Published in: Challenge April 1992
Despite all the peace initiatives of the churches and human rights organisations, despite all the peace accords, despite all the exposures and revelations about the involvement of the security forces in the conflict, the violence continues. Why?
JEFF MARISHANE has been studying this kind of violence in South Africa and in other parts of the world. The killings are not as senseless as they appear to be. Viewed against the background of what military strategists around the world call LIC (Low-Intensity Conflict), South Africa's violence makes complete sense - rather frightening sense.
We publish a brief summary of Jeff's research.
The violence in South Africa today is a classic example of what military strategists call Low-Intensity Warfare (LIW). This counter-insurgency strategy has a long history in South Africa and other parts of the world. Some acquaintance with this history will help us to understand the reasoning behind the violence.
AFTER VIETNAM
Their humiliating defeat in Vietnam finally convinced the United States military strategists and politicians that guerilla wars, insurrections and revolutions cannot be defeated by conventional armies using conventional military strategies. The mightiest army in the world with well trained personnel, sophisticated weapons, endless bombardment, wholesale massacres, torture and even the notorious napalm bomb could not defeat the Vietnamese insurgents.
Will and determination were on the side of the Vietnamese who kept coming back despite the merciless war of attrition conducted against them. Not only did the US Army lose the minds and hearts of the Vietnamese, they almost lost the minds and hearts of their own citizens.
It was obvious that from the perspective of US military interests that new and imaginative strategies of counter-insurgency would have to be found. Low Intensity Conflict was born out of this search for alternatives, although many of the elements of the new military strategy had been formulated earlier.
THE AIM OF LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT IS NOT A MILITARY VICTORY BUT DESTABILISATION.
HEART AND MINDS
In 1952, when General Sir Gerald Templar, the British Military High Commissioner in Malaya, was asked whether he had enough troops to defeat the insurgents in this British colony, he replied: "The answer lies not in pouring more soldiers into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the Malayan people".
In the USA, even before the Vietnam war, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) had begun to develop this "hearts and minds"strategy in their covert operations.
Edward G. Lonsdale, a former advertising executive, was sent to the Philippines as a CIA operative in the fifties to destroy the Huk rebellion by winning the hearts and minds of the people. He did this by planting informers, recruiting defectors, spreading disinformation and by numerous other "dirty tricks".
But most of all he constructed a political alternative in the person of Ramon Magsaysay, a friendly, popular man with a "moderate" image who called for reforms, for peace and for elections. Like F.W. de Klerk? In the fifties in the Philippines this formula worked.
After the Vietnam fiasco this was the formula for counter-insurgency around the world - it was even used a second time in the Philippines when Marcos, the new dictator, lost the minds and hearts of the people.
This approach came to be known as Low Intensity Conflict. It was further developed over the years and its tactics became more and more sinister and violent.
TOTAL WAR
In the days of P.W. Botha we heard a lot about the total onslaught that required a total strategy on the part of the State. The idea and the words came from General Andre Beaufre's book, "An Introduction to Strategy" (Faber 1963) which was based upon his experience of counter-insurgency as a French general in Algeria.
Basically total strategy or total war means "anything goes" - any kind of dirty trick or deception or even terrorism. The argument is that we can only defeat "the enemy" by adopting the methods and strategies they use. Their total onslaught requires a total response. If they lie, we lie; if they kill, we kill; if they plant bombs, we plant bombs; if they destabilise communities we do the same.
The perception of what any particular liberation movement is trying to do may be wrong, but LIC is thought of as giving terrorists a dose of their own medicine with disinformation, sabotage, death squads, hitmen, assassinations, planting bombs in buildings, killing civilians and generally destabilising communities.
The US Army has defined LIC as " a limited political military struggle (which) ranges from diplomatic, economic and psychological pressure through terrorism and insurgency". A former commander of US Special Operations in EI Salvador describes LIC as "total war at the grassroots level"
High-Intensity Warfare means a nuclear war. Mid-Intensity Warfare means a war with conventional weapons like the war against Iraq. Low-Intensity Warfare uses unconventional methods against any kind of "communist" or "terrorist" threat.
DESTABILISATION
LIC is anti-communist. It is a way of destabilising revolutionary movements which are thought to be communist, and a way of destabilising governments that have been taken over by communists. In the late 70's and early 80's, Western strategists started low intensity wars against the new Marxist governments in Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. They trained, armed and supported right-wing guerrilla groups in each country to do the work of destabilisation: Unita in Angola, Renamo or MNR in Mozambique, the Contras in Nicaragua and the Mudjahedin in Afghanistan.
