War of independence
A war of independence is a conflict in which a nation fights to win a state of its own. In January 1961, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. The phrase sounds simple, but it hides a dispute. The very same fighting can be called a liberation by one side and an insurgency or rebellion by the other. This documentary asks who gets to decide which name fits. It asks what international law says about a people's right to take up arms, and how such wars are actually fought. It follows the pattern from Haiti in the 1790s to South Sudan in 2011. Along the way it asks why outside powers keep choosing sides.
Insurgency and rebellion are the words used from a different point of view for the same conflicts that rebels call wars of independence. The core idea is a war against foreign powers, or at least a power perceived as foreign, fought to create a separate sovereign state for the rebelling nationality.
The phrase "war of national liberation" is used most often for the decolonization movement. Those wars were fought mostly in the third world, against Western powers and their economic influence. They were also a major part of the Cold War. Because of that setting, the phrase has often been applied selectively, as a way to criticize the foreign power involved.
Who is entitled to fight is not only a matter of labels. It is also a legal question, and states have answered it differently.
International law generally holds that a people with a legal right to self-determination may wage wars of national liberation. Agreement ends there, because states classify these wars in opposing ways. Western states tend to see them as civil wars. Third World and communist states tend to see them as international wars.
That difference in classification matters in practice. It leads to varying views about which laws of war apply once the shooting starts.
On one point the disagreement has closed. Today every state agrees in principle that using force to frustrate a people's legal right to self-determination is unlawful.
Guerrilla warfare and terrorism are the usual methods of wars of national liberation. Groups labeled as national liberation movements have often relied on them, frequently with support from other states.
These wars generally depend on widespread public support. Ordinary civilians provide crucial help to the fighters.
A darker pattern appears when the nation is defined in ethnic terms. Wars fought to liberate such a nation have often involved ethnic cleansing or genocide, aimed at ridding the claimed territory of other population groups.
The tradition is old. The Swedish War of Liberation, fought from 1521 to 1523, appears among the earliest struggles that have been described as national liberation conflicts.
The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 set self-liberated slaves against Imperial France, and it can be counted among the first wars of national liberation. It came at a time when the American and French Revolutions had raised national consciousness across the Atlantic world. From 1808 to 1833, Spanish American patriots fought royalists in a series of complex wars that produced new Latin American states. The Siege of Patras in 1821 opened the Greek War of Independence, which ended Ottoman domination and led to the Kingdom of Greece. Discontent with British company rule in India produced the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857-1858, which is sometimes described as the First War of Independence of India.
The Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin eventually led to the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1921. That war ended with the establishment of the Irish Free State.
The First World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution reshaped the map again. The Bolsheviks fought a number of independence movements without success, until Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland gained independence. The Ukrainian People's Republic fought its own war of independence from 1917 to 1921, and it ended up absorbed into a Soviet republic. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish National Movement fought campaigns from 1919 to 1922. Allied forces withdrew, and the Republic of Turkey was established.
Ireland's story did not end in 1921. The Provisional IRA insurgency ran from 1969 until 1998, with the aim of creating a socialist republic within a united Ireland.
In 1916, Lenin published Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which theorized the concept of imperialism itself. After the Russian Revolution, the revolutionary goals of communism and socialism were shared by many anticolonialist leaders. That overlap explains the objective alliance between anticolonial forces and Marxism.
Ho Chi Minh shows how the two currents met. He was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1921. He founded the Viet-Minh in 1941. Following the 1945 August Revolution, he declared the independence of Vietnam on the 2nd of September 1945.
The Soviet Union claimed to be an anti-imperialist power. It supported replacing Western-backed governments with local Communist or other non pro-Western parties, and it backed some of these wars vocally or materially. Critics saw the same involvement as a way to enlarge the Soviet Bloc and its influence, and so a form of imperialism in itself.
The People's Republic of China called the Soviet Union social imperialist. China presented itself as a model of independent nationalist development outside Western influence. It was regarded as a threat to Western power, and it regarded itself as one. It used its resources to help movements politically, economically and militarily, as in Vietnam.
