27.3.04
Che Guevara Guerilla Warfare Chapter I: General Principles of Guerilla Warfare�
Ernesto Che Guevara:
Guerilla Warfare
Chapter I: General Principles of Guerilla Warfare
1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare
2. Guerrilla Strategy
3. Guerrilla Tactics
4. Warfare on Favorable Ground
5. Warfare on Unfavorable Ground
6. Suburban Warfare
1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare
The armed victory of the Cuban people over the Batista dictatorship was not only the triumph of heroism as reported by the newspapers of the world; it also forced a change in the old dogmas concerning the conduct of the popular masses of Latin America. It showed plainly the capacity of the people to free themselves by means of guerrilla warfare from a government that oppresses them.
We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are:
1. Popular forces can win a war against the army.
2. It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.
3. In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.
Of these three propositions the first two contradict the defeatist attitude of revolutionaries or pseudo-revolutionaries who remain inactive and take refuge in the pretext that against a professional army nothing can be done, who sit down to wait until in some mechanical way all necessary objective and subjective conditions are given without working to accelerate them. As these problems were formerly a subject of discussion in Cuba, until facts settled the question, they are probably still much discussed in America.
Naturally, it is not to be thought that all conditions for revolution are going to be created through the impulse given to them by guerrilla activity. It must always be kept in mind that there is a necessary minimum without which the establishment and consolidation of the first center is not practicable. People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.
In these conditions popular discontent expresses itself in more active forms. An attitude of resistance finally crystallizes in an outbreak of fighting, provoked initially by the conduct of the authorities.
Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.
The third proposition is a fundamental of strategy. It ought to be noted by those who maintain dogmatically that the struggle of the masses is centered in city movements, entirely forgetting the immense participation of the country people in the life of all the underdeveloped parts of America. Of course, the struggles of the city masses of organized workers should not be underrated; but their real possibilities of engaging in armed struggle must be carefully analyzed where the guarantees which customarily adorn our constitutions are suspended or ignored. In these conditions the illegal workers' movements face enormous dangers. They must function secretly without arms. The situation in the open country is not so difficult. There, in places beyond the reach of the repressive forces, the inhabitants can be supported by the armed guerrillas.
We will later make a careful analysis of these three conclusions that stand out in the Cuban revolutionary experience. We emphasize them now at the beginning of this work as our fundamental contribution.
Guerrilla warfare, the basis of the struggle of a people to redeem itself, has diverse characteristics, different facets, even though the essential will for liberation remains the same. It is obvious-and writers on the theme have said it many times-that war responds to a certain series of scientific laws; whoever ignores them will go down to defeat. Guerrilla warfare as a phase of war must be ruled by all of these; but besides, because of its special aspects, a series of corollary laws must also be recognized in order to carry it forward. Though geographical and social conditions in each country determine the mode and particular forms that guerrilla warfare will take, there are general laws that hold for all fighting of this type.
Our task at the moment is to find the basic principles of this kind of fighting and the rules to be followed by peoples seeking liberation; to develop theory from facts; to generalize and give structure to our experience for the profit of others.
Let us first consider the question: Who are the combatants in guerrilla warfare? On one side we have a group composed of the oppressor and his agents, the professional army, well armed and disciplined, in many cases receiving foreign help as well as the help of the bureaucracy in the employ of the oppressor. On the other side are the people of the nation or region involved. It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves. The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in firepower. Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression.
The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition. This is clearly seen by considering the case of bandit gangs that operate in a region. They have all the characteristics of a guerrilla army: homogeneity, respect for the leader, valor, knowledge of the ground, and, often, even good understanding of the tactics to be employed. The only thing missing is support of the people; and, inevitably, these gangs are captured and exterminated by the public force.
Analyzing the mode of operation of the guerrilla band, seeing its form of struggle, and understanding its base in the masses, we can answer the question: Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery. He launches himself against the conditions of the reigning institutions at a particular moment and dedicates himself with all the vigor that circumstances permit to breaking the mold of these institutions.
When we analyze more fully the tactic of guerrilla warfare, we will see that the guerrilla fighter needs to have a good knowledge of the surrounding countryside, the paths of entry and escape, the possibilities of speedy maneuver, good hiding places; naturally, also, he must count on the support of the people. All this indicates that the guerrilla fighter will carry out his action in wild places of small population. Since in these places the struggle of the people for reforms is aimed primarily and almost exclusively at changing the social form of land ownership, the guerrilla fighter is above all an agrarian revolutionary. He interprets the desires of the great peasant mass to be owners of land, owners of their means of production, of their animals, of all that which they have long yearned to call their own, of that which constitutes their life and will also serve as their cemetery.
It should be noted that in current interpretations there are two different types of guerrilla warfare, one of which-a struggle complementing great regular armies such as was the case of the Ukrainian fighters in the Soviet Union-does not enter into this analysis. We are interested in the other type, the case of an armed group engaged in struggle against the constituted power, whether colonial or not, which establishes itself as the only base and which builds itself up in rural areas. In all such cases, whatever the ideological aims that may inspire the fight, the economic aim is determined by the aspiration toward ownership of land.
The China of Mao begins as an outbreak of worker groups in the South, which is defeated and almost annihilated. It succeeds in establishing itself and begins its advance only when, after the long march from Yenan, it takes up its base in rural territories and makes agrarian reform its fundamental goal. The struggle of Ho Chi Minh is based in the rice-growing peasants, who are oppressed by the French colonial yoke; with this force it is going forward to the defeat of the colonialists. In both cases there is a framework of patriotic war against the Japanese invader, but the economic basis of a fight for the land has not disappeared. In the case of Algeria, the grand idea of Arab nationalism has its economic counterpart in the fact that nearly all of the arable land of Algeria is utilized by a million French settlers. In some countries, such as Puerto Rico, where the special conditions of the island have not permitted a guerrilla outbreak, the nationalist spirit, deeply wounded by the discrimination that is daily practiced, has as its basis the aspiration of the peasants (even though many of them are already a proletariat) to recover the land that the Yankee invader seized from them. This same central idea, though in different forms, inspired the small farmers, peasants, and slaves of the eastern estates of Cuba to close ranks and defend together the right to possess land during the thirty-year war of liberation.
Taking account of the possibilities of development of guerrilla warfare, which is transformed with the increase in the operating potential of the guerrilla band into a war of positions, this type of warfare, despite its special character, is to be considered as an embryo, a prelude, of the other. The possibilities of growth of the guerrilla band and of changes in the mode of fight, until conventional warfare is reached, are as great as the possibilities of defeating the enemy in each of the different battles, combats, or skirmishes that take place. Therefore, the fundamental principle is that no battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won. There is a malevolent definition that says: "The guerrilla fighter is the Jesuit of warfare." By this is indicated a quality of secretiveness, of treachery, of surprise that is obviously an essential element of guerrilla warfare. It is a special kind of Jesuitism, naturally prompted by circumstances, which necessitates acting at certain moments in ways different from the romantic and sporting conceptions with which we are taught to believe war is fought.
War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems in order to achieve the goal. Military strategy and tactics are a representation by analysis of the objectives of the groups and of the means of achieving these objectives. These means contemplate taking advantage of all the weak points of the enemy. The fighting action of each individual platoon in a large army in a war of positions will present the same characteristics as those of the guerrilla band. It uses secretiveness, treachery, and surprise; and when these are not present, it is because vigilance on the other side prevents surprise. But since the guerrilla band is a division unto itself, and since there are large zones of territory not controlled by the enemy, it is always possible to carry out guerrilla attacks in such a way as to assure surprise; and it is the duty of the guerrilla fighter to do so.
"Hit and run," some call this scornfully, and this is accurate. Hit and run, wait, lie in ambush, again hit and run, and thus repeatedly, without giving any rest to the enemy. There is in all this, it would appear, a negative quality, an attitude of retreat, of avoiding frontal fights. However, this is consequent upon the general strategy of guerrilla warfare, which is the same in its ultimate end as is any warfare: to win, to annihilate the enemy.
Thus, it is clear that guerrilla warfare is a phase that does not afford in itself opportunities to arrive at complete victory. It is one of the initial phases of warfare and will develop continuously until the guerrilla army in its steady growth acquires the characteristics of a regular army. At that moment it will be ready to deal final blows to the enemy and to achieve victory. Triumph will always be the product of a regular army, even though its origins are in a guerrilla army.
Just as the general of a division in a modern war does not have to die in front of his soldiers, the guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle. He is ready to give his life, but the positive quality of this guerrilla warfare is precisely that each one of the guerrilla fighters is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality. This is the basis, the essence of guerrilla fighting. Miraculously, a small band of men, the armed vanguard of the great popular force that supports them, goes beyond the immediate tactical objective, goes on decisively to achieve an ideal, to establish a new society, to break the old molds of the outdated, and to achieve, finally, the social justice for which they fight.
Considered thus, all these disparaged qualities acquire a true nobility, the nobility of the end at which they aim; and it becomes clear that we are not speaking of distorted means of reaching an end. This fighting attitude, this attitude of not being dismayed at any time, this inflexibility when confronting the great problems in the final objective is also the nobility of the guerrilla fighter.
2. Guerrilla Strategy
In guerrilla terminology, strategy is understood as the analysis of the objectives to be achieved in light of the total military situation and the overall ways of reaching these objectives.
To have a correct strategic appreciation from the point of view of the guerrilla band, it is necessary to analyze fundamentally what will be the enemy's mode of action. If the final objective is always the complete destruction of the opposite force, the enemy is confronted in the case of a civil war of this kind with the standard task: he will have to achieve the total destruction of each one of the components of the guerrilla band. The guerrilla fighter, on the other hand, must analyze the resources which the enemy has for trying to achieve that outcome: the means in men, in mobility, in popular support, in armaments, in capacity of leadership on which he can count. We must make our own strategy adequate on the basis of these studies, keeping in mind always the final objective of defeating the enemy army.
There are fundamental aspects to be studied: the armament, for example, and the manner of using this armament. The value of a tank, of an airplane, in a fight of this type must be weighed. The arms of the enemy, his ammunition, his habits must be considered; because the principal source of provision for the guerrilla force is precisely in enemy armaments. If there is a possibility of choice, we should prefer the same type as that used by the enemy, since the greatest problem of the guerrilla band is the lack of ammunition, which the opponent must provide.
After the objectives have been fixed and analyzed, it is necessary to study the order of the steps leading to the achievement of the final objective. This should be planned in advance, even though it will be modified and adjusted as the fighting develops and unforeseen circumstances arise.
At the outset, the essential task of the guerrilla fighter is to keep himself from being destroyed. Little by little it will be easier for the members of the guerrilla band or bands to adapt themselves to their form of life and to make flight and escape from the forces that are on the offensive an easy task, because it is performed daily. When this condition is reached, the guerrilla, having taken up inaccessible positions out of reach of the enemy, or having assembled forces that deter the enemy from attacking, ought to proceed to the gradual weakening of the enemy. This will be carried out at first at those points nearest to the points of active warfare against the guerrilla band and later will be taken deeper into enemy territory, attacking his communications, later attacking or harassing his bases of operations and his central bases, tormenting him on all sides to the full extent of the capabilities of the guerrilla forces.
The blows should be continuous. The enemy soldier in a zone of operations ought not to be allowed to sleep; his outposts ought to be attacked and liquidated systematically. At every moment the impression ought to be created that he is surrounded by a complete circle. In wooded and broken areas this effort should be maintained both day and night; in open zones that are easily penetrated by enemy patrols, at night only. In order to do all this the absolute cooperation of the people and a perfect knowledge of the ground are necessary. These two necessities affect every minute of the life of the guerrilla fighter. Therefore, along with centers for study of present and future zones of operations, intensive popular work must be undertaken to explain the motives of the revolution, its ends, and to spread the incontrovertible truth that victory of the enemy against the people is finally impossible. Whoever does not feel this undoubted truth cannot be a guerrilla fighter.
This popular work should at first be aimed at securing secrecy; that is, each peasant, each member of the society in which action is taking place, will be asked not to mention what he sees and hears; later, help will be sought from inhabitants whose loyalty to the revolution offers greater guarantees; still later, use will be made of these persons in missions of contact, for transporting goods or arms, as guides in the zones familiar to them; still later, it is possible to arrive at organized mass action in the centers of work, of which the final result will be the general strike.
The strike is a most important factor in civil war, but in order to reach it a series of complementary conditions are necessary which do not always exist and which very rarely come to exist spontaneously. It is necessary to create these essential conditions, basically by explaining the purposes of the revolution and by demonstrating the forces of the people and their possibilities.
It is also possible to have recourse to certain very homogeneous groups, which must have shown their efficacy previously in less dangerous tasks, in order to make use of another of the terrible arms of the guerrilla band, sabotage. It is possible to paralyze entire armies, to suspend the industrial life of a zone, leaving the inhabitants of a city without factories, without light, without water, without communications of any kind, without being able to risk travel by highway except at certain hours. If all this is achieved, the morale of the enemy falls, the morale of his combatant units weakens, and the fruit ripens for plucking at a precise moment.
All this presupposes an increase in the territory included within the guerrilla action, but an excessive increase of this territory is to be avoided. It is essential always to preserve a strong base of operations and to continue strengthening it during the course of the war. Within this territory, measures of indoctrination of the inhabitants of the zone should be utilized; measures of quarantine should be taken against the irreconcilable enemies of the revolution; all the purely defensive measures, such as trenches, mines, and communications, should be perfected.
When the guerrilla band has reached a respectable power in arms and in number of combatants, it ought to proceed to the formation of new columns. This is an act similar to that of the beehive when at a given moment it releases a new queen, who goes to another region with a part of the swarm. The mother hive with the most notable guerrilla chief will stay in the less dangerous places, while the new columns will penetrate other enemy territories following the cycle already described.
A moment will arrive in which the territory occupied by the columns is too small for them; and in the advance toward regions solidly defended by the enemy, it will be necessary to confront powerful forces. At that instant the columns join, they offer a compact fighting front, and a war of positions is reached, a war carried on by regular armies. However, the former guerrilla army cannot cut itself off from its base, and it should create new guerrilla bands behind the enemy acting in the same way as the original bands operated earlier, proceeding thus to penetrate enemy territory until it is dominated.
It is thus that guerrillas reach the stage of attack, of the encirclement of fortified bases, of the defeat of reinforcements, of mass action, ever more ardent, in the whole national territory, arriving finally at the objective of the war: victory.
3. Guerrilla Tactics
In military language, tactics are the practical methods of achieving the grand strategic objectives.
In one sense they complement strategy and in another they are more specific rules within it. As means, tactics are much more variable, much more flexible than the final objectives, and they should be adjusted continually during the struggle. There are tactical objectives that remain constant throughout a war and others that vary. The first thing to be considered is the adjusting of guerrilla action to the action of the enemy.
The fundamental characteristic of a guerrilla band is mobility. This permits it in a few minutes to move far from a specific theatre and in a few hours far even from the region, if that becomes necessary; permits it constantly to change front and avoid any type of encirclement. As the circumstances of the war require, the guerrilla band can dedicate itself exclusively to fleeing from an encirclement which is the enemy's only way of forcing the band into a decisive fight that could be unfavorable; it can also change the battle into a counter- encirclement (small bands of men are presumably surrounded by the enemy when suddenly the enemy is surrounded by stronger contingents; or men located in a safe place serve as a lure, leading to the encirclement and annihilation of the entire troops and supply of an attacking force). Characteristic of this war of mobility is the so-called minuet, named from the analogy with the dance: the guerrilla bands encircle an enemy position, an advancing column, for example; they encircle it completely from the four points of the compass, with five or six men in each place, far enough away to avoid being encircled themselves; the fight is started at any one of the points, and the army moves toward it; the guerrilla band then retreats, always maintaining visual contact, and initiates its attack from another point. The army will repeat its action and the guerrilla band, the same. Thus, successively, it is possible to keep an enemy column immobilized, forcing it to expend large quantities of ammunition and weakening the morale of its troops without incurring great dangers.
This same tactic can be applied at nighttime, closing in more and showing greater aggressiveness, because in these conditions counter- encirclement is much more difficult. Movement by night is another important characteristic of the guerrilla band, enabling it to advance into position for an attack and, where the danger of betrayal exists, to mobilize in new territory. The numerical inferiority of the guerrilla makes it necessary that attacks always be carried out by surprise; this great advantage is what permits the guerrilla fighter to inflict losses on the enemy without suffering losses. In a fight between a hundred men on one side and ten on the other, losses are not equal where there is one casualty on each side. The enemy loss is always reparable; it amounts to only one percent of his effectives. The loss of the guerrilla band requires more time to be repaired because it involves a soldier of high specialization and is ten percent of the operating forces.
A dead soldier of the guerrillas ought never to be left with his arms and his ammunition. The duty of every guerrilla soldier whenever a companion falls is to recover immediately these extremely precious elements of the fight. In fact, the care which must be taken of ammunition and the method of using it are further characteristics of guerrilla warfare. In any combat between a regular force and a guerrilla band it is always possible to know one from the other by their different manner of fire: a great amount of firing on the part of the regular army, sporadic and accurate shots on the part of the guerrillas.
Once one of our heroes, now dead, had to employ his machine guns for nearly five minutes, burst after burst, in order to slow up the advance of enemy soldiers. This fact caused considerable confusion in our forces, because they assumed from the rhythm of fire that that key position must have been taken by the enemy, since this was one of the rare occasions where departure from the rule of saving fire had been called for because of the importance of the point being defended.
