On Insurgencies
War is a messy, brutal, ugly, and tawdry ordeal, sanitised and propagandised by those who have a vested interest in making it look clean and heroic. So naturally, the messiest, most brutal, ugliest, and tawdriest kind of war is the one subject to the most propaganda and sanitisation. When it comes to portrayal in media, with some exceptions, the insurgency is probably the kind of war which is portrayed the most differently from reality: the stories of clean-cut freedom-fighters mowing down faceless ranks of regime or occupational troops, enjoying the support of almost every person around, and being destined for a simple, clear-cut victory which leads to a better future for all who deserve it is a very common narrative.
It’s also pretty much 100% bullshit.
The reason why this sort of thing gets mythologised so readily is simple enough to understand: almost everyone in the modern world has had their lives shaped by the outcome of an insurgency, and those people have a vested interest in mythologising those insurgencies in ways which make them look good: Americans have the Sons of Liberty and the Minutemen, Europeans have the various antifascist partisans which fought against the Nazis. Much of Africa and Asia have anti-colonialist rebellions and movements which drove out European, American, and Japanese imperialists to create the societies they now live in. People have a vested interest in seeing the struggles of those honoured forebears as heroic, in seeing their actions as morally clear, and in seeing their ultimate victory as one which showcases the essential goodness of the national or cultural identity which they identify with.
Likewise, those with grievances against existing governments or states of affairs have similar reasons to mythologise insurgency: they want recruits, and they’re not going to get any if they tell the people they want to induct the truth. They want people to think of insurgents as underdogs who are paradoxically also supersoldiers, fighters who fight unconventionally but somehow never hurt anyone who doesn’t ‘deserve’ it. Much like a cult or an extremist political movement, insurgencies and those who support them (themselves often cults or extremist political movements) often recruit by providing an idealised vision of heroic combat to those who lack direction, purpose, or belonging. Would-be revolutionaries lie about the nature of insurgency because ultimately, revolutionaries are ideological war profiteers, looking to sucker people into suffering, killing, and dying, for their vision of a world which benefits them more than the current one does.
So, that covers the lies. What about the truth?
The truth stems from a single fact which also shapes the basic nature of insurgency itself: insurgents fight from a position of weakness. If an insurgency was able to fight its enemy on an even playing field, it wouldn’t be an insurgency, it would still be fighting a conventional conflict. Because it’s not, it can be fairly assumed that conventional fighting has ended – or never started to begin with, because those who would normally direct and authorise conventional fighting have already considered it hopeless.
What this means first of all is that when insurgents actually fight against their enemies directly, they usually lose. Even if the insurgency itself is made up of a significant number of individuals who have weapons or combat training and experience, they’ll still be operating at a logistical and organisational disadvantage: their equipment will be worse, their training will be less effective (because they have to do it in hiding), and they generally won’t have the numbers. A smart insurgency won’t fight against enemy military forces unless they absolutely have no choice – or when they believe they’re strong enough to transition from insurgency to conventional warfare. The latter case is an immense gamble for that insurgency. When it succeeds (as with the PLA in the last phase of the Chinese Civil War, the Viet Minh during First Indochina War, or the Taliban during the fall of Afghanistan), they often win. When they fail (as the Viet Cong did during the Tet Offensive, or the Polish Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising) they often are destroyed entirely as an organisation, as formerly hidden insurgent groups sacrifice the one effective protection they have (concealment) and are destroyed by the superior firepower, training, numbers, and organisation of a conventional military.
Even if that insurgency wins the battle, the resulting ratio of losses is likely to be vastly in favour of the conventional forces for the same reason that these victories tend to be so rare. The advantages that a professional army provides in equipment, training, discipline, and sheer weight of numbers and firepower mean a lot more than conventional media – with its focus on heroic individual martial prowess – often portrays. This means that when insurgents do attack conventional forces, they have to do so with often vastly superior numbers.
But superior numbers aren’t easy to come by. People in general will support a cause they agree with when there’s little risk involved, but when supporting an insurgency means fines, imprisonment, or even death, they are far less likely to do so – especially when it is understood that the insurgency is in a position of weakness. It bears repeating that while the French Resistance is mythologised as having widespread popular support, it was primarily a fringe alliance of communists and monarchists propped up by British military intelligence until relatively late in the war; when the Allies were clearly winning, liberation was a foregone conclusion, and resistance seemed like a more profitable proposition long-term than collaboration. Likewise, the initial fighting ranks of an insurgency will almost always consist of either the desperate (who face certain death at the hands of the enemy already) and the fanatics (who find death preferable to life under the enemy).
Expanding these ranks requires what is essentially a political strategy, which has two prongs: demonstrating the capability of the insurgent group, and demonstrating the enemy’s inability to maintain control. These prongs are ultimately about legitimacy, with the former establishing the insurgents’ own legitimacy as an effective fighting force capable of achieving its objectives, and the second attacking the enemy’s legitimacy as a potential civil government capable of maintaining stable control over an occupied territory.
To establish legitimacy, the insurgents have to prove two things: that they actually exist, and that they can cause meaningful damage to the enemy to a degree that they can force the enemy with withdraw or otherwise give concessions. Part of this can be done through propaganda: through things as simple as leaflets and broadcasts, to communicate to potential recruits and sympathisers that an insurgency actually exists. However, such tactics only work to a point, and eventually, an insurgency will have to proceed to direct attacks on enemy forces to prove they have the ability to carry those attacks out.
