“Foreign support” provided to dictatorships is considered to be one of the major challenges facing the popular resistance movements, who are wagging a “Non-Violence War” on their regimes. The apparent durability for some of these dictatorships, actually results from the assistance provided from an outside source not from the real power they possess.

“Foreign Support” for dictatorial regimes falls into two categories:

 1.Logistic Support: by providing money, weapons, media, different forms of security capabilities and expertise. Since this type of support represents a primary element in the struggle between dictatorships and the popular resistance forces, we will use the term “Direct Support”to denote it.

2.Moral, political, and diplomatic support, which we will refer to as “Indirect Support” for it represents a secondary element in the struggle, and its effect can be overcome relatively easily.

In this article our focusis going to be the first type. When “Direct Support”is identified as one of the main reasons to keep the dictatorial regime stand still against the popular resistance, then it should be cut. The “Non-Violence War” doesn’t rely on targeting the ruler directly, but to target the means by which he gains power, and try to persuade or force them to give up on him.

The main objectives of operations dealing with “Foreign Direct Support” are:

•  Disconnect it from the antagonist (The dictatorships).
•  Neutralize it, so it will no longer be a participant in the conflict.
•  Prompt these supportive countries to take the non-violent popular resistance side and provide them with their aid. This off course depends on the actual potentials and capacity of the operations to be performed to handle this kind of support and the nature of the supportive country. Taking the former into consideration, the popular resistance might accept to receive support from one country while reject it from another.

The basic idea for dealing with the notion of “Foreign Support” is to convince the supportive countries with the following:

• The cost and consequences of providing such support is higher than ones resulting from submitting to people’s will, and their assistance to dictatorships will badly affect them.
• They will not remain safe from the “Non-Violence” resistance acts. These countries should not assume that playing their game on a land other than theirs, which gives them a considerable margin of safety, and having their people not aware of the struggle that has been going on, will keep them protected. The scope of the battle of freeing people might be widened, and the weaknesses of these countries are numerous.
• The coming era is the “People’s Era”, therefore if these countries really care for their own interests, they should definitely not be on the falling system’s side, but rather on that of the people’s.
• These countries are putting themselves in confrontation not only with the people of the country in which they interfere, but also with all nations believing in and defending freedom.
• The popular resistance forces do not antagonize supportive countries for their own being, but for their actions which are in contrast with their interests. The message the “Non-Violence” resistance movements try to deliver to these countries is that they still have the chance to correct their course of action and build new relationships based on mutual gains and grounded on competency not dependency.

The above provisions can be used in formulating the“Non-Violent” resistance media’s discourse, and color all its movements, which range between persuasion and “Non-Violent” enforcement.The supportive countries practices will form the criteria upon which the popular movement’s tone will be determined.

This is the main rationale for the movements of “Non-Violence” resistance. In the coming articles we will mention some practical ideas on how to handle dictatorships’ supportive regimes.

The project of “Dealing with Foreign Support” is significant in the case of “Direct Interference”. It can be implemented by groups who decide to specialize in this domain, and deal with it within a sound methodological framework, which preserves society and establish a new balanced relationship with countries of the world, after the fall of dictatorships.

By Ahmad Adel Abd Al-Hakeem and Wael Adel

Translated by Rana Mohammed

September 4^th, 2011