economy and so we referred to the board in the same way for the u.s. as for other countries and then, of course, we don't ha ourselves, what we feel works -- in the economy, it has the country itself, to move ahead: . >> in her book "the unheard

truth: poverty and human rights," irene khan, secretary general of amnesty international argues human-rights and poverty are directly connected. the first congregational church in berkeley, california, hosts this 45 minute event. >> as all of you know amnesty international's general secretary, irene khan, is with us tonight. in 2001 irene khan became the first woman, the first asian and the first muslim to head reorganization and justice she was getting accustomed to the confines of her new office, the attacks of 9/11 prevented one of the gravest challenges not just to the organization but the very idea of human-rights. with the onset of the global war on terrorism is senior bush

administration official told amnesty international delegates that, quote, your role collapsed with the collapse of the twin towers in new york. in a report from amnesty international in 2005 irene khan wrote about guantanamo bay, calling it the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention and violation of international law, trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process. 2005 was a different time than now. that was a big deal. i was in washington at the time as a capitol hill correspondent and i remember the stir it caused in washington. defense secretary donald rumsfeld called the report reprehensible. dick cheney said he was offended. . called it absurd. the washington post

editorialized that, quote, lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnation not for dictators but for the united states and. it was a clear attempt to try to discredit this organization. i have followed washington politics long enough to know that when top officials attack you instead of ignoring you it is because they are scared of you. the white house's attack on the group's credibility for me at that time was a clear affirmation of amnesty international integrity and power. we are talking about look bush administration but it is important to note that president obama signed the national defense authorization act that endorses another attempt by the u.s. government to conduct military commission trial. amnesty international and irene khan are once again pushing and

changing the way we see human rights. in a new campaign called demand dignity amnesty international is seeking to leave poverty caused to human-rights. irene khan argues that party remains a global epidemic because it continues to be defined as an economic problem that should be addressed in foreign aid and investment. in her new book "the unheard truth: poverty and human rights," she says am powering the poor with a basic rights for security and food and even health-care is our only chance of eradicating poverty. before joining amnesty international irene khan spent 20 years with the high commissioner for refugees. in 1977 as a very young person she helped create the organization concerned universal which works with people in the poorest countries of the world to find sustainable solutions to poverty and inequality. she was born in bangladesh

during a time when east bengal was fighting for its independence from pakistan. it is my pleasure to introduce to you the general secretary of amnesty international, irene khan. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> it is great to have you here. i know you have a little talk planned for our audience but welcome. >> thank you very much. what i thought i would speak about the book, and threw the book, about amnesty's campaign to demand dignity. we have to get this straight. i begin my book at the beginning

with my berth in my grandmother's house and my mother is as you can see today, to acknowledged her. the same time that i was born in that house, another baby was also born and that was the child of my grandfather's made. if i can read from the book, 50 years ago two babies were born at the same time in my grandmother's house. one with a girl, myself, the other was a boy born to my grandmother. growing up with children in the same household we often played together. and remember a bright child keen to drop pictures and make toys out of tin cans and pieces of string and run around the yard singing donkeys. as we grew older our lives went our separate ways. i went to school and university at a successful international

career. she was sent to school but dropped out after a year because the teacher and school boards teased and taunted him for being the child of a domestic supply. his mother put him to work in a state run factory. continued a man of age of 18 he married a 14-year-old girl and soon became a father. when his factory was privatized he agitated with other workers and was sacked. my family gave him money to buy rickshaw and he did reasonably well until political violence and insecurity drove him out of business. he drifted into petty crime. unable to afford proper medical care he never fully recovered from his injuries. today he is disabled and lives in a shack in a sprawling slum surviving on hand out and the meager income. this is one of sixty million bangladeshis who live in extreme

poverty. if the tragedies of his life and my own show that many sectors -- >> i think we are going to fix that. our handy engineer. [applause] >> should be ok now. >> thank you. if i could continue the reading. he is one of sixty million bangladeshis who live in extreme poverty. the tragedy of his life and my own show that many factors, not all of them easy to analyze, are crucial to understanding why people are poor. i go on to say i was not born poor but i was born in a poor

