Joshua Damir
INTRODUCTION
The historical record unveils insurgent groups who have overcome massive odds to defeat their enemies, contrasted sharply against others who were well-organized and capable but were crushed mercilessly. There appears little continuity in what leads insurgents to victory and what results instead in their failure. What causes insurgent success? The Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) for example had the odds stacked against them yet were successful, while the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had every advantage but were still defeated. Through thorough analysis of these two insurgent groups, my research establishes two specific typologies for insurgent success: insurgents facing strong democracies are most likely to succeed by focusing their efforts on terrorist campaigns to achieve political goals, while those fighting autocracies that they are more materially equivalent to succeed by prioritizing guerrilla warfare in order to win militarily first, and then politically. Insurgents achieve success by adapting their strategy of violence to address the specific strategic environment that they operate in based on enduring principles of insurgent warfare.
Scholars have identified four variables as important to insurgent success. These four are ruling government type, state capacity, insurgent resources, and the insurgent strategy of violence.[1] Previous research has established relationships between single variables, I build on this research using the most impactful variables to create a holistic view of insurgent success. I combine government type, state capacity and insurgent resources into a variable I call the strategic environment. I then match it with strategy of violence as my second variable to build a theory for insurgent success.[2] My research differentiates successful insurgent strategies of violence from unsuccessful ones by analyzing these variables and assessing how the FLN and LTTE’s strategies connected with their corresponding strategic environment.
ARGUMENT
Strategic environment is the first independent variable in my theory, consisting of the three sub-variables of government type, state capacity, and insurgent resources. The insurgents’ strategy of violence is the second independent variable. The interactions between these two independent variables will in turn impact the dependent variable, success. Success here means the achievement of the insurgents’ political goals determined at the onset of conflict. Importantly, success is political rather than military. If, for example, a group achieves their goals but disbands as a militia in favor of forming a political party, they are still considered successful.
I analyze two separatist case studies to understand how these insurgent groups used violence within their specific environments and whether they succeeded or failed. I am looking at the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) in Algeria (1954-1962) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka (1976-2009).[3] These two groups share many similarities that are important to isolating key variables. The most important similarity is their end goal of separatism from what they considered an illegitimate ruler or occupying power. It is critical that these groups shared this similarity for two reasons. First, the existence of different constituencies will highlight variations in violence and targeting. Second, the equality in insurgent ends will prevent one group from achieving success substantially easier than the others. Kydd and Walter note that a state’s degree of interest in the dispute is fundamental to their commitment to fight.[4] Since each state here has a substantial territorial stake in the conflict, their commitment to fight will be comparable. Another critical similarity is the shared timeline of the conflicts. While they did not occur simultaneously, they both took place in the mid to late 20th century. This is important to prevent significant variation in technology that may favor either the insurgents or counterinsurgents and thereby affect success. Finally, since each conflict is officially resolved, I can make conclusions about the success of each group that would not be possible in ongoing conflicts.
I analyze each case study based on the four components of insurgencies that existing literature emphasizes as the most important as outlined previously. For government type, I identify whether the government is democratic, anocratic, or autocratic in each by looking at their score in the Polity Project and analyzing historical data about government type. The Polity Project is a research tradition that codes authority characteristics of states for the purpose of quantitative analysis. A score of 6 or greater indicates a democracy.[5] In conjunction with the Polity Project score, I analyze historical data to understand the causation involved in how government type impacts the strategic environment and each respective conflicts’ results.
I measure state capacity for each state using the Correlates of War (COW) project data set that analyzes the material capabilities of states through six categories.[6] These measurements encompass the demographic, military, and industrial dimensions of a state in order to understand their military power during each time period, and in this case, measure how militarily effective the state was against the respective insurgent group. Each of the six components is measured as a share of the system’s total, and then the component shares are averaged to make the composite index of national capability score (CINC), the total share of world power that a state possesses in a given year.[7] By analyzing these components for France and Sri Lanka in their respective time periods, combined with a qualitative, historical analysis for how they leveraged their armed forces, I can effectively compare these two states’ military effectiveness.
