122-494: Counterinsurgency ( COIN , or NATO spelling counter-insurgency ) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces ". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries" and can be considered war by a state against a non-state adversary . Insurgency and counterinsurgency campaigns have been waged since ancient history . However, modern thinking on counterinsurgency
244-652: A troop , group , unit , column , band , or force . Irregulars are soldiers or warriors that are members of these organizations, or are members of special military units that employ irregular military tactics. This also applies to irregular infantry and irregular cavalry units. Irregular warfare is warfare employing the tactics commonly used by irregular military organizations. This involves avoiding large-scale combat, and focusing on small, stealthy, hit-and-run engagements. The words "regular" and "irregular" have been used to describe combat forces for hundreds of years, usually with little ambiguity. The requirements of
366-525: A Sinologist who as early as 1954 claimed that Templer merely continued policies begun by his predecessors. At all levels of the Malayan government (national, state, and district levels), the military and civil authority was assumed by a committee of military, police and civilian administration officials. This allowed intelligence from all sources to be rapidly evaluated and disseminated and also allowed all anti-guerrilla measures to be co-ordinated. Each of
488-462: A counterinsurgent needs to choose two goals out of three. Relying on economic theory , this is what Zambernardi labels the "impossible trilemma" of counterinsurgency. Specifically, the impossible trilemma suggests that it is impossible to simultaneously achieve: 1) force protection, 2) distinction between enemy combatants and non-combatants, and 3) the physical elimination of insurgents. According to Zambernardi, in pursuing any two of these three goals,
610-403: A degree that victory is easy or assured for the regular forces. However, in many modern rebellions, one does not see rebel fighters working in conjunction with regular forces. Rather, they are home-grown militias or imported fighters who have no unified goals or objectives save to expel the occupier. According to Liddell Hart, there are few effective counter-measures to this strategy. So long as
732-453: A dual threat: the MNLA guerrillas and the silent network in villages who supported them. British troops often described the terror of jungle patrols. In addition to watching out for MNLA guerrillas, they had to navigate difficult terrain and avoid dangerous animals and insects. Many patrols would stay in the jungle for days, even weeks, without encountering the MNLA guerrillas. That strategy led to
854-656: A government which would be subservient to Britain and allow British businesses to keep control of Malaya's natural resources. The first shots of the Malayan Emergency were fired during the Sungai Siput incident , on June 17, 1948, in the office of the Elphil Estate near the town of Sungai Siput . Three European plantation managers were killed by three young Chinese men suspected to have been communists. The deaths of these European plantation managers
976-429: A government's chain of command cause the regular army to be very well defined, and anybody fighting outside it, other than official paramilitary forces, are irregular. In case the legitimacy of the army or its opponents is questioned, some legal definitions have been created. In international humanitarian law , the term "irregular forces" refers to a category of combatants that consists of individuals forming part of
1098-412: A grand scale, there is no one to carry out guerilla missions but regulars." He also emphasizes the importance for the use of regular units permanently attached to guerilla warfare activities, stating that they can play key roles in severing enemy supply routes. While the morale, training and equipment of the individual irregular soldier can vary from very poor to excellent, irregulars are usually lacking
1220-427: A peasant guerilla force which in time transformed itself into a large regular force. This transformation was foreseen in the doctrine of " people's war ", in which irregular forces were seen as being able to engage the enemy and to win the support of the populace but as being incapable of taking and holding ground against regular military forces. Modern conflicts in post-invasion Iraq , the renewed Taliban insurgency in
1342-540: A prime example the French occupation of Spain during the Napoleonic wars . Whenever Spanish forces managed to constitute themselves into a regular fighting force, the superior French forces beat them every time. However, once dispersed and decentralized, the irregular nature of the rebel campaigns proved a decisive counter to French superiority on the battlefield. Napoleon 's army had no means of effectively combating
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#17327759537071464-445: A reason for the insurgents to continue until victory. Trường Chinh , second in command to Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam , wrote in his Primer for Revolt : The guiding principle of the strategy for our whole resistance must be to prolong the war. To protract the war is the key to victory. Why must the war be protracted? ... If we throw the whole of our forces into a few battles to try to decide the outcome, we shall certainly be defeated and
1586-520: A state must forgo some portion of the third objective. In particular, a state can protect its armed forces while destroying insurgents, but only by indiscriminately killing civilians as the Ottomans , Italians , and Nazis did in the Balkans, Libya, and Eastern Europe. It can choose to protect civilians along with its own armed forces instead, avoiding so-called collateral damage, but only by abandoning
1708-606: A successful counterinsurgency: In "The Three Pillars of Counterinsurgency", Dr. David Kilcullen , the Chief Strategist of the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism of the U.S. State Department in 2006, described a framework for interagency cooperation in counterinsurgency operations. His pillars – Security, Political and Economic – support the overarching goal of Control, but are based on Information: This
1830-403: A unit recruited from the people" were all examples of ways in which regular military units could be involved in irregular warfare. Mao argues that regular army units temporarily detailed for irregular warfare are essential because "First, in mobile-warfare situations, the coordination of guerilla activities with regular operations is necessary. Second, until guerilla hostilities can be developed on
1952-530: Is a sociological phenomenon that constrains the habits of a military (in this case, the Nigerian military) to the long-established, yet increasingly ineffective, ideology of the offensive in irregular warfare. As Omeni writes, Whereas the Nigerian military's performance against militias in the Niger Delta already suggested the military had a poor grasp of the threat of insurgent warfare; it was further along
