The World Was Going Our Way (77 page)
Read The World Was Going Our Way Online
Authors: Christopher Andrew
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Accounts, #Espionage, #History, #Europe, #Ireland, #Military, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Modern (16th-21st Centuries), #20th Century, #Russia, #World
Until the mid-1970s Moscow had only modest expectations of the prospects for national liberation movements in sub-Saharan Africa. The Soviet Union had maintained contact with the [South] African National Congress (ANC), mostly through the South African Communist Party (SACP), since the 1920s. In 1961 the SACP’s influence in the liberation movement was increased by the decision of the ANC, which had been banned a year earlier, to abandon its previous insistence on an exclusively non-violent campaign. The ANC and SACP co-operated in founding Umkhonto we Sizwe (‘Spear of the Nation’) to begin an armed struggle. Unlike the ANC, Umkhonto, which was supplied with Soviet arms and military training, was multiracial and thus open to SACP members, many of whom were of non-African ethnic origin. In 1963 the Soviet Presidium instructed Vladimir Semichastny, the KGB Chairman, to begin transmitting secret subsidies to the ANC - initially $300,000 a year - in addition to the traditional payments to the SACP, then running at $56,000.
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Despite Soviet assistance, however, the first fifteen years of Umkhonto operations posed no significant threat to the South African apartheid regime. By the mid-1960s, most leading ANC and SACP militants had been imprisoned or forced into exile. The SACP leadership, based mainly in London, had lost touch with those Party members who remained in South Africa.
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In 1969, after long and heated debate, the ANC agreed to admit anti-apartheid South African exiles of all ethnic backgrounds, thus opening its doors to an influx of SACP members. Moscow also welcomed the ANC decision to set up a multiracial Revolutionary Council to direct Umkhonto’s armed struggle, with Oliver Tambo, the ANC Chairman (in exile in Tanzania), as its head and Yusuf Dadoo, the SACP Chairman (in London), as his deputy. When the Tanzanian government began to object to the growing ANC military presence on its territory, Umkhonto was evacuated to the Soviet Union and remained there for several years.
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In 1969, after long and heated debate, the ANC agreed to admit anti-apartheid South African exiles of all ethnic backgrounds, thus opening its doors to an influx of SACP members. Moscow also welcomed the ANC decision to set up a multiracial Revolutionary Council to direct Umkhonto’s armed struggle, with Oliver Tambo, the ANC Chairman (in exile in Tanzania), as its head and Yusuf Dadoo, the SACP Chairman (in London), as his deputy. When the Tanzanian government began to object to the growing ANC military presence on its territory, Umkhonto was evacuated to the Soviet Union and remained there for several years.
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The Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), founded in late 1961, and the rival Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which broke away from ZAPU in 1963, had for the first decade of their existence no greater success in their struggle against Ian Smith’s white-settler regime in Rhodesia, which declared itself independent of Britain in 1965. Moscow chose what proved to be the less successful faction. Robert Mugabe, the Marxist leader of ZANU, who was to become the first Prime Minister of independent Zimbabwe in 1980, committed the unforgivable sin of describing himself as a ‘Marxist-Leninist of Maoist thought’. The Kremlin therefore backed ZAPU, led by the ‘bourgeois nationalist’ Joshua Nkomo, who was arrested in 1964 and spent the next decade in prison while his chief lieutenants bickered among themselves. In 1967 ZAPU formed a military alliance with the ANC but suffered serious losses after the entry into the conflict of helicopter-borne South African police forces on the side of the Rhodesian security forces. During the early 1970s ZAPU operations posed little threat to the Rhodesian security forces and its military alliance with the ANC disintegrated.
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Like Umkhonto in South Africa, the Angolan Movimento Popular de Libertacão de Angola (MPLA) began its armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in 1961.
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In 1962, the Centre instructed the residency in Leopoldville (later renamed Kinshasa) to establish secret contact with a member of the MPLA leadership, Agostinho Neto, a protégé of the Portuguese Communist leader Alvaro Cunhal, a hard-line Soviet loyalist who in 1968 was to be the first Western Party leader to support the crushing of the Prague Spring.
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Oleg Ivanovich Nazhestkin, the KGB officer who met Neto in Leopoldville, where he was living in exile, wrote later that he had expected to encounter a ‘dashing, decisive commander’ but found instead a shy, mild-mannered intellectual who spoke slowly and became lost in thought for long periods before suddenly producing a lucid analysis of the issues under discussion. Though uncompromisingly hostile to the United States and Western imperialism, Neto seemed uncertain about the MPLA’s political aims. He told Nazhestkin:
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In 1962, the Centre instructed the residency in Leopoldville (later renamed Kinshasa) to establish secret contact with a member of the MPLA leadership, Agostinho Neto, a protégé of the Portuguese Communist leader Alvaro Cunhal, a hard-line Soviet loyalist who in 1968 was to be the first Western Party leader to support the crushing of the Prague Spring.
