Based on unprecedented access to PLO archives and empirical research from a variety of sources, this groundbreaking study represents the definitive history of the Palestinian national movement. Spanning the 45 years from the establishment of the Sate of Israel in 1948 to the PLO-Israel accord of 1993, it sheds radical new light on the history of the Middle East in the last half of the twentieth century.

Over the course of World War II, guerrillas from across the Philippines opposed Imperial Japan's occupation of the archipelago. Although the guerrillas never possessed the combat strength to overcome the Japanese occupation on their own, they disrupted operations, kept the spirit of resistance alive, provided important intelligence to the Allies, and assumed frontline duties fighting the Japanese. By examining the organization, motivations, capabilities, and operations of the guerrillas, James Villanueva argues that the guerrillas were effective because Japanese punitive measures, along with a strong sense of obligation and loyalty to the United States, pushed most of the population to support the guerrillas. Unlike their predecessors opposing the Americans in 1899, the guerrillas during World War II benefited from the leadership of US and Filipino military personnel and received significant aid and direction from General Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) Headquarters, conducting one of the most effective and sophisticated resistance campaigns in World War II.Awaiting MacArthur's Return is the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the major World War II guerrilla groups across the Philippine Archipelago, providing a fuller picture of the nature of the war in the Southwest Pacific and revealing the extent to which the guerrilla movement affected operations for both Allied and Imperial Japanese forces. Analyzing the organizational effectiveness of the guerrillas resisting the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, this book alternates narrative chapters with thematic chapters examining the guerrillas' organization, logistics, administration, intelligence gathering, and the support they received from Allied forces and provided the Allies in turn. Villanueva offers the most in-depth analysis of the guerrillas' military organization and effectiveness in the context of existing theories of insurgency and counterinsurgency while using an extensive body of memoirs, archival guerrilla and US Army and Navy records, and translations of Japanese documents and interviews with Japanese officers.

The presence of women combatants on the battlefield-especially in large numbers-strikes many observers as a notable departure from the historical norm. Yet women have played a significant active role in many contemporary armed rebellions. Over recent decades, numerous resistance movements in many regions of the globe have deployed thousands of female fighters in combat. In Female Fighters, Reed M. Wood explains why some rebel groups deploy women in combat while others exclude women from their ranks, and the strategic implications of this decision. Examining a vast original dataset on female fighters in over 250 rebel organizations, Wood argues rebel groups can gain considerable strategic advantages by including women fighters. Drawing on women increases the pool of available recruits and helps ameliorate resource constraints. Furthermore, the visible presence of female fighters often becomes an important propaganda tool for domestic and international audiences. Images of women combatants help raise a group's visibility, boost local recruitment, and aid the group's efforts to solicit support from transnational actors and diaspora communities. However, Wood finds that, regardless of the wartime resource challenges they face, religious fundamentalist rebels consistently resist utilizing female fighters. A rich, data-driven study, Female Fighters presents a systematic, comprehensive analysis of the impact women's participation has on organized political violence in the modern era.

In the not-too-distant future, an American military commander is preparing to take charge of counterinsurgency operations in the Narabad Province of remote and mountainous Khanastan, an impoverished region scarred by war and ruled by diverse religious and tribal communities. As part of his preparations, he enters a stunningly real conflict-mapping simulation that allows him to see the results of his on-the-ground decisions within hours.
What he learns shocks him.
His initial efforts to take control of the situation--by establishing a secure forward operating base, pressuring the local population to support his soldiers, providing armed escorts to government leaders, and taking the fight to the enemy--lead to chaos, increasing the danger to his troops and making the insurgents more numerous and deadly. He consults with his two mentors, a battlehardened war fighter and a provocative devil's advocate, then rewinds the scenario and tries again. And again. But whatever he does falls short of effective counterinsurgency, leading to more violence and to consequences he never expected. He grows frustrated, unsure if he and his soldiers can do anything at all to defeat the enemy and claim victory. It's only when he discards obsolete strategies and old measures of success and formulates a nontraditional--and more cold-blooded--approach that his efforts gain traction and the insurgency starts to weaken. He begins to see that effective counterinsurgency demands a new way of thinking. And a new way of fighting.
In the tradition of military classics such as "The Defence of Duffer's Drift," this powerful parable illustrates the urgent need for military leaders to rethink how they fight contemporary conflicts. It reads like a thriller, with a cast of vivid characters, even as it puts forward a bold approach to effective counterinsurgency operations and makes a compelling case for change.

