Thinking About Guerrilla War

In the terminology of the last century, guerrilla war was considered to be a subspecies of small war. The term “small war” has long gone out of fashion, and “guerrilla war” now covers much wider aspects of hostile manifestations than it used to.

“Small war,” stated Major (later Major- General Sir Charles) Callwell in 1896, “may be said to include all campaigns other than those where both the opposing sides consist of regular troops. It comprises the expeditions against savages and semi-civilized races by disciplined soldiers, it comprises campaigns to suppress rebellions and guerrilla warfare in all parts of the world where organized armies are struggling against opponents who will not meet them in the open field. ...”

It was therefore a characteristic of guerrilla wars of the past that the organized armies— nowadays called security forces or counterinsurgents—were opposed by irregulars who refused to fight “in the open field.” Yet, in our time, guerrillas have on a number of occasions fought in the open field: Tito’s forces in Yugoslavia, Mao’s forces in China, and Giap’s forces in Vietnam did meet the regulars in the open in the battles of Belgrade, Nanking, and Dien Bien Phu. Furthermore, while in the guerrilla wars of old only one side employed regular troops, both sides fought in those theaters with regulars. Still, we refer to those forces as guerrillas.

The term guerrilla war has in fact become a convenient collective for greatly differing forms of warfare. General George Grivas, who directed the Eoka struggle in Cyprus (1956- 1959), sent his shotgun commandos and execution teams into the streets of towns and villages and conducted terrorist operations; his guerrilla groups played only a minor part in the campaign. On a different level, the Malayan emergency was a proper guerrilla campaign in which ambushing, raiding, and mining operations predominated. Finally, on yet another level, the Viet Minh campaign against the French Union Forces was characterized by a number of regular warfare operations. Yet, rather confusingly, Grivas has discussed his terrorist activities in a book entitled Guerrilla Warfare. The British called the Malayan guerrillas terrorists, and everybody refers to the First Vietnam War as a guerrilla war.

It is true that we hardly meet in practice these three forms of guerrilla war—terrorist, guerrilla proper, and regular—in their pure form. More often than not do terrorist movements engage in some kind of guerrilla activities; the guerrillas proper resort to terrorism to some extent, and if guerrillas fight as regulars, they are always supported by guerrillas proper and sometimes even resort to guerrilla activities themselves. But the main effort, either throughout a campaign or in the various phases of a campaign, usually stands out; it is one or the other of the three types of “guerrilla” activity. Thus, the Second Vietnamese War started with terrorist operations; they were followed by a guerrilla campaign; and the war came near to assuming the character of regular warfare.

Obviously, the main effort of the so-called guerrillas in a terror campaign has little in common with the main effort in regular warfare, and since the three types of campaign differ in many aspects, it is inappropriate to lump them together and refer to them as “guerrilla” campaigns. They differ in particular in their aims, targets, missions, and theaters of operations; and also different are the opponent’s countermeasures, as the following discussion will show.

Terrorists. In a terror campaign the members of the organization murder, kidnap, ambush, or threaten with violence the representatives of the occupation power or of the lawful government and its supporters among the population. The terrorists wreck police stations, sabotage railways, blow up vital installations, throw bombs into cinemas and restaurants, and murder in the streets. Their special human targets are government officials —teachers, tax collectors, village officials, etc.

The terrorists’ aim is to destroy the government’s authority and its capacity to govern. They therefore try to create a state of disorder and lawlessness and force the government to resign or yield to their demands. The latter was the aim of the Viet Cong terrorists in the years 1957 to 1959; they intended to make the government agree to a plebiscite on the reunification of North and South Vietnam.

The terror campaign directed by Grivas used the same means for a different purpose. He did not expect to terminate British rule in the island by his own efforts. His activities were only a prelude, intended to draw public attention to the Greek Cypriots’ grievances, arouse and mobilize public opinion outside the island, gain United Nations support and achieve union with Greece as a result.

Terrorists, as the above survey shows, do not as a rule aim at controlling areas or tying down enemy troops unless they want to protect guerrillas belonging to their movement.

Neither Grivas nor the Viet Cong nor any other terrorist movement can hope to succeed with their campaign unless the movement is known to enjoy widespread popular support. But even then the authorities cannot be expected to yield to terrorism unless they are directly confronted with the proof of their own unpopularity and inability to restore law and order. The terrorists must therefore operate in the cities and especially in the capital itself. For Grivas there was an additional reason for campaigning in urban districts: the representatives of the world press were conveniently near to take notice of the happenings and give the terrorists all the publicity they could hope for. While Grivas did not neglect the villages, his main effort was made in urban districts.

