Russia's Vietnam?

Fred Bridgland

With world attention in Africa focused on the struggle for Chad, the biggest

nattle yet in the more important eight-year

war for the southern African state of Angola has been largely ignored. The fall of tIle garrison of Cangamba in the middle of c,‘..tigust to rebel Angolan forces marked a rid of Dien Bien Phu for the Cuban- "acked army of Angola's Marxist MPLA AgOVernment. Cangamba, 300 miles inside ngola ifrom the Namibian border, was the site of fo a last stand made by government . rces in a vast swathe of territory about the size of Britain held by insurgents of the 1-111ITA movement. I Passed close to Cangamba during a `,C100-rnile journey through Angola with UNIITA (the National Union for the Total In- ea nePendenee of Angola) earlier this Year. ngamba was defended by two brigades of (Popular Movement for the Libera

a -

tion of Angola) soldiers, the 44th Brigade

nd the 32nd — a total of 2,800 men. There

were also two companies (100 to a corn- !;,11Y) of Cuban troops in the town. The -mtil was a crack brigade, sent from Luan- da, the capital, to ensure that the govern- 'nein retained a foothold within UNITA ter- i°rY. To avoid UNITA missile units around angamba the MPLA was using light A. n- Innov transport planes which arrived high over the town to and made spiralling descents the airstrip. Ca UNITA was clearly determined to take . ngarnba before the year was out, The ,rebels' leader, Dr Jonas Savimbi, told me: hCangarnba is vulnerable. Around it we ,.ave four teams of Sam-7s, so it is difficult ,about it.

tor them to supply. We have a big plan

That plan was put into operation Italia Month. UNITA claims to have captured e 1°wn More after an 11-day siege in which than 1,000 defenders were killed, This Makes it by far the biggest battle n A,1101a's civil war — which began in 1975 i ter Portugal announced it intended giving Independence

The MPLA confirmed in a communique to its 500-year-old colony. fr°n1 Luanda that Cangamba had been

9 r,azed; i est but President dos Santos said the ..ructon

had been wrought by eight south African jets and that only 53 govern- ,nlent troops had died in the town's defence. Afric

ittI.TA is no virgin-pure outfit and South 1tnala is clearly exploiting Angola's inter- co.nflict for its own ends, but my convic- ton is that the UNITA account will prove n.e.arer.the truth. South Africa openly sup- 311es diesel fuel and spare parts for UNITA'S 1°18 truck fleet and — despite UNITA denials wealpons and ammunition. But neither Dr UNITA nor South Africa does it make n to be seen fighting together in Angola. The defeat at Cangamba has dented Luanda's morale heavily. Conversely, UNITA'S spirits — already high after a suc- cession of victories earlier this year — have risen further; and some 6,000 or more of its soldiers have been freed from the siege of Cangamba to join other strike forces who have already moved well north of the Benguela railway line.

In the first week of September a series of towns north of the railway fell to UNITA. The most important is Calulo, within 100 miles of Luanda, where 27 Brazilians, Spaniards and Portuguese were captured. The hostages include a dozen or more priests and nuns, and the Vatican has already contacted UNITA'S European representatives to negotiate their release.

Afresh assessment of the war in Angola has been needed for some years. Academic and journalistic analyses have been far too conventional — either predic- tably left- or right-wing in their orient- ation, none rigorously interpreting the com- plexity of the situation.

Angola was just another obscure African country, although about twice the size of France, when it made world headlines in 1975-76 after a civil war broke out and rapidly became internationalised. The US, China, the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa and a number of black African states all gave varying degrees of backing to their clients in the war, But by February 1976 the MPLA, helped by $300 million of Soviet arms and 20,000 Cuban troops, had emerged the clear winners and gained wide recognition as the legitimate government of Angola. With the MPLA looking impregnable as a consequence of Soviet and Cuban support, few newspapers bothered to pick up a state- ment which emerged from the Angolan bush in May 1976. Some 1,000 members of the defeated UNITA had regrouped and vowed to fight on until the elections agreed for independence were finally held. The Cuanza River Manifesto said: 'There will be no peace in Angola, no economic develop- ment, no railroad traffic, no working har- bours while the Luanda regime hangs on to power thanks to Cuban soldiers and Rus- sian armour and fighter planes.

`We know that we will triumph. Those that have the people are never small, even faced with the giant imperialist Russian in- vaders. With the people you always win. Against the people you always lose.'

That may be inflated language, but seven years on from the Cuanza Manifesto UNITA is beginning to win. Even before the Cangamba victory, units of its army were wriggling like eels northwards through Angola between the main towns, picking

off MPLA garrisons and making hostages of foreign contract workers. There is evidence that UNITA troops have pushed a corridor all the way from the Namibian border to the north, where a salient of Zaire adjoins Angola; men and materials may now be coming across the border from Zaire.

There is plenty of other evidence of spec- tacular UNITA successes this year: the destruction of Angola's second biggest dam, the Lomaum, which fed electricity to the country's main industrial complexes at Lobito, Benguela and Huambo; the destruction of two major road and rail bridges over the Giraul River in the desert near the southern port of Mocamedes; the sacking of a major industrial complex in the most densely populated part of the country between Lobito and Huambo, and the tak- ing from there of 64 Czechoslavak, 20 Por- tuguese and one Cuban army officer as hostages; the capture of the strategic town of Gago Coutinho which gives UNITA con- trol of the border with Zambia; the raiding of a political prison at Tan, 700 miles north of Angola's border with Namibia, and the release of 300 prisoners, including Brazilians and Portuguese.

