MOZAMBIQUE CIVIL WAR

MOZAMBIQUE CIVIL WAR TACTICS

 By Davies Saina Kalepa

RENAMO strategies and operations

Having fought the Portuguese using guerilla strategies, FRELIMO was now forced to defend itself against the very same methods. It had to defend vast areas and hundreds of locations, while RENAMO operated out of a few remote areas carrying out raids against towns and important infrastructure. Furthermore, RENAMO systematically forced civilians into its employment. This was done by mass abduction, especially of children in order to use them as soldiers. It is estimated that one third of RENAMO forces were child soldiers. But abducted people also had to serve RENAMO in administrative or public service functions in the areas it controlled. Another way of using civilians for military purposes was the so-called system of "Gandira". This system especially affected the rural population in areas controlled by RENAMO and forced them to fulfill three main tasks: 1) produce food for RENAMO, 2) transport goods and ammunition, 3) serve as female sex slaves.

Both sides heavily relied on the use of land mines; FRELIMO as a means to defend important infrastructure, RENAMO in order to terrify the populace, stall the economy and destroy the civil services, mining roads, schools and health centres.

Thus, despite of its far superior numbers, FRELIMO was unable to adequately defend any but the most important cities. By the mid-1980s, FRELIMO had lost control of much of the countryside. RENAMO was able to carry out raids virtually anywhere in the country except for the major cities. Transportation had become a perilous business. Even armed convoys were not safe from RENAMO attacks.

War crimes and crimes against humanity

RENAMO systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity as part of its destabilization strategy. These include mass killing, rape and mutilation of non-combatants during terroristic raids on villages and towns, the use of child soldiers and the employment of the Gandira system, based upon forced labour and sexual violence. Often women would be apprehended while out in the fields, then raped as a means to boost troop moral. Gandira caused widespread starvation among the rural population due to the little time left to produce food for themselves. This caused more and more persons to be bodily unable to endure the long transportation marches demanded from them. Refusing to participate in Gandira or falling behind on the marches resulted in severe beating and often execution. Flight attempts were also punished harshly. One particularly gruesome practice was the mutilation and killing of children left behind by escaped parents.

RENAMO crimes gained worldwide public attention when RENAMO soldiers butchered 424 civilians, including the patients of a hospital, with guns and machetes during a raid on the rural town of Homoine. This incident prompted an investigation into RENAMO methods by US-State Department consultant Robert Gersony, which finally put an end to right-wing ambitions for US-government support for RENAMO. The report concluded that RENAMO's actions in Homoine did not significantly differ from the tactics it normally employed in such raids. These methods are described in the report in the following way:

"The attack stage was sometimes reported to begin with what appeared to the inhabitants to be the indiscriminate firing of automatic weapons by a substantial force of attacking RENAMO combatants. […] Reportedly the Government soldiers aim their defensive fire at the attackers, while the RENAMO forces shoot indiscriminately into the village. In some cases refugees perceived that the attacking force had divided into three detachments: one conducts the military attack; another enters houses and removes valuables, mainly clothing, radios, food, pots and other possessions; a third moves through the looted houses with pieces of burning thatch setting fire to the houses in the village. There were several reports that schools and health clinics are typical targets for destruction. The destruction of the village as a viable entity appears to be the main objective of such attacks. This type of attack causes several types of civilian casualties. As is normal in guerrilla warfare, some civilians are killed in crossfire between the two opposing forces, although this tends in the view of the refugees to account for only a minority of the deaths. A larger number of civilians in these attacks and other contexts were reported to be victims of purposeful shooting deaths and executions, of axing, knifing, bayoneting, burning to death, forced drowning and asphyxiation, and other forms of murder where no meaningful resistance or defense is present. Eyewitness accounts indicate that when civilians are killed in these indiscriminate attacks, whether against defended or undefended villages, children, often together with mothers and elderly people, are also killed. Varying numbers of civilian victims in each attack were reported to be rounded up and abducted [...]. Thus it appears the only difference between the Homoine massacre and RENAMO's usual methods was the size of the operation. Normally RENAMO would choose smaller, easier targets instead of attacking a town defended by some 90 government soldiers. The "Gersony Report" submitted on April 1988, reported that refugees provided eyewitness or other credible accounts about killings (from RENAMO) which included shooting executions, knife/axe/bayonet killings, burning alive, beating to death, forced asphyxiation, forced starvation, and random shooting at civilians in villages during attacks.

 

RENAMO TACTICS

a.         This force was formed to counter the FERLIMO government and to disrupt the logistical flow of goods to neighboring Zimbabwe

b.         People are compelled to work long hours without pay on farms, to serve as porters on forced marches without food, and to service the sexual needs of RENAMO warriors

 FRELIMO strategies and operations

FRELIMO reacted by reusing a system first introduced by the Portuguese: the creation of fortified communal villages called aldeamentos where much of the rural population was relocated. Furthermore, in order to keep a minimum level of infrastructure working, three heavily guarded and mined corridors were established consisting of roads, railways and power lines: the Beira, the Tete (also called the Tete Run which speaks for itself regarding its safety) and the Limpopo Corridors.

