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An Anarchist and Feminist self styled urban guerrilla group. The Order—United States; 3 Percenters – United States; Europe. National Liberation Army – North Macedonia; Albanian National Army – North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece; Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – Kosovo; Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac ...
Jun 3, 2013 · Guerrilla Warfare. Hometown heroes and villains. June 3, 2013 • Updated January 9, 2024. By Kara E. Kozikowski. Throughout the American Civil War, as vast armies in blue and gray clashed on conventional battlefields, a drastically different kind of conflict was raging as well: a bloody guerrilla war that erupted in the South in response to ...
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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.
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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.
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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.
Viet Cong (VC), the guerrilla force that, with the support of the North Vietnamese Army, fought against South Vietnam (late 1950s–1975) and the United States (early 1960s–1973). The name is said to have first been used by South Vietnamese Pres. Ngo Dinh Diem to belittle the rebels.
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In North America, one of the earliest recorded instances of guerrilla warfare was Apalachee resistance to the Spanish during the Narváez expedition in 1528 in Spanish Florida . In the mid 17th century the Colonists of New France were in conflict with the Iroquois Confederacy.
Jun 20, 2012 · During the American Civil War, groups of so-called “partisan rangers” engaged in bloody campaigns of guerilla attacks, raiding and psychological warfare against rival military units and...
Jan 15, 2013 · Heard on Morning Edition. 7-Minute Listen. Playlist. In the new book Invisible Armies, author Max Boot traces the role of guerrilla warfare through history, starting in the Roman Empire all the...