country. my fear as a citizen of bangladesh and a human-rights activist tells me discrimination the disney state suppression, corruption, insecurity and violence are defining poverty. they are human rights abuses. to me poverty is the denial of human rights and an affront to human dignity. that is the definition that i use in my book. shortly after i came to amnesty international i had the occasion to visit south africa. i went to a police station with an amnesty researcher and found counselors to help complaints about domestic violence. that is one of the most progressive laws on domestic violence. here was an attempt to assist women, very progressive and the

story of rosy. rosy's story is in the same chapter. rosy was a south african woman and mother of 5 who was beaten often by her husband and one day she was beaten so badly that she died. i asked the counselor why rosie had not gone to get a protection order. easy for a woman and simple. pay for the bus fare to take her. the best laws of the land could not protect rosy. you now hear the story of rosy. of course all of us recognize

right away the issue of lack of income but that is not the whole story. it is about the insecurity with which poor women live and the difficulty they have in getting out of that situation. that is why this holistic definition includes not just in, or how many dollars a day you learn. if you listen to the port they will tell you they are for naught because of their income. 70% of the world's for our women and that is increasing. some people call it the feminization. even in the united states the highest educated group are asian males. the highest earning group are white men.

the lowest educated group and lowest earning group are latino females. the poor live in insecurity, neighborhoods with high crime rates. violence. i speak of the work amnesty international has done in brazil where police criminalize -- should they ask questions afterwards. the 4 are criminalize even in this city. 43,000 citations were given to people in san francisco in 2006 for sleeping in public parks. homeless people criminalize for being homeless. this is what the poor are subjected to. you can be pushed off of your

land. if you are living in a slum you have to be destroyed. if you are a day laborer you don't know whether you will earn any money the next day or not so you live with a job insecurity. there are many forms of insecurity that defined the life of people. poor people are deprived of basic economic and social resources. housing, education, health but most importantly poor people are excluded from political power. powerlessness defines poverty constantly. i travelled on behalf of amity several times. many of you know about the situation, this is a city where poor women have come from

mexico. they improve their income. they go to night school to improve their situation and many of these young women have been killed, abducted, kidnapped, raped and their bodies found mutilated after word. no one cares, police did not investigate. until recently there were no prosecutions and no one cares. we don't count because we are poor women and the powerlessness of the poor is a defining feature of their life. discrimination and insecurity and deprivation is what makes up poverty. these issues are human-rights issues. that is what poverty is a human-rights problem. the other point i talk about is

how wonderful these reinforce each other so there's a constant downward spiral from which people once they have been pushed into poverty find it very difficult to get out of poverty. what i am saying now is not regional. many others have said it. he spoke of freedom. the path to development. there are many others. world bank research analysis, a very well known book called the voice of the poor in which they documented testimony from 60,000 people around the world said the

same thing about powerlessness the personal deprivation and discrimination and yet when we look at the policies of the world bank, when we look at poverty eradication strategy is around the world human rights are rarely inc.. my book puts the question, points out the problem and defines it but goes on to say if we know what the answer is, why don't we follow it? one finds interesting reasons. on the one hand the argument that you need read before balance and that is the argument that china would use. it is important to suppress civil liberties in order to promote economic development. other people tend to go along with that. that is one way for development.

in writing my book we did a lot of research and we could not find any evidence to suggest that china's economic development is because of suppression. it was a choice the chinese government made but there is no reason for that choice. when you see in china are great mistakes that have been made. a lot of people paid a heavy price for development in china. these are people who are living in rural areas. these are minorities in many cases, these are migrant workers in cities who are not enjoying prosperity of china. when things go wrong, because it is a closed society is difficult to point out the mistakes that have been made so authoritarian regimes very rarely correct their mistakes.

