Gents-
Perhaps it might be useful to delineate our terminology a bit.
An armed group who seeks purely economical ends is a criminal gang, cartel, mafia, or something similar. They are not insurgents, nor are they rebels.
Insurgency is always political, as Mr. Owen states. If it is not political, it is not warfare and must be something else. War always has political ends.
The insurgent or rebel always seek a political objective. These objectives fall into two broad categories: Those who wish to overthrow a government and replace it with another (usually the insurgent/rebel leadership), or, those who wish to force a government to change a policy/policies, but do not wish to overthrow that government.
I'm not an expert, but my sense of it is that the definitions of these terms depends on who you ask - therefore arguing semantics probably isn't useful. However, my general sense is that insurgency is a sub-category of rebellion in which the insurgent group seeks the overthrow of a government. Rebellions may or may not be insurgencies. Rebels may simply demand a change in policy, or perhaps, secession from a nation-state, without being an insurgency.
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