Cuban intervention in Angola

The Cuban intervention in Angola (codenamed Operation Carlota) began on 5 November 1975, when Cuba sent combat troops in support of the communist-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against the pro-western National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA). The intervention came after the outbreak of the Angolan Civil War, which occurred after the former Portuguese colony was granted independence after the Angolan War of Independence. The civil war quickly became a proxy war between the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union and the Western Bloc led by the United States. South Africa and the United States backed UNITA and the FNLA, while communist nations backed the MPLA.

Some 4,000 Cuban troops helped to turn back a three-pronged advance by the SADF, UNITA, FLNA, and Zairean troops. Later, 18,000 Cuban troops defeated the FNLA in the north and UNITA in the south. Separatists from the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) fought the Cubans but were defeated. In 1976, the Cuban military in Angola reached 36,000 troops. Following the withdrawal of Zaire and South Africa (March 1976), Cuban forces remained in Angola to support the MPLA government against UNITA in the continuing civil war. South Africa spent the following decade launching bombing and strafing raids from its bases in South West Africa into southern Angola, while UNITA engaged in ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, and harassment of Cuban units.

In 1988, Cuban troops (increased to about 55,000) intervened again to avert military disaster in a Soviet-led People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) offensive against UNITA, which was still supported by South Africa, leading to the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the opening of a second front. This turn of events is considered to have been the major impetus to the success of the ongoing peace talks leading to the 1988 New York Accords, the agreement by which Cuban and South African forces withdrew from Angola while South West Africa gained its independence from South Africa.Film ''Une Odyssée Africaine'' (France, 2006, 59 min) directed by: Jihan El TahriGleijesesCuito Cuanavale – "Afrikas Stalingrad", Ein Sieg über Pretorias Apartheid" in: ''Neues Deutschland'', 19/20 April. 2008Campbell, Horace: The Military Defeat of the South Africans in Angola in: ''Monthly Review'', April 1989 Cuban military engagement in Angola ended in 1991, while the Angolan Civil War continued until 2002. Cuban casualties in Angola totaled approximately 10,000 dead, wounded or missing.

Background

Failure of the Alvor Agreement and Civil War

The Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 in Portugal took the world by surprise and caught the independence movements in its last African colonies unprepared. After smooth negotiations, Mozambique's independence was granted on 25 June 1975, but Angolan control remained disputed between the three rival independence movements: MPLA, FNLA and UNITA in Angola-proper and Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) in Cabinda.

Until independence, the independence movements' priority lay in fighting the colonial power and they initially had no clear alliances. With the disappearance of Portugal as their common foe, ethnic and ideological rivalries moved to the fore. Fighting between the three already broke out in November 1974, starting in Luanda and quickly spreading across all of Angola. The new leftist Portuguese government showed little interest in interfering but often favored the MPLA. The country soon fell apart into different spheres of influence, the FNLA taking hold of northern Angola and UNITA in the central south. The MPLA mostly held the coastline, the far south-east and, in November 1974 gained control of Cabinda. The disunity of the three main movements postponed the handing over of power. The Alvor Agreement, which the three and Portugal signed on 15 January, proved to be no solid foundation for the procedure. The transitional government the agreement provided for was equally composed of the three big independence movements and Portugal. It was sworn in on 31 January 1975; independence day was set for 11 November 1975, the same day of the ceasefire.Smith, p. 66 FLEC was not part of the deal because it fought for the independence of Cabinda, which the Portuguese had administratively joined as an exclave to Angola.

Fighting in Luanda (referred to as the "Second War of Liberation" by the MPLA) resumed hardly a day after the transitional government took office, when Agostinho Neto took advantage of the ceasefire to launch a purge of his rival Daniel Chipenda's supporters within the MPLA. The Chipenda faction was largely annihilated, leaving the FLNA as the only remaining obstacle to MPLA control of the city. Chipenda and 2,000 of his surviving troops defected to FLNA around February, which further heightened tensions. FNLA troops, flown in from Zaire, had been taking positions in Luanda since October 1974. The MPLA had followed later in smaller numbers. To that point, the MPLA and UNITA "had given every sign of intending to honour the Alvor agreement", however fighting broke out in Luanda between the FNLA and the MPLA. The FNLA were backed by Mobutu, the U.S., and China. By March, the FNLA from northern Angola was driving on Luanda joined by units of the Zairian army which the U.S. had encouraged Mobutu to provide. On 28 April, the FNLA unleashed a second wave of attacks and in early May, 200 Zairian troops crossed into northern Angola in its support. Neto requested the Soviets increase its military aid to the MPLA. During March 1975, Soviet pilots flew thirty planeloads of weapons into Brazzaville, where they were then transported to Luanda. The Soviet Union airlifted thirty million dollars' worth of weaponry to the MPLA in three months, while Cuba deployed a contingent of 230 military advisers and technicians to the MPLA, with the first advisers arriving in May.

