U.K. to send more soldiers to Zimbabwe

Press, 7 June 1980, Page 9

U.K. to send more soldiers to Zimbabwe

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury Britain has agreed to more than double its military training staff in Zimbabwe at the request of the Prime Minister (Mr Robert Mugabe). A spokesman for the British' High Commission said that over the next four months the number of military trainers — mainly officers and non-commis-sioned officers — would be increased from 58 to 130. The British military mission in Zimbabwe is ' helping to integrate the forces into a new national army. Mr Mugabe voiced concern at the slow pace of integration and asked for extra British training staff to replace white officers of the former Rhodesian Army. Military sources said the white Rhodesian officers still had poor relations with their erstwhile enemies in black- nationalist guerrilla ranks. The military integration, probably the most crucial single issue facing Mr Mugabe’s six-week-old independence government, has hit many problems. Only 1200 of the 35,000 Patriotic Front guerrillas that fought against former Government troops had been assigned for retraining as conventional troops, and hundreds of these had been jailed for indiscipline, military’ sources said. The guerrillas are split into the mutually hostile

Zanla (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army), loyal to Mr Mugabe, and the Zipra (Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army) of the Home Affairs Minister, (Mr Joshua Nkomo), While some units of the old white Rhodesian Army, notably the Selous Scouts, had been disbanded, wartime hostility between the three forces still ran high, military sources said. Zimbabwe’s military planners have launched a socalled “Operation Seed” — an acronym for “Soldiers Employed in Economic Developments” — to redeploy the nationalist forces in agricultural projects. But few of the guerrillas had shown any interest in abandoning a military career or surrendering their weapons, military sources said. Mr Mugabe has set an end-of-year deadline for the creation of a new army. Military planners believed it would number 14,000 to 15,000, but this would mean standing down many guerrillas and regulars from the old Rhodesian Army, and both sides resisted this idea. Another complication was the tension between Zipra and Zanla. Mr Nkomo wanted the new army to be drawn equally from the two guerrilla armies, but the Zanla commander, Rex Nhongo, insisted that the Zimbabwe force be based on his guerrillas, the sources said.