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The Evolution of Irregular War Insurgents and Guerrillas From Akkadi Akkadiaa to Afghanistan By Max Boo Boott Ja n u a r y 5 , 2 0 1 3 A rt icl e Su m m ar y an d A u t h or Bi ogr ap h y
Holdin g do wn t he fo rt: in Chila s,
British I ndia , 1 898. (Getty Images / Hulton Archive). Pundits and the the press too often treat terror ism and guerrilla tactics as something new, new, a departure from old-fashioned ways of war. But nothing could be further from the truth. Thro Thro ughout ugho ut most most of our species' long and bloody slog, warfare has primarily been carried out by bands of loosely organized, illdisciplined, and lightly lightly armed v olunte olu nte e rs who disda disdained open bat open bat tle tl e in favo favo r of stea lthy raids ra ids and ambushes: the strategies of both tribal warriors and modern guerrillas and terror ists. In fact, conventional warfare is the relatively recent invention. It was first made possible after 10,000 BC by the dev elopment of agricultural societies, which produc ed enough surplus wealth and population to allow for the creatio n of specially designed fortifications and weapons (and the professionals to o perate them). The first genuine genuine armies -- commanded by a strict hierarchy , compo sed of trained soldiers, disciplined with threats of punishment -- arose after 31 00 BC in Egypt Egypt and Meso potamia. But the process o f state formation and, with it, it, army formation too k considerably lo nger in most of the world. In some places, states emerged o nly in the past century , and their ability ability to c arry out such basic functions as maintaining an army re mains tenuous at best. Considering how how long humans have bee n roaming the earth, the era of what we n ow t hink o f as c onv ent ion al c on flict r epr ese nts t he m er e b link o f an ey e. Nonetheless, since at least the days of the Greeks and the Romans, Romans, obser ve rs have be littled irregular war fare . Weste rn so ldie rs a nd sc hol ars hav e te nde d to v iew i t as u nman ly , ev en b arb ari c. I t's not har d to see why : guerillas, in in the words o f the British British historian John Keegan, are "cruel "cruel to the weak and cowardly in the face of the brav e" -- precisely the oppo site of what professional soldiers are taught to b e. Many scholars have even claimed that guerrilla raids are not true warfare. This view comes to see m a bit ironic when one considers the fact that throughout history , irregular war fare has b ee n co nsis ten tly dea dlie r tha n its c onv ent ion al c ou sin -- no t in to tal n umb er s kille d, sin ce tribal societies are tiny c ompared with urban civ ilizations, ilizations, but in the percentage killed. The The ave rage tribal society loses 0.5 percent of its population in combat every year. In the United States, that would translate translate into 1.5 million million deaths, deaths, or 500 September September 1 1 attacks attacks a y ear. Archaeological evidence co nfirms nfirms that such losses are not a modern anomaly. The origins of guerilla warfare are lost in the
By manufacturing manufacturing and distributing countless weapons, the Europeans ensured that their twentieth-century opponents were far better armed than their predecessors had been.
swamps of prehistory , but the kinds of foes that guerrillas have faced have changed over the centuries. Before about 3 000 BC, BC, tribal guerrillas fought exclusively against other tribal guerrillas. Al tho ugh t hat t y pe o f fighting c ont inue d afte r 300 0 BC, BC, it was supplemented and sometimes supplanted by warfare pitting tribes and rebels
against newly formed states. These co nflicts nflicts were, in a sense, the wo rld's rld's first insurgencies and
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counter insurgencies. Every gre at empire of antiquity, starting with the first on record, the A kkadian empire, in ancient Mesopotamia, was dev iled by nomadic guerrillas, although the term "guerrilla" would not be coined for millennia to c ome. ("Guerrilla," literally meaning "small war," dates to the Spanish resistance against Napoleon, from 1808 to 1814.) In modern times, the same old guerr illa tactics have been married to ideological agendas, something that was u tte rly lac king am on g the apo litic al (an d illit er ate ) trib al wa rr ior s o f old. Of cour se, the pre cis e nature of the ideological agendas being fought for has changed ov er the ye ars, from liberalism and nationalism (the cri de coe ur of guerrilla fighters from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century ), to socialism and nationalism (which inspired guerrillas between the late nineteenth century and the late twentieth century), to jihadist extre mism today. A ll the while, guerrilla and terrorist warfare have remained as ubiquitous and deadly as ever. THE GUERRILLA PARADOX The success of var ious raiders in attacking and conquering states from ancient Rome to medieval China gave r ise to what one histor ian has called "the nomad parado x." "In the history of warfare, it has generally be en th e c ase that milit ary sup er ior ity lies with t he w eal thie st s tate s and tho se w ith th e mo st d ev