Guerilla Warfare is a weapon of the weak; it is decisive only where the actor in power fails to commit adequate resources to the conflict. The Chinese and Cuban revolutions are examples of guerilla warfare success, albeit under different conditions and employment techniques; while Mao Tse-tung utilized decentralized guerilla warfare to indoctrinate and mobilize the masses of peasants for revolutionary struggle against a stronger enemy; Fidel Castro employed a more centralized approach to create the conditions necessary for popular support of the revolution. However, in both cases guerilla warfare was simply part of a pragmatic grand strategy to build nationalism across all classes of society. It is well known that revolutionary movements do not succeed where only one class of society is mobilized. As a result, both Mao and Castro designed dual strategies: an internal component focused on the peasant base; and an external component focused on a nationalistic appeal to all classes of society. In a revolutionary setting, the strong force of nationalism can cut across all segments of the population and strongly enable popular support for the insurgents. Both revolutionary leaders skillfully managed the contradictions associated with their respective dual strategies - a difficult task indeed since the dual strategy is one of deception. This thesis will prove that through such a plan of action, Mao and Castro integrated efforts such as leadership and ideology, with the key ingredient of guerilla warfare, to create the conditions for the control of resources necessary to achieve ultimate victory. Following revolutionary success, the experience of guerilla warfare and the dual strategy - particularly in Cuba - shaped the respective foreign policies within the context of a worldwide struggle against imperialism. Cuba has continued to refine the dual strategy in order to obtain international support and maintain the Castro regime in power. China eventually adopted a dual strategy of a different variety: the separation of economics from communist ideology. Although implementation of the dual strategy continues to the present day, it was the revolutionary process that not only validated the concept, but provided the credibility required to continue its execution.

The United States was throughout the history engaged in several conflicts which had a character of counterinsurgency. These are - among others- War in Vietnam and second War in Iraq. These two conflicts are examined in this diploma thesis. Author poses a question how did counterinsurgency tactics evolved in both conflicts. The second question is whether the United States implemented counterinsurgency experiences from Vietnam War in Iraq War and if so, how they were implemented. The United States developed several counterinsurgency programs and the most of them were successful - they prevented Vietcong from spreading its influence in South Vietnam. However these programs were often poorly financed, or they did not gain enough support from The US Army, because the Army prefered conventional approach in fighting against communists. The United States fought a conventional warfare in the first few years of Iraq War and it had not succeeded in garnering popularity among civilians. The change came with a new commander- general David Petraeus. Petraeus was inspired by the experiences from the Vietnam War (and other conflicts) and he concentrated his effort on providing safety to Iraqi population. This strategy paid off and the Army had much less losses during his command then during the pre - 2007 period....

This Master's thesis will focus on the newest trends in the field of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations that are moving the organization to unknown territory by deploying in theatres where missions are faced with asymmetric threats. In this regard, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), constituted as a groundbreaking and innovative peacekeeping operation, is spearheading a realignment in peacekeeping that can potentially shape future operations to come, as mandates increasingly reflect roles in areas such as counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism. The core objective of this study will be to analyze why MINUSMA is being forced to go green while studying how it is doing so, reflecting on past experiences from other operations such as the International Stabilization Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and the Multi-National Force in Iraq (MNF-I), that have guided changes in MINUSMA's doctrines and capabilities. Gabriel van Oppen Ardanaz

Since 2010 IS has transformed itself from a terroristgroup to an insurgency organisation that held territory from Mosul in Iraq to Aleppo in Syria. Through this conquest of territory it has proven it’s capabilities in launching conventional style offenses but also it use of irregular tactics and the use of different terrorist acts using suicide bombers and vehicle-borne improvised explosions. This study examines IS warfare between 2010 and 2015 and examens if David Galulas theory ’Insurgency doctrin’ and Frank Hoffmans theory ’Hybrid warfare’ can describe IS warfare through this period. This analysis shows that IS partially can be described through the insurgency doctrin theory as an insurgency following the steps that it descibes. It also shows that while IS follows the steps it also continued to use blind terrorism and selektive terrorism through the whole campaigns. Further more the analysis also shows that IS can be described through Frank Hoffmans ’Hybrid warfare’ theory. IS used conventional means such as military weapons and equipment along with artillery, tanks, anti-tank weapons in both conventional and irregular ways. It’s extensive use of IED, VBIED IS used technology in an ortodox way by rebuildning vehicles and drones into mobile IED’s but also vehicles into light fighting vehicles by mounting heavy machineguns on pickups. This study also concludes that IS can not be described as an hybrid actor becuse it strives at building a regulare army. The conclusion of this study is that IS warfare can be described as an insurgent uprising with hybrid elements. Since 2010 IS has transformed itself from a terroristgroup to an insurgency organisation that held territory from Mosul in Iraq to Aleppo in Syria. Through this conquest of territory it has proven it’s capabilities in launching conventional style offenses but also it use of irregular tactics and the use of different terrorist acts using suicide bombers and vehicle-borne improvised explosions. This study examines IS warfare between 2010 and 2015 and examens if David Galulas theory ’Insurgency doctrin’ and Frank Hoffmans theory ’Hybrid warfare’ can describe IS warfare through this period. This analysis shows that IS partially can be described through the insurgency doctrin theory as an insurgency following the steps that it descibes. It also shows that while IS follows the steps it also continued to use blind terrorism and selektive terrorism through the whole campaigns. Further more the analysis also shows that IS can be described through Frank Hoffmans ’Hybrid warfare’ theory. IS used conventional means such as military weapons and equipment along with artillery, tanks, anti-tank weapons in both conventional and irregular ways. It’s extensive use of IED, VBIED IS used technology in an ortodox way by rebuildning vehicles and drones into mobile IED’s but also vehicles into light fighting vehicles by mounting heavy machineguns on pickups. This study also concludes that IS can not be described as an hybrid actor becuse it strives at building a regulare army The conclusion of this study is that IS warfare can be described as an insurgent uprising with hybrid elements

