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Guerrilla (also called a partisan) is a term borrowed from Spanish (from "guerra" meaning war) used to describe small
combat groups. Guerrilla warfare operates with small, mobile and flexible combat groups called cells, without a
front line. Guerrilla warfare is one of the oldest forms of asymmetric warfare. Primary contributors to modern theories of guerrilla war include Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. While
"asymmetric warfare" is the military term for guerrilla tactics, it is often referred to in the pejorative as "terrorism."
Etymology
The term was invented in Spain to describe the tactics used to resist the French regime instituted by Napoleon Bonaparte (one should however remember, that the tactics
themselves were known and used even centuries earlier). The Spanish
word means "little war". The Spanish word for guerrilla fighter is guerrillero. The change of usage from the tactics to
the person implementing them is a late 19th century mistake. In most languages the word still denotes the style of warfare.
However this is changing under the influence of the English usage.
Tactics
Guerrilla tactics are based on ambush and sabotage, and their ultimate objective is usually to destabilize an authority through long, low-intensity
confrontation. It can be quite successful against an unpopular foreign regime: a guerrilla army may increase the cost of
maintaining an occupation or a colonial presence above what the foreign power may wish to bear.
Guerrillas in wars against foreign powers do not principally direct their attacks at civilians, as they desire to obtain as
much support as possible from the population as part of their tactics. Civilians are primarily attacked or assassinated as
punishment for collaboration. Often such an attack will be officially
sanctioned by guerrilla command or tribunal. An exception is in civil wars, where
both guerrilla groups and organized armies have been known to commit atrocities
against the civilian population.
Guerrillas are often characterised as terrorists by their opponents.
Guerrillas are in particular danger of not being recognized as combatants because
they are outnumbered and may take off their uniforms to mingle with the local
population. Guerrillas are usually classified as unlawful enemy combatants.
Guerrilla warfare is classified into two main categories: urban guerrilla warfare and rural guerrilla warfare. In both cases,
guerrillas rely on a friendly population to provide supply and intelligence. Rural guerrillas prefer to operate in regions
providing plenty of cover and concealment, especially heavily forested and mountainous areas. Urban guerrillas, rather than
melting into the mountains and jungles, blend into the population and are depedent on a support base among the people. The
difference between a successful and doomed guerrilla movement is the availability of outside logistics support from foreign opponents of the local regime.
Maoist theory of people's war divides warfare into three phases. In the
first phase, the guerrillas gain the support of the population through attacks on the machinery of government and the
distribution of propaganda. In the second phase, escalating attacks are made on
the government's military and vital institutions. In the third phase, conventional
fighting is used to seize cities, overthrow the government and take control of the country.
Examples
Examples of successful guerrilla warfare:
However, guerrilla warfare has generally been unsuccessful against native regimes, which have nowhere to retreat to. The rare
examples of successful guerrilla warfare against a native regime include the Cuban Revolution and the Chinese Civil
War. More common are the unsuccessful examples of guerrilla warfare, which include Malaysia, Bolivia, Argentina, and the Philippines.
In many cases, guerrilla tactics allow a small force to hold off a much larger and better equipped enemy for a long time, as
in the Second Chechen War and the Second Seminole War.
Guerrillas in Europe
In centuries of history, many guerrilla movements appeared in Europe to fight foreign occupation forces. During The Deluge in Poland most of guerrilla
tactics were applied. In the 19th century, peoples of the Balkans used the tactics to fight the Ottoman empire. The Spanish used it to fight Napoleon in the Peninsula War the conflict from which the term "guerrilla" (meaning small war from the Spanish for war,
guerra) spawned, and Poles used it during the January
Uprising.
In World War II, several guerrilla movements operated in the countries
occupied by Nazi Germany. These included the Polish Home Army, Soviet partisans, Yugoslav partisans, French resistance or Maquis, Italian partisans, ELAS and royalist forces in Greece. The United Kingdom created Auxiliary Units to conduct guerrilla warfare in the event of invasion. Before
the Second World War the Official or Old IRA that fought in opposition to British control of
Ireland might be called guerrillas.
