Word: unita
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...armed struggle is being carried on by survivors of liberation movements that fought Neto's M.P.L.A. in the bloody, mammoth civil war: Holden Roberto's National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.), Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and FLEC, a Zaire-supported front that seeks independence from Angola for the oil-rich northern enclave of Cabinda. Despite the continuing presence in Angola of at least 13,000 elite Cuban troops, which supplement his own Soviet-supplied army of 20,000, Neto concedes that "the defense of the country...
Neto faces his 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...
...result, more than 5,000 Angolans have fled to refugee camps in Namibia, joining 5,000 others who left their homeland during an earlier government offensive against UNITA. At the same time, there are some 16,000 Angolan refugees in neighboring Zambia, which banned UNITA from operating in that country. The Zambians, who had been one of UNITA'S principal backers, evidently decided that their support could not continue now that Angola had been given a seat...
...Namibia. Nowadays the Angolan refugees who manage to get across this "Castro Corridor," as the South Africans call it, are all women and small children; they say that in the border region all males over ten, considered potential military age in Angola, are being summarily shot, lest they become UNITA recruits. The atrocities may be strengthening support for UNITA. Says one refugee cattle herder: "After what Neto and the northerners have done to us, we will fight forever for Savimbi. When the call comes to help him drive the devil Cubans out of our country, we will return...