A loyal, multicultural regiment: The Rhodesian African Rifles
A newly discovered CSI article: 'The Rhodesian African Rifles: The Growth and Adaptation of a Multicultural Regiment through the Rhodesian Bush War, 1965-1980', which now joins my reading pile:http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/car...icanRifles.pdf
Added: JMA added a post below that the paper was already in this thread. Sigh, memory loss.
The Amazon precis:
Quote:
The Rhodesian African Rifles overcame profoundly divisive racist and tribal differences among its members because a transcendent "regimental culture" superseded the disparate cultures of its individual soldiers and officers. The RAR's culture grew around the traditions of the British regimental system, after which the RAR was patterned. The soldiers of the RAR, regardless of racial or tribal background, identified themselves first as soldiers and members of the regiment, before their individual race and tribe. Regimental history and traditions, as well as shared hardships on deployments and training were mechanisms that forced officers and soldiers to see past differences. The RAR is remarkable because these bonds stayed true through to the end of the war, through incredible pressure on black Rhodesians to succumb to the black nationalist groups and cast off a government that was portrayed to them as oppressive, racist and hateful. Through the end of the Bush War, 1965-1980, RAR soldiers remained loyal and steadfast to their regiment, and that must be their legacy. In the end, the values of the government were irrelevant. It was the regiment that drew these men in, and their loyalty was more to their comrades and their heritage than to any particular government or cause.
A marked contrast - to date - with more contemporary conflicts, such as Afghanistan. Yes, there is a long running, large thread on Rhodesian COIN to which this will join one day:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2090
Book Review: Special Branch War by Ed Bird
Thanks to a BSAP History email alert, a partial quote:
Quote:
Bird manages to describe life on an SB station in an operational area very well. He tells of the, hereto generally unknown and unsung, commitment, huge risks and sacrifices made during the ‘hondo’ by many dedicated members of SB. Exposed are the frustrations of intelligence gathering with counter-insurgency work, where useful information often fell on deaf ears, or where the clue-less, who should have known better, could never use the ‘int’ efficaciously. But there were exceptions, brave men who took to unconventional, if not dirty, tactics and with whom lifelong friendships endured.
Link:http://justandrewbooks.wordpress.com...ar-by-ed-bird/
Link to South African publisher:http://www.30degreessouth.co.za/ and the UK option:http://www.30degreessouth.co.uk/
Amazon UK shows the book will be published in January 2014:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Special-Bran...ial+Branch+War
"Cut to the Bone" a book by Craig Bone
Ex RLI soldier and renowned painter, Craig Bone, is offering the complete edition of his book free on Kindle for 11 November 2013 only.
Go to amazon.com
If you snooze, you lose.
Pulling Out All The Stops
This article (appearing in the SWJ Blog, as I write), Drawing Lessons from Zimbabwe's War of Liberation (by Jephias Andrew Dzimbanhete; Journal Article, December 10, 2013), does exactly that - all stops are pulled.
The author's conclusion is relatively restrained given the body's overall content (snip):
Quote:
The foregoing discussion has shown that current attempts to equate and link the selective nature of violence that was deployed by the revolutionary guerrilla forces to contemporary outbreaks of violence are unfounded and devoid of academic analysis. The nonselective violence that is perpetrated by troops of an incumbent government is normally intended to stifle legitimate demand for economic and political spaces by the citizens. On the other hand the application of violence on civilians by the liberation fighters was in the interest of creating economic and political space. It would be fitting to refer to guerrilla violence as ‘freedom violence'.
Of course, under the 1977 APs to the GCs, "freedom fighters" were exempted from a number of the Laws of War. Consistent with the proponents of the 1977 APs, the author now introduces "freedom violence" as a protected category.
The article is certainly timely - Nelson Mandela's funeral and all. And, it takes one back to the 60s and 70s.
Regards
Mike
Mark, from a legal viewpoint,
the Dzimbanhete article isn't worth a review.
What I was trying to put across is that the article (exemplified by its coinage of the term "freedom violence") comes from the same well (manure pile, whatever) as the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, in their carving out exceptions for the "freedom fighter", the "transitory guerrilla", the "occasional IED layer", etc., etc.
It reminded me of the agitprop of the 60s and 70s, which I also said in the post. As I use the term "agitprop" here (agitation of a mass audience by propagation of the written word), the material can be true, false or mixed (white, black or varying grays) and can be acceptable, unacceptable or "so what" (depending on the reader's viewpoint). The author Dzimbanhete uses a more limited definition:
Quote:
In this article I subscribe to Sturges's definition of propaganda. He writes that propaganda is the practice of distributing material that is untrue or if it is true, it is actually not relevant and applicable. The aim of propaganda is to confuse and deceive those that receive it.[1]
[1] P. Sturges, ‘Information in the National Liberation Struggle: Developing a Model', Journal of Documentation, 60, 4 (2004), p. 439.
That kind of agitprop is definitely black (or a deep shade of gray) in content. One might well ask whether Dzimbanhete's article itself is "propaganda" as Sturges defines it. Sturges, BTW, is in Pretoria (faculty bio). Here are abstracts of his 2004 and 2005 articles.
The "literary genre" of Dzimbanhete's article is similar to that of our USAian Nick Turse (born in 1975; Wiki), who has made himself a career from the time of his 2005 Columbia University Ph.D dissertation, "Kill Anything That Moves: United States War Crimes and Atrocities in Vietnam, 1965-1973", to the present - his 2013 Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. Whether Turse's agitprop about Vietnam is black, white or gray is not going to be an issue for me here. Turse does resemble Dzimbanhete (re: that author's talk of "freedom violence") in Turse's 2000 article, New Morning, Changing Weather: Radical Youth of the Millennial Age:
Quote:
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold engaged in a shooting and bombing spree in Columbine High School that left fifteen students, including the alleged gunmen, dead. ...
...
When a youngster decides to make war on his school and classmates, the media leaps to vilify him, his alleged influences, his weaponry, and his parents. Politicians are keen to do the same, and capitalize on the shootings by pushing for new firearm regulations and stiff penalties. And why not? Don’t we punish psychotics bent on threatening life and property, set upon destroying the "American" way of life? Shouldn’t we condemn those who take the lives of others through "senseless" violence? Or should we try to make sense of it? Preferring the latter option, I propose that kids killing kids may be the radical protest of our age, and that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold may be the Mark Rudd and Abbie Hoffman figures of today.
...
While these young boys may have no Port Huron statement, no manifesto, and no coordinated actions (that we know of), they are a legitimate radical faction that may have one-upped the violent Weather Underground and the revolutionary Abbie Hoffman. These boys have truly embraced "revolution for the hell of it," maybe better than Abbie ever did. The randomness of their "non-campaign" may be the ultimate expression of "rage against the machine," ripping into the system, as it were, at its most vulnerable and fundamental level, perhaps more so than Weatherman’s bombing of the U.S. Capitol.
...
The violence unleashed by these juveniles also acts as a call to action for like-minded individuals. Their ability to gain recognition and exert power grows with each like incident, forcing us to look for connections and search for scapegoats. Maybe they have no pithy slogans, no unifying symbol, maybe Marilyn Manson is no Bob Dylan, and maybe their Woodstock ’99 is a poor rip-off of the original (which "ripped off" Monterey), but no one can deny the radicalism of their murderous behavior. Who would not concede that terrorizing the American machine, at the very site where it exerts its most powerful influence, is a truly revolutionary task? To be inarticulate about your goals, even to not understand them, does not negate their existence. Approve or disapprove of their methods, vilify them as miscreants, but don’t dare disregard these modern radicals as anything less than the latest incarnation of disaffected insurgents waging the ongoing American revolution.
In this early Turse piece, we have another example of the "freedom violence genre". Is it "propaganda" in the Sturges sense: material "to confuse and deceive those that receive it ?"
Finally, to your question (asked before about the Dutch article): how do these things get past editorial boards. The secret is to footnote the hell out of everything - in Dzimbanhete's article, 31 footnotes preceded by a bibliography of over a dozen books, articles and oral interviews. To completely vet these (to determine how black, white or gray), one would have to check the substance of each cite; and also determine its credibility.
For example, Dzimbanhete writes:
Quote:
Writing in 2006, Parker, a former Rhodesian serviceman, revealed that the Selous Scouts were responsible for the murder of Father Killian Huesser, a Roman Catholic priest based at Berejena Mission in February 1980.[3]
[3] J. Parker, Assignment Selous Scouts: Inside Story of a Rhodesian Special Branch Officer (Alberton: Galago, 2006), p. 285.
...
The balance of probability points to the Rhodesian Selous Scouts as being responsible for the murder. It was very likely that the Rhodesian Selous Scouts were responsible for the murder of white missionaries at rural outposts and rural African businessmen.[5]
[5] The Rhodesian Ministry of Information, Tourism and Immigration published a pamphlet in July 1978 in which the description of the murders is given.
As to the first cite, did Parker say that; and, if so, is Parker a credible witness ? I don't know; but would find out if this were a litigated case. It isn't, however. The second cite (the Ministry of Information, Tourism and Immigration) doesn't, on its face, prove the "probability" asserted.
For good or bad, editorial boards do not do that kind of vetting - that process is left to the reader or independent reviewer. As an example, we see the influence of footnotes and reviewers in a review of Turse's new book:
Quote:
I read the book on my Kindle. When I finished a chapter about 3/4 of the way through, I noticed the last "chapter" seemed enormous, but I was ready to grind through it. It turns out that last "chapter" was probably 75-80 pages of footnotes and source material. That was impressive and amazing. The proof is in the pudding. And the accolades from people like Daniel Ellsberg and Andrew Bacevich are to be taken seriously. Turse's other books, as well as his amazing contributions to
TomDispatch.com well worth investigating for readers who found thus book interesting, educational, and enlightening.
And so it goes - and will continue to go.
Regards
Mike