Gérard Chaliand
Gérard Chaliand was a Belgian-born French expert in geopolitics who published widely on irregular warfare and military strategy. Chaliand's analyses of insurgencies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, mostly based on his field experience with insurgent forces, have appeared in more than 20 books and in numerous newspaper articles.
Chaliand spent more than five years as a visiting professor in the United States at Harvard, UCLA and UC Berkeley.
He worked autonomously throughout his career, unconstrained by the perspectives of national governments and policy institutes. As a result, his work provides an independent perspective on many of the major conflicts that characterized the 20th and 21st centuries. He is also a published poet.
Early life and education
Chaliand was born Gérard Tchalian in Etterbeek, Brussels region, Belgium, on 15 February 1934, to Armenian parents and raised in Paris. He attended the Lycée Henri IV in the Latin Quarter and spent nearly a year in London and the United Kingdom. He travelled North Africa before entering the School of Oriental Languages and Civilisations in Paris, where his studies focused on the history and culture of non-western societies. During his youth he hitchhiked across North Africa, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India. He published his first book of poetry in 1959. In 1960 he joined the clandestine struggle for Algerian Independence. After the Algerian independence, he worked during 1963–64 as an editor at the Revolution Africaine, a weekly in Algiers where he met many of the leaders of the national liberation movements of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.He received his PhD from Sorbonne University in Paris in 1975. His dissertation Mythes révolutionnaires du tiers monde, was published in 1976 and quickly translated into English: Revolution in the Third World, Myths and Prospects, Viking Press, Penguin Books, New York, 1977.
Chaliand was a participant-observer in various guerrilla conflicts:
- Guinea Bissau, 1966
- North Vietnam, 1967
- Colombia, 1968/91
- Palestine/Israel, 1969/70/75/ 98/99
- Eritrea, 1977/91
- Afghanistan, 1980/82/2006-2012
- Iranian Kurdistan, 1980
- Salvador, 1982
- Angola, 1985
- Peru, 1985
- Philippines, 1987
- Nagorno-Karabakh, 1993
- Georgia, 1994/2006/08
- Burma, 1990/95
- Kashmir, 1999
- Sri Lanka, 1987/99/2007
- Iraqi Kurdistan, 1999-2008/2012-2015
- Iraq, 2003–2008
- Syria, 2014
He conducted field studies for over four decades in:
- Asia/Pacific
- Caucasus and Central Asia
- Central and South America
- Middle East
- Northern Africa
- Russia
- South and South East Asia
- West, East and Southern Africa
Teaching
Chaliand taught in Paris, France, at the École nationale d'administration and at Ecole de Guerre from 1990 to 1995.He spent more than five years as a visiting professor in the United States at Harvard, UCLA and UC Berkeley.
Chaliand delivered over five hundred lectures in major Universities and research centers, including the Rand Corporation and the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.
He was also a visiting professor at the military academy, Bogota, and Universities of Cape Town, Montréal, Salamanca, Sussex and Manchester, Vladikavkaz, Sulaymaniyah, and Ilia Chavchavadze. He was senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, Kabul from 2005 to 2011. He taught a summer course at Nanyang University from 2004 to 2014 and Hawler University.
He also lectured at Strategic Institutes in Washington D.C., London, Canberra, Beijing, Madrid, and Tokyo.
Other work
Chaliand was Director of the European Centre for the Studies of Conflicts, Paris from 1997 to 2000.He was an independent adviser to the Centre for Analysis and Planning of the French Foreign Ministry from 1983 to 1994.
Chaliand founded and was the Director of Minority Rights Group, from 1978 to 1987.
He was the initiator of the session of the Permanent People's Tribunal dedicated to the genocide of the Armenian people whose jury comprised three Nobel Prize winners, including Sean Mc Bride, Founder of Amnesty International, and which took place at the Sorbonne and saw the sentence towards the Turkish state delivered to the National Assembly.
In addition, Chaliand undertook several maritime expeditions aboard, a 1913-built three mast ship.
