Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present

by Max Boot

  In the narrative that follows, I place considerable emphasis on the views and personalities of notable commanders. Not only are the quirks of personality inherently interesting, but they are also important in determining the course of events—especially in insurgencies. Guerrilla armies, which lack the organizational structure of regular forces, are often the reflection of one forceful personality such as Robert the Bruce, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Orde Wingate, or Mao Zedong. Likewise, the most successful guerrilla fighters—men such as Hubert Lyautey, Edward Lansdale, and David Petraeus—are often mavericks at odds with their own military establishments.

  THE FIRST DIFFICULTY inherent in a work of this sort is that there is no commonly accepted definition of words like “guerrilla” and “terrorist.” As the saying has it, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Walter Laqueur complains, with a great deal of justification, that “the term ‘terrorism’ (like ‘guerrilla’) has been used in so many different senses as to become almost meaningless.”6 It is precisely because such terms are so hard to define that Invisible Armies covers both terrorists and guerrillas; leaving either one out would present a distorted picture.

  For purposes of this book, terrorism describes the use of violence by nonstate actors directed primarily against noncombatants (mostly civilians but also including government officials, policemen, and off-duty soldiers) in order to intimidate or coerce them and change their government’s policies or composition. Typically the political or psychological effect desired by terrorists is out of all proportion to the actual destruction they inflict. The nineteenth-century slogan “Propaganda by the Deed” still applies today: terrorism is primarily a psychological weapon. The use of violence by the state against civilians is excluded from our definition, because the common meaning of “terrorism” has changed considerably since the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror in 1793–94 unleashed what Edmund Burke dubbed “those Hell-hounds called Terrorists.”7 Our focus is on bottom-up, not top-down, terrorism, although the boundaries blur because of the prevalence of terrorist groups that receive covert state support.

  Guerrilla literally means “small war”; the name derives from the struggles of Spanish irregulars against Napoleon from 1808 to 1814, but the practice is as ancient as mankind. Here it will be used to describe the use of hit-and-run tactics by an armed group directed primarily against a government and its security forces for political or religious reasons. Bandits in search of nothing more than lucre are excluded; they are usually not interested in shaking up the established order, just in profiting from it. Most guerrillas belong to nonstate groups, but some are part of formal military units (nowadays known as Special Operations Forces) that are dispatched to operate behind enemy lines. Other irregulars may cooperate closely with conventional armies even if they are not formally enrolled in their ranks. At the lowest level, guerrilla war has much in common with the small-unit tactics of conventional armies: both rely on ambush and rapid movement. The difference is that guerrilla warfare lacks front lines and large-scale, set-piece battles—the defining characteristics of conventional conflict.

  It is sometimes said that terrorists are “urban guerrillas,” but this is an oversimplification; urban areas have seen both guerrilla and terrorist operations, just as rural areas have. Moreover, few armed uprisings have ever confined their violence strictly to noncombatants (terrorism) or combatants (guerrilla warfare). The Vietcong, for instance, killed significant numbers of South Vietnamese civilians as well as South Vietnamese and American soldiers. Similarly, the Irish Republican Army targeted stores and pubs as well as British army patrols and barracks. Usually it’s a matter of emphasis, with, for example, the Boers in the early twentieth century emphasizing guerrilla tactics and, a century later, Al Qaeda emphasizing terrorism.

  A few other salient differences are worth noting: guerrillas often try to hold territory, however briefly; terrorists do not. Guerrilla armies often number in the tens of thousands; most terrorist organizations have never had more than a few hundred adherents. Guerrillas usually limit their operations to a well-recognized war zone; terrorists focus their attacks on the home front where no formal state of war exists. Guerrillas seek to physically defeat or at least wear down the enemy; terrorists hope with a few spectacular attacks to trigger a revolution. In the continuum of armed conflict, terrorists are at the bottom, next are guerrillas, then conventional forces, and finally nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

  To further muddy the issue, their enemies usually try to brand all “guerrillas” or “insurgents” (fairly laudatory titles) as “terrorists” or other terms of abuse such as “criminals,” “bandits,” “traitors,” or “dead-enders.” Those who carry out such attacks naturally prefer to label themselves as “freedom fighters,” “holy warriors,” “patriots,” “soldiers,” or some other term with positive connotations. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the elasticity of these descriptions than a directive the British government was said to have issued in 1944 after switching its support in Yugoslavia from Mihailović’s Chetniks to Tito’s Partisans: “In future Mihailovitch forces will be described not as patriots but as terrorist gangs: we shall also drop the phrase ‘red bandits’ as applied to partisans, and substitute ‘freedom fighter.’ ”8 The Nazis might not have agreed on much with the British, but they agreed on the inadvisability of ceding the semantic edge to their enemies. Heinrich Himmler issued a directive in 1941 that, “for psychological reasons,” the term “partisan” was to be replaced by “bandit.”9

  Whatever you call them, fighters resort to terrorist or guerrilla tactics for one reason only: they are too weak to employ conventional methods. As the political scientist Samuel Huntington noted in 1962, “Guerrilla warfare is a form of warfare by which the strategically weaker side assumes the tactical offensive in selected forms, times, and places.”10 Virtually any armed group would prefer to wage conventional warfare, because it has traditionally had a higher probability of success. Conventional armies can try to carry out a strategy of annihilation, seeking to destroy the enemy’s armed forces as quickly as possible. Irregular forces are compelled to undertake a strategy of attrition, trying to wear down the enemy’s will to fight. This is invariably a costly, protracted, difficult affair, and one that no belligerents in their right minds would voluntarily undertake if there were any credible alternative. Guerrilla and terrorist tactics, therefore, always have been the resort of the weak against the strong. That is why insurgents wage war from the shadows; if they fought in the open, like a regular army, they would be annihilated.

