The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; War Against Communist-Backed Guerrillas in Rhodesia

WHITE RHODESIAN OFFICER: Fifteen locals carrying baskets and a whole lot of crates walked in there. So what`s happening is, stop one again and we dropped him here, stop two at the top here, and stop three, that pulls there. Okay?

ROBERT MacNEIL: White soldiers on the move in Rhodesia, one of the flash points in Africa. Tonight, the war against Communist-backed guerrillas, a struggle the United States is watching with mounting anxiety. Good evening. In the last few days there`s been a dramatic hardening of Carter administration rhetoric chastising Russians and Cubans for intervention in Africa. Alarmed by the grisly rebel invasion of Zaire, ostensibly with Cuban support -- although duba denies it -- President Carter has warned that Communist adventures in Africa could jeopardize vital negotiations on strategic arms control. Today, opening the summit meeting of NATO in Washington, Mr. Carter said the alliance could not be indifferent to events in Africa.

One area reported to be of crucial concern is Rhodesia. The white Prime Minister, Ian Smith, has moved towards black majority rule by including three black leaders in a transition government. But two rebel forces, backed by Communist arms, continue to attack from bases in neighboring Mozambique and Zambia. One explanation of Mr. Carter`s tougher line with the Communists is reported to be his fear that they will increasingly exploit the Rhodesian situation, putting the U.S. in the position of choosing between the rebels and the white Rhodesians.

Tonight, an intimate look at the kind of warfare going on in Rhodesia. What follows is an excerpt from a BBC report on the special antiguerrilla force of the Rhodesian Army, trying to hunt down and destroy invading rebel bands. The reporter is Richard Lindley.

RICHARD LINDLEY, BBC, Reporting: Most of them -fifty-two percent -- are not Rhodesian at all. They`re mercenaries, professional soldiers fighting to a three year contract. Men like Lieutenant John Cronin, an American, sacked from military academy, volunteered for the Marines and badly wounded in Vietnam; wants to fight for South Africa when his Rhodesian contract is up.

Sergeant Paul Abbott, from Bath in Britain. Eleven years in the Rifle Brigade, but got fed up with Northern Ireland Politics. Seven months in the French Foreign Legion, now fighting Rhodesia`s war. Ken Blaine, former pilot-sergeant in the British Marines, resented the low pay and lack of flying time. Arrived in Rhodesia from Britain this January. Lieutenant Roger Carlone, at last a Rhodesian, despite his Italian parentage. A national serviceman who signed on. Awarded the Bronze Star for bravery.

These are the men who make up Rhodesia`s elite military unit, the men who raid the guerrilla camps in Zambia and Mozambique. Under the Anglo-American proposals, all the foreigners here would be immediately discharged. Why did they join?

Lt. JOHN CRONIN: Well, we have a number of foreigners over here from Australia to New Zealand. We have French men, we have some Hungarians, a lot of Englishmen, and a few Americans. And they come over, I think, probably more for the action than anything else.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: No one likes to see a country taken over by Communists, and especially terrorists. I just cannot stand terrorists.

LINDLEY: The guerrillas are certainly applying pressure. We saw this bus blown up by a mine, but most guerrilla attacks go unreported because of censorship. We learned that around Shabani guerrillas have destroyed all the heavy equipment at a major construction site, blacked out the whole area for seven hours, including the vital Shabani asbestos mine, and most effectively ambushed a convoy of three police landrovers. The major isn`t taking any chances. He`s a bank manager doing a fifty-six day stint as a territorial. Today he`s guarding Special Forces police as they investigate a guerrilla attack.

MAJOR: As the event occurred at about eleven o`clock this morning they could quite easily have arranged a reception committee for us there -- planted land mines or an ambush. So it`s best to check it out before we actually approach the vehicle.

LINDLEY: The driver describes how guerrillas fired a rocket at his delivery van.

VAN DRIVER:...and then he fired. When I saw that he missed and went up, he was pointing right here, and then the thing went right off above.

LINDLEY: And that was where it struck?

VAN DRIVER: That`s right.

LINDLEY: I see. What faction were they? Were they Zipra, or what?

VAN DRIVER: They say they were Zanla.

LINDLEY: Zanla.

VAN DRIVER: Yes.

FIRST WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: Did you find anything this direction? Yes, we found tracks of two; the indications are from the spoor we found at the scene here, are the two terrorists responsible for this alleged attack this morning. We call them mukundungas, which means "the man who moves by night," a defiler, and we`re on tracks and we`ll stay on tracks. And as you see, it`s getting a bit dark now, but what will happen, when we can`t see the tracks any more, my lads will sleep on the tracks tonight and then tomorrow morning they`ll continue.