Another fundamental characteristic of the guerrilla soldier is his flexibility, his ability to adapt himself to all circumstances, and to convert to his service all of the accidents of the action. Against the rigidity of classical methods of fighting, the guerrilla fighter invents his own tactics at every minute of the fight and constanly surprises the enemy. In the first place, there are only elastic positions, specific places that the enemy cannot pass, and places of diverting him. Frequently, the enemy, after easily overcoming difficulties in a gradual advance, is surprised to find himself suddenly and solidly detained without possibilities of moving forward. This is due to the fact that the guerrilla-defended positions, when they have been selected on the basis of a careful study of the ground, are invulnerable. It is not the number of attacking soldiers that counts, but the number of defending soldiers. Once that number has been placed there, it can nearly always hold off a battalion with success. It is a major task of the chiefs to choose well the moment and the place for defending a position without retreat.
The form of attack of a guerrilla army is also different; starting with surprise and fury, irresistible, it suddenly converts itself into total passivity.
The surviving enemy, resting, believes that the attacker has departed; he begins to relax, to return to the routine life of the camp or of the fortress, when suddenly a new attack bursts forth in another place, with the same characteristics, while the main body of the guerrilla band lies in wait to intercept reinforcements. At other times an outpost defending the camp will be suddenly attacked by the guerrilla, dominated, and captured. The fundamental thing is surprise and rapidity of attack.
Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and indiscriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths.
There is one point very much in controversy in opinions about terrorism. Many consider that its use, by provoking police oppression, hinders all more or less legal or semiclandestine contact with the masses and makes impossible unification for actions that will be necessary at a critical moment. This is correct; but it also happens that in a civil war the repression by the governmental power in certain towns is already so great that, in fact, every type of legal action is suppressed already, and any action of the masses that is not supported by arms is impossible. It is therefore necessary to be circumspect in adopting methods of this type and to consider the consequences that they may bring for the revolution. At any rate, well-managed sabotage is always a very effective arm, though it should not be employed to put means of production out of action, leaving a sector of the population paralyzed (and thus without work) unless this paralysis affects the normal life of the society. It is ridiculous to carry out sabotage against a soft-drink factory, but it is absolutely correct and advisable to carry out sabotage against a power plant. In the first case, a certain number of workers are put out of a job but nothing is done to modify the rhythm of industrial life; in the second case, there will again be displaced workers, but this is entirely justified by the paralysis of the life of the region. We will return to the technique of sabotage later.
One of the favorite arms of the enemy army, supposed to be decisive in modern times, is aviation. Nevertheless, this has no use whatsoever during the period that guerrilla warfare is in its first stages, with small concentrations of men in rugged places. The utility of aviation lies in the systematic destruction of visible and organized defenses; and for this there must be large concentrations of men who construct these defenses, something that does not exist in this type of warfare. Planes are also potent against marches by columns through level places or places without cover; however, this latter danger is easily avoided by carrying out the marches at night.
One of the weakest points of the enemy is transportation by road and railroad. It is virtually impossible to maintain a vigil yard by yard over a transport line, a road, or a railroad. At any point a considerable amount of explosive charge can be planted that will make the road impassable; or by exploding it at the moment that a vehicle passes, a considerable loss in lives and materiel to the enemy is caused at the same time that the road is cut.
The sources of explosives are varied. They can be brought from other zones; or use can be made of bombs seized from the dictatorship, though these do not always work; or they can be manufactured in secret laboratories within the guerrilla zone. The technique of setting them off is quite varied; their manufacture also depends upon the conditions of the guerrilla band.
In our laboratory we made powder which we used as a cap, and we invented various devices for exploding the mines at the desired moment. The ones that gave the best results were electric. The first mine that we exploded was a bomb dropped from an aircraft of the dictatorship. We adapted it by inserting various caps and adding a gun with the trigger pulled by a cord. At the moment that an enemy truck passed, the weapon was fired to set off the explosion.
These techniques can be developed to a high degree. We have information that in Algeria, for example, tele-explosive mines, that is, mines exploded by radio at great distances from the point where they are located, are being used today against the French colonial power.
The technique of lying in ambush along roads in order to explode mines and annihilate survivors is one of the most remunerative in point of ammunition and arms. The surprised enemy does not use his ammunition and has no time to flee, so with a small expenditure of ammunition large results are achieved.
As blows are dealt the enemy, he also changes his tactics, and in place of isolated trucks, veritable motorized columns move. However, by choosing the ground well, the same result can be produced by breaking the column and concentrating forces on one vehicle. In these cases the essential elements of guerrilla tactics must always be kept in mind. These are: perfect knowledge of the ground; surveillance and foresight as to the lines of escape; vigilance over all the secondary roads that can bring support to the point of attack; intimacy with people in the zone so as to have sure help from them in respect to supplies, transport, and temporary or permanent hiding places if it becomes necessary to leave wounded companions behind; numerical superiority at a chosen point of action; total mobility; and the possibility of counting on reserves.
If all these tactical requisites are fulfilled, surprise attack along the lines of communication of the enemy yields notable dividends.
A fundamental part of guerrilla tactics is the treatment accorded the people of the zone. Even the treatment accorded the enemy is important; the norm to be followed should be an absolute inflexibility at the time of attack, an absolute inflexibility toward all the despicable elements that resort to informing and assassination, and clemency as absolute as possible toward the enemy soldiers who go into the fight performing or believing that they perform a military duty. It is a good policy, so long as there are no considerable bases of operations and invulnerable places, to take no prisoners. Survivors ought to be set free. The wounded should be cared for with all possible resources at the time of the action. Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier. Except in special situations, there ought to be no execution of justice without giving the criminal an opportunity to clear himself.
4. Warfare on Favorable Ground
As we have already said, guerrilla fighting will not always take place in country most favorable to the employment of its tactics; but when it does, that is, when the guerrilla band is located in zones difficult to reach, either because of dense forests, steep mountains, impassable deserts or marshes, the general tactics, based on the fundamental postulates of guerrilla warfare, must always be the same.
An important point to consider is the moment for making contact with the enemy. If the zone is so thick, so difficult that an organized army can never reach it, the guerrilla band should advance to the regions where the army can arrive and where there will be a possibility of combat.
As soon as the survival of the guerrilla band has been assured, it should fight; it must constantly go out from its refuge to fight. Its mobility does not have to be as great as in those cases where the ground is unfavorable; it must adjust itself to the capabilities of the enemy, but it is not necessary to be able to move as quickly as in places where the enemy can concentrate a large number of men in a few minutes. Neither is the nocturnal character of this warfare so important; it will be possible in many cases to carry out daytime operations, especially mobilizations by day, though subjected to enemy observation by land and air. It is also possible to persist in a military action for a much longer time, above all in the mountains; it is possible to undertake battles of long duration with very few men, and it is very probable that the arrival of enemy reinforcements at the scene of the fight can be prevented.
A close watch over the points of access is, however, an axiom never to be forgotten by the guerrilla fighter. His aggressiveness (on account of the difficulties that the enemy faces in bringing up reinforcements) can be greater, he can approach the enemy more closely, fight much more directly, more frontally, and for a longer time, though these rules may be qualified by various circumstances, such, for example, as the amount of ammunition.
Fighting on favorable ground and particularly in the mountains presents many advantages but also the inconvenience that it is difficult to capture in a single operation a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition, owing to the precautions that the enemy takes in these regions. (The guerrilla soldier must never forget the fact that it is the enemy that must serve as his source of supply of ammunition and arms.) But much more rapidly than in unfavorable ground the guerrilla band will here be able to "dig in," that is, to form a base capable of engaging in a war of positions, where small industries may be installed as they are needed, as well as hospitals, centers for education and training, storage facilities, organs of propaganda, etc., adequately protected from aviation or from long-range artillery.
The guerrilla band in these conditions can number many more personnel; there will be noncombatants and perhaps even a system of training in the use of the arms that eventually are to fall into the power of the guerrilla army.
The number of men that a guerrilla band can have is a matter of extremely flexible calculation adapted to the territory, to the means available of acquiring supplies, to the mass flights of oppressed people from other zones, to the arms available, to the necessities of organization. But, in any case, it is much more practicable to establish a base and expand with the support of new combatant elements.
The radius of action of a guerrilla band of this type can be as wide as conditions or the operations of other bands in adjacent territory permit. The range will be limited by the time that it takes to arrive at a zone of security from the zone of operation; assuming that marches must be made at night, it will not be possible to operate more than five or six hours away from a point of maximum security. Small guerrilla bands that work constantly at weakening a territory can go farther away from the zone of security.
The arms preferable for this type of warfare are long-range weapons requiring a small expenditure of bullets, supported by a group of automatic or semiautomatic arms. Of the rifles and machine guns that exist in the markets of the United States, one of the best is the M-1 rifle, called the Garand. However, this should be used only by people with some experience, since it has the disadvantage of expending too much ammunition. Medium-heavy arms, such as tripod machine guns, can be used on favorable ground, affording a greater margin of security for the weapon and its personnel, but they ought always to be a means of repelling an enemy and not for attack.
An ideal composition for a guerrilla band of 25 men would be: 10 to 15 single-shot rifles and about 10 automatic arms between Garands and hand machine guns, including light and easily portable automatic arms, such as the Browning or the more modern Belgian FAL and M-14 automatic rifles. Among the hand machine guns the best are those of nine millimeters, which permit a larger transport of ammunition. The simpler its construction the better, because this increases the ease of switching parts. All this must be adjusted to the armament that the enemy uses, since the ammunition that he employs is what we are going to use when his arms fall into our hands. It is practically impossible for heavy arms to be used. Aircraft cannot see anything and cease to operate; tanks and cannons cannot do much owing to the difficulties of advancing in these zones.
A very important consideration is supply. In general, the zones of difficult access for this very reason present special problems, since there are few peasants, and therefore animal and food supplies are scarce. It is necessary to maintain stable lines of communication in order to be able always to count on a minimum of food, stockpiled, in the event of any disagreeable development.
In this kind of zone of operations the possibilities of sabotage on a large scale are generally not present; with the inaccessibility goes a lack of constructions, telephone lines, aqueducts, etc., that could be damaged by direct action.
For supply purposes it is important to have animals, among which the mule is the best in rough country. Adequate pasturage permitting good nutrition is essential. The mule can pass through extremely hilly country impossible for other animals. In the most difficult situations it is necessary to resort to transport by men. Each individual can carry twenty-five kilograms for many hours daily and for many days.
The lines of communication with the exterior should include a series of intermediate points manned by people of complete reliability, where products can be stored and where contacts can go to hide themselves at critical times. Internal lines of communication can also be created. Their extension will be determined by the stage of development reached by the guerrilla band. In some zones of operations in the recent Cuban war, telephone lines of many kilometers of length were established, roads were built, and a messenger service maintained sufficient to cover all zones in a minimum of time.
There are also other possible means of communication, not used in the Cuban war but perfectly applicable, such as smoke signals, signals with sunshine reflected by mirrors, and carrier pigeons.
The vital necessities of the guerrillas are to maintain their arms in good condition, to capture ammunition, and, above everything else, to have adequate shoes. The first manufacturing efforts should therefore be directed toward these objectives. Shoe factories can initially be cobbler installations that replace half soles on old shoes, expanding afterwards into a series of organized factories with a good average daily production of shoes. The manufacture of powder is fairly simple; and much can be accomplished by having a small laboratory and bringing in the necessary materials from outside. Mined areas constitute a grave danger for the enemy; large areas can be mined for simultaneous explosion, destroying up to hundreds of men.
5. Warfare on Unfavorable Ground
In order to carry on warfare in country that is not very hilly, lacks forests, and has many roads, all the fundamental requisites of guerrilla warfare must be observed; only the forms will be altered. The quantity, not the quality, of guerrilla warfare will change. For example, following the same order as before, the mobility of this type of guerrilla should be extraordinary; strikes should be made preferably at night; they should be extremely rapid, but the guerrilla should move to places different from the starting point, the farthest possible from the scene of action, assuming that there is no place secure from the repressive forces that the guerrilla can use as its garrison.
A man can walk between 30 and 50 kilometers during the night hours; it is possible also to march during the first hours of daylight, unless the zones of operation are closely watched or there is danger that people in the vicinity, seeing the passing troops, will notify the pursuing army of the location of the guerrilla band and its route. It is always preferable in these cases to operate at night with the greatest possible silence both before and after the action; the first hours of night are best. Here, too, there are exceptions to the general rule, since at times the dawn hours will be preferable. It is never wise to habituate the enemy to a certain form of warfare; it is necessary to vary constantly the places, the hours, and the forms of operation.
We have already said that the action cannot endure for long, but must be rapid; it must be of a high degree of effectiveness, last a few minutes, and be followed by an immediate withdrawal. The arms employed here will not be the same as in the case of actions on favorable ground; a large quantity of automatic weapons is to be preferred. In night attacks, marksmanship is not the determining factor, but rather concentration of fire; the more automatic arms firing at short distance, the more possibilities there are of annihilating the enemy.
Also, the use of mines in roads and the destruction of bridges are tactics of great importance. Attacks by the guerrilla will be less aggressive so far as the persistence and continuation are concerned, but they can be very violent, and they can utilize different arms, such as mines and the shotgun. Against open vehicles heavily loaded with men, which is the usual method of transporting troops, and even against closed vehicles that do not have special defenses-against buses, for example-the shotgun is a tremendous weapon. A shotgun loaded with large shot is the most effective. This is not a secret of guerrilla fighters; it is used also in big wars. The Americans used shotgun platoons armed with high-quality weapons and bayonets for assaulting machine-gun nests.
There is an important problem to explain, that of ammunition; this will almost always be taken from the enemy. It is therefore necessary to strike blows where there will be the absolute assurance of restoring the ammunition expended, unless there are large reserves in secure places. In other words, an annihilating attack against a group of men is not to be undertaken at the risk of expending all the ammunition without being able to replace it. Always in guerrilla tactics it is necessary to keep in mind the grave problem of procuring the war materiel necessary for continuing the fight. For this reason, guerrilla arms ought to be the same as those used by the enemy, except for weapons such as revolvers and shotguns, for which the ammunition can be obtained in the zone itself or in the cities.
The number of men that a guerrilla band of this type should include does not exceed ten to fifteen. In forming a single combat unit it is of great importance always to consider the limitations on numbers: ten, twelve, fifteen men can hide anywhere and at the same time can help each other in putting up a powerful resistance to the enemy. Four or five would perhaps be too small a number, but when the number exceeds ten, the possibility that the enemy will discover them in their camp or on the march is much greater.
Remember that the velocity of the guerrilla band on the march is equal to the velocity of its slowest man. It is more difficult to find uniformity of marching speed with twenty, thirty, or forty men than with ten. And the guerrilla fighter on the plain must be fundamentally a runner. Here the practice of hitting and running acquires its maximum use. The guerrilla bands on the plain suffer the enormous inconvenience of being subject to a rapid encirclement and of not having sure places where they can set up a firm resistance; therefore, they must live in conditions of absolute secrecy for a long time, since it would be dangerous to trust any neighbor whose fidelity is not perfectly established. The reprisals of the enemy are so violent, usually so brutal, inflicted not only on the head of the family but frequently on the women and children as well, that pressure on individuals lacking firmness may result at any moment in their giving way and revealing information as to where the guerrilla band is located and how it is operating. This would immediately produce an encirclement with consequences always disagreeable, although not necessarily fatal. When conditions, the quantity of arms, and the state of insurrection of the people call for an increase in the number of men, the guerrilla band should be divided. If it is necessary, all can rejoin at a given moment to deal a blow, but in such a way that immediately afterwards they can disperse toward separate zones, again divided into small groups of ten, twelve, or fifteen men.
It is entirely feasible to organize whole armies under a single command and to assure respect and obedience to this command without the necessity of being in a single group. Therefore, the election of the guerrilla chiefs and the certainty that they coordinate ideologically and personally with the overall chief of the zone are very important.
The bazooka is a heavy weapon that can be used by the guerrilla band because of its easy portability and operation. Today the rifle- fired anti-tank grenade can replace it. Naturally, it will be a weapon taken from the enemy. The bazooka is ideal for firing on armored vehicles, and even on unarmored vehicles that are loaded with troops, and for taking small military bases of few men in a short time; but it is important to point out that not more than three shells per man can be carried, and this only with considerable exertion.
As for the utilization of heavy arms taken from the enemy, naturally, nothing is to be scorned. But there are weapons such as the tripod machine gun, the heavy fifty-millimeter machine gun, etc., that, when captured, can be utilized with a willingness to lose them again. In other words, in the unfavorable conditions that we are now analyzing, a battle to defend a heavy machine gun or other weapon of this type cannot be allowed; they are simply to be used until the tactical moment when they must be abandoned. In our Cuban war of liberation, to abandon a weapon constituted a grave offense, and there was never any case where the necessity arose. Nevertheless, we mention this case in order to explain clearly the only situation in which abandonment would not constitute an occasion for reproaches. On unfavorable ground, the guerrilla weapon is the personal weapon of rapid fire.
Easy access to the zone usually means that it will be habitable and that there will be a peasant population in these places. This facilitates supply enormously. Having trustworthy people and making contact with establishments that provide supplies to the population, it is possible to maintain a guerrilla band perfectly well without having to devote time or money to long and dangerous lines of communication. Also, it is well to reiterate that the smaller the number of men, the easier it will be to procure food for them. Essential supplies such as bedding, waterproof material, mosquito netting, shoes, medicines, and food will be found directly in the zone, since they are things of daily use by its inhabitants.
Communications will be much easier in the sense of being able to count on a larger number of men and more roads; but they will be more difficult as a problem of security for messages between distant points, since it will be necessary to rely on a series of contacts that have to be trusted. There will be the danger of an eventual capture of one of the messengers, who are constantly crossing enemy zones. If the messages are of small importance, they should be oral; if of great importance, code writing should be used. Experience shows that transmission by word of mouth greatly distorts any communication.
For these same reasons, manufacture will have much less importance, at the same time that it would be much more difficult to carry it out. It will not be possible to have factories making shoes or arms. Practically speaking, manufacture will have to be limited to small shops, carefully hidden, where shotgun shells can be recharged and mines, simple grenades, and other minimum necessities of the moment manufactured. On the other hand, it is possible to make use of all the friendly shops of the zone for such work as is necessary.
This brings us to two consequences that flow logically from what has been said. One of them is that the favorable conditions for establishing a permanent camp in guerrilla warfare are inverse to the degree of productive development of a place. All favorable conditions, all facilities of life normally induce men to settle; but for the guerrilla band the opposite is the case. The more facilities there are for social life, the more nomadic, the more uncertain the life of the guerrilla fighter. These really are the results of one and the same principle. The title of this section is "Warfare on Unfavorable Ground," because everything that is favorable to human life, communications, urban and semiurban concentrations of large numbers of people, land easily worked by machine: all these place the guerrilla fighter in a disadvantageous situation.
The second conclusion is that if guerrilla fighting must include the extremely important factor of work on the masses, this work is even more important in the unfavorable zones, where a single enemy attack can produce a catastrophe. Indoctrination should be continuous, and so should be the struggle for unity of the workers, of the peasants, and of other social classes that live in the zone, in order to achieve toward the guerrilla fighters a maximum homogeneity of attitude. This task with the masses, this constant work at the huge problem of relations of the guerrilla band with the inhabitants of the zone, must also govern the attitude to be taken toward the case of an individual recalcitrant enemy soldier: he should be eliminated without hesitation when he is dangerous. In this respect the guerrilla band must be drastic. Enemies cannot be permitted to exist within the zone of operations in places that offer no security.
6. Suburban Warfare
If during the war the guerrilla bands close in on cities and penetrate the surrounding country in such a way as to be able to esta-blish themselves in conditions of some security, it will be necessary to give these suburban bands a special education, or rather, a special organization.
It is fundamental to recognize that a suburban guerrilla band can never spring up of its own accord. It will be born only after certain conditions necessary for its survival have been created. Therefore, the suburban guerrilla will always be under the direct orders of chiefs located in another zone. The function of this guerrilla band will not be to carry out independent actions but to coordinate its activities with overall strategic plans in such a way as to support the action of larger groups situated in another area, contributing specifically to the success of a fixed tactical objective, without the operational freedom of guerrilla bands of the other types. For example, a suburban band will not be able to choose among the operations of destroying telephone lines, moving to make attacks in another locality, and surprising a patrol of soldiers on a distant road; it will do exactly what it is told. If its function is to cut down telephone poles or electric wires, to destroy sewers, railroads, or water mains, it will limit itself to carrying out these tasks efficiently.
It ought not to number more than four or five men. The limitation on numbers is important, because the suburban guerrilla must be considered as situated in exceptionally unfavorable ground, where the vigilance of the enemy will be much greater and the possibilities of reprisals as well as of betrayal are increased enormously. Another aggravating circumstance is that the suburban guerrilla band cannot depart far from the places where it is going to operate. To speed of action and withdrawal there must be added a limitation on the distance of withdrawal from the scene of action and the need to remain totally hidden during the daytime. This is a nocturnal guerrilla band in the extreme, without possibilities of changing its manner of operating until the insurrection is so far advanced that it can take part as an active combatant in the siege of the city.
The essential qualities of the guerrilla fighter in this situation are discipline (perhaps in the highest degree of all) and discretion. He cannot count on more than two or three friendly houses that will provide food; it is almost certain that an encirclement in these conditions will be equivalent to death. Weapons, furthermore, will not be of the same kind as those of the other groups. They will be for personal defense, of the type that do not hinder a rapid flight or betray a secure hiding place. As their armament the band ought to have not more than one carbine or one sawed-off shotgun, or perhaps two, with pistols for the other members.
They will concentrate their action on prescribed sabotage and never carry out armed attacks, except by surprising one or two members or agents of the enemy troops.
For sabotage they need a full set of instruments. The guerrilla fighter must have good saws, large quantities of dynamite, picks and shovels, apparatus for lifting rails, and, in general, adequate mechanical equipment for the work to be carried out. This should be hidden in places that are secure but easily accessible to the hands that will need to use it.
If there is more than one guerrilla band, they will all be under a single chief who will give orders as to the necessary tasks through contacts of proven trustworthiness who live openly as ordinary citizens. In certain cases the guerrilla fighter will be able to maintain his peacetime work, but this is very difficult. Practically speaking, the suburban guerrilla band is a group of men who are already outside the law, in a condition of war, situated as unfavorably as we have described.
The importance of a suburban struggle has usually been under-estimated; it is really very great. A good operation of this type extended over a wide area paralyzes almost completely the commercial and industrial life of the sector and places the entire population in a situation of unrest, of anguish, almost of impatience for the development of violent events that will relieve the period of suspense. If, from the first moment of the war, thought is taken for the future possibility of this type of fight and an organization of specialists started, a much more rapid action will be assured, and with it a saving of lives and of the priceless time of the nation.
Ernesto Che Guevara
Ernesto Che Guevara:
Guerilla Warfare
Chapter I: General Principles of Guerilla Warfare
1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare
2. Guerrilla Strategy
3. Guerrilla Tactics
4. Warfare on Favorable Ground
5. Warfare on Unfavorable Ground
6. Suburban Warfare
1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare
The armed victory of the Cuban people over the Batista dictatorship was not only the triumph of heroism as reported by the newspapers of the world; it also forced a change in the old dogmas concerning the conduct of the popular masses of Latin America. It showed plainly the capacity of the people to free themselves by means of guerrilla warfare from a government that oppresses them.
We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are:
1. Popular forces can win a war against the army.
2. It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.
3. In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.
Of these three propositions the first two contradict the defeatist attitude of revolutionaries or pseudo-revolutionaries who remain inactive and take refuge in the pretext that against a professional army nothing can be done, who sit down to wait until in some mechanical way all necessary objective and subjective conditions are given without working to accelerate them. As these problems were formerly a subject of discussion in Cuba, until facts settled the question, they are probably still much discussed in America.
Naturally, it is not to be thought that all conditions for revolution are going to be created through the impulse given to them by guerrilla activity. It must always be kept in mind that there is a necessary minimum without which the establishment and consolidation of the first center is not practicable. People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.
In these conditions popular discontent expresses itself in more active forms. An attitude of resistance finally crystallizes in an outbreak of fighting, provoked initially by the conduct of the authorities.
Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.
The third proposition is a fundamental of strategy. It ought to be noted by those who maintain dogmatically that the struggle of the masses is centered in city movements, entirely forgetting the immense participation of the country people in the life of all the underdeveloped parts of America. Of course, the struggles of the city masses of organized workers should not be underrated; but their real possibilities of engaging in armed struggle must be carefully analyzed where the guarantees which customarily adorn our constitutions are suspended or ignored. In these conditions the illegal workers' movements face enormous dangers. They must function secretly without arms. The situation in the open country is not so difficult. There, in places beyond the reach of the repressive forces, the inhabitants can be supported by the armed guerrillas.
We will later make a careful analysis of these three conclusions that stand out in the Cuban revolutionary experience. We emphasize them now at the beginning of this work as our fundamental contribution.
Guerrilla warfare, the basis of the struggle of a people to redeem itself, has diverse characteristics, different facets, even though the essential will for liberation remains the same. It is obvious-and writers on the theme have said it many times-that war responds to a certain series of scientific laws; whoever ignores them will go down to defeat. Guerrilla warfare as a phase of war must be ruled by all of these; but besides, because of its special aspects, a series of corollary laws must also be recognized in order to carry it forward. Though geographical and social conditions in each country determine the mode and particular forms that guerrilla warfare will take, there are general laws that hold for all fighting of this type.
Our task at the moment is to find the basic principles of this kind of fighting and the rules to be followed by peoples seeking liberation; to develop theory from facts; to generalize and give structure to our experience for the profit of others.
Let us first consider the question: Who are the combatants in guerrilla warfare? On one side we have a group composed of the oppressor and his agents, the professional army, well armed and disciplined, in many cases receiving foreign help as well as the help of the bureaucracy in the employ of the oppressor. On the other side are the people of the nation or region involved. It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves. The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in firepower. Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression.
The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition. This is clearly seen by considering the case of bandit gangs that operate in a region. They have all the characteristics of a guerrilla army: homogeneity, respect for the leader, valor, knowledge of the ground, and, often, even good understanding of the tactics to be employed. The only thing missing is support of the people; and, inevitably, these gangs are captured and exterminated by the public force.
Analyzing the mode of operation of the guerrilla band, seeing its form of struggle, and understanding its base in the masses, we can answer the question: Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery. He launches himself against the conditions of the reigning institutions at a particular moment and dedicates himself with all the vigor that circumstances permit to breaking the mold of these institutions.
When we analyze more fully the tactic of guerrilla warfare, we will see that the guerrilla fighter needs to have a good knowledge of the surrounding countryside, the paths of entry and escape, the possibilities of speedy maneuver, good hiding places; naturally, also, he must count on the support of the people. All this indicates that the guerrilla fighter will carry out his action in wild places of small population. Since in these places the struggle of the people for reforms is aimed primarily and almost exclusively at changing the social form of land ownership, the guerrilla fighter is above all an agrarian revolutionary. He interprets the desires of the great peasant mass to be owners of land, owners of their means of production, of their animals, of all that which they have long yearned to call their own, of that which constitutes their life and will also serve as their cemetery.
It should be noted that in current interpretations there are two different types of guerrilla warfare, one of which-a struggle complementing great regular armies such as was the case of the Ukrainian fighters in the Soviet Union-does not enter into this analysis. We are interested in the other type, the case of an armed group engaged in struggle against the constituted power, whether colonial or not, which establishes itself as the only base and which builds itself up in rural areas. In all such cases, whatever the ideological aims that may inspire the fight, the economic aim is determined by the aspiration toward ownership of land.
The China of Mao begins as an outbreak of worker groups in the South, which is defeated and almost annihilated. It succeeds in establishing itself and begins its advance only when, after the long march from Yenan, it takes up its base in rural territories and makes agrarian reform its fundamental goal. The struggle of Ho Chi Minh is based in the rice-growing peasants, who are oppressed by the French colonial yoke; with this force it is going forward to the defeat of the colonialists. In both cases there is a framework of patriotic war against the Japanese invader, but the economic basis of a fight for the land has not disappeared. In the case of Algeria, the grand idea of Arab nationalism has its economic counterpart in the fact that nearly all of the arable land of Algeria is utilized by a million French settlers. In some countries, such as Puerto Rico, where the special conditions of the island have not permitted a guerrilla outbreak, the nationalist spirit, deeply wounded by the discrimination that is daily practiced, has as its basis the aspiration of the peasants (even though many of them are already a proletariat) to recover the land that the Yankee invader seized from them. This same central idea, though in different forms, inspired the small farmers, peasants, and slaves of the eastern estates of Cuba to close ranks and defend together the right to possess land during the thirty-year war of liberation.
Taking account of the possibilities of development of guerrilla warfare, which is transformed with the increase in the operating potential of the guerrilla band into a war of positions, this type of warfare, despite its special character, is to be considered as an embryo, a prelude, of the other. The possibilities of growth of the guerrilla band and of changes in the mode of fight, until conventional warfare is reached, are as great as the possibilities of defeating the enemy in each of the different battles, combats, or skirmishes that take place. Therefore, the fundamental principle is that no battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won. There is a malevolent definition that says: "The guerrilla fighter is the Jesuit of warfare." By this is indicated a quality of secretiveness, of treachery, of surprise that is obviously an essential element of guerrilla warfare. It is a special kind of Jesuitism, naturally prompted by circumstances, which necessitates acting at certain moments in ways different from the romantic and sporting conceptions with which we are taught to believe war is fought.
War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems in order to achieve the goal. Military strategy and tactics are a representation by analysis of the objectives of the groups and of the means of achieving these objectives. These means contemplate taking advantage of all the weak points of the enemy. The fighting action of each individual platoon in a large army in a war of positions will present the same characteristics as those of the guerrilla band. It uses secretiveness, treachery, and surprise; and when these are not present, it is because vigilance on the other side prevents surprise. But since the guerrilla band is a division unto itself, and since there are large zones of territory not controlled by the enemy, it is always possible to carry out guerrilla attacks in such a way as to assure surprise; and it is the duty of the guerrilla fighter to do so.
"Hit and run," some call this scornfully, and this is accurate. Hit and run, wait, lie in ambush, again hit and run, and thus repeatedly, without giving any rest to the enemy. There is in all this, it would appear, a negative quality, an attitude of retreat, of avoiding frontal fights. However, this is consequent upon the general strategy of guerrilla warfare, which is the same in its ultimate end as is any warfare: to win, to annihilate the enemy.
Thus, it is clear that guerrilla warfare is a phase that does not afford in itself opportunities to arrive at complete victory. It is one of the initial phases of warfare and will develop continuously until the guerrilla army in its steady growth acquires the characteristics of a regular army. At that moment it will be ready to deal final blows to the enemy and to achieve victory. Triumph will always be the product of a regular army, even though its origins are in a guerrilla army.
Just as the general of a division in a modern war does not have to die in front of his soldiers, the guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle. He is ready to give his life, but the positive quality of this guerrilla warfare is precisely that each one of the guerrilla fighters is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality. This is the basis, the essence of guerrilla fighting. Miraculously, a small band of men, the armed vanguard of the great popular force that supports them, goes beyond the immediate tactical objective, goes on decisively to achieve an ideal, to establish a new society, to break the old molds of the outdated, and to achieve, finally, the social justice for which they fight.
Considered thus, all these disparaged qualities acquire a true nobility, the nobility of the end at which they aim; and it becomes clear that we are not speaking of distorted means of reaching an end. This fighting attitude, this attitude of not being dismayed at any time, this inflexibility when confronting the great problems in the final objective is also the nobility of the guerrilla fighter.
2. Guerrilla Strategy
In guerrilla terminology, strategy is understood as the analysis of the objectives to be achieved in light of the total military situation and the overall ways of reaching these objectives.
To have a correct strategic appreciation from the point of view of the guerrilla band, it is necessary to analyze fundamentally what will be the enemy's mode of action. If the final objective is always the complete destruction of the opposite force, the enemy is confronted in the case of a civil war of this kind with the standard task: he will have to achieve the total destruction of each one of the components of the guerrilla band. The guerrilla fighter, on the other hand, must analyze the resources which the enemy has for trying to achieve that outcome: the means in men, in mobility, in popular support, in armaments, in capacity of leadership on which he can count. We must make our own strategy adequate on the basis of these studies, keeping in mind always the final objective of defeating the enemy army.
There are fundamental aspects to be studied: the armament, for example, and the manner of using this armament. The value of a tank, of an airplane, in a fight of this type must be weighed. The arms of the enemy, his ammunition, his habits must be considered; because the principal source of provision for the guerrilla force is precisely in enemy armaments. If there is a possibility of choice, we should prefer the same type as that used by the enemy, since the greatest problem of the guerrilla band is the lack of ammunition, which the opponent must provide.
After the objectives have been fixed and analyzed, it is necessary to study the order of the steps leading to the achievement of the final objective. This should be planned in advance, even though it will be modified and adjusted as the fighting develops and unforeseen circumstances arise.
At the outset, the essential task of the guerrilla fighter is to keep himself from being destroyed. Little by little it will be easier for the members of the guerrilla band or bands to adapt themselves to their form of life and to make flight and escape from the forces that are on the offensive an easy task, because it is performed daily. When this condition is reached, the guerrilla, having taken up inaccessible positions out of reach of the enemy, or having assembled forces that deter the enemy from attacking, ought to proceed to the gradual weakening of the enemy. This will be carried out at first at those points nearest to the points of active warfare against the guerrilla band and later will be taken deeper into enemy territory, attacking his communications, later attacking or harassing his bases of operations and his central bases, tormenting him on all sides to the full extent of the capabilities of the guerrilla forces.
The blows should be continuous. The enemy soldier in a zone of operations ought not to be allowed to sleep; his outposts ought to be attacked and liquidated systematically. At every moment the impression ought to be created that he is surrounded by a complete circle. In wooded and broken areas this effort should be maintained both day and night; in open zones that are easily penetrated by enemy patrols, at night only. In order to do all this the absolute cooperation of the people and a perfect knowledge of the ground are necessary. These two necessities affect every minute of the life of the guerrilla fighter. Therefore, along with centers for study of present and future zones of operations, intensive popular work must be undertaken to explain the motives of the revolution, its ends, and to spread the incontrovertible truth that victory of the enemy against the people is finally impossible. Whoever does not feel this undoubted truth cannot be a guerrilla fighter.
This popular work should at first be aimed at securing secrecy; that is, each peasant, each member of the society in which action is taking place, will be asked not to mention what he sees and hears; later, help will be sought from inhabitants whose loyalty to the revolution offers greater guarantees; still later, use will be made of these persons in missions of contact, for transporting goods or arms, as guides in the zones familiar to them; still later, it is possible to arrive at organized mass action in the centers of work, of which the final result will be the general strike.
The strike is a most important factor in civil war, but in order to reach it a series of complementary conditions are necessary which do not always exist and which very rarely come to exist spontaneously. It is necessary to create these essential conditions, basically by explaining the purposes of the revolution and by demonstrating the forces of the people and their possibilities.
It is also possible to have recourse to certain very homogeneous groups, which must have shown their efficacy previously in less dangerous tasks, in order to make use of another of the terrible arms of the guerrilla band, sabotage. It is possible to paralyze entire armies, to suspend the industrial life of a zone, leaving the inhabitants of a city without factories, without light, without water, without communications of any kind, without being able to risk travel by highway except at certain hours. If all this is achieved, the morale of the enemy falls, the morale of his combatant units weakens, and the fruit ripens for plucking at a precise moment.
