The Human Intelligence Game for Armored/Mechanized Units

A mechanized infantry or armor unit is not, per its equipment, training, and structure, fundamentally prepared to operate in an insurgency/counterinsurgency operation, such as the “terrorist hunt” currently underway in Iraq. Instead, it is equipped and trained to fight in a mechanized fight where mechanized scouts and aviators locate or fix enemy formations so they can be destroyed by follow-on tanks, fighting vehicles, or other assets. However, the current number of “hot spots” around the world have established the need for armored and mechanized infantry units (as well as many others types) to conduct coun terinsurgency operations. Targeting is the biggest difficulty an armored force faces when confronted with an unconventional environment. There are no tank columns or other enemy formations to fix and destroy; the enemy does not use BRDMs and BMPs for reconnaissance. Instead, an armored force is faced with finding enemy operatives hidden with in the general population — a population that may or may not be hostile toward us. Targeting in this environment requires collecting, sorting, and analyzing a great variety of intelligence media. However, in the insurgency environment, the chief intelligence media (if a commander wishes to maintain the initiative and keep the enemy on the defensive) is human intelligence (HUMINT), more commonly known as “word of mouth.” Unfortunately, the skills needed to collect and use HUMINT are not skills armor and mechanized infantry unit commanders normally have in their intelligence sections. Before entering into any counterinsurgency operation, heavy units must understand that normal intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB) procedures will not help prepare for battles ahead. Observation and fields of fire, avenues of approach, key terrain, obstacles, and cover and concealment (OAKOC) and mission, enemy, terrain, troops, time available, and civilians (METT-TC) are hard to judge with any certainty, and overlays showing anything resembling enemy locations are, at best, entertaining and, at worst, deplorably misleading. To conduct a thorough IPB of an insurgency/counterinsurgency area of operation (AO) requires talking with locals, lots of locals. Until you hear their opinions and scraps of enemy information, it will be difficult to answer even the most basic intelligence question of all: who is the enemy? To develop an effective counterinsurgency IPB, at a minimum, you should: identify the enemy; determine if there is more than one enemy organization operating in the AO; determine how the enemy is organized; determine how the enemy operates; determine if there are different enemy factions operating independently or in concert; ascertain the enemy’s mission; identify enemy leaders; establish how and who he will attack; and determine local populace opinion about the enemy and about you, such as if they hate the enemy, support them, or are indifferent, if they hate, mistrust or support you, if they will support you or the enemy when forced to choose, if they understand your stance and objectives, if they support your objectives, and if they understand the enemy’s real stance and goals. These things must be thoroughly understood before op erating effectively in a counterinsurgency AO. The local populace’s answers, the understanding of which is paramount to your success, all depend on acquiring, sorting, cataloging, and analyzing good, accurate HUMINT. The Human Intelligence Game for Armored/Mechanized Units by Captain Timothy J. Morrow — 39

