Occupation

Volume 94 Number 885 Spring 2012regime, represented the ‘revolutionary’ strategy. 75 This indicates that resistancemovements can be motivated not only by a desire to end the occupation but also bypolitical objectives of their own that affect the conduct of hostilities.Mao Tse Tung’s book On Guerrilla Warfare 76 is often associated withrevolutionary warfare in the wake of World War II. However, it was published in1937 in the context of the war against Japanese invaders occupying China. Indescribing such warfare, Mao points out that guerrilla units may be organized froma variety of entities: the masses of the people, regular army units, local militia,the police, the ranks of the enemy, and even bandit groups. 77 Operationally, their‘primary field of activity is in the enemy’s rear area’, reinforcing the fact that armedconflict often continues once territory is occupied. 78 Guerrilla forces were assessedas being ‘particularly effective in the Far East where Chinese Communist Guerrillashelped KMT [Kuomintang] regular divisions tie down some 25 Japanese Divisionsfor most of the war’. 79While it might be tempting to view the violent activities of the WorldWar II resistance movements as a relic of a bygone era, the more recent example ofIraq suggests otherwise. Some sixty years after World War II a diversity of resistancegroups, methods of operation, motivations, and levels of violence was evident.Further, in respect of maintaining law and order, the occupation of Iraq highlightsthe challenges of containing criminal activity while addressing the significantsecurity threats posed by insurgent activity. A more detailed overview of thecomplexity of the security situation in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq isparticularly helpful in understanding the nature of a ‘violent’ occupation.The complex security situation in IraqThe swift and largely conventional Coalition military operation against Iraq thatcommenced on 20 March 2003 came to a close on 1 May 2003 with the declarationby President Bush that: ‘[m]ajor combat operations have ended’. 80 While the exacttime period of the occupation of Iraq has been the subject of debate, 81 it is widelyconsidered to have begun on 1 May 2003 and ended on 28 June 2004. 82 Even before75 Ibid.76 Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Samuel B. Griffith, University of Illinois Press, Champaign,IL, 2000.77 Ibid., pp. 71–76.78 Ibid., pp. 52–53.79 J. Ellis, above note 72, p. 200.80 Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Penguin Press, New York, 2006,p. 145. See also European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Case of Al-Skeini and Others v. The UnitedKingdom, application no. 55721/07, 7 July 2011, para. 10, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/4e2545502.pdf (last visited February 2012) (hereafter Al Skeini case).81 See Robert Kolb, ‘Occupation in Iraq since 2003 and the powers of the UN Security Council’, inInternational Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 90, No. 869, 2008, p. 29; M. Zwanenburg, above note 24, p. 745;Adam Roberts, ‘The end of occupation in Iraq (2004)’, inInternational and Comparative Law Quarterly,Vol. 54, January 2005, p. 27; and Adam Roberts, ‘Transformative military occupation: applying the laws ofwar and human rights’, inAmerican Journal of International Law, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2006, pp. 608–613.82 See Al Skeini case, above note 80, para. 143: ‘This aim was achieved by 1 May 2003, when major combatoperations were declared to be complete and the United States and the United Kingdom became279