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Why Is the U.S. Saving a Dying Communist Regime?
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11766 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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4 / 1987 |
2,235 Words |
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Dan Burton
Dan Burton is a Republican representative in Congress from
Indiana. |
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
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