Word: unita
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...Angolan conflict is "not a civil war but a war for liberation against an army of occupation," consisting of Cuban and Russian troops, an official of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), one of three warring Angolan factions, said yesterday at a Center for International Affairs (CFIA) luncheon...
...response to South Africa, U.S. and Zairois aid to the FNLA and Unita, the MPLA asked socialist countries for aid. The aid given was quite sufficient: over 10,000 Cuban troops (according to the U.S. press) and advanced equipment. The U.S. government tried to paint this as wanton aggression, but it finally admitted, as reported in The New York Times, that Soviet aid to the MPLA started after the massive increase in U.S. aid to FNLA and Unita last spring...
Despite United States, Zairois and South African aid however, Unita and FNLA soon folded. The Unita/FNLA coalition never had the popular support needed to win; that is why they had to ask for aid in the first place. And they quickly lost the support they had as they massacred and looted their way through Angola. For example, London Times reporters saw mass graves of MPLA supporters in Luanda; in a Unita prison which once held 140 MPLA cadres, only seven were alive when the MPLA took over...
...understand U.S. involvement with the unpopular FNLA and Unita, it is necessary to understand the overall situation in southern Africa...
South Africa therefore threw its support to Unita and FNLA. Savimbi, Unita's president, was sympathetic. He told the South African Financial Mail in May 1975 that he hopes "future leaders of Angola will cooperate with South Africa" and that apartheid "is a South African problem" and much misunderstood. By contrast, the MPLA has already provided a base for the operations of SWAPO of Namibia, the Namibian liberation movement...