Download or read book The Origins of the Angolan Civil War written by Fernando Andresen Guimaraes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-08 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the origins of the Angolan civil war of 1975-76. By looking at the interaction between internal and external factors, it reveals the domestic roots of the conflict and the impact of foreign intervention on the civil war. The formative influence of colonialism and anti-colonialism on the emergence of Angolan rivalry since 1961 is described, and the externalization of that power struggle is analysed from a perspective of both international and domestic politics.

Download or read book War in Angola written by Helmoed-R. Heitman and published by Ashanti Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Political History of the Civil War in Angola 1974 1990 written by W. Martin James III and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-04 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Portugal's colonial rule in Angola ended in 1974, three liberation groups-UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), and MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola)-agreed to a tripartite movement for the fledgling nation. Conflicts quickly arose and the MPLA, with Cuban and Soviet assistance, drove its rivals from the capital, instigating a civil war, which continues into three periods (1975-1991, 1992-94, and 1998-2002). This volume covers the first period, focusing on the political history of the UNITA movement and its struggles with the MPLA. The Angolan civil war was the product of personal jealousies, contrasting ideologies, and ethnic animosities. From its inception, the conflict between UNITA and Angola's Marxist government was an international affair involving the U. S., the USSR, China, and many African states: W. Martin James III, who wrote his book near the close of the first period of civil war, contends that despite Gorbachev's "new thinking" and talk of peaceful solutions to regional conflicts, Soviet policy toward Angola marked a reversion to the Brezhnev Doctrine. The biggest MPLA-Cuban offenses occurred during Gorbachev's tenure with Soviet advisers at the brigade level directing an MPLA offensive. American policy toward Angola is also examined here. This is the first book to emphasize the dynamic role of UNITA in the Angolan liberation movement. James acknowledges that the importance of foreign powers in guaranteeing a government of national reconciliation. Just as important are strategies of compromise requiring trust in a political context where it is violated and submission for the common good where defiance is a remnant of the colonial past. Foreign policy analysts, African area specialists, and scholars of post-colonial history find this volume indispensible.

Download or read book The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War written by Peter Polack and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating chronicle of the Cold War battle where US and Soviet weapons, as well as Cuban and South African troops, took part in the Angolan Civil War. In the late 1980s, as America prepared to claim its victory in the Cold War over the Soviet Union, a bloody war still raged in Southern Africa, where proxy forces from both sides vied for control of Angola. The socialist Angolan government, stocked with Soviet weapons, had only to wipe out the resistance group UNITA, secretly supplied by the United States, in order to claim sovereignty. But as Angolan forces gained the upper hand, apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolans to call on their own foreign reinforcements—the army of Communist Cuba. Thus began the epic Battle of Cuito Cuanavale: an odd match-up of South African Boers against Castro’s armed forces. While South Africa was subject to an arms boycott since 1977, the Cuban and Angolan troops had the latest Soviet weapons. But UNITA had its secret US supply line, and the South Africans knew how to fight. As a case study of ferocious fighting between East and West, The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War unveils a remarkable episode in the endgame of the Cold War—one that is largely unknown to the American public.

Download or read book Magnificent and Beggar Land written by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnificent and Beggar Land is a powerful account of fast-changing dynamics in Angola, an important African state that is a key exporter of oil and diamonds and a growing power on the continent. Based on three years of research and extensive first-hand knowledge of Angola, it documents the rise of a major economy and its insertion in the international system since it emerged in 2002 from one of Africa's longest and deadliest civil wars. The government, backed by a strategic alliance with China and working hand in glove with hundreds of thousands of expatriates, many from the former colonial power, Portugal, has pursued an ambitious agenda of state-led national reconstruction. This has resulted in double-digit growth in Sub-Saharan Africa's third largest economy and a state budget in excess of total western aid to the entire continent. Scarred by a history of slave trading, colonial plunder and war, Angolans now aspire to the building of a decent society. How has the regime, led by President José Eduardo dos Santos since 1979, dealt with these challenges, and can it deliver on popular expectations? Soares de Oliveira's book charts the remarkable course the country has taken in recent years.

