Question: From which country did Angola achieve independence in 1975?
Answer: Portugal

A nation state is a type of state that conjoins the political entity of a state to the cultural entity of a nation, from which it aims to derive its political legitimacy to rule and potentially its status as a sovereign state if one accepts the declarative theory of statehood as opposed to the constitutive theory.Such a definition is a working one: "All attempts to develop terminological consensus around "nation" resulted in failure", concludes . Walker Connor, in [] discusses the impressions surrounding the characters of "nation", "(sovereign) state", "nation state", and "nationalism". Connor, who gave the term "ethnonationalism" wide currency, also discusses the tendency to confuse nation and state and the treatment of all states as if nation states. In Globalization and Belonging, Sheila L. Crouche discusses "The Definitional Dilemma" (pp. 85ff). 
A state is specifically a political and geopolitical entity, whilst a nation is a cultural and ethnic one. The term "nation state" implies that the two coincide, in that a state has chosen to adopt and endorse a specific cultural group as associated with it. "Nation state" formation can take place at different times in different parts of the world.

The concept of a nation state can be compared and contrasted with that of the multinational state, city state,    empire, confederation, and other state formations with which it may overlap. The key distinction is the identification of a people with a polity in the "nation state."

History and origins 

The origins and early history of nation states are disputed. A major theoretical question is: "Which came first, the nation or the nation state?" Scholars such as Steven Weber, David Woodward, and Jeremy Black   have advanced the hypothesis that the nation state didn't arise out of political ingenuity or an unknown undetermined source, nor was it an accident of history or political invention; but is an inadvertent byproduct of 15th-century intellectual discoveries in political economy, capitalism, mercantilism, political geography, and geography   combined together with cartography   and advances in map-making technologies.   It was with these intellectual discoveries and technological advances that the nation state arose. For others, the nation existed first, then nationalist movements arose for sovereignty, and the nation state was created to meet that demand. Some "modernization theories" of nationalism see it as a product of government policies to unify and modernize an already existing state. Most theories see the nation state as a 19th-century European phenomenon, facilitated by developments such as state-mandated education, mass literacy and mass media. However, historians also note the early emergence of a relatively unified state and identity in Portugal and the Dutch Republic.

In France, Eric Hobsbawm argues, the French state preceded the formation of the French people. Hobsbawm considers that the state made the French nation, not French nationalism, which emerged at the end of the 19th century, the time of the Dreyfus Affair. At the time of the 1789 French Revolution, only half of the French people spoke some French, and 12-13% spoke it "fairly", according to Hobsbawm.

During the Italian unification, the number of people speaking the Italian language was even lower. The French state promoted the unification of various dialects and languages into the French language. The introduction of conscription and the Third Republic's 1880s laws on public instruction, facilitated the creation of a national identity, under this theory.

Some nation states, such as Germany or Italy, came into existence at least partly as a result of political campaigns by nationalists, during the 19th century. In both cases, the territory was previously divided among other states, some of them very small. The sense of common identity was at first a cultural movement, such as in the Völkisch movement in German-speaking states, which rapidly acquired a political significance. In these cases, the nationalist sentiment and the nationalist movement clearly precede the unification of the German and Italian nation states.

Historians Hans Kohn, Liah Greenfeld, Philip White and others have classified nations such as Germany or Italy, where cultural unification preceded state unification, as ethnic nations or ethnic nationalities. However, 'state-driven' national unifications, such as in France, England or China, are more likely to flourish in multiethnic societies, producing a traditional national heritage of civic nations, or territory-based nationalities.    Some authors deconstruct the distinction between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism because of the ambiguity of the concepts. They argue that the paradigmatic case of Ernest Renan is an idealisation and it should be interpreted within the German tradition and not in opposition to it. For example, they argue that the arguments used by Renan at the conference What is a nation? are not consistent with his thinking. This alleged civic conception of the nation would be determined only by the case of the loss gives Alsace and Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War. 

The idea of a nation state was and is associated with the rise of the modern system of states, often called the "Westphalian system" in reference to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). The balance of power, which characterized that system, depended on its effectiveness upon clearly defined, centrally controlled, independent entities, whether empires or nation states, which recognize each other's sovereignty and territory. The Westphalian system did not create the nation state, but the nation state meets the criteria for its component states (by assuming that there is no disputed territory).

The nation state received a philosophical underpinning in the era of Romanticism, at first as the 'natural' expression of the individual peoples (romantic nationalism: see Johann Gottlieb Fichte's conception of the Volk, later opposed by Ernest Renan). The increasing emphasis during the 19th century on the ethnic and racial origins of the nation, led to a redefinition of the nation state in these terms. Racism, which in Boulainvilliers's theories was inherently antipatriotic and antinationalist, joined itself with colonialist imperialism and "continental imperialism", most notably in pan-Germanic and pan-Slavic movements. 

The relation between racism and ethnic nationalism reached its height in the 20th century fascism and Nazism. The specific combination of 'nation' ('people') and 'state' expressed in such terms as the Völkische Staat and implemented in laws such as the 1935 Nuremberg laws made fascist states such as early Nazi Germany qualitatively different from non-fascist nation states. Minorities were not considered part of the people (Volk), and were consequently denied to have an authentic or legitimate role in such a state. In Germany, neither Jews nor the Roma were considered part of the people, and were specifically targeted for persecution. German nationality law defined 'German' on the basis of German ancestry, excluding all non-Germans from the people.

In recent years, a nation state's claim to absolute sovereignty within its borders has been much criticized. A global political system based on international agreements and supra-national blocs characterized the post-war era. Non-state actors, such as international corporations and non-governmental organizations, are widely seen as eroding the economic and political power of nation states, potentially leading to their eventual disappearance.

Before the nation state 

In Europe, during the 18th century, the classic non-national states were the multiethnic empires, the Austrian Empire, Kingdom of France, Kingdom of Hungary,  the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire and smaller nations at what would now be called sub-state level. The multi-ethnic empire was a monarchy ruled by a king, emperor or sultan. The population belonged to many ethnic groups, and they spoke many languages. The empire was dominated by one ethnic group, and their language was usually the language of public administration. The ruling dynasty was usually, but not always, from that group.

This type of state is not specifically European: such empires existed on all continents, except Australasia and Antarctica. Some of the smaller European states were not so ethnically diverse, but were also dynastic states, ruled by a royal house. Their territory could expand by royal intermarriage or merge with another state when the dynasty merged. In some parts of Europe, notably Germany, very small territorial units existed. They were recognised by their neighbours as independent, and had their own government and laws. Some were ruled by princes or other hereditary rulers, some were governed by bishops or abbots. Because they were so small, however, they had no separate language or culture: the inhabitants shared the language of the surrounding region.

In some cases these states were simply overthrown by nationalist uprisings in the 19th century. Liberal ideas of free trade played a role in German unification, which was preceded by a customs union, the Zollverein. However, the Austro-Prussian War, and the German alliances in the Franco-Prussian War, were decisive in the unification. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire broke up after the First World War, and the Russian Empire became the Soviet Union after the Russian Civil War.

A few of the smaller states survived: the independent principalities of Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, and the republic of San Marino. (Vatican City is a special case. All of the larger Papal State save the Vatican itself was occupied and absorbed by Italy by 1870.  The resulting Roman Question, was resolved with the rise of the modern state under the 1929 Lateran treaties between Italy and the Holy See.)

Characteristics 

 
"Legitimate states that govern effectively and dynamic industrial economies are widely regarded today as the defining characteristics of a modern nation-state." 

Nation states have their own characteristics, differing from those of the pre-national states. For a start, they have a different attitude to their territory when compared with dynastic monarchies: it is semisacred and nontransferable. No nation would swap territory with other states simply, for example, because the king's daughter married. They have a different type of border, in principle defined only by the area of settlement of the national group, although many nation states also sought natural borders (rivers, mountain ranges). They are constantly changing in population size and power because of the limited restrictions of their borders.

The most noticeable characteristic is the degree to which nation states use the state as an instrument of national unity, in economic, social and cultural life.

The nation state promoted economic unity, by abolishing internal customs and tolls. In Germany, that process, the creation of the Zollverein, preceded formal national unity. Nation states typically have a policy to create and maintain a national transportation infrastructure, facilitating trade and travel. In 19th-century Europe, the expansion of the rail transport networks was at first largely a matter for private railway companies, but gradually came under control of the national governments. The French rail network, with its main lines radiating from Paris to all corners of France, is often seen as a reflection of the centralised French nation state, which directed its construction. Nation states continue to build, for instance, specifically national motorway networks. Specifically transnational infrastructure programmes, such as the Trans-European Networks, are a recent innovation.

The nation states typically had a more centralised and uniform public administration than its imperial predecessors: they were smaller, and the population less diverse. (The internal diversity of the Ottoman Empire, for instance, was very great.) After the 19th-century triumph of the nation state in Europe, regional identity was subordinate to national identity, in regions such as Alsace-Lorraine, Catalonia, Brittany and Corsica. In many cases, the regional administration was also subordinated to central (national) government. This process was partially reversed from the 1970s onward, with the introduction of various forms of regional autonomy, in formerly centralised states such as France.

The most obvious impact of the nation state, as compared to its non-national predecessors, is the creation of a uniform national culture, through state policy. The model of the nation state implies that its population constitutes a nation, united by a common descent, a common language and many forms of shared culture. When the implied unity was absent, the nation state often tried to create it. It promoted a uniform national language, through language policy. The creation of national systems of compulsory primary education and a relatively uniform curriculum in secondary schools, was the most effective instrument in the spread of the national languages. The schools also taught the national history, often in a propagandistic and mythologised version, and (especially during conflicts) some nation states still teach this kind of history. 

Language and cultural policy was sometimes negative, aimed at the suppression of non-national elements. Language prohibitions were sometimes used to accelerate the adoption of national languages and the decline of minority languages (see examples: Anglicisation, Czechization, Francisation, Italianization, Germanisation, Magyarisation, Polonisation, Russification, Serbization, Slovakisation).

In some cases, these policies triggered bitter conflicts and further ethnic separatism. But where it worked, the cultural uniformity and homogeneity of the population increased. Conversely, the cultural divergence at the border became sharper: in theory, a uniform French identity extends from the Atlantic coast to the Rhine, and on the other bank of the Rhine, a uniform German identity begins. To enforce that model, both sides have divergent language policy and educational systems, although the linguistic boundary is in fact well inside France, and the Alsace region changed hands four times between 1870 and 1945.

In practice 

In some cases, the geographic boundaries of an ethnic population and a political state largely coincide. In these cases, there is little immigration or emigration, few members of ethnic minorities, and few members of the "home" ethnicity living in other countries.

Examples of nation states where ethnic groups make up more than 95% of the population include the following:
* Albania: The vast majority of the population is ethnically Albanian at about 98.6% of the population, with the remainder consisting of a few small ethnic minorities.
* Armenia: The vast majority of Armenia's population consists of ethnic Armenians at about 98% of the population, with the remainder consisting of a few small ethnic minorities.
* Bangladesh: The vast majority ethnic group of Bangladesh are the Bengali people, comprising 98% of the population, with the remainder consisting of mostly Bihari migrants and indigenous tribal groups. Therefore, Bangladeshi society is to a great extent linguistically and culturally homogeneous, with very small populations of foreign expatriates and workers, although there is a substantial number of Bengali workers living abroad.
* Egypt: The vast majority of Egypt's population consists of ethnic Egyptians at about 99% of the population, with the remainder consisting of a few small ethnic minorities, as well as refugees or asylum seekers. Modern Egyptian identity is closely tied to the geography of Egypt and its long history; its development over the centuries saw overlapping or conflicting ideologies. Though today an Arabic-speaking people, that aspect constitutes for Egyptians a cultural dimension of their identity, not a necessary attribute of or prop for their national political being. Today most Egyptians see themselves, their history, culture and language (the Egyptian variant of Arabic) as specifically Egyptian and at the same time as part of the Arab world.
* Estonia: Defined as a nation state in its 1920 constitution, up until the period of Soviet colonialisation, Estonia was historically a very homogenous state with 88.2% of residents being Estonians, 8.2% Russians, 1.5% Germans and 0.4% Jews according to the 1934 census.  As a result of Soviet policies the demographic situation significantly changed with the arrival of Russian speaking settlers. Today Estonians form 69%, Russians 25.4%, Ukrainians 2.04% and Belarusians 1.1% of the population(2012).  A significant proportion of the inhabitants (84.1%) are citizens of Estonia, around 7.3% are citizens of Russia and 7.0% as yet undefined citizenship (2010).
* Hungary: The Hungarians (or Magyar) people consist of about 95% of the population, with a small Roma and German minority: see Demographics of Hungary.
* Iceland: Although the inhabitants are ethnically related to other Scandinavian groups, the national culture and language are found only in Iceland. There are no cross-border minorities as the nearest land is too far away: see Demographics of Iceland

* Japan: Japan is also traditionally seen as an example of a nation state and also the largest of the nation states, with population in excess of 120 million. It should be noted that Japan has a small number of minorities such as Ryūkyū peoples, Koreans and Chinese, and on the northern island of Hokkaidō, the indigenous Ainu minority. However, they are either numerically insignificant (Ainu), their difference is not as pronounced (though Ryukyuan culture is closely related to Japanese culture, it is nonetheless distinctive in that it historically received much more influence from China and has separate political and nonpolitical and religious traditions) or well assimilated (Zainichi population is collapsing due to assimilation/naturalisation).
* Lebanon: The Arabic-speaking Lebanese consist at about 95% of the population, with the remainder consisting of a few small ethnic minorities, as well as refugees or asylum seekers. Modern Lebanese identity is closely tied to the geography of Lebanon and its history. Although they are now an Arabic-speaking people and ethnically homogeneous, its identity oversees overlapping or conflicting ideologies between its Phoenician heritage and Arab heritage. While many Lebanese regard themselves as Arab, other Lebanese regard themselves, their history, and their culture as Phoenician and not Arab, while still other Lebanese regard themselves as both.
* Lesotho: Lesotho's ethno-linguistic structure consists almost entirely of the Basotho (singular Mosotho), a Bantu-speaking people; about 99.7% of the population are Basotho.
* Maldives: The vast majority of the population is ethnically Dhivehi at about 98% of the population, with the remainder consisting of foreign workers; there are no indigenous ethnic minorities.
* Malta: The vast majority of the population is ethnically Maltese at about 95.3% of the population, with the remainder consisting of a few small ethnic minorities.
* Mongolia: The vast majority of the population is ethnically Mongol at about 95.0% of the population, with the remainder consisting of a few ethnic minorities included in Kazakhs.
* North and South Korea are among the most ethnically and linguistically homogeneous in the world. Particularly in reclusive North Korea, there are very few ethnic minority groups and expatriate foreigners.
* Poland: After World War II, with the genocide of the Jews by the invading German Nazis during the Holocaust, the expulsion of Germans after World War II and the loss of eastern territories (Kresy), 96.7% of the people of Poland claim Polish nationality, while 97.8% declare that they speak Polish at home (Census 2002).
* Several Polynesian countries such as Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, etc.
* Portugal: Although surrounded by other lands and people, the Portuguese nation has occupied the same territory since the romanization or latinization of the native population during the Roman era. The modern Portuguese nation is a very old amalgam of formerly distinct historical populations that passed through and settled in the territory of modern Portugal: native Iberian peoples, Celts, ancient Mediterraneans (Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Jews), invading Germanic peoples like the Suebi and the Visigoths, and Muslim Arabs and Berbers. Most Berber/Arab people and the Jews were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquista and the repopulation by Christians.
* San Marino: The Sammarinese make up about 97% of the population and all speak Italian and are ethnically and linguisticially identical to Italians. San Marino is a landlocked enclave, completely surrounded by Italy. The state has a population of approximately 30,000, including 1,000 foreigners, most of whom are Italians.
* Swaziland: The vast majority of the population is ethnically Swazi at about 98.6% of the population, with the remainder consisting of a few small ethnic minorities.

The notion of a unifying "national identity" also extends to countries that host multiple ethnic or language groups, such as India and China. For example, Switzerland is constitutionally a confederation of cantons, and has four official languages, but it has also a 'Swiss' national identity, a national history and a classic national hero, Wilhelm Tell. 

Innumerable conflicts have arisen where political boundaries did not correspond with ethnic or cultural boundaries.

After World War II in the Josip Broz Tito era, nationalism was appealed to for uniting South Slav peoples. Later in the 20th century, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, leaders appealed to ancient ethnic feuds or tensions that ignited conflict between the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, as well Bosnians, Montenegrins and Macedonians, eventually breaking up the long collaboration of peoples and ethnic cleansing was carried out in the Balkans, resulting in the destruction of the formerly socialist republic and produced the civil wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992–95, resulted in mass population displacements and segregation that radically altered what was once a highly diverse and intermixed ethnic makeup of the region. These conflicts were largely about creating a new political framework of states, each of which would be ethnically and politically homogeneous. Serbians, Croatians and Bosnians insisted they were ethnically distinct although many communities had a long history of intermarriage. Presently Slovenia (89% Slovene), Croatia (90,4% Croat)  and Serbia (83% Serb) could be classified as nation states per se, whereas Macedonia (66% Macedonian), Montenegro (42% Montenegrin) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (47% Bosniak) are multinational states.

Belgium is a classic example of a state that is not a nation state. The state was formed by secession from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830, whose neutrality and integrity was protected by the Treaty of London 1839; thus it served as a buffer state after the Napoleonitic Wars between the European powers France, Prussia (after 1871 the German Empire) and the United Kingdom  until World War I, when its neutrality was breached by the Germans. Currently, Belgium is divided between the Flemings in the north and the French-speaking or the German-speaking population in the south. The Flemish population in the north speaks Dutch, the Walloon population in the south speaks French and/or German. The Brussels population speaks French and/or Dutch.

The Flemish identity is also cultural, and there is a strong separatist movement espoused by the political parties, the right-wing Vlaams Belang and the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie. The Francophone Walloon identity of Belgium is linguistically distinct and regionalist. There is also unitary Belgian nationalism, several versions of a Greater Netherlands ideal, and a German-speaking community of Belgium annexed from Germany in 1920, and re-annexed by Germany in 1940–1944. However these ideologies are all very marginal and politically insignificant during elections.

China covers a large geographic area and uses the concept of "Zhonghua minzu" or Chinese nationality, in the sense of ethnic groups, but it also officially recognizes the majority Han ethnic group which accounts for over 90% of the population, and no fewer than 55 ethnic national minorities.

According to Philip G. Roeder, Moldova is an example of a Soviet era "segment-state" (Moldavian SSR), where the "nation-state project of the segment-state trumped the nation-state project of prior statehood. In Moldova, despite strong agitation from university faculty and students for reunification with Romania, the nation-state project forged within the Moldavian SSR trumped the project for a return to the interwar nation-state project of Greater Romania."  See Controversy over linguistic and ethnic identity in Moldova for further details.

Exceptional cases 

United Kingdom 

The United Kingdom is an unusual example of a nation state, due to its claimed "countries within a country" status. The United Kingdom, which is formed by the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is a unitary state formed initially by the merger of two independent kingdoms, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, but the Treaty of Union (1707) that set out the agreed terms has ensured the continuation of distinct features of each state, including separate legal systems and separate national churches.

In 2003, the British Government described the United Kingdom as "countries within a country".  While the Office for National Statistics and others describe the United Kingdom as a "nation state",   others, including a then Prime Minister, describe it as a "multinational state",    and the term Home Nations is used to describe the four national teams that represent the four nations of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales). 

Kingdom of the Netherlands 

A similar unusual example is the Kingdom of the Netherlands. As of 10 October 2010, the Kingdom of the Netherlands consists of four countries: 
* Netherlands proper
* Aruba
* Curaçao
* Sint Maarten

Each is expressly designated as a land in Dutch law by the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  Unlike the German Länder and the Austrian Bundesländer, landen is consistently translated as "countries" by the Dutch government. 

Israel 

Israel was founded as a Jewish state in 1948. Its "Basic Laws" describe it as both a Jewish and a democratic state. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 75.7% of Israel's population is Jewish.  Arabs, who make up 20.4% of the population, are the largest ethnic minority in Israel. Israel also has very small communities of Armenians, Circassians, Assyrians, Samaritans, and persons of some Jewish heritage. There are also some non-Jewish spouses of Israeli Jews. However, these communities are very small, and usually number only in the hundreds or thousands.

Pakistan 

Pakistan, even being an ethnically diverse country and officially a federation, is regarded as a nation state  due to its ideological basis on which it was given independence from British India as a separate nation rather than as part of a unified India. Different ethnic groups in Pakistan are strongly bonded by their common Muslim identity, common cultural and social values, common historical heritage, a national Lingua franca (Urdu) and joint political, strategic and economic interests. 

