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G ra h a m H . Tu r b iv i l l e , J r.
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Foreword
T
his is a pertinent and timely study of a critical issue facing
the United States military today: how do insurgents logistically
sustain and expand their operations? Graham H. Turbiville, Jr.
appropriately mentions Martin Van Creveld’s excellent treatise, Sup-
plying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton but argues persua-
sively that a similar study on the role of logistics in unconventional
or “small” wars is sorely needed. Dr Turbiville’s essay discusses lo-
gistics and sustainment of guerillas operating in the Soviet Union
behind German lines during World War II. The paper is a significant
step in addressing the research shortfall on insurgency logistics.
Dr Turbiville posits there is a high correlation between Soviet
Union planner’s studies of Soviet partisan operations in World War II
and how the USSR sponsored and supported insurgencies through-
out the Cold War period. He effectively argues that this mindset “con-
stituted the base upon which Soviet and Russian guerilla operations
and support approaches and techniques were developed” in the 60
years since World War II. Turbiville clearly identifies how the Soviet
perspective on the effectiveness of guerilla operations “constituted
the most frequent means of shaping the course of military actions
in low intensity conflict.” Implicit in this paradigm is the critical link
between Soviet special operations type units and partisan or guerilla
activities.
A significant portion of the report discusses how the Soviet
Union supplied guerilla forces during the war. Dr Turbiville empha-
sizes three distinct types of supply sources guerillas can use: local
or prepositioned supplies, captured supplies, and supplies provided
from external sources. Resupply by Soviet aircraft was an extremely
important transportation medium used by the USSR. Although most
insurgents fighting against the United States are unlikely to use aer-
ial resupply due to US air supremacy, these three broad supply cat-
egories are still valid and are present in our current conflicts in Iraq
and Afghanistan. One of the most valuable sections of Dr Turbiville’s
work is the superb recap in the essay’s conclusion of thirteen key
elements of insurgency sustainment. These elements are provided
to establish a framework for further research and consideration. Al-
though all are important, the discussions concerning the elements
of supply, basing, and mine or weapon fabrication are especially rel-
evant to today’s operational environment.
Introduction
A
t the beginning of the 1970s, the isolation and defeat—or sus-
tainment and success—of insurgencies in a number of Latin
American, African and Asian countries preoccupied selected
US and Soviet planners. The Soviet organization charged principally
with the support of insurgent or terrorist groups was the First Main
Directorate of the Committee of State Security (KGB), which had a
clear mission: create “the conditions for the use … of separate cen-
ters of the anti-imperialist movement and the guerrilla struggle on
the territory of foreign countries.” The First Main Directorate was
also specifically charged with a challenge upon which success of
that mission depended: it must through “special tasks” deliver “help
by arms, instructors etc. to the leadership of fraternal communist
parties, progressive groups and organizations that wage an armed
struggle in circumstances of isolation from the outside world.” 1 This
logistic support dimension of insurgency was the beneficiary of a body
of wartime experience and subsequent study that shaped guerrilla
support in ways that still echo in the support activities of contempo-
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nal.” 16 The underground facility had hydraulic doors, and its various
chambers, connected by tunnels, held some 307 passports from 22
countries, various national immigration stamps, other false docu-
ments, and assorted permits to include blank voter identification
cards for the upcoming 1994 election in El Salvador. It also held
approximately 7,000 pages of documents including well-developed
target data on companies and individuals, strategy papers, clippings
on actions, and other material, hundreds of AK-47s, machine guns,
RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), and tons of ammunition and ex-
plosives including C-4 plastique; and 19 surface-to-air shoulder fired
missiles.
