Understanding the Guerrilla

Chris Shepherd

May 2005

Nation Building Seminar

“Analogically, the guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog’s disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with. If the war continues long enough-this is the theory-the dog succumbs to exhaustion and anemia without ever having found anything on which to close his jaws or to rake with his claws.”

The War of the Flea-Robert Taber

I. Introduction

After winning the two World Wars, the United States rose from regional player to global superpower in a bipolar world. At the turn of the last century, the U.S. was the last man standing, victorious in the war of ideologies between communism and liberal democracy. With the possible exception of the Roman Empire, the rise of the U.S. is the story of the greatest, the wealthiest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced civilization ever to exist.

In spite of this superiority, the U.S. consistently loses wars to numerically and technologically inferior guerrilla opponents. For example, the U.S. was defeated in Vietnam, Somalia, and Lebanon.[1] More importantly, it is likely that guerrilla style warfare will dominate the conflicts of the twenty-first century. The past successes of guerrilla tactics against the U.S., its low cost to the guerrilla combined with increasing global poverty, and the futility of facing American armies in conventional warfare, all point to the continued recurrence of guerrilla wars.

Sun Tzu advised that the first step to winning any war is to “know the enemy.”[2] In an effort to help prevent such defeats in the future this paper is devoted to understanding the guerrilla militarily and psychologically.

Little practical instruction on guerrilla warfare exists. Most of the existing literature either addresses guerrilla high command regarding big picture strategy issues or is so sterilely academic that it is of little use to the guerrilla Lieutenant or Captain in urgent need of tactical insight. There are some exceptions: Che Guevara’s “Guerrilla Warfare” thoroughly addresses tactics, some of the studies and manuals published by the American military, “The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” and “The Other Side of the Mountain” a compilation of accounts of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from the small unit leader’s perspective, and Robert Asprey’s work “War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History,” are a few examples of the most helpful literature.

II. Basic Principles of Guerrilla War

What is guerrilla warfare? Guerrilla warfare is a type of asymmetric warfare in which a technologically and numerically inferior force uses improvised small-scale tactics of harassment against a conventional military enemy, in coordination with a larger political-military strategy.[3]

Along with terrorism and revolution, guerrilla war falls under the umbrella of insurgency. The main difference among the three is the degree of popular support needed to sustain each.[4] Terrorism requires only a few hard-core adherents. On the other extreme, revolution requires the most popular support; guerrilla warfare lies in between.[5] Although insurgency does not necessarily progress one by one through these stages, the continuum is a helpful conceptually.

Far from being a new phenomenon, guerilla warfare is nearly as old as foreign invasion or domestic oppression: in 512 BCE, the Persian King Darius was defeated when he fielded his well equipped conventional army against the guerrilla Scythians,[6] Alexander the Great was harassed by guerrillas on his way to India, and was forced to adapt his tactics to counter his unorthodox guerrilla enemy,[7] even the U.S. owes a debt to guerrilla warfare. American guerrillas used the same basic concepts to plague the lumbering British as Spanish guerrillas used against the Romans.

a. The Guerrilla’s Central Tactics

Most guerrilla battlefield doctrine can be traced to the two inherent characteristics of almost any guerrilla movement. First, the guerrilla, at least initially, fights from a position of weakness. Second, the guerrilla’s goal is primarily political rather than military.

i. Guerrilla Warfare is the “weapon of the weak”[8]

“The weaker the forces that are at the disposal of the supreme commander, the more appealing the use of cunning becomes.”[9]

Guerrillas fight guerrilla war because they have few other options. Conducting a traditional conventional war is futile; revolution is not yet possible, and terrorism, for all its utility, is a last resort that could do more harm than good. Without a congress to appropriate war funds, or access to the latest technology, guerrillas are forced to either transform weakness into strength or become extinct. This gives birth to an arsenal of guerrilla tactics and weapons characterized by second rate, and sometimes primitive, technology, but abundant cunning and resourcefulness: rocks instead of real shrapnel, punji sticks instead of land mines, sewers instead of bunkers, the Molotov instead of cruise missiles. This hunger forces the guerrilla to be cunning while the counter guerilla, because of his abundance of resources, risks martial atrophy. Night vision, missiles that strike from thousands of miles away with pinpoint accuracy, and numbing firepower go to the wealthy; but the night, the element of surprise, and audacity, are free to the most cunning.