  The strong are not, of course, above terrible acts of violence. Far more people have been killed by just three states (Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Mao’s China) than by all terrorists and guerrillas in history put together, but their acts lie outside the scope of this study, except insofar as they were directed against guerrilla foes or utilized guerrilla tactics.

  Guerrilla and terrorist tactics fall under such broad categories as low-intensity, irregular, asymmetric, complex, hybrid, or unconventional warfare—what was known in an earlier era as la petite guerre or “small war.” All those categories are hard to define but, like pornography, most analysts know them when they see them. Their dimensions will, I hope, become more apparent as this work progresses.

  I WROTE INVISIBLE ARMIES neither to praise guerrillas and terrorists nor to bury them. Some have been commendable, others not. Which is which depends on your own worldview. Weakness does not necessarily produce virtue any more than strength does. My aim is not polemical. It is simply to tell a story that has never been well told and to tell it as engagingly and evenhandedly as possible.

  The first part of this book looks at the origins of the oldest form of warfare, beginning in the mists of time with prehistoric tribal warfare, continuing to ancient Mesopotamia, Rome, and China, and concluding with the medieval skirmishes between the Scots and the English.

  Then we move on to the guerrilla campaigns th
at resulted from the liberal revolutions that swept the world from roughly the 1770s to the 1870s. Particular emphasis is placed not only on the American War of Independence but on the Spanish struggle against Napoleon, the Haitian slave revolt, the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans, and Garibaldi’s campaigns for Italian unification. Many of these campaigns are as revealing as the U.S. Revolution, and yet in recent years they have received far less attention than they deserve—an omission that this book attempts to address.

  The third part of the book examines another facet of nineteenth-century guerrilla warfare—the campaigns waged by Europeans to suppress “native” resistance to imperial rule. The focus will be on the American Indian wars, the Russian war in Chechnya and Dagestan against Muslim rebels, the First Afghan War and subsequent campaigns pitting Britons against Pashtuns on the Northwest Frontier of India, the French pacification of Morocco, and, lastly, the Boer War, which revealed the first signs of the frailty of European rule.

  Next we move away from guerrilla warfare per se to look at the closely related growth of terrorism. The initial focus is on one of the first terrorist campaigns ever, waged by the Assassins in the medieval Middle East. Then, jumping ahead, we look at two terrorist campaigns in nineteenth-century America that were among the most successful ever but are often neglected in discussions of the subject—namely, John Brown’s attacks on proslavery interests and the Ku Klux Klan’s efforts to undermine Reconstruction. The narrative then switches to Europe, specifically the attacks by Russian Nihilists and socialists on the tsarist state and by the IRA on British rule in Ireland.

  The fifth part of the book examines the guerrilla campaigns that arose out of World Wars I and II, focusing on T. E. Lawrence, Orde Wingate, and Josip Broz Tito—all extraordinary leaders of irregulars who left a large mark on the postwar world.

  With a focus on the Asian and African theaters, the sixth part chronicles the Chinese revolution as well as the post-1945 decolonization struggles in Indochina, Algeria, and Malaya that were inspired by Mao Zedong’s example.

  Our next subject is leftist guerrilla and terrorist groups since the 1950s. The focus is first on the Huks in the Philippines and the Vietcong in Vietnam. This is followed by Fidel Castro’s uprising in Cuba and Che Guevara’s failed efforts to spread the Cuban revolution elsewhere. Then comes an examination of the terrorist groups of the 1970s, such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and, finally, the long, up-and-down career of Yasser Arafat and of the organization he led, the PLO.

  The last part of the narrative deals with the rise of Islamist militancy, which circa 1979 displaced leftist ideology as the prime motivating force for the guerrillas and terrorists who inspired the most dread in the West. We look at the efforts of the mujahideen to drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan, then at the emergence of Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, and conclude with the rise and fall of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

  Out of this five-thousand-year historical narrative some important and provocative themes emerge. They will be explored more fully in the Implications chapter, which looks at twelve lessons of history. The appendix provides a more statistical approach to learning from the past—it presents the findings of a database of insurgencies since 1775 compiled for this book.

  As you read what follows, five major points are worth keeping in mind:

  First, low-intensity conflict has been ubiquitous throughout history and of vital importance in shaping the world.

