INSURGENCY IN IRAQ:

AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Ian F. W. Beckett

January 2005

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FOREWORD

 This monograph considers the patterns of insurgency in the 

past by way of establishing how much the conflict in Iraq conforms 

to previous experience. In particular, the author compares and 

contrasts Iraq with previous Middle Eastern insurgencies such as 

those in Palestine, Aden, the Dhofar province of Oman, Algeria, and 

Lebanon. He suggests that there is much that can be learned from 

British, French, and Israeli experience.

 The monograph was delivered by invitation at the 15th Annual 

Strategy Conference of the U.S. Army War College in April 2004. It 

derived from work undertaken while the author was occupying the 

Major General Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory at the 

U.S. Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia.

 The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this contribution 

to the debate on insurgencies, past and present.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 

v

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

IAN F. W. BECKETT became Professor of History at University 

College, Northampton (UK) in January 2005, having occupied the 

Major General Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory at the 

U.S. Marine Corps University, Quantico, from 2002 to 2004. He was 

formerly Professor of Modern History at the University of Luton 

(United Kingdom) and Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal 

Military Academy, Sandhurst. He was also Visiting Professor of 

Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, in 1992-93. His 

publications include Modern Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies

(2001) and The Encyclopaedia of Guerrilla Warfare (1999) while he was 

UK editor of Small Wars and Insurgencies from 1990 to 1997.

1

INSURGENCY IN IRAQ:

AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

 Guerrilla warfare in one form or another was certainly the most 

prevalent type of conflict in the 20th century, if not before. For 

instance, British soldiers died on active service somewhere in the 

world in every year between 1945 and 1997, with the exception of 

1968. Yet, the conventional warfighting experience was confined to 

35 months of the Korean War, 10 days at Suez in 1956, 25 days of 

the land campaign of the Falklands in 1982, and 100 hours of land 

operations in the Gulf in 1991: everything else was some kind of lowintensity conflict. Much the same was true of other major armies. 

 The continuing proliferation of insurgent organizations suggests 

that insurgency is still widely perceived as an effective means either 

of achieving power and influence, or of bringing a cause to the notice 

of an international or national community. The end of European 

decolonization and the collapse of the Soviet Union together removed 

the motivational impulse for much conflict between the late 1940s 

and the late 1980s. However, arguably new ideological, political, 

and commercial imperatives are now encouraging intrastate conflict 

and insurgency amid the breakdown of the international bipolar 

political system and the emergence of identity politics and of many 

more nonstate actors. Indeed, between 1990 and 1996 alone, there 

were at least 98 conflicts worldwide, but only 7 of these were waged 

between recognized states.1

 Various instances of contemporary insurgency have been 

categorized by different analysts in such terms as apolitical, 

primordial, traditionalist, pluralist, reformist, spiritual, separatist, 

and economic.2

 Certainly Islamic fundamentalism, which might be 

regarded more as an ideology than an expressly religious conviction, 

has emerged as a new imperative behind insurgency. Examples range 

from the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan between 1979 

and 1989 to the continuing conflicts in the Philippines, Indonesia, 

Palestine, Algeria, the Sudan, Kashmir, Chad, and, of course, Iraq, 

although some of these conflicts may also be characterized in other 

terms such as ethnic or separatist insurgencies.
2

 Notwithstanding new motivational impulses, however, and that 

insurgents increasingly are better armed, perhaps more fanatical, 

and, in some cases, better attuned to the information revolution than 

in the past, much remains the same in terms of the basic requirements 

for successful insurgency. Insurgency is still a highly political act 

arising from some sense of grievance, or upon the exploitation and 

manipulation of grievance. An insurgent leadership remains likely to 

be motivated better than the rank and file. Insurgency will still be the 

recourse of those initially weaker than their opponents and, although 

perhaps less protracted than in the past, its ultimate success may still 

largely depend on substantial external support. Above all, however, 

insurgency remains invariably a competition in government and in 

perceptions of legitimacy. 

Insurgency or Guerrilla Warfare?

 What, then, of the patterns of insurgency in Iraq, and how do they 

differ from, or compare with, the past? One fundamental question is 

whether what is being faced in Iraq is insurgency or terrorism, or 

perhaps merely a traditional form of guerrilla warfare or resistance. 

Prior to the 20th century, guerrilla warfare was understood as a 

purely military form of conflict―classic hit and run tactics employed 

by indigenous groups in opposition to foreign or colonial occupation 

where a conventional army either had been defeated or had never 

existed. Rarely did such guerrillas display any wider comprehension 

of the potential of irregular modes of conflict. Only in the 1930s and 

1940s did guerrilla warfare became truly revolutionary in both intent 

and practice, with social, economic, psychological, and, especially, 

political elements grafted onto traditional irregular military tactics 

in order to radically alter the structure of a state by force. Thus, 

dissident groups that were initially in a minority and weaker than the 

authorities would seek power through a combination of subversion, 

propaganda, and military action. More properly, therefore, modern 

revolutionary guerrilla warfare was increasingly termed insurgency, 

guerrilla tactics being employed strategically to achieve a particular 

political and/or ideological end. 

 The transition from guerrilla warfare to insurgency does not 

depend, therefore, upon the size of any particular group, but upon 
3

the intention to bring about fundamental political change through 

a political-military strategy of organized coercion and subversion, 

and, usually, also the attempt to mobilize a mass political base. While 

insurgents routinely might employ terror or intimidation in tactical 

terms, they have rarely done so at the strategic level. Consequently, 

perhaps it can be argued that terrorist groups, even if motivated 

by a similar ideology to insurgent groups, have tended to employ 

terrorism indiscriminately and as political symbolism without the 

same intention of taking over the state apparatus themselves and 

without any attempt to mobilize popular support.