elo ped administrations," the historian Hugh Kennedy wrote in Mong ols , Huns, a nd V ikings. Yet going back to the days of Mesopotamia, nomads often managed to bring down far richer and more advanced empires. Kennedy ex plains this seeming contradiction by citing all the military advantages nomad s enjoye d: they wer e mo re m ob ile, e v er y adu lt ma le wa s a wa rr ior , and the ir le ade rs w er e se lec ted prim ari ly for the ir war -makin g pro wes s. By co ntr ast , he n ot es, set tled so cie tie s app oin ted co mma nde rs b ase d o n po litic al consideratio ns and drafted as so ldiers farmers with scant martial skills. Nomads' military advantages see m to have pe rsisted among guerrillas in the modern wor ld; even in the last two centuries, during which states became far more po werful than in the ancient or the mediev al period, guer rillas often managed to humble them. Think of the tribes of Afghanistan, which frustrated the United Kingdom, the Sov iet Union, and the United States. Kennedy's "nomad parado x" is really a guerrilla paradox , and it asks how and why the weak seem to so freque ntly defeat the strong. The answer lies largely in the use o f hit-and-run tactics, taking advantage of mobility and surp rise to make it difficult for the stronger state to bring its full weight to bear. Guerrillas often present a further paradox: even the most successful raiders have been prone to switch to conventional tactics once they achieve great military success. The Mongols eventually turned into a semiregular army under Genghis Khan, and the Arabs underwent a similar transformation. They fought in traditional Bedouin style while spreading I slam across the Middle East in the century after Muhammad's death, in 632. But their conquests led to the c reation of the Umayy ad and Abbassid caliphates, two o f the greatest states of the medieval wor ld, which were defended by co nventional forces. The Turkish empire, too, arose out of the raiding culture of the steppes but built a formidable conventional army, complete with h ighly disc ipline d sla v e-s old ier s, th e ja niss arie s. The new Ottom an ar my co nqu er ed Co nsta ntino ple in a famous siege in 1453 and, within less than a century, adv anced to the gates of Vienna. Why d id no mad s so ade pt a t gue rr illa t ac tic s re so rt t o c onv ent ion al wa rfar e? Fo r o ne t hing, t heir tar get s be ca me b igge r, r eq uir ing a s hift in ta ct ics . Mo unte d ar che rs c ou ld no t hav e ta ken Co nsta ntino ple ; that feat required the mechanics of a prope r military, including a battery of 69 cannons, two of which were 27 feet long and fired stone balls that weighed more than half a ton. Nor were fast-moving tribal fighters of much use in defending, administering, and policing newly conqu ered states. Those tasks, too, requ ired a professional standing army. A further factor dictated the tra nsformation of nomads into regulars: the style o f fighting practiced by mounted arc hers was so difficult and demanding that it required c onstant practice from c hildhood on for an archer to maintain proficiency . Once nomads began living among more sedentary people, they "easily lost their supe rior individual talents and unit cohesion," write the historians Mesut Uyar and Edward Erickson in A Mil itary Histo ry o f the Ott om ans. This was a tradeoff that most of them were happy to make. A settled life was much easier -- and safer. The nomads' achieve ments, although great, were mostly fleeting: with the exce ption of the Arabs, the Turks, the Moguls, and the Manchu, who blended into settled societies, no mads could no t build lasting institutions. Nomadic empires gener ally crumbled after a generation o r two. Former nomads who se ttled down found themselves, somewhat ironically, beset by fresh waves of nomads and other guerrillas. Such was t he fat e o f the Ma nch u, wh o, a s the ru ler s o f China, fo ught o ff the Dzunga r (o r we ste rn Mo ngo ls) in t he eighteenth century and tried to fight off the Taiping rebels in the deadliest war o f the nineteenth century. The Taipings, in turn, tried to dev elop mor e powerful armies of their own, blurring the distinction be twe en r egu lar and ir re gula r c onflic t. Sinc e th en, m any civ il war s, inc ludi ng the one the Unite d Stat es fought between 1861 and 1865, have featured both kinds of combat. IRREGULARS I N THE AGE OF REA SON The dividing line betwee n regular and irregular warfare grew mo re distinct with the spread of standing national armies after the Thirty Y ears' War. That process, which went hand in hand with the growth of nation-states, came to a head in the second half of the seventeenth century . The period saw the proliferation of barracks to house so ldiers, drillmasters to train them, professional officers to lead them,
