Legacy of Bitterness: Insurgency in North West Rwanda

The insurgency in North West Rwanda is a good example of a small scale conflict that provides a first step into the more complex world of regional instability in central Africa. Following the genocide of 1994, genocidaires and ex-military personnel fled to what was then Zaire and established a network of anti-Tutsi bases. Linking up with local groups in Eastern Zaire, these insurgents, usually known as ‘infiltrators’ have carried out a low-intensity but consistent insurgency campaign in Rwanda.

The constant barrage of propaganda aimed at the local population, a technique pioneered during the 1994 genocide, has led to a general, manufactured support for the insurgency. In particular, those people returning from Zaire have been fed a constant diet of anti-Tutsi and Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) propaganda, making it easier to act against these groups. Even within the local government and other official bodies, there are widespread Hutu sympathies that have led to additional aid reaching the insurgents.

The particular strain of ethnic violence has led to an insurgency in which civilian villages are as likely to be attacked as RPA military installations. More surprising, given the nature of the insurgency, Hutus themselves have been targets. Initially, moderate Hutus were singled out as examples, but increasingly indiscriminate killings have been aiming to force all Hutus to take sides.

The insurgents have deliberately polarised large parts of Rwanda and this has profound implications for conflict resolution. In particular, supplementing the military campaign with political social campaigns, at least partly to combat the mythology of grievance among the Hutus, and tackling the conflict as part of a supra-national conflict that goes beyond ‘national’ borders.     

India: Fleeting Attachment to the Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy

India’s success in dealing with insurgency movements was based on adherence to four key rules of engagement: identifying a lead counter-insurgent force, launching population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, non-use of excessive force and confining the role of the COIN operations to preparing a ground for a political solution. While the country does not yet have a COIN doctrine, these four rules of engagement do constitute what can be referred to a COIN grand strategy. Analysis of the several continuing insurgencies, however, reveals the country’s inability to adhere to the grand strategy. Political considerations, incapacity to manoeuvre through the demands of various stake holders, and even the wish to expedite the decimation of insurgent outfits through a force-centric approach has produced a long history of failures in dousing the fires of discontent.     

Counterinsurgency and the limits of state-building: An analysis of Colombia's policy of territorial consolidation, 2006–2012

Since 2002 the Colombian government has been implementing a series of policy initiatives that have sought to coordinate state resources in a neo-classical counterinsurgency approach to fight the country's main insurgent group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and recover and consolidate the territory. Despite impressive operational successes against the insurgency and other illegal groups, the government has been unable to reassert its control and build legitimacy via the state-building effort known as ‘Consolidación’, in some of the most recalcitrant areas of the country. This article examines two areas where government efforts at consolidation appear to be failing to discuss the limits of COIN theory and practice.     

Factors leading to insurgency in Balochistan

Balochistan has been in the midst of a full fledged insurgency for over five years now. Pakistani establishment has tried to project the current insurgency as a tribal mischief being perpetrated by a few feudal lords but the widespread support that the insurgents have been enjoying and the impunity with which they have been targeting symbols of government authority not only across the entire length and breadth of Balochistan but even outside, indicate that there are deep rooted, well defined causes that have led to this insurgency. The paper attempts to analyse the factors that have led to current round of insurgency in Balochistan.     

The Fire Within: Naxalite Insurgency Violence in India

India is at a crossroads today. While it is fast emerging as a global power with a vibrant democratic polity, a robust economy and a nuclear-weapons capable military, the country is also witnessing a growing polarisation between the rich and poor and between urban and rural areas, a rise in communal tensions, large numbers of suicides by impoverished and indebted farmers and a spurt in terrorist activities and attacks by various disgruntled organisations and groups. Of these various challenges, as attested to by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself, the most dangerous threat to India's territorial integrity, prosperity and wellbeing has come from the Naxalite insurgency or ‘people's war’ that is manifest in large areas of eastern, central and southern India. But what factors account for the formation and persistence of Naxalite insurgency in India? What are the key objectives of the Naxalites and why is violence directed against the Indian State? And how has the Indian State (both central and state governments) responded to the Naxalite insurgency and with what effect? These are the main research questions that we attempt to answer in this paper. We put forward two broad arguments. First, the Naxalite insurgency in India is the latest manifestation of peasant struggles caused by grinding poverty, exploitation and inequality that have prevailed in rural areas for centuries. What sustains these struggles to this day is the fact that socio-economic conditions in rural areas have changed little and the policies followed by the post-independent Indian State have generally failed to mitigate rural problems. Second, the Naxalite insurgency has emerged as the most dangerous threat mainly due to the movement's spatial spread, growing support base in tribal and backward areas and enhanced fighting capabilities. The Indian State has viewed the movement as a ‘law and order’ problem and responded with force. But a ‘law and order’ approach to the Naxalite insurgency is unlikely to produce a lasting resolution of the problem, since it would not effectively redress deep-rooted grievances felt by a majority of India's rural poor for decades.     

