Guerrilla warfare is the
irregular warfare and combat in which a
small group of combatants use mobile
military tactics in the form of ambushes
and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal
army.
The guerrilla army uses
ambush and
mobility in attacking vulnerable targets in
enemy territory. More often, attacks in enemy territory are called
strikes and are conducted by small groups of professional soldiers.
However, guerrillas are usually non-government civilians and are
either impressed by local guerrilla leaders or volunteer.
Guerrillas are usually fighting invaders of their home territory.
Often, the invaders are in control of all or a portion of the home
territory of the civilians who become guerrillas, and for that
reason they can be considered attacking the "enemy" territory of
their own homeland. A main tactic of the guerrillas is [sabotage].
This would include destruction or impediment of traffic (such as
placing plates upside down on a highway to force invaders to slow
down in order to check for road mines, or removal of all street
signs), electrical or other forms of power, the previously stated
ambush as well as any other form of warfare designed to inflict
damage on the invaders and avoid direct confrontation with the
enemy forces which are normally better equipped and larger (that's
why the locals regular army lost out to the invaders). This term
means "little war" in Spanish and was created during the
Peninsular War. Reading
Ernest Hemingway's "
For Whom The Bell Tolls", who was an
ambulance driver for the injured guerrillas of the
Spanish Civil War, gives a sense of the
local nature of guerrilla warfare, with each village having its own
guerrilla leader and the sabotage tactics used by guerrillas. The
concept acknowledges a conflict between armed civilians against a
powerful nation state army, either foreign or domestic.
The tactics of guerrilla warfare were used successfully in the 20th
century by, among others, the
People's Liberation Army in the
Chinese Civil War, the
Irish Republican Army during the
Irish War of Independence,
and
Fidel Castro's rebel army in the
Cuban Revolution. Most factions of
the
Iraqi Insurgency and groups
such as
FARC are said to be engaged in some
form of guerrilla warfare.
Etymology
Guerrilla ( ) is the diminutive of the Spanish word
guerra "war". It derives from the Old High German word
Werra or from the middle Dutch word
warre;
adopted by the
Visigoths in A.D. 5th
century
Hispania.
The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale,
and scope between the guerrilla army and the formal, professional
army of the state.
An early example of this came when General
John Burgoyne, who, during the
Saratoga campaign of the American War of
Independence, noted that in proceeding through dense woodland:
‘The enemy is infinitely inferior to the King’s Troop
in open space, and hardy combat, is well fitted by disposition and
practice, for the stratagems of enterprises of Little
War...upon the same principle must be a constant rule, in or
near woods to place advanced sentries, where they may have a tree
or some other defence to prevent their being taken off by a single
marksman.'
So conscious of hidden marksmen was Burgoyne that he asked his men,
‘When the Lieutenant General visits an outpost, the men are not to
stand to their Arms or pay him any compliment’, clearly being aware
he would be singled out.
The word was thus not coined in Spain to describe resistance to
Napoleon Bonaparte's French
régime during the
Peninsula War. Its meaning was however
broadened to mean any similar-scale armed resistance.
Guerrillero is the Spanish word for
guerrilla fighter, while in
Spanish-speaking countries the noun
guerrilla usually
denotes
guerrilla army (e.g.
la guerrilla de las
FARC translates as "the FARC guerrilla group"). Moreover, per
the OED, 'the
guerrilla' was in English usage (as early as
1809), describing the
fighters, not only their tactics
(e.g."the town was taken by the guerrillas"). However, in most
languages
guerrilla still denotes the specific style of
warfare.
Strategy, tactics and organization
The strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around
the use of a small, mobile force competing against a large,
unwieldy one. The guerrilla focuses on organizing in small units,
dependent on the support of the local population.
Tactically, the guerrilla army would avoid any confrontation with
large units of enemy troops, but seek for and eliminate small
groups of soldiers to minimize losses and exhaust the opposing
force. Not only personnel, resources also are preferred targets.
All of this is to weaken the enemy's strength, cause them no longer
can prosecute the war, forcing them to withdraw.
It is often misunderstood that guerrilla warfare must involve
disguising as civilians in order to cause enemy troops fail in
telling friend from foe. However, this is a not a primary feature
of a guerrilla war. This type of war can be practiced in everywhere
there are places for combatants to cover themselves, and where such
advantage can not be made use of by a larger and more conventional
force.
