"Just think that, to your government, trying to get me has cost 130 millions of dollars. I dragged them for miles into arid and hilly territory, making them stay for fifty miles without water, with nothing but sun and mosquitoes. ... And all this for what? For nothing" (Pancho Villa, 1878-1923)
Terrorists and rebels, in relation to the forces at stake, always win! (even when they lose). Low intensity or asymmetric wars due to their peculiarities benefit the terrorists and guerrillas. Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan have shown all the fragility (casual or otherwise) of the modern military and hyper-technological system in relation to the guerrillas.
Let's take Afghanistan for example. For some time now the scenario of the continually postponed exit of the coalition from the country has been looming. In the Hindu-Kush mountain range and its branches, the lesson was very severe. The changes in the course of the various American generals were totally useless, above all because they substantially resolved nothing in relation to the energies, money and sacrificed lives of the poor fallen or mutilated soldiers.
Why did all this happen? Why the Taliban and Afghans in relationship are super warriors and in fact almost invincible even if poorly or badly armed? The same questions can also be asked for the other scenarios and fighters of the countries mentioned above.
The questions are harsh and they reveal the reality that unfortunately some have underestimated, others have had the perception and few have learned it: the low intensity conflicts, today as today, fight better and more effectively with the structures Psyops and propaganda that act on public opinion. It is paradoxical, but by taking a maxim from Napoleon, perhaps the concept is better clarified: "In the world there are only two forces, the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the sword is always won by the spirit ". A study on the psychology of fighters and terrorists is therefore needed, obviously understood as belonging to a certain ethnicity or possible race. The polemology, the creation of the French sociologist Gaston Bouthoul, has always been oriented to the study of war in a social key to arrive at scientific pacifism.
The brute force
"If you want to say lies that are believed, do not say truths that are not credible" (Tokugawa Ieyasu, shogun of Japan, XNUMXth century *).
Let's take Afghanistan as a model. The brute force, the demonstration of numerical and technological superiority, which are part of the typical military doctrine, have no effect in this proud country, because the mentality can not be eliminated abruptly but only diluted with time. In fact, Afghanistan has always been in feudal wars and in one way or another has always fought fiercely. Ancient weapons have undergone a transformation for the objective and subjective necessity of modernizing, because the colonizer (invader) has no time to lose. We are all inclined to believe that Afghans do sparks only thanks to the knowledge of the territory, but it is a mistake. Maybe it's a possibility, but not the only one.
It can therefore be assumed that native fighters take better advantage of the occupants of the technical resources of those places. Charles Wingate already in the 1943 understood that the "Jungle is neutral" and that the natives have no greater capacity to analyze the territory of a properly trained foreigner. For example, Vo Nguyen Giap, before venturing into the military camp was a former student of Hanoi law. This demonstrates that he was not one who knew the Indochinese jungle more than the French parias, his direct adversaries.
The same thing is for the territorial morphology in Afghanistan. The key to reading, not at all obvious in its acceptance, is that instead everything revolves around the pivot that Westerners are addicted to technique. It is therefore logical to note that the technique is an instrument, not an end. Unfortunately, the habit leads to the state of mechanical trance that then slowly leaves the attention to things. Attention in these cases plays the primary role.
The attention
"Consider braver not to get involved in a conflict that will win in battle, and where there is already a stupid man who interferes, make sure that there are not two" (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658 *)
The Afghans are very attentive because they do not have large availability of technical means. They have always been involved in purely manual and simple jobs. All their poor economy is supported by this manpower and precisely for this reason they have developed a strictly technical interior feature, for the sake of survival.
Currently the guerrilla can be defined as a sort of battlefield between professionalism, where, in the case of Afghanistan, the technical action stands out, which is not detached from human and individual (ideological) but rather puts itself on the highest pedestal. Centuries of tribal wars have pushed the natives to carefully study, precisely, the gap between the parties involved. It is certainly the discovery of hot water, but Afghans are showing that they are not equal in terms of resistance and attrition with a low-intensity war. The force therefore consists in the degree of maximum attention that the combatant commits on the object, whatever it is: sustenance, apparatus, weapons, etc. This path transforms the technical commitment into the non-technical: the victory even without the annihilation of the occupant. According to General Beaufre, the strategy is "The art of appropriately choosing between different doctrines and possible procedures those that best apply to the considered case". In fact, according to Beaufre, in his analysis of strategies, in the specific case there is great freedom of action but weak means, so there will be a prolonged struggle of weak intensity.