All this presupposes an increase in the territory included within the guerrilla action, but an excessive increase of this territory is to be avoided. It is essential always to preserve a strong base of operations and to continue strengthening it during the course of the war. Within this territory, measures of indoctrination of the inhabitants of the zone should be utilized; measures of quarantine should be taken against the irreconcilable enemies of the revolution; all the purely defensive measures, such as trenches, mines, and communications, should be perfected.
When the guerrilla band has reached a respectable power in arms and in number of combatants, it ought to proceed to the formation of new columns. This is an act similar to that of the beehive when at a given moment it releases a new queen, who goes to another region with a part of the swarm. The mother hive with the most notable guerrilla chief will stay in the less dangerous places, while the new columns will penetrate other enemy territories following the cycle already described.
A moment will arrive in which the territory occupied by the columns is too small for them; and in the advance toward regions solidly defended by the enemy, it will be necessary to confront powerful forces. At that instant the columns join, they offer a compact fighting front, and a war of positions is reached, a war carried on by regular armies. However, the former guerrilla army cannot cut itself off from its base, and it should create new guerrilla bands behind the enemy acting in the same way as the original bands operated earlier, proceeding thus to penetrate enemy territory until it is dominated.
It is thus that guerrillas reach the stage of attack, of the encirclement of fortified bases, of the defeat of reinforcements, of mass action, ever more ardent, in the whole national territory, arriving finally at the objective of the war: victory.
3. Guerrilla Tactics
In military language, tactics are the practical methods of achieving the grand strategic objectives.
In one sense they complement strategy and in another they are more specific rules within it. As means, tactics are much more variable, much more flexible than the final objectives, and they should be adjusted continually during the struggle. There are tactical objectives that remain constant throughout a war and others that vary. The first thing to be considered is the adjusting of guerrilla action to the action of the enemy.
The fundamental characteristic of a guerrilla band is mobility. This permits it in a few minutes to move far from a specific theatre and in a few hours far even from the region, if that becomes necessary; permits it constantly to change front and avoid any type of encirclement. As the circumstances of the war require, the guerrilla band can dedicate itself exclusively to fleeing from an encirclement which is the enemy's only way of forcing the band into a decisive fight that could be unfavorable; it can also change the battle into a counter- encirclement (small bands of men are presumably surrounded by the enemy when suddenly the enemy is surrounded by stronger contingents; or men located in a safe place serve as a lure, leading to the encirclement and annihilation of the entire troops and supply of an attacking force). Characteristic of this war of mobility is the so-called minuet, named from the analogy with the dance: the guerrilla bands encircle an enemy position, an advancing column, for example; they encircle it completely from the four points of the compass, with five or six men in each place, far enough away to avoid being encircled themselves; the fight is started at any one of the points, and the army moves toward it; the guerrilla band then retreats, always maintaining visual contact, and initiates its attack from another point. The army will repeat its action and the guerrilla band, the same. Thus, successively, it is possible to keep an enemy column immobilized, forcing it to expend large quantities of ammunition and weakening the morale of its troops without incurring great dangers.
This same tactic can be applied at nighttime, closing in more and showing greater aggressiveness, because in these conditions counter- encirclement is much more difficult. Movement by night is another important characteristic of the guerrilla band, enabling it to advance into position for an attack and, where the danger of betrayal exists, to mobilize in new territory. The numerical inferiority of the guerrilla makes it necessary that attacks always be carried out by surprise; this great advantage is what permits the guerrilla fighter to inflict losses on the enemy without suffering losses. In a fight between a hundred men on one side and ten on the other, losses are not equal where there is one casualty on each side. The enemy loss is always reparable; it amounts to only one percent of his effectives. The loss of the guerrilla band requires more time to be repaired because it involves a soldier of high specialization and is ten percent of the operating forces.
A dead soldier of the guerrillas ought never to be left with his arms and his ammunition. The duty of every guerrilla soldier whenever a companion falls is to recover immediately these extremely precious elements of the fight. In fact, the care which must be taken of ammunition and the method of using it are further characteristics of guerrilla warfare. In any combat between a regular force and a guerrilla band it is always possible to know one from the other by their different manner of fire: a great amount of firing on the part of the regular army, sporadic and accurate shots on the part of the guerrillas.
Once one of our heroes, now dead, had to employ his machine guns for nearly five minutes, burst after burst, in order to slow up the advance of enemy soldiers. This fact caused considerable confusion in our forces, because they assumed from the rhythm of fire that that key position must have been taken by the enemy, since this was one of the rare occasions where departure from the rule of saving fire had been called for because of the importance of the point being defended.
Another fundamental characteristic of the guerrilla soldier is his flexibility, his ability to adapt himself to all circumstances, and to convert to his service all of the accidents of the action. Against the rigidity of classical methods of fighting, the guerrilla fighter invents his own tactics at every minute of the fight and constanly surprises the enemy. In the first place, there are only elastic positions, specific places that the enemy cannot pass, and places of diverting him. Frequently, the enemy, after easily overcoming difficulties in a gradual advance, is surprised to find himself suddenly and solidly detained without possibilities of moving forward. This is due to the fact that the guerrilla-defended positions, when they have been selected on the basis of a careful study of the ground, are invulnerable. It is not the number of attacking soldiers that counts, but the number of defending soldiers. Once that number has been placed there, it can nearly always hold off a battalion with success. It is a major task of the chiefs to choose well the moment and the place for defending a position without retreat.
The form of attack of a guerrilla army is also different; starting with surprise and fury, irresistible, it suddenly converts itself into total passivity.
The surviving enemy, resting, believes that the attacker has departed; he begins to relax, to return to the routine life of the camp or of the fortress, when suddenly a new attack bursts forth in another place, with the same characteristics, while the main body of the guerrilla band lies in wait to intercept reinforcements. At other times an outpost defending the camp will be suddenly attacked by the guerrilla, dominated, and captured. The fundamental thing is surprise and rapidity of attack.
Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and indiscriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths.
There is one point very much in controversy in opinions about terrorism. Many consider that its use, by provoking police oppression, hinders all more or less legal or semiclandestine contact with the masses and makes impossible unification for actions that will be necessary at a critical moment. This is correct; but it also happens that in a civil war the repression by the governmental power in certain towns is already so great that, in fact, every type of legal action is suppressed already, and any action of the masses that is not supported by arms is impossible. It is therefore necessary to be circumspect in adopting methods of this type and to consider the consequences that they may bring for the revolution. At any rate, well-managed sabotage is always a very effective arm, though it should not be employed to put means of production out of action, leaving a sector of the population paralyzed (and thus without work) unless this paralysis affects the normal life of the society. It is ridiculous to carry out sabotage against a soft-drink factory, but it is absolutely correct and advisable to carry out sabotage against a power plant. In the first case, a certain number of workers are put out of a job but nothing is done to modify the rhythm of industrial life; in the second case, there will again be displaced workers, but this is entirely justified by the paralysis of the life of the region. We will return to the technique of sabotage later.
One of the favorite arms of the enemy army, supposed to be decisive in modern times, is aviation. Nevertheless, this has no use whatsoever during the period that guerrilla warfare is in its first stages, with small concentrations of men in rugged places. The utility of aviation lies in the systematic destruction of visible and organized defenses; and for this there must be large concentrations of men who construct these defenses, something that does not exist in this type of warfare. Planes are also potent against marches by columns through level places or places without cover; however, this latter danger is easily avoided by carrying out the marches at night.
One of the weakest points of the enemy is transportation by road and railroad. It is virtually impossible to maintain a vigil yard by yard over a transport line, a road, or a railroad. At any point a considerable amount of explosive charge can be planted that will make the road impassable; or by exploding it at the moment that a vehicle passes, a considerable loss in lives and materiel to the enemy is caused at the same time that the road is cut.
The sources of explosives are varied. They can be brought from other zones; or use can be made of bombs seized from the dictatorship, though these do not always work; or they can be manufactured in secret laboratories within the guerrilla zone. The technique of setting them off is quite varied; their manufacture also depends upon the conditions of the guerrilla band.
In our laboratory we made powder which we used as a cap, and we invented various devices for exploding the mines at the desired moment. The ones that gave the best results were electric. The first mine that we exploded was a bomb dropped from an aircraft of the dictatorship. We adapted it by inserting various caps and adding a gun with the trigger pulled by a cord. At the moment that an enemy truck passed, the weapon was fired to set off the explosion.
These techniques can be developed to a high degree. We have information that in Algeria, for example, tele-explosive mines, that is, mines exploded by radio at great distances from the point where they are located, are being used today against the French colonial power.
The technique of lying in ambush along roads in order to explode mines and annihilate survivors is one of the most remunerative in point of ammunition and arms. The surprised enemy does not use his ammunition and has no time to flee, so with a small expenditure of ammunition large results are achieved.
As blows are dealt the enemy, he also changes his tactics, and in place of isolated trucks, veritable motorized columns move. However, by choosing the ground well, the same result can be produced by breaking the column and concentrating forces on one vehicle. In these cases the essential elements of guerrilla tactics must always be kept in mind. These are: perfect knowledge of the ground; surveillance and foresight as to the lines of escape; vigilance over all the secondary roads that can bring support to the point of attack; intimacy with people in the zone so as to have sure help from them in respect to supplies, transport, and temporary or permanent hiding places if it becomes necessary to leave wounded companions behind; numerical superiority at a chosen point of action; total mobility; and the possibility of counting on reserves.
If all these tactical requisites are fulfilled, surprise attack along the lines of communication of the enemy yields notable dividends.
A fundamental part of guerrilla tactics is the treatment accorded the people of the zone. Even the treatment accorded the enemy is important; the norm to be followed should be an absolute inflexibility at the time of attack, an absolute inflexibility toward all the despicable elements that resort to informing and assassination, and clemency as absolute as possible toward the enemy soldiers who go into the fight performing or believing that they perform a military duty. It is a good policy, so long as there are no considerable bases of operations and invulnerable places, to take no prisoners. Survivors ought to be set free. The wounded should be cared for with all possible resources at the time of the action. Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier. Except in special situations, there ought to be no execution of justice without giving the criminal an opportunity to clear himself.
4. Warfare on Favorable Ground
As we have already said, guerrilla fighting will not always take place in country most favorable to the employment of its tactics; but when it does, that is, when the guerrilla band is located in zones difficult to reach, either because of dense forests, steep mountains, impassable deserts or marshes, the general tactics, based on the fundamental postulates of guerrilla warfare, must always be the same.
An important point to consider is the moment for making contact with the enemy. If the zone is so thick, so difficult that an organized army can never reach it, the guerrilla band should advance to the regions where the army can arrive and where there will be a possibility of combat.
As soon as the survival of the guerrilla band has been assured, it should fight; it must constantly go out from its refuge to fight. Its mobility does not have to be as great as in those cases where the ground is unfavorable; it must adjust itself to the capabilities of the enemy, but it is not necessary to be able to move as quickly as in places where the enemy can concentrate a large number of men in a few minutes. Neither is the nocturnal character of this warfare so important; it will be possible in many cases to carry out daytime operations, especially mobilizations by day, though subjected to enemy observation by land and air. It is also possible to persist in a military action for a much longer time, above all in the mountains; it is possible to undertake battles of long duration with very few men, and it is very probable that the arrival of enemy reinforcements at the scene of the fight can be prevented.
A close watch over the points of access is, however, an axiom never to be forgotten by the guerrilla fighter. His aggressiveness (on account of the difficulties that the enemy faces in bringing up reinforcements) can be greater, he can approach the enemy more closely, fight much more directly, more frontally, and for a longer time, though these rules may be qualified by various circumstances, such, for example, as the amount of ammunition.
Fighting on favorable ground and particularly in the mountains presents many advantages but also the inconvenience that it is difficult to capture in a single operation a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition, owing to the precautions that the enemy takes in these regions. (The guerrilla soldier must never forget the fact that it is the enemy that must serve as his source of supply of ammunition and arms.) But much more rapidly than in unfavorable ground the guerrilla band will here be able to "dig in," that is, to form a base capable of engaging in a war of positions, where small industries may be installed as they are needed, as well as hospitals, centers for education and training, storage facilities, organs of propaganda, etc., adequately protected from aviation or from long-range artillery.
The guerrilla band in these conditions can number many more personnel; there will be noncombatants and perhaps even a system of training in the use of the arms that eventually are to fall into the power of the guerrilla army.
The number of men that a guerrilla band can have is a matter of extremely flexible calculation adapted to the territory, to the means available of acquiring supplies, to the mass flights of oppressed people from other zones, to the arms available, to the necessities of organization. But, in any case, it is much more practicable to establish a base and expand with the support of new combatant elements.
The radius of action of a guerrilla band of this type can be as wide as conditions or the operations of other bands in adjacent territory permit. The range will be limited by the time that it takes to arrive at a zone of security from the zone of operation; assuming that marches must be made at night, it will not be possible to operate more than five or six hours away from a point of maximum security. Small guerrilla bands that work constantly at weakening a territory can go farther away from the zone of security.
The arms preferable for this type of warfare are long-range weapons requiring a small expenditure of bullets, supported by a group of automatic or semiautomatic arms. Of the rifles and machine guns that exist in the markets of the United States, one of the best is the M-1 rifle, called the Garand. However, this should be used only by people with some experience, since it has the disadvantage of expending too much ammunition. Medium-heavy arms, such as tripod machine guns, can be used on favorable ground, affording a greater margin of security for the weapon and its personnel, but they ought always to be a means of repelling an enemy and not for attack.
An ideal composition for a guerrilla band of 25 men would be: 10 to 15 single-shot rifles and about 10 automatic arms between Garands and hand machine guns, including light and easily portable automatic arms, such as the Browning or the more modern Belgian FAL and M-14 automatic rifles. Among the hand machine guns the best are those of nine millimeters, which permit a larger transport of ammunition. The simpler its construction the better, because this increases the ease of switching parts. All this must be adjusted to the armament that the enemy uses, since the ammunition that he employs is what we are going to use when his arms fall into our hands. It is practically impossible for heavy arms to be used. Aircraft cannot see anything and cease to operate; tanks and cannons cannot do much owing to the difficulties of advancing in these zones.
A very important consideration is supply. In general, the zones of difficult access for this very reason present special problems, since there are few peasants, and therefore animal and food supplies are scarce. It is necessary to maintain stable lines of communication in order to be able always to count on a minimum of food, stockpiled, in the event of any disagreeable development.
In this kind of zone of operations the possibilities of sabotage on a large scale are generally not present; with the inaccessibility goes a lack of constructions, telephone lines, aqueducts, etc., that could be damaged by direct action.
For supply purposes it is important to have animals, among which the mule is the best in rough country. Adequate pasturage permitting good nutrition is essential. The mule can pass through extremely hilly country impossible for other animals. In the most difficult situations it is necessary to resort to transport by men. Each individual can carry twenty-five kilograms for many hours daily and for many days.
The lines of communication with the exterior should include a series of intermediate points manned by people of complete reliability, where products can be stored and where contacts can go to hide themselves at critical times. Internal lines of communication can also be created. Their extension will be determined by the stage of development reached by the guerrilla band. In some zones of operations in the recent Cuban war, telephone lines of many kilometers of length were established, roads were built, and a messenger service maintained sufficient to cover all zones in a minimum of time.
There are also other possible means of communication, not used in the Cuban war but perfectly applicable, such as smoke signals, signals with sunshine reflected by mirrors, and carrier pigeons.
The vital necessities of the guerrillas are to maintain their arms in good condition, to capture ammunition, and, above everything else, to have adequate shoes. The first manufacturing efforts should therefore be directed toward these objectives. Shoe factories can initially be cobbler installations that replace half soles on old shoes, expanding afterwards into a series of organized factories with a good average daily production of shoes. The manufacture of powder is fairly simple; and much can be accomplished by having a small laboratory and bringing in the necessary materials from outside. Mined areas constitute a grave danger for the enemy; large areas can be mined for simultaneous explosion, destroying up to hundreds of men.
5. Warfare on Unfavorable Ground
In order to carry on warfare in country that is not very hilly, lacks forests, and has many roads, all the fundamental requisites of guerrilla warfare must be observed; only the forms will be altered. The quantity, not the quality, of guerrilla warfare will change. For example, following the same order as before, the mobility of this type of guerrilla should be extraordinary; strikes should be made preferably at night; they should be extremely rapid, but the guerrilla should move to places different from the starting point, the farthest possible from the scene of action, assuming that there is no place secure from the repressive forces that the guerrilla can use as its garrison.
A man can walk between 30 and 50 kilometers during the night hours; it is possible also to march during the first hours of daylight, unless the zones of operation are closely watched or there is danger that people in the vicinity, seeing the passing troops, will notify the pursuing army of the location of the guerrilla band and its route. It is always preferable in these cases to operate at night with the greatest possible silence both before and after the action; the first hours of night are best. Here, too, there are exceptions to the general rule, since at times the dawn hours will be preferable. It is never wise to habituate the enemy to a certain form of warfare; it is necessary to vary constantly the places, the hours, and the forms of operation.
We have already said that the action cannot endure for long, but must be rapid; it must be of a high degree of effectiveness, last a few minutes, and be followed by an immediate withdrawal. The arms employed here will not be the same as in the case of actions on favorable ground; a large quantity of automatic weapons is to be preferred. In night attacks, marksmanship is not the determining factor, but rather concentration of fire; the more automatic arms firing at short distance, the more possibilities there are of annihilating the enemy.
Also, the use of mines in roads and the destruction of bridges are tactics of great importance. Attacks by the guerrilla will be less aggressive so far as the persistence and continuation are concerned, but they can be very violent, and they can utilize different arms, such as mines and the shotgun. Against open vehicles heavily loaded with men, which is the usual method of transporting troops, and even against closed vehicles that do not have special defenses-against buses, for example-the shotgun is a tremendous weapon. A shotgun loaded with large shot is the most effective. This is not a secret of guerrilla fighters; it is used also in big wars. The Americans used shotgun platoons armed with high-quality weapons and bayonets for assaulting machine-gun nests.
There is an important problem to explain, that of ammunition; this will almost always be taken from the enemy. It is therefore necessary to strike blows where there will be the absolute assurance of restoring the ammunition expended, unless there are large reserves in secure places. In other words, an annihilating attack against a group of men is not to be undertaken at the risk of expending all the ammunition without being able to replace it. Always in guerrilla tactics it is necessary to keep in mind the grave problem of procuring the war materiel necessary for continuing the fight. For this reason, guerrilla arms ought to be the same as those used by the enemy, except for weapons such as revolvers and shotguns, for which the ammunition can be obtained in the zone itself or in the cities.
The number of men that a guerrilla band of this type should include does not exceed ten to fifteen. In forming a single combat unit it is of great importance always to consider the limitations on numbers: ten, twelve, fifteen men can hide anywhere and at the same time can help each other in putting up a powerful resistance to the enemy. Four or five would perhaps be too small a number, but when the number exceeds ten, the possibility that the enemy will discover them in their camp or on the march is much greater.
Remember that the velocity of the guerrilla band on the march is equal to the velocity of its slowest man. It is more difficult to find uniformity of marching speed with twenty, thirty, or forty men than with ten. And the guerrilla fighter on the plain must be fundamentally a runner. Here the practice of hitting and running acquires its maximum use. The guerrilla bands on the plain suffer the enormous inconvenience of being subject to a rapid encirclement and of not having sure places where they can set up a firm resistance; therefore, they must live in conditions of absolute secrecy for a long time, since it would be dangerous to trust any neighbor whose fidelity is not perfectly established. The reprisals of the enemy are so violent, usually so brutal, inflicted not only on the head of the family but frequently on the women and children as well, that pressure on individuals lacking firmness may result at any moment in their giving way and revealing information as to where the guerrilla band is located and how it is operating. This would immediately produce an encirclement with consequences always disagreeable, although not necessarily fatal. When conditions, the quantity of arms, and the state of insurrection of the people call for an increase in the number of men, the guerrilla band should be divided. If it is necessary, all can rejoin at a given moment to deal a blow, but in such a way that immediately afterwards they can disperse toward separate zones, again divided into small groups of ten, twelve, or fifteen men.
It is entirely feasible to organize whole armies under a single command and to assure respect and obedience to this command without the necessity of being in a single group. Therefore, the election of the guerrilla chiefs and the certainty that they coordinate ideologically and personally with the overall chief of the zone are very important.
The bazooka is a heavy weapon that can be used by the guerrilla band because of its easy portability and operation. Today the rifle- fired anti-tank grenade can replace it. Naturally, it will be a weapon taken from the enemy. The bazooka is ideal for firing on armored vehicles, and even on unarmored vehicles that are loaded with troops, and for taking small military bases of few men in a short time; but it is important to point out that not more than three shells per man can be carried, and this only with considerable exertion.
As for the utilization of heavy arms taken from the enemy, naturally, nothing is to be scorned. But there are weapons such as the tripod machine gun, the heavy fifty-millimeter machine gun, etc., that, when captured, can be utilized with a willingness to lose them again. In other words, in the unfavorable conditions that we are now analyzing, a battle to defend a heavy machine gun or other weapon of this type cannot be allowed; they are simply to be used until the tactical moment when they must be abandoned. In our Cuban war of liberation, to abandon a weapon constituted a grave offense, and there was never any case where the necessity arose. Nevertheless, we mention this case in order to explain clearly the only situation in which abandonment would not constitute an occasion for reproaches. On unfavorable ground, the guerrilla weapon is the personal weapon of rapid fire.
Easy access to the zone usually means that it will be habitable and that there will be a peasant population in these places. This facilitates supply enormously. Having trustworthy people and making contact with establishments that provide supplies to the population, it is possible to maintain a guerrilla band perfectly well without having to devote time or money to long and dangerous lines of communication. Also, it is well to reiterate that the smaller the number of men, the easier it will be to procure food for them. Essential supplies such as bedding, waterproof material, mosquito netting, shoes, medicines, and food will be found directly in the zone, since they are things of daily use by its inhabitants.
Communications will be much easier in the sense of being able to count on a larger number of men and more roads; but they will be more difficult as a problem of security for messages between distant points, since it will be necessary to rely on a series of contacts that have to be trusted. There will be the danger of an eventual capture of one of the messengers, who are constantly crossing enemy zones. If the messages are of small importance, they should be oral; if of great importance, code writing should be used. Experience shows that transmission by word of mouth greatly distorts any communication.
For these same reasons, manufacture will have much less importance, at the same time that it would be much more difficult to carry it out. It will not be possible to have factories making shoes or arms. Practically speaking, manufacture will have to be limited to small shops, carefully hidden, where shotgun shells can be recharged and mines, simple grenades, and other minimum necessities of the moment manufactured. On the other hand, it is possible to make use of all the friendly shops of the zone for such work as is necessary.
This brings us to two consequences that flow logically from what has been said. One of them is that the favorable conditions for establishing a permanent camp in guerrilla warfare are inverse to the degree of productive development of a place. All favorable conditions, all facilities of life normally induce men to settle; but for the guerrilla band the opposite is the case. The more facilities there are for social life, the more nomadic, the more uncertain the life of the guerrilla fighter. These really are the results of one and the same principle. The title of this section is "Warfare on Unfavorable Ground," because everything that is favorable to human life, communications, urban and semiurban concentrations of large numbers of people, land easily worked by machine: all these place the guerrilla fighter in a disadvantageous situation.
The second conclusion is that if guerrilla fighting must include the extremely important factor of work on the masses, this work is even more important in the unfavorable zones, where a single enemy attack can produce a catastrophe. Indoctrination should be continuous, and so should be the struggle for unity of the workers, of the peasants, and of other social classes that live in the zone, in order to achieve toward the guerrilla fighters a maximum homogeneity of attitude. This task with the masses, this constant work at the huge problem of relations of the guerrilla band with the inhabitants of the zone, must also govern the attitude to be taken toward the case of an individual recalcitrant enemy soldier: he should be eliminated without hesitation when he is dangerous. In this respect the guerrilla band must be drastic. Enemies cannot be permitted to exist within the zone of operations in places that offer no security.
6. Suburban Warfare
If during the war the guerrilla bands close in on cities and penetrate the surrounding country in such a way as to be able to esta-blish themselves in conditions of some security, it will be necessary to give these suburban bands a special education, or rather, a special organization.
It is fundamental to recognize that a suburban guerrilla band can never spring up of its own accord. It will be born only after certain conditions necessary for its survival have been created. Therefore, the suburban guerrilla will always be under the direct orders of chiefs located in another zone. The function of this guerrilla band will not be to carry out independent actions but to coordinate its activities with overall strategic plans in such a way as to support the action of larger groups situated in another area, contributing specifically to the success of a fixed tactical objective, without the operational freedom of guerrilla bands of the other types. For example, a suburban band will not be able to choose among the operations of destroying telephone lines, moving to make attacks in another locality, and surprising a patrol of soldiers on a distant road; it will do exactly what it is told. If its function is to cut down telephone poles or electric wires, to destroy sewers, railroads, or water mains, it will limit itself to carrying out these tasks efficiently.
It ought not to number more than four or five men. The limitation on numbers is important, because the suburban guerrilla must be considered as situated in exceptionally unfavorable ground, where the vigilance of the enemy will be much greater and the possibilities of reprisals as well as of betrayal are increased enormously. Another aggravating circumstance is that the suburban guerrilla band cannot depart far from the places where it is going to operate. To speed of action and withdrawal there must be added a limitation on the distance of withdrawal from the scene of action and the need to remain totally hidden during the daytime. This is a nocturnal guerrilla band in the extreme, without possibilities of changing its manner of operating until the insurrection is so far advanced that it can take part as an active combatant in the siege of the city.
The essential qualities of the guerrilla fighter in this situation are discipline (perhaps in the highest degree of all) and discretion. He cannot count on more than two or three friendly houses that will provide food; it is almost certain that an encirclement in these conditions will be equivalent to death. Weapons, furthermore, will not be of the same kind as those of the other groups. They will be for personal defense, of the type that do not hinder a rapid flight or betray a secure hiding place. As their armament the band ought to have not more than one carbine or one sawed-off shotgun, or perhaps two, with pistols for the other members.
They will concentrate their action on prescribed sabotage and never carry out armed attacks, except by surprising one or two members or agents of the enemy troops.
For sabotage they need a full set of instruments. The guerrilla fighter must have good saws, large quantities of dynamite, picks and shovels, apparatus for lifting rails, and, in general, adequate mechanical equipment for the work to be carried out. This should be hidden in places that are secure but easily accessible to the hands that will need to use it.
If there is more than one guerrilla band, they will all be under a single chief who will give orders as to the necessary tasks through contacts of proven trustworthiness who live openly as ordinary citizens. In certain cases the guerrilla fighter will be able to maintain his peacetime work, but this is very difficult. Practically speaking, the suburban guerrilla band is a group of men who are already outside the law, in a condition of war, situated as unfavorably as we have described.
The importance of a suburban struggle has usually been under-estimated; it is really very great. A good operation of this type extended over a wide area paralyzes almost completely the commercial and industrial life of the sector and places the entire population in a situation of unrest, of anguish, almost of impatience for the development of violent events that will relieve the period of suspense. If, from the first moment of the war, thought is taken for the future possibility of this type of fight and an organization of specialists started, a much more rapid action will be assured, and with it a saving of lives and of the priceless time of the nation.
Ernesto Che Guevara
BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | Lifeboat honour for drowned youth
Lifeboat honour for drowned youth
Jordan drowned after falling from a pier
The parents of a teenager who drowned after being swept out to sea off the County Down coast are to present a new lifeboat for the area in his memory.
Jordan Murdock, 14, fell into the sea at Killough pier on 11 January and was pulled under water by the current.
Hundreds of volunteers combed the shoreline for any trace of the teenager in the subsequent weeks.
A woman walking her dog found his body at the beginning of February, near an old sewage pipe, a short distance from where he had disappeared.
On Saturday, Jordan's family will present a new lifeboat to the Boyne Search and Resue Team, many of whom were present every day of the three-week search for his body.
The lifeboat, which will bear Jordan's name, has been paid for by donations.
A new lifebelt, donated by teenagers in the village, will also be handed over.
Jordan had moved to Killough with his family from south Belfast last year.
Coastguards said the search for the teenager, which involved all the emergency services, community volunteers and divers, was the biggest ever of its kind in Northern Ireland.
Lifeboat honour for drowned youth
Jordan drowned after falling from a pier
The parents of a teenager who drowned after being swept out to sea off the County Down coast are to present a new lifeboat for the area in his memory.
Jordan Murdock, 14, fell into the sea at Killough pier on 11 January and was pulled under water by the current.
Hundreds of volunteers combed the shoreline for any trace of the teenager in the subsequent weeks.
A woman walking her dog found his body at the beginning of February, near an old sewage pipe, a short distance from where he had disappeared.
On Saturday, Jordan's family will present a new lifeboat to the Boyne Search and Resue Team, many of whom were present every day of the three-week search for his body.
The lifeboat, which will bear Jordan's name, has been paid for by donations.
A new lifebelt, donated by teenagers in the village, will also be handed over.
Jordan had moved to Killough with his family from south Belfast last year.
Coastguards said the search for the teenager, which involved all the emergency services, community volunteers and divers, was the biggest ever of its kind in Northern Ireland.
Press-Telegram
Barkeep wins his day in court
Sean O'Cealleagh seeks to clear name after IRA-linked conviction.
By Greg Mellen
Staff writer
SAN PEDRO -- Sean O'Cealleagh will get his day and his say in court American court.
The popular Seal Beach bartender from Northern Ireland, who gained permanent resident status in 2001, faces deportation for his conviction in a controversial trial in Northern Ireland for aiding and abetting in the brutal killing of two plainclothes British soldiers.
On Tuesday he won the right to have a chance to clear his name.
At a preliminary hearing, Federal Administrative Judge Rose Peters agreed to schedule an evidentiary hearing April 20 to 22, when O'Cealleagh and his lawyers will argue that the 35-year- old father of a 3-year-old son was the victim of a political conviction.
O'Cealleagh (pronounced O'Kelly) spells his name in the traditional Gaelic. He is referred to as Sean Kelly on official British documents.
As O'Cealleagh sat in his blue prison jumpsuit inside the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center on Terminal Island, he looked over his shoulder at his wife and three friends on hand to lend emotional support.
He joked and tried to laugh, but he looked close to tears just before a guard told him to turn around.
While O'Cealleagh's wife, Geraldine, wept when she learned her husband would be jailed for another four weeks, three supporters who waited in the drizzle outside were heartened by the news.
"I hope this will exonerate him and allow him to get his life back in order,' said Gene Wagner, a neighbor from Westminster.
"This is a success story. This isn't bad,' said Brian Kyle, owner of O'Malley's where O'Cealleagh works, of his employee getting the chance to clear his name.
Geraldine declined to comment.
"A great victory'
Co-counsel John Farrell called the decision "a great victory,' before co-counsel Jim Byrne urged caution.
"What happens is his case will be looked on by an American judge under American law,' said Byrne, who added he will try to prove that the British courts either made a mistake or that the prosecution was political.
"What we'll try to do is prove that a man who made a life for himself, who's married, has a wife, a child and a home can continue to live here,' Byrne said. "This country gave him the opportunity Northern Ireland never gave him.'
Farrell said the chance for O'Cealleagh to have his case reviewed in an American court is "huge' because many of the controversial elements used against him under British law won't apply.
At the evidentiary hearing, the defense will be able to present declarations from Ireland that will be accepted as testimony and the government will be given the opportunity to refute the evidence. The prosecution will also present certified original documents pertaining to the conviction that were not available Tuesday.
O'Cealleagh has been in custody since Feb. 25 when he was arrested on a plane at Los Angeles International Airport upon his return from a trip to Ireland to see family.
Moral turpitude
O'Cealleagh is considered inadmissible to the United States because of his conviction on a crime of moral turpitude, according to Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Although there is no specific formula for moral turpitude, people are denied entry to the United States if they have been convicted of such crimes as murder, voluntary manslaughter, rape, arson, bribery, alien smuggling and perjury. Crimes not involving moral turpitude include simple assault without a weapon, vagrancy, carrying a concealed weapon, tax evasion and possession of narcotics, and these are not an automatic barrier to enter the United States.
O'Cealleagh was one of three men, later dubbed the Casement Three, found guilty of aiding and abetting in the beating and subsequent shooting deaths by an Irish Republican Army gunman of British corporals Derek Wood and David Howes at a Republican funeral proceeding in March 1988.
Period of unrest
The killings of the soldiers came at a particularly incendiary time in Northern Ireland's history. Earlier in the month, three unarmed IRA members were killed by British Special Air Service (SAS) troops on Gibraltar. At the funeral for those three, loyalist Michael Stone attacked mourners with grenades and guns, killing three more and injuring 68.
At the funeral of one of those three, Kevin Brady, a reputed member of the provisional wing of the IRA, Wood and Howes stumbled into the procession. As they tried to back out, the two soldiers, later found to be connected to the same unit that carried out the Gibraltar killings, were surrounded by mourners. It was later claimed they feared another loyalist attack. Wood fired his gun as he was pulled from the car.
The two were beaten and dragged away for the funeral procession into Casement Park. They were later thrown in a cab, taken to an area called Penny Lane and shot dead. The IRA later claimed responsibility for the killing.
O'Cealleagh, whose lawyers say was merely returning from babysitting and wasn't in the procession, was allegedly caught on tape participating in the beating and dragging of Wood to Casement Park. His lawyers deny this and say video footage shot from a news helicopter is unreliable.
After the killings, more than 200 people were rounded up by the police and eventually more than 12 were sentenced to more than 300 years.
"You have to understand that everyone 14 and above was picked up in those days,' said Kyle.
Nonjury courts
O'Cealleagh, along with Patrick Kane and Michael Timmons in separate trials, was convicted in the nonjury Diplock courts, which were used in terrorist and certain political cases. The system, adopted in 1973 as part of the Emergency Provision Act, was created due to the belief juries would be intimidated by paramilitary groups. The system has been derided by numerous human rights groups worldwide for its lower standards of admissibility for confessions and police statements and can use a suspect's silence as an inference of complicity.
O'Cealleagh did not testify in his original trial and, according to the Republican News, Judge Carswell, "drawing adverse inference from the defendant's decision not to testify in court, secured the conviction.'
O'Cealleagh spent 8 1/2 years in Long Kesh, the infamous "Maze,' where political prisoners were held. He was released in 1998 and soon after emigrated to the U.S.
Although he was released as a political prisoner, O'Cealleagh was never cleared of the crime.
Kyle held a fund-raiser at O'Malley's Sunday to help pay O'Cealleagh's legal expenses. He said hundreds attended and $7,500 was raised.
"We're not trying to make a political statement,' Byrne said, "we're trying to keep a family together.'
Barkeep wins his day in court
Sean O'Cealleagh seeks to clear name after IRA-linked conviction.
By Greg Mellen
Staff writer
SAN PEDRO -- Sean O'Cealleagh will get his day and his say in court American court.
The popular Seal Beach bartender from Northern Ireland, who gained permanent resident status in 2001, faces deportation for his conviction in a controversial trial in Northern Ireland for aiding and abetting in the brutal killing of two plainclothes British soldiers.
