$Unique_ID{COW00129}
$Pretitle{259}
$Title{Angola
Chapter 4B.   War for Independence}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Eugene K. Keefe}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{army
portuguese
fapla
soviet
military
war
forces
mpla
angolan
guerrilla}
$Date{1978}
$Log{}
Country:     Angola
Book:        Angola, A Country Study
Author:      Eugene K. Keefe
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1978

Chapter 4B.   War for Independence

     The thirty-year lull in the Angolan campaigns-the longest period of
relative peace since the arrival of Diogo Cao in the late fifteenth
century-was shattered in January 1961 when a sect calling itself Maria rose
up against the Portuguese settlers and authorities in the cotton growing area
of Malange Province. At first thought to be some kind of religious movement,
the sect turned out to be the followers of Antonio Mariano, and their original
protest against the system of enforced cotton growing became a feeble cry for
independence known as Maria's War. Mariano, who earlier had some contact with
the Union of Angolan Peoples (Uniao das Populacoes de Angola-UPA), led his
followers on a rampage of property destruction and livestock killing, but no
Portuguese settlers were killed as they fled from the countryside into the
towns. As the uprising spread, the colonial authorities responded in force
with troops and aircraft, inflicting heavy casualties-the almost predictable
result of an undisciplined band of peasants armed with hoes, scythes, and
ancient muskets fighting against a well-armed, numerically superior regular
army.

     Although the Portuguese army had little trouble in stopping the spread
of hostilities, it could not stop the dissemination of news about Maria's War
to the nationalist forces that were increasing in number rapidly throughout
the country. Even while the little war was in progress in Malange, another
blow against the colonialists was delivered in Luanda where a large group of
unemployed slumdwellers attacked the Sao Paulo prison hoping to free political
prisoners who were being held there. The attackers, armed only with knives and
clubs, failed to release any prisoners, but seven Portuguese policemen were
reportedly killed as were many more of the rebels. Rioting between blacks and
whites broke out next day after the funeral of the policemen, and when
another attack on a Luanda prison a few days later again caused police
casualties, the authorities once again responded with great force. In the
words of John A. Marcum, an American who chronicled the Angolan revolution in
a two-volume study, "Portuguese vengeance was awesome."

     Heavy censorship prevented foreigners from learning the full extent of
the massacre that followed the Luanda prison attacks but, according to
missionaries and newsmen who were in Luanda at the time, indiscriminate
killing took several hundred lives as white vigilante groups roamed through
the Luanda slums attacking Africans. Although there was some disagreement
about who organized the original attack on Sao Paulo prison, the MPLA took
the credit and in later years commemorated February 4, 1961, as the date on
which their war for independence began.

     Maria's War had occurred in a remote area and was hardly noticed outside
Angola but, despite censorship, the Luanda troubles could not be hushed up,
and enough attention was focused on the Portuguese colony to warrant the
discussion of these events in the United Nations (UN) Security Council. But
even as Luanda was being discussed, the third uprising of early 1961 occurred,
which for sheer ferocity overshadowed everything that had happened during
Maria's War or the prison attacks. In the northern part of the colony,
peoples of the Kongo ethnic group, assembled under the banners of the UPA,
attacked government installations, farms, and trading posts, killing
Portuguese men, women, and children indiscriminately. Killed also in the orgy
of violence were mesticos and assimilados as well as many contract laborers of
the Ovimbundu ethnic group who had been brought north to work on the coffee
plantations. The latter killings evoked charges of tribalism that would haunt
the opposing Angolan factions throughout the wars of independence and on into
the postindependence civil wars. Roberto, leader of the UPA, was in New York
at the UN hearings at the time of the attack and later decried the extreme
violence but attributed it to the "centuries of Portuguese brutality against
the Africans."

