In 2006, the US Army and Marine Corps released Counterinsurgency
Field Manual 3–24 (hereafter FM 3–24) under Army General David Petraeus and
Marine General James Mattis. It was one of the earliest doctrinal adaptations
to the conflicts in (principally) Iraq and Afghanistan – resulting primarily
from the need to address the strategic drift in Iraq.
Nevertheless, its influence was felt beyond the US military,
being unofficially adopted as the NATO counter-insurgency doctrine. It broke
with the US Army’s former preoccupation with the decisive use of military
force, stressing instead a ‘population-centric approach’, and sought to
engineer a change in the strategic culture of the US military.
Whilst its treatment of protection remained fragmentary,
split between its desire to separate the insurgent from the general population
and its IHL obligations, (FM 3–24: Appendix D) it framed the counter insurgency
war as ‘a struggle for the population’s support’ with the ‘protection, welfare,
and support of the people’ being ‘vital to success’ (FM 3–24: 1–159).
US Joint Publication 3–07.3 entitled ‘Peace Operations’
(2007) introduces elements of a strategy for the protection of civilians, but
this tends to focus on protecting the civilian components of an international
mission, referring obliquely to the international humanitarian community,
especially in what it labels as ‘foreign humanitarian assistance’ missions.
As strategic doctrine it perhaps intentionally sidesteps
what the protection of civilians would demand in terms of a concept of
operations. However it does draw out an approach that may involve the forcible
separation of belligerents, support to host nation institutions and security
apparatus, the maintenance of law and order, the protection of civilians and
public officials, the direct protection of NGOs, Other Government Agencies
(OGAs) and the military providing what it labels as ‘humanitarian assistance’
(section II-2).
It argues that this might involve the protection of safe
areas as well as the protection of logistical hubs, corridors and distribution
centres. When opposed by one or more belligerents humanitarian assistance may
also involve the direct delivery of aid by the military. Whilst many of these
activities are potentially valid, the doctrine itself is piecemeal and tends to
focus on humanitarian commodities, logistics and international staff rather
than the safety of host nation civilians. It also presumes the capacity of the
host nation to directly provide a secure environment or to do this in an
acceptable timeframe with external support. This may not always be a realistic
set of assumptions.
In 2008 the Army revised its field manual on basic
operations, known as Field Manual (FM) 3–0, ‘to elevate stability operations to
an essential core competency - as important as defeating foreign enemies and protecting
the U.S. from attack’ (Ackerman 2008: 5). It also published FM 3–07, the
Stability Operations field manual. None of these contained a systematic
treatment of POC although all stressed the multidimensional nature of the
contemporary military operating environment. FM 3–07, for example, emphasises
the protection of urban infrastructure and the seat of government, the
avoidance of collateral damage, as well as the requirement to address the range
of factors that generate lawlessness, insurgency and subversion. It also
referred to the purpose of Civil-Military Operations as building support for
the host government, but again POC is not pursued as an end in itself nor does
it offer anything resembling a framework of operations.3
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