Malcolm X is listed as a lead figure in the "Days of Rage", which occurred in 1970, five years after he was assassinated IOTL. Does this mean he never renounced the Nation of Islam, or did he somehow manage to avoid assassination after doing so?
New Deal Coalition Retained: A Sixth Party System Wikibox Timeline
With George Wallace elected President, many of the more radical black leaders received a jolt of support. Malcolm X ITTL was less radical when he was affiliated with the Nation of Islam, and the assassination was butterflied away.
His affiliation in the Days of Rage were more due to his rhetoric about King's near death. The massive riots were more on the Black Jaguars and Bill Ayers
I can tell you that it will end better than OTL (no coup) and that I am patterning it after the OTL example of another nation
Other than that, wait and see
That's good to hear.I can tell you that it will end better than OTL (no coup) and that I am patterning it after the OTL example of another nation
Other than that, wait and see
Third World Battleground
The ferocious fighting during the Algerian War had sent chills down the spines of the European and White minority governments across the African continent. Soviet aid under the Khrushchev program had propped up the FLN long after when they would have been annihilated if left to their own devices. In the great game between the superpowers, both the United States and the Soviet Union sent vital support to their allies and ideological similar regimes.
For the most part, the governments most fearful of the spectre of Soviet-backed African liberation movements weren’t the colonial governments but rather the white minority regimes in South Africa, Bechuanaland, and Rhodesia. While European settlers were usually quite sparse in the vast majority of the colonies, as with Algeria these three states were quite densely populated with whites – albeit vastly outnumbered by black Africans. Already, segregation policies such as South Africa’s Apartheid had been instituted to preserve minority rule, but the increasing radicalization of the natives by such Soviet and Chinese backed organizations such as the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Rhodesia), the Zimbabwe African National Union (Rhodesia), South West Africa People's Organization (South Africa and Bechuanaland), and uMkhonto we Sizwe (South Africa) greatly worried Pretoria, Gaberone, and Salisbury.
Each of these were connected to the British Commonwealth as dominions or colonies, South Africa under self-rule while the other two were subject to London’s control. Following the lead of France, Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod had arranged a plan of decolonization for Britain’s African Empire. Each would be given independence and majority rule, subsequently entering a security and economic alliance with the former colonial power – as a result both the Commonwealth and the French Community would maintain extensive strength in the Dark Continent.
Initially, all three states seemed destined to international isolation and eventual pariah status, but the Assassination of Richard Nixon completely changed the dynamic. The new calculus of the Rockefeller (later Kennedy) Administration and the Macleod Ministry was that anti-Communism was the overarching concern. Deeming that it would be easier to promote human rights once the Soviet-backed groups were defeated, the NATO, SEATO, and ANZUS nations each recognized the white minority states and began friendly trade relations with them, greatly boosting their already impressive advantages against the native militant groups.
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One colonial power that refused to give in to the spate of decolonization declarations was Portugal. Ruled by the formerly fascist turned republican authoritarian Estado Novo regime of António de Oliveira Salazar, the well-established colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique were as part of Portugal as the Metropole was. And the government and military were willing to fight to keep it that way.
The Angola colony had been in Portuguese hands for nearly four centuries, the city of Luanda founded by Paulo Dias de Novais in 1576. Colonization of the inland would have to wait for the discovery of proper anti-malarial drugs in the late nineteenth century, but afterwards Angola had provided Portugal with a massive supply of mineral and agricultural wealth as well as a huge influx of white settlers (only to increase in the economic hardship years of the late sixties). Something the Estado Novo regime was willing to expend massive amounts of men and treasure to protect.
Initially begun as a push of civil disobedience in the Gandhi mold, lack of any headway ended in a transition to more violent means, the Portuguese government and the native rebels engaging in several tit for tat terror raids that only inflamed the situation further. The start of the war was ultimately deemed to be the 1961 attempting storming of a Luanda police station, in retaliation the Portuguese military committing reprisals in the black slums of the capitol. Things deteriorated quickly and soon the entire country was ablaze with rebellion.
Initially, Portuguese commanders – culminating in General António de Spínola by 1966 – utilized military aid from the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa to great effect against the underequipped rebels. The fact the native forces were divided into the communist MPLA, the centrist FNLA, and the right-wing UNITA served to the Portuguese advantage, the colonial forces practicing the age old military strategy of divide and conquer.
However, by the time Spinola left to take the position of Defence Minister in 1967, Soviet Military aid funneled through neighboring nations – including the pro-Western President Mobutu Seke Seso, anti-colonialist to the core, though he ensured most of the aid went to UNITA – many within the Estado Novo leadership felt that he combined weight of the colonial wars was leading to ruin. Newly appointed General Kaúlza de Arriaga, taking command in Luanda, instituted a new strategy of holding the line in the countryside and concentrating on securing the capitol and the regions around it. The successes of Operation Vimeiro heartened Lisbon, but Spinola’s warnings of a dire future convinced Salazar that they needed a new way forward.
