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The Urban Environment and its Influences on Insurgent Campaigns

For a long time, insurgency was a rural affair. The growing modernization of the modern world, however, shifts conflicts to the cities and requires us to explore the logics of armed struggle in urban environments. This article explores how the urban environment shapes armed conflicts, and argues that insurgents face severe practical constraints when acting in the cities. The urban environment offers the insurgents alternative ways of financing and of operating while close state control impedes them in pursuing a classic strategy of insurgency. Although state control cannot prevent attacks as such, it particularly hampers insurgents in relating to the population and organizing opposition. However, without massive and active support, armed struggle will remain sectarian and, thus, fail to achieve major political changes. This article argues that urban insurgents face a paradoxical relationship with society. While urban insurgents become independent of social support on an operational level, they depend more than ever on spontaneous massive and active social support on a strategic level.