by John Hackett
The China-Japan economic alliance is leading to a sort of political alliance as well. Although China calls itself communist, it now looks like becoming a Swedish version of Japan. This is providing a degree of security in that quarter of the world.
There is no degree of security in the other three-quarters of the world. Some part of the blame for this must be laid on continuing Soviet-US military rivalry. Strategically, after eight years of Democratic Administration in the US and the ineffectuality of SALT, your incoming Republican Administration must decide how to react to a situation of Soviet nuclear superiority and an established Soviet capability to destroy surveillance and communications satellites. The remaining US superiority is now in long distance intervention capability, in technology in general and in electronics in particular.
Mutual deterrence is further complicated and weakened by nuclear proliferation among the feuding Third World countries. Some of these are going to go nuclear anyway, and both the USSR and the US might see advantage in providing know-how and intelligence to potential clients (e.g., ‘unstable left-wing’ and ‘unstable right-wing’ governments) in order to gain new positions of strength and in the belief that this will give a better chance to control a nuclear outbreak.
I would strongly counsel the new Administration against such proliferation, and indeed against any deliberate baiting of the worried Russian bear at this juncture. It is possible that a third world war could be started by mistake, though probably only if two or more of the main points of instability around the world become critical at the same time.
Reserves of crisis management have dealt satisfactorily with Cuba in 1963 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War in isolation, and even with the combination of Suez and Hungary in 1956, but none of these directly involved both superpowers. Our present systems for containing crises could be overstrained in a multifarious mess in which the superpowers saw their vital interests engaged on several fronts at once. Simultaneous crises in, say, the Middle East, Southern Africa and Poland (or Yugoslavia) would cause just such overstrain.
It is possible that there will be such multiple crises if the Soviet empire starts to crack under its own pressures. There might even be important developments in the eleven weeks before your Inauguration Day.
The final words of the Ex-Secretary’s report proved to be prophetic.
CHAPTER 3: Cradles of Conflict — Middle East and Africa
When asked by his major what history would say about all his comings and goings, General Burgoyne replied without hesitation, ‘History, sir, will lie!’ Gentleman Johnny knew what he was talking about.
Historians seem likely to fix the beginning of the Third World War as a day in 1985, but as far as the people of Africa and Arabia were concerned it had already been in progress for more than a quarter of a century. By the summer of 1985 the war was being conducted in a score of countries with a variety of motives, methods and participants which was remarkable even in a continent renowned for variety. Nowhere were the participants so divided, the results so inconclusive or the military operations so bizarre as in the Horn of Africa.
Events there hinged round Ethiopia. The Soviet Union’s plan for a federation had of course come to nothing. There was too much to quarrel about. In Addis Ababa the Soviet puppet General Madkushu had succeeded in retaining power, but very little else. He presided over anarchy. He had had his greatest rival Colonel Abnatu executed and in this way had secured his position within the Dergue. But his position in the country as a whole had never been more insecure. It was no more than his just deserts. Sudden in his judgements, a revolutionary for the sake of revenge, a military leader for the sake of oppression, he was singularly well qualified to fulfil the role of dictator and devastator of his homeland. He had been given arms and assistance enough by the Soviet Union, but had succeeded in little more than the terrorization of the central area around Addis Ababa. He had failed in the prosecution of operations against Eritrea and Sudan, and Kenya’s support, more real than visual, availed him nothing. Madkushu could not even reassert the central government’s authority over the dissident provinces of Tigre and Bagemder. Soviet troops, and Cuban advisers, training teams and troops might advise, train and assist, but they could not overcome sloth, indifference, tribal rivalries and sheer incompetence.