For the resources available to insurgents, I analyze the insurgents’ flows of different resources over time, as well as absolute levels, all based on RAND’s designation of resource importance.[8] RAND prioritizes sanctuary, financial resources, political support, and direct military support as most important for insurgencies, while secondary support is made up of training and weapons provisions.[9]
Finally, for the analysis of the insurgents’ strategies of violence, I analyze the variation in attack type, specifying between terrorism and guerrilla warfare, and looking into what specific people or groups were targeted. I want to frame these strategies based on the goals of the insurgents and look to see if they achieved their goals in the long term.
Six chefs du FLN (Wikimedia)
In sum, I bring together three well-established variables to classify insurgencies by their strategic environment, my first variable. My second variable is the strategies of violence that insurgents use, and the connections between the two will result in success or failure on a scale. The success or failure of different combinations of typologies and strategies will inform the future debate on separatist insurgencies and terrorist strategies.
FLN VS FRANCE
Strategic Environment
The strategic environment that surrounded the war in Algeria allowed the FLN to coerce the French into granting them independence through terrorism. France, as a republic, had a favorable government type for terrorism to be successful. The French state capacity the FLN faced was substantial however and wore down the FLN and restrained its resources to the point that they could put up little military resistance to the French at the end of the conflict. Combining these three components into one comprehensive environment, the FLN’s French opponent was a strong, democratic state that was able to drain their resources and render them ineffective militarily, but ultimately unable to overcome the anti-colonial tide of history that the FLN successfully harnessed.
France experienced significant, domestic political turmoil throughout the duration of the Algerian war that led the government to consolidate its power in the executive; however, this did not reduce France’s susceptibility to terrorism as a democracy because it retained the political features of one. Based on the Polity Project’s ranking for France during this time period, it was considered a democracy with a score of 8 during the reign of the fourth republic through 1957.[10] In 1958 as the government transitioned, France earned a polity score of 0, because the conditions that existed at the time did not reflect the attributes of a democracy. From 1959 until the end of the conflict in 1962, France earned a score of 4. While technically considered an anocracy, this score suggests that the government possessed many of the characteristics of democracy.[11]
Democracies are more susceptible to terrorism because they are cost-sensitive and less likely to have extreme kinetic responses due to the demands of their domestic constituents and international partners.[12] France did not pull punches in its military response to the FLN, but it faced the consequences of that decision in domestic and international backlash to its practices in Algeria. Torture was widely used by the French, as were extra-judicial confinements and executions.[13] International opinion was widely against the French as people began to realize that their interrogation measures surpassed even those of the Nazi’s occupation.[14] France may have been considered an anocracy through the Algerian war’s resolution in 1962, but it maintained its sensitivity to constituent wishes that make democracies susceptible to insurgencies, and this ultimately led France to the bargaining table.
France’s state capacity in the 1950s and 1960s was large enough to allow it to cordon off the borders of Algeria, divide and police the country by sector, and restrict the flow of insurgents and weapons to the point that the FLN could not support its forces in Algeria. Based on the National Material Capabilities dataset, France possessed 3.30% of global state power in 1954, establishing it as the sixth strongest state at that time. This remained relatively constant throughout the Algerian war, dipping down in the later years of the conflict to 2.94% in 1962, making it the eighth strongest power in the world.[15]
Algeria was the jewel of the French empire, it was designated as a part of Metropolitan France since the 1800s and was France’s single most important market.[16] France was one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 1950s and furthermore had a first-rate military force, experienced from WWII and the First Indochina war. Considering France’s wealth and power, and combined with Algeria’s importance, it is no surprise that they committed 400,000 soldiers as well as large amounts of materiel to the fight against the FLN.[17] Notably, at the height of the United States’ war in Afghanistan, the number of U.S. soldiers in the region did not surpass 100,000.[18] France’s state capacity was one of its greatest strengths in the Algerian war and greatly reduced the FLN’s ability to make physical gains in the region. This factor played a large role in dampening the FLN’s effectiveness, and it is important to look at the other variables to understand how the FLN was successful in spite of France’s military ability.
