South Africa's transition to democracy took place against a backdrop of shadow war between the apartheid regime's counterinsurgency forces and the African National Congress' armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). This book analyses in unprecedented detail the hidden history of MK's struggle and its contribution to South Africa's liberation, while exposing new dimensions of clandestine apartheid-era violence. Drawing on interviews with former MK guerrillas, Daniel Douek traces the evolution of MK's operations across southern Africa from the 1960s, culminating in the 1990-4 negotiations between the ANC and the white supremacist regime. As political violence escalated, the battle waged in the shadows became nothing less than a struggle to shape South Africa's future. Counterinsurgency forces recruited spies, deployed death squads, engaged in psychological warfare, and targeted ANC leaders, including MK chief Chris Hani. Even once ANC elites had come to power, apartheid counterinsurgency operations continued to undermine South Africa's new democracy by marginalizing MK guerrillas within the 'new' security forces, leaving legacies of violence and instability still felt today.

In Mobility, Mobilization, and Counter/Insurgency, Daniel Agbiboa takes African insurgencies back to their routes by providing a transdisciplinary perspective on the centrality of mobility to the strategies of insurgents, state security forces, and civilian populations caught in conflict. Drawing on one of the world’s deadliest insurgencies, the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, this well-crafted and richly nuanced intervention offers fresh insights into how violent extremist organizations exploit forms of local immobility and border porosity to mobilize new recruits, how the state’s “war on terror” mobilizes against so-called subversive mobilities, and how civilian populations in transit are treated as could-be terrorists and subjected to extortion and state-sanctioned violence en route. The multiple and intersecting flows analyzed here upend Eurocentric representations of movement in Africa as one-sided, anarchic, and dangerous. Instead, this book underscores the contradictions of mobility in conflict zones as simultaneously a resource and a burden. Intellectually rigorous yet clear, engaging, and accessible, Mobility, Mobilization, and Counter/Insurgency is a seminal contribution that lays bare the neglected linkages between conflict and mobility.

"As the global landscape changes - politically and economically - so governments need to reassess the threats of violence both within and outside their borders. The South African Defence Force is reviewing the likely future threat environment and this book is the result - an aid to thought and understanding in preparing for a future in which insurgencies and other irregular threats loom large. The book outlines key concepts and theoretical constructs relevant to understanding counterinsurgency; assesses the history and current state of South Africa's counterinsurgency capabilities; and, extracts key lessons from recent relevant case studies, such as MONUC in the DRC, counterinsurgency and peacekeeping in Northern Uganda, private security contractors in Nigeria, and the failures of cultural intelligence in Burundi"--TSO online bookshop website.

In Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in South Asia, ten experts native to South Asia consider the nature of intrastate insurgent movements from a peacebuilding perspective. Case studies on India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka lend new insights into the dynamics of each conflict and how they might be prevented or resolved.

This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, arguing that it is crucial to ground contemporary experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq in a global framework. Unlike other studies that begin with the American and French revolutions, this book reaches back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. Interweaving thematic and chronological narratives, Black probes the enduring linkages between beliefs, events, and people on the one hand and changes over time on the other hand. He shows the extent to which power politics, technologies, and ideologies have evolved, creating new parameters and paradigms that have framed both governmental and public views. Tracing insurgencies ranging from China to Africa to Latin America, Black highlights the widely differing military and political dimensions of each conflict. He weighs how, and why, lessons were “learned” or, rather, asserted, in both insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare. At every stage, he considers lessons learned by contemporaries, the ways in which norms developed within militaries and societies, and their impact on doctrine and policy. His sweeping study of insurrectionary warfare and its counterinsurgency counterpart will be essential reading for all students of military history.

In Resisting Rebellion, Anthony James Joes explores insurgencies ranging across five continents and spanning more than two centuries. Analyzing examples from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, he identifies recurrent patterns and offers useful lessons for future policymakers. Insurgencies arise from many sources of discontent, including foreign occupation, fraudulent elections, and religious persecution, but they also stem from ethnic hostilities, the aspirations of would-be elites, and traditions of political violence. Because insurgency is as much a political phenomenon as a military one, effective counterinsurgency requires a thorough understanding of the insurgents' motives and sources of support. Clear political aims must guide military action if a counterinsurgency is to be successful and prepare a lasting reconciliation within a deeply fragmented society. The most successful counterinsurgency campaign undertaken by the United States was the one against Philippine insurgents following the Spanish-American War. But even more instructive than successful counterinsurgencies are the persistent patterns of errors revealed by Joes's comparative study. Instances include the indiscriminate destructiveness displayed by the Japanese in China and the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the torture of suspected Muslim terrorists by members of the French Army in Algeria. Joes's comprehensive twofold approach to counterinsurgency is easily applied to the U.S. The first element, developing the strategic basis for victory, emphasizes creating a peaceful path to the redress of legitimate grievances, committing sufficient troops to the counterinsurgent operation, and isolating the conflict area from outside aid. The second element aims at marginalizing the insurgents and includes fair conduct toward civilians and prisoners, systematic intelligence gathering, depriving insurgents of weapons and food, separating insurgent leaders from their followers, and offering amnesty to all but the most incorrigible. Providing valuable insights into a world of conflict, Resisting Rebellion is a thorough and readable exploration of successes and failures in counterinsurgency's long history and a strategy for the future.

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the Nineteenth Century examines insurgency and counterinsurgency across the globe in the nineteenth century. The volume includes chapters from distinguished and rising historians from Europe, North and South America and covers irregular wars in Spain, Ireland, France, Latin America, China, USA, Africa, Central Asia and Burma. The authors explore links between insurgencies and nationalism, including learning curves and emulation in counterinsurgency. With a special emphasis on non-Western warfare, this volume includes case studies such as the Katanga and White Lotus rebellions largely unknown to Western readers. The military history of the nineteenth century thus reveals much more than the symmetrical warfare of Napoleon, Grant and Moltke. This volume shows the commonalities of responses more than their differences and refracts these through themes which crop up repeatedly in different times and places. These themes include common problems and solutions: the challenge of commanding local intelligence networks; public opinion; millenarianism, magic and religion; technology; 'hearts and minds'; the legal framework of state violence; racial stereotypes and patterns of forgetting and remembering guerrilla conflicts. The first recent study to examine Western and non-Western warfare in equal measure, stressing the prevalence of commonalities between guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency across the globe, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the Nineteenth Century will be of great interest to scholars of military and strategic studies, as well as modern military history. It was originally published as a special issue of Small Wars & Insurgencies.