Kaúlza Oliveira de Arriaga
Kaúlza de Arriaga (* 18th January 1915 in Porto , † 3. February 2004 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese general , writers and politicians , who from 1970 to 1973 in the Portuguese overseas territory Mozambique as commander in chief of the Portuguese troops against the FRELIMO fought -Guerilla .
Life
Before his assignment in Mozambique, Arriaga held various management positions, such as State Secretary for Aviation and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Agency. In 1968 he was promoted to general and in 1969 sent to Mozambique. In 1970 he became commander in chief and headed the "Gordian Knot" operation, in which the FRELIMO was to be driven out of the northern provinces with the help of 10,000 members of the armed forces. At the same time, he pursued a settlement policy to concentrate the population in "aldeamentos", strategic villages, in order to be able to better control them. These measures went hand in hand with the Hearts and Minds program , which the US apparently copied from the Vietnam War , which also included building hospitals and raising the quality of local cattle herds.
Arriaga developed a kind of personality cult , which was unusual for Portuguese commanders, and introduced a kind of political instruction to his troops. He was given the nickname Pink Panther , apparently after the well-known film character of the Pink Panther series . Analogous to the USA in Vietnam, Arriaga also tried to "Africanize" the war in Mozambique by expanding African auxiliary troops.
Despite certain successes, Arriaga suffered setbacks as the strategic conditions changed to the detriment of Portugal. Until 1970 FRELIMO was only supported by the Warsaw Pact via Tanzania , but now it has also received help from the People's Republic of China via Zambia .
Arriaga was in charge of a massacre by Portuguese troops in the village of Wirimayu not far from the Cabora Bassa dam . In 1972, his elite soldiers killed the entire civilian population, around 400 men, women and children, and burned the village to cover all traces. After information about the massacre leaked in July 1973, Arriaga was forced to return to Portugal.
As an ultra-conservative, he was now a sharp opponent of General António de Spínola and his political and military reform intentions and took his leave. After the Carnation Revolution , Arriaga was imprisoned from September 1974 to June 1976 to prevent a conservative coup.
After his release from prison he founded the MIRN (Movimento Independente para a Reconstrucao Nacional - Independent Movement for National Reconstruction) with a small group of right-wing extremists. The movement was supported by Franz Josef Strauss with funds from the Hanns Seidel Foundation .
Arriaga died in Lisbon in 2004.
literature
- Keyword: Arriaga, Gen. Kaulza Oliveira de (1915-) , in: Ian FW Beckett: Encyclopedia of Guerilla Warfare , New York 2001, p. 17.
- Kaulza de Arriaga: The Portuguese Answer , London 1973.
- John Cann: Counterinsurgency in Africa: The Portuguese Way of War, 1961-1974 , Westport 1997.
- Peter Abbott / Manuel Rodrigues: Modern African Wars 2: Angola and Mozambique 1961-74 , London 1998.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Then everything starts rolling at spiegel.de, accessed on August 26, 2017
See also
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Arriaga, Kaúlza Oliveira de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Portuguese general, writer and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 18, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | postage |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 3, 2004 |
| Place of death | Lisbon |