 Insurgency also implies an attempt to establish a political 

infrastructure based on some form of mass organization in order to 

cultivate popular support. There have been cases in which insurgents 

attempted to bypass the lengthy political preparation of a population 

recommended by Mao and by those who have espoused a broadly 

Maoist model of insurgency, and thus follow a shorter route to 

power. The most obvious examples are the rural focos inspired by 

Guevara and Debray in Latin America in the mid 1960s as a result of 

a flawed interpretation of the unique combination of circumstances 

that enabled Castro to succeed in Cuba between 1956 and 1959. In 

the same way, the belief in the ability of a small insurgent elite to 

exploit a minimum level of discontent and act as a catalyst for wider 

popular insurrection without consciously building a mass political 

support organization characterized the approach of the urban 

guerrilla groups inspired by theorists such as Marighela and Guillen 

in Latin America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, none 

of these groups succeeded. The Maoist model itself has not always 

been successful. It failed in Malaya, the Philippines, Thailand, and 

Peru, in the latter after 17 years of preparation before the Shining Path

actually launched its declaration of a “people’s war” in May 1980. 

It follows, however, that those insurgencies that ultimately have 

been successful have been those capable of organizing a sufficiently 

durable political infrastructure to sustain a prolonged conflict.

 The utility of the ability to prolong insurgency is equally 

applicable to either offensive or defensive insurgency, the former 

implying the seizure of power in a state, and the latter the expulsion 

of an invading or occupying force, or secession. One reason for the 

prolongation of conflict in the Maoist model of insurgency was that 
4

the ultimate aim was always to build a conventional army capable of 

undertaking large scale military operations in a third, mobile phase 

of war, following the two earlier essentially political phases of the 

conflict. Building a conventional army, as did Mao and the North 

Vietnamese, however, has not always been essential to success when 

the aim of prolongation has been to raise the military and political 

costs for the incumbent authorities. Indeed, in many respects, for 

the insurgent, survival is winning. It also always has been possible 

to wage an effective urban campaign with far fewer insurgents 

than a rural campaign, but urban insurgencies have always proved 

vulnerable in the past. 

 The situation that has developed since President George W. 

Bush declared Operation IRAQI FREEDOM at an end on May 1, 

2003, is a complex one. Among the Sunnis, a variety of groups have 

been identified. They are united only in the sense of having what 

have been called “negative” goals in opposition to U.S. presence; in 

seeking some return to the former status quo in which the Sunni 

minority have exercised power since the Ottoman period; or 

expressing a simple nationalist reaction to defeat.3

 Some are clearly 

restorationist groups drawn from the former regime, the Baa’th 

Party, the paramilitary Fida’iyn, and the Republican Guard. Some 

are anti-Saddam nationalist groups with no desire to see Saddam 

restored but resentful of U.S. and Western presence; others are 

Islamist groups, some members of which have been trained overseas 

or are foreign nationals, the latter including Syrians, Saudis, Yemenis, 

and Sudanese. Some activities have been the work of criminals or 

criminal organizations, large numbers of criminals being released 

at the end of the war and some certainly hiring themselves out for 

attacks on U.S. and Coalition forces. Indeed, the U.S. 4th Division’s 

Taskforce Ironhorse reported in November 2003 that between 70 and 

80 percent of those apprehended for making attacks in their area 

were paid to do so, the going rate being anything between $150 and 

$500.4

 Most armed opposition has been Sunni. Some leading Sunni 

parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iraqi Islamic Party 

apparently have resolved to engage in legitimate political activities, 

but Sunni clerics have largely condemned the Coalition presence. 

By contrast, although the Coalition presence is the principal barrier 
5

between the Shi’ites and the power denied them for so long, many 

Shi’ite clerics have mostly condemned the failures to restore law and 

order, having perhaps calculated that Sunni insurgency currently 

lacks the ability to transform itself into anything resembling a national 

movement. However, there are armed militias attached to the two 

main Shi’ite political parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic 

Revolution in Iraq and Al-Da’wa, and there is clearly potential for 

Shi’ite participation in violence. Indeed, since April 2004, the militia 

of Muqtada al-Sadr, the so-called Mahdi’s Army, has engaged in 

significant violence after the closure of his weekly newspaper by 

the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the arrest of his 

deputy. Former exiled groups such as the Iraqi National Congress 

and the Iraqi National Accord also maintain militias. Another armed 

factor in the equation is the Kurds, but they are highly unlikely to 

participate in any anti-Coalition insurgency. The situation is made 

still more complex by the tribal nature of Iraq, with its extended 

clan and kinship system, the CPA having recognized the problem 

by establishing an advisory Council of Tribal Sheikhs.5

 It has been 

suggested on the basis of a letter seized in January 2004 that there 

is an Al-Qa’eda plan to foment civil war in Iraq by attacking the 

Shi’ite majority, but the document also implies frustration at Iraq 

not proving fertile ground for jihad and foreign holy warriors.6 The 

number of foreign activists in Iraq thus far appears small.

 Divisions within Iraqi society, of course, have always been of 

major significance. Indeed, as Gertrude Bell observed during the 

Iraqi insurrection against British control in 1920, while all groups 

were equally nationalist and espoused the idea of an Islamic 

government, the revolt meant different things to different people. 