After Word War II, during 1940s and 1950s,
thousands of resistance fighters in Latvia and Lithuania participated in unsuccessful guerrilla warfare against soviet regime.
Currently, the Basque ETA and Corsican FLNC
and other groups such as the Greek Marxist November 17 claim to be
guerrillas, but are commonly recognized as terrorists since they almost
exclusivly murder civilians instead of attacking legitimate military targets, and this is how the government and media of their
respective countries prefer to refer to them. The Provisional IRA, Loyalist paramilitaries and various anti-Good Friday Agreement splinter-groups could be called guerrillas
but were usually called terrorists by both the British and Irish governments and media. In contrast Loyalist militants were
often referred to as paramilitaries rather than terrorists by the media.
Guerrillas in the American Revolutionary War
Although the American Revolutionary War is
often thought of as a guerrilla war, guerrilla tactics were uncommon, and almost all of the battles involved conventional set
piece battles. Some of the confusion may be due to the fact that generals George Washington and Nathaniel Greene
successfully used a strategy of harassment and progressively grinding down British forces instead of seeking a decisive battle.
Nevertheless the tactics used by most of the American forces were those conventional warfare.
One of the exceptions was in the south, the brunt of the war was upon militia
forces who fought the enemy British troops and their Loyalist supporters, but used concealment, surprise, and other guerrilla tactics to much advantage. General
Francis Marion of South Carolina, who often attacked the British at unexpected places, then would fade into the swamps by the
time the British were able to get organized enough to return fire, was named by them The Swamp Fox.
Guerrillas in the American Civil War
John Singleton Mosby formed a guerrilla unit during the
American Civil War, which Mosby called his "Partisan
Rangers".
In the late 20th century several historians have focused on the non-use
of guerrilla warfare to prolong the war. Near the end of the war, there were those in the Confederate government, namely Jefferson Davis who
advocated continuing the southern fight as a guerrilla conflict. He was opposed by generals such as Robert E. Lee who ultimately believed that surrender was better than guerrilla warfare.
Guerrillas in Latin America
In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Latin America had a number of urban guerrilla movements whose strategy was to destabilize democratic
regimes and provoke a counter-reaction by the military. The theory was that a harsh military regime would oppress the middle classes who would then support the guerrillas and create a popular
uprising.
Unfortunately, while these movements did destabilize governments, such as Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala, and Peru to the point of military intervention, the military
generally then proceeded to wipe out the guerrilla movements, often committing atrocities among both civilians and the armed insurgents in the process.
Several other guerrilla movements attempted to overthrow US-backed right-wing dictatorships, whilst US-backed Contra guerrillas attempted to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
Guerrillas and the Vietnam War
Within the United States, the Vietnam War is commonly thought of as a guerrilla war. However this is a misleading simplification of a much
more complex situation which followed the pattern outlined by Maoist theory.
The National
Liberation Front (NLF), drawing its ranks from the South Vietnamese peasantry and working class, used guerrilla tactics in
the early phases of the war. However, by 1965 when U.S. involvement escalated, the National
Liberation Front was in the process of being supplanted by regular units of the North Vietnamese Army.
The NVA regiments organized along traditional military
lines, were supplied via the Ho Chi Minh trail rather than living
off the land, and had access to weapons such as tanks and artillery which are not normally used by guerrilla forces.
Over time, more of the fighting was conducted by the North Vietnamese Army and the character of the war become increasingly
conventional. The final offensive into South Vietnam in 1975 was a completely conventional military operation with no elements of guerrilla warfare.
By the end of the Vietnam War, U.S.-led forces had killed or incapacitated a large share of the NLF's guerrilla fighters.
Guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and Kosovo
Guerrilla warfare formed in integral part of the campaigns in Kosovo in the late 1990's and Afghanistan in 2001, which created
an unique style of warfare which combined low technology guerrilla warfare with high technology air power. In these campaigns,
guerrilla fighters with coordination from special forces would engage the
enemy forcing them to move out into the open where they could be destroyed using air power supplied by the United States. In both cases, the guerrillas were able to take advantage of their
local knowledge and willingness to take causalities to great effect when supplemented by outside air power.
See also
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