S6 Episode 9 - "Something Big and Bloody"

Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James. And I'm Noah Colwyn. And this is Season 6, Episode 9, Something Big and Bloody. Last episode, the Reagan government won re-election in a landslide. Good news for the forces of the Angolan nationalist Jonas Savimbi and his friends in apartheid South Africa, both of whom were making a renewed push to smash the government of Angola. The U.S. leaned toward South Africa's interests, but key diplomats, such as Chester Crocker at the State Department, pursued a policy that was meant to mellow South Africa's expansionist impulses while driving Angola's Cuban allies out of the continent altogether. Through ideas such as constructive engagement and linkage, the plan was to get the apartheid state to allow elections in Namibia, the country sitting between South Africa and Angola, which the South Africans had been occupying militarily and running for years. In return, the United States would pressure the Cubans and the Soviets to wind down or even break off entirely their commitments to the Angolan government. But that balancing act was harder to achieve than the Americans initially thought. The South Africans in Savimbi, not to mention their allies in the West, never accepted the idea that the United States could force them into coexistence with either an independent Namibia or an independent Angola. Meanwhile, Jonas Savimbi, already a welcome guest in the White House, poured millions of dollars into a PR campaign directed at the international, and particularly American, media. The warlord donned a black Nehru jacket, and, never forgetting to mention his Christian pedigree, preached the gospel of anti-communism. Though there had been reports of his unsavory treatment of his enemies, not to mention his allies, the Savimbi lobby, made up of the PR firm Black Manafort & Stone and lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff, they were still able to craft an image of Savimbi as a freedom fighter, not unlike the brave Mujahideen in Afghanistan. By the late 1980s, three struggles in southern Africa were now converging. First and foremost, the independence of Namibia, where the Angolan government had been supporting the anti-South African resistance movement, SWAPO, whom everyone knew would win elections should South Africa relinquish its occupation. Second, the internal resistance and external condemnation of South Africa itself, whose apartheid system was wobbling, and with it, all South Africa's regional plans for white rule. But the third struggle that would have an outsized effect on both of those was the showdown reaching its climax in Angola. In this episode, we'll see a damning reversal of MPLA and Soviet tactics as South Africa sinks its claws deeper into Angola, an event that will be answered by a renewed campaign by Cuba to turn the tide against UNITA and its sponsors in Pretoria. In the southwest, Cuban forces would, for the first time, link up with fighters from SWAPO, delivering a serious blow to the enemy, while connecting the Angolan and Namibian struggles outright. But the long war in Angola that began in 1975 would reach its zenith in a tiny village called Quido Quinevale. In this tiny village, the standoff between the Angolan government and its allies, and South Africa and its collaborators, would form the largest battle in Africa since the Second World War. In Angola, war and fear are everywhere. Men with guns are even part of the marketplace. Outside the towns, the only safe way to travel is in armed convoys or by Soviet helicopter, fast and low to avoid American Stinger missiles, reportedly supplied to rebel forces last year. Angola has the highest per capita population of amputees in the world. Large supplies of cheap landmines, deliberately hidden by Unita rebels along the edges of rivers and fields, have maimed and killed thousands of peasants. The day we visited one amputation center, yet another victim was brought in with smashed legs. There will be more. For years, the headquarters of Jonas Savimbi in his war against the MPLA was Jamba. Located in the southeastern corner of the country, wedged between the borders of Namibia and Zambia, Jamba had become the heart of Savimbi's personal empire of corruption, exploitation, ivory trafficking, sex trafficking, and witch-burning. Were Savimbi ever to be truly defeated, the MPLA government knew that it had to strike a dagger into the heart at Jamba. And so, in the summer of 1987, the government, advised by its Soviet ally in particular, launched Operation Salute to October. It was a mission to crush Unita's presence in the southeast of Angola and dislodge Savimbi from Jamba. Luanda's loyal allies in Havana vehemently disagreed with the Soviet commanders leading this campaign, believing that it could invite an overwhelming South African response. As we witnessed over the last several episodes, a year earlier, Yanida had captured territory miles inward in a serious challenge to the government, specifically the area of Mavinga, which the Angolan army had consistently failed to recapture. The MPLA knew it would have to carry out a major campaign for Mavinga to reverse enemy momentum, and so the Angolans decided to launch it from the nearby town of Cuito-Quanevale. It was thought, at least by the Soviet commanders, that this may even turn the tide of the war. At first, the push for Mavinga looked to be a smashing success. The Angolan army met little resistance in its slow, deliberate advance, writes Piero Gleheses. Morale was high. But the South Africans had been aware of Luanda's plans and had been on standby to intervene and assist Jonas Savimbi's forces, if necessary. And it was beginning to look rather necessary. Quote, a South African army history noted that Unita forces in the area appeared totally incapable of halting the offensive on their own. By late August, two of the four Angolan brigades, the 47th and 59th, had reached the Lomba River, the last significant barrier before Mavinga, and the remaining two brigades were approaching the river close behind. On top of already deployed special forces, the SADF then sent new divisions to back up UNITA, but the commander in charge demanded that quote-unquote clues of South Africa's involvement be kept to a minimum. The South African reinforcements spoiled Luanda's rapid advance. Airstrikes, not to mention long-range guns and heavy artillery, turned their drive toward the enemy into a defensive action. Despite desperate warnings from the Cubans, the Angolan commanders refused a tactical retreat, convinced that they only needed to weather a brief counterattack. Behind the scenes, South Africa's leaders sensed an opportunity to go for the jugular. President P.W. Bota gave his blessing to a larger operation, to throttle the Angolans and back Unida to the hilt. Just as Luanda had been convinced that Operation Salute to October would defeat its enemies, Pretoria was starting to think its own counterattack, Operation Modular, would be the beginning of the end for its enemies in Angola and Namibia. Quito-Quanevale