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Counter-Insurgency in Rhodesia
When originally published in 1985 this volume was the first scholarly and objective contribution available on Rhodesian counter-insurgency. It documents and explains why Rhodesia lost the war. The origins of the conflict are reviewed; each chapter examines a separate institution or counter-insurgency strategy directly related to the development of the conflict, concluding with a summary view of the Rhodesian security situation both past and present.
- GenresAfrica
266 pages, Hardcover
First published April 17, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
July 26, 2012
Without question, this is one of the best accounts of the overall Rhodesian counter-insurgency strategy (or lack thereof at times). The book covers a wide variety of topics including a general overview of the war, psychological and intelligence operations, protected village and cordon sanitaire tactics, Security Force Axillary operations, pseudo-operations of the Selous Scouts, and other aspects of the war. The book serves to give you a good account of the overall view straight away before it then delves into the specific aspects of how the war was fought.
The book is written in a very readable style, and the only real gripe I can say is that you'll want a notebook and print out map of Rhodesia to go along with your reading, as the information can be difficult to keep track of at times (no fault of the author), and the graphics are not the best (given it's time of printing, again little fault of the author). Regardless of these two minor issues, the book is presented in a very interesting fashion and one that gives the reader a clear sense of how different parts of the war were fought and won or lost. The author pulls no punches and roundly cites the Rhodesians for a lack of overall national strategy, poor planning of things such as the protected villages program, and other shortcomings, but does so in a way that is neither pompous nor smug in its hindsight. It also does an excellent job of covering the less "glamorous" aspects of the conflict such as command structures and how they impacted the war.
Overall, the book does a great job of not only highlighting the well known or exciting part of the war, but also the specifics of it. It also does an excellent job of showing how the Rhodesians won every engagement in the martial arena, but still loss the conflict due, in part, to a lack of coherent national strategy to combat the insurgents, ignorance (intentional or otherwise) of black African political consciousness and aspirations, and other political, social, economic, and human factors that are in some ways as relevant to the current GWOT as they were to this fascinating conflict that is now over 30 years over.
The book is written in a very readable style, and the only real gripe I can say is that you'll want a notebook and print out map of Rhodesia to go along with your reading, as the information can be difficult to keep track of at times (no fault of the author), and the graphics are not the best (given it's time of printing, again little fault of the author). Regardless of these two minor issues, the book is presented in a very interesting fashion and one that gives the reader a clear sense of how different parts of the war were fought and won or lost. The author pulls no punches and roundly cites the Rhodesians for a lack of overall national strategy, poor planning of things such as the protected villages program, and other shortcomings, but does so in a way that is neither pompous nor smug in its hindsight. It also does an excellent job of covering the less "glamorous" aspects of the conflict such as command structures and how they impacted the war.
Overall, the book does a great job of not only highlighting the well known or exciting part of the war, but also the specifics of it. It also does an excellent job of showing how the Rhodesians won every engagement in the martial arena, but still loss the conflict due, in part, to a lack of coherent national strategy to combat the insurgents, ignorance (intentional or otherwise) of black African political consciousness and aspirations, and other political, social, economic, and human factors that are in some ways as relevant to the current GWOT as they were to this fascinating conflict that is now over 30 years over.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review