Changing Battlefields Drive Insurgent Innovation / Jonathan Spyer. IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review.

MESOP TODAYS FORECAST BY JONATHAN SPYER

2 November 2016. – The fragmentation of once powerful centralised states in the Middle East and to a lesser extent former Communist Europe has led to the proliferation of insurgent political-military organisations doing battle over the ruins. In these ungoverned or partially governed spaces, insurgent groups are holding ground and fighting each other and conventional state militaries.

In the Middle East, a massive, contiguous land area between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea is now taken up by the conflict between such groups. In Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, there are still military formations representing the internationally recognised governments of each area. However, in each country, government forces operate in close co-operation with insurgent or paramilitary forces—to the extent that identifying a clear dividing line between them is not always possible—against insurgent forces of similar strength.

In the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, irregular political-military formations have taken de facto control over areas of territory. Similarly, in Ukraine, the Russian and Ukrainian governments have both made extensive use of irregular militia formations.

In each of these spaces insurgent, irregular formations are currently operating as semi-regular forces: holding and defending ground and utilising tactical means—including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), artillery, and armour—not associated with either the terrorist or guerrilla warfare tactics that many of the organisations had previously used.

The result is that creative tactical innovations employed by irregular formations can be identified in each of the conflict arenas noted above. In some cases, such as the employment of UAVs, irregular formations have adapted means more usually associated with regular formations but in ways and for purposes not previously witnessed. In others—such as the Islamic State’s use of suicide bombers, both on foot and vehicle-borne—tactics usually associated with terrorism are being used on the conventional battlefield.

The proliferation of insurgent organisations conducting this kind of warfare is to a degree dependent on an additional factor—namely, the non-involvement of a powerful, conventional military force in the area in question. Hence, it may well be that the innovations derive from a very specific political and military context in which only irregular or poor quality conventional forces are engaged. When a conventional force—such as Russian air power or the Turkish military in northern Syria—enters the picture, this quickly shifts the balance and renders any tactical innovations that have emerged largely irrelevant.

Avoiding Regular Conflict

Historically, insurgent forces that began to operate as regular or semi-regular formations tended to find that this was not a wise choice if they then allowed themselves to be drawn into conflict with well-equipped regular armed forces. For example, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in southern Lebanon in the pre-1982 period developed a low-quality regular force, which was easily destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in June of that year. This was in contrast to the Israeli experience against the Lebanese militant group Hizbullah, which avoided this approach, survived, and registered achievements in the pre-2000 period of insurgency and in the 2006 war. Arguably, the Islamic State militant group now appears to be set to face a similar eclipse in Iraq and Syria.

As such, conventional war as fought by insurgent organisations is likely to remain a factor of importance only for as long as conventional forces remain absent from the arena in question. However, given the reluctance of Western powers (and to a lesser extent Russia), and also of regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, to commit conventional ground forces, and the proliferation of ongoing and intractable conflicts, innovation in the future direction of this genre of conflict is likely to continue.

Proliferation of UAVs

UAVs have been used as a weapon of war by a variety of forces on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, including Arab insurgents, Hizbullah, the Islamic State, and Kurdish forces. Conventional forces—the Iraqi Security Forces, the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Russia, the Syrian government, and the Western coalition—also utilise them.

The relatively low cost of UAVs and the ease with which they can be assembled have enabled irregular forces in this region to develop a rudimentary air capacity for the first time. The tactics used by irregular forces in employing these devices are reminiscent of the first utilisation of air power in a military context in the First World War—namely, as tools for tactical reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering to provide information about the battle space to the infantry and artillery, and as weapons of attack.

Hizbullah pioneered the use of UAVs in the period before the Syrian civil war. The group’s first known use was in 2004, when it dispatched an Iranian Ababil-T into Israeli airspace. The device returned undetected. Tehran has invested heavily in UAV technology and its irregular clients are benefiting from this; IHS Jane’s reported in April 2015 that Hizbullah had constructed a 2,000-m airstrip in the northern Bekaa Valley, which had the appearance of a UAV launching site.

Although Hizbullah initially sought to deny its use of UAVs, the movement has begun to openly proclaim their use in its propaganda. A video released by the Hizbullah-associated War Media Center, which was then picked up by Iran’s Press TV, showed a Hizbullah UAV attack on a Syrian insurgent position in the village of Khalsa in the countryside of southern Aleppo Province on 9 August 2016.

Hizbullah enjoys an advantage over its Sunni jihadist foes in that it has the direct sponsorship of Iran. However, the relatively cheap price of commercially available surveillance drones—at around USD1,000-3,000—means that less sophisticated UAVs have been employed by Sunni jihadists and insurgents. The Islamic State, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (the former Jabhat al-Nusra), and Jund al-Aqsa have all released videos indicating their use of UAVs.

The possession of these UAVs does not affect the general strategic situation in the Middle East, since any employed on the Syrian battlefield would not pose anything more than an irritant to a conventional state military. They can operate only at short range and cannot carry a large explosive charge. Yet on the battlefields of fragmented states, where irregular and semi-regular forces are the only ones present, these UAVs are playing a significant role for the first time. From a Western security point of view, the growing expertise of non-state armed groups in the operation of UAVs is of concern chiefly because of the potential applications of this knowledge should members of such groups return to terrorist activity.

Weaponisation of Suicide

The use of suicide personnel on the battlefield has many precedents. In insurgency in the post-1945 period, it was pioneered by Hizbullah (although it is no longer used by this group), which killed 241 US Marines at their barracks in Beirut in 1983, using a truck filled with explosives driven by a suicide bomber.

Inspired by this example, the Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) then set about the wide utilisation of suicide tactics against Sri Lankan government forces. However, the emergence of the use of suicide bombers as an integral part of a military force is one of the particular features of the Syrian war. The Islamic State makes use of individual fighters wearing suicide vests and suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIEDs) as core parts of the organisation’s tactical doctrine.

A senior officer of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel: YPG) militia speaking to IHS Jane’s  in Syria in late 2015 described the specifics of the offensive tactics used by the Islamic State in its attempted counter-attacks against the YPG’s advance towards the town of Shadadi that was taking place at that time. He described how the attack would begin with the appearance and advance of SVBIEDs. These would be followed by fighters wearing suicide vests who would seek to reach the YPG’s positions, and then by large groups of infantry.This basic picture is borne out by closer study of specific Islamic State engagements. The second-wave attackers wearing suicide vests are the ‘Inghimassiyin’, an elite component of the Islamic State consisting mainly of foreign volunteers, whose specific task is breaking enemy lines and conquering fortified positions.

It is important to note that the ‘elite’ designation of the Inghimassiyin does not derive merely from their active seeking of death. Rather, this is a force offered additional training for their task as ‘shock troops’. Their suicide belts are considered one item in their arsenal, for use when tactically necessary, in contrast to the way a terrorist attack by a suicide bomber would be conducted.

Such a ‘suicide force’ is again not without precedent. The LTTE maintained a group of elite fighters called the ‘Black Tigers’ and ‘Tigresses’ who performed a similar elite function that included a readiness for suicide. However, the emergence of SVBIEDs and forces such as the Inghimassiyin represents the appearance of suicide personnel as a weapon in conventional combat on a large scale for the first time in the Arabic-speaking world.

As of 2016, only Sunni jihadist militants used suicide in this way. Neither Hizbullah, nor any of the other Shia and Alawite groups aligned with it and with Iran, currently employ these means. Iraqi Shia militias do not use suicide bombers in combat. Neither do Ansar Allah, the Zaidi Shia movement in Yemen often known as the Houthis, or the various Syrian irregular units gathered into the ‘National Defence Forces’ of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

However, it is not only the Islamic State that has used the tactic. The small Jund al-Aqsa organisation, a Salafist jihadist group that fights alongside the Syrian insurgency, is known for pioneering the use of motorcycle-borne suicide attackers as a weapon against Syrian government checkpoints. Fatah al-Sham also uses suicide bombers in combat.

Armour and Artillery

In Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen, insurgent and irregular forces are making use of tanks and artillery. In Iraq, evidence has emerged that Shia militias, including the Badr Organisation, the Kataib Hizbullah group, and the Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada are in possession of US-made M1 Abrams tanks. The Islamic State built up a fleet of more than 100 tanks, captured from Iraqi forces after Mosul and Ramadi fell in June 2014 and May 2015, respectively. Syrian insurgents initially paraded a small number of captured Assad government tanks for propaganda purposes in 2012, but have since employed them in combat. Islamic State forces have also built up an impressive anti-tank capability, which has taken a heavy toll on Iraqi military armour. Monitoring of social media and official releases by the group shows that Islamic State fighters have employed a variety of anti-tank weaponry, including the Russian 9K129 Kornet ATGW and M79 Osa rocket launchers, as well as the ubiquitous RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Syrian insurgents, who began the war using improvised artillery devices known as ‘hell cannons’ firing propane gas cylinders (first used by the Ahrar al Shamal brigades in Idlib province in 2012), are now employing field artillery such as the Soviet-made 122-mm D30 howitzer.

In Ukraine, the self-styled militia of the Russian-supported ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ now possesses a fleet of more than 200 armoured vehicles, including T72-B main battle tanks and artillery pieces. This militia and that of the neighbouring Luhansk People’s Republic consists of an unwieldy mix of rebel battalions.Irregular forces fighting on the side of the Ukrainian government, such as the Azov Battalion, have now been formally absorbed into the Kiev government’s army, within the framework of the National Guard of Ukraine, controlled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As a result, they have been issued with armoured vehicles. Azov, however, continues to maintain its own facility to customise armoured vehicles. Such vehicles have also been seen on the Syrian battlefield, with the Kurdish YPG particularly noted for their production and use.

Pseudo-insurgencies

A fourth notable trend is the blurring of the line dividing regular militaries from irregular and insurgent groups. Perhaps the clearest example of this is on the government side in Syria. The Syrian Arab Army is on paper a large force of 125,000 regular personnel, plus an additional 100,000 reservists. In practice, only a small part of the force was sufficiently loyal for Assad to risk using it in the battle against the anti-government insurgency. As of end-2016, the army was exhausted and in disarray.Syria’s allies have helped it to fill the gap by facilitating the establishment of new, semi-regular military formations, which function in an analogous way to the insurgents with whom they are at war. The National Defence Forces, a 90,000-strong light infantry force assembled with Iranian assistance from pro-Assad paramilitary groups in 2012 and 2013, is the most significant force of this type. In addition, paramilitary allies of the Syrian regime, such as Hizbullah and the Iraqi Shia militias of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), have come to play a crucial role in the Assad government’s ground war in Syria.

A parallel trend is the growing incorporation of militias into state armies. In Iraq, for example, Shia militias are deeply embedded in certain units of the Iraqi Security Forces. For example, the 5th Division, based in Diyala province, is controlled by the Badr Organisation, one of the oldest and strongest pro-Iranian political-military organisations in the country. The Kurdish Peshmerga, although officially controlled by the Peshmerga Ministry of the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, in practice remains a union of militias, with units identifying with either the ruling Kurdish Democratic Party or the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. One force, the Zerevani Special Forces, is not controlled by the ministry but rather answers directly to the office of President Massoud Barzani, making it analogous (in form if not in behaviour or ethical content) with the Special Republican Guard of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, or the ‘Defence Companies’ of Hafez Assad’s government in Syria (now the 4th Armoured Division).

In Ukraine, militias have been officially absorbed into the national army. However, much evidence suggests that this is cosmetic. Indeed, in a further echo of similar developments in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, the Azov Battalion, although officially part of the Ukrainian National Guard since November 2014, has also founded a political party, the ‘National Corps’. The party argues for a stronger role for the Ukrainian president and against Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO.

Outlook

A variety of organisations, some familiar (such as Hizbullah) and some new (such as the Islamic State or Ukrainian militia groups), have emerged on the battlefields of collapsed or fragmented states. Wars in which such militias hold ground and fight one another, in the absence of a fully deployed regular force of a powerful state, are leading to tactical innovations by such forces, and the emergence of a kind of hybrid force, somewhere between a conventional military and an irregular militia or insurgent force. Some of these forces use the tactics of terrorism against civilians, but not all of them.

These forces are developing innovative tactics for use against one another and weaker conventional forces, including the creative use of UAVs and armour and artillery. They are not always operating as independent forces (such as the Kurdish YPG), but sometimes as the servants of recognised governments (such as the Azov Battalion or the PMF in Iraq).

As the organisations concerned are political-military groups, rather than purely military formations, they sometimes maintain exclusive control of a territory (for example the Islamic State and Kurdish groups) and at other times translate their joint political and military role into influence over elements of the regular forces of the state that they support (as with the Iraqi PMF). A political organisation’s possession of a military component can then form part of an integrated political strategy, as seen with groups such as the Badr Organisation in Iraq and Hizbullah in Lebanon, and perhaps in a more embryonic form with the Azov Battalion in Ukraine. Perhaps the key lesson of the proliferation of hybrid militias in the collapsed spaces is the renewed relevance of the old Maoist dictum, namely that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” http://knowleak.com/changing-battlefields-drive-insurgent-innovation/