• A journey through the mind of a commander as he learns and adapts in a complex, deadly environment.
• One of the world's premier practitioners challenges conventional wisdom about counterinsurgency, using a parable to help leaders develop the mental agility to be successful.
• A fictional commander participates in virtual reality combat situations that illustrate the chaos, complexity, and uncertainty of modern conflict-and he fails repeatedly, learning and adapting with each set of experiences.
• This highly practical parable avoids checklists and formulas; it teaches leaders how to think and how to develop the mental courage to learn, adapt, and make decisions in the face of a deadly and resilient enemy.
• An innovative tool for developing in peacetime the mental agility and adaptability our leaders need to be successful in combat.

In June 1943, SOE's Prosper resistance circuit in France led by Major Francis Suttill collapsed very suddenly. Was it deliberately betrayed by the British as part of a deception plan to make the Germans think an invasion was imminent? Was it betrayed by MI6 out of jealousy? Did Churchill meet Prosper and deliberately mislead him? These are some of the stories that have developed since the war as survivors and others struggled to explain the sudden collapse of this circuit, the biggest in France at the time. Shadows in the Fog by Major Suttill's son meticulously traces what actually happened. It provides one of the most detailed records of the organisation and work of a resistance circuit ever published. The story that emerges shows the enormous risks faced by those who resisted and what their bravery enabled them to achieve.

'A magnificent story, brilliantly told. Read it!' ANTHONY HOROWITZ SIX GENTLEMEN, ONE GOAL - THE DESTRUCTION OF HITLER'S WAR MACHINE. In the spring of 1939, a top secret organisation was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was to prove every bit as extraordinary as the six gentlemen who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who invented a lethal bomb. Another, William Fairbairn, was the world's leading expert in silent killing. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, and aided by a group of formidable women, these six men and their sabotage attacks single-handedly changed the course of the war. 'Terrific . . . a great read' IAN HISLOP 'Could not be faster-moving or more exciting' LITERARY REVIEW Previously published in hardback as The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

As Syria imploded in civil war in 2011, Kurdish volunteers in the north rose up to free their homeland from centuries of repression and create a progressive sanctuary that they named Rojava. To the medievalists of ISIS, the emergence of a haven of tolerance and democracy on the frontier of their new caliphate was an affront. They amassed 12,000 men, heavy artillery, tanks, mortars and ranks of suicide bombers to crush the uprising. Against them stood 2,500 volunteer fighters armed with 40-year-old rifles. There was only one way for the Kurds to survive. They would have to kill the invaders one by one. A decade earlier, as a 19-year-old conscript into the Iranian army, Azad Cudi had faced being forced to fight his own Kurdish people. Instead he had deserted, seeking asylum in Britain. Now, as he returned to his homeland to help build a new Kurdistan, he found he would have to pick up a gun once more. In September 2014, Azad became one of 17 snipers deployed when ISIS, trying to shatter the Kurds in a decisive battle, besieged the northern city of Kobani. In Long Shot, Azad tells the inside story of how a group of activists and idealists withstood a ferocious assault and, street by street, house by house, took back their land in a victory that was to prove the turning point in the war against ISIS. By turns devastating, inspiring and lyrical, this is an unique account of modern war and of the incalculable price of victory as a few thousand men and women achieved the impossible and kept their dream of freedom alive.

There has been a shift in the way that we understand the forces behind imperialism. In this book, Andrew Thomson re-evaluates the history of US imperialism, from the Cold War to today, by looking at the influence of paramilitary actors. Thomson reveals how these agents are central to US imperialism - from the Guatemalan coup to the Bay of Pigs, from Syrian rebel factions to the Soviet-Afghan War, bringing these narratives together to reveal the evolution of paramilitary insurgencies across the globe. Militias, mercenaries, and private companies (PMCs) have formed a central part of the strategies designed to influence political and economic conditions abroad, oriented towards the US's Empire. Drawing on declassified documents including US training manuals, CIA communiques and the National Security Archive, Outsourced Empire reveals new evidence that helps us understand these institutions and their collective role in maintaining global order.

In Gambling with Violence, Yelena Biberman tackles a global problem that is particularly consequential for Pakistan and India: state outsourcing of violence to ordinary civilians, criminals, and ex-insurgents. Why would these countries gamble with their own national security by outsourcing violence - arming nonstate actors inside their own borders? Drawing on over 200 interviews, archival research, and fieldwork conducted across Asia, Europe, and North America, Biberman introduces the "balance-of-interests" thesis to deepen our understanding of state-nonstate alliances in civil war. This framework centers on the distribution of power during war and shows how various combinations of interests result in distinct types of coalitions. Incorporating case studies of civil war and counterinsurgency, her book sheds light on how militias, alliances, and South Asian security connect today.

Unstoppable and deadly, this is the gripping story of some of the most feared soldiers in the warThe daring, courage and skill of the highly-trained men who spearheaded German assaults in the blitzkrieg of 1940, dropping from the air to seize and overwhelm key invasion points, showed to an alarmed world that a new dimension had been added to the science of warfare. One spectacular success was the invasion and capture of Crete in May 1941, all be it achieved at a terrible price. The German paratroopers were an elite, justifying again and again their great reputation for courage and hard fighting in Russia, North Africa and Italy. Bestselling military historian James Lucas has researched deeply in Allied and German archives and interviewed many of the leading members of the Fallschirmjaegar who survived the war. This is an unmissable and dramatic account of the Second World War's most frightening elite, perfect for readers of James Holland and Max Hastings.

In his third book, David Kilcullen takes us out of the mountains: away from the remote, rural guerrilla warfare of Afghanistan, and into the marginalised slums and complex security threats of the world's coastal cities, where almost 75 per cent of us will be living by mid-century. Scrutinising major environmental trends - population growth, coastal urbanisation - and increasing digital connectivity he projects a future of feral cities, urban systems under stress, and increasing overlaps between crime and war, internal and external threats, and the real and virtual worlds. Informed by Kilcullen's own fieldwork in the Caribbean, Somalia, the Middle East and Afghanistan, and that of his field research teams in cities in Central America and Africa, Out of the Mountains presents detailed, on-the-ground accounts of the new faces of modern conflict - - from the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, to transnational drug networks, local street gangs, and the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

The Partisan's Companion was produced by the Red Army to train partisans to fight the Nazi invader. Its usefulness outlived World War II, as it was later used to train Third World guerrillas in their wars of national liberation during the 1950s-70s, and even the Fedayeen guerrillas who fought US and coalition forces in Iraq. By the end of 1942, it was obvious that Germany was losing the war. The partisan ranks grew as did the training requirements for partisan commanders. The 1942 edition of The Partisan's Companion helped quickly train new guerrillas to a common standard. Besides field craft, it covers partisan tactics, German counter-guerrilla tactics, demolitions, German and Soviet weapons, scouting, camouflage, anti-tank warfare and anti-aircraft defense for squad and platoon-level instruction. It contains the Soviet lessons of two bitter years of war and provides a good look at the tactics and training of a mature partisan force. The partisans moved and lived clandestinely, harassed the enemy, and supported the Red Army through reconnaissance and attacks on German supply lines. They clearly frustrated German logistics and forced the Germans to periodically sideline divisions for rear-area security. The partisans and their handbook were clearly part of the eventual Soviet victory over Germany. This pocket manual puts The Partisan's Companion in context, explaining its importance.

David Kilcullen is one of the world's foremost experts on guerrilla warfare. His vision of war has been enormously influential, through his service as senior counterinsurgency adviser to General David Petraeus during the Surge in Iraq, as special adviser to the United States Secretary of State, and as a current adviser to the United States, British, Australian and other allied governments. This brief book distills that vision in an easily readable and practical format, through a completely revised and updated edition of his 2006 cult classic "The Twenty-Eight Articles", a field practitioner's guide to the fundamentals of counterinsurgency, which has become the essential handbook for generations of allied military officers and civilian officials in Iraq and Afghanistan, has become part of the course of instruction at military academies and counterinsurgency schools worldwide, and has been translated into Arabic and Spanish. This edition presents a fully updated and expanded version, including a new introduction, annotated tactical case studies, and an appendix on the key principles of the hugely successful Surge campaign of 2007 in Iraq. Issued as a rugged, pocket-sized field handbook, this modern classic will be an indispensable aid to a new generation of field officers, as well as a concise and accessible primer for students and the general reader.

Andrew Thomson rethinks the history of US imperialism, from the Cold War to today, to reveal how paramilitaries, militias, mercenaries, private armies, and contractors have always been central to US-sponsored insurgencies and US counterinsurgent statecraft. Examining a broad range of events from the Bay of Pigs to the occupation of Iraq, and from the Soviet-Afghan war to the ongoing conflict in Syria, Thomson offers an analysis of the evolution of US support for various para-institutional actors or non-state armed forces. He demonstrates how and why militias, mercenaries, and private military companies have increasingly formed a central part of US imperial strategies designed to influence political and economic conditions abroad. Drawing on declassified documents including military training manuals, CIA communiqus, and national security documents, Outsourced Empire reveals new evidence that helps us understand these institutions and their collective role in maintaining global order.