Download or read book Battle For Angola written by Al J. Venter and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the publication of Al Venter’s successful Portugal’s Guerrilla Wars in Africa - shortlisted by the New York Military Affairs Symposium’s 'Arthur Goodzeit Book Award for 2013' - his Battle for Angola delves still further into the troubled history of this former Portuguese African colony. This is a completely fresh work running to almost 600 pages including 32 pages of color photos, with the main thrust on events before and after the civil war that followed Lisbon’s over-hasty departure back to the metrópole. There are also several sections that detail the role of South African mercenaries in defeating the rebel leader Dr Jonas Savimbi (considered by some as the most accomplished guerrilla leader to emerge in Africa in the past century). There are many chapters that deal with Pretoria’s reaction to the deteriorating political and military situation in Angola, the role of the Soviets and mercenaries in the political transition, as well as the civil war that followed. With the assistance of several notable military authorities he elaborates in considerable detail on South Africa’s 23-year Border War, from the first guerrilla incursions to the last. In this regard he received solid help from the former the head of 4 Reconnaissance Regiment, Colonel Douw Steyn, who details several cross-border Recce strikes, including the sinking by frogmen of two Soviet ships and a Cuban freighter in an Angolan deepwater port. Throughout, the author was helped by a variety of notable authorities, including the French historian Dr René Pélissier and the American academic and former naval aviator Dr John (Jack) Cann. With their assistance, he covers several ancillary uprisings and invasions, including the Herero revolt of the early 20th century; the equally troubled Ovambo insurrection, as well as the invasion of Angola by the Imperial German Army in the First World War. Former deputy head of the South African Army Major General Roland de Vries played a seminal role. It was he - dubbed ‘South Africa’s Rommel’ by his fellow commanders - who successfully nurtured the concept of ‘mobile warfare’ where, in a succession of armored onslaughts ‘thin-skinned’ Ratel Infantry Fighting Vehicles tackled Soviet main battle tanks and thrashed them. There is a major section on South African Airborne – the ‘Parabats’ –by Brigadier-General McGill Alexander, one of the architects of that kind of warfare under Third World conditions. Finally, the role of Cuban Revolutionary Army receives the attention it deserves: officially there were almost 50,000 Cuban troops deployed in the Angolan war, though subsequent disclosures in Havana suggest that the final total was much higher.

Download or read book A Far Away War written by Ian Liebenberg and published by AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. This book was released on 2016-01-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa?s armed forces invaded Angola in 1975, setting off a war that had consequences for the whole region that are still felt today. A Far-Away War contributes to a wider understanding of this war in Angola and Namibia. The book does not only look at the war from an ?old? South African (Defence Force) perspective, but also gives a voice to participants ?on the other side? ? emphasising the role of the Cubans and Russians. This focus is supplemented by the inclusion of many never-before-published photographs from Cuban and Russian archives, and a comprehensive bibliography.

Download or read book Political Identity and Conflict in Central Angola 1975 2002 written by Justin Pearce and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the internal politics of the war that divided Angola for more than a quarter-century after independence. In contrast to earlier studies, its emphasis is on Angolan people's relationship to the rival political forces that prevented the development of a united nation. Pearce's argument is based on original interviews with farmers and town dwellers, soldiers and politicians in Central Angola. He uses these to examine the ideologies about nation and state that elites deployed in pursuit of hegemony, and traces how people responded to these efforts at politicisation. The material presented here demonstrates the power of the ideas of state and nation in shaping perceptions of self-interest and determining political loyalty. Yet the book also shows how political allegiances could and did change in response to the experience of military force. In so doing, it brings the Angolan case to the centre of debates on conflict in post-colonial Africa.

Download or read book Cuba and Angola written by Harry Villegas and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When we face new and unexpectedchallenges we will always be able torecall the epic of Angola with gratitude.Without Angola we would not be asstrong as we are today."--RAÚL CASTRO, MAY 1991Beginning in 1975 an epic battle was waged for the future ofsouthern Africa. The Angolan people had just thrown off 500years of Portuguese colonial brutality. Now South Africa'swhite supremacist regime, spurred by Washington, had invadedAngola. Its goal: to impose a government beholden toPretoria and imperialism.Angola's government appealed for help. The response ofCuba's leadership was immediate and decisive. A hard-foughtwar for freedom ended in 1988 at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale,with the crushing defeat of South Africa's army byAngolan, Cuban, and Namibian combatants.This is the story of Cuba's unparalleled contribution to thefight to free Africa from the scourge of apartheid. And how, inthe doing, Cuba's socialist revolution also was strengthened.Harry Villegas is a brigadier general of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.He is known the world over as "Pombo," the nom de guerre given him by ErnestoChe Guevara, at whose side he worked and fought in Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia.

