‘Disrupt Insurgent Psychological Dominance’

This first thing the Mexican government must do is to establish its credibility amongst the people.  To establish credibility, the government must ‘Disrupt Insurgent Psychological Dominance’.

Below is a generic example of how it has been done in other counterinsurgency environments.  Granted, every situation is different, but many principles remain the same.   The locals need to be made part of the solution.  The only thing kind of new is the idea of the ‘COIN Triad’ which highlights all the key functions and synchronization needed to start disrupting and destroying the threat from more of a holistic point of view

The center of gravity for the narco-insurgents and the government are the same…it’s the population.

Until the government gains respect and cooperation of the population, it will continue to appear useless.  If the government cannot be respected, then there is really no governance…period. 

Disrupt Insurgent Psychological Dominance

Three, sustained, fundamental activities HAVE TO OCCUR (COIN Triad) for insurgent influence to wane and/or dissipate.

·         Cocoon the population

·         Run a high op-tempo lethal and non-lethal targeting effort

·         Most important, create, mobilize and sustain an overt and surreptitious cell of locals to subvert the insurgent movement.  This effort constitutes a TRIAD.

All lethal, non-lethal, intelligence, intelligence operations and collection efforts, civil affairs, political, humanitarian activities must follow along these lines of operation in order to serve as a catalyst for a small minority to become the tipping point for a populace driven counterinsurgency movement. 

The British did this in the 50s and 60s in Malaysia and Africa via pseudo gangs and Special Branch, in addition to a number of population control and civil political efforts.  The Portuguese conducted similar operations in Africa during the 60s and 70s.  The Sunni Iraqis and US did this in 2006 through the Awakening Movement and “Desert Protection Force”; some elements of the Afghan population have initiated efforts in 2008/2009.

Figure 1 Graphic illustrates the "three prong" approach to disrupting insurgent psychological dominance of the battle space.  Conventional forces stabilize; Special Operations and Targeting forces keep the enemy on the run on the surface and in the underground; Unconventional forces exploit the dissonance caused by targeting operations to penetrate the underground, exploit societal seams and subvert the insurgency from the inside out.