South Africa's COIN war in SWA/Namibia/Angola

[JMA]

Whilst Koevoet were a SAP unit, the trackers, and a lot of the troops, were not White South African. They were either indigenous SW Africans recruited directly, or captured and turned terrorists / insurgents. For this 'idea' to ahve any utility for AFG one needs to explain :

1. What 'police force' ISAF are to use; and'
2. How and why indigenous people will join and be effective in this initiative, given ISAF is having enough difficulties getting them to participate effectively as 'normal' police.

I am reminded of Sir Michael Howard's description of the use of military history without context as being akin to pornography... I believe that selective cherry picking of 'examples' is just as gratuitous and possibly even less useful.

Not at all.

The Koevoet style of operation was a classic intelligent application of what Hans Dreyer saw the Portuguese and the Rhodesians were doing. He was operating on largely flat ground so he used vehicles for greater mobility. He needed to track the insurgents so he used the best he could find among the Ovambo and Koi San (Bushmen). And the rest is history. Absolutely outstanding from a military point of view and coming from a policeman too.

Why introduce the race angle?

In Rhodesia 80% of the government troops were black. And the RAR (Rhodesian African Rifles) did well by any standard.

In South West Africa (Namibia) the South Africans raised battalions from each of the ethnic groups and obviously the police recruited locals for their station areas for language, cultural awareness etc etc. Koevoet was about 25% white and together they fought against SWAPO / PLAN. That mix of black and white policemen achieved the best results of all forces in SWA/Namibia.

So if there is anything to take out of the Southern African wars that is worthy of study it is the Rhodesian Fire Force and the South West African Koetvoet operations.

And for either of these concepts to have any potential value for Afghanistan it needs some like a Hans Dreyer (who knows Afghanistan) to study both concepts in detail and come up some hybrid that would be useful in Afghanistan.