Under what has been dubbed the Reagan doctrine, the United States now supports resistance movements in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, and Cambodia. Lesser-known "freedom fighter" movements have arisen in Ethiopia, Laos, and Vietnam. Of all the world's anticommunist rebellions, however, the one closest to victory is fighting a government that the State Department is enthusiastically supporting - the People's Republic of Mozambique.
The story of how an enclave of Carteresque foreign policy has survived within the State Department is as fascinating as it is frustrating. Actually, the U.S. policy toward Mozambique is the tip of the iceberg of policies that are based on a philosophy that President Reagan has vigorously opposed. How did the State Department come to join with the Soviet bloc in attempting to save a dying communist regime?
On June 25, 1975, Samora Machel became the president of Mozambique, ending centuries of Portuguese colonial rule. Machel, a male nurse who had risen to the top of a pro-Soviet guerrilla movement called FRELIMO, had fought the Portuguese for almost 20 years. He inherited a country twice the size of California with tremendous natural and human potential but almost no skilled labor force.
Though Mozambique is desperately poor, Machel embarked on a Soviet-style collectivization campaign. Those who resisted were put into labor camps called "centers for mental decolonization." An estimated 200,000 Mozambicans went through these camps, and approximately 70,000 of them did not survive. Machel also launched a "campaign against prostitution and banditry" reminiscent of Pol Pot's war against whole classes of society in Kampuchea. Thousands were denounced by neighbors and relatives as former agents of PIDE, the Portuguese secret service.
Machel's policies took their toll on Mozambique. As described by David Lamb in his book The Africans (1983):
Despite Machel's accomplishments, Mozambique was in dreadful shape in 1983, and Marxism had retarded, not stimulated its development....The two hundred "people's stores" set up in the countryside, though relatively effective in controlling prices and black marketeering, were pitifully short of goods. In the cities, women had to stand in lines for hours to buy a pint of milk or a loaf of bread. Agricultural production had fallen 70 percent since independence, and factories were limping along at 30 percent of capacity. The tourist industry, once worth millions every year, no longer earned the country a single nickel.
While most of the people of Mozambique welcomed FRELIMO's victory and the departure of the Portuguese, within about a year it became clear that Machel's Marxist-Leninist agenda would not bring freedom to Mozambique. A group of disaffected FRELIMO officers, refugees, and former draftees of the Portuguese army started the Mozambique National Resistance under the leadership of Andres Matsangaisse, a former FRELIMO officer. The MNR (now known as RENAMO) started with a few hundred troops who attacked FRELIMO installations and released prisoners at labor camps.
Steady growth
By 1977, RENAMO's activities attracted the attention of the Rhodesian secret service, which
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