Counter-guerrilla Warfare Research Articles

Стратегія протидії незаконним збройним формуванням: зміст, складові, еволюція

Стратегія протидії незаконним збройним формуванням: зміст, складові, еволюція

“The greatest evil in Prlekija:” Polizei-Reiter-Abteilung Serbien in Ljutomer and its surroundings

During the Second World, numerous (small) occupier and collaborator military units operated in Slovenian territory that are better known for their war crimes against civilians rather their involvement in counterguerrilla warfare. One of these units was also the mounted police detachment Serbia (Polizei-Reiter-Abteilung Serbien), which arrived in Prlekija no earlier than the autumn of 1944 as part of the general retreat of German and collaborator units from Serbia. Based on wartime and postwar archival documents as well as postwar literature, the article at hand presents and analyses the activities performed by this paramilitary unit, which was primarily composed of foreigners but under German command. Whereas in Prlekija, the unit engaged in fights against local Partisans, its members entered the local history by inflicting the worst kind of terror on the local population.

“The greatest evil in Prlekija:” Polizei-Reiter-Abteilung Serbien in Ljutomer and its surroundings

During the Second World, numerous (small) occupier and collaborator military units operated in Slovenian territory that are better known for their war crimes against civilians rather their involvement in counterguerrilla warfare. One of these units was also the mounted police detachment Serbia (Polizei-Reiter-Abteilung Serbien), which arrived in Prlekija no earlier than the autumn of 1944 as part of the general retreat of German and collaborator units from Serbia. Based on wartime and postwar archival documents as well as postwar literature, the article at hand presents and analyses the activities performed by this paramilitary unit, which was primarily composed of foreigners but under German command. Whereas in Prlekija, the unit engaged in fights against local Partisans, its members entered the local history by inflicting the worst kind of terror on the local population.

“The greatest evil in Prlekija:” Polizei-Reiter-Abteilung Serbien in Ljutomer and its surroundings

During the Second World, numerous (small) occupier and collaborator military units operated in Slovenian territory that are better known for their war crimes against civilians rather their involvement in counterguerrilla warfare. One of these units was also the mounted police detachment Serbia (Polizei-Reiter-Abteilung Serbien), which arrived in Prlekija no earlier than the autumn of 1944 as part of the general retreat of German and collaborator units from Serbia. Based on wartime and postwar archival documents as well as postwar literature, the article at hand presents and analyses the activities performed by this paramilitary unit, which was primarily composed of foreigners but under German command. Whereas in Prlekija, the unit engaged in fights against local Partisans, its members entered the local history by inflicting the worst kind of terror on the local population.

Review: On the Importance of Military Geoscience

Review: On the Importance of Military Geoscience

A case study of four South African War (1899-1902) Black concentration camps

On 11 October 1899, the South African War commenced between the British Empire and the South African Republic and Orange Free State Republic. This conflict saw the targeting of civilians by all sides throughout the conflict and a harbinger of 20th century “Total War”, when civilians and their resources were harnessed to support military objectives. Set against the prior use of concentration camps in Cuba and the Philippines, the war was followed by a genocidal campaign undertaken by Imperial Germany against the Herero people in German South West Africa in 1906.Although civilian internment in South Africa was not genocidal by design and purpose, it caused a high loss of life and lasting bitterness amongst Boer descendants. Black concentration camps, however, were far more lethal to their internees and designed along a completely different model. Their role was to coerce labour while supporting the British war effort in defeating the Republican forces. Through a work or starve policy, combined with withholding food, medical support and shelter, many perished from systemic neglect. Yet the memory of this experience of the black concentration camps has entered historical discourse only recently, in the last three decades.The area of study, examined by this article, is those black concentration camps established during 1901 to 1902, at Klip River Station, Witkop, Meyerton and Vereeniging, in the former South African Republic (ZAR). Contemporary tangible evidence of these camps remains fleeting. However, this article identifies where these camps existed and how they were integrated into the British military’s counter-guerrilla warfare strategy. This in turn enables further research into these camps that may conclusively establish their historic locations.