1. Guerrilla Weakness Forces Reliance on Terrain

In many theaters, few things are cheaper and more readily available than favorable terrain. Since the earliest wars, favorable terrain has been the friend of the weak. In 480 B.C. 10,000 Greeks used a narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae to hold off a Persian force of 250,000.[10] The narrow bottleneck in the mountains negated the Persian advantage in numbers.[11] In 60 A.D. a desperately outnumbered band of 10,000 Roman soldiers routed a horde of 230,000 rebellious British. The Roman commander neutralized the Briton’s numerical advantage by picking an elevated cone shaped clearing surrounded by thick forest to turn and face the British horde.[12] In the same way, jungles, thick forests, narrow access pathways through mountains, and urban buildings offer excellent opportunities for the modern guerrilla.

In addition to the natural advantages of terrain, guerrilla fighters have intimate knowledge of the land,[13] and because the guerrilla chooses when and where to fight, counter guerrilla forces need not be attacked unless the geography favors an engagement.

2. Dispersion and Concentration

Because the guerrilla is usually outnumbered and outgunned it should not present a massed target to the counter guerrilla. Tactically, this characteristic manifests itself in the use of dispersion. Dispersion is essential to the guerrilla defensively;[14] forcing the counter guerrilla to disperse is important to the guerrilla offensively. The guerrilla’s survival depends on being dispersed, blending in with the population, making it as difficult as possible for the counter guerrilla to engage him unless it is on the guerrilla’s terms. Offensively, the guerrilla forces the counter guerrilla to disperse by engaging him throughout the theater, rather than in one region of the theater.[15]

Analogically, the counter guerrilla faced with the task of rooting out a dispersed guerrilla force is in the same predicament as the doctor trying to cure a cancer. If all the malignant cells could be separated from the healthy cells, the doctor could easily excise them. Because the malignancy is dispersed throughout the otherwise healthy body of the patient, the doctor must attack the cancer at the expense of healthy surrounding tissue and sometimes at the expense of the patient’s life.

There is a tension between dispersion and concentration. While dispersal is the safest state for the guerrilla, the essence of warfare is the use of locally superior concentration of power against an opposing force of inferior power. Guerrilla armies who lack the audacity to swiftly concentrate and take advantage of the inevitable vulnerability, face demoralization and a slow death.[16]

ii. The Guerrilla’s Goal is Primarily Political

In T.E. Lawrence’s view, only a third of guerrilla warfare is military. And the nature of even this military aspect “depend[s] fundamentally on the political two-thirds.”[17] One way to understand Lawrence of Arabia’s theory is to divide a guerilla war into three sub wars. First, a war attacking the morale of the counter guerilla army and its regime’s political will to fight, second, the war to win the hearts and minds of the people, and finally, the actual contest of arms between guerrilla and counter guerrilla. In some cases, a fourth sub war is fought, the battle to influence international opinion.[18] The over arching goals of attacking the counter guerrilla’s political will to fight and winning the people’s support, dictate the conduct of the actual contest of arms.

III. Is Guerilla War Merely a Phase Before Conventional War?

Almost without exception, all guerrillas and guerrilla theorists agree that modern guerrilla warfare is a temporary means to an ultimate political goal: independence, a change in government, or the withdrawal of foreign forces. Whether guerrilla war leads directly to the desired political goal or is merely a transition phase to conventional war is the subject of debate.

At one end of the spectrum, the founding fathers of guerrilla war, Che Guevara (“Che) and Mao Tse-tung (“Mao”), insist that guerrilla war does not lead directly to the desired political change but is rather a stepping-stone to conventional armies, which in turn lead directly to the desired political change. Mao wrote that insurgency progresses through three stages. In the first phase the insurgents concentrate primarily on building political strength; military action is limited to surgical politically motivated strikes.[19] In the second phase the insurgents consolidate, set up bases, and conduct more extensive military operations.[20] In the final phase, the insurgents employ regular forces in a final conventional offensive against the government.[21] Che agreed saying, “it is clear that guerrilla warfare is a phase that does not afford in itself opportunities to arrive at complete victory. It is one of the initial phases of warfare and will develop continuously until the guerrilla army in its steady growth acquires the characteristics of a regular army.”[22]

Mao rose from the faceless anonymity of the peasant caste to become ruler of one of the largest nations in the world; he was arguably the most influential political philosopher of his time. At one point, Che’s guerrilla force was decimated to 16 guerrillas with 12 weapons between them.[23] Through iron discipline, determination, and a natural gift for tactics, the doctor, along with Castro, recovered from almost imminent defeat and conquered Cuba.

Mao and Che are the founding fathers of modern guerrilla theory, but they are not gods and they were not infallible. Their insistence that guerrilla war must necessarily lead to conventional war in order to achieve a political goal is dead wrong and an anachronism. At most, guerrilla warfare as a phase on the way to conventional war is the exception rather than the rule.

