WASHINGTON — The U.S. military's new counterinsurgency doctrine takes issue with some key strategies that American commanders in Iraq continue to use, most notably the practice of concentrating combat forces in massive bases rather than dispersing them among the population.
The 282-page counterinsurgency field manual, unveiled Friday, seeks to bring together the best practices in fighting sustained insurgencies that the United States has learned during the Iraq war. It also lists tactics that have tripped up American forces, such as trying to make local security forces act like the U.S. military and overemphasizing killing or capturing enemies rather than providing for the safety of the population.
Although the military has moved away from some of these tactics, others are widely used in Iraq.
Most special operations forces in Iraq spend the bulk of their time and resources trying to kill or capture Al Qaeda members and insurgents. But the manual says the best use of those troops is not hunting enemies but training Iraqi security forces or police.
Perhaps the most controversial section may be the manual's warning about large, sprawling bases, the very kind the Army has erected in Baghdad. The manual warns that such military bases could suggest "a long-term foreign occupation."
A cornerstone of the Iraq plans of Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has been to concentrate Baghdad's U.S. Army forces in a few large forward operating bases, or FOBs. Counterinsurgency experts have questioned the practice, arguing that to protect the populace from insurgents, military forces must have a constant presence in the area.
The authors of the manual say the new doctrine is not meant as a critique of the Iraq strategy. Retired Army Col. Conrad Crane, who helped oversee the manual's development, said they were not criticizing the practice of putting soldiers on large bases but rather were saying they simply did not want people to hole up and become "fobbits."
"You have to get out and mingle among the people," Crane said. "You can't cede control of the night and the street to the enemy."
Retired Gen. John Keane, former acting chief of staff of the Army, said the military needed to move off the big bases in Baghdad and establish small bases peppered throughout key neighborhoods, as had been done in the Iraqi cities of Tall Afar and Ramadi.
