Author: Bullet Marks
In the 1960s, the world colonial system began to collapse and disintegrate, and the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America set off a revolutionary upsurge to get rid of colonial rule and strive for national liberation.
Naturally, the two camps of the United States and the Soviet Union, which were fighting on both sides of the Iron Curtain in order to compete for world hegemony, would not miss such an excellent opportunity to expand their sphere of influence.
From Africa to Central America, the United States and the Soviet Union either cultivated agents or personally operated the battle, a series of open and secret struggles added a lot of turmoil and war to the already turbulent world situation at that time, and the Angolan civil war was a microcosm of the open and secret struggle between the forces in front of and behind the scenes.
Located in southwestern Africa, Angola has been invaded by Portugal since the end of the 15th century, and angola was classified as a Portuguese colony at the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, occupied all of Angola by Portuguese troops in 1922, and further strengthened control of Angola in 1926 by a right-wing military coup d'état in Portugal.
In 1951 Portugal declared Angola an "overseas province" and gradually tightened its grip on Angola in the form of the introduction of white immigrants and foreign capital. Although the Portuguese colonial rulers declared Portugal and the "overseas provinces" to be an indivisible whole, they did not give the indigenous inhabitants of Angola the economic and political treatment they deserved.
Since the 1940s, Angola's industry and agriculture, infrastructure, roads, towns and other aspects of construction have made great progress, and the Indigenous Ethnic Group in Angola has not received any benefits from economic growth, but has become increasingly impoverished due to lack of citizenship, lack of access to education, and uneven economic development.
During the Portuguese colonial period, white people had the highest social status and had political, economic and other privileges in the local area. The offspring of intermarriage between whites and indigenous peoples are called people of color, and people of color enjoy citizenship rights, are lower in status than whites, but can hold some less important government positions.
Natives who are educated in Portugal, speak Portuguese, and have a Portuguese lifestyle are called "assimilators", who can hold management positions in businesses or enterprises, but it is difficult to obtain higher positions, let alone government positions.
The political and economic status of the indigenous peoples of Angola, which are mainly composed of the three major ethnic groups of the Ovindus, the Mbendou and the Bago congolese, are even lower, the indigenous people live mainly in the countryside, they have no citizenship rights, they lack access to education, and the cost of urbanization and industrialization construction of the Portuguese colonial authorities is passed on to the indigenous people in the form of trade scissors, and the indigenous people naturally lack a sense of identity with the Portuguese colonial authorities.
Dissatisfaction with Portuguese colonial rule by people of color and assimilators due to the existence of a ceiling of political and economic status was further exacerbated by the increase in the number of white immigrants and the already limited political and economic status of people of color and assimilators was further squeezed.
The indigenous peoples both opposed Portuguese colonial rule and were at odds with people of color and assimilated people because of social status and economic income disparities. The three ethnic groups also lack a sense of identity due to differences in customs and culture, and gradually evolve irreconcilable contradictions due to the competition for interests such as land and resources.
The common hatred of Portuguese colonial rule among the various ethnic groups in Angola fueled the full-scale outbreak of the Angolan independence movement, while the insurmountable gap between the various ethnic groups set a bloody tone for the brutality and intensity of the civil war that broke out after Angola's independence.
In 1961, the People's Liberation Movement of Angola first fired the first shots of the armed struggle for independence. Centered on the Mbendous and the Coloured People, the organization was based on the Communist Party of Angola, which was fostered by the Portuguese Communist Party, and developed through the association of other political parties. Therefore, in the early days of its establishment, there was a deep "Moscow imprint", such as the members were mainly intellectuals, and they always had a certain arrogant prejudice against the rural movement and the peasant community.
The splm's struggle for independence began with both strong repression by the Portuguese colonial authorities and competition from the Front nationales de libération du Angola (FNL), with the Congolese as the main body, and the intra-SPLM was repeatedly in danger of splitting because of differences in its route. Fortunately, because of the similar ideology, the SPLM won the support of the Soviet Union, Cuba, Algeria and other countries from the beginning, and its strength gradually grew.
In contrast to the intellectual-based SPLM, the main population identity of FNL is mainly derived from the ethnic identity within the Bago congolese people, formerly known as the Northern Angolan Popular League, which originally advocated the restoration of the rule of the Kingdom of Congo, which existed from the 15th century to the end of the 19th century. Its leader, Holden Robert, gradually abandoned monolithic tribalism in favor of representing the entire Angolan people, and the Awami League of Northern Angola was renamed the Awami League of Angolans.
In the 1960s, the Awami League of Angolan People's Republics formally formed the Angolan National Liberation Front (FNL), after absorbing some non-Palestinian Congolese tribal forces. However, since its main internal voice was still controlled by tribal forces, the FNL had been in constant internal contradictions since its inception, and Jonas Savimbi, a native of Ovindu, was forced to flee to form the National Union for the Complete Independence of Angola (UNITA).
UNITA is the latest and weakest of the three national forces de libération (FNL) in Angola, but its leader, Savimbi, is from the Ovindu ethnic group, the most populous ethnic group in Angola, and has considerable potential. Although Savimbi went to Lisbon to study medicine in his early years and received a doctorate in political law in Switzerland, he belongs to the ranks of senior intellectuals in Angola. However, Savimbi was very dissatisfied with the internal leaders of the SPLM who were obsessed with sitting and talking about the Tao and the line struggle, and were not good at mobilizing the masses, believing that the SPLM had no real combat effectiveness.
Savimbi believed that the Portuguese colonial authorities focused their rule on large cities and coastal areas, had no influence in the southern rural areas, and that most of the villages were isolated from each other and were prone to develop their own power. So he focused on the education and mobilization of the peasants and decided to take the line of struggle between the countryside and the cities. Despite unita's very weak military strength, Savimbi gained some influence in rural Angola with his superior influence.
And it was precisely because of unita's weak military strength that it was often impossible to compromise with the Portuguese colonial authorities, and Savimbi himself was well educated, so it was recognized in the predominantly white Portuguese colonial army.
The programs and lines of the three major liberation organizations and the interests of the ethnic groups they represent are different, and it is naturally impossible to establish a united front. Neither the three major organizations were able to compete with the Portuguese colonial authorities in terms of armed forces nor political influence, and their own limited power was also consumed in the struggle between the three major organizations, so that until 1974, the year before Angola gained independence, a national liberation organization was not developed in Angola, let alone a representative military victory.
However, the long-term war investment has greatly affected the domestic economy of Portugal, which is a small country in itself, unable to withstand heavy military investment and the resulting inflation and trade deficit (military equipment is basically imported).
In April 1974, a coup d'état broke out in Portugal and a new government was formed. In January 1975, the Portuguese government held talks with the three major organizations and signed the Avol Agreement, which stipulates that the three major organizations are the legitimate representatives of the future regime in Angola. Angola officially gained its independence on 11 November 1975. (End)