The Iraq War vs. the Second Boer War
They say history always repeats itself and since General Petraeus has taken command and begun implementing his counter-insurgency tactics, my mind has recalled another conflict and another general who had to defeat an insurgency.
The conflict was the Second Boer War (1899 – 1902) fought in South Africa between the British and the Boers. The war went through several phases until the British considered the Boers defeated… does this sound familiar? (from Wikipedia):
By September 1900, the British were in control of both Republics, except for the northern part of Transvaal. They however found that they only controlled the ground their columns physically occupied. As soon as the columns left a town or district, British control of that area faded away. The huge territory of the Republics made it impossible for the 250,000 British troops to control it effectively. The vast distances between the columns allowed the Boer commandos considerable freedom to move about. The Boer commanders adopted a guerrilla style of warfare. The commandos were sent to their own districts with the order to act against the British there whenever possible. Their strategy was to do as much damage to the enemy as possible, and then to move off and vanish when enemy reinforcements arrived.
The Boers were especially effective during the guerrilla phase of the war because Roberts had assumed that the war would end with the capture of the Boer capitals and the dispersal of the main Boer armies.
That’s essentially how the Iraq War has played out pre-Petraeus. The US military captured the major cities, dispersed the regular Iraqi army, did not have enough troops to control the country, and Al Qaeda and Iraqi sectarians turned to guerilla tactics and started the insurgency.
So what did the British do to counter the insurgency? The British commander-in-chief, Lord Kitchener, implemented a new policy that erected lines of blockhouses connected with barbed wire fencing effectively limiting the ability of the insurgents from freely moving across the field. British troops would operate out of the blockhouses. They could now search and scour areas bounded by the blockhouses and search for insurgents and weapons. Kitchener also encouraged native Africans to provide the British with intelligence about the Boers.
This is very similiar to the counter-insurgency strategy being used by General Petraeus. Earlier in the war, American commanders kept their forces in large military bases or in the Green Zone, ceding large swaths of territory to the insurgents. Petraeus has changed this by creating smaller, local operational headquarters (blockhouses?) right in the middle neighborhoods and cities. This in turn has limited the insurgents ability to move and reinforce.
General Petraeus (with Al Qaeda’s help) has encouraged native Iraqis to turn against Al Qaeda. Whether it’s Iragi civilians providing intelligence or the turning of native Iraqi insurgents to the side of the Americans and Iraqi government, these tactics seem to be making progress.
While Lord Kitchener employed scorched earth tactics (like burning farms and establishing concentration camps) that would never be tolerated in this day and age, he did develop some of the tactics that seem to be currently under implementation in Iraq.
The Second Boer War ended when the insurgency essentially ran out of gas and they were forced to sign a treaty which brought the Boer republics into the British Empire.
There are even political parallels between the two conflicts… read up on the Second Boer War at Wikipedia to learn more.
