Psychology of Guerrilla War

While doing research for my book Prophets of Violence, Prophets of Peace (Ref 1) and reviewing biographies of reformers and revolutionaries of the 20th century, I became aware that many of the revolutionaries like Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela had fought guerrilla wars. That discovery inspired me to study the political strategy, philosophy and psychology of guerrilla wars and warriors. The more I studied the more fascinated I became with the contributions of Vladimir Lenin and Mao Tse Tung.

Lenin wrote his essay Guerrilla Warfare (Ref 2) in 1906, while living in exile in Europe. Hearing the news that guerrilla warriors, who had masterminded the attacks in Moscow against the Tsar’s government, were accused of being delinquents and hooligans, Lenin wrote his article in favour of guerrilla warriors. He highlighted that violence is of two types based on the underlying motivation and the goal. In criminal violence the goal of attackers is to steal money, property and goods and hurt the common people, but violence in guerrilla war is of a political nature where the attackers do not seek any financial gains. The goal of such violence is to destabilize an autocratic government or colonial power and pave the way for revolution whereby power is transferred to the masses so that common people can enjoy freedom and economic prosperity. Such violence is intended to destroy the old colonial system and introduce foundations for a new socialist system. Although Lenin’s opponents like peace activist Leo Tolstoy considered Lenin’s philosophy a justification and rationalization of violence, Lenin’s followers gave him credit for offering a major insight into the psychology of violence and guerrilla warfare.

One of Lenin’s admirers and disciples was Mao Tse Tung who brought about the Communist revolution in China through guerrilla warfare. Mao’s book Protracted War (Ref 3) is a collection of lectures that he delivered in May and June of 1938 after a year of Japanese occupation of China and eleven years before the foundation of People’s Republic of China. In those lectures Mao highlighted that guerrilla war is more like a marathon run than a hundred meter sprint and guerrilla warriors are more like mythological turtles than rabbits, hence the title Protracted War. In protracted war, as in a marathon, it is not the power but rather the stamina that is most important. Guerrilla warriors must have a long-term plan so that they do not become exhausted and burnt out.

Mao published another book called On Guerrilla Warfare, which later became the bible of guerrilla warriors and revolutionaries in different parts of the world. Mao was aware that he was starting a worldwide movement against imperial and colonial powers with long lasting effects. He wrote in 1937 “…the guerrilla campaigns being waged in China today are a page in history that has no precedent. Their influences will be confined not only to China in her present anti-Japanese struggle, but will be worldwide.” (Ref 4 p 3)

Mao stated that revolution was not a garden party and was born from the barrel of a gun. He justified the violence and bloodshed necessary to bring about revolution by presenting it as an extension of politics. He said, “War is the continuation of politics… It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” (Ref 4 p 58)

Mao also believed that such a revolution would serve oppressed farmers and factory workers and would eventually bring justice to the world. He believed that it was the final war to bring peace to all humanity and that the end justified the means. His followers were willing to take life to create peace. He stated, “Only the war which has now begun comes close to being the final war, that is, comes close to the perpetual peace of mankind.” (Ref 4 p 52)

Mao realized that some people believe that guerrilla war is a primitive war fought by a bunch of extremists who are not in touch with social and political realities. He endeavoured to prove that that perception was a myth and that guerrilla war was a very organized and sophisticated war.

Mao stressed that for guerrilla warriors to be successful they must engage the sympathies of their communities because when the police and army of the imperialistic and colonial powers attack them, they have to disappear in the middle of the night the way fish swim in the ocean. People of their communities have to protect, defend, and even hide guerrilla warriors, out of the conviction that those warriors are their heroes, fighting on their behalf for liberation from imperial and colonial powers.

Mao trained his guerrilla warriors to be fast and mobile so that they could disappear after attacking the enemy. Guerrilla warriors locate their enemy, devise a strategy, attack from behind as an ambush and then disappear in the jungles. Since guerrilla warriors are highly trained their lives are precious. In successful guerrilla wars the leaders make sure that they destroy the enemy, not themselves, with minimum casualties.

Mao trained his followers to see all the resources of their enemies as their own and to find ways to get hold of them in order to defeat the enemy with their own resources and weapons. He taught his warriors to accept the reality that they would never be able to win the war militarily; rather, they would need to keep on bleeding the enemy financially, economically, morally and politically until they finally capitulated. Mao wrote of the necessity of a political strategy alongside the military strategy, so that when the imperial and colonial power loses the war and the revolutionaries win, there is an economic and political strategy to run the country and ensure a stable and progressive government.

Mao also believed that throughout history there were two kinds of wars in the world, which he differentiated by stating, “History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars, we actively participate in them.” (Ref 4 p 53)

Over the decades Mao became one of the most controversial political figures of the twentieth century. Some give him credit for liberating nearly a billion people while others accuse him of sacrificing millions of innocent men, women and children on the altar of revolution. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday wrote, “Mao Tse Tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader.” (Ref 5)

Whether a blessing or a curse for humanity, the writings of Lenin and Mao inspired people and movements all over the world, including the Algerian revolution against the French government and the Vietnamese and Cuban struggles against American domination.

