Frelimo activity
From lain Sproat, MP
Sir: I read with interest your article on Mozambique, as I have only recently returned from there, and indeed have made a study of the Mozambique situation for some years now — in particular for a series of lectures at the Royal College of Defence Studies last year — from as objective a viewpoint as possible. It seems to me that although many — not all — of the facts quoted by your correspondent were correct, the general impression was badly misleading. The truth about the present situation there may be summarised as follows:
Since about mid-1970 the general level of overall Frelimo activity has been falling. Frelimo's original strategy was based on the war-like Makonde tribe of the Cabo Delgado district, who were to form the nucleus of an army of ' liberation ' to sweep south. Cabo Delgado borders Tanzania to the north and in the early days there was little difficulty for Frelimo about supplies and weapons crossing that frontier. In the spring of 1970, the Portuguese under their new Commander-in-chief, General Kaulza de Arriaga, mounted an operation which cleaned out all the permanent Frelimo bases. These have never been re-established, although of course there continue to be mobile pockets of Frelimo, amounting to a maximum of some 3,500 armed and trained men. Some idea of the de-escalation of the war in Cabo Delgado can be gained from the fact that when I was in Mozambique in early 1970, an average of 200 mines a week were laid — the largest form of Frelimo activity: this is now an average of less -than twenty, and of those 90
per cent are rendered harmless.
The original Frelimo strategy also allowed for insurrection in the district of Niassa to the west of Cabo Delgado, which also borders Tanzania. The recruits raised here would have swept south and east and joined up with those in Cabo Delgado. The insurrection in Niassa was never, however, the threat it was in Cabo Delgado, and today the district is almost entirely quiescent, with less than 1,000 largely demoralised Frelimo confined to four mountainous areas. There are also small sporadic raids out of southern Malawi, where Dr Banda's writ does not effectively run, which are dealt with largely by African villagers on a selfdefence basis. They cannot be said to constitute much more than a nuisance for the Portuguese.
In Tete district, the original Frelimo strategy provided for almost no action, and it was not until some two years ago that there was any trouble, although the war started in 1964. It is precisely because the Portuguese have been so successful in blocking their strategy in Cabo Delgado, that Frelimo have been forced to turn to Tete. The Portuguese found some difficulty in dealing with Frelimo at first as the population were widely scattered and no effective effort had been made to group them into protected villages, as had been done in Niassa and Cabo Delgado, although this is now under way.
Frelimo activity has certainly increased in Tete, but this is from an almost zero base, and it is still much less than in Cabo Delgado. A generous estimate of armed Frelimo strength in Tete, which is as large as England, would be 1,500 men. Overall activity in Mozambique by Frelimo, I repeat ,has been steadily and greatly declining since the 1970 peak.
However, in Tete, there are three targets that are particularly sensitive in psychological and international media terms — Cabora Bassa dam, the international road from Malawi through Tete to Rhodesia, and the railway to Beira. One bomb near any of these three makes international headlines — although a few bombs are hardly a military threat — in spite of the fact that no government, whether in Belfast, Munich or even London (vide the Angry Brigade), can stop every determined bomber. Rhodesians and _South Africans in particular get overly alarmist because they have interests in the three sensitive areas, and also because the Frelimo activity, though much less serious than the Portuguese have already successfully contained, is for the first time nearer to their own frontier.
On a point of fact, there are no South African or Rhodesian troops used in the defence of Mozambique.
lain Sproat
House of Commons, London, SW1
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