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After regaining independence in 1918, Poland faced many fundamental and strategic challenges. One of them was the issue of border crossings on the German-Polish border in Silesia. It was a region dominated by modern heavy industry, to which both the modern states laid claim. The course of the border was to be decided by a plebiscite, but the parties to the conflict resorted to violence and military means. In a complicated international situation and without the possibility of open military intervention, Poland effectively used the strategic tool of special operations - known more widely today as unconventional warfare. Thanks to their skillful application, the German military advantage was effectively eliminated and strategic goals were achieved. Poles effectively cut lines of communication, making it impossible to support pro-German organizations in Silesia, and successfully organized insurgent forces that achieved the goals important for Poland’s development policy. This paper tells the story of a special mission unit called the Destruction Group ‘Wawelberg’ and its use as a tool for implementing the state policy of unconventional warfare during the Third Silesian Uprising.

The government of Uganda eliminated primary school fees during the insurgency of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group notorious for abducting school aged boys and girls to turn them into rebels through indoctrination and intimidation. Previous research shows that the no-fee policy, commonly known as the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme, increases access to education mainly for girls. I test the hypothesis that UPE increases incentives of abducted girls to desert the LRA. Difference-in-differences estimates, which compare the change in desertion of girls in primary school age (treatment group) to the change of older females (control group), support the hypothesis. Investigating possible mechanisms, I find little support for the ‘standard’ opportunity cost hypothesis that dominates the literature, where education increases earning opportunities in the regular economy and thus makes staying with the rebels less attractive. Instead, the evidence supports a ‘novel’ opportunity cost hypothesis that has received little attention thus far: Girls long for education, and the prospect of going to school – which UPE increases substantially – entices them to abandon the rebels.

In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates shows why a net-zero world is necessary, and how it might be achieved through fostering demand for and the supply of innovation. He argues that techno...

During my fieldwork in Brazil in December 2017, Neuza showed me a short video that she got in a WhatsApp group called “Bolsonaro our president.” In the video, Jair Bolsonaro tells Maria do Rosario,...

Is militarized policing an effective way to combat insurgency? This article uses new global data on policing practices to evaluate whether states with militarized police perform better than those w...

The present essay argues that the ancient Hindu acharyas (teachers) and rulers came up with nuanced and complex theories and techniques of COIN. This was because the multi-religious and polyethnic ...

The Boko Haram insurgency is one of the most devastating violent crises that Nigeria has encountered in recent years. This paper compares the relative effect of the Boko Haram insurgency, as compared to other conflict events, on vaccination uptake among Nigerian children. To evaluate the effect of conflict events on vaccination, the children's birth months and the months of armed conflict were matched. The data on vaccination uptake was from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) conducted in 2018, while the information on conflict events was from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) Georeferenced Event Dataset (UCDP GED). The sub-group analysis was conducted, Boko-Haram affected sample vs. total sample, to evaluate the differential effect of armed conflict events on vaccination. The Boko Haram insurgency had a significant and negative effect on vaccination uptake in the conflict-affected states; Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe. On the other hand, other forms of conflicts that took place in Nigeria had significantly weaker effects on vaccination uptake. The negative effect of Boko Haram-related conflict events was particularly strong on Penta3/DPT3 uptake, while its effect on BCG was weak.

Often maligned by academics and international organisations alike, mercenaries are perceived as being a contributory factor to the worsening of conflict and as a threat to democracy. This chapter d...

The article will discuss the patterns that jihadism has followed when spreading throughout sub-Saharan Africa, addressing the major scholarly debates but also to bring forward the elements that var...

This article explores three interrelated components of the independence movement in Papua – armed resistance, political struggle, and international lobbying. As an insurgency, the armed resistance ...

Since the end of the Cold War, Africa has experienced a wide range of terrorism and wars. With a diverse population spread out over nearly sixty countries, there is no single type of insurgency, co...

In Sao Paulo, squatting movements provide an alternative route to housing for members. At the same time, they highlight the city’s housing deficit and high rates of property vacancy. This article a...

Over sixty years of conflict in the Southern Philippines, between the government and separatist groups, have made Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago an area prone to violence. Armed groups in Bangsa...

Ireland’s ‘decade of centenaries’ means different things to different people.1 On the one hand, for Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland and the Republic,2 the term refers to the period bookended...

This article traces the foundations, development, and evolution of Al-Shabaab’s multi-tiered media and information operations through a historical lens from proto and early Al-Shabaab media in 2006...

Initially underestimated as a group of ‘ragtag combatants’, Boko Haram has in the past decade emerged as a genuine threat to populations and security forces across both Northeast Nigeria and the La...

Throughout the 1950s Britain faced unprecedented challenges to its imperial rule. Civil disobedience, insurgency and terrorism gripped its colonies as the flames of nationalism and anti-colonialism...

This article analyses Islamic State’s English language propaganda targeting Western women and how that messaging changed as the group shifted from territorial control back into an insurgency. It ar...

This article sheds light on recent political developments in Rojhelat (Eastern/Iranian Kurdistan), focusing on the activities of Rojhelat’s leading political parties. This study argues that the exi...

The challenges of terrorism and insurgency have continued to attract regional response. A significant aspect of such response is the demonstration of shared responsibilities by various nation state...

Following the Chibok abductions of April 2014, the involvement of women and girls in the Boko Haram insurgency has increased, as has the subsequent analysis of them in both the academic and the gre...

Ethnic and land conflicts have recently gained significance in peace and conflict resolution. It is imperative to understand both endogenous and exogenous factors and their relations towards the in...

