BLOG  1:   27 February 2010

Why This Book?

Insurgency, an unarmed or armed attack on the sovereignty of a state, is the greatest threat to any government next to an attack across its borders by a hostile nation. Insurgencies tend to follow a pattern – the society divides for whatever reasons into demographic elements; usually the minority is subjected to types of abuses and these create ‘grievances’; the majority provides no relief for these grievances nor does it in the eyes of the minority adequately redress these grievances even if it the majority makes in its own estimation an honest attempt to do so; grievances over time provide the fuel for unrest; unrest brings a counter-move by the majority; radicals beget radicals on all sides; then, through some miscalculation, accidental incident, or the arrival of a radical leader who takes ownership of the minorities complaints for his/her own reasons conflicts occur; conflicts escalate into sectarian or communal violence and clandestine warfare.

Academics argue that this dynamic is based in ‘root causes’ or the grievances suggested here. But the argument is incomplete in my view because there are many aggrieved societies that do not rise up in revolt. It seems that insurgencies occur whenever certain factors are present that makes them ‘feasible – possible and practical to do easily or conveniently.’ In other words, insurgencies occur because there are root causes and because they can occur.

The factors that make occurrence likely are combinations of 1) a population in which young (16-30) males are unusually predominate in the minority population; 2) a territory and landscape that is large, rugged, difficult to traverse – think of Afghanistan or most of rural Canada; 3) a nation that depends on the export of resources that must travel through this difficult terrain.

UPRISING applies this model to the present-day circumstances of Canada’s aboriginal people, the vulnerability of Canada’s resource industry, and the failure of governments over many years to adequately address the deteriorating relations in our community to warn Canadians –aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike – to beware of the dangers lurking in our communities.