Fourth front opens in Rhodesia

Press, 9 August 1976, Page 8

Fourth front opens in Rhodesia

By

JOHN EDLIN,

of Associ-

ated Press, through NZPA

Wankie, Rhodesia ! Black nationalists operating from bases in Zambia (have opened a fourth front i in the guerrilla offensive [against Rhodesia’s white-mi-jnority Government. ■■ In the last month, at least [two units of Soviet-trained 1 ' insurgents have slipped ! across the 500-mile frontier land penetrated 28 miles into i north-western Rhodesia’s (thickly-wooded farmlands' land tribal reserves, which (had been largely untouched i by almost four years of conflict. i The infiltrators killed a 1 white farmer when they j raked his remote homestead (with machine-gun fire. I More alarming to the I authorities, the guerrillas ambushed and killed a white lumberman on the main 300mile highway between Rhodesia’s second city, Bulawayo. in the far south-west land the Victoria Falls resort in the north-west, overlooking Zambia. The highway, a popular route for holidaymakers j travelling to Victoria Falls I and to the famed Wankiej

wild animal reserve, has been closed to traffic from late afternoon to early morning.

“You’ll travel at your own risk if you’re not off the road by 4 pan.,” said a young white policeman in khaki uniform at a roadblock just outside Bulawayo. One hundred miles up the highway, a few miles from where the lumberman was slain, an elderly police reservist. in combat camouflage leaned on a Belgian-designed rifle as black constables search Africans travelling in a bus. “You never know where or when they might strike next,” he said, “and you never really know who’s an ordinary African villager and who is a terrorist.”

At the nearby Gwaai River Hotel, the owner, Mr Harold Broomberg, idly wiped a beer glass, and sighed. “We get very few visitors since the first terrorist reports in this area,” he said. “People are obviously scared to use this road, but as far as we’re concerned there's nothing to worry about. The murders were pretty well •isolated, and proper steps

have now been taken to ensure there will be no more of them.”

But the spectre of a fourth front in Northern Matabeleland, a province stretching from Bulawayo to the Victoria Falls, has generated a spate of alarmist rumours elsewhere in Rhodesia.

“I’ve been getting calls from people who’ve heard I’ve been shot and that my hotel has been attacked,” said Mr Broomberg. “If that’s the way people are thinking, then it might be a while before we can attract tourists back here.” One of the callers was the Rhodesian Information, Immigration, and Tourism Minister (Mr Elly Broomberg), who is Harold’s brother. He quickly issued a statement last week-end warning against rumour mongering.

“We must simply face the fact that we’re living in a state similar to Israel,” said Harold Broomberg. “But there’s no question of us being forced out.” The aim of the insurgents, according to intelligence sources, is to unnerve the! civilian population. par-, ticularlv the whites, and cut communications. 1

Mr Ted Sutton Pryce, a military adviser in Mr lan Smith’s office in Salisbury, said in an interview this week that 400 fully-trained guerrillas were poised in Zambia to move into Northern Matabeleland, and another 600 were in training to link up with them later.

The authorities have yet to establish an operations command in the new sector to c o-o r d i n a t e counterinsurgency operations by the army, air force, police, and civil administration.

“It’s strictly a limited operation at the moment,” said one police officer at the mining town. “For the time being the police can handle it.” But an expected new wave of incursions from Zambia in the next few weeks could force military planners to designate Northern Matabeleland as a fourth operational zone. i

The other three—codenamed Thrasher. Hurricane, . and Repulse—stretch from the north-east of Rhodesia (down the eastern border iarea with Mozambique and (to the stations and sugar; plantations of the south-east.' The creation of a fourth

operational area would mean that Rhodesian security forces, their manpower reserves already strained in the existing zones, would have to field even more men over an area of several hundred square miles.

“These are classic tactics for guerrillas,” a counterinsurgency expert in Salisbury said. ‘They maintain a presence over as much territory as possible to make us spread our own resources as thinly as possible.” Yet the military planners are confident that they will be able to cope with any large-scale insurgency in Northern Matabeleland. The latest batches of “terrs” (guerrillas) in this region had been a rag-tag lot, the intelligence source at Victoria Falls insisted. “And we don’t expect much better from the next bunches to come across."

I The insurgents who have crossed from Zambia in the last month are said to be supporters of Mr Joshua Nkomo, the leader of the domestic wing of the Rhodesian African National Council — one, iof two factions training guer-j rillas to try to topple the' Government.