note space for pressure to be put on them. there is this argument that is suppress liberty to have prosperity. the other argument that we hear very often is what we are talking about are not economic and social rights. that is an argument not in china but in the united states. there is a debate on health care as a human right. the irony is when the universal declaration of human rights was concluded economic and social rights as well as civil and political rights and the architect of that document was her husband spoke about the full freedom. freedom from need. freedom from fear and freedom

from want went hand-in-hand. his conceptualization of freedom. that was because in 1948 the memory was very fresh in the minds of the u.s. administration about depression. it is interesting to see the economic recession today will revive interest in recognizing economic and social life in this country as rights. the third reason poverty is not seen as a human rights issue and human-rights are not injected into public eradication strategy is is because there is a belief the market was processing. if we simply have economic growth we will all be pulled out. as we all know that is not how economic growth takes place. economic growth creates

inequality at the same time and even if it pushes some people out, many others--as human rights activists the question we constantly have to ask ourselves is -- the people being left behind tend to be women or women headed households tend to be minorities, tend to be people who are discriminated against. people who are down and out. that is why that market is not an answer either and yet these are the arguments that are constantly used to keep the cumin rights debate and development debate in two separate boxes. i challenge that in my book and look at robert allenby and thumbs and the issue of the extracti

industry operating in africa. human-rights abuses underlie these issues. women who died in birth. in the united states women of color are three to four times more likely to risk maternal death than white women. in sierra leone the numbers one in eight women. i was there in three weeks ago after the book was published. i was actually able to see what was happening myself. a woman said to me that when she got pregnant her family came to visit her to say goodbye because pregnancy, she said, is a death sentence. pregnant women die because of lack of health care, discrimination, and

mismanagement of the health system. who decides when a woman should get married? who decides when a woman should have children? how many should she have? who decides how much of the national budget should be spent on maternal health care? sternly not women in many countries. you see high rates of maternal death. you see the relationship between power and impoverishment. that is why the pieces of my bookcase that it is not poverty that is the answer to poverty, is not and richmond, it is empowerment. in every chapter of my book and put on good news stories. is important to know how people organized themselves. they have had the freedom, the space and where they had equal access to economic and social

life. that produces good results. perhaps i should stop here by saying equality matters and security matters. we need to invest in people and listen to people and give them the space to play the role to define their own destiny and to regain that. [applause] >> thank you very much. irene khan's book is titled "the unheard truth: poverty and human rights". i know they had some in the lobby. irene khan has 25 minutes to spend with us and we want to ask

many of your questions. we are walking around handing out cards if you would like one to write your question down. let's begin by asking you. human-rights and having effective change that comes from that, would that require a whole new set of policy at the national international level to be created for could you somehow make that link and have it already applied for existing human-rights treaties that countries have already ratified? >> there are a couple things that would be progress. one would be for the united states to recognize the economic, social and cultural rights and for china to recognize them.

that is part of amnesty's dignity campaign. our goal is to get these countries to recognize these. so that we have a unified vision of human rights. the second step would be to get the international community that has invested so much money into development through the millennium development goals to recognize bowls that advocate poverty. to get them to inject human rights into those goals. those goals do not recognize the cessation of people as a means for achieving those goals. those goals and not recognize empowerment. those goals don't even recognize discrimination. one of the goals is to have poverty. that is a very commendable goal and many countries claim to have reached that goal but my question is who is still poor?

you may find among minorities or in rural areas or among women, poverty is still 80% but among more privileged classes there is no poverty. if you don't desegregate the data, if you just look at these things generally you get a very different picture. discrimination is an issue fundamental to human rights. human-rights experts always ask who has been left behind, who's not in delaying equality? by injecting human rights you can reach a international strategy and poverty eradication. these are two big issues that there are many other issues where a human rights approach can make a big difference. we don't need treaties. they are all there. what you need is political will,

commitment and people to change that debate. this is why. i am promoting the book not because i get money out of it. it all goes to amnesty international. i hope people will read the book and debate it and they will say this is not about economics. this is about politics, it is about power and human rights. >> you would need a movement to make that happen. a number of companies if not all of them are very cautious about such an approach thinking the way was adopted that you would have a situation, every country does, they would be held reliable, maybe amnesty international has a losses or something that would try to say the united states is out of

compliance with the law. >> many countries would feel uncomfortable about the issue because poverty is not just something that happens. is not inevitable byproduct of our economy. it is deliberately created for some to benefit from. those who are in power, we want to retain their power and this will deprive others. if you look at chapter viii of my book this chapter look that the global economy, the role of big business and what is happening in africa and i identify countries like equity oriel guinea and the democratic republic, very wealthy countries. yet they have the poorest populations. they have conflict, insecurity, deprivation. that is happening because corrupt governments are colluding with greedy business

to create systems by which the benefits don't go to the population. the international community is part of that problem because they turn a blind eye to these governments. it is in their economic interest. the economy is growing. many others are not. on the other hand, and there are moments in these social activists who are bringing about change. the bigger reason change will come is where living in one world. the one thing we have learned is we are part of the same system. 9/11 showed us what happens in afghanistan matters in manhattan. climate change is showing off

what happens around the world and what matters to everyone of us. if we want to create a sustainable world to create the economy. the economy and politics. it takes courage to create a sustainable future.

