ABSTRACT
The primarily bipolar world that helped to characterize the decades long Cold War has begun to realign itself. The information revolution, increasing globalization, the ongoing expansion of transnational terrorist and insurgent networks, and many other elements of this systemic level change have continued to take place into the early twenty-first century. Within the context of this large-scale shift in human and state relations, one question that has often been asked by analysts is whether changing forms of insurgency are taking place. If this is so, these changing forms of insurgency would be distinct from the currently dominant political form of insurgency found in the revolutionary, and at times nationalistic, writings of Mao Zedong, Giap, Thai, Guevara, Marighella, Urbano, Bayo and others. Almost all of our current understanding of insurgency theory is derived from this dominant form that reached its zenith in the decades following the Second World War. Such changing forms of insurgency challenge in fact our modern definition of political insurgency by incorporating both pre-modern and post-modern constructs. Concepts of ‘private warfare’ – waged by individuals such as warlords – and ‘privatized warfare’ – waged by mercenary and free companies and corporations – very much help to define both very old and newly emergent forms of conflict. So too do the concepts of religious crusade and jihad once embraced by the Christian and Islamic religions during their early expansionist periods and now again being promoted by the extremist fringes of both these religions and newer religious cults. ‘RAHOWA’ (racial holy war promoted by white supremacists), ‘Jihad’ (holy warfare to expand and defend an Islamic state) and ‘Divine Justice’ (God’s will carried out by La Familia Michoacana) are but a few examples of the war cries of these holy warriors. The dominant political form of insurgency current in contemporary analysis, on the other hand, is one which usually seeks to create a shadow government which will ultimately replace the pre-existing government of a state through a phased process of resistance such as that defined by strategic defence, stalemate and eventual strategic offence. Tools of the trade include targeted killings (assassinations and executions), hit-and-run tactics, booby traps and IEDs, propaganda, reeducation camps, and psychological warfare and terrorism. The defined end state is the replacement of the government of a nation-state by a different governmental structure. The nature of the state ultimately remains the same with only its political leadership and structure changing. The basis of the insurgency itself is thus political in nature and exists within the paradigm of the Westphalian state system established in 1648 and which continues to define the modern world order.
