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COUNTERINSURGENCY
IN AFRICA
The Portuguese Way of War,

1961-1974

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Contributions in Military Studies, Number 167

GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut London

h
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cann, John P., 1941Counterinsurgency in Africa the Portuguese way of war, 1961-1974
I John P. Cann ; foreword by Bernard E. Trainor.
p. cm. - (Contributions in military studies, ISSN 0883--6884
; no. 167)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN (}-313-30189-1 (alk. paper)
I. Portugal-Colonies-Africa. 2. Portugal-Colonies-History.
3. Africa, Portuguese-speaking-History, Military.
4. Counterinsurgency-Africa, Portuguese-speaking-History-20th
century. 5. Counterinsurgency-Portugal-History-20th century.
6. Angola-History-Revolution, 1961-1975-Campaigns.
7. Mozambique-History-Revolution, 1964-1975-Campaigns. 8. GuineaBissau-History-Revolution, 1963-1974---Campaigns. I. Title.
11. Series.
DT36.7.C355 1997
96-38260
960.3'26--dc20
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 1997 by John P. Cann
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique. without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-38260
ISBNo (}-313-30189-1
ISSNo 0883-6884
First published in 1997
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America

@"
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (239.48-1984).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

For my uncle
LANGBOURNE M. WILLIAMS

CONTENTS

Tables

ix

Foreword by General Bernard E. Trainor

xi

Preface
Acknowledgments

xm
xv

1. A Remarkable Feat of Arms

2. Commitment to the Ultramar

13

3. 0 Exercito na Guerra Subversiva: Portuguese Counterinsurgency

Doctrine on the Eve of War

37

4. Portuguese Organization, Education, and Training for

Counterinsurgency

61

5. Portuguese Africanization of Counterinsurgency

87

6. Portuguese Intelligence Network in Counterinsurgency

111

7. Portuguese Approach to Mobility in Counterinsurgency

129

8. Portuguese Social Operations and Aldeamentos

143

9. Selected Aspects of Logistical Operations

169

viii

Contents

10. The Portuguese Way

187

Selected Bibliography

197

Index

207

TABLES

1.1 Per Capita GDP in U.S. Dollars

1.2 National and Per Capita GDPs, 1962-1970

5.1 Able-Bodied Males

89

5.2 Recruitment in the Metropole

89

5.3 Military Academy Permanent Officer Commissioning

92

5.4 Army Combat Deaths by Recruitment Source

105

8.1 Primary Education in the Ultramar

147

8.2 Health Standards for Guine and Actual Figures by Source

150

9.1 Airfield Capability by Theater

173

9.2 Ratios of Deaths to Wounds

180

10.1 Combat Deaths per Day of War per Thousand Combatants

for Selected Conflicts

189

FOREWORD

The archetypal small war is more relevant than ever today. Although
superpower confrontation and its proxy wars of national liberation are quiescent
at the moment, ethnic, religious, political, and economic rivalries remain on
every continent. In sub-Saharan Africa particularly, where animosities have
been a fact of life throughout recorded history, armed conflict driven by ancient
antagonisms and modem political ambitions has again become symptomatic.
These struggles largely follow the Maoist prescription of protracted war, always
a difficult and insidious threat for any incumbent government to fight and win.
And yet there are tried and proven solutions to gaining victory in these
circumstances. Dr. John P. Cann provides just such a case study in this work.
Portugal was the first colonial power to arrive in Africa and the last to leave.
As other European states were granting independence to their African
possessions, Portugal chose to stay and fight despite the small odds for success.
That it did so successfully for thirteen years across the three fronts of Angola,
Guine, and Mozambique remains a remarkable achievement, particularly for a
nation of such modest' resources. Dr. Cann calls attention to this important
counterinsurgency campaign, one that was overshadowed by the United States
involvement in Vietnam and that is now largely forgotten by non-Portugnese
scholars. He dispels the conventional thinking that such a campaign cannot be
won, particularly by a country lacking wealth in manpower, treasure, and
experience. While the military plays a key role in counterinsurgency, at heart
it remains a political struggle. Consequently, the job of the armed forces is not
necessarily to deliver an outright military victory, but rather to contain violence,
protect people from intimidation, deny guerrillas access to the local inhabitants
and their supply of food and recruits, gain the people's confidence with
psychological and social initiatives, and through these activities prodnce enough
respect among the insurgent leadership to induce political negotiations.

