Gentlemen,

Jimbo sort of beat me to this, but here goes.

Isn't the guerilla's war primarily political in nature, with an aim to overthrow the government or change its policies? The ambushes and assassinations are just tools to that end. What allows him to survive and thrive is the political support (either actve, passive, or coerced) he enjoys among the population.

His strength? The legitimacy he receives due to representing the people he moves amongst. If the government was already following these policies, the guerilla movement would have no reason to exist.

You can try to hunt down and kill or capture the guerillas. You can even kick down some doors trying to catch him napping or intimidate the population into talking. I’ll leave it to you to judge how well that strategy has worked out in Iraq, and elsewhere.

If you come to the decision that you can’t defeat him militarily, it seems to me that you would seek to come to some sort of accommodation to the guerilla group. Address his grievances. It is noteworthy that some of the insurgencies we are seeing these days are not monolithic, like what emerged in China under Mao and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. The insurgents are sometimes a loose alliance of different groups. Meeting whatever economic, social, or cultural causes he advocates may splinter the movement and isolate those who are hellbent on seizing power, no matter what. The homegrown “regime changers” then may be possible to defeat, without their allies who had more limited grievances. Unwillingness to implement reforms invites revolution.