Minorities 

The most obvious deviation from the ideal of 'one nation, one state', is the presence of minorities, especially ethnic minorities, which are clearly not members of the majority nation. An ethnic nationalist definition of a nation is necessarily exclusive: ethnic nations typically do not have open membership. In most cases, there is a clear idea that surrounding nations are different, and that includes members of those nations who live on the 'wrong side' of the border. Historical examples of groups, who have been specifically singled out as outsiders, are the Roma and Jews in Europe.

Negative responses to minorities within the nation state have ranged from cultural assimilation enforced by the state, to expulsion, persecution, violence, and extermination. The assimilation policies are usually enforced by the state, but violence against minorities is not always state initiated: it can occur in the form of mob violence such as lynching or pogroms. Nation states are responsible for some of the worst historical examples of violence against minorities: minorities not considered part of the nation.

However, many nation states accept specific minorities as being part of the nation, and the term national minority is often used in this sense. The Sorbs in Germany are an example: for centuries they have lived in German-speaking states, surrounded by a much larger ethnic German population, and they have no other historical territory. They are now generally considered to be part of the German nation and are accepted as such by the Federal Republic of Germany, which constitutionally guarantees their cultural rights. Of the thousands of ethnic and cultural minorities in nation states across the world, only a few have this level of acceptance and protection.

Multiculturalism is an official policy in many states, establishing the ideal of peaceful existence among multiple ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups. Many nations have laws protecting minority rights.

When national boundaries that do not match ethnic boundaries are drawn, such as in the Balkans and Central Asia, ethnic tension, massacres and even genocide, sometimes has occurred historically (see Bosnian genocide and 2010 ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan).

Irredentism 

 

Ideally, the border of a nation state extends far enough to include all the members of the nation, and all of the national homeland. Again, in practice some of them always live on the 'wrong side' of the border. Part of the national homeland may be there too, and it may be governed by the 'wrong' nation. The response to the non-inclusion of territory and population may take the form of irredentism: demands to annex unredeemed territory and incorporate it into the nation state.

Irredentist claims are usually based on the fact that an identifiable part of the national group lives across the border. However, they can include claims to territory where no members of that nation live at present, because they lived there in the past, the national language is spoken in that region, the national culture has influenced it, geographical unity with the existing territory, or a wide variety of other reasons. Past grievances are usually involved and can cause revanchism.

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish irredentism from pan-nationalism, since both claim that all members of an ethnic and cultural nation belong in one specific state. Pan-nationalism is less likely to specify the nation ethnically. For instance, variants of Pan-Germanism have different ideas about what constituted Greater Germany, including the confusing term Grossdeutschland, which, in fact, implied the inclusion of huge Slavic minorities from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Typically, irredentist demands are at first made by members of non-state nationalist movements. When they are adopted by a state, they typically result in tensions, and actual attempts at annexation are always considered a casus belli, a cause for war. In many cases, such claims result in long-term hostile relations between neighbouring states. Irredentist movements typically circulate maps of the claimed national territory, the greater nation state. That territory, which is often much larger than the existing state, plays a central role in their propaganda.

Irredentism should not be confused with claims to overseas colonies, which are not generally considered part of the national homeland. Some French overseas colonies would be an exception: French rule in Algeria unsuccessfully treated the colony as a département of France.

Future 

It has been speculated by both proponents of globalization and various science fiction writers that the concept of a nation state may disappear with the ever-increasingly interconnected nature of the world.  Such ideas are sometimes expressed around concepts of a world government. Another possibility is a societal collapse and move into communal anarchy or zero world government, in which nation states no longer exist and government is done on the local level based on a global ethic of human rights.

This falls into line with the concept of internationalism, which states that sovereignty is an outdated concept and a barrier to achieving peace and harmony in the world, thus also stating that nation states are also a similar outdated concept.

Globalization especially has helped to bring about the discussion about the disappearance of nation states, as global trade and the rise of the concepts of a 'global citizen' and a common identity have helped to reduce differences and 'distances' between individual nation states, especially with regards to the internet. 

Clash of civilizations 

The theory of the clash of civilizations lies in direct contrast to cosmopolitan theories about an ever more-connected world that no longer requires nation states. According to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post–Cold War world.

The theory was originally formulated in a 1992 lecture  at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?",  in response to Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post–Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy and capitalist free market economics had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post–Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama, in The End of History and the Last Man, argued that the world had reached a Hegelian "end of history".

Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had reverted only to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines.

As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict.

In the 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington writes:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

Sandra Joireman suggests that Huntington may be characterised as a neo-primordialist, as, while he sees people as having strong ties to their ethnicity, he does not believe that these ties have always existed. 

Historiography 

Historians often look to the past to find the origins of a particular nation state. Indeed, they often put so much emphasis on the importance of the nation state in modern times, that they distort the history of earlier periods in order to emphasize the question of origins. Lansing and English argue that much of the medieval history of Europe was structured to follow the historical winners—especially the nation states that emerged around Paris and London. Important developments that did not directly lead to a nation state get neglected, they argue:
one effect of this approach has been to privilege historical winners, aspects of medieval Europe that became important in later centuries, above all the nation state.... Arguably the liveliest cultural innovation in the 13th century was Mediterranean, centered on Frederick II's polyglot court and administration in Palermo....Sicily and the Italian South in later centuries suffered a long slide into overtaxed poverty and marginality. Textbook narratives therefore focus not on medieval Palermo, with its Muslim and Jewish bureaucracies and Arabic-speaking monarch, but on the historical winners, Paris and London.

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola (; Kikongo, Kimbundu and Umbundu: Repubilika ya Ngola), is a country in Southern Africa. It is the seventh-largest country in Africa, and is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north and east, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to west. The exclave province of Cabinda has borders with the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The capital and largest city of Angola is Luanda.

Although its territory has been inhabited since the Paleolithic Era, modern Angola originates in Portuguese colonization, which began with, and was for centuries limited to, coastal settlements and trading posts established beginning in the 16th century. In the 19th century, European settlers slowly and hesitantly began to establish themselves in the interior. As a Portuguese colony, Angola did not encompass its present borders until the early 20th century, following resistance by groups such as the Cuamato, the Kwanyama and the Mbunda. Independence was achieved in 1975 after the protracted liberation war. That same year, Angola descended into an intense civil war that lasted until 2002. It has since become a relatively stable unitary presidential republic.

Angola has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy is among the fastest growing in the world, especially since the end of the civil war. In spite of this, the standard of living remains low for the majority of the population, and life expectancy and infant mortality rates in Angola are among the worst in the world.  Angola's economic growth is highly uneven, with the majority of the nation's wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small sector of the population. 

Angola is a member state of the United Nations, OPEC, African Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union and the Southern African Development Community. A highly multiethnic country, Angola's 24.3 million people span various tribal groups, customs, and traditions. Angolan culture reflects centuries of Portuguese rule, namely in the predominance of the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism, combined with diverse indigenous influences.

Etymology

The name Angola comes from the Portuguese colonial name Reino de Angola (Kingdom of Angola), appearing as early as Dias de Novais's 1571 charter.  The toponym was derived by the Portuguese from the title ngola held by the kings of Ndongo. Ndongo was a kingdom in the highlands, between the Kwanza and Lukala Rivers, nominally tributary to the king of Kongo but which was seeking greater independence during the 16th century.

History

Early migrations and political units

Khoi and San hunter-gatherers are the earliest known modern human inhabitants of the area. They were largely absorbed or replaced by Bantu peoples during the Bantu migrations, though small numbers remain in parts of southern Angola to the present day. The Bantu came from the north, probably from somewhere near the present-day Republic of Cameroon.

During this time, the Bantu established a number of political units ("kingdoms", "empires") in most parts of what today is Angola. The best known of these is the Kingdom of the Kongo that had its centre in the northwest of contemporary Angola, but included important regions in the west of present-day Democratic Republic and Republic of Congo and in southern Gabon. It established trade routes with other trading cities and civilisations up and down the coast of southwestern and West Africa and even with the Great Zimbabwe Mutapa Empire, but engaged in little or no transoceanic trade.  To its south lay the Kingdom of Ndongo, from which the area of the later Portuguese colony was sometimes known as Dongo.

Portuguese colonization

The region now known as Angola was reached by the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in 1484. The year before, the Portuguese had established relations with the Kingdom of Kongo, which stretched at the time from modern Gabon in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The Portuguese established their primary early trading post at Soyo, which is now the northernmost city in Angola apart from the Cabinda enclave. Paulo Dias de Novais founded São Paulo de Loanda (Luanda) in 1575 with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. Benguela was fortified in 1587 and elevated to a township in 1617.

The Portuguese established several other settlements, forts, and trading posts along the Angolan coast, principally trading in Angolan slaves for Brazilian plantations. Local slave dealers provided a large number of slaves for the Portuguese Empire, usually sold in exchange for manufactured goods from Europe.  This part of the Atlantic slave trade continued until after Brazil's independence in the 1820s.

Despite Portugal's nominal claims, as late as the 19th century, their control over the interior country of Angola was minimal. In the 16th century Portugal gained control of the coast through a series of treaties and wars. Life for European colonists was difficult and progress slow. Iliffe notes that "Portuguese records of Angola from the 16th century show that a great famine occurred on average every seventy years; accompanied by epidemic disease, it might kill one-third or one-half of the population, destroying the demographic growth of a generation and forcing colonists back into the river valleys". 

Amid the Portuguese Restoration War, the Dutch occupied Luanda in 1641, using alliances with local peoples against Portuguese holdings elsewhere. A fleet under Salvador de Sá retook Luanda for Portugal in 1648; reconquest of the rest of the territory was completed by 1650. New treaties with Kongo were signed in 1649; others with Njinga's Kingdom of Matamba and Ndongo followed in 1656. The conquest of Pungo Andongo in 1671 was the last major Portuguese expansion from Luanda, as attempts to invade Kongo in 1670 and Matamba in 1681 failed. Portugal also expanded inward from Benguela, but until the late 19th century the inroads from Luanda and Benguela were very limited. Portugal had neither the intention nor the means to carry out a large scale territorial occupation and colonization.

Development of the hinterland began after the Berlin Conference in 1885 fixed the colony's borders, and British and Portuguese investment fostered mining, railways, and agriculture based on various forced-labour and voluntary labour systems.(See also Chibalo.) Full Portuguese administrative control of the hinterland did not establish itself until the beginning of the 20th century. Portugal had a minimalist presence in Angola for nearly five hundred years, and early calls for independence provoked little reaction amongst the population who had no social identity related to the territory as a whole. More overtly political and "nationalist" organisations first appeared in the 1950s and began to make demands for self-determination, especially in international forums such as the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Portuguese régime, meanwhile, refused to accede to the demands for independence, provoking an armed conflict that started in 1961 when freedom fighters attacked both white and black civilians in cross-border operations in northeastern Angola. The war came to be known as the Colonial War. In this struggle, the principal protagonists included the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), founded in 1956, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), which appeared in 1961, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), founded in 1966. After many years of conflict that weakened all of the insurgent parties, Angola gained its independence on 11 November 1975, after the 1974 coup d'état in Lisbon, Portugal, which overthrew the Portuguese régime headed by Marcelo Caetano.

Portugal's new revolutionary leaders began in 1974 a process of political change at home and accepted independence for its former colonies abroad. In Angola a fight for dominance broke out immediately between the three nationalist movements. The events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens, creating up to 300 000 destitute Portuguese refugees—the retornados.  The new Portuguese government tried to mediate an understanding between the three competing movements, and succeeded in getting them to agree, on paper, to form a common government. But in the end none of the African parties respected the commitments they had made, and military force resolved the issue.

Independence and civil war

After it gained independence in November 1975, Angola experienced a devastating civil war which lasted several decades (with some interludes). It claimed millions of lives and produced many refugees; it didn't end until 2002. 

Following negotiations held in Portugal, itself experiencing severe social and political turmoil and uncertainty due to the April 1974 revolution, Angola's three main guerrilla groups agreed to establish a transitional government in January 1975. Within two months, however, the FNLA, MPLA and UNITA had started fighting each other and the country began splitting into zones controlled by rival armed political groups. The MPLA gained control of the capital Luanda and much of the rest of the country. With the support of the United States, Zaïre and South Africa intervened militarily in favour of the FNLA and UNITA with the intention of taking Luanda before the declaration of independence.   In response, Cuba intervened in favor of the MPLA (see: Cuba in Angola), which became a flash point for the Cold War.

With Cuban support, the MPLA held Luanda and declared independence on 11 November 1975, with Agostinho Neto becoming the first president, though the civil war continued. At this time, most of the half-million Portuguese who lived in Angola – and who had accounted for the majority of the skilled workers in public administration, agriculture, industries and trade – fled the country, leaving its once prosperous and growing economy in a state of bankruptcy. 

For most of 1975–1990, the MPLA organised and maintained a socialist régime.  In 1990, when the Cold War ended, MPLA abandoned its ties to the Marxist–Leninist ideology and declared social democracy to be its official ideology,  going on to win the 1992 general election. However, eight opposition parties rejected the elections as rigged,National Society for Human Rights, Ending the Angolan Conflict, Windhoek, Namibia, 3 July 2000 (opposition parties, massacres); John Matthew, Letters, The Times, UK, 6 November 1992 (election observer); NSHR, Press Releases, 12 September 2000, 16 May 2001 (MPLA atrocities). sparking the Halloween massacre.

Ceasefire with UNITA

On 22 March 2002, Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, was killed in combat with government troops. The two sides reached a cease-fire shortly afterwards. UNITA gave up its armed wing and assumed the role of major opposition party, although in the knowledge that under the present regime a legitimate democratic election was impossible. Although the political situation of the country began to stabilize, regular democratic processes were not established until the elections in Angola in 2008 and 2012 and the adoption of a new Constitution of Angola in 2010, all of which strengthened the prevailing Dominant-party system. MPLA head officials continue e.g. to be given senior positions in top-level companies or other fields, although a few outstanding UNITA figures are given some of the economic as well as the military share. 

Angola has a serious humanitarian crisis, the result of the prolonged war, the abundance of minefields, the continued political, and to a much lesser degree, military activities in favour of the independence of the northern exclave of Cabinda, carried out in the context of the protracted Cabinda Conflict by the Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda, (FLEC), but most of all, the depradation of the country's rich mineral resources by the régime. While most of the internally displaced have now settled around the capital, in the so-called musseques, the general situation for Angolans remains desperate.  

Drought, in 2016, is the worst global food crisis in Southern Africa for 25 years. Drought affects 1.4 million people across seven of Angola’s 18 provinces. Food prices have risen and acute malnutrition rates have doubled, with more than 95,000 children being affected. Food insecurity is expected to worsen from July to the end of the year. 

Geography

At 481321 sqmi,  Angola is the world's twenty-third largest country. It is comparable in size to Mali, or twice the size of France or Texas. It lies mostly between latitudes 4° and 18°S, and longitudes 12° and 24°E.

Angola is bordered by Namibia to the south, Zambia to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north-east, and the South Atlantic Ocean to the west. The coastal exclave of Cabinda in the north, borders the Republic of the Congo to the north, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south.  Angola's capital, Luanda, lies on the Atlantic coast in the northwest of the country.

Climate

Angola has three seasons, a dry season which lasts from May to October, a transitional season with some rain from November to January and a hot, rainy season from February to April. April is the wettest month.  

Politics

Angola's motto is Virtus Unita Fortior, a Latin phrase meaning "Virtue is stronger when united". The Angolan government is composed of three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. The executive branch of the government is composed of the President, the Vice-Presidents and the Council of Ministers. The legislative branch comprises a 220-seat unicameral legislature elected from both provincial and nationwide constituencies. For decades, political power has been concentrated in the presidency.

The Constitution of 2010 establishes the broad outlines of government structure and delineates the rights and duties of citizens. The legal system is based on Portuguese and customary law but is weak and fragmented, and courts operate in only 12 of more than 140 municipalities. A Supreme Court serves as the appellate tribunal; a Constitutional Court does not hold the powers of judicial review. Governors of the 18 provinces are appointed by the president.

After the end of the Civil War the regime came under pressure from within as well as from the international community to become more democratic and less authoritarian. Its reaction was to implement a number of changes without substantially changing its character. 

Angola is classified as 'not free' by Freedom House in the Freedom in the World 2014 report. The report noted that the August 2012 parliamentary elections, in which the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola won more than 70% of the vote, suffered from serious flaws, including outdated and inaccurate voter rolls. Voter turnout dropped from 80% in 2008 to 60%.

Angola scored poorly on the 2013 Ibrahim Index of African Governance. It was ranked 39 out of 52 sub-Saharan African countries, scoring particularly badly in the areas of participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity, and human development. The Ibrahim Index uses a number of variables to compile its list which reflects the state of governance in Africa. 

The new constitution, adopted in 2010, further sharpened the authoritarian character of the regime. In the future, there will be no presidential elections; the president and the vice-president of the political party which wins the parliamentary elections automatically become president and vice-president of Angola.  Through a variety of mechanisms, the state president controls all the other organs of the state, so that separation of powers is not maintained. As a consequence, Angola no longer has a presidential system in the sense of the systems existing, e.g., in the USA or in France. In terms of the classifications used in constitutional law, its regime is considered one of several authoritarian regimes in Africa. 

On 16 October 2014, Angola was elected for the second time as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, with 190 favourable votes out of 193. The mandate begins on 1 January 2015 and lasts for two years. 

Also in that month, the country took on the leadership of the Group of African Ministers and Governors at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, following the debates at the annual meetings of both entities. 

Since January 2014 the Republic of Angola has held the presidency of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).  In 2015, the executive secretary of ICGLR, Ntumba Luaba, said that Angola is the example to be followed by members of the organization, because of the significant progress made over the 12 years of peace, particularly in terms of socioeconomic and political-military stability. 

Military

The Angolan Armed Forces (AAF) is headed by a Chief of Staff who reports to the Minister of Defense. There are three divisions—the Army (Exército), Navy (Marinha de Guerra, MGA), and National Air Force (Força Aérea Nacional, FAN). Total manpower is about 110,000. Its equipment includes Russian-manufactured fighters, bombers, and transport planes. There are also Brazilian-made EMB-312 Tucano for training role, Czech-made L-39 for training and bombing role, Czech Zlin for training role and a variety of western made aircraft such as C-212\Aviocar, Sud Aviation Alouette III, etc. A small number of AAF personnel are stationed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) and the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville).

Police

The National Police departments are Public Order, Criminal Investigation, Traffic and Transport, Investigation and Inspection of Economic Activities, Taxation and Frontier Supervision, Riot Police and the Rapid Intervention Police. The National Police are in the process of standing up an air wing, which will provide helicopter support for operations. The National Police are developing their criminal investigation and forensic capabilities. The force has an estimated 6,000 patrol officers, 2,500 taxation and frontier supervision officers, 182 criminal investigators and 100 financial crimes detectives and around 90 economic activity inspectors.

The National Police have implemented a modernization and development plan to increase the capabilities and efficiency of the total force. In addition to administrative reorganization, modernization projects include procurement of new vehicles, aircraft and equipment, construction of new police stations and forensic laboratories, restructured training programs and the replacement of AKM rifles with 9 mm Uzis for officers in urban areas.

Justice

In 2014, a new penal code took effect in Angola. The classification of money-laundering as a crime is one of the novelties in the new legislation. 

Administrative divisions

, Angola is divided into eighteen provinces (províncias) and 162 municipalities. The municipalities are further divided into 559 communes (townships).  The provinces are:

Exclave of Cabinda

With an area of approximately 7283 km2, the Northern Angolan province of Cabinda is unusual in being separated from the rest of the country by a strip, some 60 km wide, of the Democratic Republic of Congo along the lower Congo river. Cabinda borders the Congo Republic to the north and north-northeast and the DRC to the east and south. The town of Cabinda is the chief population center.

According to a 1995 census, Cabinda had an estimated population of 600,000, approximately 400,000 of whom live in neighboring countries. Population estimates are, however, highly unreliable. Consisting largely of tropical forest, Cabinda produces hardwoods, coffee, cocoa, crude rubber and palm oil. The product for which it is best known, however, is its oil, which has given it the nickname, "the Kuwait of Africa". Cabinda's petroleum production from its considerable offshore reserves now accounts for more than half of Angola's output.  Most of the oil along its coast was discovered under Portuguese rule by the Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (CABGOC) from 1968 onwards.

Ever since Portugal handed over sovereignty of its former overseas province of Angola to the local independence groups (MPLA, UNITA, and FNLA), the territory of Cabinda has been a focus of separatist guerrilla actions opposing the Government of Angola (which has employed its military forces, the FAA—Forças Armadas Angolanas) and Cabindan separatists. The Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda-Armed Forces of Cabinda (FLEC-FAC) announced a virtual Federal Republic of Cabinda under the Presidency of N'Zita Henriques Tiago. One of the characteristics of the Cabindan independence movement is its constant fragmentation, into smaller and smaller factions.

