While Ukraine is at the bottom of the counter-insurgency learning curve as it combats Kremlin-backed separatists, Israel, where 400,000 immigrants from Ukraine live, has much experience to share from its encounters with Palestinian insurgents over the decades.
“Every insurgency is unique,” explains Professor Ely Karmon from the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel. “Ukraine is dealing with an insurgency on its own territory, while Israel has had to conduct operations in occupied territory (of Palestinian Authority and southern Lebanon).”
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry estimates that as many as 10,000 armed Moscow-backed separatists are hunkered down in the Donbas. To fight them, the government launched a counterterrorism operation on April 19 and deployed several thousand of its own troops plus some irregular formations.
Since the official policy of the Israeli Defense Forces is not to assist or offer advice on counter-insurgency operations in other countries, it declined a Kyiv Post request to comment on Ukraine.
Starting from scratch
Ukraine is starting from a clean slate. “I do not see a counter-insurgency doctrine with the Ukrainians,” observes Karmon. “That is essential, since such operations are very complex.” A doctrine will offer the military a set of rules of engagement, but Karmon emphasizes that the doctrine must be flexible, since the situation on the ground can be very fluid.
One of the major challenges that Ukraine faces is the linguistic and cultural “proximity” of Ukrainians and Russians, unlike in Israel, where Arabs are usually separate from Jews.
“This can undermine the reliability of Ukrainians forces, whether amongst the border troops or the officer corps,” Karmon said. “Deserters can filter to the insurgents and back again, thereby compromising any counter-insurgency operation.”
Intelligence-gathering is one common feature between counter-insurgency efforts in Ukraine and Israel. The use of drones and other electronic imaging technologies have become essential in combating insurgency in Israel, for example, says Karmon. “Human intelligence is also very important,” he explains. “Without understanding the strategy and tactics of the insurgents, applying a force against them becomes very difficult.”
Deploying a vast force against insurgents holding a large urban environment is not a part of Israeli military doctrine. Rather, Israeli forces have created a number of small, specialized units that undergo relentless training in various combat environments and with precise weapons. Its Duvdevan, which has a wide-ranging brief from infiltration to urban combat, is one such anti-terrorist unit that has effectively neutralized a number of Palestinian anti-government actions.
Ukraine needs such formations. The best the country has are airborne units. However, when the government sent its elite 25th Airborne Brigade against separatists in Kramatorsk at the outset of the ATO in April, the result was defeat, humiliation and disbandment of the unit. Since then, the government has deployed the elite 95th Airmobile Brigade to Kramatorsk.
One of the key challenges facing Ukraine’s counter-insurgency is the separatists’ intimate knowledge of how the Ukrainian military works, its strengths and weaknesses. “The rebels know who they are dealing with, and so the Ukrainian side must learn to shift its tactics,” says Karmon.
Unlike in Israel, where the Israeli Defense Forces are almost exclusively composed of Jewish Israelis, many of the insurgents in the Donbas have either served in the Ukrainian armed forces or local law enforcement bodies.
Yet, Karmon does not see supplementing the regular armed forces with irregular militias, like the Donbas and Azov battalions, as an effective solution. “We tried that in the occupied territories and in southern Lebanon, and the results were not good.”
In fact, the Israeli-supported South Lebanon Army collapsed within weeks of the Israeli military’s withdrawal from occupied southern Lebanon in 2000.
Peaceful efforts to convince the local population of the benefits of supporting the central government should also be applied. “There must be a financial incentive,” Karmon says. “Economic changes can foster mentality changes, such as was the case with East Germany after the collapse of Communism there.”
This view is confirmed by retired U.S. Navy admiral James Stavridis in his article on Ukraine’s counter-insurgency for Foreign Policy.
“A significant part of the message is that Ukraine’s best future lies not in policies that are pro-Russian or pro-NATO, but pro-Ukrainian — meaning the freedom to evaluate where the best opportunities for the nation lie,” he wrote.
Despite the massive effort put by Israel into its counter-insurgency doctrine, it has failed to end the terrorist threat or bring peace, admits retired major-general Yaakov Amidror of The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
The Russian factor
However, like Israel, Ukraine is beset by at least one foreign power that is actively supporting insurgency within the country. An anti-Israeli insurgency on Palestinian territories has received support from Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt over the decades.
In Ukraine, Russia has been revealed to have a hand in encouraging the separatists both morally and materially, and many of the fighters have acknowledged they are from Russia.
Yet, Russia is larger and at the moment more aggressive than Israel’s former Arab enemies. To help neutralize this threat, the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s Karmon advocates finding a geopolitical balance between Russia and its NATO nemesis.
Kyiv Post business journalist Evan Ostryzniuk can be reached at [email protected].