state official was a state secret. that was the beginning of a nationwide movement in india for freedom of information legislation. and it eventually led the indian government to adopt a law about freedom of information. i visit india about sex but after that law was adopted in 2006, and i met an activist who was working in one of the villages. she told me in the village where she was working, the state provides the food for public works.

and now the villagers go and we asked the local official how many bags of food did the government send you. and he's obliged to show them the document with the back. so it is 100 back. than the villagers go and count how many bags have been distributed. and they come back and say we distributed only 87 back. what happened to the other bags? and you can see very clearly from that how the dialogue, how the relationship between the state and the individuals, is changing. >> another question from the audience. how do you help women in muslim countries, for example, iran, go up against institutionalized discrimination? >> institutionalized discrimination is a serious problem in many countries in the world. something like 50 plus countries and world, there are laws that actively discriminate against women. so you have to change the law and ensure the law is properly

committed and then you also have to fight social discrimination. but in a country like iran where the state itself refuses to recognize the discrimination against women and institutes it in the name of religion, in the name of culture, in the name of tradition, you have a very big battle to fight. but what is remarkable in iran is the million signature campaign that has been launched by many human rights defenders in that country. women but also men. there's a campaign for 10 million signatures but so what they're trying to do is mobilize people in the own country to stand up until the government government what you say -- what you do is not what we want. so there's this grass-roots issue happening there. now this issue about women's rights and religion is something that i am often asked about because i am a muslim that a lot of journalist will ask me what do you think about

discriminating against women. and my answer is that, you know, part of my work and amnesty or previously as a u.n. refugee worker, i traveled around the world to many, many muslim countries. i have never heard a single muslim government say that they will not be part of the international financial system because it does not allow them to take interest. right? and yet, how often do we hear these same governments talk about it when it comes to women's right? the law is interpreted in many different ways from morocco to indonesia. why take the least progressive implication rather than the more aggressive when? these are political choices that governments make that it's not an issue of tradition, religion or custom. tradition and custom change over

time. governments have to be pushed to move alongside with the. we need to spot them to. >> followed up on that, one of the criticism that we've about amnesty international is that it spans and has more reports directed towards open government, democratic government, that it does towards closed governments. >> amnesty international covers over 150 countries in its annual report, for example. so we do work very in depth work on about 70 countries of the world, and we do keep an eye on another 70, 75 countries in the world. so we have a very wide range of countries that we cover. so don, to sweden. we are looking at human rights abuses, human rights performances, all these governments. yes, democratic government get

very sensitive when we point out to human rights abuses in their countries, but so do otto terry governments. they don't like is pointing fingers at them either. and so what we say is we're looking to hold governments to account international assignments they have signed up to. so whether you are a sovereign government or a weak one, whether you are a western democracy or an african or asian dictator we are going to hold you to the same standards of human rights that i know president bush that we were holding him too close to the fire, but i don't feel bad about it at all because i think what we're doing is we were expecting the u.s. administration to show the same respect for human rights as we were expecting the government of saddam or the government of sri lanka. so i think amnesty should be proud of applying the same standards of human rights across the world. we would like to see governments

it away from double standards where they are very happy to point a human rights problems elsewhere, but not so happy when the light is shone on nonperformance. >> another question from the audience. is not a basic cause of paying the result of a deliberate policy and laws that benefit the rich? for example, in the lack of equitable health care benefits, the wealthy health insurance corporations fight poverty, don't we need to redistribute wealth and power by a radical change in laws and policies? >> well, laws and policies, it's interesting that you raise the issue of laws and policies. you know, laws and policies -- laws are there to protect all of us, but the reality actually shows that the law doesn't work in favor of the poor. very often. tarballs of commission of commission set up. it included madeleine albright,

