Increasing Effectiveness of Local Partnerships in Counter Insurgency with Commercial Imagery.

摘要

The first of GEN Stanley McChrystal's Eight Imperatives for Success in Afghanistan addresses the basic tenet of modern counterinsurgency: We must protect and partner with the security forces, tribal and governmental leaders, and local councils to build their capacity to secure their own countries and reinforce local institutions. In fact, the fundamental core of Coalition success in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is this ability to form meaningful partnerships that help to advance multiple lines of operation in parallel. Unfortunately, self-imposed classification barriers are often preventing our Warfighters captains, lieutenants, and sergeants access to some of the most useful tools in our Counter Insurgency kit bag, not only decreasing the effectiveness of local partnerships with Afghans and Iraqis but sometimes with other coalition allies as well. As we know, pictures are worth a thousand words, and unclassified imagery provided by the Army's 1st Space Brigade Commercial Imagery Team (CIT) can be openly shared with local security partners, tribal leaders, municipal department managers, or coalition allies and is an increasingly important tool in partnership operations. As the company commander for the CIT charged with supporting the city of Rutbah in Anbar Province, I quickly learned that the vast majority of our police force, municipal engineers, city council subcommittee leaders, muqtars, tribal leaders, and pretty much anybody with whom my platoon and squad leaders needed to partner were not very good at reading maps. It was a major challenge to find a local leader who could read our military maps, even in the areas they lived in for decades. Simple cultural differences yield significant barriers to partnership efforts. However, civilians who could not read a map could report Improvised Explosive Device locations and cache sites using Army-provided unclassified imagery.