Guerillas is a fascinating survey of five guerillas movements researched between 1988 and 1992: the mujahedin of Afghanistan, the FMLN of El Salvador, the Karen of Burma, the Polisario of Western Sahara, and a group of young Palestinians fighting against Israel in the Gaza Strip.

At it's best, it lets the fighters speak, lets the clarity of their need to remake the world come through. Guerilla life is hard life, one of deprivation and sacrifice, but the idea of a better world on the other side of the struggle is worth everything. These are people who will never give up.

Combat is random, somewhat distant. The FMLN has a liberated zone, occasionally bombed by government forces. The Polisario have an immense wall across a harsh desert. The mujahedin engage in close combat with government forces, while the Karen are pushed back by superior firepower. The Palestinians work amongst Israelis, but live separate lives, with violence spilling over from long tensions of occupation all around: mob violence met with massive firepower.

35 years on, the guerillas have met with mixed results. The FMLN became one of El Salvador's major parties, and even won control of government, thought the president was forced to flee on corruption charges and gang violence is worse than the civil war. The mujahedin conquered Afghanistan, lost Afghanistan, conquered it again; and the country has only suffered. The Polisario and the Karen bouth brokered ceasefires, and returned to the battlefield around 2020. And I think everybody knows how the Palestinian intifada has gone.

Other reviews have noted some of the flaws. Anderson almost entirely overlooks women, exoticizes his subjects, and takes public relations, particularly from the media savvy Polisario, on face value. Still, this is some fantastic non-fiction reporting.