Angolan Civil War
The Angolan Civil War was a conflict that plagued the country from the beginning of its independence until 2002. The war was the longest running conflict in Africa and claimed the lives of a million people. The conflict was between the communist MPLA and Cuba against FNLA and UNITA, who in turn received support and assistance from the USA via South Africa and Zaire.
The United States and the USSR downplayed their involvement due to their own military problems in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and they participated through their various proxies only, although several USSR officers were killed and captured in Angola by the South Africans. Cuba would become the only major non-African nation to openly intervene in this conflict. The war ended with an international agreement in which the MPLA and UNITA agreed to hold democratic elections.
Read more about this topic: Military History Of Angola
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“The utter helplessness of a conquered people is perhaps the most tragic feature of a civil war or any other sort of war.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don’t go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It’s always so.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)