Gleijeses is the author of Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976. The book traces the history of Cubas internationalist aid to the independence struggles of African countries against colonial rule, beginning in Algeria in 1961 to the Congo and Guinea Bissau. Conflicting Missions also gives a detailed account of the first two years of Cubas mission to help defend newly independent Angola in 1975 against an invasion by troops of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
As he does in his book, Gleijeses reviewed the stakes involved in Angola for Washington and apartheid-era Pretoria, on the one hand, and for Luanda, Havana, and the national liberation movements in southern African, on the other.
The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), Gleijeses said, was winning popular support and the civil war against UNITA and FNLA. The inevitable military defeat of UNITA, in particular, forced Pretoria to intervene directly. More than Angola was at stake for the apartheid regime, Gleijeses continued. An independent Angola would provide a secure rear base of operations for troops of the South West Africa Peoples Organisation fighting a guerilla war against apartheid rule in neighboring Namibia.
On Oct. 14, 1975, an elite South African column intervened in the civil war in Angola against the MPLA in support of one of its rivals, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) was aided by the U.S.-backed regime of Joseph Mobutu in neighboring Zaire, now the Republic of Congo, with the help of the CIA.
With superior armor and artillery, the apartheid army columns quickly overran MPLA forces in southern Angola. On November 7, at the request of the MPLA, the Cuban government sent the first battle group of 652 soldiers to help stop the South African advance. Hundreds of other Cuban volunteers would follow.
Washington saw the Cuban intervention as a proxy for Soviet policy in Africa, Gleijeses said. But the archives containing the daily reports received by Kissinger about the arrival of Cuban troops in Angola confirm Havanas contention that Cubas decision was taken completely independent from Moscow. Henry Kissinger was secretary of state in the Nixon administration.
Gleijeses read from Cuban, U.S., and Soviet archives showing that Havana decided not to inform Moscow of its decision to send troops to Angola to fight the South African invasion until well after the operation had begun, in the belief that Moscow would not have agreed. Neither did Cuba receive aid from Moscow in sending troops to Angola. The Cubans had to use very old planes that couldnt make the trip without a couple for refueling stops, Gleijeses recounted. When the governments of Barbados, Jamaica, and Venezuela agreed to provide refueling stations, the U.S. came down on them like a ton of bricks.
One question during the discussion was whether the Cuban internationalist mission in Angola was a net gain or net loss.
The victory of the MPLA and Cuba in Angola went far beyond the bounds of Angola, Gleijeses replied. In 1987, when South African forces had trapped the best Angolan brigade in the town of Cuito Cuanavale, he said, Havana sent its best troops and equipment, not only to save Cuito Cuanavale but also to drive the apartheid troops out of Angola.
During the first three months of 1988, integrated units of Cuban troops, the Angolan MPLA, and the Namibian SWAPO broke the back of the South African encirclement of Cuito Cuanavale and subsequently routed its forces in southern Angola. On June 13, 1988, representatives from Luanda, Havana, Washington, and Pretoria signed an agreement setting the framework for withdrawal of South African troops from Angola and the independence of Namibia.
The revolutionary victory at Cuito Cuanavale had broader repercussions throughout southern Africa.
In Rhodesia, Gleijeses said, the Carter administration decided not to aid the white minority regime for fear that it might provoke military intervention by Cuban forces who were in neighboring Mozambique. The white-minority regime ceded power in 1979. The following year, Rhodesia, a former British colony, gained independence and the country was renamed Zimbabwe.
Gleijeses added that the Cuban mission in Angola also contributed greatly to the struggle to bring down the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. Citing Nelson Mandelas tribute to the Cuban Revolution in a speech the African National Congress leader gave at a rally of tens of thousands in Matanzas, Cuba, on July 26, 1991, Gleijeses said, The decisive defeat of the apartheid aggressors broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors… Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation.
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