Through ideological and social manipulation of the general population, the insurgent party ultimately seeks to transfer political power from the government to itself. The weaker of these groups constitutes the ‘insurgent’ party, while the stronger is the government. Fundamentally, an insurgency is a civil war characterised by a power asymmetry between belligerent groups. Insurgency is another difficult-to-define concept.
Insurgency meaning how to#
Generally speaking, each model contains differences in threat perception, how to guard against that threat, how to frame terrorism in the law and constitution, and which agents effect counter-terrorism.Ī country’s comprehensive counter-terrorist strategy is usually a combination of some or all of these models. Counter-terrorism can be classified according to four theoretical models: Defensive, Reconciliatory, Criminal-Justice, and War. Ĭounter-terrorism consists of actions or strategies aimed at preventing terrorism from escalating, controlling the damage from terrorist attacks that do occur, and ultimately seeking to eradicate terrorism in a given context.
Gaining legitimacy is where the terrorist group seeks to transfer legitimacy from the government to its own cause through skilful manipulation of the media, through grassroots social agitation, or through alternative media such as the internet.
Target response seeks to prompt a disproportionately harsh collective reprisal from a government, in order to radicalise the affected population and win international legitimacy, or to wrestle political concessions. Disorientation seeks to sow within a population a general sense of insecurity and detract from the legitimacy of existing state structures, often through random acts of violence that prey upon the civilian population in general. Furthermore, as the term ‘counter-terrorism’ implies actions taken by governments, I will focus on non-state actors as the primary agents of terrorism, as they are the relevant terrorists in this discussion.Īs a strategic choice, terrorism follows a three-stage method: disorientation, target response, and gaining legitimacy: ġ. However, the majority view of most academics seems to be that terrorism is ‘a politically motivated tactic involving the threat or use of force or violence in which the pursuit of publicity plays a significant role.’ For this short essay, I will use this definition. Some academics have provided definitions that span dense paragraphs referencing over a dozen traits, while others offer a minimalist definition of only a few words. Academics have struggled to define terrorism for decades, reaching no significant consensus. Yet this is easier said than done, especially with regard to the former. The particular ways in which counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency are different, and also how they are related, become evident in a discussion of the phenomena of terrorism and insurgency themselves, and then what it means for a state to ‘counter’ them.Īny discussion of the concepts of ‘counter-terrorism’ and ‘counter-insurgency’ would be meaningless without first defining what terrorism and insurgency actually are. A nuanced examination of what each term actually means shows that while closely related, they are nevertheless analytically discrete. Both counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency have often been used to describe similar state activities, but they are not interchangeable. Yet they do hold more objective meaning as well, though the difference between the two can sometimes be confusing.
Repression, military and paramilitary action, and systematic human rights abuses are often justified in their name. ‘Counter-terrorism’ and ‘counter-insurgency’ as they are popularly understood are rhetorically loaded concepts.