Urban Terrorism in Revolutionary Strategy

Abstract

The diplomatic kidnappings, a relatively new phenomenon in world politics, have dramatized the growing prevalence of violence and terrorism as tactics of urban revolutionary strategy. The urban guerilla has emerged not only in Latin America, but in North America, Europe, and parts of North Africa and the Middle East as well, as the heir apparent to the peasant revolutionary of Mao, Castro, and Ché.¹ Yet urban and rural guerillas alike have shared a common heritage of 20th Century revolutionary theory which encompasses within it the role of guerilla warfare and the uses of terrorism. Tomes have been written and published on revolution itself, revolutionary theories, and revolutionaries; there is also a sizable collection of works on guerilla warfare per se. It is not the purpose of this chapter, therefore, even to attempt to summarize that body of literature, but rather to extract from it the relevant theories which have formed the literary matrix, so to speak, of the urban terrorist. It is particularly pertinent to seek out and examine those writings which have become the virtual guidelines to action for the modern revolutionary.