Guerilla

Etymology

The same word coming to him from the Castillan meaning small war initially described the Tactique S to resist the mode imposed in Spain by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Political war

The guerilla is primarily a political war since his Spanish modern origin in the fight against the Napoleonean invasion. Then, its operative field exceeds the territorial limits of a conventional war of territorial conquest to even enter the political entity: “Polikon Zoon” of Aristote.

It is with the wars of the French revolution and the First Empire that this phenomenon was going to know a major historical turning point. The guerillas become then of true strategies politico-soldiers, strongly marked ideologically, generally “on the right” because of importance of the religious motivation and their opposition to the French Republic (Chouannerie in the Vendée in other) or to the Empire.

Throughout the 19th century, this tendency to ideologisation continues, in particular in Latin America. An ideological slip “towards the left” is then felt partially. It is during the same period that this ideology politico-soldier meets an artistic and literary current: romanticism. Consequently, these two movements will not cease any more being influenced mutually.

Indeed, the human one is regarded the main objective in a political war and as the military target of the guerilla. The human one has its central point criticizes and neuralgic in the spirit. This is illustrated in the currency of UNESCO: “As it is in the spirit of the men that is born the war, it is in the spirit of the men that we must set up the ramparts of peace” () the guerilla is a war of conquest of the heart and spirit. When the heart and the spirit are touched, the social animal (Politkon Zoon) is acquired without necessarily receiving only one ball or only one glare of shell.

The guerilla is born and develops in a political environment and through a constant combat to control the field of mentalté political inherent in the social animal which is the human one. The human community constitutes the environment and the context which direct and delimit the configurations and the possible activities of the guerilla, from the point of view of the Théorie of the contexts into ecopolitic of a ecosystemic Approche. It is in this that the expression of Mao Zedong of the “guerilla in the population, as a fish in water” becomes clear and understandable in its width and its depth. Indeed, a guerilla conquering is that which corresponds to an appropriate response with the context socio-policy and the physical environment. Indeed, the war and the guerilla are forms of communication in which various recipients are immersed. It is a form of relation directed towards a certain goal.

The design of the guerilla as a political struggle placed the psychological operations at the row of the deciding factors to obtain favorable results. Then, the target to reach guerillas is the heart and the spirit of the population, all the population, our troops, the troops opposing and especially the wait and see civil population whose adhesion or desertion makes the difference between the victory or the defeat of the guerilla. Second world war at time present, the illustrative examples are very numerous.

The history of the Armée Popular Vietnamese is a emblemaic illustration of this design of the guerilla like political war, of the birth with the “Brigade of Propaganda Armed” until heavy divisions with the great battles supported by the local militia with the peasants out of weapons which form the base of the regional troops. The guerilla is not only the traps and ambushes of these peasants out of weapons of the combatants of the shade.

Guerilla and Propaganda

The nature and the environment of the guerilla do not allow psychological operations by media of mass high or average technology, like the cinema, the radio and television. By the conquest of the heart and spirit, the guerilla refers much more to the direct human contacts of the “epidemic propagation” gradually on the ground, like a contagion to wake up the consciences, rather than with a “irradiation” starting from a center with media of mass between people who do not know each other and do not recognize themselves. An example of “epidemic propagation” is the rumor which is spread gradually, like a contagion, between people who know each other and recognize type “somebody who saw somebody who saw the bear”. The rumor spreads a “truth” truer than the “veracious truth”, like showed it Edgar Morin and its team with the “Rumor of Orleans” of 1968 when young women were captured for the “draft of white”, according to this rumor. Even if there were no disappearance announced to the police force, it were that the police force was accessory, in the blow of this traffic, according to this eodemic propagation of the rumor. This veracious truth of the rumor resisted any scientific validation by showing accessory science, by inventing even a submarine going up the Loire naviguable only by flat-bottomed barges and with weak draft.

The individual political conscience of the guerilla and the reasons of the fight are as important as the aptitude for the combat. It is the Duty and To want Psychological warfare, compared to the Capacity and To know of hardware and the expertise soldiers. This political conscience and this motivation are made possible by:

the development of the potential of fight of the guerilla at the same time as the reason of this fight and the motivation to fight.

recognition by the guerilla itself of the vital bond with the population whose support is essential for survival, the development and the reproduction of the two parts. The failure of the guerilla of Che Guevara in Bolivia seemed to be ascribable to the rupture of this bond with the population.

the development of this bond includes/understands the confidence of the population in the guerilla as a big factor of the insurrectionary change which is the psychological base for policies installation, after small victories in small victories. Thus, the “released” zones become small-scale models of the future life in the promised company.

the development gradually of this bond of confidence in the guerilla in the rebuilding of the country, the local scales to the national scales, small victories in small victories, zones “released” in zones “released” in the course of the war of liberation. In the Wars of Indo-China, these were the “parallel hierarchies” clandestine which made lose Indo-China with the French, according to Bernard B. Fall, and Vietnam with American. During the Second world war, the administration gaullist could set up these administrative parallel hierarchies in competition with the French State of Vichy.

the promotion and the valorization of the participation of the guerilla and the population in the civic businesses of the national plans of rebuilding.

