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Clear and hold is a counter-insurgency strategy in which
military personnel Military personnel are members of the state's armed forces. Their roles, pay, and obligations differ according to their military branch (army, navy, marines, air force, space force, and coast guard), rank (officer, non-commissioned officer, or ...
clear an area of
guerrillas Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tacti ...
or other insurgents, and then keep the area clear of insurgents while winning the support of the populace for the government and its policies. As defined by the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
, "clear and hold" contains three elements:
civil-military operations Civil-military operations or CMO are activities of a military force to minimize civil interference on and maximize civil support for military operations. CMO is conducted in conjunction with combat operations during wartime and becomes a central p ...
,
combat operations Combat operations area - process is undertaken by armed forces during military campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements to facilitate the setting of objectives, direction of combat, and assessment of the operation plan's success. Th ...
, and
information warfare Information warfare (IW) (as different from cyber warfare that attacks computers, software, and command control systems) is a concept involving the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a ...
. Only highly strategic areas are initially chosen for "clear and hold" operations; once they are secure, the operation gradually spreads to less strategic areas until the desired geographic unit (county, province, or nation) is under control. Once an area has been cleared, local police (rather than military) authority is re-established, and government authority re-asserted.


Development and critical elements

The clear and hold strategy was first developed by
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and the
British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
during the Malayan Emergency, from 1948 to 1960. It was also widely employed by the British during the Mau Mau Uprising of 1952 to 1960.Collins, ''Military Strategy,'' 2002, p. 187. The strategy was also implemented by
General A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED ...
Creighton Abrams Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. (September 15, 1914 – September 4, 1974) was a United States Army general who commanded military operations in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972, which saw United States troop strength in South Vietnam reduced ...
, as part of the "pacification" effort conducted by the
Republic of Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of t ...
and the US Army during the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
, at which time the strategy became widely known. Clear and hold has also been used as a counter-insurgency tactic in
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,
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, the
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, and
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.Joes, ''The War for South Viet Nam, 1954–1975,'' 2001, p. 63. The strategy was used extensively by the United States and its allies during the
Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror , image ...
. Several critical elements of the clear and hold strategy have been identified. One element is to secure support for the strategy at all levels of the traditional military forces. Experience in Vietnam has shown that traditional military forces dislike the limited role they play in the clear and hold strategy and may successfully advocate for a more traditional warmaking role. Another challenge is that the strategy takes time, which a government may for various reasons lack. The strategy also requires significant numbers of on-the-ground "clearing" combat and "holding" police forces. Thompson and others have also argued that clear and hold operations can be successful by only isolating the population from insurgents, but some strategists point out that can have deleterious effects on public support for the government and its policies.


Assessment

The success of clear and hold as a counter-insurgency strategy is hotly debated. Military historian
Lewis Sorley Lewis Stone "Bob" Sorley III (born August 3, 1934) is an American intelligence analyst and military historian. His books about the U.S. war in Vietnam, in which he served as an officer, have been highly influential in government circles. Biograp ...
has argued that clear and hold tactics were markedly successful in the Vietnam War despite being implemented after a decade of conflict and under less than ideal conditions. His view is supported by others, who see the strategy as still viable in the 21st century. While combat operations against insurgents are often successful, some authors conclude that combat operations themselves make it very difficult to win support for the government, "hold" operations are rarely successful, and guerrillas easily adapt. Others argue that the initial limited goals of clear and hold operations enable guerrilla forces to regroup militarily, limiting the combat effectiveness of the strategy. Some analysts have also voiced the concern that the strategy relies too heavily on physical security issues and ignores the role that ideology, nationalism, and other belief systems play in fomenting insurgency in the first place. More recently, American military strategists in both Iraq and Afghanistan have proposed modifications to the strategy. Sometimes defined as "clear, hold and build" or "shape, clear, hold, and build," native forces identify the nature and strength of the enemy threat in a given area (shape), foreign and native forces defeat the enemy threat (clear), foreign and native forces keep the area clear of enemies (hold), and native democratic institutions are established that draw their legitimacy from the local people (build). Basic services such as electricity, sewer systems, fresh water, farms, and marketplaces were provided. By 2008, the strategy had "shown some results in Iraq." International affairs expert
Anthony Cordesman Anthony H. Cordesman (born August 1, 1939) holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and is a national security analyst on a number of global conflicts. Career He earned his B.A. ...
has noted less success in Afghanistan, where many areas were still in the "shape", "clear", and "hold" stage after nine years, and only a few others in beginning, mixed "hold/build" stages. Journalist Fred Kaplan has argued that the revised doctrine is
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, capitalist, and materialistic and ignores such important beliefs as religion and cultural norms and institutions. Kaplan also concludes that too little discussion is given to local versus national government (especially regarding corruption and trustworthiness) and situations in which a majority of the population is on the side of the insurgents.Maslin, Janet. "A General Battles His Own Army: 'The Insurgents,' About David Petraeus, by Fred Kaplan." ''New York Times.'' December 26, 2012
accessed 2012-12-27; and, generally, Kaplan, ''The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War.''


References


Bibliography

*Asprey, Robert B. ''War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History.'' Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2002. *Bowman, Steve. ''War in Afghanistan: Strategy, Military Operations, and Issues for Congress.'' Darby, Pa.: DIANE Publishing, 2010. *Collins, John M. ''Military Strategy: Principles, Practices, and Historical Perspectives.'' Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2002. *Elliott, David W. P. "Parallel Wars? Can 'Lessons of Vietnam' Be Applied to Iraq?" In ''Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam, or, How Not to Learn From the Past.'' Lloyd C. Gardner and Marilyn Blatt Young, eds. New York: New Press, 2007. *Elliott, David W. P. ''The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975.'' 2d ed. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007. *Gettleman, Marvin E. ''Vietnam and America: A Documented History.'' 2d rev. ed. New York: Grove Press, 1995. *Headquarters. Department of the Army. ''Counterinsurgency Operations.'' Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 2004.

''
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.'' November 4, 2005. *Joes, Anthony James. ''America and Guerrilla Warfare.'' Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. *Joes, Anthony James. ''The War for South Viet Nam, 1954–1975.'' 2d rev. ed. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing, 2001. *Kaiser, David E. ''American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War.'' Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. * Kaplan, Fred. ''The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. *Marston, Daniel and Malkasian, Carter. "Introduction." In ''Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare.'' Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian, eds. Westminster, Md.: Osprey Publishing, 2008. *Ricks, Thomas E. ''Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.'' New York: Penguin Group, 2006. *Sorley, Lewis. ''A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam.'' New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999.
"South Viet Nam: To Clear & to Hold."
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Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
.'' March 27, 1964. *Taber, Robert. ''War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare.'' Reprint ed. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2002. *Thompson, Sir Robert. ''Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam.'' New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1978. *Trinquier, Roger. ''Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency.'' Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. * Tuohy, William. "Ky's Army Switches to Pacification Role." ''
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.'' November 6, 1966. *Walton, C. Dale. ''The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam.'' Florence, Ky.: Taylor & Francis, 2002. *West, Bing. ''The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq.'' Reprint ed. New York: Random House, 2009. *Woodward, Bob. ''State of Denial: Bush at War.'' Reprint ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. *Young, Marilyn Blatt. ''The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990.'' Reprint ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. {{ISBN, 0-06-092107-2 Counterinsurgency Military strategy