The Ethics of Insurgency: Just Guerrilla Warfare

Writing in 1976, Walter Laqueur confidently predicted that guerrilla warfare was nearing its end. Post–World War II wars of decolonization had wracked the international system but would wane in the years following the ratification of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions. By 1998, however, Laqueur reversed course and noted a resurgence of small wars in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Chechnya, and the Middle East (Laqueur 1998: ix–xiii, 404–409). This trend had only intensified in the years following the breakup of the Soviet Union. The 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) disintegrated, and decades of terror, civil unrest, and open warfare in Gaza and the West Bank ensued. American and Coalition forces waged war in Afghanistan against a Taliban enemy that claimed to fight foreign intervention and a corrupt central government. The 1994 Chechen war turned out to be only the first, while the second (1999–2009) proved a far more bloody and vicious affair that still left Chechnya’s demand for independence unaddressed. In the Western Sahara, Polisario guerrillas and Moroccan forces have locked horns since Spain departed Africa in the mid-1960s. This conflict continues to simmer unresolved. In short, guerrilla organizations are still very active. And while some reports suggest a steady decline in intrastate violence, there is no doubt that new wars brew as citizens rise up against autocratic regimes in North Africa and the Middle East (Human Security Report Project 2013). On the other hand, some conflicts, thought intractable when Laqueur wrote, resolved after prolonged guerrilla war. Thanks to international military intervention, East Timor finally rid itself of Indonesia in 2002, while NATO made it possible for Kosovo to achieve de facto independence from Serbia in 2008. In 2011, following fighting that caused some of the worst casualties since World War II, South Sudan gained independence from its northern neighbor.