Angola and the End of the Cold War

The end of Portugal’s colonial African empire was messy, protracted, and bloody. In Angola, Africa’s seventh-largest nation, the struggle for independence (1961-1974) was followed by a generation of disastrous civil wars (1975-2002) that became entangled with the rivalries of the Cold War. The ruling “People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola” (MPLA) backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba fought against the “National Union for the Total Independence of Angola” (UNITA) supported by the United States and South Africa. The Ovimbundu people, about 38% of Angola’s population, were the base of UNITA’s power, while the Ambundu people (about 25% of the population) and the mixed-race urbanized working class of the capital, Luanda, formed the core of the MPLA.

Between 14 August 1987 and 23 March 1988, the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in the southeastern corner of Angola, pitted these opposing forces against one another in the largest armed clash on the African continent since the battle of El Alamein in 1942.

The battle unfolded in several phases. Initially (2 June 1987), an MPLA offensive planned by Russian advisors and massively equipped with Soviet weapons launched four brigades in an offensive against the UNITA base of Mavinga. This was blocked and forced to retreat (5 October 1987) with heavy losses by a highly mobile defense led by a South African brigade equipped with the excellent G5 155 mm howitzer and Ratel 6x6 armored personnel carrier. The Russians evacuated their advisors by helicopter. Beginning in December, Cuban troops - eventually numbering over 50,000 - began arriving in Angola to reinforce the MPLA. The South Africans brought in Olifant tanks, (their up-gunned version of the British Centurion) which outclassed the MPLA’s Soviet T-55’s. The Cubans and their Angolan allies established a defensive perimeter at Cuito Cuanavale that fought off repeated South African and UNITA attacks. The resulting stalemate led to a ceasefire agreement in 1988, under which Cuban and South African forces withdrew from Angola.

Rambling, repetitive, and poorly edited, this book, a softcover reprint of the original 2013 edition, is a hot mess; a disjointed collection of material, larded with South African hero-worship war stories, and illustrated with numerous blurry photographs from various sources. The author, Peter Polack, is described as “formerly a criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands.” The chapter on the Air War is reasonably good, and a chapter on “The Siege of Cuito Cuanavale” comes close to providing a coherent account of operations. But there are pages and pages that are just lists of names, which contribute nothing to understanding the battle. Astonishingly, there is not a single map, which makes the narrative quite difficult for readers to follow. To adequately research this campaign, one would need to be fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, Afrikaans, and at least two indigenous Angolan languages. There is an extensive literature on this battle, from various sources, which would be of greater value to readers interested in this neglected history.

---///---

Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek.Com and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews in modern history include To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940, Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler, Rome – City in Terror: The Nazi Occupation 1943–44, A Raid on the Red Sea: The Israeli Capture of the Karine A, Strike from the Sea: The Development and Deployment of Strategic Cruise Missiles since 1934, 100 Greatest Battles, Battle for the Island Kingdom, Abraham Lincoln and the Bible, From Ironclads to Dreadnoughts: The Development of the German Battleship, 1864-1918, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City, The Demon of Unrest, Next War: Reimagining How We Fight, Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Hitler's Atomic Bomb, The Dark Path: The Structure of War and the Rise of the West, and

---///---

Note: The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War is also available in hard cover & e-editions.

www.nymas.org