Urban Insurgencies
3-51. As urban migration increases in the developing world, rural guerrillas appear to follow. This transition of insurgencies from rural to urban areas occurs because urban areas offer a rich field of targets for insurgent attacks. People immediately notice any disruption of urban infrastructure, thus having great 3-14
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propaganda value. A concentrated urban population whose allegiance and support are critical to the success of an insurgency is often more susceptible to propaganda, political organization, and terrorism. Insurgents can easily arrange mass demonstrations using available communications facilities, both overt and covert.
Travel is effortless and large urban populations provide cover and concealment. On the whole, urban areas, particularly those suffering the effects of general instability outlined earlier, may provide a fertile environment for guerrillas to apply formerly rural insurgent strategies. However, even with a primarily rural-based insurgency, operations in urban areas will often be essential to the insurgents’ strategy as they offer them distinct opportunities to disrupt, discredit, and demoralize the government (see FM 3-05.20 and FMI 3-07.22).
Insurgencies and the Urban Society
The goal of modern warfare is control of the populace, and terrorism is a particularly appropriate weapon, since it aims directly at the inhabitant. In the street, at work, at home, the citizen lives continually under the threat of violent death. In the presence of this permanent danger surrounding him, he has the depressing feeling of being an isolated and defenseless target. The fact that public authority and the police are no longer capable of ensuring his security adds to his distress. He loses confidence in the state whose inherent mission is to guarantee his safety. He is more and more drawn to the side of the [insurgents], who alone are able to protect him.
Roger Trinquier
Modern Warfare
Merchant Class or Economic Elite
3-52. Urban areas normally possess a merchant class or economic elite as part of their social structure. In some urban areas, they may carry more power than the local or central state government. They may isolate themselves physically and socially from the sprawling poor yet wield enormous power over the country’s political and economic activities. The degree of economic separation between the merchant class and the poor may be small but still socially or politically significant.
3-53. In a vastly impoverished area where the economy of the urban area is severely disrupted, the merchant class will often continue to operate and function and, as a result, achieve a measure of influence.
To continue to operate under acute economic turmoil, they may form alliances in criminal organizations and secure loyalties within the government. Outside resources introduced into a crisis area (such as food, water, fuel, and pharmaceuticals) take on increased value, may replace currency as the medium for exchange, and often become the means to amass and hold wealth. One primary way to obtain wealth is to steal it.
3-54. In some turbulent situations that lead to the need for stability operations, commanders may harness the power of the merchant class as a force for peace and stability instead of one that uses crime to achieve economic goals. For example, in a relief situation, instead of competing with the merchant class by distributing food directly to the needy and possibly creating an environment of looting and black marketeering, it may be possible to monetize food. Food assistance from donor governments could be sold to merchants at an attractive price so they have a reliable source of supply. This could, in turn, create a healthy economic system and separate merchants from criminals and gangs.
Criminal Organizations
3-55. Organized criminal groups have grown common in urban areas; have also become an important part of the urban social structure (gangs for example); and can exert considerable influence on governments, people, and military forces conducting UO. These organizations can threaten the successful completion of urban operations both directly and indirectly. Criminals and criminal organizations may directly target Army forces, stealing supplies and extorting money or contracts. Criminals may also violently confront Army forces during mission execution. During many UO, particularly during or following combat, civil disturbances, or large natural disasters, looting (organized or unorganized) may become of critical concern.
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For a portion of the population, crime may be the only reliable source of income and resources to support their families. Therefore, UO will often require a combined law enforcement and military response.
3-56. Some large criminal organizations relying on international connections often have better resources and equipment than their insurgent counterparts. (A prime example is drug traffickers.) Their large financial resources, long-reaching connections, and ruthlessness provide them the means to corrupt or intimidate local officials and government institutions. Their tactics parallel those of insurgents. They have developed an intuitive cultural understanding of slum neighborhoods and the ability to lure civilians into criminal activities. They have also mastered the management of mobs. They recruit teenagers and young adults in their efforts against rivals and authorities, just as insurgents muster armies from the youth of rural villages. In many developing nations, there exists an alliance between insurgents and organized criminal groups. In these alliances, the insurgents defend the criminals and the criminals fund the insurgents.
