Assignment Selous Scouts

Jim Parker

ISBN 10: 1919854142 / ISBN 13: 9781919854144

Published by Galago Publishing Pty Ltd, 2006

About this Item

360 Pages, Maps, Illustrations, Index and 32 Pages of Photographs. Very Good Condition, with mild tanning to edges, flyleaf and index pages, otherwise pages clean and bright and binding tight. Although involved in the conflict earlier while a regular policeman, the author stepped back into the Rhodesian Bush War in mid 1977 when as a farmer and a Police A Reservist he was appointed as a Special Branch liaison officer with the Selous Scouts at their Chiredzi Fort in the Lowveld. The Rhodesian Bush War had grumbled on at a low key since the early 1960s, but it escalated sharply in late 1972 when major infiltrations of ZANLA guerillas from Mozambique began. The Rhodesian forces found it difficult to engage the guerrillas using conventional counter-insurgency methods, because the enemy's tactic was to merge with the local tribal population. This resulted in the formation of the Selous Scouts whose role was to infiltrate pseudo-guerillas into enemy groups, gather intelligence and turn captured guerillas into pro-government fighters. The Selous Scouts accounted for 68% of all guerillas killed or captured during the war. It was a bloody and brutal war. ZANLA targeted white civilians, particularly farmers, to drive them from the land, as well as tribal blacks to bring them onside using a strategy of murder, torture, rape, arson and other acts of terror. They laid landmines indiscriminately on public roads. By the war s end there had been 21 782 recorded terrorist incidents in the country and countless thousands were dead. 1 276 landmine detonations had caused 7 283 casualties. This is a no-punches-pulled account of the final years of the war as experienced by a Special Branch liaison officer with the Selous Scouts.

Seller Inventory # 001020

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Assignment Selous Scouts
• Publisher: Galago Publishing Pty Ltd
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1919854142
• ISBN 13: 9781919854144
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

Rare Book

Review

Jim Parker was born in Zambia and educated in Rhodesia. After five years in the British South Africa Police he resigned to manage the family's sugar farm at Chiredzi in the Rhodesia lowveld. In 1977 at the peak of the Bush War he joined the ranks of Special Branch Selous Scouts as an A Reserve Detective Section Officer. He served with this elite unit for protracted periods of service without remuneration until the summary disbandment of the Selous Scouts when Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF assumed power in March 1980. He is now a farmer in South Africa.