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logistical service s to supply them, factories to c lothe and equip them, and hospitals and retirement homes to take care of them. By the eighteenth century, Western warfare had reached sty lized heights seldom seen before o r since, with m ona rc hic al ar mies fighting in ro ughl y s imila r st y les and a bid ing b y r ou ghly simila r r ule s of conduc t. No change was more important than the adoption o f standardized uniforms, which meant that the difference between so ldiers and civilians could b e glimpsed in an instant. Fighters who insisted on making war without uniforms therefore became mo re easily distinguished. They we re subject to prosec ution as bandits rather than treated as soldiers entitled to the protec tions of the emerging laws of war . But irregulars soo n returned to pro minence, during the War of the Austrian Succession (17 40-48), a conflict pitting Austria, Great Britain, Hanove r, Hesse, and the Netherlands against Bavaria, France, Prussia, Saxo ny, and Spain. Austria lost the war's early battles, allowing foreign troops to oc cupy a substantial portion of its territory. But Austria managed a come back thanks to so-called wild men it mustered from the fringes of its empire: hussars from Hungary , pandours from Croatia, and other Christians from the Balkans who had been fighting the Turks for centuries. Frederick the Great and other generals at first denounced the raider s as "savages." But as soo n as they saw the irregulars' effectiveness, they copied the Austrian ex ample. By the 17 7 0s, light troops (skirmishers lacking heavy weapo ns and armor who did not stand in the main battle line) made up 20 perce nt of most European armies. In North America, the British army came increasingly to rely o n a variety of light infantry. Prec ursors to to day's special forces -- troops trained in guerrilla tactics who are nonetheless still more disciplined than stateless fighters -- these "rangers" were raised for "wood serv ice," or irregular comb at, against French co lonial troops and their native allies. One of the cherished myths of Ame rican history is that plucky Y ankees won independence from Great Britain by picking off befuddled redco ats too dense to deviate from ritualistic parade-ground warfare. That is an exaggeration. By the time the Revolution bro ke out, in 17 7 5, the British were well ver sed in irregular warfare and were counter ing it in Europe, the Caribbean, and North Amer ica. Redcoats certainly knew enough to b reak ranks and seek cove r in battle when possible, rather than, in the words of one historian, "remaining inert and v ulnerable to enemy fire." The British army had a different problem: much like the modern U.S. Army pre-Iraq, it had forgotten most of the lessons of irregular war learned a generation before. A nd the American re bels used a more so phisticated form of irregular warfare than the French backwoodsmen and Native American warriors whom the redcoats had gotten used to fighting. The spread of literacy and printed boo ks allowed the American insurgents to appeal for popular suppo rt, thereby elevating the role of propaganda and psychological warfare. It is appropriate that the term "public opinion" first appeared in print in 17 7 6, for the American re bels won independence in large part by app eal ing to the Br itish e lec to rat e wit h do cu men ts s uc h as Tho mas P aine 's pamp hlet Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence . In fact, the outco me of the Revo lution was really decided in 17 82, whe n the British Hous e o f Commo ns v ot ed b y a nar ro w mar gin to disc ont inue offen siv e o pe rat ion s. The British could hav e kept fighting after that date; they co uld have r aised fresh armies eve n after the defeat at Yo rktown in 17 81. But not after they had lost the support of parliament. Most of the revo lutionaries who followed were more e xtre me in their methods and beliefs than the A mer ica n re be ls, b ut, w het her left o r r ight, m any of th em c op ied t he A mer ica ns' skillful m anip ulat ion of public opinion. The Greeks in the 1820s, the Cubans in the 1890s, and the Algerians in the 1950 s all enjoy ed notable succ ess mobilizing foreign opinion to help win their independence. In Greece and Cuba, the anti-imperialists won by highlighting the colonies' suffering to spur what would today be c alled humanitarian interventions by Western powers. Liberal insurgents scored their most impressiv e victo ries in the New World. With a few exceptions, by 1825, the European colonial powers had been defeated in the Americas. European revolts at home, such as that of the Chartists in the United Kingdom and that of the Decembrists in Russia, were less suc cessful. Still, by the turn of the twentieth century , most of Europe and North A merica was mov ing in a more liberal direction -- even those absolute monarc hies, such as Austria, Germany, and Russia, that remained as such were making greater efforts to appease and direct popular sentiment. WARS THAT WEREN'T A t the sam e tim e, Wes ter n sta tes wer e e x ten ding t heir rul e ac ro ss mu ch o f the r est of th e wo rld in a decidedly illiberal fashion. The process of colonization and resistance would do much to shape the modern wo rld and would give rise to the mo st influential counterinsurgency doctrine o f all time: the "oil spot" theory , coined by the French marshal Hubert Ly autey, who in fin-de-siècle Indo china, Madagascar, and Moroc co anticipated the "population-centric" doctrine that U.S. forces implemented in Afghanistan and Iraq in the twenty-first century. It involved slowly extending army posts and settlements, like a spreading oil spot, until indigenous resistance was cru shed, while also trying to addr ess locals' political and economic co ncerns. The people of Asia and Africa resisted the colonists' advance as best they could. Sometimes, they were able to force se rious setbac ks; a famous example was the 1 842 British retreat from Kabul. But these were