Insurgency by the numbers I: A reconsideration of the ecology of communist success in jiangxi province,China

Theorizing about Taliban operations in Afghanistan has its limits and it is possible that Kabul-centric strategies do not adequately address the unique circumstances of each region in the country. How exactly has the Taliban gone about attaining its objectives in Kandahar province and how have those approaches evolved since 2002? And how have the Taliban adapted to coalition forces' attempts to compete with the insurgency and stamp it out? The answers to these questions are critical in the formulation of any counterinsurgency approach to Afghanistan.     

Signaling resolve,democratization, and the first battle of Fallujah

Perceptions and efforts to signal resolve can play an important role in counterinsurgency. The Coalition offensive against Fallujah in April 2004 demonstrates the limitations of relying on military force to signal resolve. The offensive catalyzed insurgent violence in Iraq and generated popular support for the insurgency. The Coalition prematurely halted the offensive because the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) could not maintain support for the Coalition in the face of popular outrage. Given the importance of democratizing Iraq and establishing a sovereign government, the objections of the IGC could not be ignored. Without Iraqi political support, military force ultimately signaled weakness instead of resolve.     

The Islamic insurgency in the Philippines

The Moro insurgency in the Philippines represents an interesting case of Islamically‐based insurgency with very differing roots and developments from the more widely studied Islamic movements in the Middle East. The Moro groups in the Philippines have displayed the difficulties in combining ethnic and religiously based ideologies of insurgencies. The insurgent groups have been marked by considerable factionalism and defections, but the government's counterinsurgency operations have been largely ineffective. Although neither the government nor the insurgent groups have ‘won’ the war, the Moros have gained significant autonomy from government control.     

The strategic utility of New Zealand Special Forces

In 1955, the New Zealand government authorised the creation of a Special Forces unit to operate with British forces in Malaya to counter a communist-inspired guerrilla insurgency. Drawing upon the operational experiences of the New Zealand SAS largely taken from the Cold War period, and underpinned by Colin Gray's Special Forces essentials of ‘economy of force’ and ‘expansion of choice’, this article will show how New Zealand's SAS is now accepted not only as a respected and relevant part of the nation's military capability, but also empowers its political decision-makers with the confidence to take on significant, and at times difficult, strategic foreign-policy choices.     

Interreligious violence in the Central African Republic

The outbreak of violence following the insurgency by a coalition of armed groups called Séléka represents one of the darkest pages in the contemporary history of the Central African Republic (CAR). Although the country has experienced chronic instability since independence from France in 1960, it has never before descended into the current near-genocidal situation, which has pitted Muslims against Christians. The CAR has been embroiled in conflict since March 2013, with unprecedented security and humanitarian consequences. In December 2013, the United Nations representative for the first time described the situation as an alarming security threat and evoked the likelihood of genocide and humanitarian disaster if nothing is done.     

Setting a place at the table: ending insurgencies through the political process

This article argues that, under certain conditions, allowing insurgents into the political process – through elections or government posts – can be a useful tool in the peace process and can help end insurgencies. However, bringing insurgents into the political process is unlikely to end insurgencies on its own, particularly if insurgents, the government, or the population believes that force is still a viable means of defeating the opponent and changing the status quo. The article begins with a brief overview of the causes of insurgency and on conflict resolution for internal wars. The article then considers two examples of insurgents that have entered the political process – the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland and Hezbollah in Lebanon – and the differing degrees of success in transforming these insurgents to non-violent participants in the political process. It concludes by suggesting how insurgents can be brought into the political process as part of conflict resolution and the implications for Afghanistan.     

Interagency Coordination: The Other Side of CIMIC

All governments wrestle with the challenge of interagency coordination. Improving civil-military coordination, at the national level as well as in the field, can be a useful step in designing a more effective defense decision-making process. National-level organisations do not cooperate easily, but young military and civilian personnel with CIMIC experience can begin to open stovepipes. If vertically organized governments are ever to deal effectively with horizontally organized threats, they must become populated by those who have witnessed the power of horizontal thinking. CIMIC operations thus prepare future `bureaucrats' to create government networks capable of managing the triple threat of terrorism, insurgency and organized crime     

Countering the Quetta Shura: a viable strategy to US policy in Afghanistan

The US strategy in Afghanistan has fallen short of neutralizing the insurgency that threatens the future stability. The primary insurgency's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, has effectively managed influence through a shadow government and superior tactics in recruiting marginalized tribal leaders, leading to a questionable outcome once Coalition forces withdraw in 2014. This article summarizes the threat posed by the Quetta Shura, coinciding with the deficiencies in the current US policy, and recommends a more viable strategy conducive to the current circumstances, based on historical and cultural precedence. Coalition forces have put a great amount of time, money, and effort into establishing a more stable Afghanistan. The USA needs a more aggressive strategy to counter the aspirations of the insurgency, thereby giving the Afghans the opportunity to further progress in the future. Under the current circumstances and policies, a peaceful transition after the Coalition withdrawal is becoming more unlikely.     

