Other theories have put the emphasis on politics (the presence of conflicting social myths), on cultural-political-moral factors (such as the alienation of intellectuals), or on psychological moments ("terrorist personality').7
These theories help to shed some light, at best, on one or a few insurgencies and are quite inapplicable to others. In short, they are quite useless. This sad state of affairs has not escaped the attention of social scientists. One of them has concluded that the actual instances of insurgency observed in our time fail to reveal a correlation with the gravity of socioeconomic, cultural and related ills.8 Another has said that a Western doctrine on guerrilla war comparable to the principles of war between nations has not developed because the character of insurrections is largely determined by the peculiar social structure of the society in which it takes place.9 Guerrilla movements, in other words, are an awkward topic for generalization. Yet another observer decrying the "chaotic and inadequate" state of existing etiologies of internal war has pointed to more promising venues to be explored.10 At the bottom of every protest movement there is a feeling of grievance. But how to measure these grievances, how to account for the fact that at one time a major grievance may be fatalistically accepted, whereas at another time (or place) a minor grievance may produce the most violent reaction? Is it not the perception of the grievance that matters rather than the grievance per se? How to explain that conditions perceived as tolerable at one time (or in one country) become intolerable at another time (or in another country)? Such a change in attitude could be produced by a variety of circumstances — the accumulation of reasons for discontent, or a successful revolution in another country (the "echo effect") or the emergence of a new leader, or a new generation of leaders who are driven by a greater sense of justice or ambition or fanaticism than their predecessors. But if such analysis is difficult enough with regard to the spread of political violence in one specific country, it is impossible on a worldwide scale. The great differences in the prevailing conditions are too deep and too numerous to be digested in cross-national surveys.
More fruitful perhaps is the suggestion that the obstacles to internal war should be examined. Students of guerrilla war have almost invariably concentrated on insurgents rather than on incumbents, on the forces which propel societies towards violence, rather than those which inhibit it. This omission explains to a certain extent the misunderstandings that have prevailed among some Western writers. It has been argued both on the left and the right that guerrillas are "invincible" ("Regular armies have almost never succeeded in gaining the ascendancy over guerrilla operations of any importance" — Colonel Nemo).11 It is easy to understand this pessimism in the light of recent French history but it does not at all correspond with the experience gained elsewhere. Liberal democracies and in particular ineffective authoritarian regimes indeed found it impossible to cope with colonial insurrections in the 1950s and 1960s. Other political regimes have suppressed guerrilla insurgencies with great ease. Guerrilla movements are, as Mao said, the fish that needs water—the water being a minimum of freedom. Such freedom exists if the government is relatively liberal or relatively inefficient. If government control and coercion is really effective, a guerrilla movement cannot possibly develop as the Communist and Fascist experience has shown. Some governments are inhibited in their action by public opinion, others are not. The Iraqi government liquidated the Kurdish rebellion in 1974 with great ease yet the British government failed to suppress the civil war in Ulster. This did not mean that the Iraqi government had greater legitimacy or that it was more virtuous.
Dictatorships, needless to say, are not free of grievances, for all one knows they may be even more acutely felt there. Yet there is no outlet for them; the rebel will be arrested, sent to prison and perhaps shot. His arrest will not be reported by the mass media, it will have no political consequences, his sacrifice will be in vain. If intellectuals are alienated, they keep the fact strictly to themselves for fear of losing their jobs — or worse. Much of Western guerrilla literature is curiously parochial in its stress on the importance of public opinion; in a great and growing number of countries there is no public opinion — or it has no way of expressing itself. It is hardly necessary to describe in detail the means of control and coercion which make resistance in an effective dictatorship very nearly hopeless as long as the leader (or the leaders) have not lost their self-confidence and feel no compunction in using their means of repression to the full. The argument that repression is a two-edged sword, that guerrillas always benefit from government repression, that power is weakest when it uses violence (Merriam) applied perhaps to pre-modern dictatorships, and to liberal regimes whose powers of repression are strictly limited. By and large it is no longer true.