t-': -
xii

Foreword

The Portuguese military accomplished all of these things. Its route to success
was not always direct; however, it profited from its mistakes and remained

flexible in its thinking. It was able to learn while doing. Unfortunately, in the
end Portugal's politicians squandered the hard-won military gains by refusing to
come to terms with the insurgents.
Dr. Cann's work is the first comprehensive account in English of how the
Portuguese armed forces prepared for and conducted their distant campaigu.
The Portuguese military crafted its doctrine and implemented it to match the
guerrilla strategy of protracted war, and in doing so followed the lessons gleaned
from the British and French experiences in small wars. Portugal defined and
analyzed its insurgency problem in light of this accumulated knowledge on
counterinsurgency, developed its military policies in this context, and applied
them in the African colonial environment. The Portuguese approach to the
conflict was distinct in that it sought to combine the two-pronged national
strategy of containing the cost of the war and of spreading the burden to the
colonies, with the solution on the battlefield. Dr. Cann argues the uniqueness
of this approach by highlighting it through a thematic military analysis of the
Portuguese effort and a comparison with the experiences of other governments
fighting similar contemporaneous wars. Since many records of the campaigus
were destroyed in Portugal's April 1974 revolution and many more were
abandoned in Africa during the decolonization process, Dr. Cann's work draws

primarily on his wide-ranging intervie'-':S of participants and decisionmakers and

on the extensive use of their personal papers. This original material is ably
blended with published sources in both Portuguese and English to produce an
informative, valuable, and readable account of the agonies and successes in the

development of Portugal's counterinsurgency capabilities. Even today Portugal's

systematic and logical approach to its insurgency challenge holds valuable
lessons for any nation forced to wage a small war on the cheap.
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
29 July 1996

General Bemard E. Trainor

PREFACE

The origin of this book can be traced to the time between 1987 and 1992, when
I participated in maritime exercises as a naval officer temporarily augmenting
the staff of the Commander-in-Chief Iberian Atlantic Area at NATO
headquarters in Oeiras, Portugal. Every Portuguese officer with whom I
worked during these exercises was a veteran of the African Campaigus of
1961-1974, a lengthy war that was not well known or understood outside of
Portugal. There is little written about the conflict in English, and those works
that are available are relatively obscure. Consequently, as my interest in lowintensity conflict and guerrilla warfare matured during subsequent assiguments,
I was offered the opportunity to pursue this topic.
There are invariably two sides to the story of every war, and the Campaigus
are no exception. The Portuguese military was faced with the difficult job of
winning a "war of national liberation" in an era when it was not politic to retain
one's colonial empire. In such a war, victory may be achieved militarily, but
more than likely it will be achieved by producing a stalemate in which the
government has gained credibility through military and social initiatives and has
thereby induced the guerrillas to negotiate. Such an accomplishment is no small
feat in a war in which the guerrillas seek a total displacement of authority. The
Portuguese military achieved outright military victory in Angola, a credible
stalemate in Guine, and, with additional resources and spirited leadership, could
have regained control of northern Mozambique. Unfortunately, Portugal's
political leaders remained shortsighted and removed from reality, and the
military and social successes were squandered through political intransigence.
When victory was within Portugal's grasp, political inflexibility created a
frustrated military and a revolution in 1974.
This book is the story of the Campaigus from the perspective of the
Portuguese military. It addresses the conflict through a thematic military

xiv

Preface

analysis of the counterinsurgency effort from the time of the Angola uprisings
on 4 February and 15 March 1961 until the military coup in Lisbon on 25 April
1974. It describes how Portogal defined and analyzed its insurgency problem,
how it developed its own particular military policies and doctrines, and how it
applied them in the African colonial environment. Its object is to show how
Portogal' s national strategy to busband and preserve its meager resources was
translated into policies and practices at the campaign and tactical level, and how
this strategy was effective in permitting Portogal to conduct a sustained and
lengthy campaign in three distant colonies. In following both broad and narrow
campaign strategies, Portogal attempted to disrupt the organization of the
nationalist movements through the operations of agents and to counter their
armed action with appropriate military force and diplomatic pressure.
Concurrently, it sought to protect its people from insurgent contact and to win
their loyalty by elevating their standard of living and redressing their grievances.
These elements, their particular combination, and their style of execution reflect
what may be termed a Portuguese way of war. This book seeks to analyze each
of these factors, to examine their coordinated and synergistic application, to
compare them with other contemporary counterinsurgency experiences, and to
emphasize their uniqueness.
Research for the work, conducted between 1993 and 1996, focused on how
the Portoguese, through imaginative leadership and management of the
Campaigns, fought a three-front colonial war 8,000 kilometers from home for
thirteen years on a very limited defensebudget. Since many official records on
the wars either were destroyed in the 1974 Portoguese revolution or abandoned
in Africa upon decolonization, the central research challenge has been to
reconstruct events largely through the process of interviewing key participants
and decisionmakers. To those who so graciously supported me, I owe a large
debt of gratitude.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Professor Patrick Chabal, head of the Department of Portoguese

