Rudimentary Insurgency Center of Gravity Analysis

Excerpt from Notes of a Counterinsurgent

Rudimentary Insurgency Center of Gravity Analysis

The Center of Gravity (see figure 3) for the insurgent is the indigenous population. Local support is helps arm and sustain the movement by providing the insurgent Critical Capabilities of supply, intelligence, communication, fire support, force protection, infiltration nodes, etc.  Support may be active, passive or coerced.

The Critical Requirement the insurgent requires in order to nurture and protect his Center of Gravity (local population) is psychological dominance of the battlespace.  As long as the population fears/prefers the insurgent more than COIN forces the insurgent has achieved his objective.

Examples:

Many people are afraid to speak out against the Mexican cartels because law enforcement measures are ineffective against them, or law enforcement official are colluding with the cartels.

Sunni moderates are afraid to speak out against al Qaeda or Palestinian Extremists.  Al Qaeda calls moderates infidels and kill them as opportunities develop.  Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, was unable to stop extremist violence in late 2008/2009 that resulted in Israel conducting operation Cast Lead.  Extremist Palestinians threatened civilian Palestinian lives if they did not fight against Israel.

Afghan locals are afraid to speak out against the Taliban because they believe the US will desert them before they can develop a sustained capability to protect themselves and their families.

Despite the overt fear and control however likely lurks a silent minority waiting to come out from the cold and fight against the terrorist or insurgent when he feels he can make some positive gains.  Identifying such individuals is a COIN information collection requirement.  Such people are the heart of an insurgent movement, or the heart of a COIN countermovement.

·         There have been low-level reports of isolated forms of vigilantism against the Mexican cartels, but the effort is not sustained; this indicates a silent minority exists that want to fight against the cartels.

The Critical Vulnerability to the mosaic of the insurgents needs is trust.  Trust ties everything together.  Break the trust, and the insurgent (or counterinsurgent for that matter) has nothing to sustain him.

The true Center Of Gravity for COIN forces is also the indigenous population.  For the objective of the counterinsurgent is to ensure the indigenous population complies with rule of law and run their own areas without assistance from COIN forces.

It is therefore a competition between the insurgent and counterinsurgent to control the population and win by proxy.  Winning is achieved via the population by both sides, NOT by direct contact between the two opposing forces.

Hence this is why the late David Galula’s following comment remains valid today, as it did during his day.

"It can no longer be ignored or applied unconsciously in a country beset by a revolutionary war, when what is at stake is precisely the counterinsurgent’s power directly challenged by an active minority through the use of subversion and force. The counterinsurgent who refuses to use this law for his own purposes, who is bound by its peacetime limitations, tends to drag the war out without getting closer to victory.

How far to extend the limitations is a matter of ethics, and a very serious one, but no more so than bombing the civilian population in a conventional war. All wars are cruel, the revolutionary war perhaps most of all because every citizen, whatever his wish, is or will be directly and actively involved in it by the insurgent who needs him and cannot afford to let him remain neutral. The cruelty of the revolutionary war is not a mass, anonymous cruelty but a highly personalized, individual one. No greater crime can be committed by the counterinsurgent than accepting, or resigning himself to, the protraction of the war. He would do as well to give up early.

The strategic problem of the counterinsurgent may be defined now as follows: “To find the favorable minority, to organize it in order to mobilize the population against the insurgent minority.” Every operation, whether in the military field or in the political, social, economic, and psychological fields, must be geared to that end."

This excerpt was obtained from David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare:  Theory and Practice, pages 56 and 57, dated 1964 and printed by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc.  All rights reserved.  Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc, Westport CT.

Of interest to counterinsurgents is a quote by one of America’s favorite insurgents and founding fathers, Samuel Adams…

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.”

THE POINT HERE IS TO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A VOCAL AND ACTIVE MINORITY.   DO NOT IGNORE THE TECHNOLOGICALLY INFERIOR, OR AN ENITITY’S WILL TO PERSEVERE.  IF ONE CANNOT OVERTLY CAPTURE OR KILL A VOCAL MINORITY, YOU MUST FIGURE A WAY TO SUBVERT HIM, OR GET HIM BY PROXY.  HE MAY NEED TO BE A FOCUS OF YOUR OPERATONAL AND INTELLIGENCE EFFORT.  IF HE IS IGNORED, OR ALLOWED TO CONTINUE UNABATED, HE MAY COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU.