‘In my territory you have to do something’: MK, FAPLA and the War against UNITA

In the early 1990s several rebel groups turned to natural resource extraction to pay for war. A key form of this is rebel diamond production, commonly referred to as conflict diamonds, which is widely perceived as being highly beneficial to insurgent organisations. Yet in the Angolan Civil War (1992–2002), the use of conflict diamonds by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) resulted in a decisive insurgent defeat. How can this outcome be explained? Offering a nuanced understanding of how conflict diamonds affect civil war, this article shows that although diamonds generated considerable revenue for UNITA, they were not an effective method for them to take on the Angolan government. This was for two reasons: internally, the rebels greatly struggled to convert their diamond proceeds into sufficient goods and services; and externally, it left the group highly vulnerable to international countermeasures in the form of United Nations Security Council sanctions. Natural resource extraction may therefore not be as useful to rebel groups as is frequently believed.

This chapter addresses the specification of the tde-marginalisationt of National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) shortly before and after independence. There is little doubt that ethnicity played an important role in the Angolan civil war, and that it proved to be a very potent mobilising tool for UNITA. The chapter starts with a brief critical overview of the historiography of Angolan nationalism, showing how dominant interpretations of the role of ethnicity and religion in explaining the divisions within Angolan nationalism have provided a reductionist picture. It then goes on to analyse the social and political meaning of ethnicity in the late colonial phase before offering some thoughts on the moral economy of exclusion upon which UNITA built its growth in the late 1970s. Keywords:Angolan civil war; UNITA

What are the legacies of defeat? This article examines the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a rebel movement which fought a 27-year long civil war against the Angolan state until its military defeat in 2002, and traces its strategies of legitimisation during and after the war. Focusing on the alternative imaginary of the Nation upon which UNITA constructed its social base, I argue that the legacies of defeat depend on the ability of armed groups to keep alive the narratives that supported their struggle and articulate them with shifting local realities in the post-war environment.

This article analyses the main categories of accusation found in the speeches of leaders from the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) during the Civil War in Angola (1975-2002). Seeking to understand the entanglements between the global and local dimensions of the conflict, we argue that the accusations made by Agostinho Neto (MPLA), José Eduardo dos Santos (MPLA), and Jonas Savimbi (UNITA) aimed to delegitimize the ‘other’ in the act of claiming legitimacy to occupy the state. This is achieved through the opposition between accusatory categories attributed to the ‘other’ and their inverse, categories attributed to the person making the accusation. We thereby show how the understanding of political conflicts in general, and the conflict in Angola specifically, can be illuminated through the analysis of categories whose linguistic dimension is entangled with historically constituted social positionalities.

