Saturday, August 29, 2009

Lessons from Sri Lanka: Brutality Can Help Win Small Wars

Sri Lankan military checkpoint Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP-Getty Images

From War Is Boring:

Sri Lanka’s victorious offensive against the rebel Tamil Tigers this spring is a model of “hybrid” warfare, where states must contend with high-tech insurgent enemies. Small Wars Journal culled the major lessons of the war from an Indian journal. Defeating hybrid enemies requires:

• Unwavering political will
• Disregard for international opinion distracting from the goal
• No negotiations with the forces of terror
• Unidirectional floor of conflict information
• Absence of political intervention to pull away from complete defeat of the [enemy]
• Complete operational freedom for the security forces — let the best men do the task
• Accent on young commanders
• Keep[ing] your neighbors in the loop


Read more
....

My Comment: When the communists were constituting the Soviet Union right after the revolution, they had low level insurgencies in many of their regions. The bloodiest ones were in the Caucasus and in the Muslim Republics of Ccentral Asia.

To defeat them .... which they did .... they also used the same tactics that are outlined above. It took them a number of years, but they eventually won.

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