People's War

While it is said the hard things are simple and the simple things are hard, the basics of people's war are easy to grasp. The biggest mistake made by some who fight those who use the tactics of people's war as first formulated by Mao is they expect exact iterations of the original (it·er·a·tion
1 : the action or a process of iterating or repeating: as a : a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result). What we see is adaptation of the strategy to the terrain both human and political and the motivation which is either political or in the case of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contain a religious element as well.

The main center of gravity is the people, without the support of the people the fighter is a fish out of water, with the support of the people the fighter is like Mao's fish. The people's support can be willing which means you have food, shelter, recruits, intelligence on the movements of your opponent and caches for your equipment or obtained through the use of terrorism in the end their passive indifference is just as good as active support, as long as they are not aiding your opponent then you have a clear field to operate from.

In the end when you are losing a people's war/insurgency you are not being outfought but being out administrated as Dr Bernard Fall famously said.

While the government can't meet every need of the people the important thing that matters is that the people see the government doing the best it can to help the people to help themselves and to supply guidance, security as well as materiel to rebuild or to build a better life.