African warfare

In Seriousness, preferably no /pol/ tier answers.

Is any African nation "good" at war? there seems to be a stereotype that black people cant into war but is this truly the case throughout history, is there any country that has seen significant success even in the past?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
marxistnkrumaistforum.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/thornton-warfare-in-atlantic-africa-1500e280931800.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War#Background
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

In the past 60 years or so, Africa has seen some crazy shit go down. Rwanda in particular has a damn interesting military history. Can't remember where but I've seen it compared to Prussia before.

Read Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 by John K. Thornton, you can find it for free online

Ah fuck I wish I'd saved the "African Mini Prussia" cap about paratroopers in Africa.
Not really relevant, but it's still pretty good.

compared to Prussia? interesting
will do!

African nations can field paratroopers? wouldn't something like this be difficult because they can barley maintain tanks or even an air force?

being "good" at war is a relative thing. you can only realistically be as good as your competition forces you to be. the US and Russia are probably the "best" at war in the global setting because they've been competing with each other for almost a century. african nations have only had other african nations to compete with, so they don't have to get any "better" than ground troops with assault rifles and maybe some artillery and explosives. they don't need any more than that to win a war against an army equipped with surplus soviet equipment from the 20th century and machetes.

Ethiopia and Rhodesia I guess.

If I remember correctly there's hardly any other way to effectively wage warfare in Africa. A few paratroopers taking control of a few power plants and a few (air)ports can effectively cripple a nation's infrastructure.
But that's from info I remember from the cap, so take it with a grain of salt.

>compared to Prussia? interesting
Specifically for how they manage to punch WAY above their weight class.

I got you covered, user.

Not at all. Paratroopers are actually very easy to maintain comparatively.

Paratroopers are actually far more common than tanks are in Africa. Think about like this: tanks require constant maintenance, fuel, specialized ammo, and good terrain. African countries tend to have very few of these things. Meanwhile, for paratroopers, all you need is a plane and some crazy fucks with guns to jump out of it. As a result, paratroopers end up being used to cover huge distances of territory.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

Paratroopers are easy to field compared to tanks. The geography of Africa creates a massive advantage for being able to deploy paratrooper infantry - the dense jungles, mountain ranges, etc. make getting the right people to the right place in a timely manner very powerful, even if it's not a large force. All you need is a cargo plane really, and most African nations can't maintain real anti-air defenses, so it's a cheap and effective force. You can read up on it, some paratroopers from, I think, Rwanda, were able to basically shut down the entirety of Zaire.

wow that's pretty cool
saved

That was a good quick read, super interesting. Thanks for posting it user

I think I remember that post. It was about how all the airports were quickly captured and the capital had what little electricity they had shut off. Some shit about how they were going to win the war until some bastards from neighboring nations fucked it all up.

Keep in mind that this is a brief summary from someone who knows nothing about African history (besides north Africa) and is basing this post off of a post he may or may not have seen once.

Ethiopia was smart enough to hire European advisors and listen to them. As a result, Ethiopia was able to defeat Italy and in the end Ethiopia is the only place in Africa that was never colonized.

From reading books on the Great Lakes crisis and the Congo wars, African troops are typically very light infantry (often carrying nothing other than an AK-47 with one magazine and a machete) sometimes mobilized on humvees and often supported by light artillery. They typically begin attacks on villages with a short but intense barrage from behind heavy foliage or a hill, and then the infantry just overruns the town as quickly and violently as possible.

There was some armored combat, notably during the Six Day War (Rwandan-Ugandan war), but mainly in urban settings where conflict was protracted.

I don't know much about African paratrooper actions outside of the "Kitona Airlift," but I do know that the Congolese and the Rwandan (RPF) paratrooper divisions were both humorously (tragically?) underfunded. They would wear pots instead of helmets, bring goats with them in their airplanes for food and hijack commercial planes instead of using military aircraft.

Oh, in that last sentence, by "Congolese" I mean Zairian.

