Selous Scouts - Intelligence and Tradecraft

Intelligence and Tradecraft

Many times, due to their intelligence collecting, the HUMINT side of the Selous Scouts was more up to date than the guerrillas. The job of intelligence — and the task of the Selous Scouts as well as the special branches in general — was to find out the identity of the insurgents, their plans, their training locations, the parties involved in training them, the source and location of their supply routes, their sympathizers, and any other relevant information. The pseudo-operators gained entrance into the areas controlled by ZANLA/ZIPRA through memorization of dead drops, presenting the appropriate letter at the necessary time, and by use of the information given by their intelligence. Compartmentalization was key, and the need-to-know basis was strictly enforced.

In order to gain entrance into the surrounding African countries they were required to use their callsigns and tribal spies for ZANLA/ZIPRA, in order to process and compile names so as to enable them to enter a country covertly or as “illegals”. While on a mission to assassinate Nkomo they had to observe operational security. This consisted of using code words to tell a handler when one was out of money or to warn the agent if the authorities were aware of his activities in Zambia. This message would tell the scout whether he had to leave Zambia the traditional route of using buses or cars or if he had to leave Zambia through the bush.