Download or read book The Angolan War written by Arthur J Klinghoffer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Angolan War of 1975-1976 focused international attention on an area -long relegated to the sidelines of world diplomacy and accented the historical momentum toward black control of southern African states. This book is the first to examine why a localized conflict in a remote area was the object of such extensive global concern. Dr. Klinghoffer discusses both the Soviet and the Cuban roles in Angola and evaluates the decisive change in Soviet foreign policy that, subsequently, caused the United States to question the very nature of Soviet-American detente. He answers the key question of whether the Soviet Union followed an overall plan for Angola or developed its policy over time, in reaction to the behavior of the United States, China, South Africa, Zaire, Portugal, and other political actors.

Download or read book The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War written by Peter Polack and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse during the late 1980s, and America prepared to claim its victory, a bloody war still raged in Southern Africa, where proxy forces from both sides vied for control of Angola. The result was the largest battle on the dark continent since Al Alamein, with forces from both sides paying in blood what U.S.-Soviet diplomats were otherwise spending in diplomacy. The socialist government of Angola and its army, FAPLA, fully stocked with Soviet weapons, had only to wipe out a massive resistance group, UNITA, secretly supplied by the U.S, in order to claim full sovereignty over the country. A giant FAPLA offensive so threatened to succeed in overcoming UNITA that apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolan government to call on their own foreign reinforcementsÑthe army of Communist CubaÕs. Thus began the epic battle of Cuito Cuanavale, largely unknown in the U.S., but which raged for three months in the entirely odd match-up of South African Boers vs. CastroÕs armed forces, which for the first time in the Cold War proved what it could achieve. And it turned out the Cubans were very good. The South Africans were no slouches at warfare themselves, but had suffered under a boycott of weapons since 1977. The Cubans and Angolan troops, instead, had the latest Soviet weapons, easily delivered. But UNITA had its secret U.S. supply line and the South Africans knew how to fight, mainly at a disadvantage in air power for lack of spare parts. Meantime the Cubans overcame their logistic difficulties with an impressive airlift of troops over the Atlantic, while the Boers simply needed to drive next door. As a case study of ferocious fighting between East and WestÑalbeit proxies for the great powers on all sidesÑthis book unveils a remarkable episode of the end-game of the Cold War largely unknown to the public. The Angolans on both sides suffered heavily, but it was the apartheid South Africans versus CastroÕs armed forces that provides utter fascination in one of historyÕs rare match-ups.

Download or read book The USSR in Third World Conflicts written by Bruce D. Porter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-07-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a thorough and sophisticated study of one of the most critical current issues in world politics. Bruce Porter examines Soviet policy and behaviour in Third World conflicts in the postwar period, focusing particularly on five examples: the Yemeni civil war, the Nigerian civil war, the Yom Kippur war, the Angolan civil war, and the Ogaden war. Aiming to illuminate various complex tactical and operational aspects of the USSR's policy in local conflicts, the author draws on a wide and eclectic range of sources. He pays close attention to the Soviet role as arms supplier and diplomatic actor in relation to both US policy and the dynamics of the local conflict, and he concludes with a careful consideration of the effectiveness of Soviet policy and of the implications for the United States.

