Word: guerrillas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Long before the Angolan civil war was rendered newsworthy as a backdrop for CIA disclosures, foreign policy foibles and the restive ghost of Vietnam, there was a war raging in Angola. And it now appears that in the next few years there will be a still more intense guerrilla war raging in Angola. Few have understood the real issue at stake in this conflict--majority rule--buried as it were beneath the stifling mantle of superpower politics. But if Vietnam has taught little else, surely we have learned that the will of a people, regardless of the odds against them...
...fish in a Zambian market, were stunned at the levels of relative popularity for the three movements--at such great variance to the propaganda campaign of the more substantially foreign-backed parties. Inside Angola however, that reality could be more readily comprehended. Both MPLA and FNLA had launched their guerrilla struggle in the early 1960's against the Portuguese from military bases in neighboring countries, MPLA in Zambia, FNLA in Zaire. The tactic of occasional forays across the border into Angola, followed by a quick retreat to a foreign base, began in both cases to seriously alienate the peasantry...
...building liberated areas in the center of Angola. Its headquarters and leadership were permanently established inside Angola. By maintaining complete contact with the peasantry and studying at close quarters the factors specific to the Angola struggle, UNITA succeeded in implanting within Angola's interior a solid infrastructure for guerrilla warfare and national reconstruction. Within a relatively brief period of existence UNITA significantly bridged the gap between intellectual leadership and the Angola reality of a massive peasant majority...
UNITA's administrative capital, Huambo, fell on February 8, 1976, but the war was far from over. Guerrilla bases which had been operation against the Portuguese have been re-activated, and the military has moved back into the bush areas, which are inaccessible to Soviet tanks, and which provide dense forest cover against MPLA bomber attacks. Because the support base of UNITA is essentially the hundreds of deep villages which dot the vast Angolan countryside, the fall of Huambo has had relatively little effect on the functioning of the movement inside the country...
...such successes, the M.P.L.A. was far less sure of achieving genuine control of the country. The Western-backed factions that had been outgunned in conventional warfare-the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.)-were regrouping into guerrilla bands...