Decline of "Fighting Communist Groups" (FCOs) in Europe

     From the late 1960s to the beginning of the 1990s the main
terrorist groups operating in Europe were what I have elsewhere
labelled "Anarchistic Leftist Terrorist" groups.  In 1984 there
were at least nine (9) such groups operating in Europe:

     Group Name with                    Nation-State in
     Standard Abbreviation              Group was Based

     Red Army Faction - RAF             German Federal Republic
     (a/k/a "Baader-Meinhof Gang")
     
     Red Brigades - BR                  Italy

     Prima Linea - PL                   Italy

     Direct Action - AD                 France

     Communist Combatant Cells - CCC    Belgium

     GRAPO (="Anti-Fascist              Spain
     Resistance Group of Oct. 1")

     Popular Force of April 15 - FL-25  Portugal

     Revolutionary Organization         Greece
     of November 17th - N17

     Dev Sol (=Devrimchi Sol;           Turkey
     "Revolutionary Left")

     As of late 1992 only three remained active, namely GRAPO, Dev
Sol, and N17.  Only Dev Sol has remained consistently active in the
period since 1992 and it is not known whether GRAPO and N17 are
defunct or merely currently inactive.  

     According to the analysis of Dennis A. Pluchinsky, analyst of
the Office of Intelligence and Threat Analysis, Bureau of
Diplomatic Security, of the United States Department of State, the
FCOs are dying out for similar reasons.  By examining the case of
the Red Army Faction, which is perhaps the most prominent of the
FCOs, he found elements of an internal crisis in that organization
that may be common to all other FCOs.  French analyst Xavier
Raufer's interview with a column commander of the Italian Red
Brigades, perhaps the second most notorious FCO, who so far has
eluded capture reveals that this organization experienced a similar
internal crisis that has led to its own demise.

Demise of the Red Army Faction

     The Red Army Faction dates from 1970, although its founding
members were engaged in anti-state terrorist activities as early as
1968.  Due to incorrect press accounts, which tended to portray
Andreas Baader and his girlfriend Ulrike Meinhof as a latter-day
"Bonnie and Clyde" team, the group became known as the "Baader-
Meinhof Gang," a name that it never applied to itself.  The main
nucleus of RAF consisted of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ennslin and Jan-
Carl Raspe.  Ulrike Meinhof was originally a left-wing journalist
covering the German far left who became a principal of this group
through her romantic attachment to Andreas Baader.  

     Unlike many other FCOs the RAF has succeeded in perpetuating
itself through at least three generations of leaders and possibly
four:

     1970-1972                Original leadership, arrested in
                              1972; all committed suicide in 1977
                              Agenda: to topple the West German
                              state using Marighella strategy
     1972-1977                Second leadership; Agenda: to
                              break original leadership out of
                              prison in order to restore original
                              agenda of toppling W. German state;
                              most of this leadership killed by
                              Israeli army rescuers in Entebbe raid
                              of 1976 and GSG-9 [West Germany's
                              elite counter-terrorist brigade] raid
                              on Mogadishu Airport in 1977
     1977-1989                Third leadership; set aside strategy
                              of break-out of original leaders [all
                              dead] in favor of propaganda campaign
                              against alleged summary execution,
                              torture, and isolation of remaining
                              imprisoned RAF members.  Sporadic
                              but spectacular anti-state and anti-
                              NATO attacks continued.
     1989-1992+               Possible change of leadership hinted
                              in 10 April 1992 communique
                              indicating due to confusion in ranks
                              of commandos over correct ideological
                              interpretation of the collapse of
                              international communism;  Agenda: to
                              fight attempts to integrate the
                              former East Germany into "Greater
                              Germany"

     A  2,335 word communique was issued by the "Commando" of the
RAF dated 10 April 1992, the first half consisting of a self-
criticism of the strategy of the group and the second half
containing a "conditional unilateral cease-fire."  Follow-up
communiques of 29 June 1992 and a 58 page document issued in August
1992 reiterated the cease-fire and outlined reasons why the group
decided it would no longer engage in anti-state terror.

