text: Twenty-Eight Articles:
  Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency
  of State, aid agencies, and the local police or fire brigade. Train point-men in each squad
  to deal with the interagency people. Realize that civilians find rifles, helmets, and body armor
  intimidating. Learn how not to scare them. Ask others who come from that country or culture
  about your ideas. See it through the eyes of a civilian who knows nothing about the military.
  How would you react if foreigners came to your neighborhood and conducted the operations
  you planned? What if somebody came to your mother’s house and did that? Most
  importantly, know that your operations will create a temporary breathing space, but long-term
  development and stabilization by civilian agencies will ultimately win the war.
  5. Travel light and harden your combat service support (CSS). You will be weighed down
  with body armor, rations, extra ammunition, communications gear, and a thousand other
  things. The enemy will carry a rifle or rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a shemagh (head
  scarf), and a water bottle if he is lucky. Unless you ruthlessly lighten your load and enforce a
  culture of speed and mobility, the insurgents will consistently out-run and out-maneuver you.
  But in lightening your load, make sure you can always reach back to call for firepower
  or heavy support if needed. Also, remember to harden your CSS. The enemy will attack your
  weakest points. Most attacks on Coalition forces in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, outside preplanned
  combat actions like the two battles of Fallujah or Operation Iron Horse, were against CSS
  installations and convoys. You do the math. Ensure your CSS assets are hardened, have
  communications, and are trained in combat operations. They may do more fighting than your
  rifle squads.
  6. Find a political/cultural adviser. In a force optimized for counterinsurgency, you might
  receive a political-cultural adviser at company level, a diplomat or military foreign area
  officer able to speak the language and navigate the intricacies of local politics. Back on planet
  Earth, the corps and division commander will get a political advisor; you will not, so you
  must improvise. Find a POLAD (political-cultural adviser) from among your people—
  perhaps an officer, perhaps not (see article 8). Someone with people skills and a feel for the
  environment will do better than a political-science graduate. Don’t try to be your own cultural
  adviser: You must be fully aware of the political and cultural dimension, but this is a different
  task. Also, don’t give one of your intelligence people this role. They can help, but their task
  is to understand the environment. The POLAD’s job is to help shape it.
  7. Train the squad leaders—then trust them. Counterinsurgency is a squad and platoon
  leader’s war, and often a private soldier’s war. Battles are won or lost in moments: Whoever
  can bring combat power to bear in seconds, on a street corner, will win. The commander on
  the spot controls the fight. You must train the squad leaders to act intelligently
  and independently without orders. If your squad leaders are competent, you can get away
  with average company or platoon staffs. The reverse is not the case. Training should focus on
  basic skills: marksmanship, patrolling, security on the move and at the halt, and basic drills.
  When in doubt, spend less time on company and platoon training, and more time on squads.
  Ruthlessly replace leaders who do not make the grade. But once people are trained and you
  have a shared operational diagnosis, you must trust them. We talk about this, but few
  company or platoon leaders really trust their people. In counterinsurgency, you have no
  choice.
  8. Rank is nothing; talent is everything. Not everyone is good at counterinsurgency. Many
  people don’t understand the concept, and some can’t execute it. It is difficult, and in a
  conventional force only a few people will master it. Anyone can learn the basics, but a few
  naturals do exist. Learn how to spot these people, and put them into positions where they can
  make a difference. Rank matters far less than talent—a few good men led by a smart junior
  noncommissioned officer can succeed in counterinsurgency, where hundreds of well-armed
  soldiers under a mediocre senior officer will fail.
  9. Have a game plan. The final preparation task is to develop a game plan, a mental picture
  of how you see the operation developing. You will be tempted to try and do this too early.
  But wait, as your knowledge improves, you will get a better idea of what needs to be done