page_title: Battle of Quifangondo
section_title: ELNA expelled from Luanda
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Quifangondo / Prelude / ELNA expelled from Luanda
caption_attribution_description: English: Avenida Comandante Valòdia in 1970
context_page_description: The Battle of Quifangondo was fought on 10 November 1975, near the strategic settlement of Quifangondo, Luanda Province, between the People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola, armed wing of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and the National Liberation Army of Angola, armed wing of the National Liberation Front of Angola. The engagement was notable for marking the first major deployment of rocket artillery in the Angolan Civil War, as well as the last serious attempt by ELNA forces to seize Luanda, the Angolan capital. It occurred on the last day of Portuguese colonial rule in the country, which formally received independence only hours after the fighting.
  After defeating a FAPLA garrison at the nearby town of Caxito, an army of ELNA militants led personally by Holden Roberto began advancing southwards towards Luanda. Roberto's forces included a composite battery of three BL 5.5-inch Medium Guns and two 130 mm Type 59 field guns manned by Zairean and South African artillery crews. Their objective was to dislodge FAPLA from the vital waterworks at Quifangondo and an adjoining bridge which spanned the Bengo River.
context_section_description: FAPLA benefited most from the erosion of Portuguese rule throughout mid-1974, seizing control of eleven of Angola's sixteen provincial capitals. However, distracted by an internal power struggle between Agostinho Neto and Daniel Chipenda, it was unable to consolidate its control of Luanda. In October, Holden Roberto took advantage of the situation to begin airlifting ELNA troops into Luanda from their training camps in neighbouring Zaire. With each movement extending its influence over the local population, the uneasy peace soon broke down and within a month the capital had erupted into bloody street battles. On 3 January 1975, at the behest of Organisation of African Unity, Neto, Roberto, and UNITA's Savimbi signed an accord in which they agreed to a permanent truce and promised to terminate mutually hostile propaganda. The nationalists then participated in a multi-party conference in Alvor, Portugal, which formed a coalition government of MPLA, FNLA, UNITA, and Portuguese representatives to govern Angola during the interim period. The coalition government would draft a constitution, to be followed by democratic elections. Angola's independence date was set for 11 November 1975, the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of Luanda.
  Fighting almost immediately broke out in Luanda again when Neto took advantage of the ceasefire to launch a purge of Chipenda's supporters. The Chipenda faction was largely annihilated, leaving ELNA as the only remaining obstacle to FAPLA control of the city. Chipenda and 2,000 of his surviving troops defected to ELNA around February, which further heightened tensions. ELNA had the largest number of personnel inside Angola at the time, and was further strengthened by over 400 tonnes of weaponry donated by the People's Republic of China and channelled through a sympathetic Zaire. ELNA also benefited from covert financial aid supplied by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Roberto was pressed by his field commanders to destroy Neto's forces while he held an indisputable advantage in manpower and logistics over his opponent. On 23 March, ELNA began attacking FAPLA bases in Luanda. A week later, a motorised column of 500 ELNA troops drove into the capital to join the fighting, unopposed by the Portuguese troops on duty. The threat posed by ELNA's troop buildup was proving far more formidable than Neto had anticipated, and near the end of March he appealed to the Soviet Union and Cuba for military backing.
  As an ELNA victory in Luanda had become more apparent, Soviet policymakers grew increasingly anxious about Angola. They believed that Angola's fate carried heavy implications for the global strategic and diplomatic momentum gained by the Soviet sphere after the end of the Vietnam War. They saw Roberto as an agent of Bakongo tribalism rather than a true revolutionary and assumed that his success would serve the interests of Beijing and Washington. The coincidence of Chinese and American patronage of Roberto was especially alarming, as it seemed to indicate the possibility of a future Sino-American alliance dominating Angola, to the detriment of Soviet interests. The result was approval of Neto's request for a massive increase in Soviet military aid to FAPLA. During March 1975 alone, Soviet pilots flew thirty planeloads of weapons into Brazzaville, where they were unloaded and transported by rail, truck, and ship to waiting FAPLA units around Luanda. In the span of three months, the Soviet Union had airlifted thirty million dollars' worth of weaponry to FAPLA. Neto had received enough new arms to equip an additional 20,000 troops, and this proved instrumental in turning the tide against Roberto. Additionally, a Soviet military delegation offered to provide training instructors and logistics staff during well-publicised talks with the MPLA leadership on 25 April. For its part, Cuba deployed a contingent of 230 military advisers and technicians to Angola to assemble Soviet hardware and train an influx of new FAPLA recruits. The first Cuban advisers began arriving in May.
  The infusion
caption: Luanda in the early 1970s, just prior to the civil war
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