Free US Law Dictionary

Insurgent

There are no universally accepted definitions of insurgency. The common concept, in a wide range of definitions, is that it involves a desire for political power, achieved through means illegal under the rules of the existing government. It has long been used in the professional military and political literature.

The French expert on Indochina and Vietnam, Bernard Fall, entitled one of his major books Street without joy: insurgency in Indochina, 1946-63. [1] Fall himself, however, wrote later on that "revolutionary warfare" might be a more accurate term. [2] Insurgency has been used for years in professional military literature. Under the British, the situation in Malaya (now Malaysia) was often called the "Malayan insurgency". [3], or "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Insurgencies have existed in many countries and regions, including the Philippines, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Yemen, Djibouti, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, the American colonies of Great Britain, and the Confederate States of America.[4] Each had different specifics but share the property of an attempt to disrupt the central government by means considered illegal by that government. North points out, however, that insurgents today need not be part of a highly organized movement:

"Some are networked with only loose objectives and mission-type orders to enhance their survival. Most are divided and factionalized by area, composition, or goals. Strike one against the current definition of insurgency. It is not relevant to the enemies we face today. Many of these enemies do not currently seek the overthrow of a constituted government...weak government control is useful and perhaps essential for many of these “enemies of the state” to survive and operate."[5]

The term Iraqi insurgency has been used to describe the guerilla resistance to the US-led coalition forces and the new Iraqi Government in Iraq[6]) While the U.S. news media tend to regard insurgencies as the villains in a situation, so did Great Britain regard the rebellious American colonists at the Battle of Lexington. The Chinese revolution led by Mao Zedong was an insurgency, following a conceptual model about which he wrote extensively.[7] Insurgency is far more than what politicians and journalists oversimplify as the Global War on Terror which deals only with one tactic, is inaccurate for the U.S. since it does not fight all terror worldwide, and is a term that does not include the political and other nonviolent means needed to defeat an insurgency:

The term “war on terrorism” is a misnomer, resulting in distorted ideas of the main threat facing Americans today. Terrorism is only a means to an end; in this respect, a “war on terror” makes no more sense than a war on submarines.

– Francis Fukuyama[8]

A variety of terms, none precisely defined, all fall under the category of insurgency: rebellion, uprisings, coups, resistance, etc. The value of the formal models discussed below is to have a taxonomy to categorize insurgencies. No two insurgencies are identical. The basis of the insurgency can be political, economic, religious, or ethnic, or a combination of factors. For example, "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland are most often described as Protestant versus Catholic, but there was significant economic disparity that contributed to the conflict. Fall [2] as well as the United States Marine Corps have used "small wars"; the Marine Small Wars Manual was a pre-World War II classic reference.[9] The Northern Irish situation has been called terrorism,[10] an ethnic conflict,[11] a guerrilla war,[12] a low intensity conflict, and sometimes a civil war. The term Irish Civil War is, however, more often used for the 1922-1923 conflict.

Iraq is not unique in having only a government and multiple sets of insurgents. Historic insurgencies, such as the Russian Civil War, have been multipolar rather than a straightforward model made up of two sides. While the Angolan Civil War had two main sides, MPLA and UNITA. FLEC, however, was a simultaneous separatist movement for the independence of the Cabinda region. Multipolarity extends the definition of insurgency to situations where there is no recognized authority, as in the Somali Civil War, especially the period, from 1998 to 2006, where it broke into quasi-autonomous smaller states, fighting among one another in changing alliances.