was where they had hoped to pin the tail on this donkey. A South African commander recalled that Botta had approved, quote, the total destruction of the enemy forces north of the Lomba River, and the advance to and possible capture of Cuito-Quanevale itself. We started with essentially the same battle plan we used in 1985, simply to stop the Angolan offensive, remembered one general. But our plans changed when everything went so well. It was decided halfway through the battle, let's take Cuito. Though the South Africans officially denied any intimate involvement in this standoff in the Southeast, the South African paper The Johannesburg Star summed it up. Quote, In the opening weeks of October, the South Africans annihilated Angola's 47th Brigade, a devastating blow to what only months earlier had been a confident military force. The Cubans, who had so far stayed out of the catastrophe in southeast Angola, were far from happy to be proven right. By then, writes South African General Johannes Geldenhuis, it was an open secret that South Africa was up to something with UNITA in southeastern Angola. Pretoria, however, admitted only that its troops were launching raids against Swapo in Kunene province, hundreds of miles west of Mavinga. All the while, Savimbi was thumping his chest as the SADF flew 40 journalists from South Africa to Mavinga to celebrate Savimbi's latest victory. Angola's president, José Eduardo dos Santos was frantic to understand how things had gone so wrong he summoned his cabinet as well as his in-country Cuban and Soviet advisors the head of the Cuban military mission more or less said, I told you so quote, we Cubans were always against the Mavinga operation end quote meanwhile, the head of the Soviet mission, Rezcleheses acted as if he were blameless Quote, I'm just an advisor. But now it was the other side's turn to get complacent. Throughout October, the South Africans and Unita dallied, to use Glehesis' word. Unita was not pulling its weight, said one SADF major. Quote, its attitude seemed to be very much one of, well, the Burrs are here, so we don't have to do any of the fighting. End quote. Instead of pursuing the retreating brigades, Savimbi bragged about the, quote, magnificent victory his troops had achieved, forcing the Angolans and their Cuban and Soviet backers into a full retreat. Then something unprecedented happened. On November 11th, 1987, General Geldenhuis announced publicly that the SADF was fighting in southeastern Angola alongside UNITA against the MPLA and its Cuban and Soviet allies who were, quote, using tanks, sophisticated ground-to-air missiles, fighter aircraft, and attack helicopters to capture the province. The SADF will continue to act, Galdenhuis said, as long as Russian and Cuban forces intervene. This open declaration of war surprised many, including Jonas Savimbi, who until then had been quite happy with UNITA taking credit for South African firepower and stratagems. Savimbi attempted to deny reality to the press, but the toothpaste was out of the tube. When Gleheses asked Geldenhuis himself why the government had also made public at this time P.W. Butta's visit to South African troops inside Angola, the general countered, They all do it. Was it wrong for the U.S. presidents to visit the troops in Vietnam? King's presidents have always visited their troops on the battlefield. After a pause, Geldenhuis added, the president wanted to score points with the public. As the autumn drew on, the South African campaign was not only recognized as blatant, but also illegal. In November, the UN Security Council issued a resolution condemning Praetoria's new offensive on Angolan soil. It demanded South Africa withdraw ASAP, but by now it was clear that the only thing in the way of Praetoria's ambitions was military resistance. the ANC and its allies at home, SWAPO in Namibia, and MPLA, Cuban, and Soviet forces in Angola. On the Security Council, the United States had voted to condemn South Africa's new Angolan operation. But behind closed doors, this maneuver was understood to be pure theater. The Reagan administration assumed, writes scholar George Wright, that it would give them leverage with the Angolan government without having to apply any sanctions on Pretoria. The South African ambassador winked at Chester Crocker, reports Gleheses, in response to the U.S. vote. It was, he said, a necessary sop to the MPLA to keep the negotiation process in play. Crocker agreed, writing in his memoir, the resolution did not contain a call for comprehensive sanctions and did not provide for any assistance to Angola. That was no accident, but a consequence of our own efforts to keep the resolution within bounds. South Africa, for its part, told America that it was planning a tactical withdrawal to be completed by Christmas, reports Wright. But in fact, South Africa had no intention of leaving Angola. The South Africans considered the enemy at Quido Quinevale doomed. The Angolan troops were demoralized, their commanders overwhelmed, and the MPLA forces were indeed spread thin, guarding a terrified population. But they had established a bridgehead, defended by some 1,500 soldiers on the eastern shore across from the town, writes Clehesus. The South African generals decided that they would launch tank attacks supported by Unita infantry against the bridgehead. The fall of the bridgehead would demoralize the defenders in Quito and lead to the fall of the town. It would take a few more weeks. Geldenhuis's instructions were that after the town had fallen, it should be left in the hands of Unita. The SADF would give Savimbi the credit for the victory, hoping to boost his international prestige and hide its own role. But something stood in the way of Savimbi's latest and greatest battlefield coronation, the Cubans. While U.S.-Soviet relations had improved since Mikhail Gorbachev had become general secretary, Relations between Moscow and Havana were coolant. The Cubans were unhappy with a newfound reluctance in Moscow to provide weapons to places like Angola. Nor did the Cubans agree with Gorbachev's perestroika, the liberalization of the Soviet economy, a self-imposed restructuring around market forces rather than government planning. In July 1987, the CIA suggested, quote, While he seems to respect Gorbachev for his audacity, vitality, and decisiveness, Castro is also convinced that the Soviet leader has embarked on a disastrous course. Not only that, but some of the new political wins in the USSR brought on criticism of longtime Soviet support for allies such as Cuba. Much of this was private discussion among the new Gorbachev crew, but some of it was aired out in the open in the Soviet press. As we witnessed in our season about Afghanistan, a Soviet occupation from which Gorbachev was eager to disengage, the priority for the new chairman's foreign policy was normalization with the United States, rather than the Brezhnev era's support for revolutionary and progressive struggles around the globe. Fidel Castro knew this, and with Angola on his mind, was growing increasingly frustrated with