The Cuban Revolution, in spite of what Che writes in his treatise on guerrilla war, never matured into conventional war. The only battle of the whole revolution resembling conventional war occurred in December, 1958, over control of the city of Santa Clara in central Cuba.[24] Soon after the battle, on New Year’s Day, Batista fled Cuba. His army subsequently disintegrated and his regime folded. The insurgency never had the opportunity to change into a true conventional war; it merely incorporated conventional tactics into what was otherwise a guerrilla movement.

Mao’s insurgency did progress through his three stages ultimately reaching conventional war. After many years of guerrilla war, the Communists eventually smashed the Nationalists with conventional tactics culminating in the battle of Hwai-hai.[25] Still, Mao was a prisoner of his own experience. He assumed that because his insurgency reached conventional war that it was a necessary progression for all insurgencies.

The reality is that the Chinese progression is an anomaly. Around and after the years of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, guerrilla wars that never matured into a full conventional conflict have regularly achieved victory by doing one, all, or a combination of the following: (1) demoralizing the counter guerrilla army to such an extent that it surrenders en masse, it becomes ineffective militarily, the regime withdraws it, or that the army stages a coup,[26] (2) exhausting the counter guerrilla regime’s will to fight,[27] and (3) inciting revolution or uprising by winning the people’s active support through a coherent political message and an effective dissemination of that message to the intended audience.[28]

a. A Better Approach: Conventional Tactics as an Option within Guerrilla War

This paper advocates a third way. One that is in between the two extremes of, on one hand, guerrilla war as a purgatory on the road to conventional war, and on the other hand, a war of exclusively guerrilla tactics. Instead, guerrillas should wage a primarily guerrilla war, but should, if profitable given the totality of the circumstances, also incorporate conventional tactics. This approach discards Che and Mao’s rigid model of a necessary progression through watertight compartments to ultimate conventional war while salvaging some its more fluid features.[29]

I use the North Vietnamese “Tet Offensive” (“Tet”) as a model and starting point to outline the considerations that should be weighed in deciding whether and how to adopt conventional tactics. The next section sets out a factored analysis for deciding whether conventional tactics should be incorporated into a guerrilla insurgency.

In a subsequent section, this paper applies the analysis in context, examining the Kosovo Liberation Army’s, (“KLA”), decision to adopt conventional tactics in their July 1998 offensive and testing the proposes analysis.

b. The Tet Offensive-Political Brilliance, Martial Suicide

During the 1968 Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese temporarily abandoned guerrilla tactics in favor of a conventional offensive. A force of about 60,000 North Vietnamese struck over 100 South Vietnamese towns.[30] In some areas, the North Vietnamese held territory for as long as a month before they reverted back to guerrilla tactics.[31]

In a purely military sense, the offensive was an insurgent disaster, and an American victory. General Vo Nguyen Giap (“Giap”) and his Vietcong (“VC”) had lost over 50,000 men; over twice that number were wounded or taken prisoner. General Westmoreland (“Westmoreland”) lost only 4,500 U.S. and South Vietnamese Army (“ARVN”) troops, and over 16,000 wounded, well below what Giap had intended to inflict.[32]

Nevertheless, within a year of Tet, the U.S. had begun to withdraw forces from Vietnam. Tet has gone down in history as the paradigmatic example of a successful guerrilla offensive. How could such a disastrous military campaign be such a brilliant success?

Tet was successful because its objectives were political. On the high end, the Communists hoped it would incite a general uprising in the South; at the very least the offensive was designed to exhaust the American will to fight, both at home, within the army, and within the administration.[33] Although the uprising never materialized, the Communists did achieve their other objectives. Shocked and confused Americans watched an enemy their administration had declared hamstrung, carry the fight not only straight into the heart of Saigon, but to the doors of the American embassy. The administration’s credibility plummeted, and with it, the morale of its soldiers and its citizens’ political will to fight.

c. Factors to Weigh in Deciding Whether a Guerrilla Movement Should Adopt Conventional Tactics

What lessons and considerations can be extrapolated from Tet’s planning and execution?