Of course, attacking enemy military assets is a costly gamble – even if it succeeds, it’s likely to cause an insurgency to suffer disproportionate losses. As a result, most insurgencies will only ever attempt this when they absolutely have to, or feel they’re in a position strong enough to accept those losses. In contrast, most insurgencies would prefer to attack “soft” targets, which often means civilian representatives of enemy control, public services, and even humanitarian aid deliveries. This not only serves as proof that the insurgency is doing something, but it also forces the enemy to detach forces to guard these vulnerable points, which allows for less force to be concentrated on finding and fighting insurgent groups in the first place.
This is because the insurgency has one strategic advantage over its enemy: the enemy have to govern and control a territory, an insurgency only has to contest it. Any occupying force (or government regime) has to maintain public safety and services for the people under its control if they want those people to remain under their control. If they fail to protect those people, then their legitimacy as a government is damaged, and the people under their control start to look for alternatives. This is fundamentally the concept behind the use of terrorism as a form of insurgency. By attacking the general population – especially parts of the general population aligned with or seen to align with the enemy, it forces those parts of the population to either leave the region, or to retract their support of a government which cannot offer anything useful for their obedience.
Ultimately, this strategy is intended to convince the enemy that concessions or negotiation are a superior alternative to continued counter-insurgency. Contrary to what certain (very, very historically ignorant) washed up radicals have said, almost every successful insurgency succeeds because it is able to cut a deal with its enemy. The post-WW2 wave of decolonisations is best understood as the colonial powers admitting that while they possessed the means to continue counterinsurgency, they lacked the desire to continue fighting for colonies full of people who obviously did not want them there. Very few are able to directly contest the enemy on their own terms – and those only with the massive support of foreign powers (more on this later). This becomes somewhat self-evident when you consider the fact that if an insurgency had been able to stand a chance at conventional victory, it probably would have never become an insurgency in the first place.
Two major factors determine whether this strategy actually succeeds: popular support, and outside support, with one often connected to the other.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, the general population will very rarely risk themselves to side with a force they consider to be the loser, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be sympathetic to an insurgency, and aid them in ways which can be seen as low-risk: providing food or supplies, gathering intelligence, giving warnings, or misdirecting the enemy’s forces. This serves to make up for the insurgency’s disadvantages while serving to negate the enemy force’s advantages, which means it can be vital to the insurgency’s survival – especially since insurgencies rarely have the ability to secure stable supplies of food and basic supplies themselves. However, this is all contingent on the general population being sympathetic in the first place. If the population is not sympathetic – or not sympathetic enough to consider acts of violent insurgency justified, then they will instead be driven further into the arms of the enemy and its systems of control.
This can easily lead to a self-defeating cycle: the insurgency lacks the support it needs to replenish its numbers and supplies so it has to resort to more and more extreme acts of violence, which turn more and more of the general population against it, which in turn causes it to lose ever more support and thus become even more incapable of effective action. The end result would be an increasingly unsympathetic population, which will slowly starve the insurgency of food, supplies, and legitimacy – forcing the insurgency either to the negotiating table to get whatever concessions they still can, or to unmarked graves in the vast corpse-pit of failed guerilla movements.
So how do you break that cycle? This is often where outside support comes in. While there have been insurgencies which have succeeded without the substantial support of outside powers, they are few indeed. Usually, this is because outside support provides force multipliers which allow the insurgency to fight its enemy in ways which render it more legitimate in the eyes of the general population – things like advanced or heavy weapons, as well as advisors which might train the insurgents to fight more effectively. At the same time, foreign powers could also provide resources directly, which allow an insurgency to fund efforts to create parallel systems of public services in the areas where it’s present, boosting its legitimacy among the local population. Last of all, a neighbouring foreign power can provide safe bases for an insurgency to hide in, which their enemy can’t reach without provoking an open war with the beneficiary power. During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union used all of these methods to great effect – for example, the USSR in Vietnam, and the Americans in Afghanistan. Vietnam also provides an interesting example in the fact that the Viet Cong were backed both by the USSR and the PRC, but also by North Vietnam’s formal government, which provided safe bases and supply routes which South Vietnam and its allies couldn’t clear out with ground troops because the North was under Soviet protection.
So, to sum up:
Insurgencies very rarely engage in direct conflict with enemy military forces, and when they do, they usually lose, due to their own qualitative inferiority.
Insurgencies usually attack “soft” targets in acts of terrorism. Whether this is justifiable or necessary is determined usually after the fact.
Insurgencies are fundamentally political movements, with a political strategy, for political aims.
Along those lines, sustainable insurgencies require the political support of either the local population, a powerful foreign backer, or ideally both.
Insurgencies succeed by aligning the interests of the enemy with their own – which is to say, they make concessions the cheapest option for their enemy, either morally, politically, or materially.
As always, this is an overview, and a subjective one at that. Hopefully, it’s helped you figure out what an insurgency is and isn’t, but at the very least, it should give you some idea into what I think an insurgency is or isn’t.
If you want a good example of how to write an insurgency from the perspective of an insurgent, I’d suggest taking a look at Choice of Rebels: Uprising (and it’s upcoming sequel Stormwright). Unlike me, the author has actual experience living in areas and with people dealing with active insurgencies, and he’s used that experience to good effect in his work.
Paul Wang 