Urban and Rural Insurgencies: A Comparative Analysis, (Paperback)

With global urbanization on the rise, especially in the developing world, it is reasonable to conclude that urban insurgencies will become more prevalent in the future. The new Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual devotes only a single paragraph to this environmental change, noting that urban insurgencies are "difficult to counter because they require little or no popular support." This admission implies a need to study the dynamics of urban-based insurgencies in greater depth and suggests that the time has come for a systematic comparison between urban and rural-based insurgencies. This thesis historically analyzed two rural insurgencies and two urban insurgencies to determine the underlying similarities and differences between the two types of insurgencies.