Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis focuses on the regional response to the crisis in Colombia. The major conclusions of the thesis are that the crisis directly affects the security of Colombia's neighbors; that the use of military force will be the most important element in a strategy to restore security and that the Colombian military will require external military assistance to do so; that while Colombia's neighbors have traditionally rejected ideas of intervention, there are indications that they may be willing to participate in such an endeavor; and that while less politically risky courses of action are more likely to occur, a regional military force operating in a peacemaking role will be the most effective course of action towards restoring security in Colombia and the region. These conclusions are reached through an examination of the conflict's effect on Colombia and its neighbors, the capabilities of the Colombian security forces, the history of regional cooperative efforts, and recent political rhetoric and policy decisions region-wide. / Major, United States Marine Corps

L’Angola est devenue indépendante du Portugal le 11 novembre 1975, au milieu des disputes internes qui ont conduit à l'éclatement de la guerre civile provoquée par le fait que le MPLA a déclaré unilatéralement l'indépendance à Luanda. Ce moment a été déterminée en grande partie par le soutien reçu de Cuba et le bloc de l'Est, plus précisément l'URSS, au cours des 14 années de lutte anticoloniale. Dans la période postindépendance, entre 1975 et 1991, même si des bases militaires soviétiques ne furent pas été installées en Angola, il faut signaler l’influence politique-idéologique et la présence militaire de l’Union Soviétique, qui s’exerça à un degré élevé en comparaison avec d’autres pays dans le contexte d’une bipolarité mondiale. Du point de vue idéologique, l’influence soviétique se manifesta dans des actions de l’Etat angolais en ce que cela touchait à la construction d’un sentiment et d’une identité nationale, ainsi que dans l’appartenance à une nation angolaise, objectivée dans le processus de constitution de l’Homme Nouveau, promu par le Parti-Etat. Du point de vue militaire, l’implication de Moscou dans la guerre en Angola nous a amené à conclure que dans ce territoire les Soviétiques donnèrent une plus grande importance à la consolidation de l’Etat en ce qui touchait la sécurité et le renforcement des appareils politiques, en fournissant matériel et le soutien consultatif pour les forces militaires de l’Angola, bien qu'il soit important de remarquer que les Soviétiques n'ont pas contrôlé la politique intérieure du pays. / Angola became independent from Portugal on 11 November 1975, in the midst of internal disputes that led to the outbreak of civil war caused by the fact that the MPLA unilaterally declared independence in Luanda. This moment has been determined largely by the support received from Cuba and the Eastern bloc, specifically the USSR during the 14 years of anti-colonial struggle. In the post-independence period, between 1975 and 1991, although Soviet military bases were not been installed in Angola, it should be noted the political-ideological influence and military presence of the Soviet Union, which exercised a high degree compared with other countries in the context of global bipolarity. From an ideological point of view, Soviet influence was manifested in the actions of the Angolan government in that it affected the building and a sense of national identity, as well as membership in an Angolan nation, objectified in the process of formation of the New Man, promoted by the Party-state. From a military point of view, the involvement of Moscow in the war in Angola has led us to conclude that in this territory the Soviets gave greater importance to the consolidation of the state in which affected the safety and building equipment policies, providing material and advisory support to the military forces of Angola, although it is important to note that the Soviets did not control the internal politics of the country.

