Africa's forgotten cold war - The Angolan War of Independence transitions to the Angolan Civil War
The change of government in Portugal and their change in policy to their colonies created a power vacuum that the liberation forces of Angola began fighting over.
America, Cuba, the Soviets and South Africa were dragged in even deeper.
With America fearing the increased Cuban and Soviet interventions, they lent more support via the CIA under very ambiguous and dubious circumstances.
I finally managed to dredge up an English documentary that covers the involvement of all the players.
With inputs from all parties, including Fidel Castro and CIA Leadership, to set the stage under which the major South African offensive was held. This offensive escalated South African meddling in Angola to a previously unprecedented scale.
So began the Angolan phase of the South African Border War with backing from the CIA and from then onward the South Africa Border War would be intimately intertwined with the Angolan Civil War.
CIA - Angolan Revolution
Involvement of CIA, Cuba, Russia and South Africa as seen from the US and Cuban perspective.
Next time we will take a look at this through South African eyes, beginning with Operation Savannah.
Other posts in this series
The piece of the cold war nobody told you about - Africa's forgotten war
The air battles
The SA Fighter Aircraft
The SA Bomber Aircraft
The conflicts deep roots and start
Regional Tensions
Africa's forgotten cold war - Angolan War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Mozambican War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Rhodesian Bush War
Love the fact that you always come back to South African History, thanks for a very nice post.
Thank you, for this, gavvet. If you want some "personal experience" input, my dad was the chaplain for a South African regiment. I could maybe write something for you.
Highly appreciated. Angola is a huge mess today. And... while the drillers are being forced into administration (Seadrill, Transocean), it will not take long before the oil companies themselves cannot put up with the price pressure, maintenance of platforms will cease, Angola will be left to rot. I wonder if all the blood spillt was worth it.
That question has been on peoples lips for decades
I always knew there was something going on there but not to this extent ///wow!!
This war was an amazing war, with a lot of lives lost, but still it is an interesting piece of history, which was part of our lives when we grew up. I am looking forward to the posts.
Did I understand correctly that Moscow was hesitant to send arms & food, because it knew that it would escalate the conflict. And the US, not only supplied 2 of the 3 rival factions in Angola but also, through the CIA, sent mercenaries?
Dubious indeed.
that is correct
I'm perplexed as to how the US has maintained the image of being the "Good Guys" with such a long history of "Bad Guy" actions.
A question I've been asking for a long time myself. - The Americans by nature are a very kind and giving people who have given their trust to their government thinking the government would do right by the people who only wanted to help others. Foolishly or perhaps willfully turning a blind eye to the little eww blurbs of ill will or crimes/atrocities against civilians in other countries indicating US involvement,because it was happening outside of the US and wasn't our problem. Americans don't wan't to get to conserned or involved in dealing with forcing our government to do the right thing, by force if, necessary because they would be inconvienced and put out of a nice sheltered life necess
Ah yes, good old cold war.
My country was under communism hands for over 40 years, up to 1989 and to this day you can still find some of those communist principles echoing through our system.
Another interesting war from those times to look into is the one in Laos. It's very one sided but its aftermath is horrible.
Cool find, looking forward to the followup for this article :)
@gavvet interesting that the CIA funded mercenaries with tax dollars, even though the American people had no desire to get involved. If the MPLA hadn't been against aparthied, they probably would not have even noticed the war.
The MPLA had Soviet and Cuban backing, thats what made them fair game to the South Africans... SA was very worried about the "communist threat" since all of the surrounding countries were falling to communist backed liberation forces.
Wow! Can't believe how intertwined this all is - especially for us little South Africans...
I'm assuming you also live in SA @gavvet? Where in SA are you?
G-angster P-aradise
Whaha - used to live there but couldn't take the traffic :O
In Limpopo now ;)
Thanks for all the super posts man :)
I'm a Ghanaian but I'm not all the opened to all the colonial powerings during the cold world wars among others. Thanks for sharing such a post....winks. ...