Reviewed by: Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own ed. by Mary-Alice Waters Jennifer Lambe (bio) Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own By Mary-Alice Waters, ed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 2013. 150 pp. isbn 978-1604880465 The political, diplomatic, and social implications of Cuba’s engagement with African liberation struggles have just begun to receive the scholarly attention they deserve. Piero Gleijeses’ Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 (U of North Carolina P, 2013), a continuation of his Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (U of North Carolina P, 2002), will undoubtedly become the definitive diplomatic work on the topic. Gleijeses has consistently advanced the once heterodox view that Cuban forays into Algeria, Guinea-Bissau, Zaire, and Angola took place largely on Cuban, not Soviet, terms. Indeed, much of the new diplomatic scholarship on the topic, which posits Cuban “idealism” on one hand and African “gratitude” on the other, highlights the profoundly ideological nature of these campaigns. That Cuba undertook its most extended African intervention in Angola at a moment of budding political rapprochement with the United States appears to lend weight to the primacy of idealistic over geostrategic motivations, in sharp contrast to Henry Kissinger’s cynical realpolitik. On both sides, however, the ideological stakes of the Angolan conflict, which became a critical testing ground of Cold War alliances, were unmistakably weighty. The struggle against Portuguese imperialism in Angola had simmered for over a decade before Cuban involvement. Anti-colonial resistance directly contributed to the fall of the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal in the 1974 Carnation Revolution, which ultimately impelled Portuguese withdrawal and independence in Angola. Nevertheless, the realization of independence also gave rise to inter-factional struggles between the three groups principally responsible for its achievement: the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The Angolan civil war quickly became a battleground in the global Cold War, with the United States, apartheid-era South Africa, and Zaire supporting the FNLA and UNITA after the early withdrawal of Chinese and North Korean support, and Cuba and the Soviet Union bolstering the MPLA. Many of these contacts predated Angolan independence, but quickly escalated in a context of civil war. The Cuban entrance into the conflict at the personal solicitation of MPLA leaders was initially to be limited to military training. Ultimately, however, over the course of more than a decade, 375,000 Cuban volunteers, along with 50,000 additional civilian participants, would make their way to Angola. Early successes in beating back the South African advance depended in no small measure on Cuban support, and Cuban participation would also prove crucial at the 1988 victory over South African troops at Cuito Cuanavale, which led to the final attainment of Angolan and Namibian independence and the decisive weakening of apartheid in South Africa. Two years later, Nelson Mandela would also be freed, and, in a widely publicized speech, he personally thanked the Cuban “internationalists,” who had “done so much to free our continent” (73). Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own (New York: Pathfinder, 2013), an edited volume of speeches and firsthand accounts from the Angolan intervention, also proffers this vision of Cuban idealism and African gratitude. It is thus somewhat difficult to assess the compilation in scholarly terms, given its non-academic framing and its unabashed admiration for the Cuban leadership of the campaign. The book’s aims thus diverge notably from the nuanced, if still largely positive, account presented by Piero Gleijeses, which marshals an impressive array of previously classified documentation from six countries, including Cuba. Nevertheless, the historical documents compiled in the volume do contain information of scholarly value, providing a useful lens onto the significance of Angola in Cuba itself. As a result of the campaign, for example, inter-nationalism was increasingly claimed as an integral part of the Cuban revolutionary project. The invocation by many participants...

The rapid end of hostilities after Jonas Savimbi’s death in February 2002 barely masked the fragility of the peace so solemnly announced several months later. Angolans chose amnesty over accountability as a guiding principle, unlike their counterparts in war-torn Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda. Emphasizing forgiveness rather than justice seemed shortsighted to those who insisted there could be no lasting peace without the punishment of those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Angolans opted for a peace process inspired, in part, by their Mozambican colleagues who, in 1992, also chose amnesty rather than accountability as their guiding principle to conclude a brutal 15-year civil war. In partial recognition of demands for a modicum of accountability, a National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) official, Abilio Camalata “Numa” issued a conciliatory statement in early January 2003. UNITA’s former chief of staff diminished Savimbi’s role in the insurgency and insisted that his colleagues “wanted a society that is more democratic and fair and this is what made us go to war. It was not one person’s adventure. It was a political project that made people go to war. It is in this framework that UNITA come before the people to ask for forgiveness for the lives lost. We take responsibility for our mistakes. We are asking forgiveness about [sic] the period of war which took place in this country since 1975.”1 KeywordsPeace ProcessLegislative ElectionMilitary StrategyLasting PeaceMilitary VictoryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

On February 26, 1999, Angola suffered another fatality in its civil war: the United Nations peacekeeping operation. The conflict, which has raged on and off since the country obtained its independence from Portugal in 1975, had already caused over 800,000 deaths. Ironically, the demise of the UN effort came after the longest period of relative peace in those 24 years. That peace, lasting four years, had been brokered by the UN but had begun to fall apart months earlier. Both the government and the rebels opposing it, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) headed by Jonas Savimbi, had ceased any pretense of dialogue by mid-1998. The government-controlled National Assembly had branded Savimbi a war criminal and accused the international community of complacency, bias, and making it easy for UNITA to rearm and prepare for war.1 The government also had moved aggressively to extend the area under its control, and UNITA had launched a strong counterattack. Thus, by the time the peacekeeping operation's mandate expired on February 26, the country was already at war once again.KeywordsInternational CommunitySecurity CouncilSecretary GeneralHumanitarian ReliefRelative PeaceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The term “Apartheid Wars” is used here to describe all the armed conflicts in which South Africa’s security forces and its adversaries were involved from the early 1960s to the 1990s. Some scholars prefer the term “the Southern Africa Thirty-Year War.” I will also use the term “Border War” to refer specifically to the fighting in Namibia-Angola. The term “Liberation War” was used by opponents of the apartheid state in both Namibia and South Africa. Whatever nomenclature is employed, the broad parameters of the conflict are not in dispute. The point of departure for my periodization is the launch of the armed struggle by the African National Congress (ANC) in 1961 and the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) in 1966. Guerrillas from both these organizations spent most of their existence in exile and infiltrated their respective countries from bases in contiguous and other African states. Hence the armed struggle and the counterinsurgency war was entangled in the internal and external conflicts of South Africa’s neighboring states, especially Angola, Mozambique, and Rhodesia. The civil wars in these countries are only relevant to this bibliography insofar as South Africa was involved. In the case of Angola, the South African Defense Force (SADF) not only launched cross-border operations in support of its ally, UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), it also fought conventional battles against FAPLA (the Peoples’ Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola) and Cuban troops. The combination of (anti-) colonial, civil, and Cold War conflicts resulted in a hybrid and, at times, asymmetrical war fought on many fronts by multiple military formations.