Economy

Angola has a rich subsoil heritage, from diamonds, oil, gold, copper, and a rich wildlife (dramatically impoverished during the civil war), forest, and fossils. Since independence, oil and diamonds have been the most important economic resource. Smallholder and plantation agriculture have dramatically dropped because of the Angolan Civil War, but have begun to recover after 2002. The transformation industry that had come into existence in the late colonial period collapsed at independence, because of the exodus of most of the ethnic Portuguese population, but has begun to reemerge with updated technologies, partly because of the influx of new Portuguese entrepreneurs. Similar developments can be verified in the service sector.

Overall, Angola's economy has in recent years moved on from the disarray caused by a quarter-century of civil war to become the fastest-growing economy in Africa and one of the fastest in the world, with an average GDP growth of 20 percent between 2005 and 2007.  In the period 2001–10, Angola had the world's highest annual average GDP growth, at 11.1 percent. In 2004, the  Eximbank approved a $2 billion line of credit to Angola. The loan was to be used to rebuild Angola's infrastructure, and also to limited the influence of the International Monetary Fund in the country.  China is Angola's biggest trade partner and export destination as well as the fourth-largest importer. Bilateral trade reached $27.67 billion in 2011, up 11.5% year-on-year. China's imports, mainly crude oil and diamonds, increased 9.1% to $24.89 billion while China's exports, including mechanical and electrical products, machinery parts and construction materials, surged 38.8%. The oil glut led to a local unleaded gasoline "pricetag" of £0.37 per gallon. 

The Economist reported in 2008 that diamonds and oil make up 60% of Angola's economy, almost all of the country's revenue and are its dominant exports.  Growth is almost entirely driven by rising oil production which surpassed  in late 2005 and was expected to grow to 2 Moilbbl/d by 2007. Control of the oil industry is consolidated in Sonangol Group, a conglomerate owned by the Angolan government. In December 2006, Angola was admitted as a member of OPEC.  However, operations in diamond mines include partnerships between state-run Endiama and mining companies such as ALROSA which continue operations in Angola.  The economy grew 18% in 2005, 26% in 2006 and 17.6% in 2007. However, due to the global recession the economy contracted an estimated −0.3% in 2009. The security brought about by the 2002 peace settlement has led to the resettlement of 4 million displaced persons, thus resulting in large-scale increases in agriculture production.

Although the country's economy has developed significantly since it achieved political stability in 2002, mainly thanks to the fast-rising earnings of the oil sector, Angola faces huge social and economic problems. These are in part a result of the almost continual state of conflict from 1961 onwards, although the highest level of destruction and socio-economic damage took place after the 1975 independence, during the long years of civil war. However, high poverty rates and blatant social inequality are chiefly the outcome of a combination of a persistent political authoritarianism, of "neo-patrimonial" practices at all levels of the political, administrative, military, and economic apparatuses, and of a pervasive corruption.   The main beneficiary of this situation is a social segment constituted during the last decades, around the political, administrative, economic, and military power holders, which has accumulated (and continues accumulating) enormous wealth.  "Secondary beneficiaries" are the middle strata which are about to become social classes. However, overall almost half the population has to be considered as poor, but in this respect there are dramatic differences between the countryside and the cities (where by now slightly more than 50% of the people live).

An inquiry carried out in 2008 by the Angolan Instituto Nacional de Estatística has it that in the rural areas roughly 58% must be classified as "poor", according to UN norms, but in the urban areas only 19%, while the overall rate is 37%.  In the cities, a majority of families, well beyond those officially classified as poor, have to adopt a variety of survival strategies.  At the same time, in urban areas social inequality is most evident, and assumes extreme forms in the capital, Luanda.  In the Human Development Index Angola constantly ranks in the bottom group. 

According to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank, oil production from Angola has increased so significantly that Angola now is China's biggest supplier of oil.  “China has extended three multibillion dollar lines of credit to the Angolan government; two loans of $2 billion from China Exim Bank, one in 2004, the second in 2007, as well as one loan in 2005 of $2.9 billion from China International Fund Ltd.”   Growing oil revenues have also created opportunities for corruption: according to a recent Human Rights Watch report, 32 billion US dollars disappeared from government accounts from 2007 to 2010.  Furthermore, Sonangol, the state run oil company, has control of 51% of Cabinda’s oil. Due to this market control the company ends up determining the profit given to the government and the taxes paid. The council of foreign affairs states that the World Bank mentioned that Sonangol " is a taxpayer, it carries out quasi-fiscal activities, it invests public funds, and, as concessionaire, it is a sector regulator. This multifarious work program creates conflicts of interest and characterizes a complex relationship between Sonangol and the government that weakens the formal budgetary process and creates uncertainty as regards the actual fiscal stance of the state." 

Before independence in 1975, Angola was a breadbasket of southern Africa and a major exporter of bananas, coffee and sisal, but three decades of civil war (1975–2002) destroyed fertile countryside, left it littered with landmines and drove millions into the cities. The country now depends on expensive food imports, mainly from South Africa and Portugal, while more than 90% of farming is done at thefamily and subsistence level. Thousands of Angolan small-scale farmers are trapped in poverty. 

The enormous differences between the regions pose a serious structural problem for the Angolan economy, illustrated by the fact that about one third of economic activities are concentrated in Luanda and neighbouring Bengo province, while several areas of the interior suffer economic stagnation and even regression. 

One of the economic consequences of the social and regional disparities is a sharp increase in Angolan private investments abroad. The small fringe of Angolan society where most of the accumulation takes place seeks to spread its assets, for reasons of security and profit. For the time being, the biggest share of these investments is concentrated in Portugal where the Angolan presence (including that of the family of the state president) in banks as well as in the domains of energy, telecommunications, and mass media has become notable, as has the acquisition of vineyards and orchards as well as of touristic enterprises. 

Sub-Saharan Africa nations are globally achieving impressive improvements in well-being, according to a report by Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative and The Boston Consulting Group.  Angola has upgraded critical infrastructure, an investment made possible by funds from the nation's development of oil resources. According to this report, just slightly more than ten years after the end of the civil war Angola's standard of living has overall greatly improved. Life expectancy, which was just 46 years in 2002, reached 51 in 2011. Mortality rates for children fell from 25 percent in 2001 to 19 percent in 2010 and the number of students enrolled in primary school has tripled since 2001.  However, at the same time the social and economic inequality that has characterised the country since long has not diminished, but on the contrary deepened in all respects.

With a stock of assets corresponding to 70 billion Kz (6.8 billion USD), Angola is now the third largest financial market in sub-Saharan Africa, surpassed only by Nigeria and South Africa. According to the Angolan Minister of Economy, Abraão Gourgel, the financial market of the country grew modestly from 2002 and now lies in third place at the level of sub-Saharan Africa. 

Angola's economy is expected to grow by 3.9 percent in 2014 said the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to the Fund, robust growth in the non-oil economy, mainly driven by a very good performance in the agricultural sector, is expected to offset a temporary drop in oil production. 

Angola's financial system is maintained by the National Bank of Angola and managed by governor Jose de Lima Massano. According to a study on the banking sector, carried out by Deloitte, the monetary policy led by Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA), the Angolan national bank, allowed a decrease in the inflation rate put at 7.96% in December 2013, which contributed to the sector's growth trend.  According to estimates released by Angola's central bank, the country's economy should grow at an annual average rate of 5 percent over the next four years, boosted by the increasing participation of the private sector. 

On 19 December 2014, the Capital Market in Angola started. BODIVA (Angola Securities and Debt Stock Exchange, in English) received the secondary public debt market, and it is expected to start the corporate debt market by 2015, but the stock market should only be a reality in 2016. 

Agriculture 

Agriculture and forestry is an area of opportunity for the country. “Angola requires 4.5 million tonnes a year of grain but only grows about 55% of the corn it needs, 20% of the rice and just 5% of its required wheat”(African economic Outlook)  but “less than 3 percent of Angola's abundant fertile land is cultivated and the economic potential of the forestry sector remains largely unexploited” (World Bank).  From this fact we can appreciate the capacity that Angola has to increase production not only for the national market but also for the international one. Investing in this sector can help reduce unemployment and more specifically in the rural areas. This will undoubted have consequences on the living standard of rural civilians.

Transport

Transport in Angola consists of:
*Three separate railway systems totalling 2,761 km (1,715 mi)
*76626 km of highway of which 19156 km is paved
*1,295 navigable inland waterways
*Eight major sea ports
*243 airports, of which 32 are paved.

Travel on highways outside of towns and cities in Angola (and in some cases within) is often not best advised for those without four-by-four vehicles. While a reasonable road infrastructure has existed within Angola, time and the war have taken their toll on the road surfaces, leaving many severely potholed, littered with broken asphalt. In many areas drivers have established alternate tracks to avoid the worst parts of the surface, although careful attention must be paid to the presence or absence of landmine warning markers by the side of the road. The Angolan government has contracted the restoration of many of the country's roads. The road between Lubango and Namibe, for example, was completed recently with funding from the European Union, and is comparable to many European main routes. Completing the road infrastructure is likely to take some decades, but substantial efforts are already being made.

Transport is  an important aspect in Angola because it is strategically located and it could become a regional logistics hub. In addition Angola has some of the most important and biggest ports and so it is vital to connect them to the interior of the country as well as to neighbouring countries.

Telecommunications

The telecommunications industry is considered one of the main strategic sectors in Angola. 

In October 2014, the building of an optic fiber underwater cable was announced.  This project aims to turn Angola into a continental hub, thus improving Internet connections both nationally and internationally. 

On 11 March 2015, the First Angolan Forum of Telecommunications and Information Technology was held, in Luanda under the motto "The challenges of telecommunications in the current context of Angola".  The purpose of this forum was to promote the debate on topical issues on telecommunications in Angola and worldwide.  A study about this sector was also presented at this forum, and some of its conclusions were: Angola had the first telecommunications operator in Africa to test the High Speed Internet technology (LTE-Advanced with speeds up to 400Mbit/s); It has a mobile penetration rate of about 75%; There are about 3.5 million smartphones in the Angolan market; There are about  of optical fiber installed in the country.  

The first Angolan satellite, AngoSat-1, will be ready for launch into orbit in 2017  and it will ensure telecommunications throughout the country.  According to Aristides Safeca, Secretary of State for Telecommunications, the satellite will provide telecommunications services, TV, internet and e-government and will remain into orbit "at best" for 18 years. 

Technology

The management of the domain '.ao' on web pages, will go from Portugal to Angola in 2015, following the approval of a new legislation by the Angolan Government.  The joint decree of the minister of Telecommunications and Information Technologies, José Carvalho da Rocha, and the minister of Science and Technology, Maria Cândida Pereira Teixeira, states that "under the massification" of that Angolan domain, "conditions are created for the transfer of the domain root '.ao' of Portugal to Angola". 

Demographics

Angola has a population of 24,383,301 inhabitants according to the preliminary results of its 2014 census, the first one conducted or carried out since 15 December 1970. It is composed of Ovimbundu (language Umbundu) 37%, Ambundu (language Kimbundu) 23%, Bakongo 13%, and 32% other ethnic groups (including the Chokwe, the Ovambo, the Ganguela and the Xindonga) as well as about 2% mestiços (mixed European and African), 1.6% Chinese and 1% European. The Ambundu and Ovimbundu nations combined form a majority of the population, at 62%.  The population is forecast to grow to over 60 million people to 2050, 2.7 times the 2014 population.  However, on March 23, 2016, official data revealed by Angola's National Statistic Institute  - Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE), states that Angola has a population of 25.789.024 inhabitants.

It is estimated that Angola was host to 12,100 refugees and 2,900 asylum seekers by the end of 2007. 11,400 of those refugees were originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who arrived in the 1970s.   there were an estimated 400,000 Democratic Republic of the Congo migrant workers,  at least 220,000 Portuguese,  and about 259,000 Chinese living in Angola. 

Since 2003, more than 400,000 Congolese migrants have been expelled from Angola.  Prior to independence in 1975, Angola had a community of approximately 350,000 Portuguese,  but the vast majority left after independence and the ensuing civil war. However, Angola has recovered its Portuguese minority in recent years; currently, there are about 200,000 registered with the consulates, and increasing due to the debt crisis in Portugal and the relative prosperity in Angola.  The Chinese population stands at 258,920, mostly composed of temporary migrants.  Also, there is a small Brazilian community of about 5,000 people. 

The total fertility rate of Angola is 5.54 children born per woman (2012 estimates), the 11th highest in the world.

Languages

The languages in Angola are those originally spoken by the different ethnic groups and Portuguese, introduced during the Portuguese colonial era. The indigenous languages with the largest usage are Umbundu, Kimbundu, and Kikongo, in that order. Portuguese is the official language of the country.

Mastery of the official language is probably more extended in Angola than it is elsewhere in Africa, and this certainly applies to its use in everyday life. Moreover, and above all, the proportion of native (or near-native) speakers of the language of the former colonizer, become official after independence, is no doubt considerably higher than in any other African country.

There are three intertwined historical reasons for this situation.
#In the Portuguese "bridgeheads" Luanda and Benguela, which existed on the coast of what today is Angola since the 15th and 16th century, respectively, Portuguese was spoken not only by the Portuguese and their mestiço descendents, but—especially in and around Luanda—by a significant number of Africans, although these always remained native speakers of their local African language.
#Since the Portuguese conquest of the present territory of Angola, and especially since its "effective occupation" in the mid-1920s, schooling in Portuguese was slowly developed by the colonial state as well as by Catholic and Protestant missions. The rhythm of this expansion was considerably accelerated during the late colonial period, 1961–1974, so that by the end of the colonial period children all over the territory (with relatively few exceptions) had at least some access to the Portuguese language. 
#In the same late colonial period, the legal discrimination of the black population was abolished, and the state apparatus in fields like health, education, social work, and rural development was enlarged. This entailed a significant increase in jobs for Africans, on condition that they spoke Portuguese.

As a consequence of all this, the African "lower middle class" which at that stage formed in Luanda and other cities began to prevent their children from learning the local African language, in order to guarantee that they learned Portuguese as their native language. At the same time, the white and "mestiço" population, where some knowledge of African languages could previously often be found, neglected this aspect more and more, to the point of frequently ignoring it totally.
These tendencies continued and grew under the rule of the MPLA whose main social roots are exactly in those social segments where the mastery of Portuguese as well as the proportion of native Portuguese speakers was highest. This became a political side issue, as FNLA and UNITA, given their regional constituencies, came out in favour of a greater attention to the African languages, and as the FNLA favoured French over Portuguese.

The dynamics of the language situation, as described above, were additionally fostered by the massive migrations triggered by the Civil War. Ovimbundu, the most populous ethnic group and the most affected by the war, appeared in great numbers in urban areas outside their areas, especially in Luanda and surroundings. At the same time, a majority of the Bakongo who had fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo in the early 1960s, or of their children and grandchildren, returned to Angola, but mostly did not settle in their original "habitat", but in the cities—and again above all in Luanda. As a consequence, more than half the population is now living in the cities which, from the linguistic point of view, have become highly heterogeneous. This means, of course, that Portuguese as the overall national language of communication is by now of paramount importance, and that the role of the African languages is steadily decreasing among the urban population—a trend which is beginning to spread into rural areas as well.

The exact numbers of those fluent in Portuguese or who speak Portuguese as a first language are unknown, although a census is expected to be carried out in July–August 2013.  Quite a number of voices demand the recognition of "Angolan Portuguese" as a specific variant, comparable to those spoken in Portugal or in Brazil. However, while there exists a certain number of idiomatic particularities in everyday Portuguese, as spoken by Angolans, it remains to be seen whether or not the Angolan government comes to the conclusion that these particularities constitute a configuration that justifies the claim to be a new language variant.

Religion

There are about 1000 mostly Christian religious communities in Angola.  While reliable statistics are nonexistent, estimates have it that more than half of the population are Catholics, while about a quarter adhere to the Protestant churches introduced during the colonial period: the Congregationalists mainly among the Ovimbundu of the Central Highlands and the coastal region to its West, the Methodists concentrating on the Kimbundu speaking strip from Luanda to Malanje, the Baptists almost exclusively among the Bakongo of the Northwest (now present in Luanda as well) and dispersed Adventists, Reformed and Lutherans.   In Luanda and region there subsists a nucleus of the "syncretic" Tocoists and in the northwest a sprinkling of Kimbanguism can be found, spreading from the Congo/Zaïre. Since independence, hundreds of Pentecostal and similar communities have sprung up in the cities, where by now about 50% of the population is living; several of these communities/churches are of Brazilian origin.

The U.S. Department of State estimates the Muslim population at 80,000–90,000,  while the Islamic Community of Angola puts the figure closer to 500,000.  Muslims consist largely of migrants from West Africa and the Middle East (especially Lebanon), although some are local converts.  The Angolan government does not legally recognize any Muslim organizations and often shuts down mosques or prevents their construction.

In a study assessing nations' levels of religious regulation and persecution with scores ranging from 0 to 10 where 0 represented low levels of regulation or persecution, Angola was scored 0.8 on Government Regulation of Religion, 4.0 on Social Regulation of Religion, 0 on Government Favoritism of Religion and 0 on Religious Persecution. 

Foreign missionaries were very active prior to independence in 1975, although since the beginning of the anti-colonial fight in 1961 the Portuguese colonial authorities expelled a series of Protestant missionaries and closed mission stations based on the belief that the missionaries were inciting pro-independence sentiments. Missionaries have been able to return to the country since the early 1990s, although security conditions due to the civil war have prevented them until 2002 from restoring many of their former inland mission stations. 

The Catholic Church and some major Protestant denominations mostly keep to themselves in contrast to the "New Churches" which actively proselytize. Catholics, as well as some major Protestant denominations, provide help for the poor in the form of crop seeds, farm animals, medical care and education.  

Largest cities

Culture

In Angola, there is a Culture Ministry that is managed by Culture Minister Rosa Maria Martins da Cruz e Silva.   Portugal has been present in Angola for 400 years, occupied the territory in the 19th and early 20th century, and ruled over it for about 50 years. As a consequence, both countries share cultural aspects: language (Portuguese) and main religion (Roman Catholic Christianity). The substrate of Angolan culture is African, mostly Bantu, while Portuguese culture has been imported. The diverse ethnic communities  – the Ovimbundu, Ambundu, Bakongo, Chokwe, Mbunda and other peoples – maintain to varying degrees their own cultural traits, traditions and languages, but in the cities, where slightly more than half of the population now lives, a mixed culture has been emerging since colonial times – in Luanda since its foundation in the 16th century. In this urban culture, the Portuguese heritage has become more and more dominant. An African influence is evident in music and dance, and is moulding the way in which Portuguese is spoken, but is almost disappearing from the vocabulary. This process is well reflected in contemporary Angolan literature, especially in the works of Pepetela and Ana Paula Ribeiro Tavares.

Leila Lopes, Miss Angola 2011, was crowned Miss Universe 2011 in Brazil on 12 September 2011 making her the first Angolan to win the pageant.

In 2014, Angola resume the National Festival of Angolan Culture (FENACULT), after a 25-years break. The festival took place in all the provincial capitals of the country between 30 August and 20 September and had as theme "Culture as a Factor of Peace and Development". 

Health

Epidemics of cholera, malaria, rabies and African hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg hemorrhagic fever, are common diseases in several parts of the country. Many regions in this country have high incidence rates of tuberculosis and high HIV prevalence rates. Dengue, filariasis, leishmaniasis, and onchocerciasis (river blindness) are other diseases carried by insects that also occur in the region. Angola has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and one of the world's lowest life expectancies.  A 2007 survey concluded that low and deficient niacin status was common in Angola.  Demographic and Health Surveys is currently conducting several surveys in Angola on malaria, domestic violence and more. 

In September 2014, the Angolan Institute for Cancer Control (IACC) was created by presidential decree, and it will integrate the National Health Service in Angola.  The purpose of this new center is to ensure the health and medical care in oncology, policy implementation, programs and plans for prevention and specialized treatment.  This cancer institute will be assumed as a reference institution in the central and southern regions of Africa. 

In 2014, Angola launched a national campaign of vaccination against measles, extended to every child under ten years old and aiming to go to all 18 provinces in the country.  The measure is part of the Strategic Plan for the Elimination of Measles 2014–2020 created by the Angolan Ministry of Health which includes strengthening routine immunization, a proper dealing with measles cases, national campaigns, introducing a second dose of vaccination in the national routine vaccination calendar and active epidemiological surveillance for measles. This campaign took place together with the vaccination against polio and vitamin A supplementation. 

