Guerrilla warfare: tactics, history, and strategic applications

Guerilla Warfare

Guerrilla warfare is basically classified into two main categories, urban guerrilla warfare and rural guerrilla warfare, both of which rely on a friendly population to provide supplies and intelligence (Guerilla pp). Rural guerrillas generally prefer to operate in regions that provide plenty of cover and concealment, such as forested and mountainous areas, while urban guerrillas blend into urban populations and also depend on a support base among the people (Guerilla pp).

Latin America is considered the birthplace of a certain type of ideological terrorism that uses urban guerilla warfare in the name of nationalism together with economic revolution (Latin pp). Beginning as a rural peasant rebellion by a guerilla named Pedro Antonio Marion, (aka Marulanda Velkez), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, was founded in 1964 and today is the richest insurgent group in the world with their own web page (Latin pp).

Argentina-born Che Guevara became a mastermind of guerilla warfare and joined Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution in 1956 (Latin pp). Guevara's book, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, is basically a how-to manual for guerrilla war that involves three phases: first, organize and train commando cells in the countryside, second, combine the isolated cells into columns, and third, bring all the columns together into a conventional army (Latin pp). The rule of thumb is to strike the enemy at places where the enemy feels 'safe' and then never let the enemy relax (Latin pp). Terrorism is an act of violence by groups that are part of guerilla movements, in an effort to create fear and draw support (Ramli pp). Today, suicide terrorism is the most widely used tactic by the insurgents in Iraq, and the present quagmire in Iraq could transform guerilla warfare into revolutionary warfare, whereby the Iraqis could mobilize and seize the state due to their hatred for the occupying power, thus within these constraints revolutionary warfare can take the form of urban guerilla war or rural guerilla war (Ramli pp).