LINDLEY: The police trackers lost the trail at the river. But a Fireforce ambush in the same area produced results. These two men had been in the same area as the guerrillas; apparently they`d blundered out of the bush straight into the Fireforce ambush, while the guerrillas had got away. They`d first been spotted by one of the observation posts in the area.

CRONIN: The OP kept saying over and over again, "Well, listen, I can see four people standing under a tree. And I can see two of them definitely armed, and two of these others are green trousers."

LINDLEY: Which are the men you brought

CRONIN: Which are the men we brought

LINDLEY: You`ve handed them over to Special Branch now; what sort of information do you get out of people like that? Do they talk?

CRONIN: They will. Normally, if they`re only contact men they`ll break very easily. If they`re terrorists it`ll take a little bit longer. But the fact remains that regardless of what they are, contact men or terrorists, they will be able to give us information on that group.

LINDLEY: After two days` interrogation, the men were released, law-abiding citizens after all. They might easily have been shot rather than captured. Already this year Rhodesia admits more than seventy innocent civilians have been killed.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: Well, if we could recognize them as civilians, they hopefully stand up and raise their hands, then they`re okay.

LINDLEY: But what happens if they don`t? What happens if they`re running, frightened?

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: Okay, if they`re mistaken for terrorists then there`s not much we can do about it. We`ve got to play it as safe as possible for our people.

LINDLEY: Is this a winnable war?

SECOND WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: Well, now, that is something very difficult to try and assess. Any terrorist war is virtually unwinnable, really. We are inclined to be too defensive, I feel, and I think this is something we have all be saying as soldiers for the last ten years, possibly -- that our attitude has been too defensive and not offensive enough outside the country. And I think that is basically where the problem has lain for the last ten years or so.

LINDLEY: What would you like to be doing, then, from a military point of view?

SECOND WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: Well, I feel we should certainly be doing more external operations. And that is where the -- you`ve got to hit the problem at the source of the problem. To wait for the problem to come to you doesn`t work. I mean, this has been proven many a time in the past.

CRONIN: Killing them is no problem at all; finding them is the difficulty. Their method of winning is to go through the people, get the people on their side so they can establish a basis of support in the rural areas, and that way we don`t certainly have enough troops to contain the movements. We can`t saturate an area, certainly; we tried that in Vietnam and we lost badly in that attempt.

LINDLEY: So winning, militarily, isn`t possible.

CRONIN: In a guerrilla war - and I could only quote Maoon this - as long as the people are on your side, no. But this is where this war has taken a different turn, because we have, I would say, definitely the majority of the population on the government`s side now. And this is why I think we definitely are winning.

LINDLEY:A few miles from the Fireforce camp, in the Madziwa tribal trust land, there`s a battle going on. An itinerant team from the police and Internal Affairs is waging psychological warfare on these African villagers. Today the District Commissioner has come, to win their support for the internal settlement in Salisbury.

DISTRICT COMMISSIONER: They must remember to ask these boys, these gundungas, when they come, what are they fighting for now? As of the thirty-first of December there`s going to be majority rule, so what are they fighting for now? Aren`t they fighting to serve it to the Communists? All right, now the outside world have said this is not on, okay? They`ve said they`re not going to listen to the internal settlement that we`ve got. But this is an agreement between us, us people that have to live in this country. We`ve got to live here. It`s up to us to make sure that the Communists don`t come in and take it over.

(Interpreter translates for villagers.)

LINDLEY: It`s rather late in the history of black-white relations in Rhodesia for the DC to ask for these villagers` support, particularly when the war makes life so difficult for them.

BLACK SOLDIER: He`s asking whether he can go out.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: To go and get them?

BLACK SOLDIER: Yes.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: Well, he should have organized for the cattle to be brought in before the curfew.

LINDLEY: Winning support for the new government, the same government that authorizes soldiers to shoot at curfew breakers, that`s not so easy.

BLACK SOLDIER: They want to see the difference between the internal settlement and this Communist settlement, the bush of the terrorists.

LINDLEY: And what do they think? Do they understand the difference, do you think?

BLACK SOLDIER: After explanation, I believe they understand.

LINDLEY: Do they want to come and listen to you?

ENGLISH SOLDIER: It`s a sort of mixed feeling sort of thing. But sometimes you get a good response at the end, they start singing, and it`s quite a good show.

