Is Surprise still a Principle of War?

“You’ve got to have surprise, and it’s binary: you’ve either surprised your enemy or he knows you’re coming. You can’t have a little bit of surprise.”

That was a key message during my early training in the Army: so why oh why have we heard all this week about the impending massive assault by Allied troops in Afghanistan? Surely the Taleban read the Telegraph and watch News 24 and might just have got an inkling we were on our way.

The world of war fighting has changed. Gen McCrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan has recognised that to win in Afghanistan it is probably better not to fight as that endangers innocent by-standers. Instead we are seeing a war that is being fought to win the ground and then through having enough local troops to stay on that ground, win the hearts and minds of the population.

The warnings of the build up to the attacks were, in my opinion, an attempt to avoid any fighting, they were designed to encourage the Taleban, or some of them anyway, to withdraw. This avoided civilian casualties as the territory was won, but it will also have given two critical additional benefits.

First: the Taleban were forced to move. This is disruptive and whilst in itself not critical will have lead to the second benefit which was opportunity for ambush of withdrawing enemy. It would be very surprising if there were no attacks on withdrawing fighters as they sought refuge elsewhere. Don’t however expect to hear much about these operations as they would have been conducted by elements of the military who don’t want to be in the papers.

In this new era of war fighting, it is clear that the old rules don’t apply It is to McCrystal’s credit that he sees the value of peaceful operations in order to generate peace in the long term. The locals are more likely to talk to you if you’ve not been shooting at them.