the new Soviet administration refusal to commit more weapons to the defense of Cuito Guanavale Whereas the Americans and South Africans were exchanging figurative winks and nods the Cubans and the Soviets were quietly judging each other. At a meeting in Moscow, in which the Cubans intentionally arrived late for the anniversary of the October Revolution, Castro and Gorbachev tiptoed around the issue of third world liberation. By the time Fidel was back home in Havana, the situation in Cuido was clearly crumbling. On November 15th, Castro met with his brother Raul, the Minister of Defense, as well as Jorge Resquet, who had long been Cuba's top diplomat in both Angola and Namibia. Here, Castro decided to pledge, on top of the tens of thousands of Cuban troops already serving in Angola, another wave of military support. By March of 88, their troops would line the Namibian border west of Cuido. Not only that, reports Wright, Cuba would deliver, quote, the best planes with the best pilots, the most sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons, and the most modern tanks. They would send all the fuel needed for the planes. This decision, he reports, was not just a military calculation. Castro assumed the only way to force South Africa to agree to a political solution was to intensify military pressure on them, end quote. All of this was decided, as it had been 13 years earlier, in 1975, at the time of Angolan independence, without consulting the Soviet Union. The Cuban idea was to begin an offensive to the West, where South Africa and UNITA had less of a presence. Throwing everyone straight into the hot zone in the southeast, Fidel said, would be suicidal. Quote, the South Africans have chosen the worst place for us to fight. It is at the end of the world. The key, Fidel told his brother, was to establish air supremacy. Raul, we have to be the masters of the air, Fidel said. We are going to create the conditions to strike a very heavy blow. Finally, we will wage war down there in the southwest. But none of this had been run by the Soviets. While meeting in Moscow, Castro and Gorbachev had sized each other up and exchanged clichés about the imperialist west, but neither laid down their cards about what to do in Angola. That dialogue only started once Havana's operation was underway. In his own visit to Moscow in late November, Cuba's Deputy Defense Minister, General Ulysses Rosales, briefed and increasingly stressed Marshal Akromaev, the Soviet General Chief of Staff, about the plans of the Castro brothers. Quote, When do you plan to send the first ships from Cuba? Akromaev asked. Ulysses responded, The first group is now on the high seas, headed toward Angola. The others are loading at the docks as we speak. Ulysses later said, quote, when I met with Akromaev, he thought I was going to present a proposal to him, but then he realized that we were not consulting him, we were informing him. He was taking notes with a pencil, and when I told him that the first group had already left, he pressed down hard on the pencil and broke the point. But Akromaev in fact understood the Cubans' position. He did not object or even threaten to make a stink. He even admitted that the Soviets had made a huge mistake in advising the Angolans to make a stand at Mavinga months earlier. The next day, the Cuban minister, Ulysses, got an earful from the new Soviet defense minister. This guy accused the Cubans of abandoning the earlier Soviet-approved MPLA assault in the southeast, but Akromea backed up the Cubans. Comrade Ulysses is right, he said, in the sense that the Cuban comrades have never been in favor of these offensives in the southeast. Next came letters from Gorbachev himself. In an echo of the messages exchanged between John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev over Cuba during the missile crisis, it was now Gorbachev and Castro exchanging letters over Angola. After a testy back and forth between Raul Castro and the Soviet charged affair in Cuba. Fidel sent Gorbachev, a blunt missive. We do not bear any responsibility for the military situation that has been created there. The responsibility belongs entirely to the Soviet advisors who insisted on urging the Angolans to launch an offensive in the southeast. We have always been against foolhardy operations like this which cannot solve the problem, squander resources, and divert attention from operations against the Anita guerrillas. The Americans can be assured that Cuba sincerely wishes to cooperate in the search for a political solution to the problems of Southern Africa. At the same time, they must be warned that South Africa's actions have gone too far, and the result may be serious conflict with Cuban troops. Gorbachev responded, quote, The news of Cuba's decision to send additional troops to Angola was, for us, frankly, a complete surprise. Maybe you coordinated with the Angolan president, Dos Santos, but in any case, I find it hard to understand how you could have taken such a decision without consulting us, when we have relied for a long time on tripartite consultations to develop a coordinated policy in Angola. But Ivana's decision was final. The new Cuban troops and hardware made it to Angola, and the Cuban-Angolan offensive in the southwest was already underway by early 88. Per Gleheses, the Cubans were feeling bold, not only in their desire to dislodge the apartheid state from its neighbors, but also against the White House, which had been chastened and tamed by the Iran-Contra scandal. Quote, Reagan had been defanged, and the danger of a U.S. military attack against Cuba receded at the same moment that the South Africans had become even more aggressive in Angola. I think the possibility of war there, in Angola, is 20 times greater than here in Cuba, Castro said in November 87. For us, the danger is in Angola. The war is there, not here. During this escalating military situation, U.S. representatives had, in fact, been meeting with the Angolans. At those sessions, per George Wright, the Angolan government accepted further terms for Cuban withdrawal, but insisted that the Cubans themselves become party to negotiations. A few weeks later, Chester Crocker proposed, in essence, a three-year timetable for a complete Cuban withdrawal from Angola. During that period, the idea went, the U.S. would bring South Africa to heel, and yank them out of both Angola and Namibia, not to mention smooth over Angola's acceptance to the International Monetary Fund. This wasn't the final deal, but to the Angolans, the Americans were getting warmer, and the influx of Cuban troops on the battlefield were about to heat things up even more. Cuba's deployment had secured Quido Quaneval, historian Pahiro Glehesis told us in an interview. But, he added, it was not what won the war. In late February 1988, the Soviets started sending additional weapons. But the Cubans are already moving without reinforcement in weapons from the Soviets because they no longer worry that the Americans might strike him. And Friedrich Castor's strategy, which he describes, again to Slovak on another