Guerrilla Strategies
Gerard Chaliand
University of California Press
Here is a unique anthology of writings on revolutionary warfare and counterinsurgency, covering almost all the major struggles of the modern world. The editor, who has had firsthand experience with guerrilla movements in Asia (most recently in Afghanistan), Africa, and Latin America, provides a concise yet panoramic overview of political and military strategies in revolutionary warfare, noting their strengths, limitations, and pathologies.
“The best balanced and most thoughtful collection that I have seen, one that should be consulted by every serious student of the subject.” — Richard Sklar, UCLA
“Chaliand has made a superb choice of materials.
… This collection is the best that I have seen.”
— Daniel Chirot, University of Washington
Gerard Chaliand divides his time between field research, travels, writing, and teaching. He is the author of numerous works, the most recent of which are The Struggle for Africa: Strategy of the Major Powers (1981) and People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan (1980).
Contents
Acknowledgments / ix
Abbreviations / xi
Gerard Chaliand: Introduction / 1
Part One. Stories
I. Camille Rougeron: The Historical Dimension of Guerrilla Warfare / 35
II. Agnes Smedley: The Red Phalanx / 52
III. Vladimir Dedijer: The Yugoslav Partisans / 63
IV. William J. Pomeroy: The Huk Guerrilla Struggle in the Philippines / 88
V. Ngo Van Chieu: The Journal of a Vietminh Combatant / 108
VI. Bernard B. Fall: Street Without Joy / 120
VIII. Si Azzedine: Story of aGuerrilla in Algeria / 133
VIII. Donald L. Barnett and Karari Njama: Mau Mau from Within / 141
IX. Frank Kitson: Counterinsurrection in Kenya / 163
X. Ernesto Che Guevara: Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War / 173
XI. Gerard Chaliand: With the Guerrillas in “Portuguese” Guinea / 186
XII. Journal of a Colombian Guerrillero / 216
XIII. Michael Raeburn: On the Move / 225
Part Two: Analyses
XIV. Eqbal Ahmad: Revolutionary Warfare and Counterinsurgency / 241
XV. Captain Labignette: The Communist Insurrection in Greece / 263
XVI. Julian Paget: Emergency in Malaya / 270
XVII. Jean-Philippe Talbo-Bernigaud: Steamroller in Kabylia / 274
XVIII. Hector Bejar: The Failure of the Guerrillas in Peru / 282
XIX. Jeffrey Race: War Comes to Long An / 299
XX. Nguyen Van Thieu: Our Strategy for Guerrilla War / 310
XXI. Abraham Guillen: Urban Guerrilla Strategy / 317
XXII. Abu Iyad: Al Fatah’s Autocriticism / 324
XXIII. Gerard Chaliand: The Bargain War in Afghanistan / 328
Annotated Bibliography / 347
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research has been done without the support of any grant or organization. I want to thank the following for their help: the Library of Congress (Washington, D. C.), la Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), and the British Museum (London). Christoph Bertram, Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, and his staff have provided invaluable assistance, for which I extend my warmest thanks. I would also like to thank my translator, Mike Pallis, and, at the University of California Press, my friend Alain Henon for his enthusiastic support of the project and Rebecca Stein for her fine editorial work.
Finally, many thanks to the original publishers of the works that follow for their permission to reprint.
Introduction
Guerrilla warfare has been particularly important ever since the Second World War. This book is concerned less with the history and more with the strategy of this kind of war, analyzing its underlying principles and their connection with the ultimate goal, political change. This is not to say that guerrilla techniques and tactics are a new phenomenon. On the contrary, they go back to the dawn of history. Guerrilla warfare has consistently been the choice of the weak who oppose the strong, for it enables them to avoid direct decisive confrontations and rely on harassment and surprise.
Guerrilla techniques are recorded in ancient Egypt and China. They are mentioned in the Bible and described, sometimes at length, by classical historians, notably Polybius, Appius, Plutarch, Flavius Josephus, Herodotus, and Tacitus. While Rome was still expanding its empire, in the two centuries before Christ, there were long and bitter guerrilla wars in Spain and, later, during the first century a.d., in North Africa. Throughout the Middle Ages and afterward, religious movements made use of guerrilla techniques, as did the peasants who fought in innumerable revolts, the classical example being the peasant war in sixteenth-century Germany. In the Ottoman-dominated Balkans, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, socially or nationally oriented bandit groups and movements were based entirely on guerrilla tactics. The most famous guerrilla war, fought by the Albanians against the authority of the Turkish sultan, was simply on a much larger scale.
