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Jedburgh
07-12-2006, 12:14 AM
Yes, I know - I'm a week late in posting this, but this article from the 1 Jul The Economist is a decent short read: Fighting Rebellion the Wrong Way (http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7118005)

The boundaries between rebellion, terrorism and criminality can be fuzzy in South-East Asia. Rebels supposedly struggling for local self-rule or a juster society may be enriching themselves through extortion and kidnapping. And factions within such insurgencies sometimes help or are helped by terrorist groups with bolder aims—like creating an Islamic “superstate”—and deadlier methods than those the rebels might adopt.

This makes it hard for the region's governments to know how to deal with insurgents. Their stock response has often been to launch a new “war” on them. Such military-led campaigns, though, may be motivated mainly by a need to be seen to be doing something rather than nothing; or by a desire to divert attention from other political problems. They rarely succeed. Often, by tacitly sanctioning brutality by the security forces, they make things worse...