2074-490: Is any non-standard military component that is distinct from a country's national armed forces. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military organization, or to the type of tactics used. An irregular military organization is one which is not part of the regular army organization. Without standard military unit organization , various more general names are often used; such organizations may be called
2196-401: Is because perception is crucial in developing control and influence over population groups. Substantive security, political and economic measures are critical but to be effective they must rest upon, and integrate with a broader information strategy. Every action in counterinsurgency sends a message; the purpose of the information campaign is to consolidate and unify this message. ... Importantly,
2318-399: Is not primarily military, but a combination of military, political and social actions under the strong control of a single authority. Galula proposes four "laws" for counterinsurgency: Galula contends that: A victory [in a counterinsurgency] is not the destruction in a given area of the insurgent's forces and his political organization. ... A victory is that plus the permanent isolation of
2440-570: Is the Batang Kali massacre , which the press has referred to as "Britain's My Lai ". The Briggs Plan forcibly relocated between 400,000 and 1,000,000 civilians into concentration camps called " new villages ". Many Orang Asli indigenous communities were also targeted for internment because the British believed that they were supporting the communists. The widespread use of decapitations on people suspected to have been guerrillas, led to
2562-405: Is throw overboard 99 percent of the literature on counterinsurgency, counter guerrilla, counterterrorism, and the like. Since most of it was written by the losing side, it is of little value. In examining why so many counterinsurgencies by powerful militaries fail against weaker enemies, Van Creveld identifies a key dynamic that he illustrates by the metaphor of killing a child. Regardless of whether
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#17327759537072684-446: Is to be used to refer to a specific group. Using one term over another can strongly imply strong support or opposition for the cause. It is possible for a military to cross the line between regular and irregular. Isolated regular army units that are forced to operate without regular support for long periods of time can degrade into irregulars. As an irregular military becomes more successful, it may transition away from irregular, even to
2806-732: The 2001 war in Afghanistan , the Darfur conflict , the rebellion in the North of Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army , and the Second Chechen War are fought almost entirely by irregular forces on one or both sides. The CIA 's Special Activities Center (SAC) is the premiere American paramilitary clandestine unit for creating or combating irregular military forces. SAD paramilitary officers created and led successful units from
2928-604: The Briggs Plan , was appointed to Malaya. The central tenet of the Briggs Plan was to segregate MNLA guerrillas from their supporters among the population. A major component of the Briggs Plan involved targeting the MNLA's food supplies, which were supplied from three main sources: food grown by the MNLA in the jungle, food supplied by the Orang Asli aboriginal people living in the deep jungle, and MNLA supporters within
3050-560: The British Army . Prior to 1857 Britain's East India Company maintained large numbers of cavalry and infantry regiments officially designated as "irregulars", although they were permanently established units. The end of Muslim rule saw a large number of unemployed Indian Muslim horsemen, who were employed in the army of the EIC . British officers such as Skinner , Gardner and Hearsay had become leaders of irregular cavalry that preserved
3172-618: The CIA 's Special Activities Center . However at times, such as out of desperation, conventional militaries will resort to guerilla tactics, usually to buy breathing space and time for themselves by tying up enemy forces to threaten their line of communications and rear areas, such as the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry and the Chindits . Although they are part of a regular army, United States Special Forces are trained in missions such as implementing irregular military tactics . However, outside
3294-673: The Confederate States of America . One could attribute the disastrous defeat of the Romans at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest to the lack of supporting irregular forces; only a few squadrons of irregular light cavalry accompanied the invasion of Germany when normally the number of foederati and auxiliaries would equal the regular legions. During this campaign the majority of locally recruited irregulars defected to
3416-903: The Hmong tribe during the Laotian Civil War in the 1960s and 1970s. They also organized and led the Mujaheddin as an irregular force against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, as well as the Northern Alliance as an irregular insurgency force against the Taliban with US Army Special Forces during the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and organized and led the Kurdish Peshmerga with US Army Special Forces as an irregular counter-insurgency force against
3538-527: The Kuala Langat swamp is described in The Guerrilla – and how to Fight Him ): On 7 July, two additional companies were assigned to the area; patrolling and harassing fires were intensified. Three terrorists surrendered and one of them led a platoon patrol to the terrorist leader's camp. The patrol attacked the camp, killing four, including the leader. Other patrols accounted for four more; by
3660-592: The OSS operators of World War II, which were tasked with inspiring, training, arming and leading resistance movements in German-occupied Europe and Japanese occupied Asia. In Finland, well-trained light infantry Sissi troops use irregular tactics such as reconnaissance, sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The founder of the People's Republic of China , Mao Zedong actively advocated for
3782-607: The Peninsular War led by Spaniards against the French invaders in 1808 provided the first modern example of guerrilla warfare . Indeed, the term of guerrilla itself was coined during this time. As the Industrial Revolution dried up the traditional source of irregulars, nations were forced take over the duties of the irregulars using specially trained regular army units. Examples are the light infantry in
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3904-939: The Three Kingdoms period, the American Revolution , the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War , the Franco-Prussian War , the Russian Civil War , the Second Boer War , Liberation war of Bangladesh, Vietnam War , the Syrian Civil War and especially the Eastern Front of World War II where hundreds of thousands of partisans fought on both sides. The Chinese People's Liberation Army began as
