The Australian Services Contingent was the Australian Army contribution to the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) peacekeeping mission to Namibia in 1989 and 1990. Australia sent two contingents of over 300 engineers each to assist the Special Representative of the Secretary General, Martti Ahtisaari, in overseeing free and fair elections in Namibia for a Constituent Assembly in what was the largest deployment of Australian troops since the Vietnam War.
The Australian mission was widely reported as successful. Colonel John Crocker, commander of the second Australian contingent (2ASC), wrote that the November 1989 election was UNTAG's raison d'être and observed that "the Australian contingent's complete and wide-ranging support was critical to the success of that election and hence the mission – a fact that has been acknowledged at the highest level in UNTAG". Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary-General of the United Nations, wrote to Gareth Evans (Australia's Foreign Minister) about the "remarkable contribution made by the Australian military and electoral personnel", saying that their "dedication and professionalism had been widely and deservedly praised". Although a total of 19 UN personnel lost their lives in Namibia, the two Australian contingents achieved their mission without sustaining any fatalities – one of the few military units in UNTAG to do so.
Overall, the UNTAG mission assisted Namibia in transitioning to a democratic government after the racial segregation of the apartheid system. The military forces did not fire a shot during the operation, and Mays called it "possibly the most successful UN peacekeeping operation ever fielded"; Hearn called it "one of the major successes of the United Nations". Almost 20 years later, in a message to the annual session of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization on 28 February 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that "facilitating this process" constituted "one of the proudest chapters of our Organization's history".
Background
History of conflict
Southwest Africa has a rich history encompassing colonisation, war and genocide. The first European to set foot on Namibian soil was the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in 1485. Over the next 500 years, the country was colonised by the Dutch, English and Germans. Namibia was a German colony (German South-West Africa) from 1884 until its annexation by South Africa during World War I. After the war, it was mandated to South Africa by the League of Nations. After World War II the United Nations (UN) asked South Africa to place Namibia under UN trusteeship, but South Africa refused. Legal arguments continued until 1966 when the UN General Assembly resolved to end the mandate, declaring that henceforth South-West Africa was the direct responsibility of the UN.
At the height of the Cold War in 1965, conflict escalated across the border with the Cuban intervention in Angola. Cuba formed an alliance with the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) (), which led to the deployment of more than 25,000 Cuban soldiers to the region in the Angolan War of Independence.
The next year the Namibian War of Independence began when the South-West Africa People's Organisation's (SWAPO) military wing – the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) – began guerrilla attacks on South African forces, infiltrating from bases in Zambia. The first attack was the battle at Omugulugwombashe on 26 August, and the war was a classic insurgent-counterinsurgent operation. PLAN initially established bases in northern Namibia; they were later forced out of the country by the South African Defence Force (SADF), subsequently operating from bases in southern Angola and Zambia. The intensity of cross-border conflict escalated, becoming known as the South African Border War and the Angolan Bush War.
The principal protagonists were the SADF and the PLAN. Other groups involved included the South West African Territorial Force (SWATF) and National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) (both aligned with the SADF) and the People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) and Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (both aligned with SWAPO). The South African-aligned forces consisted of regular army (SADF), South West African Police forces and the South West Africa Police Counter-Insurgency Unit (SWAPOL-COIN), including the paramilitary-trained SWAPOL police counter-insurgency unit known as Koevoet.