Thus, Shi’ites anticipated a theocratic state under Shariah law; 

Sunnis, an independent Arab state under Amir Abdullah; and “to the 

tribes, it meant no government at all.” Interestingly, even as astute 

an observer as Bell believed the revolt largely a result of external 

agitation by the Bolsheviks and the Turks. The British prevailed in 

the end partly by buying off some of the tribal leaders.7

 Therefore, although elements required for an insurgency exist 

in Iraq, including some early U.S. and Coalition errors, widespread 

resentment and alienation, “occupation fatigue,” and even cash 

and arms, there is not yet the cohesive leadership, political vision, 
6

strategic direction, or unifying ideology to suggest the emergence of 

a real insurgency. It is generally easier to mobilize mass support in a 

defensive rather than an offensive insurgency since occupation, for 

example, may prompt a fundamentally different reaction on the part 

of the population to insurgents playing a nationalist card. Clausewitz 

argued that national character shaped the suitability of a population 

for waging people’s war and, although this is too deterministic, the 

nature of a particular state and its population is of considerable 

significance. Some insurgencies, however, may simply lack the ability 

to progress to a wider base of support where they represent narrow 

sectional interests as in conflicts based upon separatism or ethnicity. 

It is evident that mosques do provide some basis for the organization 

that is beginning to emerge among the Sunnis, but a wider sense of 

alienation among the majority of Shi’ites sufficient to forge a more 

national response in opposition to the Coalition presence would be 

required to generate a centralized resistance movement.8

 Indeed, 

in November 2003 Paul Bremer indicated there was still no reliable 

information on the size and structure of the various groups carrying 

out attacks or their leadership. In February 2004, however, the U.S. 

military released a list of 32 suspects believed to be involved in 

organizing the insurgency, headed by Mohammed Yunis al-Ahmad, 

a former Ba’ath official for whom a reward of $1 million was offered. 

Rewards of $200,000 were offered for the next top 10 names on the 

list, all being former regime military or party figures. 

 The situation in Iraq has been characterized as perhaps an example 

of a “net war,” in which loose groups often diametrically opposed to 

one another gravitate towards one another to carry out attacks, trade 

weapons or intelligence, and disperse, never to cooperate again. 

Equally, the British army has tended to view its own role in Basra 

as an extension of the “twofold war” of conventional operations 

concomitant with internal security operations it experienced in first 

taking control of the city in March 2003. Neither suggests insurgency 

in the sense usually understood since 1945.9

Parallels with the Past: The Insurgent Challenge.

 The absence of a real insurgency, however, does not make 

the situation less dangerous, and whatever the motivation of any 
7

particular group, the aim is clearly to sow divisions both between 

the Iraqis and the Coalition and also among Iraqis themselves. It is 

also to raise the costs of U.S. and Western presence since there can 

be little expectation on the part of these various groups that they are 

capable of challenging the Coalition’s military superiority. Indeed, 

far from reading Black Hawk Down as Saddam apparently suggested 

to his followers, it seems more likely opponents of the United States 

in Iraq have read Menachem Begin’s The Revolt. Begin’s intent, 

when leading the Irgun campaign in Palestine between 1945 and 

1947, was to raise the political and military costs of the continued 

British presence sufficiently to persuade them to quit, especially as 

he was convinced that the British could never seriously contemplate 

outright suppression. Indeed, the self-imposed restraint of the British 

response has been likened to that of “a police state with a conscience,” 

the choice between total repression and total withdrawal forcing the 

British to turn over the Palestine problem to the United Nations (UN) 

in September 1947.10 The elements of Begin’s campaign and that of 

the other Jewish insurgent group, Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for 

the Freedom of Israel or LEHI), more popularly known as the Stern 

Gang, are instructive. Over 58 percent of all attacks were directed 

at British military and police personnel, LEHI favoring taxi or truck 

bombs and the Irgun road mines. In all, just under two-thirds of 

attacks were with mines, and just under a quarter with bombs. Some 

attacks, such as that on the headquarters of the British Mandate 

secretariat in the King David Hotel in Jersualem in July 1946, or on 

the Haifa police headquarters in September 1947, were particularly 

spectacular. Subsidiary attacks were mounted against economic 

targets, with the railways attracting 18 percent of all attacks. The 

campaign was exported briefly, with the bombing of the British 

embassy in Rome and attacks on British servicemen in Germany and 

Austria, while there was a highly effective insurgent propaganda 

campaign, and any British measures against the insurgents were 

invariably followed by specific reprisals.11

 The pattern of Iraqi activity thus far looks remarkably similar to 

that in Palestine with roadside bombs, which have also been used 

by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and other so-called improvised explosive 

devices; ambushes of soft-skinned vehicles; opportunistic rocketpropelled grenade and shooting attacks on military personnel; 
8

attacks on civilian members of the Coalition authorities and foreign 

personnel working in some way for the Coalition; attacks on Iraqi 

“collaborators,” most recently police and army recruits; and attacks 

on economic targets such as power stations, oil installations, and 

pipelines. There has also been an increase in the number of attacks 

upon “soft” targets, principally civilian gatherings. This does not 

reflect the tactics employed in Palestine during the Mandate but does 

reflect insurgencies elsewhere and an increasing confluence between 

insurgent and terrorist methods.

 An analysis of the U.S. fatality reports produced by U.S. Central 

Command (CENTCOM) from May 2003 to March 2004 indicates that 

30.8 percent of U.S. fatalities were the result of bombs or improvised 

explosive devices; 14.3 percent, the result of stand off weapons in 

terms of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars; and 10.5 percent, 

the result of small arms or grenades. Downed helicopters accounted 

for 13.1 percent of fatalities, with the remaining 30.6 percent the 

result of accidents of varying kinds and other nonhostile causes. It 

is likely that the proportion of deaths due to small arms increased 

substantially with the outbreak of greater violence in April 2004, 

but, as the communiqués relating to U.S. Marine Corps deaths are 

no longer made specific for operational reasons, the calculation has 

become more difficult. 

