Silendo Libertatem Servo: Stay-Behind Organisations and the Future of Resilience and Resistance

They came from all walks of life. Hospital administrators, school principals, and engineers, chosen for their national loyalty, discretion, and capacity for independent thinking. For more than 33 years during the Cold War, European governments and intelligence agencies engaged in the selection and training of small groups of civilians to spearhead a potential armed resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Known formally as ‘stay-behind organisations’, the project, which began in November of 1956 with the support of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, is more commonly referred to today as Operation Gladio.

The first official reference to American-led efforts to train, equip, and deploy stay-behind forces is found in National Security Council Directive 10/2, which expanded the CIA’s remit from the execution of ‘psychological’ operations to all ‘covert’ activities against hostile states or groups.[SD1]  Listed among the examples of such covert operations was ‘preventive direct action’ through ‘aid to guerrilla and underground resistance movements’. By the time of the Korean War, the OPC had already established a plan to leverage these organisations to delay and harass a Soviet ground invasion into Western Europe. Shortly thereafter, the Allied Coordination Committee of representatives from six intelligence services – those of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg – was formed to coordinate the activity of stay-behind and territorial resistance groups. By the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, stay-behind organisations populated the entire European continent, from Portugal in the West to NATO’s Turkish flank in the East.

Responsibilities of European stay-behind organisations (SBOs) during the Cold War were broadly similar to those of their military special operations counterparts. In addition to conducting sabotage, reconnaissance, and targeted direct action in occupied territory, SBO personnel were tasked with collecting information for a potential government-in-exile as well as establishing exfiltration routes for pilots and intelligence assets stranded behind Soviet lines. SBOs, however, had a major advantage in contrast to other military units: rather than being forced to infiltrate a battlespace by land, sea, or air prior to Soviet forces passing over their positions, SBOs were already embedded within the local populace and could effectively position themselves to immediately begin post-occupation resistance activities.

Stay-behind organisations were largely disbanded by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but beginning in the 1970s, European states such as Belgium and the Netherlands elected to remove the paramilitary function of their respective SBOs and reorient their networks towards intelligence collection and assisting in the evasion and escape of isolated personnel. The first public acknowledgement of the existence of these organisations only occurred in 1990, when Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed rumours of a covert territorial resistance organisation under the control of the Military Intelligence and Security Service. Admissions by other Western European governments soon followed, leading to parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium regarding oversight of the networks and allegations of collusion with domestic criminal and extremist organisations. By no means, though, did the formal end of the Cold War signify the abandonment of the stay-behind concept.

Beginning in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, US Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) initiated the Resistance Seminar Series, bringing together academics and practitioners to consider responses to the potential occupation of a NATO state or ally. The group’s work culminated in the publication of the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC), a multinational planning guide designed to assist friendly states in developing a resistance to preserve or restore national sovereignty in the event of an occupation by a hostile power. ROC sought to overcome two shortfalls which had plagued efforts to establish European resistance movements during WWII and the Cold War: a resistance capability had to be trained, equipped, and positioned prior to the outbreak of hostilities and, as shown by the politically explosive revelations of Operation Gladio, conducted within the legal frameworks of partner nations. Most of all, a contemporary continental resistance had to reflect the security realities facing European powers and push past the ‘nostalgic vision’ of guerrilla bases in remote forests to consider non-violent resistance, economic and cyberwarfare, information operations, and the manipulation of international law to undermine state sovereignty.

The Resistance Operating Concept is rooted in a formalised distinction between ‘resilience’ and ‘resistance’. While ‘resilience’ refers to the will of a national populace to withstand and recover from the effects of external pressures or influences, ‘resistance’ encompasses a state’s organised and whole-of-society effort, directed by a legally established government, to re-establish sovereignty over an occupied territory. Both resilience and resistance are co-constitutive processes. The ability to mount an effective counterblow leveraging the full breadth of an occupied state's remaining military and civilian resources is contingent upon the survivability and unity of its society. Simultaneously, a Total Defence approach centred on the physical and psychological preparation of all facets of society to counter an occupation offers a powerful tool to foster a nation’s will to resist hostility. Central to these pre-crises preparations is the designation of a shadow government, the creation of caches of vital equipment, and, above all, the selection and education of a core cadre of resistance personnel capable of being activated at the outset of hostilities[SD2] .