Features of the use of air support forces in conditions of asymmetric conflict on the example of the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960)

This article analyzes the materials of the British military, devoted to the peculiarities of the use of air support forces in conditions of asymmetric conflicts on the example of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960). Attention is focused on the transfer of British colonial experience by the US military, carried out through pilot schools, symposia, publication of reports of colonial military. The main strategic and tactical tasks of the air force in counter-guerrilla warfare are considered. The main difficulties of using support aviation forces in conditions of anti-instabilities are analysed, the tasks faced by the pilots are considered. The article focuses on the functional features of the use of helicopter forces, which have become one of the defining mechanisms for dealing with the insurgency. It is concluded that it was the British experience of using the air support forces in asymmetric conflicts that formed the basis of the strategy and tactics of the US air forces in the framework of the Vietnam War.

Colonial experience and the theory of counter-guerrilla warfare in the USA: a source study of materials from the RAND Corporation in the first half of the 1960s

This paper analyzes materials of the RAND Corporation of the first half of the 1960s, devoted to the study of the colonial experience of European empires and the theory of counter-guerrilla warfare. The entire set of documents created by the RAND Corporation allows researchers, firstly, to analyze the intellectual resource available to the American establishment before the invasion of Vietnam, and to understand the causes of the mistakes and successes of the US armed forces in this region, and secondly, these materials allow to analyze the role of colonial and anthropological knowledge in US foreign policy during the Cold War. The sources considered by us in the paper can be classified both by their typology and by their subject matter: from the point of view of typology, RAND Corporations materials are divided into articles, memoranda and symposia materials, as well as from the point of view of subjects on the research of the war for Algeria, the Malay Company, counter-guerrilla warfare in Vietnam and general theoretical issues related to counter-insurgency operations. In the conclusion of the paper the author says about the great role of these sources in the study, both colonial experience and the theory of counter-guerrilla warfare, as well as military, political, social and economic, thus contributing to the interdisciplinarity of scientific papers.

“Frequent Deaths”: The Colonial Development of Concentration Camps Reconsidered, 1868–1974

ABSTRACTThis article sheds new light on the development of concentration camps in colonial warfare in the longue durée from 1868 to 1974. Introducing different examples of forced removal and deportation in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, the analysis emphasizes their interrelation, highlighting possible transfers of knowledge that have been neglected in comparative discussions. Specifically, the article reassesses the Cuban experience of concentrating civilians in times of war (1868–98); it critically evaluates Spain’s forgotten concentration camps on the Canary Islands, which emerged during the Ifni-Sahara war of 1957–58; and it focuses on both the theory of revolutionary warfare and the practice of so-called strategic resettlement in the long and protracted Portuguese colonial wars in Africa (1961–74). In particular, the camps on the Canary Islands suggest the need for an analytical distinction between the function of forced removals in counter-guerrilla warfare and administrative internment; they are related but essentially different policies. Based on hitherto ignored archival material, this empirically supported analysis challenges common assumptions about the “origins” of camps, and questions traditional temporal boundaries in the development of (anti-)guerrilla warfare.

Colonial experience and the theory of counter-guerrilla warfare in the USA: a symposium of RAND, April 16-20, 1962 as a historic source

This paper analyzes the materials of the symposium held by the RAND Corporation from 16 to 20 April 1962. Its purpose was to generalize the experience of past combat conflicts, which could contribute to an effective fight against insurgents in future conflicts. Twelve military officers of the armies of the United States, Britain, France and Australia participated in this symposium. All of them took part in counter-guerrilla operations around the world Algeria, China, Greece, Kenya, Laos, Malaya, Oman, South Vietnam and the Philippines. Their rich experience formed the basis of this symposium. The goals and objectives of the symposium, the features of the materials and the biographies of the participants are consecrated in details in the paper. The questions discussed at the meeting are discussed in details. They are characteristics and examples of guerrilla warfare; primary objectives of counterinsurgency and some effective organizational and operational approaches; tactics and techniques of counter-guerrilla warfare; principles and techniques of political action; psychological warfare and civil actions; intelligence and counterintelligence: problems and techniques of intelligence-gathering, and the importance of communications; British campaign in Kenya; selection of personnel for counterinsurgency; special role of the advisor; winning the Counterguerrilla War. The conclusion of the paper shows a special significance of the materials of this symposium for the study of military thought during the Cold War, and especially the influence of the colonial experience of European empires on US foreign policy.