The yellow fever outbreak in Angola began in December 2015. More than 2,400 people have been infected since December, and 300 people have died from the yellow fever. The outbreak began in the capital of Luanda but now has spread to at least 14 of the 18 provinces in the country. This outbreak of the yellow fever is the worst in the southern African country in three decades. 

Education

Although by law education in Angola is compulsory and free for eight years, the government reports that a percentage of students are not attending due to a lack of school buildings and teachers."Botswana". [http://web.archive.org/web/20140109071239/http://www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2005/tda2005.pdf 2005 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor]. Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor (2006). This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Students are often responsible for paying additional school-related expenses, including fees for books and supplies.

In 1999, the gross primary enrollment rate was 74 percent and in 1998, the most recent year for which data are available, the net primary enrollment rate was 61 percent. Gross and net enrollment ratios are based on the number of students formally registered in primary school and therefore do not necessarily reflect actual school attendance. There continue to be significant disparities in enrollment between rural and urban areas. In 1995, 71.2 percent of children ages 7 to 14 years were attending school. It is reported that higher percentages of boys attend school than girls. During the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), nearly half of all schools were reportedly looted and destroyed, leading to current problems with overcrowding.

The Ministry of Education hired 20,000 new teachers in 2005 and continued to implement teacher trainings. Teachers tend to be underpaid, inadequately trained, and overworked (sometimes teaching two or three shifts a day). Some teachers may reportedly demand payment or bribes directly from their students. Other factors, such as the presence of landmines, lack of resources and identity papers, and poor health prevent children from regularly attending school. Although budgetary allocations for education were increased in 2004, the education system in Angola continues to be extremely under-funded.

According to estimates by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the adult literacy rate in 2011 was 70.4%. 82.9% of males and 54.2% of women are literate as of 2001.  Since independence from Portugal in 1975, a number of Angolan students continued to be admitted every year at high schools, polytechnical institutes, and universities in Portugal, Brazil and Cuba through bilateral agreements; in general, these students belong to the elites.

In September 2014, the Angolan Ministry of Education announced an investment of 16 million Euros in the computerization of over 300 classrooms across the country. The project also includes training teachers at a national level, "as a way to introduce and use new information technologies in primary schools, thus reflecting an improvement in the quality of teaching." 

In 2010, the Angolan government started building the Angolan Media Libraries Network, distributed throughout several provinces in the country to facilitate the people's access to information and knowledge. Each site has a bibliographic archive, multimedia resources and computers with Internet access, as well as areas for reading, researching and socializing.  The plan envisages the establishment of one media library in each Angolan province by 2017. The project also includes the implementation of several media libraries, in order to provide the several contents available in the fixed media libraries to the most isolated populations in the country.  At this time, the mobile media libraries are already operating in the provinces of Luanda, Malanje, Uíge, Cabinda and Lunda South. As for REMA, the provinces of Luanda, Benguela, Lubango and Soyo have currently working media libraries. 

Sports

Angola is the top basketball team of FIBA Africa, and a regular competitor at the Summer Olympic Games and the FIBA World Cup. The Angola national football team qualified for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, as this was their first appearance on the World Cup finals stage. They were eliminated after one defeat and two draws in the group stage. They won 3 COSAFA Cups and finished runner up in 2011 African Nations Championship. Angola has participated in the World Women's Handball Championship for several years. The country has also appeared in the Summer Olympics for seven years and both compete and have hosted the FIRS Roller Hockey World Cup. Angola is also often believed to have historic roots in the martial art "Capoeira Angola" and "Batuque" which were practiced by enslaved African Angolans transported as part of the Atlantic slave trade.

The Angolan Civil War () was a major civil conflict in Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with some interludes, until 2002. The war began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. Prior to this, a decolonisation conflict, the Angolan War of Independence (1961–74), had taken place. The following civil war was essentially a power struggle between two former liberation movements, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). At the same time, the war served as a surrogate battleground for the Cold War and large-scale direct and indirect international involvement by opposing powers such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa and the United States was a major feature of the conflict. 

The MPLA and UNITA had different roots in the Angolan social fabric and mutually incompatible leaderships, despite their shared aim of ending colonial rule. Although both had socialist leanings, for the purpose of mobilising 
international support they posed as "Marxist–Leninist" and "anti-communist", respectively.  A third  movement, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), having fought the MPLA alongside UNITA during the war for independence and the decolonization conflict, played almost no role in the Civil War. Additionally, the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), an association of separatist militant groups, fought for the independence of the province of Cabinda from Angola.

The 27-year war can be divided roughly into three periods of major fighting – from 1975 to 1991, 1992 to 1994, and from 1998 to 2002 – broken up by fragile periods of peace. By the time the MPLA finally achieved victory in 2002, more than 500,000 people had died and over one million had been internally displaced. The war devastated Angola's infrastructure, and severely damaged the nation's public administration, economic enterprises, and religious institutions.

The Angolan Civil War was notable due to the combination of Angola's violent internal dynamics and massive foreign intervention. The war became a Cold War struggle, as both the Soviet Union and the United States, along with their respective allies, provided significant military assistance to parties in the conflict. Moreover, the Angolan conflict became entangled with the Second Congo War in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as with the Namibian War of Independence.

Outline of main combatants

Angola's three rebel movements had their roots in the anti-colonial movements of the 1950s. The MPLA was primarily an urban based movement in Luanda and its surrounding area. It was largely composed of Mbundu people. By contrast the other two major anti-colonial movements were rurally based groups, the FNLA and UNITA. The FNLA largely consisted of  Bakongo people  hailing from Northern Angola. UNITA, an offshoot of the FNLA, was mainly composed of  Ovimbundu people from the Central highlands.

MPLA

Since its formation in the 1950s, the MPLA's main social base has been among the Ambundu people and the multiracial intelligentsia of cities such as Luanda, Benguela and Huambo.  During its anti-colonial struggle of 1962–74, the MPLA was supported by several African countries, as well as by the Soviet Union. In the decolonization conflict of 1974–75, Cuba became the MPLA's strongest ally, sending significant contingents of combat and support personnel to Angola. This support, as well as that of several other countries of the Eastern Bloc, e.g. Romania and East Germany, was maintained during the Civil War. 

FNLA

The FNLA formed parallel to the MPLA,  and was initially devoted to defending the interests of the Bakongo people and supporting the restoration of the historical Kongo Empire. However, it rapidly developed into a nationalist movement, supported in its struggle against Portugal by the government of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire. During the early 1960s, the FNLA was also supported by the People's Republic of China, but when UNITA was founded in the mid-1960s, China switched its support to this new movement, because the FNLA had shown little real activity. The United States refused to give the FNLA support during the movement's war against Portugal, which was a NATO ally of the U.S.; however, the FNLA did receive U.S. aid during the decolonization conflict and later during the Civil Wars.

UNITA

UNITA's main social basis were the Ovimbundu of central Angola, who constituted about one third of the country's population, but the organization also had roots among several less numerous peoples of eastern Angola. UNITA was founded in 1966 by Jonas Savimbi, who until then had been a prominent leader of the FNLA. During the anti-colonial war, UNITA received some support from the People's Republic of China. During the subsequent decolonization conflict, the United States decided to support UNITA, and considerably augmented their aid to UNITA during the Civil War. However, in the latter period, UNITA's main ally was the Republic of South Africa.

Roots of the conflict

Angola, like most African countries, became constituted as a nation through colonial intervention. In Angola's case, its colonial power – Portugal – was present and active in the territory, in one way or another, for over four centuries.

Ethnic divisions

The original population of this territory were dispersed Khoisan groups. These were absorbed or pushed southwards, where residual groups still exist, by a massive influx of Bantu people who came from the north and east.

The Bantu influx began around 500 BC, and some continued their migrations inside the territory well into the 20th century. They established a number of major political units, of which the most important was the Kongo Empire whose centre was located in the northwest of what today is Angola, and which stretched northwards into the west of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the south and west of the contemporary Republic of Congo and even the southernmost part of Gabon.

Also of historical importance were the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms to the south of the Kongo Empire, in the Ambundu area. Additionally, the Lunda Empire, in the south-east of the present day DRC, occupied a portion of what today is north-eastern Angola. In the south of the territory, and the north of present-day Namibia, lay the Kwanyama kingdom, along with minor realms on the central highlands. All these political units were a reflection of ethnic cleavages that slowly developed among the Bantu populations, and were instrumental in consolidating these cleavages and fostering the emergence of new and distinct social identities.

Portuguese colonialism

At the end of the 15th century, Portuguese settlers made contact with the Kongo Empire, maintaining a continuous presence in its territory and enjoying considerable cultural and religious influence thereafter. In 1575, Portugal established a settlement and fort called Saint Paul of Luanda on the coast south of the Kongo Empire, in an area inhabited by Ambundu people. Another fort, Benguela, was established on the coast further south, in a region inhabited by ancestors of the Ovimbundu people.

Neither of these Portuguese settlement efforts was launched for the purpose of territorial conquest. It is true that both gradually came to occupy and farm a broad area around their initial bridgeheads (in the case of Luanda, mostly along the lower Kwanza River). However, their main function was trade – overwhelmingly the slave trade. Slaves were bought from African intermediaries and sold to Brazil and the Caribbean. In addition, Benguela developed a commerce in ivory, wax, and honey, which they bought from Ovimbundu caravans which fetched these goods from among the Ganguela peoples in the eastern part of what is now Angola. 

Nonetheless, the Portuguese presence on the Angolan coast remained limited for much of the colonial period. The degree of real colonial settlement was minor, and, with few exceptions, the Portuguese did not interfere by means other than commercial in the social and political dynamics of the native peoples. There was no real delimitation of territory; Angola, to all intents and purposes, did not yet exist.

In the 19th century, the Portuguese began a more serious program of advancing into the continental interior. However, their intention was less territorial occupation and more establishing a de facto overlordship which allowed them to establish commercial networks as well as a few settlements. In this context, they also moved further south along the coast, and founded the "third bridgehead" of Moçâmedes. In the course of this expansion, they entered into conflict with several of the African political units. 

Territorial occupation only became a central concern for Portugal in the last decades of the 19th century, during the European powers' "Scramble for Africa", especially following the 1884 Berlin Conference. A number of military expeditions were organized as preconditions for obtaining territory which roughly corresponded to that of present-day Angola. However, as late as 1906 only about 6% of that territory was effectively occupied, and the military campaigns had to continue. By the mid-1920s, the limits of the territory were finally fixed, and the last "primary resistance" was quelled in the early 1940s. It is thus reasonable to talk of Angola as a defined territorial entity from this point onwards.

Build-up to independence and rising tensions

In 1961, the FNLA and the MPLA, based in neighbouring countries, began a guerrilla campaign against Portuguese rule on several fronts. The Portuguese Colonial War, which included the Angolan War of Independence, lasted until the Portuguese regime's overthrow in 1974 through a leftist military coup in Lisbon. When the timeline for independence became known, most of the roughly 500,000 ethnic Portuguese Angolans fled the territory during the weeks before or after that deadline. Portugal left behind a newly independent country whose population was mainly composed by Ambundu, Ovimbundu, and Bakongo peoples. The Portuguese that lived in Angola accounted for the majority of the skilled workers in public administration, agriculture, and industry; once they fled the country, the national economy began to sink into depression. 

The South African government initially became involved in an effort to counter the Chinese presence in Angola, which was feared might escalate the conflict into a local theatre of the Cold War. In 1975, South African Prime Minister B.J. Vorster authorized Operation Savannah,  which began as an effort to protect engineers constructing the dam at Calueque, after unruly UNITA soldiers took over.  The dam, paid for by South Africa, was felt to be at risk.   The South African Defence Force (SADF) despatched an armoured task force to secure Calueque, and from this Operation Savannah escalated, there being no formal government in place and thus no clear lines of authority.  The South Africans came to commit thousands of soldiers to the intervention, and ultimately clashed with Cuban forces assisting the MPLA.

1970s

Independence

After the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon and the end of the Angolan War of Independence, the parties of the conflict signed the Alvor Accords on 15 January 1975. In July 1975, the MPLA violently forced the FNLA out of Luanda, and UNITA voluntarily withdrew to its stronghold in the south. By August, the MPLA had control of 11 of the 15 provincial capitals, including Cabinda and Luanda. South Africa intervened on 23 October, sending between 1,500 and 2,000 troops from Namibia into southern Angola in order to support the FNLA and UNITA. Zaire, in a bid to install a pro-Kinshasa government and thwart the MPLA's drive for power, deployed armored cars, paratroopers, and three infantry battalions to Angola in support of the FNLA.  Within three weeks, South African and UNITA forces had captured five provincial capitals, including Novo Redondo and Benguela. In response to the South African intervention, Cuba sent 18,000 soldiers as part of a large-scale military intervention nicknamed Operation Carlota in support of the MPLA. Cuba had initially provided the MPLA with 230 military advisers prior to the South African intervention.  The Cuban intervention proved decisive in repelling the South African-UNITA advance. The FNLA were likewise routed at the Battle of Quifangondo and forced to retreat towards Zaire.   The defeat of the FNLA allowed the MPLA to consolidate power over the capital Luanda.

 Agostinho Neto, the leader of the MPLA, declared the independence of the Portuguese Overseas Province of Angola as the People's Republic of Angola on 11 November 1975. (Hereafter "Rothchild".) UNITA declared Angolan independence as the Social Democratic Republic of Angola based in Huambo, and the FNLA declared the Democratic Republic of Angola based in Ambriz. FLEC, armed and backed by the French government, declared the independence of the Republic of Cabinda from Paris. The FNLA and UNITA forged an alliance on 23 November, proclaiming their own coalition government based in Huambo with Holden Roberto and Jonas Savimbi as co-Presidents, and José Ndelé and Johnny Pinnock Eduardo as co-Prime Ministers. 

In early November 1975, the South African government warned Savimbi and Roberto that the South African Defence Force (SADF) would soon end operations in Angola despite the failure of the coalition to capture Luanda and therefore secure international recognition for their government. Savimbi, desperate to avoid the withdrawal of South Africa, asked General Constand Viljoen to arrange a meeting for him with Prime Minister of South Africa John Vorster, who had been Savimbi's ally since October 1974. On the night of 10 November, the day before the formal declaration of independence, Savimbi secretly flew to Pretoria to meet Vorster. In a reversal of policy, Vorster not only agreed to keep his troops in Angola through November, but also promised to withdraw the SADF only after the OAU meeting on 9 December. The Soviets, well aware of South African activity in southern Angola, flew Cuban soldiers into Luanda the week before independence. While Cuban officers led the mission and provided the bulk of the troop force, 60 Soviet officers in the Congo joined the Cubans on 12 November. The Soviet leadership expressly forbade the Cubans from intervening in Angola's civil war, focusing the mission on containing South Africa.

In 1975 and 1976 most foreign forces, with the exception of Cuba, withdrew. The last elements of the Portuguese military withdrew in 1975 and the South African military withdrew in February 1976. However, Cuba's troop force in Angola increased from 5,500 in December 1975 to 11,000 in February 1976. Sweden provided humanitarian assistance to both the SWAPO and the MPLA in the mid-1970s,    and regularly raised the issue of UNITA in political discussions between the two movements.

Clark Amendment

President of the United States Gerald Ford approved covert aid to UNITA and the FNLA through Operation IA Feature on 18 July 1975, despite strong opposition from officials in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ford told William Colby, the Director of Central Intelligence, to establish the operation, providing an initial US$6 million. He granted an additional $8 million on 27 July and another $25 million in August.

Two days before the program's approval, Nathaniel Davis, the Assistant Secretary of State, told Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State, that he believed maintaining the secrecy of IA Feature would be impossible. Davis correctly predicted the Soviet Union would respond by increasing involvement in the Angolan conflict, leading to more violence and negative publicity for the United States. When Ford approved the program, Davis resigned. John Stockwell, the CIA's station chief in Angola, echoed Davis' criticism saying that success required the expansion of the program, but its size already exceeded what could be hidden from the public eye. Davis' deputy, former U.S. ambassador to Chile Edward Mulcahy, also opposed direct involvement. Mulcahy presented three options for U.S. policy towards Angola on 13 May 1975. Mulcahy believed the Ford administration could use diplomacy to campaign against foreign aid to the communist MPLA, refuse to take sides in factional fighting, or increase support for the FNLA and UNITA. He warned however that supporting UNITA would not sit well with Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire.

Dick Clark, a Democratic Senator from Iowa, discovered the operation during a fact-finding mission in Africa, but Seymour Hersh, a reporter for The New York Times, revealed IA Feature to the public on 13 December 1975. Clark proposed an amendment to the Arms Export Control Act, barring aid to private groups engaged in military or paramilitary operations in Angola. The Senate passed the bill, voting 54–22 on 19 December 1975, and the House of Representatives passed the bill, voting 323–99 on 27 January 1976. Ford signed the bill into law on 9 February 1976. Even after the Clark Amendment became law, then-Director of Central Intelligence, George H. W. Bush, refused to concede that all U.S. aid to Angola had ceased.p. 52 pp. 186–187. According to foreign affairs analyst Jane Hunter, Israel stepped in as a proxy arms supplier for South Africa after the Clark Amendment took effect. Israel and South Africa established a longstanding military alliance, in which Israel provided weapons and training, as well as conducting joint military exercises. 

The U.S. government vetoed Angolan entry into the United Nations on 23 June 1976.  Zambia forbade UNITA from launching attacks from its territory on 28 December 1976  after Angola under MPLA rule became a member of the United Nations.

'Cuba's Vietnam'

The Vietnam War tempered foreign involvement in Angola's civil war as neither the Soviet Union nor the United States wanted to be drawn into an internal conflict of highly debatable importance in terms of winning the Cold War. CBS Newscaster Walter Cronkite spread this message in his broadcasts to "try to play our small part in preventing that mistake this time." The Politburo engaged in heated debate over the extent to which the Soviet Union would support a continued offensive by the MPLA in February 1976. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Premier Alexei Kosygin led a faction favoring less support for the MPLA and greater emphasis on preserving détente with the West. Leonid Brezhnev, the then head of the Soviet Union, won out against the dissident faction and the Soviet alliance with the MPLA continued even as Neto publicly reaffirmed its policy of non-alignment at the 15th anniversary of the First Revolt.

The MPLA government and Cuban troops had control over all southern cities by 1977, but roads in the south faced repeated UNITA attacks. Savimbi expressed his willingness for rapprochement with the MPLA and the formation of a unity, socialist government, but he insisted on Cuban withdrawal first. "The real enemy is Cuban colonialism," Savimbi told reporters, warning, "The Cubans have taken over the country, but sooner or later they will suffer their own Vietnam in Angola." MPLA and Cuban troops used flame throwers, bulldozers, and planes with napalm to destroy villages in a  wide area along the Angola-Namibia border. Only women and children passed through this area, "Castro Corridor," because MPLA troops had shot all males ten years of age or older to prevent them from joining the UNITA. The napalm killed cattle to feed government troops and to retaliate against UNITA sympathizers. A number of civilians fled from their homes; 10,000 going south to Namibia and 16,000 east to Zambia, where they lived in refugee camps.

Shaba invasions

About 1,500 members of the Front for the National Liberation of the Congo (FNLC) invaded Shaba, Zaire, from eastern Angola on 7 March 1977. The FNLC wanted to overthrow Mobutu, and the MPLA government, suffering from Mobutu's support for the FNLA and UNITA, did not try to stop the invasion. The FNLC failed to capture Kolwezi, Zaire's economic heartland, but took Kasaji and Mutshatsha. The Zairean army (the Forces Armées Zaïroises) was defeated without difficulty and the FNLC continued to advance. On 2 April, Mobutu appealed to William Eteki of Cameroon, Chairman of the Organization of African Unity, for assistance. Eight days later, the French government responded to Mobutu's plea and airlifted 1,500 Moroccan troops into Kinshasa. This force worked in conjunction with the Zairean army, the FNLA and Egyptian pilots flying French-made Zairean Mirage fighter aircraft to beat back the FNLC. The counter-invasion force pushed the last of the militants, along with numerous refugees, into Angola and Zambia in April 1977.

Mobutu accused the MPLA, Cuban and Soviet governments of complicity in the war. While Neto did support the FNLC, the MPLA government's support came in response to Mobutu's continued support for Angola's FNLA The Carter Administration, unconvinced of Cuban involvement, responded by offering a meager $15 million-worth of non-military aid. American timidity during the war prompted a shift in Zaire's foreign policy towards greater engagement with France, which became Zaire's largest supplier of arms after the intervention. Neto and Mobutu signed a border agreement on 22 July 1977.

John Stockwell, the CIA's station chief in Angola, resigned after the invasion, explaining in the April 1977 The Washington Post article "Why I'm Leaving the CIA" that he had warned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that continued American support for anti-government rebels in Angola could provoke a war with Zaire. He also said that covert Soviet involvement in Angola came after, and in response to, U.S. involvement.

