Parallel Organizations
The NLF and PIRA, as well as other movements, have chosen to have parallel political and military organizations. In the case of the NLF, other than some individuals with sanctuary in North Vietnam, the political organization could not be overt during the Vietnam War. After the war ended, surviving NLF officials held high office.
In the case of the PIRA, its political wing, Sinn Féin, became increasingly overt, and then a full participant in politics. Hamas and Hezbollah also have variants of overt political/social service and covert military wings.
The overt political-covert military split avoided the inflexibility of a completely secret organization. Once an active insurgency began, the secrecy could limited freedom of action, distort information about goals and ideals, and restrict communication within the insurgency. In a split organization the public issues can be addressed overtly, while military actions were kept covert and intelligence functions stay clandestine.
Read more about this topic: Clandestine Cell System
Famous quotes containing the word parallel:
“The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, jealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement.”
—Ashley Montagu (b. 1905)