Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare Volume Ii: 1962–2009
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CASEBOOK ON INSURGENCY AND REVOLUTIONARY WARFARE VOLUME II: 1962–2009 27 APRIL 2012 United States Army Special Operations Command CASEBOOK ON INSURGENCY AND REVOLUTIONARY WARFARE VOLUME II: 1962–2009 Paul J. Tompkins Jr., USASOC Project Lead Chuck Crossett, Editor United States Army Special Operations Command and The Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory National Security Analysis Department In a rare spare moment during a training exercise, the Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA) Team Sergeant took an old book down from the shelf and tossed it into the young Green Beret’s lap. “Read and learn.” The book on human factors considerations in insurgencies was already more than twenty years old and very out of vogue. But the younger sergeant soon became engrossed and took other forgotten revolution-related texts off the shelf, including the 1962 Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, which described the organization of undergrounds and the motivations and behaviors of revolutionaries. He became a student of the history of unconventional warfare and soon championed its revival as a teaching subject for the US Army Special Forces. When his country faced pop-up resistance in Iraq and tenacious guerrilla bands in Afghanistan during the mid-2000s, his vision of modernizing the research and reintroducing it into standard education and training took hold. This second volume owes its creation to the vision of that young Green Beret, Paul Tompkins, and to the challenge that his sergeant, Ed Brody, threw into his lap. i FOREWORD Unconventional Warfare is the core mission and organizing principle for US Army Special Forces. The Army is the only military organization specifically trained and organized to wage Unconventional Warfare. From their inception, Special Forces and Army Special Operations Forces were largely focused on developing regional, cultural, and language skills in recognition of the singular importance of the human dimensions of war among the people. We have consistently recognized the importance of dedicating intellectual efforts to better understand the nature of our environment, the motivations and behavior of our enemies. Investment in our human capital is an essential part of developing and maintaining sufficient capability to conduct Unconventional Warfare or Unconventional Warfare-related operations in sensitive environments or conditions. In the 1960s, our predecessors had the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) at American University produce a collection of case studies on insurgent movements; these studies characterized the motivations and behaviors of revolutionaries and insurgents. The book provided rich reading and study for generations of scholars, Green Berets, and other practitioners and is still a relevant part of our professional literature today. That investment informed our tactics and operations and set the tone for how US Army Special Operations practiced irregular warfare. Today we again find ourselves facing a dynamic, agile, and flexible enemy whose motivations and behaviors have changed since our historic studies. Our challenge is to understand today’s very capable, intelligent, and adaptable enemy and to understand that enemy’s relationship to relevant populations. We partnered with Johns Hopkins scholars to build on the foundations of our historic case studies to produce a new case-study series to help us better understand the characteristics of the modern operational environment. I strongly encourage the men and women of Army Special Operations, the joint Special Operations community, and anyone whose professional interest encompasses unconventional warfare and irregular warfare to make these studies a fundamental part of their professional reading and development. The understanding and successful practice of Unconventional Warfare and Irregular Warfare demands our best intellectual appreciation and application as much as it does excellence within our tactical skill sets. Strength and Honor, Lieutenant General John F. Mulholland US Army, Commanding General ii On behalf of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center (SWC) and School, I am proud to present this collection of twenty-three outstanding case studies of insurgencies and revolutions as a survey of modern unconventional warfare. These case studies are a valuable reference for those who study contemporary conflict and for those who practice it, and they are a significant contribution to the body of knowledge on unconventional warfare. At SWC, our mission is to prepare soldiers for unconventional warfare. We have pursued the singular goal of excellence in all areas of unconventional operations since our inception, and we have established ourselves as the Center of Excellence for Unconventional Warfare. Today, as US Army Special Forces (SF) move into the twenty- first-century operating environment, our ability to think creatively and critically to find solutions to the complex situations we will face becomes even more significant. The operating environment of today requires the traditional skills that have been a mainstay of SF operations since our founding. It also demands that these skills be updated to meet the new demands of an agile and adaptable enemy. Green Berets employ both a direct and an indirect approach to countering modern threats. At times there is value in and need for the direct approach. For SF, however, the enduring results, and our legacy, live with the indirect approach whereby we enable partners and populations to combat extremist organizations themselves and we contribute to their capabilities through advising and training. It is in this environment that these updated case studies will have the most value. These chapters offer an opportunity to capture and learn important lessons from history. In them, you can inform your own actions and decisions by better understanding the steps that led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. By developing an appreciation for the cultural and political frustrations in the Middle East, you will better understand the conditions that brought about modern-day militant Islam. By taking the time to become a student of the history of revolutionaries and insurgencies, you will better be able to carry out the indirect missions of advising and training our partners and allies. Brigadier General Bennet S. Sacolick USAJFKSWCS Commanding General iii “How do you set about raising an insurrection?” inquired the King. “Why,” replied Coppenole, “the thing is not at all difficult. There are a hundred ways. In the first place the city must be discontented. That is not a rare circumstance. And then the character of the inhabitants. Those of Ghent are disposed to rebellion. They always love the son of the reigning prince, but never the prince himself. Well, suppose some morning someone comes into my shop and says to me: ‘Father Coppenole, there is this, and there is that; the maid of Flanders is determined to save her ministers; the high bailiff has doubled the tax for grinding corn’—or anything else for that matter. That’s all we need. I leave my work, and I go out into the street and shout, ‘To arms!’ There is always some cask or barrel lying around. I leap up on it, and cry out the first words that come to mind what I have upon my heart, and when one belongs to the people, sire, one always has something upon the heart. Then everyone assembles, they shout, they ring the alarm bell, they arm themselves with weapons taken from the soldiers, the market people join them, and they go to work. And this will always be the way, while there are lords in the seigneuries, bourgeois in the cities, and peasants in the country.” “And against whom do you rebel?” inquired the King. “Against your bailiffs? Against your liege lords?” “Sometimes one, sometimes the other; sometimes it is against the Duke.” —Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Book X, Chapter V, trans. Catherine Liu (New York: Random House, 2002). iv PREFACE This Casebook provides a summary of twenty-three insurgencies and revolutions; the goal of the book is to introduce the reader to modern-style irregular and unconventional warfare, as well as to act as an informational resource on these particular cases. While not trying to provide an in-depth analysis of any case, our intent was to provide enough background material and description of the revolution to allow comparisons and analysis of broader ideas and insights across this broad spectrum of cases. If further study is desired, each case contains a detailed bibliography that points toward what we found to be the most helpful and insightful sources. All cases in this book are presented in a standardized format, a research framework, making it easy to compare various aspects of revolutionary warfare. The Methodology section will define what each section of the framework provides and our justification for its inclusion. All of the sources used in preparation of this Casebook are unclassified and for the most part are secondary rather than primary sources. Where we could, we used primary sources to describe the objectives of the revolution and to give a sense of the perspective of the revolutionary or another participant or observer. Our limitation to unclassified sources allows a much wider distribution of these case studies, while hindering the inclusion of revealing or perhaps more accurate information. We have endeavored to use sources that we believe to be reliable and accurate. These studies are also meant to be strictly neutral in terms of bias toward the revolution