Word: mobutu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...would go in on the side of the Democratic People's Republic of Angola (capital: Huambo), which was formed by a coalition of Hoiden Roberto's F.N.L.A. and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. The F.N.L.A. has the open support of a peculiar combination: Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, the U.S. (which funnels money through Zaire for weapons), Western business interests−and China. Savimbi's group, ,meanwhile, has been bankrolled by South Africans and wealthy white Angolans who fear their property will be confiscated by the country's other government, the Luanda-based People...
Both sides seem desperately eager for outside help from their friends. The M.P.L.A. now admits that Cubans (an estimated 3,000, half of them combat soldiers) have joined its side. There are also some 4,000 refugees from the 1960-63 Katanga rebellion, most of them diehard opponents of Mobutu, who are fighting for the M.P.L.A. A hundred or more Algerians, Brazilians and North Vietnamese are also involved as advisers, technicians and tacticians. Moscow reportedly has dispatched 400 technicians to train Angolans to use Russian equipment, including light artillery and antiaircraft guns being disgorged daily at Luanda's Craveiro...
F.N.L.A. Chief Roberto has had his own source of foreign strength. His brother-in-law, Zaïre President Mobutu Sese Seko, provides the F.N.L.A's 33,000 regular troops with arms, armored cars and personnel carriers sent to Zaïre by France and China. Roberto, the most Western-oriented of the Angolan liberation leaders, has also reportedly received CIA backing; it is believed that the Administration's request to Congress for a $35 million increase in military aid to Zaïre is mostly ticketed for the F.N.L.A. Until UNITA's military alliance with...
Apart from Mobutu's hope that an independent Cabinda would be easy prey for Zaire, he has concentrated on aiding the FNLA, whose leader, Holden Roberto, is his brother-in-law. The FNLA is essentially a tribal organization of the Bakongo, some 500,000 of whom fled to Zaire after the abortive 1961 uprising, and operates largely from Zairean bases. Since the FNLA has no real program beyond anti-communism and tribalism, the movement has attracted a great deal of Western support which is funneled through Mobutu. The U.S., which is increasing military aid to Zaire from $3.8 million...
...protect these investments Western powers have made every effort to create alternatives to the Soviet-supported MPLA, which they rightly feel would prevent foreign exploitation of Angolan resources if it came to power. President Mobutu of Zaire plays the largest interventionary role. Despite the commitment of all three Angolan factions and the OAU to the territorial integrity of Angola, Mobutu has continuously fomented secessionist tendencies in the oil rich enclave of Cabinda, a fiefdom of Gulf Oil separated from the rest of the country by a piece of Zaire...