Two very important lessons were learnt from this exercise in Low-Intensity Warfare. The first was that the aim of LIC should not be a military victory but destabilisation. Once the country had been thoroughly destabilised and the economy in ruins, the long suffering and war-weary people would be quite happy to vote for a pro-Western government in a general election. This happened a short while ago in Nicaragua.
Counter-revolutionary terrorism is far more effective than any amount of propaganda as a way of getting people to vote for peace, reform and moderation.
The second lesson the strategists learnt was that you must use puppets or surrogate armies. You must not introduce a foreign army of occupation. You must get the people of the same nation to fight the government you want to destabilise. Angolans must fight Angolans and Mozambicans must fight Mozambicans.
The lessons of the Vietnam war are now clear: don't try to win the war, just keep the country destabilised; don't use your own troops, get the "natives" to fight one another.
DIVIDE AND RULE
Finally, LIC terrorism has now become the most effective way of keeping a pro-Western government in power. In countries like Guatemala, EI Salvador, the Philippines and South Africa, LIC is a kind of divide and rule strategy that prevents an effective revolution from the left. Every possible means is used to get the poor to begin fighting one another. It then becomes possible for the government to pose as the neutral peacemaker.
A variety of means are now being used to instigate internal conflict: vigilantes, gangsters, death squads, agents provocateurs, recruiting mercenaries from the unemployed, exploiting political rivalries and tribal loyalties.
Today the most sophisticated use of LIC to destabilise the left and the communities that might support them is being planned and executed in South Africa.
LIC IN SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa's military strategists are very well versed in the theory and techniques of LIC. Many of our generals, including Magnus Malan, studied counter-insurgency in the military academies of the USA. Their links with other military strategists from Chile to Israel are well known.
The generals and the politicians have not only made use of the theory of total strategy and dirty tricks and winning hearts and minds, but they have also gained much experience in the use of death squads, as we learnt from the Harms Commission and numerous other revelations, and in the "art" of destabilising other countries by means of hit squads or surrogate forces like Renamo, Unita and the Lesotho Liberation Army.
By 1989 it had become abundantly clear that these strategies were not working. More subtle forms of counter-insurgency would have to be worked out.
At the beginning of 1990, the new plan began to emerge: abandon the policy of apartheid, unban the opposition, present the National Party as a moderate, reformist party working for peace, improve the image of white South Africa and stop sanctions. But what if the black majority took advantage of the new freedom to rise up and take power? Whether that is likely to happen or not, it represents what whites fear most.
Addressing these fears on March 8 1992, during the white referendum debate on TV, Hernus Kriel, the Minister of Law and Order, pointed out that since February 2, 1990 the violence had changed from "black on white" to "black on black". Does that mean that there was deliberate strategy not only to stop the ANC's armed struggle, but also to destabilise the black community by instigating internal conflict?
BEHIND THE VIOLENCE
The pattern of violence since the beginning of the 90's is clear. In ICT's booklet on violence, "The New Kairos" published in September 1990, a clear distinction is made between "the causes of the violence and the conditions that make violence possible."
The conditions that are being exploited include political rivalry, tribalism, hostel dwellers and residents, squatters and residents and competing taxi associations. But the instigators of the violence are a "third force" that most commentators and analysts now trace back to the Special Forces of the SADF. Nobody else could orchestrate conflict throughout the country on such a massive scale without being discovered. The operation is now so extensive and so complicated, employing thousands of highly skilled people, planning hundreds of attacks and conspiracies, using vast amounts of equipment and weapons and such huge sums of money that that it is no longer possible to monitor the operation, let alone stop it.
What still puzzles many commentators, however , is the motive. Are they trying to wreck the negotiations process? Acquaintance with the long history of low intensity conflict as strategy shows that the violence is meant to complement the government's negotiation policy by discrediting the ANC and blacks in general and by demotivating, demoralising, destabilising and confusing the war-weary people of the townships who are then supposed to opt for peace at all costs as they did in Nicaragua, Angola and Mozambique. It has all been very carefully thought out to confuse and frighten everyone.
On February 2, 1990, the security establishment did not abandon the low intensity war that they had been waging against the people for years. They simply adapted it. Sergeant Felix Ndimene claims that his SADF superiors described the new mission of the Special Forces as "a different kind of war". The same people are now busy with a more extensive, more invisible and more destructive war against the people.