LINDLEY: How would you describe this meeting?

ENGLISH SOLDIER: This meeting? Quite successful.

LINDLEY: You say you`re doing this really to win the hearts and minds of the people here. Does that mean you`ve lost them, at the moment?

ENGLISH SOLDIER: No, well, the African people, they`re on one person`s side and then they`re on -- they`re on our side, then they`re on the terrorists` side; it depends how the terrorists, they terrorize them. That`s why they go onto their side. Then next day you come in and talk to them and then they`re on your side. And so it goes.

LINDLEY: At dawn one morning, without our escort, we set out to discover what rural Africans really think. Because they shelter the guerrillas they call "the boys" rather than report them, these people could go to jail for life. They took a considerable risk in talking to us at the secret rendezvous.

LINDLEY: You aren`t frightened of the guerrillas?

FIRST BLACK CIVILIAN: No, we aren`t. They are very kind to us, and they really are like us. And they`re not cruel.

LINDLEY: The security forces say that the guerrillas force you to give them food and that they make you very unhappy. How do you feel about them?

SECOND BLACK CIVILIAN: The guerrillas are our brothers. We like them. They give us injections; if we are ill we can go to them and tell them we are ill of such and such a disease, then they give injections.

LINDLEY: Medical treatment.

SECOND BLACK CIVILIAN: Yes, medical treatment. They treat us. And they are our brothers. We are not frightened of them, we just stay with them, laugh and talk -anything they like...

LINDLEY: What is it like with the defense forces? We know they`re very active here.

THIRD BLACK CIVILIAN: Well, let`s say the soldiers come. Once you hear the landrovers coming, you start panicking. And when they come they can take the girls and the boys, take them to their camps, start torturing them....

LINDLEY: To have the full weight of Fireforce fall upon your village must be a terrifying experience. No wonder the innocent run to hide in the bush, and sometimes get shot. This callout was very close indeed to where we talked to the guerrilla supporters. Now a group of eighteen armed men had been reported traveling through the area, and Fireforce had responded. "The greatest killing force we`ve got" is how Combined Operations describes Fireforce, and these men of Three Commando hold the record for guerrillas killed since 1968. But very often, all the Fireforce sound and fury signifies nothing at all, except more expense that Rhodesia can`t afford.

LINDLEY: Looks like another one without a (unintelligible).

THIRD WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: You asking me for a quote? (Laughing.) It`s too early to tell.

LINDLEY: How many does this make

THIRD WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: Seven -- eight lemons in a row. (Laughs.)

LINDLEY: How does that make you feel?

THIRD WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: You get used to it, you know? It`s all part of the game of war.

CRONIN: It`s terrible when you`re that close, unfortunately. But hell, I can`t do anything about it. All we can do is depend on the information.

LINDLEY: Do you think they`re there still?

CRONIN: They`re in the hills now. There are about a thousand meters from the area that we swept south. They`re probably in there just watching us. But it`s a resident group. Any time you get a group that goes to a business center once every two or three days, four days, you can figure it`s a resident group.

LINDLEY: From John Cronin we now got a clue about the nature of the secret war going on around us in the bush.

CRONIN: We can put a call sign in there as soon as the area is unfrozen -- in other words, thawed. There`s a group in there now that`s holding it for us, and as soon as they release that area then we`ll put our own people in.

LINDLEY: Only if called in on special radio channel 22 can Fireforce enter a frozen area. Otherwise, the secret unit already out there risks being shot. Fireforce depends for its success completely on the men out in the bush in their hidden observation posts trying to pinpoint the movements of the guerrillas. Now, when these men are brought back to base in helicopters, they land outside the camp. The commandos never see them, they communicate only by radio, and we are not allowed to photograph them. But we have seen enough of them to realize why there`s so much secrecy: they look exactly like the guerrillas they`re hunting. They wear denims, they carry the standard Communist gun, the AK-47, and they`re black. There`s an irony here, since these men are part of a unit named after Rhodesia`s greatest white hunter; they`re the Selous Scouts.

Now, the presence of these black Rhodesian soldiers here, dressed to look exactly like the guerrillas, means two things: first, when there are reports of atrocities allegedly committed by guerrillas against the rural population, we cannot be absolutely certain who is really responsible; and second, when it`s admitted to me that here in territory where guerrillas from the Zanla army are operating the Selous Scouts are passing themselves off as men from Zipra, the rival nationalist organization, then we can only speculate that the Rhodesian government is trying to foment those clashes between the rival nationalist groups that they say are already happening.