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Oleg Ivanovich Nazhestkin, the KGB officer who met Neto in Leopoldville, where he was living in exile, wrote later that he had expected to encounter a ‘dashing, decisive commander’ but found instead a shy, mild-mannered intellectual who spoke slowly and became lost in thought for long periods before suddenly producing a lucid analysis of the issues under discussion. Though uncompromisingly hostile to the United States and Western imperialism, Neto seemed uncertain about the MPLA’s political aims. He told Nazhestkin:
Our programme sets just, humane, noble, but too distant goals. Now is not the time to be talking about the creation of elements of a communist society in the conditions of African reality. The main task is to produce as broadly based a union as possible of patriotic forces, first and foremost within Angola . . . And what is communism [in African conditions]? Help me to come to grips with this question. After all, you’re a communist and you must understand it well. Help me to obtain the necessary literature.
Though impressed by Neto’s honesty and commitment to Angolan liberation, Nazhestkin was left wondering whether he had the self-belief required to lead an ‘uncompromising armed struggle’.
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Neto, however, retained the strong backing of Cunhal, who arranged for him to visit the Soviet Union in 1964. Following his visit, Moscow publicly announced its support for the MPLA. Neto paid further visits to the Soviet Union in 1966 and 1967.
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Neto, however, retained the strong backing of Cunhal, who arranged for him to visit the Soviet Union in 1964. Following his visit, Moscow publicly announced its support for the MPLA. Neto paid further visits to the Soviet Union in 1966 and 1967.
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The Frente de Libertacão de Mocambique (FRELIMO), led by the US-educated Eduardo Mondlane, was slower to pose a threat to Portuguese rule in Mozambique than the MPLA in Angola and did not begin guerrilla warfare until 1964. Though the Centre was unimpressed by Mondlane, it had more confidence in a younger member of the FRELIMO leadership, codenamed TSOM, until recently a student in Paris. TSOM was given military training in the Soviet Union in 1965, and thereafter maintained contact with the International Department of the Central Committee on behalf of FRELIMO as well as with the KGB. In 1970 a proposal by the Centre to recruit him as an agent was vetoed by the International Department but he remained a KGB confidential contact who provided information on FRELIMO and Mozambique.
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Early in 1967 a four-man interdepartmental mission of enquiry - two from the International Department, a senior diplomat and Vadim Kirpichenko representing the KGB - set off from Moscow to gather information in Dar-es-Salaam, Lusaka and elsewhere on the progress of the national liberation movements in Portuguese Africa. Kirpichenko, as Nazhestkin had been six years earlier, was intrigued by his discussions with Neto but left with mixed feelings:
Neto would constantly shift conversations about the internal situation in Angola - the positions of various parties and prospects for their unification into a single movement, specific MPLA military actions - to the external aspects of the Angolan problem, which we already knew about. At the same time Neto made no attempt to exaggerate the merits of his party and was quite moderate with regard to the assistance expected from us. The impression left by the meetings with him was pleasant, and were it not for the colour of his skin, one might have taken Neto for a somewhat phlegmatic European rather than a temperamental African.
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In July 1967, after receiving the report of the mission of enquiry, the Politburo instructed the KGB to provide training for the ‘progressive nationalist organizations’ fighting for independence in Portugal’s African colonies: the MPLA, FRELIMO, and a smaller guerrilla group in Guinea-Bissau, the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC).
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The Centre was initially dismayed by the quality of the FRELIMO guerrillas. Between 1966 and 1970 the KGB provided training for twenty-one specialist FRELIMO saboteurs, but found all of them ideologically ‘primitive’ and ignorant of the Soviet Union save as a source of arms and money.
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Serious divisions within FRELIMO’s ranks led in 1968 to riots in Dar-es-Salaam, the sacking of its offices, the killing of one of its Central Committee, and the closure of the FRELIMO school. In the following year Mondlane was assassinated by a parcel bomb delivered by FRELIMO dissidents. The Centre undoubtedly welcomed his replacement as head of FRELIMO by Samora Machel, whose aim was to make Mozambique ‘Africa’s first Marxist state’. Machel claimed that his Marxist convictions derived ‘not from writing in a book. Nor from reading Marx and Engels. But from seeing my father forced to grow cotton and going with him to the market where he was to sell it at a low price - much lower than the Portuguese grower.’
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Serious divisions within FRELIMO’s ranks led in 1968 to riots in Dar-es-Salaam, the sacking of its offices, the killing of one of its Central Committee, and the closure of the FRELIMO school. In the following year Mondlane was assassinated by a parcel bomb delivered by FRELIMO dissidents. The Centre undoubtedly welcomed his replacement as head of FRELIMO by Samora Machel, whose aim was to make Mozambique ‘Africa’s first Marxist state’. Machel claimed that his Marxist convictions derived ‘not from writing in a book. Nor from reading Marx and Engels. But from seeing my father forced to grow cotton and going with him to the market where he was to sell it at a low price - much lower than the Portuguese grower.’