The FNLC invaded Shaba again on 11 May 1978, capturing Kolwezi in two days. While the Carter Administration had accepted Cuba's insistence on its non-involvement in Shaba I, and therefore did not stand with Mobutu, the U.S. government now accused Castro of complicity. This time, when Mobutu appealed for foreign assistance, the U.S. government worked with the French and Belgian militaries to beat back the invasion, the first military cooperation between France and the United States since the Vietnam War.George (2005), p. 136. The French Foreign Legion took back Kolwezi after a seven-day battle and airlifted 2,250 European citizens to Belgium, but not before the FNLC massacred 80 Europeans and 200 Africans. In one instance, the FNLC killed 34 European civilians who had hidden in a room. The FNLC retreated to Zambia, vowing to return to Angola. The Zairean army then forcibly evicted civilians along Shaba's border with Angola. Mobutu, wanting to prevent any chance of another invasion, ordered his troops to shoot on sight.

U.S.-mediated negotiations between the MPLA and Zairean governments led to a peace accord in 1979 and an end to support for insurgencies in each other's respective countries. Zaire temporarily cut off support to the FLEC, the FNLA and UNITA, and Angola forbade further activity by the FNLC.

Nitistas

Neto's Interior Minister, Nito Alves, had successfully put down Daniel Chipenda's Eastern Revolt and the Active Revolt during Angola's War of Independence. Factionalism within the MPLA became a major challenge to Neto's power by late 1975 and he gave Alves the task of once again clamping down on dissent. Alves shut down the Cabral and Henda Committees while expanding his influence within the MPLA through his control of the nation's newspapers and state-run television. Alves visited the Soviet Union in October 1976. When he returned, Neto began taking steps to neutralize the threat he saw in the Nitistas, followers of Alves. Neto called a plenum meeting of the Central Committee of the MPLA. Neto formally designated the party Marxist-Leninist, abolished the Interior Ministry , the official branch of the MPLA used by the Nitistas, and established a Commission of Enquiry. Neto used the commission, officially created to examine and report factionalism, to target the Nitistas, and ordered the commission to issue a report of its findings in March 1977. Alves and Chief of Staff José Van-Dunem, his political ally, began planning a coup d'état against Neto.

Alves represented the MPLA at the 25th Soviet Communist Party Congress in February 1977 and may have then obtained support for the coup from the Soviet Union. Alves and Van-Dunem planned to arrest Neto on 21 May before he arrived at a meeting of the Central Committee and before the commission released its report. The MPLA changed the location of the meeting shortly before its scheduled start, throwing the plotters' plans into disarray, but Alves attended the meeting and faced the commission anyway. The commission released its report, accusing him of factionalism. Alves fought back, denouncing Neto for not aligning Angola with the Soviet Union. After twelve hours of debate, the party voted 26 to 6 to dismiss Alves and Van-Dunem from their positions.

Ten armored cars with the Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) 8th Brigade broke into São Paulo prison at 4 a.m. on 27 May, killing the prison warden and freeing more than 150 supporters, including 11 who had been arrested only a few days before. The brigade took control of the radio station in Luanda at 7 a.m. and announced their coup, calling themselves the MPLA Action Committee. The brigade asked citizens to show their support for the coup by demonstrating in front of the presidential palace. The Nitistas captured Bula and Dangereaux, generals loyal to Neto, but Neto had moved his base of operations from the palace to the Ministry of Defence in fear of such an uprising. Cuban troops retook the palace at Neto's request and marched to the radio station. After an hour of fighting, the Cubans succeeded and proceeded to the barracks of the 8th Brigade, recaptured by 1:30 p.m. While the Cuban force captured the palace and radio station, the Nitistas kidnapped seven leaders within the government and the military, shooting and killing six.George (2005), pp. 129–131.

The MPLA government arrested tens of thousands of suspected Nitistas from May to November and tried them in secret courts overseen by Defense Minister Iko Carreira. Those who were found guilty, including Van-Dunem, Jacobo "Immortal Monster" Caetano, the head of the 8th Brigade, and political commissar Eduardo Evaristo, were then shot and buried in secret graves. At least 18,000 followers (or alleged followers) of Nito Alves were estimated to have been killed by Cuban and MPLA troops in the aftermath over a period that lasted up to two years, with some estimates claiming as high as 70,000 dead.   The coup attempt had a lasting effect on Angola's foreign relations. Alves had opposed Neto's foreign policy of non-alignment, evolutionary socialism, and multiracialism, favoring stronger relations with the Soviet Union, which he wanted to grant military bases in Angola. While Cuban soldiers actively helped Neto put down the coup, Alves and Neto both believed the Soviet Union supported Neto's ouster. Cuban Armed Forces Minister Raúl Castro sent an additional four thousand troops to prevent further dissension within the MPLA's ranks and met with Neto in August in a display of solidarity. In contrast, Neto's distrust of the Soviet leadership increased and relations with the USSR worsened. In December, the MPLA held its first party Congress and changed its name to the MPLA-Worker's Party (MPLA-PT). The Nitista coup took a toll on the MPLA's membership. In 1975, the MPLA reached 200,000 members. After the first party congress, that number decreased to 30,000.Georges A. Fauriol and Eva Loser. Cuba: The International Dimension, 1990 (ISBN 0-88738-324-6), p. 164.

Rise of dos Santos

The Soviets, trying to increase their influence in Luanda, began sending busts of Vladimir Lenin, a plane full of brochures with Leonid Brezhnev's speech at the February 1976 Party Congress, and two planes full of pamphlets denouncing Mao Zedong, to Angola. They sent so many busts that they ran out in the summer of 1976 and requested more from the CPSU Propaganda Department. Despite the best efforts of the Soviet propaganda machine and persistent lobbying by G. A. Zverev, the Soviet chargé d'affaires, Neto stood his ground, refusing to grant the permanent military bases the Soviets so desperately wanted in Angola. Neto allies like Defense Minister Iko Carreira and MPLA General Secretary Lúcio Lara also irked the Soviet leadership through their policies and personalities. With Alves out of the picture, the Soviet Union promoted Prime Minister Lopo do Nascimento, another 'internationalist', against Neto, a 'careerist,' for the MPLA's leadership. Neto moved swiftly to crush his adversary. The MPLA-PT's Central Committee met from 6 to 9 December. The Committee concluded the meeting by firing Nascimento as both Prime Minister and as Secretary of the Politburo, the Director of National Television, and the Director of Jornal de Angola. Commander C. R. Dilolua resigned as Second Deputy Prime Minister and a member of the Politburo.Kalley (1999), p. 10. Later that month the Committee abolished the positions of Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. Paving the way for dos Santos, Neto increased the ethnic composition of the MPLA-PT's political bureau as he replaced the hardline Old Guard with new blood. On 5 July 1979, Neto issued a decree requiring all citizens to serve in the military for three years upon reaching the age of 18. The MPLA gave a report to the UN claiming $293 million in property damage from South African attacks between 1976 and 1979, asking for compensation on 3 August 1979. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Cabinda, a Cabindan separatist rebel group, attacked a Cuban base near Tshiowa on 11 August.Kalley (1999), p. 12.

President Neto died from inoperable cancer in Moscow on 10 September 1979.  The MPLA declared 45 days of mourning. The government held his funeral at the Palace of the People on 17 September. Many foreign dignitaries, including Organization of African Unity President William R. Tolbert, Jr. of Liberia, attended. The Central Committee of the MPLA unanimously voted in favor of José Eduardo dos Santos as President. He was sworn in on 21 September. Under dos Santos' leadership, Angolan troops crossed the border into Namibia for the first time on 31 October, going into Kavango. The next day, the governments of Angola, Zambia, and Zaire signed a non-aggression pact.

1980s

In the 1980s, fighting spread outward from southeastern Angola, where most of the fighting had taken place in the 1970s, as the National Congolese Army (ANC) and SWAPO increased their activity. The South African government responded by sending troops back into Angola, intervening in the war from 1981 to 1987, prompting the Soviet Union to deliver massive amounts of military aid from 1981 to 1986. The USSR gave the MPLA more than US$2 billion in aid in 1984. In 1981, newly elected United States President Ronald Reagan's U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker, developed a linkage policy, tying Namibian independence to Cuban withdrawal and peace in Angola.

The South African military attacked insurgents in Cunene Province on 12 May 1980. The Angolan Ministry of Defense accused the South African government of wounding and killing civilians. Nine days later, the SADF attacked again, this time in Cuando-Cubango, and the MPLA threatened to respond militarily. The SADF launched a full-scale invasion of Angola through Cunene and Cuando-Cubango on 7 June, destroying SWAPO's operational command headquarters on 13 June, in what Prime Minister Pieter Willem Botha described as a "shock attack". The MPLA government arrested 120 Angolans who were planning to set off explosives in Luanda, on 24 June, foiling a plot purportedly orchestrated by the South African government. Three days later, the United Nations Security Council convened at the behest of Angola's ambassador to the UN, E. de Figuerido, and condemned South Africa's incursions into Angola. President Mobutu of Zaire also sided with the MPLA. The MPLA government recorded 529 instances in which they claim South African forces violated Angola's territorial sovereignty between January and June 1980.Kalley (1999), pp. 13–14.

Cuba increased its troop force in Angola from 35,000 in 1982 to 40,000 in 1985. South African forces tried to capture Lubango, capital of Huíla province, in Operation Askari in December 1983.
Also, in order to enhance MPLA's combat capacity, Romania sent 150 flight instructors and other aviation personnel, who contributed to the establishment of an Angolan Military Aviation School.

On 2 June 1985, American conservative activists held the Democratic International, a symbolic meeting of anti-Communist militants, at UNITA's headquarters in Jamba. Primarily funded by Rite Aid founder Lewis Lehrman and organized by anti-communist activists Jack Abramoff and Jack Wheeler, participants included Savimbi, Adolfo Calero, leader of the Nicaraguan Contras, Pa Kao Her, Hmong Laotian rebel leader, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, South African security forces, Abdurrahim Wardak, Afghan Mujahideen leader, Jack Wheeler, American conservative policy advocate, and many others. The Reagan administration, although unwilling to publicly support the meeting, privately expressed approval. The governments of Israel and South Africa supported the idea, but both respective countries were deemed inadvisable for hosting the conference.

The participants released a communiqué stating,

"We, free peoples fighting for our national independence and human rights, assembled at Jamba, declare our solidarity with all freedom movements in the world and state our commitment to cooperate to liberate our nations from the Soviet Imperialists."

The United States House of Representatives voted 236 to 185 to repeal the Clark Amendment on 11 July 1985. The MPLA government began attacking UNITA later that month from Luena towards Cazombo along the Benguela Railway in a military operation named Congresso II, taking Cazombo on 18 September. The MPLA government tried unsuccessfully to take UNITA's supply depot in Mavinga from Menongue. While the attack failed, very different interpretations of the attack emerged. UNITA claimed Portuguese-speaking Soviet officers led FAPLA troops while the government said UNITA relied on South African paratroopers to defeat the MPLA attack. The South African government admitted to fighting in the area, but said its troops fought SWAPO militants.

War intensifies

By 1986, Angola began to assume a more central role in the Cold War, with the Soviet Union, Cuba and other Eastern bloc nations enhancing support for the MPLA government, and American conservatives beginning to elevate their support for Savimbi's UNITA. Savimbi developed close relations with influential American conservatives, who saw Savimbi as a key ally in the U.S. effort to oppose and rollback Soviet-backed, non-democratic governments around the world. The conflict quickly escalated, with both Washington and Moscow seeing it as a critical strategic conflict in the Cold War.

The Soviet Union gave an additional $1 billion in aid to the MPLA government and Cuba sent an additional 2,000 troops to the 35,000-strong force in Angola to protect Chevron oil platforms in 1986. Savimbi had called Chevron's presence in Angola, already protected by Cuban troops, a "target" for UNITA in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine on 31 January. 

In Washington, Savimbi forged close relationships with influential conservatives, including Michael Johns (the Heritage Foundation's foreign policy analyst and a key Savimbi advocate), Grover Norquist (President of Americans for Tax Reform and a Savimbi economic advisor), and others, who played critical roles in elevating escalated U.S. covert aid to Savimbi's UNITA and visited with Savimbi in his Jamba, Angola headquarters to provide the Angolan rebel leader with military, political and other guidance in his war against the MPLA government. With enhanced U.S. support, the war quickly escalated, both in terms of the intensity of the conflict and also in its perception as a key conflict in the overall Cold War.  

In addition to escalating its military support for UNITA, the Reagan administration and its conservative allies also worked to expand recognition of Savimbi as a key U.S. ally in an important Cold War struggle. In January 1986, Reagan invited Savimbi to meet with him at the White House. Following the meeting, Reagan spoke of UNITA winning a victory that "electrifies the world" at the White House in January 1986. Two months later, Reagan announced the delivery of Stinger surface-to-air missiles as part of the $25 million in aid UNITA received from the U.S. government.  Jeremias Chitunda, UNITA's representative to the U.S., became the Vice President of UNITA in August 1986 at the sixth party congress. Fidel Castro made Crocker's proposal, the withdrawal of foreign troops from Angola and Namibia, a prerequisite to Cuban withdrawal from Angola on 10 September.

UNITA forces attacked Camabatela in Cuanza Norte province on 8 February 1986. ANGOP alleged UNITA massacred civilians in Damba in Uíge Province later that month, on 26 February. The South African government agreed to Crocker's terms in principle on 8 March. Savimbi proposed a truce regarding the Benguela railway on 26 March, saying MPLA trains could pass through as long as an international inspection group monitored trains to prevent their use for counter-insurgency activity. The government did not respond. In April 1987 Fidel Castro sent Cuba's Fiftieth Brigade to southern Angola, increasing the number of Cuban troops from 12,000 to 15,000. The MPLA and American governments began negotiating in June 1987.Kalley (1999), p. 36.

Cuito Cuanavale and New York Accords

UNITA and South African forces attacked the MPLA's base at Cuito Cuanavale in Cuando Cubango province from 13 January to 23 March 1988, in the second largest battle in the history of Africa,George (2005), p. 1. after the Battle of El Alamein, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa since World War II.Alao (1994), pp. 33–34. Cuito Cuanavale's importance came not from its size or its wealth but its location. South African Defense Forces maintained an overwatch on the city using new, G5 artillery pieces. Both sides claimed victory in the ensuing Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.  

With that manoeuvre, Fidel Castro claimed that he increased the cost to South Africa of continuing to fight in Angola and placed Cuba in its most aggressive combat position of the war, arguing that he was preparing to leave Angola with his opponents on the defensive.  According to the Cubans, the political, economical and technical cost to South Africa of maintaining its presence in Angola proved too much.  Conversely, the South Africans believe they indicated their resolve to the superpowers by preparing a nuclear test that ultimately forced the Cubans into a settlement. 

Cuban troops were alleged to have used nerve gas against UNITA troops during the civil war. Belgian criminal toxologist Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx, studied alleged evidence, including samples of  war-gas "identification kits" found after the battle at Cuito Cuanavale, claimed that "there is no doubt anymore that the Cubans were using nerve  gases against the troops of Mr. Jonas Savimbi." 

The Cuban government joined negotiations on 28 January 1988, and all three parties held a round of negotiations on 9 March. The South African government joined negotiations on 3 May and the parties met in June and August in New York and Geneva. All parties agreed to a ceasefire on 8 August. Representatives from the governments of Angola, Cuba, and South Africa signed the New York Accords, granting independence to Namibia and ending the direct involvement of foreign troops in the civil war, in New York City on 22 December 1988. The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 626 later that day, creating the United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM), a peacekeeping force. UNAVEM troops began arriving in Angola in January 1989.

Ceasefire

As the Angolan Civil War began to take on a diplomatic component, in addition to a military one, two key Savimbi allies, The Conservative Caucus' Howard Phillips and the Heritage Foundation's Michael Johns visited Savimbi in Angola, where they sought to persuade Savimbi to come to the United States in the spring of 1989 to help the Conservative Caucus, the Heritage Foundation and other conservatives in making the case for continued U.S. aid to UNITA.

President Mobutu invited 18 African leaders, Savimbi, and dos Santos to his palace in Gbadolite in June 1989 for negotiations. Savimbi and dos Santos met for the first time and agreed to the Gbadolite Declaration, a ceasefire, on 22 June, paving the way for a future peace agreement. President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia said a few days after the declaration that Savimbi had agreed to leave Angola and go into exile, a claim Mobutu, Savimbi, and the U.S. government disputed. Dos Santos agreed with Kaunda's interpretation of the negotiations, saying Savimbi had agreed to temporarily leave the country.

On 23 August, dos Santos complained that the U.S. and South African governments continued to fund UNITA, warning such activity endangered the already fragile ceasefire. The next day Savimbi announced UNITA would no longer abide by the ceasefire, citing Kaunda's insistence that Savimbi leave the country and UNITA disband. The MPLA government responded to Savimbi's statement by moving troops from Cuito Cuanavale, under MPLA control, to UNITA-occupied Mavinga. The ceasefire broke down with dos Santos and the U.S. government blaming each other for the resumption in armed conflict. 

1990s

Political changes abroad and military victories at home allowed the government to transition from a nominally communist state to a nominally democratic one. Namibia's declaration of independence, internationally recognized on 1 April, eliminated the threat to the MPLA from South Africa, as the SADF withdrew from Nambia.  The MPLA abolished the one-party system in June and rejected Marxist-Leninism at the MPLA's third Congress in December, formally changing the party's name from the MPLA-PT to the MPLA. The National Assembly passed law 12/91 in May 1991, coinciding with the withdrawal of the last Cuban troops, defining Angola as a "democratic state based on the rule of law" with a multi-party system. Observers met such changes with skepticism. American journalist Karl Maier wrote: "In the New Angola ideology is being replaced by the bottom line, as security and selling expertise in weaponry have become a very profitable business. With its wealth in oil and diamonds, Angola is like a big swollen carcass and the vultures are swirling overhead. Savimbi's former allies are switching sides, lured by the aroma of hard currency." Savimbi also reportedly purged some of those within UNITA whom he may have seen as threats to his leadership or as questioning his strategic course. Among those killed in the purge were Tito Chingunji and his family in 1991. Savimbi denied his involvement in the Chingunji killing and blamed it on UNITA dissidents. 

Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly

Government troops wounded Savimbi in battles in January and February 1990, but not enough to restrict his mobilityAlao (1994), p. XX. He went to Washington, D.C. in December and met with President George H. W. Bush again, the fourth of five trips he made to the United States. Savimbi paid Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, a lobbying firm based in Washington, D.C., $5 million to lobby the Federal government for aid, portray UNITA favorably in Western media, and acquire support among politicians in Washington. Savimbi was highly successful in this endeavour.

Senators Larry Smith and Dante Fascell, a senior member of the firm, worked with the Cuban American National Foundation, Representative Claude Pepper of Florida, Neal Blair's Free the Eagle, and Howard Phillips' Conservative Caucus to repeal the Clark Amendment in 1985. From the amendment's repeal in 1985 to 1992 the U.S. government gave Savimbi $60 million per year, a total of $420 million. A sizable amount of the aid went to Savimbi's personal expenses. Black, Manafort filed foreign lobbying records with the U.S. Justice Department showing Savimbi's expenses during his U.S. visits. During his December 1990 visit he spent $136,424 at the Park Hyatt hotel and $2,705 in tips. He spent almost $473,000 in October 1991 during his week-long visit to Washington and Manhattan. He spent $98,022 in hotel bills, at the Park Hyatt, $26,709 in limousine rides in Washington and another $5,293 in Manhattan. Paul Manafort, a partner in the firm, charged Savimbi $19,300 in consulting and additional $1,712 in expenses. He also bought $1,143 worth of "survival kits" from Motorola. When questioned in an interview in 1990 about human rights abuses under Savimbi, Black said, "Now when you're in a war, trying to manage a war, when the enemy ... is no more than a couple of hours away from you at any given time, you might not run your territory according to New Hampshire town meeting rules."

Bicesse Accords

President dos Santos met with Savimbi in Lisbon, Portugal and signed the Bicesse Accords, the first of three major peace agreements, on 31 May 1991, with the mediation of the Portuguese government. The accords laid out a transition to multi-party democracy under the supervision of the United Nations' UNAVEM II mission, with a presidential election to be held within a year. The agreement attempted to demobilize the 152,000 active fighters and integrate the remaining government troops and UNITA rebels into a 50,000-strong Angolan Armed Forces (FAA). The FAA would consist of a national army with 40,000 troops, navy with 6,000, and air force with 4,000. While UNITA largely did not disarm, the FAA complied with the accord and demobilized, leaving the government disadvantaged.