occasion, is the boxer that with the left hand holds the blow and with the right strikes. The left hand is the Cubans who stop the South African offense against Guido Bonavai. Again, it's a joy to follow the military development through South African documents. Because you have the surprise, almost fear, panic of the South African commanders because they lose the control of the air over Quidobana Valley. For the first time, the South Africans lose the control of the air. Cuban meats gained the control of the air. South African supply to the troops surrounding Quito-Cuanavale can no longer arrive by air because the Cubans controlled air. It's actually to make a long story short. By March 88, the Cubans have won the battle of Quito-Cuanavale. But Quito-Cuanavale is a defensive battle. It's a defensive victory. It was a win-win war with defensive battles. What decides to war is the Cuban offense in the Southwest. For years, the U.S.'s top diplomat on Angola, Chester Crocker, had been facing pressure to get the South Africans to end their occupation of neighboring Namibia. This was one half of the linkage deal meant to get the Cubans out of Angola. Here's Crocker in his own words in a BBC documentary from the 1990s. key. He didn't really want to hear a lot about Cubans in Angola. He recognized ultimately that we were serious about that agenda, but he said begin in Namibia. But change in Namibia would not begin at the negotiating table, as Crocker might have imagined. As the battle at Cuito-Cuanovale expanded, another piece of the Cubans and Angolans strategy became operational. First concentrating the fighting in southeast Angola, in the region of Mavinga and Quito, Chester Crocker writes in his memoir that the next step of the Cubans and Angolans was, quote, to move a major combat force into the southwest, Kunene province, bordering Namibia. Just a few years earlier, Kunene had been mostly off limits to aggressive military action, per the 1984 Lusaka Accord, which stopped Swapo from using the province to launch operations into Namibia itself. Quote, much of the Southwest could be considered a no-man's land, writes Crocker, looked upon by South Africans as a free-fire zone for their special forces and more or less emptied of towns and other population centers. Castro, on the other hand, quote, aimed to fill this zone with a major deployment of modern, conventional combat power. Deploying Cuban forces to Namibia itself had always been a tricky proposition. Luanda and Havana both correctly believed that the apartheid regime possessed an atomic arsenal, and suspected that Pretoria would use nukes if its rule over Namibia came under direct threat. Thus, as Castro himself later explained, Our troops advanced at night with a formidable array of anti-aircraft weapons, in groups of no more than 1,000 men, strongly armed, at a prescribed distance from one another, always keeping in mind the possibility that the enemy might use nuclear weapons. Castro was right to be worried. As the fighting intensified, writes journalist Sasha Polokop-Saransky, the South Africans, quote, scrambled to put the finishing touches on nuclear-capable missiles being built with Israeli help, end quote. But in the end, the South Africans proved unwilling or unable to take the nuclear plunge. Cuban arrivals surged in from March to May of 88, writes Crocker. By late May, they had established a new southern front running some 250 miles in rough parallel with the Namibian border and coming to within 12 miles of it in some places. The front was manned by 11,000 to 12,000 of Cuba's best units, end quote. The linchpin of these moves toward northern Namibia, however, was rehabbing an old airfield located near the ghost town of Kahama, which had been destroyed by South African attacks. The Soviets had declined to provide the Cubans with fuel tanks to extend the range of their fighter jets. So if the Cubans wanted to threaten the South Africans in Namibia, they would need an airfield further south that could refuel their planes. In late March, Castro had cabled his generals asking, how long would it take to construct an operational airfield for fighter planes at Kahama? The answer? About ten months. But as Castro later boasted, we built it in a few weeks. The airport's first runway was ready, and a second one was being built by June of 88. Accompanied by mobile anti-aircraft units, the Cubans had begun conducting their first joint operations with SWAPO, serving together in scouting patrols as they barreled through Kunene to deal a direct blow to apartheid South Africa. Twenty years later, writes Gleheses, quote, the Cubans remembered their Namibian comrades with respect and affection. They had so much experience, and they were very brave and intelligent, our former Cuban Special Forces Lieutenant Tolga Hases, while displaying a yellowing photograph of his Namibian friends. Quote, without them, we could not have accomplished our mission as successfully as we did. The South Africans, meanwhile, initially adopted an arrogant posture toward these Namibian maneuvers. One of their colonels told an American colleague at first that, quote, the SADF is going to give the Cubans a bloody nose now that they are down in our operational area. It's territory we're familiar with, and they're not. The swift construction of the Kahama airfield, however, suggested that South Africa was quickly losing air superiority, even as enemy forces were barreling toward Namibian territory. Quote, In happier times, writes Clehesis, these Cuban troops would have been tempting targets for the South African Air Force. But now, the SADF leaders were paralyzed by the Cuban anti-aircraft defenses. Jan Breitenbach, the infamous ex-South African Special Forces commander, summed up what had happened in an interview years later with Glehesis. Bloody Fidel Castro outwitted South Africa's generals. At the same time that South African forces, UNITA, the MPLA, the Cubans, SWAPO, and the ANC were all fighting on the ground, the Americans made another pass at diplomacy. Throughout 1987, there had been more or less talks about talks, a discussion among Angolan and U.S. diplomats about what would be discussed in actual negotiations. The only major thing worked out was a preemptive Angolan concession to the Americans by President Dos Santos to agree that future talks would lead to the complete withdrawal of the Cubans. But in January of 88, Quido Quanevale pushed the Americans, the Angolans, and, for the first time, the Cubans toward one another. There were now a few reasons why 1988 was looking to be a diplomatically fruitful year. For one thing, no one respected South Africa's demand for UNITA to be installed in power in Luanda. For another, there was a new Africa director at the U.S. National Security Council, someone a little less warlike, Herman Cohen. Well, I was in the National Security Council, and I got a call from Peggy Delaney, the daughter of Rockefeller, and she said, I'm here in Cuba on some sort of a meeting of NGOs, and Castro called me in and gave me a message. Another reason that negotiations had