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only temporary reversals in the inexorable westernization of the world. By 1914, Europeans and their offspring contro lled 84 percent of the world's landmass, up from 35 perce nt in 1800. That non-Europeans did not hav e more suc cess in preserv ing their independence was due in large measure to Europe's growing advantages in military te chnology and technique. But it also owed something to the fact that most non-Europeans did not ado pt strategies that made the be st use of their limited resource s. Instead o f attempting to engage in guerrilla warfare -- which, even if unsuccessful, might have stave d off ultimate defeat for y ears, if not decades, and inflicted considerab le costs on the invaders -- most non-Europeans fought precisely as the Europeans wanted them to, that is to say, in conventional fashion. Weste rne rs t hou ght t hat m os t o f the a re as th ey co nqu er ed w er e "primit iv e" and "bac kwar d," but i n a sense, they were too advanced for their own good. By the time Europeans marched into Asia and Africa, much of those c ontinents had fallen under the sway of native re gimes with standing armies, such as the Zulu empire in southern A frica and the Maratha empire in India. Their rulers naturally looked to those standing armies for pro tection, ty pically esche wing the sort of tribal tactics (a primitive form of guerrilla war fare ) pra ct ice d by the ir an ce sto rs. In m os t c ase s, th e de cis ion s qu ickl y bac kfire d. When n ativ e ru ler s did try to correct course, their impulse was usually to make their armies even more conventional by hiring European adv isers and buying European arms. The reproduc tions were seldom as goo d as the originals, however, and their inferiority was brutally exposed in battle. Why d id so few ind igen ou s re gime s re so rt t o gu er rilla tac tic s? In p art , be ca use no n-West er ner s had little idea of the combat powe r of Western armies until it was too late. Too many indigenous empire builders in the dev eloping world imagined that the tactics they had used to co nquer local tribes wo uld work against the white invaders as well. Even if those rulers had wanted to ignite insurgencies, moreov er, the ideological fuel was generally lacking, save in A lgeria, Chechny a and Dagestan, and a few other areas whe re Muslim re be ls wa ged pro lon ged war s of r esi sta nce agai nst Eur op ean co lon ists . Often, th e su bje ct s of these regimes resented the indigenous rulers as much as, if not more than, the European inv aders. Nationalism, a relatively recent invention, had not yet spread to those lands. European soldiers in "small wars" were helped by the fact that most o f the fighting occurr ed on the periphery of their empires in Asia and A frica against enemies that were considere d "uncivilized" and therefore, under the European code of conduct, could be fought with unrestrained ferocity. As late as the 193 0s, the British officer and nov elist John Masters wrote that on the no rthwest frontier of India (today 's Pakistan), Pashtun warriors "would usually castrate and behead" captives, whereas the British "took few prisoners at any time, and very few indeed if there was no Po litical Agent about" -- they simply killed those they captured. The ve ry suc cess of the imperial armies meant that future battles would take place with in imp er ial b ou nda rie s, ho wev er , and tha t the y wou ld be , as t he hi sto rian Thom as Mo cka itis w ro te in British Co unte rinsu rgen cy , "considered c ivil unrest rather than war." Ac cord ingly, imperial troops in the future would find their actions circumsc ribed by law and public opinion in ways that they had not been in the nineteenth century. The civil unrest of the twentieth century was harder to d eal with for other reasons as well. By setting up schoo ls and newspapers that promulgated Western ideas such as nationalism and Marxism, Western administrators eventually spurred widespread resistance to their own rule. And by manufacturing and distributing countless weapons, from TNT to the AK-47 , all over the wor ld, the Europeans ensure d that their twentieth-century opponents were far better armed than their predecessors had been. THE SUN SETS ON THE BRITISH EMPIRE To understand why dec olonization swept the world in the late 1940s and why anti-Western guerrillas and terror ists fared so well during that period, it is vital to underscor e how weak the two biggest colonial powers were by then. Even if France and the United Kingdom had been determined to hold on to all their overseas possessions after 1945, they would have been hard-pressed to do so. Both were essentially ba nkru pt a nd c ou ld no t c om for tab ly fight a p ro lon ged co unte rins urg enc y -- es pe cia lly no t in th e fac e o f hostility from the rising superpowers. The