ABSTRACT
This chapter includes an examination of Marxist counterinsurgency, an analysis of the insurgents, and what portends for the late 1980s. While the 1950s and 1960s can be labeled the Western Counterinsurgency Era, the 1980s are rapidly becoming the Marxist Counterinsurgency Era. To those whose only source of information has been a steady diet of video tape from Afghanistan, the Marxist counterinsurgent surely appears to be a Neanderthal man, stamping out resistance with hairy feet wherever it is found. With a population of about eight million and a literacy rate of ten percent, the oil producing Marxist state of Angola is undergoing a tenth year of insurgency. There were several factions that fought and defeated the Portuguese in 1975. The insurgency in Mozambique is in some respects parallel to that in Angola. The basis of insurgency in Ethiopia has its roots in the United Nations 1952 decision to provide Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia authority over the former Italian colony of Eritrea.
