The DO’s

• Protect and serve the population – The people are the decisive ‘terrain’. Work with police and other authorities to provide the people security, to give them respect, to gain their support, and where necessary, to facilitate establishment of local governance, restoration of basic services, and revival of local economies. The police and the military should live, eat and work side by side, so that when transition occurs, it is smooth. Also the police and Para-Military must be trained to develop an attitude that will enable them to be a part of the solution, not part of the problem. Find ways to speak to the locals – use loud speakers in built-up areas and radio in other areas. Disseminate general information / news and slip in information about the insurgents on terror incidents or killings, especially of other locals.
• Work with the Police to establish order and provide security. Even use the locals as recruits to ‘Civil Defense’ or ‘Police Assistance Teams’ or ‘Neighbourhood Watches’ etc, the locals can identify the insurgents, their informers and any outsiders and understand their movement patterns better than you.
• Set-up local or district level reconstruction teams to buildup the local economy from the bottom-up in order to improve security and provide earning and livelihood opportunities and eventually reduce the military presence.
• Select the area to be occupied. Sneak in a ‘Sniper’ team into a location that commands the area and the approaches to it. Send a route clearance team to work its way to that location, followed by a Company of Army Troops or Security Forces to really move in and occupy the area. Deploy forces to the borders of the area to be controlled to cut and control all ‘Lines of communication’ eg: Roads, paths, river ways, passes, into the area.
• Establish scores of small outposts (Platoon Strength) and patrol almost incessantly, with a clear understanding that if you are present in a neighbour hood for only two hours a day, the insurgents may well control it the other 22 hours, and naturally no one will reach out to you as it will lead to inevitable retaliation. Maintain a constant presence in the disputed area, deny the insurgents the ability to accurately trace or predict your actions.
• Position outposts at key intersections and approaches, use circling drones if available, to keep an eye out for attacks. Ask the local leaders to advice on where to place the police stations and outposts, even if they tend to favour locations close to their own homes. Give them recognition and a sense of participation to win their involvement and support.
• Ensure your own security: The new combat outposts should have proper and secure living spaces and barriers
• to limit damage from small arms and small projectiles. To save time and decrease the vulnerability period, such outposts can be pre-designed and pre-fabricated in a modular fashion to be moved and set-up in the least possible time.
• Live amongst or in close proximity to the people – You cannot commute to this fight. Position security stations (jointly with the police if necessary), combat outposts, and Patrol bases, in the neighborhoods you intend to secure. Living amongst the people is essential to securing them and defeating the insurgents and also for gathering actionable intelligence. Be there, sleep there and move on foot, day and night. All this seems more dangerous than it really is. Establish links with the locals, who will thus see you as real people they can trust and do business with, not ‘aliens’ who drive through from remote bases, day-tripping like a tourist ‘in hell’, such behavour degrades your situational awareness, makes you a target and is ultimately more dangerous. This way you will isolate the insurgents. Remember – for insurgents isolation is death.
• Walk – Move mounted, work dismounted. Stop by, don’t drive by. Patrol on foot and engage the population. Situational awareness can only be gained by interacting with the people face to face.
• Hold areas that have been secured – once an area is cleared and control achieved, it must be retained, do not under any circumstances give it up or allow yourself to be driven away. Never give up – always show that you are there to stay. Develop the plan for holding an area before starting to clear it. The people need to know that you will not abandon them. When reducing forces and presence and handing over to Police and State Administration, gradually thin the line rather than handing off or withdrawing completely at a stroke. They will then begin to talk to you or help in other ways. Such as anonymously marking or otherwise indicating where a bomb had been planted, or an arms cache hidden the previous night, or where insurgents are hiding. Encourage and even suitably reward the informers, secretly if necessary.
• Pursue the insurgents relentlessly – Identify and pursue the extremist elements tenaciously. Do not let them retain support areas or sanctuaries. Force them to respond to you. Deny them the ability to plan and conduct deliberate operations. Remember killing insurgents is easy, it is finding them that is often nearly impossible. Enter into deals with local leaders/opinion makers. Compete with the insurgents for the loyalty of the local population. The locals will know their territory better than you. They will also know the individuals better and so be able to help identify the insurgents or their informants. Of course you then need to be able to protect your own informants or they will be killed by the insurgents.
• Generate unity of effort – Coordinate operations and initiatives with the police, para military, intelligence, local administrative authorities and governmental authorities, as may be necessary, to ensure all
• are working to achieve a common purpose.
• Promote Reconciliation – We cannot kill our way out of this endeavor. We must remain alert for signs of division within the insurgent movement. Encourage insurgents to change sides. Don’t be too unforgiving, remember many saints had an unsavoury past and every sinner can have a better future. We must identify and separate the ‘Reconcilables’ from the ‘Irreconcilables’ through engagement, population control measures, information operations, kinetic operations and political activities. We must strive to make the ‘Reconcilables’ a part of the solution and convert them, even as we identify, pursue, and kill, capture, or drive out the ‘Irreconcilables’ and protect the locals from them.
• Defeat the network, not just the attack – Defeat the insurgent networks. Develop and focus intelligence assets to identify the networks behind an attack, and go after its leaders, financiers, suppliers, operators and technical experts (bomb makers etc)
• Employ all assets to isolate and defeat the insurgents – Counter insurgency forces alone cannot defeat the insurgents/ extremists; success requires all forces and all means at our disposal. Employ Paramilitary Forces and Police and local protection forces or Neighbourhood watches etc and, when required, even Conventional and Special Forces, and also all other available multipliers. Integrate civilian and military efforts to cement security gains. Fight decentralized, and push assets down to those who most need them and can actually use them.
• Recruit locals as auxiliary police or civil defense or neighbourhood watches and as workers. The volunteers may be illiterate, under age or over weight, but they can be worked on. Create ‘Emergency battalions’ to work them (eg:- Pioneer units) and employ them. Arm them with captured weapons and get the Military to give them training, even if only for a week or two. Such political change can lead to improved security and a sense of belonging in the locals.

