Search

The escalation of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) into interstate wars has been studied extensively with opportunity and willingness frameworks. In this article, we conceptualize and operationalize proto-insurgencies as a civil war equivalent to MIDs. Just as most MIDs do not escalate into interstate war, most proto-insurgencies never make the key tactical transitions needed to produce the onset of civil war. We separately examine proto-insurgency formation and proto-insurgency escalation to onset. We find that proto-insurgency formation is associated with political persecution, such as denial of access to justice, regime corruption, and mid-range levels of repression. Our theoretical focus is on how state repressive violence creates diffusion effects that push proto-insurgencies toward the tactical transitions that enable the escalation to civil war. Proto-insurgency escalation to civil war onset is driven by high levels of state repressive violence directed against proto-insurgency and its area of origin. This leads to the dispersal of proto-insurgents and the displacement of surrounding populations, inducing the spread of state repression to a larger number of administrative units. This creates the foundation for guerrilla warfare and establishes the conditions for rebels to offer sanctuary to displaced persons in return for active support, marking the onset of civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the full-scale military invasion of the occupying country, the national security of Ukraine required drastic and urgent actions both on the battlefield and to ensure security within the state. The search for alternative and more effective ways of obtaining and transmitting information in the defense and security sector is an important issue for achieving peace in our country. The current state of repelling military aggression prompts Ukrainian society to format information and analytical support on new tracks and rapid training of personnel. The discovery of collaborators and aids of the aggressor country in the temporarily occupied territories among modern Ukrainians became a new resistance in the modern war. This phenomenon does not create a positive dynamic in expelling the occupier from Ukrainian land, which is due to betrayal, assistance and the need to fight against such elements. Modern war emphasizes the need to neutralize the enemy not only on the battlefield, but also in the middle of our country. In this aspect, receiving and transmitting information in the defense and security sector will make a significant contribution to achieving a positive result. The development of events without the appropriate armament conditions decision-making and their implementation in a way that does not correspond to traditional military tactics. Skillful processing of the received information can lead to a change in the situation on the battlefield in the shortest possible time. The use of traditional guerrilla warfare in modern conditions must be adapted to military practices and the latest technologies. However, this aspect is due to the lack of opportunities and the necessary support for the implementation of the assigned operational and service-combat tasks. In such conditions, the acquisition of skills in relevant fields before the onset of critical and/ or emergency situations becomes an important issue. After all, professional orientation involves understanding and internal perception of the goals and tasks of professional activity. The changes taking place in the content of professional orientation are reflected in the fact that they strengthen the motives related to professional activity, call for a desire to conscientiously perform one’s official duties, the desire to show oneself as a qualified specialist and achieve success not only at work, but also on the battlefield with the enemy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an interview with Marwan Abd el-'Al, a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), conducted in Beirut's Mar Elias refugee camp. The interview covers various topics, including the inception of the PFLP and its early years in Lebanon, the consequences of the wartime period in Lebanon for Palestinians, the priorities and goals of the PFLP in today's Lebanese context, the PFLP's position on the revolutionary movement in Lebanon in 2019, and the rising popularity of Ghassan Kanafani's work. The interview provides insights into the political and social situation faced by Palestinians in Lebanon and the role of the PFLP in advocating for their rights. Another part of the text focuses on Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian writer and political figure. The author discusses Kanafani's literature and its reflection of the Palestinian people's experiences and struggles. They also explore Kanafani's involvement in the PFLP and his contributions to the organization's political and organizational strategies. The author emphasizes Kanafani's dedication to the Palestinian cause and his belief in the role of culture in supporting resistance. They also address the controversy surrounding Kanafani's political affiliation and his assassination by Israel. Overall, the text provides insights into Kanafani's political and literary legacy. [Extracted from the article]

