Peter McLaughlin - The Rhodesian War - Fifty Years On

FIFTY YEARS ON

Other related books by Paul Moorcraft

A Short Thousand Years: The End of Rhodesias Rebellion (1979)

Contact 2: The Struggle for Peace (1981)

Africas Superpower (1981)

Stander: bank robber (with Mike Cohen) (1984)

African Nemesis: War and Revolution in Southern Africa, 1945-2010 (1994)

What the hell am I doing here? Travels with an occasional war correspondent (1995)

Guns and Poses: Travels with an occasional war correspondent (2001)

Axis of Evil: The War on Terror (with Gwyn Winfield and John Chisholm) (2005)*

The New Wars of the West (with Gwyn Winfield and John Chisholm) (2006)

Inside the Danger Zones: Travels to Arresting Places (2010)

Shooting the Messenger: The Political Impact of War Reporting (with Phil Taylor) (2011)

Mugabes War Machine (2011)*

Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers (2012)*

Omar Al-Bashir and Africas Longest War (2014)*

The Jihadist Threat (2015)*

* Denotes titles published by Pen & Sword Books

Peter McLaughlin

Ragtime Soldiers: The Rhodesian experience in The Great War (1981)

The Occupation of Mashonaland (1982)

FIFTY YEARS ON

P AUL L M OORCRAFT AND

P ETER M C L AUGHLIN

First published in South Africa in 1982 by

Sygma Books (Pry) Ltd and Collins Vaal (Pty) Ltd

Published in Great Britain in 2008

and reprinted in 2010,2011 and 2015

Reprinted in this format in 2015,2016 and 2019by

Pen & Sword MILITARY

An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Paul Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin, 1982, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016, 2019

ISBN: 978 1 47386 073 5

eISBN: 978 1 47386 075 9

mobi ISBN: 978 1 47386 074 2

The right of Paul Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Tribal Groups

Rhodesia

South Africa

Rhodesian Operational Areas

Guerrilla Infiltration Routes

Guerrilla Ambush

Fire Force

The Destruction of New Chimoio

Southern Africa

Zimbabwe

A Rhodesian T-55 Tank

A Rhodesian copy of a British anti-bomb robot

A Rhodesian Air Force Hawker Hunter

A Mirage III of the South African Air Force

A Fire Force operation

One of the Alouettes loaned by South Africa

Slaughter of the innocents

ZIPRA shot down two Air Rhodesia Civilian Airliners

Selous Scouts in their initial period of formation

Close-combat use of the bayonet

Guerrilla attacks on urban targets forced the Rhodesians to form a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit.

Rhodesian police SWAT teams wore distinctive blue denim uniforms

Salisbury central oil storage depot

Dads Army

A Security Force Auxiliary, loyal to Bishop Muzorewa

Selous Scouts preparing for Operation Miracle

An early Soviet BTR-152

Mike Edden, the Assistant Commissioner of Police

Lieutenant General Peter Walls

Fire Force

ZIPRA guerrillas examine a Rhodesian helicopter

Guerrilla propaganda was simple and highly effective

Bishop Abel Muzorewa

Robert Gabriel Mugabe

P K van der Byl, Rhodesias most flamboyant and verbally aggressive politician

The prime architect of the Rhodesian rebellion: Ian Douglas Smith

Professor Paul Moorcraft lived in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe from 1976-81. He covered the war, inter alia, for Time magazine, and also taught politics and history at the University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. His doctorate was on the intelligence and military failures of the Rhodesian government. He also served in the A Reserve of the politics and international relations. He was a Distinguished Radford Visiting Professor in Journalism at Baylor University, Texas. He has worked in 30 war zones in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Balkans, often with irregular forces, most recently in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine/Israel, Darfur and Nepal.

Paul Moorcraft is a former senior instructor at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College. He also worked in Corporate Communications in the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. In 2003 he was recalled temporarily to government service in Whitehall and Iraq.

He is the author of a wide range of books on military history, politics and crime, as well as being an award-winning novelist. Paul Moorcraft is a regular broadcaster and contributor to UK and US newspapers (with frequent columns in the Washington Times, Business Day [Johannesburg], the Guardian, etc.), as well as a pundit on BBC TV and radio, Sky, Al-Jazeera, CBC, etc. His most recent co-authored book is Axis of Evil: The War on Terror (2005); the updated US edition is The New Wars of the West (2006). His co-authored study on combat journalism, with Professor Phil Taylor, Shooting the Messenger: The Political Impact of War Reporting , was published in 2008.

Professor Moorcraft is currently the director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis, London, as well as being a Visiting Professor at Cardiff Universitys School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.

Dr Peter McLaughlin was born in Northern Ireland and lived in Southern Rhodesia, Rhodesia and Zimbabwe from 1956 to 1983. He is a history graduate of the University of Rhodesia. His doctorate was a study of the role of British Imperial defence policy in shaping the Rhodesian armed forces from the 1890s to the 1950s. During the Rhodesian war, he served in operational areas as a field reservist in the British South Africa Police. Peter McLaughlin taught modern political and economic history at the University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe from 1977 to 1983. He set up the War Studies course at the university and was awarded an Association of Commonwealth Universities Post-doctoral Fellowship to the London School of Economics to study the British munitions industry in the First World War. He left the world of research and lecturing to carve out a successful career as a headmaster at major independent schools in England. From 1999 to 2005 he was Principal of The British International School in Cairo and kept the school functioning smoothly throughout the Islamist terrorist campaigns in Egypt, as well as during the turmoil in the Middle East of 9/11, the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq crisis.