Cuban intervention in Angola

Cuban intervention in Angola
Part of the Angolan Civil War and the South African Border War

Location of Cuba (red), Angola (green), and South Africa (blue), including South West Africa
Date1975–1991
Location
Angola
Result Cuban and South African withdrawal in 1991
Belligerents
Material support:
Material support:
Strength

Cuba Cuban troops:

  • 36,000 (1976)[12]
  • 35,000–37,000 (1982)[13]
  • 60,000 (1988)[13]

Total Cuban troops:
337,033[14]–380,000[15]

MPLA troops:

Soviet Union Soviet troops:

  • Altogether 11,000
    (1975 to 1991)[19]

UNITA militants:

  • 65,000 (1990, highest)[20]

FNLA militants:

  • 22,000 (1975)[21]
  • 4,000–7,000 (1976)[22]

Union of South Africa South African troops:

  • 7,000 (1975–76)[23]
  • 6,000 (1987–88)[23]
Casualties and losses
Unknown
Cuba 2,016–5,000 dead[24]
Soviet Union 54 killed[25]		 Unknown
South Africa 715-2000 dead[23]
Unknown
Unknown
100,000 killed (1975–76)[17]
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The Cuban intervention in Angola (codenamed Operation Carlota) began on the 5th of November 1975, when Cuba sent combat troops in support of the communist-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against the pro-western coalition of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA). The intervention came after the outbreak of the Angolan Civil War, which occurred after the former Portuguese colony was granted independence after the Angolan War of Independence. The civil war quickly became a proxy war between the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union, and the Western Bloc, led by the United States. South Africa and the United States backed UNITA and the FNLA, while communist nations backed the MPLA.[26][27]

Some 4,000 Cuban troops helped to turn back a three-pronged advance by the SADF, UNITA, FNLA, and Zairean troops.[23] Later, 18,000 Cuban troops proved instrumental in defeating FNLA forces in the north and UNITA in the south.[23] The Cuban army also assisted the MPLA in repressing separatists from the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC). By 1976, the Cuban military presence in Angola had grown to nearly 36,000 troops. By effectively driving out the internationally isolated South African forces, Cuba was able to secure control over all the provincial capitals in Angola.[28] Following the withdrawal of Zaire and South Africa, Cuban forces remained in Angola to support the MPLA government against UNITA in the continuing civil war.[29] South Africa spent the following decade launching bombing and strafing raids from its bases in South West Africa into southern Angola, while UNITA engaged in ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, and harassment of Cuban units.[30]

In 1988, Cuban troops, now numbering about 55,000, intervened again to avert military disaster in a Soviet-led People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) offensive against UNITA, which was still supported by South Africa, leading to the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the opening of a second front.[31] This turn of events was considered to have been the major impetus to the success of the ongoing peace talks leading to the 1988 New York Accords, the agreement by which Cuban and South African forces withdrew from Angola while South West Africa gained its independence from South Africa.[32][33][34][35][36] Cuban military engagement in Angola ended in 1991, while the Angolan Civil War continued until 2002. Cuban casualties in Angola totaled approximately 10,000 dead, wounded, or missing.[37][38]

