Can these people in Syria and Yemene resort to Che's "Guerrilla Warfare?"

[R_P_A_S]

Honestly... I just picked this book up at a free book store. They gave it to me because I gave them a book. Some downtown LA deal thing.. anyways.. First thing I read when I open this book up.. (maybe I should read on)..

1. Popular forces can win a war against the army.
2. It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.
3. In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.


How can the Syrian and Yemeni people "get armed?" Who has read this entire book? Do they have a shot alá Che Guevara: Guerrilla Warfare? without NATO?

[Zealot]

Yes they have a shot but NATO would go and co-opt it so I'm not sure what road to take.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yemen...Yemen's a mess. The president could barely hold that country together before the unrest in the Middle East, and once it started segments of his military started defecting almost immediately. The tribal/clan system is really strong there, much stronger than state power, somewhat like Somalia. An insurgency with the support of broad portions of the armed forces there is certainly possible, and indeed was happening around the time when a mortar almost landed on Saleh's fat head. :)

Syria is more difficult. The Assad regime actually has a certain degree of support there. The military is more reliable than other middle eastern militaries, although I've heard reports that their morale is going steadily downward since the beginning of the conflict.

I don't think that guerilla war is going to help things, though...it's really hard to be non-violent in the face of your people being massacred in the streets, as has happened in both Yemen and Syria, almost suicidal in fact, but if a tightly regimented insurgent force actually managed to take power and installed some military figure as head of state, perhaps with promises to western powers to be a good lil' strongman, that doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.

The middle east is a complicated part of the world. Ultimately I think that people are resisting period in a region that has been savagely repressed for over three decades is a huge positive development. If you were to tell political analysts in 2010 that one guy setting himself on fire would spark off social upheaval spreading from Morocco to Iraq it would've been laughed aside as fantasy.

[R_P_A_S]

How can these people have a fair shot? Without NATO or a foreign military?