Selous Scouts

Selous Scouts
The cap badge of the Selous Scouts was a stylised osprey.
Active	1973–1980
Country	Rhodesia
Allegiance	Republic of Rhodesia (1973–79)  Zimbabwe Rhodesia (1979)
Branch	Regular Army
Type	Special forces
Role	Special reconnaissance, raids, counter-terrorism, tracking, and bushcraft
Size	1,500 (peak)
Garrison/HQ	Inkomo Barracks (Andre Rabie Barracks)
Nickname(s)	Eskimos, Skuz' apo (Shona), Armpits with eyeballs
Motto(s)	Pamwe chete (Shona; "All together")
Colours	Green
Engagements	Rhodesian Bush War
Commanders
Notable commanders	Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Reid-Daly

The Selous Scouts was a special forces regiment of the Rhodesian Army, that operated from 1973 until the reconstitution of the country as Zimbabwe in 1980. Named after the British explorer Frederick Courteney Selous (1851–1917), its motto was pamwe chete—a Shona phrase roughly meaning "all together", "together only" or "forward together".

The charter of the Selous Scouts directed them to "the clandestine elimination of terrorists/terrorism both within and without the country."

The period during which the Selous Scouts were most active was during the Rhodesian Bush War (or Second Chimurenga). This was a war of annihilation through terrorism and insurgency waged by black guerrillas (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA)/Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA)/Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU)) with the goal of ending white minority rule in Rhodesia, a nation led by Prime Minister Ian Smith. Rhodesia at the time had the highest levels of wealth and one of the highest gross domestic product of any nation in Africa, and its white minority citizens enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world.

However, it was a small nation of a few hundred thousand whites, principally farmers, and lacked access to the sea. As a land-locked nation, that had recently unilaterally declared its independence from Britain, Rhodesia was quickly isolated by the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Rhodesian military, comprising the Rhodesian Army and the Air Force, was considered formidable by many foreign observers, but the country's size—relative to the larger black-governed nations surrounding it, a lack of support from crucial Western suppliers, and aid provided by the Soviet Union and China to guerrilla insurgents—put Rhodesia in a precarious situation. To deal with the rising insurgency, the Rhodesian government strengthened diplomatic and economic ties with South Africa, as well as with Portugal, which controlled the neighbouring territory of Mozambique until 1975.