Has a terrorist / partisan / insurgency / freedom fighter organisation ever been DEFEATED by military force?

Answer 1

No. At best, such organizations are prevented from wreaking as much harm as they otherwise would. Terrorism, insurgencies and the like are the resort of groups that cannot fight a conventional war against a conventional military force. That is the whole purpose of resorting to such tactics. You might as well try to fight propaganda with a machine gun. The counter response must match the tactic being employed. Conventional military force is not a counter tactic to terrorism or insurgency. Rather, terrorism and insurgence are counter tactics used against a conventional military presence.

Answer 2

The insurgency in Malaya wasn't defeated by military force. The main points of the insurgency was the independence from British colonial rule. As Tunku Abdul Rahman had achieved this by peaceful means, the insurgency had lost its cause and became irrelevant.

It has been said that the war on terror is as win-able as the war on drugs - you can't do it from solely a military standpoint (or just law enforcement where the war on drugs is concerned). The root causes, or the elements which make such an insurgency relevant must also be addressed and resolved.

Answer 3

Well, I would say the most famous case would be the Nazis. The difference between them and terrorists in general is that they were very organized and part of the country's government, rather than random attackers here and there. And of course there are neo-Nazis, which I think represent the part of a terrorist organization that it is impossible to defeat with military force. Even if you were to use force to destroy every last terrorist in the world, you would not have defeated terrorism, there will always be people who will take their lives in the same direction when faced with the same hopeless situations. The only way to truly defeat terrorism and make the world safer is to figure out what causes terrorism and cure the cause, which is more of a social policy problem than a military/defense problem.

Answer 4

Well I don't know that Native Americans were defeated by military force as much as by genocide and brutality. And I don't know what people with their own government and society that are invaded by strangers who impose their own values, government, and society on them wouldn't fight back.

Your question hinges on how those organizations are defined. The British in 1776 surely considered the colonists to be insurgents/terrorist/freedom fighters. And despite two attempts to defeat them were unsuccessful. However to us they were the founding fathers. To the Union in the Civil War the Rebels were considered freedom fighters/inusrgents/terrorists and successfully defeated them. To the South the Rebels were heros. In Northern Ireland the British saw the IRA as terrorists but to many Irish people they were heros. They were not defeated by military force though. Diplomacy brought an end to the violence there. During WWII the French Freedom Fighters were terrorists to the Germans but saivors to the French.

It's all about perspective.

Answer 5

Defeated, in the sense of losing a fight, then yes, there are many examples.

Defeated, in the sense of obliterating the organisation and completely eliminating the underlying insurrection, then the examples are few, as the grievance may be nursed for decades or centuries and flare up/come back

A recent example is Israel in Lebannon; the Israeli army defeated the armed terrorists in the 80's & 90's on many occaisions. However, Hizbollah coming back just illustrates the ultimate futility of military force on its own in these circumstances

Answer 6

Yes. They are most of the time. Example one: The Greek insurgency after world war two. Exemple two: Che Guevara in Bolivia.
Some insurgent movements become part of main politics, as was the case in Northern Ireland.

Answer 7

Yes. The native Americans (Indians) were these types of fighters and they were defeated.

The problem, as with any combat situation, is attrition. We had more than they did. If the guerrilla fighters are constantly supplied with bodies, the situation will only be drug out. A well organized, well equipped, highly motivated military force can win such engagements.

Answer 8

Yes, it has happened a few times throughout recorded history.

Types of rebellion
A violent rebellion is sometimes referred to as an insurgency while a larger one may escalate into a civil war. There are a number of terms that fall under the umbrella of "rebel", though they range from those with positive connotations to those that are considered pejorative. Examples, in rough order from sympathetic to pejorative, are:

"Nonviolent resistance" or "civil disobedience"
"Resistance" carried out by freedom fighters, often to an occupying invader
"Revolution" by revolutionaries, often meant to indicate a desired change in the form of government and/or economic system
"Uprising" by militants
"Insurrection" by insurrectionists
"Insurgency" by insurgents
"Revolt"- A localized rebellion that, while wanting some form of change they lack the foresight that a revolution has. While they might overpower the local forces they more often then not fail to defeat a major army, if they do it tends to evolve into a full scale revolution.
"Mutiny" by mutineers, normally of military or security forces to commanders
"Subversion" by subversives
[edit]
Famous rebellions / uprisings in history
335 BC Theban Rebellion against Alexander the Great
73 BC - 71 BC The Roman Slave rebellion
66 AD - 70 AD Great Jewish Revolt
184 Yellow Turban Rebellion in Han China
1378 Revolt of the Ciompi in Florence
1381 Peasants' Revolt in England
1519 - 1659 Jelali Revolts in the Ottoman Empire
1524 - 1526 Peasants' War in Germany
1569 - 1582 Desmond Rebellions in southern Ireland
1594 - 1603 Nine Years War (Ireland) in Ireland
1612 Minin-Pozharsky Uprising
1637 - 1638 Shimabara Rebellion
1641 - 1642 Irish Rebellion of 1641
1642 - 1649 The English civil wars, also known as the Great Rebellion
1648 - 1654 Chmielnicki uprising in the Ukraine
1670 - 1671 Insurrection of Stepan Razin
1676 Bacon's Rebellion
1680 Pueblo Revolt
1689 Jacobite Rising
1715 the 'Fifteen Jacobite Rising
1739 Stono Rebellion
1741 New York Slave Insurrection of 1741
1745 the 'Forty-Five Jacobite Rising
1763 - 1766 Pontiac's Rebellion
1773 - 1774 Insurrection of Emelyan Pugachov
1775 - 1783 American Revolutionary War
1786 Shays' Rebellion
1789 - 1815 French Revolution
1792 New York Revolt of 1792
1793 - 1796 Revolt in the Vendée
1794 Kościuszko Uprising in Poland
1794 Whiskey Rebellion
1798 Irish Rebellion of 1798
1799 - 1800 John Fries's Rebellion
1800 United Irish Uprising in Newfoundland
1800 Gabriel Prosser's Rebellion
1804 - 1807 First Serbian Uprising
1811 Charles Deslandes' Louisiana Territory Slave Rebellion
1815 George Boxley Rebellion
1816 Fort Blount Revolt
1821 Greek War of Independence
1822 Denmark Vesey's Uprising
1825 Decembrist revolt
1839 Amistad Seizure
1831 Nat Turner's rebellion
1830 - 1831 November Uprising in Poland
1837 Rebellions of 1837 in Canada
1848 Young Irelanders' Rebellion
1851 - 1864 The Taiping rebellion
1853 - 1868 Nian Rebellion (捻軍起義)
1857 - 1858 Sepoy Rebellion
1861 - 1865 American Civil War
1863 - 1864 January Uprising in Poland
1867 Fenian rebellion
1876 Bulgarian rebellion
1885 North-West Rebellion
1896 - 1898 Philippine Revolution
1899 - 1913 Philippine-American War
1900 - 1901 Boxer Rebellion
1905 Battleship Potemkin uprising
1916 Easter Rebellion
1917 Russian Revolution
1919 - 1921 Tambov rebellion
1919 - 1939 Non-Cooperation Movement
1921 Kronstadt rebellion
1932 Mäntsälä rebellion
1934 Austrian Revolution
1940 - 1945 French Resistance
1952 - 1959 Mau Mau Rebellion
1968 May 1968 revolt in France
1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal
1987 - 1991 First Intifada
1989 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
1994 - Present Zapatista Rebellion
1992 Afghan Northern Alliance
2000 - Second Intifada
2003 - Iraqi Insurgency


A lot of the minor details are different in all the different instances but you get the idea.

Also you can research these guys:
(all of whom exhibited terrorist characteristics on different levels)

Famous rebels
Theodoros Kolokotronis
Malcolm X
Bhagat Singh
Jack Cade
Bohdan Chmielnicki
James Connolly
Michael Davitt
Francis of Assisi
Mahatma Gandhi
Owain Glyndŵr
Che Guevara
Ammon Hennacy
Helgi Hóseasson
Stonewall Jackson
Robert E Lee
Martin Luther
Martin Luther King
Maccabees
Jake Mooney
Subcomandante Marcos
Thomas Francis Meagher
Emilio Aguinaldo
Tipu Sultan
John Mitchel
Emelyan Pugachov
Rani Lakshmi Bai
Vladimir Lenin
Stenka Razin
William Smith O'Brien
Subash Chandra Bose
Spartacus
Leo Tolstoy
Leon Trotsky
Pancho Villa
George Washington
Emiliano Zapata
The Unknown Rebel
William Wallace
Michael Collins
James Connoly
Louis Riel

Answer 9

Yes, by the british in Malaya