Angola held the first round of its 1992 presidential election on 29–30 September. Dos Santos officially received 49.57% of the vote and Savimbi won 40.6%. As no candidate received 50% or more of the vote, election law dictated a second round of voting between the top two contenders. Savimbi, along with eight opposition parties and many other election observers, said the election had been neither free nor fair.National Society for Human Rights, Ending the Angolan Conflict, Windhoek, Namibia, 3 July 2000 An official observer wrote that there was little UN supervision, that 500,000 UNITA voters were disenfranchised and that there were 100 clandestine polling stations.   Savimbi sent Jeremias Chitunda, Vice President of UNITA, to Luanda to negotiate the terms of the second round.Rothchild, p. 134. The election process broke down on 31 October, when government troops in Luanda attacked UNITA. Civilians, using guns they had received from police a few days earlier, conducted house-by-house raids with the Rapid Intervention Police, killing and detaining hundreds of UNITA supporters. The government took civilians in trucks to the Camama cemetery and Morro da Luz ravine, shot them, and buried them in mass graves. Assailants attacked Chitunda's convoy on 2 November, pulling him out of his car and shooting him and two others in their faces. The MPLA massacred over ten thousand UNITA and FNLA voters nationwide in a few days in what was known as the Halloween Massacre.[https://books.google.com/books?idV_qm7zPo87oC&pg
PA33&lpgPA33&dq
Angola+Halloween+Massacre&sourcebl&ots
z4kRxXc_VX&sigtcCDQm2tGVKOk4AFFfvAOtUCGnE&hl
en&saX&oi
book_result&resnum1&ct
result#PPA67,M1 Historical Dictionary of Angola by W. Martin James, Susan Herlin Broadhead] on Google Books Savimbi said the election had neither been free nor fair and refused to participate in the second round. He then proceeded to resume armed struggle against the MPLA.

Then, in a series of stunning victories, UNITA regained control over Caxito, Huambo, M'banza Kongo, Ndalatando, and Uíge, provincial capitals it had not held since 1976, and moved against Kuito, Luena, and Malange. Although the U.S. and South African governments had stopped aiding UNITA, supplies continued to come from Mobutu in Zaire.Hodges (2004). pp. 15–16. UNITA tried to wrest control of Cabinda from the MPLA in January 1993. Edward DeJarnette, Head of the U.S. Liaison Office in Angola for the Clinton Administration, warned Savimbi that, if UNITA hindered or halted Cabinda's production, the U.S. would end its support for UNITA. On 9 January, UNITA began a 55-day battle over Huambo, the War of the Cities. Hundreds of thousands fled and 10,000 were killed before UNITA gained control on 7 March. The government engaged in an ethnic cleansing of Bakongo, and, to a lesser extent Ovimbundu, in multiple cities, most notably Luanda, on 22 January in the Bloody Friday massacre. UNITA and government representatives met five days later in Ethiopia, but negotiations failed to restore the peace. The United Nations Security Council sanctioned UNITA through Resolution 864 on 15 September 1993, prohibiting the sale of weapons or fuel to UNITA. Perhaps the clearest shift in U.S. foreign policy emerged when President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12865 on 23 September, labeling UNITA a "continuing threat to the foreign policy objectives of the U.S." By August 1993, UNITA had gained control over 70% of Angola, but the government's military successes in 1994 forced UNITA to sue for peace. By November 1994, the government had taken control of 60% of the country. Savimbi called the situation UNITA's "deepest crisis" since its creation.Rothchild,  pp. 137–138. It is estimate that perhaps 120,000 people were killed in the first eighteen months following the 1992 election, nearly half the number of casualties of the previous sixteen years of war.  Both sides of the conflict continued to commit widespread and systematic violations of the laws of war with UNITA in particular guilty of indiscriminate shelling of besieged cities resulting in large death toll to civilians. The MPLA government forces used air power in indiscriminate fashion also resulting in high civilian deaths.  The Lusaka Protocol of 1994 reaffirmed the Bicesse Accords. 

Lusaka Protocol

Savimbi, unwilling to personally sign an accord, had former UNITA Secretary General Eugenio Manuvakola represent UNITA in his place. Manuvakola and Angolan Foreign Minister Venancio de Moura signed the Lusaka Protocol in Lusaka, Zambia on 31 October 1994, agreeing to integrate and disarm UNITA. Both sides signed a ceasefire as part of the protocol on 20 November. Under the agreement the government and UNITA would cease fire and demobilize. 5,500 UNITA members, including 180 militants, would join the Angolan national police, 1,200 UNITA members, including 40 militants, would join the rapid reaction police force, and UNITA generals would become officers in the Angolan Armed Forces. Foreign mercenaries would return to their home countries and all parties would stop acquiring foreign arms. The agreement gave UNITA politicians homes and a headquarters. The government agreed to appoint UNITA members to head the Mines, Commerce, Health, and Tourism ministries, in addition to seven deputy ministers, ambassadors, the governorships of Uige, Lunda Sul, and Cuando Cubango, deputy governors, municipal administrators, deputy administrators, and commune administrators. The government would release all prisoners and give amnesty to all militants involved in the civil war. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and South African President Nelson Mandela met in Lusaka on 15 November 1994 to boost support symbolically for the protocol. Mugabe and Mandela both said they would be willing to meet with Savimbi and Mandela asked him to come to South Africa, but Savimbi did not come. The agreement created a joint commission, consisting of officials from the Angolan government, UNITA, and the UN with the governments of Portugal, the United States, and Russia observing, to oversee its implementation. Violations of the protocol's provisions would be discussed and reviewed by the commission. The protocol's provisions, integrating UNITA into the military, a ceasefire, and a coalition government, were similar to those of the Alvor Agreement that granted Angola independence from Portugal in 1975. Many of the same environmental problems, mutual distrust between UNITA and the MPLA, loose international oversight, the importation of foreign arms, and an overemphasis on maintaining the balance of power, led to the collapse of the protocol.

Arms monitoring

In January 1995, U.S. President Clinton sent Paul Hare, his envoy to Angola, to support the Lusaka Protocol and impress the importance of the ceasefire onto the Angolan government and UNITA, both in need of outside assistance. The United Nations agreed to send a peacekeeping force on 8 February. Savimbi met with South African President Mandela in May. Shortly after, on 18 June, the MPLA offered Savimbi the position of Vice President under dos Santos with another Vice President chosen from the MPLA. Savimbi told Mandela he felt ready to "serve in any capacity which will aid my nation," but he did not accept the proposal until 12 August. The United States Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency's Angola operations and analysis expanded in an effort to halt weapons shipments, a violation of the protocol, with limited success. The Angolan government bought six Mil Mi-17 from Ukraine in 1995.Vines (1999), pp. 103–104. The government bought L-39 attack aircraft from the Czechoslovakia in 1998 along with ammunition and uniforms from Zimbabwe Defence Industries and ammunition and weapons from Ukraine in 1998 and 1999. U.S. monitoring significantly dropped off in 1997 as events in Zaire, the Congo and then Liberia occupied more of the U.S. government's attention. UNITA purchased more than 20 FROG-7 scuds and three FOX 7 missiles from the North Korean government in 1999.Vines (1999), p. 106.

The UN extended its mandate on 8 February 1996. In March, Savimbi and dos Santos formally agreed to form a coalition government. The government deported 2,000 West African and Lebanese Angolans in Operation Cancer Two, in August 1996, on the grounds that dangerous minorities were responsible for the rising crime rate. In 1996 the Angolan government bought military equipment from India, two Mil Mi-24 attack helicopters and three Sukhoi Su-17 from Kazakhstan in December, and helicopters from Slovakia in March.

The international community helped install a Government of Unity and National Reconciliation in April 1997, but UNITA did not allow the regional MPLA government to take up residence in 60 cities. The UN Security Council voted on 28 August 1997, to impose sanctions on UNITA through Resolution 1127, prohibiting UNITA leaders from traveling abroad, closing UNITA's embassies abroad, and making UNITA-controlled areas a no-fly zone. The Security Council expanded the sanctions through Resolution 1173 on 12 June 1998, requiring government certification for the purchase of Angolan diamonds and freezing UNITA's bank accounts.

During the First Congo War, the Angolan government joined the coalition to overthrow Mobutu's government due to Mobutu's support for UNITA. Mobutu's government fell on 16 May 1997.  In early October 1997, Angola invaded the Republic of the Congo during its civil war, and helped Sassou Nguesso's rebels overthrow the government of Pascal Lissouba. Lissouba's government had allowed UNITA use of cities in the Republic of Congo in order to circumvent sanctions. 

The UN spent $1.6 billion from 1994 to 1998 in maintaining a peacekeeping force. The Angolan military attacked UNITA forces in the Central Highlands on 4 December 1998, the day before the MPLA's fourth Congress. Dos Santos told the delegates the next day that he believed war to be the only way to ultimately achieve peace, rejected the Lusaka Protocol, and asked MONUA to leave. In February 1999, the Security Council withdrew the last MONUA personnel. In late 1998, several UNITA commanders, dissatisfied with Savimbi's leadership, formed UNITA Renovada, a breakaway militant group. Thousands more deserted UNITA in 1999 and 2000.

The Angolan military launched Operation Restore, a massive offensive, in September 1999, recapturing N'harea, Mungo and Andulo and Bailundo, the site of Savimbi's headquarters just one year before. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1268 on 15 October, instructing United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to update the Security Council to the situation in Angola every three months. Dos Santos offered an amnesty to UNITA militants on 11 November. By December, Chief of Staff General João de Matos said the Angolan Armed Forces had destroyed 80% of UNITA's militant wing and captured 15,000 tons of military equipment.Martin (2004), p. 141. Following the dissolution of the coalition government, Savimbi retreated to his historical base in Moxico and prepared for battle. In order to isolate UNITA, the government forced civilians in countryside areas subject to UNITA influence to relocate to major cities. The strategy was successful isolating in UNITA but had adverse humanitarian consequences. 

Diamond trade

UNITA's ability to mine diamonds and sell them abroad provided funding for the war to continue even as the movement's support in the Western world and among the local populace withered away. De Beers and Endiama, a state-owned diamond-mining monopoly, signed a contract allowing De Beers to handle Angola's diamond exports in 1990. According to the United Nation's Fowler Report, Joe De Deker, a former stockholder in De Beers, worked with the government of Zaire to supply military equipment to UNITA from 1993 to 1997. De Deker's brother, Ronnie, allegedly flew from South Africa to Angola, directing weapons originating in Eastern Europe. In return, UNITA gave Ronnie bushels of diamonds worth $6 million. De Deker sent the diamonds to De Beer's buying office in Antwerp, Belgium. De Beers openly acknowledges spending $500 million on legal and illegal Angolan diamonds in 1992 alone. The United Nations estimates Angolans made between three and four billion dollars through the diamond trade between 1992 and 1998. The UN also estimates that out of that sum, UNITA made at least $3.72 billion, or 93% of all diamond sales, despite international sanctions.

Executive Outcomes (EO), a private military company, played a major role in turning the tide for the MPLA, with one U.S. defense expert calling the EO the "best fifty or sixty million dollars the Angolan government ever spent." Heritage Oil and Gas, and allegedly De Beers, hired EO to protect their operations in Angola. Executive Outcomes trained up to 5,000 troops and 30 combat pilots in camps in Lunda Sul, Cabo Ledo, and Dondo.

Cabinda separatism

The territory of Cabinda is north of Angola proper, separated by a strip of territory 60 km long in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Portuguese Constitution of 1933 designated Angola and Cabinda as overseas provinces.  In the course of administrative reforms during the 1930s to 1950s, Angola was divided into districts, and Cabinda became one of the districts of Angola. The Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) formed in 1963 during the broader war for independence from Portugal. Contrary to the organization's name, Cabinda is an exclave, not an enclave. FLEC later split into the Armed Forces of Cabinda (FLEC-FAC) and FLEC-Renovada (FLEC-R). Several other, smaller FLEC factions later broke away from these movements, but FLEC-R remained the most prominent because of its size and its tactics. FLEC-R members cut off the ears and noses of government officials and their supporters, similar to the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Despite Cabinda's relatively small size, foreign powers and the nationalist movements coveted the territory for its vast reserves of petroleum, the principal export of Angola then and now.

In the war for independence, the division of assimilados versus indigenas peoples masked the inter-ethnic conflict between the various native tribes, a division that emerged in the early 1970s. The Union of Peoples of Angola, the predecessor to the FNLA, only controlled 15% of Angola's territory during the independence war, excluding MPLA-controlled Cabinda. The People's Republic of China openly backed UNITA upon independence despite the mutual support from its adversary South Africa and UNITA's pro-Western tilt. The PRC's support for Savimbi came in 1965, a year after he left the FNLA. China saw Holden Roberto and the FNLA as the stooge of the West and the MPLA as the Soviet Union's proxy. With the Sino-Soviet split, South Africa presented the least odious of allies to the PRC.  

Throughout the 1990s, Cabindan rebels kidnapped and ransomed off foreign oil workers to in turn finance further attacks against the national government. FLEC militants stopped buses, forcing Chevron Oil workers out, and setting fire to the buses on 27 March and 23 April 1992. A large-scale battle took place between FLEC and police in Malongo on 14 May in which 25 mortar rounds accidentally hit a nearby Chevron compound. The government, fearing the loss of their prime source of revenue, began to negotiate with representatives from Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda-Renewal (FLEC-R), Armed Forces of Cabinda (FLEC-FAC), and the Democratic Front of Cabinda (FDC) in 1995. Patronage and bribery failed to assuage the anger of FLEC-R and FLEC-FAC and negotiations ended. In February 1997, FLEC-FAC kidnapped two Inwangsa SDN-timber company employees, killing one and releasing the other after receiving a $400,000 ransom. FLEC-FLAC kidnapped eleven people in April 1998, nine Angolans and two Portuguese, released for a $500,000 ransom. FLEC-R kidnapped five Byansol-oil engineering employees, two Frenchman, two Portuguese, and an Angolan, in March 1999. While militants released the Angolan, the government complicated the situation by promising the rebel leadership $12.5 million for the hostages. When António Bento Bembe, the President of FLEC-R, showed up, the Angolan army arrested him and his bodyguards. The Angolan army later forcibly freed the other hostages on 7 July. By the end of the year the government had arrested the leadership of all three rebel organizations.

2000s

Illicit arms trading characterized much of the later years of the Angolan Civil War, as each side tried to gain the upper hand by buying arms from Eastern Europe and Russia. Israel continued in its role as a proxy arms dealer for the United States.  On 21 September 2000, a Russian freighter delivered 500 tons of Ukrainian 7.62 mm ammunition to Simportex, a division of the Angolan government, with the help of a shipping agent in London. The ship's captain declared his cargo "fragile" to minimize inspection. The next day, the MPLA began attacking UNITA, winning victories in several battles from 22 to 25 September. The government gained control over military bases and diamond mines in Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul, hurting Savimbi's ability to pay his troops.

Angola agreed to trade oil to Slovakia in return for arms, buying six Sukhoi Su-17 attack aircraft on 3 April 2000. The Spanish government in the Canary Islands prevented a Ukrainian freighter from delivering 636 tons of military equipment to Angola on 24 February 2001. The captain of the ship had inaccurately reported his cargo, falsely claiming the ship carried automobile parts. The Angolan government admitted Simportex had purchased arms from Rosvooruzhenie, the Russian state-owned arms company, and acknowledged the captain might have violated Spanish law by misreporting his cargo, a common practice in arms smuggling to Angola.

UNITA carried out several attacks against civilians in May 2001 in a show of strength. UNITA militants attacked Caxito on 7 May, killing 100 people and kidnapping 60 children and two adults. UNITA then attacked Baia-do-Cuio, followed by an attack on Golungo Alto, a city 200 km east of Luanda, a few days later. The militants advanced on Golungo Alto at 2:00 pm on 21 May, staying until 9:00 pm on 22 May when the Angolan military retook the town. They looted local businesses, taking food and alcoholic beverages before singing drunkenly in the streets. More than 700 villagers trekked 60 km from Golungo Alto to Ndalatando, the provincial capital of Cuanza Norte, without injury. According to an aid official in Ndalatando, the Angolan military prohibited media coverage of the incident, so the details of the attack are unknown. Joffre Justino, UNITA's spokesman in Portugal, said UNITA only attacked Gungo Alto to demonstrate the government's military inferiority and the need to cut a deal. Four days later UNITA released the children to a Catholic mission in Camabatela, a city 200 km from where UNITA kidnapped them. The national organization said the abduction violated their policy towards the treatment of civilians. In a letter to the bishops of Angola, Jonas Savimbi asked the Catholic Church to act as an intermediary between UNITA and the government in negotiations.  The attacks took their toll on Angola's economy. At the end of May 2001, De Beers, the international diamond mining company, suspended its operations in Angola, ostensibly on the grounds that negotiations with the national government reached an impasse.

Militants of unknown affiliation fired rockets at United Nations World Food Program (UNWFP) planes on 8 June near Luena and again near Kuito a few days later. As the first plane, a Boeing 727, approached Luena someone shot a missile at the aircraft, damaging one engine but not critically as the three-man crew landed successfully. The plane's altitude, 5000 m, most likely prevented the assailant from identifying his target. As the citizens of Luena had enough food to last them several weeks, the UNFWP temporarily suspended their flights. When the flights began again a few days later, militants shot at a plane flying to Kuito, the first attack targeting UN workers since 1999. The UNWFP again suspended food aid flights throughout the country. While he did not claim responsibility for the attack, UNITA spokesman Justino said the planes carried weapons and soldiers rather than food, making them acceptable targets. UNITA and the Angolan government both said the international community needed to pressure the other side into returning to the negotiating table. Despite the looming humanitarian crisis, neither side guaranteed UNWFP planes safety. Kuito, which had relied on international aid, only had enough food to feed their population of 200,000. The UNFWP had to fly in all aid to Kuito and the rest of the Central Highlands because militants ambushed trucks. Further complicating the situation, potholes in the Kuito airport strip slowed aid deliveries. Overall chaos reduced the amount of available oil to the point at which the UN had to import its jet fuel.

Government troops captured and destroyed UNITA's Epongoloko base in Benguela province and Mufumbo base in Cuanza Sul in October 2001.Martin (2004). p. 166. The Slovak government sold fighter jets to the Angolan government in 2001 in violation of the European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports.

Death of Savimbi

Government troops killed Jonas Savimbi on 22 February 2002, in Moxico province. UNITA Vice President António Dembo took over, but died from diabetes 12 days later on 3 March, and Secretary-General Paulo Lukamba became UNITA's leader. After Savimbi's death, the government came to a crossroads over how to proceed. After initially indicating the counter-insurgency might continue, the government announced it would halt all military operations on 13 March. Military commanders for UNITA and the MPLA met in Cassamba and agreed to a cease-fire. However, Carlos Morgado, UNITA's spokesman in Portugal, said the UNITA's Portugal wing had been under the impression General Kamorteiro, the UNITA general who agreed to the ceasefire, had been captured more than a week earlier. Morgado did say that he had not heard from Angola since Savimbi's death. The military commanders signed a Memorandum of Understanding as an addendum to the Lusaka Protocol in Luena on 4 April, with Santos and Lukambo observing.Crocker, Aall, and Osler (2004). p. 224.

The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1404 on 18 April, extending the monitoring mechanism of sanctions by six months. Resolutions 1412 and 1432, passed on 17 May and 15 August respectively, suspended the UN travel ban on UNITA officials for 90 days each, finally abolishing the ban through Resolution 1439 on 18 October. UNAVEM III, extended an additional two months by Resolution 1439, ended on 19 December. 

UNITA's new leadership declared the rebel group a political party and officially demobilized its armed forces in August 2002. That same month, the United Nations Security Council replaced the United Nations Office in Angola with the United Nations Mission in Angola, a larger, non-military, political presence.

Aftermath

The civil war spawned a disastrous humanitarian crisis in Angola, internally displacing 4.28 million people – one-third of Angola's total population. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that 80% of Angolans lacked access to basic medical care, 60% lacked access to water, and 30% of Angolan children would die before the age of five, with an overall national life expectancy of less than 40 years of age.

There was an exodus from rural areas in most of the country. Today the urban population represents slightly more than half of the population, according to the latest census. In many cases, people went into cities outside the traditional area of their ethnic group. There are now important Ovimbundu communities in Luanda, Malanje, and Lubango. There has been a degree of return, but at a slow pace, while many younger people are reluctant to go to a rural life that they never knew.

In rural areas, one problem is that some were for years been under the control of the MPLA-government, while others were controlled by UNITA. Some of the population fled to neighbouring countries, while others went into remote mountainous areas.