This type of warfare has been characteristic of social and religious movements and has even enabled people to avoid taxation, but it has also been one of the most important forms of resistance to aggression and foreign occupation, notably during the expansion of the Roman, Ottoman, and Napoleonic empires and during the European expansion in the nineteenth century. Guerrilla tactics played a not unimportant role in the American War of Independence, as fought by Marion, also known as the Swamp Fox. Apart from the Vendee uprising during the French Revolution, however, the real “classics” of this period were the wars of national resistance in the Tyrol (1809), in Russia (1812), and in Spain (1808-1813)—giving us the term “guerrilla.” More than any other ideology, modern nationalism managed to extend guerrilla warfare beyond regional or local confines.
Military theoreticians, particularly French and German, have not overlooked the peculiarities of the “little war.” It was analyzed as early as the eighteenth century, but there was no treatment of the subject as a whole until Le Miere de Corvey wrote his Des partisans et des corps irreguliers. The two great theoreticians of the nineteenth century, Clausewitz and Jomini, gave it some attention. For Clausewitz, influenced as he was by the emergence of nationalism, popular warfare was a war of peasant resistance to a foreign aggressor. Several other theoreticians of the period just preceding the 1830s, notably the Italians, wrote on the subject, sometimes displaying an appreciation of its political potential. But, at the time, guerrilla warfare was quite rightly regarded as only a minor technique that could not carry the day and that was best used to back up a regular army.
In fact, if one leaves aside the Carlist Wars of Succession in Spain and the Italian Risorgimento, guerrilla warfare was a minor and very marginal feature of the post-Napoleonic period, the main examples having been the Polish insurrections and the Greek War of Independence. Indeed, from 1830 until the end of the nineteenth century, as socialism became more influential, urban insurrection came to be considered a better means of gaining power. Rapid urbanization, mass proletarianization, the conservatism of the peasantry, and the increasing centralization of the state apparatus within the capital all seemed to confirm this viewpoint, which found explosive expression in 1830, 1848, and 1871. It was only the Italians and the Poles who felt that studies on guerrilla warfare were particularly relevant.
As in the United States, Latin America’s Wars of Independence, led by Bolivar and San Martin, were essentially fought by regular armies. The exceptions were in Mexico, in Venezuela (where the Llaneros gave considerable support to Bolivar), and in the Plata (especially in Uruguay, where the montoneros were active). In Peru (1809-1816) a major insurrection was crushed. The astonishing saga of Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti provides another instance of guerrilla activity in Latin America.
A little later, two major guerrilla offensives against Spanish domination were launched in Cuba (particularly in Oriente) from 1863 to 1878 and from 1895 to 1898. The outcome was that the island ceased to be a Crown dependency; in the process, the Spanish General Weyler learned to take the technique of counterinsurgency farther than ever before.
European Expansion and Guerrilla Resistance
The longest, most numerous, and most important guerrilla wars were fought in response to European colonial expansion in Asia and Africa. Examples of such struggles against the British include the bitter, long drawn-out campaigns in Burma (1824-1825, 1852, 1885), the endless wars fought by the Afghans, the Sierra Leone Campaign, the Boer War (1899-1902), and the Somalia Campaigns that dragged on from the turn of the century until just after the First World War. The French fought in Algeria from 1830 to 1847. The conquest of Vietnam took them ten years. Gradually, they perfected political and military counterinsurgency techniques, and they fought on, in Madagascar (1844-1895) and in West Africa, where they encountered stiff opposition (1882-1898). Bitter campaigns were fought by the Dutch in Java and by the Germans against the Herreros of South West Africa. The Portuguese Wars in Angola and Guinea-Bissau continued for more than half a century. The Russians had to overcome the guerrilla forces led by Sheikh Shamyl before they could control the Caucasus (1836-1859).
American colonization of the Philippines was bitterly resisted. Finally, full-scale guerrilla struggles erupted repeatedly in nineteenth-century China.
…..
Gerard Chaliand
Guerrilla Strategies
University of California
University of California Press
Guerrilla Strategies
An Historical Anthology from the
Long March to Afghanistan
Edited by Gerard Chaliand
University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 1982 by
The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title:
Guerrilla strategies.
Bibliography: p.
1. Guerrilla warfare—Addresses, essays, lectures.
2. Counterinsurgency—Addresses, essays, lectures.
3. Military history, Modern—20th century—Addresses, essays, lectures.
4. Revolutions— History—20th century—Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Chaliand, Gerard, 1934-
U240.G8234 355'.02184 81-16347
ISBN 0-520-04444-4 AACR2
ISBN 0-520-04443-6 (pbk.)
Jacket illustration: Yno hai remedio
(And There’s No Help for It) from Los disastres de la guerra,
by Francisco Goya y Lucientes.
By permission of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,
Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts.
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