     To understand the significance of these communiques it is
necessary to understand the structure of RAF:

     I---------------------I            Above-ground supporters
     I   "sympathizers"    I            who provide support short
     I---------V-----------I            of criminal actions
               V
     I---------V-----------I            RAF members who provide
     I   "resistance"      I            support sufficient to make
     I---------V-----------I            them accessories or       
               V                        accomplices to RAF crimes
     I---------V-----------I
     I   "the commando"    I            The ten or so members who
     I---------------------I            carry out actual crimes

     RAF counts those members of the resistance and commando who
have been arrested, convicted and imprisoned as a special class of
RAF heros who are still considered to be active members of RAF even
though they cannot act.  In reality although the sympathizers and
resistance together form a front and support network unlike other
terrorist organizations in which the military branch is nominally
subject to the political wing, the radical ideology of the RAF
holds the "Commando" members to be the front-lien soldiers and
workers who exercise vanguard leadership over the non-commando
members.  This authoritarian and highly elitist notion has
alienated support from the rest of the radical left in Germany many
of whom viewed the antics of RAF as destructive to the cause of the
left in West Germany.  Those "prisoners" who were not commando
members are given honorary status along with imprisoned commando
members as members of the "commando."  The fiction of their active
membership and leadership was maintained by using them as the
mouthpiece for announcing all communiques of RAF.  In spite of West
German efforts to break down individual imprisoned RAF members
through isolation from each other (and also to prevent a mass
break-out) by sending the 40 or so RAF prisoners to 18 different
prisons and keeping RAF prisoners in the same prison isolated from
each other the RAF commando has maintained communications with them
through its lawyers (members of its sympathizer wing) who enjoy
client-lawyer privileges of confidentiality and private meetings
under West German constitutional provisions of civil liberties. 
Thus West German authorities have had to endure the spectacle of
several imprisoned RAF members isolated from each other delivering
the same RAF communiques verbatim on certain occasions.

     The fact that the commando dispensed with this formal pretence
by issuing the 10 April 1992 communique themselves is significant. 
In effect they were also serving notice as much to their own
constituency of prisoners, resistance members and sympathizers that
they would not carry on the armed struggle.

Key Contents of the Communiques

     In the 10 April 1992 communique the following passages occur:

     "In 1989, we, the RAF, began to apply more thought and
     discussion to the understanding that, for us and for all of
     those who have a record of resistance in the Federal Republic
     of Germany, things cannot go on as they have done . . . 

     "Our starting point is that, first of all, we are facing a
     completely changed situation regarding the international
     balance of power---the dissolution of the socialist state
     system and the end of the cold war.
          
     "We were faced with the fact that we had failed to accomplish
     our objective, namely to achieve  a breakthrough in the joint
     international struggle for liberation.  The liberation
     struggles were essentially too weak to hold their own against
     the imperialist war . . .

     "The collapse of the socialist states, which was due
     essentially to unsolved internal inconsistencies, has had a
     disastrous effect on the millions of people throughout the
     world, and now all those who are fighting for liberation will
     have to rely solely on themselves . . . 

     "We ourselves were confronted with the fact that the policy we
     pursued in the years before 1989 did not strengthen us
     politically but weakened us.  For the most varied reasons we
     no longer managed to attract people here as would have been
     necessary to make a joint action possible. . .
     
     "We have come to realize that we must look out for people and
     that a situation in which we, the commando, make all the
     decisions ourselves, while the others have to follow us,
     cannot go on.  Although we might often put it differently,
     that was the reality."

     The major "conditions" attached to this "conditional cease-
fire" pertained to the treatment of the remaining RAF prisoners. 
RAF had in the past demanded the unconditional release of all RAF
prisoners in its terms for the exchange of West German businessmen
it had kidnapped but without promising an cessation of the armed
struggle.  Here it announced its unilateral cease-fire and demanded
only that the longest imprisoned members and those who were
seriously ill and physically incapacitated, be released.  For the
remainder of the prisoners it demanded little more that
"collocation," i.e. ending their confinement in isolation and
allowing the remaining prisoners to be housed together in one wing
of one prison.  

     Many West German authorities were skeptical of the communique
which was issued just ten days after RAF had murdered Detlev
Rohdewedder, the West German businessmen appointed to oversee the
privatization of the formerly state-owned East German firms and
industries which had been temporarily made part of a government
trust by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany.  Hard-
line Christian Democrat conservatives believed it was merely a
temporizing tactic and that RAF would go on the offensive again
even if their demands were met.  Many Raf sympathizers and
resistance members were horrified that the commando appeared to be
ready to throw in the towel and they published their own
remonstrances in radical left-wing tabloids urging the RAF commando
to carry on the armed struggle and vowing their continued support.

     The significance of the communique thus has to be determined
1. by the German government's handling of the prisoner issue, 2. by
the content of the June and August communiques, and 3. by what RAF
has done since the last of these communiques.

