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Right
up to the point when someone thought a 17-ton
armoured vehicle was the right negotiating tactic
to spring two British special forces operatives
from an Iraqi jail, the fact that two SAS troopers
were disguised as locals (and sneaking around
in a civvy car) showed the British Army was doing
what it has always done, usually pretty well:
getting down and dirty with the locals and gathering
information.
The Army is struggling to win the intelligence
battle. When your enemy communicates through
use-once-and-throw-away mobile phones, or motorbike
couriers, when you don't speak the language,
and the locals are all related, come from the
same village, and won't talk to strangers, gaining
actionable intelligence is very hard. Hence the
covert ops.
And technology won't help. |
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ben
rooney on
the challenge
of gathering intelligence in Iraq |
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Faced
with the language problem, the US bought electronic
translators. The British hired teachers.
Much is made of lads from Bolton in slouch hats kicking
a football with street kids from Basra. Great PR, but
most importantly one game of football is worth more
than the annual output of the entire US National Reconnaissance
Office.
When your threat is a man with an AK47, spy satellites
aren't going to tell you that someone has moved into
the empty house next to the centre-forward's cousin.
This is nothing more than good old-fashioned policing
- the Bobby on the Beat, albeit with a 155mm howitzer
on call. What the British Army - and even more so the
American forces - need is far fewer Rambos and a lot
more Jack Warners. 
Ben Rooney is a former army officer
who has served in the Middle East
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