History
Since
Classical Antiquity, when
many strategies and tactics were used to fight foreign occupation
that anticipated the modern guerrilla. An early example was the
hit-and-run tactics employed by
the nomadic
Scythians of
Central Asia against
Darius the Great's
Persian Achaemenid Empire and later against
Alexander the Great's
Macedonian Empire.
The
Fabian strategy applied by the
Roman Republic against Hannibal in the Second
Punic War could be considered another early example of
guerrilla tactics: After witnessing several disastrous defeats,
assassinations and raiding parties, the Romans set aside the typical military doctrine of
crushing the enemy in a single battle and initiated a successful,
albeit unpopular, war of attrition against the Carthaginians
that lasted for 83 years.
In expanding their
own Empire, the
Romans encountered numerous examples of guerrilla resistance to
their legions as well. The success of
Judas Maccabeus in his rebellion against
Seleucid rule was at least partly due to
his mastery of irregular warfare.
The
victory of the Basque forces against
Charlemagne's army in the Battle of
Roncevaux Pass
, which gave birth to the Medieval myth of Roland, was due to effective use of a guerrilla
principles in the mountain terrain of the Pyrenees
.
Mongols also faced irregulars composed of
armed peasants in Hungary after the Battle of Mohi
. The various
castles
provided power bases for the Hungarian resistance fighters; while
the Mongols devastated the countryside, the Mongols were unable to
take the
castles and walled cities. The
Hungarians eventually ambushed and destroyed the Mongol rearguard
troops, two
toumens, at Carpathian mountains 1242, where
light horse is at disadvantage because of terrain.
One of the most successful of the guerrilla campaigns was that of
Robert the Bruce in the
Scottish War of Independence
when using strategies of ambushes, avoiding large battles,
destroying enemy strongholds and using a scorched earth policy, the
Scots forced the English out of Scotland without a single
largescale battle until the Battle of Bannockburn eight years after
the start of the war.
In the 15th century,
Vietnamese leader
Le Loi launched a
guerrilla war against the
Chinese. One of the
most successful guerrilla wars against the invading
Ottomans was led by
Skanderbeg from 1443 to 1468. In 1443 he rallied
Albanian forces and drove the Turks from
his homeland.
For 25 years Skanderbeg kept the Turks from
retaking Albania
, which due
to its proximity to Italy, could easily have served as a
springboard to the rest of Europe. In 1462, the Ottomans
were driven back by
Wallachian prince
Vlad III Dracula. Vlad was unable
to stop the Turks from entering Wallachia, so he resorted to
guerrilla war, constantly organizing small attacks and ambushes on
the Turks.
During
the Deluge in
Poland, guerrilla tactics were applied. In the
100 years war between England and France,
commander
Bertrand du Guesclin
used guerrilla tactics to pester the English invaders. The
Frisian warlord
Pier
Gerlofs Donia fought a guerrilla conflict against
Philip I of Castile and with
co-commander
Wijerd Jelckama against
Charles V.
During the
Dutch Revolt of the 16th
century, the
Geuzen waged a guerrilla war
against the
Spanish Empire. During
the
Scanian War, a pro-Danish guerrilla
group known as the
Snapphane fought
against the Swedes. In
Balkan tradition, the
Hajduk was an outlaw who engaged in robbery
and guerrilla warfare against the Turks.
In 17th century Ireland, Irish irregulars called
tories and
rapparees used
guerrilla warfare in the
Irish
Confederate Wars and the
Williamite War in Ireland. Finnish
guerrillas,
sissis, fought against
Russian occupation troops in the
Great Northern War, 1700-1721. The
Russians retaliated brutally against the civilian populace; the
period is called
Isoviha in
Finland.
In the 17th century,
Marathas on the Indian
peninsula under their leader
Shivaji waged
successful guerrilla war against the
Mughal Empire then founded the
Maratha Empire which lasted until superseded
by the
British Empire.
In the 17th and 18th century,
Sikh fighters in
the
Punjab region waged successful
guerrilla warfare against Mughal, Persian and Afghan invasions,
until they founded the powerful
Sikh
empire under
Ranjit Singh.