mary robinson, very eminent people, including others. and that commission discovered that the law doesn't work for the poor. there are millions of kids, poor kids were never registered, whose birth are never registered because the system is either too bureaucratic or simply not accurate to people living in conditions of poverty. the law often, police in many country, requires bride before they would do anything. judges belong to an elite that don't understand the poor. very often laws are there to restrict people. i mentioned earlier a citation for homelessness. you know, the law doesn't work for the poor. and therefore, you need to make changes in the law so that the poor can get its protection in the same way. and there are many, many situations where that is

actually happening. you have alternative legal systems being created. you have paralegals working. you have poor people being assisted to litigate, to enforce the law and actually win their rights. so yes, the system, the economic system, political system, legal system are not always necessarily fair. the contour movement there, the antidote to that is actually providing the space and working, talking about in justice, toward light on injustice and mobilizing the people for change. >> another question from the audience. have you studied the poor of this rich country, u.s.a.? something about some of those finding. >> well, amnesty international, amnesty u.s.a., in fact, will publish a report in february, next year, which looks at the issue of maternal death in this country. and that report shows already our research is showing that

report will make it very clear that women of color, phase three to four times the risk of dying. and the reason for that is often the lack of access to health care, no insurance, a lack of information, and the conditions in which they live the. so that's one area of poverty that we would surely want to highlight. i myself, since i have been promoting the book in the last two to three weeks where i have been in the cities, i was in a soup kitchen in richmond. i went to a birthing center in south bronx because i wanted to get a sense of what do people in this country feel about poverty. this is the richest country in the world. and i must say, and also to another center in boston, called rosie's place. rosy again. and in all those places, what i

found was the amazing wealth of the people. people. endymion intellectual wealth of the poor people who were coming to the soup kitchen. and had very interesting conversations with the. i asked the man in richmond, virginia, you know, what would you say to your leaders. and he walked up to the wall and he started speaking and he said, you know, it would make that much of a difference. what i say to the wall and what i say to my leaders. you know, this sort of amazing sense of frustration, and the person who runs that center, that soup kitchen, he said the difference between someone being here and not being here is maybe a paychecknot arising. maybe, you know, some kind of personal tragedy and there is no support, no social support for that. and that's what pushes people here and they can't get out of

it here. and they lose their dignity there. they just become, you know, they are made to feel as though they have no road to society again. so yes, i mean, here walking down san francisco two days ago, i had people begging. and i was struck by a. i'm not used to bigger that i come from a country where there is begging in the streets. but one doesn't expect in the richest country in world. >> another question. what role does corporate greed play in the creation and maintenance of poverty? >> well, in our global economy today, the big challenge is how do you hold economic actors accountable for human rights? the traditional concept of human rights is the state, the government, the country. the state does the duty to respect your rights. but in the global economy today,

if you are a person living in eastern congo, then the decisions that affect your life are not being made in the capital of your country. they are being made in faraway borders. so how do you insist that? and that's why there is a movement that is going on to bring human rights responsibility to bear on big business. there is a process in the united nations going on there, amnesty international is campaigning for international standards to be set for companies about how companies should behave in these situations but because what they do and what they don't do has a huge impact on human rights. that's a very open part of the. the second part of it is you create the standards and the standards have to be enforced. very often in these poor countries, the state is just not able to enforce those. the governments just either doesn't have the political will

or doesn't have a criminal justice system that can force a legal system that can enforce these obligations, and that's why very important that no matter where the company is, the company can be held liable. companies go global to seek investment. they are present in stock exchanges around the world. they are investment is global. they operate globally. their supply chains are global. so when it comes to legal liability for what they do, they should also be held globally. but they are not. think of the disaster in india which took place because of what dow chemical did. they are still today children that are being born with birth deformities. young women who were babies at the time who are now young women, who cannot merit because in that society, if you are not fit to give birth, then you are

