White Malice (3) Angola

Another ugly story told by Susan Williams is about CIA involvement in the civil war in Angola. Two separate independence groups began a struggle against their Portuguese colonists.

The MPLA, which described itself as anti-imperialist, received funding from the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc; consequently, it was perceived as an enemy to America. The MPLA actively favoured a union with other Angolan freedom lighters, a stance that the US firmly resisted ((White Malice p.455).

The US opposed the MPLA and supported an alternative group called the the UPA. In February and March 1961, the UPA led a violent revolt in Luanda, the capital of Angola, and also in the northern region of the Portuguese colony. Attacks were made on farms, government outposts and trading centres, leading to the deaths of an estimated two hundred white people. The Portuguese responded with a veritable blood bath, Fleeing villages were strafed and napalmed. Between twenty thousand and thirty thousand people were killed. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Angola, walking long distances to reach the Congo.

A range of new strategies was developed by the Portuguese in order to suppress the Angolan freedom struggle. One was an industrialisation policy for the colony, which included plans to greatly increase and support white immigration. Another was to send a massive number of troops to Angola.

Angola was of central significance to the US by reason of its geographical position, its mineral resources and the discovery of oil there in the mid-1950s. Was on the route by which Uranium was exported from Congo to the United States (White Malice p.456).

As often happened in these independent struggles the US chose the wrong side to protect its economic interests.

The MPLA continued to petition for a union of all Angolan liberation movements, a position that was firmly opposed by the UPA (which was funded by the CIA). The UPA, which became the FNLA in 1961, was unable to appeal as widely to Angolans as the MPLA. The CIA decided to sideline the UPA; instead, it backed Jonas Savimbi, who had left the FNLA in to form the pro-Western Unita movement. In November 1975, the Portuguese finally withdrew, the MPLA was recognized as the legitimate government of Angola.

The CIA had singled out the MPLA as an enemy even though the MPLA wanted relations with the US and had not committed a single act of aggression against the country. (White Malice p.460).

The division stirred up by the CIA resulted in an ugly civil war.

A bitter civil war between the MPLA and Savimbi’s Unita ensued, lasting twenty-seven years and killing more than five hundred thousand people. South Africa and Mobutu’s Congo intervened on the side of Unita, backed by the US. Cuba sent fifteen thousand combat troops to support the MPLA, which finally prevailed (White Malice p.460).

In Stockwell’s analysis, the US led the way at every step of the escalation of the fighting: We said it was the Soviets and the Cubans that were doing it. It was the U.S. that was escalating the fighting. There would have been no war if we hadn’t gone in first. We put arms in, they put arms in.

We put advisors in, they answered with advisors. We put in Zairian para-commando battalions, they put in Cuban troops. We brought in the South African army, they brought in the Cuban army. And they pushed us away.

They blew us away because we were lying, we were covering ourselves with lies, and they were telling the truth. And it was not a war that we could fight. We didn’t have interests there that should have been defended that way (White Malice p.461).

This war was a terrible waste of lives harmed the economy, but the US failed to achieve its goals.