The fighting intensified with street clashes in April and May, and UNITA became involved after over two hundred of its members were massacred by an MPLA contingent in June. The initially weaker MPLA retreated south but with supplies finally arriving from the Soviet Union then succeeded in driving the FNLA out of Luanda by 9 July, and UNITA voluntarily withdrew to its stronghold in the south. The FNLA took up positions east of Kifangondo at the eastern outskirts of the capital, from where it kept up its pressure, and eliminated all remaining MPLA presence in the northern provinces of Uige and Zaire. The fighting was taken up throughout the whole country. The independence movements attempted to seize key strategic points, most importantly the capital on the day of independence. By August, the MPLA had control of 11 of the 15 provincial capitals, including Cabinda and Luanda. The fighting was taken up throughout the whole country. The independence movements attempted to seize key strategic points, most importantly the capital on the day of independence.

Foreign involvement

Starting in the early 1960s, the three big independence movements enjoyed support from a wide range of countries, in some cases even from the same. By the time of independence, FNLA and UNITA received aid from the U.S., Zaire, South Africa and China.

As long as Portugal was present in Angola, the movements had to have their headquarters in independent neighbouring countries, making Congo-Léopoldville (Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Belgian), for both MPLA and FNLA a logical choice. After its expulsion from Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) in November 1963, the MPLA moved across the Congo River to formerly French Congo-Brazzaville (Republic of Congo), where it was invited by its new leftist government. The FNLA stayed in Congo-Léopoldville to which it remained closely tied and from where it received the bulk of its support. FNLA leader Holden Roberto was linked to Mobutu by marriage and obligated to him for many past favours. Over the years the FNLA had become little more than an extension of Mobutu's own armed forces. Much of Zaire's support came indirectly from the U.S., with which Zaire's leader Mobutu had close ties. Zaire was the first country to send troops to Angola in March 1975 and to engage in fighting against the MPLA by the summer of that year.IPRI—Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais : The United States and the Portuguese Decolonization (1974-1976) Kenneth Maxwell, Council on Foreign Relations. Paper presented at the International Conference "Portugal, Europe and the United States", Lisbon, October 2003

In the summer of 1974, China was first to act after the Portuguese Revolution and posted 200 military instructors to Zaire where they trained FNLA troops and supplied military assistance. Chinese involvement was a measure against Soviet influence rather than that from western countries. On 27 October 1975, they were also the first to withdraw their military instructors. UNITA, which split away from FNLA in 1965/66 was initially Maoist and received some support from China. China had been training Mobutu's elite division, the Kamanyola, also trained the FNLA but withdrew their support for Zaire and the FNLA by the end of December 1975. In 1975 China were also the first to pull out of the area after the Portuguese Revolution. When their support ceased FNLA and UNITA became firmly established in the western camp.

The United States had a history of supporting the Salazar regime in Portugal. They allowed NATO equipment to be used in Angola during the Independence War. U.S. support for the FNLA was taken up by the Kennedy administration in 1960. Holden Roberto had been on the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) payroll since 1963.Smith, p. 70 On 7 July 1974, the CIA started funding the FNLA on a small scale. On 22 January 1975, one week after the Alvor Accords were signed and just before the provisional government of Angola was to take office, the U.S. National Security Council's "40 Committee", which oversaw clandestine CIA operations, authorized US $300,000 in covert aid to the FNLA.

