Insurgent Strategies

Abstract

Unlike the previous two chapters’ historical and conceptual analyses of insurgency, this chapter is not identifying and describing ‘the nature of the enterprise’ — it is focused on how the insurgents intend to make it a successful enterprise. It is concerned with how they plan to use organised violence to achieve their political goals or, in other words, the ‘strategies’ they use to win the war or a major campaign in the war rather than merely a particular battle or a series of small-scale military actions. Insurgents’ various strategies can be categorised under four headings, namely preparation, pressure, propaganda and provocation, and can also be related to other aspects of insurgent stateless warfare, especially to its historical phases, its three main types and its modes of operation.