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Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer
The differences are a function of how you choose to define the terms, which can have somewhat elastic meanings. But fundamentally they differ because they have to do with two separate things.
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An "insurgency" refers to the nature or form of the conflict.
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A "civil war" refers to the purpose of the conflict.
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Thats it. Totally 4 sure.
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The insurgency doesn't become a civil war merely by becoming more violent or deadly. It does by reaching a point where there are clear sides with definable and achievable ends
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I would put forward that another indicator might also be clearly defined ideals which dont change with tactics (eg. coersion of population). To me, the "achievable" criteria is not strict enough. It is disguised as a subjective parameter. Or do historians (in retrospect) determine which conflicts are civil wars and which are merely violence and domestic uprising?
You can have clear sides with definable and achievable ends at any point in a conflict, if you are an insurgent and you are putting up an illusion to win popular support. In practice, um, how about peasant revolts around a pretender. Or, the Chinese communists (first they were marxists, then nationalists, then they were socalists, then they were "unified" in the face of Japanese agression, dropped land reform, then they performed land reform by violent means thereby committing the rural population to violence, allowing the dropping of land reform in favor of collectivization)