MOSCOW'S GAINS IN AFRICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302080003-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
-5 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302080003-9
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WASHINGTON POST
25 May 1986
Moscow's Gains in Africa
With the Reagan Doctrine, We're Losing Friends and Influencing No One
By Glenn Frankel
H,
ARARE, Zimbabwe?Something has
gone wrong with the Reagan Doc-
trine in southern Africa, one of the
regions where the administration has la-
bored hardest to outmanuver and limit So-
viet influence: Moscow, aided by the right-
ward lurch in Washington's foreign policy
and* South Africa's low-grade but persis-
tent war against its black neighbors, is qui-
etly staging a diplomatic comeback.
Only two years ago, with the signing of
the Nkomati Accord between South Africa
and Marxist-oriented Mozambique, former-
ly a tlose Soviet ally, Moscow was seen as
having lost of one its few footholds in the
regipn. On the continent as a whole?from
Guigea to Somalia, Egypt to Mozambique?
the -African landscape was littered with
enough tales of Soviet arrogance and inep-
titilde to make the comrades from Moscow
semi like the Gang That Couldn't Shoot
Straight.
INit the tables may be turning. Under the
leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow is
beginning to win new friends and influence
nations less by making new commitments
or taking risks than by adopting a more flex-
ible'and conciliatory approach to black gov-
ernments in the region.
In this effort, analysts from both East and
West agree, Moscow has been helped im-
measurably by South Africa's inability to
keep its hands off its neighbors. Last week's
commando raids on Botswana, Zimbabwe
and Zambia?spectacular displays of fire-
works that did virtually no damage to the
rebels they supposedly were aimed at?
have reinforced the longstanding impres-
sion that Pretoria has inadvertently become
Moscow's best helpmate in Africa.
Gorbachev has also received a helping
hand from the Reagan administration,
which is widely perceived here as having
been caught up in its own aggressive rhet-
oric in recent months. On issues as diverse
as U.S. military aid to Jonas Savimbi's rebel
movement in Angola, last week's bombing
of Libya and nuclear disarmament, Wash-
ington is increasingly viewed as war-like
and irrational, Moscow as peace-loving and
reasonable.
Glenn Frankel is The Washington Post's
southern Africa correspondent.
Since its inception, the Reagan adminis-
tration has tended to judge its success in
the region in East-West terms. Ironically, it
is precisely in those terms that Washington
now is seen to be stumbling.
"The Soviet Union. is doing better," said a
senior Western European diplomat here,
"and to be brutally frank, the reason they're
doing better is because of the counter-pro-
ductive nature of U.S. policy. They are the
passive beneficiaries of your mistakes."
In Angola, Moscow has cemented its ties
with the Marxist-oriented government and
reversed a process by which a significant
faction inside the ruling party appeared to
be reaching out to the West. The key to its
success has been Angolan anger over U.S.
support for Savimbi and fears that Wash-
ington has decided to join with Pretoria,
which also supports Savimbi's rebels, in
seeking to overthrow the Luanda regime.
The Reagan administration clearly regards
closer Soviet-Angolan ties as an acceptable
risk.
With Mozambique, the Soviet Union
has managed to maintain close re-
lations and recently hosted Pres-
ident Samora Machel in Moscow despite
deep Soviet disappointment in the Machel
government's 1984 pact with Pretoria. It is
also capitalizing on Mozambican fears that
the CIA may reverse U.S. policy by throw-
ing its support bebind antigovernment reb-
els, who have received South African back-
ing as well.
In South Africa itself, the Soviet Union is
held in esteem by many blacks as an ally and
strong supporter of the outlawed African
National Congress, the main black resis-
tance movement. Red flags and anti-Amer-
ican rhetoric with a strong Marxist tinge
have become regular features at funerals
for black victims of civil unrest.
But it is Zimbabwe, whose leaders tra-
ditionally have been cold toward the Soviet
Union, that best illustrates the modest but
significant new success Moscow is achiev-
ing in the region.
That success is a blend of several factors:
heightened fear of South Africa aggression
and the perception that the West will do
little or nothing in Zimbabwe's defense if
Pretoria chooses to attack; anger and sus-
picion over U.S. aid to Savimbi, and Gorba-
chev's success in establishing a personal
rapport with Mugabe, a fiercely indepen-
dent leader who, despite his personal com-
mitment to socialism, has until now been
immune to Soviet charms.
Moscow backed the wrong horse in the
liberation struggle against white minority
rule here. Its exclusive support for guerrilla
leader Joshua Nkomo alienated Mugabe's
rival movement. When Mugabe won Zim-
babwe's first national election and the pre-
miership in 1980, the Soviets were frozen
out.
But there were other factors behind
western ascendancy here, as political sci-
entist Michael Clough pointed out in a re-
cent article for the Center for Strategic and
International Studies' "Africa Notes." The
United States and Britain had far more cap-
ital and expertise to contribute to Mugabe's
new country and their diplomatic leverage
over Pretoria appeared to him a more likely
deterent to South African intervention than
Soviet arms.
None of these would have been decisive,
says Clough, had not Mugabe also believed
he could trust the West. But that trust has
been drained away in recent months.
The main reason is South Africa. As black
unrest has intensified during the past year
Pretoria has been increasingly inclined to
lash out at its black neighbors, contending
that they harbor "terrorists" fomenting
strife. Both Botswana and Lesotho?
moderate, pro-western states?have been
the target of South African commando raids
and Lesotho's government was overthrown
in January in a South African-supported
coup. Now Zimbabwe and Zambia been
added to the list of countries whose borders
and sovereignty Pretoria feels compelled to
violate
Those events have sent a wave of fear
through the fragile black govern-
ments of the region. They have
started searching for powerful friends to
protect them from Pretoria?but have
found little comfort in the West.