The master's thesis Insurgent Governance Systems: The Effectiveness of the Talban and the Islamic State is a qualitative comparative analysis of Islamic Jihadist rebel governance systems in the cases of the Islamic State and the Taliban. Using Mampilly's framework for effective rebel governance systems, I analyze the various factors, stemming from 'below', 'within', and 'above' that negatively and positively affect an insurgent government, its leadership, and the civilians that dynamically interact with the rebels. This thesis' aim is three part. First, it aims to show that variations between conventional rebel governments and Islamic Jihadist governance systems do exist. Second, that variation also exists between different Islamic Jihadist rebel governments, and that the challenges and opportunities presented by civilians and international actors are dealt with differently. Third, that the effectiveness of these rebel organizations is dependent on the factors presented by Mampilly, yet is not static as effectiveness of a rebel governance system changes throughout a conflict. This thesis found that significant variation, as well as some similarities, exists between conventional and Islamic Jihadist organizations; through analyzing the two cases presented, we can see variation does exist between the...

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Insurgency has two main strategies, guerrilla warfare and terrorism, which should be treated as linked, but distinct, strategies. This thesis examines the role of incumbent violence in leading insurgents to select one, or both, of these strategies. It argues that incumbent violence can create support for insurgency by causing fear and a desire for revenge and reshaping the social structures of a community. It also argues that incumbent violence increases popular support for terrorism in particular by creating outbidding incentives and desires to respond in kind to civilian deaths and as a way of punishing norm violations against attacking civilians on the part of the incumbent. The paper tests this theory with a qualitative case study of the conflict in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and a quantitative analysis of insurgent violence in the Kirkuk, Diyala, Babylon, and Salah al Din provinces during the 2003-2009 Iraq conflict

Legitimacy is arguably one of the most salient concepts in the political science discipline, affecting all forms of political life. In this dissertation, I explore how legitimacy influences the behavior of state and non-state actors in violent and non-violent contested spaces in three separate cases. The first paper examines the mechanisms through which structural factors and micro-level conditions translate into civilian support for insurgents. While the literature has largely assumed that civilians are rational actors driven by interests, immediate utility calculations represent only one of the mechanisms through which civilian support can be reached. Evidence from the interviews I conducted during my fieldwork in Thailand demonstrate that weak insurgents who have limited capacity can still leverage shared ethnic identity to build support through trust and legitimacy. Building off these findings, I propose that utility, trust, and legitimacy constitute three mechanisms that exist along a continuum, with utility being purely interest-based driven, trust being a combination of interest and moral calculations, and legitimacy being rooted in moral obligation. The second paper identifies the various conditions that lead to ASEAN taking action in response to domestic crises within its member states. Through elite interviews with top ASEAN bureaucrats and diplomats, I first identify four conditions that motivate ASEAN action, two of which are tied to its internal legitimacy concerns, while the other two are derived from its desire to maintain external legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. Combing through thousands of official ASEAN documents, I then build an original dataset on ASEAN action and inaction, and run a qualitative comparative analysis to further determine how these conditions relate to each other. I find that ASEAN is ultimately more concerned with maintaining its internal legitimacy. The two pathways leading to the organization taking action are 1) when they have grounds to justify their action, and 2) when there is a threat of external interference and the member state does not feel like its domestic interests are being threatened. In the third paper, I rely on interviews, participation in two consultation processes, and both manual and automated text analysis to map out the causes and consequences of regime complexity in the Mekong subregion, where nine informal institutions and one treaty-based organization operate with similar member states and functional scopes. I find that the institutions including an external partner as a member state were established as vehicles to legitimate the external state’s influence in the region. These institutions therefore engage in competition with each other, which leads to functional repetition. Meanwhile, the Mekong-led institutions seek institutional legitimacy by establishing niche areas, and thus avoid competition with each other. However, the most effective way for an institution to gain legitimacy appears to be through the availability of large amounts of funding, as these financial considerations determine which institution the Mekong member states prioritize in their engagement.

Why do women and children join insurgency groups? The subject has been a matter of extensive debate, with experts offering theories of motivation on well-known groups such as the National Liberation Front (FLN) or the Irish Republican Army (IRA). However, there has been a small amount of work comparing two insurgency groups and their participants to one another. This paper addresses the underlying reasons for why women and children join insurgencies, explicitly focusing on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey from their origins to the present. The paper uses interviews from other scholarly works on the two groups and their participants. In doing this, the paper showcases that despite differences across geographic location and each group's motivation, there are similar indicators that motivate women and children to join insurgency groups. This paper finds that women and children are primarily motivated to join the FARC because of harsh gender inequality and economic poverty. Regarding women and children joining the PKK, their motivations primarily concern ethnic discrimination and gender inequality. The implications of this research will provide information about dynamics leading large numbers of women and children to join violent organizations. Furthermore, it will find that despite regional differences and group’s overall goals, there are universal motivating factors, like gender inequality, which influence women and children to participate in political violence.

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