Why Paramilitary Operations Fail

Armin Krishnan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319716312
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyzes U.S. pro-insurgency paramilitary operations (PMOs) or U.S. proxy warfare from the beginning of the Cold War to the present and explains why many of these operations either failed entirely to achieve their objective, or why they produced negative consequences that greatly diminished their benefits. The chapters cover important aspects of what PMOs are, the history of U.S. PMOs, how they function, the dilemmas of secrecy and accountability, the issues of control, criminal conduct, and disposal of proxies, as well as newer developments that may change PMOs in the future. The author argues that the general approach of conducting PMOs as covert operations is inherently flawed since it tends to undermine many possibilities for control over proxies in a situation where the interests of sponsors and proxies necessarily diverge on key issues.

© The Author(s) 2018

Armin KrishnanWhy Paramilitary Operations Failhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71631-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. What Are Paramilitary Operations?

Armin Krishnan¹

(1)

Department of Political Science, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

End Abstract

Paramilitary operations (PMOs), which are the manner in which to conduct proxy wars, can be best defined as ‘secret war-like activities’ (Johnson 2012, 481). They typically consist of providing money, training, weapons, other materials, intelligence, leadership support, and sometimes additional fighters to nonstate proxy forces that are irregular, such as ‘specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political “undesirables”’ in an effort to initiate or manipulate an (internal) armed conflict, or to achieve some other political, military, or economic objective (US DoD 2008, 1–3). According to Kennedy and Johnson administration National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy,

a paramilitary operation is considered to be one which by its tactics and its requirements in military-type personnel, equipment and training, approximates a conventional military operation. It may be undertaken in support of an existing government friendly to the US or in support of a rebel group seeking to overthrow a government hostile to us. The US may render assistance to such operations overtly, covertly or by a combination of both methods. The small operations will often fall completely within the normal capability of one agency; the larger ones may affect State, Defense, CIA, USIA and possibly other departments and agencies. (US NSC 1961)

As indicated in this definition, PMOs can be used in both a pro-insurgency context (support to revolutionary or separatist movements) and in a counterinsurgency/counterterrorism context (support to an allied government/host nation to suppress an insurgency).¹ Once PMOs reach a certain size, they would be typically supported by indirect nonmilitary US government activities (diplomatic pressure, propaganda , economic pressure, etc.), as well as possibly direct military intervention on behalf of a supported paramilitary group. Furthermore, PMOs may be tightly controlled by the sponsor recruiting and operationally leading indigenous fighters, or they may be autonomous operations, where ‘the CIA would extend financial aid and a minimum of advice and guidance’ so that the ‘leadership [of the resistance group] would possess a degree of operational self-determination ’ (US NSC 1964).

Covert Action and Special Operations

It is important to distinguish PMOs that are CIA/Pentagon covert actions from ‘special operations’ or ‘clandestine operations’ undertaken by uniformed US military personnel, although there has always been some overlap. Covert action is part of what is termed more broadly ‘special activities ,’ which are defined in Executive Order 12333 as ‘activities conducted in support of national foreign policy objectives abroad which are planned and executed so that the role of the United States Government is not apparent or acknowledged publicly’ (US White House 1981, Art. 3.4, Para h). Special activities include actions such as ‘the training of foreign military, security, and intelligence services; the provision of intelligence materials or special support to foreign governments; field support to operational counternarcotics and counterterrorism forces of a nation; exfiltration by sea or air of a sensitive defector; or rendering inert a cache of terrorist explosives’ (Daugherty 2004, 15). Covert action includes the following types of activities: propaganda , political activity, economic activity sabotage, coups, PMOs, and cyber warfare.² PMOs are therefore usually a specific type of covert action (unless they are part of a conventional military operation in which case proxies would only be considered to be auxiliaries). Since PMOs are ‘the largest, most violent, and most dangerous covert actions,’ they are undertaken less frequently than other types of covert action (Lowenthal 2013, 237). The Senate Select Committee report that investigated covert action in 1976 even suggested that ‘paramilitary activities…are an anomaly, if not an aberration, of covert action ’ (US Senate 1976, 1:154).

