guerrilla tactics

[Luciana]

Everybody will pardon my ignorance, but one of these days I realized I couldn't define it, which is surprising considering I hear about it nearly everyday.

What are guerrilla tactics, and how do they differ from regular warfare?

I know what a guerrilla is; I don't know what those tactics refer about, and I can't find any useful definition of it in the internet. It's as if this knowledge is a "given", of as if the label is applied without much thinking. Any thoughts on that?

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Rather than fighting directly on a battlefield in hope of winning by superior force, guerilla tactics involve hitting-and-running. So, instead of duking it out, you snipe from a building before melting away. Lay mines in the street. The insurgency in Iraq is pretty much a classic example of guerilla warfare.

Since most guerillas are fighting from a position of inferiority, the idea is to wear down the enemy by attrition rather than an (impossible) fast victory.

 

[crimresearch]

You say that you know what a guerilla is, how is that possible without getting a sense of what a guerilla does?

Here's Britannica:

"....member of an irregular military force fighting small-scale, limited actions, in concert with an overall political-military strategy, against conventional military forces. Guerrilla tactics involve constantly shifting attack operations and include the use of sabotage and terrorism."

If you want detail, you could read Bayo's '150 Questions for a Guerilla'.

 

[geni]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare

 

[Luciana]

I don't read war books, I don't see war films. That's why, by reading Wikipedia's definition, I can't very well differentiate between military and guerrilla tactics.

I understood guerrilla as "irregular military force fighting small-scale, limited actions, in concert with an overall political-military strategy". But the part about tactics I now understand better after Mr. Manifesto's explanation.

Wikipedia mentions sabotage. What constitutes sabotage? Would blowing up a bridge be sabotage? Or yes, it is, if it's done sneakily or no, it's not, if done by an Army.

Also, ambush. Regular armies don't do that? (It's a question, not an assumption).

 

[crimresearch]

Regular armies use many of the same tactics as guerilas, but they also use large scale tactics, such as expending many troops to occupy territory, which a guerilla unit would not usually be able or willing to copy.


http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/bayo.htm

 

[Luciana]

Excellent, crimresearch. Great link. I'll read it more carefully tomorrow.