ABSTRACT
Armed struggles are a nexus of unconventional tactics and techniques in the service of illegitimate aspirations. Each armed struggle is the product of the transformation of the energy contained in a denied aspiration into the available means to change the future, a means inevitable shaped by the tangible power of the enemy and maintained by the faith of the committed. As far as the dynamics of an armed struggle are concerned, the content of the faith is irrelevant only the attraction. Most of the people in the arena are befuddled by the visible power of the state, befuddled by innocence and ignorance and habit; but all are the constituency of the faithful. Any armed struggle is almost inevitably unrepresentative of the constituency and so too the leadership and often so too the volunteers, who may be little different from the leaders in class and caste, in residence, education and ambition—and identical in aspiration.