Zimbabwe has sought unsuccessfully to
interest the West, especially the British, in
supplying more sophisticated aircraft and
air defense missiles to defend against a
South African attack. But western diplo-
mats fear such systems would only escalate
regional tensions and provoke the South
Africans into an Israeli-style preemptive
strike. The result has disappointed the Zim-
babweans and raised doubts about the
West's commitment here.
"We learned from Botswana," said a Zim-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302080003-9
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302080003-9
babwean government source, reterring to
last June's South African commando raid on
suspected black guerrillas there. "You
couldn't find a more pro-western govern-
ment and look what happened there. The
British and the Americans are constantly
telling us what limited influence they have
on South Africa. We've never accepted that,
but we realize that if anything happens to
us, that's the way they'll play it."
In the tense atmosphere created by
South African militarism, the newly enun-
ciated Reagan Doctrine of support for an-
ticommunist "freedom fighters" has had the
effect of a lighted match in a bomb factory.
Nervous black governments fear that if
Washington can support Savimbi's South
African-backed rebels against the interna-
tionally recognized government of Angola,
what will stop it from doing the same thing
in places like Mozambique and Zimbabwe,
each of which also face Pretoria-supported
insurgencies?
"We observe a common purpose between
South Africa and , the U.S. in the sub-
region," said Zimbabwean Minister of State
Security Emmerson Munangagwa, gener-
ally considered a political moderate, in a
recent speech in which he accused Wa-
shingtin of joining with Pretoria in destabil-
izing the region.
Washington's denials of collusion with
Pretoria ring so hollow here that even
American diplomats have begun to have
doubts. When a Zimbabwean cabinet min-
ister recently accused the United States of
funding clandestine anti-Zimbabwe radio
broadcasts from South Africa, the U.S. em-
bassy here waited 24 hours before denying
the charge. Diplomats explained they were
waiting for a firm denial from Washington
because, as one put it, "these days you nev-
er know what the CIA may be up to."
All of this has helped give the Soviets the
opening they have long sought here?ls was
best illustrated in December following a se-
ries of landmine explosions inside South Af-
rica near the northern border town of Mes-
sina. Pretoria blamed the attacks on black
guerrillas it said were operating from Zim-
babwe and warned Harare that South Africa
might send its troops over the border in hot
pursuit.
The warning came just as Mugabe was
leaving for his first official visit to Moscow
since independence. There he was given the
red carpet treatment, including a three-and-
one-half hour private session with Gorbachev
the length and warmth of which surprised
both leaders' closest advisers.
Mugabe returned home saying that as a
result of the visit, "we are very much closer
in our ideas, in the rapport that we have cre-
ated and in our assessment of international
issues." He also said he and Gorbachev had
discussed "how we can strengthen ourselves
in the face of threats from South Africa."
Since then, Mugabe's defense minister has
made a Second visit to Moscow to discuss mil-
itary assistance and Soviet military officials
have quietly visited Zimbabwe as part of a So-
viet trade delegation.
Zimbabwe is said to be considering the pur-
chase of a Soviet-made air defense system that
would include surface-to-air missiles. There is
also speculation that Mugabe may ask Moscow
to outfit with sophisticated electronics a set of
aging MIG 21s that Zimbabwe has purchased
from China.
Senior Zimbabwean army and air force of-
ficers, who were trained on British equipmmt
and weaned on British military strategy kick
tactics, have resisted turning to the Soviet
sources here say; and they believe Mugbe
'
himself vetoed a Soviet proposal to sell Zig
babwe highly sophisticated MIG 25 fighte4 in
part because they would have been accoippit
nied by Soviet and East European instructors.
Nonetheless, a doser relationship is inev-
itable, according to Zimbabwean officials. As
one put it, "The Soviet strategy is not lost on
us?we're aware of their motives?but we
need to defend ourselves and we'll take help
wherever we can get it."
The Soviets themselves .harbor few illu-
sions that their new relationship with
Zimbabwe is anything but tentative.
"We have learned to be patient and to lower
our expectations," said a Soviet analyst here,
speaking not for attribution. "We think Mu-
gabe has finally come to the conclusion that he
needs the Soviet Union more than the Soviet
Union needs him, but we don't expect any-
thing dramatic to happen here."
Soviet patience ha R been born in large part
through previous disappointments, the analyst
said. In the 1960s, Moscow was obsessed with
enrolling African states into the Marxist camp;
and taken in by their socialist rhetoric. Buf
series of defections?including the expulsion
of Soviet advisors from Egypt and Somalia's
jumping to the West?have taught the Sovieti:
a bitter lesson. . _ ? ,
........
Soviet gestures towards longstanding'
friends like Angola, potential friends like Zim-
babwe and estranged friends like Mozambique
are designed to send a clear message to other
African states that Moscow's policy in Africa,
unlike Washington's, is consistent, patient and
friendly. It is calculated to capitalize on Amer-
ican shortcomings, South African militarism
and African fears.
"The United States is repeating the same
mistakes that we made 20 years ago," said the
Soviet analyst. "You are concentrating too
much on ideological surfaces and ignoring
much more important things. You are losing
influence and you have no one to blame.kst.
yourselves."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302080003-9