I was impressed by the guerrilla war led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba. It was a political miracle for only a handful of revolutionaries to take on the American-backed Batista government. During the struggle many comrades died but the leaders were so determined that they never gave up. After the revolution was successful Che gained great political and economic, national and international powers, and dreamt of exporting the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America. He also wrote a book Guerilla Warfare (Ref 6) that became a guide for many Latin American revolutionaries. Too ambitious and idealistic, he sacrificed his life for the revolution as the American CIA tracked him down in Bolivia and killed him alongside his comrades in 1967. America was so scared of Che’s popularity that he was secretly buried and only his hands were shown to the world. Thirty years later his body was discovered and brought back to Cuba where he was buried with great ceremony. His anti-imperialistic message has been inspiring many countries in Latin America to attempt socialist revolutions.

When I reviewed the guerrilla wars of the 20th century, I realized that they had as many differences as similarities. They had similar political strategies as they were fighting against autocratic, imperialistic and colonial powers but their goals and dreams were different. Some were progressive, others regressive, some looked towards the future while others were obsessed with the past.

For me the most ironic part of 20th century guerrilla warfare is that the same century that started with Russia introducing guerrilla war to the world ended with Osama bin Laden and his followers using the same guerilla techniques to defeat the Russians and throw them out of Afghanistan. Unfortunately that war was not fought to liberate a country and prepare the foundations for a progressive democratic society; it was done to create a regressive Islamic theocratic state that created misery for the population because of violations of human rights, especially for women, children and minorities. It created an atmosphere that became a fertile ground for religious extremism. The other irony was that the Americans supported Osama by having him and his followers from sixty Muslim countries trained by the best guerrilla warriors of the world. By the time the Americans realized that they had given some of their most sophisticated modern weapons to ultra-orthodox religious extremists, it was already too late as they had created a Frankensteinian monster, which attacked them in the end. The whole world knows that there was a time when Americans embraced Osama and his followers and called them Mujahedeen but when that admiration turned into hate they became the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, alongside his repressive religious fundamentalist ideology might be remembered in history as the only guerrilla leader who fought with Russia, Saudi Arabia and America, the three powerful governments, empires and ideologies of the twentieth century. Osama turned the dream of a just and peaceful revolution into a worldwide bloody nightmare.

During my studies of all the guerrilla wars and revolutions of the 20th century, I was most impressed by the one led by Nelson Mandela to liberate South Africa from the apartheid regime. Mandela as a guerrilla leader was different than other leaders in many ways. He had a realistic rather than an idealistic attitude. He combined various ideologies and strategies and created a synthesis of socialist, democratic and humanistic philosophies. He tried to create a revolution with minimum bloodshed. Unlike the Communists who harboured a virulent anger and hatred against imperialists and capitalists and killed them ruthlessly after victory, Mandela was forgiving of his enemies and reassured them that they would not be thrown into the ocean. Mandela, the former guerrilla leader, acted as a wise statesman and negotiated with his rival Buthelezi and Prime Minister De Klerk to institute a peaceful social change and set the stage for democratic elections.
Mandela tried his best to keep all parties together, to prevent the division of South Africa into small Bantustans as suggested by the white minority government, like the division of India into Pakistan and Hindustan. Mandela, a guerrilla warrior who had been involved in armed struggle, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside De Klerk for his contributions to world peace.

The twentieth century has experienced a series of guerrilla wars and has now given birth to the first guerrilla conflict of the 21st century, the war in Iraq. The whole world is closely watching and speculating how the war will escalate and end. It seems that George Bush’s dream of democracy in the Middle East is turning into a violent nightmare. Are the guerrilla warriors of Iraq hoping for a democratic peaceful government similar to that of South Africa led by Nelson Mandela or another theocratic state like Afghanistan led by Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar? I think the jury of history is still out and we might have to wait for a few years or decades before we see the final results. Watching the massacres of this civil war on CNN and Al-Jazeera television is psychologically disturbing—it might take decades to emotionally recover from the trauma of such a war. Before Bush attacked Iraq, Mandela had warned the world that Bush might be pushing all of humanity into a third world war with indefinite borders for an indefinite time. I think Mandela’s prophecy is coming true.





REFERENCES
1. Sohail Khalid Prophets of Violence, Prophets of Peace White Knight Publishers Toronto Canada 2005
2. Lenin V I Guerrilla Warfare Proletary No 5 Sep 1906 Collected Works 4th English edition Progress Publishers Moscow 1965
3. Tse Tung Mao On Protracted War University press of the Pacific Honolulu Hawaii 2001
4. Tse Tung Mao On Guerrilla Warfare Translated by Samuel Griffith University of Illinois Press Chicago USA 1961
5. Chang Jung/ Halliday Jan Mao…The Unknown Story Alfred Knoff Publishers New York USA 2005
6. Guevara Che Guerrilla Warfare Edited by Brian Loveman /Thomas Davies Jr Scholarly Resources Inc USA 1997