Cuban intervention in Angola
The Cuban intervention in Angola began on 5 November 1975, when Cuba sent combat troops in support of the communist-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola against the pro-western coalition of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, and the National Liberation Front of Angola. The intervention came after the outbreak of the Angolan Civil War, which occurred after the former Portuguese colony was granted independence after the Angolan War of Independence. The previously unimportant civil war quickly developed into a proxy war between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc. South Africa and the United States backed UNITA and the FNLA, while communist nations backed the MPLA.
Around 4,000 Cuban troops fought to push back a three-pronged advance by the SADF, UNITA, FNLA, and Zairean troops. 18,000 Cuban troops then proved instrumental in defeating FNLA forces in the north and UNITA in the south. The Cuban army helped assist the MPLA in repressing separatists from the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda. By 1976, the Cuban military presence in Angola had grown to nearly 36,000 troops. By effectively driving out the internationally isolated South African forces, Cuba was able to secure control over all the provincial capitals in Angola. Following the withdrawal of Zaire and South Africa, Cuban forces remained in Angola to support the MPLA government against UNITA in the continuing civil war. South Africa spent the following decade launching bombing and strafing raids from its bases in South West Africa into southern Angola, while UNITA engaged in ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, and harassment of Cuban units.
In 1988, Cuban troops, now amounting to around 55,000 troops, intervened to avert a military disaster in a Soviet-led People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola offensive against UNITA, which was still supported by South Africa, leading to the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the opening of a second front. This turn of events was considered to have been the major impetus to the success of the ongoing peace talks leading to the 1988 New York Accords, the agreement by which Cuban and South African forces withdrew from Angola while South West Africa gained its independence from South Africa. Cuban military engagement in Angola ended in 1991, while the Angolan Civil War continued until 2002. Between 1975 and 1991, Cuban casualties in Angola totaled approximately 10,000 dead, wounded, or missing.
Background
Failure of the Alvor Agreement and Civil War
The Carnation Revolution began in Portugal on 25 April 1974. The revolution took the world by surprise and caught the independence movements in Portugal's last African colonies unprepared. As a result of negotiations between Portugal and the Liberation Front of Mozambique, Mozambique was granted independence on 25 June 1974, but Angolan control remained disputed between the three rival independence movements: MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA in Angola-proper and the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda in Cabinda.Until independence, the movements' priority lay in fighting the colonial power and they initially had no clear alliances. With the disappearance of Portugal as their common foe, ethnic and ideological rivalries were prioritized. Fighting between the three already broke out in November 1974, starting in Luanda and quickly spreading across all of Angola. The new leftist Portuguese government showed little interest in interfering but often favored the MPLA. The country soon fell apart into different spheres of influence, the FNLA taking hold of northern Angola and UNITA in the central south. The MPLA mostly held the coastline, the far southeast, and, in November 1974 gained control of Cabinda. The disunity of the three main movements postponed the handing over of power. The Alvor Agreement, which the three and Portugal signed on 15 January, proved not to be a solid foundation for the procedure. The transitional government that the agreement provided for was equally composed of the three main independence movements and Portugal. It was sworn in on 31 January 1975; Independence Day was set for 11 November 1975, the same day as the ceasefire. FLEC was not part of the deal because it fought for the independence of Cabinda, which the Portuguese had administratively joined as an exclave to Angola.
Fighting in Luanda resumed hardly a day after the transitional government took office, when Agostinho Neto took advantage of the ceasefire to launch a purge of his rival Daniel Chipenda's supporters within the MPLA. The Chipenda faction was largely annihilated, leaving the FLNA as the only remaining obstacle to MPLA control of the city. Chipenda and 2,000 of his surviving troops defected to FLNA around February, which further heightened tensions. FNLA troops, flown in from Zaire, had been taking positions in Luanda since October 1974. The MPLA followed later in smaller numbers. To that point, the MPLA and UNITA "had given every sign of intending to honour the Alvor agreement". However, fighting broke out in Luanda between the FNLA and the MPLA. The FNLA was backed by Mobutu, the U.S., and China. By March, the FNLA from northern Angola was driving on Luanda joined by units of the Zairian army which the U.S. had encouraged Mobutu to provide.
On 28 April 1975, the FNLA unleashed a second wave of attacks, and in early May, 200 Zairian troops crossed into northern Angola in its support. Neto requested the Soviets increase its military aid to the MPLA. During March 1975, Soviet pilots flew thirty planeloads of weapons into Brazzaville, where they were then transported to Luanda. The Soviet Union airlifted thirty million dollars' worth of weaponry to the MPLA in three months, while Cuba deployed a contingent of 230 military advisers and technicians to the MPLA, with the first advisers arriving in May.
The fighting intensified with street clashes in April and May, and UNITA became involved after over two hundred of its members were massacred by an MPLA contingent in June 1975. The initially weaker MPLA retreated south, but with supplies finally arriving from the Soviet Union then succeeded in driving the FNLA out of Luanda by 9 July 1975, and UNITA voluntarily withdrew to its stronghold in the south. The FNLA took up positions east of Quifangondo at the eastern outskirts of the capital, from where it kept up its pressure and eliminated all remaining MPLA presence in the northern provinces of Uíge and Zaire.
