The Insurgent View vs. US Military View

[Oredigger61]

...( I break insurgency into three broad categories: Revolutionary -change the government; Resistance - remove an externally installed government; and Separatist- break of some segment of the country and form a new government)...

Bob, is this typology written up anywhere?

[Oredigger61]

Bob, is this typology written up anywhere?

Bob, did you see my earlier question up thread?

[Bob's World]

Sorry, yes. I've worked through it a few times in various threads here on the topic. Have also incorporated into at least one paper.

In a nutshell, many efforts at describing insurgency seem overly complicated. I am reminded of a painful experience in College when I took integration calculus for the first time. I was completely overwhelmed by the incredible complexity, and every problem was a blur of complex equations or situations to be converted to complex equations. I didn't know where to start, and I didn't have a firm grip on what I was trying to accomplish, and I didn't have a firm grasp of the reduction formulas and high end algebra and geometry required.

The following term I was sitting in the library with my nemesis the calculus book, when suddenly it dawned on me that for all of the surface complexity, there were really just three types of problems, and step one was to identify which type of problem you were trying to solve. Then as I mastered the reduction formulae and my algebra and geometry skills, it all became quite simple and I ended up earning the highest score in the class.

I think that insurgency is much like this. The complexity in front of one's face is overwhelming; and many sent in to deal with an insurgency also lack proficiency in the basic skills required for such operations

So I set out to see if there were logical "types" of insurgency. As I looked at it there were three. Others have come up with larger numbers, but I think those can be reduced down to the three that I use.

1. Revolutionary: When an element of the populace seeks to overthrow/change the current government through illegal means

2. Resistance: When an element of the populace seeks to throw out an external force that has either forced itself upon them, or come in invited and overstayed its welcome.

3. Separatist: When some segment of the populace seeks to break some portion of the state off from the parent and form a new state.

These may occur in combinations. For example, in Afghanistan, I see the Senior leader Taliban insurgency as a revolutionary movement that is rooted primarily in the perceived illegitimacy of the Karzai government and the lack of trusted and certain processes for the populace to effect legal change of that government (Causation); supported by the AQ UW operations; and employing a fundamental Islamist ideology (motivation). This is the aspect of the insurgency that must be resolved in order to bring peace to the country.

Beneath and within this is the much larger rank and file resistance insurgency of average Afghans, who care little about governance, but who care deeply about the presence of foreign invaders in their homes. They also feel deeply about the duty to safeguard their homes and families, and to have the pride that comes with earning a day's wage for a day's work. They are also Sunni Muslim, so the Islamist message speaks to them. They fight because the coalition is here and because they are paid to do so. This is good, honorable, Pashtun work. Far preferable to simply living on the coalition dole.

Solve the revolutionary "parent" insurgency, and then we can take actions in conjunction with the newly legitimized government of Afghanistan to reduce troop levels; stop the pay and motivation to resist, and all get back to our normal lives. The resistance insurgency largely fades away simply because we fade away, and be cause or narrative becomes more believable with a government perceived as legitimate in the eyes of the populace in office.


Until then, we are largely protecting and feeding a massive Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. Fix that first. Small, local ponzi schemes are very afghan; the big national one fed by coalition "investors" is not. It lifts the money up and out of the country, instead of distributing it back among the people at the local, district, and provincial levels.

[Oredigger61]

Bob, thank you for the detailed response. I sensed it was something along those lines. My reason for asking is that you appear to be plowing ground that I plowed during the period 1974-1980 while course manager for the Navy’s COIN course.

By 1974, the COIN instruction was a residual effort consisting of two classes. First, we taught a two-week seminar about 12 or so times a year. The target audience was the Navy Special Warfare Community and Marine equivalent. However, Army (and some Air Force) reserves flocked to our course because it gave them an ACDUTRA opportunity that was educational. Many of the Army officers were from Reserve Civil Affairs units, so we had a wide variety of knowledgeable folks who passed through our doors. We picked their brains on the way through.

Second, we taught a unit-specific weekend course as part of the Naval Reserve training structure.

