Word: guerrillas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What all these attacks have in common is their psychological impact. The 2007 air strike established that the LTTE had become the first guerrilla organization in the world to have its own air force. These aren't fighter planes, however. They are light propeller planes reportedly put together from parts smuggled into the country. But they are enough to carry out small-scale bombing raids. "Even though the government claimed that the Tiger's air attacks inflicted little damage, the psychological advantage the LTTE has won has served to significantly boost the rebels' morale and could embolden them to step...
...detention of civilians serves a strategic purpose for the army as well. In the past, the Tigers were often able to recapture territory by sending guerrilla fighters into the general population. That's still a potent tactic. On Feb. 9, a female suicide bomber killed 28 people, including 20 soldiers, at a screening point for IDPs. This kind of asymmetrical warfare--the LTTE was the global pioneer in the use of suicide bombers--allowed a few thousand fighters to hold their own for decades against the Sri Lankan army's 50,000 soldiers. So the most recent army offensive uses...
...Khmer Rouge took root in Cambodia's northeastern jungles as early as the 1960s, a guerrilla group driven by communist ideals that nipped the periphery of government-controlled areas. The flash point came when Cambodia's leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was deposed in a military coup in 1970 and leaned on the Khmer Rouge for support. The prince's imprimatur lent the movement legitimacy, although while he would nominally serve as head of state, he spent much of the Khmer Rouge's rule under house arrest. As the country descended into civil war, the Khmer Rouge presented themselves...
Colombia's Marxist guerrillas probably rue the day they kidnapped state legislator Sigifredo Lopez and his colleagues. Disguised as police agents, the rebels stormed a government building in the southern city of Cali in 2002, announced a bomb threat and then herded a dozen lawmakers, including Lopez, aboard a bus and drove them into the mountains. But the operation ended up in one of the ghastliest blunders of Colombia's four-decade-long civil war. In June 2007, guerrilla guards mistakenly thought they were under attack by the army and, in a panic, executed 11 of the hostages. Lopez alone...
...Many of the works - like Quach Phong's memorable watercolors - capture ordinary acts of resistance by beleaguered fighters armed with unsophisticated weaponry. Phong's Farmer with Gun (1966) portrays a leather-faced guerrilla pointing a rifle to the sky in a defiant attack on a fighter plane. "Even though he had little hope of shooting it down, there lay his strength," recalls Phong...