
After nearly 15 years of
civil war,
opposing factions in Angola agree to a cease-fire to end a conflict
that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The cease-fire also
helped to defuse U.S.-Soviet tensions concerning Angola.







Angola
was a former Portuguese colony that had attained independence in 1975.
Even before that date, however, various factions had been jockeying for
power. The two most important were the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA), which was favored by the
United States,
and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which was
supported by the Soviets. Once independence became a reality in
November 1975, the two groups began a brutal contest for control, with
the Soviet-supported MPLA eventually seizing control of the nation's
capital. UNITA found support from Zaire and South Africa in the form of
funds, weapons, and, in the case of South Africa, troops. The United
States provided covert financial and arms support to both Zaire and
South Africa to assist those nations' efforts in Angola. The Soviets
responded with increasingly heavy support to the MPLA, and Cuba began to
airlift troops in to help fight against UNITA. The African nation
quickly became a
Cold War hotspot. President
Ronald Reagan began direct U.S. support of UNITA during his term in office in the
1980s.
Angola suffered through a debilitating civil war, with thousands of
people killed. Hundreds of thousands more became refugees from the
increasingly savage conflict.
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In 1988, Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev
set into motion a series of events that would lead to a cease-fire the
following year. Gorbachev was desperately seeking to better Soviet
relations with the United States and he was facing a Soviet economy that
could no longer sustain the expenses of supporting far-flung "wars of
national liberation" like in Angola. He therefore announced that the
Soviet Union was cutting its aid to both the MPLA and Cuba. Cuba, which
depended on the Soviet subsidy to maintain its troops in Angola, made
the decision to withdraw, and its forces began to depart in early 1989.
South Africa thereupon suspended its aid to UNITA. The United States
continued its aid to UNITA, but at a much smaller level. UNITA and the
MPLA, exhausted from nearly 15 years of conflict, agreed to talks in
1989. These resulted in a cease-fire in June of that year. It was a
short-lived respite. In 1992, national elections resulted in an
overwhelming victory for the MPLA, and UNITA went back on the warpath.



In
1994, a peace accord was signed between the MPLA government and UNITA
and in 1997, a government with representatives from both sides was
established. Still, in 1998 fighting again broke out and democracy was
suspended. In 2002, the leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, was murdered. After surviving more than a dozen assassination attempts, Savimbi was
killed on February 22, 2002, in a battle with Angolan government troops
along riverbanks in the province of
Moxico,
his birthplace. In the firefight, Savimbi sustained 15 wounds from
machine gun fire to his head, throat, upper body and legs. While Savimbi
returned fire, his wounds proved fatal almost immediately.



Savimbi's somewhat mystical reputation for eluding the Angolan
military and their Soviet and Cuban military advisors led many Angolans
to question the validity of reports of his 2002 death. Not until
pictures of his bloodied and bullet-ridden body appeared on Angolan
state television, and the
United States State Department
subsequently confirmed it, did the reports of Savimbi's death in combat
gain credence in the country. Savimbi was interred in Luena Main
Cemetery in
Luena, Moxico Province.
On January 3, 2008, Savimbi's tomb was vandalised and four members of the youth wing of the MPLA were charged and arrested.
Taken from:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cease-fire-established-in-angolan-civil-war [22.06.2012]
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