In the case of Iraq, the enemies we are now dealing with (no matter their factions) are ones who act clandestinely, with little equipment and training. They do not need vast supply lines or other support structures that a traditional unit would need because they can find supporters everywhere they go. This makes it very difficult to track down and destroy enemy supply lines and other needed infrastructure in attempts to deny the enemy support. This is not the first time we have dealt with such an enemy — it began during our own American Revolution when dealing with the Tories loyal to the English crown. Answering questions of who was friend or foe or how loyalties stood were chief among the internal problems our forefathers faced while trying to win our independence. We also had to deal with very similar situations during the Civil War, the Indian wars, and nearly every other war since. The most similar and recent situation in which we had to deal with these circumstances was during the Vietnam War. Like modern day Iraq, the enemy looked just like any other local citizen and enemy insurgents did not wear uniforms. Spotting enemy spies and infiltrating operatives was impossible (barring catching someone red-handed) without HUMINT collection and analysis. HUMINT is so effective because of the mixed allegiances that can be found in a broken country such as Iraq. HUMINT (when collected correctly) will be gathered while playing on the differences between groups within a given area of responsibility (AOR). Although the enemy will likely have groups and individuals friendly to their cause, there will also likely be groups and individuals who are not friendly to their cause. Those who are not friendly to the enemy’s cause may be coerced into supporting your cause, or at least choosing allegiance to you as the lesser of two evils. In either case, locals will hear gossip and will likely notice suspicious activity and when outsiders arrive. If they support you, or at least want your help in ridding their country of the enemy, given proper protection and anonymity, they will help you locate the enemy. In essence, they will become a network of “spies” working for you. Beware; informants have many reasons for feeding you information, not the least of which is treachery, aimed at misleading you into eliminating their political, business, or familial adversaries. Learning how to handle and properly analyze information gained through HUMINT collection is more of an art than a science; discerning between useful and false HUMINT reports will make or break your chances for success. Analyzing the HUMINT source to understand his reasons for giving you information (and not taking reports at face value until they are corroborated by other sources) will save you from making many costly mistakes, including falling into treachery. Not all informants are honest patriots! Success in HUMINT collection relies on your ability to start/collect a productive informant network and your ability to manage and handle this network and information properly. It has been said time and again that “nothing is free,” which certainly pertains to HUMINT. All informants will have some special motivation for giving you information. It may be an attempt to help eradicate enemy presence, or an interest in monetary rewards, jobs, obtaining military contracts, eradicating competition (business, religious, social, or romantic) or even settling old family scores (very common in Iraq). The informant may even be an honest-to-goodness patriot. Whatever the motivation, to keep local informants in your service, you will need to find ways of motivating them so they will keep coming back with accurate and timely information. They will realize that they are risking their lives and the lives of their families by giving you information. To keep them working with you, you must always be cognizant of their sacrifices and, if the information turns out to be honest and valuable to your operations, do your best to appease and develop them as members of your organization. This is where the art comes in — you have to win their allegiance and fulfill their expectations, keep their identities secret, and show them they are important members of your “team,” without breaking any laws and squandering all of your resources. A very tall order! Before building a useful informant network, it is important to understand how the Iraqi people feel about our western ideas of democracy and individual freedom. Iraq has never had a democratic form of government, nor have they ever had the freedom to experiment with one — they have always been ruled by tyrants. From the caliphs to Saddam Hussein, they have never had a system based on individual freedom and individual rights. Instead, they have known only strict, tyrannical discipline from monarchs and religious leaders, generally mutually supportive of each other in controlling the population of Iraq. You will find that most Iraqis do not generally have a strong knowledge of life beyond the Islamic states. They generally have very little knowledge about the western world, except what they have been told by religious and political leaders, most of whom are fundamentally anti-western in ideology and motivation (a western-style government would rob them of their power and privileges). In essence, they have been enslaved since early childhood by their own religious and political leaders, who have demon-ized commonly held views about the west in attempts to curtail the desire for individual freedoms and rights. “To conduct a thorough IPB of an insurgency/counterinsurgency area of operation (AO) requires talking with locals, lots of locals. Until you hear their opinions and scraps of enemy information, it will be difficult to answer even the most basic intelligence question of all: who is the enemy?” 40 —

Despite these obstacles, you will find that many Iraqis realize that modernization and western influence is good for them and their people. They are often very willing to work with the coalition and its representatives for the good of their families and their nation. Problems surface because several small groups do not want a western way of life, nor do they want westerners in their region. Their reasons may stem from traditional friction between middle easterners and westerners, religious views, or be rooted in the desire to prevent a shift of political and monetary power from the wealthy to the lower classes. Those who would lose power and wealth by Iraq becoming a free, democratic society will be against you, and those who would benefit will support you and your efforts if properly educated, motivated, and protected. Those are the ones you should recruit as members of your network. Once you understand the feelings of the people in your AOR, and you have started an informant network, you will quickly have a need to catalog reports. If you are in a battalion-sized task force (or a smaller unit), three important methods for cataloging, analysis, and reporting HUMINT reports are recommended: intelligence summaries (INTSUMS), activity overlays, and a HUMINT database in the form of a simple spreadsheet. The first of these, the daily INTSUM, merges pertinent reports from higher with reports from within your AO. This will give you glimpses of the bigger picture and will allow you to start meshing the events in your AO with those of “the bigger picture.” This is also the place to use predictive analysis and speculate about what all of these events may mean to you and your task force. Think of your INTSUM as a newspaper. You cannot go wrong if you cover the five Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. Use charts and graphs that show the levels of differing types of activity such as mortar attacks and direct-fire attacks. In the graphs, show the numbers of each type of incident in calendar time so you can see relationships between events, such as your activities and the enemy’s reactions to them throughout a given time period. Also, include pattern wheels to track events by time of day. This will allow you to see relationships, but these relationships will be for time of day. For example, if you always perform an IED search at 0700 hours and you notice that most IEDs are being set off around noon, then you know (with pretty good reassurance) that the enemy is emplacing them sometime after your searches at 0700 hours. This will aid commanders in identifying peak times of enemy activity, which will enable them to plan more effective spoiling operations or other operations aimed at eliminating the enemy when he is most likely to be active. Notice that in Figure 1, the spike of small arms activity is on the 24th day of the month. Are there any reasons for this? Check your HUMINT reports. Were there any threats made by anybody prior to this date about an ensuing attack? If so, do you have the names and locations of possible perpetrators? Also, notice the text block, which points out a 19-percent increase in overall incidents per day since the past month. Is there any reporting that may be linked to this? Are there names of individuals associated with that reporting? An example would be receiving reports about a sheik who had recently de- 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31

