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‘this book should be required reading for anyone involved in the war on terror. Kilcullen’s central concept of the “accidental guerrilla” is brilliant and the policy prescriptions that flow from it important. And that’s not all; the book has many more insights drawn from various battlefields. —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
'For a wider perspective on the lessons drawn over the past seven years
of the 'war on terror', the reader can do no better than turn to Mr
Kilcullen's excellent book. The Accidental Guerrilla
has an anthropologist's sense of social dynamics and a reporter's eye
for telling detail. If T.E. Lawrence evoked the means of waging
irregular warfare in his 1926 classic, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Mr
Kilcullen describes the practitioner's art of combating insurgents.' — The Economist
The Australian David Kilcullen is the world’s foremost expert on this way of war, and in The Accidental Guerrilla, the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to the Pentagon and architect of ‘the Surge’, surveys war as it is actually fought in the contemporary world.
376pp Apr 2009
| Hardback | | 9781850659556 | | £20.00 | | Buy Now |
War today is far different from what we expected it to be. Counter-insurgency and protracted guerrilla warfare, not shock and awe, are the order of the day. The Australian David Kilcullen is the world’s foremost expert on this way of war, and in The Accidental Guerrilla, the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to the Pentagon and architect of ‘the Surge’, surveys war as it is actually fought in the contemporary world. Colouring his account with gripping battlefield experiences that range from the highlands of Southeast Asia to the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the dusty towns of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, The Accidental Guerrilla will, quite simply, change the way we think about war. While conventional warfare has obvious limits, Kilcullen stresses that neither counterterrorism nor traditional counterinsurgency is the appropriate framework to fight the enemy we now face. Traditional counterinsurgency is more effective than counterterrorism when it comes to entities like Al Qaeda, but, as Kilcullen contends, our current focus is far too narrow, for it tends to emphasize one geographical region and one state. The current war presents a much different situation: stateless insurgents and terrorists operating across large number of countries and only loosely affiliated with each other. Just as importantly, Western armies have done a poor job of applying different tactics to different situations, continually misidentifying insurgents with limited aims and legitimate grievances as part of a coordinated worldwide network. Given the incremental—yet remarkable—success of Kilcullen’s strategy in Iraq, what Kilcullen has to say will be widely anticipated. His vision of war has changed Western policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and this eagerly awaited comprehensive account will help shape policy for years to come.
Reviews 'At the heart of this significant book is the author's declaration that terrorism cannot be addressed by military means alone: that for American or British soldiers merely to kill insurgents is meaningless. He urges policies based upon securing and succouring populations, not on enemy body counts. . . . Kilcullen is an influential man. A former Australian army officer, he became a key adviser to General David Petraeus and then Condoleezza Rice's principal counter-terrorist strategist at the State Department. His book synthesises lessons that America has learnt by bitter experience and that, hopefully, will continue to influence its politics in the Obama era. . . Almost everything the author says makes sense. His work reflects wisdom purchased by eight years of western military and political folly.' — Max Hastings, The Sunday Times
‘David Kilcullen’s Accidental Guerrilla is a richly reported and well written account of the new way of war of the twenty-first century; how those “small wars” will differ from previous conflicts and what they have in common with past insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. Analytically very sharp and also an engrossing read, Kilcullen’s book is destined to become a classic study of warfare in our new century.’ — Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know, is CNN’s national security analyst.
'Kilcullen’s Accidental Guerrilla is a perceptive, argumentative handbook on how to fix a problem. [...] His argument is that while “there is a global enemy”, it amounts to “only 2 per cent to 5 per cent of the people we’ve been fighting since 9/11”. many of the others are “Accidental terrorists”, provoked into retaliation by intrusion into their territory or disputes. [...] His strength is in knowledge of the different enemies and their motivation, and it is his case that without understanding those subtleties, the battle is lost.’ — The Times
‘this book is essential.... Kilcullen skillfully interprets the future of counterinsurgency, the proper use of military force and what we must learn from our losses and mistakes. After reading The Accidental Guerrilla, one is left to wonder why the pentagon did not listen to his sage advice back in 2003.’—New York Times Book Review
'America's disastrous war in Iraq was salvaged by an unlikely collection of dissident generals, think-tank scholars and foreign experts. The “surge” of troops launched in 2007, along with the adoption of new counter-insurgency tactics and a favourable realignment of political forces, all combined to pull Iraq back from a full-blown civil war—and made a celebrity of General David Petraeus.
David Kilcullen, a former Australian army officer who served as an adviser to the general, further burnishes his reputation with a new account of the surge.
For a wide perspective on the lessons drawn over the past seven years of the “war on terror”, the reader can do no better than turn to Mr Kilcullen’s excellent book. “The Accidental Guerrilla” has an anthropologist’s sense of social dynamics and a reporter’s eye for telling detail. If T.E. Lawrence evoked the means of waging irregular warfare in his 1926 classic, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, Mr Kilcullen describes the practitioner’s art of combating insurgents. For instance, his account of how the Americans use soft and hard power to pacify parts of eastern Afghanistan—combining road-building with focused operations—should be compulsory reading in military academies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mr Kilcullen draws on experiences from many places—not just Iraq, but also Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia and even Europe—to try to understand the nature of global jihadist militancy. He offers four overlapping, if imperfect, ways of analysing the phenomenon: as part of a reaction against globalisation; part of a global Muslim insurgency; the result of a civil war within Islam itself; and a rebellion of the weak against America’s might.
All this makes the Iraq war fiendishly complex; it is “an insurgency plus a terrorist campaign plus a sectarian civil war, sitting on top of a fragile state within a divided, unstable region,” says Mr Kilcullen. Classical notions of counter-insurgency, which emphasise building up indigenous forces, may be counter-productive if that ends up strengthening one side of a sectarian war. Conversely, creating Sunni tribal militias, successful against al-Qaeda in the short term, may ultimately weaken the central government. Mr Kilcullen quotes one Iraqi officer as warning him: “You have taken a crocodile as a pet.”
Mr Kilcullen is a reluctant warrior. Many of those fighting the West, he argues, are “accidental guerrillas”, driven to making common cause with violent extremists by the perceived need to defend themselves against American intervention. The invasion of Iraq, he says, was a grievous self-inflicted wound. Having learnt, impressively but painfully, how to do a better job of fighting insurgencies, America should not rush into more such wars. The watchword, he says, should be “never again”. But nor should it give up its hard-won expertise. It may need it in future. — The Economist
--- The Accidental Guerrilla
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