Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 103

IGNORANT COUNTERINSURGENT

(Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Foss, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division PAO)

Members of the Afghan Uniform Police and the Afghan local police stand ready with their AK-47 assault rifles as they conduct urban operations training with U.S. soldiers assigned to Security Force Assistance Team 6, Cross Functional Team Warrior, 10th Mountain Division
in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, 11 April 2013.

would be able to unlock new opportunities for emergent
processes and results. Instead of driving a security force
to mimic the occupying force, or projecting the values of
the counterinsurgents’ society (for instance, values of literacy, gender roles, violence, justice, beauty, or truth), the
ignorant counterinsurgents would encourage students to
explore with them in a partnership of equals.
Further, ignorant teachers would not impede their
students’ exploration because of their own ignorance
on the topics. Nor would they attempt to teach in the
old, stultifying model on topics of which they knew
nothing. In Afghanistan, for instance, “the very concept of the non-Muslim American trying to lecture
such village crowds about proper Islamic teachings
or moral behavior is ironic, but unfortunately [was] a
common occurrence.”31
In the emancipated model, teachers could not
resurrect an old master relationship because an old
master could not teach a topic in ignorance; this might
seem like hypocrisy to the traditional student. Instead,
ignorant teachers would acknowledge their ignorance
MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2015

of a topic—Islamic teachings on morality, for example,
and how they affected security operations—and appreciate that as students advanced in developing a viable
security force that would incorporate Islamic morality
in action, the teacher probably would remain ignorant
to some extent. The teachers would have some trouble
recognizing when the students had learned what they
really needed to know.
Perhaps literacy would not be necessary for the
security force members if a majority in the host nation
functioned at extremely low literacy. Perhaps maleonly policing, nepotism, and a degree of what U.S.
forces regarded as corruption would be considered
part of the learning outcome. Teachers would not
impose knowledge derived from their society’s web of
values upon the local students.
Perhaps the students would explore learning how to
conduct security by capitalizing upon the very illiteracy,
lack of automation, unequal gender roles, and patterns
of apparent corruption and nepotism that the outsiders
found unacceptable. The students would explore and
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