The FLN’s resourcing proved to be one of its strengths and is largely responsible for their survival and eventual political victory. The FLN had strong support from outside nations that provided it with materiel resources and political support. Over time the French cut them off from many of these resources including weapons, recruits, and sanctuary; however, the Algerian independence movement had already reached critical mass on the international stage by that point and had cemented the FLN’s victory.
After the initial attacks on All Saints Day in 1954 when the FLN retreated to the countryside, they found critical outside support from multiple other Arab countries. Morocco and Tunisia played a large role by providing a sanctuary throughout the war for the FLN’s fighters and leadership.[19] Multiple members of the Arab league also provided funding, and Egypt and Syria helped arm and train the fighters.[20] Outside material support for the FLN was substantial, especially as they initiated the resistance; however, over time French forces were able to reduce the resources available to the insurgents through extensive border fences and patrolling. Along the Tunisian border in 1957, the French built the Morice line, and along the Moroccan border they built the similar Pedron line. These fences were reinforced with spotlights, minefields, and patrols, effectively cutting the flow of insurgents and supplies to Algeria.[21] The FLN attempted to break through these lines multiple times after their construction but were consistently beaten back. By the end of the war, there were still 20,000 fighters that had been forced to wait it out on the sidelines in Tunisia.[22]
France’s state capacity allowed them to achieve a stranglehold on the FLN’s resources, and combined with their overall military superiority, this allowed them to dominate the military fight under General Challe by mid-1960. The external support that proved invaluable here was the international political support that various Arab and Asian states provided, voicing concern over France’s imperialist actions in Algeria. Twenty-two African and Asian states introduced a request to the UN to make the Algerian question part of the General Assembly’s session in the late 1950s. Morocco and Tunisia were particularly supportive in international bodies, opening up their offices for bilateral peace talks between the FLN and French and aiding Algeria throughout the conflict.[23] The FLN’s materiel, moral, and political resources shaped their strategic environment and enabled them to survive the French military’s onslaught while simultaneously gaining international support on the global stage.
Strategy of Violence
The strategic environment set the conditions for the FLN to achieve independence, but it was the terrorist strategy that they aggressively pursued that actually opened the doors. Trinquier acknowledged as much, asserting that “The war in Indochina and the one in Algeria have demonstrated the basic weapon that permits our enemies to fight effectively with few resources and even to defeat a traditional army. This weapon is terrorism.”[24] The FLN used terrorism for several purposes, they used it to outbid their organizational rivals, intimidate the population in what Lieutenant Colonel Galula termed the “battle for silence,” provoke the French into mistakes and repression, attrit the French political will, and spread their message as propaganda.[25] Each of these strategies was successful in their own respective manner. Without outbidding rival groups, the FLN would have never been able to effectively organize against the French. Similarly, it was critical that the population supported the FLN for them to last as a movement. The two most critical strategies however were those of provocation and propaganda because they worked in tandem to advertise to the world the brutality of the French occupation and the spirit of Algerian independence; these two strategies ultimately achieved victory for the FLN.
Provocation was central to the FLN’s strategy from the beginning. They began pursuing provocation in 1955 when they realized its effectiveness in the Philippeville massacre, and heavily relied on it during the Battle for Algiers in 1957.[26] In a sense, the strategy backfired on them as the French reacted so strongly in Algiers as to effectively wipe out the insurgents living there. Regardless of this blunder however, the strategy achieved its goal of escalating the French response to alienate the Muslim population and, eventually, the international community. “During that period from 1956 to 1957 [in the Battle for Algiers], the FLN grew from having 50% of the population’s support to 95%.”[27] Propaganda was the second strategic aim of the FLN’s terrorism campaign. It was closely linked to their provocation but intended to bring attention to their cause with the attacks themselves, rather than waiting for the French response. Terrorism’s use as an act of propaganda led the FLN to realize that “a grenade or bomb in a café [in Algiers] would produce far more noise than an obscure ambush against French soldiers in the Ouarsenis Mountains.”[28] The propaganda was successful, with the issue of Algerian independence making it onto the agenda for the UN general assembly six times between 1954 and 1959.[29] Aided by several Arab countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan, the issue gained prominence in 1957 with the rise of the FLN and the onset of conflict in urban Algiers.[30]
The FLN were defeated in nearly every battle yet won the war for their independence through their effective use of terrorism to provoke the French and advertise their cause. They successfully matched their actions to their environment and won a political rather than a military victory as a result.
