And it starts at home…

…it has the unfortunate acronym of CIA, no matter where you put a hyphen e.g. CI-A, C-IA, -CIA, CIA-, whatever, etc…CIA is CIA is CIA wherever you are…so what? Just don’t have your CIA handbook in your back pocket when backpacking through countries ending in -stan…

Some call it COIN, the Marines called it Countering Irregular Threats (CIT), and the Brits call it Countering Irregular Activity (CI-A, note the hyphen, apparently it is important, like anyone cares – who is going to say CI Hyphen A? It’s CIA, get over it!). CIT and CIA take a broader focus than focusing purely on insurgency. The essence of CIA is that any activity that affects the regularity and stability of our normality is irregular. The key to countering irregular activity is the Comprehensive Approach – identifying the appropriate mix of measures from all of those available from across Clausewitz’s Trinity:

• Government/leadership. Government agencies and ministries, incentives for programmes, supporting legislation.

• ‘The People‘. The community, including the business community, aid and welfare organisations, churches and agencies, the media.

• The action arm. Military or police involvement, the threat or application of force and occupation.

I was just over at Crimestoppers and read this blog piece about a BMX park in Papakura being abandoned by the community. The community was unable to manage criminal activity there by a group of 8-11 year olds. 8-11 years old? Why not? In other parts of the world, they’d probably have their own AK-47s by now…So what?

Well, here’s the so what: this type of activity destabilises our communities. If unchecked, these little thugs just go on to become bigger thugs. Without intervention, this is NOT something that they will grow out of. The Trinity in and around Papakura needs to get together, decide what the underlying real issues are and do something about it. And here’s a heads-up, the solution is unlikely to be one that can be enforced by the Police…curfews etc only cover the symptoms…what this requires is a comprehensive approach within the community otherwise it might as well withdraw into its walled compounds and abandon Papakura to the Cursed Earth…