How to Use counterinsurgency in a Sentence

counterinsurgency

noun
  • The military has launched a counterinsurgency.
  • As anyone who has done counterinsurgency work knows, this is just going to pour more gasoline on the fire.
    — Brynn Tannehill, The New Republic, 12 Dec. 2022
  • These became the basis for what is now known as counterinsurgency doctrine.
    — Jonathan M. Katz, The New Republic, 20 Aug. 2021
  • He was seen as a counterinsurgency expert, and close to Modi.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 8 Dec. 2021
  • Halfway around the world, American troops were soon mired in a bloody and brutal counterinsurgency.
    — Time Staff, Time, 18 May 1950
  • After all, the counterinsurgency against the NPA is the longest-running in the world.
    — Patrick Peralta, The Conversation, 28 May 2026
  • Four militants and a police official with the counterinsurgency force were killed in the fighting, said Col.
    — Aijaz Hussain, The Christian Science Monitor, 25 June 2018
  • To beat back the rebels, President Omar al-Bashir licensed a local militia to wage a counterinsurgency on the cheap.
    — Alex De Waal, Foreign Affairs, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Human rights groups allege the devices were placed there by the Burmese military, which has long used the explosive devices to quell counterinsurgencies.
    — Annie Gowen, Washington Post, 13 Sep. 2017
  • America has since spent more than 90 times that amount in Afghanistan on a stabilization and counterinsurgency effort.
    — Gil Barndollar, WSJ, 20 Apr. 2021
  • Last October, the army launched counterinsurgency operations there after the killing of nine border guards.
    — Esther Htusan, The Seattle Times, 4 July 2017
  • The United States has renewed its commitment to the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.
    — Mujib Mashal, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Apr. 2018
  • But the 1970s was also the beginning of the counterinsurgency against the enforcement of laws against white-collar crime.
    — Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, The New Republic, 15 Sep. 2020
  • Some of those jobs are no longer necessary, as the needs in areas such as counterinsurgency have changed since the scaling back of troops in Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
    — Theresa Braine, New York Daily News, 27 Feb. 2024
  • This is especially likely if the Malian army seeks to continue to expand the counterinsurgency mission.
    — Christopher Michael Faulkner, The Conversation, 9 Aug. 2024
  • As part of its sweeping counterinsurgency in Sinai, Egypt has blocked journalists from reporting in the peninsula.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 5 Feb. 2018
  • For a media ecosystem that seldom reports on the atrocities of the counterinsurgency, this episode has drawn weeks of political scrutiny.
    — Patrick Peralta, The Conversation, 28 May 2026
  • Through the conflict, the Sri Lankan government ran national deficits to finance the counterinsurgency.
    — Neil Devotta, The Conversation, 18 July 2022
  • The Philippine resistance turned against the United States, which fought a years-long counterinsurgency war to maintain control.
    — James Brooks, Anchorage Daily News, 4 Mar. 2022
  • Although, soldiers in Afghanistan could benefit from the fruits of the modernization effort, a counterinsurgency is very different from a near-peer war.
    — Vikram Mittal, Forbes, 19 Apr. 2021
  • For the American forces on the ground the final weeks of the war, the task at hand wasn’t a presence patrol, or counterinsurgency operations or clear-hold-build or nation-building.
    — New York Times, 30 Aug. 2021
  • Since coming to power in Afghanistan three months ago, the Taliban have been waging a counterinsurgency campaign, vowing to put down the threat from IS.
    — Fox News, 12 Nov. 2021
  • Apart from the limited experiments at serious counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, all three presidents have sought to kill their way out of the problem.
    — Katherine Zimmerman, National Review, 12 Oct. 2017
  • But the plan to pacify the stronghold failed and came to symbolize larger problems with the counterinsurgency strategy, The Post reported.
    — New York Times, 9 Dec. 2019
  • Defense officials said the United States is planning to continue its counterinsurgency mission in Iraq for the time being.
    — Washington Post, 27 Sep. 2020
  • The program was meant to provide close air support, light strike, and intelligence gathering, especially for counterinsurgency missions.
    — Sujita Sinha, Interesting Engineering, 1 May 2026
  • The counterinsurgency against the PKK in the early 1990s looked different.
    — Jason Scheideman, Washington Post, 9 May 2017
  • As political violence escalated, public support for the military to take the lead in counterinsurgency grew.
    — Kristina Mani, The Conversation, 23 Sep. 2025
  • The United States almost certainly would have wound up fighting the sort of casualty-heavy counterinsurgency campaign that has led it to costly defeats elsewhere.
    — Thomas Wright, The Atlantic, 19 June 2026
  • Soon, Rathika and other patients left again when a final counterinsurgency push ordered the evacuation of Tamils, herding even the injured into a no-fire zone which was later shelled.
    — Longreads, 22 May 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'counterinsurgency.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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