In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

The Economy-Size War (163]
thunder you have ever heard and you won't be close to the onetwenty-two.
If one lands within a hundred yards, light fixtures drop
from the ceiling and doors jump open. The percussion charge will
shatter a small house or penetrate an eighteen-inch reinforced concrete
bunker. The antipersonnel charge fragments into fourteen
thousand red-hot, razor-sharp slivers of steel." Such rockets, landing
anywhere near our FNLA troops, would destroy their morale.
The 122 had a simple advantage over the weapons we had given
the FNLA-nam~ly, range. It would fire twelve kilometers; our
mortars no more than eight. From a safe distance the MPLA could
lob 122 mm. rockets onto FNLA troops who were unable to return
fire.
Well-organized troops could endure such shelling indefinitely, by
digging in or by aggressive patroling and maneuvering. The 122 could
also be neutralized by coordinated artillery fire, tactical aircraft, or
electronically guided rocketry, but these were not available to the
FNLA.
The United States had no simple weapon comparable to the 122
to give the FNLA. Our weaponry jumped from the less effective
mortars to heavy artillery and modem rockets. These, and tactical
aircraft, could have neutralized the 122, but they were prohibitively
expensive and required highly trained crews to operate them. They
would also have been conspicuously American and the 40 Committee
refused to authorize their use- until December, when it was too
late.
The answer seemed to come from Zaire-and South Africa. On
September II, Mobutu committed his elite Seventh and Fourth Commando
Battalions, flying them to Ambriz in his C-13os, and the tide
swung back in favor of the FNLA north of Luanda. On September
17, a consolidated task force of Zairian, FNLA, and Portuguese
troops retook Caxito; then they began a cautious advance on Luanda
itself.
Another Zairian force joined a Cabindan * liberation force, called
•cabinda was a curiosity- a small, 2,800 square mile area of 6o,ooo people-it came
into being in 1898, when the Cabindan tribal chief had signed the Simbuluku treaty
with the Portuguese, accepting their protection in order to escape the dread, forcedlabor
policies of King Leopold of Belgium. The Cabindan people related loosely to
the Zairians of the lower Congo River, at least more than to the Mbundu of Central
Angola.