1. Title
NATIONAL STYLES IN INSURGENCIES AND
COUNTERINSURGENCIES?
2. Principal proposer/editor
Full name (surname underlined) and title: Professor Beatrice Heuser
Present appointment and employing institution: University of Reading
Address for correspondence (including post code): Department of Politics & International Relations, University of
Reading, Whiteknights, PoBox 218, Reading RG6 6AA
Telephone no:
0118 – 378 8508
Email address: d.b.g.heuser@reading.ac.uk
3. Other Editors
Please provide the following information for each other Editor of the volume.
Full name (surname underlined) and title: Dr Eitan Shamir
Present appointment and employing institution: Lecturer of the Department of Political Studies, Fellow of the BESA
Centre
Department of Political Studies, Faculty of
Social Sciences, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel
Address for correspondence (including post code): BESA Centre,
Telephone no.:
+972-(0)50 6932 555
Email address: eitan shamir eitanshamir10@gmail.com
4. Summary
(max. 150 words).
: Are there typical “National Styles” of conducting insurgencies and counterinsurgencies? The bulk of the
contributions to this book will cover the experiences over up to 200 years of individual countries involved in
combatting insurgents, and of peoples who have staged or experienced insurgencies. The emphasis will be on
historical context, but the question will be asked throughout whether there was a specific national style, or an
inescapable configuration (e.g. geography of the area in which the insurgency was staged and combatted, or the
distance between colonial motherland and colony, overstretch of the armed forces involved in the counterinsurgency campaign, etc) or indeed a cultural proclivity to certain solutions, be they more humanitarian, more
brutal, or other. A strong conclusion will examine whether there was more similarity between “national”
approaches during particular periods, or diversity and distinctiveness over time.
5. Background
: The concept of “national styles in warfare” can be traced back to Antiquity. The rationale about this
book is to test and go beyond the (in itself rather 19 th century) assumption that different nations have
national styles, and to look at a more complex and useful key to the understanding of how
governments or leaders of insurgent movements approach the conflict in which they are involved.
Famously, Liddell Hart introduced the idea of a “national way of war” for his country, and much
literature tries to replicate this approach for other countries. Questioning this approach, without
losing sight of the particular national histories and experiences, this project aims to compare how
different nations, in the 19th to early 21st centuries, have been conducting their insurgencies and
counterinsurgencies, and to look for generalizable patterns both within “national” traditions (where
they exist) and for patterns transcending international boundaries, which can be attributed more to
ideologies or particular fashions of thought particular to certain periods.
6. Details of aims and objective
: The ongoing NATO operations in Afghanistan has shown that individual NATO member states
have diverged considerably in their approach to the tasks in hand, and even in their definitions of
these tasks, the over-all tenor of which has been defined in a variety of forms ranged from “peacekeeping” and “reconstruction” to “war-fighting”. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
operating in Afghanistan does not just contain NATO member forces, but also forces from other
countries that, again, approach the task from different perspectives. Experts and eye-witnesses have
judged these differences to be so significant that at various stages they have jeopardized the overall
success of the mission.
The divergences between the different forces’ approaches can be overcome to some extent by
common training, but some are fundamental and rooted in different legislation, rules of engagement,
political missions, which in turn must be explained from an historical and contemporary political
perspective. Explaining them will be the precondition to addressing them on an inter-governmental
level to seek to overcome at least the most extreme problems they have posed. This makes our study
very relevant to policy-makers and diplomatic and military negotiators.
The past decade has seen a great wave of publications on insurgencies and counterinsurgency (COIN), but this angle – the differences between national postures – have barely been
examined in a comparative study. Moreover, there are but few studies which tackle a larger time
frame rather than concentrating on a short period or chronologically closely clustered case studies.
Taking on a larger time-frame is leading us to the realisation that “national styles” have been
subject to very considerable change. Most European colonial powers and indeed the Americans had a
racist phase in their counterinsurgency operations, although nobody took this to the same extremes as
the Germans. The insurgents themselves also had differing or similar approaches depending on
factors other than “nationality”. More than any national idiosyncrasies, it is ideologies, many shared
across national frontiers, which can account for different “ways of war”. In the 19 th and early 20th
centuries, racism can be related to genocidal forms of collective punishment in COIN operations, and
religious fervour has had a similar impact on all sides. On the other hand, any sincere debate about
human rights inevitably leads to greater caution in the meeting out of indiscriminate violence. Our
findings show that in the 19th and 20th centuries, there are many common patterns, and that at various
stages, there were great convergences, e.g. among Totalitarian states (the conduct of COIN operations
by Nazi Germany and the USSR), among European colonial powers in the 19th century (where often
in parallel, there were relatively humanitarian ideas of spreading their own civilizational acquis, and
racist approaches), and among Liberal Democracies basing their approach on universal human rights
(significantly, there are precedents for this last type of approach at least in the theoretical literature of
the 18th century and even earlier).
