Low-intensity conflict
A low-intensity conflict is a military conflict, usually localised, between two or more state or non-state groups which is below the intensity of conventional war. It involves the state's use of military forces applied selectively and with restraint to enforce compliance with its policies or objectives.
The term can be used to describe conflicts where at least one or both of the opposing parties operate along such lines.
Official definitions
United States
Low-intensity conflict is defined by the United States Army as:The manual also says:
Relations with terrorism
Boaz Ganor notes that scholars once labeled terrorism as "low-intensity warfare." However, this terminology has become obsolete due to the intricate nature of multidimensional warfare and the mass impact of contemporary terrorist attacks, such as the September 11 attacks.Implementation
Weapons
As the name suggests, in comparison with conventional operations the armed forces involved operate at a greatly reduced tempo, with fewer soldiers, a reduced range of tactical equipment and limited scope to operate in a military manner. For example, the use of air power, pivotal in modern warfare, is often relegated to transport and surveillance, or used only by the dominant side of conflict in asymmetric warfare such as a government forces against insurgents. Artillery and multiple rocket launchers are often not used when LIC occurs in populated areas. The role of the armed forces is dependent on the stage of the insurrection, whether it has progressed to armed struggle or is in an early stage of propaganda and protests. Improvised explosive devices are commonly used by insurgents, militias and sometimes government forces such as barrel bombs in low intensity conflicts. The majority of casualties in low intensity conflicts tend to be resulting from small arms and improvised explosive devices.Intelligence
is essential to an efficient basis of LIC operation instructions. Electronic and signal gathering intelligence, ELINT and SIGINT, proves largely ineffective against low-intensity opponents. LIC generally requires more hands-on HUMINT methods of information retrieval.Stages
In the first stages of insurrection, much of an army's work is "soft" – working in conjunction with civil authorities in psychological operations, propaganda, counter-organizing, so-called "hearts and minds." If the conflict progresses, possibly into armed clashes, the role develops with the addition of the identification and removal of the armed groups – but again, at a low level, in communities rather than throughout entire cities.Examples
Burma
has regularly conducted limited low-intensity military campaigns against the independence movement of the Karen people in an area of southeast Burma, which has actively pursued independence since January 1949. While allegedly limited and low-intensity in that the territories occupied in force by central government forces are returned at the end of the offensives, human rights organizations and national governments outside of Burma question the veracity of, and sometimes outright refute, these claims.Sudan
The governments of Sudan have also engaged in limited military offensives against various armed opposition and independence movements, which have often escalated into full-scale warfare, particularly in the south and Darfur, but also until recently in the east. These military actions have, over time, continued to ravage the areas in dispute and contribute greatly to the poor conditions in those regions as well as the various human rights violations that have occurred there.German occupation of France
German occupation of Western Europe during World War II, notably the occupation of France, shared many aspects with more recent cases of LIC, such as the "Hearts and minds" stage early on, establishment of puppet governments, strong propaganda aimed at isolating resistance movements, and support to domestic friendly forces.German occupation of Poland
In Poland from 1939 to 1945 there was a strong partisan movement. Partisan forces, although less numerous than the German army, organized a strong resistance movement; in the years 1941-44 a successful action was carried out against the expulsion of Poles from the Zamość region. Besides, the "Polish underground" destroyed hundreds of German transports of military supplies throughout the war. In Poland there was also a secret order and many non-military resistance organizations like "Zegota" which helped thousands of Jews save their lives. When the Red Army entered Poland in 1944, the Poles wanted to support them in the fight against the Germans, but the Soviets betrayed them, even though during Operation Tempest, the partisans significantly accelerated the Russian attack, the Russians arrested or killed thousands of members of the Polish Underground State, nor did the Soviets also help support the Warsaw Uprising. In total, throughout the war, hundreds of thousands of people served in the ranks of the Polish underground, and even every sixth Pole helped polish partizants but partizantes did not have more than 50,000 firearms.Northern Ireland
The conflict, known as The Troubles, was a sectarian and ethno-nationalistic conflict, fuelled by historical events and longstanding oppression by the UK's military and security services. By the mid-1960s, the Northern Ireland civil rights movement began organizing Irish Catholics to protest, among other factors, disenfranchisement, abuses of power such as discrimination in the housing and job markets perpetuated by the ruling governments in the United Kingdom and its devolved subsidiary, known as Stormont. When these peaceful protests were met with brutal attacks by both the police and loyalist gangs given free rein to attack these protesters. On its face, it had a religious dimension although despite use of the terms 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' to refer to the two warring sides, it was not a religious conflict. For most, these were mostly just terms of identity. A key issue was the status of Northern Ireland. Unionists and loyalists, who descended from colonists who arrived during the Ulster Plantation, displacing all but a handful of native clans and farmers, were Ulster Protestants and wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists and republicans, who were mostly Irish Catholics, wanted to end the Partition of Ireland, leave the United Kingdom and reunite with the 26 counties that had formed the Republic of Ireland following partition.The main participants in the Troubles were republican paramilitaries such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army ; loyalist paramilitaries such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association ; British state security forces such as the British Army, Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ulster Defense Regiment, MI5, and lesser known groups like the Force Research Unit; and political activists. The security forces of the Republic of Ireland played a smaller role. Republicans carried out a guerrilla campaign against British forces as well as a bombing campaign against infrastructural, commercial and political targets. Loyalists attacked occasionally republicans/nationalists, but focused primarily on the wider Catholic community in what they described as retaliation. At times, there were bouts of sectarian tit-for-tat violence, as well as feuds within and between paramilitary groups. The British security forces undertook policing and counter-insurgency, primarily against suspected republicans. This included the internment without trial of anyone accused of being, or supporting, Republicans. Investigations also revealed significant collusion between British state forces and loyalist paramilitaries, and furthermore loyalist paramilitaries such as the Glenanne gang included serving members of the Ulster Defense Regiment and Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Guerrilla warfare
Low-intensity warfare's main opponent is the guerrilla, or irregular fighter. This opponent may be state sponsored, or private non-state actors driven by religious or other ideology in urban, semi-urban and rural areas. Modern guerrilla warfare at its fullest elaboration is an integrated process, complete with sophisticated doctrine, organization, specialist skills and propaganda capabilities. Guerrillas can operate as small, scattered bands of raiders, but they can also work side by side with regular forces or combine for far-ranging mobile operations in squad, platoon or battalion sizes or even form conventional units. Based on their level of sophistication and organization, they can shift between all those modes as the situation demands, as guerrilla warfare is flexible, not static.Guerrilla tactics are based on intelligence, ambush, deception, sabotage, and espionage, undermining an authority by long, low-intensity confrontation. It can be quite successful against an unpopular foreign or local regime, as demonstrated by the Vietnam War. A guerrilla army may increase the cost of maintaining an occupation or a colonial presence above what the foreign power may wish to bear. Against a local regime, guerrillas may make governance impossible by terror strikes and sabotage or even a combination of forces to depose their local enemies in conventional battle. Those tactics are useful in demoralizing an enemy and raising the morale of the guerrillas. In many cases, guerrilla tactics allow a small force to hold off a much larger and better equipped enemy for a long time, as in Russia's Second Chechen War and the Second Seminole War fought in the swamps of Florida, United States. Guerrilla tactics and strategy are summarized below and are discussed extensively in standard reference works such as Mao's On Guerrilla Warfare.