[news] The Dilemma of Armed Struggle in the Global South

[Mostly Water - mostlywater.org = news.resist.ca]

>From the 1950s to the end of the 1980s, armed struggle in nations of the global South was widely accepted as a legitimate strategy for seeking political and social change. There was also a tolerance by many governments in the global North of their own citizens who organized in solidarity with armed liberation groups such as the Palestinian Liberation Army, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas and El Salvador’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)...Acceptance of armed struggle as a legitimate strategy to achieve political and social change began to diminish with the demise of Soviet-style socialism and the end of the Cold War...The Bush administration’s new war on terror...ensured that armed struggle would not return as an internationally tolerated strategy by emphasizing that anti-capitalist groups such as the FARC (in Colombia) were on the U.S. terrorist list and, therefore, could not be considered legitimate political actors.

URL: http://mostlywater.org/node/3924