some sudden promise was because the Cubans, buffeted by the stalemate at Quino Cuanevale, could now credibly demand to be at the negotiating table, side by side with the Angolans. Chester Crocker himself, interviewed later by the BBC, relays Castro's message. The basic message was this diplomacy is missing a critical ingredient. Yes that critical ingredient is direct physical Cuban participation If there were to be Cuban participation this diplomacy would be more realistic and it would have better prospects for success And the Americans continued refusal to talk directly to the Cubans and to include them in the negotiating process. Crocker, with Secretary of State George Schultz's permission, agreed to the condition and met with the Angolans and Cubans in Luanda, all together for the first time in January and March of 88, before formally meeting with the Americans and South Africans all together in London that met. Cuba went to London with two non-negotiable demands. The first was South Africa to finally implement Resolution 435, the long-since-passed UN resolution which called for an independent Namibia, and for South Africa to acquiesce to Resolution 435 without any changes. And the other demand was for South Africa to cut Savimbi loose. Although the Cubans privately had no plans to enter Namibia, Washington was spooked. Crocker asked Cuba's diplomat Risquet, how do I know your troops will stop at the Namibian border? Piero Gleheses told us Risquet's answer, which was that he could not give the Americans a tranquilizer. And Risquet answers, I cannot give you a tranquilizer. He uses the Cuban word, me programato. If I were to tell you that our troops will stop at the border, I would be giving you a tranquilizer. If I told you that our troops will cross the border, I would be threatening you. All I can tell you is, if you want to be sure that we are not going to cross the border, tell the South Africans to get out completely of Angola and to accept independence of them. And this is the Cuban position. But South Africa was stubborn. it was getting nervous about its deteriorating situation in Namibia. At a June summit in Cairo, the apartheid state kept up its front. The Cubans had to stop driving toward Namibia. The MPLA had to stop helping the ANC and SWAPO. And Resolution 435 had to be modified to suit South African preferences. When Fidel Castro received these South African terms for a peace proposal, he exclaimed, this is a proposal written by idiots. They are not intelligent. His brother Raoul agreed. We've flipped the tortilla, and things are getting rough for them. At the opening of the Cairo talks, the Angolans agreed, saying, quote, the proposal reveals an absolute lack of seriousness. Under this pressure, South Africa's position softened as the Cairo talks proceeded, but not completely. Not yet. For many years, South Africa's military enjoyed a reputation as perhaps the most powerful on the entire continent. And by most measures, this held true at the end of 1987 and into 1988. But the apartheid state had become bogged down in Cuito-Cuanevale, thwarted in other guerrilla campaigns against neighboring black-ruled countries, under attack by Swapo-Cuban forces in Namibia and facing a domestic insurgency led by the ANC. With all this, the most powerful military in southern Africa was beginning to look like the beefy appendage of a weak, overmatched regime. The armed wing of the ANC, writes scholar Stuart Kaufman, launched about 200 armed attacks each year from 1986 to 1988. Most of these attacks failed, but a campaign of laying landmines alone killed 20 people between 1985 and 1987. A number of people were also killed in a spate of attacks on restaurants, bars, shopping centers, and other public venues in this period. ANC activists, he writes, quote, used threats and violence to enforce strikes and boycotts, aiming to make the townships ungovernable. Also part of this ungovernability strategy were attacks on police and on black township counselors. One tally identified 807 attacks on police homes between September 84 and April 86, resulting in 33 deaths. Although most of the deaths and political violence were inflicted by government security forces, end quote. On the war front, the Cuban breakthrough in Namibia appeared to have become a tipping point. Quote, the reputation of the South African army as an invincible force has been challenged by the war along the Angolan-Namibian border, read in August 88 New York Times-Dispatch by reporter James Brooke. Brooke correctly observed that, despite Pretoria organizing the war on Angola and the occupation of Namibia, quote, fighting was done not by white South African soldiers, but by black troops recruited in Namibia and by Angolan rebels, a practice that served to insulate many South Africans from the heavy costs of the war, end quote. Jonas Sivimbi's UNITA was one instrument of this policy. So was the infamous 32 Battalion, or Buffalo Battalion, an SADF unit composed mostly of blacks. But, he continues, that has changed in the last year as white combat units suffered an unaccustomed number of casualties in battles against Cubans, Angolans, and Namibian rebels, notably around the Angolan stronghold of Cuido Quantevale. This took some of the luster from South Africa's military reputation and raised questions among the public about the army's role in Angola. Piero Gleheses identifies the moment that the ground shifted as June 26th and 27th, 1988. On the first day, the South Africans launched an artillery bombardment on a Cuban patrol on the Namibian front by the town of Kaleke. Quote, the timing suggests that the South African generals were responding to their setbacks at the Cairo round of negotiations. Ten Cubans were killed. A few hours later, in the early morning of June 27th, 10 Cuban MiG jets carried out an attack, killing 11 South African soldiers, 50 according to Cuban sources, and damaging their installations. Shortly thereafter, the South Africans blew up a bridge over the Kunene River, evidently fearful of another Cuban advance at Calique. But the South Africans did not counterattack. Quote, they responded with extreme violence verbally. Having stung each other, writes Chester Crocker of the Cubans, Angolans, and South Africans. Quote, the scorpions took a deep breath and never touched one another again. The events of June 26th to 27th, 1988 marked a psychological watershed. The follow-up to the Cairo talks took place in New York in July 1988, just a few weeks after Kaleke. Now, the South Africans were singing a different tune. Principles for an agreement were quickly hashed out, setting a date to implement Resolution 435, granting Namibia independence, and affirming a staged and total withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. On July 13, 1988, Glehesus writes, As the delegations prepared to leave, a small incident hinted at the possibility of better times. South African General Johannes Geldenweiss approached a member of the Cuban delegation, Colonel Eduardo Morejon, who spoke English perfectly. A surprised Morajon reported, Quote, Geldenhuis