Losing Small Wars by Frank Ledwidge

Author:Frank Ledwidge
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-300-16671-2
Publisher: Yale University Press

Colonel David Benest, another scholar and expert on British counterinsurgency history, takes the view that:

Participation by officers in one or more I[nternal] S[ecurity] operation in other parts of the world does NOT mean that they know all about things in the new theatre. A liberal dose of humility is essential, while making use of previous experience, to learn from the experience of others.45

Eventually they did learn. Techniques evolved which served, if not to neutralize the IRA, then at least to contain it. A framework of intelligence, particularly human intelligence (agent-running, in other words), local awareness and, eventually, good interagency cooperation developed against a background of superb training and continuity, with a mixture of six-month and two-year deployments of battalions. Another veteran of Northern Ireland, Colonel Richard Iron, has rightly described the British as having become ‘experts’ in fighting that conflict. He states that the army serving in Northern Ireland was by the late 1980s ‘one of the best armies Britain has ever fielded’. Above all, the skills developed were practised against the background of a sound and clear political and strategic direction and leadership, resulting in political settlement after lengthy and expert negotiation over a period of many years.

Success and expertise in fighting an insurgency in north-west Europe does not imply such prowess elsewhere. Iron puts the problem this way: ‘something had gone terribly wrong. What seem to have been institutional lessons from Northern Ireland were not applied in Iraq and Afghanistan or, if they were, only after great expenditure of time, money and blood.’46

When questions of reconciliation and political settlement came to be considered in Basra province in 2007, there were facile comparisons with the long-drawn-out negotiations carried out by negotiators in Northern Ireland. Those who conducted the talks with Sinn Fein,and indeed the IRA, were intimately familiar with the issues at stake and, thanks to the pervasive media and excellent intelligence on both sides, with each other. As Hew Strachan has written (echoing Iron): ‘if we apply models from one war to another we are in danger of being guided solely by operational and tactical concerns’.47 This is exactly what happened in Basra in 2007–8, with highly destructive results.

One element is luminously clear from all the successfully concluded conflicts in which the British have been involved. A senior retired British officer and leading expert on British counterinsurgency, Colonel David Benest, identifies it as ‘the inherent danger of applying any counterinsurgency strategy which does not include an end-state that is achievable within a finite period’.48 Even in the mishandled Mau Mau operations in Kenya in 1948–60, there came a point when practical concerns ensured a reasonably smooth handover of power – although in that case not without a great deal of residual bitterness and continuing controversy. In simple terms, the British knew when they were beaten, or, in the cases of Malaya and Northern Ireland, understood the limits of their powers. From that realization they attempted to produce the best possible deal, using the considerable local knowledge and expertise available to them.

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