"The guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog's disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with." With these words, Robert Taber began a revolution in conventional military thought that has dramatically impacted the way armed conflicts have been fought since the book's initial publication in 1965. Whether ideological, nationalistic, or religious, all guerrilla insurgencies use similar tactics to advance their cause. "War of the Flea's" timeless analysis of the guerrilla fighter's means and methods provides a fundamental resource for any reader seeking to understand this distinct form of warfare and the challenge it continues to present to today's armed forces in the Philippines, Colombia, and elsewhere.

The presence of women combatants on the battlefield-especially in large numbers-strikes many observers as a notable departure from the historical norm. Yet women have played a significant active role in many contemporary armed rebellions. Over recent decades, numerous resistance movements in many regions of the globe have deployed thousands of female fighters in combat. In Female Fighters, Reed M. Wood explains why some rebel groups deploy women in combat while others exclude women from their ranks, and the strategic implications of this decision. Examining a vast original dataset on female fighters in over 250 rebel organizations, Wood argues rebel groups can gain considerable strategic advantages by including women fighters. Drawing on women increases the pool of available recruits and helps ameliorate resource constraints. Furthermore, the visible presence of female fighters often becomes an important propaganda tool for domestic and international audiences. Images of women combatants help raise a group's visibility, boost local recruitment, and aid the group's efforts to solicit support from transnational actors and diaspora communities. However, Wood finds that, regardless of the wartime resource challenges they face, religious fundamentalist rebels consistently resist utilizing female fighters. A rich, data-driven study, Female Fighters presents a systematic, comprehensive analysis of the impact women's participation has on organized political violence in the modern era.

The twentieth century produced scores of such conflicts, whether as sideshows of the world wars or as the main events in wars of revolution or liberation. "Guerrilla Warfare" examines twenty-one of these conflicts, shedding light on the remarkable capabilities of unconventional fighters to outlast and defeat their enemies. "Guerrilla Warfare" covers a century of unconventional fighters at war including: succinct accounts of 21 guerrilla conflicts in the twentieth century; the exploits of men like Lawrence of Arabia, Orde Wingate, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevera; the American hunt for Pancho Villa; Mao versus Chiang in the Chinese Civil War; the showdown at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; France's long war in Algeria; the Siege of Khe Sanh in the Vietnam War; the Afgan-Soviet War from 1979 to 1989; and, more.

In most societies, courts are where the rubber of government meets the road of the people. If a state cannot settle disputes and ensure that its decisions are carried out, for practical purposes it is no longer in charge. This is why successful rebels put courts and justice at the top of their agendas. Rebel Law examines this key weapon in the armory of insurgent groups, ranging from the Ireland of the 1920s, where the IRA sapped British power using 'Republican Tribunals' to today's 'Caliphate of Law' -- the Islamic State, by way of Algeria in the 1950s and the Afghan Taliban. Frank Ledwidge tells how insurgent courts bleed legitimacy from government, decide cases and enforce judgments on the battlefield itself. Astute counterinsurgents, especially in 'ungoverned space,' can ensure that they retain the initiative. The book describes French, Turkish and British colonial 'judicial strategy' and contrasts their experience with the chaos of more recent 'stabilization operations' in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing lessons for contemporary counterinsurgents. Rebel Law builds on his insights and shows that the courts themselves can be used as weapons for both sides in highly unconventional warfare.

The savage partisan war on the Eastern Front during World War II saw a wide variety of forces deployed by both sides. On the Soviet side, civilian partisans fought alongside and in co-operation with Red Army troops and Red Army and NKVD 'special forces'. On the German side, German Army security divisions, with indigenous components including cavalry, fought alongside SS police and Waffen-SS units and other front-line troops employed for short periods in the anti-partisan role. In addition to providing the background history of the forces of both sides, this study focuses upon three examples of German anti-partisan operations that show varied success in dealing with the Soviet partisan threat. Notably, it covers a major operation in north-west Russia during the spring of 1943 - Operation Spring Clean - that saw Wehrmacht security forces including local components fighting alongside troops under the SS umbrella against a number of Soviet partisan brigades. During the fighting, German forces even employed captured French tanks from earlier in the war against the partisans. Featuring specially commissioned artwork and drawing upon an array of sources, this is an absorbing account of the brutal fighting between German security forces and their Soviet partisan opponents during the long struggle for victory on World War II's Eastern Front.

