6 - From Regional Conflict to Domestic Crisis

Summary

Chapter 6 chronicles the fragmentation of the four sets of post-liberation elites, and the purging of many established veterans between the late 1990s and ca. 2006. The chapter shows how each movement during these years was shaken to its foundations by internal criticism and major splits which pitted the leadership and a new, younger generation of loyalists against many senior liberation war cadres. Though these splits were notionally focused around questions of movement governance and leadership they were provoked by regional security crises. Indeed, in all four cases, debates on loyalty, ideological purity and movement integrity were laid on top of more long-standing disagreements on each movement’s relationship with its struggle-era regional ally. In mapping these splits and the removal of a significant part of the founding post-liberation elite from the policy arena, this chapter demonstrates how fundamentally inter-linked regional and domestic politics have been in these four states, at least with regard to relations with states governed by a one-time liberation war partner. It also underscores the degree to which gaining and maintaining office can be intrinsically destabilising – even destructive – for militarised, revolutionary movements such as those examined in this study.