just of no value. women whose lives have been totally destroyed. and the company has yet to clean the site properly, the water is still being polluted. the government of india in bided dow chemicals in at that time in order to promote its economy. and the government did a deal with dow chemical's afterword which deprived the people of apostolate of pursuing the case here in the united states. so you have those kinds of injustices that take place that need to be set right. >> on the other side of the question about corporate greed, another audience member asks, is changing consumer habits effective and empowering humane labor forces through the world? >> yes, i think the consumer movement has done, have pushed congress to improve their behavior to some cubbies have learned the hard way. reputation risk is surely something companies take into account. but there are also certain

industries that are more susceptible to consumer pressure than others. for example, the clothes we wear. now they're as we know, big brand names have suffered and some of them have improved their behavior. but you know, other things matter less. it's more difficult to put consumer pressure on some other commodities. so it's a difficult business just by consumers putting pressure. i think there needs to be greater consciousness about applying rules to all companies regardless of where they are situated about their behavior. you can only rely on consumer pressure to change company behavior. >> another audience member asks i understand that you will be leaving amnesty international at the end of the year. >> that is to. >> what are, and i see a lot of questions similar to this, what is the advice to your successor about running a grassroots

volunteer membership organization? >> well, i have had eight and a half years at amnesty international. the years that i treasured very much because of all that i have learned. and the privilege that i've had of leading this organization. my advice to my successor would be, always be courageous. it took a lot of courage when you talk about guantánamo. it took courage at that time to say it. and we got pushed back immediately from the u.s. government and from many others. so courage is very important. and the other very important thing i would tell my successor, my advice to my successor would be to not be afraid, shined a light on hidden scandals. and to recognize that membership organization, the mobilization

of people, bringing the membership along as a force to change public opinion and to put pressure on governments is a huge force. and that we should not underestimate the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. >> irene kahn, thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you.

>> marine corps university professor mark moyar argues that good military leadership, not winning hearts and minds, is the key to winning counterinsurgency wars. professor moyar studied counterinsurgency efforts going back to the american civil war. before coming to this conclusion. thattenal studies in washington, d.c., hosts the hour 10 minute event. >> good afternoon and welcome to the center for search egypt international studies. i'm andrew schwartz, our vice president for external relations. i'm so glad to see all of you here today for this important booktalk with these two just terrific military analysts, scholars, authors and i want to tell you about both of them.

mark moyar, doctor moore is a historian and analyst of contemporary national security affairs. is the chair of insurgency and terrorism and professor of national security affairs of them ring for university at quantico. his previous books include triumph forsaken, the vietnam war. and "phoenix and the birds of prey: counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in vietnam." marks articles have appeared in "the new york times," wall street journal, "washington post" and other publications and you may have seen his op-ed in "the new york times" and wall street journal in the last couple of months about afghanistan. mark is a harvard grad and a cambridge and received his phd from cambridge. his new book, "a question of command" which will be discussing today, counterinsurgency from the civil war in iraq. i can see that you guys are all very interested and we will get to it in just a bit. tom ricks who is near and dear to our hearts here at csis.

tom as you may know is one of the great military journalists of all times. he's been with the "washington post," before that he was with "the wall street journal" for 17 years and he's been part of two pulitzer prize-winning teams. one with the journal, one with the "washington post." of course, tom wrote his seminal book, the seminal book on iraq, the asko. when he was a writer in residence. we've always been very grateful for his guidance and his policy expertise. tom is now at the center for a new american security, a fantastic think tank, based here in washington and he is also a contributing editor of foreign policy magazine where he writes one of just the best blogs anywhere. it's called the best defense. and i urge that you go to foreign policy.com if you happen to take a look at a. of course, tom grew up in new york and afghanistan and is a graduate of yale.

question of command-- "a question of command: counterinsurgency from the civil war to iraq" present a wide range of history of counterinsurgency from the civil war and reconstruction to afghanistan and iraq making it really one of the most timely books out there today. through a series of case studies mark identifies the 10 critical attributes of counterinsurgency leadership and reveals why these attributes have been much more prevalent in some organizations than others. mark also points out the u.s. military and american allies in afghanistan and iraq should revamp their personnel systems in order to celebrate more individuals with those kind of attribute. without i would like to introduce dr. moyar who will deliver some comments. [applause] >> thank you, andrew, very much for that kind introduction. and thanks to csis for hosting this event.

