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    Council Member ryanmleigh's Avatar
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    Default Insurgency vs. Civil War

    All-
    I am looking for some assistance trying to differentiate between insurgencies and civil wars. I have already read most of the literature on the benchmarks necessary to meet the international standard for a civil war, I am more interested in what the community thinks about the differences between the two. Academic sources would be helpful, but I am just as inclined to read your opinions as well. I appreciate any assistance you all can provide.

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    Default 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.

    Cheers

    JohnT

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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Why differentiate? What purpose does it serve?

    In very general terms I think a Civil War would generally see warfare between two or more fielded forces, aimed at taking and holding objectives and centres of population. Irregular forces generally avoid taking and holding ground, though sometimes they do.
    OK, I differentiate between regular and irregular, but there comes a point where there is little actual benefit in doing so.

    Again, I cannot see why defining this would be important.
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    I have always thought of insurgencies as violent/non-violent activites whose goal/s can be scaled along a continuum from a change in policy to outright state capture (or revolution, i.e., overthrowing a regime).

    In civil wars the identity of the state, its organisational form and the scope/extent/depth of its territorial authority are themselves are in question (take, for instance, the US war of Sesession/Civil War).
    Last edited by Tukhachevskii; 06-24-2010 at 03:02 PM. Reason: pselingl

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    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    ll civil wars are insurgencies if by insurgency we mean an effort to overturn a govt and replace it with another by armed means.
    I would largely agree (although I would probably count RSA as a civil war), in general civil wars are a subset of insurgencies. A few defining features:

    1) Severity. We don't consider the Red Army Faction versus West Germany a civil war. (I'm sometimes tempted to define civil war as an insurgency that reaches the point that the government thinks "holy crap, we could lose this!")

    2) Internal actors (although they may have external patrons). Violence wholly directed at an occupying power would not be a civil war.

    3) Insurgency targets an established authority. In those rare cases where there is no authority--Somalia at certain times--you could have the unusual case of a civil war that isn't an insurgency.

    Wilf raises an essential social science point, though. Categories are abstractions, and it's only worth defining and using them if by so doing we gain some greater analytical insight.
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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
    Wilf raises an essential social science point, though.
    Oh Crap! Now I'm doing social science. I need to hold a gun.... now!!
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    Council Member M-A Lagrange's Avatar
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    Rex Brynen
    I would largely agree (although I would probably count RSA as a civil war), in general civil wars are a subset of insurgencies. A few defining features:

    1) Severity. We don't consider the Red Army Faction versus West Germany a civil war. (I'm sometimes tempted to define civil war as an insurgency that reaches the point that the government thinks "holy crap, we could lose this!")

    2) Internal actors (although they may have external patrons). Violence wholly directed at an occupying power would not be a civil war.

    3) Insurgency targets an established authority. In those rare cases where there is no authority--Somalia at certain times--you could have the unusual case of a civil war that isn't an insurgency.

    Rex, what would be DRC?
    A war conducted by local actors in the name of external powers who are not happy that the pupet they pupet in place, after overpassing an established authority, is no more listening to them?
    Just to add some fun, you can even add the fact that you have at least 2 external powers who are fighting indirectly to take control over strategic natural resources in a cold war like manner... (But that's just if you wanna go in details).

    By the way, Liberia was no insurgency. It was a civil war but the rebel (Taylor) invaded the country without national support and insurgent network.
    But 1) his troops were mainly liberian and 2) his obective was to reconquere power in the name of a liberia ethnic group (the Kongo).

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    Council Member ryanmleigh's Avatar
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    Rex-
    Did you truly mean to say that civil war is a subset of insurgency, or did you mean that insurgency is a subset of civil war? Your example 1 would lead me to believe that there is scale of intrastate conflict, with civil war residing somewhere at the top and insurgency falling somehwere below that.

    The current literature would also support some concept of scale. According to COW (Correlates of War) University of Michigan, political violence must incur at least 1,000 deaths to be considered a civil war. There is also a necessity for a minimum number of casualties incurred by the incumbent forces in order to achieve civil war status.

    Much of the discussion so far has been terrific, to some degree I think it highlights some of the confusion surrounding the concepts of civil war and insurgency. I believe that is why it is important to identify the differences between them. It goes further than just categorizing conflict. Understanding the conflict should have an impact on how we address it.
    Last edited by ryanmleigh; 06-24-2010 at 04:05 PM. Reason: spelling error

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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryanmleigh View Post
    Much of the discussion so far has been terrific, to some degree I think it highlights some of the confusion surrounding the concepts of civil war and insurgency. I believe that is why it is important to identify the differences between them. It goes further than just categorizes conflict. Understanding the conflict should have an impact on how we address it.
    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.
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    Council Member ryanmleigh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
    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.
    I agree wholeheartedly with your statement. At the tactical level, where the rubber meets the road, all war is war. However, I would argue that at the operational and strategic level there is difference in how we approach different types of conflict. That is why I think there is utility is identfying the differences.