Mortar

Small Arms Unexplained # of incidents/# of days 62/31 2 incidents per day 19% increase in daily incidents Figure 1 — 41 cided to support the insurgency in your area because of a dispute with the local governor. A possible link of this nature helps focus your intelligence gathering and may prioritize your efforts. It may be a good time to pay more attention to the reports about the sheik and focus on collecting more information about him and his associates. In Figure 2, notice the almost-linear decline in RPG incidents over the covered months. Is there good reason for this? Check your HUMINT sources, which may show there are no more RPG rounds coming into your area from abroad; however, a HUMINT report provides another answer, such as the sheik who stole RPGs from local military bases and sold them to insurgents instead of using them for attacks. Also, notice the fluctuations in mortar firing incidents. Could it be that the spikes of activity show deliveries of new munitions to the resistance, or could it signal the periodic return of an insurgency leader to your AO? Check your HUMINT reports; the answer may already be in your hands. Adding maps to your INTSUMs that show the same types of activity as the figures represent, will give you spa tial references. These will be exceedingly useful in comparing parts of your AO and for tracking individual cells, as well as for planning operations. By simply tracking major events, such as IED incidents, RPG firings, mortar attacks, and direct fire incidents, you will be showing the “what,” “when,” and “where” of the five Ws. The “who” and “why” are up to you to collect from HUM INT resources, such as informants, local police, and other officials, or from the many random reports you will receive from concerned citizens. For example, the map of your AO shows mortar points of origin along a road on the east side of the river, in the same area as a couple of unexplained explosions. Could this mean that the mortar firers are moving along that road in a vehicle? Possibly. The unexplained explosions are possible mortar shots that were not identified because they were in obscured locations. Either way, it would be wise to use your HUM INT sources to find out who may be shooting mortars on that side of the river. You may luck out and find somebody who has already been reported as a mortar shooter who lives in that vicinity. This would probably deserve a search. If your map shows that IED attacks all appear be occurring in two different parts of the city, it might be the presence of two different insurgent cells planting IEDs. Do you have any reports of bombers living in those areas? If you do, then you know where to focus your collection efforts. The same applies to RPG attacks. Paying attention to where RPG activity occurs will aid in discerning a pattern. A study of the pattern may reveal the shooters do not like to drive around town “Although the enemy will likely have groups and individuals friendly to their cause, there will also like ly be groups and individuals who are not friendly to their cause. Those who are not friendly to the enemy’s cause may be coerced into supporting your cause, or at least choosing allegiance to you as the lesser of two evils. In either case, locals will hear gossip and will likely notice suspicious activity and when outsiders arrive.” # of incidents/# of days 52/30 1.7 incidents per day