A Study on Counter-guerrilla Warfare of the Korean Army during the Vietnam War - Focused on the Company Tactical Base -

A Study on Counter-guerrilla Warfare of the Korean Army during the Vietnam War - Focused on the Company Tactical Base -

Say Who Made Her So: Breaker Morant and British Empire

In the early morning of February 27, 1902, on a windy, barren hill in the Transvaal region of South Africa, Lieutenants Harry Morant and Peter J. Handcock, serving in what is now known as the South African War,1 were shot by a British firing squad. The third convict, Lieutenant George Witton, was also sentenced to die, but he was given a last-minute commutation to life imprisonment and was then released five years later. What reads like fiction accurately describes the historical military execution of Morant and Handcock, officers in the British Imperial fighting unit known as the Bushveldt Carbineers. Less than 24 hours earlier, the officers had been found guilty by the British Military court of fatally shooting 14 Boer prisoners. Over the last century, the court-martial2 many people know today simply as the case of Breaker Morant has become one of the most contested in modern military history, despite its having occurred in a remote area of Africa during the tail end of a mostly unremembered war. This relatively insignificant episode has inspired more than a dozen books and articles, and served as the subject of a play and of Bruce Beresford's 1980 docu-drama classic, Breaker Morant. Why do historians and other interested parties continue to challenge the facts and issues of this case? Most likely because the courts -marti al of Morant and two of his fellow Carbineers remain compelling detective stories, full of lingering questions concerning the true identities of the parties involved, the guilt of the accused, and the conduct and motives of British officialdom in the case. Moreover, national identities on several sides play a significant part in the complex scenario. The most cogent, accurate, and wide-ranging article on the subject is Hallman B. Bryant's 'Breaker Morant' in Fact, Fiction and Film. But in the more than 12 years since research for Bryant's article was completed, new and important scholarship on Breaker has appeared, by Elizabeth J. Birmingham, Larry Bridges, and Adam Henry, in addition to several documents issued by the Australian War Memorial and the premier booklength treatment of the subject, Arthur Davey's Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers. The twists and turns of the labyrinthine case prove too numerous to encapsulate within a single article. But, using the most recent scholarship, this article offers a new synthesis of the available historical data, explaining how and why the events unfolded as they did. The article also explains why Beresford's film continues to present a relevant and compelling portrait of the perennial challenges of leadership in counter-guerrilla warfare. To some degree, the intrigue and the cloudiness of the event stem from the conflicting portrayals of Morant and the Boer War. Beresford, perhaps not wanting to deal with thorny character issues, skips over Morant's earliest roots and begins the story in media res, just as the court martial opens. The director then flashes back to incidents pertinent to the trial. But Morant's background is more relevant than the film suggests. Harry Morant - nicknamed in Australia because of his preWar reputation for breaking wild horses - proved in life to be as mysterious as he has become since his death. He was born Edwin Harry Murrant, the son of a workhouse master, in Bridgewater, Somerset, England.3 Yet neither a birth certificate nor baptismal records of Morant in and around Devon, where Breaker claims to have been born, can be located. Of course, the county holds no records of concealed births (if the birth had been illegitimate, for example), and Morant may not have been baptized. In any case, Morant's writings, as well as several other narrative accounts, reveal a man who, at minimum, possessed enough formal education to have elevated his mannerisms, language, and stature. Kit Denton, in his book Closed File, notes that Morant's poetry, letters, and other writings show a command of the language which surely. …

Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars

deplorable experience in Vietnam overshadows American thinking about guerrilla insurgency. --Anthony James Joes (1) Fools say they learn from experience; I prefer to learn from the experience of others. --Otto von Bismark (2) 'n 1961, Bernard Fall, a scholar and practitioner of war, published a book entitled The Without The book provided a lucid account of why the French Expeditionary Corps failed to defeat the Viet Minh during the Indochina War, and the book's title derived from the French soldiers' sardonic moniker for Highway 1 on the coast of Indochina--Ambush Alley, or the Street without Joy. In 1967, while patrolling with US Marines on the Street without Joy in Vietnam, Bernard Fall was killed by an improvised explosive mine during a Viet Cong ambush. In 2003, after the fall of Baghdad and following the conventional phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, US and Coalition forces operating in the Sunni Triangle began fighting a counter-guerrilla type war in which much of the enemy insurgent activity occurred along Highway 1, another street exhibiting little joy. Learning from the experience of other US counterinsurgencies is preferable to the alternative. The US military has had a host of successful experiences in counter-guerrilla war, including some distinct successes with certain aspects of the Vietnam War. However, the paradox stemming from America's unsuccessful crusade in the jungles of Vietnam is this--because the experience was perceived as anathema to the mainstream American military, hard lessons learned there about fighting guerrillas were neither embedded nor preserved in the US Army's institutional memory. The American military culture's efforts to expunge the specter of Vietnam, embodied in the mantra No More Vietnams, also prevented the US Army as an institution from really learning from those lessons. In fact, even the term seemed to become a reviled and unwelcome word, one that the doctrinal cognoscenti of the 1980s conveniently transmogrified into foreign internal defense. Even though many lessons exist in the US military's historical experience with small wars, the lessons from the Vietnam War were the most voluminous. Yet these lessons were most likely the least read, because the Army's intellectual rebirth after Vietnam focused almost exclusively on a big conventional war in Europe--the scenario preferred by the US military culture. (3) Since the US Army and its coalition partners are currently prosecuting counter-guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is useful to revisit the lessons from Vietnam and other counterinsurgencies because they are germane to the wars of today and tomorrow. Capturing all or many of these lessons is beyond the scope of this article and is most likely beyond the scope of a single-volume book. However, this article aims to distill some of the more relevant counterinsurgency lessons from the American military's experiences during Vietnam and before. A bigger goal of this article, however, is to highlight some salient studies for professional reading as the US Army starts to inculcate a mindset that embraces the challenges of counterinsurgency and to develop a culture that learns from past lessons in counterinsurgency. This analysis also offers a brief explanation of US military culture and the hitherto embedded cultural obstacles to learning how to fight guerrillas. To simplify and clarify at the outset, the terms counterinsurgency, counter-guerrilla warfare, small war, and asymmetric conflict are used interchangeably. It is a form of warfare in which enemies of the regime or occupying force aim to undermine the regime by employing classical guerrilla tactics. (4) The US Army and the broader American military are only now, well into the second decade after the end of the Cold War, wholeheartedly trying to transform their culture, or mindset. Senior civilian and military leaders of the defense establishment realize that military cultural change is a precondition for innovative and adaptive approaches to meet the exigencies of a more complex security landscape, one in which our adversaries will most likely adopt unorthodox strategies and tactics to undermine our technological overmatch in the Western, orthodox, way of war. …

The French Army ‘Centre for Training and Preparation in Counter-Guerrilla Warfare’ (CIPCG) at Arzew

Psychological warfare had been used by the French army in the Indochina War (1946–54), and had spawned a sub-caste of French officers who moulded it and counter-insurgent propaganda into a doctrine known as guerre révolutionnaire (revolutionary war). In Algeria, in 1956, the army established a specialist training centre, the CIPCG, at Arzew on the Algerian coast, to provide courses for all officers arriving ‘in country’. By this, the French command sought to ensure that field officers possessed an approach to pacification and the political dimension to their missions well suited to the terrain and socio-political make-up of Algeria. The real ‘revolutionary war’ zealots were kept away from the directing staff, although some delivered guest lectures. Despite complaints from commanders of field units at losing experienced officers to the CIPCG instructing staff, Arzew students testified that the courses aided them in their missions. Some 10,000 French officers undertook courses at the CIPCG before it was downgraded and then disbanded after Pierre Messmer, a Gaullist, became Minister for the Armed Forces in 1960.

