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Doing a little looking around about why some of those worked, and so few have since, was interesting to me.

Length, economic impact, cold war politics, regional vs national opinions, how actors reacted (sometimes violently), the way information propagated at the time… an interesting confluence of events.

> they were certainly not popular with the locals either.

No, but the cause was popular enough with broader electorate.

They largely weren’t for the locals. The biggest wins were from deliberately provoking extremists who foolishly allowed nationwide pictures of dogs and water cannons being used to attack children, which attracted attention from people elsewhere.