Soviets, and later the Chinese, were always rea dy to pr ov ide arms, training, and financing to national liberation move ments of a Marxist bent. Most of the decolonization proc ess was relatively peaceful. Where the British did face deter mined opposition, as in India and Palestine, it did not take much to persuade them to leav e. London generally only fought to hold on to a few bases, such as Cyprus and A den, that it deemed to be of strategic significance or, as in Malaya and Kenya, to prevent a takeover by Communists or other extremists. When the British did choose to fight, they did so skillfully and successfully; their counter insurgency re cord is be tte r th an th at o f the Fr enc h dur ing the sam e pe rio d, an d so me o f their ca mpa igns, not abl y that in Malaya, are still studied by military strategists. The incidence of guerrilla warfare and terrorism did not decline with the demise of the European empires. On the contrary , the years b etween 195 9 and 197 9 -- from Fidel Castro's takeove r in Cuba to the Sandinistas' takeov er in Nicaragua -- were, if anything, the golden age of leftist insurgency. There remained a few colo nial wars and a larger number of essentially ethnic wars (in Congo, East Timor, and Nigeria's Biafra region) fought to determine the nature o f postcolonial states, but the p rimary dr iver was
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socialist ideology . Radicals who styled themselves as the nex t Mao, Ho, Fidel, or Che took up Kalashnikovs to wage ru ral guerrilla warfare and urban terro rism. Never before or since has the glamour and prestige of irregular warrior s been higher, as seen in the ubiquity of the artist Alberto Korda's famous photograph o f Che Guevara, which still adorns T-shirts and posters. The success of rev olutionaries abroad resounded among the Western radicals of the 1960s, who were discontented with their own societies and imagined that they, too, c ould ov erthrow the establishment. Tom Wolfe captured the moment in his famous 1 97 0 essay "Radical Chic," which described in ex cruciating detail a party thrown by the co mpo ser Leo nar d Bern ste in in his swa nk New Y or k apa rtm ent fo r a gr ou p o f Black Pant her s, o ne of myriad terrorist groups of a period whose fame far exceeded its ability to achieve its goals. Some governments had considerable success in suppressing insurgent movements. The 1960s saw the publication o f influential manuals such as Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, by the French officer (and Algeria v eteran) David Galula, and Defeati ng Co mmu nist I nsurg enc y, by the British official Sir Rober t Thompson, a suave vete ran of Malaya and V ietnam. Galula, Thompson, and other ex perts reache d a remarkable degree o f agreement that insurgencies co uld not be fought like conv entional wars. The fundamental principle that set co unterinsurgency apart was the use o f "the minimum of fire." Meanwhile, a "soldier must be prepared to beco me a propagandist, a soc ial worker, a civil engineer, a schoo lteacher, a nurse, a boy scout," Galula wrote. It was one thing to generate such hard-won lessons. A ltogether more d ifficult was to get them accepted by milit ary offic er s who se i dea l re main ed t he a rmo re d bli tzkr ieg a nd wh o ha d no thing but co nte mpt for lightly ar med ragtag fighters. Western militaries marched into the nex t few decades still focused on fighting a mirror-image foe. When the United States had to c onfront a guerrilla threat in V ietnam, William Westm or ela nd, t he c om man der of U.S. o pe rat ion s the re , for mula ted an o v er whe lming ly co nv ent ion al response that expended lots of firepower and destroyed lives on both sides but did not produce v ictory. LEFT OUT Like every one else, guerrillas and terrorists are subjec t to popular moo ds and intellectual fads. By the 1980s, as memories of colonialism faded, as the excesses of postcolonial rulers became more apparent, and as the de sirability of capitalism was rev ived under U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, leftist move ments went into eclipse and the guerr illa mystique faded. Few bu t the mo st pu rb lind id eo log ue s co uld i magin e tha t the futur e wa s be ing b or n in imp ov er ishe d an d oppresse d Cambodia or Cuba. The end of the old regime in Mosco w and the gradual opening in Beijing had a more direc t impact on insurgent groups, too, by cutting off valuable so urces o f subsidies, arms, and training. The Marxist terro rist groups of the 197 0s, such as the Italian Red Brigades and the German Baader-Meinhof Gang, were nev er able to generate significant support b ases of their own and languished along with their foreign backers. Nationalist mov ements, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Irish Republican Army, fared better , although they were also hob bled by a decline in outside support. A ltho ugh le ftist in sur genc ies wer e o n the wane , ho wev er , gue rr illa wa rfar e an d te rr or ism ha rdl y disappeared. They simply assume d different forms as new militants motivate d by the o ldest grievance s of all -- race and religion -- shot their way into the he adlines. The transition from politically mo tivated to