E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Is There an Alternative to… 185different from what one encounters in insurgency or guerrillawarfare. In fact, those who resort to terrorism may notnecessarily look upon it as the limit to which they are willing togo. They may look upon it as a stage on the path to insurgencyand guerrilla warfare, to achieve the destruction of thecredibility of the government, and the paralysis of thegovernment, as a prelude to establishing a parallel government,and later still establishing a liberated territory where it is thewrit of the 'revolutionary' group that will run, not that of thegovernment. Without going too far into the dynamics of suchrevolutionary manoeuvres or operational blueprints, one caneasily see that when an organised force that uses violencewishes to move from hit-and-run tactics or the operations ofmobile and secret squads to positional operations that involvethe use of territories as sanctuaries, or bases, or units ofliberated area, the force or group will have to look for afriendly hinterland or rear, to prevent the attrition and defeatthat can follow from the risk of encirclement. This is preciselythe reason why insurgent and secessionist movements reach thebrink of guerrilla warfare in areas that have common frontierswith a country that is unfriendly or not totally friendly with thegovernment against which the guerrillas or insurgents operate. Ido not want to go into the various aspects of this question atlength here. I only want to point out how insurgency andguerrilla warfare, and terrorism that is meant to pave the wayfor insurgency or guerrilla warfare inevitably tend to look forassistance from across the frontiers for arms, for training, forsanctuaries, for safety of the rear and so on, and how this inturn tends to political proneness or amenability to extraneousforeign forces, thus creating the possibility of tempering oraffecting the social objectives with which the group started itsstruggle.It is also necessary to point to some other unavoidableconcomitants of the dependence on ‘violence.’ Firstly, no