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    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    Default Gotta agree (and disagree) with Wilf

    Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
    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.
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryanmleigh View Post
    The current literature would also support some concept of scale. According to COW (Correlates of War) University of Michigan, political violence must incur at least 1,000 deaths to be considered a civil war. There is also a necessity for a minimum number of casualties incurred by the incumbent forces in order to achieve civil war status.
    I've never understood why CoW uses an absolute threshold, and not a relative one. 100 dead in Tuvalu would be a civil war. 100 dead in DR Congo is a bad morning.

    Yes, I mean to say civil war is a subset of insurgency. Insurgency is simply violence against established authority. Civil wars are always large insurgencies (hence the "war").

    But, to reiterate what several have now said--it all depends on why you're slotting things in conceptual boxes.
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    Yes, I mean to say civil war is a subset of insurgency. Insurgency is simply violence against established authority. Civil wars are always large insurgencies (hence the "war").
    Not sure I agree with that. How do you define "established authority?" Who, for example, was the established authority in the Russian civil war? What about cases where the insurgency gains the upper hand and becomes "established" but elements of the old regime remain and continue to fight? At what point to they change from being the "established authority" to the insurgent?
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    Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
    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.

    Cheers

    JohnT

    IMO that is about the best definition you can get. I would add if it is two opposing groups of "citizens"(legal residents) inside the same Geographic boundary or country, it will usually be viewed as Civil War. But as John points out whenever an External power/group "non-citizens" comes into the picture it will tend to be called an Insurgency.

    The very term Insurgency is rather nebulous because it often depends on the viewpoint you have as to who is the good guy or bad guy. I have often thought that term was invented because it is more Politically acceptably to use that term as opposed to calling it some type of War(Civil or Un-Civil).
    Last edited by slapout9; 06-26-2010 at 04:00 AM. Reason: stuff

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    Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
    IMO that is about the best definition you can get. I would add if it is two opposing groups of "citizens"(legal residents) inside the same Geographic boundary or country, it will usually be viewed as Civil War. But as John points out whenever an External power/group "non-citizens" comes into the picture it will tend to be called an Insurgency.

    The very term Insurgency is rather nebulous because it often depends on the viewpoint you have as to who is the good guy or bad guy. I have often thought that term was invented because it is more Politically acceptably to use that term as opposed to calling it some type of War(Civil or Un-Civil).
    So the introduction of an (outside the state) third party would help to distinguish an insurgency from a civil war. Otherwise, any number of parties inside a state fighting for control over the people would be a civil war?
    Ryan Leigh
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryanmleigh View Post
    So the introduction of an (outside the state) third party would help to distinguish an insurgency from a civil war. Otherwise, any number of parties inside a state fighting for control over the people would be a civil war?
    Yes, the tricky part is national boundaries were often drawn by imperial/colonial powers,in which case the indigenous populations may not recognize these boundaries in any real sense. So you could have a civil war/insurgency at the same time.

    Example the Taliban are Pashtun....half live in Afghanistan and half live in Pakistan and IMO they don't really care about any border drawn by some foreign power,it is Pashtunastan to them. That as why I think it is much better to understand them in terms of "Bands of Guerrillas in the mist" as opposed to Insurgency/Civil War. Just my 2 cents.

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    All- some more to chew on. This came from Dr. Sambanis at Yale who is also a leading civil war scholar who has worked with Drs. Collier and Hoeffler on multiple projects. He wrote "A reasonable way to distinguish between civil war and insurgency is to think of insurgency as a strategy that can be used in a civil war and civil war can be the term that describes a conflict that engages the majority of the population (by contrast, an insurgency might be a strategy pursued by a small group with relatively low levels of public support). As you know, there is no consensus on the definition of these concepts, but a distinction such as the one I suggest might help you support your claim that different interventions/policies can be effective in countering insurgency vs. civil war."
    Anyone with more thoughts?
    Ryan Leigh
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    Quote Originally Posted by ryanmleigh View Post
    All-
    I am looking for some assistance trying to differentiate between insurgencies and civil wars. I have already read most of the literature on the benchmarks necessary to meet the international standard for a civil war, I am more interested in what the community thinks about the differences between the two. Academic sources would be helpful, but I am just as inclined to read your opinions as well. I appreciate any assistance you all can provide.

    See my answer in this post HERE. Should confuse matters. Bottom line there is no CLEAR way to cleanly separate insurgency from civil war, in an academic sense. The real answer looks more like a Venn diagram depending on when/where you want to assess your case.
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