There are a number of factors weighing heavily on the conduct of insurgencies and COIN
campaigns, other than ideology, which are emphatically not national but international. These include
geography - whether both insurgents and counterinsurgents will be forced to live in the same
territory in the long run or whether the COIN forces have the option of letting go and withdrawing,
perhaps even to another continent; whether insurgents can find sanctuary in a neighbouring country;
whether the theatre of the conflict itself consists of terrain offering hiding areas to the insurgents, etc.
Then there is technology – what is possible and what is not possible at the time, e.g. the relatively
advent of precision-guided munitions, while not entirely eliminating unplanned casualties resulting
from collateral damage, has significantly reduced these.
There are also very distinct national experiences, however, often in the form of collective
traumas, which condition approaches. One such approach is what psychologists would call the
transfer: There are historical examples of nations applying to a new situation, often inappropriately,
what they “learnt” from an earlier situation. This may involve nation A taking out on a nation or
group B the harm a nation C has done to A in the past. Approaches are thus very directly linked to
historical experiences, which, while they might form patterns, differ to some significant extent from
country to country. Moreover, the historical experience’s impact is not necessarily directly
proportionate to, say, the number of casualties, or the destruction of treasure. Many commemorated
events have had a disproportionately strong, and disproportionately long-lasting impact measured
over these two characteristics (casualties/destruction): the massacres by the Germans of unarmed
inhabitants of Lidice (around 430 fatalities, plus deportations) and Oradour-sur-Glane (642 fatalities)
in their COIN campaigns in the Second World War pale almost into insignificance compared with the
number of civilian victims of the Germans in the USSR (estimated at 15 million, see Christian
Hartmann, Johannes Hürter, Peter Lieb, Dieter Pohl: Der deutsche Krieg im Osten, 1941-1944: Facetten
einer Grenzüberschreitung, München: Oldenbourg, 2009, p.61.) Haunted by History, governments will
adopt strategies which are often deeply influenced by such events which live on as normative myths
in collective memories.
All these factors jointly, plus others such as the financial strength or weakness of any state
when it engages in a COIN operation, or the resources on which insurgents can draw, condition their
conduct of operations. It is this interplay of factors which we want to anlyse in highlighting the
historical-political baggage which each of these states or peoples carry into present times.
Readership:
: Students of International Relations courses such as Strategic Studies, War Studies, Diplomacy, Conflict &
Conflict Resolution; Practitioners, both civilian and military; advisors to decision-makers; journalists.
7. Disciplines
Politics / International Relations, History
: The book contextualizes insurgencies and counterinsurgencies historically, while using an International
Relations/Political Science-based analytical approach to their examination. Besides drawing on these two
disciplines, the contributions will shed light on the legal and geographic dimension of each case, and will be of
interest to regional experts, including – as per your list – Oriental and African Studies, and regional expert in
Anthropology.
8. Contents list
(* = paper is submitted)
1. Introduction: “National Style” vs. “National Experience”
The chapter is to sketch the debate about “national style” in warfare.
(Beatrice Heuser & Jeannie Johnson*)
2. UK (Beatrice Heuser & Bruno Reis)
3. France (J.Frémeaux & Bruno Reis*)
4. US (C. Dale Walton*)
5. The USSR/Russia (Stephen Blank*)
6. China (Yitzhak Shichor*)
7. Portugal (Bruno Reis)
8. Israel (Efraim Inbar* & Eitan Shamir*)
9. Pakistan (Chalini Shawla*)
10. Turkey (Can Kasapoğlu*)
11. Germany in World War II (Henning Pieper*)
12. The Two Sides in the Greek Civil War (Spyridon Plakoudas*)
13. Irish Republican Terrorists (Jim Storr*)
14. The Kurds (Michael Eppel with Spyridon Plakouda*)
15. The Algerian insurgents, 1830-1962 (Jacques Frémeaux*)
16. The Palestinians (Carmit Valensi*)
17. Syria 2011/2012 (Eyal Zisser*)
18. The Taliban (Rob Johnson*)
19. Sri Lanka (Ahmed Salah Hashim)
20. International transfer of concepts and practices: David Galula (Elie
Tenenbaum*)
21. Conclusions (Beatrice Heuser & Eitan Shamir*)
Each contribution is to be around 7000 words (including footnotes)
The scholars contributing to this volume come from the UK, the US, France, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Israel, and
India. All have previously worked on related areas, each is a specialist on the subject.