The role of poverty
"We must never be too direct. We look at the forest: the straight trees are the ones that are cut first, the twisted trees remain intact " (Kautilya, Indian philosopher, 3rd century BC *)
It is poverty that allows this miracle. Poverty that deprives everything but exalts attention, especially when everything becomes urgent. The attention thus enriches the poverty of the means. The tribal, cultural and religious political galaxy do the rest.
The scope of application is throughout the country, but Kabul is partially exempt, because it is richer than the rest of the country and therefore poorer in attention. It is the rural areas that can therefore be considered the makers of attention.
The few dollars weapons and the guerrilla principles win over the rich armies
"When I set the bait for deer, I will not shoot at the first deer that is sniffing, but I will wait until the whole herd rallies around" (Otto von Bismarck, 1815-1898 *)
Mao Tze-Tung was prophetic: "Weapons are an important but not decisive factor in the war. The decisive factor is man and not the material. The relationship of forces is determined not only by the relationship of military and economic powers, but also by the relationship of human resources and moral forces. He is the man who has the military and economic forces "(From the prolonged war, May 1938).
Today's armies are modern, multi-purpose and structured to deal with disparate situations and scenarios against every type of enemy. From structure to equipment everything leads back to versatility. They are the image of power and state that serve on the basis of the available budget and ultramodern technology. The guerrilla, on the other hand, is at its opposite and appeals to an improvised and heteroclite weapons picked up during the ambushes, with smuggling or produced by the ingenuity of the fighters. An example above all: the emergency isothermal blanket, used to escape the identification of drones.
The guerrilla has its principles that date back to the times of the Bible. But remaining in more or less recent times we can cite interesting insights into analysis by studying Vercingetorix against the Romans, Bertrand Du Guesclin (1320-1380) against the British after the battle of Poitiers, or the Vendeans against Hoche and especially the Spaniards who, in the 1812 , led the guerilla, against Napoleon's armies.
The treaty of Sun-Tzu, the art of war, is well suited to the guerrilla, because the strategies and Western tactics elaborated by Clausewitz in his treatise "The war" instead are good only for the armies of the rich nations, or with strong structures technological and industrial.
The guerrilla is divided into eight distinct phases (contained in three macro processes) which can be interrupted with the necessary countermeasures, but the closer you get to the eighth phase, the more difficult it is to reverse the trend.
Here is the path of growth over time.
Crystallization: 1, militant selection; 2, corrosion of the social order and start of terrorist actions;
Installation: 3, psychological action on the people, beginning of paramilitary formation; 4, systematic attacks; 5, creation of support bases;
edification: 6, Magnification of bases in the liberated areas; 7, passage from guerrilla to popular army; 8, establishing new power.
The guerrilla war has a specific duration over time which on average tends to be about seven years regardless of the outcome. Usually there is a specular effect between war mongrelism and political encampment.
The hypnotic vigil
"Stealthily cross the ocean in the middle of the day. This means creating a screen that looks familiar, behind which the strategists can maneuver unseen, while all eyes are used to focus on something known " (I 36 stratagems quoted in The Japanese Art of War, Thomas Cleary, 1991 *)
All this is not enough to make the Afghan warrior a super fighter, because it also serves mental conditioning so as to make him immolate to the cause. The kamikaze, Japanese word but now sadly used all over the world, undergo a brainwashing through a particularly aggressive and distorted use of religion. Always Napoleon can help in understanding events: "I do not see in religion the mystery of the Incarnation, but the mystery of the social order". At this point it could be assumed that they arrive at a hypnotic vigil state and thus sent to martyrdom. This particular hypothesis would give the explanation to the blind, absolute courage and without hesitation that they demonstrate in the guerrilla actions and in the acts of terrorism. A strong vocation to the defense of one's own homeland is not enough to convince everyone to blow themselves up, it would serve hypnosis.
The time
"The land, we can always win it back, the weather never" (Napoleon, 1769-1821 *)
Time plays an important role. For the Taliban, fighting time is linked to the seasons of the year. This alternation between the seasons is a real weapon of attrition to the enemy. The invader, in this case the ISAF, is forced to prolong the low intensity conflict.
Why is the Afghan mentality so refractory to news and changes?