asked me if at our next meeting I could bring him a cassette with Cuban music. Unable to win any concessions from the Cubans at subsequent talks in Cape Verde, General Geldenhuis instead negotiated the withdrawal of South African forces from Angola. On August 8th, in Geneva, a ceasefire agreement was reached. Today, the governments of South Africa, Angola, and Cuba have finally agreed on the details for ending a war in Angola and granting independence to next-door Namibia. The war in Angola has lasted since 1975, and as of today, a ceasefire is in effect. On August 30th, the SADF's last troops left Angola. Implementation of Resolution 435 was set for April 1989. For 13 years, the war in Angola has embroiled several countries in a no-win conflict. On the one side, rebel forces, supported by at least $15 million a year in covert U.S. military aid, and backed more directly by South African soldiers. On the other side, the Marxist-Angolan government, supported by Soviet military aid, and more directly by 50,000 Cuban soldiers. It has become a military stalemate. Now South Africa and Cuba have agreed to gradually withdraw their forces from Angola. The final set of meetings negotiating the Angolan peace were in New York City. On the major two points, the timetable of Cuban withdrawal and the pace of that withdrawal, Havana and Luanda met Washington and Pretoria in the middle. It would take place over 27 months, with 66% of Cuban troops returning home in the first year. The complicated agreement also calls for South Africa to grant eventual independence to the neighboring country of Namibia. South Africa, which occupies Namibia in defiance of the United Nations, will allow independent elections there, but tied to the Cuban withdrawal from Angola. It is a fragile agreement, hammered out over months of talks mediated by the United States. However, it brings to an end, at least for now, a crippling war which has cost billions of dollars and more than 200,000 lives. Jim Hickey, ABC News, Johannesburg. Another peace agreement is being honored today in Afghanistan. A major previous sticking point had been Cuban-Angolan support for the ANC and South African support for Jonas of Embiis-Unita. But the ANC's own battle was now squarely focused within South Africa, and, quote, therefore, an Angolan pledge to cease aiding the ANC was of little consequence. The South African pledge to cease aiding UNITA, on the other hand, was enormous. In Fidel Castro's words, we're getting a ton and giving a kilogram. The official signing of the so-called New York Accords took place on December 22, 1988. But what should have been an unequivocal day of celebration was overshadowed. The day before, a bomb had gone off on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The explosion killed everyone on board, including Namibia's UN commissioner, who was en route to New York for the signing of the landmark agreement. After all of the friction, the scheming, and the risks, Havana's campaign in South Angola was a success. Cuban troops, not to mention planes and tanks, arrived in Angola throughout 1988. The head of the military mission, General Arnaldo Ochoa, coordinated directly with Fidel Castro in Havana. Glehesis writes that Fidel was as close to the military operation as he could possibly have been. Quote, the documents in the Cuban archives make it incontrovertible that he directed every aspect of the campaign, from grand strategy to tactics. Castro's strategy was to break the South African offensive against Cuito Cuanovale and then to attack in the Southwest. by going into quito we placed ourselves in the lion's jaws castro explained magnus milan south africa's minister of defense told the bbc he couldn't quite wrap his head around how castro was able to micromanage a battle fought halfway around the world the whole effort was conducted by Fidel Castro by telephone from Havana. He was a commanding officer. How you can do a thing like that, I wouldn't know. I mean, it's impossible. It gave us a problem from our side because we didn't know him. We didn't know his way of thinking, what type of personality he was. Because that's the thing you know. You've got to know in war. You've got to know the chap on the other side as well as you know yourself. The battle at Cuito-Quanavale shifted in Angola's favor, says George Wright, quote, as Cuba redeployed forces in southern Angola. This development, along with South Africa's domestic crisis, had forced the Bata regime to reassess its approach toward Angola and Namibia, end quote. Fidel's obsession with air power had clearly paid off. Because the MiG jets provided, quote, virtually uninterrupted air cover, as the SADF remarked in December, it had become extremely difficult for the South African Air Force to attack convoys along the road. South Africa's misplaced confidence had led it to believe it could never lose air superiority, and also led Praetoria to overrate its military abilities without the power from the skies. Piero Glehesus' summary of Cuido Cuanevale is worth quoting here at length. No climactic battle was fought at Cuido Cuanevale. The South Africans did not launch a major assault on the town, nor did the Cubans and the MPLA surge from the town to push them back to Mavinga. The Battle of Cuido Cuanevale, the defeat of the South Africans, consisted of two key elements. First, the Cuban victory in the air. Second, the Cuban and Angolan defensive victory on the ground, repelling the South African attacks on the bridgehead east of Quito. This saved key MPLA brigades, and it had great psychological importance. South Africa's onslaught had been broken for all to see, and its troops were demoralized. End quote. The long-imprisoned leader of the ANC, Nelson Mandela, later said, The successful defense of Quido Quinevale destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor and inspired the fighting masses of South Africa. Quido Quinevale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent and of my people from the scourge of apartheid. Speaking with us, Professor Antonio Tomas said that this legacy of Quito is still felt in Angola today. I think even today in Angola you have a lot of celebration. Everything Quito Carnaval comes and every time that it's celebrated, right? Angolan have built a whole mythology around Quito Carnaval. and they use the battle of Quito-Kanaval to justify independence of Namibia, democratization of South Africa. They say that it's because of Quito-Kanaval that Nelson Mandela came to be liberated, freed and then became South Africa president. It's because of Quito-Kanaval that Namibia became independent. Over 1988 all four involved parties the United States South Africa Cuba and Angola had started consenting to a peace process, culminating with the New York Accords in December. But one person had not consented, Jonas Savimbi. Instead, Chester Crocker had essentially presented Savimbi with a fait accompli in late 1988. South Africa was exiting Angola, and Swapo would soon come to power in Namibia. Between 1984 and 1988, the Savimbi lobby had achieved great things