Concept of Liberation

• One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter but there can be
distinct differences between Freedom fighters or Liberation movements and
Terrorist organizations.
• Many Terrorist groups start offer as Liberation movements but faced with
little success often succumb to using violence for political ends until acts of
violence become their sole method of struggle.
• Liberation movements take many forms ranging from non violent struggles,
strikes and demonstrations to full scale civil war.
• They are mostly large scale with large numbers of supporters while
terrorists rarely have much popular support, their leaders are well known
political figures whose views are well known and often well publicized while
Terrorist leaders by their very nature are secretative.
• Liberation movements are often regarded as being prepared to negotiate for
their demands and are seen as legitimate political protestors, if not by their
own governments then by the international community, while Terrorists are
universally condemned and are regarded as criminals.
• Liberation movements try to keep the moral high ground while terrorists are
quick to use illegal sources of money such as drug trafficking and money
from organized crime as with the Colombian M-19 or the Shinning Path of
Peru.
• Liberation movements generally need three factors to develop.
1- their needs to be oppression of some kind in their country be it real or
largely imagined, this gives the liberators a cause to fight for.
2- the liberation movement needs an ideology a system of beliefs that helps
them plan their struggle in a coherent manner and allows them to gain
converts to their cause.
3- they need leadership and organization to coordinate their efforts, successful
Liberation movements have always had a strong leader who becomes the
public face of the movement such as Quaid-i-Azam, Nelson Mandela etc.
• Wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts
fought by oppressed nationalities to gain independence.
• The term is used in conjunction with wars against imperial powers to
establish separate sovereign states for the subjugated nationality. From a
colonial point of view, these wars are called insurgencies or rebellions, or
more positively, wars of independence. Guerrilla warfare or asymmetric
warfare is sometimes used by national liberation movements, often with
intervention from other states.
• Wars of national liberation can refer to those fought during the
decolonization movement, primarily in the third world against Western
powers and their economic influence, and was a major aspect of the Cold
War.
• According to political scientist Gérard Chaliand, guerrilla wars against
European colonial powers were always a political success, although they
may have been in some cases a military defeat.
• According to Gwynne Dyer, the tactics and strategies used against colonial
powers were almost invariably failures when used against indigenous
regimes.
• Some of these wars were either vocally or materially supported by the
Soviet Union, which stated itself to be an anti-imperialist power, supporting
the replacement of western colonial governments with local communist or
other independent parties.
• This did not always guarantee Soviet influence in those countries.
• Republic of China presented themselves as models of independent
nationalist development outside of Western imperialist control. As such they
were regarded as a threat to Western power as they could inspire other
movements such as in Vietnam. In January 1961 Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev pledged support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the
world.
• This concept of "imperialism" and its relations to colonies had been
theorized in Lenin's famous 1916 book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism while Ho Chi Minh, who founded the Viet-Minh in 1930 and
declared the independence of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, following the
1945 August Revolution, was a founding member of the French Communist
Party (PCF) in 1921. Many Socialist and Communist led movements were
seen as progressive for the majority of people and in most cases led multi-
party national liberation fronts.
• International Law generally holds that a people with a legal right to self-
determination are entitled to wage wars of national liberation.
• Western states tend to view wars of national liberation as civil wars, Third
World and communist states tend to view them as international wars.
• This difference in classification leads to varying perceptions of which laws of
war apply in such situations.
• There is general agreement among all states today in principle that the use
of force to frustrate a people's legal right to self-determination is unlawful.
• Wars of national liberation are usually fought using guerrilla warfare.
• The main purpose of these tactics is to increase the cost of occupation of
the colonial power past the point where the colonial power is willing to bear.
Wars of national liberation generally depend a large amounts of public
support, with ordinary civilians providing crucial support.
• Wars of national liberation are often embedded in a larger context of great
power politics and are often proxy wars.
