Counterinsurgency Doctrine (COIN)
The rise and fall of counterinsurgency as America's strategy for winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The COIN Revolution
By 2006, the US was losing in Iraq. Sectarian violence had spiraled after the bombing of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, and coalition casualties were mounting. Into this crisis stepped General David Petraeus, who had overseen the writing of a new Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual — FM 3-24 — that became the intellectual foundation for a dramatic strategic shift.
The COIN doctrine represented a break from conventional military thinking. Instead of destroying the enemy through firepower, COIN emphasized protecting the civilian population, building legitimate local governance, providing essential services, and isolating insurgents from their support base. Its central axiom was borrowed from Mao Zedong's metaphor: the guerrilla is the fish, and the population is the sea. Drain the sea — remove popular support — and the fish dies.
In January 2007, President Bush announced a "surge" of 30,000 additional troops in Iraq, with Petraeus in command. The surge was paired with the "Anbar Awakening" — a movement of Sunni tribal leaders who turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq, exhausted by the group's brutality and attracted by American money and promises. Violence in Iraq dropped dramatically through 2007-2008, and COIN was hailed as a triumph.
