Counter-insurgency, Then and Now

We're getting good news today out of Diyala province in Iraq. An operation involving around 50,000 soldiers (mainly Iraqi) began a couple of days ago, aimed at establishing security and crushing the insurgency in the last truly unruly province in Iraq. Attempts to drive Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of Baquba and Diyala have been made at multiple times in the past, but have yet to bring a tolerable level of law and order.

But in this operation, senior commanders have noted on the welcoming attitude of civilians, and their helpfulness in locating weapons caches and their toleration of the hardships (roadblocks, etc.) imposed on them in the course of the security operation. What has changed to bring this about? First, the population of Diyala know that life has gotten appreciably better in most other provinces, and while they may be very wary of the Shia and may hate the U.S.-led occupation, there comes a time when a people don't want to be the only ones left behind. Second, the vast majority of those 50,000 soldiers, and nearly all of the "front-line" troops, are Iraqi soldiers. Being liberated by other Iraqis (even with American air support, etc.) is a conceivable image for the population of Diyala. Being liberated by Americans is perceived as replacing one oppressor with another. These more open and more successful operations by the Iraqi Army allow the Sunnis of Diyala to buy into a national story and start to believe in a hope of Iraqi sovereignty. Precisely how accurate their perceptions are does not really matter. But its possible for Iraqis to believe they can regain a strong and independent nation without needing to do so by means of a violent, bloody struggle against the Americans.

In Egypt, the Ptolemies focused most of their Hellenizing project and the core of their administration in the northern provinces of Lower Egypt. Through the leading Egyptian clergy, the High Priests of Ptah, who resided in Memphis, they exerted an acceptable form of limited sovereignty into Upper Egypt. That began changing late in the 3rd century. Insurgencies, called times of "tarache," or troubles, plagued parts of Egypt off and on throughout the 2nd century. Some of these rebellions had started, so the Polybian story goes, because Ptolemy IV and his ministers raised 20,000 native Egyptian soldiers to fight in a Macedonian-style phalanx at Raphia. Their success against the Seleukid Macedonian phalanx then encouraged them to revolt. But as we saw in the examination of logistics, even those 20,000 soldiers were only a small fraction of the machimoi class (as few as 1 in 20) and a drop in the bucket compared to the adult male native Egyptian population, which likely numbered over 2 million. Still, trained soldiers, then and now, are frequently the leaders in an insurgency, and many machimoi joined or even led the various native revolts. The revolt likely started because the Ptolemies, pleased with the performance of their machimoi phalangitai, sought to expand their social and economic control in Upper Egypt, so that they could better monitor the tens of thousands of machimoi in those regions.

So how did the Ptolemies respond to the native rebellion? Cutting back on recruitment of machimoi seemed like an obvious decision, and they may have done so (especially after so many of their machimoi soldiers deserted to join the rebel Haronnophris). But they eventually learned several lessons about dealing with counter-insurgency in Egypt. By using native machimoi soldiers, they could occupy places more successfully--that is, with less loss of life and material property, and for longer periods of time--than with their Hellenic troops or foreign mercenaries.
It seemingly took them quite some time to learn this method. But they did learn it, by the late 2nd century at the latest. When a new round of "troubles" started around Thebes, the largest city in Upper Egypt, economic records for the military settlement of Tebtynis, in the Fayum of Lower Egypt, indicate that there was a nearly universal machimoi call-up for the purpose of suppressing the revolt.

This increased use of machimoi by the Ptolemies has often been perceived as a sign of Ptolemaic weakness: because their Hellenic forces were so weakened by defeats, largess, and in-fighting, the Ptolemies were forced to rely on their machimoi to hold on to power. But if we look at how the U.S. is using native Iraqi forces in Diyala, are they doing so because the U.S. forces are inadequate or unprepared? We know, this close to the conflict, that the problem with using U.S. forces wouldn't be fighting effectiveness, it would be their reception by the native population. In the same way, the Ptolemies found that strategic decisions like deploying machimoi into counter-insurgency zones and showing clemency to captured officers and rebels from key families helped bring the rebellions to a close.