Insurgency Paradigms
We must understand the tenants of insurgencies. Inside these tenants are inherent differences between an insurgency, revolution and terrorism. Some experts will quickly say that insurgency, revolution and terrorism are inextricably linked. In doing so however, they would fail to recognize the consequence of this association. The three are only loosely connected but often each gains tremendous momentum when the language is used interchangeably.Originally Posted by Mike Burgoyne
An insurgency is a condition in which opportunistic groups organize to create chaos and disorder within their sphere of influence. They are self-serving and the population can be likened to the criminal gang and organized crime elements as opposed to terrorists or revolutionists. Insurgents exist because of a simple concept known as “Environmental Scarcity.” Some call it resource scarcity. Environmental Scarcity includes both scarcity of tangible resources and intangible society control including Rule of Law, Corruption and Legal Consequences.
As long as insurgents (organized criminal elements) run unabated they control the goods and services and everyone else including the government is marginalized within their sphere. And it is chaos that allows them to run free. The insurgency is almost always composed of men 18 to 45 year old. Although the "gang, family" have a central command and control, when the insurgency is large operating throughout the country, it will be composed of several "groups, families" and they will be decentralized from one another in their operations. From a one over the country view it looks like one big centralized operation but that is simply not the case.
Each group will operate locally within a small territorial range and recruit their fighters from local talent. When any one group gets too large, there will be internal violence, mass killings and rival rifts as members compete for upward mobility. An insurgents' cause is never an ideology or idealistic dogma, and therefore they will have the propensity to ebb and flow based on the 'winds" of the day and the targets of opportunity. Because they are not driven by a single ideology, members can quickly apostatize. This fact can be used as an important counter-insurgency weapon.
The insurgent is apolitical and PRIMAL in his motives as compared to terrorism or revolutionists. Insurgency war on the streets is not politically or religiously motivated. Notice how these statements fly in the face of the conventional war fighter’s paradigm proposed by Clausewitz, “War is the extension of politics by other means.”
If a word could describe insurgents, it is self-serving—power, money, lawlessness, food, freedom from oppression, survival, etc., and once spawned, their aim is protractedness; their aim is not to win. Simply stated, insurgencies are protracted because that provides the most utility to the insurgents; they are not protracted because it is an insurgency. Insurgents don’t have a goal of winning although they would not mind seeing their enemy fail. They win if the create chaos, fear and if the struggle continues to gain momentum. They will draw others criminal groups into the fray—that breeds more chaos. Finally, insurgency battles are small scale quick engagements that are executed locally within kilometers of their homes.
To support these assumptions let us look at the distance to insurgent attack scene from the insurgent’s home. An equation that predicts the probability that an attack is carried out by local insurgents of one group verses another is based on the exponential decay function. The probability of occurrence is approximated as: P(b) = A *e**-Bx Where A and B are empirical constants determined from data sets in the local area (generated from data from other incidents). As the distance X from the insurgent’s base increases, the less probable that this group committed it. Based on this, 90% of all insurgent attacks will occur within 15 km of their base of operation.
The insurgent acts locally without thinking globally. The terrorist in contrast is based on the terrorist’s commitment to violence as a small group (usually ranging in group size from few to less than one thousand members) in order to intimidate a population or government to cause their perceived fundamental change. The group size is limited by command and control capabilities. Their cause is ideological and political, based on group-actualization rather than self-serving. It is aimed at the establishment, not decapitated states. Terrorism however enjoys the freedom to operate unabated in failed states. Finally, rarely will anyone ever develop a counter- terrorist strategy to change this group’s apostasy. Their beliefs are so deeply held that they appear to the world as radical and extreme. Terrorists may or may not be highly trained and their operations are top driven and centralized from the command and control elements.
An interesting phenomenon occurs for insurgencies; they gain energy each time it is mistakenly associated with an ideological cause such as religion, oppression, Jihad, Al Qa’ida, etc. Nearly every time the insurgency will win the information warfare campaign because bad news is news. Again, it is an attempt to enrage others to carry the banner as this provides the utility necessary to support the insurgency’s need for protractedness. The greater the madness, the greater the chaos. And, the greater the chaos the more protracted the struggle.
There is a critical point to be made and that is isolating the insurgents. This is a sine qua non to victory. In Iraq for example, we restricted movement and isolated the insurgents using T-walls and this fact will probably never make the history books.
In cases where the conventional army has quelled an uprising, they were able to separate, segregate and isolate the enemy on the battlefield. This is an important tenant of counter-insurgency warfare and more often than not it is missed. Two examples of victory through isolating the insurgency are the Philippines Insurgency, or the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings.
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