4026-632: The US Department of State as the Policy Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Salam al-Zaubai . In his book, When Bad States Win: Rethinking Counterinsurgency Strategy , he found little evidence to support the ‘hearts and minds’ approach to counterinsurgency. “There is little robust generalizable evidence that population-centric approaches are effective,” he argued. Irregular military Irregular military
4148-524: The University of Michigan . Berman, Shapiro, and Felter have outlined the modern information-centric model. In this framework, the critical determinant of counterinsurgent success is information about insurgents provided to counterinsurgents, such as insurgent locations, plans, and targets. Information can be acquired from civilian sources (human intelligence, HUMINT ), or through signals intelligence ( SIGINT ). Dr. Jeffrey Treistman previously served with
4270-466: The "how" and "what", but it is more common to focus on the "why" as just about all irregular units were created to provide a tactical advantage to an existing military, whether it was privateer forces harassing shipping lanes against assorted New World colonies on behalf of their European contractors, or Auxiliaries, levies, civilian and other standing irregular troops that are used as more expendable supplements to assist costly trained soldiers. Bypassing
4392-416: The 'squatter' communities on the jungle fringes. The Briggs Plan also included the forced relocation of some 500,000 rural Malayans, including 400,000 Chinese civilians, into internment camps called " new villages ". These internment camps were surrounded by barbed wire, police posts, and floodlit areas, all designed to stop the inmates from contacting and supplying MNLA guerrillas in the jungles, segregating
4514-637: The 1952 British Malayan headhunting scandal . Similar scandals relating to atrocities committed by British forces included the public display of corpses. Although the emergency was declared over in 1960, communist leader Chin Peng renewed the insurgency against the Malaysian government in 1968. This second phase of the insurgency lasted until 1989. The economic disruption of World War II (WWII) on British Malaya led to widespread unemployment, low wages, and high levels of food price inflation. The weak economy
4636-666: The British Empire by targeting the colonial resource extraction industries, namely the tin mines and rubber plantations which were the main sources of income for the British occupation of Malaya. The MNLA attacked these industries in the hopes of bankrupting the British and winning independence by making the colonial administration too expensive to maintain. The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) employed guerrilla tactics, attacking military and police outposts, sabotaging rubber plantations and tin mines, while also destroying transport and communication infrastructure. Support for
4758-610: The British colonial occupation banned the PMFTU, Malaya's largest trade union. Malaya's rubber and tin resources were used by the British to pay war debts to the United States and to recover from the damage of WWII. Malaysian rubber exports to the United States were of greater value than all domestic exports from Britain to America, causing Malaya to be viewed by the British as a vital asset. Britain had prepared for Malaya to become an independent state, but only by handing power to
4880-457: The British military's widespread destruction of farmland and burning of homes belonging to villagers rumoured to be helping communists, led to a sharp increase in civilians joining the MNLA and communist movement. However, these tactics also prevented the communists from establishing liberated areas (the MCPs first, and foremost objective), successfully broke up larger guerrilla formations, and shifted
5002-570: The Chinese community. The communists' belief in class consciousness , and both ethnic and gender equality, inspired many women and indigenous people to join both the MNLA and its undercover supply network the Min Yuen . Additionally, hundreds of former Japanese soldiers joined the MNLA. After establishing a series of jungle bases the MNLA began raiding British colonial police and military installations. Mines, plantations, and trains were attacked by
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5124-636: The Germanic tribesmen led by the former auxiliary officer Arminius . During the decline of the Roman Empire , irregulars made up an ever-increasing proportion of the Roman military. At the end of the Western Empire, there was little difference between the Roman military and the barbarians across the borders. Following Napoleon 's modernisation of warfare with the invention of conscription ,
5246-1049: The Kurdish Sunni Islamist group Ansar al-Islam at the Iraq-Iran border and as an irregular force against Saddam Hussein during the war in Iraq in 2003. Irregular civilian volunteers also played a large role in the Battle of Kyiv during the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Malayan Emergency British Commonwealth victory British Commonwealth forces: [REDACTED] United Kingdom Communist forces: [REDACTED] Malayan Communist Party [REDACTED] United Kingdom [REDACTED] Malaya [REDACTED] Singapore [REDACTED] Australia [REDACTED] New Zealand [REDACTED] Malayan Communist Party [REDACTED] Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) Over 451,000 troops Over 7,000 troops 1950 1951 1954 1956 The Malayan Emergency (1948–1960)
5368-613: The MNLA mainly came from the 3.12 million ethnic Chinese living in Malaya, many of whom were farmers living on the edges of the Malayan jungles and had been politically influenced by both the Chinese Communist Revolution and the resistance against Japan during WWII. Their support allowed the MNLA to supply themselves with food, medicine, information, and provided a source of new recruits. The ethnic Malay population supported them in smaller numbers. The MNLA gained
5490-475: The MNLA with the goal of gaining independence for Malaya by bankrupting the British occupation. The British attempted to starve the MNLA using scorched earth policies through food rationing, killing livestock, and aerial spraying of the herbicide Agent Orange . The British engaged in extrajudicial killings of unarmed villagers, in violation of the Geneva Conventions . The most infamous example
5612-553: The MNLA's plan of securing territory, to one of widespread sabotage. Commonwealth forces struggled to fight guerrillas who moved freely in the jungle and enjoyed support from rural Chinese populations. British planters and miners, who bore the brunt of the communist attacks, began to talk about government incompetence and being betrayed by Whitehall. The initial government strategy was primarily to guard important economic targets, such as mines and plantation estates. In April 1950, General Sir Harold Briggs , most famous for implementing