Most recently, Beatrice Heuser has had a small British Academy Grant to explore a historical dimension of this
subject. She has just completed a comparative historical overview as a monograph. Bruno Reis has just
completed a Ph.D. in which he compares British, French, and Portuguese COIN stratregy since 1945.
9. Abstracts
1. Introduction: “National Style” vs. “National Experience”
(Beatrice Heuser & Jeannie Johnson*)
The topos of ethnically-determined ways of waging war goes back to Antiquity,
when Greeks and later Romans reflected on different ethnic traits as a function of
geography and temperatures, and on their own way of war vs. that of any
(especially Eastern) opponents. The French in particular took this topos up in
Medieval and early modern times, claiming special traits for themselves. Mixed
with Social Darwinism, they took on a biologically-deterministic turn in the late 19th
and early 20th century. Geopolitics often came into it, as when in Britain Basil Liddell
Hart argued for an enduring “British Way of War”. The concept has had a
renaissance in the context of insurgencies (with a dosage of “Orientalism”) and also
counterinsurgencies, with one line of argument contrasting the supposedly more
humane British approach with that of the US and France. Reality tends to be more
complex, with different political systems in different contexts of values and ideals
with particular means available reacting to particular situations, in particular
geographic contexts, in the light of particular experiences but also “myths” (in the
sense defined by Buffet & Heuser 1998) rather than there being eternal “national
styles”. Nevertheless, individual societies approach insurgency and
counterinsurgency with distinctive national baggage, made up of particular
experiences and their interpretation. These different sets of baggage should be
understood by any who will work with these societies, whether this be in alliance
with their soldiers, in negotiation with their politicians and diplomats, or in relief
work with NGO staff from these countries.
2. The British Experience
(Beatrice Heuser and Bruno Reis*)
The 2006 American Field Manual on Counterinsurgency, in part penned by Oxford
DPhil John Nagl, revived the narrative of a very successful because particularly
humane British way of Counterinsurgency (COIN) since 1945, to be contrasted with
a wasteful and largely unsuccessful American and an unsuccessful because
particularly cruel French and Portuguese style, not to mention earlier historical cases
of COIN. This tenet was based on a rather generous reading of the British
experience with COIN, even at the time Nagl’s thesis was researched, and the claim
that there was a particularly humane British approach has undergone considerable
revision at the hands of specialists on British colonial warfare, especially after a
further release of documents by the British National Archives as of 30 Nov. 2012 in
British COIN in Kenya. This chapter will summarize the debate and present some
conclusions from the literature on the British experience with COIN, especially, but
not only, since 1945, also touching on debates the very recent performance of British
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3. France
(J.Frémeaux & Bruno Reis*)
Debates about French COIN traditions tend to take the brutal suppression of the
insurgency in the Vendée (1793-96) as their starting point, then moving on to the
brutality with which the Peninsular War was conducted by both the French and the
Spanish guerrillero sides. The strategy of conquest of Algeria from 1830 was based
upon a combination of military approaches, including a large recourse to the Razzia
(that is, violent mass- seizure or mass- destruction of crops and cattle), and the
political action of the Bureaux arabes, in touch with the heads of the local tribes. The
French army was practically a professional one. The ultimate target was to impose
French power on a rural Algerian society. French public opinion; poorly informed,
barely resented the moral problem of the massacres and war crimes, and
international opinion counted for little.
