Challenge: Southern Africa Within the African Revolutionary Context

Politics & Social Sciences

Venter, Al J.

Politics & Government

Ashanti

The Zambesi salient: Conflict in Southern Africa

Hale

The Zambesi Salient: Conflict in Southern Africa

Social Sciences

Devin-Adair Pub

Portugal's guerrilla war;: The campaign for Africa

History

Africa

J. Malherbe

The Zambesi salient;: Conflict in Southern Africa

H. Timmins

Not everybody is aware that the ships that rounded the South African coast over the past five centuries are as closely linked to the history of South Africa as gold and diamonds. They were treasures then, they are all treasures today. The difference is that about 3000 ships were lost rounding the Cape of Good Hope some centuries ago on their way to and from the Spice Islands of the East. It has taken a rare brand of adventurer to discover the undersea locations of many of them and Al Venter and his friends detail their activities. Following War Stories, Shark Stories and African Stories in the series, this book about shipwrecks and diving will make riveting reading like all of Al J. Venter's books. There are hundreds of illustrations, sketches, photos, diagrams, plans as well as five color sections. The book runs to 30 chapters and is the fourth in Al Venter’s series of Southern African “stories”. Pulling together with a bunch of friends, Venter has created a book on shipwrecks that is both fascinating and beautiful.

Shipwreck Stories

Protea Boekhuis

When the world held its breath … It is 25 years since the end of the Cold War, now a generation old. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944—long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe—with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Iraq, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was the Levant. It is axiomatic that the recent history of much of the Eastern Mediterranean is linked to the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948, incontestably so. The country emerged from a series of conflicts and these have continued intermittently ever since, fuelled as much by Arab–Israeli enmity, national pride and territorial aspirations as hostile neighbours. Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt – and in the latter phases, Iran – were all part of it. There were rich pickings in the regions for the two great powers of the Cold War as they aligned with one side or the other, the Soviets in full support of Arab interests and the Jewish State enjoying the support of Washington. That combination not only led to several Middle Eastern wars but, as we are able to observe in today’s news reports, the knock-on effect continues in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria especially. For much of the period under review it was Lebanon that took the brunt of it, with resident Christian, Sunni, Shi’ite as well as Israeli interests deploying multiple levels of force – much of it clandestine – to jockey for predominance. Throughout, land, sea and air forces were involved. Al Venter has devoted a good deal of his career towards covering these developments, from the early 1970s all the way through to the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1991. He has been to war with both Arab and Jew (he was with the IDF strike force headed by Ariel Sharon when he entered Beirut in 1982); spent time in Syria (visited that country’s southern front adjacent to the Golan Heights); been on combat missions with the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army in the Druze homeland adjacent to Mount Heron and has been embedded with the Lebanese Force Command along Beirut’s Green Line, where many of his photos used in this publication were taken. Venter also spent a lot of time in South Lebanon with UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, and was able to observe from up close the growing influence of the Pasdaran, Tehran’s surrogate force in the region that eventually spawned Hezhollah. His last visit, in 1997, included contacts – while hosted by Lebanese President General Émile Lahoud – with senior Iranian-supported Hezbollah elements in Beirut, one of few Western correspondents to have achieved this distinction.

Lebanon: Levantine Calvary, 1958-1990 (Cold War 1945–1991)

Middle East

Pen and Sword Military

When the world held its breath … It is 25 years since the end of the Cold War, now a generation old. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944—long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe—with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Iraq, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was, and is, the Horn of Africa … Few countries in Africa have had such powerful links with both the Soviet Union and United States – each for several years at a stretch – as Somalia. From a quiet Indian Ocean backwater that had once been an Italian colony, it remained aloof from the kind of power struggles that beset countries like Ghana, the Congo, Guinea, Algeria and others in the 1970s. Overnight, that all changed in 1969 when the army, led by Major General Siad Barre, grabbed power. His first move was to abrogate all security links he might have had with the West and to invite Moscow into his country as an ally. The Soviets moved quickly, establishing several air bases in the interior and stationing their ships in Somali ports. Baledogle, a small airport north of Mogadishu, became a major air base from where Soviet military aircraft operated through much of the Indian Ocean. An impetuous man, Siad Barre believed his links with Moscow were secure enough to annex several neighboring regions. But when he invaded Ethiopia’s Ogaden Province – Addis Ababa was then Washington’s staunchest friend in Africa’s Horn – the Soviets had had enough. To the consternation of the West they abandoned Somalia and embraced Ethiopia, which resulted in the Russians giving full support in the Ogaden War to Addis Ababa and establishing the largest airlift of arms to an African country since the Six-Day War. For more than a decade thereafter conditions within Somalia deteriorated. Various tribal leaders established themselves as ‘war lords’, some with Soviet support, others getting succor from Western sources. It got so bad that in 1992 the United Nations eventually stepped in with Operation Restore Hope, a multinational force created for conducting humanitarian operations in Somalia. The move was always controversial with many tribal leaders retaining either clandestine Soviet links or receiving aid from radical Arab forces that included al-Qaeda. Though the United Nations and the African Union (AU) both maintain a strong presence in the country, hostilities – and killings – go on.

Somalia (Cold War 1945–1991)

When the world held its breath … It is more than 25 years since the end of the Cold War. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944 – long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europe – with the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Syria, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was El Salvador … The twelve-year guerrilla war in El Salvador – the smallest country in Central America after Belize – was one of the most intense insurgencies fought in the Central and South American region since the end of the Second World War. Backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the struggle was initiated on 15 October 1979 – largely from Nicaraguan soil – by the radical Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ‘umbrella organization’ of five socialist and communist guerrilla groups. Fearful of supporting an oppressive regime in San Salvador and media reports of ‘death squads’, this drew a quick but muted response from a United States headed by Jimmy Carter and a Democratic majority in Congress. However, once Ronald Reagan was elected into office, through various US intelligence bodies, the CIA especially, significant amounts of military hardware – including a variety of the same aircraft and helicopters originally deployed in Vietnam – were pumped into the country to counter Soviet efforts to support the rebels. The Salvadorian security forces were eventually molded into an effective counter-guerrilla force that was to force the rebels to the negotiating table.

El Salvador: Dance of the Death Squads, 1980–1992 (Cold War 1945–1991)

Americas

These are frightening times for us all: Sarin nerve gas being sprayed on innocent civilians in Syria, threats that biological warfare agents might be spread about on the New York Subway and the most terrifying of all, three dirty bomb attacks thwarted in Russia. The reality of all these developments is that the environment in which we live today is being seriously threatened by the calculated use of weapons of mass destruction, and from a variety of dissident sources.Many rogue nations have attempted to build the bomb, an enormously complex task. So far only Pakistan and North Korea have succeeded, with Iran right now on the cusp of making that breakthrough. South Africa built six atom bombs in the 1970/1980s but with British, American and help from the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled both the weapons and the entire program shortly before Nelson Mandela came to power.In Nuclear Terror, Venter assesses the developments over the past 10 years of different countries in their attempts to build a nuclear program. Not inflammatory, or scaremongering, Venter takes an objective stance in chronicling these recent developments overseas and adds another valuable contribution to this conversation.

Nuclear Terror: The Bomb and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Wrong Hands

Military

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