In contrast, the US DoD defines ‘special operations’ as ‘operations conducted in hostile, denied, politically sensitive environments to achieve military, diplomatic, and/or economic objectives employing military capabilities for which there is no broad conventional force requirement,’ while ‘paramilitary forces’ are defined as ‘forces or groups distinct from the regular armed forces of any country, but resembling them in organization, equipment, training or mission’ (Best and Feickert 2009, 1). Paramilitary operations are not supposed ‘to involve the use of one’s own uniformed military personnel as combatants’ since this would amount to an act of war (Lowenthal 2013, 238). However, in practice there can be some overlap as US military and paramilitary intelligence personnel is sometimes embedded in rebel or guerrilla groups and may get into situations where they have to directly participate in hostilities.³

Support to paramilitary organizations can include the following: funding, training, weapons, other materials (e.g. uniforms, trucks, supplies, etc.), advice and intelligence, operational leadership, and even supplying additional fighters (mercenaries, foreign fighters). Personnel planning and implementing paramilitary operations include CIA paramilitary officers, US military personnel seconded to the CIA, contract employees (e.g. security contractors), and foreign national personnel who are engaged in military-like activities (Clark 2015, 10–11). The Pentagon typically relies on Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and its attached clandestine military units (Seal Team 6, Intelligence Support Activity , Delta Force, etc.) to provide personnel for unacknowledged or clandestine operations (also known as ‘black ops’), such as PMOs.⁴ Typically, indigenous paramilitary groups would have only a few CIA or SOF personnel embedded to serve as advisors and liaison to US forces or other allied forces.

There are some important legal, operational, and oversight differences between covert action and special operations. CIA covert action is governed by Title 50 of the US Code and ‘special’ or ‘clandestine operations’ of the US military are governed under Title 10 of the US Code (Wall 2011). ‘Covert’ refers here to the secrecy of the sponsor, while ‘clandestine’ refers to the secrecy of the operation itself—covert operations are expected to produce visible results, while clandestine operations are expected to remain completely secret (Kibbe 2007, 57). Whether an operation falls under Title 50 vs. Title 10 affects command authority, oversight, and budgeting with special operations generally being subject to less congressional oversight (Kibbe 2007, 57).

More recently, it has been pointed out that special operations and covert action have become blurred in the War on Terror (Kibbe 2007). However, this overlap of special operations and covert action is nothing new. The CIA’s predecessor organization OSS was a military organization operating under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and specializing in espionage and covert warfare, working with guerrillas and resistance movements in occupied territories.⁵ After the war, SOF and covert action capability were formally separated. In practice, the Pentagon has frequently provided equipment and personnel to CIA-run PMOs, especially in the early Cold War when the CIA clearly lacked a stand-alone paramilitary capability.⁶ Sometimes the CIA and the Pentagon ran PMOs in parallel in the same theater, supporting different paramilitary groups (Table 1.1 and Diagram 1.1).⁷

Table 1.1

Unconventional warfare/foreign internal defense

From US DoD 2014. “FM 3–18: Special Forces Operations.” Department of the Army (May), pp. 3–8

Diagram 1.1

Unconventional warfare phases. (Adopted from US DoD 2014. “FM 3–18: Special Forces Operations.” Department of the Army (May), pp. 3–5 to 3–7)

Selection of Cases

For many reasons, it can be quite difficult to determine whether actually a US covert action has occurred since the activity itself may have been undertaken by an agency other than the CIA, may have been carried out by an ally or a private entity with tacit US government consent, or may have been limited to US ‘nonlethal’ or intelligence support. In order to clarify this important issue, the US Senate suggested in an investigative report:

If US government officials are simply told that some government intends to take a certain action and the US has played, or plays in the future, absolutely no further role in the matter, it has not engaged in covert action. If, on the other hand, US government officials instigate, facilitate and otherwise play a significant executory role in the action, even though it is carried out by entities other than the US government, their conduct approaches, if not crosses, the line into covert action. (Quoted from Hicks 2005, 253)

This means that for an activity to be characterized as a US covert action it requires that the US has instigated the activity, which may be carried out ‘by entities other...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. What Are Paramilitary Operations?
• 2. A Short History of US Paramilitary Operations
• 3. Conducting Paramilitary Operations
• 4. Dilemmas of Secrecy
• 5. Accountability in Paramilitary Operations
• 6. Critical Loss of Control
• 7. War Crimes and Criminal Conduct
• 8. Endgames and Outcomes
• 9. The Disposal Problem
• 10. New Developments
• Back Matter