Existing literature on the anti-Francoist guerrilla has focused on the origins, development and decline of guerrilla parties. However, many aspects of the irregular war of 1936–1952 that pitted rebel forces, and later the Francoist dictatorship, against Republican resistance fighters remain unexplored. Historians have often cited civil guards as sources on killings and torture that took place in spaces of anti-guerrilla warfare, and the violence employed by the guerrilla has also been the subject of a significant amount of research. In contrast, this article looks at how civil guards deployed in the irregular war and guerrilla fighters not only interacted peacefully, but in fact came to establish non-aggression pacts as a survival strategy. The existence of such agreements was known not only to the men on both sides, but also to the civilian population and the dictatorship itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars often explain political violence by highlighting factors such as state weakness. This article shifts the analysis to a focus on state character. More specifically, the article analyses how the growth of revolutionary violence in 1960s Colombia was shaped by the earlier period of the National Front (1958–1964). This earlier period is crucial to understanding the outbreak of revolutionary violence because it gave rise to a project of state reorganization which refashioned the relationship between dominant and subaltern groups. The reorganization of alliances under the National Front helped to significantly reduce inter-party violence, but because of the way in which the form of state was reorganized, the National Front produced new conditions of conflict, which culminated in the growth of revolutionary violence. In making this case it is argued that the birth of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), reflected through the military offensive against Marquetalia in 1964, can only be effectively captured by appreciating how dominant forces implemented a state reorganization project, which produced new dynamics of conflict and ultimately failed to incorporate key subaltern groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Saber & Scroll Historical Journal is the property of Policy Studies Organization and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After World War II, the struggle for independence in Southeast Asia was complicated by the onset of the Cold War and the involvement of major external powers in the region, especially the People's Republic of China (PRC). Amid Cold War tensions, an opportunity arose for détente in Malaya in the early 1950s, despite the failure of peace talks between the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and the Malayan government. This opportunity arose from the PRC's proclaimed embrace of peaceful coexistence. Chinese leaders adopted the policy in the expectation that the new Malayan government would defer to China's wishes. This expectation proved unfounded; the government of independent Malaya had no desire to be subservient to the PRC. The adverse turn of events for China, and the subsequent emergence of a rift between Moscow and Beijing, thwarted efforts to establish formal ties between the MCP and the Malayan government, prompting the Malayan Communists to resume their campaign of guerrilla warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the underground tunnel network at Khirbet Midras, revealing the challenges faced by the Bar Kokhba rebels. Topics include the guerrilla tactics employed by Bar Kokhba's fighters, the intricate cave systems used as hideouts, and the ultimate failure of the rebellion against the Romans.

This article examines a selection of references to the figure of Lawrence of Arabia in Fenoglio’s work, direct quotations from his writings, his recollections, and personal re-elaborations, thus expanding the list of already familiar allusions. On these premises and through the limited documentary sources available, this study attempts to reconstruct Fenoglio’s approach to T. E. Lawrence’s texts and to demonstrate how the ways in which the war experience is represented in Seven Pillars constitute the basis for the overcoming of autobiographism in Appunti partigiani and the creation of an epic of resistance. Aiming to deliver fully original outcomes, Fenoglio carefully oscillates between affiliation and detachment, as shown by one of the best-known episodes from Partigiano Johnny – the investiture of the hero, when read in connection with Lawrence’s source.

In the first years of the twentieth century, the British government came to recognize the value of espionage for the defense of the empire. This was a logical outgrowth of increasing anxieties about the intentions of the German Kaiser and the experience of the Anglo-Boer War, in which a numerically superior British army found itself in a protracted battle with local forces skilled in the art of guerrilla warfare. Espionage fiction by writers such as Rudyard Kipling, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Erskine Childers, William Le Queux, and John Buchan used the example of the Anglo-Boer War to draw attention to the deficiencies in imperial intelligence, the potential threats to the empire, and the role of civilian patriots in thwarting internal and external threats. Espionage fiction educated British readers to perceive a need for systematic intelligence gathering, which ran counter to the democratic nature to which the British aspired. The popularity of non-professional patriotic spies as protagonists of mass market fiction allowed for the development of a broad popular constituency in favor of greater government commitment to intelligence gathering. And while this popular enthusiasm was beneficial to the Tory Party, it was not driven solely by conservative politicians, but rather by populist pressure stemming from mass culture inspired by literary reflections on the Anglo-Boer War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Trashumante. Revista Americana de Historia Social is the property of Universidad de Antioquia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociedad y Economia is the property of Universidad del Valle and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article explores the interaction between sociological and historical knowledge using the example of Pitirim Sorokin’s theory of revolution and the methodological views of Marc Bloch. To achieve this goal, a general