The Accidental Guerrilla Quotes

“My personal position on counterinsurgency in general, and on Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, could therefore be summarized as "Never again, but..." That is, we should avoid any future large-scale, unilateral military intervention in the Islamic world, for all the reasons already discussed. But, recognizing that while our conventional war-fighting superiority endures, any sensible enemy will choose to fight us in this manner, we should hold on to the knowledge and corporate memory so painfully acquired, across all the agencies of all the Coalition partners, in Afghanistan and Iraq. And should we find ourselves (by error or necessity) in a similar position once again, then the best practices we have rediscovered in current campaigns represent an effective approach: effective, but not recommended.”
― David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

“Of course, in order to do this, here and there they had to kill some of the occupying forces and attack some of the military targets. But above all they had to kill their own people who collaborated with the enemy.”
― David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

“Muslim world: a youth bulge, corrupt and oppressive governments, a dysfunctional relationship between the sexes that limits the human capacity of societies by denying productive roles to half the population, a deficit of democracy and freedom of expression, economies dependent on oil but unable to provide fulfilling employment to an increasingly educated but alienated young male population, and a generalized anomie and sense of being victimized by a vaguely-defined “West.”
― David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

“The same official commented that the Pakistani army response took approximately 48 hours to mount, consisted of a two-battalion sweep of the area, commanded by a full colonel, and found nothing—a further example of the uselessness of large-scale sweep operations in this type of environment.”
― David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

“Some terrorism analysts have seen the southern insurgency as an Islamic jihad that forms part of the broader network of AQ-linked extremism, with Islamic theology and religious aspirations (for shari’a law or an Islamic emirate) as a key motivator.73 This surface impression is reinforced by the facts that the violence is led by ustadz74 and other religious teachers, that the mosques and ponoh (Islamic schools) have a central role as recruiting and training bases, and that militants repeatedly state that they are fighting a legitimate defensive jihad against the encroachment of the kafir (infidel) Buddhist Thai government. Clearly, also, the AQ affiliate Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI) has used Thailand as a venue for key meetings, financial transfers, acquisition of forged documents,75 and money laundering and as a transit hub for operators.”
― David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

“Bernard B. Fall,”
― David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One