Word: guerrillas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This is an important day for Rhodesia," declared a jubilant Sir Ian Gilmour, Britain's Deputy Foreign Secretary. "It means the end of the war." So it seemed. Moments earlier, Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, co-leaders of the Patriotic Front guerrilla alliance, had entered a gilded room in London's Foreign Office to add their signatures to a twelve-page protocol that had already been initialed by representatives of Britain and the now defunct Salisbury government of Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa. The document: a three-sided agreement for a complete cease-fire in Zimbabwe Rhodesia...
...called frontline states (Mozambique, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania and Botswana), whose support is crucial to the guerrillas, were given much of the credit for breaking the deadlock. Anxious for an end to the costly struggle, their leaders had been instrumental ever since they helped bring the Front to the conference table last September. With strong diplomatic encouragement from Whitehall and Washington, the frontline Presidents had sent a senior representative to London to tell the guerrilla leaders-particularly the recalcitrant Mugabe-that they must settle with the British. That arm twisting, and the additional assembly points, did the trick...
...shotguns and hunting rifles to make hit-and-run attacks on isolated farms, a white Rhodesian officer dismissed them as "a bunch of bloody garden boys." Such sarcastic putdowns no longer apply. The Soviet-and Chinese-trained "freedom fighters " of the Patriotic Front have been forged into an efficient guerrilla force. Despite their edge in air power, some of Zimbabwe Rhodesia's white-led array units have been routed by rebel forces that are now equipped with Soviet Kalashnikov automatic rifles, portable antiaircraft missiles and other sophisticated arms. Employing classic hide-and-seek guerrilla tactics, the "boys," as they...
Tribal enmity,* along with ideological disputes between the left-leaning Mugabe and the more pragmatic Nkomo, could pose a serious threat to the cease-fire plan. The two groups considered joining their forces under a single command and mounting a unified campaign in the forthcoming elections. Nevertheless, many guerrillas have been killed in intramural gun fights between the rival factions. Says James Chikerema, a former guerrilla leader: "The security forces sit on tops of hills and wait for ZIPRA and ZANLA to knock each other to pieces. Then they move in and kill." In November ZIPRA and ZANLA units clashed...
...week's end, the British faced an embarrassing dilemma when the conference formally ended without any final settlement. At the last plenary session, Patriotic Front Co-Leaders Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo flatly refused to sign a British-drafted plan that would require their guerrilla forces to assemble at 15 dispersed camps. This arrangement, they argued, would make them easy targets for the Rhodesian army...