Countergang

Vilfredo Pareto on Violence

2006-01-04T20:50:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the hiatus, I've been busy with other projects and the holidays. Here's a gem from Pareto:

"To ask whether or not force ought to be used in a society, whether the use of force is or is not beneficial, is to ask a question that has no meaning; for force is used by those who wish to preserve certain uniformities and by those who wish to overstep them; and the violence of the one stands in contrast and in conflict with the violence of the others. In truth, if a partisan of a governing class disavows the use of force, he means that he disavows the use of force by insurgents trying to escape the norms of the given uniformity. On the other hand, if he says he approves of the use of force, what he really means is that he approves of the use of force by the public authority to constrain insurgents to conformity. Conversely, if a partisan of the subject class says he detests the use of force in society, what he really detests is the use of force by constituted authorities in forcing dissidents to conform; and if, instead, he lauds the use of force, he is thinking of the use of force by those who would break away from certain social uniformities." From The Mind and Society.

This strikes me as brilliant, even if it is a bit cynical. After all, we've all observed the following cycle (of course the sequences may vary): the authorities committ some act of brutality; a protest movement emerges; some faction committs an act of violence, thus provoking the authorities; the authorities respond with an act of violence; the victims point to this act and claim it as an example of the regime's brutality; factions on both sides denounce the violence; and the violence continues (well, maybe not forever). It's a wonderful world.

UVF Mural, North Belfast

2005-12-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of a mural brought to us by the North Belfast Ulster Volunteer Force. Kind of menacing, eh?

Wendy and I on a recent fishing trip to Northern WI

2005-12-08T22:40:00.000-05:00

Here we are enjoying a chilly morning of fishing in the beautiful northwoods. I'll soon post some photos of the bass, pike (Wendy's first!), and walleyes (another first for Wendy!) we caught.

Republican Mural in West Belfast

2005-12-08T22:31:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo from this summer's trip to Northern Ireland. Located in a republican neighborhood in Belfast, the mural alleges collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces in the killings of republicans and innocent Catholics.

Francis Lieber on Guerrilla Warfare

2005-12-05T18:16:00.000-05:00

Here's a passage from Francis Lieber's 1862 essay on guerrilla warfare:

"What, then, do we in the present time understand by the word guerrilla? ... [I]t is universally understood in this country at the present time that a guerrilla party means an irregular band of men, carrying on an irregular war, not being able, according to their character as a guerrilla party, to carry on what the law terms a regular war. The irregularity of the guerrilla party consists in its origin, for it is either self-constituted or constituted by the call of a single individual, not according to the general law of levy, conscription, or volunteering; it consists in its disconnection with the army as to its pay, provision, and movements, and it is irregular as to the permanency of the band, which may be dismissed and called again together at any time."

Lieber was a German-born American citizen who believed that the U.S. would be punished for its evil ways, e.g. slavery and drink. He was also a legal scholar and a civilian member of the War Deparment committee that drafted the famous General Order No. 100 during the U.S. Civil War. The essay quoted above was widely considered the basis for General Order No. 100. I'll post more on that order later.

The Five Techniques

2005-11-16T17:25:00.000-05:00

Over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century, British military intelligence developed an informal set of interrogation practices known as the "Five Techniques." According to Peter Taylor in his book Brits: The War against the IRA, the five techniques were based on the experience of captured British soldiers during the Korean War. British soldiers used these techniques both to soften up prisoners for interrogation and to train their own troops how to resist interrogation.

While the five techniques were never codified in any written orders or training manuals, they were passed down orally to British soldiers in training and in the field and used in conflicts Northern Ireland, Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, British Guiana, Aden, Borneo, and the Persian Gulf.

The Five Techniques:

1. Stress positions, e.g. forcing a prisoner to squat or stand spread-eagled against a wall for long periods of time.

2. Hooding a prisoner in order to produce sensory deprivation.

3. White noise

4. Sleep deprivation

5. Food deprivation

The five techniques were often used in combination with one another.

Peter Taylor writes: "Because these methods had been part of the army's interrogation training for almost two decades and were never subject to any political approval, Ministers almost certainly knew nothing about them and therefore were not in a position to authorize them or otherwise. No doubt military intelligence chiefs thought that since they had been in use for years and proved highly effective, there was no reason to question their use in Northern Ireland" (p. 65).

