Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency

8: The Centrality of Intelligence

The Centrality of Intelligence 145 145 CHAPTER 8 THE CENTRALITY OF INTELLIGENCE The most effective weapon against an armed insurgency is a good intelligence organization. Sun Tzu observed: “Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge .”1 Machiavelli believed that “nothing is more worthy of the attention of a good general than to endeavor to penetrate the designs of the enemy.”2 On July 26, 1777, General George Washington wrote to Col. Elias Dayton that “the necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further argued. All that remains for me to add is that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon secrecy success depends in most enterprises of the kind, and for want of it they are generally defeated, however well-planned and promising a favorable issue.” Twentieth-century students and practitioners of counterinsurgency have provided similar testimony. C.E. Callwell observed that “In no class of warfare is a well-organized and well-served intelligence department more essential than in that against guerrillas.” Field Marshal Lord Carver wrote: “The importance of timely and accurate intelligence at every level, particularly of the enemy’s intentions, cannot be overemphasized.” For Lucian W. Pye, “The very essence of counterinsurgency is the collection of intelligence for the government.” Frank Kitson argues that “if it is accepted that the problem of defeating the enemy consists very largely of finding him, it is easy to recognize the paramount importance of good information .” And John P. Cann concluded that “the centralized flow of intelligence was the key to [the Portuguese] counterinsurgency [in Africa].”3 THE USES OF INTELLIGENCE Clearly, a main purpose of intelligence in counterinsurgency is to facilitate successful operations against both armed enemy units and specific 146 RESISTING REBELLION individuals. With some help from the U.S., Peruvian intelligence improved to the point that in September 1992 the authorities were able to apprehend Abimael Guzman, founder of Sendero Luminoso, while he was visiting his girlfriend’s house in Lima. This event radically disorganized the Sendero movement. The quality and quantity of intelligence available to the authorities also serves as a gauge of how the war is going, or at least how people think it is going. Almost invariably, the dominant direction of the intelligence flow is toward the side perceived to be winning. In the Malayan Emergency, the increasingly effective intelligence work of the Police Special Branch heavily depended on the visibly improving level of local security.4 Another invaluable benefit of good intelligence is that it can identify internal divisions among the insurgents. Various fissures beset any insurgent movement, sometimes producing violent internal clashes.5 By revealing the nature and extent of such divisions, good intelligence can be used to drive a wedge between leaders, between leaders and some of their followers, or between different segments of the rank and file along religious, ethnic, tribal, or other cleavage lines. By 1951 at the latest in Malaya, for example, the special privileges of leaders, especially regarding food and women, agitated guerrilla ranks.6 On the other hand, neglect of good intelligence can lead to a general underestimating of the enemy—and the disastrous surprises that follow from such an error. This was the experience, for example, of the French in their war with the Viet Minh. SOURCES OF INTELLIGENCE Besides cooperative civilians, the most obvious source of intelligence is captured enemy personnel. Therefore a major objective of any well-led counterinsurgency should be to acquire prisoners. This principle is not always self-evident: in the early 1960s, commanders of South Vietnamese Army units gave little attention to interrogating prisoners; indeed , captured Viet Cong were sometimes executed without having been questioned at all. Similarly, during the American Revolution, irregular British forces in the Carolinas often shot captured or surrendered American prisoners on the spot. Because it can have such lasting effects on intelligence gathering and the potential for future insurgencies, the incarceration of prisoners requires attention. In South Vietnam, captured or surrendered Viet The Centrality of Intelligence 147 Cong were frequently confined in ordinary jails along with common criminals. Overcrowded conditions in these places often resulted in the judicial release of enemy prisoners after only two years or less.7 In other cases, prisons have proven to be schools for revolutionaries; if prisoners are not carefully segregated...