By August, the MPLA had control of 11 of the 15 provincial capitals, including Cabinda and Luanda. The fight had spread throughout the whole country. The independence movements attempted to seize key strategic points, most importantly the capital on the independence day.
Foreign involvement
Starting in the early 1960s, the three major independence movements received support from a wide range of countries, sometimes even from the same ones. By the time of independence, FNLA and UNITA had received aid from the United States, Zaire, South Africa, and China.As long as Portugal was present in Angola, the movements had to have their headquarters in independent neighbouring countries, making Congo-Léopoldville, for both MPLA and FNLA a logical choice. After its expulsion from Kinshasa in November 1963, the MPLA moved across the Congo River to formerly French Congo-Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo where it was invited by its new leftist government. The FNLA stayed in Congo-Léopoldville to which it remained closely tied and from where it received the bulk of its support. FNLA leader Holden Roberto was linked to Mobutu by marriage and obligated to him for many past favours. Over the years, the FNLA had become little more than an extension of Mobutu's own armed forces. Much of Zaire's support came indirectly from the U.S., which Zaire's leader Mobutu had close ties with. Zaire was the first country to send troops to Angola in March 1975 and to engage in fighting against the MPLA by the summer of that year.
In the summer of 1974, China was first to act after the Portuguese Revolution and posted 200 military instructors to Zaire where they trained FNLA troops and supplied military assistance. Chinese involvement was a measure against Soviet influence rather than that from western countries. On 27 October 1975, they were also the first to withdraw their military instructors. UNITA, which split away from FNLA in 1965/66 was initially Maoist and received some support from China. China had been training Mobutu's elite division, the Kamanyola, also trained the FNLA but withdrew their support for Zaire and the FNLA by the end of December 1975. In 1975 China were also the first to pull out of the area after the Portuguese Revolution. When their support ceased FNLA and UNITA became firmly established in the western camp.
The United States had a history of supporting the Salazar regime in Portugal. They allowed NATO equipment to be used in Angola during the Independence War. U.S. support for the FNLA was taken up by the Kennedy administration in 1960. Holden Roberto had been on the Central Intelligence Agency's or CIA's payroll since 1963. On 7 July 1974, the CIA started funding the FNLA on a small scale. On 22 January 1975, one week after the Alvor Accords were signed and just before the provisional government of Angola was to take office, the U.S. National Security Council's "40 Committee", which oversaw clandestine CIA operations, authorized US$300,000 in covert aid to the FNLA.
As the CIA was suspicious of the left-leaning MPLA, it "had no wish to see the US government deal with the MPLA" and it did not want them to be part of the transitional government. The US increased its support for the FNLA and for the first time took up funding of UNITA. On 18 July 1975, U.S. president Ford approved covert CIA operation "IAFEATURE" to aid FNLA and UNITA with money, arms and instructors. U.S. military instructors arrived in southern Angola in early August, where they closely cooperated with their South African counterparts who arrived around the same time. The support involved the recruitment of mercenaries and an expanded propaganda campaign against the MPLA. Author Wayne Smith states that the U.S. "was publicly committed to an embargo against the delivery of arms to Angolan factions while it was secretly launching a paramilitary programme".
South Africa, which was then under a white-minority rule known as Apartheid, soon came to be the closest allies of both UNITA and FNLA. Other western countries with their own clandestine support for FNLA and UNITA were Great Britain and France. Israel supported the FNLA from 1963 to 1969 and the FNLA sent members to Israel for training. Through the 1970s Israel shipped arms to the FNLA via Zaire.
Some Eastern Bloc countries and Yugoslavia first established ties with the MPLA in the early 1960s during its struggle against the Portuguese. The Soviet Union started modest military aid in the late 1960s. This support remained clandestine, came in trickles and sometimes ceased altogether. This was the case in 1972, when the MPLA came under strong pressure from the Portuguese and was torn apart by internal strife. Soviet aid was suspended in 1973 with the exception of a few limited shipments in 1974 to counter Chinese support for the FNLA; only Yugoslavia continued to send supplies to the MPLA. In response to U.S. and Chinese support for the FNLA, Soviet support for the MPLA massively increased in March 1975 in the form of arms deliveries by air via Brazzaville and by sea via Dar es Salaam. Soviet assistance to the MPLA was always somewhat reluctant; they never fully trusted Neto and their relationship was to remain ambivalent through the following years. The Soviets preferred a political solution, but they did not want to see the MPLA marginalized. Even after the South African incursions the Soviets only sent arms, but no instructors for the use of the sophisticated weapons. Among the other Eastern Bloc countries the MPLA had well established contacts with East Germany and Romania, the former shipping large amounts of non-military supplies. Although being leftist, Neto was interested in an ideological balance in his foreign support, but in spite of "overtures" well into 1975, he was unable to procure support for the MPLA from the U.S., thus becoming solely dependent on the eastern camp.