 While many of the early attacks on Coalition forces in Iraq were 

amateur in nature, there has been a growing sophistication, and also 

an increasing tendency as reported by the U.S. 2nd and 4th Divisions, 

towards more long-range attacks, with rifle-propelled grenades being 

supplemented by rocket and mortar attacks, often from improvised 

launchers.12 In Aden between 1965 and 1967, there was a cognate 

transition from amateur attacks in which insurgents often blew 

themselves up―in one early attack the insurgent threw the pin rather 

than the grenade―to more effective and more numerous incidents. 

Incidents thus rose from 286 in 1965, to 540 in 1966, and to 2,900 in 

1967, with grenades, road mines, and sniping taking most British 

lives. Similarly, a transition from short-range to long-range attacks 

is reminiscent of the increasing preference of the insurgents in the 

Dhofar province of Oman between 1965 and 1975 in shifting from 

short-range ambush to long-range bombardment, enabling them to 

withdraw more quickly. A general assumption appears to be that the 
9

suicide bombings so familiar from the Palestinian Intifada, though 

also from the Shi’ite campaign against the Israelis in Lebanon, are 

more likely to be the work of foreign elements than Iraqis.13

 It might be noted in terms of installations that a particular feature 

of the Iraqi revolt in 1920 was an attack on the railway system, which 

was the principal means of mobility for a British garrison short of 

both manpower and any other means of reacting quickly to events 

beyond possessing a few armored cars and aircraft. Indeed, the British 

subsequently advanced along the tracks, repairing as they went and 

establishing the kind of blockhouses to guard them reminiscent of 

the South African War. Rather similarly, blockhouses and other 

physical barriers such as wiring the Trans-Jordanian frontier were 

utilized by the British in response to the “Arab Revolt” in Palestine 

between 1936 and 1939, along with a “village occupation” policy and 

intensive patrolling.14

 As a pre-World War II movement, the “Arab Revolt” was 

essentially an old-fashioned guerrilla war against the British, lacking 

much of the political sophistication associated with the genuine 

insurgencies faced by the British in Palestine after the war and 

later in Aden. There was certainly a higher guerrilla organization 

centered in the Arab High Committee led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, 

a degree of coordination in attacks on Jewish settlements and upon 

pipelines and railways, and wide support for the guerrillas in terms 

of the provision of food, shelter, and recruits in the villages, hence 

the British adoption of the village occupation policy. The heightened 

British response in 1938, however, led to a rapid decline in the level 

of violence, stifling any escalation of the situation into an insurgency. 

In some respects, therefore, the situation in Iraq parallels the events 

in Palestine in 1936 and 1937, especially as a Jewish population, 

convinced that the British could not defend their settlements, began 

to take the law into their own hands, deploying their own military 

units. By contrast, although the pattern of military activity by the 

Irgun in 1945-47, and by the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the 

smaller Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) 

in the case of Aden, are entirely similar to that in Iraq since 2003, the 

Irgun and the Marxist NLF had a far higher degree of organization 

than anything yet experienced in Iraq. Moreover, the aims and 

ideologies were abundantly clear. While not obviously a Middle 
10

Eastern insurgency, the campaign of Ethniki Organosis Kyprion 

Agoniston (EOKA) against the British on Cyprus between 1955 and 

1959 also is remarkably similar to that of the Irgun, albeit that the 

aim was not independence but union with Greece.

Parallels with the Past: Counterinsurgent Response. 

 In terms of the response to the situation in Iraq, there are 

clearly some experiences of Arab or Islamic insurgency that sound 

appropriate warning notes. The French experience in Algeria 

between 1956 and 1962, for example, has some similarities, albeit that 

the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) was largely secular in 

character. There were clear divisions between Arabs and Berbers 

within the nationalist movement, and popular support, or rather 

acquiescence on the part of the population, was ensured through 

terror and intimidation rather than the FLN projecting a coherent 

alternative social and political order. Indeed, there was something of 

a civil war between Muslims, some 180,000 of whom fought for the 

French. The French, however, largely failed to capitalize on divisions 

among their opponents, and made errors in decapitating a relatively 

moderate internal Muslim political party in 1954, the Movement 

for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD), and the external 

moderate leadership of the FLN by forcing down Ahmed Ben 

Bell’s aircraft inside Algeria in October 1956. Moreover, the French 

squandered the advantage of their long-term familiarity with Algeria 

and its peoples by declining to consider a future for Algeria other 

than as a part of metropolitan France and not seriously addressing 

Muslim political and socio-economic grievances. The ability of the 

FLN to find refuge across international frontiers was largely nullified 

by the construction of physical barriers along the Moroccan and 

Tunisian frontiers, and French military operations were generally 

successful in both urban and rural areas. But in almost every respect, 

the attempt to win hearts and minds failed because it was carried out 

in ways that alienated, rather than won, support 

 Apart from being very thinly spread, the French Special 

Administrative Sections and Urban Administrative Sections tasked 

with winning hearts and minds were not always sensitive to local 

customs, tended to view the Muslim population as vulnerable to FLN 
11

contagion, and too readily confused acquiescence with acceptance 

of the imposition of an alien culture. Moreover, winning hearts 

and minds sat uneasily with large-scale resettlement, the deliberate 

fostering of an internal refugee problem, and the brutal methods 

utilized to win the Battle of Algiers in 1957, in which intelligence 

was gained primarily through systematic torture of detainees. In 

the process, there was increasing international criticism of France, 

increasing domestic opposition to the war in France itself, and 

damaging politicization of the army.15

 Israeli counterinsurgency methods are also to be avoided; the 

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) taking a heavy-handed approach and, in 

