Fierce fighting continues in the Iraqi city of Falluja, with casualties continuing to be sustained among coalition troops and civilians.  The urban nature of this war and the scene there has been described in several Monitor articles this past week.  This includes a piece by Scott Peterson, currently in the city, about the difficulties in determining who is an insurgent as opposed to a civilian.  Ann Scott Tyson writes about how the military has prepared for urban warfare.

Public perception of the modern military may be of a technology-supported fighting force, with use of precision bombing and minimal casualties among troops or civilians.  Military strategists and others initially thought that after World War II, future enemies would not want to conduct battles in cities.  This turned out to be incorrect, as military troops in many countries have had to fight in cities, with different rules of engagement, if any at all.

But analysts recently have revised this theory about where enemies would want to fight; they now believe that insurgency will be an increasing problem as a cause or symptom of conflicts, and that they will occur in urban areas. Since a majority of the world's population is living in or near cities, insurgencies can erupt in these environments.  Steven Metz, a military analyst, wrote in 1993 that there would be two major types of insurgency: spiritual, and commercial.  The former can arise against the push of modernity in a society.  The latter, when a government cannot deliver the basic needs to a needy population.