Understanding Proto-Insurgencies

Abstract

Why do some small terrorist and guerrilla groups succeed in becoming full-blown insurgencies while many others fail? Proto-insurgencies face many difficulties in creating an insurgent movement: they must create a politically salient identity, harness a compelling cause, create an effective sanctuary, and defeat both violent and peaceful organizational rivals, all while evading the police and security services of the much more powerful state. Outside support is a mixed blessing for proto-insurgents. Often, the ultimate success of the proto-insurgency in becoming a full-blown insurgency depends on the mistakes of the government it opposes.     

Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria and the vicious cycle of internal insecurity

The phenomenon of the Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria has generated many security concerns. This article explores the implications of the Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria for internal security. The article, which relies on a study of secondary sources of data, reveals that the insurgency has spawned varied implications such as an international image crisis, huge economic losses, a health and humanitarian crisis, a huge burden on the security apparatuses, arms proliferation, and endangered national unity. It holds that the insurgency is essentially interlinked with a breakdown of the social contract manifested in opportunistic behavior, economic stagnation, and lack of functioning institutional mechanisms for policy conduct and conflict resolution. Owing to the security menace posed by the insurgency, the article recommends that the root causes of the insurgency should be tackled rather than relying on reactive measures that cannot guarantee enduring peace and internal security.     

Optimal defence structure for a small country

Small countries may not be able to afford all force elements (army, navy, air-force) operated by larger countries and certainly cannot afford all sub-elements (aircraft carriers, submarines, etc). This paper provides a framework for a small country to analyse its force structure, examining the influence of objectives, international co-operation, funding and technological constraints, and uncertainty. We analyse when a small country may choose to retain a balanced structure (with each force element) and when it may choose to drop one or more elements. The issues are illustrated with the decision by the New Zealand government over whether to retain a strike aircraft capacity.     

Why Pakistan failed: tribal focoism in Kashmir

The classical repertoire of insurgency types is under-specified, and does not apply well to the case of Pakistan's conduct of insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistan's approach to insurgency has been a consistent tribal variant of focoism, in which there is a reliance on imported itinerant insurgents to conduct raids to stimulate an uprising. This has its basis in the traditional warfare of the region, learned US insurgency doctrine in the 1960s, and an historical disregard for subject populations, which has led to an aversion to fostering grass-roots political movements.     

Urban Insurgency

Urban insurgency has generally been presented by analysts and security force personnel as a distinct variant. In contrast, insurgents themselves have often recognized the particular requirements of two dissimilar but related approaches of operation, the urban and rural. Hence they have sought to field approaches and doctrine that exploited the specifics of each. In some cases, simply debating such has led to internal fractures that could not be overcome. More often there has been a deadly rural-urban synthesis that has increasingly challenged security forces.     

Cognitivism,prospect theory,and foreign policy change: a comparative analysis of the politics of counterinsurgency in Malaya and Afghanistan

This article investigates the cognitive limitations on policy change in counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts by examining why American decision-makers failed to revise their government strategy substantially while fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan in 2003–2014 and why their British counterparts were more successful in adjusting their policies in the Malayan insurgency in 1948–1954. Unlike most of the COIN literature that concentrates on military strategy and tactics, the analysis of government policy-making in Malaya holds some important political lessons for American leaders today despite differences between the insurgencies in Afghanistan and British Malaya. As a response to the criticism of COIN studies in general that they lack theoretical guidance, this article utilizes an integrated cognitivist-prospect theory framework. It is argued that some of the COIN literature mistakenly suggests that a more difficult strategic situation was primarily responsible for American failure in Afghanistan. Instead, American decision-makers faced a more difficult task cognitively than their British counterparts, as policy change in Afghanistan would have required greater ideational change. American principals were much more attached to their beliefs emotionally, had no alternative problem representation, and had to shift between frames in order to engineer a response that was more in line with events on the ground in Afghanistan. Regarding prospect theory, findings indicate that gains frames appear to be unhelpful in monitoring progress until catastrophic failure endangers the reference point, and that decision-makers often have more than one reference point to attune their policies to, which often results in suboptimal choices with regard to at least one reference point.