Any study of modern insurgency has to start with Mao. The communist leader who defeated China's nationalist forces not only succeeded as an insurgent but also wrote about how he won. His book, On Guerrilla Warfare, is a how-to guide for insurgent leaders that has been quoted by nearly every insurgent strategist since, including al-Qaida's. The best translation is by U.S. marine Brig. Gen. Samuel B. Griffith, whose fluency in Chinese and extensive travel in China during its civil war enabled him to provide unique insights into Mao's work.

Journal articles offer another rich vein of enlightenment on the conduct of counter-insurgency. In Best Practices in Counterinsurgency, in the May-June 2005 issue of Military Review, Kalev I. Sepp, a former U.S. special forces officer and now professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, studied 51 recent counterinsurgencies to develop a list of 12 "best practices'' common to all successful ones, and nine "worst practices'' of the unsuccessful ones. In Iraq, the U.S. scores below 50 per cent on the first and above 50 per cent on the second.

Two important articles are written from the unique perspective of a senior military officer fighting an active counter-insurgency. In "Challenges in Fighting a Global Insurgency,'' in the summer 2006 issue of Parameters, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan from October 2003 to April 2005, highlights the insurgents' ability to think in terms of 25-year wars. "The Americans may have all the wristwatches,'' he quotes the Taliban reminding villagers, "but we have all the time.'' And in his influential Winning the Peace: The Requirement for Full-Spectrum Operations in the July-August 2005 Military Review, Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli describes how his division in Baghdad not only had to conduct combat operations but also train Iraqi security forces, provide essential services, promote Iraqi efforts to establish an effective government and foster economic competition in what had been a controlled economy.