Guerrilla warfare is a type of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians use ambushes, sabotage, terrorism, raids, petty warfare or hit-and-run tactics in a rebellion, in a violent conflict, in a war or in a civil war to fight against regular military, police or rival insurgent forces.
Although the term "guerrilla warfare" was coined in the context of the Peninsular War in the 19th century, the tactical methods of guerrilla warfare have long been in use. In the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu proposed the use of guerrilla-style tactics in The Art of War. The 3rd century BC Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus is also credited with inventing many of the tactics of guerrilla warfare through what is today called the Fabian strategy, and in China Peng Yue is also often regarded as the inventor of guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare has been used by various factions throughout history and is particularly associated with revolutionary movements and popular resistance against invading or occupying armies.
Guerrilla tactics focus on avoiding head-on confrontations with enemy armies, typically due to inferior arms or forces, and instead engage in limited skirmishes with the goal of exhausting adversaries and forcing them to withdraw (see also attrition warfare). Organized guerrilla groups often depend on the support of either the local population or foreign backers who sympathize with the guerrilla group's efforts.Guerrilla Warfare (1987), John Pimlott (Author),
Etymology The Spanish word is the diminutive form of ("war"); hence, "little war". The term became popular during the early-19th-century Peninsular War, when, after the defeat of their regular armies, the Spanish and Portuguese people successfully rose against the Napoleonic troops and defeated a highly superior army using the guerrilla strategy in combination with a scorched earth policy and people's war (see also attrition warfare against Napoleon). In correct Spanish usage, a person who is a member of a unit is a () if male, or a ([geriˈʎeɾa]) if female. Arthur Wellesley adopted the term "guerrilla" into English from Spanish usage in 1809, to refer to the individual fighters (e.g., "I have recommended to set the Guerrillas to work"), and also (as in Spanish) to denote a group or band of such fighters. However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes a specific style of warfare. The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale, and scope between the guerrilla army and the formal, professional army of the state.
History
Prehistoric tribal warriors presumably employed guerrilla-style tactics against enemy tribes:
Evidence of conventional warfare, on the other hand, did not emerge until 3100 BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his The Art of War (6th century BC), became one of the earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare. This inspired developments in modern guerrilla warfare.
In the 3rd century BC, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, called Cunctator ("delayer"), used elements of guerrilla warfare, such as the evasion of battle, the attempt to wear down the enemy, to attack small detachments in an ambush and devised the Fabian strategy, which the Roman Republic used to great effect against Hannibal's army, see also His Excellency : George Washington: the Fabian choice. The Roman general Quintus Sertorius is also noted for his skillful use of guerrilla warfare during his revolt against the Roman Senate. In China, Han dynasty general Peng Yue is often regarded as the inventor of guerrilla warfare due to his use of irregular warfare in the Chu-Han contention to attack Chu convoys and supplies.
In the Byzantine Empire, guerrilla warfare was frequently practiced between the eighth through tenth centuries along the eastern frontier with the Umayyad and then Abbasid caliphates. Tactics involved a heavy emphasis on reconnaissance and intelligence, shadowing the enemy, evacuating threatened population centers, and attacking when the enemy dispersed to raid. In the later tenth century this form of warfare was codified in a military manual known by its later Latin name as De velitatione bellica ('On Skirmishing') so it would not be forgotten in the future.
The Normans often made many forays into Wales, where the Welsh used the mountainous region, which the Normans were unfamiliar with, to spring surprise attacks upon them.
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba successfully employed guerrilla warfare during the Italian Wars, where his Italian lieutenant and successor Prospero Colonna was called Cuntatore after Quintus Fabius Maximus due to their similar tactics. Guerrilla warfare eventually became one of the specialties of the Spanish tercios, including techniques like the camisado.Baquer, M. A. (2006). La escuela Hispano-Italiana de Estrategia. Guerra y sociedad en la monarquía hispánica. Vol. 1, 2006, ISBN 84-8483-235-X, págs. 367-380
Since the Enlightenment, ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and religious fundamentalism have played an important role in shaping insurgencies and guerrilla warfare.
In the 17th century, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, founder of the Maratha Kingdom, pioneered the Shiva sutra or Ganimi Kava (Guerrilla Tactics) to defeat the many times larger and more powerful armies of the Mughal Empire.
During the Dominican Restoration War between 1863 and 1865, Spanish soldiers were deprived of supplies and weapons as insurgents intercepted mule supply trains, captured arms depots containing rifles, cannons, and ammunition, and burned towns they could not hold to deny the Spanish access to supplies and shelter.