Discussion
The FLN were successful because they catered their strategy of violence to the unique strategic environment that the anti-colonial movement and France’s domestic situation created. France’s democratic features and its presence on the international stage put pressure on it to grant Algeria independence, especially considering the scrutiny they faced because of the methods by which the French military carried out the war. France’s state capacity allowed it to win militarily and mitigate the resources the FLN could bring to bear. This military power would have effectively destroyed a more traditional insurgency, but the use of terrorist cells kept the French off balance for much of the conflict. Overall, the most important resource the FLN received because of its value in achieving success was international, political support for Algeria’s independence that many nations provided. On the scale through which I am analyzing group success, the FLN were entirely successful because they achieved the goal of independence that they set out at the beginning of the conflict. This case study develops my first typology, that strong democracies are susceptible to terrorism. Strong democracies are able to fight well militarily but are weak politically, and terrorism preys on this weakness by skirting military victory and instead targeting political success.
LTTE VS SRI LANKA
Strategic Environment
The strategic environment that the LTTE encountered in Sri Lanka was characterized by a security focused anocratic government that proved resilient to terrorist demands but had weak control over the country. The Tamil Tigers additionally had broad domestic and international support via the large Tamil diaspora that allowed them to develop substantial conventional capabilities to the point of challenging Sri Lankan dominance across the island.
The Sri Lankan government was by official accounts a democracy at this time and had been since independence from Britain in 1948. Sri Lanka scores a 5 on the Polity Project’s scale for most of the conflict (1983-2000 and 2003-2005), making it an anocracy.[31] It had the primary components of a democracy but also maintained some autocratic features, primarily its heavy-handed policing. Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which was passed in 1979, enabled police to “exercise broad powers to search, arrest, and detain terrorist suspects without charges.”[32] ReliefWeb, a humanitarian organization created by the UN, asserts that the PTA “has been used for over 40 years to enable prolonged arbitrary detention, extract false confessions through torture, and target minority communities and political dissidents in Sri Lanka.”[33]
An LTTE bicycle infantry platoon north of Kilinochchi in 2004 (Wikimedia)
Sri Lanka’s Preventing Terrorism Act demonstrates that, even though it has many features of a democracy, Sri Lanka is not susceptible to terrorism for two reasons. First, the PTA in and of itself is a tool of repression; the first argument for terrorism affecting democracies is based on the idea that democracies will not go to the same lengths to target terrorists, but this is clearly not the case here. Second, the UN and international bodies have criticized Sri Lanka’s use of the PTA for decades and there has been little meaningful reform. This indicates that Sri Lanka is not open to changing its domestic policy based on international opinion and shows how unlikely it was to reform or change its behavior while it was combatting the LTTE. Sri Lanka was not vulnerable to terrorism for much the same reason that they would not reform the PTA – the government was not responsive to outside constituents for adjusting its policies.
While government type did not play a large role in the strategic environment, Sri Lanka’s weak state capacity did, allowing the Tamil Tigers to build up strong forces, challenge the military conventionally, and control large swathes of the island for years at a time. As late as 2006 for example, only a few years prior to the LTTE’s ultimate demise, Prabhakaran had de facto control of nearly a third of Sri Lanka’s coast and a quarter of its land.[34] In 1983, at the onset of the conflict, Sri Lanka was the 74th strongest state in the world with 0.10% of world power.[35] In 2009, when the government finally defeated the LTTE, they stood as the 59th strongest state after more than doubling their share of world power to 0.21%. Especially at the beginning of the conflict, Sri Lanka’s military was more for show than anything else.[36] Due to their incompetence in conducting effective military operations, the Sri Lankan government fell back on indiscriminate brutality to fight the insurgents.[37] This indiscriminate violence was particularly key to building the strategic environment that the LTTE succeeded in for so many years because it sharply increased the grievances of the Tamil population.
