guerrilla warfare
- Also spelled:
- guerilla warfare
guerrilla warfare, type of warfare fought by irregulars in fast-moving, small-scale actions against orthodox military and police forces and, on occasion, against rival insurgent forces, either independently or in conjunction with a larger political-military strategy. The word guerrilla (the diminutive of Spanish guerra, “war”) stems from the duke of Wellington’s campaigns during the Peninsular War (1808–14), in which Spanish and Portuguese irregulars, or guerrilleros, helped drive the French from the Iberian Peninsula. Over the centuries the practitioners of guerrilla warfare have been called rebels, irregulars, insurgents, partisans, and mercenaries. Frustrated military commanders have consistently damned them as barbarians, savages, terrorists, brigands, outlaws, and bandits.
The French military writer Henri, baron de Jomini (1779–1869), classified the operations of guerrilla fighters as “national war.” The Prussian general and theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) reluctantly admitted their existence by picturing partisans as “a kind of nebulous vapoury essence.” Later writers called their operations “small wars.” During the Cold War (1945–91), Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s term revolutionary warfare became a staple, as did insurgency, rebellion, insurrection, people’s war, and war of national liberation.
Regardless of terminology, the importance of guerrilla warfare has varied considerably throughout history. Traditionally, it has been a weapon of protest employed to rectify real or imagined wrongs levied on a people either by a ruling government or by a foreign invader. As such, it has scored remarkable successes and has suffered disastrous defeats.
The role of guerrilla warfare considerably expanded during World War II, when Josip Broz Tito’s communist Partisans tied down and frequently clashed with the German army in Yugoslavia and when other groups, both communist and noncommunist, fought against the German and Japanese enemies. During the prolonged Cold War period, numerous guerrilla forces of varying political beliefs were showered with money, modern weapons, and equipment from assorted benefactors. The stew of animosities was further seasoned by ethnic and religious rivalries, a factor that helps to explain why guerrilla warfare continues to be fought in a large number of countries today.
In some instances it has assumed a universal character under the banner of religious fundamentalism. The most prominent practitioners of this type were the Islamist groups al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also called ISIS). They attracted religious fanatics from various countries to carry out vicious terrorist attacks, the most famous being the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. Still another major change has been the transition of some guerrilla groups, notably in Colombia, Peru, Northern Ireland, and Spain, into criminal terrorism on behalf of drug barons and other Mafia-style overlords.
History
Early history
In 512 bce the Persian warrior-king Darius I, who ruled the largest empire and commanded the best army in the world, bowed to the hit-and-run tactics of the nomadic Scythians and left them to their lands beyond the Danube. The Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356–323 bce) also fought serious guerrilla opposition, which he overcame by modifying his tactics and by winning important tribes to his side. In 218 bce the Carthaginian general Hannibal faced considerable guerrilla opposition in crossing the Alps into Italy; he was later brought to bay by the delaying military tactics of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, from whom the term Fabian tactics is derived and who earned the surname Cunctator (meaning “Delayer”). The Romans themselves fought against guerrillas in their conquest of Spain for more than 200 years before the foundation of the empire.
Guerrilla and quasi-guerrilla operations were employed in an aggressive role in ensuing centuries by such predatory barbarians as the Goths and the Huns, who forced the Roman Empire onto the defensive; the Magyars, who conquered Hungary; the hordes of northern barbarians who attacked the Byzantine Empire for more than 500 years; the Vikings, who overran Ireland, England, and France; and the Mongols, who conquered China and terrified central Europe. In the 12th century the Crusader invasion of Syria was at times stymied by the guerrilla tactics of the Seljuq Turks, a frustration shared by the Normans in their conquest of Ireland (1169–75). A century later, Kublai Khan’s army of Mongols was driven from the area of Vietnam by Tran Hung Dao, who had trained his army to fight guerrilla warfare. King Edward I of England struggled through long, hard, and expensive campaigns to subdue Welsh guerrillas; that he failed to conquer Scotland was largely due to the brilliant guerrilla operations of Robert the Bruce (Robert I). Bertrand du Guesclin, a Breton guerrilla leader in the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), all but pushed the English from France by using Fabian tactics of harassment, surprise, ambush, sudden assault, and slow siege.
