Once the French garrison had been withdrawn in 1977, and with the compliance of Hassan Guptidan and his Issa supporters, the Somalis had no difficulty in establishing themselves at Djibuti. In spite of disagreements, the temporary expulsion of Soviet and Cuban advisers, and capricious fluctuations of support — in spite, even, of helping Ethiopia against them — the Soviet Union had returned to Somalia in strength and had continued to supply arms and aid. In return the USSR exacted absolute security for their air and sea bases at Berbera and Kismayu. If this was an important requirement in a period of what the world called detente, it may be imagined with what speed and decision the Russians fastened their grip upon the Horn of Africa in war. With 10,000 of their own troops and some 2,00 °Cubans redeployed in Somalia, this was not difficult. Equally total was their control of the other side of the Gulf of Aden, where we shall shortly make our way.
Apart from West and North-west Africa, the quietest part of the continent, sandwiched between two large areas notable for their turbulence, was East Africa. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi were enjoying not only tolerably harmonious relationships with one another, but also a degree of internal placidity unknown since the days of British guardianship. While Tanzania continued to support FRELIMO and to deploy troops in northern Mozambique, the others did not allow this harmony to be disrupted by what was happening in Mozambique or to interrupt their own assistance to the enemies of FRELIMO. It was a game that everyone played — on both sides. The succession in Kenya of a military council after Kenyatta’s disappearance from the scene, some years before, was matched in smoothness by the skilful manipulative powers of Tanzania’s ruler, who, while accepting Cuban military assistance in the training of his armed forces, resolutely refused to accept the political advice which was offered with it. Malawi went its own way, and since the demise of the tyrannical Field Marshal Omotin, even Uganda, under its newly designed federal government, was beginning to re-establish a degree of confidence and prosperity, with plentiful Western Aid.
The last rash actions of Omotin in the first years of the eighties had left their scars, of course. His decision, in a fit of pique and desire for that military glory which had evaded him in Zaire, Zimbabwe and the Sudan, to invade Kenya was disliked by all those of his senior advisers whose experience entitled them to an opinion. But such hostile unanimity did not deter the Field Marshal from embarking on his own chosen form of Blitzkrieg. At the same time the admirable and ubiquitous intelligence service built up by the Kenyan armed forces enabled them to bring about the dissipation of Omotin’s forces and hopes alike. Omotin based his stroke on the supposed invincibility of his Soviet aircraft and tanks. The tanks were reduced to flaming dustbins by the skilfully operated Milan anti-tank guided weapons, the MiGs plucked from the sky by Kenya’s Rapier and Blowpipe missile systems.
The crowning humiliation was the capture of Omotin himself, not by the declared enemy but by some of his own people, the Acholi and Langi tribesmen, to whom he had displayed the utmost extent of his spite and vindictiveness. Trusting his bulk to an Agusta-Bell helicopter in a supposedly morale-raising visit to his troops, the morale of both Kenya and his own countrymen was greatly raised by the news that he had fallen into the hands of his former victims after a forced landing. They had taken their revenge by blowing him from the muzzle of a 76 mm gun.
North of East Africa was the distressed and turbulent Horn; south of it lay the yet unfinished struggle for Southern Africa. One battle-the battle for Zimbabwe — was over. The white Rhodesians had gone, and in the main had been absorbed into the Republic of South Africa. The much more serious battle for South Africa itself had by 1985 not yet got properly under way, in spite of all the skirmishings and preparations and promises. In Zimbabwe itself, Bishop Zilothi of the United African National Council had triumphed. He could not have done so without the allegiance of the powerful Karanga tribe and the former regime’s black troops and policemen. Nor could the help provided by Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana be forgotten. Indeed the leaders of those countries were determined that it should not be. Zambia’s and Botswana’s leaders, both nominal and actual, were easy to identify; Mozambique’s less so.
The great issue for Southern Africa, indeed for Africa as a whole, was widely thought to be how and when the confrontation states would subjugate the remaining white power there. Three of the four states concerned, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia, had not only their own resources and experience of fighting for independence to draw on. Outside support was plentiful and urgent. In Mozambique, Soviet, Cuban and Somali troops were equipped with tanks, aircraft and missiles; in Zimbabwe were the amalgamated regular army, guerrilla forces and police; and in Namibia, Cubans, Nigerians and Jamaicans were well supported by Soviet advisers and Soviet weapons. On paper it appeared to be only a matter of time, of where, when and how, rather than whether. Soviet policy had had an unending run of success in Southern Africa. What was to stop it now?
But the white South Africans had not allowed the veldt to grow under their feet. Ever since the formation of Zimbabwe, they had embarked on the creation of a levee-en-masse to form a kind of Volkssturm, which would combine firepower with speed of movement, a proper intelligence system with security of military resources, and a rigorous training cycle. There were two big questions. How would they find weapons if the US and UK (and possibly even France) denied them? And what would the inhabitants of the Bantu homelands and the black population remaining in the white homelands do about it all?
Nor was this last the only question the confrontation states had to worry about. Their own internal problems were legion. Events in Mozambique continued to show that numerous and ruthless guerrilla forces were not the monopoly of Marxists. The Marxist President Sathela hardly knew from one day to the next whether he would be president in a week’s time. The Soviet military advisers were strangely indifferent to his apprehensions. Perhaps it was because they were more concerned — and their concern was to turn into assurance with the arrival of further Cuban contingents — about the security, for their own subsequent use, of the new air base at Buzaruto, some 150 miles south of Beira, and of the harbours at Maputo, Nacala, Porto Amelia and Beira itself. This apart, Sathela was able to console himself with the thought that his own bodyguard was composed largely of East German and Portuguese mercenaries. As long as their pay was forthcoming, his own prospects were at least a talking point.
As for Zimbabwe, the patterns of power and intrigue almost defied even the Soviet passion for faction and counter-faction, revolution and counter-revolution. One principal thread was discernible — the uneasy alliance of Bishop Zilothi and the main guerrilla controllers. How long the alliance would survive raised the question of the extent to which Zimbabwe would commit itself and its forces to the struggle for South Africa. This was a matter for the High Command of the Confederation of Africa South People’s Army (CASPA) to examine.