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 24 22 20 18 Figure 2 42 — with RPGs in their car for fear of being stopped. If this is so, then the shooters must have a local cache in the area and they may be operating on foot. If there is any truth to this, it may be time to talk to your commander about placing snipers in the area to watch for shooters. A man carrying an RPG cannot move far without being noticed. Cross-referencing the collected HUM INT information with the information on your graphs and maps will help track the validity of reports and show exactly where a certain individual or cell is operating. If there are several HUMINT reports of a certain individual being an IED maker, and it is apparent that there is a large amount of IED activity in his section of town, you can focus efforts through your informant network to find out exactly where he is located. In simple terms, we are laying the groundwork for the early phases of counterinsurgency targeting. These conditions allow you to focus informant network resources on specific in di viduals and their associated operating areas (seen by tracking the IED activity “hot-spot” on an event map), which will increase your chances on catching the bomber. The next and most important HUM INT media is a good, simple database. I know there are some very high-tech ones out there, but scrap them all and use a simple spreadsheet for compiling HUM INT reports. Spreadsheets are easily browsed and make connections between people and events easier (if the spreadsheet is set up correctly). A spreadsheet makes it easy to scroll up and down, searching for names and events to link trends. This scrolling process is a very useful part of your analysis. It will familiarize you with the names in the database and allow you to identify repeat offenders in your AO, who are evident by multiple entries. Another benefit of using a spreadsheet is that it allows you to easily sort information by any of the data types in the columns. If you wish to compile information by something other than a first name, such as by father, tribe, or title, you simply sort the chosen column by alphabetical order (using the sort button) and scroll down until you find the group you are seeking. If you use a title column for titles, such as Imams or bombers, all of your bomber and Imam reports are automatically grouped for review. This allows you to easily identify a person who is reported repeatedly and who is reporting him. If a person has multiple reports for the same activity, and the reports are from different people, then you probably have identified a viable target. Using spreadsheets will help easily identify targets, and tracking informant names will help discern who is really an enemy operator and who is just disliked by a certain informant or family. Creating, managing, and using a spreadsheet will lead to successful, accurate targeting, and if you require more than single-source HUMINT for your targeting, it will prevent you from wasting time and being a pawn in family feuds. Handling names is one of the biggest problems you will face in handling HUMINT in Iraq. It will cause problems in collecting information, and targeting and handling detainees. A queried database will not make the connection between the two Ahmeds, but a trained human eye will, which makes handling intelligence reports much more efficient. If data is handled poorly, it will leave you open to being “used” by the Iraqis to settle family feuds, and the enemy will keep you chasing shadows and phantoms instead of real enemy operatives. Used properly, a database allows you to success fully track reports of operatives without loosing continuity brought about through various name spellings used by different agencies. It will also help identify insurgent targets. Over time, as your database grows in size, your knowledge of the enemy’s numbers, identities, strengths, and locations will grow. You will uncover targets and be able to focus your efforts more efficiently. The importance of HUMINT for the coun terinsurgency battlefield cannot be overemphasized. It was key to capturing or killing the top four people on the top-55 list in Iraq. If you do not want to fight a totally defensive war against insurgents who you cannot identify by their uniforms or “looks,” then you have to rely on information provided by those who can identify them by their “looks.” That is the realm of HUMINT — no computer or satellite gadgetry can replace it, nor can they equal in effectiveness. By treating locals honestly and with respect, you will be overwhelmed with good, solid enemy information. Take my advice, using the systems outlined in this article will provide a strong beginning in developing systems to capture or defeat enemies in your AO. Remember, be suspicious of free information and take care of your informants. Good hunting! CPT Timothy J. Morrow is currently serving as deputy IG, 4th Infantry Division (ID), Fort Hood, TX. He received a B. S. from Kent State University and University of Texas at San Antonio. His military education includes Special Forces Qualification Course, Ranger School, Infantry Officers Basic Course, and Scout Leaders Course. He has served in various command and staff positions, including S2, Task Force 1st Battalion, 22d (1-

22) Infantry, 4th ID, Fort Hood and Tikrit, Iraq; assistant S3/chief recon planner, 1-22 Infantry, 4th ID, Fort Hood and Tikrit; XO, A Company, 1-22 Infantry, 4th ID, Fort Hood; and scout platoon leader, A Company, 1-22 Infantry, 4th ID, Fort Hood. “Used properly, a database allows you to success fully track reports of operatives without loosing continuity brought about through various name spellings used by different agencies. It will also help identify insurgent targets. Over time, as your database grows in size, your knowledge of the enemy’s numbers, identities, strengths, and locations will grow. You will uncover targets and be able to focus your efforts more efficiently.” — 43