As the crisis in Darfur drags on - a crisis that has consumed the lives of 400,000 people and displaced two million more since 2003 - the international community's response to the tragedy faces increasing scrutiny and criticism. In particular, two internationally sanctioned military operations, the hybrid United Nations African Union Mission in Sudan (UNAMID) and its predecessor, the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), have received considerable negative attention. These forces, mostly drawn from African states, are noted for their inability to hold the Sudanesegovernment-backed Arab militia - the Janjaweed - at bay, to protect ordinary Darfurians, and to sustain the humanitarian space that would allow for relief efforts by nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations to proceed. Several variables have contributed to these weaknesses: a shortage of readily available and well-trained troops, a lack of appropriate communications and transportation equipment, insufficient funding, a poor management structure at the strategic and operational levels, an overly constraining mandate, and, not surprisingly, poor morale among the troops. Compounding this predicament has been the intransigence of the Sudanese government and the antagonism of the different Darfurian rebel movements.In hopes of putting more, or more effective, boots on the ground, several proposals have been made in recent years. They range from intervention by the major powers - possibly from NATO and the European Union - to the development of a United Nations standing force, to the creation of a genocide prevention division within the US army. However, military overstretch of key western states already occupied in Afghanistan and Iraq, strategic indifference, the time required to develop special military units, and concerns about casualty tolerance have collectively blunted these options.In light of the inability or undesirability of further using state militaries, one proposal has been to seek a nonstate solution to the crisis by relying upon the international private security industry. The logic is that higher calibre, better organized, and more effective forces can be taken from the private sector. In particular, proponents such as Max Boot of the influential Council on Foreign Relations and Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes and a past seeker of the US presidency, look back to the 1990s and cite the activities of Executive Outcomes, a now defunct South African-based firm, as conclusive proof that private security companies could play a catalytic role in bringing peace and stability to Darfur.1 The seeming attraction of the Executive Outcomes example is that in its operations in Sierra Leone from 1995 to 1997, it brought to heel the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), an organization with murderous intentions similar to those of the Janjaweed, given its penchant for terrorizing civilians with amputations and summary executions. As well, from 1993 to 1995, Executive Outcomes, through its contract with the Angolan government, was instrumental in bringing the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to the negotiating table, which resulted in the subsequent creation of the Lusaka protocol. What is more, in both cases Executive Outcomes was willing to do what the United Nations could not - sides, take casualties, deploy overwhelming force and fire pre-emptively.2The objective here is not to delve deeply into Executive Outcomes' exploits; that has been done thoroughly elsewhere.3 Instead, this article argues that employing the historical Executive Outcomes example as the template for success in contemporary Darfur is faulty for three reasons. First, it ignores how the company drew upon, supported, and interacted with other armed actors of a type not readily available in Sudan. Second, it does not recognize the sensitive nature of the mercenary issue in Africa specifically, and how states generally have approached the application of nonstate violence. …

Angola appears to be once again on the brink of renewed conflict. The hand of President José Eduardo dos Santos’ ruling Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party has recently been powerfully strengthened by a number of factors. These include: the imposition of UN sanctions against Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) – due to come into effect on 30 October 1997; stronger political and military support from the US; and the ousting in May 1997 of UNITA’s main regional backer, former Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. With the implementation of the November 1994 Lusaka Peace Accords at a standstill, some members of the Angolan government may see a military offensive as an increasingly attractive option.