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While FRELIMO was locked in an internal power struggle, the MPLA had emerged as a significant threat to Portuguese rule, though its claims to control one-third of Angola were greatly exaggerated. Following Neto’s election as MPLA President in 1969, the MPLA was riven by internal disputes similar to those which had previously disrupted FRELIMO. Reports reached the Centre from supposedly ‘reliable sources’ that Neto was embezzling Soviet funds and salting them away in a Swiss bank account. His first case officer, Oleg Nazhestkin, tried to defend Neto against these charges:
‘Allow me to point out,’ I said, ‘that as a condition of our assistance we demanded of Neto that no more than one to two individuals within the MPLA should know about it, that only he should personally decide all questions linked with our assistance. And where is he supposed to keep the hard-currency funds, in his desk drawer or in a knapsack on his back during trips out to the liberated regions?’
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During the early 1970s Portuguese intelligence reported, somewhat prematurely, that the MPLA no longer represented a military threat. There is some evidence that by 1973 Moscow was shifting support to the MPLA eastern commander, Daniel Chipendra, who had emerged as a challenger to Neto’s leadership. Soviet support for the MPLA was reduced to a trickle.
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FRELIMO, by contrast, had largely recovered from its earlier infighting. In 1973 it forced the closing of Gorongosa National Park, world famous as a big-game hunting ground for wealthy tourists.
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Simultaneously, Machel led a FRELIMO delegation to Moscow.
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The Dar-es-Salaam residency maintained covert contact with both Machel and TSOM.
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FRELIMO, by contrast, had largely recovered from its earlier infighting. In 1973 it forced the closing of Gorongosa National Park, world famous as a big-game hunting ground for wealthy tourists.
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Simultaneously, Machel led a FRELIMO delegation to Moscow.
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The Dar-es-Salaam residency maintained covert contact with both Machel and TSOM.
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The Centre’s principal hopes of influence in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1970s, however, were centred on Somalia. In October 1969 Somalia’s unpopular civilian government was toppled by a military coup which established a Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC), composed of officers and headed by the army commander General Muhammad Siad Barre. The KGB residency was given advance notice of the coup (codenamed KONKORD) by one of the chief plotters, codenamed KERL, who had visited Moscow and became a member of the SRC.
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According to KERL’s file, he continued after the coup to influence Siad Barre along lines approved by the KGB.
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Though Mitrokhin’s notes give no details, KERL may have had - or at least told the KGB that he had - some influence on Siad Barre’s early decision to invite the Soviet navy to visit Somali ports and his simultaneous expulsion of the whole of the American Peace Corps and half the US embassy staff.
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According to KERL’s file, he continued after the coup to influence Siad Barre along lines approved by the KGB.
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Though Mitrokhin’s notes give no details, KERL may have had - or at least told the KGB that he had - some influence on Siad Barre’s early decision to invite the Soviet navy to visit Somali ports and his simultaneous expulsion of the whole of the American Peace Corps and half the US embassy staff.
The SRC suspended the constitution, abolished the National Assembly, banned political parties and renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic (SDR). Though poorly educated and little acquainted with Marxism, Siad Barre declared on the first anniversary of the coup that the new regime would be based on ‘scientific socialism’. On public occasions, the streets were festooned with heroic images of himself as the ‘Victorious Leader’, flanked by portraits of Marx and Lenin. The Victorious Leader’s notion of ‘scientific socialism’, however, was somewhat eccentric. Siad Barre claimed to have synthesized Marx with Islam, and produced a little blue-and-white book reminiscent of Mao’s little red book, which contained a platitudinous mixture of pontifications and exhortations. In 1971 he announced that the SDR was to be transformed into a one-party state, an ambition eventually fulfilled with the creation of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (SRSP) five years later.
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The Centre had far greater confidence in KERL than in Siad Barre. Such was his importance in KGB eyes that during visits to Moscow he had discussions with Andropov, KGB Vice-Chairman Semyon Tsvigun and Brezhnev. KERL was used for a considerable variety of KGB operations: among them a meeting with Muammar al-Qaddafi in Tripoli at the Mogadishu residency’s request in 1969 as part of an influence operation; the expulsion of five US diplomats in the spring of 1970 and the cancellation of a visit by the US navy to Mogadishu; active-measures articles in the Somali press; and the purchase for Moscow of US and other Western technology whose export to the Soviet Union was banned under COCOM regulations.
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KERL’s motives were both ideological and mercenary. After obtaining US technology from an Italian source for onward transmission to Moscow in 1972, he was given $5,000.
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KERL’s fellow member of the SRC, Lieutenant-Colonel Salah Gaveire Kedie (codenamed OPERATOR), who had trained at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, was recruited as a KGB agent. In 1971, however, Gaveire Kedie was accused with Vice-President Muhammad Ainanche of plotting Siad Barre’s assassination. Both were found guilty of treason and executed in public.
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KERL’s motives were both ideological and mercenary. After obtaining US technology from an Italian source for onward transmission to Moscow in 1972, he was given $5,000.
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KERL’s fellow member of the SRC, Lieutenant-Colonel Salah Gaveire Kedie (codenamed OPERATOR), who had trained at the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, was recruited as a KGB agent. In 1971, however, Gaveire Kedie was accused with Vice-President Muhammad Ainanche of plotting Siad Barre’s assassination. Both were found guilty of treason and executed in public.
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