A Handbook for the Suppression of Communist Guerrilla/Terrorist Operations (Chapter VII)
| Author | Department of the Army |
|---|---|
| Country | United States of America |
| Subject | Counterinsurgency |
Publication date | 1961 |
| Text | A Handbook for the Suppression of Communist Guerrilla/Terrorist Operations online |
| Digital Identifier (JFK Library): JFKPOF-080-014 | |
| Part of a series on |
| Counterinsurgency |
|---|
TACTICS AND TECHNIQUE:
a. Objective: The objective of suppression activities is the extermination of guerrilla/terrorist forces, restoration of the lawful government to power, re-establishment of law, public order and the resumption of the normal peaceful pursuits of the populace in the affected area.
b. Principals of Operations: (listed in Chapter IV, Para k). Stress maintenance of the initiative by prompt offensive action, economy of force and employment of suitably organized and trained troops and police in all weather field operations utilizing guerrilla/terrorist tactics. "Saturation tactics" and “Sweep Operations" are avoided along with the dissipation of forces in assignment of numerous small military elements to essentially defensive tasks.
c. Phasing of Operations: Suppression operations for planning purposes and as a means of measuring progress may be divided into four general phases. These phases may overlap or merge into concurrent undertakings. Various phase objectives may be achieved at widely divergent points in time in separate locales. Attempts to rigidly define operations according to a time phase are largely unrealistic and unproductive.
(1) Phase I - Counter Attack.
(a) Establishment of the pacification committee and its assumption of command of operations at the level concerned.
(b) Elimination of physical control of towns, populated areas, military garrisons or installations by guerrilla/terrorists military formations.
(c) Restoration of government civil or military officials.
(d) Provision of temporary garrisons to populated locales until self-defense units can be established.
(e) Organization and training of self-defense units in all locales of the affected area.
(f) Establishment of extensive government positive intelligence and counter-intelligence operations within the area.
(g) Initiation of an intensified psychological campaign to rally the local people in support of the government.
(h) Initiation of material aid and assistance to restore devastated property and facilities within the area of operations to include payment of damages to individuals and to' subsidize resettlement projects.
(i) Initiation of patrols and probing actions aimed at locating and maintaining contact with guerrilla/terrorist military units.
(j) Destruction of guerrilla/terrorist forces who initiate attack against military or police formations in open battle.
(k) Initiation of stringent food rationing and control measures over commerce in restricted and contraband items.
(2) Phase II - Assumption of the Offensive.
(a) Implementation of all-out attack to exterminate large guerrilla/terrorist forces in the field.
(b) Isolation of guerrilla/terrorist forces from sources of food and other supplies through centralized food distribution, rationing systems, control of restricted and contraband items and self defense force controls.
(c) Force the movement of large guerrilla/terrorist units from heavily populated rural areas to less desirable sparsely populated regions incapable of providing adequate support for their military operations.
(d) Maintain continuous pressure on the guerrilla/terrorist forces by accelerated extermination campaigns at local and regional levels forcing armed bands and flying columns to discontinue offensive operations, fragment into smaller elements and maintain continuous movement to avoid annihilation.
(e) Evacuation of elements of population suspected of supporting guerrilla/terrorists' operations and resettlement under secure conditions.
(f) Intensified search, seizure and raid operations to destroy guerrilla terrorist supply caches. (g) Creation of sanitary zones» surrounding guerrilla/ terrorist redoubt areas.
(3) Phase III - Destruction of the Guerrilla/terrorist Military and Support Elements.
General: The destruction phase is similar in many facets to the offensive phase. Its primary purpose is to exploit and consolidate the gains of the offensive by maintaining continuous pressure on the remaining guerrilla/terrorist elements permitting no period in which regroupment, rest or re-establishment of logistical, recruiting and liaison facilities may be accomplished.
(a) Intensified efforts are made to destroy and intercept logistical support from local sources. Operations to destroy small garden plots, fields and cattle stock held -or used by guerrilla elements in remote or sparsely populated regions are pressed.
(b) An increased tempo of psychological efforts are concentrated at inducing defection in the rank and file of the guerrilla/terrorist organizations. Themes follow a variety of leads aimed at separating the rank and file from the leaders.