keeping with its offensive conventional doctrine, regarding instant 

retaliation as a means of destroying those responsible for attacks 

and of longer-term attrition of the insurgent threat. There has also 

been targeting of specific individuals since 1992 in the belief that 

the removal of key members of the opposing infrastructure will 

paralyze opponents and give full rein to internal rivalries among 

those seeking to succeed to the leadership. It has to be said, however, 

that the systematic elimination of leaders of groups like Hamas and 

Hezbollah has not diminished markedly the incidence of attacks and 

seemingly serves to provoke further hostility to the Israelis not only 

among the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, but among the Palestinians 

in Gaza and the West Bank. If anything, what is sometimes called 

deterrence by punishment has entrenched anti-Israeli opinion.16

 It can also be noted that the South Lebanese Army (SLA), formed 

originally in 1978 and used by the Israelis in the security zone of 

southern Lebanon from 1982 onwards to man check points and border 

fortifications and to undertake some motorized patrolling, was not 

a success. It not only lacked sufficient training but also was seen 

as Israeli puppet. The perception was compounded by the Israelis 

themselves viewing the SLA as mercenary auxiliaries. Defections 

from it increased markedly after 1995, and the Israelis abandoned 

it when they withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.17 As the issue of the 

SLA raises the question of a constabulary or border force, it is at 

least possible that the intended revival by the U.S. Marine Corps of 

a Combined Action Program (CAP) may yield considerable benefits, 

the CAP scheme as applied in Vietnam being itself something of 

a legacy of Marine cooperation with U.S.-raised gendarmerie in 
12

campaigns such as those in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican 

Republic in the 1920s and early 1930s.18

 In terms of the British responses to insurgency in the Middle 

East, the army’s offensive operations in Palestine usually consisted 

of cordon and search, over 170 such operations being mounted at 

battalion or brigade level, but with 25 percent bringing no results 

at all and only exposing troops to false accusations of brutality 

or looting. Moreover, although the British eventually deployed 

90,000 men, large numbers had to be used solely to guard static 

installations such as the railways and the oil pipelines. Two largescale operations were held. Operation AGATHA between June and 

July 1946 involved 10,000 troops in a search of three cities and over 

30 settlements. Operation SHARK in July and August that same year 

employed 21,000 troops in imposing a 36-hour curfew on Tel Aviv’s 

population of 170,000 and netting 787 suspects although Begin 

escaped by hiding in a secret compartment for 4 days.19

 Aden was a similar failure for the British but largely as a result 

of the premature announcement by the Labour government in 

1966 of its intention to leave South Arabia, undermining at a stroke 

the authorities of the Federation of South Arabia and the whole 

counterinsurgency effort. Increasingly, indeed, federal officials and 

even local governments in the emirates, sultanates, and sheikhdoms 

either left the country altogether or threw in their lot with the 

insurgent movements. In any case, intelligence had never been 

forthcoming freely from the population, and there was now little 

incentive to cooperate. Arab members of the Special Branch already 

had been targeted by the insurgents, and the local police forces were 

thoroughly infiltrated, both the South Arabian Police and Aden 

Armed Police mutinying in one particularly notorious incident in 

June 1967, killing 22 British servicemen and taking control of the 

Crater district of Aden for 15 days until order was restored.20

 The Dhofar campaign, however, was a major success, the Omani 

response being guided by a British Army Training Team (BATT) 

drawn from the Special Air Service and by various seconded or 

contracted British officers. Imperial Iranian and Jordanian forces 

also arrived to assist in 1973 and 1974, respectively. After 2 years 

in which the war was effectively being lost, within 24 hours of the 

assumption of power by Sultan Qaboos in July 1970, a substantial 
13

political and socio-economic plan for the regeneration of the 

previously neglected Dhofar province was announced. The Dhofar 

Development Committee supervised the expenditure of £218 

million between 1971 and 1975 and also acted as the coordinating 

body of the civil-military effort at provincial level. Spearheading the 

coordinated effort on the jebel were the Civil Action Teams. They 

established centers, dug wells as a focus for a nomadic population, 

and introduced educational and medical facilities, as well as effecting 

longer-term improvements in cattle stocks and market opportunities 

for local goods. The process, however, was greatly assisted by the 

Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf 

(PFLOAG) insurgents who were Marxists and attempted to impose 

an ideology that was anathema to the two fundamental principles of 

jebali life, namely Islam and the tribal system. Indeed, it led directly 

to defections from PFLOAG, these defectors becoming the nucleus of 

the pseudo units known as firqat. An effective propaganda campaign 

built on the slogan, “Islam is our Way, Freedom is our Aim,” and 

the establishment of successive physical barriers across PFLOAG 

infiltration routes from Yemen completed the process of separating 

insurgents from a population that increasingly had a vested interest 

in the status quo.21

 While the Dhofar represents very much a model campaign in an 

Islamic country, the problem was of a far lesser magnitude to that 

existing in Iraq. Indeed, the sheer scale of the reconstruction required 

in Iraq following so many years with a decaying infrastructure and 

a repressive regime, in which survival depended upon maintaining 

a low profile, is immense. There has been no such reconstruction 

and nation-building problem since the reintegration of Germany 

and Japan into the international community after World War II: in 

neither of those cases, however, was there an insurgency. Perhaps 

Reconstruction after the American Civil War is a better analogy, 

but if some political and other problems are similar, there is little 

comparison between the mid-19th century and the 21st century 

in terms of expectations of social and economic requirements for 

modern life.22

 “Economic and Quality of Life Indicators” in Iraq drawn up 

by the Brookings Institution, for example, deal in such matters as 

improvements in the output of megawatts of electricity; millions of 
14

barrels of oil and millions of litres of diesel, kerosene, gasoline, and 

potable water produced each day; the child immunization rate; and 

crime and unemployment rates. In the case of the U.S. 4th Division’s 

Taskforce Ironhorse, there were 2,012 civic action projects underway 

in November 2003, with 1,063 having already been completed, yet 

only $18.4 million of $139.8 million worth of projects had been 

spent. In the area of the Polish-led International Division, a key 

focus was creating 67,000 jobs as part of the overall target by the 

Coalition Provisional Authority of creating 300,000 jobs. It is also 

intended to raise 40,000 men for the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps by 

April 2004, and 71,000 policemen and 40,000 men for the new army 

by July 2004.23 The scale of the military effort is also considerable. 