On Tuesday he won the right to have a chance to clear his name.
At a preliminary hearing, Federal Administrative Judge Rose Peters agreed to schedule an evidentiary hearing April 20 to 22, when O'Cealleagh and his lawyers will argue that the 35-year- old father of a 3-year-old son was the victim of a political conviction.
O'Cealleagh (pronounced O'Kelly) spells his name in the traditional Gaelic. He is referred to as Sean Kelly on official British documents.
As O'Cealleagh sat in his blue prison jumpsuit inside the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center on Terminal Island, he looked over his shoulder at his wife and three friends on hand to lend emotional support.
He joked and tried to laugh, but he looked close to tears just before a guard told him to turn around.
While O'Cealleagh's wife, Geraldine, wept when she learned her husband would be jailed for another four weeks, three supporters who waited in the drizzle outside were heartened by the news.
"I hope this will exonerate him and allow him to get his life back in order,' said Gene Wagner, a neighbor from Westminster.
"This is a success story. This isn't bad,' said Brian Kyle, owner of O'Malley's where O'Cealleagh works, of his employee getting the chance to clear his name.
Geraldine declined to comment.
"A great victory'
Co-counsel John Farrell called the decision "a great victory,' before co-counsel Jim Byrne urged caution.
"What happens is his case will be looked on by an American judge under American law,' said Byrne, who added he will try to prove that the British courts either made a mistake or that the prosecution was political.
"What we'll try to do is prove that a man who made a life for himself, who's married, has a wife, a child and a home can continue to live here,' Byrne said. "This country gave him the opportunity Northern Ireland never gave him.'
Farrell said the chance for O'Cealleagh to have his case reviewed in an American court is "huge' because many of the controversial elements used against him under British law won't apply.
At the evidentiary hearing, the defense will be able to present declarations from Ireland that will be accepted as testimony and the government will be given the opportunity to refute the evidence. The prosecution will also present certified original documents pertaining to the conviction that were not available Tuesday.
O'Cealleagh has been in custody since Feb. 25 when he was arrested on a plane at Los Angeles International Airport upon his return from a trip to Ireland to see family.
Moral turpitude
O'Cealleagh is considered inadmissible to the United States because of his conviction on a crime of moral turpitude, according to Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Although there is no specific formula for moral turpitude, people are denied entry to the United States if they have been convicted of such crimes as murder, voluntary manslaughter, rape, arson, bribery, alien smuggling and perjury. Crimes not involving moral turpitude include simple assault without a weapon, vagrancy, carrying a concealed weapon, tax evasion and possession of narcotics, and these are not an automatic barrier to enter the United States.
O'Cealleagh was one of three men, later dubbed the Casement Three, found guilty of aiding and abetting in the beating and subsequent shooting deaths by an Irish Republican Army gunman of British corporals Derek Wood and David Howes at a Republican funeral proceeding in March 1988.
Period of unrest
The killings of the soldiers came at a particularly incendiary time in Northern Ireland's history. Earlier in the month, three unarmed IRA members were killed by British Special Air Service (SAS) troops on Gibraltar. At the funeral for those three, loyalist Michael Stone attacked mourners with grenades and guns, killing three more and injuring 68.
At the funeral of one of those three, Kevin Brady, a reputed member of the provisional wing of the IRA, Wood and Howes stumbled into the procession. As they tried to back out, the two soldiers, later found to be connected to the same unit that carried out the Gibraltar killings, were surrounded by mourners. It was later claimed they feared another loyalist attack. Wood fired his gun as he was pulled from the car.
The two were beaten and dragged away for the funeral procession into Casement Park. They were later thrown in a cab, taken to an area called Penny Lane and shot dead. The IRA later claimed responsibility for the killing.
O'Cealleagh, whose lawyers say was merely returning from babysitting and wasn't in the procession, was allegedly caught on tape participating in the beating and dragging of Wood to Casement Park. His lawyers deny this and say video footage shot from a news helicopter is unreliable.
After the killings, more than 200 people were rounded up by the police and eventually more than 12 were sentenced to more than 300 years.
"You have to understand that everyone 14 and above was picked up in those days,' said Kyle.
Nonjury courts
O'Cealleagh, along with Patrick Kane and Michael Timmons in separate trials, was convicted in the nonjury Diplock courts, which were used in terrorist and certain political cases. The system, adopted in 1973 as part of the Emergency Provision Act, was created due to the belief juries would be intimidated by paramilitary groups. The system has been derided by numerous human rights groups worldwide for its lower standards of admissibility for confessions and police statements and can use a suspect's silence as an inference of complicity.
O'Cealleagh did not testify in his original trial and, according to the Republican News, Judge Carswell, "drawing adverse inference from the defendant's decision not to testify in court, secured the conviction.'
O'Cealleagh spent 8 1/2 years in Long Kesh, the infamous "Maze,' where political prisoners were held. He was released in 1998 and soon after emigrated to the U.S.
Although he was released as a political prisoner, O'Cealleagh was never cleared of the crime.
Kyle held a fund-raiser at O'Malley's Sunday to help pay O'Cealleagh's legal expenses. He said hundreds attended and $7,500 was raised.
"We're not trying to make a political statement,' Byrne said, "we're trying to keep a family together.'
IOL: Bloody Sunday Inquiry may be further delayed
Bloody Sunday Inquiry may be further delayed
26/03/2004 - 17:34:46
The report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry may be delayed over the question of access to previously confidential lawyers’ files, it was learned tonight.
Tribunal chairman Lord Saville has asked legal teams involved in the long running inquiry to study a recent unrelated Appeal Court ruling and consider whether it has a bearing on what communications they have had with their client witnesses that need to be handed over to him.
The inquiry has been expected to report to the British government on the shooting by paratroopers of 14 civilians on a civil rights march in Derry in 1972 in about 12 months’ time – seven years after Tony Blair announced the inquiry.
But the report could be delayed still further if Lord Saville seeks to enforce the handing over of more documents and the lawyers challenge it.
And with more than 900 witnesses having appeared at the inquiry, there could be a mass of new paperwork for Lord Saville and the two Commonwealth judges sitting with him to plough through, even if it is freely handed over.
The lawyers have already had to hand over all relevant material to Lord Saville except those they consider confidential under existing lawyer -client privilege.
But in a landmark judgment, Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, questioned whether the existing privilege of confidentiality from disclosure of communication between lawyer and client should stand where litigation was not anticipated.
Lord Phillips said in the March 1 judgment that it was nearly 50 years since the matter had been last looked at and it was perhaps time for a review.
The ruling is being appealed to the House of Lords and, it is understood, could go the Europe if the Law Lords back Lord Phillips.
The legal teams representing the Bloody Sunday witnesses are understood to be currently considering their positions.
They could refuse to hand over material or challenge Lord Saville in the courts seeking to have any decision delayed until the full implications of the Lord Phillips judgment were finally ruled on – and that could be years away.
Bloody Sunday Inquiry may be further delayed
26/03/2004 - 17:34:46
The report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry may be delayed over the question of access to previously confidential lawyers’ files, it was learned tonight.
Tribunal chairman Lord Saville has asked legal teams involved in the long running inquiry to study a recent unrelated Appeal Court ruling and consider whether it has a bearing on what communications they have had with their client witnesses that need to be handed over to him.
The inquiry has been expected to report to the British government on the shooting by paratroopers of 14 civilians on a civil rights march in Derry in 1972 in about 12 months’ time – seven years after Tony Blair announced the inquiry.
But the report could be delayed still further if Lord Saville seeks to enforce the handing over of more documents and the lawyers challenge it.
And with more than 900 witnesses having appeared at the inquiry, there could be a mass of new paperwork for Lord Saville and the two Commonwealth judges sitting with him to plough through, even if it is freely handed over.
The lawyers have already had to hand over all relevant material to Lord Saville except those they consider confidential under existing lawyer -client privilege.
But in a landmark judgment, Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, questioned whether the existing privilege of confidentiality from disclosure of communication between lawyer and client should stand where litigation was not anticipated.
Lord Phillips said in the March 1 judgment that it was nearly 50 years since the matter had been last looked at and it was perhaps time for a review.
The ruling is being appealed to the House of Lords and, it is understood, could go the Europe if the Law Lords back Lord Phillips.
The legal teams representing the Bloody Sunday witnesses are understood to be currently considering their positions.
They could refuse to hand over material or challenge Lord Saville in the courts seeking to have any decision delayed until the full implications of the Lord Phillips judgment were finally ruled on – and that could be years away.
Fenian Voice
Sean O'Cealleagh seeks to clear name after IRA-linked conviction
By Greg Mellen
Staff writer
SAN PEDRO -- Sean O'Cealleagh will get his day and his say in court
American court.
The popular Seal Beach bartender from Northern Ireland, who gained
permanent resident status in 2001, faces deportation for his conviction in a
controversial trial in Northern Ireland for aiding and abetting in the killing of
two plainclothes British soldiers.
On Tuesday he won the right to have a chance to clear his name.
At a preliminary hearing, Federal Administrative Judge Rose Peters agreed to
schedule an evidentiary hearing April 20 to 22, when O'Cealleagh and his
lawyers will argue that the 35-year- old father of a 3-year-old son was the
victim of a political conviction.
O'Cealleagh (pronounced O'Kelly) spells his name in the traditional Gaelic.
He is referred to as Sean Kelly on official British documents.
As O'Cealleagh sat in his blue prison jumpsuit inside the Bureau of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center on
Terminal Island, he looked over his shoulder at his wife and three friends on
hand to lend emotional support.
He joked and tried to laugh, but he looked close to tears just before a guard
told him to turn around.
While O'Cealleagh's wife, Geraldine, wept when she learned her husband
would be jailed for another four weeks, three supporters who waited in the
drizzle outside were heartened by the news.
"I hope this will exonerate him and allow him to get his life back in order,' said
Gene Wagner, a neighbor from Westminster.
"This is a success story. This isn't bad,' said Brian Kyle, owner of O'Malley's
where O'Cealleagh works, of his employee getting the chance to clear his
name.
Geraldine declined to comment.
"A great victory'
Co-counsel John Farrell called the decision "a great victory,' before co-
counsel Jim Byrne urged caution.
"What happens is his case will be looked on by an American judge under
American law,' said Byrne, who added he will try to prove that the British
courts either made a mistake or that the prosecution was political.
"What we'll try to do is prove that a man who made a life for himself, who's
married, has a wife, a child and a home can continue to live here,' Byrne said.
"This country gave him the opportunity Northern Ireland never gave him.'
Farrell said the chance for O'Cealleagh to have his case reviewed in an
American court is "huge' because many of the controversial elements used
against him under British law won't apply.
At the evidentiary hearing, the defense will be able to present declarations
from Ireland that will be accepted as testimony and the government will be
given the opportunity to refute the evidence. The prosecution will also present
certified original documents pertaining to the conviction that were not
available Tuesday.
O'Cealleagh has been in custody since Feb. 25 when he was arrested on a
plane at Los Angeles International Airport upon his return from a trip to Ireland
to see family.
Moral turpitude
O'Cealleagh is considered inadmissible to the United States because of his
conviction on a crime of moral turpitude, according to Virginia Kice,
spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Although there is no specific formula for moral turpitude, people are denied
entry to the United States if they have been convicted of such crimes as
murder, voluntary manslaughter, rape, arson, bribery, alien smuggling and
perjury. Crimes not involving moral turpitude include simple assault without a
weapon, vagrancy, carrying a concealed weapon, tax evasion and
possession of narcotics, and these are not an automatic barrier to enter the
United States.
O'Cealleagh was one of three men, later dubbed the Casement Three, found
guilty of aiding and abetting in the beating and subsequent shooting deaths
by an Irish Republican Army gunman of British corporals Derek Wood and
David Howes at a Republican funeral proceeding in March 1988.
Period of unrest
The killings of the soldiers came at a particularly incendiary time in Northern
Ireland's history. Earlier in the month, three unarmed IRA members were
killed by British Special Air Service (SAS) troops on Gibraltar. At the funeral
for those three, loyalist Michael Stone attacked mourners with grenades and
guns, killing three more and injuring 68.
At the funeral of one of those three, Kevin Brady, a reputed member of the
provisional wing of the IRA, Wood and Howes stumbled into the procession.
As they tried to back out, the two soldiers, later found to be connected to the
same unit that carried out the Gibraltar killings, were surrounded by mourners.
It was later claimed they feared another loyalist attack. Wood fired his gun as
he was pulled from the car.
The two were beaten and dragged away for the funeral procession into
Casement Park. They were later thrown in a cab, taken to an area called
Penny Lane and shot dead. The IRA later claimed responsibility for the killing.
O'Cealleagh, whose lawyers say was merely returning from babysitting and
wasn't in the procession, was allegedly caught on tape participating in the
beating and dragging of Wood to Casement Park. His lawyers deny this and
say video footage shot from a news helicopter is unreliable.
After the killings, more than 200 people were rounded up by the police and
eventually more than 12 were sentenced to more than 300 years.
"You have to understand that everyone 14 and above was picked up in those
days,' said Kyle.
Nonjury courts
O'Cealleagh, along with Patrick Kane and Michael Timmons in separate trials,
was convicted in the nonjury Diplock courts, which were used in terrorist and
certain political cases. The system, adopted in 1973 as part of the Emergency
Provision Act, was created due to the belief juries would be intimidated by
paramilitary groups. The system has been derided by numerous human rights
groups worldwide for its lower standards of admissibility for confessions and
police statements and can use a suspect's silence as an inference of
complicity.
O'Cealleagh did not testify in his original trial and, according to the
Republican News, Judge Carswell, "drawing adverse inference from the
defendant's decision not to testify in court, secured the conviction.'
O'Cealleagh spent 8 1/2 years in Long Kesh, the infamous "Maze,' where
political prisoners were held. He was released in 1998 and soon after
emigrated to the U.S.
Although he was released as a political prisoner, O'Cealleagh was never
cleared of the crime.
Kyle held a fund-raiser at O'Malley's Sunday to help pay O'Cealleagh's legal
expenses. He said hundreds attended and $7,500 was raised.
"We're not trying to make a political statement,' Byrne said, "we're trying to
keep a family together.'
Sean O'Cealleagh seeks to clear name after IRA-linked conviction
By Greg Mellen
Staff writer
SAN PEDRO -- Sean O'Cealleagh will get his day and his say in court
American court.
The popular Seal Beach bartender from Northern Ireland, who gained
permanent resident status in 2001, faces deportation for his conviction in a
controversial trial in Northern Ireland for aiding and abetting in the killing of
two plainclothes British soldiers.
On Tuesday he won the right to have a chance to clear his name.
At a preliminary hearing, Federal Administrative Judge Rose Peters agreed to
schedule an evidentiary hearing April 20 to 22, when O'Cealleagh and his
lawyers will argue that the 35-year- old father of a 3-year-old son was the
victim of a political conviction.
O'Cealleagh (pronounced O'Kelly) spells his name in the traditional Gaelic.
He is referred to as Sean Kelly on official British documents.
As O'Cealleagh sat in his blue prison jumpsuit inside the Bureau of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center on
Terminal Island, he looked over his shoulder at his wife and three friends on
hand to lend emotional support.
He joked and tried to laugh, but he looked close to tears just before a guard
told him to turn around.
While O'Cealleagh's wife, Geraldine, wept when she learned her husband
would be jailed for another four weeks, three supporters who waited in the
drizzle outside were heartened by the news.
"I hope this will exonerate him and allow him to get his life back in order,' said
Gene Wagner, a neighbor from Westminster.
"This is a success story. This isn't bad,' said Brian Kyle, owner of O'Malley's
where O'Cealleagh works, of his employee getting the chance to clear his
name.
Geraldine declined to comment.
"A great victory'
Co-counsel John Farrell called the decision "a great victory,' before co-
counsel Jim Byrne urged caution.
"What happens is his case will be looked on by an American judge under
American law,' said Byrne, who added he will try to prove that the British
courts either made a mistake or that the prosecution was political.
"What we'll try to do is prove that a man who made a life for himself, who's
married, has a wife, a child and a home can continue to live here,' Byrne said.
"This country gave him the opportunity Northern Ireland never gave him.'
Farrell said the chance for O'Cealleagh to have his case reviewed in an
American court is "huge' because many of the controversial elements used
against him under British law won't apply.
At the evidentiary hearing, the defense will be able to present declarations
from Ireland that will be accepted as testimony and the government will be
given the opportunity to refute the evidence. The prosecution will also present
certified original documents pertaining to the conviction that were not
available Tuesday.
O'Cealleagh has been in custody since Feb. 25 when he was arrested on a
plane at Los Angeles International Airport upon his return from a trip to Ireland
to see family.
Moral turpitude
O'Cealleagh is considered inadmissible to the United States because of his
conviction on a crime of moral turpitude, according to Virginia Kice,
spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Although there is no specific formula for moral turpitude, people are denied
entry to the United States if they have been convicted of such crimes as
murder, voluntary manslaughter, rape, arson, bribery, alien smuggling and
perjury. Crimes not involving moral turpitude include simple assault without a
weapon, vagrancy, carrying a concealed weapon, tax evasion and
possession of narcotics, and these are not an automatic barrier to enter the
United States.
O'Cealleagh was one of three men, later dubbed the Casement Three, found
guilty of aiding and abetting in the beating and subsequent shooting deaths
by an Irish Republican Army gunman of British corporals Derek Wood and
David Howes at a Republican funeral proceeding in March 1988.
Period of unrest
The killings of the soldiers came at a particularly incendiary time in Northern
Ireland's history. Earlier in the month, three unarmed IRA members were
killed by British Special Air Service (SAS) troops on Gibraltar. At the funeral
for those three, loyalist Michael Stone attacked mourners with grenades and
guns, killing three more and injuring 68.