There will of course be protests against such militias (eg:- Ranveer Sena or Salwa Judum or Village Defence Cadres), especially if they are not properly monitored and directed, but the alternative is a failure of security and prolonged civil war. Those who protest should be asked to consider the condition of the locals if they are not so organized and just left to the mercy of the insurgents. Also, you can’t tell the terrorist from the good locals, the local militiaman can. He can also discriminate between genuine and justified movement/travel and that which is not.

• Encourage the rapid restoration of local administration and policing – As far as possible also encourage the assimilation of the reconciled insurgents into the local protection forces / Neighbourhood Watch Forces.
• Follow through on your strategy continuously – To act episodically and withdraw, only treats the symptoms. It offers insurgents the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and act with greater sophistication and effect the next time.
• Employ money as a weapon system – Ensure the greatest effect for each rupee or resource expended and ensure that each engagement contributes to the achievement of
• the overall objectives. Ensure contracting activities support the security effort, employing locals where ever possible. The Central government may consider encouraging a ‘matching fund’ concept when feasible in order to ensure the involvement of the State government in development, amnesty and resettlement activity.
• Fight for intelligence -A nuanced understanding of the situation is everything. Analyze the intelligence that is gathered, share it, and fight for more. Every patrol should have tasks designed to augment understanding of the area of operations and the enemy. Operate on a ‘need to share’ rather than a ‘need to know’ basis; disseminate intelligence as soon as possible to all who can benefit from it.
• Understand the Neighbourhood – Map the human terrain and study it in detail. Understand local culture and history; learn about the locals, their formal and informal leaders, local governmental authorities and police forces. Understand how local economy and systems and authorities are supposed to work for providing governance and infrastructure and basic services, and operational and maintenance support – and how they really work.
• Understand the cultural sensitivities of the locals. Do not alienate them. Work to build relationships – Relationships are a critical component of counter-insurgency operations. Together with other Authorities, strive to establish productive links with local leaders, governmental officials, religious leaders and inter agency partners. Identify and keep doing small things for the Locals – treat the sick, show care for the children and the elderly.
• Look for sustainable solutions – Build mechanisms which, under the control of local community leaders and governmental institutions, can continue to secure local areas and sustain governance and economic gains in their communities even as the Military presence is reduced and Police and State Administration take over.
• Maintain continuity and tempo through transitions – Start to build the information you’ll provide to your successors on the day you take over. Allow those who will follow you to virtually ‘look over your shoulder’ while they are yet to arrive to take over. Encourage extra time on the ground during transition periods, and strive to maintain operational tempo and local relationships to avoid giving the insurgents respite.
• Manage expectations – Be cautious and measured in announcing progress. Note what has been accomplished, but also acknowledge what still needs to be done. Avoid premature declarations of success. Ensure all Security Forces personnel are aware of the assessments and that they recognize that any counter insurgency operation has innumerable challenges, that insurgents have a say, and that progress is likely to be slow.
• Be First with the truth – Get accurate information of significant activities to your chain of Command, to the Government Authorities, and even, where appropriate, to the Media, as soon as is possible. Beat the insurgents, extremists, and criminals to the headlines, and pre-empt rumours. Integrity is critical to this fight. Acknowledge setbacks and failures, and then state what has been learnt and how to respond. Hold the Media (and yourselves) accountable for accuracy, characterization, and context. Avoid ‘spin’ and let the facts
• speak for themselves. Challenge the Insurgents disinformation. Turn, the Insurgent’s bankrupt messages, extremist ideologies, oppressive practices and indiscriminate violence, against them. In this Information Age, where 60% of the War is information, we need the Generals / Commanders to be able to talk to the Media without being afraid of stepping on some other Authority’s toes. Work with Government both State and Central, to have a media cell to coordinate such information releases or interviews. Trust the Generals / Commanders to have the necessary understanding of the entire picture and of what to disclose. Otherwise replace them.
• Fight the information war relentlessly – Realize that you are in a struggle which in the end will be won or lost in the perception of the people. Every action taken by the Insurgents and by the Forces/Police/Authorities has implications in the public arena. Develop and sustain a narrative that works and continually drive the themes home through all forms of media.
• Live our values – Do not hesitate to kill or capture the insurgents/hostiles, but stay true to the values we all hold dear. This is what distinguishes us from our enemies. There is no tougher endeavour than the one in which you are engaged. It is often brutal, physical demanding, and frustrating. All experience movements of anger, but you can neither give in to dark impulses nor tolerate unacceptable actions by others. Never forget that you may soon have to convince the family of the insurgents you killed, of the inevitability of their loss given the path their family member was following, and then still win the acceptance of the family and of their neighbours.
• Exercise initiative – In the absence of guidance or orders, determine what they should be and execute aggressively. Higher level leaders will provide broad vision and paint ‘white lines on the road’, but it will be up to those at tactical levels to turn ‘big ideas’ into specific actions. The Commanders should encourage such attitudes and stand by the junior leaders.
• Prepare and exploit opportunities – “luck is what happens when preparations meets opportunity” – said Seneca the Younger . Develop concepts (such as that of ‘Reconcilables’ and ‘Irreconcilables’), in anticipation of possible opportunities, and be prepared to take risks as necessary to take advantage of them
• Learn and adapt – Continually assess the situation and adjust tactics, policies, and programmes as required. Share good ideas (No one of us is smarter than all together). Avoid mental or physical complacency. Never forget that what works in an area today may not work there tomorrow, and it may or may not be transferable to another location.

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