Word: luanda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...familiar with the Angolan drama maintain it was not U.S. activity that provoked the heavy Soviet-Cuban response but South Africa's early move to send troops to support Savimbi. The South African forces moved in so swiftly that they almost captured Angola's capital, Luanda, before independence came. As for the CIA itself, Stockwell ridicules it as a bungling old-boy outfit fraught with favoritism and burdened with middle-grade mediocrities. He calls William Colby, who was CIA director in Stockwell's time, "a disciplined, amoral bureaucrat, who fawned over the politicians and game-players...
...Angolan independence, Agostinho Neto and his Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.) fought a classic campaign of guerrilla warfare against the territory's Portuguese rulers. Neto is now President of Angola, but guerrilla war still goes on-this time directed against his own Marxist government in Luanda. Angola has been admitted into the United Nations as its 146th member-an act of faith in the Neto government that may be slightly premature. The M.P.L.A. forces and the Cuban troops that helped them to win the civil war after the Portuguese pulled out in 1975 have uncontested control...
...biggest threat in the south, where Savimbi commands an effective force of 5,000 men. Still a hero to the area's dominant Ovimbundu people, the bearded, beret-wearing UNITA leader completed a 500-mile trek through the south-on foot-urging his tribal brothers to resist the Luanda government. Rallying to his cause, the Ovimbundu have set up underground cells throughout southern Angola...
...Assault. Although M.P.L.A. forces and the Cubans control every city and town in the south, their garrisons in the bush are isolated, and roads linking them are constantly harassed by UNITA forces. The Luanda government has launched an all-out assault in southern Angola in an effort to finish off the resistance. So far its main achievement has been to terrorize innocent civilians. MiG fighter-bombers have napalmed entire villages near Angola's border with Namibia (South West Africa); herds of cattle have been slaughtered, not only to feed the attacking forces but to punish the pro-UNlTA tribesmen...
Facing Famine. Some of the Cuban soldiers in Angola have been replaced by civilian technicians, but they have not succeeded in bringing the country out of economic paralysis. In Luanda, meat, eggs, milk and bread are often unobtainable. A U.N. official visiting the city has warned that Angola faces not only widespread famine but the danger of tuberculosis and epidemics of dysentery. Largely because of the mass exodus of Portuguese whites, the country has only one doctor for every 12,000 people. The few foreign visitors allowed into the country are appalled by the chaos. Transportation and other public service...