At the funeral of one of those three, Kevin Brady, a reputed member of the
provisional wing of the IRA, Wood and Howes stumbled into the procession.
As they tried to back out, the two soldiers, later found to be connected to the
same unit that carried out the Gibraltar killings, were surrounded by mourners.
It was later claimed they feared another loyalist attack. Wood fired his gun as
he was pulled from the car.
The two were beaten and dragged away for the funeral procession into
Casement Park. They were later thrown in a cab, taken to an area called
Penny Lane and shot dead. The IRA later claimed responsibility for the killing.
O'Cealleagh, whose lawyers say was merely returning from babysitting and
wasn't in the procession, was allegedly caught on tape participating in the
beating and dragging of Wood to Casement Park. His lawyers deny this and
say video footage shot from a news helicopter is unreliable.
After the killings, more than 200 people were rounded up by the police and
eventually more than 12 were sentenced to more than 300 years.
"You have to understand that everyone 14 and above was picked up in those
days,' said Kyle.
Nonjury courts
O'Cealleagh, along with Patrick Kane and Michael Timmons in separate trials,
was convicted in the nonjury Diplock courts, which were used in terrorist and
certain political cases. The system, adopted in 1973 as part of the Emergency
Provision Act, was created due to the belief juries would be intimidated by
paramilitary groups. The system has been derided by numerous human rights
groups worldwide for its lower standards of admissibility for confessions and
police statements and can use a suspect's silence as an inference of
complicity.
O'Cealleagh did not testify in his original trial and, according to the
Republican News, Judge Carswell, "drawing adverse inference from the
defendant's decision not to testify in court, secured the conviction.'
O'Cealleagh spent 8 1/2 years in Long Kesh, the infamous "Maze,' where
political prisoners were held. He was released in 1998 and soon after
emigrated to the U.S.
Although he was released as a political prisoner, O'Cealleagh was never
cleared of the crime.
Kyle held a fund-raiser at O'Malley's Sunday to help pay O'Cealleagh's legal
expenses. He said hundreds attended and $7,500 was raised.
"We're not trying to make a political statement,' Byrne said, "we're trying to
keep a family together.'
ic NorthernIreland - Cessation Of Violence - 24 People Killed
Cessation Of Violence - 24 People Killed
Mar 26 2004 The News Letter
The UVF/Red Hand Commando has been implicated in around 25 killings since calling a ceasefire in 1994.
According to the Government this cessation - along with the IRA's - is still intact.
This week, the Independent Monitoring Commission was asked to deem the UVF ceasefire over. Chief Reporter STEPHEN DEMPSTER looks back at the UVF/RHC's peacetime death toll.
IN October 1994 former UVF leader Gusty Spence announced the UVF ceasefire by expressing the terror organisation's ''true and abject remorse'' to its victims.
Since then, the feared loyalist killing machine has, according to the Government, maintained a cessation of violence for almost a decade.
This is despite the fact that the group has been accused of a hand in at least 24 murders in that time, as well as other shootings, punishment attacks and various illegal activities.
In all, there have been more than 200 deaths carried out by all these groups or linked to sectarianism since August 1994 and the IRA's first ceasefire.
Since 2001, the UDA and LVF have officially been deemed as ''specified'' groups, meaning their so-called ceasefires are no longer recognised - after a spate of killings by those organisations.
The Real IRA and Continuity IRA remain active and off ceasefire.
The INLA says it is still on ceasefire, despite numerous allegations of punishment beatings and other shootings.
The IRA broke its ceasefire for a period, beginning in February 1996 and has been involved in murder, punishment attacks and other activities since the cessation was recognised again by the Government.
The UVF ceasefire, however, has - by the Government's standards - ''held'' from 1994.
Cynics believe this has been because a blind eye has been turned to their violence because they have been a pro-Agreement organisation, linked to a party (PUP) which has elected representatives.
There has been a need, critics allege, to officially maintain terrorist ceasefires on both the loyalist and republican sides, in order to create stability the peace process, as well as ensuring that their political leaders are not excluded from talks.
The UVF/RHC leaderships have at times condemned attacks by their own members and said they were not sanctioned.
The Government appears to have either accepted this, decided the killings - nearly all of them Protestants - were not political or sectarian and therefore an acceptable level of violence or turned that blind eye.
24 Deaths...
Below are 24 deaths the UVF has been blamed for since October 1994:
Billy Elliott - September 1995: A Red Hand Commando member, the 32-year-old Protestant father of two was shot in Bangor. He had been under threat from loyalists for his alleged role in the band hall murder of Margaret Wright in April 1994.
Thomas Sheppard - March 1996: The 41-year-old UVF man was killed in Coleraine. It is thought the UVF murdered him because he was an informer.
Michael McGoldrick - July 1996: The Roman Catholic taxi driver and father of one, aged 31, was lured to his death outside Portadown. Renegade UVF members led by Billy Wright - soon to become the LVF - were blamed.
George Scott - September 1996: The 32-year-old Protestant was clubbed to death at home in Cookstown during a punishment beating which appeared to go too far. Sources blamed the UVF.
Thomas Stewart - October 1996: The former UVF commander in Ballysillan was shot dead near his home, days after being stood down by the organisation. Some reports blamed the UVF, others a criminal gang.
Rev David Templeton - March 1997: The Protestant Presbyterian Minister, 43, died six weeks after receiving a punishment beating from an alleged UVF gang in Newtownabbey.
His death was the result of blood clot which began in one of the legs broken in the attack. It is believed he was targeted after being caught with an illegal gay pornographic video.
Billy Harbinson - May 1997: The Shankill Road Protestant, 39, died after being beaten and left in an alleyway on Belfast's Shore Road. His friendship with LVF leader Billy Wright made him a target.
Raymond McCord Junior - November 1997: The 22-year-old Protestant and former RAF man was found dead in Ballyduff Quarry near Newtownabbey. A UVF faction has long been blamed for the killing.
William ''Wasy'' Paul - July 1998: The Protestant, 49, was a well-known loyalist figure shot dead on the Kilcooley estate, Bangor. Later a court was told it was ''a UVF murder of an alleged drugs dealer''.
Richard Quinn, Jason Quinn, Mark Quinn - July 1998: The three Roman Catholic brothers, aged 10, nine and eight years-old died in a house fire in Ballymoney at the height of the Drumcree conflict that year. The UVF was blamed for the killings by the police.
Frankie Curry - March 1999: A Protestant father from the Shankill area of Belfast, the 45-year-old was a leading loyalist assassin. There have been conflicting claims but family blamed the UVF.
Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine - February 2000: The Portadown teenagers were stabbed repeatedly to death near Tandragee, Co Armagh.
It is believed they were singled out by a gang of at least four UVF men who knew Robb was an associate of dead LVF leader Billy Wright. McIlwaine was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jackie Coulter and Booby Mahood - August 2000: UDA man Coulter, 48, and friend Bobby Mahood, also 48, were killed as they say in a car on the Crumlin Road, Belfast. Targeted by the UVF as part of a feud with the UDA.
David Greer - October 2000: The 21-year-old Protestant and UDA member, was shot in the chest after an altercation between UDA and UVF men in Tigers Bay at the height of the feud that year.
Tommy English - October 2000: The 40-year-old father of three was a well-known UDA man. He was shot dead at his front door by UVF men during the feud.
Adrian Porter - March 2001: The 34-year-old Protestant was a father-offive from North Down who was also an LVF member. He was killed in his home at Conlig, near Bangor.
It is believed Porter was killed by the UVF because he had a role in the murder of Portadown UVF man Richard Jameson.
Stephen Manners - May 2001: The former UVF man was shot several times in the toilets of a bar in Newtownards.
It is thought the murder was drug related and carried out by a hired hitman on behalf of the Red Hand Commando.
Ciaran Cummings - July 2001: The Red Hand Commando - a code name for the UDA or LVF - claimed the killing of the Roman Catholic teenager from Antrim. But it is widely believed UVF members were responsible.
Stephen Warnock - September 2002: An LVF member and known drugs dealer, it is thought he was killed by the Red Hand Commando in Newtownards in a dispute over drugs.
John Allen - November 2003: The 31-year-old was killed in his home in Ballyclare by the UVF. Allegedly he had fallen out with the local UVF commander.
Cessation Of Violence - 24 People Killed
Mar 26 2004 The News Letter
The UVF/Red Hand Commando has been implicated in around 25 killings since calling a ceasefire in 1994.
According to the Government this cessation - along with the IRA's - is still intact.
This week, the Independent Monitoring Commission was asked to deem the UVF ceasefire over. Chief Reporter STEPHEN DEMPSTER looks back at the UVF/RHC's peacetime death toll.
IN October 1994 former UVF leader Gusty Spence announced the UVF ceasefire by expressing the terror organisation's ''true and abject remorse'' to its victims.
Since then, the feared loyalist killing machine has, according to the Government, maintained a cessation of violence for almost a decade.
This is despite the fact that the group has been accused of a hand in at least 24 murders in that time, as well as other shootings, punishment attacks and various illegal activities.
In all, there have been more than 200 deaths carried out by all these groups or linked to sectarianism since August 1994 and the IRA's first ceasefire.
Since 2001, the UDA and LVF have officially been deemed as ''specified'' groups, meaning their so-called ceasefires are no longer recognised - after a spate of killings by those organisations.
The Real IRA and Continuity IRA remain active and off ceasefire.
The INLA says it is still on ceasefire, despite numerous allegations of punishment beatings and other shootings.
The IRA broke its ceasefire for a period, beginning in February 1996 and has been involved in murder, punishment attacks and other activities since the cessation was recognised again by the Government.
The UVF ceasefire, however, has - by the Government's standards - ''held'' from 1994.
Cynics believe this has been because a blind eye has been turned to their violence because they have been a pro-Agreement organisation, linked to a party (PUP) which has elected representatives.
There has been a need, critics allege, to officially maintain terrorist ceasefires on both the loyalist and republican sides, in order to create stability the peace process, as well as ensuring that their political leaders are not excluded from talks.
The UVF/RHC leaderships have at times condemned attacks by their own members and said they were not sanctioned.
The Government appears to have either accepted this, decided the killings - nearly all of them Protestants - were not political or sectarian and therefore an acceptable level of violence or turned that blind eye.
24 Deaths...
Below are 24 deaths the UVF has been blamed for since October 1994:
Billy Elliott - September 1995: A Red Hand Commando member, the 32-year-old Protestant father of two was shot in Bangor. He had been under threat from loyalists for his alleged role in the band hall murder of Margaret Wright in April 1994.
Thomas Sheppard - March 1996: The 41-year-old UVF man was killed in Coleraine. It is thought the UVF murdered him because he was an informer.
Michael McGoldrick - July 1996: The Roman Catholic taxi driver and father of one, aged 31, was lured to his death outside Portadown. Renegade UVF members led by Billy Wright - soon to become the LVF - were blamed.
George Scott - September 1996: The 32-year-old Protestant was clubbed to death at home in Cookstown during a punishment beating which appeared to go too far. Sources blamed the UVF.
Thomas Stewart - October 1996: The former UVF commander in Ballysillan was shot dead near his home, days after being stood down by the organisation. Some reports blamed the UVF, others a criminal gang.
Rev David Templeton - March 1997: The Protestant Presbyterian Minister, 43, died six weeks after receiving a punishment beating from an alleged UVF gang in Newtownabbey.
His death was the result of blood clot which began in one of the legs broken in the attack. It is believed he was targeted after being caught with an illegal gay pornographic video.
Billy Harbinson - May 1997: The Shankill Road Protestant, 39, died after being beaten and left in an alleyway on Belfast's Shore Road. His friendship with LVF leader Billy Wright made him a target.
Raymond McCord Junior - November 1997: The 22-year-old Protestant and former RAF man was found dead in Ballyduff Quarry near Newtownabbey. A UVF faction has long been blamed for the killing.
William ''Wasy'' Paul - July 1998: The Protestant, 49, was a well-known loyalist figure shot dead on the Kilcooley estate, Bangor. Later a court was told it was ''a UVF murder of an alleged drugs dealer''.
Richard Quinn, Jason Quinn, Mark Quinn - July 1998: The three Roman Catholic brothers, aged 10, nine and eight years-old died in a house fire in Ballymoney at the height of the Drumcree conflict that year. The UVF was blamed for the killings by the police.
Frankie Curry - March 1999: A Protestant father from the Shankill area of Belfast, the 45-year-old was a leading loyalist assassin. There have been conflicting claims but family blamed the UVF.
Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine - February 2000: The Portadown teenagers were stabbed repeatedly to death near Tandragee, Co Armagh.
It is believed they were singled out by a gang of at least four UVF men who knew Robb was an associate of dead LVF leader Billy Wright. McIlwaine was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Jackie Coulter and Booby Mahood - August 2000: UDA man Coulter, 48, and friend Bobby Mahood, also 48, were killed as they say in a car on the Crumlin Road, Belfast. Targeted by the UVF as part of a feud with the UDA.
David Greer - October 2000: The 21-year-old Protestant and UDA member, was shot in the chest after an altercation between UDA and UVF men in Tigers Bay at the height of the feud that year.
Tommy English - October 2000: The 40-year-old father of three was a well-known UDA man. He was shot dead at his front door by UVF men during the feud.
Adrian Porter - March 2001: The 34-year-old Protestant was a father-offive from North Down who was also an LVF member. He was killed in his home at Conlig, near Bangor.
It is believed Porter was killed by the UVF because he had a role in the murder of Portadown UVF man Richard Jameson.
Stephen Manners - May 2001: The former UVF man was shot several times in the toilets of a bar in Newtownards.
It is thought the murder was drug related and carried out by a hired hitman on behalf of the Red Hand Commando.
Ciaran Cummings - July 2001: The Red Hand Commando - a code name for the UDA or LVF - claimed the killing of the Roman Catholic teenager from Antrim. But it is widely believed UVF members were responsible.
Stephen Warnock - September 2002: An LVF member and known drugs dealer, it is thought he was killed by the Red Hand Commando in Newtownards in a dispute over drugs.
John Allen - November 2003: The 31-year-old was killed in his home in Ballyclare by the UVF. Allegedly he had fallen out with the local UVF commander.
ic Derry - PSNI Has 'Culture Of Concealment'
PSNI Has 'Culture Of Concealment'
Derry Journal Mar 26 2004
SINN FEIN'S Policing spokesperson, Paul Fleming has said 'the continuing refusal of the PSNI to disclose vital information to inquest hearings is symptomatic of a culture of concealment which infects the entire British system'.
Mr. Fleming said: "This latest refusal by the PSNI to disclose vital information to inquest hearings is unacceptable.
"The families who have demanded disclosure are entitled to the truth about the killings of their loved ones."
He added: "It is ironic that at this moment Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable of the PSNI, is in the United States promoting the lie that the PSNI today is different from the RUC.
"When Mr Orde says that the PSNI should be judged on their actions he should remember the simple truth that for the past 10 years, first the RUC and then the PSNI, including the PSNI under his control, have refused to give vital evidence to the inquest hearings into the murder of 10 people in Tyrone."
Mr. Fleming continued: "No one will be fooled by Hugh Orde's dishonest claims that things are different now.
"His assertions are an insult to the families who have fought for many years to have the truth about these killings revealed.
"The continuing refusal to reveal relevant information to these inquests is symptomatic of a culture of concealment which infects the entire British system.
"It amounts to a state sponsored cover up. Hugh Orde should explain why he is withholding information from these families rather than telling lies in the United States."
He added: "The refusal to provide information to these inquests is not an isolated case.
"It must be seen in the context of the British government's refusal to co-operate with the Barron Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the obstruction of the Saville Inquiry at all levels of the British system and the ongoing attempts to cover-up the extent of British collusion and control of loyalist death squads.
"Sinn Fein will continue to stand with those families who continue to campaign for the truth. There must be full disclosure by the British state of its real role in Ireland over the last three decades of conflict."
PSNI Has 'Culture Of Concealment'
Derry Journal Mar 26 2004
SINN FEIN'S Policing spokesperson, Paul Fleming has said 'the continuing refusal of the PSNI to disclose vital information to inquest hearings is symptomatic of a culture of concealment which infects the entire British system'.
Mr. Fleming said: "This latest refusal by the PSNI to disclose vital information to inquest hearings is unacceptable.
"The families who have demanded disclosure are entitled to the truth about the killings of their loved ones."
He added: "It is ironic that at this moment Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable of the PSNI, is in the United States promoting the lie that the PSNI today is different from the RUC.
"When Mr Orde says that the PSNI should be judged on their actions he should remember the simple truth that for the past 10 years, first the RUC and then the PSNI, including the PSNI under his control, have refused to give vital evidence to the inquest hearings into the murder of 10 people in Tyrone."
Mr. Fleming continued: "No one will be fooled by Hugh Orde's dishonest claims that things are different now.
"His assertions are an insult to the families who have fought for many years to have the truth about these killings revealed.
"The continuing refusal to reveal relevant information to these inquests is symptomatic of a culture of concealment which infects the entire British system.
"It amounts to a state sponsored cover up. Hugh Orde should explain why he is withholding information from these families rather than telling lies in the United States."
He added: "The refusal to provide information to these inquests is not an isolated case.
"It must be seen in the context of the British government's refusal to co-operate with the Barron Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the obstruction of the Saville Inquiry at all levels of the British system and the ongoing attempts to cover-up the extent of British collusion and control of loyalist death squads.
"Sinn Fein will continue to stand with those families who continue to campaign for the truth. There must be full disclosure by the British state of its real role in Ireland over the last three decades of conflict."