3-57. Excessive criminal activity can undermine the commander’s efforts to establish a sense of security among the remainder of the urban populace. Commanders will rely on the ability of their military police (MP) units to assess and understand the potential influence that crime and criminal organizations may have on UO. MPs—in coordination with local police—will need to quickly identify law enforcement gaps to include dysfunctional police organizations and stations and inadequate prison systems. Urban police records may be an important intelligence database to assist in this assessment and may be particularly useful in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Success in ensuring that law and order is maintained or reestablishing law and order will directly affect the population’s perceptions and support of Army operations. Also, MP intelligence operations will contribute immeasurably to the overall IPB effort and aid in understanding of the complexities of the urban society (see FM 3-19.50).
Crime and Criminal Organizations
Crime and poverty plague urban areas such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second
largest urban area, and would affect military operations conducted in their limits. Rio has some of the nation’s highest negative urban indicators: the largest number of
slum dwellers (1 million), the highest murder rate (1 of 700 residents per year), and the highest kidnapping rate (4 per week). In 1989, the homicide rate of the urban
area was three times higher than New York City’s, and the rate of urban violence has continued to rise. Therefore, law enforcement management may be a critical issue
for Army forces operating in urban environments similar to that of Rio de Janeiro.
However, criminal elements or organizations may not always work against Army
commanders. They can be co-opted or influenced to serve friendly objectives. For
example, during World War II the U.S. Navy worked covertly with the Mafia in New
York City to secure the New York harbor from German U-boats believed to be
torpedoing ships there. The Mafia controlled most dock activities in New York harbor and was perfectly positioned to monitor other subversive waterfront activity. This
capability provided needed information to the Navy for its counterintelligence and
security tasks. New York civil authorities, therefore, agreed to permit a Navy-Mafia alliance to operate at the port for the greater good of the country. Although the Mafia was not the preferred ally of the Navy, it had the capability to protect U.S. ships and the interest (patriotism) to help in the war effort. In those circumstances, the
temporary alliance worked (see also the civilian threat discussion in Appendix B).
Armed Factions
3-58. A characteristic of some stability operations has been the deterioration or complete collapse of political authority in the country or urban area in crisis. In some cases, “warlords” or the leaders of various armed factions have attempted to fill the power vacuum (see Appendix C for an example). These individuals often have no particular claim to legitimacy. Their power issues from their weapons, not necessarily from their political skills, human services provided, or popular consent (although they have some popular support to remain in their relative position of authority). Others, however, may already have 3-16
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a substantial base of support (for example, a religious base) and then seek to achieve their goals through violent means. In dealing with the leaders of these armed factions during stability operations, it may appear that there are three general courses of action. The first is to aggressively locate and target the leaders and their forces militarily. The second is to ignore them completely, and the third is to meet and work with them diplomatically. Depending on METT-TC, commanders may reduce some of the risks involved in these first three courses of action by combining the last two to create a fourth approach. Nevertheless, the technique chosen must clearly support political and military objectives and lead to the desired end state.
3-59. In some cases, the leaders of armed factions pose a direct threat to Army forces, the urban populace, and the overall accomplishment of the mission. Therefore, it may become necessary to target them and their forces for capture or destruction. Yet, commanders should generally avoid framing the success of a major operation on the death or capture of one or more individuals. Even with increased ISR capabilities, commanders may find an individual manhunt difficult or impossible to achieve. Instead, it may be better to seek to isolate warlords and their forces militarily, while simultaneously seeking to marginalize their influence through a combination of political, economic, and informational means. This does not necessarily mean that commanders must abandon the search if the death or capture the faction leader will contribute to achieving the mission. However, commanders must maintain the capability to strike with speed and precision if the threat leader’s location is discovered in the clutter of the complex urban environment.