The documents and investigation revealed
that the proprietor of the garage and under- The documents
ground storage facility was a leader of the ETA and investiga-
Basque terrorist international logistic apparatus tion revealed that
(who later became overall ETA logistics chief). the proprietor …
His Basque partner also was an ETA logistic ap- was a leader of
paratus member. In addition to ETA, documents
the ETA Basque
revealed that interacting organizations includ-
ed the FPL (Forces of Popular Liberation) of the terrorist inter-
multi-group FMLN (which later admitted owner- national logistic
ship of the weapons), the MIR (Movement of the apparatus …
Revolutionary Left, based in Chile); Sandinista
elements (then very much a part of the military and internal security
components of the Chamorro Government), and the ERP (Peoples
Revolutionary Army in Argentina). The logistic and other links among
these disparate groups highlighted relationships and cooperation
that gave additional insight to sometimes intertwined support.
Similarly, some FARC and ELN resourcing and financing—and
particularly the criminal linkages at a time when it was debated—ap-
peared in the early 1990s. The arrest of the ELN finance minister in
north central Colombia in early 1992 reportedly was accompanied by
the discovery of a computer disc that set out a wealth of ELN mon-
ey-making operations throughout northeastern Colombia—opera-
tions that included a list of ransom payments and victims, extortion
schemes involving businesses and individuals, and an assessment
of guerrilla front expenses. It also included Colombian intercepts of
FARC secretariat mail, seized documents, and debriefed a number
of defectors and collaborators. All of this revealed an extraordinary
amount of information on FARC and ELN financing, and indicated—
already more than a decade ago now—that the two guerrilla groups
had become the “largest, best organized, and most profitable crimi-
nal activity in the country.” Further, the Colombian authorities de-
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• Technology applications
• Rural, urban and maritime aspects
• Administering guerrilla support and operational areas
• Interaction with external groups
• Printing and disseminating directives, training, and propa-
ganda materials
• Financial and money-raising approaches and techniques
• Logistic support for phased guerrilla movement growth into
a near-regular or conventional force
This paper addresses additional “classic” experience that speaks
to all of the elements above—that is pertinent components of the
extensive and variegated experience of the Soviet guerrilla logistic
support in World War II, and how the experience was studied and
synthesized by postwar military planners who applied the lessons to
insurgent support throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. There
are many strong echoes of this that continue in groups with a heri-
tage of Soviet/Warsaw Pact/Cuban support and extensive training,
and perhaps in Russian gray market activity among old clients as
well. Articles, studies and assessments constitute a superb collection
of tactics, techniques, and procedures, theory, observations, lessons
and countermeasures applicable to insurgent logistic support—and
which have penetrated practice and language of many groups. It is
worth revisiting and reconsidering for its still-relevant lessons in the
logistic support of irregular armed groups. While studied in the West
with considerable attention in the years after World War II and in the
US-Vietnam War period, this rich body of material—and newly devel-
oped and interpreted material—has been largely neglected amid the
renewed interest in insurgency.
This paper will examine how planners collected and systematized
insurgent logistic concepts, experience and techniques to include
different types of insurgencies and environments; identified and
highlighted guerrilla actions and successful/unsuccessful counter-
measures, and considered their pertinence for the support of insur-
gencies in the last part of the 20th Century.
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fort is worth studying in detail, since the devices for the time were
extraordinary in their effects and were continually adapted to Ger-
man countermeasures. Among the inno-
vations produced in guerrilla field work- Among the innovations
shops was a cheap, portable, delayed produced in guerrilla field
action electromechanical fuse that could workshops was a cheap,
be set with a delay from 2 hours to 100 portable, delayed action
days. This single innovation was criti-
electromechanical fuse …
cally important. As one specialist noted,
“this fuse … literally opened an era in the
matter of mining roads and facilities during a withdrawal, and has a
tremendous significance in any sabotage matter.” 60
The partisan leadership had made a conscious decision to con-
centrate on the supply and fabrication of demolitions as a primary
guerrilla weapon. The reason for this was the relative guerrilla weak-
ness in mechanization and mobility, the difficulty in communicating
or blocking German communications and reaction, and the over-
all guerrilla weakness in relative firepower, especially in the early
months of the war. Explosive devices, as retrospective analyses put
it, enabled the guerrillas to strike blows of tactical, operational, and
sometimes strategic importance against a superior enemy without
the dangers of direct contact—this shaped the supply priority, re-
search for new technologies, and employment practices. As noted
earlier, Starinov’s writings alone provide a wealth of information on
theoretical and practical approach that continued to be developed
throughout the Cold War under KGB and GRU auspices.
Materiel captured or otherwise obtained from the Germans and
their allies played an important role in supplying guerrilla forma-
tions throughout much of the war. Postwar statistical retrospectives
indicate that this was the second major source of weapons and am-
munition, following external resupply.61 (The 1980s calculated de-
cision by the Salvadoran FMLN and its Soviet/Cuban/Nicaraguan
sponsors to falsely insist that local supply was the main source of
their weapons was noted earlier. The reality that outside supplies
eventually become critical for growing or sustained guerrilla move-
ments, however, remained operative four decades later.)
To illustrate local acquisition, during 1942 alone guerrillas in
the Mogilev area (in current Belorus, some 100 miles east of Minsk)
captured 8 field guns, 195 light and medium machine guns, 155
submachine guns, 2,659 rifles, 1,999 pistols, 442,000 rounds of am-
munition, and 1,256 grenades.62 Some assessments by the Germans
indicate that attacks on supply depots to obtain arms were infre-
quent, though they clearly took place more often later in the war,
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Conclusions
The guerrilla logistic and support activities reviewed above have val-
ue that falls into several areas.102 Historically, the Soviet World War
II guerrilla, or partisan, movement was arguably the most extensive
and variegated experience occurring in any single, sustained conflict.
Collectively, it constituted as “classic” a series of accounts of guer-
rilla success and failures—and their logistic underpinnings—as any
other insurgencies for the lessons it yields. The nearly five years of
intense guerrilla operations encompassed hundreds of thousands of
participants operating in mountains, forests, swamps, plains, along
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Endnotes
1 A.I. Kolpakidi and D.P. Prokhorov, Vneshnaya razvedka Rossii (The
Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia), Saint Petersburg, 2001, p.80,
as cited at <http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseactio
n=topics.item&news_id=105150>
2 There haven’t been many inspiring lines to mobilize the enthusiasm of
laboring logisticians. Winston Churchill’s 1898 tribute to British and
Egyptian transport, supply, and effective lines of communication in the
Nile Campaign still constitutes the most-quoted passage on the value
of logistics: “Victory is the beautiful, bright coloured flower. Transport
is the stem without which it could never have blossomed.” For our
main Cold War opponent, V. I. Lenin’s far less elegant and mildly hu-
morous (in English) dictate that “to wage war successfully you must
have a well-organized rear” was a similar catch-phrase among Soviet
rear service personnel for decades. See Winston S. Churchill, The Riv-
er War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, Classic
Books, 2001. The chapter on logistics (Chapter VIII, “The Desert Rail-
way”) is still well worth reading and, with the rest of the1902 edition,
is available at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/7rivr10.txt .
3 Martin Van Crevald, Supplying War: Logistics From Wallenstein to Pat-
ton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
4 John A. Lynn, ed. Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from
the Middle Ages to the Present, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.
For works dealing largely with the US, the Naval War College Press,
Newport Rhode Island, reprinted four classic logistic works recom-
mended for general military readers that include: George C. Thorpe,
Pure Logistics (1977); Duncan S. Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in
the Second World War (1998); Worrall R. Carter, Beans, Bullets and
Black Oil (1998); Henry E. Eccles, Logistics in the National Defense
(1997). These works are reviewed in David Schrady, “Reading Logis-
tics,” Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn 2002. The instructive assess-
ment by William G., Lt. General Pagonis and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank,
Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf
War, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994 recounts one of
the great logistic efforts of history.