Even though though they lost at the end, Napoleonic Frace was pretty good at war for an African nation

The Ugandans were pretty chill when I was in Iraq

They said the Chad guys are operator as fuck

Very disciplined, quiet, and tough

IIRC they whooped Libya's ass

Ethiopia, former Rhodesia, Rwanda

Historically jungle african warfare was focused on ambushes and intense raids

Pitched battles were abnormal although they did happen, like when the Ashanti empire fought Oyo and Dahomey in open battle

The people of the sahel were a bit more conventional. Sieges of walled cities using ladders, boiling water, etc by heavily armored cavalry assisted by light infantry.

It basically took all the white people joining forces to defeat them.

Any good books on the Angolan war of independence?

None that i know of but an interesting topic. The side cuba supported was getting there ass kicked by south africa until they brought in a special heavy weapons unit through non stop flying. They turned the south Africans back in just one decisive battle.

>there seems to be a stereotype that black people cant into war
Where?
The French thought the Senegalese were the fiercest fighters and decided to run mass enlistment propaganda and then gave them elite training.
In ww1 the Tirailleurs Senegalais were considered as elite troops and were even granted special privileges like spending November - February on the Mediterranean coast to prevent them from freezing.

Daily Reminder Gaddaffi lost a conventional war to Chadians in Pickup trucks while he had a conventional mechanized army & an air force.

The Chad always wins.

doesn't matter how many times betas try to rise, chad will always beat them back

Also I saw some american liberals trying to blame the French for using black troops as cannon fooder. This is false, first of all the casualties rate was virtually the same as that of white troops (3/20 IIRC).
They were however used as elite shock troops, but only in crucial spots where breakthrough was crucially needed. Officers that used them as cannon fooder because "lol niggers" got their asses chewed on because we dont squander elite troops. The only one who did that repeatedly was Lt-Gen Mangin (nicknamed "the Butcher" in 1915 and "the Butcher of Blacks" in 1916 after he got the command of a senegalese division), but he was a dangerous sociopath (who later became Zhukov's chief inspiration) who loved to indiscriminately send his troops over the top without any coordinated plans, but simply "to keep the pressure" on the Germans.

>The 1987 war resulted in a heavy defeat for Libya, which, according to American sources, lost one tenth of its army, with 7,500 men killed and US$1.5 billion worth of military equipment destroyed or captured. Chadian losses were 1,000 men killed

>This is false

>except those times it did happen

you could've just said it wasn't the norm

Question, did colonial troops wear helmets at any point during the war? I always see French Senegalese troops in their fezzes and British Sikh troops in their turbans.

Pic unrelated.

...

REEEEEEEE

>Toyota War

Doesn't surprise me considering he had to hire a bunch of Nigerian mercenaries in the war against his own people.

>tfw they had backing from the french
Qaddafi lost to Chadians that had french backing
FTFY

Numidians took over Egypt. Thats something.

The Berber pirates at their height received tribute from the United States so they wouldn't attack their ships

Nubians

What's a Nubian?

The people that live in Sudan

Hasn't Chad single-handedly fucked up Boko Haram for Nigeria?
I'm pretty sure they've cut them down to a few jungle hiding spots now.

FUCKING CHADS

REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Africans are fucking relentless. They're pissed off at warlords as much as we are.

Shut the fuck up

NAHHH SHH

Yeah, Chad is a pretty cool guy sometimes

Came here to post this, thanks

Dude sub saharans lacked the intellect to invent the wheel what do you think?

>Idriss
>Hassan
>Habre
Jesus even in the 80s Romania was full of sandnigger lol

Anyone do wargaming? Really want to get into AK47 Republic

board game ? nty

Chad won, because of the frogs...

MEME MAGIC IS REAL

when you were in iraq they were in a civil war. i dont think they into war good against a competent enemy

Dont know whats up with all the Chad dick sucking but straight from wiki
>inb4 not credible source
"While many political parties are active, power lies firmly in the hands of President Déby and his political party, the Patriotic Salvation Movement. Chad remains plagued by political violence and recurrent attempted coups d'état. Chad is one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world; most inhabitants live in poverty as subsistence herders and farmers. Since 2003 crude oil has become the country's primary source of export earnings, superseding the traditional cotton industry."

Europeans didn't invent the wheel either. So, what is your point? The wheel was only invented, at best, twice. Once in the Middle East, once in the Americas.

We're here to talk about military.
The rest of the shit in the country doesn't matter.

So?