Taking a lesson from the French, Salazar and President Francisco da Costa Gomes sought talks in 1967 with the rebel group most amenable to them, UNITA and its larger than life leader Jonas Savimbi. A committed anti-Communist, he traveled to Kinshasa in a summit hosted by his friend Mobutu between him and the Portuguese – representatives from the United States, Britain, and South Africa were in attendance as well. After five days of heated discussion, a deal was reached. UNITA would stab the other rebel groups in the back by allying with Portugal and assisting them toward a military victory. In return, once the countryside was in joint Portuguese/UNITA control, Portugal would retreat to the “Luanda districts” and leave the rest of the country as an independent republic with Savimbi as President.
Sensing little choice, Salazar, Costa Gomes, and Spinola decided that keeping part was better than potentially losing all and accepted, establishing the Portuguese-UNITA alliance.
For UNITA, Portugal, South Africa, and NATO, the denying of the Soviet-backed rebels of friendly regimes from which to operate or train was vital for both victory and the long-term security of the region. One such government was that of Milton Obote in Uganda. Fearing the increasing socialistic tendency of Obote and his strident support of the MPLA (along with FRELMO in Mozambique and anti-Mobutu forces in Zaire), a collection of western nations joined with the Ugandan military to overthrow the government while Obote was at a trade conference in British Singapore.
Finally in November 1970, General Arriaga achieved what had been a goal of the Portuguese Military since the beginning of the war. In a routine sweep and clear mission in a remote eastern provincial village, Portuguese Special Forces captured MPLA General Secretary José Eduardo dos Santos attempting to flee – declared dead by the colonial administration in Luanda two days later. It was said that Arriaga put a bullet in his head personally.
Following dos Santos’ death the MPLA and FNLA resistance effectively began to collapse, surrendering or melting away into the countryside to fight another day. As per the deal brokered between Salazar and Savimbi, the Angolan leader traveled to Portugal on February 2nd, 1971 where they signed the Alvor Agreement, dividing the country into the overseas province of Portuguese Angola and the UNITA-ruled Republic of Angola.
Partitioned Angola - Red: Portugal; Green: Republic of Angola
All across Portugal church bells rang as people took to the streets in celebration of the victory. President Savimbi would return on February 7th (now a national holiday in Angola) to the new national capital of Benguela to the exulting crowds of a hero’s welcome – and the beginning of a Civil War against the remnants of the MPLA and FNLA, rejuvenated as Zambia fell to a communist insurgency.
Arriaga would be transferred to Mozambique, where the rebel forces were still going strong. And where the victorious nation would soon tear itself apart.
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Aid to anti-communist groups wasn’t merely contained to Africa or to nations fighting off communist insurgencies or controlled by communists. One particular target of American, Commonwealth, and Community support was that of Cambodia. Given its independence following the breakup of French Indochina, the ethnically Khmer nation was ruled as a monarchy under Prince Norodom Shianouk. Nominally allied with the west, Shianouk quickly proved himself to be a weak and ineffectual ruler. American and South Vietnamese officials watched with dismay as a waffling on his part allowed Le Duan and General Giap to establish massive logistical hubs and supply lines through eastern Cambodia – both via land in the famous “Ho Chi Minh Trail” and via sea through the smuggling of material through the port city of Shianoukville.
More concerned with petty domestic concerns, Shianouk was quickly dismissed by then CIA Drector Richard Helms as an incompetent and liability to American presence in Vietnam. Thusly, under his advice President Kennedy authorized CIA and State Department funding of the newly formed Social Republican Party of Minister of Defense Field Marshall Lon Nol. An ardent anti-communist and advocate for a republic, Nol began engaging the NVA and their allied Khmer Rouge guerillas in a series of battles taken unilaterally by the military. As a result, the more populated region of western Cambodia was largely clear of communist influence.
As the new year dawned, the stubbornness of Prince Shianouk to authorize Nol to assault the Ho Chi Minh Trail directly, allow American intervention forces, or to properly police Shianoukville for smuggling had convinced President Wallace that a regime change was needed to secure a victory in Vietnam (coming to the same view held by President Tho of South Vietnam). Through the CIA pipeline, Nol was basically authorized to engage in what he had wished for so long – a republican coup against the Royal Government.
Almost immediately the Khmer Rouge guerillas began an escalation of their campaign against the government out of their strongholds in the east. Setting off vehicle bombs throughout urban areas and slaughtering several loyalist villages, public support greatly turned against the Khmer Rouge and in favor of President Nol. Aid pouring in from the US, Japan, and Australia greatly strengthened the Khmer military as they prepared for a widening of the war into the eastern regions of the republic.
Appointing himself President in November, Nol would rule by decree until overseeing the establishment of free elections eleven years after the coup. By the time of his death in 1985, Cambodia was one of the most politically stable nations within Southeast Asia – although that statement was relative.
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Besides Europe, the number one battlefield for CIA Director James Jesus Angleton (appointed by President Wallace following Richard Helms’ elevation to Secretary of State) was Latin America. The traditional backyard of the United States since the institution of the Monroe Doctrine, it was common knowledge that the KGB and other Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies were funneling money and aid via Che Guevara’s Socialist Republic of Cuba to communist and left-wing political parties within the continent. Insurgencies in Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia dogged their respective governments, and political parties in Ecuador and Argentina threatened to depose the incumbent regimes.