5734-679: The Malay states had a State War Executive Committee which included the State Chief Minister as chairman, the Chief Police Officer, the senior military commander, state home guard officer, state financial officer, state information officer, executive secretary, and up to six selected community leaders. The Police, Military, and Home Guard representatives and the Secretary formed the operations sub-committee responsible for
5856-593: The Nigerian Army has struggled in COIN due to capabilities shortcomings, holds some merit. However, a full-spectrum analysis of the Nigeria case suggests that this popular dominant narrative scarcely scratches the surface of the true COIN challenge. This population-centered challenge, moreover, is one that militaries across the world continue to contend with. And in attempting to solve the COIN puzzle, state forces over
5978-667: The Turkish forces off. In both the preceding cases, the insurgents and rebel fighters were working in conjunction with or in a manner complementary to regular forces. Such was also the case with the French Resistance during World War II and the National Liberation Front during the Vietnam War . The strategy in these cases is for the irregular combatant to weaken and destabilize the enemy to such
6100-568: The United States, the term special forces does not generally imply a force that is trained to fight as guerillas and insurgents. Originally, the United States Special Forces were created to serve as a cadre around which stay-behind resistance forces could be built in the event of a communist victory in Europe or elsewhere. The United States Special Forces and the CIA's Special Activities Center can trace their lineage to
6222-406: The aforementioned herbicides, were sprayed along a number of key roads. From June to October 1952, 510 hectares (1,250 acres) of roadside vegetation at possible ambush points were sprayed with defoliant, described as a policy of "national importance". The experts advised that the use of herbicides and defoliants for clearing the roadside could be effectively replaced by removing vegetation by hand and
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#17327759537076344-527: The armed forces of a party to an armed conflict, international or domestic, but not belonging to that party's regular forces and operating inside or outside of their own territory, even if the territory is under occupation. The Third Geneva Convention of 1949 uses "regular armed forces " as a critical distinction. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a non-governmental organization primarily responsible for and most closely associated with
6466-664: The basic training of irregulars. The regulars would only provide the core military in the major battles; irregulars would provide all other combat duties. Notable examples of regulars relying on irregulars include Bashi-bazouk units in the Ottoman Empire , auxiliary cohorts of Germanic peoples in the Roman Empire , Cossacks in the Russian Empire , and Native American forces in the American frontier of
6588-669: The camps, the soldiers attended lectures on Marxism–Leninism , and produced political newsletters to be distributed to civilians. In the early stages of the conflict, the guerrillas envisaged establishing control in "liberated areas" from which the government forces had been driven, but did not succeed in this. During the first two years of the Emergency, British forces conducted a 'counter-terror,' characterised by high levels of state coercion against civilian populations; including sweeps, cordons, large-scale deportation, and capital charges against suspected guerrillas. Police corruption and
6710-407: The child started the fight or how well armed the child is, an adult in a fight with a child will feel that he is acting unjustly if he harms the child and foolish if the child harms him; he will, therefore, wonder if the fight is necessary. Van Creveld argues that "by definition, a strong counterinsurgent who uses his strength to kill the members of a small, weak organization of insurgents – let alone
6832-495: The city, killing between 10-25,000 people, including many women and children. Asked by reporters what had happened, Hafez al-Assad exaggerated the damage and deaths, promoted the commanders who carried out the attacks, and razed Hama's well-known great mosque, replacing it with a parking lot. With the Muslim Brotherhood scattered, the population was so cowed that it would be years before opposition groups dared to disobey
6954-427: The civilian population by which it is surrounded, and which may lend it support – will commit crimes in an unjust cause," while "a child who is in a serious fight with an adult is justified in using every and any means available – not because he or she is right, but because he or she has no choice". Every act of insurgency becomes, from the perspective of the counterinsurgent, a reason to end the conflict, while also being
7076-651: The communists from their civilian supporters. In 1948 the British had 13 infantry battalions in Malaya, including seven partly formed Gurkha battalions, three British battalions, two battalions of the Royal Malay Regiment and a Royal Artillery Regiment being used as infantry. The Permanent Secretary of Defence for Malaya , Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson , had served in the Chindits in Burma during World War II. Thompson's in-depth experience of jungle warfare proved invaluable during this period as he
7198-568: The conflict suffered from serious exposure to dioxin and Trioxone. An estimated 10,000 civilians and guerrilla in Malaya also suffered from the effects of the defoliant, but many historians think that the number is much larger since Trioxone was used on a large scale in the Malayan conflict and, unlike the US, the British government limited information about its use to avoid negative global public opinion. The prolonged absence of vegetation caused by defoliation also resulted in major soil erosion . Following
7320-458: The conflict when de Havilland Vampires replaced Spitfires of No. 60 Squadron RAF in 1950 and were used for ground attack. Jet bombers came with the English Electric Canberra in 1955 The Casualty Evacuation Flight was formed in early 1953 to bring the wounded out of the jungles; it used early helicopters such as the Westland Dragonfly , landing in small clearings The RAF progressed to using Westland Whirlwind helicopters to deploy troops in
7442-400: The count of enemy troops, making the odds seem much worse than they were. This may be accidental; counts of friendly troops often came from official regular army rolls that exclude unofficial forces, while enemy strength often came from visual estimates, where the distinction between regular and irregular were lost. If irregular forces overwhelm regulars, records of the defeat are often lost in
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#17327759537077564-414: The day-to-day direction of emergency operations. The operations subcommittees as a whole made joint decisions. During the Malayan Emergency, Britain became the first nation in history to make use of herbicides and defoliants as a military weapon. It was used to destroy bushes, food crops, and trees to deprive the guerrillas of both food and cover, playing a role in Britain's food denial campaign during