In order to operate successfully in the capital and other urban areas, the terrorists must be able to rely on the help and discretion of the population there. If the majority of the population disapproves of the aims or methods of the terrorists, it cannot be coerced to help or keep silent; especially in the towns, it would turn to the security forces for protection and betray the terrorists. Even without popular support, however, the terrorists can carry out occasional raids in the towns, but they cannot hope to operate there continuously on a wide front.

Grivas was assured of widespread popular support, in the countryside as well as the towns, before he started; it came from the rural population and the less well-to-do Greeks in the urban centers. Hence, he could concentrate right from the start on the towns. The Viet Cong, by contrast, had no such support in the urban centers to begin with; they had to gain it first. Thus, while Grivas did not have to create “people’s bases,” the Viet Cong had to. For Grivas, therefore, there was no need to carry out guerrilla operations, in addition to his terror activities; for the Viet Cong there was. Whether the Viet Cong realized this from the start is difficult to say; the fact is that they engaged solely in terrorism from 1957 to 1959; it was not until 1959 that they took up guerrilla warfare which they started, as is usual, where the government was weakest, viz., as far away from the garrison towns as possible.

Hence, even if Grivas’ guerrillas had been wiped out, his terrorist activities would have been little affected, except that the morale of the terrorists and of his supporters among the population would have declined. But had the Viet Cong guerrillas been defeated, their means of propelling their movement forward, toward and into the capital, would have been destroyed and they would have had to build up guerrilla support afresh.

The Viet Cong task was therefore infinitely more difficult than that of Grivas; they had to convert the people to their cause first, by propaganda with an admixture of pressure; and the risk of discovery during this period is always great. And, obviously, the quality of military and political insurgency leadership must be much higher in the Viet Cong case than in a Cyprus-type emergency.

The fight against terrorists is more complicated than that against guerrillas. Terrorists work as a rule singly or in very small groups, and they are therefore difficult to detect. The tools of their trade do not give them away: they do not carry them themselves; that was done in Cyprus by school- children who handed the weapons over to the terrorists just before they went into action. They live in the town in which they operate, and their small logistic base is hidden in the town. Neither their appearance on the scene nor their numbers, neither weapons nor camps give them away; unless they are caught red-handed or betrayed they can hardly be identified as terrorists. And because there are relatively few terrorists—the Stern Gang in postwar Palestine had 150 active members; the Irgun, also operating there, had several hundred fighters; and Grivas had, in 1956, 47 groups of altogether 220 men in the towns— they can be carefully selected and their organization is almost proof against penetration. Terrorist security is strengthened by the fact that only a handful of people know the leader’s whereabouts.

How can the security forces fight against terrorists in the towns? From the answer to this question it becomes evident how inappropriate it is to call the terrorists “guerrillas,” because few of the tactics and methods of antiguerrilla warfare can be applied against terrorists. As the terrorists do not attempt to control an area in the way guerrillas do, that is by disputing physical control to the security forces, there is no question for the latter to reconquer lost territories. Encirclement operations, Jagdkommando and pseudo-band activities, patrolling in platoon strength would hardly net a single terrorist, and the resettlement of the population, the erection of strategic hamlets or of detention camps, and food control regulations would all be irrelevant and ineffective. Strong-points cannot stop the terrorists, and counter-terror would be useless, if not harmful to the security forces as some French units demonstrated in Algeria. And great numerical superiority of the security forces over their opponent, considered necessary in guerrilla warfare, is of little avail in a terrorist campaign.

In fact, only police work—detection of culprits and their letter boxes, interrogation of suspects, detection of supporters, searches, curfews and patrolling of the streets, etc.— coupled with psychological and political “warfare” can stamp out the terrorist movement. Troops can help in the police work and are needed to strengthen the police, but they will carry out strictly military duties only by providing for their own security, in sweeps and on guard duties at government offices and other vital installations.

Guerrillas. Guerrillas who assist the regular army of their country in an international conflict (auxiliary guerrilla movements) try to contribute toward the defeat of the enemy by extending the war behind the enemy’s front lines. Guerrillas can also fight on their own (independent guerrilla movements). Some, but by far not all, auxiliary movements have used terror, but practically all independent movements have applied it. Its purpose is to intimidate the waverers and to eliminate the “traitors” among the population. The main activity of the guerrillas consists in ambushing, mining, and raiding. By these activities they contain the enemy and acquire control of areas. The guerrilla’s war, expressed in T. E. Lawrence’s telling terminology, is not one of contact but of detachment.

Independent guerrillas can have any or all of the three following aims:

First, like some of the terrorist movements, they intend to bring international political pressure to bear on the government. This was the aim of the Indonesian guerrillas in their postwar fight against the Dutch, and they succeeded.

