Guerrilla warfare

It conducts the basic business of war without recourse to ponderous formations or equipment, complicated maneuvers, strict chains of command, calculated strategies, timetables, or other civilized embellishments.

[11] In the later tenth century this form of warfare was codified in a military manual known by its later Latin name as De velitatione bellica ('On Skirmishing') so it would not be forgotten in the future.

[14] In the 17th century, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, founder of the Maratha Kingdom, pioneered the Shiva sutra or Ganimi Kava (Guerrilla Tactics) to defeat the many times larger and more powerful armies of the Mughal Empire.

Operations in which small Irish Republican Army (IRA) units (3 to 6 guerrillas) quickly attacked a target and then disappeared into civilian crowds frustrated the British enemy.

That afternoon, the Royal Irish Constabulary force consisting of both regular RIC personnel and the Auxiliary Division took revenge, shooting into a crowd at a football match in Croke Park, killing fourteen civilians and injuring 60 others.

[23] In South Africa, African National Congress (ANC) members studied the Algerian War, prior to the release and apotheosis of Nelson Mandela;[24] in their intifada against Israel, Palestinian fighters have sought to emulate it.

We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.In the 1960s, the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara developed the foco (Spanish: foquismo) theory of revolution in his book Guerrilla Warfare,[33] based on his experiences during the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Its central principle is that vanguardism by cadres of small, fast-moving paramilitary groups can provide a focus for popular discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general insurrection.

[37] In the 20th century, other communist leaders, including North Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh, often used and developed guerrilla warfare tactics, which provided a model for their use elsewhere, leading to the Cuban "foco" theory and the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

Roadside bombs were also extensively used; they were typically placed in a drain or culvert along a rural road and detonated by remote control when British security forces vehicles were passing.

Starting six months before the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR on 27 December 1979, the Afghan mujahideen were supplied by the CIA, among others, with large quantities of many different types of anti-tank mines.

[50] The devices were triggered by a variety of methods, including remote control, pressure plates (some designed to detonate only after several vehicles drove over them), tripwires, pressure-release plates held down by roadblocks, and electrical cables that triggered only when the metal tracks of a tank or BMP drove over them;[51] these devices were hidden under roads and mountain passes and inside water wells, abandoned caves and buildings.

[53] These devices were usually command-detonated using an electrical command wire and hidden in sewer lines, piles of trash, destroyed vehicles, or placed directly on or under the surface or shoulder of a road, as well in trees or hillsides.

To counter increasing armor protection, the insurgents have also developed IEDs that make use of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs); these are essentially cylindrical shaped charges usually constructed with a machined concave metal disc (often copper) facing the target, pointed inward.

Commonly positions for IEDs include on utility poles, road signs or trees, buried underground or in piles of garbage, disguised as rocks or bricks, and even inside dead animals.

[58] Special efforts were also made to capture weapons from the Axis, such as raids were conducted on trains and vehicles carrying equipment to the front, as well as on guardhouses and gendarmerie posts, that proved highly successful.

During the Warsaw Uprising, the Polish Armia Krajowa (AK, Home Army) even managed to capture several German armored vehicles, most notably a Jagdpanzer 38 Hetzer light tank destroyer renamed "Chwat" and an Sd.Kfz.

Later in the war following the U.S intervention, more modern U.S weapons such as M14 and M16 rifles, M60 and M2 Browning machine guns and M79 grenade launchers were captured from U.S forces and the increasingly modernised ARVN.

For instance, the sheer number of AKM (an upgraded version of the AK-47 rifle) manufacturers and users in the world means that governments can supply these weapons to insurgents with plausible deniability as to exactly from where and from whom the guns were acquired.

Tank columns were eventually protected by attached self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (ZSU-23-4 Shilka, 9K22 Tunguska) used in the ground role to suppress and destroy Chechen ambushes.

In Afghanistan, the Mujahideen often modified RPGs for use against Soviet helicopters by adding a curved pipe to the rear of the launcher tube, which diverted the backblast, allowing the RPG to be fired upward at aircraft from a prone position.

The Mujahideen also utilized the 4.5-second timer on RPG rounds to make the weapon function as part of a flak battery, using multiple launchers to increase hit probabilities.

In response, the Mujahideen prepared dug-in firing positions with top cover, and again, Soviet forces altered their tactics by using air-dropped thermobaric fuel-air bombs on such landing zones.

The Błyskawica (Lightning) was a simple submachine gun produced by the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army, a Polish resistance movement fighting the Germans in occupied Poland.

[70][71] A fairly recent class of firearms, purpose-designed insurgency weapons first appeared during World War II, in the form of such arms as the FP-45 Liberator and the Sten submachine gun.

Tubular steel in standard sizes is also used when possible, and barrels (one of the few firearm parts that require fine tolerances and high strength) may be rifled (like the Sten) or left smoothbore (like the FP-45).

The CIA Deer gun of the 1960s was similar to the Liberator, but used an aluminum casting for the body of the pistol, and was chambered in 9×19 mm Parabellum, one of the all-time most common handgun cartridges in the world.

Robert Hillberg, the designer, envisioned a weapon that was cheap to manufacture, easy to use, and provided a significant chance of being effective in the hands of someone who had never handled a firearm before.

This initially resulted in heavy South African military and police casualties, as the vast distances of road network vulnerable to insurgent sappers every day made comprehensive detection and clearance efforts impractical.

The first of these weapons were made in 2012 by the Islamist Ahrar al-Shamal Brigade in the Idlib Governorate around the city of Binnish before the manufacturing was moved to Aleppo by the Free Syrian Army's 16th Division which also appropriated the design.