The U.S. 4th Division’s Taskforce Ironhorse, for example, undertook 

five successive operational phases between June 8-November 6, 

2003, of which Operation IVY NEEDLE from August 11-September 

9 alone involved 182 raids, 11,590 Coalition-only patrols, 2,285 joint 

patrols, 373 flash checkpoints, and 905 static checkpoints. In all, up 

to November 6, 2003, there had been 361 raids, 21,877 Coalitiononly patrols, 3,504 joint patrols, 2,653 static checkpoints, 1,919 flash 

checkpoints, and 843 ambushes.24

A Way Ahead?

 One member of the CPA apparently has a sign hanging in his 

office which proclaims: “End State: A durable peace for a united and 

stable, democratic Iraq that provides effective and representative 

government for and by the Iraqi people; is underpinned by new 

and protected freedoms and a growing market economy; and no 

longer poses a threat to its neighbours or international security and 

is able to defend itself.”25 How that ambitious mission statement 

might be achieved, of course, is the question, especially given the 

need to reconcile a revived centralized authority with more local 

forms of authority and the nature of the differing racial, religious, 

and tribal communities in an artificial creation with no democratic 

tradition such as Iraq. Much will depend upon the earliest possible 

establishment of a government that enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of 

a majority of Iraqis. In the meantime, however, the restoration of 

law and order and the reduction of violence to an acceptable level 
15

will best help to create a situation in which stable government can 

emerge and function. The emphasis upon an “acceptable level of 

violence,” a phrase used by a British Home Secretary, Reginald 

Maulding, to describe the government aim in Northern Ireland in 

1971, is a deliberate one, given the potential for insurgencies to be 

sustained over a considerable period of time.

 It has been suggested above that the basic patterns of insurgency 

have not changed materially, and, indeed, that there are similarities 

between the emerging situation in Iraq and some earlier insurgencies 

in the Middle East. It follows, therefore, that the essentials of 

counterinsurgency also have remained fairly constant and that 

the kind of basic requirements for success that can be identified in 

campaigns since 1945 still hold good. These requirements are, first, 

a recognition of the need for a political rather than a purely military 

response to insurgency; second, a need for coordination of the civil and 

military response; third, a need for the coordination of intelligence; 

fourth, a need to separate insurgents from the population; fifth, a 

need for the appropriate use of military force, which generally means 

the minimum necessary in any given situation; and, last, the need to 

implement long-term reform to address the grievances that led to 

support for the insurgency in the first place.26 These are as applicable 

to offensive or defensive insurgency as to irregular conflicts falling 

short of insurgency. Equally, they are as applicable to Iraq as they 

were once to the British mandate in Palestine, or to Aden, Algeria, 

and Oman. Where they were not adhered to, as in Palestine, Aden, 

and Algeria, counterinsurgency failed; where it was, as in the Dhofar, 

counterinsurgency succeeded. 

 Thus, in Palestine, Aden, and Algeria, the political response to 

insurgency was weak. In Algeria, the French declined to address 

Arab political and socio-economic aspirations through the belief 

that it was part of metropolitan France: independence was not on 

offer, and there was also a substantial European settler population. 

In the case of Palestine and Aden, Labour governments were not 

prepared to make the long-term commitment to law and order 

required to demonstrate an intention to defeat insurgency. While 

there was a reasonable degree of coordination of civil and military 

response in Algeria, albeit with a heavy military influence, there 

was frequently a mismatch of political and military objectives in 
16

Palestine and Aden. Intelligence in both Palestine and Aden was 

exceedingly poor through insurgent infiltration of the police forces 

and the obvious lack of long-term reward for cooperation with 

British authorities soon to depart. In Algeria, of course, intelligence 

was often obtained through institutionalized torture, where the 

attempt to separate insurgents from population by the erection of 

physical barriers and through large–scale resettlement also tended 

to alienate the population rather than win hearts and minds. With 

the population primarily in urban concentrations in Palestine and 

Aden, it was not practicable to attempt resettlement, and attempts 

to separate insurgent from population by means of propaganda was 

notably unsuccessful. The heavy-handed French military approach 

to operations in Algeria certainly resulted in the elimination of much 

of the FLN by 1960, but military success could not be translated into 

political success, given those other failings already outlined. British 

military operations in Aden were more sophisticated than the crude 

cordon and search methods used in Palestine but, again, military 

success was of little account, given the political imperative to cut and 

run.

 In Oman, of course, as in other successful counterinsurgency 

campaigns such as those in Malaya (1948-60), Kenya (1952-60), and 

Borneo (1962-66), the political response was eventually a measured 

one, with clear political objectives articulated for the population, 

with real incentives laid out for the maintenance of the status quo. 