Defiance against Chinese oppression has been a defining characteristic of Tibetan life for more than four decades, symbolized most visibly by the much revered Dalai Lama. But the story of Tibetan resistance weaves a far richer tapestry than anyone might have imagined.
Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison reveal how America's Central Intelligence Agency encouraged Tibet's revolt against China-and eventually came to control its fledgling resistance movement. While the CIA's presence in Tibet has been alluded to in other works, the authors provide the first comprehensive, as well as most compelling account of this little known agency enterprise.

The CIA's Secret War in Tibet takes readers from training camps in the Colorado Rockies to the scene of clandestine operations in the Himalayas, chronicling the agency's help in securing the Dalai Lama's safe passage to India and subsequent initiation of one of the most remote covert campaigns of the Cold War. Establishing a rebel army in the northern Nepali kingdom of Mustang and a para-commando force in India designed to operate behind Chinese lines, Conboy and Morrison provide previously unreported details about secret missions undertaken in extraordinarily harsh conditions. Their book greatly expands on previous memoirs by CIA officials by putting virtually every major agency participant on record with details of clandestine operations. It also calls as witnesses the people who managed and fought in the program-including Tibetan and Nepalese agents, Indian intelligence officers, and even mission aircrews.

Conboy and Morrison take pains to tell the story from all perspectives, particularly that of the former Tibetan guerrillas, many of whom have gone on record here for the first time. The authors also tell how Tibet led America and India to become secret partners over the course of several presidential administrations and cite dozens of Indian and Tibetan intelligence documents directly related to these covert operations. Ultimately, they are persuasive that the Himalayan operations were far more successful as a proving ground for CIA agents who were later reassigned to southeast Asia than as a staging ground for armed rebellion.

As the movement for Tibetan liberation continues to attract international support, Tibet's status remains a contentious issue in both Washington and Beijing. This book takes readers inside a covert war fought with Tibetan blood and U. S. sponsorship and allows us to better understand the true nature of that controversy.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), founded as a small guerrilla movement in 1974, became the leading party in the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). After decades of civil war, the EPRDF defeated the government in 1991, and has been the dominant party in Ethiopia ever since. Its political agenda of federalism, revolutionary democracy and a developmental state has been unique and controversial. Drawing on his own experience as a senior member of the TPLF/EPRDF leadership, and his unparalleled access to internal documentation, Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe identifies the organisational, political and sociocultural factors that contributed to victory in the revolutionary war, particularly the Front's capacity for intellectual leadership. Charting its challenges and limitations, he analyses how the EPRDF managed the complex transition from a liberation movement into an established government. Finally, he evaluates the fate of the organisation's revolutionary goals over its subsequent quarter-century in power, assessing the strengths and weaknesses the party has bequeathed to the country. 'Laying the Past to Rest' is a comprehensive and balanced analysis of the genesis, successes and failings of the EPRDF's state-building project in contemporary Ethiopia, from a uniquely authoritative observer.

Since the end of the cold war, a series of costly civil wars, many of them ethnic conflicts, have dominated the international security agenda. The international community, often acting through the United Nations or regional organizations like NATO, has felt compelled to intervene with military forces in many of these conflicts -- four of which comprise the heart of this book: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Cambodia, and Rwanda. "Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention" is a detailed examination by a host of distinguished scholars of these recent interventions in order to draw lessons for today's policy debates.

The contributors view ethnic conflict and internal war through the prism of the concept of the security dilemma -- a situation in which parties with strong incentives to cooperate wind up nonetheless in bloody competition out of distrust of the opponent. "Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention" assesses how international intervention can help solve the security dilemma in civil wars by designing political and military arrangements that make security commitments credible to the warring parties. The mixed record of partial successes, failures, and in some cases counterproductive interventions suggests an urgent need to extract lessons with a view toward developing a framework for making future policy choices.

As bad as they are, why aren't terrorists worse? With biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons at hand, they easily could be. And, as this chilling book suggests, they soon may well be. A former member of the National Security Council staff, Jessica Stern guides us expertly through a post-Cold War world in which the threat of all-out nuclear war, devastating but highly unlikely, is being replaced by the less costly but much more imminent threat of terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction.

According to Stern

Written from an insider's perspective, "The Ultimate Terrorists" depicts a not-very-distant future in which both independent and state-sponsored terrorism using weapons of mass destruction could actually occur. But Stern also holds out hope for new technologies that might combat this trend, and for legal and political remedies that would improve public safety without compromising basic constitutional rights.