Further colonial conquests and wars followed, including those in the Rif in North
Africa in the early 20th century, culminating in the Indochina War and the Algerian
War. In this second major French war in Algeria, the French strategy was more
sophisticated. It rested on a military action which associated the combination of the
quadrillage (cross-ruling) and the punctual intervention of Special Forces. But it
included methods of urban warfare, against the terrorists menace. The target
consisted in preventing the Algerian NLF (National Liberation Front) from ousting
the French power. The technics of extracting intelligence included torture on a larger
and more systematic scale. The presence of a majority of conscripts in these
campaigns led to huge public debates at home, while in the Cold War context,
international opinion was a real constraint on the French military action.
4. The American Experience
(C. Dale Walton*)
This chapter argues that there presently is a distinctive American national style of
counterinsurgency, but that it is deeply flawed, undermining US efforts to achieve
victory in diverse countries and under radically different conditions. This
dysfunctionality is the “flip side” of American excellence in conventional military
operations and, indeed, the latter has indirectly encouraged the former. The chapter
argues that this has not always been the case and that, indeed, throughout the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the United States military repeatedly
demonstrated a high level counterinsurgency competence, often even defeating
highly capable opponents possessed of a superior knowledge of local geography.
Changing US strategic and general political culture, combined with the technological
developments of recent decades (particularly the development of global mass media,
near-instantaneous and readily available worldwide communications, and evergreater computer processing power), have, however, resulted in an increasingly
expense but decidedly less competent approach to COIN operations, and major
strategic failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
5. The USSR/Russia
(Stephen Blank*)
Russia possesses a vast experience of counterinsurgency yet that history remains
virtually unknown abroad. The essay represents a first attempt to delineate two
sides of Russian counterinsurgency that have characterized Russia's national
style. One is a direct brutal assault on the enemy, his society, and its structures. The
other is a more indirect approach that appreciates the need to co-opt potential
leadership elements among the insurgents and make concessions (usually
temporary) to their culture and religion. Although the essay cites late Tsarist and
early Soviet insurgencies, it mainly focuses on the counterinsurgency campaign in
the Western Borderlands of 1944-53, the second Chechen war of 1999-2007, and the
current insurgency in the North Caucasus growing out of that war. The 1944-53
insurgency is a template for the second, indirect approach that surfaced in 1999-2007
as Moscow learned from the debacle of the first Chechen war of 1994-96. And the
current North Caucasus insurgency reflects Moscow’s return to the first approach of
direct assault that has utterly failed to achieve any progress. But this essay remains
merely an opening argument in the effort to discover a Russian national style in
counterinsurgency and what we might learn from it.
6. China
(Yitzhak Shichor*)
An on-going debate among scholars concerns the question to what extent
contemporary China is a “new” phenomenon or a continuation of its pre-modern
history. The answer is typically “Chinese”: it is both. It is hard to understand
contemporary China’s behaviour without an awareness of China’s traditional
civilization, political principles, military doctrine and social structure. This applies to
insurgency and counter-insurgency patterns. China’s traditional political culture
regarded insurgency as an illness that undermined the ‘harmonious’ social and
political structure. While some insurgencies were of local nature, fed by heavy taxes
and bad weather, large-scale insurgencies – primarily those triggered by religion –
were perceived as cracking the foundations of the empire. Insurgencies were
brutally suppressed not only for security reasons but also for educational ones. The
People’s Republic inherited and even expanded these legacies. Insurgencies have
originated in a variety of political, ethnic, religious, economic and social as well as
intellectual and even personal grievances. Beijing’s armed response reflected the
nature of the insurgency (the degree of threat to Party rule), its location (the closer to
the capital – the more brutal the response), the intention to teach the insurgents (and
future insurgents) a lesson and the degree of the government’s self-confidence. Also,
counter-insurgency has been proportionate to the potential threat than to the actual
threat.
7. Portugal
(Bruno Reis*)
This chapter looks at the campaigns fought in Angola (1961-1974), Guinea-Bissau
(1963-1974), and Mozambique (1964-1974) by the Portuguese military against anticolonial insurgents. A trend in both the official history of, as well as in the growing
literature on these campaigns is to underline the specificity of the Portuguese way in
counterinsurgency. I will argue that while a single official Portuguese
counterinsurgency doctrine did emerge with some specificity and impact on the
ground, it was partly derived and can therefore be included in the dominant
population-centric Mao-influenced late colonial tradition of counterinsurgency. This
is true despite the dictatorial nature of the regime because of: the need for some
political and military cooperation from key Western democratic allies; and the fact
that officially Portugal was an empire in denial claiming Africans were treated as
Portuguese. Extreme brutally would be doubly counterproductive. Also, the initial
stage of the Portuguese campaign and the final stage in Mozambique and GuineaBissau deviate from this generic model. The periods of greater brutality at the
beginning and the end of these campaigns were important in initially legitimising
and in the end de-legitimising these wars. Lastly, I will underline that populationcentric must not be confused with population friendly counterinsurgency.