In 1982, landlocked Zimbabwe directly intervened in the civil war in order to secure its transport ways, stop cross-border RENAMO raids and help its old ally FRELIMO.

War crimes and crimes against humanity

FRELIMO soldiers also committed serious war crimes during the civil war. Much like RENAMO, FRELIMO forced people in its employment. Living in the communal villages was mandatory. However, in some areas cultural norms require households to live at some distance from each other. Therefore many people preferred living in the countryside despite the risk of RENAMO assaults.  Thus people would often be forced into the communal villages at gunpoint by FAM-soldiers or their Zimbabwean allies. As a local recalls:

"I never wanted to leave my old residence and come to the communal village. Even with the war, I wanted to stay where I had my land and granaries. Ever since a long time ago, we never lived with so many people together in the same place. Everyone must live in his own yard. The Komeredes [Zimbabwean soldiers] came to my house and said that I should leave my house and go to the communal village where there were a lot of people. I tried to refuse and then they set fire to my house, my granaries, and my fields. They threatened me with death and they told me and my family to go forward. Inside the communal village we lived like pigs. It was like a yard for pigs. We were so many people living close to each other. If someone slept with his wife everyone could listen to what they were doing. When we went to the fields or to the cemeteries to bury the dead, the soldiers had to come behind and in front of us. When the women went to the river to wash themselves, the soldiers had to go too and they usually saw our women naked. Everything was a complete shame inside that corral. Usually to eat, we had to depend on humanitarian aid, but we never knew when it would arrive. It was terrible; that is why many people used to run away from the communal village to their old residences where RENAMO soldiers were, although it was also terrible there.

Also, rape was a widespread practice among FRELIMO soldiers. However, it was far less frequent and lacked the institutionalised quality of sexual violence carried out by RENAMO.  In comparison to RENAMO transgressions, FRELIMO war crimes were by far less systematic, widespread and grave. I.e. the refugees interviewed for the Gersony Report attributed 94% of the murders, 94% of the abductions and 93% of the lootings to RENAMO.  Despite the massive scale and organized manner in which war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed during the Mozambican civil war, so far not one RENAMO or FRELIMO commander has appeared before a war crimes tribunal of any sort. This is due to the unconditional general amnesty law for the period form 1976-1992 passed by the parliament (then

 

The Soviet Union continued to support the new FRELIMO government against counterrevolution in the years after 1975. By 1981, there were 230 Soviet and 800 Cuban military advisers still in the country. Cuba's involvement in Mozambique was as part of a continuing effort to export the anti-imperialist ideology of the Cuban Revolution and forge desperately needed new allies. Cuba provided support to liberation movements and leftist governments in numerous African countries, including Angola, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau and Congo-Brazzaville.

FRELIMO TACTICS

a.         hit-and-run attacks against RENANO outposts before rapidly fading into accessible backwater areas.     

Military stalemate

By the end of the 1980s neither side was able to win the war by military means. The military pressure on RENAMO had not resulted in its defeat. While being incapable of capturing any large cities, it was still able to terrorise the rural areas. FRELIMO controlled the urban areas and the corridors, but was unable to protect the countryside from RENAMO squadrons. Neither had its offensives been successful in pinning down RENAMO and forcing it into a direct full-scale

 REFERENCES

2. Caughey, Grant J. DOD Africa Affairs Divison of the Joint Staff. Personal interview about U.S. military involvement in Mozambique. Pentagon,Washington D.C., 26 February 1991.
4. Henriksen, Thomas H. Mozambique: A History. Southhampton, England. ThCamelot Press, 1978, pp. 171-188.

5. Isaacman, Allen, and Barbara Isaacman. MOZAMBIQUE: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900-1982. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1983, pp. 1-107.

6. Lecocq, Randy. Changes in Mozambique Since 1987. African Affairs Desk Officer, U.S. State Department. Washington D.C., 1991, pp. 1-4.

7. MacFarquhar, Emily. "The killing fields of Mozambique." U.S. News& World Report, 104 (2 May 1988), p. 45.

8. Maier, Karl. "Mozambique's Leader Urges Rebels to Take Fight to Ballot Box." The Washington Post, 4 Nov 1990, Section C, p. 4.

11. Shchedrin, Vladimir., Major. "USSR--Mozambique." Soviet Military Review, 8 (25 August 1986), p. 49.

Young, Lance S. 1991. Mozambique's Sixteen-Year Bloody Civil War. United States Air Force

 

Compiled during studies in Defence and Security By:

Davies Saina Kalepa, MCIPS MZIPS
Consultant – Procurement and Real Estates

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