[Yef]

Originally posted by PvK:
Yef, would you elaborate on your assertion that "Any measure you take to win the population over in this case will inevitable backfire."?

Do you mean that there may be some fanatics whose minds cannot be changed, and who may not rely as much on popular support as guerrillas?

Well, the problem with the fanatics its not only that they cannot be won over, but that they always manage to radicalize a good chunk of the civilian population. The precense of terrorist tactics in a war tells you that certain line have been crossed, and that line cannot be crossed without support of sizable segment of the population, which in time tells you that a deep rift have occurred within such population that now sees the ones that are not with them as collaborating with the enemy, and thus fair game for terrorist tactics.

In short, guerrillas wants to "save" the population and the country, whether this "saving" its wanted or not (Mao Tse-tung, Che Guevara), while terrorists wants to "save" only a segment of that population (IRA, ETA). This means that the critical mass necessary for a terrorist war to be "succesful" its lower than for a guerrilla war, thus making a guerrilla war easier to win for the counter-guerrilla forces.

But in the end every conflict has its owns characteristics which tend to modify how the war its played out, with the most important modifiers being population density, etnic make out, religion(s), terrain, borders, and even transportation network, which in time define the tactics that would be used by the insurgents.

In the case of Irak, for example, the resistance its using a mix of tactics that goes from full blown guerrilla ambushes, through drive-by-shootings and drive-by-mortaring, to pure terror tactics like car-bombs and suicide bombers.
This mix of tactics force a mix of counter-tactics, which includes the search for terrorists in civilian houses, check points, restrictions on civilian freedom of movement, and so on.

All these have the effect of annuling any progress you may have achieved by investing on the local population's well being, because yes, you gave them food, but then you stop them at a check point and search them out (which is a great offense for an Arab), and then you may even have to break into their houses acting on field intelligence that some terrorist may be hiding in there.
Its a proven fact in counter-terrorist warfare that it takes only one action that can be interpreted as offensive to render void a hundred previous good actions.

In Irak, the civilian population its being used as camouflage by the resistance. They attack the US forces in the middle of populated areas, provoking inevitable collateral damage from return fire, and this in turn provokes hate from the population.

Its almost impossible to convince the population that the resistance its the one responsible for their hardships. When the civilians are under the stress of war, they will always see the side manning the check point as the one responsible for the existance of it.

There is also the fact that the resistance comes directly from the local population, which brings family ties into the equation, and even the foreign fighters that are in the resistance are closer to the locals, for being Arabs and muslims, than the US troops.

Add to that years of anti-American propaganda, zillions of conspiracy theories that are taken for facts, and a harsh reality that doesn't seem to get any better, and you have the recipe for a long drawn conflict with no end in sight.