Guerrilla Warfare

by Walter Laqueur

The immediate successes were astounding. The slums of the big cities — but also the upper-class residential areas — provided far better cover for operations than the Sierra. It was easier to get money and weapons in the city than in the countryside, and to collect information about the targets for attack. All this daring found an echo far beyond Latin America— in the United States, Canada and even in some European countries. If the old-style guerrilla tactics had been applicable only to backward countries, the new urban guerrilla warfare seemed to offer immense possibilities to almost every country in the world, including the most developed ones. Nevertheless, the startling successes of the first years were again followed by grave setbacks and in some cases by total collapse. Unable at first to cope with this new danger, the forces of order were learning quickly. However strictly conspiratorial rules were observed, sooner or later the traces of a single Tupamaro would lead the police to a whole group, to its arsenal, and eventually to its headquarters, and once this happened, escape was difficult, far more so than in the Sierra. Marighela's assertion that the police "systematically fail" was overly optimistic — they certainly did not fail to shoot him, as well as the other urban guerrilla leaders in Brazil and Chile, and to arrest the Tupamaros. But individual failures quite apart, the entire urban guerrilla strategy was found wanting. It is true that urban guerrillas would get more publicity in a day than rural ones in a year; as far as the media were concerned, their exploits were far more newsworthy. But with repetition interest inevitably diminished; once a consul had been kidnapped for the fifth time, the news no longer automatically commanded the headlines. The terrorists had to think of new, sensational and even more bizarre exploits, such as the theft of the remains by the Monteneros of former President Aramburu (whom they had killed in 1970) from his grave. But there were limits to human imagination, and in any case publicity could not in the long run replace an overall policy. Urban guerrillas frequently referred to the Algerian example, but it was precisely in the city of Algiers that the FLN had suffered its greatest defeat. The FLN could not compel the French colonial government to evacuate Algeria; in no circumstances would a French guerrilla movement have been able to take over France even under the weak governments of the Fourth Republic. It was one thing to appear as the spearhead of a national movement against the hated foreigner; it was another, infinitely more difficult task to compete with other native political parties in the struggle for power.

  This was the overall lesson learned by the Latin American guerrilla movements in the 1960s and 1970s. But seen from the guerrilla point of view, the picture was still not all dark. The old Latin American social order with its inefficiencies and inequities could not last, and armed struggle was certainly one of the possible ways of changing it. Cuba had been a success, perhaps there would be a victory elsewhere, given some fortunate juxtaposition — a prolonged political and/or economic crisis, able guerrilla leadership, and bungling by the forces of law and order. "Objectively" there still is a revolutionary situation in many Latin American countries.

  Urban Terrorism

  In the late 1960s rural guerrillaism gave way to urban terrorism in many parts of the world. The major exceptions were Vietnam (where the war had, however, proceeded far beyond the guerrilla stage), the Portuguese colonies, and some minor theaters of war such as Burma, Thailand, the Philippines and Eritrea. Elsewhere the hijacking of airplanes, the bank raids and the kidnapping of diplomats and other public figures rather than the ambush in some remote jungle village became the symbol of armed struggle. Skyjacking had taken place since the early 1930s, with an average of about two to three cases annually, most of them not even political in character. But there were thirty-five cases in 1968 and eighty-seven in 1969. They affected twenty-three countries; Israel was the victim in only one case. After 1969, the number dropped, both as a result of diminishing returns and more stringent security measures. The wave of kidnappings and assassinations started with the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala and two American senior army officers by the FAR in Guatemala in 1968. This was followed in 1969 by the kidnapping of the U.S. ambassador to Brazil (by the ALN), the murder of the West German ambassador to Guatemala (by the FAR) in 1970, the kidnapping of the West German ambassador to Brazil (again by the ALN), the murder of the Quebec minister of labor by the FLQ, the kidnapping of the Swiss ambassador to Brazil by the ALN and of the British ambassador by the Tupamaros, of the Israeli consul general in Turkey in 1971 by the TPLA, the murder of the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in the Sudan by Black September. After 1972, Argentina became the main site of kidnappings with the ERP concentrating on businessmen; Mr. Aron Bellinson was released in June 1973 after the ransom of a million dollars had been paid, the release of Mr. Charles Lockwood, the following month, cost two million dollars, and of Mr John R. Thompson, the same month, three million. The ERP allegedly received fourteen million dollars for an oil executive in June 1974. A record was established in 1975 with the kidnapping of two Bunge and Born heirs for whom some sixty million dollars were reportedly handed over.63

