Counterinsurgency is operated as a combination of typical military operations which include many different avenues. Military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological and civic actions are all different facets of counterinsurgency operations taken to defeat insurgency. Gaps, which are societal problems, are often capitalized by insurgents. Counterinsurgency deals with closing these gaps. When these gaps are large, they create mass confusion, of which Mao Tse Tung wrote "the guerilla must swim in the people as the fish swims in the sea" (Wikipedia, 2008).

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