COIN in a Tribal Society: an interview with William S. “Mac” McCallister
By Steven Pressfield | Published: December 28, 2009
William S. “Mac” McCallister is a retired military officer, a U.S. Army major, who served in numerous special operations assignments specializing in civil-military, psychological and information operations, with focuses in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
I was introduced to Mac a few weeks ago, when he forwarded to Maj. Jim Gant his paper “COIN and Irregular Warfare in a Tribal Society,” which he’d written in 2007, and which focuses on Iraq. Mac was in Iraq around the same time Maj. Gant was in Afghanistan. Both were working with tribes, attempting to figure out what works in the real world and what doesn’t. Since his return, Mac has continued publishing work focused upon military affairs and tribal warfare. He has guest-lectured at Johns Hopkins University and presented numerous papers at academic and government- sponsored conferences such as the Watson Institute, Brown University; Department of the Navy Science and Technology and DARPA; and the Central Intelligence Agency. He has appeared as a guest on National Public Radio (NPR) and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal. As a senior consultant for Applied Knowledge International (AKI), he continues to study current events in Iraq and Afghanistan in tribal terms, including the tribal art of war and peace, tribal mediation processes, development of tribal centers of power, and tribal influence in political developments. He has applied his study of tribal culture in assessing reconstruction efforts, as well as insurgency and counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror. (more…)