We may be about to find out what hap- pens when a Soviet-Cuban expeditionary force in the post-Western colonial era gets into major trouble.

The war in Angola is now on a far larger scale than at any time during the 1975-76 civil war. It is against this background that all reports of an impen- ding settlement of the crisis in Namibia need to be weighed. Some reports suggest there is a possibility of the withdrawal from Angola of Cuban troops. The Cuban with- drawal will in turn lead to a ceasefire in Namibia, elections, the withdrawal of South African troops and independence for the territory, so the reports conclude. This is pie in the sky. Reports have been appear- ing at intervals for the past five years sug- gesting that a settlement in Namibia was 'imminent'. But what was imminent has never actually happened.

With hindsight there have been many reasons why a Namibian settlement was never possible. There is one major reason why it is not possible now. Because UNITA IS so buoyant and making steady gains, a Cuban withdrawal from Angola would lead within a short time to defeat for Moscow's and Havana's client, the MPLA government. Cuba and the Soviet Union would suffer a stunning loss of prestige across the African continent. And that loss of prestige would spread to Asia and Central America, where the two countries are either fighting wars or backing governments or insurgents of their own ideological hue.

The Russians and Cubans are hardly like- ly to run such a risk. So the war in Angola will continue and intensify. South Africa will go on sitting tight in Namibia, refusing to budge until the Cubans leave Angola. At

the United Nations there will be much denunciation of the South Africans (most of it routine, and little of it having much to do with the stands taken by governments in secret diplomacy); there will be much routine support for SWAPO, the nationalist insurgency movement which would un- doubtedly win any fair election in Namibia but which is constantly worn down by South African ruthlessness and SWAPO's own chronic internal corruption. But nothing will change for the better.

Of all those voices crying for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Namibia and the holding of free elections, which have been demanding the same for Angola? Scarcely any. Elections were planned for Angola in 1975. The consensus of most journalists and diplomats in Luanda at the time was that UNITA would win 35 to 45 per cent of the votes in Angola's planned in- dependence elections. The MPLA would win 30 to 35 per cent and a third movement, the now moribund FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), 20 to 25 per cent.

Independence was scheduled for 11 November 1975, but fighting broke out in April of that year between the MPLA and FNLA. In August UNITA also entered the war after being attacked by the MPLA. Then, in a deplorable act of colonial irresponsibility, the Portuguese put on one side the election agreement they had signed with all three liberation movements and scuttled from Angola, leaving the most precious of their African territories to descend deeper into anarchy and civil war.

The Soviet Union seized the initiative to put the MPLA in power with an injection of Soviet arms and Cuban troops. However, there was a certain irony in Moscow's sud- den largesse towards its client: a few years earlier Russia had stopped giving aid to the MPLA because it had split into three factions who spent more time killing each other in Zambia than killing Portuguese inside Angola.

Nobody knew much about UNITA. This was partly because they had based therlio' selves entirely inside Angola, putting 0, practice principles their leaders had lea, on a guerrilla warfare course at Nal Military Academy and advice Savimbi been given by his friend Che Guevara, was to die practising what he preachect;,5 Bolivia. In 1973 the Washington P°S'as Africa correspondent described the most radical of the Angolan liberao"° f movements. In truth UNITA was scare& more than nuisance value to the Nrt,d,li guese, though unlike the MPLA it was ,14 the enemy at the time of the 19' revolution in Portugal. In 1975, when Savimbi saw the rate:t which the Soviet Union was arming, I jr MPLA, he appealed to the West for be'P ensuring that elections would be held agreed. The West responded by dire .1 Savimbi towards South Africa for milita„I'd help. The West provided only token, a" covert, military support of its own. Two South African armoured colon° entered the civil war in October 1975.11'; 2,000-strong Zulu and Foxbat colurno_s,!,fl vanced rapidly 700 miles northwards. the South African presence was discoverje Pretoria demanded that the West alweif number of black African states change thhe covert support into open backingfor tut South African role in Angola. But the We.,s1, did not want to be linked publicly South Africa, so the South Africans turil!d, back and went home. The Cubans, av°1,1, ing close pursuit of the hated Scni' Africans, filled the vacuum. t. n Western policy had been slothful wnb was not cowardly, and after the African withdrawal it was opportunisilb"e. The West Europeans — though not Americans — abandoned their concern Pti elections in Angola and now proclaiales that Namibia was the place where elect5, mattered. The MPLA, despite all the Malli a jargon, would probably turn out to beid perfectly decent set of chaps who vit;,1/,,s want to buy a lot of our goods and seli

their diamonds, coffee and iron ore. .

It was assumed there would be no 5ert°11,; internal resistance in Angola to the MOAK) takeover of the country. That Prc)v-, wrong. UNITA fought back against 3,1/ parently overwhelming odds and it no* av pears to be winning the war. It is a turn of events that poses an aelj,l,es problem for the Angolan governinei'd Soviet and Cuban allies. Soon Moscow Havana will have to decide between advid, ing its MPLA client to sue for peace or sell.51 ing in more Cuban or other Comlnunid. troops in an attempt to halt UNITA'S atjs vance. The latter would be a tremenatb gamble. It would provoke a strong Sc/15 African reaction and also the anger of government that has demanded the 01%5 drawal of the 20,000 or more Cuban tro°r., from Angola as the price for Washingt()%1 help in securing a South African withdrag' from Namibia. Angola is beginning to look like tile Soviet empire's Vietnam.