Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America: nothing is left of the heroic glory of the partisans, rebels, and guerrillas. The guerrilla and anti-guerrilla movements, just a short time ago armed to the hilt ideologically and backed by powerful foreign allies, are both on their own from now on. What is left is nothing but an armed rabble. All the liberation armies, national movements, and other self-proclaimed fronts have degenerated into bands of marauders, barely distinguishable from their adversaries. The jumble of acronyms in which they array themselves--FLNA or ANLF, MPLA or MLNF--fools no one. There is no target, no plan, no idea to give them consistency, only a strategy barely worthy of the name, one of kidnappings, murder, and plunder. The guerrillas and terrorists of the 1960s and 70s still felt the need to justify themselves. In streams of tracts and proclamations, strict catechisms and manifestos in gobbledygook, they justified their actions on ideological grounds. Today, their successors think that such justification is superfluous. What strikes about them is the absence of any conviction.
According to the German Law professor Carl Schmitt's definition, the "partisan"--the irregular, the guerrilla, the mujahid, the resistor, the terrorist--is the quintessential combatant of the cold war era. The ideology of the partisan, the depth of his roots in the movement, the urban or rural milieu in which he operates, the size, mobility, and aggressiveness of his forces are all factors that may vary; but not his political core, which alone distinguishes him from the mercenary or the brigand. During the Cold War, a war of fronts, of positions, the partisan operated in the disputed areas, or, better yet, within the "territory" of either bloc. The rival superpower gave him both the ideological point of reference that shaped his political nature, and the means to fight behind enemy lines. Thus, until June 1989, the bipolar order gave the partisan room to maneuver, and enabled him to advance towards his goal. Does this room still exist in the new world that is emerging? No. The partisan must adapt, or disappear. Consequently, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the prevailing opinion was that once they fell out of style and were cut off from resources, the guerrillas and partisan forces would quickly collapse.Hans Magnus Enzensberger (2)
- An ideology that most often is Maoist and autarkical, advocating "reliance on one's own forces";
- Simultaneous control of sanctuaries (won by force of arms or humanitarian) and of "trading posts" (airports, ports, market towns), either on the coast or having links with the outside world. Following the Lebanese "model" of civil war, the guerrillas turned criminal live as predators off "their" territories and off the local civilian populace, monopolizing the transnational traffic in contraband or controlled commodities, precious woods and stones, ivory, and endangered animal species;
- Establishing control over the diaspora communities settled in the developed world, especially in Europe. The guerrilla groups turned criminal force them to pay a revolutionary tax and in their midst set up networks that engage in clandestine drug trafficking, money laundering, and illegal alien smuggling.
- Finally, these degenerate guerrillas maintain active ties with States
hostile to France, or to its friends and allies.
The main "mutant guerrilla groups" are seven in number. Three are Asian,
two are Latin American, one is African, and one is from the Near East:
Philippines: New People's Army
Sri Lanka: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
India: Sikh guerrilla movement fighting for an independent "Khalistan"
Colombia: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
Peru: Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
Senegal: Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance
Middle East: Kurdistan Worker's Party
There have been a number of indications that in addition, the Naxalites in India and the Khmer Rouge are engaged in criminal activities. One very symbolic example of this trend occurred in June 1976, when the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Francis Meloy, another diplomat, and a driver, were kidnapped and then killed by the Lebanese cohorts of the terrorist Wadi Haddad. In May 1994, one of the killers was found. He was in prison, in Beirut. Arrested in March 1993 in possession of three kilos of heroin, former terrorist Bassam al-Forkh was serving three years there for drug trafficking.
One thing that should be stressed is the extreme harmfulness of these
entities, once political but having now turned to crime, yet maintaining
their ideological trimmings for public consumption. They are all the more
dangerous because they haunt both the world's shadowy no-man's-lands and
the large urban centers, in the Third World and in the developed world,
particularly the european capitals. They excel in leading a double life:
passing themselves off as national liberation movements, while carrying
on a profitable drug trafficking operation with the Cosa Nostra, the Triades,
or the Turkish mafia.
(1) : We use the term "degenerate guerrilla groups"
because some of them have not taken a criminal course, or have not yet
had time to do so. One example would be the Zapatista Indian campesinos
of Chiapas, in Mexico
(2) :”La grande migration - Vues sur la guerre civile,
[The Great Migration: Views on the Civil War], Gallimard - L'infini, 1995