in Washington. Savimbi's paid lobbyists, the firm of Black Manafort and Stone, got him media appearances, and got him elbow to elbow with the cream of the crop of conservative America. What's more, Savimbi's friends had successfully bullied Chevron and the oil companies, not into pulling out of Angola, writes Elaine Windrich, but rather deterring them from continuing to lobby Congress against aid to UNITA. But the changing tides of 1988 had rejiggered Washington's priorities. The earlier Iran-Contra affair led to the expulsion of some of Savimbi's biggest fans from Reagan's orbit. And 1988 was an election year, the first general election in 12 years without Ronald Reagan on the ticket. A sore spot for the Republicans and their candidate, Vice President George H.W. Bush, was Reagan's Southern Africa policy. Early in the year, another wave of repression was underway in South Africa, and Reagan himself had done little to distance the U.S. from the apartheid state, whose government was becoming more unpopular all the time. Mr. President, the white minority government of South Africa has now effectively banned activities by dissenting organizations, even when those activities are peaceful. What is your view on that, and what can you do, if anything, to reverse it? Well, the State Department has already contacted them about that, and we are making our own feelings clear that they should be working toward a multiracial democracy and not oppressing political organizations there, and we've made our feelings clear about that. Well, sir, may I follow that? Have you considered sending aid to the freedom fighters, the ANC or any other organization, against this oppression, just as you send aid to other freedom fighters around the world? No, we have not involved ourselves in that, other than things such as the sanctions and so forth. We have tried our best to be persuasive in this very difficult problem and to find or to encourage a better solution. What's the difference, sir? Well, the difference is that we don't have an armed insurrection going, as we have in some other countries. and we have a great division even among the people who are being oppressed. It is a tribal policy more than it is a racial policy. And that is one of the most difficult parts here. It was in this domestic context that Secretary of State George Shultz, now Reagan's most influential advisor, empowered Chester Crocker to make peace in Angola. even if it meant sitting at the same table as America's hated enemies, the Cubans. Whenever Crocker and the dealers had made progress diplomatically before, the Savimbi lobby had screamed bloody murder in the right-wing press. But this time, they went further. Writes Windrich, quote, Both the military setbacks and Unita's exclusion from the U.S.-brokered peace negotiations on Southern Africa were important factors in bringing Savimbi to the United States in June of 88. Many admire him, many despise him, but all agree he's a survivor. Jonas Savimbi, who for 13 years has led his guerrillas in a bush war against Angolan forces backed by Soviet technology and as many as 45,000 Cuban troops. The United States is supplying Savimbi with arms estimated this year at $15 million, And that outrages some prominent American blacks because Savimbi's other ally is the white supremacist government of South Africa. The most important arm of South Africa's strategy is Jonas Savimbi. Aid to Savimbi is aid to South Africa. Savimbi is a blood-sucking vulture. A buzzard who prays off the blood of his own people. Savimbi, now in the U.S. to drum up support, says he has to accept help wherever he can get it. Does it disturb you to have to work hand in glove with a white supremacist regime? It does not. I tell them I am a black nationalist. I'm not going to be your puppet. Savimbi is engaged not only in a shooting war, but in a public relations battle. Both he and the Angolan government hiring American PR firms to win sympathy and support. An Angolan minister met this week with Secretary of State Schultz and White House officials who urged the Marxist Angolans to share power with Savimbi. The Angolan reply, no, period. All of the signs that Savimbi was still a friend of the Reagan White House were there to see. He was still getting military assistance from Washington. Officials more than gave him the time of day. Savimbi on this trip received the honor of a photo op with Reagan in the Oval Office, an encounter also caught on video. Well, it's good to have you been visiting here again. Mr. President, thank you very much for sitting here. But in the end, Windrich calls Savimbi's visit counterproductive. The optics of working with apartheid South Africa and the momentum of the peace talks made Savimbi more and more of a political liability. Now, rather than openly support Savimbi's bid for total control of Angola, the White House talked about power sharing and national reconciliation between the factions of Angola. Fewer newspapers, magazines, and TV networks covered Savimbi's visit in 1988 than had in 1986. In fact, Savimbi had become an object of scorn in his own right in the United States, targeted both by the anti-apartheid movement and black political leadership. Pretty quickly, it seemed that a trip meant to bolster Savimbi's reputation in America had failed. Protesters outnumber supporters as Angolan rebel tours U.S. South, read the Washington Post. Quote, in Port Gibson, Mississippi, Savimbi was grilled about his ties to South Africa by a local official who sat beside him on the podium when he addressed 15 civic leaders. Claiborne County tax assessor Evan Doss said that the official reception was not an indication of support for Savimbi and that most of the officials who were present oppose him, end quote. Furthermore, the Angolan government responded to Savimbi's lobbying push by hiring its own PR agency. The MPLA paid for ads that were plastered in newspapers across America, calling Savimbi South Africa's secret agent, and featuring Savimbi quotes praising South African leader P.W. Botta. One of the more ornate products of the Savimbi propaganda war was a film production put together by Jack Abramoff, co-organizer of the Jamba Jamboree back in 1985. The film was Red Scorpion, an action flick starring Dolph Lundgren, a.k.a. Ivan Drago of Rocky III. And the film was directed by Joseph Zito, the B-movie auteur behind the pro-America, anti-commie Chuck Norris vehicles, Missing in Action, and Invasion USA. Red Scorpion was the story of a Russian soldier in a nameless African country who winds up joining forces against the Soviets with a black resistance leader, a story, quote, loosely based on the life of Jonas Savimbi, as the New York Times wrote it. What proved embarrassing, however, was the revelation in Namibian newspapers that Red Scorpion was essentially a co-production with the South African military. The movie had been filmed in Namibia using tanks, jeeps, mortars, trucks, and other gear supplied directly by the apartheid government, as well as taking on South African officers directly as consultants. The previous fall, producers published ads in Namibia looking for light-skinned people to play the role of the villainous Cubans. This obviously went above and beyond breaking the ongoing cultural boycott of South Africa. The movie's dismal critical reception upon release in 1989 was personally embarrassing to Jack Abramoff. And it certainly didn't help Jonas Savimbi's cause in the end. Despite losing the PR war, Jonas Savimbi's allies did score a major victory at the end of the year. Quote, Senate supporters of Jonas Savimbi came together to block the Reagan administration's request for $150 million for UN peacekeeping. Windrich reports most of it for the operations in Namibia and that were linked with the settlement on Angola. Senator Jesse Helms and others had put a hold on the UN bill, despite the assurance of continuing support for UNITA from National Security Advisor Colin Powell. In the time between the Cairo talks of June 88 and the signing of the New York Accords in December, Elaine Windrich writes that, quote, Savimbi's response to the peace moves was first to take credit for them and then to disparage their chances for success. Not unlike the false allegations of chemical warfare leveled against communists in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia that we've seen in previous seasons, Savimbi and South Africa made the same fake charges against Cuba. They falsely accused the Cubans of deploying nerve gas on the battlefield. But in the spring of 1989, Savimbi's reputation in the West had begun to decline, precipitously. And these types of sensational allegations did not attract the attention or support that they once might have. In the waning years of the Cold War, Jonas Savimbi's firebrand anti-communism lost some luster. And that March, a series of stories appeared in the UK and in the US that, more than any such stories before published by the mainstream press, put on display Savimbi's and his movements penchant for cruelty, violence, and paranoia. In 1989, Savimbi's rather sympathetic biographer, Fred Bridgeland, began to piece together a more accurate portrait of Unita and its leader. Over several months, he put together a story that painted Jonas Savimbi and his organization as a brutal and terrifying cult of personality. What had previously been known only to insiders was now public information. As summed up by Meredith, Savimbi systematically purged Unita of rivals and critics, ordering death sentences not only for party dissidents, but for members of their families as well. We have already discussed the bonfires in which Savimbi threw women and children on charges of witchcraft. He chose wives for his senior officers and slept with them in a bizarre rite of passage before they were married. end quote. He had even seduced his own teenage niece, writes Meredith, and made her one of his concubines. Her parents protested and were executed. Two of Savimbi's closest colleagues, his foreign minister and his interior minister, announced that they had quit Unida after discovering that Savimbi had ordered the death of two prominent officials, Tito Chigunji and his brother-in-law, together with their families. Chigunji came from a distinguished Ovimbundu family, which Savimbi was said to regard as potential rivals. Several members had previously died in suspicious circumstances. According to the two defectors, Chigunji's two children, one, a baby, had died with their heads smashed against a tree. The U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, wrote to Savimbi demanding a full account of what had happened to the two men. Savimbi denied any involvement in their deaths and rode out the storm. End quote. Not only were the revelations denied by Sivimbi supporters, writes Elaine Windrich Sivimbi supporters in Congress, like Utah Senator Orrin Hatch believed that Tito and others had organized an anti-Sivimbi conspiracy Some of Sivimbi supporters in the right-wing press, such as Radek Sikorski today Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and then a stringer for National Review magazine acknowledged that Sivimbi was the murderous head of a cult of personality But National Review and other outlets, quote, continued to advocate U.S. support for UNITA, even though their strictures against the recipients' worthiness made nonsense of it. Furthermore, Windrich writes, the human rights allegations against Sivimbi had singularly little effect upon the U.S. government, with Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, continuing to supply military aid and Congress taking no effective action to prevent it, despite the growing effort of several African states to get a ceasefire in the Angolan War. If the New York Accords were meant to have resolved the international dimension of Angola's war, It was the Bissess Accords, mediated by Portugal, that were supposed to resolve the war between the government and Unida. After much back and forth, and with the United States still officially backing Jonas Savimbi, having essentially bribed Mobutu and Zaire to keep weapons flowing, the two sides agreed to a transition, a ceasefire, and elections under a multi-party democracy, in an agreement reached in the summer of May 1991. The two sides were to be disarmed. Their patrons were to be barred from supplying weapons and materiel. The sixteen months anticipating the election was, to many, a surreal but welcome fantasia. It was arguably the first time since 1975 that Angolans had felt any sense of relief, maybe even hope, about the future of their country. By the next year, in 92, elections would be underway, monitored by international bodies. The government would run its candidates, UNITA would run theirs. There was just one question. What would Savimbi do if he lost? The end of another era in another part of the world. Cuban soldiers today left Angola after 16 years. The government and U.S.-backed rebels plan to sign a peace agreement next week ending Angola's civil war. In May of 1991, the final contingent of Cuban soldiers deployed to Angola returned home. For 16 years, Cuban troops had been indispensable in the protection of Angola from the armies of apartheid. Now, with success at Cuido Cuanival and at the negotiating table, the Cubans were heading home. The war inside Angola was not over, but Havana's mission to neutralize the threat from South Africa had been achieved. The cost for the Cubans had been high. Thousands killed or wounded. Even the legacy of those who participated did not emerge unscathed. In 1989, Arnaldo Ochoa, the head of Cuba's military mission in Angola, he was subsequently tried and executed. convicted of trying to cut a deal with the Medellin cartel and for siphoning thousands of dollars away from Angola's state coffers. And in the 1990s, the country to which Cuban troops were returning was in bad shape. But as bad as things would get in Cuba's so-called special period, Angola was in for something even worse. Quote, What I regret, said Fidel Castro, is that when we withdraw the troops, we'll also have to withdraw the aid workers. The reason being, any Cubans left in Angola would be targets. you