Tracking the Origins of a State Terror Network

Operation Condor was a secret intelligence and operations system created in the 1970s through which the South American military regimes coordinated intelligence information and seized, tortured, and executed political opponents in combined cross-border operations. Condor's key members were Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil, later joined by Ecuador and Peru. In Condor operations, combined military and paramilitary commandos disappeared refugees who had fled coups and in their own countries and subjected them to barbaric tortures and death. Security forces in the region classified and targeted persons on the basis of their political ideas rather than illegal acts. The regimes hunted down dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, intellectuals, students, and teachers as well as suspected guerrillas (who are, in a lawful state, also entitled to due process). Long before the repressive network was formally institutionalized in 1975 and code-named Operation Condor, the militaries engaged in intelligence sharing and coordinated cross-border operations. A Brazilian intelligence officer disclosed in 2000 that in the 1960s, intelligence officers from other Condor countries came to three Brazilian bases for training in counterguerrilla warfare, interrogation techniques, and methods of (Gosman, 2000a; 2000b; Clarin, May 10, 2000). This former member of the intelligence apparatus Serviqo Nacional de Informaqoes (National Information Service-SNI) said that, beginning in 1969, combined teams gathered data, later used in the political repression (Notisur, July 7, 2000). Martin Almada, the Paraguayan educator who in 1992 discovered the Paraguayan police files known as the Archives of Terror, received information that Brazil

The Origins of Guerrilla Doctrine

The huge literature on guerrilla and counter guerrilla warfare published in the nineteen fifties and sixties was based almost entirely on the assumption that this phenomenon constituted a revolution in modern strategy. While it is perfectly correct that 'small war', partisan and guerrilla warfare had fallen into disregard in most industrial countries, it has, in fact, existed for a very long time; guerrilla fighting, for obvious reasons, predates warfare between regular armies.1 It has been argued that the history of guerrilla warfare begins with the Spanish insurrection against Napoleon since the partisans of previous ages were not politically inspired. But it cannot really be seriously maintained that the age of people's wars, of wars of 'national liberation' and of 'wars of opinion' begins in 1808, even if such wars had almost been forgotten in the eighteenth century. The present paper, part of a larger study on the history of guerrilla warfare, deals with the concepts of the theorists of small war between roughly 1750 and 1900, and their views on the utility and the limitations of partisan warfare. To regard these military thinkers as the precursors of modern guerrilla warfare is claiming both too much and too little. Too much, because only a few of them were concerned with the political implications of guerrilla warfare; too little, because from a 'technical' point of view they anticipated most present-day tactics and to regard them as mere forerunners is to belittle their part. The theory of small warfare (petite guerre) has its origins in the seventeenth century, being mainly based on the experience of the Thirty Years War, which, perhaps more than any other, had been a 'war without fronts', the Spanish War of Succession and the Wars of Frederick the Great. These early writings deal with the scope of the activities of relatively small detachments. The American War of Inde-

Guerrilla and Counter-Guerrilla Warfare: Liberation and Suppression in the Present Period

Guerrilla and Counter-Guerrilla Warfare: Liberation and Suppression in the Present Period

Planning, mobility, and counter guerrilla warfare

The process of solution identification is defined and structured as one of the four key components of the R & D planning process. Within the process some workable concepts of mobility are derived relating to the time factor in military operations. Data for the ballistic projectile hardware family are used to illustrate mobility capabilities. The counter guerrilla strategy of reaction to guerrilla actions is discussed and illustrative mobility requirements resulting from the strategy are displayed. A counter guerrilla system is deduced functionally and its mobility component is highlighted. Finally, the system feasibility test is described for the counter guerrilla mission, both for single targets and target complexes.