  Hijacking and kidnapping were also the favorite ploys of the Palestinian organizations and of some of the European terrorist groups. But there was competition in this field by angry or mentally unstable individuals; to launch rural guerrilla war at least a small group of people was needed, whereas any single madman or criminal could put a time bomb on a plane. The clandestine nature of urban terrorist operations made it difficult to establish how many members the terrorist groups numbered, in whose name they were operating or speaking, whether the motive was political, or whether the love of excitement or money was the driving force, and to what extent the whole phenomenon belonged to the realm of psychodrama rather than politics. Some Latin American terrorist groups consisted of no more than a few dozen members, the Japanese URA had at its height three hundred, but the number was reduced by defections and mutual assassinations, the FLQ had fewer than a hundred and fifty members, the TPLA fewer than a hundred, the British "Angry Brigade" eight, the Symbionese Liberation Army about ten, and after its shootout with the police, only three or four. But even if there were only three members left, to the media the "Army" was still an "army," "bulletins" were published, "ideological platforms" hammered out and spectacular exploits, whether an assassination or a bank raid, still caught the headlines. Ideologically there was often utter confusion; leading members of the pro-Fascist Tacuara (Argentina) moved over to neo-Trotskyite groups, the Monteneros (also in Argentina) stressed at one and the same time both their "Christian" (anti-Semitic) and radical-socialist character; the Canadian FLQ and the Official IRA presented a mixture of Marxist-Leninist doctrine and religious-nationalist sectarianism. Urban terrorist interest in political philosophy was strictly limited — the deed was more important than the thought.

  The most active of the urban terrorist groups was the Provisional IRA which had split from the "Officials" in 1969.64 The Provos had some five to six hundred militants, the Officials about four hundred, but they enjoyed considerable support among the Catholics in Northern Ireland against a background of deep-rooted anger about national and social discrimination. The IRA had a sanctuary and a supply base in the Irish Free State. Officially it was banned there and the Irish government regarded their activities with disfavor, but being doctrinally committed to the idea of a united Ireland, it could not drop the northern activists entirely. Like other urban terrorist movements, the IRA had international connections; money came from well-wishers in the United States, money and arms from Libya's Colonel Ghadafi — a protector of terrorists from Northern Ireland to the Philippines — and from Eastern Europe. The ideological differences between Provos and Officials are discussed elsewhere in this study;65 cynics had it that the only difference was that the former went to church each week, and the latter only once a year. In practice, as opposed to doctrine, their operations were not so much directed against the British government, but against the Protestant community. As the fighting progressed, it became a straightforward secta
rian civil war, with the British army in the thankless role of an arbiter trying to limit the fighting and to isolate the gunmen from the community. The Protestants had paramilitary organizations of their own (the UVF and others) and their terrorist record resembled that of the IRA. Looked at in historical perspective, the armed struggle in Northern Ireland since 1969 was not a novel phenomenon but simply a new stage in the age-old struggle between two neighboring communities. The methods used in this civil war were on the whole old-fashioned; the IRA tried to extend its operations to England, but this, too, had been tried before World War II, and on a small scale even back in the nineteenth century. The IRA was more successful than other urban terrorist groups because it had a fringe, albeit small, of supporters; and it was probably not accidental that this base was sectarian-religious rather than "revolutionary" in makeup. The FLQ lacked both a sanctuary and a clear program and, since Canadian political culture was considerably less murderous than in Ireland, its movement was much more short-lived. The Basque ETA, with its bank robberies, holdups, bombings and kidnappings, was a little more effective because, like the IRA, and unlike the Latin American urban terrorists, it had its base in a national minority. Urban terrorist operations in the United States and West Germany (on which more below) had no major political impact even though they greatly preoccupied journalists, psychologists, lawyers, judges and law enforcement officers.

  The international character of urban terrorism has already been remarked: the Palestinian PFLP engaged in combined operations with the Japanese URA, various Latin American urban terrorists would cooperate with Palestinians, who in turn collaborated with Baader-Meinhof and other gangs, as the 1975 "Carlos Affair" (the case of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) demonstrated. Foreign governments would take an active interest; the Iran urban guerrillas were financed for years by Iraq; Cuba continued to contribute to various Latin American terrorist groups even though, in principle, it favored rural guerrillas. "Carlos" had been trained at the Lumumba University in Moscow. The Soviet attitude to urban terrorism was ambivalent; on the one hand they would welcome and support movements likely to cause disruption in the West, on the other, they could not fail to realize that small ineffectual factions such as Baader-Meinhof would bring a political backlash that would be directed not only against members ofthat specific group but against Communists in general. Terrorism came to resemble the workings of a multinational corporation. An operation would be planned in West Germany by Palestine Arabs, executed in Israel by terrorists recruited in Japan with weapons acquired in Italy but manufactured in Russia, supplied by an Algerian diplomat, and financed with Libyan money.66 With the improvement and greater accessibility of modern technology, the potential for destruction for small groups of people became much larger.67 As technical progress continued, society became more vulnerable to destruction. A single individual could spread alarm and confusion even by means of a telephone call about a bomb that had allegedly been placed in some vital place. This new power acquired by a few has, however, its limits; it could paralyze the state apparatus but it could not take over. Urban terrorism faced its practitioners with an insoluble dilemma — to reduce the risk of discovery they had to be few in number. The political impact of a small anonymous group was bound to be insignificant. Urban terrorists are not, as the Palestinian (1948) and Cypriot experience had shown, serious contenders for power; once the foreign enemy had withdrawn, they dropped out of the picture since they were so few and had no political organization. Prospects are better perhaps where terrorists operate as the military wing of a political movement rather than on their own initiative. But in this case there are always the seeds of conflict between the military and the political leadership of the movement. In urban terrorism it is the action that counts, not consistent strategy or a clear political purpose. It is a Herculean task to disentangle its rational and irrational components, and not always a rewarding one.

  An aristocracy and a proletariat emerged among the urban terrorists of the 1970s. The "proletarians" were shunned by the Russians and the Cubans because their activities did not fit into Communist policies; they were rejected by the Libyans and Algerians because they belonged to the wrong religion or nationality, and refused a haven even by South Yemen. Yet the "proletarian" terrorists were unquestioningly sincere whereas there were a great many question marks with regard to the political bona fide of the terrorist aristocracy, those with powerful protectors and rich financial backers. Were they not mere pawns manipulated by outside forces? It was by no means always clear whose interests they tried to serve and their ideological declarations could not be taken at face value.*

  * The climate of dissension in these groups has been vividly described in Régis Debray's novel L'indésirable (Paris, 1975).

  * The attack against OPEC headquarters in Vienna in December 1975 and the abduction of oil ministers was a typical illustration of the mysteries of transnational terrorism. The leader of the group was said to be a Venezuelan who had been in close touch with Cuban intelligence, according to the French authorities who had first established his identity. But according to the Egyptian press the operation in Vienna had been paid for by the Libyans. In this maze of great and small power rivalries, of big business and intelligence intrigues, there were no longer any certainties apart perhaps from the fact that the official purpose of the attack (to save the Palestinian revolution) was most probably not the real one.

