It's a matter of definition
Ryan--
All civil wars are insurgencies if by insurgency we mean an effort to overturn a govt and replace it with another by armed means. Not all insurgenies are civil wars. If the govt is some external power or a clearly defined different group. Thus, the ANC insurgency against the RSA was not a civil war because both Afrikaners and Africans defined themselves as different peoples. Of course, the outcome was to redefine all S Africans as one people. And, I left off the Anglo S. Africans. so, perhaps, it was a civi war after all.:confused:
Cheers
JohnT
While I have a minor quible with Rex
over Somalia - kinda like his quible with me over RSA (and I can see his point in both cases), the real issue as Wilf succinctly put it and JMM reiterated in his lawerese ;), why do you want to differentiate? what is your purpose? If it is purely academic, then you might need an operational definition which can pretty much be what you want it to be (so long as it doesn't do too much violence to the general understanding of the term a la Webster),:eek:
Cheers
JohnT
Personal Interest Explained
Since there seems to be some issue with why I am looking for a distinction between insurgency and civil war, please allow me to illuminate.
1. I find the lack of coherent difference between the use of terms problematic when assessing conflict.
2. Academic literature seems to intermix the terms, some write very clearly about insurgency separate and distinct from civil wars. Others ignorantly or intentionally intermix terms in both research and literature which can then be used by practitioners of war while not understanding the logic behind the data.
3. I am currently writing a monograph on the distinctions and thought it might be possible to reach a larger audience in order to create discourse as to the meaning of the words insurgency and civil wars.
If the concensus is that there is no difference, fine so be it. I accept that. However, I would still be interested in the discussion which revolves around the use of the words in both strategy and policy.
I hope this helps to clarify why I think there might some utility in identifying any difference. Whether it is political or military. I still find it instructive to debate the meaning of the words.:cool:
Gotta agree (and disagree) with Wilf
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
OK. I'd really like to see you put some flesh on the bones here.
From a practitioners point of view, calling it a Civil War or an insurgency is actually completely superfluous, unless it's blindingly obvious, which it is. Warfare is pretty much warfare. War is War.
If a distinction does not help you deal with a problem more effectively, it probably lends more confusion than help. IW, 4GW, Asymmetric Warfare, etc spring to mind. New names that don't help me solve the problems they describe.
To say that the historic (and recent) distinctions for using the term insurgency or civil war to describe a conflict are a bit loose is generous. I haven't seen a clear distinction and have never seen much rhyme nor reason to how these things have been sorted.
Now, where I disagree with Wilf is that conflict between a state and its own populace is the same as conflict between two states. I understand where he's coming from, and we agree to disagree on this matter. My position is that when a state employs its military against its own populace in COIN that it may suppress the conflict for a time, but makes the underlying insurgency worse, and merely pushing the problem down the road a bit.
That said, if a serious distinction was made between a civil war and an insurgency that divides it into problems with two distinctly different solutions, then there is some value. I don't think agonizing over strategic-operational-tactical levels of conflict applies or his helpful though, so I wouldn't go down that path. If it is insurgency at a tactical level it is insurgency at all levels. Same for Civil War.
So one distinction that I have been playing with lately is that insurgency is revolutionary, an informal or illegally formed movement within a state to either change the current organic government; separatist, break some piece off from a state to form a new state; or Resistance, to overthrow some occupying/colonial force and its puppets. In all these cases I do not believe the COIN force is best served by treating the conflict as "warfare", but rather as a civil emergency that requires addressing the causal concerns rooted in the perceptions of their Legitimacy, the Injustice and Disrespect perceived by the populace, and ensuring that the populace has trusted legal means available to them to address these concerns. There will be fighting, after all, by definition the insurgent is acting outside the law and opens himself to full fury of the state, but resolution will come from addressing the root causes.
A Civil War distinction makes sense if rebel segment of the state has acted within the con struts of the law to separate themselves legally, form a new state, and are then fighting to secure that end. This is what happened in the American Civil War. A new nation was formed legally, that legality was challenged by the Union, and the two state waged a war to settle the matter. Perfectly logical to treat such an event as warfare. However, once one of those states is defeated in war, it may then devolve into an insurgency based on some mix of the categories above.
So based on this definition, there was no civil war in Iraq (unless the Kurds decide to make a full break as a state), and there is no civil war in Afghanistan. Both are insurgencies and are best resolved by addressing them as a whole as civil emergencies which require a main effort of addressing the failures of governance as perceived by their respective populaces; and a supporting effort of justly applying the rule of law to those who bring violence to the state and the populace to achieve their ends.