In the
Irish War of
Independence in 1919-21, guerrilla warfare was used in a
successful attempt to allow Ireland to set up its own parliament
and to leave the United Kingdom. However the same tactics failed to
overthrow the
Anglo-Irish Treaty
in the
Guerrilla
Phase of the Irish Civil War.
World War II
Many clandestine organizations (often known as
resistance movement) operated
in the countries occupied by
Nazi
Germany during the
World War II.
The first guerrilla commanders in the Second World War in Europe
was Major
Henryk Dobrzański
"Hubal". In March 1940, a partisan unit lead by Hubal
completely destroyed a
battalion of German
infantry in a skirmish near the village of Huciska. In the former
Yugoslavia, guerrillas under General
Draža Mihailović, known as
Chetniks, and communist guerrilla under
Josip Broz Tito known as
Partisans, engaged the Germans in a
guerrilla war. By 1944 the
Polish resistance
was thought to number 400,000.
The strength of the Soviet partisan units and formations can not
be accurately estimated, but in Belarus
alone is
thought to have been in excess of 300,000.
On the other side of the world, guerrilla forces in Southeast Asian
countries were a mill stone around the neck of the Japanese. For
example, tens of thousands of Japanese troops were committed to
anti-guerrilla operations in the Philippines. Not only did this
cause a drain on Japanese military resources, but the guerrillas
prevented the Japanese from making the most effective use of the
islands' resources (food, ore, civilian labor, etc.) in their war
effort.
Foco theory
During the 1960s
Che Guevara developed
the foco theory of
revolution by way of
guerrilla warfare, also known as focalism ( ), based upon
experiences surrounding the rebel army's victory in the 1959
Cuban Revolution, and was
formalized as such by
Régis
Debray. Its central principle is that
vanguardism by
cadres of
small, fast-moving
paramilitary groups
can provide a focus (in Spanish,
foco) for popular
discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general
insurrection. Although the original
approach was to mobilize and launch attacks from rural areas, many
foco ideas were adapted into
urban guerrilla warfare movements by
the late 1960s.
Current and recent guerrilla conflicts
Present ongoing guerrilla wars, and regions facing guerrilla war
activity include:
Asia:
Africa:
Latin America:
Europe:
Russia:
Counter-guerrilla warfare
Principles
The guerrilla can be difficult to beat, but certain principles of
counter-insurgency warfare are well known since the 1950s and 1960s
and have been successfully applied.
Classic guidelines
The widely distributed and influential work of Sir
Robert Thompson,
counter-insurgency expert of the
Malayan Emergency, offers several such
guidelines. Thompson's underlying assumption is that of a country
minimally committed to the rule of law and better governance.
Some governments, however, give such considerations short shrift,
and their counterguerrilla operations have involved mass murder,
genocide, starvation and the massive spread of terror, torture and
execution. The totalitarian regimes of Hitler are classic examples,
as are more modern conflicts in places like Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan's anti-Mujahideen war for example, the Soviets
implemented a ruthless policy of wastage and depopulation, driving
over one third of the Afghan population into exile (over 5 million
people), and carrying out widespread destruction of villages,
granaries, crops, herds and irrigation systems, including the
deadly and widespread mining of fields and pastures. See Wiki
article
Soviet war in
Afghanistan.
Many modern countries employ
manhunting doctrine to seek out and
eliminate individual guerrillas. Elements of Thompson's moderate
approach are adapted here:
- The people are the key base to be secured and defended
rather than territory won or enemy bodies counted.
Contrary to the focus of conventional warfare, territory gained, or
casualty counts are not of overriding importance in
counter-guerrilla warfare. The support of the population is the key
variable. Since many insurgents rely on the population for
recruits, food, shelter, financing, and other materials, the
counter-insurgent force must focus its efforts on providing
physical and economic security for that population and defending it
against insurgent attacks and propaganda.
- There must be a clear political counter-vision that can
overshadow, match or neutralize the guerrilla vision. This
can range from granting political autonomy, to economic development
measures in the affected region. The vision must be an integrated
approach, involving political, social and economic and media
influence measures. A nationalist narrative for example, might be
used in one situation, an ethnic autonomy approach in another. An
aggressive media campaign must also be mounted in support of the
competing vision or the counter-insurgent regime will appear weak
or incompetent.
