# 12: Guerrillas
Jon Lee Anderson
I like Jon Lee Anderson, I devoured his biography of Che Guevara at Business School. He also writes in the New Yorker, and I am struck by his type of reporting. This is a man who is goes to the hotspots in the world: when the Israelis are bombing Lebanon and people are fighting to get out of there, Anderson is flying into Beirut and reporting from there. When Afghanistan was a mess, there he was
Unfortunately I finished the book over a month ago, I know, I have been a bad boy with respect to my posts, so I am not sure how much I remember about this specific book.
The subtitle is: Journeys in The Insurgent World. Anderson has a serious ability to enter the world of different groups of guerillas around the world - he writes about guerillas in El Savador, the Mujahedin fighting in Afghanistan, the Karen of Burma (fighting an independence war for over 50 years), the Polisaro of Western Sahara (this is a strange case, they basically have their own country and rarely fight at all), and finally a group of Palestinians struggling against Israel in the Gaza Strip.
He enters these world's and writes about their experiences, their world-view, their philosophies. I fought it very vivid and quite eye-opening. These are people who have taken up a cause and are willing to both die and kill for it. It was interesting to see the fights forgotten by the world (Burma) and others that are always in the news (Gaza). It was interesting to see how the mujahedin have developed a culture that glorifies death and makes it a very acceptable outcome. The FMLN in Salvador understood the political aspect of the battle, how they needed to also win the hearts and minds of the people in the countryside. I also began to understand how if someone loses their parents and sisters to the enemy, they are sucked into the battle and find no other meaning in life other than to fight. In its purest form, violence simply begets more violence.
This a good read. It will leave you thinking.
I like Jon Lee Anderson, I devoured his biography of Che Guevara at Business School. He also writes in the New Yorker, and I am struck by his type of reporting. This is a man who is goes to the hotspots in the world: when the Israelis are bombing Lebanon and people are fighting to get out of there, Anderson is flying into Beirut and reporting from there. When Afghanistan was a mess, there he was
Unfortunately I finished the book over a month ago, I know, I have been a bad boy with respect to my posts, so I am not sure how much I remember about this specific book.
The subtitle is: Journeys in The Insurgent World. Anderson has a serious ability to enter the world of different groups of guerillas around the world - he writes about guerillas in El Savador, the Mujahedin fighting in Afghanistan, the Karen of Burma (fighting an independence war for over 50 years), the Polisaro of Western Sahara (this is a strange case, they basically have their own country and rarely fight at all), and finally a group of Palestinians struggling against Israel in the Gaza Strip.
He enters these world's and writes about their experiences, their world-view, their philosophies. I fought it very vivid and quite eye-opening. These are people who have taken up a cause and are willing to both die and kill for it. It was interesting to see the fights forgotten by the world (Burma) and others that are always in the news (Gaza). It was interesting to see how the mujahedin have developed a culture that glorifies death and makes it a very acceptable outcome. The FMLN in Salvador understood the political aspect of the battle, how they needed to also win the hearts and minds of the people in the countryside. I also began to understand how if someone loses their parents and sisters to the enemy, they are sucked into the battle and find no other meaning in life other than to fight. In its purest form, violence simply begets more violence.
This a good read. It will leave you thinking.
posted by guchix at 8:44 PM
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