Zimbabwe Violence Bears British Counterinsurgency Stamp

June 23, 2008 (LPAC)--An African military intelligence source told EIR today that the brutality and professional nature of the killings and violence during the period running up to the June 27 run-off election in Zimbabwe were just like the British special-forces counterinsurgency operations that were used against the freedom fighters in Zimbabwe before independence. That force in Zimbabwe, known as the Selous Scouts, during the independence struggle, was a more advanced form of what the British had deployed in Kenya, and Malaya (today Malaysia) before that, in the respective fights of those two countries for independence from the British.

During the present Zimbabwe election period, the killings and violence have targeted members of the MDC opposition, who then blame the government, and then the Anglo-Dutch controlled media raises a hue and cry about what they call the government's use of violence to influence the election. British-trained SAS special forces are still active in Africa. In the 1990s, EIR exposed the fact that this type of force were clandestinely being run out of the huge game reserves the British have set up in Africa, where these forces couldn't be observed because the game reserves are restricted, ostensibly in the interest of saving the wildlife from being poached.

Military observers, who suspect that such a force has been interjected into the Zimbabwe run-off election, are reminded of the role of the Selous Scouts in Rhodesia, during the final phase of the independence struggle in the 1970s. The Selous Scouts, the most feared counterinsurgency operation on the African continent, was named after Frederick Courtney Selous, a hunter/explorer who was a friend of Cecil Rhodes.

The Selous Scouts were created in the early 1970s under the direction of a Rhodesian-born ex British SAS serviceman who fought in the Malayan conflict. He created the Scouts officially in 1974, and their mission was to infiltrate the local population and the liberation networks in then Rhodesia, and neighboring countries. Those who volunteered for the Scouts underwent such a severe selection process, that only 15% made it. Reid Daly's intention was to completely break a man in order to build him up again from scratch, according to the needs of the Selous Scouts. They wore Warsaw Pact uniforms to pass themselves off as freedom fighters, tracked the freedom fighters and their supporters, and were reportedly responsible for 68% of all freedom-fighter deaths during the independence war, even though they only numbered between 700-1000 fighters. 80% of the Scouts were African, a necessary requirement to be able to infiltrate the local populations, and the freedom fighters.

EIR spokesman Larry Freeman, on a live interview with Iranian presstv today, pointed out that a Selous Scouts-type operation is possibly behind the violence in Zimbabwe.