5 “Guerrilla” or “insurgent” along with the word “partisan” are used in-
terchangeably in this paper to convey, as the Russians do, a broader
sense of the topic than the more European-associated “partisan” that
appears in most English language writings on the guerrilla move-
ments of the USSR, Yugoslavia, Greece and other European states.
In Russian (and formerly Soviet) writings, partisan (partizan) is the
term of choice for Third World guerrillas or insurgents. The Revolu-
tionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) , for example, is a “partisan
movement” (partizanskoye dvizheniye) as was the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front of El Salvador.
6 Charles R. Shrader, The Withered Vine: Logistics and the Communist
Insurgency in Greece, 1945-1949, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. Sev-
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eral other excellent works by Shrader dealing with military logistics for
regular forces include: The First Helicopter War: Logistics and Mobility
in Algeria, 1954-1962, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. While dealing with
a regular military force, Schrader’s Communist Logistics in the Korean
War, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995, is fine focused treatment
of North Korean Army logistics.
7 In particular see Shrader, Withered Vine, Chapters 5, ”The Greek
Democratic Army: Manpower and Logistics,” and Chapter 8, “Logistics
and the Failure of the Insurrection in Greece.”
8 Jose Angel Moroni Bracamonte and David E. Spencer, Strategy and
Tactics of the Salvadoran FMLN Guerrillas: Last Battle of the Cold War,
Blueprint for Future Conflicts, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. See in par-
ticular Chapter 9, “Guerrilla Logistics/Support/Sanctuary.”
9 Ibid., p. 186.
10 Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Bolivian Diary, Introduction by Fidel Castro,
trans. by Carlos P. Hansen and Andrew Sinclair, London: Jonathan
Cape/Lorrimer, 1968 (a translation of the “official” Cuban version
published in Havana that same year).
11 Carlos Marighella, The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, June 1969,
Sao Paulo, Brazil. (On-line at http://www.military-media.com/down-
load/mini.pdf )
12 Daniel L. Byman, et al, Trends in Outside Support of Insurgent Move-
ments (1991-2000), Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, 2001, MR-
1405-OTI.
13 Kim Cragin, Bruce Hoffman, Arms Trafficking and Colombia, Santa
Monica: The Rand Corporation, 2003, MR-1468-DIA.
14 Brian A. Jackson, et al, Aptitude for Destruction: Organizational Learn-
ing in Terrorist Groups and its Implications for Combating Terrorism,
Volume I, Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, 2005, MG-331-NIJ;
and Aptitude for Destruction: Case Studies of Organizational learning in
Five Terrorist Groups, Volume II, Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation,
2005, MG-332-NIJ.
15 Ibid.
16 The explosions were evidently caused during a mishap when some
weapons or explosives were being transferred from the arsenal to a
waiting vehicle. Among the best sources dealing with the Managua
Taller Santa Rosa explosions are: Roberto Orozco B., “Etarra de leva
en Nicaragua,” La Prensa, received via Internet; “ ‘Paticorto,’ presun-
to jefe del aparato logístico de ETA” El Mundo, 26 November 2001;
“En la Indefinicion Esta la Clave,” Envio, no. 138, June 1993; Tim
Johnson, “Blast Blows Kidnapping Ring’s Cover—Sandinistas’ Role
Questioned,” The Miami Herald, 20 June 1993; and Douglas Farah,
“Managua Blasts Rip Lid Off Secrets; Salvadoran Rebel Cache, Leftist
Kidnap Data Exposed; Sandinistas Implicated,” Washington Post, 14
July 1993; and Reed Irvine, ed., Sandinista Link to New York Plots?”
Accuracy in Media Report, 13 July 1993.
17 “El gran negocio de la guerrilla,” Semana, 7-14 July 1992, No. 531, p.
26-32.
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18 See Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants in the “Declara-
tion of Jihad Against the Country’s Tyrants Military Series,” a docu-
ment entered in evidence at the trial for the African Embassy bomb-
ings, Southern District Court, New York City Attorney General’s Office,
circa early to mid-1990s, in translation from Arabic. The pertinent
“Seventh Lesson—Weapons: Measures Related to Buying and Trans-
porting Them,” pp. 19-23.
19 Much of this was set out in the postwar US Department of the Army
“Historical Study” series based on German records and compiled by
German officers working with US officers. See for example, Depart-
ment of the Army, Rear Area Security in Russia—The Soviet Second
Front Behind German Lines, No. 20-240, July 1952.
20 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, http://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/
008/087/173.htm.
21 Soviet participation in the Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil War, and
Finnish “Winter War” before also informed this base of experience as
Soviet and Russian planners pointed out.
22 The subsequent availability of some Soviet archive materials following
the fall of the USSR has increased this knowledge further.
23 See Il’ya G. Starinov, Il’ya Starinov: Soldat stoletiya [Soldier of the Cen-
tury], General Editor I.I. Komarova, Moscow: 2002; and Il’ya G. Stari-
nov, Over the Abyss, New York: Ballantine Books, 1995. His first wife
of 48 years, also a demolitions expert he met in Spain, wrote her own
account in Anna Starinov, Behind Fascist Lines : A Firsthand Account
of Guerrilla Warfare During the Spanish Revolution, New York: Ballan-
tine Books, 2001.
24 D.L. Podushkov, “Spetsnaz rozhdalsya na Tverskoy zemle” [Spetsnaz
Was Born on Tver Territory], on-line at http://starina.library.tver.ru/
us-007.htm.
25 Ibid., The 350-kilogram explosive device was buried at a depth of 2
meters in the basement of a house the general and other officers were
expected to occupy. A decoy mine—intended to be discovered and thus
end continued searches—was also planted.
26 Mikhailovich Ptichkin, “The GRU Spetsnaz Is the Elite of the Russian
Armed Forces: Spetsnaz Reconnaissance Team Competitions Were
Held in Leningrad MD”, Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kuryer, 10 Aug 2005
(as translated by FBIS CEP20050811949001 ).
27 Initiatives for creating and supporting guerrilla groups around the
USSR’s periphery were underway at this time. For example, the war-
time head of the NKVD Administration for Special Tasks, Pavel Su-
doplatov, recalled in his memoirs 50 years after the war ended that
“during most of 1948 I was preoccupied with the Berlin crisis and es-
tablishing a Kurdish guerrilla network in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey with
the goal of overthrowing the government of Nuri Said and Faisal in
Iraq.” See Pavel and Anatoli Sudoplatov, et al, Special Tasks, Boston:
Back Bay Books, 1995, p. 297.
28 “Sozdaniye Kursov uslovershenstvovaniya ofitserskogo sostava” [Cre-
ating the USSR KGB Improved Officer Corps Courses (KUOS)], 3 April
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100 Ibid., and L. Zabavskaya, “To Serve People,” SMR, October 1980, pp.
56-57.
101 “Military Secret,” RenTV, 0945 GMT, 21 May 2000.
102 The treatment is far from comprehensive in terms of sources and ar-
chives now available on World War II and the postwar period. In ad-
dition, it does not include such important antecedents as the Soviet-
Finnish ‘’Winter War” (1939-1940), Soviet military assistance to Spain
(1936-1939), and the Russian Civil War (1917-1922)—all of which had
their lessons to offer to Soviet planners and theorists.
103 For an illustration of the kinds of material becoming available from
FSB and other archives, see the review by CIA staff historian Benja-
min B. Fischer of V. S. Khristoforov, et al., Lubyanka in the Days of
the Battle for Moscow: Materials from the Organs of State Security SSSR
from the Central Archive FSB Russia, Moscow: Izdatel’skii dom “Zvon-
nitsa-MG,” 2002. 480 pages.
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