US Army Special Operations Command and Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory National Security Analysis Department have put together a useful reference for small wars students and practitioners entitled "Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare Volume II: 1962-2009." The resource is available for download in PDF format here. If you are wondering where Volume I is, that government document covers post-World War I insurgencies and revolutions up to 1962 and can be downloaded in PDF here. The original was published by the Special Operations Research Office at The American University in 1962.
Volume II is broken down by conceptual categories as can be seen by the table of contents:
I. REVOLUTION TO MODIFY THE TYPE OF GOVERNMENT........... 1
1. New People’s Army (NPA).............................................................5
2. Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC)..........39
3. Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)............................................71
4. 1979 Iranian Revolution............................................................113
5. Frente Farabundo Martí Para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN)...151
6. Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)................................195
II. REVOLUTION BASED ON IDENTITY OR ETHNIC ISSUES........ 229
7. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)...............................233
8. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): 1964–2009............277
9. Hutu–Tutsi Genocides...............................................................307
10. Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA): 1996–1999............................343
11. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA): 1969–2001...379
III. REVOLUTION TO DRIVE OUT A FOREIGN POWER.................. 423
12. Afghan Mujahidin: 1979–1989..................................................427
13. Viet Cong: 1954–1976................................................................459
14. Chechen Revolution: 1991–2002..............................................489
15. Hizbollah: 1982–2009................................................................525
16. Hizbul Mujahideen....................................................................569
IV. REVOLUTION BASED ON RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM.... 605
17. Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ)......................................................609
18. Taliban: 1994–2009....................................................................651
19. Al Qaeda: 1988–2001.................................................................685
V. REVOLUTION FOR MODERNIZATION OR REFORM................. 725
20. Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)....729
21. Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—Sierra Leone.................763
22. Orange Revolution of Ukraine: 2004–2005..............................801
23. Solidarity.....................................................................................825
The original was broken down regionally and included chapters on Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaya, Guatemala, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Tunisia, Algeria, French Cameroon, Congo, Iraq x 2, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Korea, China, Germany, Spain, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
"In a rare spare moment during a training exercise, the Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA) Team Sergeant took an old book down from the shelf and tossed it into the young Green Beret’s lap. “Read and learn.” The book on human factors considerations in insurgencies was already more than twenty years old and very out of vogue. But the younger sergeant soon became engrossed and took other forgotten revolution-related texts off the shelf, including the 1962 Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, which described the organization of undergrounds and the motivations and behaviors of revolutionaries. He became a student of the history of unconventional warfare and soon championed its revival as a teaching subject for the US Army Special Forces. When his country faced pop-up resistance in Iraq and tenacious guerrilla bands in Afghanistan during the mid-2000s, his vision of modernizing the research and reintroducing it into standard education and training took hold.
This second volume owes its creation to the vision of that young Green Beret, Paul Tompkins, and to the challenge that his sergeant, Ed Brody, threw into his lap."
H/T to Dave Maxwell
Comments
I had considerable misgivings about reading the case study on the Afghan mujahidin but the gushing overview convinced me to read on. I found the societal political insights to be consistent with my experiences and the historical aspects very much factual; as I at least understand them to be. However even 20/20 hindsight didn’t prevent some glaring errors.
The 5 million refugees living in the deserts of Pakistan and Iran are recorded as “several thousand.” An ocean of human misery which lasted 30 years for 5 million people in some of the worst deserts in the world as thousands? It was like someone saying 5 people were killed in the WTC. Considering this is where the Taliban originated from it is important to get it right.
The FIM-92 is described as “laser guided” missile. I wish it was a beam-rider as you might have got around the decoys, shutter strobe jammers, exhaust coolers, ground clutter and FLIRN equipped night helo raiders. As it happened Soviet aircraft losses went down.
However the most damning criticism is what it doesn’t say about our enemies and more importantly our ‘friends.’ In fairness it rightly points out at the height of the military aid flowing from the US and Saudi Arabia the battlefield reports correctly indicated the muj were getting hammered worse than ever by the Soviets. Not many historical accounts of the period have noted this.
Battlefield commanders (as opposed to the ‘air-conditioned muj’ in Peshawar ) were screaming out that nothing was getting through to them. It was alleged that the ISI was hoarding 90% of the all aid meant for the muj in country. Some intelligence agencies were hearing similar reports from intercepts targeting Soviet comms as far away as Europe.
Teams were dispatched in theatre and a careful count was made during the April to November fighting season. It was found that it was worse than expected ie. less than 10% was getting thru. Some equipment which was presumed to be aid was in fact captured Soviet and not Chincom, Egyptian or Pakistani so it didn’t come thru the ISI pipeline. There were no comms, very little medical, no boots, clapped out vehicles and the amounts leaving Pak were minuscule.
In other words Wilson and the US Congress had been completely hoodwinked by the ISI. Obviously that does not surprise anyone today but in the mid-1980’s any suggestion that the whole ISI effort was a crock could get you a bullet in the back of the neck - not just either side of the border but back home as well.
It does identify the origins of the ALQ but it affiliates them with the wrong muj group. However what it doesn’t mention that during this time it was reported by the teams monitoring the weapons pipeline that these individuals were not interested in fighting the Soviets (many where actually Warsaw Pact trained) and where all rabidly anti-American.
We are constantly reminded that understanding the OE is paramount and the criticality of the Human Domain to the tactical, operational and strategic outcome. The trumpeting of this case study indicates to me that we have made very little real progress.
I can only hope for all our sakes the other 1000 pages are much more enlightening.
Regards,
RC
Eric Wolf—<a href=http://gss.fiu.edu/graduate-programs/convo-with-eric-wolf-1.pdf>a veteran of the 10th Mountain Division</a>, FWIW—did <a href=http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/54359>something similar</a> 40+ years ago.