The Failure of Counterinsurgency by Ivan Eland

Author:Ivan Eland [Eland, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440830105
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2013-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

SCORCHED EARTH POLICIES CAN SOMETIMES WORK

In the unpredictable realm of fighting guerrillas, a scorched earth policy can occasionally be effective. For example, in the early to mid-1800s in Algeria, before inventing the more benevolent “oil spot” COIN strategy in the late 1800s in Indochina, the French achieved an ugly victory by attacking or looting villages, crops, livestock, and private property. Such heavy-handedness not only caused a backlash among the local population but also drained some support from the rebel Abd al-Qadir.

In the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), Confederate guerrilla movements arose against federal troops in most rebellious states. In fact, one-third of Union forces in the South were tied down guarding Union bases and supplies from the guerrillas. Yet only in Arkansas did the Union have success statewide against Confederate insurgents. In response to plundering by the guerrillas, Union troops responded with a scorched earth policy. The guerrillas’ bad behavior undermined popular support for the Confederate cause in Arkansas, thus improved intelligence gathered by federal troops, and allowed the Union’s harsh tactics to work.14

In the 19th century, the U.S. Army burned crops and villages and slaughtered men, women, and children of perceived racially inferior American Indian tribes. The number of Indians dwindled because of slaughter, starvation, and disease contracted from the white man. The Native Americans could not compete with U.S. numbers and technology. Some of the American Army’s same leaders used similar vicious methods in their colonial conquest of the Philippines (1899–1906). U.S. forces won by brutally separating civilians and food from the guerrillas. The American soldiers commonly burned villages, stole crops, looted, and used indiscriminate artillery attacks to kill civilians. In all, about 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence or disease related to the war. In Samar, one-third of the civilian population was killed, and in Batanga, the United States eliminated all plant and animal life, thus starving the population.

According to a United Nations panel investigating possible war crimes during the civil war in Sri Lanka (1983–2009), the Sri Lankan government killed tens of thousands of noncombatants by indiscriminately shelling civilian areas in a push to end an insurgency by the Tamil Tigers, a separatist group. (The panel also cited the Tigers for war crimes, because they refused to let civilians leave the war zone and used them as human shields.) Sri Lanka ended the long-standing Tamil rebellion using such brutal tactics.15

In the second war in Chechnya (1999–), the Russians “won” using scorched earth practices to kill 30,000–40,000 civilians out of a population of a million. Suicide attacks by Chechens were reduced for a time (late 2004 to late 2007), however, when Russia killed fewer civilians and granted amnesty to Chechen fighters. But then after the withdrawal of Russian forces, the Russian puppet government resumed harsh tactics to try to fully eradicate the guerrillas, and suicide bombings spiked again. Until Chechen grievances are settled, the war will likely continue on some level. This last episode may actually indicate that although scorched earth can work, a milder “hearts and minds” may be superior (but still fraught with difficulties, as this book indicates).

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