By David Kilcullen
For experts, these are mind-boggling questions, especially to those who looked at the Iraqi war as a merry picnic, only to find out that it was just a nightmare whose chapters have not yet unfolded.
David Kilcullen, a US strategic expert and once the chief advisor of general David Peteraous, was against the war on Iraq from the very beginning. He famously advised the White House in 2003 that "this war will last longer that you expect and you will never be able to end it". Not one of the post-picnic dealers lent him an ear at the time.
After the military operations were over, Kilcullen went over to Baghdad, not just to the "Green Zone" as many others had done. He mixed with the grassroots, recognized their aspirations and sufferings as a result of the war and the military occupation.
Together with his friend Peteraous, Kilcullen charted a plan of action to get closer to the local Sunni population and followed up its implementation on the ground rather than from his own office. He removed the obstacles on the way by collaborating with tribes and clans and worked diligently to gain the support of Sunni Arabs and keep them away from Al-Qaeda, which had almost absorbed them all. By doing so, he aimed to re-integrate those people into political life, which is their right as Iraqi citizens, as Kilcullen once said.
Combining the Iraqi experience with his similar experience in Afghanistan, he wrote his book "The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One", which crowns years of hard work. The book marks the birth of Kilcullen's new theory whereby he differentiates between real Qaeda terrorists and local insurgents in the war areas. The latter represent a category of people accidentally turned guerrillas - hence the name of the book. According to Kilcullen, the grave error of the White House Anti-terrorism strategy is that it failed to draw a line of demarcation between Qaeda terrorists and local insurgents, who were dragged into the war to fight a foreign occupier. On the contrary, Qaeda terrorists forced the West to go to war with them. Besides, some of these insurgents have legitimate goals that can be discussed and their support can be engaged through helping them realize these goals.
Kilcullen is influenced by the theory of famous French officer David Galeli, author of "The Anti-Revolution: Theory and Practice", who called at the time of the French-Algerian war for a protection of citizens rather than control of the territories.
In one prominent part of his book, Kilcullen says: "A successful anti-terrorist act is the one which makes people in cities and villages safe and sound wherever they are. The aim of an anti-terrorism war is not to expel an enemy, but to let the people live peacefully on their own land. "The people are the prime target of security" and America has to be wise enough to realize that. Americans can build a network of local connections in Iraq and Afghanistan where the Qaeda guerrillas are already wired-up to a net of marriage and trade relationships with the local inhabitants. Thus terrorists won over these inhabitants to their side and mobilized them in their fight against the Western allied forces. Commenting on the book, Newsweek editor-in-chief Fareed Zakaria said: "its central idea of the accidental guerrilla is very smart and so is its political quality. Every military man and everyone concerned with the war against terrorism has to read it".
Will the Obama administration, then, listen to Kilcullen, and develop a new, innovative strategy for the war against terrorism? It should be noted that such a strategy must differentiate between the major war and the minor local conflicts which can be resolved in some way or another. Otherwise, ignoring them will inevitably disturb the course of the major war.