Humanitarian efforts 

The government spent $187 million settling internally displaced persons (IDPs) between 4 April 2002, and 2004, after which the World Bank gave $33 million to continue the settling process. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that fighting in 2002 displaced 98,000 people between 1 January and 28 February alone. IDPs comprised 75% of all landmine victims. The IDPs, unacquainted with their surroundings, frequently and predominantly fell victim to these weapons.  Militant forces laid approximately 15 million landmines by 2002. The HALO Trust began demining Angola in 1994, and had destroyed 30,000 landmines by July 2007. 1,100 Angolans and seven foreign workers are employed by the HALO Trust in Angola, with demining operations expected to finish by 2014.

Child soldiers 

Human Rights Watch estimates UNITA and the government employed more than 6,000 and 3,000 child soldiers respectively, some forcibly impressed, during the war. Additionally, human rights analysts found that between 5,000 and 8,000 underage girls were married to UNITA militants. Some girls were ordered to go and forage for food to provide for the troops – the girls were denied food if they did not bring back enough to satisfy their commander. After victories, UNITA commanders would be rewarded with women, who were often then sexually abused. The Angolan government and UN agencies identified 190 child soldiers in the Angolan army, and had relocated 70 of them by November 2002, but the government continued to knowingly employ other underage soldiers.

In popular culture

In John Milius's 1984 film Red Dawn, Bella, one of the Cuban officers who takes part in a joint Cuban-Soviet invasion of the United States, is said to have fought in the conflicts in Angola, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

Jack Abramoff wrote and co-produced the film Red Scorpion with his brother Robert in 1989. In the film, Dolph Lundgren plays Nikolai, a Soviet agent sent to assassinate an African revolutionary in a fictional country modeled on Angola. The South African government financed the film through the International Freedom Foundation, a front-group chaired by Abramoff, as part of its efforts to undermine international sympathy for the African National Congress. While working in Hollywood, Abramoff was convicted for fraud and other offenses that he had committed during his concurrent career as a lobbyist.

The war provides a more comedic background story in the South African comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy 2 as a Cuban and an Angolan soldier repeatedly try to take each other prisoner, but ultimately part on (more or less) amicable terms.

The 2004 film The Hero, produced by Fernando Vendrell and directed by Zézé Gamboa, depicts the life of average Angolans in the aftermath of the civil war. The film follows the lives of three individuals: Vitório, a war veteran crippled by a landmine who returns to Luanda; Manu, a young boy searching for his soldier father; and Joana, a teacher who mentors the boy and begins a love affair with Vitório. The Hero won the 2005 Sundance World Dramatic Cinema Jury Grand Prize. A joint Angolan, Portuguese, and French production, The Hero was filmed entirely in Angola.

The character of Danny Archer in the 2006 film Blood Diamond, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, discusses on several occasions his service within the SADF during its intervention in the Angolan Civil War. As the film unfolds, it is revealed that he is a white Rhodesian orphan who ran away to South Africa only to be conscripted into the infamous 32 Battalion, with whom he saw combat in Angola around 1987.

The Angolan Civil War is featured in the 2012 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II, in which the player character assists Jonas Savimbi in a battle against MPLA forces. 

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is partly set in the Angola—Zaire border region during the Angolan Civil War.

Angola from past to present | Conciliation Resources
Angola from past to present
Angola from past to present
From military peace to social justice? The Angolan peace process
Publication date: 
David Birmingham
When Angola achieved independence in 1975, a war was raging between competing national liberation movements and their foreign backers. Guus Meijer and David Birmingham revisit Angola’s colonial period and the independence struggle that followed and ask how the resulting social and economic divisions shaped and were manipulated by the warring parties. The article describes the introduction of authoritarian one-party rule under the MPLA and the impact of natural resource development and international and regional powers on the conflict. Tracing the conflict up to the signing of the Luena Memorandum, the authors conclude that Angola’s peace remains incomplete and that the country faces many challenges in achieving social and democratic reconstruction.
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Angola from past to present
On 11 November 1975, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) declared Angola's independence and installed Agostinho Neto as its first President in the former Portuguese colony's capital at Luanda. This outcome had long seemed uncertain and indeed even unlikely; the MPLA had not only had to deal with its own serious internal troubles and disaffections, but had also had to take on the Portuguese colonial army and the two rival armed movements, each backed by powerful allies. Holden Roberto's National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) had initially been the most powerful of the three competing national liberation movements and in the autumn of 1975 it came close to capturing Luanda from the north, backed by a heavily armed force supplied by President Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). In the south, two armoured columns of a South African invasion force, acting in military coordination with the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi, almost reached Luanda before they were stopped by Cuban troops which had been rushed to the assistance of the MPLA. The independent Angolan state was thus born out of turmoil and violence and amid serious national, regional and global rivalries. This heritage with its deep historical roots was to influence the unfolding of events for a long time.
Angola, like most African countries, grew out of a conglomerate of peoples and groups each with its own distinct history and traditions. Gradually small local nations and states came into contact with each other and historical developments drove them to share a common destiny under increasing Portuguese influence. Long before the arrival of the Portuguese, Bantu-speaking communities had established a farming economy over most of the territory. They had absorbed many of the scattered Khoisan-speaking populations and developed a successful pastoral dimension to their agriculture as well as building up trading economies. One of the most successfully diverse market centres became the town of M'banza Kongo around which the Kongo kingdom evolved. Further east the concept of state formation related to the political ideology of the Lunda peoples while in the south later kingdoms took shape in the highlands of the Ovimbundu people.
Angola under Portuguese rule
Although the first Portuguese traders, explorers and soldiers set foot on this part of the African coast from 1483, modern colonisation of the whole territory was only formalised four centuries later after the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. Wide stretches of Angola experienced colonial rule for less than a century, and even after 1900 armed revolts broke out and resistance movements sprang up as among the Ovimbundu and the Bakongo from 1913, until the last northern resistance was put down in 1917. During its century of overrule the colonial regime left crucial marks on Angolan society. Its discriminatory legislation, particularly the Statute of the Portuguese Natives of the Provinces of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea, separated the indigenous population from a tiny elite of 'civilised' individuals (or assimilados) who enjoyed some of the rights of Portuguese citizens. In 1961, after the start of an armed liberation struggle, the statute was revoked but the changes were only cosmetic. The Portuguese policy of racial and cultural discrimination had a profound and lasting impact on the later social and political development of Angola as an independent country. Social divisions created by colonialism continued to exercise a strong influence on the relationships between groups and on the attitudes of individuals. Racial mistrust manifested itself in the conflicts between as well as the tensions within the liberation movements. Deeply entrenched suspicion played a decisive role in Angola's recent political history. The conflicting interests of rural dwellers and people living in urban centres are in part another source of tension which independent Angola inherited from the colonial state.
Portugal, like the other colonial powers, was primarily interested in extracting riches from its colonies, through taxation, forced labour and the compulsory cultivation of marketable crops such as cotton. Under the guise of a 'civilising mission', the colonial state was heavily influenced by its own distinctive variety of Catholic fundamentalism, invented by the semi-fascist dictator António Salazar. An ideology developed under the banner of luso-tropicalism, a supposedly specific Portuguese way of harmonising Portuguese manners with the customs of peoples in the tropics. In Angola economic extraction was later supplemented by migrant influences when Portugal needed to dispose of excess population. In the 1950s and 1960s Angola received many thousands of poor white peasants and entrepreneurial settlers from Portugal. They created a colony of European descent which, although smaller than the Portuguese communities in France or Brazil, was larger than the rival colonial one in Mozambique.
During the colonial period, and particularly under the corporatist 'New State' and its colonial charters perfected by Salazar when he graduated from finance minister to Prime Minister in 1932, Angola's political and economic developments were crucially linked to the motherland. In 1969 Marcelo Caetano succeeded Salazar as Prime Minister and continued to insulate Portugal's colonies, and especially the crown jewel that was Angola, from the winds of change that blew concepts of independence over Africa in the 1960s. Instead of preparing for independence, as the other colonial powers had reluctantly done after the Second World War, Portugal tried to strengthen its imperial grip. As a weak state, politically isolated and economically backward, Portugal resorted to special measures to hold on to its colonies and in 1954 it euphemistically renamed them 'overseas provinces' in an attempt to avoid the attentions of United Nations inspectors. Economically, both Portugal and Angola were always at the mercy of trends and developments in the wider global economy, determined by powers beyond their control. It had been the world economic crisis of the 1930s which had led to the impoverishment of Portugal and to the crystallisation of Salazar's authoritarian regime. In the 1950s, when Portugal aspired to become a member of the United Nations and yet keep its colonies, it was agricultural crises and opportunities that caused impending upheavals. The relative poverty of the southern highlands and the boom in coffee prices in the north drove thousands of Ovimbundu peasants to become migrant workers on the coffee estates. There they were subjected to humiliation by white colonists and to resentment by the Bakongo who lived there.
Continuous rivalries between various elites have played an important role in Angola's recent history. The FNLA embodied the aspirations of the northern elite focused on Kinshasa but with some cultural links with the old Kongo kingdom. The MPLA had its heartland in the territory of the Mbundu people of the Luanda hinterland but included many groups in the urban centres including some who descended from the old assimilated families of black Angolans and others who were the mixed-race children of modern colonisation. UNITA became the expression of a third political tradition and embodied the economic aspirations of the Ovimbundu and their merchant leaders on the southern planalto. To a large extent the ethnic identification of these movements has come about as a result of conscious political manoeuvring by each leadership rather than as a genuine expression of popular sentiment and aspiration. Over time the social and political factors of identity and cohesion have become real.
Angola's historical society can be characterised by a tiny semi-urbanised elite of Portuguese-speaking 'creole' families – many black, some of mixed race, some Catholic and others Protestant, some old-established and others cosmopolitan – who are distinguished from the broad population of black African peasants and farm workers. Until the nineteenth century the great creole merchants and the rural princes dealt in captive slaves, most of whom were exported to Brazil or to the African islands. The black aristocracy and the creole bourgeoisie thrived on the profits of overseas trade and lived in style, consuming large quantities of imported alcoholic beverages and wearing fashionable European costumes. In the early twentieth century, however, their social and economic position was eroded by an influx of petty merchants and bureaucrats from Portugal, who wished to grasp the commercial and employment opportunities created by a new colonial order.
Although effective occupation only had a relatively short duration and elements of pre-colonial continuity persisted, colonialism nevertheless brought major social changes in urbanisation, in formal education, in religious practice, in farming techniques and in commercial linkages. These changes affected all sections of society and all parts of the country, albeit to an uneven and variable degree. There is a tendency noted above to view Angolan society, and indeed other African societies, as fundamentally split between a 'modern' sector, influenced by 'Western' (or European) values, and a 'traditional' one governed by pre-modern systems of unchanging norms and historic ritual practices. Such views, expressed in political and public discourse, tend to over-simplify the socio-cultural base of both the MPLA and UNITA when in fact each had to manage its relations with appropriate 'traditional authorities'. Angola presents a rich variety of influences and mixtures all deeply marked by the colonial experience as well as by the so-called Afro-Stalinism of the post-independence years. 'Traditional' concepts are now being transformed to adapt to the challenges of life in the present and the future. There is no part of Angola, however remote, and no sector of Angolan society, however 'traditional', which is not in some way linked to the 'modern' world of a globalised economy and its culture and communication systems.
The struggle for national liberation
While colonial rule never went unresisted, a more focused armed struggle for independence only started in 1961, after the Portuguese had bloodily repressed a mass protest against colonial conditions in the north. Hundreds of white planters and traders (estimates vary between 250 and 1,000) and thousands of black farm workers were killed, and many more fled the country, forming a fertile recruiting ground for an emerging anti-colonial cause.
nationalist political activity and resistance occurred initially under the banner of the Union of the Peoples of Angola (UPA), a predecessor of the FNLA. In Luanda and the coastal cities much older associations had long expressed the nationalist sentiment of Angola's African population. This urban-based nationalism also incorporated assimilados and mestiços of Luanda and Benguela who had organised the Angolan League in the 1910s and the Let's Discover Angola (Vamos Descobrir Angola) movement in the 1940s under leaders such as Viriato da Cruz who later became founders of the MPLA.
The 1960s saw a major military and political confrontation between the Portuguese colonial regime and Angolan nationalism. The country also experienced the early manifestation of divisions within the nationalist movement that were to mark political life in Angola for many years. The protagonists were the FNLA, the MPLA, which subsequently tried to claim responsibility for an attack on a Luanda prison on 4 February 1961, and UNITA which emerged in the mid 1960s. The date of the prison attack was later officially celebrated as the beginning of the armed struggle.
The anti-colonial struggle launched in 1961 was fought with guerrilla tactics, gradually increasing in scope to reach from the north to the east of the country. On the diplomatic front nationalists worked from bases in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), Conakry and Brazzaville, as well as from Lisbon and Paris. The FNLA received political and military backing from African countries and from China and the US. In 1962 it formed a Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (GRAE) which the organisation of African Unity (OAU) initially recognised as the legitimate successor to colonial rule. Some African countries later transferred their allegiance to the MPLA which, though its military record was poor and its leadership continuously suffered from internal conflict, gradually outmanoeuvred its rivals politically and diplomatically to gain pre-eminence in 1975.
The FNLA was no freer from internal dissent than the MPLA and in 1964 Jonas Savimbi left the 'government in exile' in which he had served as Minister for Foreign Affairs. He accused the FNLA leaders of being militarily ineffective and heavily dependent on the US. He also denounced nepotism and the authoritarian leadership of Holden Roberto. After visiting a number of mainly communist countries Savimbi founded UNITA in 1966. By exploiting the feelings of exclusion in Angola's largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu, Savimbi built up his own constituency in the centre and south of the country. Initially he conducted small guerrilla operations inside Angola before establishing a network of supporters abroad.
None of the armed movements succeeded in effectively threatening the colonial state in Angola. The end of this 'first Angolan war' was brought about indirectly through domestic pressure in Portugal and the growing dissatisfaction of the Portuguese military fighting the colonial wars in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. In April 1974, junior officers belonging to the Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA) toppled the Salazar-Caetano regime in Portugal and began the process of decolonisation. In 1974, however, a frenzy of diplomatic and political activity at home and abroad mitigated against a negotiated independence. In 1975, as the will to retain imperial control over Angola dwindled, fighting broke out in many provinces of Angola and also in the capital, Luanda, where the armies of the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA were intended to maintain the peace with joint patrols. In January 1975, under heavy international pressure, the colonial power and the three movements had signed an agreement in Alvor, Portugal, providing for a transitional government, a constitution, elections and independence. This Alvor Accord soon collapsed, however, and the transitional government scarcely functioned. In the subsequent confrontations the FNLA received military support from Zaire with the backing of China and the US, while under Agostinho Neto the MPLA gained ground in particular in Luanda with support from the Soviet Union and from Cuban troops. On 11 November 1975 Angola became independent. The FNLA and UNITA were excluded from the city and from government and a socialist one-party regime was established which eventually gained international recognition, though not from the United States.
Angola under one-party rule
From 1975 until the late 1980s Angolan society was moulded along 'classical' Marxist-Leninist lines. A dominant, but increasingly corrupt state sector was controlled by the ruling party. Private business, with the exception of the activities of foreign oil companies, was restricted and organised religion, including the Catholic Church, which had held an official place under the colonial regime, was suppressed. No freely organised 'civil society' emerged and the state controlled the media and mass organisations for youth, for women, for workers and for some of the professions.
One event had a crucial impact on the political climate during Angola's socialist era: the failed coup attempt by Nito Alves and his followers on 27 May 1977. Alves was a minister in President Agostinho Neto's government but also had his own constituency of supporters in Luanda's musseques (slums). The nitista crisis was fuelled by personal ambitions but also by ideological battles within the ruling socialist camp. Some leaders were loyal to the 'bureaucratic' line practised in the USSR while others preferred a more 'revolutionary' Chinese approach. The coup itself was bloodily repressed and it is alleged that thousands of supposed sympathisers were jailed or killed in the following days, weeks and months. The episode had a profound effect on the President, and his regime became ever more authoritarian and repressive. Angola's population lost its innocence and henceforth lived in fear.
Subsequent wars
By the end of the 1970s, UNITA took over from the FNLA as the main civil war opponent of the MPLA government. A rapprochement had been achieved between the MPLA and President Mobutu of Zaire. The FNLA's cadres, led by Mobutu's protégé Holden Roberto, were gradually integrated into Angolan society as the free-market acolytes of the one-party state. The FNLA army, once a foreign-armed force with thousands of recruits, disintegrated without being formally disarmed or demobilised.
Agostinho Neto died of cancer in 1979 and was succeeded as President by José Eduardo dos Santos, a young petroleum engineer trained in the Soviet Union. By this time the superpower conflict in Vietnam had ended and Angola became the seat of a new war by proxy between the United States and the Soviet Union. Each side was not so much defending a specific interest in Angola as playing out geo-political rivalry. The regional allies of the US continued to be Zaire and South Africa, while Congo-Brazzaville aligned itself with the Soviet Union. Cuba stepped up both military and civilian support to the MPLA government and contributed significantly to the rehabilitation of social sectors such as health and education.
Diamonds, and more especially oil, provided the MPLA with the necessary revenue to function as a government. Foreign income also funded the lifestyle of the ruling elite and financed the ongoing war against UNITA. During the war years economic links between the coastal cities and the agrarian hinterland weakened almost to the point of extinction. Sometimes backed by South African forces, UNITA spasmodically occupied parts of the country, which became inaccessible to both government and merchants. The cities, especially Luanda, survived on imported food rather than home produce. Consumer goods were paid for by oil royalties. The neglected countryside was left to its own subsistence strategies. Over the years many people fleeing the war migrated to the towns. The lack of opportunities in the rural areas made prospects in the urban centres seem more attractive despite the poverty of the great slums. The city of Luanda grew to an estimated population of four million.
The 'second Angolan war' reached its peak in the mid-1980s. One of its enduring ironies concerned the dollar income generated by American oil companies, which paid for Cuban troops to protect the Angolan government and its oil installations from attacks by South African forces working for UNITA and partly financed by the US. In this phase of the war the battle for the small but strategic town of Cuito Cuanavale was a turning point. In 1987-88, South African and UNITA forces were pushed back by MPLA and Cuban troops after a long siege. The South Africans conceded that no military solution to the security of their northern border was possible and they started to explore political alternatives. The ensuing peace initiatives, orchestrated by a Troika of Portugal, America and Russia, finally resulted in the Bicesse Accords of May 1991 between the MPLA and UNITA. The peace was followed by the holding under UN auspices of Angola's first and only general election. Savimbi expected to gain power through the ballot box in September 1992. When he failed to do so he rejected the voting results and returned to war.
The 'third Angolan war' was even more brutal than its predecessors. Whole cities were reduced to ruins, hundreds of thousands of people were killed or died from war-related deprivation and disease, and millions were displaced, some for the second or even the third time. Extended talks in Lusaka finally resulted in another peace agreement, the Lusaka Protocol, signed in October 1994, but even then the war was not over. Despite international sanctions against UNITA's supply networks, Savimbi was reluctant to surrender the military option. After four years of neither peace nor war, the war erupted again with full ferocity in December 1998. The Angolan government, on paper a 'government of national unity and reconciliation' in which some UNITA dissident politicians participated under MPLA domination, pursued an offensive that culminated in the assassination of Jonas Savimbi in February 2002. On 4 April 2002, the Luena Memorandum marked the end of four decades of war and the ultimate defeat of UNITA. In October 2002, UNITA declared itself a fully disarmed and democratic political party and UN sanctions against it were lifted.
Peace has characterised mainland Angola since April 2002, but in Cabinda, the enclave between the two Congo republics which accounts for sixty per cent of Angola's oil production, a war has continued unabated. The government has tried to replicate the strategy of scorched earth and starvation that had proved successful against UNITA. Many Cabindans nevertheless still support the rival movements demanding independence. The Angolan government, determined to preserve major economic assets, could never offer more than some form of provincial autonomy for the enclave. In October 2002, a major offensive against the Liberation Front of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) led to serious accusations of human rights abuses. Towards the end of 2003, after some FLEC defeats and defections, the Luanda government signalled that it was prepared to talk peace or even consider a referendum. So far, however, the silencing of the guns in mainland Angola has not reached Cabinda and the conflict remains unresolved. Peace in Angola remains incomplete. The physical and psychological scars of war are still evident. The democratic deficit has not been remedied. The regime is still marked by its predatory history.