However, the pro-American regime most threatened by left-wing elements was Chile. A republic since its founding during the 1840s, the fifties and sixties saw a successive series of center right governments headed by the Christian Democratic party. Propped up by the CIA during the Eisenhower, Nixon, Rockefeller, and Kennedy administrations, sluggish growth and rising inequality within the republic spurred rising discontent with Eduardo Frei Montalva’s government. Fearful that Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende would win the 1970 election, CIA/State Department officials turned to the staunchly right-wing Chilean Military.
Formerly commanded by benign General Rene Schneider, an opponent of military interference in political matters, his mysterious death by alcohol poisoning in 1969 resulted in the far more politically active General Roberto Viaux taking command. Deeming CD candidate Radomiro Tomic not likely to defeat Allende, the military Chiefs of Staff formed an alliance with the right-wing National Party to run a third candidate in the upcoming elections. In the subsequent conference, the charismatic General Commander of the Santiago Army Garrison Augusto Pinochet was accepted to lead the National Alliance into the election against Allende and Tomic.
Almost immediately the race boiled down to one between the National and Socialist camps, political violence breaking out in many instances across the nation. CIA Director Angleton and KGB Director Andropov (the latter aided in all capacities by Guevara’s government) funneled a total of fifteen million in funds to assist their allies, a record of any amount spent on a foreign election.
Freeing themselves of any of the “wetwork” so to speak – conducted by the Army on the National side and by Guevaran “Foco” paramilitary organizations on the Socialist side – Pinochet and Allende campaigned hard for every single vote. The General promoted the “Shock Strategy,” in which the government would use any method necessary in creating a robust capitalistic economic growth pattern that would raise the cost of living, while Allende favored mass nationalization and redistribution of wealth in between that of the Bevanite Labour Party and that of the deceased Fidel Castro.
Pinochet wasn’t confident in the chamber – the sentiment proved in recently unearthed audio transcripts taken by the CIA between the general and the military Chiefs of Staff. His bid had ruffled many feathers among the centrist members, and quite a few would likely vote for Allende only due to his slight plurality in the popular vote. The general quickly ruled out a military coup however, promulgated by the Army and Navy commanders. Instead, Army Intelligence and the sympathetic Director General of the Carabineros de Chile devised a more covert strategy aimed at securing the vote against the Socialists. After heated wrangling between Valparaiso and Washington, President Wallace assured Pinochet that the United States would stand by him “Come hell or high water.”
In the two weeks preceding the election, a fair number of socialist and Allende-allied members of the Chilean Parliament found themselves subjected to a series of unfortunate “incidents.” One was discovered stabbed to death in what police called a mugging called wrong. One from Valparaiso perished in a drunk driving hit and run, while two others were ruled having committed suicide after falling from buildings. A fifth was arrested on corruption charges, while two others caught debilitating illnesses and were hospitalized. After four other members suddenly found their accounts flush with cash payments via CIA front organizations, the deputies gathered for the confirmation vote.
By a 98-95 margin, despite losing the popular vote Augusto Pinochet had legally been confirmed as President of Chile. Fearing for his safety, Allende would subsequently flee to the SRC, being given a warm reception by President Guevara. Several dozen of his staunchest allies weren’t so lucky, finding themselves arrested on charges of espionage and treason (many were connected in some level to the KGB and GRU, but others were only lumped in due to their ideology).
Overall, the country was content. Dirty tricks or not the nation was still a democracy, the socialist takeover had been thwarted, and Pinochet immediately went to work at jumpstarting the Chilean economy – which would see massive spikes in growth over the course of the 1970s till the nation sported the highest GDP rating for any South American nation in 1988.
However, South America hadn’t seen the last of Guevara and Semichastny’s meddling.
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I don't think he'll be okay-ish for long. Hopefully, he'll be deposed before he goes on his murderous rampage, but I don't think he'll remain un-dictatorial for long in any case.
Why is everyone saying Rhodesia is doomed? They've got better backing from the western community and if they can keep their GDP high - most blacks in the country will be content (read as not going out into the streets to overthrow the Govt.) - much like it was for the most part OTL.
Hopefully Pinochet won't lock up or kill opponents; I'd much rather prefer my relatives out there remaining not disappeared...
Hopefully Pinochet won't lock up or kill opponents; I'd much rather prefer my relatives out there remaining not disappeared...
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Not having the coup fixed much of that, since Pinochet has much more popular legitimacy by being elected; there was still some... shady activity, but not nearly as much. As for the future, it all likely depends on the economic situation and on the level of support the communists get from the USSR and Guevara. No mainland state has fallen to them, yet.
What was the racial policy of Rhodesia? Was it like Apartheid?
Yep. There's a reason Mugabe was initially seen as a hero, after all.
Western influence will greatly help in this regard. Won't be as desperate as OTL.