29sep06-dark_fruit.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The US Army's Strategic Studies Institute just released a 313 page compilation titled:

Strategic Challenges For Counterinsurgency And The Global War On Terrorism

Two chapters in particular are noteworthy enough that we have extracted them and offer them here:

1. The Dark Fruit Of Globalization: Hostile Use Of The Internet
by Lieutenant Colonel Todd A. Megill

This reviews the problem and offers some suggestions regarding counter-measures.

File: http://www.sofir.org/resources/29sep06-dark_fruit.pdf

2. From The Ashes Of The Phoenix: Lessons For Contemporary Counterinsurgency Operations
by Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo

The author reviews lessons that can be learned from the Phoenix Program - the highly controversial and much-maligned US counterinsurgency against the Viet Cong infrastructure in South Vietnam. He then discusses these lessons in light of the current global Islamist insurgency, whose infrastructure he describes as follows:

The general support component of the militant Islamic infrastructure also includes Islamic nongovernmental organizations that solicit money on behalf of al-Qa’ida and other terrorist organizations, as well as funding fundamentalist madrassas and mosques throughout the world. Such religious institutions serve as recruiting centers and platforms to spread their propaganda messages. This component also includes media organizations and web sites that provide fora for the insurgents’ psychological operations and assist in the furtherance of their information campaign objectives. The infrastructure directs, supports, and sustains the execution of violence against the regime and Western enemies; it constitutes the insurgency’s center of gravity.

File: http://www.sofir.org/resources/29sep06-phoenix.pdf

Posted on 29 September 2006 @ 08:23