As the CIA was suspicious of the left-leaning MPLA, it "had no wish to see the US government deal with the MPLA" and it did not want them to be part of the transitional government. The US increased its support for the FNLA and for the first time took up funding of UNITA. On 18 July 1975, U.S. president Ford approved covert CIA operation " IAFEATURE" to aid FNLA and UNITA with money (US $30 million), arms and instructors. U.S. military instructors (CIA) arrived in southern Angola in early August, where they closely cooperated with their South African counterparts who arrived around the same time. The support involved the recruitment of mercenaries and an expanded propaganda campaign against the MPLA. Author Wayne Smith states that the U.S. "was publicly committed to an embargo against the delivery of arms to Angolan factions while it was secretly launching a paramilitary programme".

South Africa, which was then under a white-minority rule known as Apartheid, soon came to be the closest allies of both UNITA and FNLA. Other western countries with their own clandestine support for FNLA and UNITA were Great Britain and France.Gleijeses, pp. 293–294, 296–297 Israel supported the FNLA from 1963 to 1969 and the FNLA sent members to Israel for training. Through the 1970s Israel shipped arms to the FNLA via Zaire.

Some East Bloc countries and Yugoslavia first established ties with the MPLA in the early 1960s during its struggle against the Portuguese. The Soviet Union started modest military aid in the late 1960s. This support remained clandestine, came in trickles and sometimes ceased altogether. This was the case in 1972, when the MPLA came under strong pressure from the Portuguese and was torn apart by internal strife (struggle between MPLA leader António Agostinho Neto and Chipenda from 1972 to 1974). Soviet aid was suspended in 1973 with the exception of a few limited shipments in 1974 to counter Chinese support for the FNLA; only Yugoslavia continued to send supplies to the MPLA. In response to U.S. and Chinese support for the FNLA, Soviet support for the MPLA massively increased in March 1975 in the form of arms deliveries by air via Brazzaville and by sea via Dar-es-Salaam. Soviet assistance to the MPLA was always somewhat reluctant; they never fully trusted Neto and their relationship was to remain ambivalent through the following years. The Soviets preferred a political solution, but they did not want to see the MPLA marginalized. Even after the South African incursions the Soviets only sent arms, but no instructors for the use of the sophisticated weapons. Among the other Eastern Bloc countries the MPLA had well established contacts with East Germany and Romania, the former shipping large amounts of non-military supplies. Although being leftist, Neto was interested in an ideological balance in his foreign support, but in spite of "overtures" well into 1975, he was unable to procure support for the MPLA from the U.S., thus becoming solely dependent on the eastern camp.

Cuba and the MPLA before the Civil War

Cuba's first informal contacts with the MPLA dated back to the late 1950s. MPLA guerrillas received their first training from Cubans in Algiers starting in 1963 and Che Guevara met MPLA-leader Agostinho Neto for the first high-level talks on 5 January 1965 in Brazzaville where Cuba was establishing a two-year military mission. This mission had the primary purpose to act as a strategic reserve for the Cuban operation in eastern Congo. It also was to provide assistance to the Alphonse Massemba-Débat government in Brazzaville and, at Neto's request, to the MPLA with its operations against the Portuguese in Cabinda and in northern Angola where its major foe was the FNLA. This co-operation marked the beginning of the Cuban-MPLA alliance which was to last 26 years.

The MPLA-Cuban operations in Cabinda and northern Angola were met with very little success and the Cubans ended the mission to Brazzaville as planned in July 1966. The MPLA moved its headquarters to Lusaka in early 1968. A few MPLA guerrillas continued to receive military training in Cuba but else contacts between Cuba and the MPLA cooled as Havana turned its attention to the independence struggle in Guinea-Bissau. Following Castro's tour of African countries in May 1972 Cuba stepped up its internationalist operations in Africa starting a training mission in Sierra Leone and smaller technical missions in Equatorial Guinea, Somalia, Algeria and Tanzania.

