African Party For The Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde - National Revolutionary Struggle

National Revolutionary Struggle

Amílcar Cabral founded the party with his brother Luís in then-Portuguese Guinea in 1956, advocating the independence of Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea from Portugal.

In the 1950s, Portuguese Guinea was the poorest and least developed Portuguese colony in Africa, though it was prized for its strategic position, as it acted as a stepping stone from Portugal to her colonies of Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Angola.

In 1959, the Pijiguiti Massacre took place, when Portuguese soldiers opened fire on protesting dockworkers, killing 50. This massacre caused a large segment of the population to swing towards the PAIGC's push for independence. Portugal, however, still considered the PAIGC to be irrelevant, and took no serious action in trying to suppress it.

In 1961, the FRELIMO in Mozambique, the MPLA of Angola and the PAIGC formed the Conferência das Organizações Nacionalistas das Colónias Portuguesas (Portuguese: Conference of Nationalist Organisations of the Portuguese Colonies), a common party to coordinate the struggles for independence of Portuguese colonies across Africa. The three groups were often represented at international events by the CONCP.

The PAIGC was originally a peaceful movement, their first strategy being requests for the Portuguese to peacefully withdraw from their Guinea colony. As this failed, however, the PAIGC turned to more violent measures to achieve independence.

Armed struggle against the Portuguese began in March 1962 with an abortive attack by PAIGC guerrillas on Praia. Guerrilla warfare was largely concentrated to the mainland Guinea, however, as logistical reasons prevented an armed struggle on the Cape Verde islands. On the Cape Verde islands PAIGC worked in a clandestine manner. After being nearly crippled militarily, Amílcar Cabral ordered that sabotage be the PAIGC's main weapon until military strength could be regained.

In January 1963, Cabral declared full scale war against the Portuguese, and on January 23, the Portuguese fortress at Tite came under heavy gunfire from PAIGC guerrillas. Frequent attacks in the north also took place. In that same month, attacks on police stations in Fulacunda and Buba were carried out not only by the PAIGC but also by the FLING.

In the context of the ongoing Cold War, PAIGC guerrillas received Kalashnikovs from the USSR, bazookas from Cuba and recoilless rifles from the People's Republic of China. Guerrillas were also trained in these countries.

The first party congress took place at liberated Cassaca in February 1964, in which both the political and military arms of the PAIGC were assessed and reorganized, with a regular army (Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People, FARP) to supplement the guerrilla forces (The People's Guerrillas).

Como Island was the site of a major battle between PAIGC and Portuguese forces, in which the PAIGC took control of the island and resisted fierce counterattacks by the Portuguese, including airstrikes by FAP (Portuguese: Força Aérea Portuguesa; Portuguese Air Force) F-86 Sabres.

Throughout the war, the Portuguese handled themselves poorly. It took them a long time to finally take the PAIGC seriously, diverting aircraft and troops based in Guinea to the conflicts in Mozambique and Angola, and by the time that the Portuguese government began to realise that the PAIGC was a significant threat to their continued rule over Guinea, it was too late. Very little was done to curtail the guerrilla operations; the Portuguese didn't try to sever the link between the populace and the PAIGC until very late in the war, and as a result, it became very dangerous for Portuguese troops to operate far from their fortresses.

Following the loss of Como Island, the Portuguese army, navy and the air force (FAP) began the Operation Tridente, a combined arms operation to retake the island. The PAIGC fought fiercely, and the Portuguese took heavy casualties and gained ground slowly.

Finally, after 71 days of fighting and 851 FAP combat sorties, the island was taken back by the Portuguese. However, less than two months later, the PAIGC would retake the island, as the Portuguese operation to capture it had depleted much of their invasion force, leaving the island vulnerable.

Como Island ceased to be of strategic importance to Portugal following establishment of new PAIGC positions in the south, especially on the Cantanhez and Quitafine Peninsulas. Large numbers of Portuguese troops on these peninsulas were encircled and besieged by guerrillas.

In 1966, Amílcar Cabral attended the Conferencia Tricontinental Enero in Havana and made a great impression on Fidel Castro. As a result of this, Cuba agreed to supply artillery experts, doctors and technicians to assist in the independence struggle. The head of the Cuban Military Mission was Victor Dreke.

By 1967, the PAIGC had carried out 147 attacks on Portuguese barracks and army encampments, and effectively controlled 2/3 of Portuguese Guinea. The following year, Portugal began a new campaign against the guerrillas with the arrival of the new governor of the colony, António de Spínola. Spínola began a massive construction campaign, building schools, hospitals, new housing and improving telecommunications and the road system, in an attempt to gain public favour in Guinea. PAIGC was the first African party to establish a comprehensive cooperative program with Sweden.

However, in 1970, the FAP began to use similar weapons to those the US was using in the Vietnam War: napalm and defoliants, the former to destroy guerrillas when they could find them, the latter to decrease the number of ambushes that occurred when they could not.

Spínola's tenure as governor marked a turning point in the war: Portugal began to win battles, and in a Portuguese invasion of Guinea, 1970 raid on Conakry, in the neighbouring Republic of Guinea, 400 amphibious troops attacked the city and freed 26 Portuguese prisoners of war kept there by the PAIGC.

The USSR and Cuba began to send more weapons to Portuguese Guinea via Nigeria, notably several Ilyushin Il-14 aircraft to use as bombers.

Though the Portuguese army in the Guinea colony began to start winning battles more frequently, following a leftist military coup d'état, the Portuguese government began to negotiate with the PAIGC, and on September 10, independence was granted. Luís Cabral, brother of Amílcar, became the country's first president.

In January 1973, a crushing blow was dealt to the PAIGC: its leader, Amílcar Cabral, was assassinated, not by the Portuguese, but rather by a disgruntled former associate. Independence was unilaterally declared on September 24, 1973 and was recognized by a 93–7 UN General Assembly vote in November, unprecedented as it denounced illegal Portuguese aggression and occupation and was prior to Portuguese recognition.

1,875 Portuguese soldiers (out of 35,000 stationed in Portuguese Guinea) and some 6,000 (out of 10,000) PAIGC troops were killed by the end of the 11 year war.