Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0012/00129.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 30KB | 464 lines

$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, th