Army Field Manual 3-24 & Counter-Insurgency Warfare

Summary: Army Field Manual 3-24, published in December 2006, was an updated version of approved US Army procedures in fighting counter-insurgency wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was widely hailed as a dramatic change in conventional army procedures for combating a similar national armed force, notably by recognizing some counterintuitive aspects of fighting against insurgents in a foreign country. Incorporating political elements of war, including building effective host nation security forces, delivering government services, and helping the host nation with effective governance, were among the manual's recommendations written by Army General David Petraeus and Marine General James Amos. 

Although the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were commonly called the "Iraq War" or "Afghanistan War," they both had characteristics of "counterinsurgency" wars rather than conventional wars pitting the armed forces of one state against the armed forces of another. In 2006, nearly five years after the US invasion of Afghanistan and three years into the Iraq war, the US Army published a new field manual. This field manual was designated Field Manual 3-24 (FM 3-24). It was designed to describe the tactics appropriate for fighting a counterinsurgency. It was the first field manual of its kind published in twenty years. 

The field manual went beyond military tactics. It strongly emphasized the political aspects of an anti-insurgency war, characterized by elements of a civil war, insofar as the insurgents are generally from the same country where the war is being fought. FM 3-24 emphasized the overriding importance of elements well outside the traditional sphere of military operations: economic growth and security, building confidence in the host government, and providing essential services to civilians. In effect, the military's principal task was to provide short-term security to civilians while the host nation, aided by non-military agencies, built its security forces, an effective government, and an economy. 

Petraeus started revising the Army's field manual on counter-insurgency warfare in 2004, shortly after returning from commanding the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion in March 2003. President George W. Bush later named Petraeus Commanding General of the Multi-National Force in Iraq in 2007 when he put into effect the doctrine laid out in FM 3-24. 

Although the manual bore the names of Generals Petraeus and Amos, it was written by various individuals, some of whom were not in the military or government. Consultants included human rights advocates, academics, and journalists. Unlike other technical manuals published by the Army, FM 3-24 achieved widespread distribution after its publication—including being posted online—in December 2006. It was widely discussed in the press, and copies were found in Taliban camps in Afghanistan. 

At its outset, the manual focused on the political aspects of anti-insurgency warfare by observing that insurgents, unable to defeat the US military using conventional tactics, employed terrorist and guerrilla tactics in hopes of exhausting the political will of the American people. More important was the perception among the population where the anti-insurgency war was being fought. The desired understanding was that American soldiers were there to support a government that was accepted as legitimate by ordinary people. 

The manual also focused on what was described in Chapter 1 as nine "paradoxes of Counter-Insurgency Operations that ran contrary to conventional military thinking:" 

• "Sometimes, the More You Protect Your Force, the Less Secure You May Be." Protecting the counter-insurgent force by staying inside enclosed encampments may serve to alienate the counterinsurgents from the population they are meant to protect. 

• "Sometimes, the More Force Is Used, the Less Effective It Is." For example, excess force can lead to civilian casualties. 

• "The More Successful the Counterinsurgency Is, the Less Force Can Be Used and the More Risk Must Be Accepted." This paradox describes situations when insurgent violence decreases, leading to stricter controls over counter-insurgent forces, such as adherence to international law or domestic laws governing police work. 

• "Sometimes Doing Nothing Is the Best Reaction." Sometimes, doing nothing is the best course to follow, rather than overreacting to a terrorist attack in a crowded area where a military reaction could alienate many civilians. 

• "Some of the Best Weapons for Counterinsurgents Do Not Shoot." Gaining support for the host government is often more important than killing insurgents. "Arguably, the decisive battle is for the people's minds…. Every action, including uses of force, must be 'wrapped in a bodyguard of information'…. Soldiers and Marines should prepare to execute many nonmilitary missions…. Everyone has a role in nation building…." 

• "The Host Nation Doing Something Tolerably Is Normally Better than Us Doing It Well." Long-term success requires establishing viable host nation leaders and institutions that can function without American support. 

• "If a Tactic Works this Week, It Might Not Work Next Week; If It Works in this Province, It Might Not Work in the Next." Insurgents are capable of adapting quickly, and counter-insurgents must able to do so as well. 

• "Tactical Success Guarantees Nothing…." Insurgents that never defeat counter-insurgents in combat still may achieve their strategic objectives. Tactical actions thus must be linked not only to strategic and operational military objectives but also to the host nation's essential political goals." 

