ABSTRACT
Insurgencies are generally ethnic, ideological or religious in character. Invariably these are guided along the path of violence as the state or the regime against which the insurgency is directed, tries to crush the militancy by force, instead of addressing the causes of unrest for resolution. The insurgent leadership tries to generate following and support to mobilise the people and put them as the vanguard of the movement with the promise of a better deal under a political dispensation in which it will play a direct role. Since waging a conventional war against the might of the state becomes difficult and costly, the insurgent movement takes to terror as an instrument of defeating the state power and achieving the political objective of a self-rule. For this reason, the insurgency is sometimes, described as an irregular war by people mobilised, motivated and trained around sentiments attached to ethnicity, ideology or religion.
