Weak insurgents can win by attacking native police rather than the army

Evidence

ONE: In the early days of the Algerian War, once the FLN realised it was not strong enough to take on the powerful French Army, it concentrated its attacks on the native police loyal to France. Result: a deadly loss of morale among the police, with defections to the FLN, and the French Army defensively reduced to protecting the police, instead of concentrating on active “search-and-destroy” missions. The “insurgents” in Iraq have learned from this strategy with deadly effect. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 49

Categorization

• XREF: Comparative counterinsurgency link to Iraq; connects to the reader’s search for causal mechanisms. — connects to: A N.A.T.O.-style conventional army was unfit for the ambivalent task of pacification; The oppressed group’s apparent weakness becomes a revolutionary advantage against the enemy — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 14; French troops faced guerrilla warfare that negated their conventional military advantage. (+4 more)

Related

• A militarily victorious counterinsurgency can still lose due to non-battlefield factors (similarity 0.85)
• The army’s ambiguous pacification strategy left it unsuited to counterinsurgency (similarity 0.83)
• The FLN targeted native police to cripple French counterinsurgency. (similarity 0.83)
• French troops faced guerrilla warfare that negated their conventional military advantage. (similarity 0.83)
• The French army’s NATO-style force was ill-suited to counterinsurgency warfare. (similarity 0.82)
• Guerrilla warfare made French suppression of the insurgency fail (similarity 0.82)
• The French army’s heavy-handed countermeasures alienated even sympathetic observers (similarity 0.79)
• French counterinsurgency repeatedly traded military advantage for political costs (similarity 0.79)
• The independent Algerian state proved as unable to crush insurgency as France had been. (similarity 0.78)
• Rebel guerrilla tactics eroded the French army’s moral terror over its enemies (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• French troops faced guerrilla warfare that negated their conventional military advantage. #corroborates (0.60)
• French tactical victories could not win a prolonged elusive insurgency #corroborates (0.55)
• A militarily victorious counterinsurgency can still lose due to non-battlefield factors #expands (0.55)
• Cheap weapons let untrained commoners overcome heavily armored elites #exemplifies (0.45)