Some hard lessons that may help in Mali

By Gary Anderson

Best Defense office of hard lessons

Over the course of the past 20 years, I have observed or
participated in counterinsurgency campaigns in South Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq,
and Afghanistan in both military and civilian capacities. Some were done
poorly, some successfully. The one thing that I have learned is that each is
unique in its own way and there are no templates that will work in all cases.
Mali is a good example of uniqueness, and there are some lessons from each of
my experiences that pertain to that particular situation.

As a U.N. observer in Lebanon, I watched the Israelis go from
liberators to hated occupiers in a way that was completely unnecessary, and caused
them needless grief. Like the French in Mali, the Israelis chased off an
unwanted foreign presence -- in their case, the Palestinians were viewed occupiers
by the largely Shiite southern Lebanese population. Unfortunately, the Israelis
had a tendency to view any armed Muslim Arab as a threat. Consequently, Israel
opted to arm a minority Christian-led militia. This action inadvertently
created Hezbollah, which became a far greater threat to Israel than the
Palestinians ever could present. The Israelis would have likely been far better
off arming individual villages for self-protection without taking sides in the
ongoing Lebanese civil war and positioning themselves as an honest third-party
broker in the inevitable civil disputes in South Lebanon.

Mali is a civil war as much as an insurgency. The southern third,
and the government, are dominated by blacks while the northern part has a considerable
population of light-skinned Tauregs of Berber origin. Although heavily armed al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) foreign fighters have provided the Taureg
separatists their military advantage, in the recent past the Tauregs have shown
an inclination to negotiate, and will likely do so again if the jihadists can
be ejected. This is where the French need to avoid Israel's Lebanon mistake and
become facilitators of real negotiations.

In Somalia, we learned the lessons of cultural ignorance the hard
way. After a largely successful humanitarian intervention to stop mass
starvation, we and the United Nations ignored the traditional clan system of
the Somalis and made the mistake of trying to supplant it with alien Western
style democracy. Ironically, the attempt by the former Somali dictator to
ignore the influence of the clans was what began the disastrous civil war that
caused the collapse of Somalia to begin with. The Americans and United Nations
overreached in Somalia. The Malian government understands that it needs to
rebuild the democratic institutions that were toppled by the disastrous
military coup that initiated the current crisis. We could help in
reestablishing Malian governmental legitimacy.

In Iraq, we succeeded largely because we were able to separate the
foreign jihadist insurgents from the indigenous Sunni nationalist insurgents
through a soft power combination of diplomacy and money. The use of soft power
such as this in driving a wedge between the Tuareg people and AQIM will be critical
to any potential success.

In Afghanistan, we continue to learn perhaps the most difficult
lesson of all. To successfully help a host-nation government fight an insurgency
requires that the host-nation government wants to address the root causes of
the insurgency. The Afghan government never accepted that principle, and may
never will. That does not mean that governance cannot be improved in Mali. Good
governance is not necessarily expensive. I have come to the conclusion through
bitter experience that the more development money we throw at a country, the
worse the government gets, as money breeds corruption. In Mali, we would be
better advised to spend small amounts of money on rule of law training and
local management techniques for local officials, particularly Tauregs and other
local officials in the north. Insurgencies are like politics in that they are
basically local.

In rebuilding the Malian military, we need to remember that the
organizer of the coup debacle was American trained. As Western trainers try to
retool the Malian Army, we need to remember human rights training and the
importance of civilian control over the military as much as small unit
training, patrolling, and other tactical skills. In addition, the Department of
State and French Foreign Ministry need to stress civil-military relations in
training national level Malian officials.

I am one of those opposed to U.S. intervention in Syria. The
infestation of Islamic radicals in the ranks of the rebels is even greater than
it was in Afghanistan during the revolt against the Soviets. I favor a
negotiated settlement with the Baathists that will allow them a reasonably soft
landing as we brokered between the government junta and the rebels in El
Salvador two decades ago, but Mali is different.

If we use Special Operations Force troops to train local militias
and retool the Malian Army into a professional force capable of supporting a
democratic civilian government, we can do so cheaply and effectively; that is
the SOF mission. More importantly, they could help build village-level self-defense
militias in the north to prevent the now hated Islamists from returning. Again,
a relatively inexpensive operation.

Likewise, the State Department and USAID now have hard-earned Iraq
and Afghanistan experience in coaching good governance and anti-corruption at
the national, provincial, and local levels. This ought to be exploited before
it atrophies. Again, this can be done affordably. Mali is not hopeless, and it
can be a model for the right way to stabilize governments and fight Islamic
extremists.

Gary Anderson
is a retired Marine Corps colonel who was a governance advisor in Iraq and
Afghanistan. He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University
Elliott School of International Affairs.