Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century

[lrd]

I came across this article in the Feb 2005 issue of Special Warfare magazine, while researching another topic. Metz and Millen have covered many of the topics we have discussed on this forum, and I'd love to hear your opinions of their conclusions.

The article is long, but interesting.

[Tom Odom]

I know Steve Metz from when we both were on the CGSC faculty and he sat on the editorial board for my book on the 1964-65 Congo rescue missions (LP#14 available online at CGSC/CSI Press).

I used the term mixed reviews because while I find some of the ideas put forth in this article useful, others are not. I agree that most who even consider COIN typically fall back on Maoist or counter-Maoist theory. That was a cottage industry for "thinkers" in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed when I was writing LP 14 on the 1960s Congo troubles, I read literrally hundreds of assessments and messages that tried to find a Maoist or Soviet threat underlying the Simba rebellion of the 1960s. That was hardly the case; the Simba rebellion was a primitiive, ethnic based expression of of frustration (one of Metz's elements) and opportunistic greed. The result in the way that rebellion was suppressed was to open a door to Communist infiltration that was soon heavily trafficked.

What I have a problem with is the ideas of a National Insurgency versus a Liberation Insurgency. Why? Because both are motivated by nationalism and Metz's distinctions between them are somewhat artificial. The other issue I have with them is a pet peeve: everyone seems to feel we have to label something as new because it happens in the 21st century. I take an opposite view to that as a historian. Very little if anything is new about what is happening in Iraq; read TE Lawrence Evolution of a Revolt at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Lawrence/lawrence.asp to get a feel for insurgent strategy (the Arabs lead by Lawrence) against the Turks. the Brits then had their own problems with Arab insurgents after they had defeated the Turks. Were those national insurgencies ? or liberations insurgencies? Yes and yes and no and no. They were national because the Arabs sought to displace the Ottomans who had been there so long and were hardly the outsiders one might think. That made the Ottomans both a legitimate government and an interloper. And it made the Arabs both a legitimate force culturally (they were Arab and the Turks at least in name were not) at the same time they were more the interloper (as Arab tribes out of the Arabian Peninsula) than the Turks who had been there for centuries.

If that left you confused, I succeeded making my point: sterile academic definitions, especially simple ones like national versus liberation insurgencies, do not fit so neatly on the ground.

Best
Tom