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Angolan Civil War of 1975

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Angolan Civil War of 1975 King’s Research Portal DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2013.836120 Document Version Peer reviewed version Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Hughes, G. (2014). Soldiers of Misfortune: The Angolan Civil War, the British Mercenary Intervention, and UK policy towards Southern Africa, 1975-6. INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW, 36(3), 493-512. https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2013.836120 Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections. 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Sep. 2021 SOLDIERS OF MISFORTUNE: THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, THE BRITISH MERCENARY INTERVENTION AND UK POLICY TOWARDS SOUTHERN AFRICA, 1975-6.1 On 11 November 1975 the Portuguese military authorities in Luanda conducted a formal handover of power to mark the end of their country’s colonial rule over Angola. This ceremony was held whilst fighters loyal to the Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (MPLA) were defending the capital from their foes, the Frente Nacional de Libertacao de Angola (FNLA) – which was augmented by Zairian troops – and the Uniao Nacional para Independencia Total de Angola (UNITA), which was reinforced by a South African Defence Force (SADF) contingent.2 The MPLA eventually defeated its enemies thanks to the air and sea-lift of arms from the Soviet bloc and also the intervention of a Cuban expeditionary force, although it was unable to achieve a lasting peace in Angola. Thanks to external support (from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, France, South Africa and ultimately the USA) UNITA was able to recover from its defeat in 1975-6, and its struggle against the MPLA lasted beyond the Cold War’s end.3 The scholarly literature on the Angolan conflict and its external dimensions is extensive, and has benefited both from the limited opening of the Cuban and Russian archives, and also the democratisation of South Africa after 1994. Edward George, Piero Gleijeses and Odd Arne Westad have provided valuable accounts of Cuban and Soviet policy-making on Angola, demonstrating in particular that Fidel Castro’s decision to send combat troops to help the MPLA in November 1975 was an autonomous one, which the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev subsequently supported.4 There is also no shortage of studies on the abortive US covert operation to back the FNLA against the pro-Soviet MPLA (known by its CIA acronym as IAFEATURE),5 1 although the same cannot be said regarding the policies of other states that sponsored factions in the Angolan civil war, in particular France, South Africa, Zaire and China.6 Although Norrie MacQueen and Glyn Stone have examined British policy towards the wars of decolonisation in Portugal’s African possessions prior to 1974,7 there have been no studies written on the United Kingdom’s response to the Angolan civil war. This gap in the literature may appear irrelevant, given the UK’s peripheral role in this conflict, yet this topic is worthy of scholarly attention for the following reasons. Despite the end of empire and the decline of Britain’s status as a world power, successive British governments concluded that their country still had important national interests in Africa. The Southern part of the continent was of particular importance because the transition from white minority rule had potential implications for Rhodesia, where the settler community had illegally declared independence in November 1965. Britain had a moral obligation as the former colonial power to resolve the civil war between Ian Smith’s regime and the Zimbabwean nationalists, and to oversee the peaceful transition to black majority rule. Yet like the Angolan war the chimurenga in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe had a Cold War dimension, because both the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) received military training and arms from the Communist world.8 A secondary reason concerned the presence of British mercenaries in Angola in early 1976, which generated claims that Britain was covertly backing IAFEATURE, or at the very least colluding with American efforts to recruit UK nationals to fight against the MPLA.9 Thirdly, the Angolan mercenary scandal reflected on domestic Cold War politics in the UK during the mid-1970s, which were illustrated not only by the fierce debates between the Labour government and Conservative opposition over the course of East-West relations and the nature of détente, but also the sense of paranoia that was commonplace within British society regarding the prospects of either subversion by the extreme left, or a right-wing military coup.10 2 The aims of this article are therefore threefold. Using declassified archival evidence, contemporary news sources and secondary literature, this article will describe British policy towards Angola in the immediate context of its decolonisation. It will also examine the impact of the MPLA’s victory in 1975 – and its reliance on Cuban and Soviet bloc support – on perceptions within Westminster and Whitehall on both the USSR’s foreign policy and the prospects for East- West détente, and will seek to determine whether there was any official complicity in the brief, and inglorious, campaign waged by Costas Georgiou (‘Colonel Callan’) and his compatriots in Northern Angola in January-February 1976. The historical context: In March 1961 there was an anti-colonial uprising in Angola which was brutally repressed by the Portuguese military. For the following thirteen years Portugal fought to preserve its rule over its African empire, until the left-leaning officers of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) seized power in Lisbon in a largely bloodless coup on 25 April 1974.11 Five months after the ‘Carnation Revolution’, the MFA junta offered unconditional independence to Portugal’s remaining colonial possessions, and in Mozambique and Guinea Bissau it handed over political power to the two main insurgent movements, FRELIMO and the PAIGC. The decolonisation of Angola was complicated by the fact that there were three insurgent parties involved in the conflict – MPLA, FNLA and UNITA – which spent as much, if not more, time fighting each other than they did the Portuguese. Although the MFA brokered the Alvor Accords in January 1975, which committed the three movements and the Portuguese authorities in Luanda to a coalition government until elections were held in October, this peace settlement lasted for just two months. In March 1975 clashes between FNLA and MPLA guerrillas in and around Luanda led to all-out civil war, with 3 UNITA aligning itself with the former. As the Portuguese lost control of Angola, the warring factions became proxies for external powers. The MPLA received arms from the Soviet bloc and military advisors from Cuba; the FNLA was backed by Zaire and China, and after July 1975 was funded and armed by the CIA; UNITA became a South African client. In response to an FNLA- Zairian advance on Luanda, and the intervention of the SADF in October 1975, Castro ordered the deployment of a task force to defend the MPLA (4 November 1975). Cuba’s military intervention, and the air and sea life of Soviet arms supplies to Luanda, proved to be decisive. By January 1976 there were 12,000 Cuban troops in the country, and the South African prime minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster withdrew the SADF and abandoned UNITA. In the same month the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) recognised the MPLA as the legitimate government of an independent Angola, and on 9 February the US president Gerald Ford reluctantly signed the Clark Amendment – which banned the covert funding of Angolan proxies without Congressional approval – into law.12 The MPLA’s victory did not mark the end of the Angolan civil war, as UNITA was able to continue the fight thanks to external assistance from South Africa and other sponsors. But the defeat of the FNLA, led by Holden Roberto, was shortly followed by its collapse.13 The FNLA and its Zairian allies were routed by the MPLA and its Cuban advisors at the battle of Quifangondo (10 kilometres East of the capital) on 10 November, and Roberto’s army was driven into a headlong retreat to the Zairian border. According to John Stockwell, the chief of the CIA’s Angola Task Force, the FNLA leader tried to use his CIA funds to recruit European mercenaries to bolster his forces, which already had a few hundred
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