Sri Lanka improved its military power as the conflict dragged on, increasing defense spending by almost a third between 1995 and 1996 and purchasing modern equipment from Israel, China, and others.[38] Their upgrades paid off, allowing them to more effectively combat the LTTE in the last few years of the conflict. The government successfully turned around its military by increasing its size and investing extensively in contemporary equipment in the latter years of the conflict, but Sri Lanka’s ineptitude early on allowed the Tamil Tigers to create a strong organization that proved resilient to the military’s improvements.
The Tamil Tigers resourced materiel and finances to sustain their war effort by networking through a broad Tamil diaspora, appealing to outside states and humanitarian NGOs, and raiding Sri Lankan military bases to steal equipment. These three methods in tandem allowed them to sustain their operations and grow into one of the largest and most capable insurgent forces in history. In those countries that had high numbers of Tamils, the LTTE created front organizations used to funnel money back to Sri Lanka.[39] The LTTE also relied on direct military support and sanctuary from Tamils living in Tamil Nadu, India. This population provided recruits as well as a space to train cadres.[40] India itself supplied the LTTE with weapons at the beginning of the conflict too, eager to prevent other states from stepping in and establishing themselves so close to the southern tip of India.[41]
Beyond appealing directly to their ethnic brothers and sisters for aid, the Tamil Tigers leveraged the image of oppression that they created internationally to bring in humanitarian aid and political support through western NGOs, all while aggressively and proactively fighting the government. They were able to pull together large groups of Tamils to protest and build political support in established countries across the world.[42] When crowdsourcing weapons and equipment failed to suffice, the Tamil Tigers resorted to raiding military bases and stealing equipment to bolster their military.[43]
The LTTE’s strategic environment, consisting of a weak yet resilient and oppressive domestic government, as well as bountiful resources, was extraordinarily accommodating in their pursuit of Tamil Eelam. Had the Tigers played their cards right, they may have achieved that goal; however, their own military strategy and political conduct thwarted their attempts at separatism.
Strategy of Violence
The LTTE’s strategy of violence was sufficient to survive long-term conflict with the Sri Lankan military, but they failed to achieve decisive victory and adapt to increasing government strength towards the end of the conflict. The LTTE combined terrorist attacks with guerrilla and conventional style warfare to build international legitimacy, provoke the Sri Lankan government, and ultimately try to defeat it militarily. In the end, the Tigers were unsuccessful because they had insufficient force to achieve decisive victory while they fought a disadvantageous strategy of conventional conflict.
The Tigers’ terrorist attacks prioritized intimidation, provocation, and spoiling methods to build popular support for a sustained war. Their intimidation of uncooperative populations is well recorded, the LTTE on multiple occasions massacred non-Tamil people with the intent of asserting their dominance in various regions. Provocation attacks were utilized primarily at the beginning of the conflict with the goal of “provoking COIN force overreaction.”[44] They did not need to focus on these attacks for long however as the incompetent military embraced indiscriminate retaliation. They also used spoiling attacks throughout the conflict to prevent the creation of peace deals that would have drawn moderate supporters away from supporting the LTTE.[45] The LTTE used terrorism to effectively achieve tactical and operational goals; however, their failure to leverage guerrilla and conventional attacks to meet strategic goals facilitated their defeat.
The LTTE’s use of guerrilla and conventional tactics varied throughout the war, and while they achieved battlefield victories, they were never able to solidify those into strategic gains. The Tigers’ use of guerrilla warfare began at the onset of the conflict when they ambushed thirteen Sri Lankan soldiers, triggering ethnic riots and initiating the twenty-six-year war. They used guerrilla methods to great success throughout the conflict and supplemented those with conventional military operations as well.
