This chapter pursues the connection between societies in crisis and violence by examining certain forms of anti-partisan warfare. The emergence of guerrilla movements in the affected marginal rural areas resulted from social tensions which were in turn radically intensified by government repression. The fact that many people were drawn into the use of force – by now a familiar trait of extremely violent societies – prolonged the conflict immensely.

My Lai, Chatyn, Wiriamu, Pingdingshan, San Francisco (Nentón), Nyazonia, Lari, Philippeville. Symbols for military brutality, many such sites of massacres during anti-guerrilla wars in the twentieth century were located in areas designated ‘free-fire,’ ‘no-go,’ or ‘dead’ zones from which all people were to be removed: expelled, resettled, or killed.

When fighting protracted, brutal wars against uprisings in the countryside, a variety of regimes developed distinct concepts of counter-insurgency. In order to limit the political success of guerrilla movements among the rural population, to cut off their supplies and recruitment, and to destroy any shelter for them, armies hit out against civilians rather more than against the partisan forces. Militaries combined bloody sweeps and the destruction of buildings in marginal areas with the mass removal of the survivors and their resettlement in model villages in areas easier to control and closer to roads. Movements of people and distribution of food were radically restricted. In government-controlled areas, however, rural dwellers were promised economic advancement and some of the men recruited for armed militias, formations that turned out to be surprisingly loyal.