• "Many Important Decisions Are Not Made by Generals." Successful counterinsurgency tactics often depend on judgment by soldiers and Marines "at all levels," including "so-called 'strategic corporals'" who are trained to adapt to their local situation. 

Among the key points of FM 3-24 were the importance of parallel efforts to build political support among the population. It also stressed the importance of obtaining intelligence about the location of insurgents who may be embedded in the civilian population. Another point was the need for a multi-faceted approach that included not just military operations. These methods needed adaptation to the unique circumstances of each insurgency, as opposed to generic principles of warfare. FM 3-24 also called for the buildup of host nation security forces, such as armies and police forces, that enhanced the "legitimacy" of the host government. These focused on the delivery of essential services, "good governance," and economic development, all features of "nation building" that had not traditionally been a military function. 

Publication of FM 3-24 created an uproar insofar as it was in sharp contrast to the operational mandates of conventional warfare matching the armed forces of one state against another—principally, in the case of the United States, matching NATO forces against those of the former Warsaw Pact. 

Precedents. Modern anti-insurgency warfare is an inheritance of the post-World War II efforts to defeat insurgents who rose principally in former European colonies in Asia and Africa. The United States had little direct experience in such conflicts. Some analysts writing about FM 3-24 suggested the war in Vietnam was an anti-insurgent conflict in which the United States was defeated after having replaced France, the colonial power in Vietnam. Critics have argued the outcome of the Vietnam War caused the US military to resist drawing lessons from that conflict, which in many respects was a counter-insurgent war. In this view, FM 3-24 represented an effort to reform military thinking amid the first significant anti-insurgency since Vietnam. 

In the years after World War II, most anti-insurgency campaigns failed insofar as virtually no European colonies remained in Africa or Asia after independence campaigns led by insurgents organized as guerrilla armies. One often-cited exception was the British anti-insurgency campaign in the Malay archipelago, known as the Malayan Emergency, which lasted from 1948 to 1960. In that conflict, insurgents led by the Malaysian Communist Party and comprising mostly ethnic Chinese were defeated. Although Malaysia achieved independence in 1957, it was not due to the insurgents. Britain's tactics in that conflict have often been cited as an example of how to conduct an anti-insurgent campaign. 

FM 3-24 critics also cited the British campaign in Malaysia, suggesting the conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan were sufficiently different to make tactics in Malaysia largely irrelevant. For example, the Malaysian insurgency was driven by ethnic Chinese, who moved to the peninsula to fill a labor shortage. In contrast, ethnic differences are not the hallmark of either Iraq or Afghanistan. Successive Malaysian governments have pursued economic policies widely viewed as favoring ethnic Malays at the expense of other ethnic groups—a source of continuing tension. 

Moreover, the Malay conflict did not center primarily on religion, whereas various aspects of Islam—Islamic fundamentalism, Sunni vs. Shiite—are at the center of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts, and the defenders of host governments are from non-Muslim lands. 

Another notable aspect concerning FM 3-24 was that it tacitly acknowledged that assumptions made prior to the initiation of the American-led ground invasion of Iraq in 2003 had been in serious error. Prior to this event, advocates of the offensive, led by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldwho held this office from 2001 to 2006 and died in 2021suggested Iraq would be subdued quickly by conventional military means. Rumsfeld was convinced that the outcome to 2003 ground invasion would be similar to the 1991 ground offensive in Operation Desert Storm where the US Army had crushed the Iraqi conventional ground forces in 100 hours. Prior to the 2003 invasion, Rumsfeld pointedly suggested the United States’ only concern would be regime change of the Saddam Hussein government of Iraq. The military forces of the United States would depart after Hussein was displaced and a new Iraqi democracy put into place. Rumsfeld discounted the possibility that an Iraqi insurgency would develop, and that the United States would become ensnarled in nation-building in Iraq. 

FM3-24 also pointed to the tendency of the US military to lose the hard-fought lessons learned after the conclusion of a war. American military forces were typically forced to relearn these same lessons in later conflicts. By the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, most of the US military’s institutional knowledge about its counterinsurgency efforts during the Vietnam War no longer existed. FM3-24 was an attempt to recapture that knowledge. In another example, the US Marines had had much experience in counterinsurgency warfare and had published a precursor to FM3-24 in the 1980s. This followed US counterinsurgency operations in Latin America which had dominated the decade. These lessons were also unconsidered by Rumsfeld and other war advocates.

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