Task one is the establishment of a movement. Intellectuals coordinate on a sheer nation-state project and identify leaders among themselves or attract others with organizational skills.
They develop one or more groups that are defined, by independence and, in turn, sustain a commitment to the cause of independence.
Insurgency usually begins with a group of like-minded individuals discussing core grievances.
During this period, the insurgency establishes an identity, cause, narrative and a firm ideological or political base. Due to ideological or other internal disputes, it can be a period of frequent fracturing and splintering.
In establishing a campaign and sustaining it; the founding leaders must reach out to intellectuals and current or would-be politicians within the population.
As Eric Hoffer writes, the movement pioneered by men of words, materialised by fanatics and consolidated by men of action. It is usually an advantage to a movement, and perhaps a prerequisite for its endurance, that different men should play these roles.
The campaign cannot abandon, the intellectuals once women and men of action are in control because the intellectuals' to conjure new projects poses a constant threat of programmatic competition that could weaken the campaign.
Coordination among the intellectuals who create nation-state projects is a daunting task because the natural tendencies of intellectuals often resist coordination. Even before propagation among other constituencies can commence, most projects fall victim to alternative projects offered by other intellectuals appealing to at least some members of the same population. Sustaining coordination among creative intellectuals may be troublesome: individual members of the intelligentsia may value their intellectual independence, and their measure of creativity can be the originality and thus the difference of their formulations, including nation-state projects.
As Hoffer stresses, Men of thought seldom work together. Teamwork is rare in intellectual or artistic undertakings. So, there is a high probability that any national secession project will face multiple alternative projects unless this tendency is constrained.
In many campaigns, practical politicians come over to the cause only in an eleventh-hour switch to save their careers. The operational task of recruiting and coordinating among practical politicians with a shallower commitment to the goal carries a risk of capture that displaces the campaign leaders and their original goals.
Thus, the first operational task of campaign leaders is building leadership, which includes recruiting intellectual would-be politicians to the cause of independence. Even in the establishment stage, a divergence in motivations between true believers and practical politicians may emerge.
Over the longer term, the establishment task includes a greater need to deter defections to other causes: a task that becomes more difficult as the number of pragmatists in the leadership increases. Containing the centrifugal forces and keeping the leadership focused on the cause of independence is essential to campaign coordination.
Mehrab Sarjov
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