ABSTRACT
Insurgencies are of three types: regional/local, transnational and global. The last is the emerging feature of a postmodern age. Modern insurgents were mainly motivated by secular ideologies like Marxism and nationalism with Islam playing second fiddle. The principal weapon of the postmodern insurgents is information technology. In the Mughal Empire of India, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we have evidence of Ahom, Maratha and Sikh insurgencies. The Ottoman Empire like the Mughal Empire was beset by demobilised soldiers and armed peasants. Ivan Arreguin-Toft’s assertion that, as regards the post-Second World War era, barbarism is a sound strategy for winning asymmetric conflict in the short run but results in losing the peace in the long run remains questionable, as the case of Sri Lanka shows. Jeremy Black points out that the West is experiencing a Revolution in Attitudes towards the Military (RAM).
