text: Chapter 6
  stagnant. Naturally, the Host Nation and combined forces will conduct stability operations to create
  situations where businesses can thrive. An example is conducting route security, so that insurgents cannot
  interfere with the transportation of products to a market. Economic infrastructure that might need defensive
  considerations include—
  • Natural resources.
  • Industries such as manufacturing and transportation.
  • Agriculture and livestock—crops, products, and storage facilities.
  • Local merchants and markets.
  • Credit associations.
  CONDUCT INFORMATION ENGAGEMENT
  6-123. Information engagement is deliberately integrated into defensive operations to compliment
  and reinforce the success of operations. Exploiting insurgent violent tactics, behaving harshly towards the
  HN population, and failing to achieve their goals are matters of precise timing and coordination. Some
  units have chosen to prepare an information engagement plan to provide an immediate response
  to insurgent attacks or propaganda such as sending a field-grade officer to the site of an insurgent attack
  to talk with the local media and get the correct story out. These efforts may go far to influence the populace
  to provide information, either for reward or anonymously, that may break apart insurgent networks.
  Specifically, information supplied by the populace is critical in countering ambushes, IEDs, snipers, and
  drive-by shootings. It does this by interrupting the insurgent decision cycle.
  SUMMARY
  General Clutterbuck in the Malayan emergency said, “(A Village police post)… was the only thing that
  could provide security against the threat that really mattered in the villages—the man with the knife, who
  lived in the village and prowled the streets at night seeking out those people who had actively supported
  the government or betrayed the guerrillas during the day.” This chapter identified defensive operations
  as they apply specifically to establishing civil security and civil control, and the other LOEs. Defensive
  operations in COIN must secure the population, Host Nation security forces and government, and US
  forces from the actions of insurgents.