26.3.04
Sunday Tribune
Law Lords ruling undermines families' case for collusion inquiries
--by Eamon McCann, Sunday Tribune
The prospect of new inquiries finding the truth about alleged
security force collusion in killings in the North has been thrown into doubt by Britain's highest court. Inquiries recommended by Canadian judge Peter Cory into the murders of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Billy Wright and Robert Hamill will be directly affected.
Five Law Lords ruled unanimously 10 days ago that the Government's obligation under Article Two of the European Convention on Human Rights---to carry out "effective and independent" investigations into killings involving State agents---did not apply to deaths that happened before the brought the provisions of the convention into
domestic UK law in 2000.
The Lords' ruling related to an appeal by the Crown against a
decision in the Northern courts in January last year that the family of Gervaise McKerr was entitled under Article Two to a new investigation into his death. Lord Chief Justice Carswell ruled that a RUC investigation which had led to failed murder charges against three RUC officers had not met the convention standard.
McKerr, together with fellow IRA members Eugene Toman and Sean Burns, had been ambushed and killed by a RUC unit near Lurgan in November 1982. All three men were unarmed at the time. McKerr's was a test case for the families of eight other "shoot-to-kill" victims, including Toman and Burns, who had launched proceedings.
The Cory review of six separate "collusion" cases---the four in the North, plus two in the South---was commissioned by the British and Irish governments following the Weston Park talks in August 2001. Both governments pledged to implement Cory's findings. The reports were delivered last October. The Dublin authorities accepted Cory's recommendation of an Inquiry into alleged garda collusion in the March 1989 IRA killing of RUC officers Bob Buchanan and Harry Breen. Cory did not recommend further inquiry into the April 1987 killing by the IRA of Lord Justice and Lady Gibson. .
The British Government has cited legal and security reasons for refusing so far to comment on the reports. Apparently unhappy at the delay, Cory personally contacted the four families last month to tell them he had recommended an inquiry in each case.
On March 12th---the day after the Lords' ruling on McKerr---Northern Secretary Paul Murphy wrote to Rosemary Nelson's mother to confirm that Cory's report will be published before the end of this month.
The significance of the McKerr ruling has to do with the balance inquiries would have to strike between considerations of national security and the safety of security forces witnesses on the one hand and the rights of the families to a full investigation on the other. Article Two has been widely seen as enormously strengthening the families' hand in such situations. The Law Lords have now withdrawn this advantage from families of pre-October 2000 victims.
It is difficult to see how a public inquiry into the Finucane case, for example, in which the bulk of the evidence would refer to the identity and roles of intelligence and security force personnel, could be made genuinely public given that the family will now be unable to cite Article Two rights in arguing for disclosure. The Nelson, Wright and Hamill families, too, could find that inquiries which Murphy may announce within the next nine days will have been conceded just at the moment when the Lords have made effective and
independent inquiries in their cases even more problematic.
March 25, 2004
Law Lords ruling undermines families' case for collusion inquiries
--by Eamon McCann, Sunday Tribune
The prospect of new inquiries finding the truth about alleged
security force collusion in killings in the North has been thrown into doubt by Britain's highest court. Inquiries recommended by Canadian judge Peter Cory into the murders of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Billy Wright and Robert Hamill will be directly affected.
Five Law Lords ruled unanimously 10 days ago that the Government's obligation under Article Two of the European Convention on Human Rights---to carry out "effective and independent" investigations into killings involving State agents---did not apply to deaths that happened before the brought the provisions of the convention into
domestic UK law in 2000.
The Lords' ruling related to an appeal by the Crown against a
decision in the Northern courts in January last year that the family of Gervaise McKerr was entitled under Article Two to a new investigation into his death. Lord Chief Justice Carswell ruled that a RUC investigation which had led to failed murder charges against three RUC officers had not met the convention standard.
McKerr, together with fellow IRA members Eugene Toman and Sean Burns, had been ambushed and killed by a RUC unit near Lurgan in November 1982. All three men were unarmed at the time. McKerr's was a test case for the families of eight other "shoot-to-kill" victims, including Toman and Burns, who had launched proceedings.
The Cory review of six separate "collusion" cases---the four in the North, plus two in the South---was commissioned by the British and Irish governments following the Weston Park talks in August 2001. Both governments pledged to implement Cory's findings. The reports were delivered last October. The Dublin authorities accepted Cory's recommendation of an Inquiry into alleged garda collusion in the March 1989 IRA killing of RUC officers Bob Buchanan and Harry Breen. Cory did not recommend further inquiry into the April 1987 killing by the IRA of Lord Justice and Lady Gibson. .
The British Government has cited legal and security reasons for refusing so far to comment on the reports. Apparently unhappy at the delay, Cory personally contacted the four families last month to tell them he had recommended an inquiry in each case.
On March 12th---the day after the Lords' ruling on McKerr---Northern Secretary Paul Murphy wrote to Rosemary Nelson's mother to confirm that Cory's report will be published before the end of this month.
The significance of the McKerr ruling has to do with the balance inquiries would have to strike between considerations of national security and the safety of security forces witnesses on the one hand and the rights of the families to a full investigation on the other. Article Two has been widely seen as enormously strengthening the families' hand in such situations. The Law Lords have now withdrawn this advantage from families of pre-October 2000 victims.
It is difficult to see how a public inquiry into the Finucane case, for example, in which the bulk of the evidence would refer to the identity and roles of intelligence and security force personnel, could be made genuinely public given that the family will now be unable to cite Article Two rights in arguing for disclosure. The Nelson, Wright and Hamill families, too, could find that inquiries which Murphy may announce within the next nine days will have been conceded just at the moment when the Lords have made effective and
independent inquiries in their cases even more problematic.
March 25, 2004
Irelandclick.com
Cops hatched media strategy to counter Operation Torsion stories in press
The PSNI adopted a top-level media strategy in order to “distract attention” away from news reports about the existence of the Special Branch’s Operation Torsion – the operation which was used to promote allegations of a so-called ‘Stormont spy-ring’ in October 2002.
That’s the explosive conclusion of a confidential report prepared by the Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, in response to a complaint by Chief Superintendent Bill Lowry – the Special Branch officer who led Operation Torsion – over the circumstances in which he left the PSNI.
The revelation comes in an updated paperback version of the book ‘The Armed Peace’, written by the BBC’s Security Editor, Brian Rowan.
In the revised book Mr Rowan states that in a curious twist Special Branch itself was apparently concerned about leaks emanating from the ongoing investigation that were allegedly coming from a source other than Bill Lowry.
Mr Rowan also states that Special Branch secretly obtained information about internal Sinn Féin discussions during the Weston Park talks in July 2001 which was then passed on to MI5.
This ensured that the British government’s negotiating hand was strengthened against republicans during the crucial talks on policing and decommissioning.
In hindsight, therefore, these revelations put the SDLP’s decision to join the Policing Board in August 2001 – just four weeks after the Weston Park talks – into an entirely new context.
Republicans are expected to highlight the political nature of the Special Branch spying activities as yet more evidence that, in the words of one, “a cartel of political policing detectives are still pulling the strings”.
And the latest objective assessment by the Police Ombudsman that the PSNI tried to “distract attention” away from news reports over the existence of Operation Torsion could also have political and legal implications.
Half the original charges brought by the PSNI’s REMIT team in relation to Operation Torsion have now been dropped, with the key charge of ‘possessing documents of secret, confidential or restricted nature originating from government offices’ completely withdrawn by the Crown prosecutors.
Of the four local people arrested in relation to Operation Torsion, one has now been completely exonerated, and the other three accused – Denis Donaldson, Ciaran Kearney and William Mackessy – are scheduled to face reduced charges at a trial that is not expected to commence for another twelve months.
Given the charges brought as a result of Operation Torsion, it is ironic that Mr Rowan’s revelations are sourced to a ‘confidential document’ that was only privately circulated amongst three agencies by the Police Ombudsman – namely, the Secretary of State, the Chief Constable and the Policing Board.
It is also noteworthy that Mr Rowan was, in fact, the journalist who first broke the story about Operation Torsion in BBC news reports on November 12, 2002.
The PSNI’s attempts to “distract attention” away from his reports involved convening a press conference involving the current head of REMIT, Chief Superintendent Phil Wright, and the then Assistant Chief Constable for Belfast, Alan McQuillan, to talk about other aspects of their activity in the case.
Shortly afterwards Mr McQuillan announced that he had instigated a leaks investigation within the PSNI. And REMIT Inspector Michael McErlane later told a court that officers within the investigation were asked to disclose all details of their contacts with the press to an internal inquiry.
The outcome of the leaks investigation established by Alan McQuillan has never been made public.
‘The Armed Peace’ carries interviews with key political figures, statements from the IRA leadership, and a full breakdown of recent political developments including David Trimble’s rejection of the IRA initiative last October and the Assembly election results of last November.
• The Armed Peace by Brian Rowan (updated, paperback) is published by Mainstream Publishing, price £9.99.
Journalist:: Jarlath Kearney
Cops hatched media strategy to counter Operation Torsion stories in press
The PSNI adopted a top-level media strategy in order to “distract attention” away from news reports about the existence of the Special Branch’s Operation Torsion – the operation which was used to promote allegations of a so-called ‘Stormont spy-ring’ in October 2002.
That’s the explosive conclusion of a confidential report prepared by the Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, in response to a complaint by Chief Superintendent Bill Lowry – the Special Branch officer who led Operation Torsion – over the circumstances in which he left the PSNI.
The revelation comes in an updated paperback version of the book ‘The Armed Peace’, written by the BBC’s Security Editor, Brian Rowan.
In the revised book Mr Rowan states that in a curious twist Special Branch itself was apparently concerned about leaks emanating from the ongoing investigation that were allegedly coming from a source other than Bill Lowry.
Mr Rowan also states that Special Branch secretly obtained information about internal Sinn Féin discussions during the Weston Park talks in July 2001 which was then passed on to MI5.
This ensured that the British government’s negotiating hand was strengthened against republicans during the crucial talks on policing and decommissioning.
In hindsight, therefore, these revelations put the SDLP’s decision to join the Policing Board in August 2001 – just four weeks after the Weston Park talks – into an entirely new context.
Republicans are expected to highlight the political nature of the Special Branch spying activities as yet more evidence that, in the words of one, “a cartel of political policing detectives are still pulling the strings”.
And the latest objective assessment by the Police Ombudsman that the PSNI tried to “distract attention” away from news reports over the existence of Operation Torsion could also have political and legal implications.
Half the original charges brought by the PSNI’s REMIT team in relation to Operation Torsion have now been dropped, with the key charge of ‘possessing documents of secret, confidential or restricted nature originating from government offices’ completely withdrawn by the Crown prosecutors.
Of the four local people arrested in relation to Operation Torsion, one has now been completely exonerated, and the other three accused – Denis Donaldson, Ciaran Kearney and William Mackessy – are scheduled to face reduced charges at a trial that is not expected to commence for another twelve months.
Given the charges brought as a result of Operation Torsion, it is ironic that Mr Rowan’s revelations are sourced to a ‘confidential document’ that was only privately circulated amongst three agencies by the Police Ombudsman – namely, the Secretary of State, the Chief Constable and the Policing Board.
It is also noteworthy that Mr Rowan was, in fact, the journalist who first broke the story about Operation Torsion in BBC news reports on November 12, 2002.
The PSNI’s attempts to “distract attention” away from his reports involved convening a press conference involving the current head of REMIT, Chief Superintendent Phil Wright, and the then Assistant Chief Constable for Belfast, Alan McQuillan, to talk about other aspects of their activity in the case.
Shortly afterwards Mr McQuillan announced that he had instigated a leaks investigation within the PSNI. And REMIT Inspector Michael McErlane later told a court that officers within the investigation were asked to disclose all details of their contacts with the press to an internal inquiry.
The outcome of the leaks investigation established by Alan McQuillan has never been made public.
‘The Armed Peace’ carries interviews with key political figures, statements from the IRA leadership, and a full breakdown of recent political developments including David Trimble’s rejection of the IRA initiative last October and the Assembly election results of last November.
• The Armed Peace by Brian Rowan (updated, paperback) is published by Mainstream Publishing, price £9.99.
Journalist:: Jarlath Kearney
Irish American Information Service
SINN FEIN DELEGATION MEETS WITH MONITORING BODY
03/25/04 07:19 EST
A Sinn Féin delegation including North Belfast MLA Gerry
Kelly and South Belfast MLA Alex Maskey this morning met
with the International Monitoring Commission in their
Belfast offices.
The commission was set up at Ulster Unionist leader David
Trimble's insistence to monitor paramilitary ceasefires in
Northern Ireland.
Speaking after the meeting Mr Kelly said that they had told
the IMC "in very clear terms that they were little more
than a smokescreen to be used by the British government to
provide cover for any attempt to exclude Sinn Féin".
Mr Kelly said: "This mornings meeting was the second time
which we had met with the IM. At the initial meeting in
early January we informed the IMC that it was our belief
that they were not independent, operated outside the terms
of the Good Friday Agreement and were a British tool to be
used to validate acts of exclusion against Sinn Féin".
"The actions of the IMC in the weeks since vindicate
completely this position and we told them this at today's
meeting. Nationalists and republicans hear little from the
IMC or the British government about the ongoing campaign
being conducted by unionist paramilitaries. We have heard
little from them about the murder of a young catholic man
in Lisburn late last year."
" The IMC should be in doubt that Sinn Féin and the
community we represent view them as little more than a
smokescreen to be used by the British government to provide
cover for any attempt at exclusion in the future," Kelly
said.
SINN FEIN DELEGATION MEETS WITH MONITORING BODY
03/25/04 07:19 EST
A Sinn Féin delegation including North Belfast MLA Gerry
Kelly and South Belfast MLA Alex Maskey this morning met
with the International Monitoring Commission in their
Belfast offices.
The commission was set up at Ulster Unionist leader David
Trimble's insistence to monitor paramilitary ceasefires in
Northern Ireland.
Speaking after the meeting Mr Kelly said that they had told
the IMC "in very clear terms that they were little more
than a smokescreen to be used by the British government to
provide cover for any attempt to exclude Sinn Féin".
Mr Kelly said: "This mornings meeting was the second time
which we had met with the IM. At the initial meeting in
early January we informed the IMC that it was our belief
that they were not independent, operated outside the terms
of the Good Friday Agreement and were a British tool to be
used to validate acts of exclusion against Sinn Féin".
"The actions of the IMC in the weeks since vindicate
completely this position and we told them this at today's
meeting. Nationalists and republicans hear little from the
IMC or the British government about the ongoing campaign
being conducted by unionist paramilitaries. We have heard
little from them about the murder of a young catholic man
in Lisburn late last year."
" The IMC should be in doubt that Sinn Féin and the
community we represent view them as little more than a
smokescreen to be used by the British government to provide
cover for any attempt at exclusion in the future," Kelly
said.
25.3.04
Saoirse Online Newsroom
Joe Lynch, Limerick Republican Sinn Féin
March 21, 2004
Arrest Prince of Wales
The heir to the British throne as Colonel in Chief of the Paratroop
Regiment of the British Army should be taken in for questioning
about war crimes while in Ireland, the Limerick Branch of Republican
Sinn Féin stated today.
RSF Munster Executive spokesman Joe Lynch said that instead of being
feted and fawned upon by Free State police and politicians, the
Prince of Wales should be charged in relation to the murders of 13
innocent civilians in Derry in 1972.
"The fact is he is the Colonel in Chief of the Regiment that
murdered innocent people in Ireland and fawning upon him is an
insult to all those who died," said Mr. Lynch. "The Munster
Executive of Republican Sinn Féin meeting in Limerick on Saturday
20th March agreed that the visit of the Prince of Wales to Ireland
must be opposed. The level of security and the cost to the Irish
taxpayer is an indication of how Free State politicians fawn on
British rulers.
"If a man in his position wishes to visit the Free State then he
should do so as a private individual with no cost to the taxpayer.
The public show of excessive security by the police indicates how
such a visit is regarded by most right thinking Irish people - the
fact that the police can be seen brandishing sub machine guns and
automatic weapons must also be questioned.
"The whole process is an attempt to normalise British rule in
Ireland but it is the view of Republican Sinn Féin that such a
process must be rejected and highlighted - there can be no
normalisation of British relations until the British Crown agrees to
remove its forces of occupation from the Six Counties."
Joe Lynch, Limerick Republican Sinn Féin
March 21, 2004
Arrest Prince of Wales
The heir to the British throne as Colonel in Chief of the Paratroop
Regiment of the British Army should be taken in for questioning
about war crimes while in Ireland, the Limerick Branch of Republican
Sinn Féin stated today.
RSF Munster Executive spokesman Joe Lynch said that instead of being
feted and fawned upon by Free State police and politicians, the
Prince of Wales should be charged in relation to the murders of 13
innocent civilians in Derry in 1972.
"The fact is he is the Colonel in Chief of the Regiment that
murdered innocent people in Ireland and fawning upon him is an
insult to all those who died," said Mr. Lynch. "The Munster
Executive of Republican Sinn Féin meeting in Limerick on Saturday
20th March agreed that the visit of the Prince of Wales to Ireland
must be opposed. The level of security and the cost to the Irish
taxpayer is an indication of how Free State politicians fawn on
British rulers.
"If a man in his position wishes to visit the Free State then he
should do so as a private individual with no cost to the taxpayer.
The public show of excessive security by the police indicates how
such a visit is regarded by most right thinking Irish people - the
fact that the police can be seen brandishing sub machine guns and
automatic weapons must also be questioned.
"The whole process is an attempt to normalise British rule in
Ireland but it is the view of Republican Sinn Féin that such a
process must be rejected and highlighted - there can be no
normalisation of British relations until the British Crown agrees to
remove its forces of occupation from the Six Counties."
