Page 314 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

816 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

For the education at the military academy at Nampula and other military schools, tacti-
cal manuals of the Warsaw Pact were used, replacing the former guerilla warfare doctrine.
Instructors and advisors were Soviet and Cuban military personnel but no East Germans.
The alleged success story of NVA proved to be completely unsuitable for Mozambique.
The setup of regular army structures modeled on the Eastern bloc did not lead to success in
the fight against the new guerilla.
Instead, warfare continued for 15 years.
The ideas and concepts of the Eastern bloc armies were tailored to European conditions
and a regular war involving large armies, therefore, they were unsuitable for Africa in three
respects:
They were neither in line with the geographical and climatic conditions nor designed for
asymmetric warfare against irregular forces. In particular in the Mozambican civil war, the
government forces lost their capability of effective counter-insurgency tactics and strategy.
Doubts as to whether a strategy and organization based exclusively on the military struc-
tures of the Warsaw Pact armed forces, could be successful under African conditions were
expressed as early as in the 1980s, at least in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1987,
Ernst Hillebrand argued that operations of heavy conventional units would be unsuitable for
the conditions of guerilla warfare. The “relative failure [of] Afro-Marxist states” against the
oppositional guerillas proved the unsuitability of the strategic and tactical concepts of the
Eastern bloc advisors for African conflicts .
15
According to Christopher Coker, “by the early 1980s, it was clear to Mozambique that the
East Germans in particular had little, if any, understanding of guerrilla warfare” .
16
“In November 1981, President Machel bitterly attacked the security forces for gross in-
competence in the field”. According to Christopher Coker and Bernhard Weimer, the harsh
criticism was implicitly directed at instructors, advisors and weapons suppliers from the East-
ern bloc: Machel’s criticism can thus also be referred to the training in the GDR army .
17
“Self-defense of the population” was the new focus that was born of necessity. In May
1989 President Alberto Chissano told Honecker: „We think that the expenses for a regular
army could not be afforded neither by our economy nor through the means we get as aid from
friendly nations. […] The most effective way is the self-defense of the population. We talked
about this with the Cuban comrades who have great experience in this field.“ 18
Nevertheless, FRELIMO and President Samora Machel, in particular, several times praised
the military aid provided by the GDR as valuable and even existential for their fight.
Files contain many documents to confirm the gratitude of the Mozambicans.
The failure of the Warsaw Pact model was nevertheless obvious. To prevent complete
failure, the government in Maputo changed their course. After mid-1985 they again resorted
to the old FRELIMO tactics. The army was decentralized again. New regionally organized
“people’s units” were set up. The numbers I quoted on the training provided in the GDR fit

15 Hillebrand, Afrika-Engagement, p. 212.
16 Coker, NATO and Africa, p. 170.
17 Coker, NATO and Africa, p. 170; Weimer, Post-Nkomati period, p. 163.
18 Vgl. SAPMO-BArch, DY 30/2470: Transcript of a Conversation between Honecker and Chissano), Berlin,
24 May 1989, p. 325.