     The government threw its full weight against the rebels in the north
and with a 9,000-man army (including 6,000 African auxiliaries) armed with
modern weapons and supported by bombers plus units of the settlers' militia
bent on vengeance, the response was terrifying. An estimated 20,000 Africans
were killed during the six months after the UPA uprising. In Lisbon, Salazar
reacted to the events of March 1961 by firing his defense minister, personally
taking over that portfolio, and ordering 10,000 additional European Portuguese
troops to Angola. The guerrilla fighting, which later became known as the War
for Independence, was under way. The government forces were able to bring the
situation under control, but they were not able to eliminate the dissident
organizations nor end the widespread guerrilla attacks. By the end of 1962 the
situation had been stabilized enough so that Salazar gave up personal
direction of the defense department and appointed armed forces chief of
staff, General Manuel Gomes de Araujo, to the position.

     During the first half of the 1960s as the forces of the MPLA under Neto
and those of the UPA-which had become FNLA under Roberto-increased their
strength, so did the Portuguese. By the mid-1960s as many as 50,000 troops
were in the field against the guerrillas. Half of the Portuguese force
consisted of locally conscripted soldiers, mostly Africans but also
including some settlers. In 1966 still another guerrilla force joined in
the fighting as UNITA made known its presence by attacking Portuguese forces.
UNITA's troops were drawn primarily from the Ovimbundu and were led by
Savimbi.

     As the war progressed, most combat actions were fought in the rural areas
away from the urban centers, and European casualties were relatively light
making the war seem quite distant to the settlers as well as to the
metropolitan Portuguese. As the fighting dragged on into the early 1970s,
however, dissatisfaction began to grow, and public complaints became more
frequent. Portugal's African troubles were not confined to Angola; rebellion
was also rampant in Portuguese Guinea (later Guinea-Bissau) and Mozambique,
and even though casualties remained relatively light, when statistics from the
three separate wars were totaled, people began to worry. Objections from the
young men who were being conscripted to fight the African wars also became
much more frequent. As for the financial burden, most of the funds for the
Angolan operation were coming from the export of Angolan coffee, diamonds, and
crude oil. Nevertheless for a country as poor as Portugal, the annual
expenditure on colonial wars was alarming. By the beginning of 1974 war
weariness had infected a large segment of the Portuguese population, but
because the rebels could not marshal enough strength to defeat the colonial
armies, some observers were of the opinion that hostilities could drag on
indefinitely.

     The end of the anticolonial wars came about not because the insurgents
suddenly gained strength or because they finally unified their separate
efforts; the end of the war coincided with the end of the authoritarian
regime that had dominated Portuguese affairs for almost fifty years.
Salazar had suffered a disabling stroke in 1968, and the reins of government
had been picked up by Marcello Caetano who generally maintained the status
quo for the next six years. To the Angolan rebels the change made no
difference; they continued to fight against the colonial power and at times
against each other. In April 1974, thirteen years into the Angolan war, a
group of young Portuguese military officers known as the Armed Forces
Movement overthrew the Caetano government and announced that the future
of Portugal's colonies would be determined by the people of those colonies.

Civil War

     The existence of three rival movements, each having its own army,
complicated the question of the inheritance of the government when the
Portuguese departed. The hostility between the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA during
the long years of anticolonial warfare had often led to internecine battles,
and that hostility was exacerbated by the intervention of foreign
governments. The Soviet Union, Cuba, and various other communist
countries backed the MPLA. The United ltates, the People's Republic of
China (PRC), and South Africa supported FNLA (which was generally based
in and supported by Zaire) and UNITA. When MPLA was criticized for seeking
communist aid, Neto countered by stating that he would accept help from the
devil if it would further his cause-words similar to those of Winston
Churchill when the Soviet Union entered World War II on the Allied side.
Accepting aid from the devil, however, could not be compared to accepting
aid from South Africa, which later proved to be a reason for the
condemnation of FNLA and UNITA, particularly the latter, by many
African governments.

