Insurgencies

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In the seven decades since World War II, the number of wars between states had declined enormously compared to any previous period in human history. What we have seen instead is a very large numbers of civil wars, insurgencies, guerrilla conflicts and terrorist campaigns, often involving great powers as participants or supporters of local proxies. As of 2019, four such conflicts are occurring in the Middle East and North Africa alone (in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Israel-Palestine). Some of these wars have been of immense global and historical importance. The Afghan Jihad of the 1990s helped to destroy the USSR. The Vietnam War created rifts in US society that remain to this day and helped create the conditions for the election of Donald Trump. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the decline of US global hegemony. The war in Yemen threatens the stability of Saudi Arabia and of global oil supplies. The uprising in Kashmir risks nuclear war between India and Pakistan. This course will explore the nature and general patterns of insurgency and counter-insurgency in the modern world. In teaching it, Professor Anatol Lieven will use historical accounts, memoirs, theoretical analyses, and both documentary and fictional films. He will also draw on his personal experience as a British journalist covering a range of such conflicts: on both sides of the Afghan war of the 1980s; on both sides of the Russo-Chechen War of 1994-96; in the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban insurgencies since 2001; and in a range of ethnic and ethno-religious conflicts in the Caucasus and South Asia over the past 30 years. Insurgencies and resistance movements have been the subject of some of the greatest films (both fictional and documentary) ever made. This course will therefore include weekly film screenings. Attendance at these will be optional and ungraded. Each student will however have to choose and watch one film and make a presentation about it to the class. An initial list of these films is included below.