Frelimo's Victories in Mozambique

Abstract

On May 17, 1970, Portuguese colonial forces in Mozambique numbering 50,000 and headed by the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief, General Kaulza de Arriaga launched a sweeping offensive against the areas in northern Mozambique held by FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front. Operation Gordian Knot was intended to crush the FRELIMO forces which had been operating in Mozambique since 1964. Now, four years after “Gordian Knot,” General de Arriaga has retired from the Portuguese armed forces. Following the coup that rocked Portugal on April 25 the new provisional Portuguese government has opened discussions with FRELIMO in Lusaka on the colonial problem. And FRELIMO forces are operating in strength in five districts of Mozambique—from Niassa and Cabo Delgado in the north, to Tete in the west, to Beira and Vila Pery in central Mozambique. The purpose of this article is to examine the Portuguese military defeat in Mozambique and the growing strength of FRELIMO, to look at the situation as it appears immediately following the coup in Portugal, and to briefly relate these developments to U.S. policy towards Portuguese colonialism.The most dramatic testimony of the Portuguese military failure is of course the coup in Portugal. Many accounts have noted that General Spinola's book, Portugal and the Future, which heralded the coup, made clear in its analysis that Portugal could not defeat the liberation movements militarily and that a political solution had to be sought. The signs of the erosion of Portugal's position have been evident: the feeling of “hopelessness” among Portuguese youth about the colonial wars; an estimated 100,300 draft resisters and deserters abroad added to the some one million expatriates working outside the country; an increasing tendency for troops in the field “to shy away from contact with the enemy, taking defensive stands only“; fewer than one hundred places taken in the military academy with room for four hundred; the massive discontent within the Portuguese junior officer corps about conditions of service; the growing refusal of military duty (one half of the last class called refused to report).