- Practical action must be taken at the lower levels to
match the competitive political vision. It may be tempting
for the counter-insurgent side to simply declare guerrillas
"terrorists" and pursue a harsh liquidation strategy. Brute force
however, may not be successful in the long run. Action does not
mean capitulation, but sincere steps such as removing corrupt or
arbitrary officials, cleaning up fraud, building more
infrastructure, collecting taxes honestly, or addressing other
legitimate grievances can do much to undermine the guerrillas'
appeal.
- Economy of
force. The counter-insurgent regime must not overreact
to guerrilla provocations, since this may indeed be what they seek
to create a crisis in civilian morale. Indiscriminate use of
firepower may only serve to alienate the key focus of
counterinsurgency- the base of the people. Police level actions
should guide the effort and take place in a clear framework of
legality, even if under a State of Emergency. Civil liberties and
other customs of peacetime may have to be suspended, but again, the
counter-insurgent regime must exercise restraint, and cleave to
orderly procedures. In the counter-insurgency context, "boots on
the ground" are even more important than technological prowess and
massive firepower, although anti-guerrilla forces should take full
advantage of modern air, artillery and electronic warfare
assets.
- Big unit action may sometimes be necessary. If
police action is not sufficient to stop the guerrilla fighters,
military sweeps may be necessary. Such "big battalion" operations
may be needed to break up significant guerrilla concentrations and
split them into small groups where combined civic-police action can
control them.
- Aggressive mobility. Mobility and aggressive
small unit action is extremely important for the counter-insurgent
regime. Heavy formations must be lightened to aggressively locate,
pursue and fix insurgent units. Huddling in static strongpoints
simply concedes the field to the insurgents. They must be kept on
the run constantly with aggressive patrols, raids, ambushes,
sweeps, cordons, roadblocks, prisoner snatches, etc.
- Ground level embedding and integration. In
tandem with mobility is the embedding of hardcore counter-insurgent
units or troops with local security forces and civilian elements.
The US Marines in Vietnam also saw some success with this method,
under its CAP (Combined Action Program) where Marines were teamed
as both trainers and "stiffeners" of local elements on the ground.
US Special Forces in Vietnam like the Green Berets, also caused
significant local problems for their opponents by their leadership
and integration with mobile tribal and irregular forces. The
CIA's Special Activities Division
created successful guerrilla forces from the Hmong tribe during the
war in Vietnam in the 1960s, from the Northern Alliance against the Taliban during the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and
from the Kurdish Peshmerga against Ansar
al-Islam and the forces of Saddam
Hussein during the war in Iraq in 2003. In Iraq, the 2007 US
"surge" strategy saw the embedding of regular and special forces
troops among Iraqi army units. These hardcore groups were also
incorporated into local neighborhood outposts in a bid to
facilitate intelligence gathering, and to strengthen ground level
support among the masses.
- Cultural sensitivity. Counter-insurgent forces
require familiarity with the local culture, mores and language or
they will experience numerous difficulties. Americans experienced
this in Vietnam and during the US Iraqi Freedom invasion and
occupation, where shortages of Arabic speaking interpreters and
translators hindered both civil and military operations.
- Systematic intelligence effort. Every
effort must be made to gather and organize useful intelligence. A
systematic process must be set up to do so, from casual questioning
of civilians to structured interrogations of prisoners. Creative
measures must also be used, including the use of double agents, or
even bogus "liberation" or sympathizer groups that help reveal
insurgent personnel or operations.
- Methodical clear and hold. An "ink spot" clear
and hold strategy must be used by the counter-insurgent regime,
dividing the conflict area into sectors, and assigning priorities
between them. Control must expand outward like an ink spot on
paper, systematically neutralizing and eliminating the insurgents
in one sector of the grid, before proceeding to the next. It may be
necessary to pursue holding or defensive actions elsewhere, while
priority areas are cleared and held.
- Careful deployment of mass popular forces and special
units. Mass forces include village self-defence groups and
citizen militias organized for community defence and can be useful
in providing civic mobilization and local security. Specialist
units can be used profitably, including commando squads, long range
reconnaissance and "hunter-killer" patrols, defectors who can track
or persuade their former colleagues like the Kit Carson units in Vietnam, and
paramilitary style groups. Strict control must be kept over
specialist units to prevent the emergence of violent vigilante
style reprisal squads that undermine the government's program.