The goal of this study is to ascertain how Thailand wages counterinsurgency (COIN). Thailand has waged two successful COINs in the past and is currently waging a third on its southern border. The lessons learned from Thailand’s COIN campaigns could result in modern irregular warfare techniques valuable not only to Thailand and neighboring countries with similar security problems, but also to countries like the United States and the United Kingdom that are currently reshaping their irregular warfare doctrines in response to the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first set of COIN lessons comes from Thailand’s successful 1965-85 communist COIN. The second set comes from Bangkok’s understudied 1980s-90s COIN against southern separatists. The third set comes from Thailand’s current war against ethnic Malay separatists and radical Islamic insurgents attempting to secede and form a separate state called “Patani Raya,” among other names. Counterinsurgency is a difficult type of warfare for four reasons: (1) it can take years to succeed; (2) the battle space is poorly defined; (3) insurgents are not easily identifiable; and (4) war typically takes place among a civilian population that the guerrillas depend on for auxiliary support. Successful COINs include not only precise force application operations based on quality intelligence, but also lasting social and economic programs, political empowerment of the disenfranchised, and government acceptance of previously ignored cultural realities. Background: In 1965, communist insurgents, backed by the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), began waging an insurgency against Thailand in order to overthrow its government and install a Marxist regime. The Thai government struggled, both politically and militarily, to contain the movement for years, but eventually, it prevailed. Its success was based on a combination of effective strategy and coordination, plus well-designed and run security, political, and economic programs, the latter nowadays called the “three pillars of COIN,” a phrase developed by David Kilcullen, a modern COIN theorist and practitioner. One of Bangkok’s most successful initiatives was the CPM program (civil-military-police), which used a linked chain of local forces, police, and the military to not only provide security for villages, but also economic aid and administrative training to rural peoples. State political programs that undercut communist political programs backed by masterful diplomacy and a constant barrage of rural works helped erode the communist position. The 1980s-90s COIN against southern separatists followed similar lines. The far South’s four border provinces, comprised of 80 percent ethnic Malay Muslims, had been in revolt on and off for decades since Bangkok annexed the area in 1902. Bangkok had waged haphazard COIN campaigns against rebel groups there for decades with mixed results. But after the successful communist COIN was up and running in 1980, Bangkok decided to apply similar ways and means to tackle the southern issue. The government divided its COIN operations into two components: a security component run by a task force called CPM-43, and a political-economic component run by the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center, or SB-PAC. SB-PAC also had a Special Branch investigative capacity. Combined, the 80s-90s southern COIN strategy relied on extensive military intelligence networks to curb violence, civilian administrators to execute local political reforms, and local politicians to apply traditional Malay and Muslim problem solving techniques to keep the peace. These programs worked well against the multitude of southern insurgent groups that conducted sporadic attacks against government and civilian targets while also running organized criminal syndicates. By the end of the 1990s, with a dose of Thailand’s famed diplomacy and help from Malaysia’s Special Branch, Bangkok defeated the southern separatists. In January 2004, however, a new separatist movement in southern Thailand emerged – one based on ethnic Malay separatism and radical Islam. It is a well-coordinated movement with effective operational expertise that attacks at a higher tempo than past southern rebel groups. It moreover strikes civilian targets on a regular basis, thereby making it a terrorist group. Overall, it dwarfs past southern movements regarding motivation and scale of violence. Thai officials think the Barisan Revolusi Nasional Coordinate, or BRN-C, leads the current rebellion, but there are several other groups that claim to also lead the fight. Members of the insurgency are nearly exclusively ethnic Malays and Muslims. The movement demonstrates radical Islamic tendencies thought its propaganda, indoctrination, recruitment, and deeds. It is a takfiri group that kills other Muslims who do not share its religious beliefs, so it wrote in its spiritual rebel guidebook, Fight for the Liberation of Patani. BRN-C seeks to separate the four southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla from Thailand in order to establish an Islamic republic. The separatists base their revolt on perceived military, economic, cultural, and religious subjugation going back to the early 1900s. And they have a point. The central government has, at different times in the past, indeed treated southerners with tremendous disdain and sometimes violence – especially those considered insurgents. But Bangkok has also instituted scores of economic and social aid programs in the south – mosque building, college scholarships, and medical aid, for example – so it has not been a continual anti-Muslim “blood fest” as government detractors have painted it. Still the maltreatment, certainly many times less than yesteryear, has provided today’s insurgents with ideological fodder for a steady stream of recruits and supporters. Combined with radical Islam, it has bonded the insurgents to a significant degree. Statistically, in the 2005-07-time frame, insurgents assassinated 1.09 people a day, detonated 18.8 bombs a month, and staged 12.8 arson attacks a month. In 2005, they conducted 43 raids and 45 ambushes. The militants target security forces, government civilians, and the local population. They have killed fellow Muslims and beheaded numerous Buddhist villagers. The insurgents’ actions have crippled the South’s education system, justice system, and commerce, and also have maligned Buddhist-Muslim relations. Overall, the separatists pose a direct threat to Thailand’s south and an indirect threat to the rest of the country. Moreover, their radical Islamic overtones have potential regional and global terrorist implications. The Thai Government spent much of 2004 attempting to ascertain whether the high level of violence was, in fact, an insurgency. To begin with, the government, led by PM Thaksin Shinawatra, was puzzled by the fact that the separatists had not published a manifesto or approached Bangkok with a list of demands. By mid-2004, however, the insurgents had staged a failed, region-wide revolt, and their prolific leaflet and Internet propaganda campaign clearly demonstrated that a rebel movement was afoot. By fall 2005, the separatists had made political demands via the press, all of which centered on secession. By 2006, a coup against PM Thaksin succeeded and the military government that replaced him instituted a new COIN strategy for the south that by 2008 had reduced violence by about 40 percent. Some of the tenets of this new strategy were based on Thailand’s past successful COIN strategies. Whether or not the government has concocted a winning strategy for the future, however, remains to be seen. This paper analyses these COIN campaigns through the COIN Pantheon, a conceptual model the author developed as an analytical tool. It is based on David Kilcullen’s three pillars of COIN.