(c) Offers of amnesty and/or rehabilitation are extended to the rank and file. These .offers are timed to coincide with planned public appeals by families, friends and former comrades to abandon the Red cause.
(d) The public is enlisted in the general movement to halt the fighting by providing information regarding fugitive guerrilla/terrorists. Liberal use of rewards and protection for informants and their families is afforded. Stringent punishment is meted out to persons harboring fugitives.
(e) Subsequent to defeat in the field, personnel from dispersed guerrilla/terrorist units may be expected to attempt to return to their places of origin and resume private pursuits or seek refuge in familiar areas until the government pressure is relieved. Careful surveillance and frequent spot checks of resident populations should be used to pick up such returning elements. Families should be encouraged to have their relatives involved in guerrilla/terrorist activity surrender themselves voluntarily to the authorities and accept the amnesty, etc.
(f) Wherever feasible military police formations no longer necessary in local areas are returned to the region for reassignment.
(g) Continued efforts are made to track down and exterminate remnants of armed elements. Individual descriptions of leaders and other prescribed personnel are widely circulated. Hunter teams are assigned to track down and destroy these individual leaders and their remaining followers.
(h) Care should be exercised that such reductions are not premature. Intelligence and informant nets should be left in operation for a longer period to assure continued surveillance.
(4) Phase IV Rehabilitation: This phase encompasses all programs and activities necessary to restore the community to normalcy and implement the government's reform program. Adequate supervision and an intelligent and practical administration of-this phase will do much to forstall future recurrences of insurgency. Care must be exercised that firm but fair practices are observed in administration and that vindictive or discriminatory measures are not taken against groups or individuals who were former adherents of the guerrilla/terrorists.
(a) As soon as possible restrictive measures are lifted by the local committees who maintain control until directed to pass the reins of government to the civil authority.
(b) Troops and police no longer required are transferred from the area or employed in the rehabilitation program.
(c) Special land property courts and location bureaus as necessary are initiated to resettle displaced population elements including rehabilitated guerrilla/terrorists.
(d) Special economic and material aid is given to areas suffering heavy property damage, and troops and police as appropriate are sent to augment local labor shortages.
(e) An effort should be made during this phase to identify the forces of government (troops and police) in more than a superficial, supervisory role in the rehabilitation and reconstruction program. Troops and police as units and as individuals should be employed in an active role in building, planting, harvesting and other essential programs. A close association of these forces of government with the population will enhance support of the program and expedite the general recovery.
(f) Serious consideration should be given to the retention of the Self-Defense units for use in military emergencies, natural disasters and as a base for national military service programs.
d. A consideration of tactical and psychological aspects of operations, and an understanding of basic attitudes, situations, and motivating factors within the area of operation and its impact on both the forces of government and the guerrilla/terrorists is necessary to the successful conduct of suppression operations.
(1) The Guerrilla/terrorist Military: Basically the guerrilla/terrorist mentally acknowledges and accepts his status as an illegal person whose life is forfeit if apprehended. Accordingly he accustoms himself to a life of movement from one area or locale to another. He endures a life of physical danger and privation subject to ambush, attack or betrayal at any time. Cut off from his family, friends and original environment he lives a life of relative isolation under primitive conditions with small numbers of his comrades surrounded by security measures designed to insure his survival. In this essentially secretive and isolated existence punctuated by periods of violence and physical combat the individual is subjected to extremes of mental and physical stress.
He depends to a large degree on the group for support and is bound by circumstances in a large measure to identification with their aims and requirements. He realizes that if he does not conform to the group pattern or attempts to disassociate himself from the organization both he and his family will be liquidated.
He wages a war of the weak against forces essentially stronger in both material and intrinsic moral respects. His operations capitalize on stealth, speed, violence and terror; characterized by their short duration and the speedy withdrawal to safe haven in the anonymous countryside.
His operations are carefully planned to assure that the tasks contemplated can be successfully accomplished with a minimum of risk and loss to the guerrilla/terrorists. These policies indicate a realistic appreciation that survival is dependent on an ability to avoid situations in which the guerrilla/terrorist forces are obliged to engage superior government forces under field combat conditions.
