Word: unita
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Africa, Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) is waging a classic war of attrition in the bush. Its target, the pro-Soviet government in Luanda, relies heavily on some 30,000 Cuban troops, much as the South Vietnamese government relied on American forces until 1975. UNITA's principal backer is South Africa, but Savimbi has visited Washington as frequently as some anticolonialist revolutionaries used to visit Moscow...
When a time bomb ripped apart an oil pipeline in northern Angola on July 12, the former Portuguese colony's Marxist leaders felt the shock waves. The blast could not be dismissed as simply another act of sabotage by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the guerrilla group battling to set up a government of national unity. For the first time, UNITA had struck at Angola's oil industry, which accounts for 75% of the country's revenues, and had launched an attack hundreds of kilometers from its bush-fringed stronghold in southeastern...
...South African hostilities against the Angolan government and to Pretoria's support for the antigovernment forces of Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). "The governments of Cuba and Angola," the communiqué went on, "reiterate that they shall restart, on their own decision and exercising their sovereignty, the implementation of the gradual withdrawal [of Cuban troops] as soon as the conditions...
...about peace. After serving for so long as a base for the sabotage attacks on South African targets by the militant African National Congress, Mozambique increasingly feared retaliation by South Africa; on top of that, the country had been weakened by a severe drought. Marxist Angola, under siege by UNITA, saw the wisdom of compromise following consistently heavy losses during South African raids. But South Africa, too, has been drained by constant war. Namibia alone costs South Africa $1 billion annually, some 6% of the national budget. The continuing toll of casualties has dismayed the public, and pressure from abroad...
...have yielded an unprecedented climate of confidence, but the biggest hurdle remains: achieving a political settlement for Namibia. The Cuban withdrawal from Angola, which South Africa insists on as a condition for independence, seems unlikely to be met, however, until the Angolan government finds some way of defusing the UNITA threat. Recently, U.S. diplomats have voiced cautious optimism, claiming that the Angolans are beginning to recognize that UNITA must be given a political voice in the government...