8. Israel
(Efraim Inbar* & Eitan Shamir*)
The chapter on Israel’s experience in fighting terror and guerrilla in the 21st
century begins with an exposee of Israel's dominant perspective as being in a
Protracted Intractable Conflict. This term underscores the assumption that no political
solution to the conflict in sight because no compromise is available and both sides
still have energies to fight. Under such circumstances, Israel's strategy aims
at buying time at a minimum cost. The objective of Israel's use of force is
to achieve temporary deterrence in order to create periods of quiet along its borders.
Whenever deterrence fails, Israel acts forcefully to destroy the capabilities of its foes
to harm it , which in Israel's strategic parlance is termed “mowing the grass”.
This chapter looks at the sources of Israel’s Protracted Intractable Conflict, its political
and military meaning and the principles of combating terror and guerilla against
ever more sophisticated organizations. The 2002, 2006, 2008-9 and 2012 rounds of
violence serve as case studies for this chapter.
9. Pakistan
(Shalini Chawla*)
Pakistan from the time of its creation in 1947 has undertaken a number of
counterinsurgency operations in four broad regions: East Pakistan, Balochistan and
Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP – now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). In all cases insurgencies took place because of
socio-economic and political disparities created by the minority ruler’s ethno
chauvinism. In each case, Pakistan as a military dominated state adopted an “enemy
centric approach” where the regular army takes pride in itself in its military
professionalism for a conventional war and where the driving pshyche is to treat all
opposition as “enemy”. State took little or no political steps to meet genuine rights
and aspirations of people. For example, in East Pakistan the West Pakistani rulers
and the Army refused to implement the first adult franchise based election results
and instead launched a military repression in East Pakistan (in 1970s). In the war in
Balochistan (since 1940s) there have been at least six COIN operations including the
use of combat fighters, leading to indiscriminate killing of even highly respected
Baloch leader – Bugti. Pakistan’s approach in dealing with insurgency in FATA and
NWFP for the past 6 years has been centered on brute force.
10. Turkey
(Can Kasapoğlu*)
Turkey’s experience with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during the 1990s and the
2000s provides a valuable lessons-learned source for military theory and academic
efforts on explaining merits of a COIN security environment. First, the 1990s period
has shown the transformation of a conventional NATO force into a military machine
in compliance with the requirements of low intensity conflicts. This transformation
included the drastic change in inventory, doctrines, and operational concepts, as
well as the paradigm shift that can be explained within Galula’s conceptualization of
altering military mindset. Furthermore, the broad transformation of Turkish Armed
Forces (TAF) at that period enables an assessment of how (or if) the concept of
Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) could be applied to conventional forces’ COIN
experiences. Finally, the Turkish counterterrorism efforts during the 1990s give a
clear view about the role of cross-border military operations when facing
transnational non-state violent actors. On the other hand, the 2000s period in
Turkey’s COIN efforts is a good source for understanding the political nature of war,
in a Clausewitzian sense, and moreover, how this political context dominates the
COIN threat landscape as both Mao and Galula, two theorists on two different sides
of the conflict, have explained the political-intensive essence of insurgencies and
counterinsurgencies. This chapter will assess the 1990s and 2000s periods in
comparison, and within the military theoretical and strategic aspects given above.
11. Germany in World War II
(Henning Pieper*)
The Germans dealt with insurgencies in different ways throughout the first half of
the twentieth century. Their methods were not only characterised by military
necessity, but also strongly shaped by the interconnections of military and
paramilitary organisations with the genocidal aims of the Nazi regime. The article
seeks to combine two lines of argument: a delineation of German counterinsurgency
policy between 1939 and 1945, and a historiographical approach. Based upon
research on the most important theatres of partisan warfare in occupied Europe, the
behaviour of the Wehrmacht, and its cooperation with the SS and the order police in
five operational areas will be demonstrated: Poland, France, the Balkans (especially
Yugoslavia and Greece), the Soviet Union, and Italy. Within this concept, the main
focus lies on the German fight against the Soviet partisan movement, as
counterinsurgency in this operational area is both well-researched and intertwined
with other fields of occupation policy, especially the Holocaust. The development of
historiography will be outlined according to two different approaches of the postwar
period: the legend of the 'clean Wehrmacht', which dominated historiography until
the 1970s, and the current state of research which views the German army as an
organisation that became complicit in atrocities against the civilian population and
the genocide of European Jewry.
