Search results for ""Author Al J Venter""

When a large group of rebels invaded Angola from a recently independent Congo in 1961, it heralded the opening shots in another African war of independence. Between 1961 and 1974, Portugal faced the extremely ambitious task of conducting three simultaneous counterinsurgency campaigns to preserve its hegemony of Angola, Portuguese Guinea and Mozambique. While other European states were falling over themselves in granting independence to their African possessions, Portugal chose to stay and fight despite the odds against success. That it did so successfully for thirteen years in a distant multi-fronted war remains a remarkable achievement, particularly for a nation of such modest resources. For example, in Angola the Portuguese had a tiny air force of possibly a dozen transport planes, a squadron or two of F-86s and perhaps twenty helicopters: and that in a remote African country twice the size of Texas. Portugal proved that such a war can be won. In Angola victory was complete. However, the political leadership proved weak and irresolute, and this encouraged communist elements within the military to stage a coup in April 1974 and lead a capitulation to the insurgent movements, squandering the hard-won military and social gains and abandoning Portugal's African citizens to generations of civil war and destitution.

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Portugal fought a bush war in Mozambique - one of the most beautiful countries in the world - for over a decade. The small European nation was ranged against formidable odds and in the end was unable to muster the resources required to effectively take on the might of the Soviet Union and its collaborators - every single communist country on the planet and almost all of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, Al Venter argues, Portugal did not actually lose the war, and indeed fought in difficult terrain with a good degree of success over an extended period. It was radical domestic politics that heralded the end.Mozambique is once again embroiled in a guerrilla war, this time against a large force of Islamic militants, many from Somalia and some Arab countries, and unequivocally backed by Islamic State and the lessons of Mozambique’s bush war are still relevant today.

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Insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere-the majority linked to al Qaeda-are in the news on an almost daily basis. But very little surfaces about a festering insurgency that has been on the go for six years in West Africa under the acronym of AQIM, or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. This low-level series of guerrilla conflicts is widespread and sporadic, covering an area as vast as Europe. Nigeria has been drawn into the equation because its Boko Haram insurgent faction maintains close ties with AQIM and Islamic State. For now though, the focus is on Mali where several jihadist groups-despite formal peace agreements-remain active. Involved is the French army and air force as well as the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the European Union Training Mission in Mali (EUTM) as well as the European Union Capacity Building Mission (EUCAP). The insurrection that fostered all this broke out early 2012 when President Fran�ois Hollande announced the beginning of Operation Serval. Five hours later the first squadrons of French Gazelle helicopter gunships began attacking Islamist columns. A day later French fighter jets based in Chad, almost 2,000 kilometres away, were making sorties against rebel ground targets in northern Mali.

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The world’s oldest still-active war correspondent, Al J. Venter has reported from the front lines for well over half a century, witnessing the horrors humanity visits upon itself in twenty-five conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. In this memoir, Venter masterfully recounts his experiences, sharing the real stories behind the headlines and the sharp lessons he learned that enabled him to survive his countless exploits, ranging from exposing a major KGB operative in Rhodesia entirely by accident, and accompanying an Israeli force led by Ariel Sharon into Beirut, to gun-running into the United States.

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Portugal was the first European country to colonise Africa. It was also the last to leave, almost five centuries later. During the course of what Lisbon called its civilizing mission in Africa the Portuguese weathered numerous insurrections, but none as severe as the guerrilla war first launched in Angola in 1961 and two years later in Portuguese Guinea. While Angola had a solid economic infrastructure, that did not hold for the tiny West African enclave that was to become Guine-Bissau. Both Soviets and Cubans believed that because that tiny colony- roughly the size of Belgium - had no resources and a small population, that Lisbon would soon capitulate. They were wrong, because hostilities lasted more than a decade and the 11-year struggle turned into the most intense of Lisbon's three African colonies. It was a classic African guerrilla campaign that kicked off in January 1963, but nobody noticed because what was taking place in Vietnam grabbed all the headlines. The Soviet-led guerrilla campaign in Portuguese Guinea was to go on and set the scene for the wars that followed in Rhodesia and present-day Namibia.

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One of the great tragedies of Africa is not only the fact that a million people-mostly civilians and a large proportion of them children-died in one of Africa's first post-independence wars, but that until it happened the world thought Nigeria was immune from the wasting disease of tribalism. It certainly was not because the Biafran War is still the most expansive tribal conflagration that the continent has experienced-barring perhaps the ongoing Great Lakes conflict-involving the forces of East and West, only this time, with the British siding with the Soviets. Worse, some of the religious differences that emerged before and after that dreadful carnage are still with us today. During the course of hostilities that lasted almost four years, a lot of other shortcomings surfaced in Africa's most populous nation, including the kind of corruption that, until then, had always been linked to countries rich in oil. Disunity, incompetence and instability-from which Nigeria never really recovered-also emerged. Two bloody army coups followed after the rebels capitulated, together with an appalling series of massacres, mostly of southern Christians by Muslim northerners. Half a century later the slaughter continues.

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