religiously motivated insurgencies was the product of decades, even centuries, of development. It could be tra ce d ba ck t o, a mo ng o the r thi ngs, t he wr iting s of th e Egy ptia n agit ato r Say y id Qutb in the 1 95 0s and 1960 s; the activ ities of Hasan al-Banna, who founded Egypt's Muslim Brotherho od in 1 928; and the prosely tizing of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who in the eighteenth century created the puritanical movement that would one day become the official theology of Saudi Arabia. But the epochal conseq uences o f these religious leaders' ideas did not seize the world's attention until the fateful fall of 197 9, when protester s occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The embassy takeov er had been organized by rad ica l univ er sity stu den ts, in clu ding t he fut ur e I ran ian p re side nt Mah mo ud A hmad inej ad, w ho want ed t o st rike a bl ow a t "the Gre at Sat an" and do mes tic sec ular ists . It was fo llo wed by the milita nt takeov er of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the ho liest shrine in Islam, and the burning of the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. And then, on December 24, 1 97 9, the Soviets marched into A fghanistan, thus inspiring the mobilization of a formidable force of holy guerrillas: the mujahideen. The threat from Islamist ex tremists, which had been building sub rosa for dec ades, burst into bloo dy v iew o n Sept emb er 1 1 , 20 01 , whe n al Qaed a sta ged the dea dlie st te rr or ist a tta ck o f all tim e. Pr ev iou s terror ist organizations, from the PLO to va rious anarchist groups, had limited the scale of their violence. A s the ter ro rism anal y st Bria n Jen kins wr ot e in t he 1 97 0s , "Terro ris m is th ea ter . . . . Te rr or ists want a lo t of people watching, not a lot o f people dead." Al Qaeda and its ilk rewrote that play boo k in the United States and Iraq. To defend itself, the United States and its allies erected a variety of defenses. Mostly, this involv ed improved security, police work, and intelligence gathering. Militaries played an important role, too, although seldom as central as in Afghanistan and Iraq -- countries whose gov ernments were toppled b y A mer ica n inv asio ns. I n sta tes with fun ct ion ing o r se mi-func tio ning go v er nme nts, suc h as t he Phi lipp ines and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. role was limited to prov iding training, weapons, intelligence, and other assistance to help those governments fight the extremists.
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Beyond the West's efforts against al Qaeda, popu lar protests in the Middle East have dealt ter rorist organizations another blow. The Arab Spring has prove d to be far more po tent an instrument of change than suicide bombings. Even before the death of Osama bin Laden, in 201 1, the Pew Global A ttitudes Project had rec orded a sharp dro p in those expr essing "confidence" in him: between 20 03 and 20 10 , the figure fell from 46 percent to 1 8 percent in Pakistan, from 59 perce nt to 25 perc ent in Indonesia, and from 56 percent to 1 4 percent in Jordan. Even a small minority is eno ugh to sustain a terrorist group, howev er, and al Qaeda has shown an impressive c apacity to regenerate itself. Its affiliates still operate from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, other Islamist groups co ntinue to show co nsiderable strength in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah holds sway in Lebano n, al Shabab bids for powe r in Somalia, Boko Haram adv ances in Nigeria, and two newer groups, A nsar Dine and the Mov ement for Unity and Jihad in West A frica, have taken contro l of northern Mali. Notwithstanding bin Laden's death and o ther setbacks to al Qaeda central, the war against Islamist terrorism is far from won. The 9/1 1 attacks serv e as a reminder that seeming security against an invisible army c an turn to vulnerab ility with shocking suddenness and that, unlike the more geogra phically restricte d insurgents of the past, international terror ist groups, such as al Qaeda, can strike almost anywhere. SMALL WARS, BIG LESSONS The long history of low-intensity co nflict rev eals not only how ub iquitous guerrilla warfare has been but also how o ften its importance has been ignored, thus se tting the stage for future humiliations at the hands of determined irregulars. The U.S. Army has a pa rticularly dismay ing record of failing to adapt to "small war s," desp ite i ts c on side rab le e x pe rie nc e fight ing Nat iv e A mer ica ns, Ph ilipp ine insurrectos, the V ietc on g, al Qae da, t he Tal iba n, an d num er ou s ot her irr egu lars . To a v oid simi lar c alam itie s in the futur e, today's soldiers and policymakers need to accurately appraise the strengths and weaknesses of insurgents. It is important neither to underestimate nor to ov erestimate the potenc y o f guerrilla warfare. Before 1945, since irregulars refused to engage in face-to-face battle, they were routinely underestimated. After 1945 , howev er, popular sentiment swung too far in the other direction, enshrining guerrillas as superhuman figures. The truth lies somewhere in between: insurgents have honed