thanks to comrades were offering to discuss this talk today. as was mentioned this is really perfect timing for a book on the subject. and it's not just because the interest in blue boy have started to wane, but in fact we do stand at a crossroads in afghanistan and we face problems there which i think are at their core questions of leadership that i think also the solutions to those problems will probably have a lot to do with leadership. i'm going to first talk a little bit about how i came about writing this book. now i'm going to go into detail on some of the points in the book that i think are particularly relevant that as we think about how we move forward in afghanistan. i arrived at the u.s. marine corps university in the middle of 2004, and like most recent

phd's, my interest were somewhat narrow. i have been working on the vietnam war for quite some time. but coming in there, we began an overhaul of the curriculum that involved putting much more emphasis on to counterinsurgency because we had a lot of new marines coming in from iraq, the new director who came in and actually served in the first battle of falluja where the one where american marines went and and were stopped halfway. and i was put in charge of a course that focused on counterinsurgency and looked particularly at foreign cultures, and interagency operations. in order to do that i had to go through the outside my comfort zone and look at a lot of other insurgency that it wasn't all that familiar with. and ended up for the course picking a lot of the cases that actually appear in the book. so we tested some of them, found some work better than others. and i've include the ones that i think are most helpful.

in the course of teaching this, i got to talk to lots of marines. would also have a lot of army, air force, navy civilian international students. and it was really an eye-opening experience. in the course of putting together this course in teaching it, i came to the conclusion that we were not teaching them in many cases everything that we ought to be doing. and i had reached a similar conclusion about vietnam from working on that. if you look at the literature on the vietnam war, and many of these other wars, a lot of it more written for academics than for practitioners of counterinsurgency. i think there is an inordinate amount of strategy on abstracts and theories and i think a lot of times, far too much effort is spent on doing things like that finding terms. so i wanted to do something that was really great use to the practitioner.

the thing that ultimately pushed me into stopping work on vietnam to do this book was the outbreak in violence in iraq after the armies in 2006. you probably remember seeing the images of dead corpses in baghdad street, dozens of them every night. american casualties going way up. so that was what finally inspired me to get cracking on a question of command. the book is largely historic low, although i mention i'm a historian. so there are nine historical cases. the last two being iraq and afghanistan up to 2008. it does draw some general lessons from those various cases, although i point out repeatedly that counterinsurgency there are very few instruments that will work in all cases. so an important part of the leadership is being able to figure out when you can use those particular methods. the first case i'm going to talk

about is the malayan emergency of 1948 to 1960. and i'm going to start in the middle of that in october 6 of 1951. go on that date the british high commissioner, sir henry, decided to take a trip to fraser's hill which is about 65 miles outside the capital city. he went in a four vehicle convoy but on the way, two of the vehicles had to stop for technical reasons. but they pressed on. and when they came to a turn in the road where they had to almost come to a stop, their vehicles were ambushed by 38 guerrillas. his wife stayed in the car. you decide to try to make a run for it, and was shot down, shot dead. and this was catastrophic loss for the counterinsurgency. at that time, but leah was still a british colony, and so this was a supreme authority in the

country, being killed in an ambush by the emmy. the war was already going against them. so it seemed like things just could not get any worse and malaya. something very important happened just a few weeks later, and that was that winston churchill returned to position of prime minister after elections in britain. and churchill being a man with a keen eye for talent, selected search or old camper to go out and take command of the counterinsurgency. and everyone knows that templer came in within a matter of months and turn the counterinsurgency around here by the time he left, 28 months later, the counterinsurgency were on the road to victory. the question of how he did it is much less well understood. and there's a common argument that what he really did was that he codified some best practices,

put them into a counterinsurgency manual, and the distribution of this manual helped them figure out how to defeat the enemy. in fact, you'll see that interpretation in the army marine corps counterinsurgency manual, 324, and part of the reason that manual was written because of this belief that templer's manual had been the be all, and all and malaya. i did some digging into that and i found that interpretation was not correct. if you look at the strategy, they do something called a bridge plan to the bridge plan had been in effect since 1950, and the tactics they used were not any different. they had in previous years developed some tactics based heavily on what had been learned in burma and southern africa. so how was it that he was able to use strategy and tactics that there've in the past in order to achieve success in the