In spite of deep divisions within the various factions of the Eritrean Liberation Front, one figure continued to stand up as the only one likely to command support general enough to be able to forge some unity — the veteran leader Suleiman Salle. His strength lay in the support afforded him by the Sudan. Training, weapons, ammunition and, if necessary, refuge — these were powerful magnets. The other Eritrean separatists, while no doubt playing their own waiting games, could see no one else whom they could use to paste over the cracks. Suleiman Salle became the first President of Eritrea. Elderly he might have been, but the world abounded with encouraging instances of longevity at the seat of authority. Madkushu may have condemned him and sworn all sorts of vengeance, but the distractions of DJibuti and the further separatist movements in Tigre and Bagemder were enough to prevent his mounting anything other than murderous guerrilla sorties into Eritrea. Even after Ethiopian reoccupation the Ogaden continued to provide a threat to his security. How, Madkushu asked himself, could the Soviet Union first support Somalia against himself and then himself against President Sarrul of Somalia, when they themselves were such implacable enemies? The answer, of course, was that it was because they were implacable enemies. If you back both sides there is a better chance of winning: heads, I win; tails, you lose — it worked very well.
Once the French garrison had been withdrawn in 1977, and with the compliance of Hassan Guptidan and his Issa supporters, the Somalis had no difficulty in establishing themselves at Djibuti. In spite of disagreements, the temporary expulsion of Soviet and Cuban advisers, and capricious fluctuations of support — in spite, even, of helping Ethiopia against them — the Soviet Union had returned to Somalia in strength and had continued to supply arms and aid. In return the USSR exacted absolute security for their air and sea bases at Berbera and Kismayu. If this was an important requirement in a period of what the world called detente, it may be imagined with what speed and decision the Russians fastened their grip upon the Horn of Africa in war. With 10,000 of their own troops and some 2,00 °Cubans redeployed in Somalia, this was not difficult. Equally total was their control of the other side of the Gulf of Aden, where we shall shortly make our way.
Apart from West and North-west Africa, the quietest part of the continent, sandwiched between two large areas notable for their turbulence, was East Africa. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi were enjoying not only tolerably harmonious relationships with one another, but also a degree of internal placidity unknown since the days of British guardianship. While Tanzania continued to support FRELIMO and to deploy troops in northern Mozambique, the others did not allow this harmony to be disrupted by what was happening in Mozambique or to interrupt their own assistance to the enemies of FRELIMO. It was a game that everyone played — on both sides. The succession in Kenya of a military council after Kenyatta’s disappearance from the scene, some years before, was matched in smoothness by the skilful manipulative powers of Tanzania’s ruler, who, while accepting Cuban military assistance in the training of his armed forces, resolutely refused to accept the political advice which was offered with it. Malawi went its own way, and since the demise of the tyrannical Field Marshal Omotin, even Uganda, under its newly designed federal government, was beginning to re-establish a degree of confidence and prosperity, with plentiful Western Aid.
The last rash actions of Omotin in the first years of the eighties had left their scars, of course. His decision, in a fit of pique and desire for that military glory which had evaded him in Zaire, Zimbabwe and the Sudan, to invade Kenya was disliked by all those of his senior advisers whose experience entitled them to an opinion. But such hostile unanimity did not deter the Field Marshal from embarking on his own chosen form of
Blitzkrieg. At the same time the admirable and ubiquitous intelligence service built up by the Kenyan armed forces enabled them to bring about the dissipation of Omotin’s forces and hopes alike. Omotin based his stroke on the supposed invincibility of his Soviet aircraft and tanks. The tanks were reduced to flaming dustbins by the skilfully operated Milan anti-tank guided weapons, the MiGs plucked from the sky by Kenya’s Rapier and Blowpipe missile systems.
The crowning humiliation was the capture of Omotin himself, not by the declared enemy but by some of his own people, the Acholi and Langi tribesmen, to whom he had displayed the utmost extent of his spite and vindictiveness. Trusting his bulk to an Agusta-Bell helicopter in a supposedly morale-raising visit to his troops, the morale of both Kenya and his own countrymen was greatly raised by the news that he had fallen into the hands of his former victims after a forced landing. They had taken their revenge by blowing him from the muzzle of a 76 mm gun.
