Where exactly have you seen this? And in what percentage of recent historical armed conflicts?
I was a white living in Rhodesia during the 1970's. A nice law and order government, a good economy, i.e. a stable, safe and prosperous nation in Africa. Unfortunately the government was dominated by about 5% of the population (whites) and the bulk of the good land was owned by (very productive) white farmers, and in pretty much every really successful business the whites ran the show while the blacks did the grunt work. The blacks had lost their land in a series of wars and treaties less than 100 years before. Nice little Paradise if you where white.
Damn natives started a terrorist war (simply how the week fight the strong), and Paradise became less pleasant. Mostly it was the blacks themselves who died, either the terrorists at the hands of the rather good Rhodesian forces, or black civilians at the hands of terrorists. The latter in the largest numbers IIRC. Ian Smith (the white PM of Rhodesia) once declared his regime would last 1000 years in Black Africa. It folded a few years later.
During the war, the terrorist never really held significant territory. If they concentrated, the RAF & SAS & RLI saw to it that they died promptly. The RAF & SAS could also attack training bases in the neighboring black states with impunity.
The terrorists would kidnap recruits from high schools and even grade schools, march them across the borders and train them to return. The government would have one believe that was how they got 90% of their recruits, but I doubt this. I knew a few who disappeared on their own. Torture & intimidation of blacks that sided with the whites was common. The Rhodesian army had more black soldiers then whites BTW. The white government generated tons of propaganda, most of which I think was factually correct, with tales and gruesome pictures of the evil deeds of the terrorists, and lots of stats on the great success of the army in killing them.
What the whites utterly failed to do, was consider how they themselves might have behaved, if in their ancestral English homeland, they found themselves subjugated by some foreign Bantu tribe for the last 100 years.
The isolated farmers took to sandbagging their house walls, clearing the brush back for a 100m or more, placing triple 3m fences around them, and laying in a good supply of ammo. Nights became "interesting". The total number of whites killed was not high. But a death here and a death there, and no end in sight makes people wonder what the heck the future holds. Does any of this remind you of another little war???
Well, they have peace of sorts now. The whites that are left are well under 1%. The guy that runs the show is a despot, but he's black. If the whites of Rhodesia had shown a strong commitment to racial justice in the 1940's and on, I suspect that Zimbabwe would be a stellar example (positively) in Africa. There are some lessons for the USA's meddling in Iraqi that might be gleaned from such histories.
Regarding other modern wars. Most of southern Africa. Many other ex colonial dominions as well. |