Europe was literally thousands of years more advanced than Sub Saharian Africa

it was alien invasion tier when Europeans entered in the 1400s

Military requires money from taxes.
Taxes don't give a very good source of revenue for the state due to poverty.
The state is very strained on money and this is not considering any debt repayements that they have to do which makes it worse.

That means that for infrastructure, healthcare, education, military, subsidies one+more of those categories have to take a hit. This is also mentioning the IMF/WB's effect on several nations fucking up the country with very retarded policies and impositions that aren't grounded in reality and fucks with development.

Several countries the military has done coups and disposals of leaders so under funding the military is a way to keep the military leaders in check.

Thus militarizes often deal with scenarios and budgets that aren't seen in many parts of the world or are uncommon so the solutions to these issues tend to be catered towards local problems and local solutions like the Rwandan paratroopers picture, guerilla warfare and counter guerrilla warfare.

It's pretty evident you don't know anything about Africa history on top of your whole treating Africa as a monolith.

>soldiers and planes have to be maintaned already so no special maintanance
>almost no special training apart from a basic parachuting tutorial (I mean, this is Africa we are talking about)
>infantry doesn't relly that much on combined arms as our armies, so they are used to operating without any support
>low probabilitties of them getting shot down
>quick deployment anywhere, regardless of the terrain, which is actually pretty varied in Africa
>if deployed smartly, they will never face anything other than hostile infantry so they don't even need really versatile equipment
>countless tactical posibilities, from throwing out drugged fanatical niggers to carry out civilian genocide far away from the first lines to covertly droping in tacticool operators that can cripple the entire country if played right
It's pretty perfect for Africa.

miniatures wargame

Dropping troops behind enemy lines is the worst thing, logistically, you can do. It only makes sense if you are capturing a bridge or something like that. And most likely any infrastructure in Africa would stop being maintained the first week of the war.

Damn if those zebras where just a little easier to domesticate Africans would be colonising Titan by now

Nah, they don't waste drugs on paratroopers. Even in Africa, the airborne troops have large amounts of discipline and espirt de corps. They might be the ONLY professional unit in a nation's army, but they are professional and act as such. That professionalism lets them consider themselves "above" the common rabble in the infantry, so they're able to maintain their elite status. This also has the result of the infantry trying to emulate the airborne because of how cool they carry themselves and what they accomplish, so gradually you'll see African armies get more and more professional as the years go on.

angola

Yeah, nah. The battle of Cuito Canavale gets portrayed as a great vigdory for gommunism all the time but in reality only 80 something south africans died for thousands of MPLA amd a good number of cubans. SA was attacked in their positions near the angola-namibia border, annihilated the attacking force, pushed them back with a counterattack all the way to cuito canavale, encountered actual resistance from the cubans, said "nah, fuck it, this isn't what we're here for" and returned to their original positions. Basically it was a defensive action by SA , so it irritates me to hear people claim that somehow preventing SA from capturing the city was a victory when the battle started fuck far away from the city as an offensive action

>often carrying nothing other than an AK-47 with one magazine and a machete
Given how absurdly easy it is to carry more magazines, I find this hard to believe. You'd literally have most of our infantry running around with no ammo within a few seconds of making contact.

you find it hard to believe African militias might be short on ammunition?

No point in weighing yourself down any more than you need to out there.

[RWANDA NOISES]
[CONGO OCCUPATION INTENSIFIES]
[ANGOLAN AND ZIMBABWEAN DYING NOISES]

If anything they should blame the Brits who used much more colonial troops (both in raw numbers and per capita) than the French

>Other Africans
>120,000 casualties out of 396,000 troops
>mfw

cannon fodder is now """elite shock troops"""

more decadent leftist delusions at 11

>preferably no /pol/ tier answers.
That's like going to the doctor when you're morbidly obese and asking them not to bring up your weight. When your average iq is 75 it's a limiting factor on every aspect of your country

not this shit again

blacks have the reverse midas touch desu

That assumes you're going to be fighting an extended conflict. Besides which, all your paratroopers really need are food, water and 7.62×39mm rounds. Guess what the best method of conveying supplies is, btw?

Air drop. Even conventional infantry is supplied by air drop frequently.

Of course your average IQ would be 75 if (((white people))) destroys all of your culture out of greed.

