Angolan Civil War

Angola gained independence from Portugal in November 1975 already at war with itself. For the next 27 years the governing MPLA and the rebel movement UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, fought for control of the country, with long ceasefires that repeatedly broke down. For much of that time the war was also a Cold War battleground, drawing in Cuban troops and Soviet aid on one side and South African forces and American support on the other. It ended only after Savimbi was killed in 2002, leaving between 500,000 and 800,000 dead by common estimates and millions uprooted.

The 1975 Alvor Agreement meant to share power among the three nationalist movements that had fought the Angolan War of Independence, but it soon collapsed. By August the MPLA held Luanda and most provincial capitals. In October South Africa sent troops north from Namibia in support of the FNLA and UNITA, and Zaire backed the FNLA, while Cuba ferried in soldiers to help the MPLA. On 11 November 1975 Agostinho Neto proclaimed the People's Republic of Angola; the FNLA and UNITA set up a rival government in Huambo. With some 18,000 Cuban troops and Soviet backing, the MPLA won the conventional war by February 1976, and South African forces withdrew. The FNLA faded away, but UNITA retreated to the south-east to continue a guerrilla war.

Through the 1980s UNITA, supported by South Africa and, after Congress repealed a ban on aid in 1985, by the United States, held large parts of the south and east. The MPLA government relied on Cuban troops, whose numbers eventually reached tens of thousands, and Soviet and East German advisers. The war was entangled with South Africa's conflict with Namibian independence fighters based in southern Angola. In 1987 an MPLA offensive towards Mavinga was broken by South African intervention, and from January to March 1988 UNITA and South African forces besieged Cuito Cuanavale in one of the largest battles fought in Africa since the Second World War. Both sides claimed victory.

Talks among Angola, Cuba and South Africa produced the New York Accords of 22 December 1988, which linked Namibian independence to the withdrawal of foreign troops. The MPLA abandoned Marxism-Leninism and accepted multi-party politics in 1990, and the last Cubans left in 1991. On 31 May 1991 President José Eduardo dos Santos and Savimbi signed the Bicesse Accords. In the September 1992 election dos Santos officially won 49.6 per cent and Savimbi 40.6 per cent; Savimbi rejected the result as unfair, and before a run-off could be held, fighting erupted in Luanda at the end of October.

The renewed war was fiercer than before. UNITA seized several provincial capitals and took Huambo after a 55-day battle in early 1993. By one estimate perhaps 120,000 people were killed in the 18 months after the election, and both sides committed serious abuses, including UNITA's shelling of besieged cities and government reprisals against civilians. Government gains in 1994 forced UNITA to sign the Lusaka Protocol on 31 October that year, but disarmament never fully happened. UNITA financed itself through diamond sales, and from 1998 full-scale war resumed.

In the final phase the government, which bought arms from Eastern Europe, in part by trading oil, steadily pushed UNITA back and captured its diamond areas. On 22 February 2002 government troops killed Savimbi in Moxico province. The government halted offensive operations in March, the two armies' commanders agreed a ceasefire, and the war is usually dated as ending on 4 April 2002. UNITA demobilised its forces and became a political party later that year.

The war left about 4.28 million people internally displaced, roughly a third of the population, wrecked infrastructure and left the countryside strewn with landmines that still kill civilians.

Our 1985 map shows independent Angola in the middle of the war, with Namibia still under South African rule to the south; our 1994 and 2000 maps show the country during the later phases of fighting.