Second, if the guerrillas do not receive political support from outside, for want of trying or lack of success in trying, they must at some stage of the campaign transform their guerrilla struggle into a regular war waged by regular forces in order to drive out the enemy by their own military effort, as the Yugoslavs, Chinese, and Viet Minh did in their campaigns. But even after a regular army has been formed, the guerrilla formations will not be deactivated. The guerrilla component may be reduced in order to allow for the formation of regular units from its ranks, but it will remain in existence and assist the regular forces.

That was already the case in Yugoslavia: while Tito’s regular forces fought against the occupation troops at the “front,” his guerrillas harassed them in their rear and resident partisans operated near their homes outside the battlefield. A similar pattern could be observed in China. The strategic concept and the division of labor in campaigns of this type have been outlined by General Giap; “in addition to the units which have to be scattered in order to wear out the enemy, it is necessary to regroup big armed forces in favorable conditions in order to achieve supremacy in attack at a given point, and at a given time to annihilate the enemy.” The scattered units do not necessarily all have to be guerrillas but at least a sizeable portion of them usually are. Giap applied this strategy in the winter campaign 1953-54 which ended with the fall of Dien Bien Phu. The battle for Dien Bien Phu is usually thought to have started in March 1954, when the direct attacks began; it started in reality in December 1953, when the scattered units proceeded to wear out the enemy: Viet Minh and Laotian insurgents opened the campaign by waging offensives first in Middle Laos, then in Upper and Lower Laos, and South Central Vietnam. These moves were coupled with intensified guerrilla activities all over the country, especially in the Red River Delta where 80,000 guerrillas are said to have operated, and in South Central Vietnam. The French Union forces were torn apart and tied down in all corners of the country, thus assuring the Viet Minh of superiority for their attack on Dien Bien Phu where their enemy was annihilated.

Third and finally, guerrillas may be operating in preparation of an invasion, as North Korean guerrillas did in the South immediately before the outbreak of hostilities.

“Today it has apparently become a custom to start guerrilla activities during peacetime in those countries for which an invasion is planned. Such jabs from the rear can always spread and become a civil war, and in this way relieve the task of the aggressor’s army. It is common strategy in recent years to employ cold or secret war during peacetime to eat away a potential enemy from the inside so that he can be invaded and subjugated easily and rapidly.” Since these words were written by General Abdul Haris Nasution, the Indonesian Defense Minister, they could be indicative of Indonesian strategy in the Malaysian confrontation.

Which of the three aims a guerrilla movement pursues may not always be easy to judge for the opponent at the start of operations, because the guerrilla tactics for all of them are identical. All guerrilla movements start their activities away from the large towns; they rise where the opponent is weakest; and they all use identical methods to weaken the enemy and gain strength themselves. It is even more difficult to predict before an expected outbreak which option they will exercise: once the Viet Cong had gone over to guerrilla warfare, their activities might have been the means for gaining foreign support for holding a plebiscite on reunification; or transforming the guerrilla war into a regular war, or, lastly, preparing the field for an invasion by regular troops from the North. The suggestion repeatedly made by some American writers that the last alternative was impracticable because the North could not possibly solve the great logistic problems of an invasion is unconvincing and reminiscent of similar underestimates of guerrilla capabilities at the time of Dien Bien Phu.

It is therefore unjust to blame MAAG now for having expected an early invasion and organized and trained the South Vietnamese Army for this eventuality. However, guerrillas who had done such useful service in the First Vietnamese War were bound to figure prominently in any Northern plan providing for regular operations, and the training of some counterinsurgency forces in 1956 or 1957 would therefore have been imperative.

It is only through first-class intelligence that the guerrilla aim can be discovered. It is one of the striking weaknesses of almost all counterinsurgency forces that they are slow in building up and perfecting their intelligence system. On a number of occasions, the authorities thought to be confronted with one of the customary tribal outbreaks when they were actually faced with the beginning of a long drawn-out guerrilla war. It is also remarkable that as a rule all counterinsurgency activities start in low gear, and only very gradually are the counterinsurgency forces built up in numbers and efficiency. Their superiority ratio may decline in the process since the guerrillas also build up their strength. Since the security forces need great numerical superiority to beat their guerrilla opponent— a 15-fold superiority is often mentioned as necessary—they are faced with ever increasing manpower problems. Above all, the longer the guerrillas are allowed to operate and expand, the firmer and more widespread is their hold over the population and the more difficult and protracted is the re-education effort of the government forces.

The counterinsurgents’ maximum effort— military, psychological, and political—must be made when the guerrillas are still weak. And, in Vietnam the time for the maximum effort was in 1959, as can be seen on the chart which appears on page 42.

Regulars. While the guerrillas conduct a war of detachment, the guerrilla regulars wage campaigns of contact. They might disappear from the scene after an engagement, turn up unexpectedly somewhere else and fight another campaign of contact there. Their regular operations ought to start in places where the enemy can be isolated. The security forces fight guerrilla regulars in the same way as against any other regular troops.