"Experience shows that, if the plan you want to undertake is expected from afar, you can act quickly once the time has come to execute it" (Cardinal Richelieu, 1585-1642 *)
The local mentality is slow in evolving as mountaineers and with an atavistic heritage characterized by isolation. Centuries of mountain isolation seeds have forged the 14 local ethnic groups. The aspect of the mountain mentality is valid for any country in the world. The hardness in the character makes the Afghans very combative and resistant. They are Muslims and this makes them not very malleable and impervious to fast emancipations and more tied to traditions. Although at first sight they can be misled especially if they have internet, satellite dishes and cell phones. The people generally have irreducible conservative instincts, a fetishist respect for traditions and an unconscious horror for all the news. Afghans are no exception, because the people are forged from the surrounding environment of reference together with inheritance. The sum, therefore, constitutes the very soul of the people. The typical characters, always referring to the people, are ancestral and very stable. The true story is not the one that impresses us for the duration of the conflict or the particular violence, because true changes see the light through opinions, concepts and beliefs. But there are only two passages that generate novelties and influence events: the end of religious, political and social beliefs; production by science and industry of new discoveries that change the previous living and thought conditions. Obviously a state that is changing skin must have fixed rules shared by everyone and aimed at bringing discipline, reasoning aimed at peaceful coexistence, political foresight and an adequate culture. All these qualities are not currently present all together in Afghanistan and for this reason there are still very big problems.
The ethnic factor is however preponderant in the Afghan question, because all conscious acts are processed by a substratum, however unconscious, which heavily undergoes hereditary influences and ancestral residues belonging to the various ethnic groups of reference. Men of the same ethnic group resemble each other only thanks to the substrate in question. This is what determines the soul of the ethnic group and the consequent sense of belonging. Every people originates from a few fundamental and almost never renewed ideas.
Now Afghanistan is at the center of the dilemma: is it part of the ideas created at the moment by fashions or passing influences, or is it part of the fundamental ideas and therefore stable thanks to hereditary factors and public opinion? The democratic and social ideas fall into the second case, but how close is Afghanistan to these?
It is the time that governs the dilemma. But the greatest risk today is that the Afghans sit on external aid and do not go all the way to the path towards democracy more out of laziness than anything else. It is not easy to disentangle it, and more and more we understand that the low intensity war can be won by the massive and targeted use of the Psyops.
Wanting to make a historical comparison, the philosophical ideas that made the conditions that led to the French Revolution mature, they put us very hard to break through and rooted in the popular soul. There was nothing fast and immediate and the people usually, at least as far as the maturation of certain ideas is concerned, is always late for generations on scientists, artists and philosophers.
Not even the billions of euros and dollars spent by ISAF to support the operations were enough to bring the young democracy to walk quickly with its legs. Evidently what did not work were not the operational apparatus, in this case the FFAA, but the political ideas. The Zweck by Clausewitz, the "national political strategy", is therefore missing. There are still very active pockets of resistance and they do not recognize the occupants. The Afghan police are afraid to intervene. Because? There is still no deep-rooted public opinion and the police know this. So in this context it is not absolutely easy to move. According to the English philosopher David Hume, two events are in relation (association) constant (habitual) if one is the cause of the other when they occur both (jointly), with the warning that an event must always precede the next event if between the two elements there is a link. That is:
- A is the cause of B when A and B always occur jointly and never separately,
- A will have to occur first
- and between A and B there must be a constant causal link.
It goes without saying that religion plays a decisive role in this complicated chessboard, so we can conclude that the mosques actually contain a subtle strategy of control of the status quo, because those who conquer power or a state must necessarily rest on the imagination popular (this also applies to other religions). The crowds can be dragged and even the people, in the broadest sense of the term, is no exception. History, moreover, clearly demonstrates this: the creation of the most important religions, like the minor ones, are nothing more than the logical consequences of impressions, however strong, produced by the imagination of men. Controlling a religion, or rather, using the religious factor for political purposes leads to having an obedience to the cause in some cases absolute. If you think of ancient Rome, then you perceive the true reach of this powerful psychological picklocker. The absolute obedience to Rome made it immense. And all because the emperor, who personified the greatness of the empire, was worshiped like a God. Here, on this plane is the problem of the Mosques. Even if we are in 2018, in fact human psychology has not changed in any way since the birth of man. The crowds, the people, the men of all races and ethnicities absolutely need a religion, but this can be represented either by a religion in the classic sense of the word, or by an absorbing political doctrine as well as a religion proper. A cause, a creed, a doctrine spread only if they have a religious form. This allows them to protect them from the discussion. The latter is avoided as the plague as potentially demolishing the power itself. The historical events in question can be well understood only if the degree of religious absorption and the ideas to which they are bearers is clarified. The people, the common people, the spontaneous crowds are usually prone to it and the violence of wars, revolutions, massacres, the needs of propaganda are understood if they are considered as the most evident manifestation of the spread of a new religious belief in the soul human.
