Chapter 4
Conclusions
A victory is not [just] the destruction in a given area of the insurgent’s forces and his political organization. It is that, plus the permanent isolation of the insurgent from the population, isolation not enforced upon the population but maintained by and with the population. - David Galula
The four historical examples studied in this paper display many of the traits commonly associated with insurgent warfare. Winning requires a political solution, not simply a military one. These struggles are protracted in nature. The ultimate goal of the insurgency is replacing the existing government. And both the insurgents and counterinsurgents battled for legitimacy throughout the various conflicts. Both the Anti-Huk campaign and the Battle of Algiers can be viewed as government victories. While important, France’s political defeat in Algeria came about by factors beyond the scope of this study. The Afghan insurgency is at a stalemate, which favors the insurgency. The Baghdad insurgency was tipping steeply toward an insurgent victory during the period studied. Based on this bag of mixed results, we will now review the most essential aspects of the four insurgencies here studied, to determine the similarities and differences of the underlying dynamics of urban and rural insurgencies.
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This thesis historically analyzed two rural insurgencies and two urban insurgencies to determine the underlying similarities and differences between the two types of insurgencies. A systematic analysis of these four cases revealed two similar dynamics and two divergent dynamics. The first similarity is that insurgents must be able to hide in order to expand in the beginning and middle stages of an insurgency. The second similarity is that the ability to hide and grow depends on the relative capabilities between the insurgents and counterinsurgents to operate in insurgent base areas. The divergent dynamics are that the criticality of popular support to the insurgent and the density of high-impact targets for insurgents to strike vary between urban and rural insurgency.
Implications
Although the underlying dynamics of rural and urban insurgencies are very similar, there are also some important differences. These differences do not require diverse conceptual approaches. They may, however, require modifications in technique that current doctrine fails to address adequately. Therefore, the insights developed in this thesis should be carefully considered by doctrine writers to validate, refute, or amend existing COIN doctrines.
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