In last week's Geopolitical
Weekly, George Friedman discussed how the global financial crisis has caused a global unemployment crisis and how
Europe has become the epicenter of that crisis. He also noted that rampant
unemployment will give way to a political crisis as austerity measures
galvanize radical political parties opposed to the status quo.
Because unemployment is so
pervasive, jobless, disenchanted people are joining radical parties espousing a
wide variety of ideologies. Examples include populist euroskeptic parties, such
as Italy's Five Star movement; far-right parties, such as Greece's Golden Dawn
party; and anti-austerity leftist groups, such as Greece's Coalition of the
Radical Left, or Syriza. With unemployment in Greece at 27 percent, it is not
surprising to see both radical right-wing and radical left-wing groups gaining
support from those who have become deeply disaffected by the crises.
In fact, Greece has a long
history of left-wing radicalism inclined toward violence. The 1970s saw the rise
of radical group 17 November, and more recent years marked the rise of such
groups as the Revolutionary Struggle and the Conspiracy of Fire Cells.
Given this history and the
manner in which the current crises are producing disaffected, radicalized and
unemployed people, we thought it would be worth examining radical far-left
groups in Greece and the types of violence they can be expected to conduct. It
is also important to remember that Greece is not the only country in which the
population, particularly the left, is radicalizing. Italy, too, has seen
increased leftist radicalism. What is happening in these two countries could
herald things to come elsewhere in Europe.
A History of Radicalism
The revolutionary left in
Greece dates back to the anarchists of the 1800s and the emergence of communism
in Europe. Influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, communist
partisans were some of the most effective anti-Nazi forces during the Axis
powers' brutal occupation of Greece (Italy and Bulgaria joined Germany in the
occupation). After the Allied invasion of Greece and its liberation from Axis
control, a civil war erupted that pitted communist partisans against
anti-communist forces, which were backed by the British and the Americans.
Because many former Nazi collaborators aided the anti-communists in the Greek
Civil War, many anti-communist elements remained in Greece's security forces.
The war also left the remnants of an embittered communist movement upset by the
fact that Nazi collaborators such as Georgios Papadopoulos, who would become
the future leader of a military junta that seized power in 1967, were never
brought to justice.
Like much of Europe, Greece
then became a Cold War battleground. The strength of the communist forces in
Greece and in its neighbor, Turkey, was the driving force behind the 1947
Truman Doctrine in which U.S. President Harry S. Truman pledged military and
economic support to Greece and Turkey to prevent them from falling into the
Soviet sphere of influence. This resulted in strong anti-U.S. and anti-NATO
sentiment among the Greek left, which would later act on that sentiment through
terrorist activity.
But the United States and its allies were not the only ones attempting to influence Greece. The Soviet Union saw the Greek communists, like communist groups elsewhere in the West, as a useful tool. The Soviets actively supported communist activists in the Greek labor and student movements. Anti-regime radicalism in the Greek student movement came to a head in 1973, when student protests against the military junta were put down by force. In a particularly iconic incident, an army tank crashed through the gates of Athens Polytechnic on Nov. 17, 1973, as soldiers seized control of the university from student protesters.
The gravity of the Athens
Polytechnic uprising was clearly felt when a then-unknown group, Revolutionary
Organization 17 November, assassinated Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in
Athens, in December 1975. From then until 2000, 17 November conducted several assassinations
and attacked NATO, Greek government and Greek industrialist targets. Although
the group came to be known for close-quarter assassinations using .45-caliber
pistols, they also conducted a number of successful bombing attacks, such as
the June 1988 assassination of U.S. Defense Attache Capt. William Nordeen. In
1989, the group stole anti-tank rockets from a military base in Larissa. The
rockets were later used in attacks against buildings and armored limousines.
The 17 November operatives
practiced good terrorist tradecraft and excellent operational security. This
allowed them to operate far longer than their contemporary radical leftist
groups in Germany and Italy. While the founders of the German Red Army Faction
and the Italian Red Brigades were arrested in the 1970s, the founders of 17
November were not taken into custody until 2002, when a botched bombing on a
ferry company resulted in the arrest of the bomber. Authorities used the
evidence the culprit provided to arrest most of the remaining members of 17
November, whose long reign of terror finally came to an end.
But Greece was not quiet for
long. Inspired by the highly publicized arrest and trial of the 17 November
members, a new group arose from the radical Greek left in 2003. This group was
called Revolutionary Struggle. The group shared 17 November's anti-imperialist,
anti-capitalist and anti-U.S. focus, but it was more anarchistic than the
Marxist 17 November.
From 2003 to 2010,
Revolutionary Struggle bombed several Greek law enforcement buildings, banks
and international corporations. The group was also responsible for a number of
firearm attacks against police and a rocket attack against the U.S. Embassy. In
the latter attack, the group notably used an RPG-7, not the M28 super bazooka
rockets associated with 17 November. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher was
recovered in April 2010, when six members of Revolutionary Struggle were
arrested. Two members of the group, founder Nikos Maziotis and his wife,
Panagiota Roupa, fled after being released from custody during their trial in
July 2012. They are still at large.
In 2008, another Greek
anarchist group calling itself the Conspiracy of Fire Cells announced its
presence with a series of low-level bombing attacks against car dealerships and
banks in Athens and Thessaloniki. Until late 2010, the group's attacks were
meant to damage property and send messages rather than kill people -- a big
departure from the homicidal intentions of 17 November. In the January 2010
bombing of the Greek Parliament, the group made a warning call to a newspaper
that permitted the area to be evacuated, thus avoiding casualties.
