Rhodesian COIN (consolidated thread, inc original RLI)

[davidbfpo]

Watching an email exchange between former BSAP members I came across some comments on the war, as the police rarely publicly remember I've added them anonymously.

1)

I do agree we suffered an insurgency and our efforts were that of a counter-insurgency… if one has to label it a war… then perhaps best described as a small war, but an insurgency is more appropriate.
The introduction of Ground Coverage to the BSA Police circa the time of the Mau Mau insurgency placed ground roots intelligence in the forefront of information gathering concerning the impending insurgency and concentrated its efforts on the labour movement and the nationalists. The battle for the hearts and minds of the labour force/people was well established in the early 1960’s, if not slightly earlier, and this is well chronicled. Many will remember the activities of Benjamin Borombo and how the nationalist subverted his struggle for the labour movement into the nationalist/political struggle of blacks.

Imperial powers might well have been stuck up with organisation and structure at the expenses of knowing its subjects, a good many of whom were beginning to demonstrate their disloyalty in the late 1950s – police intelligence was aware of the threats and changes taking place in Africa and had a good insight into grass roots activism of the time.

The early days of the insurgency were marred, for the insurgents that is, since their ranks had been so very well infiltrated by Rhodesian spies and agents… Most incursion intentions were know well in advance of them occurring and most if not all of them were pretty well wrapped up within days, at worst weeks, of them occurring.

2)

The imperialist ego was so deluded by 1965 that intelligence such as it was did not even know that the battle for hearts and minds was taking place under our noses including on the football terraces of Bulawayo. Imperial power which had boiled down to meticulous organisation of a wasting resource namely "loyal" manpower, never had a chance against the grass roots impulse of freedom.

If the intelligence was available it was not used by Field Commanders effectively and anyway they were always in and then going deeper into a situation where the availability of manpower could never meet the demand remember vast swathes of the TTL/Communal land was lost to rebel control by the ceasefire.