The Countdown for Rhodesia

"The choice for the Europeans in Rhodesia is not between handing over and hanging on. It is between a chance of survival and certain suicide." That ominous warning from London's conservative Daily Mail was echoed in many Western and African ministries last week. But if Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith got the message, he failed to heed it. Instead, the embattled Smith clung more tenaciously than ever to his minority government (273,000 whites v. 5.8 million blacks). Meanwhile, an economic noose was tightening around the breakaway British colony, and there were ever louder alarms of a debilitating racial war between black-and white-ruled regimes that could engulf southern Africa. The possibility that Rhodesia would become the cockpit of Africa's next violent conflict grew steadily stronger.

For a time last week, in fact, some Rhodesians thought that war had actually been declared. Charging Rhodesia with aggression against his country, Mozambique President Samora Machel told his 8.3 million people in a radio broadcast: "Our country has been attacked and our people are being massacred. We are in a state of war." (An erroneous translation at first referred to a declaration of war.)

Machel ordered his country's porous, 800-mile border with Rhodesia closed and declared that he would begin "fully implementing" the United Nations-imposed international sanctions against Rhodesia. His government detained 18 Rhodesian trainmen caught inside Mozambique's borders and seized a considerable amount of Rhodesian rolling stock as well as tons of tobacco, copper, chrome and asbestos awaiting shipment at Mozambican ports.

The immediate impetus for Machel's action was the growing conflict along the border between Rhodesian government forces and guerrillas of the Zimbabwe Liberation Army, which is dedicated to overthrowing Smith's regime by force. Only days before Machel's tough speech, Rhodesia had boasted of engaging in "hot pursuit" operations against the guerrillas--even though Machel had warned that such incursions into Mozambique's territory would be considered an act of war. According to Machel, Rhodesian jets strafed the border village of Pafuri, killing seven Mozambican civilians and two soldiers. He said that Mozambique had shot down two of the planes, a claim Rhodesia did not deny.

Since launching Operation Hurricane in December 1972 to wipe out the guerrillas, the Rhodesian government says it has killed 786 rebels while losing 89 of its own troops. But the Zimbabwe forces, beefed up after three years of low-level and largely ineffective insurgency in northeastern Rhodesia, now have an estimated 10,000 fighters in Mozambique and Tanzania.

Keenly Felt. The local civilian populations along both sides of the border have become victims of both government and guerrilla reprisals. Salisbury has charged that Zimbabwe guerrillas have mutilated civilians suspected of being informers. There have also been reports of atrocities by Rhodesian forces against civilians.

For the time being, Smith's 12,000 troops under arms, comprising regulars, paramilitary police and reservists, will probably have little trouble containing the guerrilla insurgency. But Rhodesia's diplomatic and economic isolation as a result of the Mozambique action will be keenly--and immediately--felt. The loss of an outlet to the Indian Ocean via railway links to the Mozambique ports of Beira and Maputo immensely complicates Salisbury's trade with the outside world. Nearly 40% of Rhodesia's exports and imports moved along those rail lines. Alternate routes through South Africa are already congested.

Whether Smith survives at all, in fact, may very well depend on South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster, his old white-supremacist ally. Vorster is himself under increasing pressure to find an equitable solution to Pretoria's jurisdiction over the disputed territory of South West Africa (Namibia) and to assuage his own black majority. After Pretoria's military misadventure in Angola, South Africans are chary of being sucked into another no-win situation. Vorster's response to the "state of war" last week was cautious, and he carefully avoided taking sides. But South Africa's influential Financial Mail minced no words about what his course should be. The only way to stop the dangerous chain of events that threatened to drag South Africa into war, the magazine editorialized, was for Vorster to "put a gun to Smith's head: settle or quit."

If Rhodesia now finds itself completely surrounded by hostile African governments (Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana all supported Mozambique's action), it will get no comfort from Britain. Prime Minister Harold Wilson's government not only applauded Mozambique's imposition of sanctions against Rhodesia but also approved up to $30 million in emergency humanitarian aid to help the hard-pressed Mozambique economy survive the loss of crucial rail revenues from Rhodesia.

Through Lord Greenhill, its special envoy to Rhodesia, London has told Smith that if he would accept early black majority rule, Britain would 1) provide troops to protect whites and blacks alike during the transition period, and 2) underwrite the main financial cost of resettling Rhodesian Europeans in Britain and other Western countries. Although Smith now concedes that majority rule will have to come considerably sooner than he once envisaged ("not in my lifetime"), he still insists that an African majority government is 10 to 15 years off. That stubbornness prompted British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan to declare in exasperation last week: "Mr. Smith is his own man and will go his own way. But whether to heaven or perdition I am still not quite sure."

Lingering Hopes. The military assessment in Whitehall is that Smith has nine to twelve months at most before his regime is overwhelmed by a combined guerrilla war from surrounding African countries and a siege economy at home. "It's no longer the eleventh hour for Rhodesia but the 59th minute before Armageddon," said a British official in London. This view is based on the assumption that South Africa will not enter the war in force on the Rhodesian side, since such a move might trigger an Angola-scale Cuban intervention. At the moment, the British are resigned to the Cubans participating in a training and logistical role. But they do not think Fidel Castro's forces will engage in heavy combat as they did in Angola, unless Smith receives large reinforcements of South Africans or white mercenaries.

Britain's greatest fear is that Smith will launch a pre-emptive strike against Mozambique, which has no air force. Rhodesia's Canberras, Hunters and Vampire attack aircraft would have little trouble taking out guerrilla camps and breaking up concentrations of ground forces. The danger is that Moscow might reply by approving the use of Cuban-flown MIG 17s and 21s against the Rhodesian heartland. That would mean the end of all lingering hopes for a peaceful solution of Rhodesia's future.

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