The first factors is an assessment of whether the guerrilla force is ready to launch a conventional offensive. This is a double inquiry. First, the guerrilla force, before the major conventional offensive, should at least be battle hardened. Ideally they should have some experience in conventional tactics. For the Vietnamese, the Americans were the latest in a long line of would-be occupiers. The generation before had fought the French, and the generation before that, the Chinese. Fighting was in their blood and it showed on the battlefield. In addition, the Communists even had some experience with conventional tactics. Months before Tet, moving in regiments and even divisions, the North Vietnamese launched a conventional offensive against American outposts in central Vietnam.[34]

Second, history shows that guerrilla forces suffer heavy casualties when they adopt conventional tactics.[35] A conventional offensive means heavy casualties. Can guerrilla morale absorb such a loss? The North Vietnamese lost over half of their attacking force.[36] Not only were losses heavy, they were concentrated among the leadership.[37] VC troops were “disenchanted by the realization that, despite their enormous sacrifices during the campaign, they still faced a long struggle ahead. Official report express alarm at the erosion of morale.”[38] Only a firmly rooted movement can afford such risk or absorb such loss.

After assessing the guerrilla force, assess the counter guerrilla force and its sponsor regime. A conventional strike is most effective when the counter guerrilla army is over-extended. On the eve of Tet, the VC had fought the Americans to a stalemate.[39] The Americans were too dispersed to cripple the North Vietnamese, and Giap estimated that the U.S. would not overextend itself any further either in men or resources.[40] Like one last good chop on a nearly felled tree, the conventional strike, if not the coup de grace, may at least usher in the beginning of the end.

Bold conventional offensives should be timed to capitalize on discontent in the counter guerrilla regime. The North Vietnamese did this by attacking the administration’s credibility. Tet was launched on the heels of great optimism from American leaders. Westmoreland’s assurances to the American public illustrate the administration’s prevailing optimism at the time: “the enemy’s hopes are bankrupt,” and of, “the beginning of a great defeat for the enemy.”[41]

Assess what effect a conventional offensive will have on the domestic population. According to General Tran Do, co-architect of the Tet offensive and one of the North’s most celebrated soldiers,[42] the “main objective [was to] spur uprisings throughout the south.”[43] Communist leadership was convinced that Tet could capitalize on anti-American sentiment in the South by demonstrating not only that the Americans were vulnerable, but also that a Communist victory was a strong possibility. Specifically, one way in which this was achieved was to make a spectacular attack on the American embassy in downtown Saigon; the one place where the Americans should have been invulnerable.[44] By hitting the American embassy, cities, and towns, the communists planted the seed of doubt in the minds of the people of South Vietnam: if American troops were vulnerable in their own embassy, how could they hope to dominate the countryside?

The Communists also hoped to benefit diplomatically from Tet; they predicted that at the very least, confronted with an undeniable show of Communist power and American vulnerability, President Johnson would begin negotiating.[45] The timing was no coincidence; the Vietnamese used the same tactic against the French when they launched a conventional war timed to improve their leverage at the Geneva Conference.[46]

A general consideration, one that does not fit when applied to Vietnam, but should be noted, is whether the counter guerrilla is purely a domestic regime or purely a foreign invader. Unlike a domestic counter guerrilla, in most cases involving a foreign invading counter guerrilla, conventional tactics should not be necessary. Rather, the mere survival of guerrilla forces and their ability to keep the war going for several years, exhausts a foreign invading counter guerrilla regime’s will to fight and is sufficient to achieve its withdrawal. This is because, in a case where the counter guerrilla is a domestic regime, the counter guerrilla’s investment in the status quo is much stronger than if the counter guerrilla were an invading army. The domestic counter guerrilla has family, position, influence, and property at stake; he is less likely to ask himself, “Why am I here?” In the case of defeat, there is no retreat to a home country; exile or melting away are his only options. Exile means abandoning all hard assets. Melting away after being on the losing side of a civil war subjects the counter guerilla and his family to the avarice and perfidy that sometimes accompanies the shift of power from the ruling faction to the formerly powerless insurgent. Such a counter guerrilla finds himself in a position similar to the Muslim army invading the Iberian peninsula in 711 C.E. After crossing the Gibraltar Tarik Ibn Ziad, a berber from north Africa and the Muslim commander, burned the ships he had used to cross the Strait. The tactical effect on morale of foreclosing a retreat helped the Moors conquer the Iberian peninsula and remain there for the next 700 years. Spartacus did something similar. Just before a showdown with the Romans, he dismounted his horse and killed it on the spot.

Therefore, the political will of a purely domestic counter guerrilla is the more durable and therefore less attractive target.

IV. Guerrilla Doctrine in Action

A series of three vignettes comprises this section. The first is an ambush illustrating a KLA guerrilla ambush on a Serbian patrol.