Download or read book Colonialism Ethnicity and War in Angola written by Vasco Martins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making a fresh contribution to our understanding of the history of Angola, this book explores the impact of social, political and economic change upon the largest ethnic group of the country, the Ovimbundu. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Angola, including oral testimonies and life stories, participant-observation, and archival materials, this book shifts the viewpoint from the colonial enterprise, international politics and ideological alignments to focus on African experiences and responses. The author analyses the transformations introduced by Christianity and colonialisation and how they contributed to politicised modern notions of ethnic identity, creating communal imaginaries that began manifesting during Angolan’s anti-colonial war. He then explains how the weaving of this ethno-political landscape assisted UNITA’s mobilisation of significant parts of the Ovimbundu during the civil-war, essentially deepening popular belief in the axiom Ovimbundu-UNITA, and how the latter created a national imaginary that echoed social anxieties and moral discourses. The book then explores the links between ethnicity, politics and war on the quality of post-war citizenship in Angola, particularly on people’s integration in the citizenry or marginalisation from it. Articulating a reading of ethnicity that connects high politics and elite based explanations with how ordinary people feel and discuss ethnicity, politics and citizenship, this book will be of interest to scholars of African history and politics, as well as ethnicity and nationalism.

Download or read book Rebels and Robbers written by Assis Malaquias and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebels and Robbers is about the political economy of violence in post-colonial Angola. This book provides the first comprehensive attempt at analyzing how the military and non-military dynamics of more than four decades of conflict created the structural violence that stubbornly defines Angolan society even in the absence of war. The book clearly demonstrates that the end of the civil war has not ushered in positive peace. The focus on structural violence enables the author to explore the continuities since colonial times, especially in the ways race, class, ethnicity, and power have been used by governing elites as mechanisms to oppress the powerless. Thus, although corruption as structural violence manifesting itself so ubiquitously in Angola today may have been taken to new levels after independence, its origin is unmistakably colonial. Similarly, the zero-sum character of political interactions that defined colonial Angola is yet to be fully exorcized. But there are also important discontinuities. The unabashed propensity to capture public resources for personal aggrandizement is purely post-colonial. So is the tendency toward personal, unaccountable rule. Given its rich endowments, the end of the civil war provides Angola with an opportunity to finally realize its developmental potential. This will depend on whether the wealth resulting from the exploration of natural resources is directed toward creating the conditions for the citizens " realization of their aspirations for the good life thus ensuring sustainable peace. This book will be valuable to academics, practitioners, and the general public interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the political economy of violence in Africa and, more specifically, the interplay between violence, wealth and power in Angola.

Download or read book Apartheid s Contras written by William Minter and published by William Minter. This book was released on 1994 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It also outlines a new kind of Third World warfare - neither classic guerrilla warfare nor straightforward external aggression; instead, one comprising elements of civil war, but dominated by the initiatives of external powers.

Download or read book The Ruling Elite of Singapore written by Michael D. Barr and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Barr explores the complex and covert networks of power at work in one of the world's most prosperous countries - the city-state of Singapore. He argues that the contemporary networks of power are a deliberate project initiated and managed by Lee Kuan Yew - former prime minister and Singapore's 'founding father' - designed to empower himself and his family. Barr identifies the crucial institutions of power - including the country's sovereign wealth funds, and the government-linked companies - together with five critical features that form the key to understanding the nature of the networks. He provides an assessment of possible shifts of power within the elite in the wake of Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong, assuming power, and considers the possibility of a more fundamental democratic shift in Singapore's political system.

Download or read book The War for Africa written by Fred Bridgland and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “gripping” story of the Angolan Civil War and how it evolved into a Cold War struggle between superpowers (New York Journal of Books). Lasting over a quarter of a century, from 1975 to 2002, the Angolan Civil War began as a power struggle between two former liberation movements, the MPLA and UNITA—but became a Cold War struggle with involvement from the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States. This book examines the height of the Cuban-South African fighting in Angola in 1987–88, when three thousand South African soldiers and about eight thousand UNITA guerrilla fighters fought in alliance against the Cubans and the armed forces of the Marxist MPLA government, a force of over fifty thousand men. Fred Bridgland pieced together the course of the war, fought in one of the world’s most remote and wild terrains, by interviewing the South Africans who fought it, and many of their stories are woven into the narrative. This classic account of a Cold War struggle and its momentous consequences for the participants and the continent now includes a new preface and epilogue. “Highlights just how much political and social considerations dictate the outcome of war . . . A highly detailed work of military history, The War for Africa can tell us a lot about the nature of counter-insurgency warfare and how small states can become contested battlegrounds between superpowers.” —New York Journal of Books