  8

  Guerrilla Doctrine Today

  The great upsurge of guerrilla warfare in the 1950s and 1960s was reflected in the hundreds of books and thousands of articles devoted to the strategy and tactics of wars of national liberation, foci, revolutionary warfare, the advantages of the rural over the urban guerrilla, and vice versa. Most of this new body of doctrine emanated from Latin America and was left wing in inspiration. There were heated polemics about the "correct approach," about "subjective" and "objective" conditions, about the place of the vanguard, and the role of the masses in the struggle. But the number and even the quality of books produced was not necessarily an indicator to the efficacy of the movements sponsoring them. Some of the most protracted and bloody guerrilla wars such as those in Algeria, the Middle East or Ulster, produced few theoretical reflections on the subject. The Kurds fought for twenty years and knew all there was to know about guerrilla warfare even though they probably never read a book on the subject. If they were defeated in the end, it was not because of any doctrinal shortcomings. Conversely some guerrilla movements, which barely functioned, were very strong on doctrine. Broadly speaking the more remote the Marxist-Leninist inspiration, the more limited was the interest in ideological disputations. This is not to say that all the theoretical writings were innovative: most of the literature presented variations on the same theme.

  The Marxist-Leninist tradition had a profound influence on the vocabulary of the Latin American apostles of guerrilla warfare, but the real impact of patriotic-nationalist traditions was quite unmistakable. (The slogan of most Latin American guerrilla movements was Patria ο Muerte-Venceremos.) About the revolutionary character of these movements there is no doubt; on the other hand they did not just "deviate" from Marxism on essential points but did to Marx what Marx had done to Hegel: they stood him on his head. That any political dogma is bound to be adapted and modified in the light of new historical developments goes without saying; Marxists in particular have always stressed the necessity of "creatively employing" their method. But if these changes are fundamental and far-reaching, if some of the basic tenets are given up, the point is bound to be reached sooner or later when the old label no longer conforms to the new content, when, in fact, it misleads and becomes a source of misunderstanding. Other ideologies and creeds have faced a similar fate: Christianity without God is an interesting phenomenon, but is it Christianity any longer?

  The new doctrines of guerrilla warfare must be studied within their context of time and place, and be subjected to a critical analysis for they by no means provide a true reflection of gu
errilla experience. The writings of Guevara and the speeches of Fidel Castro contain much of interest about the Cuban revolution; they contain even more myths and post facto rationalizations that only can be explained in the light of their authors' subsequent political careers. They went into the struggle with one ideology and emerged with another. While the Cuban revolutionaries were fighting in the Sierra Maestra they were a movement in search of an ideology; some of them belittled revolutionary theory altogether and thought that all that mattered was revolutionary struggle. As the Tupamaros put it in later years: "Words divide us, action unites us." Castroist-Guevaraist doctrine is the product of a later period, and offered no guidelines while the struggle lasted. It fails to explain what happened and why, it is not the key to the lessons of the Cuban revolution.

  Guevara's views in 1965 differed to a considerable extent from those he had pronounced five years earlier, and Debray's estimation likewise underwent radical changes. The unity of theory and practice is always highly imperfect and ideology frequently serves as a smokescreen. To provide two extreme examples: firstly, from the ideological pronouncements of the leaders of the IRA one would not learn that sectarian elements were prominently involved in their struggle; secondly, the one major tactical innovation of the Palestinian guerrillas was that their operations were mainly conducted from outside Israel. But official pronouncements almost invariably proclaim the opposite. The IRA and the Palestinian Arab spokesmen no doubt have sound political reasons for preferring fiction to fact.

  There was a tendency among the guerrilla theorists of the 1950s and 1960s to emphasize the universal applicability of their doctrines. This was as true of Lin Piao's thesis about the struggle of the world villages against the world cities, as of Frantz Fanon's analysis of the anticolonial struggle, or of the propagation of the Cuban model as befitting all Latin America. But conditions varied so much from country to country that these wholesale prescriptions were usually quite unrealistic. They led to major setbacks for the guerrillas and became a source of confusion to those trying to understand the dynamics of guerrilla warfare. What Boris Goldenberg wrote about the Cuban revolution applies mutatis mutandis to guerrilla warfare everywhere: in view of its unique character it is a topic for the historian and not the sociologist.1