It is widely held that of the three forms of guerrilla campaigns, viz., terrorism, guerrilla warfare and regular warfare, the last offers the best chances to the security forces. Indeed, the German occupation troops in Yugoslavia waged the so-called Seventh Offensive against Tito’s “National Liberation Army and Partisan detachments,” among other reasons, in order to prevent him from abandoning regular warfare and reverting to small-scale tactics since the latter “would impose considerable handicaps on the German conduct of the war,” as the War Diary of the High Command of the (German) Armed Forces put it. The French Union Forces in Vietnam were just as convinced as the Germans that guerrillas conducting regular operations were very much less serious opponents than guerrillas proper. The French therefore tried to induce their opponent to go over from guerrilla to regular operations, and they established the fortress of Dien Bien Phu in the belief that the Viet Minh were obliged to attack it with regular forces and would be defeated in the process.

It is easy to see why the security forces prefer to fight against guerrilla regulars: the latter have neither comparable arms and equipment nor training and leadership. What is more, the security forces do not require a 15-fold superiority in numbers if they fight against regulars. But, in their calculations, the French overlooked the fact that the enemy would be numerically superior at Dien Bien Phu. It must be recognized that this is a prospect which security forces will have to face in the future: the guerrilla regulars achieve local superiority because the guerrillas proper tie down many times their own number in side shows staged outside the theater of the regular battle. If this strategy becomes guerrilla standard procedure, the security forces will no longer think it advantageous to fight against guerrilla regulars.

In carrying out this strategy, the guerrillas are favored by the absence of a continuous front in this type of war. It is true, of course, that even a continuous front does not prevent the guerrillas from waging war in the enemy rear—as the Soviet partisans behind the German lines showed in the last war—but the absence of such a front allows the insurgents to move their men and supplies with greater ease to the theaters of these sideshows and to withdraw them at will for action elsewhere.

The absence of a continuous front opens another prospect. Truong Chinh, one-time Secretary-General of the Indochinese Communist Party and subsequently Vice-Premier of North Vietnam, described it in 1947 as follows: “When we want to defend a position, we often have the tendency to establish a fixed line of defence, dig trenches, set up fortifications and defend them in a rigid manner; we do not know how to combine guerrilla and mobile tactics to attack and encircle the enemy, cut off his supply lines, attack him on the flank or from behind, with the aim of obliging him to withdraw.” Because the flanks are open, penetration into the enemy rear is always possible.

This concept is not novel. Guerrillas, fighting in support of their regular troops, are usually called on to cut the enemy’s supply lines. Furthermore, when General Orde Wingate embarked on the Second Chindit Expedition (1944), he knew that the Japanese were going to attack the British at the Imphal and Kohima front; he attacked the Japanese in the rear and his effort, combined with the British main effort at the front, compelled them to withdraw. General Douglas MacArthur later had the same strategic objective when he ordered the Inchon landing.

In past conventional wars, regulars were sent to attack the enemy in his rear only if their main force was also attacking or counter-attacking, while Truong, like Wingate before him and MacArthur after him, envisaged to, or did, attack in the rear when their own main force was on the defensive. The security forces in a guerrilla war can, of course, operate in like fashion; yet the French did not attack the Viet Minh in the rear at Dien Bien Phu, and no attempt was made to cut their supply lines.

The concept formulated by Truong abolishes the hitherto clear-cut distinction between attacker and defender by envisaging that troops under attack fight their battles defensively at the front and offensively in the rear. It should be recognized that its application is not restricted to guerrilla war. Since there will also be no fixed front in a nuclear conflict or in a conventional war against a nuclear power, the concept is applicable in such wars too and, what is more, seems to offer particular attractions: by extending the battlefield into the enemy rear and thus greatly increasing its size, it is possible also to increase the number of troops who can operate—in dispersed order—against the enemy. But NATO can adopt such a strategy only if it is numerically as strong as the other side; the widely held belief that NATO, as the defender, can afford to have considerably fewer troops than an attacker requires re-examination.

However “regular” a guerrilla war may be, one distinction between this and other types of war remains: “The anti-guerrilla war,” says General Nasution, “is an attempt at pacification. It consists largely of constructive efforts while an ordinary war is largely destructive." The constructive effort requires other than purely military qualities in the counterinsurgency leadership. “Not only is it the army that fights,” states General Nasution, “but also the people; it is not only a military war but also a political, psychological, and socio-economic war; in short, a total war. The science of war does not only deal with armed battles, but it has also been extended to include political, psychological and socioeconomic matters. The leaders in a war are not military experts only; they must be expert statesmen as well.”