Sometimes there may be one or more simultaneous insurgencies (multipolar) occurring in a country. Criticisms of widely held ideas and actions about insurgency started to occur in works of the 1960s they are still common in recent studies. However when it is used by a state or another authority under threat, "insurgency" often also carries an implication that the rebels' cause is illegitimate, whereas those rising up will see the authority itself as being illegitimate.
When insurgency is used to describe a movement's unlawfulness by virtue of not being authorized by or in accordance with the law of the land, its use is neutral.
For example, during the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America was not recognized as a sovereign state, but it was recognized as a belligerent power, and thus Confederate warships were given the same rights as United States warships in foreign ports. Where a revolt takes the form of armed rebellion, it may not be viewed as an insurgency if a state of belligerency exists between one or more sovereign states and rebel forces.
There have been many cases of non-violent rebellions, using civil resistance, as in the People Power Revolution in the Philippines in the 1980s that ousted President Marcos and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The nature of insurgencies is an ambiguous concept. An insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, and may also be opposed by measures to protect the population, and by political and economic actions of various kinds aimed at undermining the insurgents' claims against the incumbent regime. Grenier says the mood of the meeting was “heavily colored by the presence of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who interrupted one of the analysts who had first used the term insurgency to ask him why he had used that word, explaining, ‘This is not a term that we should use publicly because it conveys legitimacy on them that we obviously don’t want to convey.An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority (for example, an authority recognized as such by the United Nations) when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents. Most Americans are unnerved when Bush and his top officials insist the insurgency is in its last throes when the facts are obvious: according to the military, the insurgency was about 5,000 strong in NOvember of 2003.īERG: Yes, well, I don't believe that scenario because every time that news of new atrocities committed by Americans in Iraq becomes public, more and more of the every day Iraqi people who try to hold out, to try to be peaceful people, lose it and join the - what we call the insurgency, what I call the resistance against the occupation of one sovereign nation.Īlmost exactly a year later, Cheney didn’t quibble about the term insurgency when he was speaking with Larry King on CNN but instead told viewers that it was in its “last throes.” Today the military says the insurgency is anywhere from 16,000 to 20,000 strong that's three to four times bigger today than it was 18 months ago. Negroponte could have said the insurgency is as strong as it's ever been, but Bush wouldn't have liked that. The big deal with the insurgency is they have to keep doing things that can get them killed. Matthew Hoh: Cautious Optimism for Talks in Afghanistan Since President Obama took office 21 months ago, US policy in Afghanistan has reflected a mistaken premise that the insurgency is a monolithic organization capable of being defeated by a mixture of massive security and development efforts that would drive a wedge between the Afghan population and the insurgents. officials are ratcheting up the rhetoric, going so far as using the term insurgency to describe how Mexican cartels are challenging the government.