LINDLEY: The Rhodesian security forces say that Zanla guerrillas are fighting Zipra guerrillas. Now, what do you think is happening?

FOURTH BLACK CIVILIAN: No, that is not true. I`ve seen Zipra boys and Zanla boys; they don`t speak bad of each other.

Whenever the Rhodesian soldiers report that Zanla and Zipra fighting, it is not so.

LINDLEY: Just as the Selous Scouts are trying to drive a wedge between African villagers and guerrillas, just as the white government has co-opted some black politicians to try and split the nationalist ranks, so the white-run army is recruiting black soldiers to fight the black guerrillas. These are new arrivals at the Rhodesian African Rifles Depot at Balla Balla, near Shabani. Not all of them realize what it means to cross that barrier into the barracks, but the motivation is sometimes pretty obvious.

ENGLISH OFFICER AT DEPOT: You look a bit thin. Where have you come from?

FIRST RECRUIT: I come from Gwelo.

OFFICER: From?

FIRST RECRUIT: Gwelo.

OFFICER: Gwelo. What have you been doing in Gwelo? Eh?

FIRST RECRUIT:I wasn`t working, sir.

OFFICER: No work.

FIRST RECRUIT: Yes.

OFFICER: Is that why you have no food in your tummy?.. Eh?.. Eh? He doesn`t understand. How old are you?

SECOND RECRUIT: I`m nineteen, sir.

OFFICER: Nineteen.

SECOND RECRUIT: Yes.

OFFICER: What standard of education have you got?

SECOND RECRUIT: Grade seven.

OFFICER: Grade seven.

SECOND RECRUIT: Yes.

OFFICER: That`s good. Why do you want to come and be a soldier?

SECOND RECRUIT: I want to help Rhodesia.

OFFICER: Want to help Rhodesia.

SECOND RECRUIT: Yes, sir.

OFFICER: What about helping Zimbabwe?

SECOND RECRUIT: (Laughing.) No, sir.

OFFICER: Why not?

SECOND RECRUIT: I like to be a soldier, sir..

OFFICER: You like to be e, soldier.

SECOND RECRUIT: Yes, sir.

OFFICER: So it doesn`t really matter what it is, you just want to be a soldier.

SECOND RECRUIT: Yes, sir

OFFICER: I see

LINDLEY: More and more, the boys in the bush on both sides are black. Balla Balla is churning out hastily trained soldiers, what the whites disparagingly call "three-month wonders." Short as their training is, they`re already marked men, cut off from their roots, in mortal danger.

FOURTH WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: Once he joins us it`s very difficult for him to go back home, at the moment, with the terror presence that he`s got there.

LINDLEY: What would happen if he did?

FOURTH WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: Well, normally, the terrorists, when they find out somebody is in the army, they then more or less stake out his house, coming back every now and again; as soon as they find him there, they then murder him and the rest of his family. They sometimes write letters to recruits here at Balla Balla and tell them, Look, we know you`re in the army now. Either come home within a week or we are going to write off your family.

BLACK SOLDIER: When we were at home they used to beat us, killing some of the civilians without any cares; and they used to just take a person by force.

LINDLEY: When black nationalists like Sithole and Muzorewa are joining the Smith government, when so many blacks are joining the Rhodesian army, what do you think the guerrillas are going to do?

SECOND BLACK CIVILIAN: I think they are going to continue to fight (unintelligible), destroying more things, so that this government won`t get any supply from the people.

LINDLEY: Is this agreement going to make them give up?

Lt. ROGER CARLONE: Yeah, I reckon it is.

LINDLEY: Why?

CARLONE: Because they`ve got an excuse for coming back in and saying, Right, you know, what the hell are we fighting for anyway? They don`t know what they`re fighting for originally (laughing), you know, they come back and say, Let`s go back to our cause. That`s all they want to do; they want to sit outside their little kyar and watch their pickaninnies grow up and do their grazing and all the rest of it. And that`s what their life revolves around.

LINDLEY: So this disagreement is going to bring them in?

CRONIN: I think it will. I think it`ll have a profound effect on the number of terrorists now in the bush.

LINDLEY: Then the whole point about this agreement in Salisbury was that i t would lead to a cease-fire, it would lead to the end of the war. Any sign of that?

WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: No, I don`t think so. I think it will increase, and then they`re going to bring more and more in, and I don`t think it`ll end. Not in this country.