3-60. In some situations, commanders may attempt to marginalize warlords by ignoring them. However, refusal to acknowledge warlords may increase the threat to Army forces and NGOs. Their militias may attack Army forces to achieve recognition or simply due to misunderstanding or inherent friction between armed forces. On the other hand, dealing with them may provide legitimacy to the exclusion of other elements of the urban population such as professional groups (for example, doctors or teachers), religious leaders, and traditional clan or tribal chiefs—which may have a greater claim to legitimacy and better form the foundation for a reconstituted urban society.
3-61. A compromise between the last two options may offer the best chance for success. In this fourth course of action, commanders can generally recognize these warlords and work with them diplomatically to decrease the risk of armed conflict and civilian casualties; however, this recognition can be kept at staff levels to avoid bestowing any perceived legitimacy on them. Instead, commanders themselves may visibly meet the other elements of society that have a more legitimate claim to political, social, or economic leadership. Inevitably, commanders may need to meet with warlords. In those circumstances, clan or tribal elders, and others who represent traditional authority, should attend the meetings. Moreover, commanders should ask for and give deliberate consideration to their opinions above those of the leaders of the armed factions.
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Chapter 4
Understanding the Urban Environment’s Effects on
Warfighting Functions and Tactics
War is, above all things, an art, employing science in all its branches as its servant, but depending first and chiefly upon the skill of the artisan. It has its own rules, but not one of them is rigid and invariable. As new implements are devised, new methods result in its mechanical execution; but over and above all its mechanical appliances, it rests upon the complex factors of human nature, which cannot be reduced to formulas and rules.
Captain Francis V. Greene, 1883
Commanders of major operations should understand the potential effects that the
urban environment may have on warfighting functions. They should also understand
the possible effects that the urban environment may have on lower-level tactics to
properly plan, prepare, and execute major operations that may include UO.
Otherwise, commanders may ask their subordinates to achieve effects, accomplish
objectives, or adhere to a timetable that is unsupportable due to the constraints
imposed by the urban environment. Commanders and their staffs must do more than
simply understand the impossible; rather, they must apply the art and science of
warfighting to the urban environment and determine what it will take to make it
possible.
WARFIGHTING FUNCTIONS
4-1. Understanding the potential effects of the urban
environment on warfighting functions permits the urban
WARFIGHTING FUNCTIONS
commander to better visualize his operational environment.
• Intelligence
With this appreciation, he can conduct a more thorough
• Movement and maneuver
assessment and thereby determine the most efficient and
• Fire
support
effective means of employing Army forces. The staff should be
• Protection
intimately familiar with effects in their area of expertise and
• Sustainment
use that knowledge to understand the problem and develop
• Command and control
creative and innovative solutions to achieve their commander’s
intent.
INTELLIGENCE
4-2. The intelligence function facilitates understanding of the threat and the environment. The urban environment affects this critical function in many ways. Impacts of the environment on the intelligence function include degraded reconnaissance capability; more difficult IPB process; and an increased importance of credible HUMINT (including the contribution of local civilian liaisons), and an established intelligence reach capability. The Army forces’ response to these effects can result in timely, accurate, and actionable intelligence that permits the effective application of other warfighting functions to the mission within the urban environment (see FM 2-0).
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Degraded Reconnaissance and Surveillance Capability
4-3. The physical environment creates a major challenge to the intelligence function. The man-made construction in the urban areas provides nearly complete cover and concealment for threats. Although improving many sensor capabilities cannot penetrate the subsurface facilities and much of the space within supersurface areas. The mass of buildings can also defuse electronic signatures. Tall buildings shield movement within urban canyons from aerial observation except from directly overhead. Urban threats may be less technology dependent and may thwart some signals intelligence efforts simply by turning off their radios and using messengers. Threat forces will likely use elements of the civilian telecommunications infrastructure for C2. These systems may include traditional landline phones, cellular telephones, and computer-to-computer or Internet data communications. Most urban telecommunications systems use buried fiber or cables or employ modern digital signaling technology. Such systems are difficult to intercept and exploit at the tactical level.