This article provides a new perspective on the logic of violence of the JNIM in the context of the Malian civil war. After a critical review of the literature on the Malian conflict, this article w...

We understand the terrors of this historical moment: rising white nationalism and white supremacist violence, xenophobia, homophobia, sharpening economic inequality, homelessness and underemploymen...

The United States has provides international military education and training (U.S. IMET) to military personnel from more than 100 countries annually. In spite of this, the effects of such training ...

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is waging a disinformation campaign against the U.S.-led international system. China uses disinformation to translate its economic power into Great Power presti...

The leftist traces of Thomas Sankara, Africa’s Che, in Burkina Faso and beyond is undeniable. The recent insurgency that overthrew Blaise Compaore and his long-standing government framed itself as ...

The article evaluates the current worsening security situation in Burkina Faso and ties it to a lack of state-building in the country. Based on Tilly's approach to state-building, it, consequently,...

This article examines the reasons for the rise of the Taliban and the onset of the insurgency in Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion, using counterfactual and path dependence analysis to bolst...

Violent clashes between Fulani and Dogon have recently escalated in the Seeno plains in central Mali. After failing to defeat a “jihadist” insurgency dominated by Fulani, the Malian army has sponsored and trained a Dogon militia, which has systematically attacked Fulani villages, and again caused counterattacks. In addition, internal conflicts within Fulani and Dogon society have emerged. This demonstrates the complexities of the current crisis in Mali and how simplistic narratives about its causes are unhelpful. It also shows how views of the enemy as “terrorists” or “jihadists” are dangerous and able to further fuel violent conflicts.

On March 12, 1947, Harry Truman addressed a joint session of Congress with a very specific proposal: emergency aid for Greece and Turkey, which were menaced by a communist insurgency and facing Sov...

The development of Intelligence Studies has provided new and exciting insights into war, societies, ideologies, institutions, and even cultures and mindsets, even if the geographical reach of these...

What explains the variation in violence in the internationalized civil conflict? This study identifies such conflict as an adaptation of insurgency warfare by the state. The analysis of the conflic...

Prior research on female participation in militant organizations explores organizational and individual factors that influence women’s recruitment, and the roles women fulfill. However, most resear...

This edited volume is useful for scholars interested in critical approaches to terrorism and security. Written in accessible language, it addresses political and social processes in Asia through fo...

Jacob Zenn’s Unmasking Boko Haram is an important contribution to the study of this significant West African insurgency that in the mid-2010s controlled an area about the size of Belgium. Zenn is a...

This article explores the Taliban’s insurgency (2007–9) in Swat valley (Pakistan), with two objectives: (a) how civilians survive violence and (b) what their survival strategies mean for them. Draw...

In the past 10 years, the North-Eastern part of Nigeria has been engulfed by the scourge of Boko Haram attacks, leading to a high level of insecurity, severe humanitarian crisis and food insecurity...

The consequences of Boko Haram insurgency on the Nigerian state has enjoyed robust interrogation. However, most of the studies have concentrated on human and material losses to the neglect of the e...

Why have Quebec student organizations resisted oligarchization, conservativism, complacency and demobilization since the late 1960’s? The Quebec student movement has remained both radical and highl...

While jihadism appears to be on the rise in Africa, the explanations of violent extremist groups’ capacity to foment jihadi insurgencies and mobilize recruits remain poorly understood. Recent studi...

Jeremy Black’s study is an important new contribution to the historiography of insurgencies and counterinsurgency. Having taught history at the universities of Exeter and Durham before his retireme...

In 2013, international news headlines started referencing Georgian Tarkhan Batirashvili, or Omar al-Shishani, as a rising star among foreign fighters in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). ...

The Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) combined the socialist discourse of the revolutionary left with explicit calls to Colombian nationalism. This paper will question how and why the M-19 framed its i...

Insurgencies are routinely conceptualised using a binary opposition between states and rebels. However, this neglects the complexity of their interaction, especially their collaboration. Although r...

While representing a major military threat in Niger and Nigeria, the two branches of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP-Liptako Gourma and ISWAP-Lake Chad) have increasingly sought to wi...

The Boko Haram Insurgency in Western Africa has displaced an estimated 3,4 million people across Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger. In January 2019 an estimated 30,000 Nigerians fled the town of R...

In times when league tables, metrics and rankings threaten to determine our writing and thinking, real intellectual engagement is vital and much to be appreciated. My thanks to the editors of Ident...

The 1997 Indo–Naga ceasefire is one of the world’s longest truces. Although formally-agreed rules technically regulate the state-rebel relationship, the rules themselves and their applicability bey...

The Communist International (Comintern) had one of its earliest outposts in the small northern Norwegian border town of Vardø. In dealing with the raison d’etre of this so-called liaison point Vardø Etat the paper adopts anon-state actors’ intelligence perspective, by uncovering the secret communist activities and identities of the main actors involved in the transnational clandestine network and comparing its features with the characteristics of insurgent intelligence actors. The paper argues that the political aim of exporting the October Revolution to the rest of the world, together with a heritage of pre-revolutionary Bolshevik organizational practice and experience, contributed to forming the Vardø Etat’s use of internal security, counterintelligence, HUMINT and covert actions. Though, despite similarities to other insurgent groups the Vardø Etat was a hybrid, a state proxy, deeply entwined with the Soviet state and its intelligence agencies. Reckless militancy was downplayed as the Comintern took form in the period of 1919–1921 quickly evolving toward a more centralized apparatus staffed by professional cosmopolitan communists. In a longer perspective the Vardø Etat can be perceived as part of the first wave of many later waves of Marxist-Leninist insurgent groups around the world throughout the twentieth century and after.