ABSTRACT
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 18 Insurgency and COIN ...................................................................................................................... 19
Insurgency ...................................................................................................................................20 Force Structure ............................................................................................................................20 Leadership and Personnel ...........................................................................................................22 The Local Populace .....................................................................................................................23
Counterinsurgency ...........................................................................................................................24 Force Structure ............................................................................................................................24 Leadership and Personnel ...........................................................................................................25 The Local Populace: “Hearts and Minds” ...................................................................................25
Revolution and SMT ........................................................................................................................27 Analytical Recommendations .......................................................................................................... 31 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 33 Suggested Reading ........................................................................................................................... 33 References ........................................................................................................................................34
Insurgencies* are social movements.† To contextualize insurgencies as social movements, one must consider their very social nature. Insurgencies are grassroots movements composed of socially charged and motivated actors, coordinating contentious violent action against a governing authority or authorities in response to some grievance(s) and a lack of agency within the existing political praxis, having the aim of signicantly changing or overthrowing the sovereign as a means of affecting desired normative or policy change(s). This unconventional attempt to change the rules of the game, the established rules of the polity, is a socially constructed “Warden’s Dilemma,” which rallies against or altogether rejects the incumbent structure’s power and requires the incumbent to revise policy or altogether step down.‡ It is possibly because the social nature of insurgencies is overlooked§ in favor of a military/political understanding of the phenomena that the social aspects and power of insurgencies are often a secondary consideration for battleeld commanders and policy-makers.¶ On the other hand, those studying social movements are often more involved and interested in understanding what forms and informs these collectivities and are less concerned with affecting them.
