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East Germany Policy Toward the Third World
Since the 1970s, East Germany has pursued an active policy in
the Third World, particularly in Africa. East Germany pursues a
vigorous Third World policy both to advance its own specific
interests and as part of its role as a Soviet client.
In the 1970s and 1980s, East Germany promoted two foreign
policy interests in the Third World. First, in the late 1960s and
1970s, East Germany, functioning as a divided state enjoying
little international status as compared with West Germany, turned
to the newly independent states of the Third World to gain
recognition in return for economic and technical assistance.
Comparative technological and economic backwardness vis-à-vis
West Germany was less important in the Third World arena than in
the West; East Germany could still proffer much-needed assistance
to these economically backward states. Second, East Berlin
launched a propaganda campaign to identify West Germany as the
heir to Germany's imperial past, while representing itself as a
German state able to offer all the qualities usually associated
with Germans, such as efficiency, without the taint of a colonial
past. Indeed, these policies paid off in 1969 when Sudan
recognized East Germany. In the early 1970s, recognition by a
number of Arab governments followed, no doubt impelled by East
German support of the Arab cause in the June 1967 War between the
Arab states and Israel.
East Germany has also developed trading relationships with a
number of Third World states. Algeria, for example, has become a
leading supplier of oil to East Germany. The East German
government hopes to tap coal reserves held by Mozambique, and in
the 1980s East Germans were developing the infrastructure of the
Moatize coal mining district in that country. In addition East
Germany imports raw cotton, tropical fruits, coffee beans, and
nuts from Africa.
East Germany also promotes Soviet interests in the Third
World by extending military, economic, and medical aid to states
allied with the Soviet Union in the Third World, as well as
selected Third World liberation movements. East Germany has
concluded treaties of friendship and cooperation with Angola,
Mozambique, and Ethiopia. These agreements call for cooperation
in the fields of health, economic, scientific, political, and
educational affairs. East Germany has also signed specific
agreements covering much of the same ground as the treaties of
friendship and cooperation with other Soviet allies in the Third
World.
In the mid-1980s, East Germany had a significant military
presence in the Third World. In 1981 the United States Department
of Defense estimated that 2,225 East Germans were serving in the
Middle East and Africa, specifically in Angola, Ethiopia, Guinea,
Mozambique, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the People's
Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). Apparently East
German troops do no fighting; they act primarily in an advisory
and training capacity. The Soviet Union trains military officers
in these countries, and East Germany trains the other ranks.
Third World military and security personnel have also traveled to
East Germany for instruction. Such personnel include members of
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the South- West
African People's Organization (SWAPO), the African National
Congress (ANC), and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).
East German military advisers in Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia
also train guerrillas of SWAPO, the ANC, and ZAPU. In addition,
East Germany gives food, medical, and educational assistance to
these movements.
One area of East German-Third World cooperation is police
training. In the 1980s, hundreds of students from Angola,
Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Guinea-Bissau took instruction in
internal security methods for periods ranging from three months
to three years.
East Germany also has played an important role in the
development of the economic infrastructure of selected Soviet
allies in the Third World. East German education specialists have
trained teachers, provided advice on the content of courses and
books, and tendered instruction in educational administration in
Benin, Mozambique, Angola, Congo, and Guinea-Bissau. In addition,
East Germany has given assistance in the area of transportation;
East German trucks operate in more than thirty countries, and in
Angola and Mozambique the East Germans have set up centers to
train indigenous personnel as mechanics and truck drivers.
Finally, East German educational institutions that specialize in
farm technology, health, construction, metalworking, finance, and
industrial management have also trained personnel from countries
such as Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau.
East Germany has encountered some frustrations in Africa.
After Angola achieved its independence in 1975, East German
technicians assisted in the operation of the port at Luanda. By
1981, however, Luanda had become very congested, and only a
fraction of its equipment worked well. East Germany subsequently
relinquished control over the port, which was turned over to a
private Portuguese company. In general, in its effort to compete
with West Germany throughout Africa, East Germany has been at a
disadvantage because the West Germans have a considerably larger
array of resources at their command, including substantial
amounts of financial aid, which in the long run will probably be
more important to the emerging societies than military and police
expertise.
Data as of July 1987
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