thedrifter
09-21-03, 07:34 AM
09-16-2003
Scouts to the Rescue
By Jim Simpson
The Bush administration deserves credit for recognizing early on the necessity of completely eliminating the Ba’athist infrastructure in Iraq. This has become more urgent as Ba’athist holdouts and outside supporters have stepped up their terror attacks on Iraqi citizens, Coalition forces and U.N. personnel.
As I first noted last February, only by completely destroying the Ba’ath party would a peaceful, stable Iraq emerge. Despite their best efforts, the coalition has not yet found an effective way to deal with them.
I have an answer: bring back the Selous Scouts.
Of the many special forces units formed throughout history, the Scouts are perhaps one of the least known but most effective ever fielded. Named after famed Rhodesian hunter and bushman, Frederick C. Selous, the Scouts were a mixed-race unit formed by the Rhodesian government in 1973 in response to the civil war being waged by communist insurgents.
The Rhodesians ultimately failed but not due to the efforts of the Scouts. They were responsible for over 68 percent of all insurgents killed within Rhodesia during the civil war and thousands more hiding out in border states. The Scouts themselves lost under 40 men. Their very name struck terror and respect into the hearts of the enemy.
It must be acknowledged that most modern guerilla tactics, Muslim or otherwise, take their inspiration from Soviet or Chinese communist insurgency doctrine. This means a rigorous attention to internal security, with highly compartmentalized, autonomous cell structures, extensive use of codes and signals, and barbaric recruitment and enforcement mechanisms.
As a result, terrorist groups are extremely difficult to crack. No one cell knows what another is doing or even who its members are and only a few or even one member have any contact with any higher authority. Within an area, the terrorists can quickly identify and eliminate potential adversaries while subduing that part of the local population not sympathetic with terror and threats of terror.
The only way to learn anything about these cells – their structure, their members, their support network, their activities and plans – is to get inside them. Only an active member can supply such information and only he will know the elaborate identification signals with which they communicate and identify each other.
The Scouts utilized an innovative formula to break the secrecy of these cells. They perfected the “pseudo team” counter-insurgency concept, originally developed by the British in 1951 in response to the Malayan communist insurgency. Like the fabled Trojan Horse, groups of fake or “pseudo” terrorists would enter an area and attempt to gain acceptance within the actual insurgent network.
Having made contact and identified the guerilla group, the infiltrators would then call in a strike force of the highly mobile and deadly Rhodesian Light Infantry to finish them off. The Scouts would carefully arrange to be elsewhere when the attack came. In later meetings with insurgents, they might detail their harrowing escape. To avoid exposure, the Scouts would do no shooting themselves unless it was absolutely necessary. Properly conducted, the pseudo team could remain uncompromised and continue operations in the same area until the threat was completely removed.
This was an extremely risky business as it usually involved direct, unarmed contact with the enemy, followed by extensive identification rituals that included use of passwords and signals that changed on a regular basis.
The key to the Scouts’ success was extensive reliance on turned, or “tame” insurgents. A constant inflow of these insurgent recruits kept the intelligence on guerilla security procedures up-to-date. Also, if an insurgent’s capture could be kept secret, his identity as a terrorist would assist in establishing a team’s bona fides with other terrorists once in the field. At its zenith, turned insurgents comprised over 50 percent of the Scouts’ fighting force. The rest were the best soldiers, black and white, from various components of the Rhodesian military.
How did they recruit from this pool of seemingly fanatic, dedicated guerillas? Retired Lt. Col. Ron Reid-Daly, then-commander of the Selous Scouts and author of “Pamwe Chete: The Legend of the Selous Scouts,” put it this way:
“It was simple and direct. He [the terrorist] had the option of being handed over to the police, after which he would be prosecuted for … offenses related to terrorism. If found guilty he would be hanged. He could, however, change sides and work with the security forces against his former comrades. After a short period of intensive contemplation, the capture elected to change sides. He was immediately given back his weapon, but unknown to him, its firing pin had been removed. The fact that he had been given a weapon astonished … him. [I]t was a shrewdly calculated move designed to sow the seeds of trust. A pseudo group always had to make a hard decision … quickly. Could they trust the ex-insurgent or not? The answer to that question…demanded a considerable amount of moral courage on the part of the team. It meant … placing their lives in the hands of a former enemy whom, having turned once, might very well turn again, and kill and betray them.”
According to Col. Reid-Daly, despite their vaunted fanaticism, insurgents were relatively easy to turn. They generally lived a tough, hand-to-mouth existence and were acutely aware that while they were putting their lives on the line every day, their leaders were often living in lush accommodations, far removed from any danger, traveling in high diplomatic circles and pilfering the money and supplies intended for them.
Many of the turned insurgents went on to become some of the Scouts’ most loyal and decorated soldiers. That the Scouts’ formula is an effective counter-insurgency technique is beyond question. Their successes speak for themselves.
Similar conditions exist in Iraq today, where many of Saddam’s loyalists fight on only for lack of other options. The “pseudo team” concept, employed so successfully by the Selous Scouts, should be considered a viable option for countering the guerilla campaign currently hobbling the introduction of democracy in Iraq.