Many struggles from these years were considered national liberation wars by the rebelling sides. They included the Indonesian War of Independence of 1945-1949, the Liberation of Irian Jaya of 1960-1962, and the First Indochina War of 1946-1954. They also included the Vietnam War of 1959-1975, the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and the Algerian War of 1954-1962. The African National Congress's struggle against the apartheid regime is another example. Most of these rebellions had some Soviet support.
Soviet help was not the only outside aid. In the 1960s, Cuba under Fidel Castro supported national liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique.
The Portuguese colonial wars finally ended in 1975, when Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau were recognized as independent states. The change followed the April Carnation Revolution.
In Rhodesia, the Bush War became a scene of guerrilla warfare and terrorism by factions of ZANLA and ZAPU. White-majority rule came to an end in 1979. The Lancaster House Agreement then led to the independence of Zimbabwe in April 1980.
The label did not disappear with the Cold War. In February 1991, a coalition led by the United States launched a ground offensive to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. The breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 produced several smaller wars of independence, among them the Ten-Day War and the Croatian War of Independence. After the Rwandan genocide, the AFDL invaded Zaire and overthrew the regime of Mobutu. The country's name reverted to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In the first Libyan Civil War of 2011, an uprising grew into a rebellion that toppled the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The National Transitional Council then declared the liberation of Libya from 42 years of his rule.
The longest of these struggles came to a formal end the same year. The South Sudanese wars of independence ran from 1955 to 1972 and again from 1983 to 2005, and they culminated in the independence of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011.
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a national liberation movement with official recognition of its legal status as such. The African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania were also national liberation movements in the Organization of African Unity at that time. The PLO is the only non-African national liberation movement to hold observer status there. It was one of the first such movements granted permanent observer status by the United Nations General Assembly, under a 1974 resolution. It also takes part in UN Security Council debates. Since 1988, it has represented the Palestinian people at the UN under the name "Palestine".
Other designations remain controversial. Many Chechens and foreign observers consider the First and Second Chechen Wars to be wars of national liberation against Russia. Some Iraqi insurgent groups, and certain political groups, believe the Iraq War was a war of national liberation against the US-led coalition. Many Kurds hold that the Kurdish-Turkish conflict is a war of national liberation for the Kurdish people in Turkey.
The Polisario Front has sought the independence of Western Sahara since 1973. It considers its war against Morocco a national liberation war, as do many foreign observers, countries and the African Union. The United Nations has recognized it as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people. A cease-fire and settlement plan in 1991 called for a referendum on self-determination. That referendum was never held, and hostilities resumed in 2020.
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Common questions
What is a war of independence?
A war of independence, also called a war of national liberation or war of liberation, is a conflict fought by a nation to gain independence. It is usually waged against foreign powers, or a power perceived as foreign, to establish a separate sovereign state for the rebelling nationality.
Why is a war of independence also called an insurgency or rebellion?
The name depends on point of view. The side fighting for a state calls it a war of independence, while the ruling power describes the same conflict as an insurgency or a rebellion.
Is a war of independence legal under international law?
International law generally holds that a people with a legal right to self-determination may wage wars of national liberation. All states today agree in principle that using force to frustrate that right is unlawful.
How are wars of independence usually fought?
Wars of national liberation are usually fought with guerrilla warfare and terrorism. They generally depend on widespread public support, with ordinary civilians providing crucial help to the fighters.
Which was one of the first wars of independence in modern history?
The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 can be considered one of the first wars of national liberation. It pitted self-liberated slaves against Imperial France.
What did Nikita Khrushchev say about wars of independence in 1961?
In January 1961, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. Critics viewed Soviet involvement as a way to increase the size and influence of the Soviet Bloc.
Which movements are recognized as national liberation movements in a war of independence context?
The Palestine Liberation Organization holds official recognition as a national liberation movement. The African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania were also national liberation movements in the Organization of African Unity.
All sources
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