and Brazilian Studies, and Dr. Martin Navias, Department of War Studies,
King's College, London, both observant critics, for their skillful guidance and
support during the research and writing of this work. Their careful reading of
the manuscript immensely improved the quality of the final product, and they
have been perfect advisers and ideal friends throughout.
I am most grateful for the assistance and hospitality offered in Portogal by
General Joaquim Chito Rodrigues, Director of the Instituto de Altos Estudos
Militares (IAEM), and his entire staff, who spent many hours helping me.
Particular thanks are due to Colonel Femando Jose Pinto Simoes, Director of
the Library at the IAEM, who along with his staff gave so generously of their
time. General Jose Manuel de Bethencourt Rodrigues, Brigadeiro Renato
Femando Marques Pinto, and Colonel Luis Alberta Santiago Inocentes deserve
special thanks for their tireless help in explaining the African political and
military environment, for introducing me to the appropriate experts on various
unique aspects of the wars, and for reading earlier drafts of this book. General
Pedro Alexandre Gomes Cardoso, Presidencia do conselho de Ministros, and
his staff; General Jorge Brochado de Miranda, former Chief of Staff of the
Portoguese Air Force, and his staff at the Arquivo Hist6rico da Fof9a Aerea
Portoguesa; Colonel Lufs Valen.- Pinto, Commandant of the Escola Pnitica
Engenharia, and his staff; Colonel Ant6nio Rosas Leitiio, instructor at the
Academia Militar; and Lieutenant Colonel Aniceto Afonso, Director of the
Arqnivo Hist6rico Militar, and his staff, deserve particular thanks for their
helpful support.
Deep appreciation goes to my good friend of three decades, Stephen W.
Woody, who has taken a personal interest in the success of this volume from its
inception and who introduced me to Colonel A. Marques de Carvalho, who in

xvi

Acknowledgments

turn was instrumental in helping me at the beginning in Portugal. I owe a

particular debt to the many participants in the Campaigns who so patiently
helped me to fill in the gaps in information that contributed to a fuller picture.
To General Jose Lufs Almiro Canelhas, General T01ruis George Concei9iio Silva,
General Joaquim Mignel Duarte Silva, General Manuel Amorim de Sousa
Menezes, Vice Admiral Nuno Gon9alo Vieira Matias, Brigadeiro Helio Felgas,
Colonel Dionisio de Almeida Santos, Colonel Carlos Fabiiio, Colonel Carlos da
Costa Gomes Bessa, Colonel Cesar Augnsto Rodrigues Mano, Colonel Lufs A.
Martinho Griio, Inspector Oscar Cardoso, the Duke of Valderano, and Mr.
Colin M. Beer, each of whom provided an invaluable and unique perspective on
the wars, I am deeply grateful for their patience and care in helping me to
understand the many facets of the conflict. Without exception they gave freely
of their time and experience, and I hope that I have done justice to their views.
My research in published sources uncovered a varied array of experts whose
advice and counsel proved indispensable. I am indebted to the very professional
library staffs throughout the University of London, most particularly to Carole
Radanne, whose tireless initiative, knowledgeable assistance, and dear friendship
remain an integral part of this book. To Caroline Tyssen of Livraria Galileo in
Cascais and to Fritz Berkemeier of Livraria Hist6rica e Ultramarina in Lisbon,
whose encyclopedic knowledge of the literature on Portuguese Africa proved as
indispensable as their stimulating discussions, I owe a special debt. Many
thauks are due my cartographer, Edyyard Haile, whose personal interest in
Portuguese Africa lent a special dimension to the maps.
Funding of the original research for this work was received from the
Department of War Studies, King's College, London, and from the Overseas
Research Students Awards Scheme as administered by the Committee of V iceChancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom, for which
I am most grateful.
Finally, I owe a particular debt to my family-Courtenay, Jay, and Jamie-all
of whom lived patiently with the domestic chaos of this work.

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Counterinsurgency
in Africa