Jim Simpson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at
one.wonders@verizon.net.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=199&rnd=778.0113872269161
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Scouts to the Rescue
By Jim Simpson
The Bush administration deserves credit for recognizing early on the necessity of completely eliminating the Ba’athist infrastructure in Iraq. This has become more urgent as Ba’athist holdouts and outside supporters have stepped up their terror attacks on Iraqi citizens, Coalition forces and U.N. personnel.
As I first noted last February, only by completely destroying the Ba’ath party would a peaceful, stable Iraq emerge. Despite their best efforts, the coalition has not yet found an effective way to deal with them.
I have an answer: bring back the Selous Scouts.
Of the many special forces units formed throughout history, the Scouts are perhaps one of the least known but most effective ever fielded. Named after famed Rhodesian hunter and bushman, Frederick C. Selous, the Scouts were a mixed-race unit formed by the Rhodesian government in 1973 in response to the civil war being waged by communist insurgents.
The Rhodesians ultimately failed but not due to the efforts of the Scouts. They were responsible for over 68 percent of all insurgents killed within Rhodesia during the civil war and thousands more hiding out in border states. The Scouts themselves lost under 40 men. Their very name struck terror and respect into the hearts of the enemy.
It must be acknowledged that most modern guerilla tactics, Muslim or otherwise, take their inspiration from Soviet or Chinese communist insurgency doctrine. This means a rigorous attention to internal security, with highly compartmentalized, autonomous cell structures, extensive use of codes and signals, and barbaric recruitment and enforcement mechanisms.
As a result, terrorist groups are extremely difficult to crack. No one cell knows what another is doing or even who its members are and only a few or even one member have any contact with any higher authority. Within an area, the terrorists can quickly identify and eliminate potential adversaries while subduing that part of the local population not sympathetic with terror and threats of terror.
The only way to learn anything about these cells – their structure, their members, their support network, their activities and plans – is to get inside them. Only an active member can supply such information and only he will know the elaborate identification signals with which they communicate and identify each other.
The Scouts utilized an innovative formula to break the secrecy of these cells. They perfected the “pseudo team” counter-insurgency concept, originally developed by the British in 1951 in response to the Malayan communist insurgency. Like the fabled Trojan Horse, groups of fake or “pseudo” terrorists would enter an area and attempt to gain acceptance within the actual insurgent network.
Having made contact and identified the guerilla group, the infiltrators would then call in a strike force of the highly mobile and deadly Rhodesian Light Infantry to finish them off. The Scouts would carefully arrange to be elsewhere when the attack came. In later meetings with insurgents, they might detail their harrowing escape. To avoid exposure, the Scouts would do no shooting themselves unless it was absolutely necessary. Properly conducted, the pseudo team could remain uncompromised and continue operations in the same area until the threat was completely removed.
This was an extremely risky business as it usually involved direct, unarmed contact with the enemy, followed by extensive identification rituals that included use of passwords and signals that changed on a regular basis.
The key to the Scouts’ success was extensive reliance on turned, or “tame” insurgents. A constant inflow of these insurgent recruits kept the intelligence on guerilla security procedures up-to-date. Also, if an insurgent’s capture could be kept secret, his identity as a terrorist would assist in establishing a team’s bona fides with other terrorists once in the field. At its zenith, turned insurgents comprised over 50 percent of the Scouts’ fighting force. The rest were the best soldiers, black and white, from various components of the Rhodesian military.
How did they recruit from this pool of seemingly fanatic, dedicated guerillas? Retired Lt. Col. Ron Reid-Daly, then-commander of the Selous Scouts and author of “Pamwe Chete: The Legend of the Selous Scouts,” put it this way:
“It was simple and direct. He [the terrorist] had the option of being handed over to the police, after which he would be prosecuted for … offenses related to terrorism. If found guilty he would be hanged. He could, however, change sides and work with the security forces against his former comrades. After a short period of intensive contemplation, the capture elected to change sides. He was immediately given back his weapon, but unknown to him, its firing pin had been removed. The fact that he had been given a weapon astonished … him. [I]t was a shrewdly calculated move designed to sow the seeds of trust. A pseudo group always had to make a hard decision … quickly. Could they trust the ex-insurgent or not? The answer to that question…demanded a considerable amount of moral courage on the part of the team. It meant … placing their lives in the hands of a former enemy whom, having turned once, might very well turn again, and kill and betray them.”
According to Col. Reid-Daly, despite their vaunted fanaticism, insurgents were relatively easy to turn. They generally lived a tough, hand-to-mouth existence and were acutely aware that while they were putting their lives on the line every day, their leaders were often living in lush accommodations, far removed from any danger, traveling in high diplomatic circles and pilfering the money and supplies intended for them.
Many of the turned insurgents went on to become some of the Scouts’ most loyal and decorated soldiers. That the Scouts’ formula is an effective counter-insurgency technique is beyond question. Their successes speak for themselves.
Similar conditions exist in Iraq today, where many of Saddam’s loyalists fight on only for lack of other options. The “pseudo team” concept, employed so successfully by the Selous Scouts, should be considered a viable option for countering the guerilla campaign currently hobbling the introduction of democracy in Iraq.
Jim Simpson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at
one.wonders@verizon.net.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=199&rnd=778.0113872269161
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: