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Translated for CWHIP by Gary Goldberg & Sue Onslow The White Sun of Angola by Anatoly Adamishin Moscow, 2014 (second edition) Children, don't go to Africa to walk - the warning of wise Korney Chukovsky, author of a beautiful fairy tale, often came to mind when I was writing this book. But how can one not go? Whoever who has seen the primordial, captivating beauty of African lands wants to return there again and again, to one of the most complex and dramatic crossroads of the contemporary world, to this potentially the richest continent which has vegetated in poverty for centuries. And Angola? The adventures of Captain Grant’s children, and gangly Paganel’s stories of butterflies, flowers and birds created the impression of a mythical country of our childhood. But in the 1970s and 1980s we collided with an entirely different reality: the Soviet Union found itself drawn into a serious civil war in the enormous spaces of Angola, half the size of Western Europe, which grew into an international conflict, second only to the degree of our involvement in Afghanistan. YESTERDAY CONTINUES TODAY Against the background of the escalating number of international conflicts which were mostly inter-ethnic and which included the unsuccessful attempt of the US and NATO to solve one of them by force (by this I mean the Yugoslav conflict), my thoughts return to the events which occurred 25 years ago - the successful peaceful settlement in South Western Africa. The conflict there was, I dare to say, as complicated as the Balkan one; it had a static nature, and had drawn more than a dozen countries and liberation movements directly into its orbit such as the RSA [Republic of South Africa], Angola, Cuba, the US, the USSR, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zaire, the ANC, SWAPO, and UNITA. Almost all the countries of Africa participated indirectly, as did such countries as Britain, France, Germany, Canada, India, and many others. What is extremely important to remember: the agreements signed in December 1988 at the UN headquarters in New York did work, unlike many other international agreements. Namibia, the last colony in Africa, received independence. The RSA left Namibia and also withdrew its troops from Angola. Cuban units, too, pulled out of Angola. Events developed tempestuously in South Africa, and soon put an end to the vestiges of apartheid there. A new democratic period of the development of this country began. The entire situation in Southern Africa changed for the better. I was fortunate (now I know exactly that this is the correct word) to participate in resolving the conflict in its final and decisive stages: in May 1986, thanks to the USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eduard Shevardnadze, I was appointed as his deputy with responsibilities, among other things, for dealing with Africa south of the Sahara. 2 This was the time of Gorbachev’s perestroika and we were engaged in an overall critical analysis of Soviet foreign policy in this region, as well as elsewhere. It was about readjusting our approaches to current realities, and not ideological interests of the country, in the spirit of the famous ‘new thinking’. But we were intent not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Before this point, the African continent was not among our top priorities. In combination with the general credit-worthiness which I had with the leaders of perestroika, this reassessment gave me a unique ability to influence our policy, at least in Southern Africa, both in terms of its elaboration and putting it in practice. THE WAR SEEMED ENDLESS What kind of situation in the south of the continent did the newly-fledged Africanist find in 1985? I had previously dealt chiefly with European problems, although as a speechwriter for Andrey Gromyko and other Soviet leaders I had switched to global studies. To begin with, a war had already been going on in this region for many years. Furthermore, this was not one conflict but several which, moreover, had become entangled with one another. In Angola, Angolans were fighting one another, and in Mozambique – Mozambicans were also engaged in an ongoing civil war. In the Angolan theatre, one side represented a generally-internationally recognized government which was a member of the Organization of African Unity and the UN. This side was supported by Cuba and the USSR. The opposing contenders for power corresponded to the groups UNITA and RENAMO, both of which were supported by the South Africans. In the case of Angola, UNITA was also backed by the United States of America. South Africa savagely repressed the militants against apartheid inside the country, and behaved aggressively outside its borders. It was illegally occupying Namibia,1 insolently ignoring all UN resolutions which included the key Security Council Resolution Nº 435 adopted in September 1978. This UNSC resolution had been devised by a so-called "Contact Group" which consisted solely of Western countries (the US, Britain, France, Germany and Canada). The South Africans retaliated severely against the rebels of SWAPO (the South West Africa People's Organization). SWAPO’s military positions in Namibia were relatively weak, the main bases being concentrated on Angolan territory. The RSA declared a ‘forward’ strategy: its commandos, which were specially trained raiding troops equipped with modern weapons, encountered SWAPO detachments deep inside Angolan territory. The RSA military propagated the concept of "helicopter occupation", the use of small, highly-mobile sub-units. Everything was directed at minimizing losses of white soldiers. Such a tactic had its reverse side: when the South Africans had to fight a much stronger enemy, the Cubans, they gave up rapidly and avoided fighting. 1 South Africa seized South West Africa from Germany in 1915 and controlled it until the Second World War in accordance with a League of Nations mandate; after the war, South Africa continued its occupation despite growing international criticism. In 1966 the UN General Assembly declared the RSA trusteeship in Namibia at an end. The UN took Namibia under its supervision, but that did not change anything. Later the Security Council formulated a thesis about the illegal occupation of Namibia by the South Africans and demanded that they leave. The International Court in The Hague had previously taken a similar position 3 The South Africans openly helped the UNITA rebel group. This often ensured the superiority of the latter over FAPLA, the Angolan government troops. The RSA, in turn, used the UNITA rebels as their own shield, including subsequently against the Cubans. Indeed, along one front line, sparsely spread in Angolan conditions, were government troops and SWAPO fighters, plus Cubans at a certain distance, and along the other - UNITA and the SADF. Before 1975 SWAPO operated from bases in Zambia, and made use of the services of UNITA, which gave it corridors for passage into Namibia. The fronts changed when the People's Republic of Angola was proclaimed in November 1975. The main hopes were pinned on the principle of "Vietnamization", that is, a war of Angolans vs. Angolans, especially after the US under Ronald Reagan openly intervened in the civil war. At the beginning of 1986 the US resumed an infusion of weapons to UNITA after a 10-year hiatus. The RSA savagely oppressed armed attacks by the African National Congress (ANC), the main anti-apartheid force. The camps of its armed wing, Umkhonte we Sizwe (MK) were in Angola for the most part, but also partly in the other Front Line States, as they called themselves (FLS).2 Regularly, the South Africans inflicted painful blows on these external militants, making broad use of terrorist methods. In turn, the Front Line States tried to retaliate with propaganda campaigns and calls to strengthen sanctions against South Africa. At the same time they did not avoid economic and other ties with the RSA, which were usually concealed from public view. Harsh reality drove them to this – the Pretoria regime’s industrial, financial, and other military power far exceeded the abilities of the opposing countries, and was concentrated at the far edge of the continent. When one day I landed at the airport in Johannesburg, I was shocked at the multitude of aircraft from African companies. All of them underwent maintenance in the RSA. South Africans had their own armaments industry and were even secretly working on the creation of nuclear weapons. We followed this very carefully, because we knew that South Africa had all the necessary elements to acquire its own nuclear bomb: large reserves of uranium (the country was one of the largest exporters of uranium in the world), the required technology and specialists. In addition, South Africa stubbornly refused to accede to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. We tried to go a different route, introducing or supporting the UN proposals to establish a nuclear- free zone in Africa, but they remained declarations. It is worth noting that on this issue we actually coincided with the Americans’ approach, which in those days was infrequent. When in June 1977 the Soviet satellite discovered signs of preparations for a nuclear test in the north of South Africa, the first thing we did was to share this information with the United States. At the time, South Africa was forced to abandon the test, as a result of strong international pressure. Likewise, in September 1979, the United States’ reconnaissance satellite "Vela" registered a doubly powerful flash of light in the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, where there were South African Navy exercises. The Americans and we came to the conclusion that it was a nuclear weapons test: a nuclear warhead had been blown up at a height of seven kilometers, and the most likely explanation was that it was an Israeli test, with the assistance of South Africa.