Death
Chaliand died in Paris on 20 August 2025, at the age of 91.Selected bibliography
Chaliand was the author, the co-author or the editor of more than 50 books, over 20 of which have been translated into English.Books in English
A World History of War, UC Press Berkeley, 2014. History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to al Qaïda, Berkeley, 2007.Mirrors of a Disaster. The Spanish conquest of America, Transaction, Rutgers University Press. N.J. 2005Nomadic Empires, From Mongolia to the Danube, Transaction, Rutgers University Press, N.J. 2003. The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas, New York, 1995. The Art of War in World History, Berkeley, 1994. The Kurdish Tragedy, Zed Press, London, 1994, Report to the sub-commission on Human Rights on the situation of the Kurds in the Middle East.Strategic Atlas: A Comparative Geopolitics of the World's Powers, with J.P. Rageau, Harper & Row, New York 1987, 1990, updated edition 1992.Minorities at the Age of Nation-States Pluto Press, London, 1988.Terrorism, Saqi Books, London: 1987.The Genocide of the Armenians, Zoryan Institute, Boston, Mass, 1986Guerrilla Strategy. A Historical Anthology From the Long March to Afghanistan, ed. Berkeley, 1982.The Struggle for Africa. Great Power Strategies, Macmillan, London 1982.Report from Afghanistan, Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1982. A People without a country, The Kurds and Kurdistan,, Zed Books 1980, Olive Branch Press, 1993 Revolution in the Third World: Myths and Prospects, Viking, New York 1977; updated edition, Penguin Books, 1989. The Palestinian Resistance, Penguin Books, Baltimore 1972.Peasants of North Vietnam, Penguin Books, Baltimore 1970. Armed Struggle in Africa: With the guerrillas in Portuguese Guinea, Monthly Review Press, New York 1969.Chaliand also wrote a cookbook, Food without Frontiers, Pluto Press, London 1981 and two books of poems The Stubborn March, Blue Crane Books, Watercrown, MA. 1990, and Lone Rider, bilingual edition, translated by André Demir, Paris, 2015.
Many of his books have been translated into more than twelve languages.
Books in French
Political analysis
L'Algérie est-elle socialiste?, Maspéro, 1964Où va l’Afrique du Sud?, Calmann-Lévy, 1986Etat de crise, vers les nouveaux équilibres mondiaux, Seuil, 1993 Voyage dans le demi-siècle, Complexe, 2001America is back, les nouveaux Césars du Pentagone,, Bayard, 2003L'Amérique en guerre, Irak-Afghanistan, Editions du Rocher, 2007 L'Impasse afghane, Éditions de l’Aube, 2011Vers un nouvel ordre du monde, Le Seuil, 2013De l’Esprit d’aventure, J’ai lu, Arthaud, J’ai lu, 2011Le Regard du singe Seuil 2014Military strategy
Atlas du nucléaire civil et militaire, Payot, 1993Dictionnaire de stratégie militaire, Perrin, 1998Les Guerres irrégulières, Folio Gallimard, 2008Le Nouvel Art de la guerre, l'Archipel, 2007, Pocket 2009Geopolitical and historical atlases
Atlas de la découverte du monde, Fayard, 1984 Atlas politique du XXème siècle, Seuil, 1987Atlas des Européens, Fayard, 1989Atlas des empires. De Baylone à la Russie Soviétique, Payot, 1993Atlas historique des migrations, Seuil, 1994Atlas historique du monde méditerranéen Payot, 1995Atlas de l’Asie orientale, Seuil, 1997Atlas du millénaire, la mort des empires, 1900-2015, Hachette, 1998Atlas du nouvel ordre mondial, Laffont, 2003Géopolitique des empires, des pharaons à l'Imperium américain, Arthaud, 2010, Flammarion 2014History
Les Bâtisseurs d'histoire, Arléa, 1995, Edition augmentée, Agora 2005, Magellan, 20122000 ans de chrétientés,, Odile Jacob, 2000, 2003L'Héritage occidental,, Odile Jacob, 2002, 2015Memoirs
Mémoire de ma mémoire, Julliard, 2003Guérillas, du Vietnam à l’Irak, Hachette Pluriel, 2008La Pointe du couteau. Mémoires, Robert Laffont, 2011Travel
Los Angeles, Naissance d’un Mythe, Stock, 1991.Aux confins de l’Eldorado, Le Seuil, 2006Voyages dans 40 ans de guérillas, Lignes de repères, 2006. Le Guide du voyageur autour du monde Odile Jacob, 2007Chaliand also published three plays, four books for children and translations of Kautiliya's Arthashastra, Guevara's La guerra de guerrillas, and a book of popular Turkish poetry.