7686-414: The decades have tried a range of tactics. Starting in the early 2000s, micro-level data has transformed the analysis of effective counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. Leading this work is the "information-centric" group of theorists and researchers, led by the work of the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) group at Princeton University , and the Conflict and Peace, Research and Development (CPRD) group at
7808-469: The drafting and successful completion of the Third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War ("GPW"). The ICRC provided commentary saying that "regular armed forces" satisfy four Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) (Hague IV) conditions. In other words, "regular forces" must satisfy the following criteria: By extension, combat forces that do not satisfy these criteria are termed "irregular forces". The term "irregular military" describes
7930-403: The dynamics of revolutionary warfare. Counter-insurgency focuses on bridging these gaps. Insurgents take advantage of social issues known as gaps. When the gaps are wide, they create a sea of discontent, creating the environment in which the insurgent can operate. In The Insurgent Archipelago , John Mackinlay puts forward the concept of an evolution of the insurgency from the Maoist paradigm of
8052-452: The early 1950s. A variety of herbicides were used to clear lines of communication and destroy food crops as part of this strategy. One of the herbicides, was a 50:50 mixture of butyl esters of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D with the brand name brand name Trioxone. This mixture was virtually identical to the later Agent Orange, though Trioxone likely had a heavier contamination of the health-damaging dioxin impurity. In 1952, Trioxone and mixtures of
8174-413: The emergency was one step nearer. MNLA guerrillas had numerous advantages over Commonwealth forces since they lived in closer proximity to villagers, they sometimes had relatives or close friends in the village, and they were not afraid to threaten violence or torture and murder village leaders as an example to the others, which forced them to assist them with food and information. British forces thus faced
8296-399: The end of July, twenty-three terrorists remained in the swamp with no food or communications with the outside world. This was the nature of operations: 60,000 artillery shells, 30,000 rounds of mortar ammunition, and 2,000 aircraft bombs for 35 terrorists killed or captured. Each one represented 1,500 man-days of patrolling or waiting in ambushes. "Nassau" was considered a success for the end of
8418-645: The end of the Emergency, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk advised US President John F. Kennedy that the precedent of using herbicide in warfare had been established by the British through their use of aircraft to spray herbicide and thus destroy enemy crops and thin the thick jungle of northern Malaya. The British Army soon realised that clumsy sweeps by large formations were unproductive. Instead, platoons or sections carried out patrols and laid ambushes, based on intelligence from various sources, including informers, surrendered MNLA personnel, aerial reconnaissance and so on. An operation named "Nassau", carried out in
8540-443: The enemy will win. On the other hand, if while fighting we maintain our forces, expand them, train our army and people, learn military tactics … and at the same time wear down the enemy forces, we shall weary and discourage them in such a way that, strong as they are, they will become weak and will meet defeat instead of victory. Van Creveld thus identifies "time" as the key factor in counterinsurgency. In an attempt to find lessons from
8662-433: The fault of its governors." Consequently, he advocated clemency towards the population and good governance, to seek the people's "heart and love". Liddell Hart attributed the failure of counterinsurgencies to various causes. First, as pointed out in the Insurgency addendum to the second version of his book Strategy: The Indirect Approach , a popular insurgency has an inherent advantage over any occupying force. He showed as
8784-573: The few cases of successful counterinsurgency, of which he lists two clear cases: the British efforts during The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the 1982 Hama massacre carried out by the Syrian government to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood , he asserts that the "core of the difficulty is neither military nor political, but moral" and outlines two distinct methods. The first method relies on superb intelligence, provided by those who know
8906-639: The golden age of insurgency to the global insurgency of the start of the 21st century. He defines this distinction as "Maoist" and "post-Maoist" insurgency. The third Marques of Santa Cruz de Marcenado (1684–1732) is probably the earliest author who dealt systematically in his writings with counterinsurgency. In his Reflexiones Militares , published between 1726 and 1730, he discussed how to spot early signs of an incipient insurgency, prevent insurgencies, and counter them, if they could not be warded off. Strikingly, Santa Cruz recognized that insurgencies are usually due to real grievances: "A state rarely rises up without
9028-403: The government. Thus the essence of counterinsurgency warfare is summed up by Galula as "Build (or rebuild) a political machine from the population upward." Robert Grainger Ker Thompson wrote Defeating Communist Insurgency in 1966, wherein he argued that a successful counterinsurgency effort must be proactive in seizing the initiative from insurgents. Thompson outlines five basic principles for
9150-440: The grassroots. The counterinsurgent reaches a position of strength when his power is embedded in a political organization issuing from, and firmly supported by, the population. With his four principles in mind, Galula goes on to describe a general military and political strategy to put them into operation in an area that is under full insurgent control: In a Selected Area 1. Concentrate enough armed forces to destroy or to expel
9272-586: The higher-level organizational training and equipment that is part of regular army. This usually makes irregulars ineffective in direct, main-line combat, the typical focus of more standard armed forces. Other things being equal, major battles between regulars and irregulars heavily favor the regulars. However, irregulars can excel at many other combat duties besides main-line combat, such as scouting , skirmishing , harassing , pursuing, rear-guard actions, cutting supply, sabotage , raids , ambushes and underground resistance . Experienced irregulars often surpass
9394-432: The inaccessible tropical jungle and had limited infrastructure. Almost 90% of MNLA guerrillas were ethnic Chinese, though there were some Malays, Indonesians and Indians among its members. The MNLA was organised into regiments, although these had no fixed establishments and each included all communist forces operating in a particular region. The regiments had political sections, commissars , instructors and secret service. In
9516-419: The incident rate fell from 500 to less than 100 per month and the civilian and security force casualties from 200 to less than 40." Orthodox historiography suggests that Templer changed the situation in the Emergency and his actions and policies were a major part of British success during his period in command. Revisionist historians have challenged this view and frequently support the ideas of Victor Purcell ,
9638-401: The infamous Batang Kali massacre in which 24 unarmed villagers were executed by British troops. Royal Air Force activities, grouped under "Operation Firedog" included ground attacks in support of troops and the transport of supplies. The RAF used a wide mixture of aircraft to attack MNLA positions: from the new Avro Lincoln heavy bomber to Short Sunderland flying boats. Jets were used in
9760-442: The information campaign has to be conducted at a global, regional and local level — because modern insurgents draw upon global networks of sympathy, support, funding and recruitment. Kilcullen considers the three pillars to be of equal importance because unless they are developed in parallel, the campaign becomes unbalanced: too much economic assistance with inadequate security, for example, simply creates an array of soft targets for
9882-452: The institution of COIN within militaries and their tendency to reject the innovation and adaptation often necessary to defeat insurgency. These three features, furthermore, influence and can undermine the operational tactics and concepts adopted against insurgents. The COIN challenge, therefore, is not just operational; it also is cultural and institutional before ever it reflects on the battlefield. According to Omeni, institutional isomorphism
10004-484: The insurgency maintains popular support, it will retain all of its strategic advantages of mobility, invisibility, and legitimacy in its own eyes and the eyes of the people. So long as this is the situation, an insurgency essentially cannot be defeated by regular forces. David Galula gained his practical experience in counterinsurgency as a French Army officer in the Algerian War . His theory of counterinsurgency
10126-456: The insurgent from the population, isolation not enforced upon the population, but maintained by and with the population. ... In conventional warfare, strength is assessed according to military or other tangible criteria, such as the number of divisions, the position they hold, the industrial resources, etc. In revolutionary warfare, strength must be assessed by the extent of support from the population as measured in terms of political organization at
10248-470: The insurgents. Similarly, too much security assistance without political consensus or governance simply creates more capable armed groups. In developing each pillar, we measure progress by gauging effectiveness (capability and capacity) and legitimacy (the degree to which the population accepts that government actions are in its interest). The overall goal, according to this model, "is not to reduce violence to zero or to kill every insurgent, but rather to return
10370-589: The jungle. The MNLA was vastly outnumbered by the British forces and their Commonwealth and colonial allies in terms of regular full-time soldiers. Siding with the British occupation were a maximum of 40,000 British and other Commonwealth troops, 250,000 Home Guard members, and 66,000 police agents. Supporting the communists were 7,000+ communist guerrillas (1951 peak), an estimated 1,000,000 sympathisers, and an unknown number of civilian Min Yuen supporters and Orang Asli sympathisers. Commonwealth forces from Africa and
10492-645: The killing of left-wing activists. Leader of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) Chin Peng and his allies fled into the jungles and formed the MNLA to wage a war for national liberation against British colonial rule. Many MNLA fighters were veterans of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), a communist guerrilla army previously trained, armed and funded by the British to fight against Japan during World War II . The communists gained support from many civilians, mainly those from
10614-409: The legitimate military and taking up arms is an extreme measure. The motivation for doing so is often used as the basis of the primary label for any irregular military. Different terms come into and out of fashion, based on political and emotional associations that develop. Here is a list of such terms, which is organized more or less from oldest to latest: Intense debates can build up over which term
10736-451: The line, as the military struggled against Boko Haram's threat, that the extent of this weakness was exposed. At best, the utility of force, for the Nigerian military, had become but a temporary solution against the threat of insurgent warfare. At worst, the existing model has been perpetuated at such high cost, that urgent revisionist thinking around the idea of counterinsurgency within the military institution may now be required. Additionally,
10858-531: The main body of armed insurgents. 2. Detach for the area sufficient troops to oppose an insurgent come back in strength, install these troops in the hamlets, villages, and towns where the population lives. 3. Establish contact with the population, control its movements in order to cut off its links with the guerrillas. 4. Destroy the local insurgent political organization. 5. Set up, by means of elections, new provisional local authorities. 6. Test those authorities by assigning them various concrete tasks. Replace
10980-445: The margins of the theoretical debate – even though Africa today is faced with a number of deadly insurgencies. In Counter-insurgency in Nigeria , Omeni, a Nigerian academic, discusses the interactions between certain features away from the battlefield, which account for battlefield performance against insurgent warfare. Specifically, Omeni argues that the trio of historical experience, organisational culture (OC) and doctrine, help explain
11102-418: The military's decisive civil war victory, the pivot in Nigeria's strategic culture towards a regional role, and the institutional delegitimization brought about by decades of coups and political meddling, meant that much time went by without substantive revisionism to the military's thinking around its internal function. Change moreover, where it occurred, was institutionally isomorphic and not as far removed from
11224-607: The military's own origins as the intervening decades may have suggested. Further, the infantry-centric nature of the Nigerian Army 's battalions, traceable back to the Nigerian Civil War back in the 1960s, is reflected in the kinetic nature of the Army's contemporary COIN approach. This approach has failed to defeat Boko Haram in the way many expected. Certainly, therefore, the popular argument today, which holds that