Angola
Fact Sheet
September 26, 2016
More information about Angola is available on the Angola Page and from other Department of State publications and other sources listed at the end of this fact sheet.
U.S.-ANGOLA RELATIONS
The United States established diplomatic relations in 1993 with Angola, which had become independent from Portugal in 1975. Post-independence, Angola saw 27 years of civil war among groups backed at various times by countries that included the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and South Africa. Angola has had two presidents since independence. The first president came to power in 1975; upon his 1979 death, the second president assumed power. Multiparty elections were held in 1992 under a process supervised by the United Nations, but the results were disputed and civil war continued until the 2002 death of one holdout guerilla leader. A new constitution was adopted in 2010 and elections were held in 2012.
Angola has a strong and capable military. Although the country is sub-Saharan Africa's second-largest oil producer and has great agricultural potential, two-thirds of the population live in poverty. U.S. foreign policy goals in Angola are to promote and strengthen Angola’s democratic institutions, promote economic prosperity, improve health, and consolidate peace and security, including maritime security. The United States has worked with Angola to remove thousands of landmines and help war refugees and internally displaced people return to their homes.
In 2009 Secretary Clinton declared Angola a “strategic partner” of the United States, one of three that the Obama Administration has identified on the African continent (the other two are Nigeria and South Africa). The U.S. – Angola Strategic Partnership Dialogue (SPD) was formalized with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Washington in July 2010. Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Chikoti met for the first high level Strategic Dialogue in December 2014 in Washington, D.C. Secretary Kerry met President dos Santos during his visit to Luanda in May 2014.
U.S. Assistance to Angola
U.S. assistance seeks to focus on preventing major infectious diseases, strengthening health systems, increasing access to family planning and reproductive health services, and building capacity within nongovernmental organizations working in health advocacy and health service delivery. U.S. assistance also promotes stabilization and security sector reform.
Bilateral Economic Relations
Angola is the third-largest trading partner of the United States in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because of its petroleum exports. U.S. imports from Angola are dominated by petroleum, with some diamonds.  U.S. exports to Angola include machinery, aircraft, poultry, and iron and steel products. Angola is a partner country with Power Africa.  Angola is eligible for preferential trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The United States and Angola have signed a trade and investment framework agreement, which seeks to promote greater trade and investment between the two countries.
Angola's Membership in International Organizations
Angola and the United States belong to a number of the same international organizations, including the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. Angola also is an observer to the Organization of American States and is currently on the United Nations Security Council. They also serve as the chair of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region.
Bilateral Representation
The U.S. Ambassador to Angola is Helen La Lime . Other principal embassy officials are listed in the Department's Key Officers List .
Angola maintains an embassy in the United States at 2100-2108 16th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009 (tel. 202-785-1156).
More information about Angola is available from the Department of State and other sources, some of which are listed here:

Angola: History
History
History
History until Independence
The first inhabitants of the area that is now Angola are thought to have been members of the hunter-gatherer Khoisan group. Bantu-speaking peoples from West Africa arrived in the region in the 13th cent., partially displacing the Khoisan and establishing a number of powerful kingdoms. The Portuguese first explored coastal Angola in the late 15th cent., and except for a short occupation (1641–48) by the Dutch, it was under Portugal's control until they left the country late in the 20th cent.
Although they failed to discover the gold and other precious metals they were seeking, the Portuguese found in Angola an excellent source of slaves for their colony in Brazil. Portuguese colonization of Angola began in 1575, when a permanent base was established at Luanda. By this time the Mbundu kingdom had established itself in central Angola. After several attempts at subjugation, Portuguese troops finally broke the back of the kingdom in 1902, when the Bié Plateau was captured. Construction of the Benguela railroad followed, and white settlers arrived in the Angolan highlands.
The modern development of Angola began only after World War II. In 1951 the colony was designated an overseas province, and Portugal initiated plans to develop industries and hydroelectric power. Although the Portuguese professed the aim of a multiracial society of equals in Angola, most Africans still suffered repression. Inspired by nationalist movements elsewhere, the native Angolans rose in revolt in 1961. When the uprising was quelled by the Portuguese army, many fled to Congo (Kinshasa) and other neighboring countries.
In 1962 a group of refugees in the Congo, led by Holden Roberto, organized the Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA). It maintained supply and training bases in the Congo, waged guerrilla warfare in Angola, and, while developing contacts with both Western and Communist nations, obtained its chief support from the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Angola's liberation movement comprised two other guerrilla groups as well. The Marxist-influenced Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), founded in 1956, had its headquarters in Zambia and was most active among educated Angolan Africans and mestiços living abroad. The MPLA led the struggle for Angolan independence. The third rival group was the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), which was established in 1966 under the leadership of Jonas Savimbi . As a result of the guerrilla warfare, Portugal was forced to keep more than 50,000 troops in Angola by the early 1970s.
In 1972 the heads of the FNLA and MPLA assumed joint leadership of a newly formed Supreme Council for the Liberation of Angola, but their military forces did not merge. That same year the Portuguese national assembly changed Angola's status from an overseas province to an "autonomous state" with authority over internal affairs; Portugal was to retain responsibility for defense and foreign relations. Elections were held for a legislative assembly in 1973.
In Apr., 1974, the Portuguese government was overthrown in a military uprising. In May of that year the new government proclaimed a truce with the guerrillas in an effort to promote peace talks. Later in the year Portugal seemed intent on granting Angola independence; however, the situation was complicated by the large number of Portuguese and other Europeans (estimated at 500,000) resident there, by continued conflict among the African liberation movements, and by the desire of some Cabindans for their oil-rich region to become independent as a separate.
Postcolonial History
Portugal granted Angola independence in 1975 and the MPLA assumed control of the government in Luanda; Agostinho Neto became president. The FNLA and UNITA, however, proclaimed a coaliton government in Nova Lisboa (now Huambo), but by early 1976 the MPLA had gained control of the whole country. Most of the European population fled the political and economic upheaval that followed independence, taking their investments and technical expertise with them. When Neto died in 1979, José Eduardo dos Santos succeeded him as president. In the 1970s and 80s the MPLA government received large amounts of aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union, while the United States supported first the FNLA and then UNITA. In Cabinda, independence forces that had fought against the Portuguese now fought against the Angolan government. Although the FNLA faded in importance, UNITA obtained the support of South Africa, which was mounting its own campaigns against the Southwest Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), a Namibian liberation group based in Angola.
In the late 1980s the United States provided military aid to UNITA and demanded the withdrawal of Cuban troops and an end to Soviet assistance. As a result of negotiations among Angola, South Africa, Cuba, and the United States, the withdrawal of Cuban troops began in 1989. Also in the late 1980s, Marxist Angola implemented programs of privatization under President dos Santos. A cease-fire between the ruling MPLA and UNITA was reached in 1991, and the government agreed to make Angola a multiparty state. However, when dos Santos won UN-supervised elections held in Sept., 1992, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi charged fraud and refused to accept the results. In Nov., 1992, bitter fighting broke out between rebel UNITA troops and government forces, destroying many cities and much of the country's infrastructure. Despite initial victories that gave UNITA control of some two thirds of Angola, the MPLA eventually gained the upper hand in the renewed warfare.
In Nov., 1994, with UNITA on the verge of defeat, dos Santos and Savimbi signed the Lusaka protocol, a new agreement on ending the conflict. The two sides committed to the integration of several thousand UNITA troops into the government armed forces as well as the demobilization of thousands more from both sides. UN peacekeeping troops began arriving in June, 1995, to supervise the process. Troop integration, however, was suspended in 1996, and UNITA's demobilization efforts lagged. A new government of national unity was formed in 1997, including several UNITA deputies; Savimbi had declined a vice presidency in 1996.
With renewed fighting in 1998, Angola's ruling MPLA put the country's coalition government on hold, saying that UNITA had failed to meet its peace-treaty obligations. It suspended all UNITA representatives from parliament and declared that it would no longer deal with Savimbi, instead recognizing a splinter group, UNITA Renovada. In 1999 the United Nations voted to pull out all remaining troops stationed in the country, while continuing humanitarian relief work with over a million refugees.
UNITA was able to finance its activities, including an estimated 30,000 troops stationed in neighboring Zambia and Congo (Kinshasa), with some $500 million a year in diamond revenues from mines it controlled in the country's northeast. Fighting continued, with Angola's army inflicting several defeats on UNITA beginning in late 1999, weakening UNITA's still sizable forces. International restrictions (2001) on sales of diamonds not certfied as coming from legitimate sources also hurt UNITA, and the death of Savimbi in battle in 2002 was a severe blow to the rebels, who subsequently signed a cease-fire agreement and demobilized. UNITA subsequently reconstituted itself as a political party. Also in 2002 Angolan government forces gained the upper hand against Cabindan separatists; a peace agreement for the province was signed in 2006. As many as one million people died in the Angolan civil war, and the country's infrastructure was slow to recover from the effects of the fighting.
Parliamentary elections scheduled for 2007 were postponed late in 2006 until mid-2008, and the presidential election was then set for 2009. In Mar., 2007, there was an apparent attack on the leader of UNITA, Isaias Samakuva; UNITA accused the government of trying to assassinate him. When the parliamentary elections were finally held in Sept., 2008, they were marred by procedural irregulaties and difficulties but were otherwise generally transparent, and the MPLA won a landslide victory, with more than 80% of the vote.
In 2009 the presidential election (scheduled for Sept., 2009) was again postponed; a new constitution approved by the National Assembly in Jan., 2010, abolished direct election for the president. In the legislative elections of Aug., 2012, the MPLA won 72% of the vote, which thus resulted in the election of dos Santos as president. UNITA and other opposition parties unsuccessfully challenged the result in the courts.
Sections in this article:

Milestones: 1969–1976 - Office of the Historian
Milestones: 1969–1976
The Angola Crisis 1974–75
After a successful military coup in Portugal that toppled a long-standing                     authoritarian regime on April 25, 1974, the new rulers in Lisbon sought to divest the country of its costly                     colonial empire. The impending independence of one of those colonies, Angola, led to the Angolan civil war that grew into a                     Cold War competition. The Angola crisis of 1974–1975 ultimately contributed to                     straining relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Cuban and Angolan soldiers are shown during a weapon practice session at a                         training center. (AP Photo)
Three main military movements had been fighting for Angolan independence since                     the 1960s. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was a                     Marxist organization centered in the capital, Luanda, and led by Agostinho Neto. The National Front for the Liberation                     of Angola (FNLA), led by Holden Roberto, was based in the                     north of the country and had strong ties to the U.S. ally, Mobutu Sese Seko, in                     neighboring Zaire. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola                     (UNITA), an offshoot of the FNLA, was led by Jonas Savimbi and supported by the                     country’s largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu. Following the Portuguese coup,                     these three revolutionaries met with representatives of the new Portuguese                     Government in January 1975 and signed the Alvor Agreement that granted Angolan                     independence and provided for a three-way power sharing government. However,                     trust quickly broke down among the three groups, and the country descended into                     civil war as each vied for sole power.
The crisis in Angola developed into a Cold War battleground as the superpowers                     and their allies delivered military assistance to their preferred clients. The                     United States supplied aid and training for both the FNLA and UNITA while troops                     from Zaire assisted Holden Roberto and his fighters. China, also, sent military                     instructors to train the FNLA. The Soviet Union provided military training and                     equipment for the MPLA. During the summer of 1975, the Soviet-supported MPLA was                     able to consolidate power in Luanda and oust the U.S.-supported FNLA from the                     capital, but the FNLA continued to attack. The remaining Portuguese troops                     failed to stem the violence. When MPLA leader Neto announced November 11, 1975                     as the day of Angolan independence, Lisbon decided to withdraw its troops on                     that day.
The MPLA also had long-established relations with Fidel                         Castro’s Cuba. Before November 11, the MPLA had negotiated with                     Castro for Cuban assistance. At the same time, UNITA, which enjoyed U.S.                     support, approached the Apartheid government in South Africa for military                     reinforcement. Pretoria, with the aim to end the use of Angola as a base for                     rebels fighting for the independence of South Africa-occupied Namibia,                     contributed forces that entered southern Angola in October and made rapid                     progress toward the capital. In response, Castro sent Cuban Special Forces to                     halt the South African advance and succeeded in drawing attention to the fact                     that the United States had provided support to a group that now accepted                     assistance from an Apartheid government.
The U.S. Government had encouraged the South African intervention, but preferred                     to downplay its connection with the Apartheid regime. However, once Pretoria’s                     involvement became widely known, the Chinese withdrew its advisers from the                     region, and the Ford Administration was faced with domestic resistance to the                     U.S. role in the Angolan conflict. President Gerald Ford had requested                     Congressional approval for more money to fund the operation in Angola. However,                     many members of Congress were wary of intervening abroad after the struggle in                     Vietnam, others wished to avoid the South Africa connection, and still others                     did not believe the issue was important. In the end, Congress rejected the                     President’s request for additional funds. South Africa withdrew its forces in                     the spring of 1976 and the MPLA remained as the official government of Angola.                     Still, Jonas Savimbi and UNITA continued an insurgency until his death in 2002.
During the period of the Angolan crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union                     were still enjoying a brief thaw in their relations, in an era referred to as détente . During this time,                     Washington and Moscow had reached a series of agreements that aimed to reduce                     tensions between the two superpowers. However, by 1974, strains on bilateral                     relations had already compromised U.S. support for détente and the crisis in                     Angola served to accelerate this trend. From the U.S. point of view, one of the                     aims of détente was to draw the Soviet Union further into the international                     system so that Washington could induce Moscow to show restraint in its dealings                     with the Third World. The Ford Administration believed that Cuba had intervened                     in Angola as a Soviet proxy and as such, the general view in Washington was that                     Moscow was breaking the rules of détente. The appearance of a Soviet success and                     a U.S. loss in Angola on the heels of a victory by Soviet-supported North                     Vietnam over U.S.-supported South Vietnam continued to erode U.S. faith in                     détente as an effective Cold War foreign policy.
The U.S. failure to achieve its desired outcome in Angola raised the stakes of                     the superpower competition in the Third World. Subsequent disagreements over the                     Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan contributed to undoing the period of détente                     between the Soviet Union and the United States. Additionally, the Angola crisis                     also ended a recent thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations.

Angolan Civil War (1975-2002) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed
Angolan Civil War (1975-2002)
Angolan Soldier in front of Soviet Missiles
Image Ownership: Public Domain
The Angolan Civil War, beginning at the time of the country's independence from Portugal in 1975, was a 27-year struggle involving the deaths of over 500,000 soldiers and civilians.  Initiated at the height of the Cold War, pro- and anti- communist forces in Angola set the stage for a proxy fight between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) .  Though the fighting officially ended in 2002, Angola remains in economic and social turmoil with a massive refugee crisis and millions of landmines impeding farming practices.
Rich in diamonds and oil, Angola was one of the last African nations to receive independence from a European power.  On April 25, 1974, a Portuguese military coup d’état protesting the country’s colonial practices successfully overthrew the regime.  The combined forces of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), and the National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) created a transitional government with the Alvor Accord of 1974.
Within a year the government had disintegrated, and with aid from the USSR and the Cuban military, the Marxist-oriented MPLA under the leadership of José dos Santos had wrested control of most of Angola.  Indirectly and through proxies, governments from the United States, Brazil and South Africa funded UNITA, providing munitions, intelligence reports, and mercenaries.
Heavy fighting continued until 1991 when a temporary agreement known as the Bicesse Accords was reached.  Calling for an immediate ceasefire and the removal of both Cuban and South African troops, the agreement mandated a new national government and army, along with Angola’s first multi-party elections.  A year later, MPLA candidate José dos Santos won 49% of the popular vote in the election compared to 40% for UNITA candidate Dr. Jonas Savimbi .  When Savimbi disputed the outcome, UNITA resumed guerilla war against the MPLA.
In 1993 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 864 placing an embargo on petroleum and munitions shipments to UNITA.  UNITA continued military operations until Savimbi was killed in an ambush in February of 2002.  Officially demobilized that August under less-radical leadership, UNITA has since been a formidable political party in Angolan politics.
Though a country rich in natural resources, Angola was economically and politically devastated with runaway inflation of the country’s currency (the kwanza), a national crisis of amputees from the millions of landmines, and political fallout from the millions of refugees displaced from the fighting.
Sources:
Kevin Shillington, Encyclopedia of African History (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005); Fernando Andresen Guimaraes, The Origins of the Angolan Civil War: Foreign Intervention and Domestic Political Conflict (London: Macmillan Press, 1997); John A. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Vol. 2: Exile Politics and Guerilla Warfare (1962-1976)  (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978).
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BBC ON THIS DAY | 11 | 1975: Divided Angola gets independence
1975: Divided Angola gets independence
The southern African state of Angola has gained its independence from former colonial power Portugal.
The leader of one of the country's rival factions, Dr Agostinho Neto, of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), has been proclaimed the country's first president.
In the capital, Luanda, huge crowds cheered and soldiers fired shots into the air as the new country's flag was raised at midnight.
However, the main groups vying for power held separate independence ceremonies.
The MPLA held a huge ceremony at a stadium in the capital, Luanda, attended by a representative from the Soviet Union.
'Slave pool'
In a speech, Dr Neto was critical of the Portuguese for not recognising the MPLA as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Angolan people.
Meanwhile, the rival Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) announced it had joined forces with another liberation movement to form a national council which would act as Angola's government.
Angola's independence ends nearly 500 years of Portuguese rule.
Initially the Portuguese used Angola as a "slave pool" for its more lucrative colony in Brazil and mined Angola's precious gemstones and metals.
Resistance to Portuguese rule was widespread by the mid-20th century but was complicated by clashes between the various African communities.

Angola country profile - BBC News
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One of Africa's major oil producers, Angola is striving to tackle the physical, social and political legacy of a 27-year civil war that ravaged the country after independence.
Following the withdrawal of the Portuguese colonial masters in 1975, the rival former independence movements competed for power until 2002.
Much of Angola's oil wealth lies in Cabinda province, where a decades-long separatist conflict simmers.
The government has sent thousands of troops to subdue the rebellion in the enclave, which has no border with the rest of Angola. Human rights groups have alleged abuses against civilians.
Read more country profiles - Profiles by BBC Monitoring
FACTS
Area 1.25m sq km (481,354 sq miles)
Major languages Portuguese (official), Umbundu, Kimbundu, Kikongo
Major religion Christianity
Life expectancy 50 years (men), 53 years (women)
Currency kwanza
President: Jose Eduardo dos Santos
Image copyright Getty Images
Jose Eduardo dos Santos, of the ruling MPLA, has been in power since 1979, and is Africa's second-longest serving head of state after Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang. He keeps tight control over all aspects of Angola's political life.
Many Angolans credit the president for leading the country to recovery after the end of its 27-year civil war in 2002, and for turning the country's formerly socialist economy into one of the world's fastest-growing - mainly on the back of Angola's prodigious oil wealth.
Some, however, accuse him of authoritarianism, staying in office for too long and failing to distribute the proceeds from the oil boom more widely.
In 2008, his party won the country's first parliamentary elections for 16 years. A new constitution approved in 2010 substituted direct election of the president with a system under which the top candidate of the largest party in parliament becomes president.
It also strengthened the presidency's powers, prompting the Unita opposition to accuse the government of "destroying democracy".
He appointed his daughter Isabel as chief executive of the state-run oil firm Sonangol in 2016, prompting suspicions that he is establishing a dynasty at a time he is winding down his own career.
Isabel has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the richest woman on the continent with a fortune of around $3 billion.
MEDIA
Image copyright Getty Images
Social media appeared to be under threat at the end of 2015 when President dos Santos called for their stricter regulation, at a time when the government was cracking down on political dissident and activism.
For many urban Angolans, the internet has become the primary medium for expression of political anger because of the dangers of protesting on the streets.
The state controls all media with nationwide reach, including radio, the most influential medium outside the capital.
Some key dates in Angola's history:
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption The Angolan civil war involved forces from Cuba, pictured, as well as from South Africa
1300s - Kongo kingdom consolidates in the north.
1483 - Portuguese arrive.
17th and 18th centuries - Angola becomes a major Portuguese trading arena for slaves. Between 1580 and 1680 a million plus are shipped to Brazil.
1885-1930 - Portugal consolidates colonial control over Angola, local resistance persists.
1950s-1961 - Nationalist movement develops, guerrilla war begins.
1974 - Revolution in Portugal, colonial empire collapses.
1975 - Portuguese withdraw from Angola without formally handing power to any movement. MPLA is in control of Luanda and declares itself government of independent Angola. Unita and FNLA set up a rival government in Huambo.
Civil war begins, dragging on until 2002.
1979 - Jose Eduardo dos Santos becomes country's leader.
1987 - South African forces enter southeast Angola to thwart MPLA and Cuban offensive against Unita. They withdrew the next year.
1991 - Government, Unita sign peace accord in Lisbon.
1992 - Disputed elections. Fighting flares again.
1998 - Luanda launches offensive against Unita - thousands killed in next four years of fighting.
2002 - Unita leader Jonas Savimbi is killed in battle and a formal ceasefire is signed.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption The civil war came to an end following the killing of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi