relation:
Attempts on civil and religious authorities and on isolated members or little groups of the armed forces and policemen.
Destruction and sabotage of the plants and energetic networks: thermal plants, dams, combined cycle plants, wind fields, refineries, fuels deposits, crude oil and gas pipelines, electric transformers and high tension lines and their centers of control and distribution.
Assaults to the lines of communications: television and mobile telephony repeaters, broadcasting stations, radio antennas, telegraphic wires, bridges, tunnels and viaducts, halts and railway stations, railroad track and catenary parts, trains and buses, great tonnage trucks and distribution transport vehicles, temporary obstacles in the roads and railway tracks, covered or not by indirect or direct fire.
Destruction or incapacitation of directly economic means of all sizes and importance: mines, plantations, industries, shops, hotels and resorts, groups of tourists. In these cases the insurgency must value the direct loss of working places and the probable alienation of part of the popular sympathy towards it; the effect is similar if there gets depressed the economic activity, but the employment is not destroyed directly.

The biased political intervention in this kind of social irregular military conflicts is a plague for the military struggle.
Sun Tzu is the real or supposed name of a Chinese author, who wrote The Thirteen Chapters on the Art of War, between 400 and 320 BC The style unit and its originality allow to affirm that it is neither a collective work nor a summary. And the use of the cross-bow did not generalize until 400 BC and the cavalry was not incorporated into the army before 320 BC And, what does Sun Tzu say on the military missions and the political spurious interference on them?
«Normally, when the armed forces are employed, the general first receives the general orders from the sovereign. Later he assembles the troops, and makes the army a quite homogeneous and harmonious unity and installs it in its camp”. Chapter 7, verse 1.
«It is necessary to know the sovereign has three ways of taking his army to the disaster. They consist in proceeding as follows:
To ignore that the army must not advance and order that it should advance, or, to ignore that it must not withdraw and arrange a retreat. This is what is called «to put the army in a difficulty». Chia Lin’s commentary: «there is no major calamity that the orders of a sovereign that resides in the court».
To ignore all the military matters and to take part in its administration. This disorients the officials.
To ignore all the problems of the command and to take part in the exercise of the military responsibilities. This destroys the spirit of the officials » Chapter 3, verses 19 to 22.
«That who has competent generals and protects them from the interference of the sovereign, will be the victor”. Ibid, verse 29. Hsi Ho Yen’s commentary: «In the war hundreds of changes take place in every stage. To say that a general must wait for all the orders from his Superiors is like to inform a Superior that you want to extinguish a fire. Before the orders come the ashes will be cold. And it has been said that in such circumstances it is necessary for  him to consult the General Inspector of the Army! To tie shortly a competent general, while he is asked to suppress a crafty enemy, is like to hold the Black Greyhound of the Han and later give it the order to  catch unattainable hares»
«There are cases in which the orders of the sovereign do not have to be executed necessarily. Chang Yu’s commentary: «The king Fu Chai has said: ‘ If you know which is the conduct to follow, go on; do not wait the instructions».
A general who possesses a perfect knowledge of his trade, knows how to handle the troops. Chia Lin’s commentary: «The general must be sure of being able to exploit the situation in his profit, according to its circumstances» Chapter 8, verses 8 and 9.

A vivid example of a right camp defense taken from the Vietnam’s war.
2 º battalion of the 28 North American infantry regiment carried out in March, 1966 the operation Cocoa Beach, of “search and destroy” units of the Viet Cong, in the Ben Cat district, Binh Dueng province of South Vietnam. The battalion, at lieutenant colonel Kyle M. Bowie’s orders, moved afoot on March 2 from the base of its brigade in Lai Khe up to the Lo Ke rubber plantation. There it established a strong defensive perimeter, in a flat and free of bushes area, except for some hedges and elephant grass spots. West of the plantation a thick jungle was raising. The time was good.
The following day, the companies A and B initiated their missions, remaining the company C in garrison. In its return, company B located an enormous trench of several km, which was passing in North and North-East directions from the US camp. And that had been occupied recently by an important enemy force, as the new excavations in it were proving.
Colonel Bowie supposing that a great Viet Cong force was in the vicinity, coordinated with the 3 ª brigade to assure himself the air and artillery supports. The fighting positions of his men in the camp were improved and protected everything possible. Bowie also established three observation and combat positions, each for a reinforced section, advanced by each company, at approximately 500 m. out the camp perimeter.
Around 06:00 on March 5, the second lieutenant Robert Hibbs, company B, in positions with his section on the perpendicular crossing of the routes Blue and Red, at the northwest of the camp, observed a group of armed women and children carrying ammunition. They were moving slowly through the Red route (parallel to the trench) and stopped at approximately 100 m. from the patrol.
Immediately he detected a company of the Viet Cong advancing from north to south in the Blue route, which stopped at approximately 50 m. of his position. Three Viets went to the group of civilians. The patrol used the delay to direct all her Claymore grenades on the Blue route. Finally, the guerrilla company continued the march. When its main body was at approximately 6 m. of the patrol, this one detonated her Claymore and threw hand grenades, dispersing finally the rest of the Viets with the fire of the M-16s. On having heard the explosions colonel Bowie ordered Hibbs to return. In her way of return, the patrol reached the rear of another enemy company, deployed already to attack. The American patrol attacked the enemy and crossed its assault deployment, routing it totally. Hibbs died trying to recover with his sergeant a wounded straggler. Before falling down definitively, hurt several times, he destroyed his night vision devices. Honor’s Medal of the Congress was granted to him.
The patrol of the company A was operating south of the camp. Soon she was totally surrounded by Viet Cong columns, which ignored her presence and which were going towards the American battalion. The patrol stuck at the end of an enemy squad, to go approaching the perimeter. Already near it, this way out was made initially shooting and launching grenades over the nearby guerrillas, slipping towards the camp.
Bowie withdrew patrol C. Around 07:00 the battalion was occupying his defense positions almost in full force.
The opportune detection of the enemy intention, the premature dislocation of part of his attack deployment, the precise support by the brigade heavy fire and the defensive positions in depth of the battalion were decisive. Around 12:00 the enemy assault, by the 272 regiment of infantry of the Viet Cong, reinforced by a heavy weapon battalion in war subordination, had vanished with the most serious losses.

One example from the Iraqi counter insurgency war. The  Spanish base in Diwaniya
On August 28, 2003 an Spanish infantry brigade assumed the control of the sector centered in Diwaniya, as part of the Hispanic Polish division, deployed in the south center of Iraq. Diwaniya, city of approximately 100 thousand inhabitants, is the capital of Al-Qadisiya’s province.
Scarcely come to the power in April, 2004, one of the first orders of the Spanish Chief of the Government Rodríguez was the retreat of our forces of Iraq. The following one was to grant the Great Cross of the Military Merit to the minister of Defense, for the above mentioned withdraw operation. The shame of his family made resign Mr. Bono the above mentioned high decoration. On May 21 were transferred officially the control of our three barracks, Spain, Al-Andalus and Santo Domingo, in Diwaniya to the North American forces.
The North American command initiated this April an offensive in this zone against the so called Army of the Mahdi (the guided by Allah) of the imam chií Muqtada al-Sadr (see our article » Iraq Hoy” in this blog) and they requested the active Spanish help. As our forces did not have a Parliament “mandate” to take part in attack operation, the continuity of their mission in the reconstruction and stabilization of Iraq was staying in precariously indefinitely.
The situation had deteriorated so much that the Iraqi governor of Al-Qadisiya, more extensive than Estremadura Spanish province and with approximately 800 thousand inhabitants, had just deserted and to form a band of approximately 40 followers, to make worth) his master of the war’s rights.
Diwaniya’s facilities, where were lodging our more than thousand men, remained turned into Fort Apache’s imitation. Because the Iraqi rebels are not in the habit of estimating these subtleties like: «I am here, but I do not attack you» or «I am white, rich and use Kevlar helmet, but I am not Yankee». We were an easy and comfortable target for their fury and hatred to a not Islamic democracy and to the winning Christians occupants.
During more than one month the irregular rebels chiíes realize a permanent harassment of our barracks, tremendously defended (sensors, pits, wire fences and fortifications) against the islamist suicides assault bombs. But it happens that these suicides, who are illuminated but not silly fanatics, attack enemies groups not protected sufficiently, searching as passport to the Houris Garden, to take with them the major possible number of dead or mutilated enemies. There was not even a suicidal attempt against us.
The majority of the days of wait up to the announced retreat, our billetings were scourged by automatic fire of light weapon and mortar shells, with an average of 10 grenades for assault. In order to remove the origin of the indirect fire, our forces realized assaults with limited aims, expelling the irregular mortars up to the other side of the river. In the encounters and ambushes suffered, we killed approximately 20 rebels. We suffered a dozen of injured men in the whole process and several Arabic collaborators died. We do not have any news or help from the chií battalion of the Iraqi Army that we were training. And whose colonel was asking formally us not to return to Spain.

Some possible right fighting missions for this type of defense.
The gravity center of the active defense of the military fixed positions resides in the observation and the control of the approximation routes. That in rural zone can be a semi flooded rice field; in mountainous area, a heights line below the military crest; in urban zone, the streets orientated towards them, from certain distance, and in a road, a verge. All this compounded by the climate and the day hour.
The observation and fighting positions can consist from the couple of snipers up to a platoon, according to the characteristics of the area and the intentions and capacities of the enemy. Those are apart of the perimeter defense and of the patrols who cross it randomly, that constitute a part of the camp static defense.
The enemy is in the habit of exploring, at least initially and also in fluid fighting conditions, by observation. It is important to locate and to eliminate these reconnaissance positions. The patient observation is the way. Bearing in mind that if the exigency is intense, every 30 minutes the observer must be replaced, because he looks, but already not sees.
If additional means exist for it and as complement, it is very necessary to use the energetic patrolling (see our article “Irak, hoy” in this blog) against the enemy, moving away much more.
A passive defense, limited to rejecting the assaults, with the initiative and the election of the moments in hands of the enemy, is almost the most solvent of the combat morale that can experience a force, leaving apart a defeat. Ask about it to the Frenchmen who were defending multitude of redoubts and positions in Indochina before Dien Bien Fu in 1954 and to the nationalistic Chinese until 1949.

Maneuver Warfare. Its links with the Military Operational Strategy.

Introduction and Scope of the three different levels of the military activity.

The first level of the activity of the defense of an organized Society is called national strategy and also, some old-fashioned, great strategy. In it must be considered also the economic and diplomatic resources of the State, as part of the resources of a nation to obtain her big strategic goals in a war.

The military strategy or simply strategy treats, in the second great level of activity in the national defense, of the definition of the big goals of a war, of a theatre of operations or a campaign, and of the assignment of the military, generally scanty or very scanty resources, to get them.

The tactics devote itself to the best accomplishment of the combats against an enemy, whom is opposed to the achievement of our strategic goals by military means. The combat skills and technics are the bricks which help to construct the tactics. They are the specific knowledge of weapons, movements, protections, which the men personally and collectively learn with the training and their experience.

In the Realm of the ever present Operational Strategy is the ultimate goal of modern Maneuver Warfare.

Between both levels of the military action exists a space of essentially practical and eminent activity, so called operational level or operational strategy. Its mission is to optimize the use of the tactics and of the available resources in the campaign and in the theatre of operations. To do that, it defines and conceptualizes the battles, the marches, etc., both the military operations and their correct succession, depending on those decisive goals.

So it gives to the tactics and the decision to which it is orientated, a superior importance. Which is far beyond of the pursuit and the exploit of the tactical success. That is to say, the operative strategy uses the tactics as one of its immediate instruments. Integrating them to reach the goals that are entrusted to it and being orientated to them, taking part then of its strategic nature.

The Instruments of Maneuver Warfare. Used both in Mechanized Warfare as in Infantry Warfare.

This way, the operational strategy defines its own goals in the military theatre or campaign, which are the incapacitation and the disorganization of the enemy, through the action over his operational and strategic vulnerabilities. The first is orientated against the enemy combat capacity, seeking to incapacitate positionally or functionally it, and simultaneously protecting the own combat capacity. The second is achieved by the occupation or the destruction of the enemy critical vulnerabilities in the operations zone.

These vulnerabilities are those elements, possessions or reasons that give sense to the fight that the enemy makes against us. That is to say, whose loss inevitably infuses a hopelessness sensation and a uselessness sense in continuing the fight in these circumstances, which only is now oriented to accumulate more losses.

In the World War II, the occupation of the enemy capital and the fall of his government were critical strategic vulnerabilities. To which get through an operative strategy of mobile offensive war: as example, the spring campaign of 1940 in the western front. The same thing Hitler looked for in 1941 in the Soviet front in relation with Moscow. Surely in this total war, almost of extermination, in the East front, its occupation had not had the importance that was assuming him. But Moscow was constituting a great railway “hub”, a vital center of railway communications for the whole USSR at the west of the Urals mountains. And, in this respect, it had been a critical permanent vulnerability of the military operational level.

To achieve these intermediate strategic aims, the operational level has several specific operational means that are the intelligence, the imbalance and the incapacitation of the enemy, the tempo or operations and combats relative speed, the logistic organization and its physical support, the full supplies line and the correct sense of the commands.

It uses these means to lead and to optimally use (without squandering) the tactical – operational means at its disposition.

These are:

the area transitability (in the whole geographical dimension of the nature of the lands, climate, station and day hour), with less range and significance (for it not takes care of the air dimension)somes call it ground ongoing,

the combat capacity (all kind of military means like men, equipment, supports and combat or carrier vehicles) and the operational movement capacity (big and small tonnage transports, the supplies and replacements of all kinds and combustible and the deposits and accessible parks in the zone) available,

the freedom of action and the “favorable interfaces of action” with the enemy (that exist and that can also be created always, by means of the extension or the decrease of the “field of action” over him, like a tactical operative zoom, or by means of its change to another sector of the front or in the depth of the enemy zone). With these last 2 “systems” we can act always according to our criterion and interest and not simply reacting to the enemy actions.

Hereby, the mentioned 10 “operational systems” realize the employment and the functioning of all the levels of the National Defense. And they go from the conception and the great creation of goals and interests. Received from the high command and ultimately from the nation, including the allocated resources, up to the practical final accomplishment of them. Involving also the necessary and the inevitable and imposed by the enemy tactical employment of the military means, as stages for the optimal attainment of those entrusted goals.

These systems are full developed and explained in «On the Nature of War» book. You can take a look to the Index in www.amazon.com

THE OPERATIONAL STRATEGY. ITS SCOPE AND CHARACTERISTICS.

The first level of the activity of the defense of an organized Society is called national strategy and also, some old-fashioned, great strategy. In it must be considered also the economic and diplomatic resources of the State, as part of the resources of a nation to obtain her big strategic goals in a war.

The military strategy or simply strategy treats, in the second great level of activity in the national defense, of the definition of the big goals of a war, of a theatre of operations or a campaign, and of the assignment of the military, generally scanty or very scanty resources, to get them.

The tactics devote itself to the best accomplishment of the combats against an enemy, whom is opposed to the achievement of our strategic goals by military means. The combat skills and technics are the bricks which help to construct the tactics. They are the specific knowledge of weapons, movements, protections, which the men personally and collectively learn with the training and their experience.

Between both levels of the military action exists a space of essentially practical and eminent activity, so called operational level or operational strategy. Its mission is to optimize the use of the tactics and of the available resources in the campaign and in the theatre of operations. To do that, it defines and conceptualizes the battles, the marches, etc., both the military operations and their correct succession, depending on those decisive goals.

So it gives to the tactics and the decision to which it is orientated, a superior importance. Which is far beyond of the pursuit and the exploit of the tactical success. That is to say, the operative strategy uses the tactics as one of its immediate instruments. Integrating them to reach the goals that are entrusted to it and being orientated to them, taking part then of its strategic nature.

This way, the operational strategy defines its own goals in the military theatre or campaign, which are the incapacitation and the disorganization of the enemy, through the action over his operational and strategic vulnerabilities. The first is orientated against the enemy combat capacity, seeking to incapacitate positionally or functionally it, and simultaneously protecting the own combat capacity. The second is achieved by the occupation or the destruction of the enemy critical vulnerabilities in the operations zone.

These vulnerabilities are those elements, possessions or reasons that give sense to the fight that the enemy makes against us. That is to say, whose loss inevitably infuses a hopelessness sensation and a uselessness sense in continuing the fight in these circumstances, which only is now oriented to accumulate more losses.

In the World War II, the occupation of the enemy capital and the fall of his government were critical strategic vulnerabilities. To which get through an operative strategy of mobile offensive war: as example, the spring campaign of 1940 in the western front. The same thing Hitler looked for in 1941 in the Soviet front in relation with Moscow. Surely in this total war, almost of extermination, in the East front, its occupation had not had the importance that was assuming him. But Moscow was constituting a great railway «hub», a vital center of railway communications for the whole USSR at the west of the Urals mountains. And, in this respect, it had been a critical permanent vulnerability of the military operational level.

To achieve these intermediate strategic aims, the operational level has several specific operational means that are the intelligence, the imbalance and the incapacitation of the enemy, the tempo or operations and combats relative speed, the logistic organization and its physical support, the full supplies line and the correct sense of the commands.

It uses these means to lead and to optimally use (without squandering) the tactical – operational means at its disposition.

These are:

the area transitability (in the whole geographical dimension of the nature of the lands, climate, station and day hour),

the combat capacity (all kind of military means like men, equipment, supports and combat or carrier vehicles) and the operational movement capacity (big and small tonnage transports, the supplies and replacements of all kinds and combustible and the deposits and accessible parks in the zone) available,

the freedom of action and the «favorable interfaces of action» with the enemy (that exist and that can also be created always, by means of the extension or the decrease of the «field of action» over him, like a tactical operative zoom, or by means of its change to another sector of the front or in the depth of the enemy zone). With these last 2 «systems» we can act always according to our criterion and interest and not simply reacting to the enemy actions.

Hereby, the mentioned 10 «operational systems» realize the employment and the functioning of all the levels of the National Defense. And they go from the conception and the great creation of goals and interests. Received from the high command and ultimately from the nation, including the allocated resources, up to the practical final accomplishment of them. Involving also the necessary and the inevitable and imposed by the enemy tactical employment of the military means, as stages for the optimal attainment of those entrusted goals. These “operational systems” are full developed in my book “On the Nature of War”, specially dedicated to the international educational military market.

The urban guerrilla war in Iraq

Stalingrad (1942) and the Iraqis cities (2007). Are they two «parallel battles»?

In the description that follows, our intelligent reader will be able to see the similarities and the differences of these urban battles. And to extract his conclusions and possibilities. They are separated in the time by 65 years, but they are sensitively equal in the fighting forms. In they the defensive starts with a qualitative advantage. Only they are really separated by the different commands´ intentions and the capacities of both defenses.

Stalingrad.

In the summer of 1942, 6 º German army, advancing in the direction Volga, initiated the assault of the city of Stalingrad. The sweeping German advance through the wide Soviet steppes (of Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine) during the good time, was stopping to take Stalingrad. Placed in the right bank of the low section of the Volga, near the river mouth but without controlling it, Stalingrad was lacking the strategic importance of the Caucasus, as crude oil production zone, or Moscow, as the most important railroad communications hub in the USSR, at the west of the Urales.

Promptly Hitler is going to concentrate obsessively on its occupation. Probably as result of his decisive leading role in the direction of the war, from his armchair general’s place, many hundreds of km from the running drama. From the Wehrmatch’s headquarters or from the wolf’s shelter or the Alpine fortress, the supreme command was not perceiving the differences of equipment, motivation and combative availability between the armies of the Axis deployed in the European USSR. In the maps of general situation, the units and big units of the different national armed forces, were only distinguished by the color of the representative figures or flags, that were indicating their geographical deployment. In certain occasion, the Spanish ambassador Agustín de Foxá, count of Foxá, was present at an invitation in Rome. During it, the count Ciano, son-in-law of the Duce and Italian Secretary of State, with the distorted intention of treading on ourselves and to laugh, asked him: «Certainly, Foxá, when does Spain think to finally join the international struggle against the Bolshevism, which we are supporting?» Don Agustín answered him: «Count Ciano, do you believe that the Reich can permit to have another military ally?» The following day Foxá was indicated that he should leave Italy.

As consequence of all this, 6 º German army, the major «great unit» of its class of the whole Wehrmatch or German armed forces, is going to waste its operational advantages of movement with flexibility and agility. Which were allowing it to keep the freedom of action and the initiative in its offensive actions, as strategic decisive principles. And it in exchange for using only tactically its fire and of combat in the close distances capacities, to reduce an enemy arranged already fiercely not to yielding any more land, to resisting up to the death in the defense of the city. An enemy whose chiefs and high commands were encouraged only by the hope that their Stavka or high central staff get time to assemble and deploy the enough reserves, to crush the insufficiently protected flanks of the German strategic deployment, around 6 º army, defended by the 3 º and 4 º Romanian armies. A hard and tough enemy, to support the tremendous efforts and hardships, by the fatalism, the sobriety and the conformity of his Slavic idiosyncrasy, represented in the motto chosen by his commands, «there is no land for us beyond the Volga».

At the end of August, 1942 the German forward guards began to operate against Stalingrad. Two months later the Soviet positions in the city were diminishing to a few isolated zones, full of debris and rubbles, of not more than 275 m. in depth, hugged to the right bank of the Volga. These resistance islands, purified in the oven of the privations and the resistance to numerous German assaults, turned in uncompromising. Two were their structural secrets: the Germans never managed to isolate the city from the left bank of the river and in the mentioned zones the rigid defense was anchored in buildings of metal framework, covered with metallic plates. The grains elevator close to the trains station (too narrow and isolated to resist indefinitely), and several factories Red October (of light infantry weapons), Barricade (of artillery tubes of great calibre) and Dzerzhinski (of tractors, reconverted to make the T-34 model 41), from south to north, are the examples. The 6 º army became exhausted. The campaign ended on February 2, 1943, with the surrender by Fieldmarshall von Paulus of the remains of his army, turned into an enormous mass of armed men without operational capacity.

The confronted rivals in the cities of Iraq.

In Baghdad, Samarra, Faluya and other Iraqi populations confront two very unequal and different enemies. The American troops are prepared to fight against a military regular enemy, endowed with a masses army or even more modern, with means technologically more elaborated and men better trained, to support the loneliness and tensions of the current battle fields. Definitively, its «environment», its performance space, is the direct and opened clash in presence of a great profusion of probable enemy targets. Its instrument is the attrition, the destruction of the targets that the enemy shows and that could be detected and acquired in all the depth of his march, assemble, defense or attack deployments. The last two enemy echelons, nowadays increasingly remote or deep, are reached by the long range tactical support aviation or with the ballistic or of free flight rocketry of medium range.

But, what does happen with a weaker in means and equipment rival, always evasive by need and method and with another cultural and social idiosyncrasy? That is not worry if he needs to move back or to hide in front of a superior enemy. Without for it feeling unworthy, loser or defeated. in these frustrated and incomplete combats. But he avoids the fighting that is unfavorable for him, waiting for a better opportunity to use his sparing and effective means with 40 years of design. Knowing that his enemy tomorrow will continue presenting numerous targets, more or less easy to scourge, irritating and hurting. Since the vehicles and the military patrols swarm everywhere, looking for a kind of «zone saturation», but generally measuring the used times, in labors of vigilance, escort, billeting and successive marches, almost routine, evident and too massive all. A rival who does not seek to win so much battles, but erode and spoil, to be a nuisance and to enervate finally. And that knows that the time is working in his favor in his own land. And that only has to resist and wait, keeping a critical volume of military annoying activity, which could confirm before all, native and foreign, inside and out of Iraq, his presence in force and his determination in the fighting struggle. Acting as a harmful, odorless and colorless gas, subtle and light by its physical nature, that everything it reaches, penetrates and damages.

The Iraqi society.

In Iraq, the Islam is a principal factor of social cohesion and national integrity, independently of the sunn’i or chií Islamic branch that people belong to. The Islam is, in its simpler and popular meaning, a simple faith provided with external and social definite well rites, that integrate the individuals in it, easy to follow and observe. An Islamic democracy, always based on the Umma or social religious community, the Koran or direct revelation from Allah, the sunna or the Prophet tradition and the Sharia or its derivative civil and penal laws, is not equal to the western democracies. Where scarcely resists and survive today in day some moral or social value, facing the all-powerful asymmetric avalanche of the individualized freedoms, dedicated as source of Law, without any juridical consideration of the duties.

The obedience is a personal and social quality very established in the Islamic societies. The sheik or chief of the families of the clan is obeyed in the attaining things to the social order. The familiar chief or father is obeyed within the family. And the God’s will is obeyed and respected as a vital rite in the Islam. This social obedience is wealth-producing and protective, not solvent or sickly by itself. In the madrasas, the Koran is learned by memory, with constant recitation throughout the years of education. Since it is the God’s Word got down from Allah, where it existed from always, there is neither slanted interpretation nor malicious acceptable critique, out of its literal. It is possible that the Muslim modern societies are envious of the economic western development. But also they despise sincerely the loss of real human values that the Christian and lay societies have unnecessarily suffered, in their way towards it.

Finally, we must not forget the structure of tribes, regional and local clans and families, which supports the Iraqi society. That one gives the real value and practical sense to the loyalties and the interests, always relative and still opportunists, of the Iraqis. Graphical, synthetic, paradoxical (for going abreast against the real Islam education) and always excessively, we might express it this way: «My tribe and I, against the world; my clan and I against the tribe; my family and I, against the clan; my brother and I, against the family; I, against my brother».

The different armed Iraqi insurgents types.

Depending on their religious ideology and their active membership in one or another armed rebel faction, the insurgents act of very different forms.

Across Syria they are infiltrating (since they avoid the controls or they disguise themselves) more than half of the suicidal muhaydines. These are very angry sunnis, persuaded for their short role, very little militarily trained and devious religiously fanatical. Soon they leave the struggle and do not look for the armed clash, but the individual and redeeming action. That assures them a passport to the «Houri’s garden», far already of this » tears’ valley», with the visa of «causing the major possible number of dead and mutilated enemies».

The smallest and worse organized bands, that are the great majority, though they are belonging to the big rebel groups, cannot aspire to face openly the soldiers. Their offensive actions consist of scourging, kidnapping, torturing and mutilating, putting bombs and detonate them from distance, to do sabotages, to damage the small enemy units and to hurt or to kill isolated authorities, military men and policemen. Deciding the timing moment to act on the weakness, the carelessness and the negligence of their enemy and having always a high probabilities of fleeing and vanishing. They protect themselves mixing with the civil submissive population, favorable or compelled. They defend themselves from the military unexpected or deliberate assaults, trying to elude them and slipping from the threatened zone, which, till now, is never occupied permanently by the troops. To shelter temporarily or to be established in the surroundings: another neighborhood, another small population in the region or province.

In Iraq the rebel bases are always in the cities and populations most favorable to the activity of the different rebel armed groups. And surrounded or mixed by the military local and foreign forces and allies. In January, 2004, the North American intelligence intercepted a memorandum of 17 pages written by Abu Musad al-Zarqawi (the previous regional chief of Al-Qaida) and directed to Osama bin Laden, in which he was expressing to Osama his worry for his survival: «In Iraq there are not mountains where we could shelter, nor forests in which thickness we could hide. There are spies eyes everywhere. Our backs are exposed and our movements are realized in view of all». For it, not all the populations are defensible of the powerful military means, not even the rebels have the intention of doing it. Here do not exist Numantine or die-hard ways of military fighting without hope.

The urban active defense of the insurgents positions in Iraq.

It is not easy to use and defend the urban zones of repulse. Its employment demands high requirements to the rebel combatants:

A sufficient motivation, which encourages them to follow the arms way and risking their lives for its cause, and appeases and rationalizes them the inevitable fear of the fighting in the nearby distances with a superior enemy, until the seniority offers to them new impulses.

A good training in the infantry fights, which gives them trade and confidence. A successful cooperation between the small units that garrison the zones, that guarantees them a cohesion without fissures in their tenuous and lean deployment and that allows and facilitates the command conduction and the accomplishment of his plans. To get iron nerves tempered by everything previous, that accustom them to fight in solitary or in small groups, refusing to flee in face of the implacable threat of the heavy military fire. For all this, among the few tens of thousands of armed rebels existing, not more than 15 % of them can in these moments use this kind of defensive fight.

These urban irregular enemies are protected extending their defensive positions beyond the necessary in a conventional defense, covering this way a major occupied surface. In the defense zone they establish delaying points, more or less reinforced. These protect the most critical positions of the zone, incorporate in the defense the buildings with steel structure , specially resistant, and form fire bags for the enemy that gets through. The resistance nests have here more importance, provided that the occupation of the zone of defense is more tenuous, they cannot strengthen the positions too much, the sights are more short and exist numerous approximation routes. They depend on the delaying points and to them they fall back if are invaded or destroyed. Numerous alternative or extras positions exist, more of the habitual in this kind of fight. This allows to deceive the military enemy about the forward limit of the defense position, its real extension, the limits of the sectors that form it, the intentions of the rebel command of the zone about its defense and to disperse the heavy fire of the attacker. In the edges of the urban zones they never establish these fixed positions. Those are occupied by combat advanced parties which mission is to receive the possible explorers or civil observers, to avoid surprises and to deceive about the tracing of the defensive zone. The occupants of combat advanced positions, distributed in pairs of sentries and some very small mobile patrol, fall back in their moment towards the more interiors delaying points.

These «fortresses» are diffuse, secret and imperceptible for the strangers. In a few hours the previous works are reinforced and occupied. It is necessary to enter the houses to detect perforated walls and to find alleys under a furniture or a carpet. Its communication routes need more working time to get done, but also are less evident. These positions are not complex. They need a few interlaced firing sectors, an immediate protection against the enemy irruption in mass or with commands, a few covers against the heavy normal fire and a sufficient concealment that conceals them from the sights of the enemy probable successive positions and his approximation avenues. The obstacles and the mines, even false in certain percentage and always distantly to not betray them, will serve to break the enemy assault and to offer to them more static targets, for example for the mortars, which will have registered its fires. The destruction that generates the wide heavy fire support without aiming a precise target, reinforces the rebel combat positions, surrounding them with debris that divide and impede the accesses of the military, except when they are reached by a ordnance direct impact. To operate this defensive structure the rebels have prepared numerous and narrow tunnels, dragging trenches and gaps in garden walls and interior walls of the buildings. In such a way that, away from the enemy sights, allow them to occupy the combat and observation positions at wish, to defend them more or less time or not, to move among them and to reinforce the most threatened or pressed.

Generally they try to shoot from the front, with isolated or couples snipers armed with the SVD sniper rifle, at individual and small groups of enemies. And to attack from the flank or the rear at the enemy units that penetrate in their defensive zone, which already are disintegrated in squads or platoons with one or two armored vehicles. Those prepared communications allow them to appear, always in small number, behind or at the flanks of the units, while these stop, regroup, ask or receive instructions, or decide where to advance, and to erode them, causing some casualties. For example, from a basement or a floor, through an irregular hollow in a yard or garden wall, under a parked or destroyed vehicle in the street, where it emerges a narrow tunnel with a covered and disguised mouth. From these positions the armed rebels throw some RPG-7V rockets or several short blasts, always aiming, of the RPK light machine gun or the obsolete RPD. The interior houses courts serve them to place the mortars, which constitute their the only «heavy fire» source, protected by an infantry position. They fired them with the maximum angles on the abundant, large and always excessive military concentrations. The usual mortar is the 82 mm. Russian modern M-1937 model. Here that the attacker presents three times more men (in means the proportion must be 20 to 1) neither favors nor facilitates their labor. But this offers the persecuted defender more targets to be able to use his exiguous fire power. Especially because, in a given moment, is small the attackers’ proportion that are putting in real distress the defenders.

Also they possess an effective and increasing anti-aircraft defense of short range. From other courts and roofs, always protected by a nearby infantry resistance nest, several teams of light anti-aircraft rocket shoulder launchers carriers are arranged. Their location in the deployment is done depending on the most probable and most dangerous aircraft approximation directions for the defense. If they are sufficient and shoot skilful, they could use two nearby, but not contiguous launchers, whom form a team, and that shoot successively and rapidly (the SAM-18 flies at 2 Mach) against an aircraft or towards an enemy air formation in immediate approximation to its target. A typical rocket would be the soul-air n º 7, called «grail» and «strela» (arrow) in not Cyrillic Russian. It had successive improvements and today is replaced in the military arsenals by the soul-air missile n º 18 former mentioned, that has a useful attack height of 3,5 km (the double), and guides, a fuel rocket, an explosive head and a bait detector improved. Its appearance among the Iraqi rebels would indicate, almost surely, that they were facilitated by Syria. The shoulder carrier limits himself to direct the launcher already loaded towards its target, wait until the missile confirms the target’s acquisition and then squeeze again the trigger. And going hide.

The crucial moment for the defense comes when the zone commander decides to evacuate it, after having stopped and delayed the enemy for some time. Trying to cause him losses as high as possible, but without been exposed excessively to a fighting in the close distances, or to be outflanked or to lose his freedom of action. This is inexorably tied to the transfer of space to the military enemies. For it the rebels avoid in opportune moment the direct assault of their enemy, not his extensive or vague bombardment. The rebels have sufficient exit tunnels directed to not very nearby buildings (often official and even respectable (mosques), offices, companies and some housings) or dry riverbeds (wadis) and not evident bushes in the open land. From there they could disperse through the outside in very small groups towards friends reception positions, in the first moments. The protection of the evacuation is therefore vital and both entrances or exits from these tunnels are always covered by resistance nests, which take to end their rigid defense.

THE BIOLOGICAL WARFARE

ITS REAL POSSIBILITIES AS TERRORISTS’ USABLE WEAPON AND IN THE MODERN WARFARE. ITS INSTRUMENTS AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT.

The biological warfare is the military use, as war weapon, of the living pathogenic, animal or plant organisms, and of the natural poisonous products, called toxins. Since the germs and the bacteria are used in it, it is also called germ warfare, though this term only incorporates a part of the biological agents capable of being used aggressively against the men.

The biological warfare is the military use, as war weapon, of the living pathogenic, animal or plant organisms, and of the natural poisonous products, called toxins. Since the germs and the bacteria are used in it, it is also called germ warfare, though this term only incorporates a part of the biological agents capable of being used aggressively against the men.

The biological warfare is the military use, as war weapon, of the living pathogenic, animal or plant organisms, and of the natural poisonous products, called toxins. Since the germs and the bacteria are used in it, it is also called germ warfare, though this term only incorporates a part of the biological agents capable of being used aggressively against the men.

The biological warfare is the military use, as war weapon, of the living pathogenic, animal or plant organisms, and of the natural poisonous products, called toxins. Since the germs and the bacteria are used in it, it is also called germ warfare, though this term only incorporates a part of the biological agents capable of being used aggressively against the men.

The military use of the pathogenic microbes.

The pathogenic organisms, which produce diseases in the man, can classify in 4 big categories or types: the fungi, the bacteria, the virus and the rickettsia, an intermediate entity between these 2 last ones, in its nature, size and characteristics.

The bacteria are unicellular organisms of spherical (they take the suffix coco in the name), cylindrical (the bacilli) or spiral (the espirilium) forms. They reproduce by transverse repeated division and, often, the partial microbes remain united forming a chain. Many of them can move by means of their whips or eyelashes (shorter). According to Lauria, the virus is a genetic element constituted by ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid, suitably to move from cell to cell and capably of synthesizing with the available amino acids its particular proteins, which will form then the infective viral particles. It is not known neither its origin nor the date of its appearance, since the existence of fossils virus is ignored. Elford, in 1931, managed to measure its size, which varies between 10 and 300 microns. Also the virus classify in vegetables, animals and bacteriafhagous, every type with their specific characteristics. Their vital cycle has, among others, 5 important phases for us: fixation to the cellular surface, penetration inside the cell, multiplication of the virus at the cost of the components of that one, liberation of the new viral individuals and their dispersion in the environment.

The military employment of the pathogenic microbes is difficult, because they are living organisms. The military usual vectors, the conventional (explosive grenades) and the reactive artillery (rockets with ballistic path, without autonomous direction) and the air bombs, turn out to be too aggressive and destroy them before their dispersion in the target. To eliminate these serious limitations, bombs with ceramic cases have been developed, which has been tried satisfactorily with flies infected with the bacterium yessinia pestis, the cause of the bubonic pest. Also it has been tried its dispersion through the air, using dispensers means of several types. But its control and the estimation of the effect on the target are very difficult. During the 40s of last century, biological desiccated and freezing of the microbes technologies were improved. With them it was seeking to prolong their life and to increase their resistance, allowing them a major storage time, their dispersion using explosives and to achieve a longer exposure in the environmental conditions.

Their real employment by means of not military transmitters has been more common. In 1763, during the war in North America between Great Britain and France for the control of all the European colonies, the military British command decided to try to infect with smallpox the hostile Indians. With this motive 2 sheets and a handkerchief from the room of infected by smallpox in a British hospital, were delivered to 2 Indian chiefs. The disease spread soon among the tribes.

Soon after the suicidal air raids on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, in September, 2001, some packages and letters supposedly containing anthrax spores, active or in vitro, acquired or stolen in pharmacological investigation laboratories began to appear in the USA, in the post offices and the addresses. The collective paranoia of these tragic moments helped to increase the extension and the importance of these facts. And it constituted a multiplier of the propaganda perverse effect in any type of individual or collective terrorism aggression. Whose purpose is the terror extension, generally using violent indiscriminate actions and the threats of repeating them. That do that all the members of the attacked collectivity considering themselves to be possible or probable, according with the cases, goals of these future actions.

The toxins as a warfare weapon.

The toxins are poisons naturally produced by the plants or the animals, so much the big or visible as the microscopic ones or microbes.

The toxins have certain advantages for their employment as war weapon. They are natural, not more or less complicated, costly and unstable synthesis chemical products. This facilitates their production in pilot or manufacturer plant scale. Some of the biological toxins are among the most poisonous products that are known. Their effect is made without the presence of the producing agent. This one, as an alive organism, presents problems in its manipulation, as being more unstable or perishable than toxins. That is to say, they can be preserved and spread easier, by means of explosive special grenades or with aerosols or atomizers dispensers, boosted by inert or neutral gases.

The enterotoxin B of the golden estafilococo is the responsible of the majority of the food human poisonings. This bacterium can grow in multitude foods and on having done produces the toxin, which is consumed by the consumption. In general, the enterotoxin B is not lethal, but a dose of only 50 micrograms already causes vomits and diarrheas in the adults. The deliberate use of this toxin is possible. For example, during a siege by the irregular rebels, always relaxed and no hermetic, to military defensive positions, and trying to scourge and to debilitated the vital enemy resistance. The sharp sound effect produced by the operating toxin is called almost onomatopoeically «the whistling sound».

A more terrible toxin, which it is possible also to find in the food, is the butolinic A toxin, produced by the clostridium butolinic bacteria. It is the most powerful known poison, a microgram kills an adult. The normal appearance of the bacterium associates with the badly preserved food, as the expired or badly sterilized during its manufacture tinned vegetables. It is a neuroagent that causes that the nervous system accumulates in excess during its functioning the acetilcolin, in a similar way that do the of nervous type agents used in the chemical warfare.

The castor toxin exists in the seeds and the leaves of the common castor plant. Its use by the secret service Bulgarian agents known as the umbrellas’ assassins, was confirmed in the 70s. In the free ends of those were concealed a mechanical launcher, which was projecting a pellet impregnated with the castor toxin and capably in the short distance of going in the naked meat. Two Bulgarian dissidents fled from the communist regime in their country, were positively identified of having being murdered this way in London.

Its appearance in the History. Modern situation.

From very ancient the pathogenic agents and the toxins have been used with military purposes. The poisoning of the enemy water fountains or to throw the infectious patients corpses over the enemy defensive walls, are military methods used by Alexander the Great or the Mongolian. It is only in the modern times when the use of biological agents in the war has acquired a stigma character. This way, no modern nation has admitted its employment in combat against her enemies.

We have an extreme example of how the use of biological agents by profane persons can go away of control, in the siege of the Genoese city of Kaffa, today called Feodosiya, placed in the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. During in it the biological harmful effects were reasonably circumscribed inside the walls of this city. In the middle of the XIVth century the Mongolian were besieging the city. The Mongolian were throwing over her walls, using catapults, the dead men’s bodies by the bubonic pest. It is thought that some Genoese ships that departed from the city towards their metropolis, could carry the plague’s bacillus, which was habitually lodging in the rates. Hereby the bubonic pest could reach Italy, and begin the massive and fulminating epidemic known in the History as the Black Death, which almost depopulated the European continent in that century.

From the 80s of last century, the genetic engineering and the biotechnology have turned into technically industrial instruments destined to improve the life conditions of the humanity. One of its possible applications is the development of vaccines against the pathogenic agents, both the natural and the reinforced by genetic actions on the first ones. This can allow the most developed countries to acquire a certain more or less widespread immunity, which is never absolute, against these biological attacks. Whereas their potential enemies, less technologically developed and with fewer economic resources, except the crude oil producers during the expansion phase of the sales cycle, would be defenseless against the biological military agents.

Its military use is punctual and restricted.

The effective, precise in the time and controlled use of biological agents in the modern combat is difficult and its results are also too vague. For the majority of the biological agents, its own nature does that its controlled launch on a target is difficult. Between the effective action on the enemy and the beginning and the development of the disease, it exists an unavoidable delay, due to the inevitable incubation periods, that goes from the hours to days; which is never acceptable in a mobile military operation. Always exist the natural and the acquired immunities (by vaccination or more or less controlled exposure), that prevent from specifying the real probable results, the number of enemy casualties derived from a biological attack. The theoretical estimated effects are diminished by certain climatic conditions, the rain, the fog, the solar luminosity and the extreme temperatures, or altered by the winds, which drag them of the surface target.

For all this, nowadays the military use of biological agents has a restricted employment in the special operations and the more or less concealed harassment of the enemy, technique where the time is not a rigid and critical parameter. This way, the goal of debilitating the enemy, more than eliminate him totally, does that the calculations of the conflicting forces correlation have to be neither so exact nor so punctual in time. The dissemination of the biological agents becomes directly, without the employment of the heavy ammunitions used as vectors. And the time between the exposure and the development of the disease, betrayed by its symptoms, constitutes then a planning factor within the attacking plan.

Its difficult and improbable use by terrorists and madmen.

Attempts have been, as the already indicated about the anthrax spores and this that we report now. In 1980 the French police assaulted a home of the Red German Army Fraction in Paris, placed in n º 41 A, Chaillot street. Those which chiefs committed simultaneously suicide later in their isolation cells in Germany. There they found a simple but effective installation «washing-up basin» type for producing the butolinic A toxin.

A natural repugnance exists in the men to experiencing the diseases, specially the infectious, the disfigurement ones and the extreme debilitating. It is only enough to see the announcements about all kinds of health centers, which offer something like a youth elixir, similar to that Ponce of León looked for in The Florida in the 16th century. The age is inevitable and implacable, but it is sought to keep, almost by all the means, the use and enjoyment of the maturity, which deterioration is one of the most fearsome effects of the diseases. The infectious serious diseases are in the habit of passing with external catastrophic symptoms. The man s attacked from inside in his aspect, in his integrity and in his capacities, by a painful and even disgusting way, up to his infamous death. This is not the death more or less adorned by us, to make it glorious and less disgusting, which is waited for the soldiers in the battlefield.

The manipulation of the pathogenic microbes and their poisonous derivatives imply high pharmacological and chemical technology operations. Here any leak or impurity leads to the failure of the experiment or to an affection of the manipulators (the most nearby and exposed possible carriers). And already we know something of how these pathogenic dwarfs and their organic products operate over us.

The fundamentalist Islamic fanatics do not find in the Noble Koran nor in the Prophet’s sunna any inducement, stimulus or excuse for their employment in the war. The microbes and their humors are in the category of the pork, the dog, the aquatic animals without fins, of the banned by Allah, all of them impure and detestable for the faithful Muslim. When the Book descended from Allah, the «ansars» or Islam’s devout could acceptably died by the sword, the mace, the axe, the lance and the arrows, in defense of the Umma or universal Islamic community and to extend its domains, applying the Jihad or sanctified war in many aleyas or verses of the Koran.

One also speaks about the possible utilization of the most attainable and known for the biological warfare means by the madmen. But a mad is not an demented. The demented has degraded his cognitive and volitional powers, by the physical deterioration of his cerebral tissues, due to the age or certain diseases (ictus, cerebral arteriosclerosis). The mad, for his part, has a portion of his feelings, ideas and concepts affected, upset and missed. But the madman is capable of reasoning specially in the topics that I will call «objectives», which are outside of his deliriums and mental affections. The madman can believe that his more or less individual terrorist actions, will be important to subvert the political regime of a country. But the mad can know how to mix sugar and potassium chlorate (the pills to disinfect the throat) to make a domestic explosive. Though the ETA (Basque revolutionary terrorists) adds sulfur to it, here it is not needed and only reduces the weight efficiency, since the chlorine takes charge connecting with the potassium and forming potassium chloride. In any case, the sulfur can be obtained, as component of the gunpowder, if there exist sensitive products restrictions, treating with commercial chlorhidric acid the sodium bisulphide, a photographic developer. Or how to concentrate the cars batteries liquid, to obtain sulfuric acid, base to obtain nitric acid (for the cotton powder or without smoke powder) and nitrates (the oxygen supplier in the smoke gunpowder, base of the pyrotechnic. And the madman also has very much, a lot of fear, probably more because a hypochondriac specific component, about the degrading diseases, stigmatized by the social group.

The Counterinsurgency War in Iraq

 Possibilities and Faults of the Conflicting Rivals. Why can win the Iraqi authorities?
The whole virulence and force estimated in the Iraqi insurgency are ballasted by his divisions, his divergent or opposite interests, his scanty real combative capacity and his problems to join combative major effective units. The people is neutral in these moments and only a certain degree of constraint, at least suggested, inclines it punctually and temporarily in favor of one or other. The Iraqi army is lacking experience, spirit of body and combative interest; but it is native, not occupant, and does not depart from zero and with the skill and professionalism of his advisors and cadres, it can advance stages rapidly. The cost to pay for all is the time, prolonged in an internal painful and costly struggle.

The Iraqi insurgency and his political-military characteristics.


The Iraqi rebels constitute a strange and not miscible miscellany. Among other factions or groups, they are present: Al-Qaida groups of with nearly autonomous character, coordinated by Abu Ayyub al-Masri; this nickname wants to say, «father of Ayyub, alias The Egyptian», very slightly identifying, except in villages and places in the field. Loyal Baazists (the party had militias that were activated militarily very little before the assault on April, 2003) to Saddam Hussein and former members of his army and administration. Islamic volunteers of several countries. Members of the intelligence agencies of, at least, Syria and Iran. The Sunnis and Chiís social religious local and regional militias. The national resistance Sunni net, principally formed by previous members of the Iraqi administration and army, opposite to the ex-president, but dismissed with excessive wisdom and hurry by Paul Bremer, which are joined now by patriots and religious Iraqis and irritated young unemployed men, before the prolongation of the occupation and the good work of the Coalition forces. Not very much time ago, there were detected common criminals bands. Local groups of clans chiefs and masters of the war, making be worth his political and economic rights.
The Iraqi rebels do not have to win a war. Its principal strategic goal is to remain active with a sufficient wearing intensity. Its forces do not have to return to home. All those of the coalition, yes. Simply not retiring, not losing, they compel the Coalition forces to keep its onerous struggle for a vague, indefinite time or to withdraw and return to house.
Something similar happened in Cyprus. The National Organization of Cypriot Fight or Ethniki Organosis Kipriahou Agonos or E.O.K.A., commanded by general Georgios Grivas, alias «Dighemis», took to end a difficult guerrilla warfare, because the scanty of the field, the force of the enemy and the lack of good hiding places, for the independence of the island against the British domination. Finally, the Enosis or political union with Greece was not obtained, but the independence of the island. Grivas, in his «General Plan for the Revolutionary Action in Cyprus» was emphasizing, «it is not necessary to believe that we, by means of these form and procedures, will get a material and total defeat of the English forces in Cyprus. We rather look for his moral defeat, harassing and upsetting them in such a way that, ultimately, we obtain the goal of the struggle. That one was until the end our strategic goal. We owe the success to the fact of having stuck firmly to it».
The propaganda constitutes a strategic basic aim of all the Iraqi rebels, with which the agencies and the western communications means collaborate filled with enthusiasm. Any rebellious assault successfully and showy is immediately broadcast to the world. This always debilitates the will of permanency of the USA and his allies. His legions called by his families, want to return, to enjoy the varied and superfluous consumption goods and the exotic vacations. The Spartan mothers, something unthinkable nowadays, were saying to her children when they were going out in campaign, when the benign station came and they leave the winter barracks: «you shall return with the shield or on the shield». When they were fleeing, the big and heavy shield of the Greek hoplite, capable of resisting the tremendous blows of the Sarisas or long lances of 5 m., principal weapon of their phalanxes, was a hindrance and they were rejecting it.
The insurgents know that the fight will not finish simply with the returning home of the forces of the coalition. This makes that some Iraqi groups, more worried by the serious and always unforeseeable consequences of a social chaos that could be established then, could be attracted with political and civil arrangements to leaving the weapons. Also, a great majority of the Iraqis do not want the return to the power of the Baaz party and its exclusive repressive methods of government and permanency in power. On the other hand, it is necessary to explain and convince the Iraqi people that the best way, in order that the military foreign presence stops, is the disappearance of the armed general revolt. The constant improvements in trade, services, supply of energies are having positive effects and must be exhibited emphatically by the National administration. Reciprocally, its destruction or sabotage by the rebels must be capitalized always against them by the communications means and agents of the Iraqi state.
The existential and ideological dispersion of the armed rebels does that its military co-ordination is difficult and only temporal, partial and for convenience. This dispersion, in turn, makes very difficult the political fight of the Iraqi government and his foreign allies against an insurgency with multiple and yet opposite interests and political and social aims.

Its operative characteristics.

The armed rebels are elusive, defending themselves by the concealment and, in less measure, with a certain local mobility. Also they possess a higher availability or combative alert during the offensive actions that they tackle. Let’s remember that any military set, from the crew of a tank up to an army, spends most of his time not deployed or ready to fight. His time passes doing labors and operations that will allow him to fight in the chosen moment. So much if he is training, embarking, moving, being equipped, being supplied, being reorganized, waiting or resting, any unit is not in full combat availability.
An autonomous advanced Iraqi band, depending on a chief of sector, consists of ambush groups, execution and kidnapping groups and sabotage groups. His functions are evident. Every functional specialty has a coordinating chief, who depends on the former one. In the cities and related road ways, the components of each group are not numerous, as maximum a few teams. They try to support its communications across a communications point, functionally dependent on the headquarters, which acts as intermediary in them to avoid enemy detection. The “effective modern” electronic follow-up of the mobile phones is deceived with corridors and couriers. In this auxiliary group of the command (a primitive and without logistics S-4, which depends on a civil parallel organization of supply), a primary service of health joins, carry out by male nurses. The most serious cases go to hospitals or particular loyal doctors, if they exist in the zone.
The insurgents nets are secret or latent and operate aggressively only against the mobility of the army and the police, which they surprise, are a nuisance, cause damages, kill and mutilate. The assault from several directions creates bags of fire and enfilade zones on the enemy. This produces besides a synergetic and enervating effect in the attacked one. That is similar to the result of multi traumatism or to that of multiple nº 8 or 9 pellets in a minor hunt piece. They lack of enough punch to give decisive blows or to finish off an important enemy. They erode a military unit (not a small unit or isolated elements), but they do not annihilate it.
Against the prepared military positions established in depth they are not effective, though it exists afraid of the guerrillas and a lot of money is expended protecting them. Their bands lack important combat capacity and are also easily canalized towards approximation avenues with registered heavy fire and medium grazing fire. For the moment, they lack engineers’ training, which would allows them the punctual break of the static protector barriers. And of superior training, to use the crawling individual approximation, without time limitation, in their diverse missions out and inside the military and police camps and facilities.
The logistics is a great disadvantage, especially the supply of equipment and no handmade goods. They possess many small active rears or bases, many full surrounded by their enemies, which activities can be detected always. The supply of the bands is provided by the support organization.

To win the battle for the favor of the Iraqi people.
The rebels, by force or thanks to their popularity, are capable of being mixed and to be diluted in the civil population. And to hide safe in houses, stores, garages, buildings, caves, etc. Though a part of the population is with them, a degree of constraint exercised by armed rebels exists always. If the Iraqi army is capable of permanently protect a neighborhood or population from the assaults or the presence of hostile irregulars, it also can progressively demand the due national loyalty to its inhabitants. What is inadmissible is that the civil local populations are intermittently subject to the armed pressure of one and another rival. So demanding from them a loyalty that does not offer safety to them. The clearly hostile recalcitrant elements in the different places, can be temporarily re-located in zones assured by the government, to neutralize them. The collective punishments of the populations are never suitable. Probably these are only justified, at least largely, by the immediate safety of the military forces. In any case, it is necessary to explain well the reasons for its application.
The rebels are tactics and operatively semiautonomous. The communications between the bands are moderated and even scanty, both the explicit ones and, especially, the tacit ones. They win the combats fitting their advantages with the weaknesses of the enemy army. The techniques of feigning retreats and establishing ambushes are useful to they against non skilled forces and still not too much motivated. They can choose the place and the moment of their attacks and carry out the necessary training to dominate the skills to be used in those.

Command, control and communications of the bands.
Its high dispersion exercises a considerable tension in its command structure (principally in the middle and high commands), because of its extensive and flat flowchart.
At the same time, this spatial extension allows them to cut temporarily the lines of communications of the enemy, with a psychological important negative effect. The systems of command, communications and control are slightly primitive at the moment, which impedes the regional concentration of bands or groups for more important actions. Its effective real command is divided by the dispersion of the chiefs and groups and the disparity or the antagonism of interests.

The Iraqi Army and its allies.

The abuses against the civil population are always counter-productive in a counterinsurgency struggle and more in an internal revolt. Sometimes, the hurries to form new troops lead to a deficient or incomplete training of these. They are not vaccinated against the stress, specially here the mental one, nor against the frustration of the not fulfilled plans or of the ungrateful enemy surprises. This leads to discharge almost inevitably the anger and the enervating impotence in the civil population, intermingled voluntary or by force with the rebels.
The wars against the armed irregular are by its Nature long, painful and difficult. The prolong character originates from the need that a popular force, departing almost from nothing, develops and spreads. And managing to moral or militarily defeat a regular own or of occupation army. The difficulty and the cruel evil arise from the high civil component that takes part in them. They are wars located in the home courtyard, in the own or occupied rear.
It is necessary, therefore, to avoid the prolongation of the conflict, which is mining the conviction of the own forces and allowing that the enemy should spread, strengthen and prevail.
The basic problem of the new Iraqi army is its lack of democratic convictions in the western style, in order to defend the new regime. It operates, as much, as a civil Police, which is not forced to die in its trade and which normally acts in its operations with overwhelming means superiority. If they do not feel and assume some values, it is not possible to accept the commitment with them. And acquire this way the necessary availability to work actively for them or to die in its defense. Already there have entered in active service several hundred thousands of Iraqi military and police men formed by the North Americans. But they are fundamentally destined to surveillance, custody and garrison labors. Their frame of mind and combative disposition are low and unequal, according to their origin. This is now a mass army.

The American military doctrine. Has it effective application here?
The massive employment of the heavy fire capacity continues being the principal «argument» of the US Army. Its doctrine (Field Manual 100-5, Operations, last edition of 1986) does not emphasize the initiative and rests in reacting to the enemy action from covered positions in the whole operations zone. One of the operative principles that gets force in this renewed doctrine is that of the simultaneity. This one establishes to beat at the same time, with heavy fire of artillery and aviation, the first and the second enemy assault echelons and even its reserve, using then aviation and tactical rocketry. The infantry and tanks forces are designed, in a secondary employment, to counter-attack this beaten enemy in all its depth, to assure the decision.
Here the detection and the selective attack to the enemy weak points don’t exist. Nor the general saving of means (that the contributors pay to the industrial corporations) and human lives. Nor the skilful, risky and fruitful maneuvers of functional or positional dislocation of the enemy forces. The Marshall Von Hindenburg invented the adage: «A battle without Schwerpunkt (principal effort) is like a man without character». Acting the North American army evokes a heavy, forceful mace, hammering and excessive. The Afrika Korps, on the contrary, remembers us an elegant, agile, unforeseeable, sufficient and effective foil.
The pompously so called fourth generation wars are the counterinsurgency wars or guerrilla warfare or irregular wars or armed revolts or liberation wars or organized banditry, which always have existed, coexisting with the conventional variants of warfare. They are those that the USA has lost or not gained lately: Vietnam, The Lebanon (peace disembarkation of “marines”, then demolished in their barrack) and Somalia (the uncontrollable and unforeseeable wasp’s nest of «all against all» by the local lords of the war and the Islamic militias). They are uneven wars (they call them now «asymmetrical warfare») against an enemy of lower technological military level relative to the regular enemy forces, always rooted in the own or occupied civil population and slight militarily intense but very extensive in the space and the time.
With embarrassing frequency, when the human or technological North American «sensors» detect some probable rebellious Iraqi or from the foreign “muyaidin” activity, first they devastate the building, the «block», the zone. Then they go to sweep up and to do the corpses inventory, the «body count», because they are very scrupulous with their statistics. Sometimes among the rubbles they can meet the corpses of an Arabic innocent and numerous family. They abuses of the attrition, which is indiscriminate and perverse when the enemy fuses with the civil ones. They neglect the active, unexpected patrolling, which needs proportionally less material and human means, but more trade, moral courage, freedom of action and creativity in the low and intermediate commands and NCO and in the men.

Effective counter insurgents operations in Iraq.

A complex operation of search, location and combat and destruction of the bands will demand successively to the military forces: to locate them, to converge on the zone, to attack and to defeat them, to be reorganized and reequip and to be dispersed. These seemingly unconnected operations of numerous small units, coordinated by the intention and aims of the high command and by the responsibility in the execution way of the direct commands, they enjoy great initiative, rapidity and maximum flexibility. This allows to the national army to take the freedom of action and to keep the initiative and a high relative mobility with the enemy, during all the offensive decided operations. Technique, tactical and operatively, the Iraqi military men must be, by trade and capacities, more professionals, more actives, better equipped, more lethal, more effective, that the irregular forces to which they search and fight.
During long time yet the air and spatial North American means, as spy satellites, not crewed planes and planes of the system Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), will have serious limitations for the detection and monitoring of small ground forces, even regular ones, in the difficult crossing areas and with possibilities of concealment, as mountains, jungles and forests, marshes and urbanized zones (industrial, of storage and distribution and of housings). These not only offer concealment, but also covered from the heavy and light fire up to the close distances of combat.
An observation and of combat patrols’ net constitutes the fighting system adapted and advised for this type of irregular warfare. Carry out against an enemy trained (it has been given sufficient time for do it), with aroused fanaticism, re-grown by the successful or believed successes and improved by a natural selection (the most clumsy and worse are falling down first, and let’s not say the suicides of only one use, who immediately leave the fighting), but that still has not matured structurally nor operatively. They constitute the natural sensors to detect the operative rebellious activity previous or between offensive actions, so as that the civil Iraqi population accepts and supports moderately well its own army.
In January, 2004, the North American intelligence intercepted a memorandum of 17 pages written by Abu Musad al-Zarqawi (the former Al-Qaida local delegate chief, which has passed away to the Houris Garden) and directed to Osama bin Laden, in which he was expressing to him his worry for his survival: «In Iraq there are no mountains where we could shelter, nor forests in whose thickness we could hide. There are spies on eyes everywhere. Our backs are exposed and our movements, in view of all».

Locating, deceiving and penetrating them.
A necessary complement of the regular net are the false rebels bands. These would be destined to operate in zones inclined to the insurgency, from where some of their members  come from. Their activity and concealment would be favored by the decentralized character of the rebels groups. Their missions would be to obtain information, to prove the loyalty of the civil ones and to annihilate small enemy groups or lone suicidal terrorists. They should not be bigger than a reinforced squad or section, except in combat special occasions.
The false rebels bands were used by enough success in the fighting against the kikuyos of the Mau-Mau in Kenya, against the Soviet guerrillas by the Germans during the World War II and against the Hukbalahap communists of Luis Taruk, the Supreme, in The Philippines by the Philippine army. In Spain the so called «counterparts» were used between 1946 and 1949. Their operative scope was minor. It was a question of «neutralizing» the rural population of the zones where the forces of the hostile «groups” were operating, by means of visits of the simulated guerrillas to the villagers. There came a moment that in the villages all were distrusting of the not habitual bands, that were coming in search of food and other helps, since it was not known if it was a counterpart.
The patrols’ and small military positions net has three operative purpose: to deny the initiative and the mobility to the guerrillas; to cut their communications with their bases, with their collaborators’ net and between the groups; and to frighten away them, like to the hunt, from their protective civil bases and their isolated redoubts.
The official net operatively covers a wide extension and so is capable of receiving the sensitive information. The knowledge of the rebels of its neighborhood and of its zone can be one of its major assets. Their refuges and depots would end located. The present impunity conviction of the rebels would disappear. With the advantage of being a native army, its initial weapons must be the discretion, the silence, using more the knives and hand grenades than its assault guns, the relative mobility with the enemy, with the night as collaborator and shelter in its operations.

The necessary ideal supply system.

The difficulties of supply in a great extension area, «empty» of enemies and without «hard» targets, can be overcome with: an anticipating logistics (a good calculation of the foreseen necessary supplies, with the commitment of the commands users); endowed with smaller and nearby pre located depots; using heavy fire pre located bases for support covering the operations zone; using all the possible common parts in equipment, food (caring of religions influence), etc.; and using small mobile armored units (minimum the reinforced interarm platoon provided with light vehicles, which could rapidly reinforce the normal military patrols). The utilization of gun and transport helicopters centralized directed, allows to rapidly create, once clarified the situation, a gravity center of the counterinsurgency effort and to supply rapidly and provisionally the most committed small units.

Lightness, mobility and relative speed in operations.
The necessary mobility of the regular forces in the fighting against the hostile irregulars of all kind prefers light combat vehicles. The Abrams tanks and the VCI Bradley need re supply every 8 hours in constant actions and are not silent, but very evident in their operations. They are designed to act massively by the fire, maneuver and shock in a gravity center of the effort against enemy regular modern forces. Also they can serve to crush a civil enemy population, as the Israelis did in Gaza, during the operation of rescue of their captured soldier.
But here we are trying to eliminate diverse guerrillas, intermingled with the Iraqi people. The armored light vehicles type Mowag 25 Piranha (14 Tm.) of Swiss design and with several manufacturing plants and the new American armored Humvee (4 Tm.) might mark the superior and low limits for the military armored vehicles to be employed in this counterinsurgency struggle.

To surround, to disperse the enemy rejection, to disturb its command and its plans and to destroy them.

Also they (the net) can react to the rebel detected activity, establishing rapidly way controls, and sufficiently sealing a more or less extensive zone. While the hermetic ring is closed next with other nearby troops or with heliborne forces. This simultaneity of initial actions has a synergetic effect that protects the small isolated military units, with exposed vulnerable flanks, in their initiative.
The surprise, besides, is a fundamental principle of this war. The relative rapidity neutralizes the alert notices that their civil Iraqi friends can pass to the bands. In Cyprus, the scanty British helicopters (it were the 50s in last century) were turning irrelevant the communication efforts of the collaborators’ net of  the E.O.K.A. about the movements of the British troops.
The best effect on the detected boxed band is achieved here by the concentric and inconsiderate attack (maximum impulse or quantity of used movement) with limited aims, by some advance spears with enough combat capacity (minimum, the reinforced platoon with heavy infantry weapons) over the interior of the siege. Since the sweep of the siege area from one or two directions is more laborious and gives the enemy, specially individual or by teams, a slip away chance. The static military forces can then be contracting by successive jumps the internal or both perimeters, according to the cases, established of the siege.

To gain the struggle through the time.
The patience must be a characteristic of all the implied ones in this war. Also it is necessary for to be effective, to reach a minimum of trade and seniority. In the zones most favorable to the bands, it is very easy that the operations of search and siege are initially closed in emptiness. It is necessary to go gaining and selecting their zone population, as we have said before, in order that the military trade and the people loyalty combined should produce its military and social incomes. The successive victories of the Iraqi army will be gaining to it the favor of the people, because all they want to be emotionally with the winning side. And because the interests of the Iraqis are volatile, unlike and yet contradictory, based on the loyalty to the family, to the clan and to the tribe.
In this type of war the armed forces cannot defend from the enemy all its possible targets. Besides, never there would be enough remaining troops to keep the initiative and to carry out a multiple, flexible and mobile offensive action against the armed rebels. Here there are no fronts to establishing and cozy, protective and supplying operative rears. What exists are armed enemies groups, their logistic support and information groups and many groups of sympathizers with them. That are integrated all according to the different personal courage of their different members. And all of them widespread and established through a big territory without limits or classic rears.
To liberate sufficient forces, the Iraqi army has to defend only its strategic objectives and its operative communications. The defense of towns and minor objectives, specially out of the Sunni zone (in the center and south center of the country), must fall in local units of police and of loyal civil self defense. These supported by military mobile units of its sector. With help of the heavy fire and the airborne mobility of the North Americans, even with the support of some of its elite units (rangers, marines, armored), the Iraqis can be trying to carry out major actions of siege and annihilation of bands and groups of them. To increasing the confidence and the respect of the own population and its experience in the resolution of its challenge of pacification of the country.

Suggested reading for professional armed forces.

I offer a books´list on military theory, which reading will be very useful to you. And that I consider to be fundamental to know better the military topics and not simply to read a more or less repeated history.

I am including one of my book, fruit of my years of dedication to this topic, which content you can examine in www.amazon.com.

“Maneuver Warfare Handbook” by William Lind.

The classical on modern maneuver warfare. Used by the Marines Corps. It is based on the German experience in the World War II. That in turn is an extrapolation to the mechanized war, of the experiences developed by the Stormtroops (infantry assault forces) in the I World War.

“The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. Samuel Griffith’s translation is the best of all.

The permanent and global chinese military theory from a classical author. Its style and content characteristics support the idea of one unique author. With each useful reading, more shades and perspectives are caught. That come to fruition in major richness, agility and depth of thought.

Other «Chinese» books give you a number of strategies (the 33, the 36, the 100, etc.). Its utilization is based on its constant memorization or on iits permanent application. I consider them to be slight practical, for the profuse, diffuse and still confused character of many ancient authors of the Han etnia. What does happen if a different case arises? It seems as if they wanted to conceal their supposed wisdom from the not initiated ones.

“The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver” by David Glantz.

The Soviet military doctrine that won the War, fully explained. With them they won the II World War. And imposed their economic social system in half Europe, supposed «liberated» from the Germans.

“Forward into Battle” by Paddy Griffith.

Excelent book about last two centuries’ military tactics, extensively presented. It has detractors for its sometimes breaking vision.

«On War» by Clausewitz.

It is an extensive work, since it fits with the epoch, in which writing little was a sign of inconsistency, little importance and scanty reflection. The books or parts that compose it were finished in variable degree by the author, whose premature death did not allow its conclusion. We are interested in the first chapters on the theory and the philosophy of the war. Other books treat on the tactics of a period in which the enemy deployment was staying at the sights of the enemy command and his HHQQ and auxiliary, placed in a nearby height. He praises Liddell Hart’s opposite: a decisive battle using the maximum own concentration and power on the enemy army. In an age of masses armies, inaugurated by Napoleon, soon was clear that it was not possible to win a war between full armed nations, in an alone great battle. It was necessary a campaign with successive victorious operations, looking for the achievement of the military goals of the campaign (theatre of operations, Europe, Pacific Ocean, Africa) or the strategy. In addition, already there did not exist a genius advanced to his epoch as Napoleon.

“Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology”, compiled by Richard D. Hooker.

Short articles of some of the best modern military writers on that topic. It has works from Rommel, Leonhard, John Antal, etc.

“The Art of Maneuver” by Robert Leonhard.

One of the first full theory about maneuver warfare. And he stands out strongly, expanding the ideas torrent of this theory in development those moments.

“Race to the Swift” by Richard Simpkin.

On maneuver warfare. The best book of this British military thinker. Its reading is some difficult, for its language erudition.

“Manual de Táctica”, dos tomos, by Eike Middeldorf.

It is the most complete and current manual on modern tactics that I have found. It has chapters about land warfare using atomic tactical bombs and on the particular conditions of fight: by night, in forests, with extreme cold, etc.

“Strategy” by Basil Liddell Hart.

Best military theory by B. L. Hart. Easy to read.

“The Foundations of the Science of War” by John Frederick Charles Fuller.

The best book about military principles. Hard to read sometimes. Almost 65 years after its first edition, it was reprinted by the Marines Corps. I got a first edition copy from an American university library (Lancaster, Pa.). It had many critiques and later the author went back on the underlying ideas in the book. The critiques, in turn, had as bottom that he had an eccentric personality, in a group (the military men) tremendously conservative and established by protocol. He had mystical streakes (Hindu philosophy, yoga) and flirted with the Nazi, being got by Hitler.

“On the Nature of War” by Enrique Alonso.

The “how to do” in war. Recent, full and unusual military theory. It is based in 10 “operational systems”.

“Understanding War” by Trevor N. Dupuy.

It is a combat theory, based on History, military factors and its figures. I find that his «friction» concept development, took from Clausewitz, is deviant. And he exposes another concept different from Clausewitz.

HEZBOLLAH.

In the active vanguard of the new «Supranational Undemocratic Revolutionary Totalitarianism» of the 21st century: the Islamic Radical Intransigent Fundamentalism (the IRIF). Brilliant, characteristic and terrible origins, stimulated and trained by the Jomeini’s Revolutionary Guards.

Hezbollah arises after the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon in June, 1982. Hezbollah takes advantage of the great reigning confusion for it, between the established Lebanese different factions (among them, Amal, the Shiite political religious organization which was receiving then the loyalties of the great majority of the Lebanese Shiites), the neighboring states and the great powers. Hezbollah is going to prosper in the emptiness of power and action created by the frustration of some ones and the weariness and the skepticism of others. Hezbollah’s catalyst is going to be the Islamic republic of Iran. Which is going to infiltrate through the Antilibano mountain chain up to the Bekaa altiplane, her revolutionary, selected, capable and motivated «volunteers», throughout the first months following the invasion. They were not too many. But the sufficient ones to indoctrinate, train armed militias and support and stimulate the creation of local active Shiite groups. This was Hezbollah’s original core.

The Islam is, in its simpler meaning, a simple faith, with external and social well definite, easy to follow and observe rites. In the Islam there exist five great rites, which are symbolized in its iconography by an opened hand: The profession of faith, short declaration that opens anyone the entry to the Islam; the 5 daily invocations (the Salat) to Allah; the fasting in the Ramadan month (the Roza); the charity (the Zakat) with helpless, disabled and poor persons of the Umma (Muslim universal community) and the peregrination to Mecca or Hajj at least once in the life, if resources are possessed, which is realized in community, between the seventh and the tenth day of last month of the lunar calendar, Dhul i Hijja. The administration of the Zakat corresponds to the ulemas or to the ministers, according to the sects. This gives them a power and an independence that no civil lay power of the Muslim countries has even dared to question.

There exists a great ideological and practical difference between the Sunnism and the Shiism. This one feels pursued, in reason of the dynastic and ideological orthodoxy that proclaims and defends. The schism in the Islam start from the fourth caliph, Alí, cousin, son-in-law and companion of the Prophet. The death of his grandson Hussein in Kerbala’s battle, Iraq, in the year 680, will mark the real beginning of the schism between the Shiites and those whom it will be called later Sunnis. Anchored in the original past, the Shiism does not evolve, as part of its identity signs, and admits fewer revelation sources. This way, it historically assumes a fatalistic, passive attitude, even of physical suffering for it, waiting for the return of the last missing imam (caliph), the seventh one since Hussein. Imam is the name that the great politician religious guides take in the Shiism. That one, which is hidden, not died, will return as Mahdi (the guided by Allah), at any one moment of the History, to make triumph the orthodox Umma (the Shiites). But also in the Shiism cases of insurgent action have existed, even with certain success and popular active implantation, as in Jomeini’s Iran or in the Lebanon with Hezbollah or Allah’s party. The Shiites constitute today about 12 % of all the Muslims.

Unlike what some pseudo trendies deduce, Hezbollah’s hostile vision towards the West derives more from the religious dogmas of the islamist totalitarian organization, that from the foreign policies of the democratic powers. During the short war of 2006, Hezbollah led its operative campaign with a high strategic and tactical knowledge and great profusion of conventional armament. Its ideologists understand and value its «blood struggle» as part of the Islam’s war against the unfaithful persons. A general war without political conventional borders. And which goal is, first, to re-define the map of Middle East according to those interests, and, finally, to manage to establish a world Islamic orthodox order.

The Hezbollah’s thinkers do not consider the Lebanon as a possible reality right now. Only when the western influence is eliminated in the zone and Israel destroyed, the Muslim Lebanon will be able to have a proper entity. For Hezbollah, the Western world is one in its hatred and hostility towards its vision of world Islamic unity. In this delirious puzzle, the United States (the Great Satan) are the command of this conspiracy and its aggressive campaign. In them Israel is only one more weapon against the Muslims. Only that is very active, nearby and, till now, very effective. We are not forgotten other modern democratic countries in this attributed and sealed role, despite of us. France, Germany, Great Britain, etc., and even Russia and, lately, China are associates, co-religionists, collaborators, friends of Satan. This about «Satan and company» gives unit of intention and coherence to Hezbollah. Only the «Union of the Islam» can defeat to this unfaithful persons’ tremendous federation. And from this, for example, Hezbollah’s recognition to the Islamic politically active and provocative Iran, as part of that one. In Hezbollah’s lexicon, the Islamic republic of Iran is «Iran el-Islam», which indicates that Iran is only a province of the great «dar el-Islam», the world future caliphate, the Umma in action, in the Shiite version.

There is in Hezbollah a strong integration phenomenon of fanaticism: the promised Paradise already is here or, at least, within reach of the simple faithful believer. It consists in joining the Umma and fulfilling a few clear and simple rules: the so called «5 rites of the Islam». Then Hezbollah preaches them that the Koran says that if they fight in the «blood struggle» of Allah, God «will reinforce them in their resolution and will give them the victory» (caution, to the Umma). And to those who die in this roses path, the immediate and sure prize is the «Houris garden» during an indefinite time (caution, not necessarily eternal). Where all their sensory and sensual appetites will be satisfied, to their personal mundane and wished range. And those who do not fall, specially belonging of the families or the most ancient clans of the «community», will see their material wealth increased with good part of the booty of war taken to the unfaithful persons. It is all a complete, simple, coherent and satisfactory program, specially for the oppressed, those without option, the overwhelmed, the prosecuted and the resentful from this difficult world in which they live.

The Jihad or Muslim Holy War

How it was interpreted and it is interpreted today? What role could have terrorists in it? Is it possible to come to a pacific living together with most of the Islamic people?  How can we control the imames, the preachers and readers in mosques, almost always without a reliable, sole and canonic formation in the Koran and the Sura?  What can really do the ulemas and muftis (the Islamic Law doctors, not theologians) in order to control the «Terrorism in the name of the Islam» and establish a reliable peace of the Islam with all peoples in the World?

What is and what does mean the Jihad in the context of the Muslim revelation?
The Islam is, in its simpler meaning, a simple faith, with external and social well definite, easy to follow and fulfill rites. The rites are canonize actions by a religion and necessary in order that it imbues in the personal and collective soul of its believers. In the Islam there exist 5 big rites, which are symbolized in its iconography by an opened hand:
The faith profession, short declaration that opens anyone the entry to the Islam. The 5 daily invocations (the Salat) to Allah. The fasting during the Ramadan´s month (the Roza). The charity (the Zakat) with the helpless, disabled and poor (in this order) of the Umma (Moslem universal community). And the peregrination to Mecca or the Hajj at least once in the life, if there are possessed enough resources, which is realized in community, congregating nowadays simultaneously several million persons, between the seventh and the tenth day of last month of the lunar calendar, Dhul i Hijja.
The Jihad, the holy war, the blooding effort in Allah’s path, is directed against those that THREATEN the Umma. These can be whether the hostile external unfaithful persons, as the not Muslims which coexist in dar-el-Islam, the lands where the Umma rules politically, and that have broken their «protection agreement» with it. The Jews and the Christians have theoretical right to it, as peoples mentioned in the Koran and that hold some of the books considered also as prophetic by the Islam. The Jihad is considered to be a practically equal obligation to one of the so called Five Pillars of the Islam, already mentioned.
The Koran has numerous “aleyas” or verses that prescribe and encourage the struggle armed in Allah’s way. Used by an “imam” or preacher, which directs the prayers and Koran readings in the mosque, and which credentials are not so much an exquisite Islamic formation of several years in a credited madrassa (Koran school), but rather to possess an empathy with his community and a certain gift of oratory, these absolute, direct and repeated “indications” can turn out to be incendiary.
The Moroccan terrorist “El Chino”, who next committed suicide in Leganés, presided several times, as was said, the Islam prayer in the M-30 road mosque. Was the imam “El Chino” a reliable follower of the Noble Koran?
Sura (chapter), 4, aleya (verse) 33 (29) «…Oh, believers…do not kill yourselves…».
2, 10 (11) «When it is said to them: Do not commit disorders (voice with which the crimes are defined) in the Earth, they answer: Far from it, we introduce in it the good order (the Good)».
2, 11 (12) «Alas!, they commit disorders, but they do not understand it».
28, 77 «As Allah does the Good, also make you the good and do not foment the corruption (the Evil)» (murder of innocent and of peoples that receive you -the lands of dar-el-Ahd-, drunkenness, drugs, unnecessary damages of the things).

We have respectfully taken TWO translations of the Noble Koran to realize a SELECTION of the aleyas that treat on the Jihad. We don not use the sunna (tradition) of the Prophet, which can be an object of controversy, about its legal legitimacy, with the Chiís and other minor Islamic groups.
Sura 2, aleya 186 (190) «Do the Holy war for Allah’s reason against those who make the war to you».
2, 187 (191) «Kill them anywhere that you find them and expel them wherefrom they have expelled you (Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans? But, perhaps did they come first there?)».
2, 189 (190) «Attack them (the unfaithful persons) until there is not presently idolatry and all adoration is given to Allah». It repeats almost exactly in 8, 40 (39).
2, 212 (216) «The war has been prescribed to you and you have taken distaste of it».
2, 214 (217) «The temptation of the idolatry is worse than the slaughter. The unfaithful persons will not stop doing the war to you, while they have not made you resign your religion, if they can».
2, 215 (218) «Those who leave their country and fight in Allah’s path (the Jihad) can wait for His mercy».
4, 7 (69) «Those who obey Allah and to His Messenger will enter in the society of the righteous, of the martyrs, of the virtuosos, whom Allah has filled with His benefits».
4, 74 «That fight in Allah’s way those that change the life in this world, for that in the Last one. And that who fights in Allah’s way, as dies or turns out to be victorious, We will give him an enormous remuneration».
4, 79 (77) «…have exclaimed: Lord, why do you order us the war? …Answer them: The possession of the life here below is small thing; the future life is the real good for those who fear Allah. Here they will not cheat you even in a filament».
4, 105 (104) «And do not weaken in chasing these people. If you feel sorry, also they feel sorry, but you expect from Allah what they cannot hope».
9, 39 «If you do not go to the battle, Allah will punish you with a painful punishment: He will replace you by another people».
9, 92 (91) «The weak persons, the patients, those who do not have means, will not be forced to go to the war, provided that are sincere respect of Allah and His Messenger». (This makes fall practically the obligation of the Jihad in the Umma, which must contribute this way a suitable number of muhaydins).
9, 124 (123) «Oh, believers!, attack the unfaithful persons who surround you: that they always find in you a rough reception».
47, 4 «When you find unfaithful persons, kill them up to the point of doing with them a  slaughter and put chains strongly on the captive ones to prevent them from fleeing».
47, 37 (35) «Do not show cowardice and do not call the unfaithful persons to make the peace, when you are the strongest».

The principal branches of the Islam and their ideology.
The Sunnism, which follow 90 % of the Muslims nowadays, also accepts as Allah´s revelation the tradition (the Sunna) of the Prophet. These are his facts and his commentaries or hadices. The major or minor rigor in the selection and acceptance of this tradition characterize three of its theological schools, founded astride between the VIIIth and IXth centuries.
The most opened and flexible school, the Chafií, founded by the Palestinian al-Chafii, died in Cairo on 820 at the age of 53 years, opens an encouraging door for the pacific evolution of the Islam. It accepts also the consensus of the wise persons of the community and the analogical reasoning or qiijas, as correct ways for the adjustment of the Islam to all the times and places, from his “rural, illiterate, poor, medieval and surrounded of hostile peoples, origin”. For it starts from the hadiz: «Allah recognizes the Good in what the Muslims have judged as such «.
There exists a great ideological and practical difference between the Sunnism and the Chiism. The last feels pursued, in reason of the dynastic (the Chiism arises from the fourth caliph, Alí, cousin, son-in-law and companion of the Prophet) and ideological orthodoxy (it admits fewer revelation sources), that it proclaims and defends. This way, it assumes historically a fatalistic, passive attitude, even of physical suffering for it, waiting for the return of the (caliph) Imam missing. Imam is the name that the political – religious guides take in the Chiism, not only the common mosques´ prayer. That one will return as Mahdi (the guided by Allah), in a given moment of the History, to make triumph the orthodox Umma (themselves).
But also cases of insurgent action have happened in the Chiism, even with certain success and popular implantation, as in Jomeini’s Iran, in the Lebanon with Hezbollah or Allah’s Party and his subsidiary Hamas, in Palestine.
It seems to be clear that the Sunnism is more prepared to treat and accept the pacific living together and the relations of all kinds with other religions and political ideologies, at least in certain moments and countries. And that with the Chiism is necessary to negotiate nowadays from a position with more determination and strength.