their craft since 1 945, bu t the y still l os e mo st o f the t ime. Their gro wing s uc ce ss is d ue t o t he sp re ad o f co mmu nic atio ns technology and the increasing influence o f public opinion. Both factors hav e sapped the will of states to engage in protracted counterinsurgencies, especially outside their own territories, and have heightened the ability of insurgents to surviv e eve n after suffering military setbac ks. In the fight against insurgents, conv entional tactics don't work. To defeat them, soldiers must focus not on chasing guerrillas but on sec uring the local population. Still, effective po pulation-centric counterinsurgency is not as touchy-feely as commonly supposed. It involves much more than winning "hearts and minds" -- a phrase inv ented by Sir Henry Clinton, a British general during the America n Revolution, and po pularized by Sir Gerald Templer, a general during the Malayan Emergency, in the late 1940s and 1950 s. The only way to gain control is to garrison troops 24 hours a day, seven days a week, among the civ ilians; periodic "sweep" or "cordon and sear ch" operations fail, eve n when conducte d by counter insurgents as cruel as the Nazis, because c ivilians know that the rebels will return the moment the soldiers leave. A ltho ugh c on tro l ca n be impo sed at gu npo int, it ca n be main tain ed o nly if the s ec uri ty for ce s hav e so me degree o f popular legitimacy . In year s past, it was not hard for foreign empires to gain the necessary legitimacy. But now, with nationalist sentiment having spread to ev ery cor ner of the world, foreign counter insurgents, such as the United States, face a tricky task, trying to buttress homegro wn regimes that can win the support o f their people and ye t will still coop erate with the United States. What ma kes c ou nte rins urg enc y a ll the mo re difficu lt is th at th er e ar e few q uic k v ict or ies i n this ty pe o f conflict. Since 1 7 7 5, the av erage insurgency has lasted seven years (and since 1945, it has lasted almost ten years). Attempts by either insurgents or counterinsurgents to short-circuit the process usually ba ckfir e. The Unite d State s tr ied to d o ju st th at in t he e arl y y ear s of b ot h the V ietn am War a nd th e I raq war by usin g its c onv ent ion al mig ht to hunt do wn gu er rilla s in a p ush fo r wha t Jo hn Pau l V ann, a famo us U.S. military adv iser in Vietnam, rightly decried as "fast, superficial results." It was o nly when the United States gave up hopes of a quick vic tory , ironically, that it started to get results, by implementing the tried-and-true tenets of population-centric counterinsurgency. In Vietnam, it was already too late, but in Iraq, the patient provision of security came just in time to avert an all-out civil war. The exper iences of the United States in Iraq in 200 7 -8, Israel in the West Bank during the second intifada, the British in Northern I reland, and Colombia in its ongoing fight against the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces o f Colombia) show that it is possible for demo cratic gov ernments to fight insurgents effectiv ely if they pay attention to what the U.S. military c alls "information operations" (also known as "propaganda" and "public relations") and implement some v ersion of a pop ulation-centric strategy . But these struggles also show that one should never enter into counterinsurgency lightly. Such wars are best avoided if possible. Even so, it is do ubtful that the United States will be able to av oid them in the future any mo re than it has in the past. Given the United States' demonstrations o f its mastery of co nventional co mbat in
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The Evolution of Irregular War | Foreig n Affair s
Iraq in 19 91 and 20 03, few adve rsaries in the future will be foolish enough to put tank armies in the desert against an American force . Future foes are unlikely, in other words, to repe at the mistake of nineteenth-century A sians and Africans who fought European inv aders in the preferred Western style. Guerrilla tactics, on the other hand, are proven effective, even against superpowers. In the future, irregulars might beco me deadlier still if they c an get their hands on a weapo n of mass destruction, espe cially a nuclear bo mb. If that were to happen, a small terrorist cell the size of a platoon might gain more killing capacity than the e ntire army o f a nonnuclear state. That is a sobering thought. It suggests that in the future, low-intensity c onflict could pose ev en greater pro blems for the world's leading powers than it has in the past -- and those problems were alre ady v exing enough. V ie w Th is A r ti cl e a s Mu lt ip le Pa ge s
Related ESSAY, JAN/FEB 2011
POSTSCRIPT, APRIL 9, 2009
ESSAY, MAR/APR 2012
Finish the Job
Obama's War
Paul D. Miller S i n c e 2 0 0 1 , A f g h a n i s t a n 's e c on o m y h a s g r o w n a t a n impressive rate and ma jor development indicators in the c ou n t r y h a v e i m p r o v e d d r a m a t i c a l l y . E v e n s e cu r i t y a n d the r ule of law -- long n eglected - are now improving. Wa sh in gt on a n d i ts a ll ies cou ld still win in Afgh anistan if they are given the time they need. Read