Blacks commited far more slavery, rape and genocide towards each other than whites, both before and after whites came to Africa. Is that somehow whitey's fault aswell cuck-san?

>Ethiopia is the only place in Africa that was never colonized
I heard that was because they were pretty much the only Christian state in a continent of Muslims and pagans. Was that just hooey?

It's because Italy is Africa-tier itself.

Rwanda is kind of amazing at war, especially by 3rd world standards. Kagame is possibly the best general since WW2. During the Congo Wars, the Rwandan army, equipped mostly with small arms, faced down foes who badly outgunned it (possessing planes and tanks and artillery). And crushed them.

Historically, you also have Ethiopia, which was able to build a decent empire and keep it in spite of European imperialism. They crushed the first Italian attempt to conquer them, and only lost in the second when the Italians brought in tanks, planes, and mustard gas. Even then they continued to resist via guerrilla warfare and eventually took their country back with the help of the British. The small Ethiopian expeditionary force sent to aid the USA in the Korean War (the Kagnew Battalions) also reportedly did damn well, though they were some of the elites of the Ethiopian military.

>The Kagnews served with great distinction, principally alongside the 7th Infantry Division, and by all accounts (including the enemy's) acquitted themselves well in battle, suffering 121 dead and 536 wounded during the course of the conflict. At the conclusion of the war the Ethiopians were the only contingent that had no prisoners to collect from the North Koreans since no Kagnew soldier ever surrendered. They had the additional distinctions of having never been bested in battle during the war. The Kagnew Battalion engaged in combat 238 times and won every encounter, as both aggressors and defenders. Another distinction was that they never left their dead behind, and it was noticed that there never seemed to be dead bodies of Kagnew soldiers on the battlefield. This earned them the respect of their American colleagues, while fostering the belief among their opponents, who had often never even seen black people before, that they were superhuman.

The Ethiopians also pulled off an impressive blitzkrieg in their intervention in Somalia. They have a fairly good military record.

Das rite! We dindu nuffin we wuz good bois

>It's because Italy is Africa-tier itself.

Italy was one of the top economies in the world at the start of the 20th century, with a GDP about 70% that of France (comparable to Austria-Hungary and four times greater than the Ottoman Empire's, for comparison). They were considered one of the great powers, hence why they participated in the Eight-Nation Alliance and were such a sought-after ally in the lead-up to the First World War. And why they played a major part in that war by effectively destroying the empire of Austria-Hungary after Russia folded. They weren't Britain, but they still were a major European power.

>Libya: 90,000 troops + tanks + planes + APCs
vs
>Chad: 30,000 troops + pick-up trucks
>Decisive Chadian victory

Holy crap this is pretty cool, any books on this? Got the basic gist of outnumbered elite Rwandan soldiers fucking up Congo with help of some badass general but I want to learn more.

>No point in weighing yourself down
I don't think you understand what magazines are

they aren't clips

>Guess what the best method of conveying supplies is, btw?
>Air drop
No. Air supply is only the bets when you're in impassible terrain, or are utterly surrounded. Land transport has literally always been better.

Surprisingly enough, that's actually one of the better sources of information on the topic outside of Africa. The Western world hasn't written much on either of the Congo Wars.

Underrated

Africa's World War
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters.

>No. Air supply is only the bets when you're in impassible terrain,
Welcome to the majority of African Conflicts.

marxistnkrumaistforum.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/thornton-warfare-in-atlantic-africa-1500e280931800.pdf
Here's a PDF if ya want to read it

this desu

I think that's the flag of Chad, you know, one of the countries were talking about?

Ooga booga

Wrong.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War#Background
>Since 1983 Chad was de facto partitioned, with the northern half controlled by the rebel Transitional Government of National Unity (GUNT) headed by Goukouni Oueddei and supported on the ground by Libyan forces, while the south was held by the Western-backed Chadian government guided by Hissène Habré.[11] This partition on 16th parallel (the so-called Red Line) into Libyan and French zones of influence was informally recognised by France in 1984, following an accord between France and Libya to withdraw their forces from Chad.[12] The accord was not respected by Libya, which maintained at least 3,000 men stationed in northern Chad.[13]
France did dump shitloads of anti-armor weapons on Chad.