The modern violent Muslim radicalism and his possible ways and solutions towards a pacific and respectful living together.
The radical Islamic insurgents devoted themselves between the 60s and 80s in last century, to attack to those that they were qualifying of Moslem corrupt and false, socialistic or liberal pro occidental governments. Their fortune was small for all the effort made: the retreat of the Soviets from Afghanistan, with the logistic western support, and the capture of the power in Sudan, guided by al-Turabi, after they infiltrated and got strong in his Army, which is still a unique case. From 90, their aims is Western developed countries.
Their operative present characteristics are:
Their unnecessary and indiscriminate brutality, which discredits them before their religion. Already we saw a minimal example of 4 moral important aleyas, which they despise and not comply with, without Allah had changed them for they. Sura 2, aleya 100 (106) «We do not abrogate any verse of this Book, nor we will make erase any one of your memory, without replacing it by other one equal or better».
The absolute absence of venerable and pious ulemas and muftíes in their side.
Their great operative decentralization owing to the universality of the Umma, which goes beyond the idea of nation or race. But that prevents them from obtaining strategic aims, though their punctual actions are important, painful and fearsome.
Their failure in joining actively and firmly to a social wide group, which gives coverage and permanent impulse to their movement. The most mentally ill activists are in the habit of being isolating progressively of the society (at least, emotional and ideologically) though they «live» inside it, for the sake of their violent methods, to which they sacrifice everything for the efficiency. They follow a process of segregation, purification (in their improvised and not orthodox rites, they fast, use water from Islam´s sacred places and green banderoles with inscriptions of the aleyas that favor their cause), consecration and radicalization. Up to coming to the death and even to the suicide in their limited actions. And then they become extinct, as weak, sterile and deviant that are, far from the Umma and her real interests.
Their zeal of publicity, to which the West contributes insensitively, stupid (it is not to know what it should know) and glad.
Their present aim is to strike any government, since the radical and aggressive caliphate in dar-el-Islam does not exist nowadays.

In the face of this own terrorism (war actions against general, innocent and indiscriminate personal targets), the Islamic world is paralyzed and do not knows what to say or do. The spokesmen and intellectual affirm that the Islam is peace and tolerance. But this is not totally true, as we saw before. The majority of the Muslims take away from the attacks for opportunism, to protect the Islam, worried by the increasing rejection that it suffers in Western countries. But, when do the ulemas or the muftís intervene in the polemic? Almost never.
Never was carried out inside the Islam a deep reflection on the political and religious opportunity of the violence. Does someone know Islamic active pacifists? It is not the case  that the intellectual laymen Moslem react. These are not operative in the way that we know in the West, since for a good Muslim the politics, the society and the religion form the only, exclusive and inseparable trinity established by Allah. Besides, the social and political failure of the intellectual laymen Arabs remains tied with that of the nationalistic, leftist and Europeanized elite, that stimulated the independence of the different Arabic nations after the World War II.
The Islam has to assume that the Jihad was necessary for the establishment and the defense of the believers’ primitive community, the Prophet establishing the Islamic state from the violent destruction of the jahiliyya (the existing barbarism previous to the Islam Arabic). And even the Jihad could be useful for its RAPID extension through the world, according with the existing condition of culture and development of the medieval civilizations. But  its historical opportunity does not exist nowadays and then it must be replaced for «another type of EFFORT in Allah’s way», which concept already exists in the Sunna and that might be recaptured and proclaimed by the ulemas and the pious muftis, which are the ideologists of the real and everlasting Islam. And, certainly, those enjoy the most ample political, social and economic independence: they are respected and / or fearsome by the governments in their respective countries, and are usually those who administer the Zakat or the canonical alms.
Since the emergence of 4 principal theological Sunnis schools before mentioned, the principle of the personal reflection effort, the ichtihad, got power in the Islam. The ichtihad is going to allow the development of the Arabic culture, so much for the civil aspects (sciences, trade, literature, art), as for the enrichment of its theology. It is the base of Islamic lawyers as al-Chafii. The ichtihad is a source of brilliancy, creativity, enrichment, progress and peace in the way of the personal and collective effort towards God (this is the nucleus and the reason of the Islam), when already the Umma has spread and multiplied enormously through the world.
But, circa the XIth century (V century from the hégira or march to Medina), the theologians close the door to the ichtihad. The methodological Islamic approach alters: from then, it is imitating, repeating and following itself and abusing of the doctrine compendiums.

What can really do the ulemas and muftis (the Islamic Law doctors) in order to control the “Terrorism in the Name of the Islam” and establish a reliable peace of the Islam with all peoples in the World?
Would it be possible that the most illustrious and lucid theologians and lawyers of the Islam were assessing and facing the tremendous internal and external problems of living together, which the Umma faces?
Would it be possible that they were agreeing  to use (already we know that it is not new at all) the reflection from the canonical sources, as instrument of advance, adjustment, external relations and perfection through the time of the Islamic community?
Would it be possible that they were preaching against the free and sterile violence that is exercised in the name of the Islam by some very hallucinated minorities?
Would it be possible that they were controlling the quality of training of the imames in the different countries and the exclusion of their noble functions of the upstarts that, being served of the direction of the prayers, preach fanatical, deviant ideologies, criminals and without real future?
Would it be possible that they will declare that the interests of the Islam and of the Umma have Spain and the rest of Europe as good friends, a part of dar-el-Ahd, the countries where the Umma does not dominate politically, but it is in peace with their inhabitants and can realize its performances and rites?
Some of the craziest Islamic guerrillas were the Algerians in the 90s. Without being not at least studious of the Islam and with very earthly interests, they were excommunicated (of the Umma) in their delirium, some groups to others. The takfir or anathema stems from kfur or ungodliness. This one relates directly to the religious chaos or jahiliyya, previous to the Islam in Arabia. For it is declared impious someone who is or tries to be a Muslim and is exiled, at least morally, of the Umma.
Would it be to ask too much the ulemas to use the institution of the takfir against the most recalcitrant, dangerous and criminal Islamic terrorists, which act turned aside perversely (maliciously or after being reprimand by them without result) in name of the Islam?

Modern Asymmetrical Warfare.

Let’s see some examples of these irregular social-military conflicts :
Country and conflict nature.   Period.    Military and political result.

Greece, communist. 1946 to 1949. Suffocated.

Malaya, communist, tied to the Chinese etnia. 1947 to 1960. Suffocated.

French Indochina. 1946 to 1954. Creation of both republics of Vietnam.

The Philippines, communist. 1947 to 1952. Suffocated.

Kenya, nationalist. 1952 to 1959. Independence.

Algeria, nationalist. 1954 to 1962. Independence.

Cyprus, nationalist. 1955 to 1959. Independence.

South Vietnam. 1959 to 1975. Unification of the country under the aegis of North Vietnam. Dissolution of  the Vietcong, independence movement of the South.

Angola, nationalist. 1960 to 1975. Independence.

Afghanistan, nationalist. 1978 to 1989. Independence from the Soviet goverment sponsor.

The military counterinsurgents must avoid, therefore, the prolongation of the conflict, which is mining the conviction of their own forces and allowing that the enemy should spread, strengthen and prevail.

Sigue leyendo Modern Asymmetrical Warfare.

Asymmetrical Warfare

The pompously so called «fourth generation wars» are the counterinsurgency wars  or guerrilla warfares or irregular wars or armed civil revolts or wars of liberation or organized banditry, which have always existed, coexisting with the conventional variants of warfare.

They are those that the USA has lost or not winned lately: Vietnam, The Lebanon (Marines pacifying disembarkation, then demolished in their barrack by Hezbollah members) and Somalia (the uncontrollable and unforseeable wasp’s nest of «all against all» of the war lords and the Islamic fundamental militias). They are unequal wars (they call them now «asymmetrical warfare») against an enemy of lower technological military level relative to the regular enemy forces, taken root always in the civil own or occupied population, slightly intense militarily and extensive in the space and the time.
With embarrassing frequency, when the North American human or technological «sensors» detect some probable Iraqi rebel activity or from the foreign muhaydines, first they devastate with ordnance the building, the block, the zone. Then they go to wipe out and to do the body count , because they are very scrupulous with their statistics. Sometimes among the rubbles they can find the corpses of an Arabic innocent and numerous family. There is an excessive use of the attrition, which is indiscriminate and perverse when the enemy fuses with the civil ones. There is a disregard of the active, unexpected patrolling, which needs proportionally less material and human means, but more trade knowledge, moral courage, performance freedom and creativity in the low and intermediate cadres and command and in the men.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri

Abu Ayyub al-Masri is the «name» of the current coordinator of the semi autonomous groups of Al-Qaida’s foreigner muhaydins in Iraq. Those scarcely are 2 % of the irregular insurgents in Iraq, but they carry out the immense majority of the suicidal assaults.

That one is not a name, but a nickname, which means, «father of Ayyub, the Egyptian». It is very slightly identifying, except in villages and places in the field. And it corresponds with our » Xuan from the Priest» (a possible sacrilegious son), «Carmelina’s son Ricardo» or the most ambiguous yet, «the son of the given birth one».

Best books on Military Theory.

I offer a books´list on military theory, which reading will be very useful to you. And that I consider to be fundamental to know better the military topics and not simply to read a more or less repeated history.

I am including one of my books, fruit of my years of dedication to this topic, which content you can examine in www.amazon.com.

«Maneuver Warfare Handbook» by William Lind.

The classical on modern maneuver warfare. Setting out from German experience.

«The Art of War» by Sun Tzu. Samuel Griffith’s translation is the best.

The permanent and global chinese military theory from a classical author. Its style and content characteristics support the idea of one unique author. With each useful reading, more shades and perspectives are caught. That come to fruition in major richness, agility and depth of thought.

Other “Chinese” books give you a number of strategies (the 33, the 36, the 100, etc.). Its utilization is based on its constant memorization or on iits permanent application. I consider them to be slight practical, for the profuse, diffuse and still confused character of many ancient authors of the Han etnia. What does happen if a different case arises? It seems as if they wanted to conceal their supposed wisdom from the not initiated ones.

«The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver» by David Glantz.

The Soviet military doctrine that won the War, fully explained. With them they won the II World War. And imposed their economic social system in half Europe, supposed “liberated” from the Germans.

“On War” by Clausewitz.

It is an extensive work, since it fits with the epoch, in which writing little was a sign of inconsistency, little importance and scanty reflection. The books or parts that compose it were finished in variable degree by the author, whose premature death did not allow its conclusion. We are interested in the first chapters on the theory and the philosophy of the war. Other books treat on the tactics of a period in which the enemy deployment was staying at the sights of the enemy command and his HHQQ and auxiliary, placed in a nearby height. He praises Liddell Hart’s opposite: a decisive battle using the maximum own concentration and power on the enemy army. In an age of masses armies, inaugurated by Napoleon, soon was clear that it was not possible to win a war between full armed nations, in an alone great battle. It was necessary a campaign with successive victorious operations, looking for the achievement of the military goals of the campaign (theatre of operations, Europe, Pacific Ocean, Africa) or the strategy. In addition, already there did not exist a genius advanced to his epoch as Napoleon.

«Forward into Battle» by Paddy Griffith.

Excelent book about last two centuries’ military tactics. It has detractors for its sometimes breaking vision.

«Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology», compiled by Richard D. Hooker.

Short articles from some of the best modern military writers. It has works from Rommel, Leonhard, John Antal, etc.

«The Art of Maneuver» by Robert Leonhard.

One of the first full theory about maneuver warfare. And he stands out strongly, expanding the ideas torrent of this theory in development those moments.

«Race to the Swift» by Richard Simpkin.

On maneuver warfare. The best book of the British military thinker. Its reading is some difficult, for its language erudition.

«Manual de Táctica», dos tomos, by Eike Middeldorf.

It is the most complete and current manual on modern tactics that I have found. It has chapters about land warfare using atomic tactical bombs and on the particular conditions of fight: by night, in forests, with extreme cold, etc.

«Estrategia» by Basil Liddell Hart.

Best military theory by B. L. Hart. Easy to read.

«The Foundations of the Science of War» by John Frederick Charles Fuller.

The best book about military principles. Hard to read sometimes. Almost 65 years after its first edition, it was reprinted by the Marines Corps. I got a first edition copy from an American university library. It had many critiques and later the author went back on the underlying ideas in the book. The critiques, in turn, had as bottom that he had an eccentric personality, in a group (the military men) tremendously conservative and established by protocol. He had mystical streakes (Hindu philosophy, yoga) and flirted with the Nazi, being got by Hitler.

«On the Nature of War» by Enrique Alonso.

The «how to do» in war. Recent, full and unusual military theory. It is based in ten «operational systems».

«Understanding War» by Trevor N. Dupuy.

It is a combat theory, based on History, military factors and its figures. I find that his “friction” concept development, took from Clausewitz, is deviant. And he exposes another concept different from Clausewitz.