This is why traditions are so important and in the case of Afghanistan, traditions have a very high value, because they represent the ideas, needs and feelings of the past. They are what might be called the quintessence of the ethnicity of belonging and their weight creates a suggestive psychic dependency. Every people is fundamentally an organism that maintains strong bonds with its creator: the past. Only slow hereditary cumulations allow modification. The people feed on traditions, because they themselves are the only ones that keep the national identity alive. These change easily but only in exterior forms. Without traditions, that is to say without the national soul, there is no form of civilization.
The political contest in Afghanistan is mainly played out in this light. Man has always had only two great thoughts: to create traditions and then destroy them, when the beneficial effects had come to an end. The stable traditions nourish civilization; progress comes with the slow elimination of traditions. Now Afghanistan, at what point is this very special vital path? From what we can see, the difficulty lies in finding the right mix between stability and variability. It is a slow and slow struggle, as slow is the evolution and awareness of a people. The solution of the rebus is not at all easy. The risk is crystallization: customs that stabilize too much (various generations), do not allow either perfection or evolution. Basically the revolutions and sudden blows are also useless, as they do not deeply and permanently affect the soul of the people subjected to such solicitations. If traditions are dispersed they create chaos and anarchy. Afghanistan has caste? These represent hard and pure conservatism. The variables in this sense are manifold. To think that a diatribe of this level can only be solved with a handful of soldiers placed outside their forts and their barracks for a few years is certainly not the winning idea. The military always does their job well, but it is politics that in this case has failed its course. That's why a massive use of Psyops can provide the solution. Only time can act as a regulator, because it allows the evolution or disappearance of all beliefs with the acquisition or not of the necessary power. We must always go back to the past to determine the genesis of the change in question. There are two memories in one state: that of the people with its beliefs and the diplomatic one. The former is more lasting, the second more evanescent. Several years have passed to be able to draw up an accurate balance with this key and for this reason we must start to study the problem by giving priority to public opinion.
Political and social organizations are formed over the centuries and find their rule after this very long journey. We need to know how the ground has been prepared to understand what is happening today. The type of teaching given today, especially to young people, allows a triangulation on the events of the future, therefore, a fairly precise prediction. But it remains a fact that since the dawn of time people have always been influenced by illusions. Statues, churches, temples were created to honor those in duty. The only way to destroy illusions, perhaps become too dangerous for a particular social order, is to destroy them with experience. In fact it is the only effective means to firmly root a truth in the conscience of the citizens of a country. There is a problem, though: it must absolutely renew itself many times and especially on a large scale. It is a common belief that experience is handed down from one generation to the next, but it is partially true in that the immediately following generation has, strangely, no capacity for learning. Creating religious faith or political faith or social faith is the task of the great leaders. Faith is therefore a very powerful weapon for social ends, because it multiplies the strength of individuals. The curious side is that the contagion of this force always comes without reasoning. That is, it is taken as a whole and never questioned.
The ethnic groups to be analyzed are therefore subject to basic psychological elements as well as changing elements. The study of popular beliefs as well as the opinions of the people is fundamental. Because everything travels on the relationship between the elements. A passing argument is often taken into consideration by the people, but it is more difficult for the hardest and most profound part to be radically changed. The revolutions change things when the people are already predisposed to change, because in this way the popular beliefs are practically eliminated without any force. The Afghan picture must be seen from the point of view that the intolerance they show is nothing but the main weapon with which this difficult match is played, because unconsciously the Afghan people use intolerance itself as the anchor of their own salvation, in short, a virtue not to be missed and indeed to be nurtured. In this case intolerance represents the virtue in the life of the tribal galaxy.
Psyops to beat the guerrilla and terrorism
"... and men are so simple, and so obedient to present needs, that he who deceives will always find those who will be deceived" (Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527 *)
The Psyops are at this point the adequate response to a low-intensity war, because they allow us to grasp the hearts and minds of those people who would otherwise be the first supporters of the Taliban and the terrorists. Terrorism needs to make propaganda to exist and its propaganda is the massacres. The guerrillas, however, still need popular support that is not based on the goodness of their ideas propagandized through the motivations and actions of the guerrilla itself. In fact, the recruitment centers pass through structures that adequately prepare the spirit of the combatant. This preparation is usually a path that takes some time. Psyops have the antidote to this situation, because they create centripetal thrusts that prevent the centrifugal forces of the adversary propaganda from branching out and grasping. When will the Psyops upgrade start? We hope soon, because time in this kind of operations is precious and "No man must despair of being able to conquer followers to the most extravagant hypothesis provided he has enough art to represent it under the most favorable colors" (David Hume, 1711-1776 *).
[* quotations from the book "the 48 laws of power" by Robert Green, Baldini & Castoldi]
(photo: US Air Force / US Army / NATO / Operation Inherent Resolve / US DoD)
