Violent revolutions in the late 20th century?

by FridgeRice

I'm trying to figure out if there were any violent revolutions in the late 20th century? So far the only thing I can find close to such an event would be the Guatemalan Civil War. Of course, there's also the Vietnam War, but i'm looking for the more obscure ones, and sort of constricted to a specific region. In particular, any violent revolutions in eastern European and western Asian countries are what i'm specifically looking for, but if there's any other notable revolutions that i'm not aware of, i'd love to learn.

CptBuck

How violent do you want 'em? There's a bunch of interesting or lesser known revolutions or failed revolutions in the Middle East, many of which involved some degree of violence.

  • Iraq: The 14 July Revolution, violent overthrow of the Hashemite Monarchy resulting in the death of King Faisal II and longtime Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said.
  • Jordan: Black September, perhaps not a revolution as such but a fascinating civil conflict that involved a revolutionary group (the PLO) trying to assert a kind of independent sovereignty within Jordan which was then met with rapid and overwhelming force by the Jordanians resulting in the expulsion of the PLO from the country as a military force.
  • Oman: The Dhofar Rebellion, another failed revolution or independence movement on the part of an oppressed province, Dhofar, to create a separate state, later joined in the fight by a Marxist Arab Nationalist group. The conflict wound down when Sultan Qaboos, the current ruler of Oman, overthrew his own father with foreign backing and basically came up with a settlement to end the conflict which successfully kept the peace.
  • Iran: The Islamic Revolution, this perhaps the biggest and most obvious one to me. It didn't involve much in the way of open civil conflict but it was certainly violent.

Beyond that I think you'd be looking at a lot of much smaller and arguably less successful examples, or ones where the subtlety between a coup, a revolution and civil conflict starts to get lost. The various conflicts in Yemen following the Yemeni Civil War for example. Or the failed uprisings against Saddam in Iraq in 1991.