Waging Insurgent Warfare

An analysis of insurgent warfare, looking at factors that contribute to insurgency.

In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and makes military victory possible. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites. Hazelton offers new analyses of five historical cases frequently held up as examples of the effectiveness of good governance in ending rebellions—the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and the Salvadoran Civil War—to show that, although unpalatable, it was really brutal repression and bribery that brought each conflict to an end. By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.

The Ethics of Insurgency explains how guerrillas who pursue national self-determination may justly utilize many unlawful practices of war.

Far from being an anachronism, much less a kit-bag of techniques, people’s war raises what has always been present in military history, irregular warfare, and fuses it symbiotically with what has likewise always been present politically, rebellion and the effort to seize power. The result is a strategic approach for waging revolutionary warfare, the effort “to make a revolution.” Voluntarism is wedded to the exploitation of structural contradiction through the building of a new world to challenge the existing world, through formation of a counterstate within the state in order ultimately to destroy and supplant the latter. This is a process of far greater moment than implied by the label “guerrilla warfare” so often applied to what Mao and others were about. This volume deals with the continuing importance of Maoist and post-Maoist concepts of people’s war. Drawing on a range of examples that include Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan, the collection shows that the study of people’s war is not just an historical curiosity but vital to the understanding of contemporary insurgent and terrorist movements. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Small Wars & Insurgencies.

In Resisting Rebellion, Anthony James Joes explores insurgencies ranging across five continents and spanning more than two centuries. Analyzing examples from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, he identifies recurrent patterns and offers useful lessons for future policymakers. Insurgencies arise from many sources of discontent, including foreign occupation, fraudulent elections, and religious persecution, but they also stem from ethnic hostilities, the aspirations of would-be elites, and traditions of political violence. Because insurgency is as much a political phenomenon as a military one, effective counterinsurgency requires a thorough understanding of the insurgents' motives and sources of support. Clear political aims must guide military action if a counterinsurgency is to be successful and prepare a lasting reconciliation within a deeply fragmented society. The most successful counterinsurgency campaign undertaken by the United States was the one against Philippine insurgents following the Spanish-American War. But even more instructive than successful counterinsurgencies are the persistent patterns of errors revealed by Joes's comparative study. Instances include the indiscriminate destructiveness displayed by the Japanese in China and the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the torture of suspected Muslim terrorists by members of the French Army in Algeria. Joes's comprehensive twofold approach to counterinsurgency is easily applied to the U.S. The first element, developing the strategic basis for victory, emphasizes creating a peaceful path to the redress of legitimate grievances, committing sufficient troops to the counterinsurgent operation, and isolating the conflict area from outside aid. The second element aims at marginalizing the insurgents and includes fair conduct toward civilians and prisoners, systematic intelligence gathering, depriving insurgents of weapons and food, separating insurgent leaders from their followers, and offering amnesty to all but the most incorrigible. Providing valuable insights into a world of conflict, Resisting Rebellion is a thorough and readable exploration of successes and failures in counterinsurgency's long history and a strategy for the future.

This edited volume focuses on India's experiences waging counterinsurgency campaigns since its independence in 1947. Filling a clear gap in the literature, the book traces and assess the origins, evolution and current state of India's counterinsurgency strategies and capabilities, focusing on key counterinsurgency campaigns waged by India within and outside its territory. It also analyzes the development of Indian doctrine on counterinsurgency, and locates this within the overall ebb and flow of India's defense and security policies. The central argument is that counterinsurgency has been an integral part of India's overall security policy and can thereby impart much to political and military leaders in other states. Since its emergence from British colonialism, India's defence policies have not merely sought to protect and preserve India's inherited colonial borders from threats by rival states, but have also sought to prevent and suppress secessionist movements. In countering insurgencies, the Indian state has fashioned strategies that seek to repress militarily any secessionist movement, while simultaneously forging a range of civilian administrative and institutional arrangements that attempt to address the grievances of disaffected populations. The book highlights key strategic and tactical innovations that the Indian Army and security forces made to deal with a range of insurgent movements. Simultaneously, it also examines how the civilian-military nexus enabled India's policy makers to utilize existing, and formulate novel, institutional means to address extant political grievances. India has been most successful where it has managed to use calibrated force, obtained the trust of much of the aggrieved population and made persuasive commitments to political and institutional reform. Examination of these elements of India's counterinsurgency performance can be compared to counterinsurgency doctrine developed by other countries, including the United States, and thus yield comparative policy prescriptions and recommendations that can be applied to other counterinsurgency contexts. This book will be of great interest to students of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare, Indian politics, Asian Security Studies and Strategic Studies in general.

A Systematic, Comprehensive, And Straightforward Book That Analyse And Compares Insurgencies And Terrorist Movements. It Covers Activity That Has Since Occurred In Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, China, Burma, Iraq, Sudan, The Philippines, Colombia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, And Elsewhere And Highlights The New Tactics And Weapons Used By Insurgent Groups Including Al Qaida - And Threatened. Author Bard E. O'Neill, The Director Of Studies Of Insurgencies And Revolution At The National War College, Addresses Insurgencies With Respect To Ultimate Goals, Strategies, Organization, The Role And Means Of Acquiring Popular Support, Causes And Effects Of Disunity, Types Of External Support, And Government Responses. To Suppress Terrorism, To Undermine Terrorism'S Ideological Support, And To Win The War Of Ideas, A National Security Expert Needs Some Of The Better Ideas Found In This Book. Thus The Book Is Also An Ideal Textbook For Soldiers, Analysts, Students, And Scholars Who Seek A Better Understanding Of Contemporary Conflicts. ( Published In Collaboration With Potomac Books, Inc. Formerly Brassey S, Inc.)

Transnational politics, modern communications, and access to the tools of warfare have combined to give political movements the ability to wage global war to promote their own agendas, a development that has changed the face of both politics and warfare. Fowler examines current aspects of conducting war, including mobilization, funding, training, fighting, and intelligence to demonstrate how they are accessible to anyone and are well-suited to waging insurgency efforts in many places around the world. Such efforts force governments to deal with unforeseen enemies who violently advance their agendas in a quest for increased power and authority. Because global insurgents, such as al Qaeda, build more direct connections between politics and the use of force, confronting them requires solutions that emphasize politics as much as the use of force. National governments must unite to seek cooperative solutions to issues that affect them. The implications of the adoption of such strategies by groups with varied agendas will undoubtedly change foreign policy planning for decades to come.