Events in Ukraine since the 2022 invasion by Russian forces have highlighted the outsized impact of organised resistance forces. A formal effort initiated by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to establish a unified territorial defence and covert stay-behind capability took effect in 2022, but left little time to select, vet, and train personnel by the beginning of the Russian invasion seven weeks later. It was, instead, volunteer citizen defence groups, many established by veterans of the initial response to the Crimean annexation, who have worked in tandem with the Security Service of Ukraine to collect intelligence in denied areas and sow chaos behind Russian lines. These activities have already had a tangible impact on Russian efforts to assert control in occupied territory. Ukrainian resistance fighters have engaged in the elimination of loyalist political leaders and media influencers, forcing Russian occupation authorities to divert crucial resources away from the frontlines to conduct counter-guerrilla operations in rear areas. Despite the significant strategic and psychological impact of Ukrainian resistance forces, it must be noted that the capability largely originated from volunteer civilian efforts separate from the national government. Though Ukraine was left to fully integrate these structures into its national defence plan at the start of the conflict, states facing threats from adversarial hegemons beyond the European context could begin considering similar preparations.

The case of Taiwan offers an ideal visualisation of the potential impact of stay-behind organisations. Taiwan has largely shied away from implementing the asymmetric defence strategy proposed by the United States, with its national defence acquisition centred on small numbers of highly sophisticated capabilities such as advanced fourth-generation fighters and submarines rather than simpler platforms capable of blunting and attriting an offensive by the People’s Republic of China. While dismissed as infeasible or displaying an utter disregard for the realities facing the island nation, Taiwan’s decisions are reflective of a gamble designed to pierce the American doctrine of strategic ambiguity and maximise the likelihood of a US intervention, even at the cost of force survivability. At the same time, however, Taiwan must be realistic in its expectations. The sheer weight of PRC military resources means that the likelihood of preventing the consolidation of an amphibious beachhead remains remote; simultaneously, the PRC’s extensive network of anti-access area-denial devices in addition to the political complexity of American military aid drastically complicate the odds of a rapid American intervention. Taiwan should, therefore, gear its defence capabilities towards the prospect of an extended campaign in which external aid is anything but assured.

Given the country’s limited strategic depth, the distance between a potential front-line and key population or military centres, as well as its highly urbanised population, any large-scale military campaign by the PRC is likely to result in high levels of civilian casualties and infrastructure damage. Strengthening the resilience of the Taiwanese population is, therefore, crucial, laying the foundations of national morale and unity necessary for continued resistance following partial or complete occupation. Studies conducted in December of 2021 indicated that upwards of 70% of respondents were willing to fight an unprovoked PRC invasion. Though this number is unlikely to reflect the true extent of Taiwanese resilience in the event of a PRC assault, the available evidence indicates that the majority of individuals in the country would actively resist a reduction in their political freedoms and economic prosperity. And though Taiwan has already instituted workshops teaching civilians key skills such as air-raid awareness or treating major haemorrhagic injuries, the selection and training of personnel for a dedicated stay-behind organisation would further strengthen this pre-conflict resilience and set conditions for effective resistance in the event of territorial occupation.

A Taiwanese stay-behind organisation would exist independently of any current military special operations or law-enforcement unit. Though coordination with these entities, in addition to the civilian National Security Bureau and Military Intelligence Bureau, would be required for the purposes of training and deconfliction, the stay-behind capability must be kept separate from these chains of command to maximise the likelihood of its survival in an initial PRC offensive. The current priority must be the selection and instruction of a core cadre of stay-behind leaders and technical specialists, with additional personnel vetted and integrated as time and resources permit. Training must cover similar skillsets to those of Operation Gladio while introducing new necessities adapted to the digital age: lessons in small-unit tactics, sabotage, and clandestine communications must be complemented by instruction in media design and the use of social networking applications for strategic messaging. Caches of equipment must similarly be established, and given Taiwan’s lack of land borders, education in maritime operations for the purposes of reconnaissance and resupply should also be emphasised.

Most of all, while the precise identities of its individual members should remain compartmentalised, the existence of these stay-behind networks and their supporting legal infrastructure must be publicly revealed and emphasised. This is not simply a question of accountability but also one of deterrence – the promise of a relentless campaign of insurgent violence perpetrated by specially selected and well-trained individuals adds an additional layer of complexity to the calculus facing the PRC and its leaders. A stay-behind organisation alone will be insufficient to alter the strategic priorities of the PRC vis-à-vis Taiwan, but the preservation of national sovereignty requires nothing less than the full engagement of all facets of society. It is impossible to know when, or even if, the PRC will elect to land its troops on the shores of Taiwan. But, until then, it is imperative that the men and women of a Taiwanese stay-behind organisation embody the tradition of their Gladio forebearers: Silendo Libertatem Servo.

Serving liberty in silence.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.