Early usage One of the earliest known uses of the term "irregular warfare" is
Charles Edward Callwell's classic 1896 publication for the
United Kingdom War Office,
Small Wars: Their Principles and Practices, where he noted in defining 'small wars': A similar usage appears in the 1986 English edition of
Modern Irregular Warfare in Defense Policy and as a Military Phenomenon by former
Nazi officer
Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte. The original 1972 German edition of the book is titled
Der Moderne Kleinkrieg als Wehrpolitisches und Militarisches Phänomen. The German word "Kleinkrieg" is literally translated as "small war". The word "irregular," used in the title of the English translation, seems to be a reference to non-regular armed forces as per the
Third Geneva Convention. Another early use of the term is in a 1996
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document by Jeffrey B. White. Major
military doctrine developments related to IW were done between 2004 and 2007 as a result of the
September 11 attacks on the United States. A key proponent of IW within US Department of Defense (DoD) is
Michael G. Vickers, a former paramilitary officer in the CIA. The CIA's
Special Activities Center (SAC) is the premiere American
paramilitary clandestine unit for creating and for combating irregular warfare units. For example, SAC paramilitary officers created and led successful irregular units from the Hmong tribe during the war in Laos in the 1960s, from the
Northern Alliance against the
Taliban during the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and from the
Kurdish Peshmerga against
Ansar al-Islam and the forces of
Saddam Hussein during the war in Iraq in 2003.
Other definitions • IW is a form of warfare that has as its objective the credibility and/or legitimacy of the relevant political authority with the goal of undermining or supporting that authority. IW favors indirect approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities to seek asymmetric approaches in order to erode an adversary's power, influence, and will. • IW is defined as a violent struggle among
state and non-state actors for
legitimacy and influence over the relevant
population(s) • IW involves conflicts in which enemy combatants are not regular military forces of nation-states. • IW is "war among the people" as opposed to "industrial war" (i.e., regular war). == Activities ==