North of East Africa was the distressed and turbulent Horn; south of it lay the yet unfinished struggle for Southern Africa. One battle-the battle for Zimbabwe — was over. The white Rhodesians had gone, and in the main had been absorbed into the Republic of South Africa. The much more serious battle for South Africa itself had by 1985 not yet got properly under way, in spite of all the skirmishings and preparations and promises. In Zimbabwe itself, Bishop Zilothi of the United African National Council had triumphed. He could not have done so without the allegiance of the powerful Karanga tribe and the former regime’s black troops and policemen. Nor could the help provided by Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana be forgotten. Indeed the leaders of those countries were determined that it should not be. Zambia’s and Botswana’s leaders, both nominal and actual, were easy to identify; Mozambique’s less so.
The great issue for Southern Africa, indeed for Africa as a whole, was widely thought to be how and when the confrontation states would subjugate the remaining white power there. Three of the four states concerned, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia, had not only their own resources and experience of fighting for independence to draw on. Outside support was plentiful and urgent. In Mozambique, Soviet, Cuban and Somali troops were equipped with tanks, aircraft and missiles; in Zimbabwe were the amalgamated regular army, guerrilla forces and police; and in Namibia, Cubans, Nigerians and Jamaicans were well supported by Soviet advisers and Soviet weapons. On paper it appeared to be only a matter of time, of where, when and how, rather than whether. Soviet policy had had an unending run of success in Southern Africa. What was to stop it now?
But the white South Africans had not allowed the veldt to grow under their feet. Ever since the formation of Zimbabwe, they had embarked on the creation of a levee-en-masse to form a kind of Volkssturm, which would combine firepower with speed of movement, a proper intelligence system with security of military resources, and a rigorous training cycle. There were two big questions. How would they find weapons if the US and UK (and possibly even France) denied them? And what would the inhabitants of the Bantu homelands and the black population remaining in the white homelands do about it all?
Nor was this last the only question the confrontation states had to worry about. Their own internal problems were legion. Events in Mozambique continued to show that numerous and ruthless guerrilla forces were not the monopoly of Marxists. The Marxist President Sathela hardly knew from one day to the next whether he would be president in a week’s time. The Soviet military advisers were strangely indifferent to his apprehensions. Perhaps it was because they were more concerned — and their concern was to turn into assurance with the arrival of further Cuban contingents — about the security, for their own subsequent use, of the new air base at Buzaruto, some 150 miles south of Beira, and of the harbours at Maputo, Nacala, Porto Amelia and Beira itself. This apart, Sathela was able to console himself with the thought that his own bodyguard was composed largely of East German and Portuguese mercenaries. As long as their pay was forthcoming, his own prospects were at least a talking point.
As for Zimbabwe, the patterns of power and intrigue almost defied even the Soviet passion for faction and counter-faction, revolution and counter-revolution. One principal thread was discernible — the uneasy alliance of Bishop Zilothi and the main guerrilla controllers. How long the alliance would survive raised the question of the extent to which Zimbabwe would commit itself and its forces to the struggle for South Africa. This was a matter for the High Command of the Confederation of Africa South People’s Army (CASPA) to examine.
If enthusiasm for CASPA were to be measured solely by military contributions to it, Botswana would have rated low among the front-line states. Indeed, she had virtually no armed forces which could be despatched outside the country. How different was the capability, if not the intention, of Namibia.
In Namibia SWAPO (South-west Africa People’s Organization) had won, though not without outside help. The intervention of strong Nigerian forces from Angola had been decisive. It had enabled a coalition between SWAPO’s leader, the Chief of the Hereros, and the Ovambos, the most numerous tribe of Namibia, utterly to destroy the Nationalist Party’s influence, with the result that, as in Zimbabwe, most of the white population, in this case about 100,000, had gone to South Africa. SWAPO troops had tasted blood. Admittedly supported by Angolan MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) forces, Cuban troops and the Nigerians, they had turned out of Namibia a total of 50,000 South African soldiers equipped with modern weapons and aided by fighter aircraft. They were not likely to forget it. And they had got their hands on one of the world’s main sources of uranium. This too they did not intend to forget. Namibia’s president, SWAPO itself and the bulk of its Ovambo troops were all committed to the crushing of South Africa, and it was from Namibia and Mozambique that the main invasion forces would come.