4-4. From the above, it is evident that these characteristics make it more difficult for the intelligence function to use electronic means to determine threat dispositions and, in offensive and defensive UO, identify decisive points leading to centers of gravity. While the environment limits some typical collection methods, all enemy electronic and human activity creates some form of observable signature and exposes the enemy to potential collection. Seeking ways to take advantage of these vulnerabilities will provide the commander an information advantage over his opponent.
Challenging IPB Process
4-5. The sheer complexity of the environment also challenges the intelligence function. The intelligence function applies the IPB process to the urban environment in accordance with Army doctrine (see Appendix B). With more data points for the IPB process to identify, evaluate, and monitor, this application becomes more demanding. The human and societal aspects of the environment and the physical complexity primarily cause this difference. Relationships between aspects of the environment, built on an immense infrastructure of formal and informal systems connecting the population to the urban area, are usually less familiar to analysts. Thus, the urban environment often requires more specifically-focused intelligence resources to plan, prepare for, execute, and assess operations than in other environments.
4-6. Compounding the challenges is the relative incongruity of all urban environments. No two urban areas are alike physically, in population, or in infrastructure. Thus, experience in one urban area with a particular population and pattern of infrastructure does not readily transfer to another urban area. Any experience in UO is valuable and normally serves as a starting point for analysis, but the intelligence function cannot assume (and treat as fact) that patterns of behavior and the relationships in one urban area mirror another urban area. The opposite is as likely to hold true. The intelligence function will have to study each urban area individually to determine how it works and understand its complex relationships.
4-7. Each characteristic of the urban environment—terrain, society, and infrastructure—is dynamic and can change radically in response to UO or external influences. Civilian populations pose a special challenge to commanders conducting UO. Civilians react to, interact with, and influence to varying degrees Army forces. Commanders must know and account for the potential influence these populations may have on their operations. Intelligence analysts must revisit or continuously monitor the critical points looking for changes, relationships, and patterns.
4-8. The actions of Army forces will affect, positively or negatively, their relationship with the urban population and, hence, mission success. NGOs may deliberately or inadvertently influence civilians. The intelligence function can monitor and predict the reactions of the civil population. However, accurate predictive analysis of a large population requires specific training and extensive cultural and regional expertise.
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Understanding the Urban Environment’s Effects on Warfighting Functions and Tactics Increased Importance of Human Intelligence
HUMINT is the collection of foreign information—by a trained HUMINT collector—from people and multimedia to identify elements, intentions, composition, strength, dispositions, tactics, equipment, personnel, and capabilities. It uses human sources as a tool, and a variety of collection methods, both passively and actively, to collect information. FM 2-0
4-9. The intelligence function adjusts to the degradation of its technical intelligence gathering systems by increasing emphasis on HUMINT in UO. HUMINT operations may be the primary and most productive intelligence source in UO. In urban offensive and defensive operations, HUMINT gathers information from refugees, immigrants and former citizens (especially previous civil administrators), civilian contractors, and military personnel who have operated in the area. Credible intelligence of this type can help meet requirements, provide more detail, and alleviate some of the need to physically penetrate the urban area with reconnaissance forces. In many urban operations where HUMINT is the primary source of intelligence, acting on single-source reporting is a constant pitfall. Yet, situations may arise where commanders must weigh the consequences of inaction against any potential negative consequences resulting from acting on uncorroborated, single-source information. (See also the Human Capabilities discussion under the Urban ISR portion of Chapter 5.)
4-10. In urban stability operations, HUMINT identifies threats and monitors the intentions and attitudes of the population. A chief source of information contributing to the development of accurate HUMINT, particularly at the tactical level, is reconnaissance forces—especially small-unit dismounted patrols. Urban reconnaissance forces and patrols should be thoroughly and routinely debriefed by unit intelligence personnel to obtain information that aids in developing a clearer picture of the threat and the urban environment. Reliable and trustworthy HUMINT is particularly important in foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, and support to counterdrug operations. Leaders must organize intelligence resources appropriately, and learn and apply valuable techniques, such as pattern and link analysis (see FM 34-3).