The second scenario is in two parts. The first part illustrates guerrilla urban combat in Grozny, Chechnya. The second part illustrates the importance of, and what factors are considered in choosing, a guerrilla base.

a. The KLA July 1998 Conventional Offensive

July of 1998 was witness to stunning tactical triumphs in the Kosovar war for independence. The deliberate shift of tactics from purely guerrilla to conventional war seemed to be a smashing success: KLA guerrillas attacked and seized the town of Rahovec, about 37 miles southwest of Prishtina, resulting in KLA control of about 40% of Kosovo.[47] The occupation of Rahovec was an unprecedented type of victory in the Kosovar bid for independence: “[t]he KLA had never mounted such a large-scale attack so deep into the province, nor had it displayed such sophisticated weaponry, discipline and military skills.”[48]

In response, the Serbs launched what appears to be a pre-planned three-pronged counter-offensive. The first prong concentrated on the town of Malisheve, a key KLA stronghold, the second thrust focused on the road between Prishtina and Prizren 40 miles south, and the third thrust attacked western Kosovo along the highway lying parallel to the Albanian border.[49]

b. The Battle of the Bridge

The KLA command turns to Lieutenant Mustafa and a force of ten guerrillas.[50] Following Mao’s recommendation to allow small units leeway to act independently and retain the initiative,[51] the orders are no more specific than to blunt the Serbian counter offensive. Mustafa decides to plan an ambush on the Millosheve Bridge spanning the Lap River. The 47 meter long bridge lies on the main road about 10 kilometers northwest of Prishtina on the road to Mitrovica.

The Lieutenant chooses this site for several reasons.

i. Strategic Reasons for Choosing the Milosevo Bridge as an Ambush Site

The site is important because it links Pristina with Serbia and Mitrovica and also with Peja. (See Map 1 in Appendix). A broader look at the Serbian offensive shows that the first Serb thrust against Malisheve and the second Serb thrust against the road between Prishtina and Prizren, take the form of an octopus, with Prishtina as the hub. As Serb forces leave Prishtina to conduct these offensives, Serbia will naturally have to replenish forces in Prishtina to help quell civil disorder raging in that city; the road to Prishtina becomes the octopus’s third leg. Milosevo bridge is the fastest and most direct route to Prishtina for a force coming from the northwest; it is the only way across the Lap river for several kilometers east or west. The only other bridge over the Lap river lies more than 15 kilometers northeast of Milosevo Bridge. An enemy force, coming from the northwest, must either cross one of these two bridges or waste valuable time building its own bridge.

Mao advised the guerilla to avoid focusing all guerrilla activity on one theater of the conflict and instead “make war everywhere [in the theater]”, in order to cause “dispersal of [the counter guerrilla’s] forces and dissipation of his strength.”[52] The Serb offensive concentrates primarily on the Drenica Valley making the Milosevo bridge area the Serb rear. Focusing guerrilla attacks on this site forces the Serbs to open another front and relieves pressure on the Drenica Valley. In addition, there has been relatively little KLA activity here[53] so Serb soldiers should be more susceptible to surprise.

ii. Tactical Reasons for Choosing the Milosevo Bridge Site

The Milosevo bridge site is tactically a good candidate for an ambush for several reasons. (See Map 2 and Map 3). First, the Lap River’s lie creates a slight salient on the northern shore which is favorable to defenders of the south shore of the river because “it allows friendly fires from a wide stretch of the near shore to concentrate against a small area on the far shore and limits the length of enemy shore that must be cleared to eliminate direct fire and observation.”[54] Although the salient is somewhat less pronounced than would be ideal, this terrain feature still offers some opportunity for flanking fires.

In addition, the site offers some defensible terrain. To the northeast is a forest, and to the southwest an abandoned farmhouse surrounded by a forest. Filling the areas in between is tall grass. Hills lie 7.5 kilometers to the east on either side of the Lap River.

iii. Battle Preparations

With the site chosen, Lieutenant Mustafa turns his attention to the battle preparations. The first priority is to contact informants. The Lieutenant has contacts on the road between Mitrovica and Prishtina who observe Serb movement and inform the Lieutenant through the use of ordinary cell phones. They report that squads of about 15-20 well armed paramilitary Interior Ministry Special Police, (“MUP”), travel the road to Prishtina almost every other day, sometimes at night; the contacts also warn that lately, heavy armor and infantry have traveled the road.[55] The contact furthest north agrees to inform Mustafa the next time such a police patrol leaves Mitrovica during the evening.[56]

