text: Appendix C
  PREPARATION
  C-6. Time is short during predeployment, but you will never have more time to think than you have
  now. This is your chance to prepare yourself and your command.
  1. Know your turf. Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion, and culture.
  Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance. Your
  task is to become the world expert on your district. If you don’t know precisely where you
  will be operating, study the general area. Read the map like a book: Study it every night
  before sleep and redraw it from memory every morning until you understand its patterns
  intuitively. Develop a mental model of your area, a framework in which to fit every new
  piece of knowledge you acquire. Study handover notes from predecessors; better still, get
  in touch with the unit in theater and pick their leaders’ brains. In an ideal world, intelligence
  officers and area experts would brief you; however, this rarely happens, and even if it does,
  there is no substitute for personal mastery. Understand the broader area of influence, which
  can be a wide area, particularly when insurgents draw on global grievances. Share out aspects
  of the operational area among platoon leaders and noncommissioned officers; have each
  individual develop a personal specialization and brief the others. Neglect this knowledge,
  and it will kill you.
  2. Diagnose the problem. Once you know your area and its people, you can begin to diagnose
  the problem. Who are the insurgents? What drives them? What makes local leaders tick?
  Counterinsurgency is fundamentally a competition between each side to mobilize the
  population in support of its agenda. So you must understand what motivates the people
  and how to mobilize them. You need to know why and how the insurgents are getting
  followers. This means you need to know your real enemy, not a cardboard cut-out. The
  enemy is adaptive, resourceful, and probably grew up in the region where you will be
  operating. The locals have known him since he was a boy; how long have they known you?
  Your worst opponent is not the psychopathic terrorist of Hollywood; it is the charismatic
  follow-me warrior who would make your best platoon leader. His followers are not misled
  or naïve; much of his success may be due to bad government policies or security forces that
  alienate the population. Work this problem collectively with your platoon and squad leaders.
  Discuss ideas, explore the problem, understand what you are facing, and seek a consensus. If
  this sounds unmilitary, get over it. Once you are in theater, situations will arise too quickly
  for orders or even commander’s intent. Corporals and privates will have to make snap
  judgments with strategic impact. The only way to help them is to give them a shared
  understanding, then trust them to think for themselves on the day.
  3. Organize for intelligence. In counterinsurgency, killing the enemy is easy. Finding him
  is often nearly impossible. Intelligence and operations are complementary. Your operations
  will be intelligence-driven, but intelligence will come mostly from your own operations, not
  as a product prepared and served up by higher headquarters. So you must organize
  for intelligence. You will need a company S2 and an intelligence section (including analysts).
  You might need platoon S2s and S3s, and you will need a reconnaissance and surveillance
  (R&S) element. You will not have enough linguists—you never do—but carefully consider
  where best to use them. Linguists are a battle-winning asset, but like any other scarce
  resource, you must have a prioritized “bump plan” in case you lose them. Often during
  predeployment the best use of linguists is to train your command in basic language. You will
  probably not get augmentation for all this, but you must still do it. Put the smartest soldiers in
  the S2 section and the R&S squad. You will have one less rifle squad, but the intelligence
  section will pay for itself in lives and effort saved.
  4. Organize for interagency operations. Almost everything in counterinsurgency
  is interagency. And everything important, from policing to intelligence to civil-military
  operations to trash collection, will involve your company working with civilian actors
  and local indigenous partners you cannot control, but whose success is essential for yours.
  Train the company in interagency operations: Get a briefing from the US Department