Irregular warfare emerged as a critical, though often uncontrollable, strategy for the Confederacy, reflecting both local resistance and the South’s desperate hopes to delay defeat. One successful Guerrilla warfare was the Red River Campaign acted as a force multiplier for the Confederates, exploiting terrain and the fragmented Union command structure. The cumulative effects of small-scale skirmishes, disruptions to supply lines, ambushes, and harassment of Union river flotillas exacerbated the shortcomings of Union strategic planning. This combination of conventional and irregular tactics was instrumental in enabling Confederate forces under Taylor to achieve decisive victories in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, extend the Union retreat, and ultimately ensure a successful outcome for the Confederacy in the campaign.
The Riffian Berber military leader Abd el-Krim ( – 1963) and his father unified the Berber tribes under their control and took up arms against the Spanish and French occupiers during the Rif War in 1920. For the first time in history, tunnel warfare was used alongside modern guerrilla tactics, which caused considerable damage to both the colonial armies in Morocco.
In the early 20th century Michael Collins and Tom Barry both developed many tactical features of guerrilla warfare during the guerrilla phase of the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence. Collins developed mainly urban guerrilla warfare tactics in Dublin City (the Irish capital). Operations in which small Irish Republican Army (IRA) units (3 to 6 guerrillas) quickly attacked a target and then disappeared into civilian crowds. In County Cork, Tom Barry was the commander of the IRA West Cork brigade. Fighting in west Cork was rural, and the IRA fought in much larger units than their comrades in urban areas. These units, called "flying columns", engaged British forces in large battles, usually for between 10–30 minutes.
The Algerian Revolution of 1954 started with a handful of Algerian guerrillas. Primitively armed, the guerrillas fought the French for over eight years. This remains a prototype for modern insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism, torture, and asymmetric warfare prevalent throughout the world today. In South Africa, African National Congress (ANC) members studied the Algerian War, prior to the release and apotheosis of Nelson Mandela; in their intifada against Israel, Palestinian fighters have sought to emulate it. Additionally, the tactics of Al-Qaeda closely resemble those of the Algerians.
Theoretical works The growth of guerrilla warfare was inspired in part by theoretical works on guerrilla warfare, starting with the Manual de Guerra de Guerrillas by Matías Ramón Mella written in the 19th century:Mao Zedong's On Guerrilla Warfare, Che Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare, and Lenin's Guerrilla warfare were all written after the successful revolutions carried out by them in China, Cuba and Russia, respectively. Those texts characterized the tactic of guerrilla warfare as, according to Che Guevara's text, being "used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression".
Writings of T. E. Lawrence T. E. Lawrence, best known as "Lawrence of Arabia", introduced a theory of guerrilla warfare tactics in an article he wrote for the Encyclopædia Britannica published in 1938. In that article, he compared guerrilla fighters to a gas. The fighters disperse in the area of operations more or less randomly. They or their cells occupy a very small intrinsic space in that area, just as gas molecules occupy a very small intrinsic space in a container. The fighters may coalesce into groups for tactical purposes, but their general state is dispersed. They are extremely difficult to "defeat" because they cannot be brought to battle in significant numbers.
Lawrence wrote down some of his theories while ill and unable to fight the Turks in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom. There, he reviews von Clausewitz and other theorists of war, and finds their writings inapplicable to his situation. The Arabs could not defeat the Turks in pitched battle since they were individualistic warriors not disciplined soldiers used to fight in large formations.
Maoist thought
Mao Zedong argued that guerrilla insurgency, or what he referred to as a "war of revolutionary nature," can be conceived of as part of a continuum.On Guerrilla Warfare, by Mao Zedong, 1937, See the text of Mao's work online at www.marxists.org On the low end are small-scale raids, ambushes and attacks. The upper end is composed of a fully integrated political-military strategy, comprising both large and small units, engaging in constantly shifting mobile warfare, both on the low-end "guerrilla" scale, and that of large, mobile formations with modern arms.
The Maoist Theory of People's War divides warfare into three phases. In Phase One, the guerrillas earn the population's support by distributing propaganda and attacking the organs of government. In Phase Two, escalating attacks are launched against the government's military forces and vital institutions. In Phase Three, conventional warfare and fighting are used to seize cities, overthrow the government, and assume control of the country. Mao Zedong's seminal work, On Guerrilla Warfare,Mao, op. cit. has been widely distributed and applied most successfully in Vietnam, by military leader and theorist Võ Nguyên Giáp, whose "Peoples War, Peoples Army"Peoples War, Peoples Army, Võ Nguyên Giáp closely follows the Maoist three-phase approachs." Some authors have stressed this interchangeability of phases inherent in this model and guerrilla warfare more generally, especially as applied by the Vietcong guerrilla.Dan Jakopovich, "Time Factor in Insurrections", Strategic Analysis, Vol. 32, No. 3, May 2008.
Foco theory