The "Myth of the Prisoners"

     With the defection of seven of the RAF prisoners who have
decided to cooperate with German authorities, with the arrests in
1991 of several former commandos and resistance members who had
been hiding in East Germany and the surrender to West German police
of East German intelligence files maintained on the RAF, it is now
known that RAF had been suffering in its ability to continue
recruiting sympathizers and resistance members from which the ranks
of commandos could be replenished.  Prior to 1984 recruits into RAF
had been attracted by the leftist anarchistic message of RAF. 
Those recruited after 1984 had largely been radicalized and
mobilized into RAF by its propaganda campaign regarding the alleged
torture, murder and mistreatment of RAF prisoners.  By 1989 the
leadership in the commando was largely made up of persons recruited
after 1984.  In other words if the issue of the prisoners were
resolved that leadership would no longer have a rationale for
continuing the struggle and nor would RAF have any selling point
for recruiting new blood to maintain the organization.  Apparently
they had calculated that the new mass of recently unemployed East
Germans who had not assimilated into the West German mainstream and
who were fast becoming an underclass despised by their West German
compatriots as "Deutsche Democratishe Schweinen" (="East German
pigs") might provide recruits and that the assassination of
Rodhewedder, whose privatization work was turning many East Germans
into the ranks of the unemployed, would spark some response by this
class of those being "oppressed" by "Greater Germany."  In fact
most East Germans had little awareness of or sympathy for the
largely West German RAF members who had turned their backs on a
middle class background that most East Germans hungered for.  Since
there was little revolutionary rational left for RAF in the post-
Cold War era the only issues binding together the group were their
continued status as a criminal group being hunted by West German
police and the status of the RAF prisoners.

The Kinkel Initiative

     Following the revelation of RAF's recruiting difficulties
Justice Minister Klaus Kinkel initiated a review of the RAF
prisoners in January 1992.  From January 1992 to September 1992
five RAF prisoners were released, four of them resistance members
and the fifth a commando member whose ill health meant he would be
unlikely to take up arms again.  The release of this commando took
place on 14 May 1992, just one month after the 13 April 1992
publication of the 10 April communique, and can be regarded as a
positive acknowledgement of the RAF communique since the released
commando, Gunter Sonnenberg, was one of those whose release had
been specifically demanded by that communique.

     In response to outraged Christian Democratic protests Justice
Minister Kinkel stated to Der Spiegel on April 20, 1992 that
"without the prisoner issue there could no longer a Red Army
Faction."  In September 1992 40 RAF prisoners remained, 18 of the
resistance members with 15 year sentences and 22 commandos with
life sentences.  West German law requires prisoners to complete
their terms but also, in the case of those convicted of terrorist
or "anti-Constitutional activities" the parolee must renounce
further armed struggle or anti-government activities.

     In the follow-up communiques RAF signaled that it would not
return to armed struggle:

     ". . . With the global balance of power, we saw our local
     struggle for revolution as a part of the international anti-
     imperialist liberation front.  Our immediate goal was the
     achievement of a breakthrough for liberation through a
     simultaneous international struggle . . .

     "There is no question that we consider resistance to the power
     politics of Greater Germany domestically and internationally
     important; and the process that is necessary now certainly
     cannot be only a process of discussions,  But we are convinced
     that at this point, we cannot further this process through
     military operations . . .

     "With our letter of April 10 we concluded a whole long phase
     of our history.  This is our decision, that we now want this
     process of reflection and reorientation for the development on
     our part.  That has nothing to do with the state. . . 

     "We want our imprisoned comrades, and the imprisoned fighters
     from all liberations struggles to have expectations for a real
     life; we want this for all and together with all those who
     want to struggle for a life with human dignity for themselves
     and the oppressed and disenfranchised all over this world."

     The final confirmation of the reality of the voluntary demise
of RAF is that since 1992 there have been no further RAF actions.

     Dennis Pluchinsky analyzed the demise of RAF[see "Germany's
Red Army Faction:  An Obituary,"  STUDIES IN CONFLICT AND
TERRORISM, 16(2):135-157 (1993)] as being due to:

     1.   Ideological Exhaustion:  The collapse of the Soviet
          Union, the Eastern Bloc and of international communism as
          a coherent alternative to western capitalist liberal
          democracy dealt a heavy blow to the self-confidence and
          morale of the organization.  If the Soviet Union as a
          military superpower could not stand up to western
          "imperialism," how could a small group of lightly-armed
          revolutionaries hope to do so?
     2.   Organizational Isolation: By going underground RAF
          would never effectively lead the German left nor
          could if form effective long-lasting coordination
          with other FCOs in Europe or elsewhere beyond
          a few joint operations.  With the demise of the
          other European FCOs that prospect died.
     3.   Strategic Confusion:  Without an "international struggle
          for liberation" with which to synchronize one's own
          campaign there was no compass for future action left
          within the organization.

     I would add one other consideration, namely that these would-
be professional revolutionaries were tiring of the unnatural
clandestine life and themselves yearned for "a real life." 
Although this sentiment was originally expressed in their June
communique for those RAF members still in the FRG prisons in a
sense it applied to themselves as well for the RAF had become, in
effect, a prison for those in its commando wing.