Gorbachev's new thinking on superpower relations assumes that struggle between two opposing world systems no longer characterizes the present era. This second volume in the East-South Relations series explores the implications of Gorbachev's new thinking for regional conflicts. Because these conflicts jeopardize tranquil relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, they are perceived as contrary to the new spirit of global cooperation. This volume suggests that the accords on Southwest Africa may illustrate how the superpowers will resolve conflict, and shows how smaller powers may now have new roles cast for them by the superpowers. In 1975, Soviet-Cuban assistance to the Leninist-oriented Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was the first extensive Soviet-allied military intervention in the Third World. While the Soviet-backed Cubans propped up the MPLA, the South Africans intervened, on a smaller scale, in support of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) under Jonas Savimbi. After 1985 UNITA began receiving United States support, and a military stalemate ensued. The contributors to this volume analyse how the Soviet Union and the United States used this stalemate to move the MPLA, Cuba and South Africa to settle not only their differences, but also the vexing question of the Independence of Namibia. Central issues explored are how and why South Africa and Cuba got into the Angolan arena, why they stayed so long, and why they saw fit to get out. While the authors differ on the forces at work, their debate is itself enlightening, and offers valuable insights into the policy options of regional powers. The contributors also review further steps, beyond military disengagement, needed to finally resolve the Angolan civil war, and ensure regional stability. They assess the potential for breakdown of the accords, and the likely consequences should this occur. "Disengagement from Southwest Africa "will interest policymakers and researchers concerned with developments in southern Africa and Cuba, and with relations between the superpowers.

Reviews 266 Didier Péclard, Les Incertitudes de la nation en Angola: aux racines sociales de l’Unita (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2015). 370 pages. Print. Reviewed by Iracema Dulley (CEBRAP — Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning) This book addresses the relations between Christian missions, Portuguese colonialism, local societies, and the emergence of UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) in the Central Highlands of Angola. The book starts with a puzzle: how could a movement that on the verge of Angola’s independence had just a few thousand members and no significant international support manage to declare a rival government — together with the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola) — in Huambo in November 1975? The government was short-lived and unrecognized by any foreign country, but UNITA would continue to challenge the legitimacy of the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) until the end of the bloody civil war, in 2002. In Savimbi’s retreat to Eastern Angola, he would be joined by a significant part of the Evangelical Congregational Church in Angola (IECA), known as the ‘church in the bush’. If UNITA’s ‘social roots’ include the Congregational church, Péclard’s analysis of the history of missionization in the Central Highlands outlines the conditions of possibility of this history, not its necessary causes. His examination of the architecture of the Congregational mission in the Central Highlands reveals both the introjection of an ethos in a long-term process of subjectification and the place of Christian missions as the only means of upward social mobility for the vast majority of Africans during Portuguese colonialism. The first chapter discusses the role of colonial knowledge in Angola and argues that the African population was rarely the object of detailed investigation. For the author, lusotropicalist ideology would promote the ontologization of the colonizer, not of colonial subjects, in its advocacy of Portuguese affability. The second chapter deals with the long-term relationship between the church and the colonial state and portrays the Portuguese New State as ‘Catholaicist’, i.e., marked by a separation of church and state in which the Catholic church was awarded privileges and funding in exchange for providing health and education services to Africans and promoting their ‘nationalization’ and ‘civilization’. Péclard relativizes the view according to which the Catholic Church is considered an extension of the colonial state by revealing the tensions that marked their relation; he also argues that while North American Protestant missionaries tended to be viewed as ‘denationalizing’, the Congregational mission’s diplomatic relations with the colonial state could ease tensions. The third chapter focuses on the implementation of the Congregational project from 1920 to 1950, a period in which the Highlands transitioned from caravan trade to agriculture. According to Péclard, the Congregational mission took advantage of the historical circumstances of sedentarization to build Reviews 267 ‘rural bastions’ relatively isolated from urban colonial society and undertake its work of ‘culturalist modernization’. The process of subjectification that ensued included transformations in agriculture, education, and the domestic space while retaining part of what was understood to be Umbundu tradition. The fourth chapter describes the challenges faced by Congregational missions from 1940 to 1960, a time of pauperization and proletarianization of the Highlands due to contract labour and the arrival of white settlers. The author describes the transformations in the Protestant project as a rural exodus and the inevitability of urbanization challenged its main pillars, rural life and relative isolation from the colonial world; he compares it with the Catholic missions, already inserted in urban areas and intimately connected to colonial society. The last chapter dwells both on the delayed participation of the Highlands in the uprisings and movements that challenged the colonial state from 1961 and on the repressive apparatus in the region, whose main targets were ‘assimilated’ subjects, especially Protestant ones. Repression and prosperity went hand in hand, as the ‘native statute’ was abolished in 1961 and economic growth provided opportunities for educated Africans. Péclard argues that while the Christian elite benefited from the colonial system that granted it privilege and status, the main opponents of the regime would nonetheless come from their ranks, given that education and...

