The US and the war in Angola

In: Review of African political economy, Volume 18, Issue 50

Abstract

Since South Africa's withdrawal from Namibia in 1989, the US has become the primary patron of Angola's UNITA contras. US resentment about the defeat of their Joint intervention into Angola with South Africa in 1975–76 fed into right‐wing cold war calculations in the Reagan period. Covert aid increased greatly from 1986 despite liberal pressures to be realistic and recognise Luanda partly as a result of influential lobbying in Washington on behalf of UNITA, with which the Angolan government found it hard to compete. But 'global managers' who were more pragmatic than ideological manage to promote the 1988 accords with the Soviet Union, Cuba, Angola and South Africa which lead to the two former withdrawing from Angola and Namibian independence, although Washington failed to follow through with an internal peace plan for Angola and stepped up arms supplies to UNITA which lead to renewed fighting. However, there are some signs that the UNITA lobby may be on the wane.