Coordination of the civil and military response was ensured through 

a sophisticated committee structure, which embraced intelligence 

services. A combination of physical and psychological measures 

when combined with political incentives successfully isolated the 

insurgents from the population, while the use of minimum force 

ensured that the population was not alienated from the security 

forces. Moreover, the incentives on offer had sufficient long-term 

promise in addressing political and other grievances to prevent any 

recurrence of insurgency. Malaysia (embracing both Malaya and 

Borneo) and Oman remain stable polities and, while hardly a shining 

example of good governance, Kenya also has avoided much of the 

bloodshed that has destabilized so many other post-independence 

African states. 

 These are essentially British principles and, although there 

have been failures―significantly, mostly urban campaigns―the 
17

British army has been far more successful than most in combating 

insurgency. While Middle Eastern examples have been stressed so 

far, there are also lessons to be learned from the British experience 

in tackling an organization which displays characteristics of both 

an insurgent and a terrorist group. It has operated principally in 

an urban environment but also in a rural environment, has enjoyed 

refuge across an international frontier, and has manipulated the 

situation within a deeply divided community. That experience, of 

course, is that in Northern Ireland, a long-running threat since 1969 

despite a supposed cease-fire in effect since 1997. It can be noted that 

the British army indeed has achieved an acceptable level of violence, 

but with a substantially larger ratio of security forces to population 

than is currently in Iraq. In Northern Ireland, it has been 20 per 1,000 

inhabitants, whereas in Iraq, it is currently 6.1 per 1,000.27 There 

was also a useful continuity and familiarity with operational areas 

established through a system of some battalions serving long tours 

and others shorter tours of 2.5 years and 6 months, respectively. 

 Some special forces were deployed in Northern Ireland and, most 

certainly, as already indicated, in Dhofar, albeit in support of larger 

conventional forces. It is not that long ago that Rod Paschall suggested 

that counterinsurgency was so destructive of military “norms” that 

it should be contracted out to private security organizations.28 To 

some extent, there has been something of a privatization of certain 

security roles in Iraq while, of course, U.S. and British special forces 

are particularly involved in operations in Afghanistan, which seem, 

arguably, atypically suited to them in collaboration with local 

forces.29 An ongoing argument appears to be that counterinsurgency 

should be the preserve of special forces, itself a reflection of a much 

older debate in the U.S. military both before and after the Vietnam 

experience. Equally, there has been an argument about the lack 

of “light” infantry available initially for post-war stabilization 

operations in Iraq. One should also be mindful that it is often the 

case that the least sophisticated armies are the best practitioners of 

counterinsurgency because lack of resources compel them to keep it 

simple and engage principally at the same level as their opponents. 

Indeed, as long ago as 1887, Charles Callwell rightly noted that, in 

small wars, it was “the disciplined army that is obliged to conform to 

the methods of those of adversaries infinitely inferior in intelligence 

and armament.”30
18

 This would suggest that, while there is a need for specialized 

forces in some cases, and, on occasion, for heavier forces in 

counterinsurgency, ideally there is a need for a force capable of 

undertaking a variety of roles from within its own capabilities. It 

also helps if there is a tradition of small wars experience on which to 

draw. There is such tradition within the U.S. armed forces. Recently, 

the Strategic Issues Research Institute has suggested that Charles 

Gwynn’s Imperial Policing of 1934 be issued to U.S. forces.31 In many 

ways, Gwynn’s work grew from that of Callwell in developing 

principles for British counterinsurgency but notably without 

taking any account of wider political issues. That was not a failing 

of another text, which also drew its inspiration from Callwell and 

which is more readily available to U.S. audiences, namely the two 

editions of the Small Wars Manual of 1935 and 1940 developed by the 

U.S. Marine Corps. For all that there are contradictions and some 

major assumptions in the Small Wars Manual, it remains distinctly 

useful for those facing the challenges of Iraq. Too often, conventional 

armed forces have had to learn the same lessons over and over again 

when the solutions have been within reach in their own past. 

 The scale of the problem may be far greater in Iraq than in past 

Islamic and Middle Eastern insurgencies or, for that matter, the 

Marine Corps experience in Central America and the Caribbean in 

the 1920s and 1930s. The process may also be far longer, but the geostrategic prize is almost inestimable.

ENDNOTES

 1. Ian F. W. Beckett, Encyclopaedia of Guerrilla Warfare, Oxford: ABC Clio, 1999, 

p. xv.

 2. Bard O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, 

Washington: Westview Press, 1990, pp. 17-21; Christopher Clapham, ed., African 

Guerrillas, Oxford: James Currey, 1998, pp. 6-7; Steven Sloan, “The Changing Face 

of Insurgency in the Post-Cold War Era: Doctrinal and Operational Implications” 

in A. J. Joes, ed., Saving Democracies: US Intervention in Threatened Democratic States, 

Westport: Praeger, 1999, pp. 67-80; Steven Metz, “Insurgency after the Cold War,” 

Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 5, 1994, pp. 63-82; W. G. Thom, “Congo-Zaire’s 

1996-97 Civil War in the Context of Evolving Patterns of Military Conflict in Africa 

in the Era of Independence,” Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 19, 1999, pp. 93-123.

 3. Ahmed Hashim, “The Sunni Insurgency in Iraq,” Middle East Institute 

Policy Brief, August 15, 2003; Ahmed Hashim, “The Insurgency in Iraq,” Small 

Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2003, pp. 1-22.
19

 4. Anthony Cordesman, “The Current Military Situation in Iraq,” Washington, 

DC: Centre for Strategic and International Studies, November 14, 2003, p. 25.

 5. Graham Fuller, “Islamist Politics in Iraq after Saddam Hussein,” U.S. 

Institute for Peace Special Report 108, August 2003; Charles Tripp, “A Land Cursed 

by Despots and Warlords,” Times Higher Education Supplement, Vol. 13, February 

2004, p. 22.