     Early in 1975 the new government in Lisbon set November 11, 1975, as
the effective date for Angolan independence. The leaders of the
factions-Neto, Roberto, and Savimbi-agreed to a truce and a coalition
administration that would seek a peaceful transition to self-government,
but the truce broke down almost immediately, and the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA
renewed their internecine warfare. Fighting was so intense in and around
Luanda in July that Portuguese troops were asked to help restore order. In
August the FNLA and UNITA, which had formed a tenuous alliance, bowed to
superior strength in the capital area and evacuated their troops and
supporters from Luanda. When independence came, for all intents and purposes,
the country was divided into three unequal territories-the FNLA controlled
the northwest, the MPLA occupied a strip from Luanda eastward to the Zairian
border (plus the enclave of Cabinda), and UNITA had the lion's share of
territory-the entire southern sector of the country. On Independence Day the
existence of two republics was declared: Neto announced the establishment
of the People's Republic of Angola with its capital at Luanda; Roberto and
Savimbi agreed that their divided territories would henceforth be the
People's Democratic Republic of Angola and its capital would be Huambo
(formerly Nova Lisboa) in Savimbi country.

     The amount of territory occupied by FNLA in the north and by UNITA in
the south plus the strength of their forces on independence day seemed to
bode ill for MPLA, apparently in a precarious position between the two
opposing forces. MPLA had a psychological advantage in that it controlled
Luanda, the capital and most important city and port; it also had Soviet
weapons and supplies plus Soviet and Cuban advisers, but the American, PRC,
and South African aid to the other side appeared to balance the equation.
The seemingly superior position of FNLA-UNITA deteriorated rapidly during
the next few weeks as the Soviets carried out a massive logistics build-up
by air and sea at the same time that Cuban fighting troops were being
ferried into Angola on a daily basis. The Soviet weaponry included MiG
aircraft, tanks, and truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers known as Stalin
Organs. These weapons were crucial to the eventual success in the civil war,
but they would have been of little use to FAPLA without Cubans to fly the
MiGs, drive the tanks, fire the weapons, and maintain all of the technically
advanced equipment.

     The civil war, which has taken its place in MPLA legend as the Second
War of Independence, was brief. The Soviet Union and Cuba also carefully
avoided using the terminology "civil war" stating that their aid was being
given to a sovereign government that had asked for help because it was
being attacked from outside. Regardless of the language used, it was the
heavy involvement of the Soviet Union and Cuba that proved decisive in the
MPLA victory. The cessation of assistance to FNLA and UNITA by the United
States and the subsequent withdrawal of the South Africans ended any hopes
of defeating MPLA. Actually the turning point came with the introduction of
Cuban troops, which changed the entire complexion of the Angolan
hostilities. Facing an enemy's superior weaponry was nothing new for FNLA and
UNITA-the Portuguese always had better weapons-but in the past the Angolans
had fought as guerrilla armies. Misconstruing their own strength and resources
after independence, they briefly stoop up against the Cuban-FAPLA combination
in a conventional warfare stance and were roundly defeated. In addition to
lacking the tanks, antitank guns, heavy artillery, and antiaircraft artillery
that they sorely needed, the FNLA-UNITA command also lacked the expertise
required. Years of guerrilla warfare had not prepared Roberto and Savimbi and
their top commanders to match the Soviet-Cuban strategy, tactics, and weaponry
used against them between November 1975 and February 1976.

Administration and Organization

     When it was created on August 1, 1974, FAPLA seemed to be a scheme
concocted by the leader of MPLA to achieve legitimacy for its armed forces. As
FAPLA the MPLA army acquired the aura of a national army rather than being
merely the military arm of a political movement that was itself contending for
power with two other movements. In effect nothing changed militarily on that
date other than the title of MPLA's fighting force-it was still the same
guerrilla army that had been fighting the Portuguese colonial administration
since the early 1960s. What had changed was the setting. The overthrow of the
Portuguese dictatorship had put Angola on a straight path to independence, and
the institutionalizing of its military arm by MPLA was a smart political
move as well as a propaganda ploy. As hostilities among the three contending
factions became more intense during 1975, and particularly after the greatly
increased intervention on the part of various foreign powers, FAPLA began to
take on the appearance of a regular army, and after the end of the civil war
in 1976, with Soviet and Cuban help, the guerrilla army was converted into a
regular force. The existence of such a military structure proved to be an aid
in the transition of MPLA from liberation movement to governing body.

Military Command and Mission

     As commander in chief of FAPLA, the president of the republic is
ultimately responsible for the defense of the country. In fulfilling that
responsibility and in overseeing the organization, administration, and
day-to-day operations the president relies on his minister of defense. The
government and the MPLA-Labor Party are closely parallel structures, and both
the president and the minister of defense are members of the Political Bureau
at the top of the party as well as being members of the Revolutionary Council
at the head of the government. President Neto has held the top position in
the MPLA since 1962 and has held the highest government office since the
country became independent. Neto has not been a field commander of FAPLA or of
the predecessor guerrilla forces and has generally relied on subordinates and
foreign advisers for military expertise.

     In his public statements about FAPLA, Neto continually stresses three
themes that seem to sum up his philosophy on what the armed forces of a
socialist state should be: the armed forces must be of the people, of the
party, and internationalist, i.e., devoted to the liberation of all Africa.
Neto has stressed that FAPLA must not be allowed to become an elite force,
remote from the everyday life of the country. He has credited the armed forces
with having been in the forefront of the liberation struggles but has warned
that under the MPLA-Labor Party the "concept that the Army is only a military
combat organization" is rejected. As an example of keeping the army close to
the people as well as an answer to an economic exigency, Neto ordered in early
1978 that units would be responsible for growing their own foodstuffs. Neto
stated, "Military units will be called upon more and more to contribute to the
development of agriculture. In every barracks there will be agricultural and
livestock production to every extent possible." Concerning internationalism
Neto declared, "We shall have to grant our constant help to the people of
Namibia, to the people of Zimbabwe, and to the people of South Africa in
particular."

     Neto's view that the armed forces should be an arm of the party seemed to
be fully concurred in by other members of the MPLA-Labor Party hierarchy,
several of whom were former guerrilla fighters and some of whom were still
active members of the armed forces. It would appear that the Political Bureau
of the MPLA-Labor Party would be the ultimate authority in military matters as
in any other national affairs of major importance. As in the Cuban system as
well as the governmental and party systems of many other socialist countries,
the minister of defense in the Angolan government is a uniformed army officer.
Unlike many of the other systems, however, officer ranks have not been
inflated, and in 1978 Minister of Defense Carreira retained the rank of
commander. In the late 1970s FAPLA was an amalgamation that showed traces
of the guerrilla force from which it evolved as well as traces of the Soviet
and Cuban forces on which it has been modeled.

Army

     By 1974 the MPLA had split into three rival groups all of which contended
for control of the movement. As part of the astute maneuvering that eventually
gained control for the pro-Neto group within MPLA and with a view toward
approaching independence, eighty-three of Neto's guerrilla officers created
FAPLA. The former guerrilla army had, of course, undergone considerable
evolution during the long years of fighting the Portuguese. For example, in
the earliest days tiny units of from six to ten men operated
semi-independently, striking and then melting away as is typical of such
operations; later the units grew in size to the point that they could be
designated companies. As communications equipment improved and the leaders and
troops learned more about coordinated attacks, companies could be brought
together to form battalions for specific engagements, always relying on the
tactic of rapid dispersal. The great influx of modern weapons at the time of
independence and during the ensuing civil war, plus the arrival of large
numbers of Cuban and Soviet advisers, ensured the conversion of FAPLA into a
conventional army, and before the end of 1976 an air force and a navy had also
been created.

     President Neto and other leaders of the MPLA-Labor Party have impressed
on the people and particularly on those people entering the armed forces that
FAPLA should not be considered a traditional military force, i.e., a bourgeois
military force. Party spokesmen let it be known that FAPLA members are
citizen-soldiers who must not develop or try to develop into an elite corps.
President Neto wants his soldiers to be part of the nationbuilding process
that is so important to Angola in its early years of independence, but it is
difficult to see how the FAPLA soldier can become very involved in
nationbuilding as long as the guerrilla warfare of the FNLA and UNITA
movements continues.

