Steve Howard

The “So What” or “Why Calling It an Insurgency Actually Matters.” In the first post I laid out the uncomfortable parallels: the Minneapolis Signal networks are not random protest coordination. They show structure, redundancy, OPSEC awareness, SALUTE-style reporting, dispatch roles, mobile intercepts, shared databases, and escalation protocols. This mirrors the early urban cells we tracked and eventually dismantled in Anbar and Helmand. The infrastructure exists. The cadre is adapting quickly. The violence has already turned lethal. The real question is not whether this qualifies as an insurgency. The real question is what changes when we finally name it one. Here is why the label matters and why refusing to use it (exactly as happened in 2003-2006 Iraq) hands the advantage to the other side. 1) Unity of Effort: From Siloed Bubbles to Cohesive Campaign Right now, federal agencies operate in separate lanes. ICE and CBP concentrate on deportations and fugitive operations. Local police departments focus on public order. DOJ prosecutes through standard channels. Intelligence elements collect what they can without crossing domestic lines. Each group optimizes for its own narrow mission while the networked opposition exploits every seam between them. We saw the same pattern in early Iraq. Units stayed inside their FOB bubbles with different chains of command, different rules of engagement, different priorities. Army elements hunted IED facilitators, Marines cleared Fallujah, intelligence agencies chased high-value targets, and civilian agencies worked reconstruction in isolation. Insurgents moved freely through the gaps and regenerated after every tactical defeat. Once we acknowledged the insurgency (roughly 2006-2007 with the Surge and FM 3-24), the picture changed. We built unity of effort: joint task forces, fused intelligence cells, combined operations centers, and a shared understanding that this was no longer a collection of law enforcement actions plus military side projects. It became a synchronized campaign with security, governance, information, and economic lines of operation working together. Chains of command aligned. Resources flowed toward the decisive effort. Agencies that once competed now reinforced one another. Apply the same logic here. Calling it an insurgency creates the doctrinal and legal foundation to stand up interagency fusion cells (DHS, DOJ, FBI, plus vetted local liaison where realistic), dedicate HUMINT and SIGINT assets against the actual networks instead of just street-level obstructors, and task-organize beyond agency silos. ICE and CBP by themselves cannot dismantle a distributed 1,000-member-per-zone command-and-control apparatus backed by local enablers. They need the full architecture of a counterinsurgency campaign where every element pulls in the same direction. 2) Authorities, Funding, and Task Organization Finally Align Without the insurgency label you remain locked in Title 8 / Title 18 law-enforcement mode: warrants, probable cause, case-by-case prosecutions. Insurgents thrive in that environment. They stay below the threshold, absorb the arrest of foot soldiers, and regenerate. Prosecutions get dropped or delayed when local prosecutors and judges are sympathetic or compromised. We watched exactly that cycle in Iraq: insurgents detained locally, released by captured courts, back on the street within days. Recognizing an insurgency opens different tools: broader surveillance authorities (FISA, Title III with national-security nexus), dedicated funding lines instead of scraping from existing agency budgets, special courts, or procedures if necessary to bypass local capture, and task-organized units that blend federal, state, and (where feasible) vetted local personnel. In Anbar we eventually had to bypass corrupt local structures and route detainees through Baghdad’s special courts to prevent immediate release. The long delay in calling it an insurgency meant we paid in blood for years before those mechanisms existed. The same dynamic applies here. ICE and CBP are outmatched against embedded networks that enjoy local government cover. A counterinsurgency posture lets you build the structure to target the leadership and support apparatus, not merely the visible chasers. 3) The Historical Lesson: Delay Equals Enemy Consolidation Iraq 2003-2006 is the warning we cannot ignore. Ground commanders (Special Forces, intelligence, line units) flagged an emerging insurgency by mid-2003. Senior political leadership banned the word and insisted it was only “dead-enders,” “criminals,” or “foreign fighters.” Narrative control overrode reality. The result was three years of escalation, multiple deaths, hardened enemy structures, and eroded popular support. By the time we admitted the truth and surged (Petraeus, Odierno, FM 3-24), the enemy was far stronger, sectarian civil war had erupted, and recovery cost far more in lives and treasure. We cannot afford that timeline on our own soil. These networks are already hardening. They learn from every disrupted ICE raid, refine their OPSEC, expand recruitment, and spread to other cities. Every day we pretend this remains “activism” or “civil disobedience,” they train, grow, and strengthen narrative dominance (“community defense” versus “federal overreach”). This is not about seeking escalation. It is about facing reality so the correct tools can be applied before the movement enters a more dangerous phase. History teaches one clear lesson: name the threat accurately, align the national effort, resource it properly, or watch it metastasize.