This operational paradigm
changed dramatically in 2010, when the group began to send letter bombs. After
a number of letter bombs were sent to the Greek Ministry of Justice, foreign
embassies in Athens and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Greek police arrested
two suspects. At the time of the arrests, the suspects were found to be in
possession of letter bombs addressed to then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy's
office in Paris and to the Belgian and Dutch embassies in Athens. In total, 13
people were arrested and charged for their involvement in the Conspiracy of
Fire Cells letter bomb campaign.
In the weeks before their
trial in January 2011, anarchists in Italy mailed letter bombs packed with
shrapnel to several embassies in Rome. On Dec. 28, 2010, anarchists attacked
the Greek Embassy in Buenos Aires, which was followed by a bombing attack on the
Athens courthouse in which the Conspiracy of Fire Cells members were to be
tried. The courthouse bombing involved a substantial device that damaged the
building and several nearby vehicles, but because of a warning call placed to
authorities 40 minutes before the device detonated, it inflicted no casualties.
A group calling itself the
Lambros Fountas cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation claimed
responsibility for the Rome parcel bombs. (Lambros Fountas was a member of
Revolutionary Struggle who was killed in April 2010 and whose death led to the
roundup of the group's members.) The moniker shows the close relationship
between Greek and Italian anarchists. Attacks in Italy, such as the May 2012
shooting of a nuclear engineer in Genoa, and two attempts to sabotage rail
signaling cables in Bristol, the United Kingdom, have been claimed by people
operating under the name of the Informal Anarchist Federation.
In one of the most brazen
attacks in recent years, three armed men appeared at Microsoft's Athens office
in the early hours of June 27, 2012, and, after forcing out the security
guards, they backed a van up to the doors of the building and ignited a large
incendiary device, which damaged the building.
More recently, anarchists in
Greece have conducted small-scale arson and bombing attacks against bank
branches, political parties and the homes of journalists. On March 11, 2013,
they conducted a low-level bombing attack against a courier company in Athens.
Progressing Toward Lethality
From this history, we can
identify some trends for future radical activity. First, it's clear that the
Marxist terrorism that wracked Europe in the 1970s and 1980s is not about to
return, no matter how many people are radicalized by the current crises. The
geopolitical environment that spawned and nurtured Marxist terrorism has
changed dramatically. The state-sponsored training and support that many
European Marxist groups received from the Soviet Union and Eastern European
states, such as East Germany, simply will not reappear. In addition, the
Marxist training camps European militants were able to visit in such places as
Yemen, Libya and Iraq no longer exist.
Since the fall of the Soviet
Union, most left-wing radicals, save for some in Latin America, have become
disillusioned with Marxism. This has helped foster the growth of anarchism,
which is seen by many radicals as a system that is less prone to corruption and
is therefore a more viable alternative to the capitalist imperialist system.
Something that has remained
consistent among those in the radical left is the sense of international
solidarity. It was this solidarity that drew Japanese Red Army operatives to
conduct attacks in the name of their Palestinian comrades and inspired the
Provisional Irish Republican Army to train other Marxist revolutionaries in
bombmaking tradecraft in training camps in southern Yemen. Likewise,
present-day Italian and Argentine anarchists claim attacks for their imprisoned
Greek comrades.
While Greek and other European
anarchists have shared the Marxists' anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist
beliefs, they have yet to kill people to the extent the Marxists did in their
attacks. Bombing an ATM or setting a building on fire is a far cry from
kidnapping or assassinating a banker or industrialist. Sending a letter bomb to
an embassy is also quite different from the Nordeen and Welch assassinations.
Nevertheless, the shift from
attacks meant to cause property destruction to attacks meant to maim people --
sending letter bombs or kneecapping a nuclear engineer, for example -- is quite
disturbing. If the trend continues, it will not be a far jump to conduct
attacks meant to cause fatalities. The Revolutionary Struggle already made this
jump in their attacks against Greek police targets, and other anarchists could
follow suit. The fact that Italian anarchists have included shrapnel in their
letter bombs is another disturbing indicator that they may be making a similar
progression toward lethality.
The January 11, 2013, firebombing attacks against the homes of five journalists in Greece is also unsettling in that it brought violence to the homes, rather than the business offices, of the targets. Fire can be a very deadly weapon, and if the firebombing attacks against homes continue, it is only a matter of time before someone dies.
Although today's anarchists
lack the state sponsorship the Cold War-era European Marxist groups enjoyed in
terms of funding and obtaining weapons, the proximity of places like Greece and
Italy to the black arms markets in the Balkans and the Middle East means that
they will be able to readily obtain arms. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher
and the Serbian Zastava pistols found in the possession of Revolutionary
Struggle militants at the time of their arrests is a great example of the
availability of arms in the region.
Whereas Molotov cocktails,
camping gas canister bombs and letter bombs are fairly cheap, guns and rocket
launchers cost real money on the black market. Therefore, it will be important
to see if Greek anarchists begin moneymaking operations, such as bank robberies
and high-value kidnappings for ransom. Since anarchists tend to be more plugged
in to technology, indications of cybercrime should also be looked for.
Because the anarchist movement
is so interconnected, shifts in violence in places like Greece and Italy can
quickly translate into continentwide, even global, trends.
Scott Stewart, Vice President of Analysis, STRATFOR, March 14, 2013
"Greek's Radical Left: The Dangers of the Disaffected and the Unemployed is republished with permission of Stratfor."
Scott Stewart, Vice President of Analysis, STRATFOR, March 14, 2013
"Greek's Radical Left: The Dangers of the Disaffected and the Unemployed is republished with permission of Stratfor."
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