African Entrepreneurship Record

Kinshasa.

The East African Defense Army’s 331st Division is responsible for the military operations in this region. The 331st Division is part of the Nile River Military District and is the flagship unit of this district. In the early years, the 331st Division was one of East Africa’s elite troops.

The 331st Division focuses on training in various treacherous environments like rainforests and mountains, stationed in the western part of the Nile River Military District. Before East Africa expanded its forces, the 331st Division was one of the five fully staffed divisions aside from the Guard Division.

The division’s headquarters is located in Bangui, the provincial capital of Azande Province, so the division mainly supports Kinshasa by moving south through the Ubangi River and then turning onto the main road of the Congo River, making transportation very convenient.

North of the 331st Division is the Sigmaringen royal territory, and to the west is the Belgian Congo colony. Currently, relations between the two countries and East Africa are good, so military pressure is relatively small, providing conditions for the 331st Division to move south to support the Angolan battlefield.

With the start of the westward counterattack, the 331st Division has successfully defeated the Portuguese troops on the outskirts of Kinshasa and taken over the city defense.

With the Kinshasa crisis resolved, the 331st Division also intends to achieve greater accomplishments in the war, and attacking the heartland of the Angolan colony, the western Atlantic coast of Angola, is undoubtedly key to ending this war swiftly.

Subsequently, the city of Kinshasa became the temporary command post of the 331st Division headquarters.

Major General Kaster, the commander of the 331st Division, is formulating strategies against Portugal. With the army’s expansion, although the 331st Division’s activities are not as large as other units, it still reaches more than 13,000 people.

With the support of this powerful military force, Kaster’s ambitions are greater, although Portugal has nearly 200,000 troops in Angola, the number that can be used in the north may be less than ten thousand.

At this time, it can be said that the 331st Division has an absolute advantage in the north.

This also makes Kaster want to formulate even more aggressive plans to achieve the goal of quickly ending the war.

Kaster held a pencil, marking on the map on the table, while speaking to the senior officers of the 331st Division: ”Here is Cabinda, the area controlled by the Kingdom of Portugal on the north bank of the Congo River, and is one of Angola’s key strategic points. Southward across the Congo River is Soyo. These two places control the Congo River estuary, so if we East Africa want to master the Congo River basin in the future, these two regions are indispensable.”

”Of course, this doesn’t have much to do with our current war. Our initial military target is to directly seize the Portuguese cities downstream along the Congo River, Cabinda and Soyo, then go south along the coastline to threaten the Portuguese Angolan capital, Luanda. Finally, if possible, ultimately seize Benguela.”

”In this way, the main ports of Angola will basically be under our control, and the Portuguese troops fighting inland with us, unable to obtain external resources, will collapse without a fight.”

Kaster’s strategy is to cut off the connection between Angola and Portugal’s homeland, and since the East African Navy is relatively weak in the South Atlantic, this can only be accomplished by the Army.

According to Kaster’s plan, most of Angola’s supplies originate from the homeland, and the excellent ports Angola can utilize are only Cabinda, Luanda, and Benguela.

As long as these three ports are cut off, the supply of Portuguese troops will inevitably face major issues. Food might still be solved by local produce, but medicine, guns, and other materials are basically inaccessible.

Hans Griffin, the strategist, agrees with Kaster’s war proposition, but he also directly pointed out the difficulty of this strategy.

Hans Griffin pointed to the downstream area marked by a red line with waterfalls, saying: ”After the river downstream of the Congo River passes Kinshasa, it is not navigable due to the waterfall and terrain disparity, which means that the subsequent journey can only rely on foot, and our heavy weapons are difficult to be sent to the front lines to support the battlefield.”

As a crack unit of the East African Defense Army, the 331st Division is equipped with a large number of light and heavy weapons. Although compared to other main divisions, the 331st Division is more focused on mountainous and jungle warfare, so it is not inferior in heavy weapons to ordinary troops.

Therefore, attacking the core area of Angola is still highly challenging for the 331st Division.

Hans Griffin continued: ”The road conditions in Portuguese Angola can be described as a swampy mess; the southern parts might be better off, but the northern parts were originally the native Congolese Kingdom. According to our observations on the level of Black civilization, the Swahili region, Somali region, and Great Lakes Region have the highest level of Black civilization, but even among these three civilizations, infrastructure construction is very poor, so don’t expect too much from Congolese Kingdom, this native land.”

In fact, up to now, East Africa has encountered the highest-level indigenous civilization in Africa, which is the Abyssinian Empire, but the Abyssinian Empire, similar to Madagascar, is a semi-mixed race, so they cannot be compared with pure Bantu Blacks.

Kaster: ”You make a lot of sense. However, no matter what the road conditions of the former Congolese Kingdom are, they should not impede our advance. We are now organizing engineers to eliminate various factors that may be unfavorable to the advancement of our troops.”

Having said this, Kaster suddenly felt some doubt about how the Portuguese solved this problem!

He asked: ”How did the Portuguese initially attack Kinshasa?”

”The Portuguese didn’t bring a small number of people, but basically all they had were rifles and no heavy firepower support, so even after besieging Kinshasa for three months, they failed. Moreover, their troops were noticeably ineffective, otherwise, Kinshasa wouldn’t still be in our hands.” Kinshasa’s military chief, Koles, directly explained.

”In other words, we might not need to consider heavy weaponry too much, after all, the Portuguese have poor equipment levels too.” Hans Griffin pondered, rubbing his chin.

Kaster countered: ”It’s still different. If it’s Cabinda and Soyo, these areas where the Portuguese haven’t built any substantial fortifications, perhaps we don’t need artillery support to easily seize local control, but Luanda is different. Luanda has solid military fortresses and bastions that the Portuguese have developed over a hundred years, potentially even better than some European fortresses. So if we want to remove this nail from Luanda, we must have heavy firepower support.

Moreover, as the colonial capital of Portuguese Angola, Luanda’s weaponry and personnel composition are not likely to be matched by the rogue units we encountered before, so we must not take it lightly.”

Kaster’s intelligence heavily relies on public information. Of course, the East African Defense Army’s Military Intelligence Department hasn’t taken much effort in Angola, yet they’ve obtained most of the Portuguese’s intelligence.

Because the Portuguese in Angola have very poor confidentiality awareness, and their troops are concentrated at several fixed coastal locations, which for the Military Intelligence Department is simply an open-book test.

Therefore, East Africa’s confidence in resolving the Angolan colony first also stems from intelligence victories: the more they know about the current state of the Portuguese military, the higher East Africa’s confidence in victory.

And until now, the Portuguese have not disappointed East Africa; their performance in the Allies only slightly surpasses that of Blacks and Indians, ranking behind the British and Boers. As for the Indian troops’ skill in shirking responsibilities, it surely ranks highest among the Allies.