The split between a conventional and guerrilla structure held for the majority of the conflict. It was towards the end, when the Tigers stopped functioning as guerrillas and operated instead as an entirely conventional force, that they were defeated.[46] Mao Tse-Tung emphasized the importance of not establishing conventional methods until the insurgency has reached the capacity to do so, and the LTTE’s failure to adhere to this rule foreshadowed their defeat.[47] The LTTE’s methods were individually successful for many years, but Prabhakaran made the crucial mistake of underestimating his opponent and failing to adapt as the stronger Sri Lankan military gradually defeated the LTTE in the final campaign from 2007-2009.
Discussion
The Tamil Tigers developed a system to bring in resources that enabled them to fight effectively against the disorganized Sri Lankan government for twenty-six years. At the strategic level however, the LTTE failed to achieve decisive results and turn battlefield success into political achievement. Sri Lanka’s anocracy and many democratic features belied their resilience to terrorist demands, clear in their enactment and sustainment of the repressive PTA. But while the government was not weak to terrorism by nature, Sri Lanka’s small state capacity created greed and grievance, making terrorism more attractive. The LTTE’s broad resource network increased their capabilities but could not make up for their ultimately fatal military strategy. This case study establishes the second typology that I will address. Insurgents facing governments with autocratic features who are nearly militarily equivalent can find success by prioritizing guerrilla warfare. Autocratic governments are not susceptible to terrorist demands, but when they are weak, they can be more easily impacted by guerrilla violence. The LTTE remained alive and found success when they focused on guerrilla warfare, it was when they switched to conventionally focused fighting that they lost the war. Prabhakaran’s refusal to accept the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord’s assurance of joint administration of the north and east provinces, as well as his not accepting the 2002 agreements’ acceptance of de facto LTTE control, are reminiscent of a gambler who does not know how to stop when he is ahead.[48] His insistence on complete military victory coupled with an ultimately mistaken conventional strategy led the LTTE to defeat.
CONCLUSION: RECONCILING THE OPPOSING RESULTS OF THE FLN AND LTTE
Insurgents’ strategies of violence are crucial, and to achieve success they must effectively tailor their use of violence to their respective strategic environment. The FLN adapted their strategy of violence to the strategic environment they faced. While France far surpassed them in military ability, terrorism allowed for the FLN to leverage the French people and the international community to pressure France’s government into granting Algeria independence. The LTTE alternatively had an extremely conducive environment for achieving success: a repressive state that increased popular grievances, a weak central government and military, and an abundance of resources from a broad diaspora and various states and non-state actors. Nevertheless, the Tigers failed to achieve decisive military victory, adapt to increasing government strength, or solidify what battlefield gains they did make into political victories.
These case studies strongly support my theory on the relationship between the strategic environment, insurgent strategies of violence, and resulting success or failure. They also support the development of two typologies for insurgent success. Insurgents who face a strong democratic country can effectively respond by utilizing terrorism to influence various government constituencies and achieve political success as the FLN did. Alternatively, those who face a materially equivalent government that has autocratic features can most effectively fight back through guerrilla warfare. Terrorism in this second case often fails to achieve larger goals, and conventional conflict is still out of the question. The LTTE made the mistake of prioritizing conventional fighting towards the end of the conflict and lost to a numerically and materially superior Sri Lankan military. Strategic environments change, and while insurgents themselves play a role in setting what that environment looks like, the most significant factor they can affect is how they conduct their campaign of violence. Insurgents can achieve success by matching their strategy of violence to their strategic environment in line with the typologies I have outlined and based on enduring themes of insurgent warfare.
Looking into the future, it is critical to build more typologies for insurgent success in order to understand how states can achieve the upper hand. Most important however is conceptualizing how insurgents successfully relate their strategy of violence to their environment. Had the United States, for example, spent more time analyzing what victory looked like for the Taliban and how they planned on achieving it based on their environment, they may have bolstered America’s own strategy. Sun Tzu’s words are meaningful here “know the enemy and know yourself.”[49] The historical record always has a peculiar way of informing the future.
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