Angolan independence was achieved on November 11, 1975, after a 14-year-long war. The war was the result of three overlapping dynamics. The first was Portugal’s refusal to consider the possibility of a negotiated settlement for the independence of its colonies in Africa. Under the dictatorial regime of António Salazar, Portugal had become extremely dependent on its colonies, both economically and politically, and was therefore, by the late 1950s, bent on maintaining its colonial empire. The second was the development of nationalist feelings among Angolan elites, which eventually materialized in the late 1950s to early 1960s in two—and, as of 1966, three—competing nationalist movements. The third constituted a series of popular grievances within sectors of the Angolan population, especially landless farmers and plantation workers in the north, against their growing marginalization and impoverishment due to exploitative colonial policies. This eventually led to three uncoordinated revolts in January, February, and March 1961 that marked the beginning of the war of independence. The division of Angolan nationalism into three competing movements—the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA)—was shaped by Angola’s long history of violent integration into Portugal’s colonial empire. The 20th-century Portuguese colonial state in Angola relied on the exploitation of the so-called native workforce through a vast system of forced labor and on taxation. It was also exclusionary and discriminatory, leaving very few avenues for upward social mobility for Angolan “natives.” It was therefore mostly at the margins of the colonial world that such mobility was possible, especially within Christian missions. The integration of these Angolan elite groups into the colonial world, or their exclusion, followed different paths according to local contexts and histories. As a result, the different lived experiences of the social groups that formed the backbone of the nationalist movement made it exceedingly difficult for them to agree on a common vision for independent Angola. This, together with the uncompromising thirst for power of the leadership of the three movements and Cold War logics, contributed to the civil war that engulfed the country at independence and lasted until 2002.

In 2002, the signing of a peace accord between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) brought an end to 27 years of civil war in Angola. Immediately thereafter, President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos of the ruling MPLA reached out to Western donors and international financial institutions to secure reconstruction and recovery funds for the war-torn country. After several years of discussion broke down without the securing of funding, China emerged as an alternative source of aid and investment in 2004 with a well-known $2 billion China Exim Bank loan. This arrangement, later reproduced in other partner states of China in the developing world, came to be known as an “Angola style” oil-for-infrastructure deal. In this agreement, Angola provided guaranteed deliveries of crude oil to Chinese firms, which would then be used to fund Chinese-constructed infrastructure projects. Soon thereafter, Sino-Angolan relations rapidly intensified, with Chinese firms leading the construction of housing developments outside of Luanda, railways and bridges crisscrossing Angola’s territory, and the development of telecommunications networks in the country. Moreover, China emerged as the leading destination for Angolan oil, boosting the country’s rapidly growing economy.

Angola is a highly influential country in Southern and Central Africa. Following the 2002 peace agreement between government forces, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the opposition, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), it has emerged as an important African leader. Understanding its foreign and defence policies requires, first and foremost, an understanding of the influence that domestic factors, particularly the MPLA's continued hold on power, have on the formulation of these policies and the objectives set. The aim of this article is to analyse this relationship, using the end of the civil war in 2002 and Dos Santos' departure from power in 2017 as decisive moments of internal political change. It is hoped to demonstrate how Angola's international integration is largely guided by internal interests, particularly the MPLA's desire to remain in power.