Pound for pound, the Rhodesian security forces may have been the most effective fighting force of the last century. Numbering at their peak 15,000 troops, pitted against an opposition likely at least three times as strong within and without the country by the war’s end, and employing increasingly aggressive tactics taking them into the neighbouring countries, they were able to keep in check their numerically superior guerrilla opponents, despite having to operate across a country larger than Germany, and over terrain practically impassable in many locations. But still, the war was lost with the advent to power of Robert Mugabe’s regime in 1980 – or was it? This article revisits the Rhodesian strategy, assesses what mistakes were made and the conduct of the war, and identifies lessons for contemporary counter-insurgency campaigns.
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