Flechas

Flechas
Active	1967-1975
Country	Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Mozambique
Allegiance	Portugal
Branch	Security forces
Type	Special Forces
Role	Special Reconnaissance, Raids, Counter-Terrorism, Tracking, and Bushcraft
Part of	PIDE / DGS
Engagements	Portuguese Colonial War
Commanders
Notable commanders	Oscar Cardoso

The Flechas (Portuguese for Arrows) were a special forces unit of the Portuguese secret police (PIDE) that operated in Angola and Mozambique during the Portuguese Colonial War. Unlike most of the other Portuguese special forces that were employed in the several theatres of operations of the conflict, the Flechas were not a military unit but a police unit.

Flechas were organized as platoon-sized units consisting of local tribesmen and rebel defectors who specialised in tracking, reconnaissance and pseudo-terrorist operations. They sometimes patrolled in captured uniforms and were rewarded with cash bounties for every guerrilla or guerrilla weapon they captured.

Flechas units were created and employed in Angola under the command of the PIDE (renamed DGS in 1969). Composed of locally recruited men, often former guerrilla fighters but mostly bushman khoisan, the units specialised in tracking, reconnaissance and pseudo-terrorist operations. The Flechas were employed with great success in the Frente Leste campaign in Eastern Angola in the early 1970s. General Costa Gomes argued that African soldiers were cheaper, knew the terrain better, and were better able to create a relationship with the local populace, a tactic that predates the 'hearts and minds' strategy later used by United States forces in Vietnam at the time. Flechas units also operated in Mozambique at the very end stages of the conflict, following the dismissal of Kaúlza de Arriaga on the eve of the Portuguese coup in 1974. The units were to continue to cause problems for the FRELIMO even after independence and Portuguese withdrawal, when the country splintered into civil war.

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