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The Conflict Resolution Process in Angola

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Anthony G. Pazzanita
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Extract

Of the dozens of conflicts in the Third World which have occurred in the post-war era, few have been of greater duration and bloodshed or have attracted the attention of as many outside actors, including the superpowers, as Angola. It has only been since the mid-1980s that the conflict began moving towards eventual settlement, with the prospects for peace often seeming to depend largely on the attitudes of Cuba, South Africa, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Further affecting the overall environment was the state of East–West relations, the internal situation in Angola, and South Africa's occupation of Namibia. A short historical background will serve as prelude to an extensive examination of the dynamics which fuelled the war in Angola for such a long period of time.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 83 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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11 It appears that Cuba sent combat troops for its own political and nationalistic reasons and not at the instigation of Moscow. See Rubinstein, op. cit. pp. 173–4, and sources cited; also Gavshon, op. cit. pp. 248–9, and Steele, Jonathan, Soviet Power: the Kremlin's foreign policy – Brezhnev to Chernenko (New York, 1984), p. 230.Google Scholar

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42 See ibid. p. 151, for a map of the disengagement area. See also The New York Times, 19 February 1984, and Martin, David and Johnson, Phyllis, ‘Africa: the old and the unexpected’, in Foreign Affairs, 63, Winter 1984–1985, pp. 611–13.Google Scholar

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47 Hanlon, op. cit. p. 164.

48 Ibid. pp. 163–7, and Coker, op. cit. p. 33, for a military analysis of a late 1985 offensive by the M.P.L.A. against Unita.

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61 Discussed in ibid. pp. 112–13; Halliday, op. cit. p. 39; and Bender, loc. cit. pp. 21–5.

62 Bender, loc. cit. p. 23.

63 For a discussion of the Soviet attitude, see McFaul, loc. cit. pp. 113–18 and p. 121, note 92.

64 Ibid. pp. 118 and 120–1 for a discussion of the important Continuities of Soviet relations with Angola under Gorbachev.

65 Bender, loc. cit. p. 22. For a description of the earlier stages of this process, see Zartman, op. cit. p. 228.

66 Ibid.

67 There were at this time 35,000 to 37,000 Cuban troops in Angola according to Zartman, op. cit. p. 227.

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