South Africa itself was to become an important battlefield of the Third World War, outside Europe, another being the Persian Gulf and southern Arabia. But South Africa had not been softened by twenty-five years of changing opinions, by what was thought of as the treachery of the United States and the degeneracy of Europe. These years had hardened its white population, and had made them realize that unless US policy changed to the extent of a total reversal no succour was to be had there. They would have to do it with their own resources, their own people and their own pluck. They had not wasted time. From the very moment of the creation of Zimbabwe in 1979 and the loss of Namibia a year later, preparations had proceeded night and day. The independence of the Bantu homelands had made it easier, for the strongholds of white supremacy, reliant though they were on black labour for both urban and rural endeavour, had shrunk to the white homelands of the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Natal and the Cape Province. There were nearly 4 | million white people in these provinces, about half that number of coloured, and a quarter that number Asian; the blacks totalled some 7 million.
What had been done militarily within the homeland had been done elsewhere by the Swiss and the Israelis, but by few others. All male and most female citizens underwent initial training as recruits for six to twelve months. Refresher training for up to one month each year was the rule for all up to the age of fifty. South Africa’s regular armed forces were by 1985 about 60,000 strong with reserves about equal in number. The combined LandwehrlVolkssturm, which could be mobilized in forty-eight hours, was nearly half a million. Of this well over 100,000 were Kommandos with their own air, armoured and communications units, organized into brigade-like formations of several thousand each. The Boers were not going to be caught napping. What is more they had absorbed 250,000 white Rhodesians and 100,000 white refugees from Namibia, who did not intend to pack their bags again. They were further strengthened by plentiful volunteers from Australia and New Zealand.
The antipathy of many in the world outside South Africa to the policies pursued there towards coloured peoples and the consequent deep reluctance of the US and British governments to give military aid to South Africa, even in a struggle against the spreading
power of the USSR, meant that no forces from either country could be expected to come to help her in war, and there was little prospect of significant military aid from any other Western source. They were on their own. There was by the end of the seventies no longer even the hope of procuring military supplies in any quantity from other Western sources. Some were had from France but not enough. South Africa turned to Japan and her associates in South-east Asia. By the beginning of the eighties the trickle of military equipment which began to come in at the end of the seventies had become a flood. Compelled to rely solely on her own manpower for her defence South Africa had now no need of Western hardware to equip it.
In Angola there was the greatest Soviet presence and at the same time the greatest anti-communist activity. The battle for Angola was not yet over. Harassed by UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), mauled by Zaire, Sovietized by Russian masters, and manipulated by Cuban puppets, the reign of President Ageto had stumbled to a humiliating conclusion, replaced by a coalition of his rivals, still essentially Marxist, propped up by the Soviet Union and Cubans. The Cuban and Nigerian military contingents were now increased to 40,000 and 20,000, respectively, with two battalions of Jamaicans. The Soviet advisers numbered some 15,000 and included radar, communications and industrial technicians plus port-operating experts. But even all this foreign support could not alter the fact that UNITA’s forces in the south were growing in strength and now numbered about 25,000, that Angolan National Liberation Front (FNLA) forces were still active in the north, and that the Cabinde Liberation Movement, with Zaire’s assistance, was gaining support. Whatever the difficulties of establishing absolute control over the whole of Angola, however, the Soviet Union was clearly determined to keep a grip of what she most wanted — the ports, the airfields, the jumping off ground for driving through Namibia to South Africa, and a general area which could be used as a relatively secure base for her proxy troops to go anywhere in Southern, Central or even West Africa. In strategic terms the Soviet victory in Angola had been of immense significance. South Africa’s Prime Minister at that time had seen it as the whirlwind before the storm, as simply one exercise in a series of exercises aimed at providing bases for black guerrilla troops and Soviet proxy mercenaries to launch their attack on the final target of South Africa.
