ACADEMIA Letters Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter? Isaac Albert Introduction Existing works on counterinsurgency focus on the military and police means of punishment and prosecution. This combat model of counterinsurgency is more popular than the social model of having the insurgents weakened from within through state political actions. The weakness could also be caused through internal rivalries between the insurgents. This social model manifests openly as factionalisation of the movements. The question asked and an- swered in this paper is whether such factionalisation really matter in ending insurgency. The situations for illustrating this paradoxical situation in insurgency are drawn from the Niger Delta and northern parts of Nigeria where different forms of violent extremist groups prolifer- ate and state forces have not been able to defeat them whether militarily or through negotiation or mediation. Four relevant cases are considered. They show clearly that the factionalisaton of insurgents matter in counterinsurgency but the matter must be handled carefully to prevent unexpected outcomes. The Four Cases The first case is drawn from the Niger Delta crisis that has been raging since the 1990s between some armed youth in the oil-rich Niger Delta region and the Nigerian state over oil exploration and allocation of oil revenue to the different groups in the Nigerian federation. The militants and the people they represent are not happy that the oil prospecting activities in their backyards damage their environment and that what is allocated to the people of the region from the oil- dependent federation account is too little. Hence, the militants attack the oil companies in Academia Letters, April 2021 Corresponding Author: Isaac Albert, ioalbert2004@yahoo.com Citation: Albert, I. (2021). Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter? Academia Letters, Article 666. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL666. 1 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0