Additionally, Soldiers, as part of reconnaissance and patrolling training, should be taught to handle captured documents, weapons, material, and equipment as legal evidence much like military and civilian police. Proper “evidence” handling is often a critical intelligence concern in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations.
Developing Local Liaisons
4-11. Whenever Soldiers encounter the urban populace, the resulting interaction may become an important source of information the commander can use to answer questions about the threat and the urban environment. While military intelligence units are the primary collectors and processors of HUMINT, commanders are not likely to have enough trained HUMINT Soldiers to satisfy their requirements—
particularly in a larger urban environment and during longer-term stability operations. Therefore, commanders may need to cultivate and establish local civilian associations to provide relevant information for decision making and to support the overall HUMINT effort.
4-12. Urban liaisons can be developed through positive civil-military interaction with the urban populace.
Critical information may be acquired through interface with the urban leadership (both formal and informal), administration officials, business owners, host-nation support workers, inhabitants along a unit’s patrol route, pedestrians at a checkpoint, civilian detainees, or any other human source willing to volunteer information to Army forces or who respond positively to tactical questioning. (Noncombatants are never coerced to provide information.) Commanders may also direct unit leaders to conduct liaisons with specific local leaders and key members of the community to obtain command directed information. Critical information may also come from other U.S. and coalition forces and intelligence organizations operating near or within the commander’s AO. To this end, commanders should ensure that collectors operating in an urban area coordinate and deconflict activities and, if possible, outbrief subordinate, geographically-responsible commanders with any relevant information that may affect their current operations. Any relevant information obtained incident to civilian liaison activities should be routinely provided to 26 October 2006
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intelligence staffs not only to gain assistance in verifying the credibility of the information but to share the information with all affected echelons and units.
4-13. NGOs operating in urban areas can also be especially beneficial resources for credible and relevant information about the urban environment. (However, they are generally not a good source for information about the threat since providing such information can violate their neutrality thereby making it difficult for them to achieve their humanitarian aid objectives.) During the 1999 fighting in Kosovo, for example, the Red Cross provided the most accurate figures regarding the number of Kosovar refugees, helping U.S. and other coalition forces to estimate the appropriate level of support required to handle their needs. In addition to a developed understanding of the current needs of the local urban populace, NGOs may also have—
z
A network of influential associations.
z
Historical archives.
z
Extensive understanding of the urban infrastructure.
z
Key knowledge of political and economic influences.
z
A keen awareness of significant changes in the urban environment.
z
Insight into the current security situation.
z
Up-to-date web sites and maps.
4-14. While productive civilian associations may become long term, they should not be confused with HUMINT source operations. Only trained HUMINT personnel can recruit and task sources to seek out threat information. Information obtained from these societal connections is normally incidental to other civil-military relationships. For example, as part of infrastructure repair in an urban stability operation, a commander may be instrumental in obtaining a generator for a local hospital. Within the context of this relationship, the commander may develop a rapport with one or more of the hospital’s administrators or health practitioners. These civilians may be inclined to provide valuable information about the threat and the urban environment—often on a continuing basis. In any civil-military relationship, however, commanders ensure that the information provided is not tied to promises of assistance or that such assistance is in any way perceived as a means to purchase civilian loyalty.
4-15. Commanders also understand that repeated interaction with any one individual may put that individual and his family in danger from threat forces. Before this potential danger becomes a reality, they should refer their civilian connections to trained HUMINT personnel for protection and continued exploitation. In addition to civilian protection considerations, commanders may also deem it necessary to turn their civilian associations over to trained HUMINT collectors anytime during the relationship if they consider the information that the contact is providing (or may provide) is credible, relevant, and—
z
Provides essential threat information on a repetitive basis.
z
Helps answer higher-level CCIR.
z
Affects operations in another AO.
z
Requires interrogation or monetary compensation to obtain.
However, turning a liaison over to trained HUMINT teams does not necessarily preclude maintaining a continued, albeit a more guarded, relationship with the individual.
4-16. In developing these civilian liaisons essential to understanding the urban environment, commanders must avoid the distinct possibility of conducting unofficial source operations by non-HUMINT