Insurgency vs. Civil War

[Bob's World]

Bob- Would you say that these root conditions are the same for either civil war or insurgency? Or are there different conditions that lead to different forms of warfare. I imagine that the initial conditions (personnel, equipment, funding) would have an impact on the way the conflict progresses.

Therefore I would also think that there may be different root causes of conflict which make it look, smell, or be an insurgency vice a civil war. Examining the root causes then would be one way to differentiate between the two forms of conflict. Wouldn't you agree?

Any distinction must provide some value in suggesting a unique type of problem that requires a unique category of solution.

In that vein, recognizing that over the recorded history of warfare these terms (civil war, revolt, insurrection, insurgency, etc) have been used randomly for a wide range of reasons (a snappy name that rolls off the tongue and is pleasing to the ear probably as high a reason as any), we really cannot look to historic precedence for our answer, merely for examples.

So, I see insurgency as being any informal, illegal revolt growing out of a populace in response to perceptions of "Poor Governance" (rooted in Legitimacy, Justice, Respect and/or Hope) to address some combination of Revolution (change the government), Resistance (remove an unwanted foreign body) or Separatist (break a chunk off to form a new state). I see these as much more being Civil Emergencies rather that true warfare, and should be addressed in a manner that recognizes that the causation is rooted in how a populace feels about its own governance, and that the government must tailor its response to focus on addressing those perceptions, while managing the violence and dealing with the (by definition) outlaw insurgents in a manner that never forgets they are the tip of an iceberg-like segment of the society, and that one cannot just shave the offensive section of the populace off and resolve the problem.

Civil War, on the other hand, is when a State breaks cleanly at the start of the conflict into 2 or more distinct legal entities, with clear boundaries and formal governing bodies. The new states willing to fight to retain their newly declared independence, and the remnant of the old state willing to fight to prevent the same. This is more traditional warfare between these two governments. Once the Civil War is resolved by accepted principles of warfare, however, one may find them self with all of the conditions of insurgency as described above that must be appreciated and managed as well.

Some may say that I am leaning too heavily on the American experience. No, it is merely a distinction that to me provides some form of worthwhile merit.

So, between a populace and its government: insurgency.

When a new government forms, and a new state is formed: Civil War.

In Iraq then, to find a current example, If the new Kurdish state with its distinct border and governance and the existing Iraqi state square off over the desire of greater sovereignty for that Kurdish state, it would be civil war. Any thing that has happened in Iraq over the past 7 years has not, IMO, been civil war.

(note: even with this distinction, it gets fuzzy pretty fast for a separatist movement; such movements probably need to be addressed with a mix of approaches from the start)