11346-428: The natural and artificial environment of the conflict as well as the insurgents. Once such superior intelligence is gained, the counterinsurgents must be trained to a point of high professionalism and discipline such that they will exercise discrimination and restraint. Through such discrimination and restraint, the counterinsurgents do not alienate members of the populace besides those already fighting them, while delaying
11468-598: The new Indian Army that was organized following the great Indian Rebellion of 1857. Before 1867, military units in Canada consisted of British units of volunteers. During French rule, small local volunteer militia units or colonial militias were used to provide defence needs. During British control of various local militias, the Provincial Marine were used to support British regular forces in Canada. Use of large irregular forces featured heavily in wars such as
11590-401: The objective of destroying the insurgents. Finally, a state can discriminate between combatants and non-combatants while killing insurgents, but only by increasing the risks for its own troops, because often insurgents will hide behind civilians, or appear to be civilians. So a country must choose two out of three goals and develop a strategy that can successfully accomplish them while sacrificing
11712-470: The overall system to normality — noting that 'normality' in one society may look different from normality in another. In each case, we seek not only to establish control, but also to consolidate that control and then transfer it to permanent, effective, and legitimate institutions." Military historian Martin van Creveld , noting that almost all attempts to deal with insurgency have ended in failure, advises: The first, and absolutely indispensable, thing to do
11834-553: The people as the fish swims in the sea. –Aphorism based on the writing of Mao Zedong Counterinsurgency is normally conducted as a combination of conventional military operations and other means, such as demoralization in the form of propaganda , Psy-ops , and assassinations . Counter-insurgency operations include many different facets: military , paramilitary , political , economic , psychological , and civic actions taken to defeat insurgency . To understand counterinsurgency, one must understand insurgency to comprehend
11956-463: The point of becoming the new regular army if it wins. Most conventional military officers and militaries are wary of using irregular military forces and see them as unreliable, of doubtful military usefulness, and prone to committing atrocities leading to retaliation in kind. Usually, such forces are raised outside the regular military like the British SOE during World War II and, more recently,
12078-579: The rebels, and in the end, their strength and morale were so sapped that when Wellington was finally able to challenge French forces in the field, the French had almost no choice but to abandon the situation. Counterinsurgency efforts may be successful, especially when the insurgents are unpopular. The Philippine–American War , the Shining Path in Peru, and the Malayan Emergency have been
12200-534: The regime again and, van Creveld argues, the massacre most likely saved the regime and prevented a bloody civil war . Van Creveld condenses al-Assad's strategy into five rules while noting that they could easily have been written by Niccolò Machiavelli : In "Counterinsurgency's Impossible Trilemma", Dr. Lorenzo Zambernardi, an Italian academic now working in the United States, clarifies the tradeoffs involved in counterinsurgency operations. He argues that counterinsurgency involves three main goals, but in real practice,
12322-455: The regular army in these functions. By avoiding formal battles, irregulars have sometimes harassed high quality armies to destruction. The total effect of irregulars is often underestimated. Since the military actions of irregulars are often small and unofficial, they are underreported or even overlooked. Even when engaged by regular armies, some military histories exclude all irregulars when counting friendly troops, but include irregulars in
12444-622: The remaining Malayan communists retreated to rural areas and formed the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) on 1 February 1949. The MNLA was partly a re-formation of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), the communist guerrilla force which had been the principal resistance in Malaya against the Japanese occupation during WWII. The British had secretly helped form the MPAJA in 1942 and trained them in
12566-535: The resulting chaos. By definition, "irregular" is understood in contrast to "regular armies", which grew slowly from personal bodyguards or elite militia. In Ancient warfare , most civilized nations relied heavily on irregulars to augment their small regular army. Even in advanced civilizations, the irregulars commonly outnumbered the regular army. Sometimes entire tribal armies of irregulars were brought in from internal native or neighboring cultures, especially ones that still had an active hunting tradition to provide
12688-540: The second method exemplified by the Hama massacre . In 1982, the regime of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad was on the point of being overwhelmed by the countrywide insurgency of the Muslim Brotherhood . Al-Assad sent a Syrian Army division under his brother Rifaat to the city of Hama , known to be the center of the resistance. Following a counterattack by the Brotherhood, Rifaat used his heavy artillery to demolish
12810-634: The sites of failed insurgencies. Hart also points to the experiences of T. E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt during World War I as another example of the power of the rebel/insurgent. Though the Ottomans often had advantages in manpower of more than 100 to 1, the Arabs ' ability to materialize out of the desert, strike, and disappear again often left the Turks reeling and paralyzed, creating an opportunity for regular British forces to sweep in and finish
12932-407: The softs and the incompetents, give full support to the active leaders. Organize self-defense units. 7. Group and educate the leaders in a national political movement. 8. Win over or suppress the last insurgent remnants. According to Galula, some of these steps can be skipped in areas that are only partially under insurgent control, and most of them are unnecessary in areas already controlled by
13054-620: The spraying was stopped. However, after that strategy failed, the use of herbicides and defoliants in effort to fight the guerrillas was restarted under the command of Gerald Templer in February 1953 as a means of destroying food crops grown by communist forces in jungle clearings. Helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft despatched sodium trichloroacetate and Trioxone, along with pellets of chlorophenyl N,N-dimethyl-1-naphthylamine onto crops such as sweet potatoes and maize . Many Commonwealth personnel who handled and/or used Trioxone during
