Notes

Angola’s conflict filled history starts 1961 with massacres in Northern Angola and an independence struggle that spanned years. Angola has been subject to many wars after 1961, including the War of Independence, Guerra do Mato (War of the Bush) and perhaps the war with the worst fighting, Guerra das Cidades (War of the Cities). These wars started off as a bid to gain independence from Portugal, as Angola (along with several other African countries) was a Portuguese colony for around 500 years before the eventually won independence in November 1975. Although after 1975, it could be assumed that fighting would stop due to Angola finally winning independence, that would be incorrect as the Global Witness report shows clearly that fighting continued way after 1975 all the way into the late 1990s. This fighting and conflict was the internal battle of two different groups trying to gain control and power over Angola, the Marxist MPLA and Maoist but anti-Marxist UNITA. The latter is the group on whom this essay will formulate around, discussing whether UNITA could have fought this multi-decade long conflict without the support of its external supporters, South Africa (S. Africa), China and the United States of America (USA). There are other factors in which could have assisted UNITA in the conflict, such as their unofficial trade of diamonds which will be explored and debated in this essay. Both aspects will certainly have their own individual differences in the impact they had on UNITA’s role in the conflict, but without both could UNITA have been able to fight such a long conflict?
There is a considerable Cold War rhetoric to UNITA’s external support network. As mentioned above, the US Truman Doctrine was well enforced during the 1960s, 70s and 80s due to the ongoing Cold War that the USA was engaged in with the USSR. The MPLA was a Communist/Marxist party that received external support from the USSR and Cuba, and the USA was willing to aid any insurgency party that was going against a Communist party. In fact, Jonas Savimbi was an anti-Communist. The USA wasn’t the only state that supported UNITA however, South Africa became involved in Angolan affairs. In the early 1970s, the MPLA was getting stronger due to the support they received from the USSR, and in May 1975 the MPLA succeeded to expel the FNLA from Luanda. Hereafter S. African support escalated, after S. African intelligence reported that the MPLA could be foiled ‘only through South African support for its rivals’. The USA and S. Africa intelligence services worked closely together after this, and both provided millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and vehicles to the FNLA and UNITA. Not only this but within a few days combined the USA and S. Africa provided worth 28 million dollars in weapons and tanks to the insurgent groups. Elizabeth Schmidt argues the FNLA and UNITA were winning territories that they would never have alone by the end of September, which was due to FNLA and UNITA soldiers, Zairian soldiers, European mercenaries, S. African contingent and CIA encouragement. This poses the question, could UNITA have successfully fought without all this external support? As the US and S. Africa provided them with major support, some of which has already been discussed. After independence, the US paid for thousands of European mercenaries to assist UNITA in reaction to the increased influence and support of the MPLA from their external support.
William Reno claims that ‘each rebel group urgently sought outside patronage through playing on Cold War ideological competition’. Following on from other points, this seems plausible as all groups wanted to gain majority control of Angola and used the superpowers to gain that. However, as Reno also states the superpowers used Angola, as they did many other countries as a proxy for the Cold War. This wasn’t a rare occurrence around the world during this time, as both the USA and USSR used other countries in order to gain victory over one another as they had the money and resources to do so. Therefore, it could be argued that this relationship was a two-way street in some ways as both parties used each other to gain what they wanted, in this case, power over their rivals.
As Global Witness points out, it is important that the role played by diamonds in UNITA’s fighting is exposed and understood. Both sides (MPLA and UNITA) funded their conflict by the trade of natural resources, diamonds for UNITA and oil for MPLA. As discussed earlier, UNITA’s external supporters pulled out mid-way into the conflict due to various reasons discussed, and it was then down to UNITA to try and fund themselves throughout the rest of the conflict. It was due to the political changes of the Cold War and the USA’s declining desire to fight all communist influenced countries via the Truman Doctrine which vowed that the USA provided economic and military support to countries under Communist threat. After years of fighting, a Peace Accord was signed by UNITA and MPLA which leads to elections in 1992 which ignites the conflict to continue. Since then both parties relied on their natural resources, and according the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Report in 1996, UNITA made around 1.5 billion dollars from the sales of diamonds. But, in the Global Witness report they state that between 1992 and 1998 UNITA made 3.72 billion dollars revenue from the sale of diamonds. Both sources vary in pricing, however the principle stays the same. UNITA made massive profits from the diamond trade and it proved a crucial source of funding for them during the multi-decade conflict. One of many issues with this large revenue is that due to all the money to be made, it made UNITA leaders hesitant to come to peace due to the increased profits of war. According to UNDP Human Development Report Angola in 1997, 82.5% of the Angolan population live in absolute and relative poverty. This shows how poverty stricken Angola is after many years of war, and puts into perspective how selfish UNITA leaders were to make billions of pounds in profits all in the name of war and victory. The sale of diamonds was not the only type of support UNITA had during war time, they gained the support of the peasantry and more specifically the Ovimbundu group whom helped UNITA’s cause greatly.
To prove their legitimacy and prove themselves as a sustainable and worthwhile government for Angolans, UNITA wanted to become a multi-ethnic national movement led by Jonas Savimbi. To UNITA, this was is what politics meant to them, to persuade people of their legitimacy as Justin Pearce declares. As both Linda Heywood and Pearce discuss, both movements were trying to convince the Angolan people that their party was the one that should be controlling their country. In contrast to the MPLA, UNITA (and FNLA, whom they broke off from in 1966) saw themselves as the ‘only representatives of authentic African nationalism’. Savimbi himself was from Ovimbundu heritage, as he was the grandson of a leader of the 1902 Ovimbundu revolt against the Portuguese. Savimbi’s grandfather participated in the ‘most serious of struggles against Portuguese occupation’, one of many the Ovimbundu had fought to resist Portuguese support of the highlands where they resided. This provided Savimbi with a lead against the MPLA as he had stronger holds to the community, something which could have proven useful in gaining Ovimbundu support. The Ovimbundu group were an influential group in the highlands, as with the help of North American missionaries they were able to establish a new society that included Ovimbundu schools, Protestant churches and clinics, and established the biggest Protestant community in the country with a membership of over 400,000 (Council of Evangelical Churches of Central Angola). The Ovimbundu saw the UNITA guerrilla campaign of 1966 in Eastern Angola their own liberation movement as Linda Heywood explains. This could show how strong the Ovimbundu’s support for UNITA was, as they also mobilised the population into supporting UNITA. It was not however only the Ovimbundu group that supported UNITA, the Lundas and the Cowkes had protected Savimbi during years of struggle. Savimbi knew that if he was to succeed in the elections, he would need the support of the Lundas, the Cowkes and the Ovimbundu. As time passed, Ovimbundu migrant labourers now felt as though UNITA was their party too, in addition to imprisoned Ovimbundu who had been sent around Angola to gain support for UNITA and to counter MPLA support. Without this support from different ethnic groups, UNITA would certainly have not been able to fight a long war even if it did have the funds from external support, i.e. S. Africa, China and the USA.
Even after a lot of research, it is still unclear whether UNITA was only able to fight such a long war due to external support, however a few conclusions can be made from the findings. The USA and S. Africa did provide a lot of support for the group in the early decades of the war and they could not have done it without their financial backing. Both countries provided UNITA with masses of weapons and machinery, in addition to deploying thousands of troops into the country to assist them in the fighting for the majority control of Angola. The support these countries provided gave UNITA a basis in which they could go ahead and fight the war themselves, even without external troops, as they had all the weaponry and machinery they required. If discussing ‘support’ as financial support only, it can be strongly argued that in the early years they could not possibly have fought such a long war without external support in the early stages of the war. But due to the diamond trade they acquired in the later stages of the war, they could unquestionably have been able to fund the war themselves without any outside influence. As previously mentioned, Global Witness states that UNITA made a minimum of 3.72 billion dollars in the diamond trade and was possibly more money than they received from the USA and S. Africa. The USA and S. Africa withdrew their support in mid-1980s and 1976 respectively, which meant that UNITA went 10-15 years without much external support. Although there is a major financial factor to the question, there are other avenues of support which are also crucial to mention. The Ovimbundu and peasantry support were key aspects of support for UNITA and could not have fought without that support. As goes for any party trying to beat the opposition, there is no basis without social support of the people of said country, and this was exceptionally true in Angola. Both parties, the MPLA and UNITA fought to win the support and influence of different ethnic groups in different areas of the country, which is why many of the wars fought within the Civil War were fought. This internal support by the masses of the Ovimbundu provided UNITA with a strong support basis. At the turn of the century, the Ovimbundu ethnic groups population amassed around 4 million. As W. Reno states, Savimbi ‘relied on his political connections to build a personal armed political following’. This shows that Savimbi possibly didn’t need external support, and that his connections could have helped him and his party fight such a long war. It is not a matter of looking at all these factors individually, it is about looking at them all as a collective before coming to an assumption. Both external and internal support factors helped UNITA fight for so long, and they could not have done it without the former or the latter. The USA needed Angola as a proxy for their own war, and used them to their own advantage, as did the USSR with the MPLA and UNITA needed the USA for support in arms and machinery, but they did not need arms and machinery if they did not have the popular support and backing of the Ovimbundu. One cannot be discussed and argued without the other, and a conclusion can be drawn as seen above as they both factors worked together to guarantee UNITA’s ability to fight for many decades.