Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 April 4

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April 4

Insurgencies that benefitted from having sanctuaries across the border in different countries?

Which insurgencies benefitted from having sanctuaries across the border in different countries? I could think of:

• The Algerian FLN having sanctuaries in both Tunisia and Morocco while its fought its war against the French
• The Vietnamese Communists having sanctuaries in both Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War, which they fought against the United States of America
• The Afghan Taliban having sanctuaries in Pakistan during the Afghanistan War, which they fought against the United States of America
• Al-Qaeda in Iraq having sanctuaries in Syria, thus allowing some of its (kicked out) members to make a comeback in Iraq in 2014 as the ISIS Caliphate
• Kashmiri insurgents having sanctuaries in Pakistan (especially in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir) during their war against India

Are there any additional examples of this? If so, exactly which ones? Futurist110 (talk) 03:38, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

• Reportedly, ethnic insurgent groups in Assam and Manipur use camps in northern Myanmar as their bases for cross-border raids.^[1]  --Lambiam 08:41, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Interesting.

• The MFDC in Senegal used to have bases in Guinea-Bissau, which were terminated with the ousting of Guinea-Bissau President Vieira in 1999.  --Lambiam 08:54, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Very interesting!

The Palestinians (PLO, etc) conspicuously failed to benefit from any such effect. Raids from Gaza in the 1950s led to a series of increasingly brutal military confrontations between Israel and Egypt, which prepared the way for the Suez war of 1956. Raids from Jordan in the late 1960s prepared the way for the Black September confrontation in which the PLO was expelled from Jordan. Raids from Lebanon in the 1970s prepared the way for the Lebanese Civil War, and ultimately for the PLO's expulsion from Lebanon. It was more convenient for the PLO etc to launch attacks from neighboring countries than from geographically remote ones, but in other situations, some guerilla groups have achieved a whole system of secure bases in the friendly foreign country reinforcing often-shifting military outposts in area controlled by the hostile regime, which benefit from the "fish in the friendly sea" effect (or whatever it's called), so that the guerilla group can go beyond isolated raids to somewhat systematically attacking the forces of the hostile regime militarily. The PLO never attained this. AnonMoos (talk) 10:29, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

There were certainly Palestinian insurgencies against Israel with the First and Second Intifadas, but were there ever actually any Palestinian insurgencies within Israel's borders before 1967? Futurist110 (talk) 06:04, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The "Intifadas" were neither one thing nor the other. They weren't peaceful enough to qualify as a non-violent protest movement (the Palestinians seem to be utterly incapable of maintaining non-violence in any numbers for any significant length of time), and they weren't violent enough to qualify as real guerilla warfare. The first intifada was a PR maneuver which also allowed the Arabs to vent their feelings, and had some success in swaying international public opinion in their favor. The second intifada was riots accompanied by suicide bombers (when Arafat made a carefully-calculated cynical decision to "ride" the wave of terrorism, instead of making any real attempt to control it), and succeeded in inflaming anti-Israel opinion in certain parts of the globe, but did extremely little to mobilize effective international support for Palestinians (certainly not in the United States). AnonMoos (talk) 08:05, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

• Ireland since 1923; see Dominic McGlinchey. ----Serial 10:33, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Interesting.

• The Polisario Front is being hosted in Algeria, and while there's been a cease-fire since 1991, maintains a military force there. Xuxl (talk) 13:32, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Yep, excellent example! Futurist110 (talk) 06:04, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

• Korean guerrillas in China vs. Japan? DOR (HK) (talk) 15:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Futurist110:: Until François Mitterand, I think, the ETA leadership was considered refugees in France, and moved with quite a lot of ease. So, when a Spanish businessman received an extortion letter, he had to just cross the border and ask at a certain place for a certain person and then negotiate for his life and safety.

I think that the IRA had a similar sanctuary in the Republic of Ireland.

There was also a raid of Confederate guerrillas against a US border town from Canada, I think. I watched a film about it.

--Error (talk) 22:50, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Generation Beta

When is the early limit for someone to be born in Generation Beta?? I guess a few years from now. (This is defined as starting when Generation Alpha ends.) Georgia guy (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

• We can not be specific - generations typically last about 15 years, which would put the transition between “Alpha” and “Beta” some time in the next few years (mid 2020s).

However, what defines a generation is cultural as well as demographic... for example, the “silent generation” ran short due to the outbreak of WWII... while the “Boomer” generation ran long - almost 20 years. Covid may end up being a cultural dividing line, and if so... we could be seeing the first Betas being born now. Only time will tell. Blueboar (talk) 15:03, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

An early decanted Beta is probably a Beta-Minus, like Linda, the mother of "Mr. Savage".  --Lambiam 23:40, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

"In 2024, by McCrindle’s definition, the last of Generation Alpha will be born, making way for Generation Beta, whose birth years will span from 2025 to 2039". From Oh No, They’ve Come Up With Another Generation Label (Mark McCrindle is the Australian researcher credited with coining the "Generation Alpha" label). The same article warns "The history of generational labeling is littered with names that gained some traction, but not enough" and that "generations talk can often devolve into stereotyping, as generational labels necessarily lump together people with a wide variety of experiences". Alansplodge (talk) 12:53, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

15 years seems like a really short time for a generation. It's certainly too short for the more general sense of [average] time from being born to having children (which is more like 20 to 30 years. I'm not sure it's even accurate for the "named demographic cohort" sense of the word, which looks more like 18 years on average, going by the ranges in the various wiki articles. Although looking in more detail, it appears that the first few named generation (Lost, Greatest, Silent, and Baby Boomers were all longer, with X, Y, Z and Alpha all being 15. (Which makes me think that the later ones are just being arbitarily defined and probably don't represent any real social division). Iapetus (talk) 19:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

There are distinctive cultural divisions for all of them. Gen X was the first generation to be raised playing home video games as kids, for example, and spent a large part of their childhood raised in the Reagan/Thatcher years. They saw the widespread growth of alternative rock music and hip hop. Gen Y is largely defined as the first generation of digital natives and the generation for which their childhood was largely defined by the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. Generation Z is the generation too young to remember 9/11 (as they are the generation whose young adulthood is happening now), while Generation Alpha is largely defined by being raised in the age of Covid-19. --Jayron32 15:36, 7 April 2021 (UTC)