13176-679: The struggle in Northern Ireland had cost the United Kingdom three thousand fatal casualties. Of the three thousand, about seventeen hundred were civilians...of the remaining, a thousand were British soldiers. No more than three hundred were terrorists, a ratio of three to one. If the prerequisites for the first method – excellent intelligence, superbly trained and disciplined soldiers and police, and an iron will to avoid being provoked into lashing out – are lacking, van Creveld posits that counterinsurgents who still want to win must use
13298-444: The support of the Chinese because the Chinese were denied the equal right to vote in elections, had no land rights to speak of, and were usually very poor. The MNLA's supply organisation was called the Min Yuen (People's Movement). It had a network of contacts within the general population. Besides supplying material, especially food, it was also important to the MNLA as a source of intelligence. The MNLA's camps and hideouts were in
13420-461: The third objective. Zambernardi's theory posits that to protect populations, which is necessary to defeat insurgencies and to physically destroy an insurgency, the counterinsurgent's military forces must be sacrificed, risking the loss of domestic political support. Another writer who explores a trio of features relevant to understanding counterinsurgency is Akali Omeni. Within the contemporary context, COIN warfare by African militaries tends to be at
13542-460: The time when the counterinsurgents become disgusted by their own actions and demoralized. General Patrick Walters, the British commander of troops in Northern Ireland, explicitly stated that his objective was not to kill as many terrorists as possible but to ensure that as few people on both sides were killed. In the vast majority of counterinsurgencies, the "forces of order" kill far more people than they lose. In contrast and using very rough figures,
13664-533: The traditions of Mughal cavalry, which had a political purpose because it absorbed pockets of cavalrymen who might otherwise become disaffected plunderers. These were less formally drilled and had fewer British officers (sometimes only three or four per regiment) than the "regular" sepoys in British service. This system enabled the Indian officers to achieve greater responsibility than their counterparts in regular regiments. Promotion for both Indian and British officers
13786-690: The use of explosives, firearms and radios. Chin Peng was a veteran anti-fascist and trade unionist who had played an integral role in the MPAJA's resistance. Disbanded in December 1945, the MPAJA officially turned in its weapons to the British Military Administration , although many MPAJA soldiers secretly hid stockpiles of weapons in jungle hideouts. Members who agreed to disband were offered economic incentives. Around 4,000 members rejected these incentives and went underground. The MNLA began their war for Malayan independence from
13908-404: The use of irregular military tactics by regular military units. In his book On Guerrilla Warfare , Mao described seven types of Guerilla units, and argues that "regular army units temporarily detailed for the purpose (of guerilla warfare)," "regular army units permanently detailed (for the purpose of guerilla warfare)," and bands of guerillas created "through a combination of a regular army unit and
14030-421: The wages of their workers. Colonial police responded to rising trade union activity through arrests, deportations, and beating striking workers to death. Responding to the attacks against trade unions, communist militants began assassinating strikebreakers , and attacking anti-union estates. These attacks were used by the colonial occupation as a pretext to conduct mass arrests of left-wing activists. On 12 June
14152-674: Was a guerrilla war fought in Malaya between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces of the Federation of Malaya and Commonwealth ( British Empire ). The communists fought to win independence for Malaya from the British Empire and to establish a communist state, while the Malayan Federation and Commonwealth forces fought to combat communism and protect British economic and colonial interests. The term "Emergency"
14274-548: Was a factor in the growth of trade union movements and caused a rise in communist party membership, with considerable labour unrest and a large number of strikes occurring between 1946 and 1948. Malayan communists organised a successful 24-hour general strike on 29 January 1946, before organising 300 strikes in 1947. To combat rising trade union activity the British used police and soldiers as strikebreakers, and employers enacted mass dismissals, forced evictions of striking workers from their homes, legal harassment, and began cutting
14396-597: Was able to build effective civil-military relations and was one of the chief architects of the counter-insurgency plan in Malaya. In 1951, the British High Commissioner in Malaya, Sir Henry Gurney , was killed near Fraser's Hill during an MNLA ambush. General Gerald Templer was chosen to become the new High Commissioner in January 1952. During Templer's two-year command, "two-thirds of the guerrillas were wiped out and lost over half their strength,
14518-459: Was developed during decolonization . During insurgency and counterinsurgency, the distinction between civilians and combatants is often blurred. Counterinsurgency may involve attempting to win the hearts and minds of populations supporting the insurgency. Alternatively, it may be waged in an attempt to intimidate or eliminate civilian populations suspected of loyalty to the insurgency through indiscriminate violence. The guerrilla must swim in
14640-460: Was for efficiency and energy, rather than by seniority as elsewhere in the EIC's armies. In irregular cavalry the Indian troopers provided their horses under the silladar system. The result was a loose collection of regiments which in general were more effective in the field than their regular counterparts. These irregular units were also cheaper to raise and maintain and as a result many survived into
14762-462: Was used by the British colonial occupation to either arrest or kill many of Malaya's communist and trade union leaders. These mass arrests and killings saw many left-wing activists going into hiding and fleeing into the Malayan jungles. Although the Malayan communists had begun preparations for a guerrilla war against the British, the emergency measures and mass arrest of communists and left-wing activists in 1948 took them by surprise. Led by Chin Peng
14884-508: Was used by the British to characterise the conflict in order to avoid referring to it as a war, because London-based insurers would not pay out in instances of civil wars. The MNLA referred to the conflict as the Anti-British National Liberation War . The war began on 17 June 1948, after Britain declared a state of emergency in Malaya following attacks on plantations , which had been revenge attacks for
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