Not only have sociologists and political scientists found it impossible to come to terms with the guerrilla phenomenon, lawyers have encountered the very same difficulties. Since the Second World War many attempts have been made to establish a new basis of legality, a more humanitarian status, for guerrilla forces under the laws of war. For many decades the status of the partisan was based on the Brussels Declaration of 1874 and the Hague Convention. Guerrilla tactics, meaning hostile activities committed by small bodies of soldiers in the enemy's rear during a real war were considered legal, whereas guerrilla war was not. According to this argument organized resistance had ceased and the individuals who engaged in guerrilla war were not bound by the laws of war. Thus private individuals were entitled to commit hostilities against the enemy — international law being a law between states could not issue prohibitions to private individuals. But these individuals did not enjoy the privileges of members of armed forces and the enemy had the right to consider them as war criminals.12 The Geneva Conventions of 1949 tried to legalize the status of the partisans in internal conflicts, but the lawyers could not agree on what constitutes a state of war and the question whether insurgents could possibly be bound by a convention which they had not themselves signed.13 For a predominantly terrorist movement the acceptance of the enemy's rules of war would be a negation of their whole strategy. But even guerrilla movements with a lesser emphasis on terror might not be in a position to adhere to the rules of war, for instance with regard to prisoners. A dictatorship may want to give a reward to captured guerrillas rather than execute them, but it will be guided in its actions by expediency rather than law. Guerrilla wars are conducted brutally and Western officers and soldiers have been guilty of excesses and even torture. But in democracies such practices quickly become known, they are denounced and have to be discontinued; in the struggle between a democratic government and a guerrilla movement at least one side is bound by law; in a dictatorship neither is, hence the failure to apply the principles of international law.
There is no theory which can predict the course of guerrilla war, and there is no reason to assume that there ever will be. Concepts and definitions have been postulated but usually this was simply "retranslating from one language of definition to another without hypothesizing anything."14 One such recent conceptual scheme differentiates between "truly qualitative insurgency" and "unsophisticated armed uprisings," stressing that the basic thrust of a "qualitative insurgency" is psychological, that the guerrilla force component by its very design is not geared to win a military victory, and that there were altogether five insurgencies that correspond with this "sophisticated" pattern (China, Cuba, the two Vietnam wars and Thailand). Such schemes tend to restate the obvious in somewhat arcane language; they are quite harmless but for the tall claims made for these exercises ("A qualitative insurgency becomes an activity lending itself to systematic and reliable analysis"15).
Even the broadest formula cannot possibly cover all guerrilla wars. It may be difficult to improve on the definition provided by Professor Huntington:
Guerrilla warfare is a form of warfare by which the strategically weaker side assumes the tactical offensive in selected forms, times and places. Guerrilla warfare is the weapon of the weak. .
.. Guerrilla warfare is decisive only where the anti-guerrilla side puts a low value on defeating the guerrillas and does not commit its full resources to the struggle.16
This definition certainly does not apply to Castro's campaign nor can it be maintained that the French in Algeria or the Portuguese in their African colonies put a "low value" on defeating the guerrillas. Various guerrilla movements have succeeded without taking any offensive at all, simply by outlasting the enemy. Guerrilla war is decisive only when the antiguerrilla side is prevented for military or political reasons from committing its full resources to the struggle.
The concept of stages in the preparation of an insurrection figures highly in the writings of counterinsurgency specialists. It implies that the outbreak of guerrilla war is preceded by an incubation period in which the emphasis is on organization, propaganda and conspiracy. That an insurgency in modern times cannot be launched without some form of organization goes without saying: there have been few, if any "spontaneous uprisings of the people." It is also true that the guerrilla movement is particularly vulnerable in the period of early mobilization. But it is equally true that such an organization, be it Communist or nationalist, usually exists already and that not that much preparatory work is needed for launching an insurgency. There was no incubation period in Yugoslavia during the war, or in Cuba, or in many African and Latin American countries. The concept of stages is the result of the Southeast Asian experience but what may be true in Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines does not necessarily apply to other parts of the world.
