Great moments in the history of counter-insurgency warfare:

Perhaps President Bush could take a lesson from the strategy followed by President Mobutu of Zaire (Congo) in his successful resistance to rebels in the breakaway Shaba (Katanga) province in the "Termite War" of 1977-78. From Time, May 2, 1977:

"Mobutu also unveiled a remarkable secret weapon in the war: pygmy power. Some 150 "expert pygmy bowmen" —as a Zaïrian official described them —were sent to Shaba to infiltrate enemy lines. The diminutive tribesmen (average height under 5 ft.) were praised by one government newspaper as "formidably efficient units who can move silently and well against the enemy." Although they were issued rifles, most pygmies prefer carrying home-made bows that shoot arrows whose tips are coated with a lethal drug (derived from local plants), which kills the monkeys that they hunt for food. Skeptical foreign correspondents could not resist joking that the rebels had suffered "a bay of pygmies," and that the tiny warriors had skewered the enemy from their hiding posts in clumps of crabgrass."

I read somewhere long ago, probably in The Economist, that this was actually a highly effective psychological weapon. The pygmies probably never even got to the front, but the airport photo op that Mobutu staged with the pygmies and their blow guns apparently scared the rebels no end. Who knows the real story, though ...

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer