They had to die: assassination against liberation

The use of political assassinations against key leaders of liberation movements has had a major impact on the course of history in Africa and the Middle East. Not only have some of the greatest of Third World leaders been killed but so, too, has the hope for political change they embodied. This survey of assassinations carried out by western states and their agents from the 1960s onwards reveals a bloody legacy of killings of leaders from Algeria, Cameroon, Congo, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, Mozambique, Palestine, South Africa, Togo and Zimbabwe – all of which were linked to the interests of western imperialism. Today's daily diet of suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians by both western militaries and jihadis is one consequence, it is suggested, of the brutalisation effected by the policy of political assassination.