Such criticism of existing definitions and models is not based on the assumption that more refined techniques would have resulted in superior insights. The multiple "objective" and "subjective" factors involved in guerrilla warfare and their complicated interaction rule out all-embracing formulas and explanations that are scientific, in the sense that they have predictive value. To recognize these limitations is not to deny that certain patterns are common to many guerrilla movements and that a study of these patterns could be of help in understanding why guerrilla wars have occurred in some conditions but not in others, and why some have succeeded and others have failed. The following attempt to summarize experience is concerned with probabilities not certainties.
1. The geographical milieu has always been of importance. Guerrilla movements have usually preferred regions that are not easily accessible (such as mountain ranges, forests, jungles, swamps) in which they are difficult to locate, and in which the enemy cannot deploy his full strength. Such areas are ideal in the early period of guerrilla warfare, during the period of consolidation, and they retain their uses later on as hideouts in a period of danger. In such areas the guerrillas will be relatively unmolested, but at the same time there are obvious drawbacks. If the enemy has to undergo the hardships of a mountain climate, the guerrillas, too, will have to suffer. It is difficult to obtain food and other supplies in distant, sparsely populated areas. Restricting their operations to these regions the guerrillas will be safe but they will be ineffective, for they will be able to harass only isolated enemy outposts, they will not be in a position to hit at the main lines of communication and they will lose contact with the "masses." Thus the ideal guerrilla territory while relatively inaccessible should be located not too far from cities and villages. Of late, topographical conditions have lost some of their erstwhile importance. On the whole it has become easier for the antiguerrilla forces to locate the rebels. Furthermore, with the rapid progress of urbanization, the countryside has lost much of its original political importance. The village cannot encircle the city if the majority of the population resides in urban areas. For this reason, and for some others, the main scene of guerrilla operations has shifted from the countryside to the city in predominantly urban societies, with a simultaneous shift in strategy from hiding in nature to finding cover in town.
Guerrilla movements need bases and they cannot operate without a steady flow of supplies. Ideally a sanctuary should be on foreign territory outside the reach of the antiguerrilla forces. Bases are needed for guerrilla units to recover from their battles, to reorganize for new campaigns and for a great many other purposes. While movement is one of the cardinal principles of guerrilla tactics a guerrilla unit is not a perpetuum mobile. The main drawback of a base is that it offers a fixed target for enemy attack. Thus guerrillas may be compelled to change their bases from time to time, unless they have established "liberated zones" which the enemy, with his resources overextended, can no longer destroy. The question of supply was not of decisive importance before the nineteenth century, when guerrillas (as regular armies) lived off the land, when weapons were unsophisticated and could be locally manufactured. The more complicated the arms, the greater the guerrillas' dependence on supply routes, frequently from abroad. There are but two cases in recent history in which major guerrilla armies survived and expanded without outside supply of arms — China and Yugoslavia. But this was exceptional in that these guerrilla armies came into being during a general war that offered many opportunities of acquiring arms. The decisive victories of Mao's army and of Tito's partisans came only after they had the opportunity of rearming themselves from outside sources.
2. The etiology of guerrilla wars shows that it very often occurs in areas in which such wars have occurred before. The Spanish war against Napoleon took place in the same regions in which Viriathus and Sertorius had fought the Romans. Guerrilla wars had occurred before (or had even been endemic) in the Tyrol, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Algeria, the Philippines, north China, North Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and other countries. This may be partly due to geographical factors, for these are all regions that favor guerrilla warfare. It is also true that the hold of the central government over peripheral areas with a long guerrilla tradition such as Oriente in Cuba, Kabylia in Algeria or Nghe An province in Vietnam has never been as strong as on more centrally located districts. Furthermore, there are cultural traditions favoring or militating against large-scale political violence. Beyond a certain stage of cultural development it is difficult for a guerrilla movement to gain mass support. Neither the middle class nor workers and peasants in civilized countries feel sufficient enthusiasm to "go to the mountains" even at a time of grave crisis. What Engels wrote in 1870 — that our tradition gives only barbarians the right of real self-defense and that civilized nations fight according to established etiquette — is a fortiori true now. Even in the case of foreign invasion and occupation the great majority of the population in a civilized country will not engage in a war risking total destruction.
