Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Concur. All Wars are 80% political! Externals were a very sound military policy, but also politically counter-productive. No mystery or anything new in that.
Its all a question of timing. The Rhodesian SAS were keen to blow up bridges and things as that was their role as they saw it.

(Here comes some wisdom in retrospect) Take the Zambian bridges dropped during the Lancaster House talks (from 15 Nov 1979). If they had been dropped earlier it would have probably forced ZIPRA (and their Russian advisors) to drop the idea of a conventional invasion at Victoria Falls (and Chirundu). Maybe then the 20,000 ZIPRA troops sitting Zambia would have been sent across the border and would have been difficult to stop if deployed skillfully.

On the other hand the Mozambique externals were delayed as somehow people (Smith, the South Africans?) thought that they would be able to work out a deal with Machel. Should have dropped all those bridges in the early days when there was still chaos in Mozambique after the Lisbon coup and when the roads and rail links started being used to ferry insurgents up to the border. More support should have been given to Renamo. Using Renamo to fight a more extensive proxy war would have taken a lot of pressure off the northeastern and eastern borders prevented much of the infiltration into the internal tribal areas.