Milton Bearden Wi th it s n ew pol ic y for A fg h a n ist a n a n d Pa ki sta n , th e O b a m a a d m i n i st r a t i on h a s taken own ership of an orphaned conflict. But can it achiev e v ic tor y , a n d h ow ? Read
Clear and Present Safety Micah Zenko a n d Michael A . Cohen U.S. officials and na tional security experts chronically exaggerate foreign threats, suggesting that th e world is scarier and more dangerous t h a n e v e r . B u t t h a t i s j u st n o t true. From th e U.S. perspective, at least, the w orld today is r e m a r k a b l y s ec u r e , a n d Wa sh in gt on n ee ds a for ei gn policy th at reflects that reality . Read
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Steve Rodriguez
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• 8 hours ago
The US defe ated the Indian and Phillipino insurgents. And guerrillas who utilize a nuclear weapon will do so only in ensuring the destruction of some nation state affiliated, or believ ed to be affiliated, with hosting them. In other words, US popular opinion would require an all-out response, and while concern f or human rights and women and children matter today in US public opinion, they would not if a city is destroyed. Therefore, a nuclear guerrilla attack would result in the exte rmination of a nation state by the US in response. T hat makes such an attack, even by crazed ideologues, unlikely. 2
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Am i t K u m a r • 20 hours ago
Yo u have missed out the success of Maoist guerrillas in Nepal in recent times...... 1
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Mi h a i - R o b e r t S o r a n
• 12 hours ago
Irregulars, insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists, tribal warriors, rebels, and some more words spread all ov er the article, undefined, undifferentiated, and with major historic holes that do not prov ide significant support fo r a meaningful understanding of asymmetric wars (irregular, but symmetric wars make little sense in the contex t set by the author). I understand that this article is rather a marketing tool for promoting the author's "Invisible Armies", but it doesn't really acco mplishes its aim. I hope the book is much better, but I won't know it if Mr. Boot doesn't give me a rev iew exemplary. I can't afford to buy all books I'd love to ... 0
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Mihai-Robert Soran • 9 hours ago
Bloody good thing they weren't or the article would have been a chore to read. 0
DAVID MYERS
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• 2 hours a o
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The Evolution of Irregular War | Foreign Affairs In Wired Magazine in 2003, Douglas McGrey asked Andrew Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessment, "whether technology ultimately make us more or less vulnerable?” In the article, Marshall responded: “A friend of mine, Yale economist Martin Shubik, says an important way to think about the world is to draw a curve of the number of people 10 determined men can kill before they are put down themselves, and how that has varied over time. His claim is that it wasn't very many for a long time, and now it's going up. In that sense, it's not just the US. All the world is getting less safe.”--“The Marshall Plan” Wired Magazine, Feb, 2003 (http://www.wired.com/wired/arc... ). This interview was provided long after 9-11 , but predated and was validated by the Mumbai Christmas Attacks of 200 8 in which a handful of dete rmined gunmen killed 166 c ivilians. A key point lost in the present public discussion ove r targeted drone strikes of U.S. combatant civiliants is that irregulars do not follow the Geneva Conventions, any more than street fighters follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules. By reciprocity , those fighting counterinsurgency should not expec t to be treated by the Geneva convention, either. T he overuse of forc e, as has been well documented in the French response in Algeria, can be counterproductiv e, as can the underuse of force. Regarding nuclear terrorism, one must realize that the Non-Proliferation Treaty never considered non-state actors. Verification is the basis for international law and is is based on the quality of a nation's intelligence. A nalogous to their non-concern for the Geneva Convention, terrorist also do not obey the Non-Proliferation Treaty. What is needed is an emphasis on nuclear forensics and human intelligence(spies), which are needed to understand capabilities, causes (God f orbid!), and intentions. Unfortunately, just as the 9-11 attacks pushed U.S. society toward a more totalitarian approach to civil security in air travel, concern for public safety will push concern for public security will mandate technological advances toward more invasive monitoring of all citizens. Such has been the stuff of science fiction novels and once again, fiction precedes reality. As the article suggests, the quality of life for non-combatants has never been a concern for ideologically motivated insurgents, and no present evidence suggests a divergence from this trend. So much for Marshall McCluhan's Global Village. 0
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