3· To this extent there is a (negative) correlation between guerrilla warfare and the degree of economic development. There have been few peasant guerrilla wars in modern times in which acute agrarian demands constituted the central issue (Mexico, the Philippines). On the other hand, in many more countries the peasantry has been the main reservoir of manpower for guerrilla armies led by nonpeasant elites. The breakdown of traditional peasant society under the pressure of capitalist development, absentee landlordism, demographic pressure, falling prices for agricultural produce, natural catastrophes and other misfortunes have created in many Asian countries (and to a lesser extent in Africa and Latin America) conditions in which there has been great sympathy among poor peasants, landless laborers, but also middle peasants for popular movements promising land to the landless, even if this promise was not the immediate issue in the war. The difficulty facing the guerrilla leaders has always been to harness this revolutionary potential on a nationwide basis in view of the traditional reluctance of peasants to fight outside their neighborhood. This could mostly be achieved only in the framework of a national struggle transcending the parochial framework such as a war against a foreign enemy (China, Algeria).
4· Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there have been three main species of guerrilla wars. They have been directed against foreign occupants, either in the framework of a general war or after the defeat of the regular army and against colonial
rule. Secondly, guerrilla warfare has been the favorite tactic of separatist, minority movements fighting the central government (the Vendée, IMRO, IRA, ELF, the Basques, the Kurds, the FLQ, etc.). And thirdly, guerrilla warfare against native incumbents has been the rule in Latin America and in a few other countries (Burma, Thailand, etc.). But the national, patriotic element has always been heavily emphasized even if domestic rulers were the target; they were attacked as foreign hirelings by the true patriots fighting for national unity and independence. In China, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, the Philippines and Malaya partisan units were established to fight foreign occupants but they became civil war forces with the end of the general war. Throughout the nineteenth century the achievement of national independence has been the traditional goal of guerrilla movements; more recently social and economic programs have featured prominently. But the patriotic appeal has always played a more important role than social-revolutionary propaganda. Castro's war was fought for the overthrow of Batista's tyranny; most Latin American guerrilla movements have stressed general reform programs rather than clearly defined socialist-Communist slogans in their fight against domestic contenders. As the outcome of these wars show, guerrillas succeed with much greater ease against foreign domination than against native incumbents.
5· The character of guerrilla war has undergone profound changes during the last two centuries, but so has regular war on the one hand, and the technique of revolution on the other. However, there is no justification for regarding modern guerrilla warfare (or "people's war," or revolutionary insurgency) as an entirely new phenomenon which has little connection with the guerrilla wars of former periods. Organization (the role of the political party) and propaganda play an infinitely more important role in present day guerrilla war than in the past, and it is of course true that in some Third World countries guerrilla war is merely one stage in the struggle for power. Guerrilla war was never apolitical," it was always nationalist in character and became national-revolutionary in an age of revolution. Too much importance has been attributed to the use of Marxist-Leninist verbiage on the part of Third World liberation movements. This has led Western observers to interpret their progress either in terms of a worldwide Communist conspiracy or as a great new liberating promise. While the common denominator of most of these Third World movements is anti-imperialism and the rejection of the capitalist form of modernization, the ideology guiding them is a mixture of agrarian populism and radical nationalism (with "nationalism" and "socialism" often interchangeable). Such political movements have certain similarities with European Communism (dictatorship, the role of the monolithic party) but on a deeper level of analysis they are as distant from socialism as from liberal capitalism. Elsewhere the basic inspiration for guerrilla warfare has been sectarian-separatist (religious-tribal) with revolutionary ideology as a concession to prevailing intellectual fashions and modes of expression.
Guerrilla Warfare Page 53