Shortly before I arrived on station the staff had flown in Roger Darling for a presentation and video taping session. We then “taught” Darling with little idea of what he was really saying.

One day a student, Tom Grassey, wandered into my office and said we had no clue, we had no one’s attention, and we had no credibility. At the end of his two-week stay we basically said to Tom that if you know so much go out and research the subject and come back and inform us.

A few months later he did just that. One of his points was that we needed to put aside the word “insurgency” and call it what it was, revolution. That opened things up for us. We had been stuck with the terminology of the 1960’s—Left, Mass and Right Strategy. Grassey also pointed us to the construct of “unjust treatment,” which he took from Aristotle.

That led us to David V. J. Bell and his treatment of resistance and revolution. I commend his book to you.

We taped Tom and he published his findings in the Naval War College Review under the title, “Some Perspectives on Revolution.” At the same time, Roger Darling was re-titling his “Military Review” article to be “Revolution Examined Anew.” We gradually renamed our course; it ultimately became a “Political Warfare Seminar," and added the American Revolution as a case study.

We synthesized Darling and Grassey into a unified scheme for qualitative analysis, and added Bell to speak to the distribution of justice component.

Up thread I have a link to a key chart I derived which, at the time, was our understanding of the spectrum of revolutionary conflict and violence. The predicate was that any government has two fundamental tasks, the dispensation of justice (Aristotle, Bell) and the management of violence. The revolutionary goal was to get the government to focus on the latter task.

I have seen little in the intervening 30 years since I last taught the subject that substantially changes what we wrote and taught at Coronado at the close of the Vietnam War.

[Bob's World]

Bob, thank you for the detailed response. I sensed it was something along those lines. My reason for asking is that you appear to be plowing ground that I plowed during the period 1974-1980 while course manager for the Navy’s COIN course.

By 1974, the COIN instruction was a residual effort consisting of two classes. First, we taught a two-week seminar about 12 or so times a year. The target audience was the Navy Special Warfare Community and Marine equivalent. However, Army (and some Air Force) reserves flocked to our course because it gave them an ACDUTRA opportunity that was educational. Many of the Army officers were from Reserve Civil Affairs units, so we had a wide variety of knowledgeable folks who passed through our doors. We picked their brains on the way through.

Second, we taught a unit-specific weekend course as part of the Naval Reserve training structure.

Shortly before I arrived on station the staff had flown in Roger Darling for a presentation and video taping session. We then “taught” Darling with little idea of what he was really saying.

One day a student, Tom Grassey, wandered into my office and said we had no clue, we had no one’s attention, and we had no credibility. At the end of his two-week stay we basically said to Tom that if you know so much go out and research the subject and come back and inform us.

A few months later he did just that. One of his points was that we needed to put aside the word “insurgency” and call it what it was, revolution. That opened things up for us. We had been stuck with the terminology of the 1960’s—Left, Mass and Right Strategy. Grassey also pointed us to the construct of “unjust treatment,” which he took from Aristotle.

That led us to David V. J. Bell and his treatment of resistance and revolution. I commend his book to you.

We taped Tom and he published his findings in the Naval War College Review under the title, “Some Perspectives on Revolution.” At the same time, Roger Darling was re-titling his “Military Review” article to be “Revolution Examined Anew.” We gradually renamed our course; it ultimately became a “Political Warfare Seminar," and added the American Revolution as a case study.

We synthesized Darling and Grassey into a unified scheme for qualitative analysis, and added Bell to speak to the distribution of justice component.

Up thread I have a link to a key chart I derived which, at the time, was our understanding of the spectrum of revolutionary conflict and violence. The predicate was that any government has two fundamental tasks, the dispensation of justice (Aristotle, Bell) and the management of violence. The revolutionary goal was to get the government to focus on the latter task.

I have seen little in the intervening 30 years since I last taught the subject that substantially changes what we wrote and taught at Coronado at the close of the Vietnam War.

You're right, we are definitely coming at this from similar perspectives. I look forward to finding some of those old pieces and working through them.