- The limits of foreign assistance must be clearly
defined and carefully used. Such aid should be limited
either by time, or as to material and technical, and personnel
support, or both. While outside aid or even troops can be helpful,
lack of clear limits, in terms of either a realistic plan for
victory or exit strategy, may find the foreign helper "taking over"
the local war, and being sucked into a lengthy commitment, thus
providing the guerrillas with valuable propaganda opportunities as
the stream of dead foreigners mounts. Such a scenario occurred with
the US in Vietnam, with the American effort creating dependence in
South Vietnam, and war weariness and protests back home.
Heavy-handed foreign interference may also fail to operate
effectively within the local cultural context, setting up
conditions for failure.
- Time. A key factor in guerrilla strategy is a
drawn-out, protracted conflict, that wears down the will of the
opposing counter-insurgent forces. Democracies are especially
vulnerable to the factor of time. The counter-insurgent force must
allow enough time to get the job done. Impatient demands for
victory centered around short-term electoral cycles play into the
hands of the guerrillas, though it is equally important to
recognize when a cause is lost and the guerrillas have won.
Variants
Some writers on counter-insurgency warfare emphasize the more
turbulent nature of today's guerrilla warfare environment, where
the clear political goals, parties and structures of such places as
Vietnam, Malaysia, or El Salvador are not as prevalent. These
writers point to numerous guerrilla conflicts that center around
religious, ethnic or even criminal enterprise themes, and that do
not lend themselves to the classic "national liberation"
template.
The wide availability of the Internet has also cause changes in the
tempo and mode of guerrilla operations in such areas as
coordination of strikes, leveraging of financing, recruitment, and
media manipulation. While the classic guidelines still apply,
today's anti-guerrilla forces need to accept a more disruptive,
disorderly and ambiguous mode of operation.
- "Insurgents may not be seeking to overthrow the state, may
have no coherent strategy or may pursue a faith-based approach
difficult to counter with traditional methods. There may
be numerous competing insurgencies in one theater, meaning that the
counterinsurgent must control the overall environment rather than
defeat a specific enemy. The actions of individuals and
the propaganda effect of a subjective “single narrative” may far
outweigh practical progress, rendering counterinsurgency even more
non-linear and unpredictable than before. The
counterinsurgent, not the insurgent, may initiate the conflict and
represent the forces of revolutionary change. The economic
relationship between insurgent and population may be diametrically
opposed to classical theory. And insurgent tactics, based
on exploiting the propaganda effects of urban bombing, may
invalidate some classical tactics and render others, like
patrolling, counterproductive under some circumstances.
Thus, field evidence suggests, classical theory is necessary
but not sufficient for success against contemporary
insurgencies..."
Influence on the arts
- Che, a 2007 film
- Guerrilla Girls, a feminist
artist group
- "Guerrilla Radio", a song by
Rage Against the
Machine
- Guerrilla burlesque, a style
of burlesque performance that involves descending upon audiences,
uninvited.
- Tomorrow series A series of
books written by John Marsden
about guerrilla warfare during a fictional invasion and occupation
of Australia.
- For Whom The Bell
Tolls, a novel by Ernest
Hemingway telling the story of Robert Jordan, a volunteer
American attached to an anti-fascist guerrilla unit during the
Spanish Civil War.
- Chetniks!
The Fighting
Guerrillas (1943), a 20th Century Fox movie on the
guerrilla resistance movement of General Draza Mihailovich in
German-occupied Yugoslavia during World War II.
- 'Undercover ' (1943), a
British film produced by Ealing Studios, Released in the US by
Columbia pictures as Underground Guerrillas.
- Red Faction: Guerrilla, a
game where the player fights as a guerrilla against an entrenched
enemy.
- The "Star Wars" trilogy (Episodes IV,
V, and VI) which are partly about guerrilla war tactics in space
combat (in particular episode VI's attack on the second Death Star
and the simultaneous attack against its shield generator on
Endor).
- Season 3 of Battlestar
Galactica which focuses on the guerrilla war against the
Cylons by the former citizens of the Twelve Colonies on New
Caprica.
- The 1965 novel Dune
features such warfare as conducted against House Harkonnen by the nomadic Fremen tribe, led by Paul
Atreides.
See also
Footnotes
Further References:
External links