I bought the working paper written by Jim Crider on the Surge through Amazon. It is a small glossy pamphlet that contains Crider's essay on his experiences in Iraq during the Surge. One of the most interesting aspects of Iraq and the US Military is how so many commanders around the same time recognized that what they were doing was not working and started to adopt mechanisms of counter-insurgency in order to stabilize the region and remove ideological insurgents from the battlefield - which in Iraq's case was the urban environment.

After the first few weeks of operating in Doura neighbourhood Crider's Regiment questioned all their assumption and procedures which were not working. The divided the insurgents into two categories. The ideological insurgent and the accidental one (following Kilcullen's thesis). Crider writes:

The first is the insurgent motivated by ideology. This is the most dangerous group because no amount of goodwill or aggressive action will cause him to alter his way of thinking. We found this group to be rather small in our area of operations.

The second category of insurgent is made up of those who found themselves caught up in the insurgency but lacked the a true philosophical tie to the violent ideologues.

Some were often local thugs who decided to take advantage of the chaos to seize power. Others were motivated to participate due to lack of economic opportunity.

Crider continues:

Therefore, many insurgents were simply people with a legitimate grievance caught up in a chaotic situation, not hardcore members of Al Queda.

Part of the strategy of the surge was to remove the conditions that led to the accidental guerrillas. This meant the military acting more like a police force than a blitzkrieg force. Crider set up permanent bases in the neighbourhood and conducted a census. Both led to increased intelligence and the ideological insurgents were either isolated, hamstrung, or caught. The regiment also began to act in the mechanism of a state and provide positive public benefits such as business grants, supplying propane gas - as opposed to the black market - and enabled the local government's trash collection to run.