The Lieutenant’s ideal ambush accomplishes two things, (1) to retreat with zero casualties and (2) to inflict some damage on the patrol in order to instill fear and break morale. Such an objective obviously necessitates a sound plan of retreat.[57] Of his ten men, four grew up in the immediate vicinity, and four more know the area and terrain intimately.[58] In contrast, few Serbs live in Kosovo, most of the invading police and soldiers come from the north from Serbia or Montenegro.[59] The lieutenant, himself a native, confers with his men and notes the locations of safe houses and other rough areas where the MUP cannot follow. Houses are important for retreat, and retreat is the sine qua non of a sound guerrilla raid. According to Che, anything not within a 15 mile radius is less than ideal. The lieutenant therefore designates any safe houses outside of this radius as secondary retreats.

iv. Plan of Attack

On July 22, 9:00 p.m., 2 days after receiving his orders from his Zone Commander, the Lieutenant’s northern contact reports a Serbian police force of four vehicles, heading south towards Milsoevo Bridge. The force is composed of one rubber tired armor vehicles with an exposed crew manning a mounted machine gun, two trucks and one jeep. The Lieutenant details a spotter with a two way radio and a cell phone about 2 kilometers north of the bridge with the task of transmitting details about the attacking force’s vehicles and weapons.[60] If the convoy has grown to anything more than 10 vehicles, or if it contains any heavy tanks, or too many vehicular machine guns, the ambush can be called off; anything with five or fewer lightly armed police cars is an ideal target for this ambush.[61]

Mustafa’s force is armed with grenades, AK 47’s, one crew served machine gun and two sniper rifles.[62] The Lieutenant never operates without at least one crew-served machine gun.[63] The Lieutenant instructs his men to tape two Kalashnikov clips together, once empty, the first clip is to be removed, the assembly quickly switched 180 degrees, and the other clip plugged in the weapon.[64] The instructions are quickly to fire the first clip on automatic, and hold the ammunition in the second clip in reserve for single-shot firing. The force also has two trucks.

The general outline of Lieutenant Mustafa’s ambush is inspired by a tactic used by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro with much success in the war against the Batista regime in Cuba. It is called the Minuet, an analogy to the dance. Che ordered his men to “encircle an enemy position, an advancing column, for example; [] from the four points of the compass, with five or six men in each place, far enough away to avoid being encircled themselves; the fight is started at any one of the points, and the army moves toward it; the guerrilla band then retreats, always maintaining visual contact, and initiates its attack from another point. The army will repeat its action and the guerrilla band, the same.”[65]

The Lieutenant operates under more restricted circumstances than Che and will therefore use a modified version of his Minuet. He has only ten men, eleven including himself. More importantly, Che had the jungles of the Sierra Miestra, the Lieutenant has only a small building, some forests, tall grass, and hills to cover his retreat. Instead of placing guerrillas on all four points of the compass, the Lieutenant splits his force and arms evenly in two. Five of his troops will set up in the Eastern Forest while the Lieutenant and the remaining four men occupy the abandoned farmhouse and the Western Forest.

The danger of such a tactic in the current ambush is the chance of friendly fire; the benefits include increased lethality through crossing fire. In this case however, the chance of friendly fire is especially great because the two zones with defensible terrain are at directly opposite corners from each other. The Lieutenant is careful to mitigate against the danger of friendly fire. He gives precise instructions. The eastern group is not to fire on the Serb patrol until it crosses the river and is well past the abandoned farm, at which point it unloads everything it has on the Serbian rear: grenades, mortars, sniper fire, and machine gun fire. Once the group has expended a good portion of its ammunition, leaving only what is necessary for self-defense, they are to immediately and permanently retreat east towards the designated safe houses and the rolling hills. At this point, assuming the eastern force has maintained cover, the Serb force will do one of two things, either flee towards Prishtina, or give chase to the eastern force. If they flee, the western force attacks the routed patrol’s rear. If the Serbs give chase, the Serbian front is now their rear and the western force is in an excellent position to attack the patrol and then immediately retreat.

The whole action is to last only five to ten minutes regardless of the degree of success achieved because of the presence of Serbian stations in the vicinity which can quickly send reinforcements to the beleaguered patrol.

b. Should the KLA Have Adopted Conventional Tactics into their Guerrilla War?

The ambush is a success. Three of the Serbian force is killed, Mustafa’s force retreats with no dead or wounded.

The successful ambush is temporarily overshadowed by recent KLA setbacks, the territorial gains have evaporated, Rahovec is now in Serbian hands, access to the rear base in Albania is threatened.[66] Over four hundred fighters are killed and 300 hundred are missing, hundreds of thousands are made refugees by the overwhelming firepower of the Serb counteroffensive.[67]

As stated above, the July Offensive, culminating in the capture of Rahovec, was the result of a deliberate shift in tactics. As one KLA commander, Hasim Thaqi, also known as Snake, explained, “This is the first step taken to intensify the quality of the war from warfare against rural areas to the stage of moving against urban areas.”[68] The commander went on to explain that the strategy was now to take over other cities and eventually to capture the provincial capital, Prishtina.[69]

Were these short-term losses outweighed by the offensive’s long-term gains? Should the KLA have incorporated conventional tactics into their guerrilla war?