Au cours des dernières décennies, l’augmentation du nombre de guerres irrégulières place les armées modernes dans une situation délicate. Pour pouvoir relever ce nouveau défi, ces organisations militaires, avant tout destinées à mener des guerres interétatiques, se doivent d’innover. Plusieurs cas historiques montrent comment, face à de nouvelles formes de conflit, certaines armées se sont lancées dans un processus d’innovation. Le cas de l’armée française en Algérie en est un. L’objectif de ce mémoire est de comprendre comment l’innovation a émergé lors du conflit, et comment elle s’est diffusée au sein de l’organisation militaire. Un survol de la stratégie française en Algérie va permettre de dégager trois principales innovations : La mise en place de la doctrine de la guerre révolutionnaire, la création des Sections Administratives Spécialisées et l’approche de David Galula. L’étude de ses trois cas nous montre que, durant la Guerre d’Algérie, l’innovation provenait principalement des militaires, plus précisément du sommet de la hiérarchie. Cependant, certains exemples d’innovation par le bas existent. Dans ces cas-là, la diffusion se fera via la doctrine informelle. L’exemple de Galula nous prouve néanmoins qu’une innovation se diffuse beaucoup plus difficilement lorsqu’elle émane des hommes de terrain. / During the last decades, the increasing number of irregular wars brought the modern armies into a delicate situation. In order to overcome this new challenge, these military organizations primarily designed for interstate wars had to innovate. Many historical cases show how certain armies have launched into innovation processes because of new forms of conflict. The case of the French army in Algeria is a good example. The main goal of this paper is to understand how innovation has emerged during the conflict, and how it has diffused within the military organization. A glance at the French strategy in Algeria will allow us to highlight three main innovations: the development of the Revolutionary Warfare doctrine, the creation of “Sections Administratives Specialisées, and the David Galula approach. The analysis of these three study cases shows that innovation came mainly from militaries during the Algerian war, particularly those on top of the hierarchy. However, certain examples of bottom-up innovations do exist. In these cases, diffusion will take place via the informal doctrine. Nevertheless, the Galula example demonstrates that an innovation will diffuse with more difficulty when it comes from people on the ground.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The United States has spent over $2 billion during the last six years to reconstruct and stabilize Afghanistan through the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP). This effort is only one of several simultaneous programs attempting to stabilize Afghanistan using approaches including providing humanitarian aid, education, government and security reform, and construction. Construction often involves simple infrastructure development with tangible benefits including increased access, growing commerce and better security. Construction projects can also employ the local population and, if done correctly, develop a sense of community and social capital. What causes construction projects to miss the mark failing to result in creating a stable community? This research compares four different construction programs including CERP, National Solidarity Program (NSP), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) to determine their potential impact on Afghan stability. It uses a combination of statistical regression, correlation, geospatial and temporal analysis to compare completed construction with recorded SIGACTs (Significant Acts) reported by U.S. forces and NGOs. The results imply that the identified stabilization programs are not using construction effectively to create social capital and stability.

L’Amérique centrale, théâtre des dernières batailles rangées de la guerre froide, est aujourd’hui la région la plus violente au monde, selon les Nations unies. Notre étude s’intéresse à la forme de guerre irrégulière livrée par l’État guatémaltèque contre sa propre population pendant la deuxième moitié du vingtième siècle. À la lumière de rares témoignages d’exécutants et d’archives militaires et policières, nous examinons un mécanisme clandestin de répression dont les trois principales composantes – les enlèvements, la torture et les exécutions sommaires – pouvaient s’abattre sur toute personne soupçonnée, à tort ou à raison, de conspirer contre un statu quo d’exclusion. Au moment de leur articulation, ces moyens répressifs ont constitué un dispositif qui, à partir de 1966, s’est avéré d’une redoutable efficacité. Arme de prédilection des adeptes de la guerre antisubversive pendant plus de vingt ans, le dispositif permettait, telle une chaîne de production, l’accumulation des renseignements jugés indispensables à cette forme de guerre, ainsi que les cadavres dont l’absence éternelle ou la présence outrageuse sur la place publique servaient d’avertissement funeste à l’ensemble du corps social. Où chercher les origines d’un tel dispositif? À partir des ouvrages de référence cités dans le manuel de guerre contre-subversive de l’armée guatémaltèque, la réponse à cette question nous fera découvrir des parachutistes français pour qui la défaite militaire en Indochine et en Algérie pendant les années 1950 n’était pas une option et pour qui la victoire justifiait absolument tous les moyens. Le penchant de ces pionniers de la guerre hors-norme pour les cours magistraux, les entrevues et les articles, nous a permis d’étudier les méthodes qu’ils préconisaient et de repérer leurs traces au Guatemala. Alors que la guerre qui avait servi de prétexte au maintien du dispositif est terminée, sa très réputée efficacité assure encore aujourd’hui sa pérennité auprès de ceux qui peuvent s’offrir le service. En ce sens, la contre-insurrection se poursuit, et ce, malgré l’absence depuis une quinzaine d’années d’un conflit armé. Cette thèse aborde l’histoire de la guerre irrégulière et son déroulement au Guatemala. Les archives et les témoignages à notre disposition contredisent le déni des crimes commis dans les villes et les campagnes guatémaltèques, dont le génocide de 1982. Finalement, certains signes avant-coureurs indiquent que la violence et l’impunité actuelles au pays pourraient mener à la répétition de tels crimes à l’avenir. / Central America, said to have harboured the Cold War’s last pitched battles, is the world’s most violent place today, according to the United Nations. This dissertation studies the form of irregular warfare that the Guatemalan state waged against its own population during the second half of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of a few extant perpetrator accounts as well as military and police sources, this study sheds light on the three main modes by which the Guatemalan government acted against individuals justly or falsely suspected of conspiring against an exclusionary status quo: kidnapping, torture and summary executions. Combined, these three separate acts constituted a covert apparatus of repression which, beginning in 1966, proved immensely efficient. As the weapon of choice for the practitioners of counterinsurgency warfare for over twenty years, the apparatus, not unlike a production line, allowed for the accumulation of intelligence that was essential for the prosecution of this kind of war, as well as the bodies that, in their perpetual absence or desecrated presence in the public domain, served as a deadly warning to the entire social body. Yet, what are the origins and history of this apparatus of state terror? Starting with the cited references in the Guatemalan military’s counter-insurgency field manual, the answer to this question led to French paratroopers for whom military defeat in Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s was not an option, and for whom victory justified all means necessary. The penchant of the pioneers of this form of no-holds-barred warfare for lectures, interviews and articles allowed us to study the methods they encouraged and to identify their tell-tale signs in Guatemala. While the war that justified the existence of this apparatus has ended, its reputable efficiency has allowed it to persevere among those who can afford to pay for its services today. In this sense, if the war has been formally over in Guatemala for over fifteen years, the counter-insurgency continues. This dissertation traces the roots of irregular warfare and how it played out in Guatemala. Historical sources, including state records and perpetrator accounts, make denial of the crimes committed in urban and rural settings, including genocide in 1982, ring hollow. Finally, present warning signs indicate that on-going violence and impunity in the country could lead to the repetition of such crimes in the future.

Thesis (Master of Military Studies)-Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Jan 8, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Master of Military Studies)-Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Dec 29, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Master of Military Studies)-Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Dec 29, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis examines the internal dynamics of the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone over the course of the civil war waged from 1991-2002. It does so in two parts, looking first at the RUF’s organizational capacity—its ability to emerge and survive as a group; and second, at its material viability—the logistics and procurement of food, weapons, and other resources required to sustain war. The RUF has become a paradigmatic case for the study of war and rebel groups in Africa. Although much has been written on the group and its violence, comparatively little is known about the inner-workings of the organization and how a largely forcibly recruited group of ill-equipped thousands managed to pose a viable threat to the state for over a decade. Through a fine-grained, case-based analysis, this study applies research on the microdynamics of violence in civil war to the structural and logistical mechanics that underpin it. Doing so contextualizes debates about resource wars, collective violence, and mobilization and onset within the RUF’s own strategies for controlling these aspects of war- making. New primary material, including rebel archive documents, describes the extensive military and civilian governance structures through which order and cohesion were established and enforced. Tracking the success and failure of these mechanisms helps explain the disconnect between rebel rhetoric and behaviour. A detailed examination of the RUF’s material capacity applies this organizational analysis to the group’s strategic priorities for survival. It reorients the resource war debate toward what actually fuels fighting on the ground. Food has long been overlooked as the primary requirement for group survival, and ammunition the basic element of military viability. These ‘low politics’ of survival explain the nature of the war and underscore the importance of shifting factors, such as territorial control, in shaping rebel behaviour. Finally, the ‘high politics’ of international arms trades and global diamond markets illumine changes in the RUF’s firepower and personalization of power, returning to the organizational failings that ultimately led to the group’s dissolution.