Pakistan’s Gadianton Robbers

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On Wednesday Jeff Lindsay posted on a fascinating article about the guerrilla warfare tactics of the Gadianton Robbers and their modern-day analogues.  Especially in light of yesterday’s tragic events, it’s especially interesting to compare Pakistan and the Middle East to what happened in the Book of Mormon:

When the Gadianton robbers start off, they start off as an urban terrorist group really, involved in assassinations. But they eventually have to flee into the mountains and this is typical of guerrilla groups in our own century. And they’ll talk at length about how the best places to work are in cities, where you can hide among the urban masses. Or if that doesn’t work—as it didn’t work for the Gadianton robbers—they then flee into inaccessible territory, almost always mountains. It was, in all three cases (in China, Vietnam and in Cuba), the mountains into which the guerrillas fled. Then they make lightning raids out of the mountains to attack settled civilizations. But they choose only those times when they can win. They can make a lightning strike, do some damage, then get away. This, of course, irritates the authorities to no end. And the authorities then will send troops into the mountains after the guerrillas, but the mountains are the guerrilla’s native territory. The guerrilla then chooses the place to fight from. He ambushes the regular troops that come after him. He causes them immense casualties.