ABSTRACT
Leadership The option to engage in armed struggle is ultimately a human decision. A collective of human beings can make a decision to use violence as a method to pursue political goals, and an individual can decide to get involved in a rebel group. Accordingly, giving up violent methods is also a human decision, either as a group or as an individual. Supporting armed struggle or ceasing to support it is also an individual choice, although it is always made in an interactive context. Testimonies of people involved in armed struggle suggest that individual conclusions regarding the convenience of ending armed resistance are difficult to implement without a proper context. Clem McCartney stresses the importance of the context when he argues that when circumstances favor maintaining the war “then the doves will be silent,” but when circumstances favor negotiations “then the hawks will be silent.”1 Moretti, a leader of the Italian Red Brigades, notes that after ten years of violent campaign he knew that armed strategy was going nowhere, that “the cycles of struggles born in the 1960s had exhausted,” but that it would be very complicated to conclude it. He argues that it would be necessary that they were allowed to transform without having to renounce their identity; it would be necessary that it did not mean abandoning the prisoners to their fate; it would be necessary that an alternative political avenue was feasible. . . . What was needed, he concludes, was “the impossible.”2 Moretti asserts that he arrived at the conclusion that armed struggle was over as early as 1981. By that time, he believed that the Red Brigades’ activity had to be stopped. Still, Moretti himself dared to share his reflections with very few comrades, because his views could have been seen as a betrayal.3 It was the former ETA militant “Kubati” who pointed me to what Moretti said about the difficulties of openly questioning the persistence of armed struggle, as there is a risk of being regarded as a traitor or, at least, ideologically weak.4 Weinberg and Pedahzur remark that recognized leaders are needed to guide this kind of transformation, as they can be vulnerable to accusations of treason and betrayal. They warn that a leadership could lose support and more intransigent leaders might emerge.5 Crenshaw argues that within underground
groups pressures toward cohesion can be intense and contact with reality can diminish, so that preservation of the group can become a priority. In these cases, she argues, “only a strong leader who is willing to take risks” can accomplish the transition toward politics.6 Zartman includes the factor of the contrast between generations in his reflection. According to his argument, conflict evolution is governed by two contrary generational trends, fatigue and radicalization:
Fatigue concerns the current generation, which, because of age and other reasons, tends to tire of war and turn to a search for normalization. Radicalization is the successor generation’s response to the normalization trend, which it views as a sell-out.7
