ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the difficulties associated with counterinsurgency, especially the difficulties in defining success, the debates surrounding the nature of contemporary insurgency and the problems involved with the execution of counterinsurgency operations themselves. In counterinsurgency campaigns, in the labels employed, political and moral factors may be as or more important than objective reality. Insurgency rests on a combination of ideological motivation and tactics of irregular warfare directed towards the overthrow of the existing political order. Experience demonstrated that neither Maoism nor Focoism constituted fool-proof strategies. Counterinsurgency embodies all of the measures required to thwart an insurgency. French approaches to colonial warfare had long understood the need both for tactical military adaptation and parallel non-military activity. One of the (many) depressing things about the counterinsurgency phases of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was the evident difficulty experienced by coalition forces in planning and executing an effective counterinsurgency campaign.
