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Counterinsurgency in Africa: The Portuguese Way of War, 1961-1974 (Contributions in Military Studies)

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Dr John P Cann, a British military scholar who teaches at the US marine college in Virginia, wrote this account of the Portuguese campaigns to hold on to its three African colonies: Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. This is a little studied war in the Anglo-Saxon world, mainly because it was seen as an anachronism even at the time, as the British, French and Belgians had abandoned or were in the process of surrendering their colonies. In contrast, Portugal under the reactionary Salazar, decided to hold onto its possessions and waged a brilliant counter-insurgency campaign between 1961-74 that fought the insurgents to a standstill. The sudden decision in 1974 to abandon the colonies was in the end a purely political decision and did not reflect the military situation on the ground.

The book is not an account of the military operations, but looks at the thought processes that went into the decision to fight the war against huge international opposition; how the military set about developing a counter-insurgency doctrine based on other nations' experiences, and with Portugal's limited resources; and finally how the strategy was implemented.

Dr Cann gives the reasons why Salazar's Portugal decided to fight, rather than surrender the 'Ultramar'(overseas territories) in Africa; this, despite the enormous international opposition and criticism and the challenges that such a campaign presented for a small country like Portugal. At that time it was the poorest country per head in Western Europe and had armed forces totalling only 79,000, compared to the UK's 500,000 or the US' 2.5 m. There were huge distances between the mother country and the colonies: 7000km to Angola, 10000km to Mozambique. The colonies themselves especially, Angola and Mozambique, covered vast areas and included a great variety of terrain, from deserts to jungle.

Dr Cann demonstrates that the very nature of the challenge determined Portugal's approach to their war and contrasts it with US in Vietnam, a war that ran almost parallel. Unlike the US, with its huge resources and firepower, Portugal was compelled to wage a low-cost, low-intensity war committing the minimum of men and resources, not only so it could be sustained militarily, but to avoid war weariness both at home and in the colonies, and to ensure the war didn't disrupt everyday life in the colonies themselves.

Cann frequently contrasts the Portuguese 'way of war' to the US in Vietnam; while Portugal decided to adapt it's army to the war, the US tried to make the war in Vietnam adapt to its army. The Portuguese, unlike the US Army, assiduously studied and learnt from previous successful and unsuccessful counterinsurgency campaigns, especially those of the British in Malaya and Kenya. By the beginning of operations in 1964, the general staff had condensed the lessons into an easy-to understand handbook 'O Exército na Guerra Subversiva' (The army in subversive war) that was issued to every soldier, explaining the nature of subversive warfare and how to fight it:
i. Disorders must be suppressed with minimum force
ii. Successful counterinsurgency depends on successful cooperation between military and civil authorities
iii. Successful counterinsurgency depends on good intelligence coordinated under a single authority
iv. Successful counterinsurgency requires highly-decentralized small unit tactics

The army also became the instrument of a programme of progressive social, economic and infrastructure projects, designed to win over the populace and that was broadly successful, especially in Angola.

However, in the end it was the Army, especially the officer corps, who wearied of the war, and the lack of a political solution to end it, that resulted in the coup that toppled the successor to Salazar. The new left-leaning military rulers granted independence almost overnight. The irony of Portugal's successful military campaign was that the insurgent groups were so disorganized and demoralized they were in no condition to assume power, and in Angola and Mozambique it quickly dissolved into a civil war between the different factions, who effectively became proxies in the cold war battle for influence in Africa.

Dr Cann doesn't hide his admiration and respect for the Portuguese military who waged a very intelligent and enlightened campaign, and he seems to almost relish contrasting the success of the Portuguese low-cost, low-intensity war, to the US' clumsy and destructive use of mass firepower and 'overwhelming force' in Vietnam, and its arrogant refusal to learn from either their own or other's mistakes.

But ultimately the author accepts that even the most successful military campaign needs a political resolution, something that the stubborn Salazar wouldn't countenance. So it was left to the army to recognize that the political ingredient was missing from their campaign, and ironically it was they who effectively who ended the war, when they launched a successful coup to depose Salazar's successor.

This is an excelent book, very well written and full of interesting information. This book should be an interesting read for people who like military history, and for those that want to find out more about the Portuguese colonial wars in Africa.