overview of the work «Sociology of Revolution» by an American researcher was conducted, and the identity of the methodological approaches presented therein to studying revolutionary processes with the questionnaire technique of a French historian was revealed. The obtained results allowed for the utilization of Pitirim Sorokin’s developments as a methodological framework by Marc Bloch for analyzing an archival document describing the Zvenyhorod uprising in the territory of Kyiv province in June 1918. As a result, it was demonstrated that constructing a questionnaire based on sociological theory is an important task for a researcher working in the field of historical sociology and sociology of revolutions. The use of the proposed methodological framework enables the enhancement of the quality of socio-historical knowledge, as the researcher can documentarily reproduce the life of society experiencing revolutionary conditions. Given close cooperation between sociologists and historians regarding the development of questionnaires, the coordination of procedures for selecting primary materials and methods of analysis, there is a real possibility of a documentary turn in historical sociology and sociology of revolutions in the future. A direct outcome of such processes could be the establishment of a proper methodological and empirical basis for the emergence of qualitatively new research in the field of sociology of revolutions, ultimately allowing sociologists to utilize more reliable sources for analyzing the causes, course, and consequences of revolutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cuban Revolution has inspired the guerrilla struggle in Latin America. Ernesto 'Che' Guevara was directly involved in processes that contributed to the organization of guerrilla forces in various Latin American countries. In this article, we argue that already at the beginning of the 1960s Guevara started to help organize and coordinate the organization of the revolutionary armed struggle in the Latin American continent. He considered that local socialist revolutions would not be able to survive if these were not accompanied by revolutionary struggle in other parts of Latin America. This paper presents Guevara's ideas on the necessity of continental revolution, in the context of United States military interventions in Latin America. It describes in detail Cuba's and Che's involvement in the organization of various guerrilla activities in South America, and demonstrates that guerrilla processes in Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina were the first stones for the development of continental guerrilla warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Che Guevara's life as a public figure (1959-1967) coincided with the golden years of the Cuban Revolution. Ernesto Guevara became Che Guevara, a glorified revolutionary guerrilla comandante and theoretician of guerrilla warfare in this short period. Especially during the sixties his texts on guerrilla strategy were studied and applied by many insurgents in Latin America and the Caribbean. Paradoxically, he supervised or was directly in charge of three ill-fated guerrilla campaigns in Bolivia/Argentina (1963/64), the Congo (1965), and again Bolivia (1966/67). The themes of this article are (1) a discussion about the use and evolution of the rural foco approach, for many followers the guiding doctrine of armed insurgency; (2) Che's three guerrilla campaigns and the reasons for failure; (3) the rural foco approach as implemented by other Latin American guerrilla leaders; and (4) some concluding remarks about post-foco guerrilla warfare in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Saber & Scroll Historical Journal is the property of Policy Studies Organization and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In ethno-territorial civil wars, which factors influence whether rebels choose and retain conventional warfare as their primary military strategy throughout the conflict, or whether they use guerrilla warfare as a primary strategy during periods judged to be less advantageous to conventional warfare? The existing literature almost exclusively emphasizes relative power as the determining factor: rebels use guerrilla warfare because they typically lack the capability to fight conventional wars effectively against states. I find some support for this hypothesis: ethno-territorial rebels are much more likely to fight exclusively conventional wars when external states intervene conventionally on the rebel side. I also find that rebel leaders with more intense, far-reaching nationalist goals are more likely to employ guerrilla warfare as a primary war strategy. For such leaders, the higher costs of using guerrilla methods pending an eventual transition to conventional warfare are made more acceptable by a higher valuation of the far-reaching gains delivered by military victory—gains expected to be made more likely by interim periods in which guerrilla warfare is the primary strategy. Turning to other factors, I do not find that status quo conditions or a high level of state democracy have a significant influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of a book has expanded and, from the old cultural guerrilla war with mass media such as television, digital culture has promoted a more effective adherence to screens as supports for writing and reading. From these practices, it can be said that, in a not very peaceful way, literature admitted the transition between the verbal and the non-verbal, as well as in the context of digital poetics, animation and sound that are also incorporated into creative language. In this sense, this article intends to discuss the reconfigurations of the book in the context of transformations in communication technologies driven by the digital and the impact of technological writings on reading processes, using