Urban Guerrilla Movements

Guerrillas, traditionally, are irregular insurgent forces with significant popular support who seek to wage hitand-run campaigns against superior forces. Guerrilla forces arise for a variety of reasons—to resist foreign occupying troops, as in the Greek and French resistance to Fascist and Nazi occupation or the Spanish opposition to Napoleon; to fight against national oppressive forces, such as the FMLN in El Salvador or SWAPO in Namibia; or to seek radical political transformation in a rapid fashion, as in the case of the Maoist forces in Nepal, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and the Zapatistas in Mexico. Urban guerrillas primarily fall within these streams but, unlike traditional guerrilla movements, urban guerrillas often lack wide public support even if they arise from populist struggles. In Western contexts, they are often elitist, inward looking, and vanguardist.

It is important to distinguish between urban guerrillas and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic—the use of violence against nonmilitary/nonstate targets to create fear within a population to achieve political ends. Urban guerrillas may adapt terrorism as a tactic, just as they may consider nonviolent forms of resistance.

Urban guerrillas have been active in every continent except Antarctica. Even more than traditional guerrilla forces, they swim among the masses, blending in with the broader communities within which they function. Because they tend to come from middle-class, educated backgrounds they can more easily hide within the same milieu as those they oppose.

Urban guerrilla struggles peaked during the Vietnam War and the years immediately after it, often arising from the more idealistic factions in movements for peace and social justice. The prototype urban guerrillas forces, however, arose in Ireland, the home of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Ulster Defence League (UDL), and in Palestine, where the Stern Gang and the Irgun used terrorist tactics to push for an independent Jewish state in the Middle East.

The IRA and the UDL were closer to traditional militia forces, with a particular mandate to defend distinct geographical, sectarian communities. They differed from traditional militias in that they were largely covert in nature, had small autonomous groups responsible for actions, used violence against selected targets to push a political agenda, and often pushed an agenda different from that of larger, above-ground movements. They arose from large-scale movements in Ireland in the period leading up to the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and from the partition of Ireland in 1921. By the 1960s, such forces were primarily dormant. Repression of Catholic civil rights activists in Northern Ireland led to a rebirth of both Protestant (UDL) and Catholic (IRA) paramilitary forces, both of which used violence to further sectarian ends. Overtly political urban guerrilla forces also arose, most notably the Irish National Liberation Army, which had a very specific Marxist agenda that echoed that of South American urban guerrillas. With the signing of the peace accords in 1998, there were major splits in the various sectarian guerrilla forces, with most agreeing to disarm but significant factions remaining active.

Irgun and the Stern Gang were active in Palestine in the late 1930s and early to mid-1940s. Like more contemporary urban guerrillas, they arose as part of a liberation movement. They broke with what were perceived as more moderate forces, using selective terrorist tactics against the British, Palestinians, and more moderate Jewish leaders to further the cause of an independent Jewish homeland. While few in number—some estimates place the Irgun as having no more than 50 active participants—they were able to maintain a sustained, small-scale campaign for years.

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