     The rank structure of the FAPLA army is rather unconventional in that
there are no generals. Officers ranks are second lieutenant, first lieutenant,
captain, major, and commander. These seem to have been the ranks that evolved
during the guerrilla days, and no accommodation has been made to the structure
of the conventional army. As far as can be determined from available
literature, majors and commanders make up the membership of the general staff
of FAPLA and also command the military regions, brigades, and battalions of
the army in the field. Little is known of the enlisted rank structure. Most
sources refer to "sergeants and ranks," but it is generally assumed that there
are probably at least three or four NCO ranks.

     Until the establishment of the navy and air force, FAPLA consisted only
of ground troops, and the army has continued to be by far the largest and most
important component. In late 1978 Western strength estimates ranged from
11,000 to 50,000, but the International Institute of Strategic Studies'
estimate of FAPLA army strength at 31,000 seemed to be reasonable. Army
deployment is regional, the country being divided into six numbered military
regions. Whether the military regions are structured for purely administrative
purposes or whether they have tactical responsibilities has not been publicly
disclosed, but some newspaper stories have contained indications that military
region staffs do fulfill tactical functions, such as reconnaissance. Military
orders that have been made public showed the appointment of a major to be
commanding officer of the First Military Region, which probably is
headquartered at Luanda, and a commander to be commanding officer of the
Second Military Region, which encompasses the Cabinda Enclave. The boundaries
of the other regions have not been publicized, but Huambo is certainly a
region headquarters, and the other three headquarters are possibly located at
Uige or Mbanza Kongo, Saurimo, and Menongue.

     Exact information on the tactical organization of the FAPLA army has been
scarce, at least for Western observers. If in fact an army Table of
Organization exists, it has not been released to the public. Certain
assumptions about organization can be made because of the heavy Soviet and
Cuban influences on FAPLA, but these can only be assumptions, and the
evolution of the organization from guerrilla force to regular army must also
be taken into account. The groups, sections, and squadrons that existed in the
guerrilla army became the squads, platoons, and companies of the regular army
and are probably commanded by sergeants, lieutenants, and captains
respectively. Battalions commanded by majors or commanders were included in
the structure of the new army, but how many companies constitute a battalion
is unknown. It is likely that battalion organization varies and is probably
tailored for specific operations.

     The MPLA Central Committee, in published documents pertaining to its
plenary session of October 1976, stated, "On the eve of independence the first
regular military unit was formed: the 9th Brigade, whose action was decisive
against the invading groups." No details concerning the brigade were given,
and nothing was known of its composition, its command structure, or its
commanding officer. Later Carreira, in an interview for a Cuban publication,
mentioned the creation of brigades as the basic unit of the army but gave no
information on size, organization, or personnel complement. The only further
public mention of the 9th Brigade came in news reports of the purges that
followed the abortive coup attempt against the Neto government in May 1977.
The "rebellious" brigade was listed among organizations whose ranks were
purged.

     In all likelihood the brigade is a flexible organization that is formed
for specific operations. The defense minister so indicated when he said,
"These brigades can be equipped with technology ranging from field artillery
cannons to tanks supplied by the Soviet Union." In early 1978 a major campaign
against UNITA forces in southern Angola was carried out by five FAPLA
battalions according to newspaper accounts. Obviously a five-battalion
operation had to be coordinated by a higher headquarters, and it is possible
that one brigade or even two brigades comprised the FAPLA force; but no
mention of such units appeared in news accounts.

Navy

     Carreira has stated that plans for a navy had been discussed with Soviet
advisers even before independence, but it wasn't until late 1976 that the
Angolan navy actually began to take shape. The first vessels were Portuguese
patrol craft that were transferred to the Angolans from the Portuguese navy
before its departure and some landing craft transferred from the Soviet navy.
The FAPLA navy
also took over the shore facilities that had been abandoned by the departing
Portuguese. These consisted of the Luanda Naval Base and smaller facilities
in Lobito and Mocamedes. In discussing the navy Carreira noted the greater
difficulties inherent in the creation of naval and air forces where none had
previously existed compared to the building of an army from combat-tested
guerrilla forces. The assistance of the Soviet Union and Cuba in building the
navy was considered invaluable by the military officials of the Neto
government.

     The navy in 1978 was a very small force of about 700 officers and sailors
manning various kinds of patrol boats and landing craft and a few shore
installations. The inventory of vessels in February 1978 included thirteen
patrol boats, one torpedo boat, and eight landing craft. Four of the patrol
boats were Argos class mounting two 40-mm guns and having a complement of
twenty-four. All had been commissioned between 1963 and 1965. There were two
smaller Jupiter class patrol boats, each of which mounted a 20-mm gun and
carried a crew of eight. Commissioning dates were 1964 and 1965. Four
similar patrol boats were of the Bellatrix class with the same armament but
carrying seven crew members. These were all of 1961 and 1962 vintage. One
Soviet patrol boat, listed as a "fast attack craft" mounting four 14.5-mm
machine guns, was transferred from the Soviet navy in 1976. The remaining two
patrol boats were older Portuguese craft of the Alfange class. The torpedo
boat and one of the landing craft were new acquisitions, presented by Soviet
naval authorities in December 1977 at ceremonies held at the Luanda Naval
Base. Soviet crewmen evidently were scheduled to give on-the-job training
to Angolan crews. The chief of the Soviet Military Mission in turning over the
vessels said, "We are sure that with the help of Soviet specialists, the
Angolan comrades will soon be able to assimilate this complicated technology
and to create a powerful force capable of resisting any attacks by enemies
of the Angolan revolution."

Air Force

     The creation of the Angolan air force was proclaimed by President Neto
on January 21, 1976, and by March of that year MiG jets, piloted by Cubans,
were flying combat missions against UNITA guerrillas in the southern part
of the country. Two years later, in a major FAPLA offensive against UNITA,
the MiGs and helicopters used in the operation were still being flown by
Cuban pilots. The technical qualifications needed for most personnel assigned
to a modern air force proved to be a stumbling block, particularly because
of the low literacy level in Angola, but young people were being sent to Cuba
and the Soviet Union for training, and eventually they will begin to take over
positions in their own air force. Meanwhile Cubans provided the trained
manpower needed to fly and maintain modern aircraft. There have also been
rumors of Soviets and East Germans working as technicians; the latter have
been reported as helicopter pilots in anti-UNITA operations, but the East
German government has denied all such reports.

     The air force, like the navy, is small; the personnel complement
at the end of 1977 was estimated at about 800. Equipment at that time
included thirty-three combat aircraft, about thirty transports, and several
helicopters. The combat planes included seventeen MiG-21s, twelve MiG-17s,
and four G-91s. An unconfirmed report from a British pilot who had visited
Luanda in 1978 said that the Angolans had twenty-four MiG-21s and thirty
"battered" MiG-17s, considerably more than the generally accepted estimate.
The MiG-17s, a subsonic single-seat fighter, was originally put into
production in 1953. Its armament consists of three 23-mm guns, and it carries
either four rocket pods (eight rockets each) or two 550-pound bombs. The
MiG-21 flew in prototype in 1955 at supersonic speed and was later produced in
more than twenty versions. It is also a single-seat fighter mounting a
twin-barrel 23-mm gun, and it carries various combinations of rocket pods and
bombs depending on model. The G-91, an Italian Fiat twin jet, mounts two 30-mm
guns and is capable of carrying four 1,000-pound bombs. The four G-91s in the
Angolan air force were transferred from the Portuguese air force before its
departure. The transport aircraft included a variety of Western and Soviet
planes, some regular propeller and some turboprop. The helicopters were mostly
French Alouettes-eleven-but there were also four Soviet Mi-8s and two American
Bell-47s. During the first half of 1978 UNITA took credit for shooting down
several FAPLA aircraft, but the reports were unconfirmed.