theoretical references by Michel Melot (2012), Robert Scholes (1989), Roger Chartier (1999, 2004, 2010), Umberto Eco (2005), Alckmar Luiz dos Santos (2003), Katherine Hayles (2009), and Rui Torres (2004). In this way, it was possible to discuss some points of the current reading process, aiming at the contribution to a reflection on digital reading, as well as to problematize the book in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at a hitherto undeveloped area of the historiography of the Rhodesian Bush War/Zimbabwe War of Liberation, namely the ways in which the guerrilla forces presented themselves in their propaganda. The war in Rhodesia was a major media conflict and so the guerrilla forces had to carefully cultivate their image both domestically and on the international scene. ZANU and ZAPU knew that they had to overcome potential sources of negative press, surrounding, among other things, their early lack of military success, the nature of the insurgent war that they fought, and accusations of terrorism. It is argued here that they were able to generate a successful narrative which countered criticism, and that they were able to offer their supporters and sponsors a positive, dynamic version of the guerrilla forces in Rhodesia. Their propaganda may have lacked subtlety at times, however it was effective in portraying the guerrilla forces as viable challengers to the Rhodesian Security Forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the work of Julian, a former guerrilla fighter in Colombia who now operates a mobile library to bring books and ideas to remote areas of the country. Julian travels to villages without libraries, inviting the community to borrow books and organizing reading and storytelling workshops. He also interacts with soldiers and former guerrillas, lending them books and fostering understanding between them. The article highlights the oppressive social conditions in Colombia and the role that violence and armed groups play in offering opportunities or ways out. Julian believes that reading texts from enemies can help people understand different perspectives and challenge their own biases, and he hopes that his library can foster empathy and reconciliation among those involved in the conflict. [Extracted from the article]

The 1932 Battle of Shanghai was the first instance of a modern war waged in a large city. This paper examines how the conflict unfolded from one urban district--Zhabei--to a large area north of the city, all the way to Wusong, from a densely populated and built-up urban area to the countryside; and how the conflict's nature and the balance of power shifted drastically. The Japanese army was not prepared to wage a war that, in its first phase, amounted to an urban guerrilla campaign by the Chinese, while the displacement into rural areas played to the advantage of the Chinese troops. This paper looks at the crucial role spatial factors played in the successes and failures of the contending armies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses how the Tet Offensive of the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong in 1968, the turning point of the Vietnam War, achieved political victory despite a military defeat. War, in general, and guerrilla struggle, in particular, is a process of violent events involving political goals. In this sense, one of the most important goals of the armed struggle is to impose the superiority of the will on the opponent with the least loss of life. Psychology is among the most important variables of this challenge. As a matter of fact, the greatest success in war is to break the resistance of the opponent by keeping the damage to a minimum. In this context, guerrilla warfare, as a war of attrition that includes unconventional warfare methods, is a field of study revealing psychological elements. This study aims to explain the strategic nature of guerrilla warfare through the example of the Tet Offensive in 1968. The Tet Offensive, which has been widely accepted in the literature to be the turning point of the Vietnam War, is essential in understanding how a military defeat can achieve political success. This military attack, in which the Viet Kong guerrillas suffered seven times more damage than their adversaries, drove the adversaries of Viet Kong guerrillas into despair about the Vietnam War. This study analyses how the Tet Offensive achieved political victory despite a military defeat. The historical limitation of the study is between 1967 and 1975. The study is expected to contribute to Turkish literature by examining the issue of guerrilla warfare through the Tet Offensive. The analysis shows that the intangible dimensions of the war such as psychological aspects can be one of the determining factors of the war in terms of its capacity and the impact it creates.

The article analyzes the evolution of complicated relations between the Communist Party of Venezuela and the Communist Party of Cuba in the 60s and 70s of XX century. Both Communist Parties originally were very close and had aided to each other during both the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions of 1958-1959. After the triumph of Castroist forces in Cuba, the Venezuelan leftists tried to repeat the successes obtained by Cuban Rebels in Venezuelan soil and started full-scale rural and urban guerrilla. However, the failure of this armed struggle not only led the PCV to abandon the guerrilla activities, but also initiated a serie of energic debates between Cuban and Venezuelan communista. Based on the documents of the International Department of the CC of the CPSU kept in Moscow (in the RGANI archive), the published memoirs, the international communist hemerography, as also publications by the Cuban and Soviet media, the authors try to recover a little-known aspects of the history of the Communist Party of Venezuela in the past centurу.