 6. Weekly Telegraph, Vol. 656, February 2004, p. 18; CENTCOM News Release, 

February 19, 2004.

 7. Mark Jacobsen, “Only by the Sword: British Counter-insurgency in Iraq, 

1920,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 2, 1991, pp. 323-363.

 8. Steven Metz, “Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in Iraq,” Washington 

Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2003-04, pp. 25-36; Hashim, “Insurgency in Iraq,” pp. 1-

22.

 9. Cordesman, “Current Military Situation,” p. 2; Washington Times, 

February 18, 2004, p. A14; CPA News Release, February 17, 2004; John Arquilla, 

David Ronfeldt, and Michele Zanini, “Networks, Netwar, and Information-age 

Terrorism,” in Ian Lesser, et al., Countering The New Terrorism, Santa Monica, 1999, 

p. 47; Alice Hills, “Basra and the Referent Points of Twofold War,” Small Wars and 

Insurgencies, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2003, pp. 23-44.

 10. Menachem Begin, The Revolt, London: Nash Publishing, 1951; David 

Charters, The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945-47, London: 

Macmillan, 1989.

 11. Ian Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies: Guerrillas and 

their Opponents since 1750, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 88-95. See also Bruce 

Hoffman, The Failure of Britain”s Military Strategy in Palestine, 1939-47, Ramat Gan: 

Bar Ilan University Press, 1983; and J Bowyer Bell, Terror out of Zion, New York: St 

Martin’s Press, 1977.

 12. Cordesman, “Current Military Situation,” pp. 10, 26.

 13. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, pp. 154, 221. See also 

David Ledger, Shifting Sands: The British in South Arabia, London: Peninsula press, 

1983; Stephen Harper, Last Sunset: What Happened in Aden, London: Collins, 1978. 

On suicide bombing, see W. Andrew Terrill, “Low-intensity Conflict in Southern 

Lebanon: Lessons and Dynamics of the Israeli-Shi’ite War,” Conflict Quarterly, Vol. 

7, No. 3, 1987, pp. 22-35.

 14. Jacobsen, “Only by the Sword,” pp. 323-363; Beckett, Modern Insurgencies 

and Counter-insurgencies, p. 47. See also Charles Townshend, “The Defence of 

Palestine: Insurrection and Public Security, 1936-39,” English Historical Review, Vol. 

103, 1988, pp. 917-949.

 15. On Algeria, see Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, London: Penguin, 

2nd edn., 1987; Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in Algeria, 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972; John Talbott, The War without a Name, 
20

New York: Faber and Faber, 1980; Martin Alexander, Martin Evans, and J. F. V. 

Keiger, eds., The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-62, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 

2002; Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, pp. 159-168.

 16. Stuart Cohen, “How did the Intifada affect the IDF?” Conflict Quarterly, 

Vol. 14, 1994, pp. 7-22; Stuart Cohen and Efraim Inbar, “Varieties of Counterinsurgency Activities: Israel’s Military Operations against the Palestinians, 1948-

90,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 2, 1991, pp. 41-60; Clive Jones, “Israeli 

Counter-insurgency Strategy and the War in Southern Lebanon, 1985-97,” Small 

Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 8, 1997, pp. 82-108.

 17. Gary Anderson, “An Examination of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in a 

Historical Context,” Paper to 1MARDIV SASO Symposium, Camp Pendleton, 

December 17-18, 2003.

 18. On CAP, see F. J. West, The Village, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.

 19. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, p. 91.

 20. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, pp.153-158; Sir John 

Willoughby, “Problems of Counter-insurgency in the Middle East,” Journal of the 

Royal United Service Institution, Vol. CXIII, No. 650, 1968, pp. 104-112.

 21. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, pp.217-30. See also 

John Akehurst, We Won a War: The Campaign in Oman, 1965-75, Salisbury: Michael 

Russell, 1982; Tony Jeapes, SAS Secret War, London: William Kimber, 1996; and 

Peter Thwaites, Muscat Command, London: Pen & Sword, 1995.

 22. See Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, 

Challenges and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-conflict Scenario, Carlisle, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, 2003.

 23. “Op-Chart: Tracking Trends in Iraq,” New York Times, November 14, 

2003; “Military and Economic Trends in Post-war Iraq,” “Op-Chart: Tracking 

Trends in Iraq,” New York Times, February 11, 2004; Cordesman, “Current Military 

Situation,” pp. 8, 22; Bing West, “Combined Action in Iraq: Learning from the Past,” 

Presentation to 1st MARDIV SASO Symposium, Camp Pendleton, December 17-

18, 2003.

 24. Cordesman, “Current Military Situation,” p. 22.

 25. George Packer, “War after the War,” The New Yorker Fact, November 24, 

2003.

 26. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, p. 107. See also 

Ministry of Defense, Army Field Manual 1995 Vol V: Operations Other Than War, 

Sec. B., Pt. 2, pp. 3-1, 3-2.

 27. J. T. Quinlivan, “Burden of Victory: The Painful Arithmetic of Stability 

Operations” Rand Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, 2003, pp. 28-29.

 28. Rod Paschall, LIC 2010, New York: Brasseys, 1990; Rod Paschall, “Lowintensity Conflict Doctrine: Who Needs It?” Parameters, No. 15, 1985, pp. 33-45.
21

 29. Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army 

and Defense Policy, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2002.

 30. Charles Callwell, “Lessons to be Learnt from the Campaigns in which 

British Forces have been employed since the year 1865,” Journal of the Royal United 

Service Institution, Vol. 31, No. 139, 1887-88, p. 362. See also Caldwell, Small Wars: 

Their Principles and Practice, London, 3rd edn., 1906.

 31. Weekly Telegraph, Vol. 665, 2004, p. 11.