Ian Smith, 88; Defiant Leader Of White-Separatist Rhodesia

He became a Spitfire fighter pilot and endured a painful hospital stay after he burned his face in a plane crash. He returned to combat and was shot down over the Po valley in Italy. He disguised himself as an Italian peasant and made his way back to Allied lines over the Alps.

After the war, he finished his college degree, married, began ranching and won election to parliament in Southern Rhodesia (later just Rhodesia).

He became part of an effort among British settlers in the region to form a federation of British colonies to preserve white-minority rule. In 1953, this resulted in the establishment of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, comprising Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi).

The federation lasted a decade, despite increasing demands among black Rhodesians for greater political say. Prime Minister Garfield Todd, who served from 1953 to 1958, became a supporter of black rights and one of Mr. Smith's leading antagonists. Todd, who likened Mr. Smith's "inhumanity" to Nazism, served five years under house arrest during the prime ministership of Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith grew disgruntled with the United Federal Party, which supported a revised constitution to bring blacks into the political system, and he used the financial support of a Rhodesian tobacco baron, Douglas C. "Boss" Lilford, to help form the Rhodesian Front in 1961.

The Rhodesian Front's principal mission was to thwart British efforts to bring black rule to Southern Rhodesia, and it gained support among whites who had been horrified by the civil war and bloodshed caused by the abrupt departure of the Belgians from Congo in 1960.

Winston Field, a tobacco farmer in the Rhodesian Front, became prime minister in 1962, and Mr. Smith was his deputy. Field, who was unable to win independence from England, was ousted by his party and replaced by Mr. Smith.

As prime minister, Mr. Smith frustrated a series of British leaders, including Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson, and engineered a national referendum of all registered voters that showed Rhodesians favored independence.

This vote was rigged in his favor; the registered voters consisted of 89,594 whites and 12,664 blacks. The rest of the black population (then about 2 million) was consulted through the tribal system of village and tribal chiefs. He easily won the support of the chiefs, whose salaries the government controlled.

Mr. Smith's government declared unilateral independence from England on Nov. 11, 1965. "We Rhodesians have rejected the doctrinaire philosophy of appeasement and surrender," he said. "The decision which we have taken today is a refusal by Rhodesians to sell their birthright."

The English government did not recognize Mr. Smith's rule from the start and launched an oil embargo and a campaign to bring economic sanctions against Rhodesia.

The embargo won support from the United Nations but had little practical effect. Rhodesia's abundant mineral wealth led other countries to violate the sanctions. The Rhodesian government used that income to buy agricultural products from the white farmers, which kept the economy strong, with a stable currency and low inflation.