In short, the offensive’s long-term benefits vindicated a decision that in the short-term was condemned as a blunder.[70] It convinced the local population that the KLA was real and powerful. For the Vietnamese, Tet’s diplomatic element, inducing negotiations, was ancillary to their main objective, sparking a general South Vietnamese uprising. In contrast, the KLA’s objective was primarily the diplomatic element, persuading the international community to intervene, and secondarily to win the support of the Kosovar people.

Like Tet, the KLA’s conventional offensive is a prime example of how successful guerrilla war can incorporate conventional tactics without necessarily morphing into conventional war. How do the factors the Communists used in executing Tet compare with those the KLA used in executing their July Offensive? Finding commonalities between the two is the starting point in developing a working framework for analyzing when conventional tactics should be adopted in guerrilla war.

i. Assessment of KLA Guerilla Strength weighed in favor of adopting a conventional offensive

One reason Tet succeeded was because of the qualities of the guerrillas themselves: their years of resistance to foreign counter guerrillas and their experience with conventional tactics. The KLA on the other hand had no previous experience with conventional tactics. Still, like the Viet Cong, the KLA, at least the cadre if not its rank and file, had been fighting the Serbs for nearly a decade at the time of the July Offensive and were necessarily well acquainted with armed resistance. What its rank and file lacked in military experience, it made up for in courage and enthusiasm. Perhaps most importantly in assessing the moral element of the Kosovar guerrillas was that, unlike the Serbs, the KLA fought for independence, and in defense of their homes, instead of some bloodless political abstraction like the domino theory or the recovery of a centuries old battlefield.[71] At the time of the July Offensive, the independence movement had come a long way from its initial core of a few hundred armed villagers. Fifteen thousand KLA fighters, still seething to avenge the massacre months before of a Kosovar patriot,[72] were eager to engage the Serbs full on. Surely, if there was ever a time when KLA morale could recover from a fierce counter offensive, this was it.

ii. An Assessment of the Serbian Army Weighed in Favor of Incorporating a Conventional Offensive

Unlike Tet, there is little evidence to show that the July Offensive struck at a time when Serb forces were physically stretched thin.[73] Like Tet, however, the July offensive did coincide with growing disgust with the war to crush Kosovar independence not only among the Serbian people but also among the Serbian army. The words of one draft-age college student illustrate the increasingly dominant mood among Serbian youth around the time of the offensive: “I don’t like the Albanian people. We are two different religions, two different nations… But this is not a fight in the interest of the Serbian people, it’s a fight in the interest of Slobodan Milosevic.”[74] The Serbian military’s morale and will to fight showed similar deterioration. On the eve of the July Offensive, hundreds of Serbian and Montenegrin policemen and soldiers abandoned their posts in Kosovo and returned home to Serbia.[75]

iii. The Time was Right for a Conventional Offensive to Consolidate Power

The architects of Tet, considered the effect on the domestic population, the South Vietnamese, their most important objective.[76] They hoped to spark a general uprising. In a different but no less important way, the effect on the people of Kosovo was probably foremost in the minds of the July Offensive’s architects.

First, the offensive helped consolidate power in KLA hands. For most of Kosovo’s recent history, two philosophies have contended for the people’s endorsement. One on hand, the pacifists, led by Ibrahim Rugova; in the other camp, the KLA, obviously the more hawkish of the two.

Pacifism. A preposterous ideology suitable only in an ideal world, against an army of empty-headed dreamers, or in a functioning democracy.[77] Since men, “wretched creatures that they are,”[78] are driven by the “dread of punishment”[79] much more than reason, compassion, or critical thought, pacifism in the face of a ruthless enemy must die out as surely as natural selection would cull a toothless lion or a blind hawk.

Indeed, the people of Kosovo instinctively knew as much. The first seed of doubt regarding pacifism was planted in 1995, when the Kosovo issue’s exclusion from the Dayton accords “made it clear that Rugova’s passivity would not win freedom for Kosovar Alabanians.”[80] More immediately, at the time of the offensive “the drum roll towards war [over the past three months, were making] the credibility of Rugova obsolete.”[81]

To come full circle to the original point, the time was perfect for a spectacular show of force and strength, something, above all, defiant, to appeal to the people’s overwhelming desire for independence.

Second, although the KLA leadership probably did not intend it to, conventional offensives can win the people’s support in a second, indirect way. A classic guerrilla tactic, described in Mao’s treatise on guerrilla war, is too win the battle over the hearts of the people indirectly by provoking the counter guerilla into adopting harsh counter measures, thereby driving the population deeper into the insurgent camp.[82] The Serbs did not disappoint. In the wake of the July Offensive, the Serbs retaliated with “a new display of brutality by Serbian police and Yugoslav army troops against civilians.”[83] Even before the July Offensive, the KLA was already enjoying the benefits of exactly the phenomenon that Mao described as a result of previous harsh Serbian counter measures, particularly the March 1998 Jashari Massacre: “By killing women and children and making a martyr of KLA leader Adem Jashari, Milosevic fueld the rapid growth of the armed ethnic Albanian independence movement.”[84]

iv. The Conventional Offensive Helped to win the Support of the international community

Finally, the Vietnamese timed Tet with an eye towards influencing the international community.[85] While the Vietnamese merely wanted to increase their bargaining posture for the Geneva Convention, the KLA desired, and achieved, something much more ambitious: attracting the intervention of the international community. That they succeeded, where so many other similarly situated insurgencies have failed, is a testament to their political vision and is no less worthy of examination than the Tet offensive’s effect on the American will to fight.

The July Offensive was instrumental in persuading the international community to intervene. One reason is that it gave the international press something real to document, to take pictures of and write about. The adoption of conventional tactics moved the KLA away from guerrilla tactics into the conventional realm. This made the Kosovo revolution look more like the celebrated western wars of independence while simultaneously making it harder to label as terrorism. In short, the July Offensive “produced the first whiffs of victory, as international intervention became inevitable.”[86]

c. Chechen Guerrillas Battle Russian Counter Guerrillas

Movies are made in Hollywood because all settings are available: urban, rural, desert, and ocean. For the same reason, Chechnya is an excellent theater to study guerrilla tactics. Northern Chechnya is mostly plains, central Chechnya has the capital city of Grozny, and southern Chechnya is mountainous. The following two part series illustrates the tactics used by a Chechen force defending against a Russian invasion. Like the Kosovo scenario above, this section, as much as possible, stays true to the geographic, political and military situation of the second Russian invasion of Chechnya during the turn of the century.

i. Russians Invade Northern Chechnya

The Russian advance sweeps through the flat plains of northern Chechnya with relative ease. The guerrillas, assessing the unfavorable terrain and the traditionally less martial nature of the northern Chechens withdraw to the heights surrounding Grozny.[87] By the beginning of December, Russian forces had surrounded the city.[88]

ii. Battle for Grozny, Urban Guerrilla Warfare

Analysts predict that by the year 2010, 75% of the world’s population will live in urban areas.[89] Urban combat is the inevitable future of war. As General Krulak of the United States Marine Corps remarked, “The future of war is not the son of Desert Storm, but the step child of Chechnya.”[90]

Soon after Russian troops surrounded the city they forced Grozny to endure a punishing day and night barrage of artillery fire. The imminent Russian invasion of Grozny is the latest in a series of battles over the city. As recently as January 1995, the Russians drove the Chechens from the city only to have the Chechens retake the city in August 1996.

As the capital, Grozny is a coveted prize for both sides. Grozny, or almost any capital city, is important by virtue of its role as the cultural, commercial, political, and industrial center of the country.[91] The capture of such a center may “yield decisive psychological advantages that frequently determine the success or failure of the larger conflict.”[92]

The first Russian invasion was a total disaster for the Russians. By intercepting unsecured communications, the Chechen guerrillas had real time information about Russian movement and intentions; they even had devices that changed or imitated the voices of Russian commanders.[93] During the first invasion the Russians tried to take Grozny with a massive show of brute force; the long files of tanks sent deep into the city were easy prey for the Chechen guerrillas. By showering the first and last tanks in line with gasoline bombs, they trapped the tanks in Grozny’s narrow avenues.[94] The Russians suffered enormous casualties but eventually took Grozny; only to see it retaken by Chechen forces that had regrouped in the Southern Mountains[95] and waited for the right time to strike.

The Russians were stronger and smarter in the 1999 invasion than they were during the 1994-1996 war. From the top down, they were determined not to make the same mistakes. Prime Minister Putin and Russian high command convinced Russian society that they would not be safe until the Chechen threat was completely eliminated; their claims were backed up by terrorist attacks within Russia proper.[96] The size of the Russian force was double the average number used in the first war with