  Second, political organizing and propaganda have been rising in importance as factors in low-intensity warfare over the past two centuries. Modern guerrillas tend to be intensely ideological and focused on winning the “battle of narrative,” while their ancient forerunners were largely apolitical and tribal. As a result modern governments have to pay much greater attention to establishing their popular legitimacy and managing their public image than did their premodern predecessors.

  Third, in a related development, guerrillas and terrorists have been growing more successful since 1945, in large part because of their ability to play on public opinion, a relatively new factor in warfare. Most insurgencies, however, still fail.

  Fourth, outside assistance—whether in the form of arms supplies and safe havens or, even better, the provision of conventional forces to operate in conjunction with guerrillas—has been one of the most important factors in the success of insurgent campaigns. The absence of outside backing is not necessarily fatal, but its existence is a big plus for any guerrilla or terrorist organization.

  Fifth, and finally, “population-centric” counterinsurgency, more popularly if inaccurately known as winning “hearts and minds,” has been an essential part of most successful counterguerrilla campaigns. While scorched-earth tactics and “search and destroy” missions have worked on occasion, especially when the insurgents were utterly isolated from outside support, more often they have bred such resentment that they sowed the seeds of their own defeat. The population-centric approach has worked better, but it is not as “touchy-feely” as popularly supposed. While it does try to address the population’s social and political needs, it is primarily focused on establishing security and involves a substantial measure of force, albeit more tightly focused and more intelligently targeted than the blunderbuss approach common to more conventional campaigns.

  MOST OF THIS account is based on written sources, both published and archival, in which I have immersed myself for years. But it is also informed by my own experience with guerrilla warfare and terrorism. I first became interested in the subject in the late 1990s, the period when American troops were being sent to places such as Haiti and Bosnia on “peacekeeping” missions to fight wars that dared not speak the name. The result of my initial interest was The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (2002).

  As The Savage Wars of Peace was in its final stages, I happened to be going to my day job as an editor at the Wall Street Journal on the morning of September 11, 2001. On the Metro-North commuter train into New York City I heard ominous rumors that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center. I imagined a Cessna accidentally flying into one of the buildings. Curious to learn more, I proceeded downtown on what turned out to be the last subway train still running. By the time I stepped out of the City Hall station, it was clear that this was no minor aviation accident. Walking through white clouds of dust as sirens wailed, I caught sight of one of the Twin Towers. I could see the flames at the top and people jumping to their deaths. Then the building collapsed and a white cloud came roaring down the narrow avenue. Along with the other dazed, incredulous onlookers, I fled in horror. Thus was America launched into what became known as the war on terror.

  Before long American troops would be fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. I followed in their wake as a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow who served as a commentator and adviser to American military commanders. I first visited Iraq in August 2003, when the post-invasion reverie was just wearing off and a long deadly insurgency was just beginning. I got a small taste of what was in the offing when a Marine Force Reconnaissance strike team with which I was riding was attacked with an IED south of Baghdad. I vividly remember the marines scrambling to identify the bomber as gunships buzzed overhead. An Iraqi man approached a marine and me while we were standing beside a Light Armored Vehicle and tried to tell us something. But he did not speak English and we did not speak Arabic, and in those days American units had few if any interpreters. It was a mutually incomprehensible conversation—a fitting symbol of how lost the American armed forces were in Mesopotamia.

  Another portent of looming problems occurred when the marines finally detained a suspect, a young man in a track suit. He was placed in the armored vehicle next to me, his hands manacled behind his back with plastic handcuffs. Because there were not enough marines present—an indicator, I would come to understand, of inadequate troop numbers in the country as a whole—a corporal handed me his sidearm and asked me to “cover” the suspect before he was transferred to another vehicle. This
I did, albeit a bit nervously: I am more used to think tanks than battle tanks.

  I would return regularly to Iraq thereafter, meeting with senior American and Iraqi commanders and ordinary grunts while traveling around the country for a week or two at a time. As the situation deteriorated, I drove in heavily “up-armored” vehicles that resembled urban submarines through neighborhoods that had been turned into veritable ghost towns. In one such area of Mosul in 2008, I was caught in what the military calls a “complex ambush” when the Humvee in front of me hit an IED submerged in a puddle and the entire convoy came under automatic weapons fire. Luckily no one in our group was seriously hurt, although a Humvee was wrecked and a poor bystander had his arm sliced off by flying shrapnel.

  Mosul was the last remaining stronghold of Al Qaeda in Iraq. By that time, thanks to the unexpected success of the “surge,” this deadly insurgent group had already been driven out of its other major safe havens—cities such as Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, which I visited in the spring of 2007.

  Ramadi summoned up images from Berlin in 1945. Rubble was everywhere. Entire buildings had collapsed. The streets were flooded because the water mains had been destroyed by so many underground bomb blasts. Yet the guns suddenly had gone quiet. A few months earlier American soldiers and marines had been fighting for their lives simply to hold on to the government center. Now I could wander around without getting shot at thanks to the recent implementation of the ancient principles of counterinsurgency. Everywhere I went I saw scruffy guards, often with bandoleers of ammunition slung across their chests like extras from a bad war movie. These were the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni militia whose defection from the insurgency had sealed Al Qaeda’s doom in Iraq.