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VPRB · 12-19-2016, 12:28 PM

Bruuman Independence War: 1951 to 1953

During 1951, the BVPLF shifted its tactic toward a long-termed conflict and set two main goals: first, secure its presence by filling the territorial gaps in areas under its control; second, making the cost of remaining unsustainable for colonists by sabotaging economic activities and increases losses in their military ranks.

During the course of the year, the rural columns concentrated their attacks on government presence in the areas under its control, conquering a sizeable number of villages and military outposts. While this result costed a great deal of lives, it proved successful in the end since they were able to inflict heavier casualties of RBF and RA forces by attacking reinforcement columns while on the move from colonial-controlled areas.

At the end of the year, both Mount Benjamin and Mount Elizabeth mountain zones were firmly under control of the BVPLF in addition to “liberated areas” of variable sizes in rest of the country, including the smaller islands. PAIB meanwhile tried to reorganize with a different approach: regarding its territorial presence, they set up a substitutive administration in areas under they controlled, expanding where the government retreated, in particular regarding security: they policed the areas and protected farms and business from bandits, receiving funding in exchange. Thus their presence was stronger in areas inhabited by small black landowners such as the hills near Gator River and Crown Island. Their political counterpart, PUIB, also engaged in the international intellectual debate, with Party’s prominent figures traveling in neighboring countries to rally liberal and democratic support for the cause. RiMoJE continued to survive mainly due to two factors: remote rural communities governed by the movement, which provided safe havens and training camps, and support nets - such as soup kitchens - for the poorest set in cities, which provided funds and support from poor and religious people. The movement did not managed to recover or expand though, and held a significant territorial control only on Storm Island.

On the colonial side, the government continued to face local white flight, desertion of black policemen and civil servants and increasing economic and military dependency from the Motherland. During the year, at the request of both Everard and the homebound Ministry of War, the RA/RBF command developed a strategy plan which aimed at countering the prolonged plans of conflict of the rebels. So in 1952 Operation Nassau was launched. Its assumption was that to avoid the disadvantages of asymmetrical warfare against guerrilla, while retaining the advantages of superior equipment and fighting abilities, the Army would turn the conflict into a more conventional one by designating “red areas”, deemed as under total enemy controls, where they would conduct conventional warfare. “Yellow areas” would see the prosecution of patrol operations and, in particular regarding plantations, the support for ordinary policing of vigilantes and militias.

Operation Nassau lasted until 1953 and was a dark and uttermost failure. BVPLF and the other rebels did not abandon their fighting style, keeping harassing the RA/RBF with ambushes and retreating when under attack. Many guerrilla camps were anyway located in impervious areas and even if destroyed, easily replaceable. Villages and civilians often bore the brunt of counterinsurgency and colonial forces committed multiple atrocities such as burning villages and conducting mass executions. The support for the rebels thus grew at a staggering rate. In “yellow areas”, operations against the rebel proved sometimes successful but always costly in term of equipment and manpower; militias and vigilantes proved to be completely ineffective against rebels, in particular the BVPLF which at that point possessed trained and well equipped soldiers. Loyalist black citizens and rural whites began to get killed in increasing numbers; most militiamen simply deserted when rebel attacked and a vast number of plantations were burned and sometimes repopulated with landless squatters, thus increasing the area of insurgents’ support. In addition, rebels took advantage of the government strategy by reopening insurrectional fronts in the cities, which managed to pin down a good numbers of RBF troops, also due to the reduced number of still active policemen, and stayed in activity until the end of the war. Rebels also managed to conquer cities for the first time in the course of the war: the first was Gatorville, who fell to PAIB in June of 1952; Arthuria followed at the hand of BVPLF after being abandoned by colonial forces in October of 1953.

At the end of that year, the situation was more critical than ever for the colonial administration, which recorded losses on every front from tax revenues to military casualties to territorial control. Governor Everard had fallen in disgrace even with the hardliners in the Motherland government and was deposed and repatriated in February 1954. In his place arrived Governor Victor Havilland, who had a long experience in colonial administration and was an emanation of a more progressive side of the government. Despite his best effort to implement a different approach to the insurgency, based on winning popular support and a widening of black presence in the ranks of the military forces, it was too little too late and the war was about to enter its final stage.

(This post was last modified: 07-08-2019, 04:52 AM by VPRB.)