  1. ^ a b Shubin, Vladimir Gennadyevich (2008). The Hot "Cold War": The USSR in Southern Africa. London: Pluto Press. pp. 92–93, 249. ISBN 978-0-7453-2472-2.
  2. ^ Thomas, Scott (1995). The Diplomacy of Liberation: The Foreign Relations of the ANC Since 1960. London: Tauris Academic Studies. pp. 202–207. ISBN 978-1850439936.
  3. ^ Wolfe, Thomas; Hosmer, Stephen (1983). Soviet policy and practice toward Third World conflicts. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 87. ISBN 978-0669060546.
  4. ^ a b c d Hughes, Geraint (2014). My Enemy's Enemy: Proxy Warfare in International Politics. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. pp. 65–79. ISBN 978-1845196271.
  5. ^ Vanneman, Peter (1990). Soviet Strategy in Southern Africa: Gorbachev's Pragmatic Approach. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. pp. 41–57. ISBN 978-0817989026.
  6. ^ Chan, Stephen (2012). Southern Africa: Old Treacheries and New Deceits. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. pp. 42–46. ISBN 978-0300184280.
  7. ^ Mitchell, Thomas G. (2013). Israel/Palestine and the Politics of a Two-State Solution. Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc. pp. 94–99. ISBN 978-0-7864-7597-1.
  8. ^ Shubin, Vladimir; Shubin, Gennady; Blanch, Hedelberto (2015). Liebenberg, Ian; Risquet, Jorge (eds.). A Far-Away War: Angola, 1975-1989. Stellenbosch: Sun Press. pp. 86–87. ISBN 978-1920689728.
  9. ^ James III, W. Martin (2011) [1992]. A Political History of the Civil War in Angola: 1974-1990. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. pp. 207–214, 239–245. ISBN 978-1-4128-1506-2.
  10. ^ Polack, Peter (13 December 2013). The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War. Casemate Publishers. pp. 66–68. ISBN 9781612001951.
  11. ^ Minter, William (1991). "The US and the War in Angola". Review of African Political Economy. 18 (50): 135–144. doi:10.1080/03056249108703896. JSTOR 4005928.
  12. ^ "Cuban Tanks".
  13. ^ a b c "La Guerras Secretas de Fidel Castro" Archived 18 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish). CubaMatinal.com. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
  14. ^ Gleijeses, Piero (2013). Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991. UNC Press Books. p. 521.
  15. ^ Risquet Valdés (2007: xlvii)
  16. ^ Risquet Valdés 2008: 102
  17. ^ a b c "ANGOLA: Now, a War Between the Outsiders". Time. 2 February 1976. With the Cubans and South Africans both so actively engaged, one Western intelligence source argued that "the war is increasingly out of the hands of the locals." UNITA commanders at Cela reported that "there are virtually no African faces in the enemy ranks." Soviet arms, including shipments of 122-mm. multiple rocket launchers, T-34 assault tanks and helicopter gunships, were largely responsible for the Cuban-led M.P.L.A.'s advances.
  18. ^ Saul David (2009). War. Dorling Kindersley Limited. ISBN 9781405341332. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
  19. ^ Andrei Mikhailov (15 February 2011). "Soviet Union and Russia lost 25,000 military men in foreign countries". English pravda.ru. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
  20. ^ Irving Louis Horowitz (1995). Cuban Communism, 8th Edition. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9781412820899. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
  21. ^ Angola – Independence Struggle, Civil War, and Intervention. MongaBay.com.
  22. ^ Political terrorism: a new guide to actors, concepts, data bases, theories and literature.
  23. ^ a b c d e Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492-2015, 4th ed. McFarland. p. 566. ISBN 978-0786474707.
  24. ^ Polack, Peter (2013). The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (illustrated ed.). Oxford: Casemate Publishers. pp. 164–171. ISBN 978-1612001951.
  25. ^ "Soviet Union and Russia lost 25,000 military men in foreign countries – English Pravda". English.pravda.ru. 15 February 2011. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
  26. ^ George, p. 1
  27. ^ Smith, pp. 66, 71–72
  28. ^ "Angola". Britannica. Cuba poured in troops to defend the MPLA, pushed the internationally isolated South Africans out of Angola, and gained control of all the provincial capitals. The Cuban expeditionary force, which eventually numbered some 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers, remained in Angola to pacify the country and ward off South African attacks.
  29. ^ Africa, Problems & Prospects: A Bibliographic Survey. U.S. Department of the Army. 1977. p. 221.
  30. ^ James III, W. Martin (2020). A Political History of the Civil War in Angola, 1974-1990. Routledge. p. 11.
  31. ^ Vanneman, Peter (1990). Soviet Strategy in Southern Africa: Gorbachev's Pragmatic Approach. Hoover Press. p. 40.
  32. ^ George, p. 3
  33. ^ Film Une Odyssée Africaine (France, 2006, 59 min) directed by: Jihan El Tahri
  34. ^ Gleijeses
  35. ^ Cuito Cuanavale – "Afrikas Stalingrad", Ein Sieg über Pretorias Apartheid" in: Neues Deutschland, 19/20 April. 2008
  36. ^ Campbell, Horace: The Military Defeat of the South Africans in Angola in: Monthly Review, April 1989
  37. ^ Mallin, Jay (1994). Covering Castro. Transaction Publishers.
  38. ^ Horowitz, Irving Louis (1995). Cuban Communism/8th Editi. Transaction Publishers. p. 560.


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