12. The Two Sides in the Greek Civil War
(Spyridon Plakoudas*)
From the early 19th century to the mid-20th century, almost every twenty years an
insurgency erupted in the territories that comprise modern Greece, generating a
distinct and consistent tradition of guerrilla warfare. Preserved and reproduced by a
discrete category of irregulars (kleftarmatoloi) who interchangeably practiced
banditry and participated in irredentist rebellions supported or even incited by the
expansionist Greek Kingdom, the tradition of kleftopolemos (literally “war of the
bandits”) remained in use by every insurgent movement until World War II.
Vacillating between the elimination of these irregulars and their employment for
irredentist purposes, the Greek state developed a dialectic approach to internal
security. The Greek Civil War with its roots in the Second World War and its third
round in 1946-1949 shows an intricate relationship with the older Greek tradition of
guerrilla warfare, both on the side of the Communist insurgents (whose rivaling
leaders adopted diametrically opposed strategies, inspired variously by the
Yugoslav neighbours and by Stalin) and on that of the state authorities to counter the
Communist insurgency (who were in turn influenced by US and British advice and
fed by autochthonous traditions).
13. Irish Republican Terrorists
(Jim Storr*)
The chapter will look exclusively at Irish Republican terrorism from the 1960s to the
2000s. It will focus largely on the Provisional IRA (PIRA), but discuss its origins as a
splinter group of the ‘Official’ IRA.
The genesis of PIRA highlights a particularly Irish dimension: the legacy of, and
legitimacy stemming from, the IRA of the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil
War. Legacy and legitimacy had both positive and negative implications. The
phenomenon of splinter groups is one such: PIRA was followed by organisations
such as the Irish National Liberation Army and the Irish People’s Liberation
Organisation, which then fought with PIRA for resources and support. Internecine
issues such as these were one factor leading to widespread and particularly
gruesome disciplinary measures, such as kneecappings.
Other aspects were peculiar, but not unique, to Ireland. An example is the role of
Catholic releigious belief, and hence the dynamics of hunger strikes (which can be
seen as a form of suicide and thereful sinful). Thus, whilst (for example) the
particular details of internal disciplinary measures can be seen as idiosyncratic,
parallels can be drawn with other insurgent and terrorist groupings.
14. The Kurds in Iraq and in Turkey
(Michael Eppel and Spyridon Plakoudas
15. The Algerian Insurgents, 1830-1962
(Jacques Frémeaux)
The Algerian resistance to the French conquest began with the conquest itself. For
centuries previously, North African tribes had resisted invasion and conquest. The
earliest Algerian insurgency strategies flowed from customs and practices that were
widespread within the Arab and Ottoman world and distinguished themselves in
little. They were a local affair, dealing in local ways with locally experienced
oppression. This was quite different in the Cold War, when the Algerian insurgents
took their inspirations from nationalist movements in other countries, and had some
important international support from international Communism. While there were
some continuities in local practice, the insurgents also employed Communist
propaganda techniques which drew world attention to their cause and which even
appealed to French domestic opinion, finally leading to the triumph of the cause of
Algerian independence.
16. The Palestinians
(Carmit Valensi*)
In the past two decades, the insurgency of Palestinian movements embodies both
innovations and continuity. Characterizing their warfare method as guerrilla, these
movements were influenced by the ideas rooted in the 1950s and the beginning of
the 1960s in China, Cuba, Algeria and particularly Vietnam. The Arab concept that
connects the guerrilla legacy with the more general ideas is called ‘Muqawama'Resistance.
The concept of Resistance relies on key elements such as striving for a constant
attrition of the enemy, demonstrating persistence, prolonging the war as long as
possible, and causing a large number of casualties. Nevertheless, this concept has
been attributed with new interpretations throughout the years and thus, does not
reflect a homogeneous doctrine.
