"successful wars against terrorists" Topic

I was wondering, given the popular view that we should fight isis by killing them all, what the historical examples are of wars against terrorists being won by simply killing them all?

I would first like to know which wars against terrorists have been won? More importantly, how would you define winning in this case?

Sri Lanka versus Tamil Tigers?
Britain versus communists in Malaya?

Colombia vs FARC

Firstly, define terrorists. It's a term used in a very indiscriminate fashion.

No, I'm not trying to nit pick. Some historical 'terrorists' are sponsored by a government, some are nothing more than criminal gangs, some are Nationalists, some follow a particular religion or political ideology.

May be an uncomfortable thought, but ISIS would seem to have the characteristics of a potential emergent state that may have to be dealt with as such in the future. Past example? Israel is the obvious one – unstable area, disorganised foes, power vacuum, strong ideological motivation.

Look up the Irgun en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun or Stern Gang link

We don't need to kill them all; just enough to make the organization fade away (like SDS weathermen in the U.S.).

While killing every last one of them is an appealing idea in some ways, I doubt if it is viable. Historically, the closest thing I can think of is the Anarchist movement back in the 1890s and the early 20th century. Ultimately, this seems to have died (along with millions of young men) in the First World War. No doubt many of the Anarchists were killed in the fighting, and many of the surviving Anarchists lost interest/enthusiasm.

Except, of course, in Spain, where Anarchism survived into the Spanish Civil War. As a group, they backed the Republicans, who ultimately lost.

In the case of Daesh, I suspect that at some point one or both of two things will happen:
1) participants will realize they aren't winning the war and winning is getting to look rather uncertain (i.e., they aren't winning hence victory is not Allah's will), and
2) folks will realize that living in the Islamic Caliphate isn't much fun.

Grelber

Not so much "killing tem all" but "killing enough of them to make the survivors change their behavior" – US v. Moros. Also Philippines v. Huks.

Guys you all are forgetting the Brits vs The Thuggs, Very similar to what is being faced now. Insular ,cells religious Death cults. Brits did the only thing that would work with them,killed them all.

Not sure what counts as won, but how do you evaluate Northern Ireland?

My question is where are they getting ammunition from?
Cut off supplies and money.

My my so much mis-information. The Thugees do not fit the definition of terrorist since their actions were not driven by political goals but simply seen as part of a immemorial religious movement. We are talking of a cult active for close to 300 years, and with potentially millions of victims and millions of members. The British did not kill them all. What they did is usher modernity which undermined the religious world-view behind it, and provided more efficient policing. Furthermore the use of mass transport denied the Thugees one of their usual methods of killing which was as part of isolated traveling groups. Harder to strangle someone with silk cords when on a train. The Thugees are a very very bad analogy.

That is my pendantry. As for the OP for my terrorism class at GSU I did an overview of terrorist campaigns. Most of them fail, and generally speaking terrorism is a bad strategy when it comes to attaining grand-strategic goals. It is cheap though and useful for weaker parties in disputes.

Most terrorist campaigns fail, and the political movements behind them usually only succeed in getting their goals once they change to non-violent tactics or to conventional-guerrilla warfare. They also fail when the social-economic changes that gave birth to them have taken place for a long time, or if alternative groups are more successful in bringing about the political change they promise.

For example the Anarchists were hampered by the support of the working classes for the more gradualist policies of the Socialists in the 19th century and more successful policies of the Communists in the 20th.Even the Spanish Anarchists were not real anarchists IMHO. Anarcho-Syndicalism is more similar to rule by Soviets pre-Bolshevicks than to what members of anarchists groups in the 19th century had in mind.

Examples of Failures: Anarchists, Shinning Path (Peru),Provisional IRA, Violent anti-abortion activists,ETA (Basque Lands), PKK (Still fighting but much weaker than 20 years ago) FARC,ELN,EPP (Paraguay),Aum Shirikyo, Abu Sayaf Group,Jemaah Islamiya,Tamil Tigers,Abul Nidal Organisation.

In most cases the terrorist organisations waned by a combination of successful military campaigns and political-economic reforms that persuaded the populations supporting them to stop supporting them or to transfer support to non-terrorist organisations and political movements.In most cases of success it became a polity with many characteristics of the state, and either played by the rules or was destroyed in inter-state war (Sicari for example, Hamas, Hebollah, or the Serbian Black Hand).

So you can defeat terrorists, and most of the time the organisations give up the policy, but it takes time and a willingness to yes beat people up and to also win them over via reform and economic prosperity.

Malayan Emergency is seen as a 'textbook' success. Kenya against the Mau Mau; Aden Emergency, etc etc. Killing is not the typical route to victory. Undercutting the support works well, as long as the terrorist organisation is 'pinned' by military action simultaneously.

I'm on board with killing them all, and/or as many as we can identify and locate. Cuts down significantly on their high recidivism rate.

"Firstly, define terrorists. It's a term used in a very indiscriminate fashion".

Not really, and it is relatively simple.

Those that target innocent civilians and non-combatants on purpose, in order to sow fear, and to further their own political views, and/or military aims.

Sister Mary Margaret vs 3rd grade class

(No fatalities, each side claimed the other was the terrorist(s), and it was declared a tie, because neither was ultimately successful… ;-)

"Sister Mary Margaret vs 3rd grade class"

Had a grade school nun that would grab scoff-laws by the cheek and pulling us up out of our desk. (Ouch that hurt!) I don't think we won, we just matriculated to the next grade.

@Mako11: your definition of terrorist includes the USA against Japan in 1945!

I am glad to see this discussion moving in a civilized fashion. You are all to be commended.

There hardly was in the past a setting for it like nowadays:
No ennemy had 1000(00.) of potential recruits nearly everywhere already into the targeted ennemy.
There was nearly no where the capacity of harm by a few as today (. Aks? Portable bombs, chemichals etc.?)
And the will of governments and the people was so different, the response so much so, what would it do?
Many of the examples above of failed aims, mostly hit the locals who after a while rightly turned against the perpretators who either gave up or where eliminated.

As above, 'terrorism' is primarily a security and political problem, not a military one.

Appropriate levels of repression can be effective, as can cutting off the political support for the disaffected minority through appropriate policies.

I shall leave others to discuss what 'appropriate' might involve.

It probably doesn't include decades of bungled intervention in the Middle East.

I guess terrorist is a difficult one to define, but how about an asymmetrical war where the larger side beat the smaller side using only force.

I was really just looking for any historical justification that the forces against isis can win the kind of war that some people want them to fight.

Both the anarchists and the sicarrii where "international" in the same sense as militant Islamic fundamentalists. Of the two, one failed, while the other succeeded in its short term goal of inciting a Gentile-Jew war, but failed in its long-term goal of creating a Jewish state. I guess the subjugation of the Jewish population after the Great Revolt is an example of success of the brutal use of un-restrained force. But again that did not work against the terrorism phase. It worked against the more conventional war-fare phase after the revolt was ignited.

So if you want to defeat ISIS by force you should let it win enough that it becomes a conventional war-machine, than fight a conventional war against it. Then engage in ethnic cleansing roman style .I.e move massive amounts of Sunni Muslims out of the middle east to all over the world just as the Romans expelled the Jews from Judea and Samaria. Though it should be noted that there were a couple of bloody Jewish revolts even after the Diaspora. I do not approve or condone such a strategy but this is what would work for many of the kill em al people.

Templer's campaign in Malaya was considered text-book, so much so that the US government asked (and was granted) permission to interview him at length in relation to Vietnam.

"The answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people."

Templer was honoured several times by the post-independence Malay government; on the 50th anniversary of independence in 2008, the government invited every surviving UK soldier who had served in The Emergency to attend the celebrations as its guests.

Sorry, punkrabbit, no it does not, since the Japanese attacked us first, and we then responded.

You need to look at things in the proper context.

Supercilius the problem with the Malay campaign as a example is that in that case the insurgency was supported by a ethnic minority (Chinese in Malaysia). In many ways the conflict in the eyes of the Malay was an ethnic one between the Chinese and them. That greatly limited the ability of the Communists to gain supporters and permitted the selective targeting of potential supporting ethnic groups. I.E it was easy to isolate them.

In our case the majority is the potential supporting group.

Ultimately successful counter guerrilla campaigns require moving populations. So population cleansing. The Greek civil war was won by forcing about a million people from their homes into the cities. The Boer war is another example like that. The Malay campaign also. The most successful parts of the US campaign in Vietnam entailed the moving of people into areas controlled by the US-RVN troops. The Roman-Jewish example is another one.

Such campaigns require lots of boots on the ground, a willingness to support the moved populations, and lots and lots of money.

These sort of problems have been dealt with in the past. What it comes down to is what we're willing to do and not do. It also about what we are afterwards.

I want to be clear that I do not condone ethnic cleansing.

Indeed anyone who thinks that war is the cheap alternative to classical counter-terrorism is using some very fuzzy logic.

For example

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan cost 1.6 Trillion Dollars in direct costs (we are not talking opportunity costs etc).

They cost the US and Western Allies about 5000-6000 combat dead, and about 100k (minimum numbers) in civilian losses.

All terrorist attacks between 1970-2014 (GTD dataset) only have killed about 300.000 people and maimed 4000.

That seems a lot but that is over a period of 40 years.

Those 105k losses caused in Iraq and Afghanistan happened in only 10 years of fighting.

An while it is hard to put a price tag on the money cost of terrorism, I bet you that the interstate and intrastate wars fought in the same period cost much more money.

War is not a cheap alternative to counter-terrorism. Its pretty expensive in lives and in money.

Indeed just one interstate war, the Ethiopian-Eritrean war of 1998-2000 may had killed as many people as all terrorist attacks 1970-2014.

All interstate wars between 1970-2014 (COW Data) have killed 1.500.000 million troops (+ god awful numbers of civilians). If I add intra-state wars it goes up.

So again, war, and total war at that which is what some on this thread, and a too many out there are looking forwards to, is not the cheaper alternative to what we have been doing over the last decades. Wars cost more money and kill more people than terrorism and non war type, counter-terrorism campaigns.

Terrorism ends when the conditions that cause the alienation that leads people to become terrorists end. That is a process of slow economic and political evolution, and governments cannot do too much about it. But it is much cheaper to bear it out than to try to rush things with some war.

The Anarchist campaigns of the 1870s-1914 killed about 100-150 people. If the states the suffered anarchism had attacked the states that permitted anarchist ideas to be circulated, the losses would had been much bigger. It was partly policing, and partly the slow evolution of societies exposed to the industrial-capitalism transformation that led to the end of anarchism.

So again, the cheapest and most successful option is to bear it out. Police, sometimes blow things and people up, but mostly normal politics. Buy people off, divide and conquer people off, arise their quality of life, wait patiently for generational change, assure an economy that gives people options and in due time Islamic Terrorism will go the way of many of those other campaigns. Many of these places have only recently been actually opened to the world system. That is never a fun process.

It may make sense to fight a counter-insurgency war against DAESH in Syria-Iraq but that is not going to end terrorism from that region. Fight the war to deny them state capacities. But do not delude yourselves that you are using a cheap or more successful alternative to the long term strategies.

How many of the people here are actually in uniform, and would be expected to fight in such a war?