Insurrection And Insurgency Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Insurrection is an armed uprising; insurgency is armed resistance by an organized political movement against an established government. While uprisings were common during the colonial era, they differed from insurgencies in that they were generally revolts led by elites in defense of traditional rights and obligations. Such was the case of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the Rif War in Morocco (1920–1925).

Insurgencies, by contrast, have tended to be mass movements that have their origins in the rise of nationalist sentiment at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Although insurgencies tend to be the result of local conditions, in particular where there are weak states, social inequalities, and foreign occupation, they are often related to broader trends in global ideas, usually through complex networks of learning and cooperation. The first of these was the rise of insurrectionary anarchism of the nineteenth century, a primarily European phenomenon. A second wave consisted of mainly rural and developing world movements, coinciding roughly with the process of decolonization in the developing world. A third wave, whose intensity has been peaked by uprisings in Afghanistan (1974–2009), Kashmir (1989–2009), Bosnia (1992–1995), Algeria (1992–2005), and Iraq (2003–2009), is the rise of insurgencies associated with militant Islam. These will be discussed in turn.

Insurrectionary Anarchism

Insurrectionary anarchism consists of informally organized groups conducting direct and spontaneous violence against political authorities on behalf of oppressed segments of the population. This anarchical approach to revolutionary war eschews the political organization typical of mainstream revolutionary movements. Although it has never succeeded politically, it was noted for many assassinations against the Tsarists in Russia, the brief seizure of government in Berlin in 1919 under Rosa Luxemburg and the Sparticists, and the first car bomb—detonated by Mario Buda against Wall Street in New York in 1920.

Maoism

Leftist insurgency has its origins in nineteenth-century Marxist predictions of class revolution in industrializing states. An early variant, Leninism, emphasized the use of a vanguard party to guide the masses, which it did with success in Russia in 1917 but failed to do in Hungary in 1919. During the cold war, applications of communist revolutionary theory produced two contradictory doctrines: the Maoist and the focoist. Both are applications of insurgency to conditions particular to China and Latin America, respectively. Through state sponsorship by the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, and East Germany, these were exported widely to Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

In Mao Zedong’s conception of peasant revolution, insurgencies proceed through three successive phases. The first is the incipient phase, during which existing forces remain dormant while cadres of the political movement are organized. This was the case of the Chinese Communist Party, which organized itself underground from 1920 until the Nanchang Uprising of 1927. The second, or guerrilla, phase consists of terrorist attacks designed to pin down the government and thereby win the initiative. This was pursued intermittently in China between 1927 and 1945. In the third phase, field armies built up during the second stage defeat the government. This coincided with China’s Communist Revolution (1947–1950).

Maoism is widely read and associated with rural forms of revolutionary warfare because of the insurgents’ special knowledge of social conditions, as in the cases of the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960), the early phase of the Vietnam War (1960–1967), the Zimbabwe Chimurenga (1966–1980), Sendero Luminoso in Peru (1980–1992), the (Maoist) Naxalites of India (1967–2009), and the New People’s Army of the Philippines (1969–2009).

Focoism

An alternative approach to revolutionary warfare, espoused by Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, is known as focoism. In this approach, demonstrative acts of violence, rather than political indoctrination, are used as catalysts to mobilize the population into an uprising. Revolutionary success without political mobilization was achieved in Cuba in 1959 due mainly to the widespread alienation caused by the inequitable policies of the Batista regime. Subsequent failures of focoism in, among other countries, Colombia in 1961, Guatemala and Ecuador in 1962, Peru in 1963, and Bolivia in 1967 were the result of a failure of political preparation. Focoism is usually associated with urban insurgencies. Focoist insurgency, although not termed as such, was also commonly used by noncommunist states. The United States sponsored the Khampa rebellion in Tibet (1959–1960) and the contras against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (1979–1988). The Republic of South Africa sponsored União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola in Angola (1975–1989) and Renamo in Mozambique (1975–1992).

Islamist Insurgency

Islamist insurgency is inspired by the Islamic revivalist movement, which draws its legitimacy from the goal of arresting the relative decline of Islam vis-à-vis Europe (since the fall of Andalusia in 1492) and the erosion of Mughal power in India. Islamist thinkers, such as Jamal ad-din al-Afghani (1837–1997), Mohammad Abduh of al Azhar University (1849–1905), and Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), are generally in agreement that Islam has been distorted, and thereby weakened, by successive injections of Sufi and modernist thought. Abduh proposes a return to the early uncorrupted practice of Islam, termed “Salafism.” Qutb argues that current Islamic governments have regressed to their pre-Islamic states (jahiliyah), justifying their removal. Building on obligations in the Sunna to defend Islam through jihad, some extremist movements practice takfir, which is the act of designating the kafir, or unbelievers. All of these ideas have come to justify the use of unlimited violence, in particular suicide bombings and attacks on noncombatants.

For example, the Peshawar-based mujahideen resistance of Afghanistan (1974–2001) was inspired by Qutb and the Salafism of the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood. Al-Qaida is a Wahhabi movement from Arabia, which seeks to reestablish an Arab caliphate. The Taliban (1995–2009) is a Deobandi variant of Hanafi revivalism popular among the Pashtun tribes. Islamist movements also benefit from a variety of state sponsorships (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for the Deoband and Iran for the militant Shia) as well as diaspora funding through traditional banking (hawala) and narco-traffic. However, Islamist insurgency has won only a handful of militant converts among non-Muslims, underlining its limited appeal. In contrast, leftist insurgents were well represented among the Palestinians, Kurds, Pashtun, Iranians, and even Iraqi Baath.

Bibliography:

Jalali, Ahmad Ali, and Lester Grau. Afghan Guerrilla Warfare. St. Paul, Minn.: MBI, 2001.
Jansen, G. H. Militant Islam. London: Pan, 1979.
Joes, Anthony James. Resisting Rebellion. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004.
Lawrence,T. E. “Guerrilla.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. 17th ed.,Vol. 10, 950–953. New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1929.
Mao Tse-Tung. “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War.” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Vol. 1. Beijing, China: Foreign Languages Press, 1967.
Shy, John, and Thomas Collier. “Revolutionary War.” In Makers of Modern Strategy, edited by Peter Paret, 815–862. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Thompson, Robert. Defeating Communist Insurgency. New York: Praeger, 1966.
Triniquier, Roger. Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency.
Translated by Daniel Lee. New York: Praeger, 1964.

This example Insurrection And Insurgency Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.