The use of the five techniques within the U.K. ignited a political firestorm and the Brits supposedly abandoned them shortly thereafter.

A Few Notes on Daniel E. Sutherland's edited volume, Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front

2005-11-14T18:56:00.000-05:00

The contributors to this volume make at least five interesting contentions in their chapters on guerrilla warfare during the U.S. Civil War:

1. Guerrilla warfare is often a struggle for the control of the local, i.e. cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods. It is also a struggle for the control of local loyalties.

2. Guerrilla war is a process: one must study and account for shifting loyalties as local conditions change (see Meyer Kestnbaum's work on war as process and event).

3. Once they form, guerrilla movements/armed forces may become rather independent political forces.

a. This is especially problematic when a state-constituted guerrilla force (i.e. partisan force) begins to pursue its own agenda.

b. These guerrilla agendas are often focused on very local struggles and local loyalties, which may lead to the settling of local scores that appear to have little connection to larger struggles, e.g. vigilantism.

c. This local focus of guerrilla agendas may have an impact on what the guerrilla force/political party will look like in its future (see Weber). Think, for example, about the connections between wartime Confederate irregular forces and the post-war Ku Klux Klan.

4. One often observes the following cycle in guerrilla warfare: intimidation/protection-perpetration-requisition/extraction-retaliation. Perhaps this isn't really a cycle, because one can imagine the mechanisms working in various sequences. Maybe it's best described as a cluster of mechanisms that describe guerrilla warfare (and maybe other types, too) and may be arranged in various sequences in order to help examine war as a process?

5. There are many motives that may explain why people form and join guerrilla armed forces, and, of course, motives are notoriously difficult to discern. The authors agree, however, that many guerrilla forces form where and when institutions of state authority crumble. They might form in order to protect "home and hearth" from the depredations of groups of bandits, or to resist the imposition of a new order by an army/administration of occupation. (This has some resemblance to Robert Bates's argument in Prosperity and Violence).

All of these contentions are made with a great deal of supporting detail in the volume. I've simply tried to extract them and state them in a very general, hypothetical form.

A Couple of Chestnuts from Max Weber and Charles Tilly

2005-11-05T21:09:00.000-05:00

Here are two quotes from a couple of heavy-hitting sociologists who have addressed issues of war and violence. I'll comment further in my next entry.

From Max Weber’s “Structures of Power”: “All political structures use force, but they differ in the manner in which and the extent to which they use or threaten it against other political organizations. These differences play a specific role in determining the form and destiny of political communities” (From Max Weber, p. 159).

And Charles Tilly: “Over the long run of human history, indeed, most important political figures have combined entrepreneurship with control of coercive means. Only during the last few centuries has the unarmed power holder become a common political actor” (The Politics of Collective Violence, p. 36).

Fun with Riot Guns

2005-11-03T21:52:00.000-05:00

A Brief Introduction

2005-11-03T20:42:00.000-05:00

I've decided to start blogging in order to prevent settling into intellectual stagnation and isolation. We'll see if it works.

I envision Countergang as working something like this: I'll post bits of stuff that I find interesting from my readings on war and historical sociology. You'll read it, enjoy it, comment thoughtfully, and perhaps provoke some fruitful discussion.

My interests in the historical and sociological aspects of war are pretty broad, but I find myself especially drawn to insurgency/counterinsurgency, guerrilla warfare, the definition and treatment of an enemy, and mobilization.

What is a countergang? While serving in Kenya during the 1950s, General Sir Frank Edward Kitson raised forces composed of former Mau Mau guerrillas. The idea was basically to use former insurgents as scouts who would employ their knowledge of local conditions and thus aid security forces. This practice, as well as some brutal variations on it, caught on in a number of subsequent conflicts, e.g. Oman, Rhodesia, Angola, and Northern Ireland.

Here's Tony Geraghty's description of how the Mobile Reconnaissance Force worked in Northern Ireland: "With the help of the freds [i.e. captured and turned IRA men] the MRF identified active Provisionals, then shot them, usually from moving, unmarked cars, using the IRA's own gangster weapon, the Thompson sub-machine gun."

Ian F.W. Beckett notes that some countergangs in Rhodesia actually carried out attacks on friendly, civilian targets in order to prove their "bona fides" to their former insurgent colleagues.

If you have any anecdotes or readings on countergangs, I'd like to hear them.