The interpretation of Resistance by the Palestinian movements was greatly affected
by their historical experience and 'friction' with the Israeli opponent, geographical
landscape; technological capabilities and religious and political vision that guides
them. Furthermore, there are differences among the Palestinian movements
themselves on how they view Resistance. This is largely based on their characteristics
as classic non-state actors (as 'Palestinian Islamic Jihad') or as quasi-state actors (as
'Hamas').
The ever changing strategic environment and the Palestinians' adaptive process
generate a dynamic military concept that constantly evolves and re-marks history.
17. Beyond national styles. Towards a connected history of Cold War
counterinsurgency.
(Elie Tenenbaum*)
This chapter attempts to apply the methods of connected history to the case of the
three majors Western powers involved in early Cold War-era counterinsurgency (the
United States, the United Kingdom and France), in order to the study of the
circulation of irregular warfare knowledge. It provides an attempt to understand the
links binding together Western experiences in counterinsurgency and thus
transcending respective national styles. Following a three-part narrative, the paper
first addresses the emergence of a strategic community based on WWII British-led
inter-allied training in guerrilla and psychological warfare that was reactivated in
the immediate post-war era to counter “Communist subversion” threat. It then takes
up the pooling and sharing of a new tactical repertoire in the context of the challenge
posed by Maoist “revolutionary warfare” doctrine in South-East Asia. The article
finally questions how these tactics were grouped together to form a coherent
strategy, systematized and standardized by the United States in order to cope with
the multiplying “wars of national liberation” in the Third world. Even though such a
standardisation was eventually reached among intellectual strategists, it failed to be
implemented as such on the ground, where specific features of each conflict
generally impeded such “standard counterinsurgency”.
18. Syria 2011/2012
(Eyal Zisser*)
Since November 1970, under the rule of Asad dynasty, Syria became a regional
superpower casting its shadow over the nearby countries and maneuvering for
influence and control over areas beyond its borders.
However, all this changed in a flash in March 2011 when the Syrian revolt broke out.
The country was once more thrown into an internal struggle that began with
restrained protest demonstrations, moved on to become a popular insurrection, and
ended up as a full blown civil war.
As soon as the disorders began the regime responded with an iron fist, but it was
unable to suppress the rebellion. The regime managed, however, to survive the first
waves of protest, maintaining its cohesion and keeping its grip on the institutions of
the state and the military.
To be sure, there was an unexpected and surprising aspect to the outbreak of the
2011-2012 revolt in Syria. Still, there is in them also a fundamental element of
historical and institutional continuity that must not be ignored. The recent events
should really be viewed as the continuation or rekindling of the not-fully-resolved
struggle over control of the state that started from the moment Syria gained
independence.
19. The Taliban
(Rob Johnson*)
The difficulty in defeating the neo-Taliban insurgency since 2001 has compelled the
Western-led Coalition armed forces to investigate the historical socio-cultural
aspects of their adversaries, and to look deeply into the British and Soviet historical
experience of fighting the Afghans to see if there was a ‘national style’. The problem
here is the familiar difficulty of applying historical models to entirely new situations
in the present. Afghanistan’s insurgent forces do not match John Lynn’s seven stage
model of army style, for example. Indeed, the campaign in Afghanistan has been
plagued by a mismatch between the policy requirements in the West and the
‘ground realities’ of Afghanistan. The urgent search for solutions has produced a
tendency to reach for simple templates. The Taliban, a much divided and localised
movement, has been warped by the dynamic of war itself, forced to adapt and
transform, just as the Coalition has done. It has not been determined by any national
style, but rather by the dynamic pressures of multiple factors, all identified as
themes within this volume, including, crucially, a particular perception of their own
past.
10. Specific information on papers
Average length of papers
: 7000 words each
To the best of our knowledge, no paper has been published (or is promised for publication) elsewhere
The language of publication will be English.
11. Submission of text
: First draft: 31 March 2013. Final draft (after review
and revision process) foreseen for the summer of 2013, after which at least one paper will have to be translated
into English, while others will have to undergo “Englishing”, as well as review.
Deadline for contributors to submit final drafts to Editor(s)
Allowing time for editorial scrutiny, give an estimated date when the final approved text will be submitted to the Publications
Committee for production
: 31 December 2013.
12. Referee
This person can be consulted as a referee on the project:
Professor Theo FARREL
Department of War Studies, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
Email
: Theo Farrell <theo.farrell@kcl.ac.uk>