Mission 204, a mixed British and Australian force, operated in Nationalist China from 1942 to 1945 with the objective of training Nationalist guerrillas. Historians have tended to focus only on the mission's record in 1942, when British and Australian commandos deployed to eastern Jiangxi Province and suffered from a high incidence of disease. This paper not only reframes the narrative concerning 1942, but also argues that the mission met with success from 1943 to 1945, due to adaptations in the mission’s force structure and an increased willingness to suit Chinese desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Union war effort west of the Appalachians during the American Civil War depended on the ability to supply and defend the massive Union depot in Nashville, Tennessee. Detailed analysis of the logistical problems in supplying Nashville Depot from late February 1862 through April 1865—via the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Cumberland River—reveals how the depot was able to support the thousands of Federal troops occupying the city, and also feed, clothe, and arm nearly 150,000 troops during periods of significant guerrilla insurgency. Logistical necessity required control of the Cumberland River from its mouth on the Ohio River to Nashville, and the U.S. Navy was essential to this strategic imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As different disciplines of social sciences potently assert the fundamental changes in the nature of international relations, non-traditional actors of power-struggle take their presence in studies that focus on evaluating this contemporary transformation. Concordantly, Iran's adaptation to the transformation of international-setting and acts towards creating non-traditional/proxy actor networks through its intelligence communities for expanding its sphere of influence and achieving its regional strategic goals lay the argumentation basis of this study. The study investigates the role of the Quds Force, a branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in constructing and maintaining Iran's proxy network. In aforementioned context, it concludes that the Quds Force functionalizes its capabilities in intelligence gathering, guerrilla warfare, and covert operations to provide financial resources, military training, and guidance to proxy actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a detailed examination of the strategies employed by the resistance leadership in Panay to mobilize and, if necessary, coerce civilians into supporting them in their guerrilla conflict with Japan. It argues that their ability to adapt and, thereby, continually ensure the support and compliance of the civilian population were as important, if not more so, to their overall success than strictly military accomplishments. The primary aim of this article is to bring the importance of civilians into focus and deepen our historical understanding of a much-understudied and understated aspect of resistance to Japanese occupation in the Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2022 marked 40 years since Hezbollah's establishment and 30 years since Nasrallah became the leader of the organization. Over the years Hezbollah has developed from a classic terrorist organization into a multifaceted and multi-identity organization that is a military force with conventional capabilities and the spearhead of the Shiite "axis of resistance." Throughout these years, and especially since the Second Lebanon War (2006), the organization has gained military strength but refrained from exercising its offensive capabilities against Israel; its activity is driven by the goal of maintaining and consolidating its balance of deterrence with Israel, in the interest of avoiding deterioration into another full-scale war. This article examines the elements that have shaped the "deterrence equation" between Hezbollah and Israel, which combines kinetic military activity and cognitive warfare, its gradual development over the course of the 40 years of conflict, and the nature of the current balance of deterrence; this is the background to assess how Israel might best deal with the challenge posed by the organization. The article contends that the balance of deterrence is rooted in Hezbollah's origins and evolution and constitutes a central component of the organization's current strategy. However, given Nasrallah's tendency to take risks and the changing regional reality, this does not guarantee the prevention of a future large-scale conflict between the organization and the IDF, which could develop into a multi-arena war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lituanistica is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article aims to investigate how political violence was conceptualized within the Argentine Trotskyist organizations of the 1960s. The influence of the Cuban Revolution, the growth of foquismo (theory of guerrilla warfare) and the crisis of the political regime impacted on their debates regarding the relation between violence and the development of a political strategy. We will analyze the positions towards armed struggle developed by the different organizations belonging to the field of Trotskyism concerning three aspects: the actions carried out, the controversies between various groups and the tensions and internal debates that led to crisis or splits from within and towards Trotskyism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an ethnographic account of quotidian family activities like cooking or watching the news, this article investigates how authoritarian history and ongoing conflict in Syria play out in the everyday life of Syrians displaced to Lebanon and Turkey. It traces the day-to-day activities through which the value of the anti-authoritarian actions of some family members is recalibrated in friction with the social and material price the family has paid for such actions, the futures various family members imagine for themselves and the particular family history of adaptation to authoritarian rule. The article argues that unfolding these recalibrations among the displaced allows us to see how Syrians formulate the conflict (also) as a family matter. Investigating this family layer of the conflict in turn alerts us to the ways in which political contestation and collaboration in authoritarian contexts is navigated (also) through ethical propositions related to the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Syrian dissidents in Lebanon cultivated their revolutionary commitment with the support of Lebanese communities. This political solidarity morphed into humanitarian care toward wounded and displaced Syrians in response to the emergency created by the war. With the mutations of the war in Syria and the collapse of the revolution as a political project, these solidarities were reconfigured to tackle the everyday hardship of displacement. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Lebanon (2014–2019), the article retraces the manifold incarnations of revolutionary solidarity in Lebanon and their relation to the other side of the border. By moving away from hospitality, the article rethinks the Syrian displacement in Lebanon through the concept of solidarity and its spatial and temporal intricacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how the ongoing conflict in Syria and the Rojava Revolution gave way to newly imagined futures and political possibilities for displaced Kurdish Syrians. It examines the Syrian war and the broader Middle Eastern context as a system of unpredictable escalations (Højer et al. 2018) and the liberation of Kobanî as a "critical" and "generative" moment (Das 1995; Kapferer 2015) in the Kurdish imaginary. Using ethnographic (audiovisual) material, I point to how people in forced displacement must constantly navigate uncertainty and reconfigure and consolidate their unknown future paths. I argue that my interlocutor Mihemed stabilized these uncertainties through his capacity to hold multiple future possibilities open simultaneously in order to keep every outcome viable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]