Roberto Colombo - Counterinsurgency Warfare and Brutalisation, the Second Russian-Chechen War

This book offers the first analysis of the brutalisation paradigm in counterinsurgency warfare.

Minimising the use of force and winning over the populations opinion is said to be the cornerstone of success in modern counterinsurgency (COIN). Yet, this tells only one side of the story. Drawing upon primary data collected during interviews with eyewitnesses of the Second Russian-Chechen War, as well as from secondary sources, to the best of the authors knowledge, this book is the first to offer a detailed analysis of the long-neglected logic underpinning brutalisation-centred COIN campaigns. It offers a comprehensive systematisation of the brutalisation paradigm and challenges the widespread assumption of brutalisation as an underperforming paradigm of COIN warfare. It shows that, although appalling, brutalisation-centred measures can deliver success. This book also outlines a stigmatised yet widely deployed set of COIN measures and provides critical insights into how Western military blueprints can be improved without compromising important moral and ethical requirements.

This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, military and strategic studies, Russian politics, and International Relations.

Roberto Colombo is an independent researcher and security analyst specialising in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism.

Emil Aslan Souleimanov is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Czech Republic.

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Counterinsurgency Warfare and Brutalisation

The Second Russian-Chechen War

Roberto Colombo and Emil Aslan Souleimanov

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First published 2022

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2022 Roberto Colombo and Emil Aslan Souleimanov

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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ISBN: 978-1-032-03579-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-03581-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-18804-9 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003188049

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4.1 Insurgent-related casualties registered in Chechnya (20102019)

3.1 Principal divergences between orthodox and shortcut patterns

3.2 Common normative standard of evaluation for population-centric COIN engagements

Minimising the use of force and winning over the populations hearts and minds are said to be the cornerstones of success in modern counterinsurgency (COIN). Yet, this is only one side of the coin. Drawing upon secondary sources and primary data collected during face-to-face interviews with eyewitnesses of the Second Russian-Chechen War, to the best of the authors knowledge, this book is the first to offer a detailed analysis of the long-neglected logic underpinning brutalisation-centred COIN campaigns. Venturing into an underresearched area, it provides unique contributions to the existing literature. First, this book offers a comprehensive systematisation of the brutalisation paradigm, so far lacking in the literature advancing a critical reading of COIN warfare. Second, it challenges the widespread assumption of brutalisation as an underperforming paradigm of COIN warfare and shows that, although appalling, brutalisation-centred measures can deliver success. Third, it sheds light on a stigmatised yet widely deployed set of COIN measures. Spearheading this alternative stream of policy-oriented research, it provides critical insights into how Western military blueprints can be improved without compromising important moral and ethical requirements. Fourth, empirically, it offers an original revisitation of the Second Russian-Chechen War. This book calls for future research into the brutalisation paradigm.

Research on the present manuscript was enabled by a research grant provided by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic 2114872S: Fratricidal defection: How blood revenge shapes anti-jihadist mobilisation.