• These strategies explain why they are quite successful against colonial
regimes and quite unsuccessful against indigenous regimes. Colonial
regimes usually have a threshold beyond which they would prefer to go
home rather than to fight the war.
• By contrast an indigenous regime has no place to go to, and will fight much
harder because of the lack of alternatives. Moreover, colonial regimes
usually have relatively few active supporters, who can often be easily
identified, making it possible for guerrilla armies to operate. By contrast,
indigenous regimes often have much more popular support, and their
supporters are not as easily recognized, making it much harder to conduct
guerrilla operations.
• The first separatist rebellion within the former British Empire not to end in
defeat since the American Revolutionary War was the Irish War of
Independence of 1919-1922 which led in 1949 to the renewed
independence of most of Ireland (26 counties out of 32). However the
rebellion also led to the Irish Civil War (1922-1923).
• The First Indochina War (1946–54), Vietnam War (1959–75), and the
Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) were all considered national
liberation wars by the rebelling sides of the conflicts. The African National
Congress (ANC) 's struggle against the apartheid regime is also another
example. These wars were in part supported by the Soviet Union, which
claimed to be an anti-imperialist power. In fact, since the 1917 October
Revolution, the revolutionary objectives of communism were shared by
many anti colonialist leaders, thus explaining the objective alliance between
anti colonialist forces and Marxism. The concept of "imperialism" itself had
been which had theorized in Lenin's famous 1916 book, Imperialism, the
Highest Stage of Capitalism.
• Ho Chi Minh — who founded the Viet-Minh in 1941 and declared the
independence of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, following the 1945 August
Revolution — was a founding member of the French Communist Party
(PCF) in 1921. In January 1961, over three years before the Gulf of Tonkin
incident which would mark the United States' increased involvement in the
Vietnam War, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev would pledge support for
"wars of national liberation" throughout the world. In the same decade,
Cuba, led by Fidel Castro, would support national liberation movements in
Angola and Mozambique. The Portuguese colonial wars finally led to the
recognition of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau as independent
states in 1975, following the April Carnation Revolution.
• The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an "official" national
liberation movement, meaning that it holds official recognition of its legal
status as such from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the United
Nations (UN).It is the only non-African national liberation movement to hold
observer status in the OAU, and was one of the first national liberation
movements granted permanent observer status by the United Nations
General Assembly pursuant to a 1974 resolution. The PLO also participates
in UN Security Council debates; since 1988, it has represented the
Palestinian people at the UN under the name "Palestine".
• Many Chechens and foreign observers consider the First and Second
Chechen Wars to be wars of national liberation against Russia.
• Some Iraqi insurgent groups, and certain political groups believe that the
Iraq War is a war of national liberation against the US-led coalition.
• Most Kurds believe the Kurdish–Turkish conflict to be a war of national
liberation of Kurdish people in Turkey.
• The Polisario Front has sought the independence of Western Sahara since
1975 and considered its guerilla war against Morocco as national liberation
war (like many foreign observers, countries and the African Union), while
Morocco considered it a secessionist movement. POLISARIO had been
recognized by many countries, the African Union and the United Nations as
the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people. The hostilities are
frozen since the 1991 cease-fire following the settlement plan agreement.
• As a result of the politics of the former Yugoslavia, a group of ethnic-
Albanian politicians in Kosovo declared (on 2 July 1990) an independent
"Republic of Kosovo" from the Republic of Serbia's Autonomous Province of
Kosovo and Metohija.
• After the dissolution of SFRY, an unofficial referendum was held for
independence in 1992 that passed and began a conflict between the
Albanian separatists led by the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Yugoslav
military and paramilitary armed forces. This lasted until 1999 when a peace
was brokered and the province came under UN administration under the
terms of UNSCR 1244.
• International negotiations between Pristina and Belgrade are in progress on
the future status of Kosovo.
• The conflict would only count as a war of national liberation if you exclude
the fact that an Albanian state already exists, and that ethnic-Albanians in
Kosovo seek their own separate nationhood.