The development, promotion and valorization are based on the capacity of the guerilla to persuade the population in meetings in face-to-face discussion of the group dynamic, at the local level of the small units for the propagation of the rumor gradually in order to obtain the support active of the population, essence and vital for success of the guerilla. With this persuation in the promise of best dissuasion in the promise from worst is allied with public executions, cruel and ostentatious of the “traitors” and “collaborators”. It was the fact also of French “Resistance” during the occupation Nazi, as in any guerilla.

Too much often, we perceive the guerilla only from the point of view of the tactical combat. It is a fatal error and extremely dangerous for the governments which faced this guerilla with the “special forces” of commandos. These governments lost all while being mistaken in war and while being unaware of (as well in the French significance “not to know” as in the English significance “not to want to know'”) as the guerilla is a political war and than the goal of the guerilla either policy whose armed struggle is only instrumental. This armed struggle is only one of the six pillars (cf Thomas Edward Lawrence) of the same height and of the same robustness to support all the building of the guerilla. There is no priority and of importance particular of each one of these pillars in the whole ecosystemic of the context socio-policy and the physical environment. The solidity of a chain is that of the weakest link.

Forsaking the armed struggle with the profit of active non-violence in Indian philosophy, the political war of independence of India indeed was a guerilla of Gandhi. In its objective to achieve a political goal, it directed and delimited the possible strategies of confrontation, negotiation and claim which were spread in tactics of description of the exploitations and oppressions with the local use, regional national and international. This description of oppression made it possible to widen and to deepen population supports it. The British Empire, on “which the sun never lay down”, was shaken by this guerilla carried out not the poor where each repression of the British Administration against civic disobedience showed how much this British Administration was bad and any more its place did not deserve.

Tactical S

The tactics of guerilla are founded on the information (in the Anglo-Saxon military significance of knowledge of the internal states and the entourage, as in " Service" intelligence;), the Ambush, the fraud (according to Sun Tzu where the war is the art of the fraud, in contrast with the unlimited use of the rough force at Clausewitz) and the Sabotage. They aim at destabilizing the authority established by long confrontations of weak intensity (from where the modern denomination of basic Guerre intensity ). In the case of an unpopular foreign occupant, the recourse to the guerilla can make prohibitory the cost of maintenance of a presence colonial and involve his withdrawal.

The guerilla carried out against of the occupying powers must save the civilians as far as possible. By this tactic, it makes sure of the support of the population. The civilians are the first victims of reprisals for Collaboration. Such crimes are condemned by the command or a court of the guerilla. On the other hand, the situations of Civil war lead sometimes the two camps to make atrocities against the civilians.

Because they are very few and can hide in the population, the guerillas are regarded as Terroriste S by their adversaries. They are likely not to be seen recognizing the statute of combatant. The first additional protocol of 1977 of the Geneva Conventions (which as well governs the wars against a foreign or colonial power, the authoritarian regimes or between states) recognize like combatant that which, because of the nature of the conflict, does not carry a uniform as a long time as it openly carries weapons during military operations. That could give to the guerillas without uniform a statute of combatant in the countries signatories.

The guerilla is divided into two principal categories: Urban guerilla warfare and rural. In both cases, it is pressed on sympathizers who supply it and inform it. The guerillas rural operate in areas favourable with the covers and the dissimulation, in particular in dense forest and mountainous. The Urban guerilla warfare is melted in the population but is dependant on the assistance of townsmen. A foreign assistance in the form of soldiers, weapons, sanctuaries, or at least, by expressions of sympathy increases the effectiveness of a movement of guerilla. This foreign interference can be used by the authorities in place to inspire a nationalist feeling with the population and to discredit the guerilla.

The theory Maoïste of the war of the people is divided into three phases. With the first phase, the guerillas obtain the support of the population through attacks against the governmental machine and by the diffusion of Propagande. With the second phase, the rise to power of the attacks is done on the military capacity and the vital institutions. With the third phase, the conventional combat is employed to take the cities, to overflow the government and to control the country.

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