Rossellini,Pontecorvo, and the neorealist cinema of insurgency

This article examines the tradition of Italian neorealism and the importance it has for films depicting guerrilla insurgencies. It looks in particular at the two films by Roberto Rossellini Rome Open City and Paisa as well as the later film by Nanni Loy Four Days in Naples. It then proceeds to locate Gillo Pontecorvo's iconic film The Battle of Algiers within this neorealist tradition and examines the degree to which the director succeeded in continuing the basic traditions of neorealism into the context of the Algerian war of Independence. The article concludes that while this film remains of great interest it should be situated in the period when it was produced and is in many ways radically disconnected from many insurgent movements of the present day.     

Expendable soldiers

Foreign Legions in the generic sense have evolved in ways that would surprise Beau Geste. Not only are more foreigners or recent immigrants enlisting in Western military forces, but also the post-Cold War era has seen the revival of warlord militias and Private Military Companies. Western militaries, in particular that of the United States, have also sought to increase their strategic reach through security assistance to regional military forces. While there have been some successes, security assistance has proven to have its limitations, not to mention unintended consequences for civil military relations, democracy promotion, and military efficiency.     

Institutional Analysis and Irregular Warfare: A Case Study of the French Army in Algeria 1954–1960

This article proposes a case study to illustrate the usefulness of sociological institutional analysis as a method to uncover ‘blue force’ challenges to deal with irregular warfare. The French Army's adaptation to revolutionary warfare in Algeria, starting in 1954, is used to illustrate both the application of the methodology and how institutional forces can hinder as well as overwhelm transformation for irregular warfare. The analysis emphasizes three key dimensions of the French Army's institutional adaptation: the regulative, normative and cognitive. These empirical elements are used to show how they interacted and influenced the institutional implementation of the French COIN structures.     

Imperial nostalgia,the liberal lie,and the perils of postmodern counterinsurgency

Since 9/11, counterinsurgency is back in fashion; the ‘war on terror’ has even been branded a ‘global counterinsurgency’. However the context within which counterinsurgency originally arose is critical to understanding the prospects for its present success; the radically changed environment in which it is currently being conducted casts into considerable doubt the validity of the doctrine's application by many national militaries currently ‘rediscovering’ this school of military thought today. Above all, classical counterinsurgency was a profoundly imperial, state-centric phenomenon; consequently it only rarely faced the thorny issue of sovereignty and legitimacy which bedevils and may doom these same efforts today.     

Lessons in airpower projection: Indochina and Algeria

The lessons from the two French counterinsurgencies, Indochina and Algeria, give rise to a new understanding of the projection of airpower in remote and hostile environments and the purpose, design, and use of aircraft in counterinsurgency. In both Indochina and Algeria, the campaigns were ones of poverty, and it is their imaginative management under severe resource constraints that provides thoughtful and applicable lessons for today. In both cases, airpower held the promise of delivering victory and solving the resource issue. In Indochina, acquisition of the needed aircraft, operating knowledge, and experience came too slowly to realize this promise. In Algeria, the French embraced the lessons from Indochina and were quite successful and innovative in the use of airpower. The lessons can be reduced to four requirements: (1) a network of airfields for liaison, ground-support, and intra-theater airlift to enable effective air support of ground forces; (2) a solid, reliable, and simple ground-support aircraft capable of operating from forward airfields within range of ground engagements; (3) a capable intra-theater heavy-lift transport to supply the extended ground forces; and (4) helicopter capability to enhance tactical troop mobility and support.     

Counterinsurgency force ratio: strategic utility or nominal necessity

As a consequence of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, force ratio for counterinsurgency (COIN) has come under increased scrutiny. Reduced to its essence, the issue is simply, ‘How many troops does it take to get the job done?’ This answer has been sought by the US military, academia, and think tanks. There have been numerous responses, culminating in several ‘plug-and-play’ equations for minimum force ratios in COIN operations. Due to the impossibility of determining precisely how many insurgent forces there are, it has become common to base force ratios on the population of the country. In the realm of policy, the question above is posed as, ‘How many of our troops does it take to get the job done?’     

The Nineteenth Century Origins of Counterinsurgency Doctrine

Abstract

In counterinsurgency, the population is the center of gravity. This insight has become a key doctrinal tenet of modern armed conflict. But where does it come from? The razzia, a tactic introduced by the French in North Africa around 1840, first thrust tribal populations into the focus of modern operational thinking. Soon the pioneering bureaux arabes added an administrative, civil, and political element. Eventually, in the 1890s, French operations in Madagascar gave rise to a mature counterinsurgency doctrine. David Galula, a French writer who heavily influenced the American Counterinsurgency manual, is merely the joint that connects the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.     

Using Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency Operations: The French in Algeria, 1954–1962

While the importance of indigenous forces for successful counterinsurgency operations has long been recognized by great powers fighting local insurgencies, the factors that determine the performance of such forces have attracted relatively little scholarly attention. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of those determinants through an examination of the role and performance of auxiliary indigenous units in French counterinsurgency operations during the Algerian War (1954–62). The findings presented here suggest some important lessons for those seeking to recruit and deploy effective indigenous forces in counterinsurgency operations.     

Remembering the war of liberation: legitimacy and conflict in contemporary Algeria

The aim of this article is to consider how Algeria's most prized achievement and treasured memory – the FLN's victory over the French in the war of liberation – has helped stimulate and sustain the violence that has blighted the country since independence. It argues that successive governments have propagated a legend of the war that encourages and legitimises rebellion and armed resistance. By celebrating the actions and achievements of a committed band of revolutionaries they have established a precedent whereby it is every citizen's duty to oppose and resist an unjust government. Time and again therefore, insurgent groups like the FFS, MIA, and AIS have justified their actions and won popular support by portraying themselves as the early FLN's natural heir.     

Terrorism,insurgency, kidnapping,and security in Africa's energy sector

Energy continues to serve as the bedrock of modern economies and the main driver of modern society. For Africa, the production and supply of energy resources such as crude oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biomass, biofuels and other renewables are an important source of employment, rents, taxes, royalties and profits. This sector brings in several tens of billions of dollars of revenue annually. The production and delivery of such resources, however, depend on critical infrastructures such as pipelines, refineries, processing plants, terminals, rigs, electrical energy pylons, substations, pump stations, vessels, and tankers. These infrastructures have been attacked by terrorists, insurgents, vandals and saboteurs, all of whom see them as targets against which to register their grievances and extract concessions from the state. This paper is a chronological account of some of the documented incidents of terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping, destruction, sabotage, and human casualties suffered in the oil and gas sectors in Africa between 1999 and 2012. It is based on data extracted from the databases of the RAND Database of World Terrorism Incidents and the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database (GTD).