Ch.38 Two Ways of Fighting
Soviet Invasions
- The Soviet Union had not given up its hopes of spreading communism around more of the world. By 1968, Russia had drawn the small countries all around its western border into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR. Soviet soldiers had invaded Poland and Hungary and added those countries to the Soviet Empire as well.
- In August 20th, 1968, Czechoslovakia was invaded.
- In 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan. into Afghanistan. But Afghanistan wasn‘t an easy country to conquer. The Mujaheddin knew how to stage guerrilla warfare, attacking from the rough wild mountains of their country and then disappearing again. Instead of making Afghanistan part of the Soviet Union, the USSR had to treat it as an occupied country, filled with hostile rebels.
Terrorism
- There were eight Black September terrorists in the Munich Olympic Village. They threatened to kill their nine Israeli hostages unless two hundred Arab guerrilla fighters, taken prisoner by the Israeli army, were released from Israeli prison.
- The most well-known terrorist groups in the world came from the Middle East. In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization was formed in the Arab state of Jordan. At first, the PLO was a political organization. It wanted to form a new homeland for the Palestinian Arabs who had been forced to leave their homes in Palestine when their land was claimed by Israel.
- Another group that gave birth to terrorism was the IRA-the Irish Republican Army. When most of Ireland was made into the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland remained part of the British Empire.
- Invasion of another country begins one kind of war. After invasions, armies and leaders clash with each other, trying to decide who will finally have power. But terrorism is another kind of war - one that changes forever the lives of those who have nothing to do with politics.