LINDLEY: If the Salisbury agreement fails to make the guerrillas surrender, whites will ask why Mr. Smith has conceded black majority rule. But if they do come in, then the army will simply not accept them into its ranks.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: You can`t really accept that sort, because it`s just like taking a battalion of IRA in Northern Ireland and sticking them with the security forces within Northern Ireland. How can you accept something like that?

WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: If that does happen, they might as well disband the whole army. Because I don`t think that anybody in the Rhodesian army, white-wise, is going to work next to the bugger that he was fighting two, three years ago.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: I don`t think I`ll be here when that happens. I`m afraid quite a lot of people will be leaving when that does happen.

LINDLEY: What are you going to feel about working for a black government? Is that something that you think about at all?

WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: Yeah, I`ve thought about it, but I won`t work for a black government, because I didn`t come into this country to fight in this country and sort of win the war and then end up working for a black government.

LINDLEY: Isn`t that what you`re going to be doing next year?

WHITE AFRICAN OFFICER: No, next year I`ll be out. I`ll pack my bags and I`ll leave. Because I`m not sticking around here, not under a black government.

LINDLEY: On the road before dawn, Fireforce hurries south. Just as long as they can see the horizon, the helicopters will fly by moonlight. Last night a commando patrol discovered a guerrilla camp. Now Fireforce is trying to get there before there`s a contact.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: Did they say one capture?

OTHER OFFICER: Yeah.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: Okay. They got one capture and they`re following up spoor at the moment, so it`s not complete... That`s the best we could do at the moment. Sorry about that.

LINDLEY: But the patrol lost track of the guerrillas. They waited by the road to be picked up with their capture. How did you make the capture?

OFFICER IN JEEP: He just gave himself up. He surrendered.

OTHER OFFICER: So we missed.

OFFICER: This guy was running away, in fact. He`s lucky he`s not dead.

LINDLEY: That same day, Fireforce finally caught up with the guerrillas, not far from the morning`s contact. It was a hard-fought encounter. At the end of it, the commandos had killed eight and captured three.

FIRST ENGLISH OFFICER: Did you have a good day?

ENGLISH SOLDIER: Yeah, it was all right. And the terrorists were situated in a village (inaudible). We just swept through. And they were just contacts swept back and forwards, and there were contacts carrying on all the time.

WHITE AFRICAN SOLDIER: There was escape by (unintelligible), and we thought he was dead. So two of us went up to him, and just as we were about five feet from him he threw a grenade at us. So we took cover, and just went off.

LINDLEY: And you shot him.

WHITE AFRICAN SOLDIER: Yeah.

LINDLEY: At last Fireforce got what it calls "floppies." The army says these guerrillas are criminals, not worthy of the name soldier. Just so, the Rhodesian government discounts the guerrillas` political leaders. But until Rhodesia recognizes that any real settlement must include them and the boys in the bush, the war won`t stop. The security. forces have killed four and a half thousand guerrillas, but today there are 4,000 more in the country. They won`t surrender.

CRONIN: All right, this is the one who threw the grenade at one of my officers and his machine gunner. He lay dead initially; and as they came up he rolled over on his back and threw that -- hit one of my people right in the forearm, but he`ll be all right. These fellows, those are burn marks on them.

LINDLEY: How did that happen?

CRONIN: Well, they got a little too close to an airstrike as it came in.

LINDLEY: These burns were caused by Rhodesian made napalm.

.LINDLEY: Quite a lot of people would say these weren`t terrorists but they were freedom fighters. How do you feel about that?

CRONIN: No, they`re -- I can`t imagine what the actual rationale behind that is. They are guilty of terrorism, there`s no question about it. They brutalize the locals. As far as being a freedom fighter, I don`t actually know what the "freedom" bit is; I can`t understand that. They`re terrorists; they always have been. And at least we`ve eliminated eleven of them. And that`s just great. That`s what Fireforce is all about.

MacNEIL: That view of the Rhodesia struggle was part of a report broadcast recently on the BBC program, "Panorama." The reporter was Richard Lindley. The United States and Britain have been trying to bring the rebel leaders, Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, into talks with Smith`s Rhodesian government on the belief that no permanent settlement is possible without the guerrillas. The rebels have refused and vowed to intensify that armed struggle. Washington and London hoped their peace plan would win the support of South Africa, but over the weekend South African Prime Minister John Vorster urged them to drop the plan and support Smith`s transition government. So, more fighting seems in prospect.

That`s all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m, Robert MacNeil. Good night.