One of the primary concerns, if not the primary continuing concern, of a guerrilla leader is the necessity for providing for current reliable information to insure his security and enable him to plan and execute those operational missions and other tasks necessary for his survival. The time, effort and manpower involved in intelligence gathering is large in proportion to his total resources.
A considerable proportion of his time and efforts must also be devoted to provision of the basic necessities for continued operation. The procurement and transport of food, clothing^, arms and medical supplies to cache locales for future use is a major problem. Security is another major consideration and involves allocation of a sizable portion of his available manpower in this role on a continuing basis'. Advances in modern technical communications facilities require that he rely largely on a tenuous system of personnel couriers, letter drops and clandestine meetings with other contacts to supply him intelligence, control direction and liaison with other elements of the apparat. His organizational structure is in a general state of continual flux caused by operational losses, shifts, reorganization, and new activation.
Manpower procurement, training and the provision of medical services or other difficult and time consuming tasks that confront him require the services of considerable numbers of his available force. The sum of these operational factors generally result in individual guerrilla/terrorist bands engaging only periodically in active combat operations of their own choosing. This lack of capability to maintain units in sustained operations of any scope is usually carefully covered by the red central's planning of raids and scheduling of other activities of adjacent elements to give an impression of continuous offensive operations on a broad scale.
The ability of the guerrilla/terrorist units to withdraw with impunity into safe haven areas subsequent to an operation for rest, training and preparation for future operations is a primary factor both psychological and physical in their ability to continue operations or even exist as a unit.
The guerrilla/terrorist unit will seldom engage in extended offensive operations of any scope when its base of operations is actively threatened.
Although the guerrilla/terrorist element occupies only a small fraction of the whole of a safe haven area its existence is dependent upon general control of the area to enable the uninterrupted function of its communication, security and supply systems. Guerrillas generally fear hostile guerrilla elements more than attacks of conventional forces in that the methods and techniques of operation utilized cannot be readily countered.
Once a guerrilla force knows that it is being stalked by hostile guerrillas or guerrilla type forces, its full attention must be focused on the destruction or removal of this immediate threat or it must prepare to abandon the area if it is to survive.
When hostile guerrillas are operating in conjunction with government forces this threat becomes even more acute to the guerrilla/terrorist. The enemy guerrilla need only locate the guerrilla/terrorist unit and in any attack it may launch the guerrilla/terrorist realizes that he must face the combined weight of both the hostile guerrilla and superior government forces.
The guerrilla/terrorist leader realizes and understands the full capability of terror as a weapon. Morale and security of his own forces are serious continuing problems.
Although capable of utilizing and capitalizing on terror operations in his own attacks against the population and the government he is even more sensitive to this type of operation when it is directed against his own forces by hostile guerrilla type operations for the several reasons enumerated above.
(2) The Government Forces: The. military and police personnel constituting the actively engaged in punitive action against guerrilla/terrorist forces are faced with problems based on both the psychological as well as the physical facets of the operation.
Unlike conventional military operations the enemy military forces can often neither be readily located nor identified. No front line, rear area, or other conventional terms of reference apply. The enemy in the form of the guerrilla/terrorist organization may sometimes appear to assume the form of a nebulous and terrifying specter that threatens the individual officer, soldier or policeman and his family at every turn. No area appears to offer complete safety. Assassinations, kidnappings, ambushes, raids and terrorist activity appear to happen in almost all locales.
These acts appear to be the acts of civilians, or at least the perpetrators vanish into the civil community which apparently harbors them and refuses to cooperate in their apprehension.
The normal relationship and attitudes of the military and police toward the populace undergo radical changes. Suspicion, distrust and to a certain extent fear of the civil population becomes a prevailing attitude of the military and police.
Frustration at the fruitless results of their efforts to apprehend or destroy the guerrilla/terrorists coupled with the belief that the people as a whole harbor and support the terrorists tend to lead to incidents and reprisals on the civil populace and a further rift in the relationship.
(a) The military and police become in many instances "bunker bound" or "compound fixtures" suffering the symptoms of "block house fever" and its psychologically associated ills. Often found in troops in conventional conflicts that have been committed for long periods to purely, defensive positions, the offensive spirit has been lost in the apparent security of their dugouts.
Patrols tend to be overly large and restricted to regularly scheduled routes over relatively "safe areas."
Incursions into the hills are made only by large forces at infrequent intervals for short periods, and then only with much "tail gate rattling" and other advanced warnings. More frequent or continuous field operations are often precluded on the basis (excuse) of the necessity of maintaining "protection" for the "key" cities and towns.
The government soldier although native to the country is often a stranger to the actual area of operations. This unfamiliarity with the terrain and the local population further add to the uncertainty and lack of confidence. The propaganda themes of the guerrilla/terrorist as well as their rumor campaigns must be expected to have a certain impact on military and police personnel as well the population as a whole.
The knowledge that capture means torture and death and that their immediate family, as well as relatives, are subject to reprisals for their participation in anti-terrorist operations does have an effect on the morale of government forces.
(b) To provide preventive as well as corrective measures to combat these tendencies a positive and realistic approach is necessary.
1. A full and continuing orientation program to acquaint all military and police personnel with guerrilla/terrorist operations, tactics and techniques should be conducted. Relationships with the civil populace should be conducted. Relationships with the civil populace should be stressed. Participation in community and public activities by military and police should be encouraged.
2. Whenever possible government families and dependents should not be evacuated from the area. The weight of the morale factor on the population as a whole viewing the mass exodus of military police and other government dependents from a threatened area merely confirms rumors that the government has already or will soon fall and that the communists are about to assume power. Dependents of government personnel can often be relocated within the area and provided suitable security at a central locale.
3. Extensive training in military tactics and techniques coupled with continuous field operations under capable leadership are necessary to instill the offensive spirit and establish a high esprit-de-corps and morale.
4. Frequent rest and leave policies for those elements actively engaged in operations should be provided. A special awards and promotions policy should be established for both military and police for successful operations and acts of bravery. Appropriate publicity should endeavor to establish personnel who distinguish themselves in operations in the public mind as "National Heroes" in the war for the preservation of "National Independence."
5. Hazardous duty pay should be provided for personnel on extended patrol operations and other activities in which the individual is required to assume appreciable risks above and beyond that encountered by the bulk of the forces engaged in operations.
6. Whenever possible military and police forces assigned to areas of operation at the local and regional level should be retained in the same general area during the active phases of operation to provide forces thoroughly familiar with local conditions, populace and geography. Rotation of duty should be afforded within the local or regional area.
7. Of all the factors and measures above that of providing intelligent, capable, forceful and professionally competent officers and NCO's in the military and police establishments is the most important single factor in overcoming the problems enumerated.
e. Suppression Tactics and Techniques
(1) General: No rote, drill or other rigidly defined tactics or techniques can be prescribed in the conduct of suppression operations. Flexibility, intelligence and ingenuity are the keynote themes.
As the guerrilla/terrorist elements react to counter various government operations new or revised methods appropriate to the locale of operation must be found to overcome or circumvent these parries. This text is not intended to detail the almost infinite variations of small unit tactics and techniques that may be used or improvised. Only general guidelines are offered to highlight the nature and pattern of activity.
(2) Principals: The general progression of detailed operations follow the simple and well-known principals of:
(a) Finding the enemy
(b) Fixing the enemy
(c) Fighting the enemy
(d) Finishing the enemy
(3) Types of operations:
The majority of government operations can be classified into one or more of the following general types:
(a) Meeting engagements
(b) Attacks
(c) Defense
(d) Ambushes, “Q” Operations* and Provocative actions.**
(e) Raids
(f) Pursuit actions
(g) Interception actions
(g) Interception actions
(h) Terror Operations
*Operations in which an ostensibly lucrative target is offered to lure the guerrilla/terrorist to attack.
** Provocative actions: Actions initiated by the government to provoke the guerrillas to attack.
(4) Scope and character of operations:
It must be remembered that the units concerned in the actions in (3) above may range from a few individuals through platoons to an infrequent battalion or regimental size engagement. The actions are usually characterized by their sudden or unexpected occurrence, violent nature, short duration, close range and a relatively high casualty ratio to the number of individuals engaged.