In a memorandum of 22 November 1972, the Cuban Major Manuel Piñeiro Lozada communicated to Raúl Castro the MPLA's request for small amounts of training and crew. These considerations in 1972 bore no fruit and Cuba's attentions remained focused on Guinea-Bissau. It was only after the Portuguese Revolution that an MPLA delegation brought a request for economic aid, military training and arms to Cuba on 26 July 1974. In early October Cuba received another request, this time more urgent, for five Cuban military officers to help organize the MPLA army, FAPLA. In December 1974 and January 1975, Cuba sent Major Alfonso Perez Morales and Carlos Cadelo on a fact finding mission to Angola to assess the situation. In a letter of 26 January 1975, handed to Cadelo and Morales, Neto listed what the MPLA wanted from Cuba, including "The establishment, organization, and maintenance of a military school for cadres", "A ubanship to transport the war materiel that we have in Dar-es-Salaam to Angola", "Uniforms and military equipment for 10,000 men", and "Financial assistance while we are establishing and organizing ourselves."

Although Cuba was considering the establishment of a military mission (military training) in Angola, again there was no official response to this request. It was only reiterated by the MPLA in May 1975 when Cuban commander Flavio Bravo met Neto in Brazzaville while the Portuguese were preparing to withdraw from their African colonies. The MPLA's hopes for aid were turned to the eastern Bloc countries from where not enough help materialised according to their wishes. Neto is quoted in a Cuban report complaining about Moscow's lacklustre support. He also expressed hope that the war in Angola would become "a vital issue in the fight against imperialism and socialism". But neither the Soviets nor the MPLA itself expected a major war to break out before independence. In March 1975 the MPLA sent of its 100 members for training in the Soviet Union and the requested financial assistance from Yugoslavia, who gave 100,000 dollars.

South Africa intervenes

Portugal's sudden retreat from Angola and Mozambique in 1975 ended a history of South African military and intelligence cooperation with Portugal against the Angolan and Namibian independence movements dating back to the 1960s, later formalized in a secret alliance codenamed Alcora Exercise.Library of Congress Country Studies
/ref> It also ended economic cooperation with regard to the Cunene hydro-project at the Angolan-Namibian border, which South Africa had financed.

South African involvement in Angola, subsumed under what it called the South African Border War, started in 1966 when the conflict with the Namibian independence movement, South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), which at that time had its bases in Ovamboland and Zambia, first flared up. With the loss of the Portuguese as an ally and the establishment of pro-SWAPO communist rule in the two former colonies, the apartheid regime lost highly valued sections of its "cordon sanitaire" ( buffer zone) between itself and hostile black Africa.Stührenberg, Michael in: ''Die Zeit'' 17/1988, Die Schlacht am Ende der Welt, p. 11 In the following years South Africa engaged in numerous military and economic activities in the region, backing RENAMO in the Mozambican Civil War, undertaking various measures at economic destabilization against Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, backing an unsuccessful mercenary intervention in the Seychelles in 1981, and supporting a coup in Lesotho in 1986. It was behind a coup attempt in Tanzania in 1983, provided support for rebels in Zimbabwe since independence, carried out raids against African National Congress offices in Maputo, Harare and Gaborone and conducted a counterinsurgency war in Namibia against SWAPO. SWAPO retreated to and operated from bases in Angola, and South Africa was confronted not only with the issue of having to cross another border in pursuit of SWAPO but also of another leftist government in the region. Unlike the other countries in the region, South Africa had no economic leverage on Angola, thus making military action the only possible means to exert any influence on the course of events.

On 14 July 1975, South African Prime Minister John Vorster approved weapons worth US $14 million to be bought secretly for FNLA and UNITA. First arms shipments for FNLA and UNITA from South Africa arrived in August 1975.

On 9 August 1975, a 30-man patrol of the South African Defence Force (SADF) moved some 50 km into southern Angola and occupied the Ruacana- Calueque hydro-electric complex and other installations on the Cunene River. Several hostile incidences with UNITA and SWAPO frightening foreign worker had been the pretext. The defence of the Calueque dam complex in southern Angola was South Africa's justification for the first permanent deployment of regular SADF units inside Angola.Smith, p. 71

On 22 August 1975, the SADF launched operation "Sausage II", a major raid against SWAPO in southern Angola. In addition, on 4 September 1975, Vorster authorized the provision of limited military training, advice and logistical support. In turn FNLA and UNITA would help the South Africans fighting SWAPO.George, p. 68
Due to the recent MPLA's successes, UNITA's territory had been shrinking to parts of central Angola, and it became clear to South Africa that independence day would find the MPLA in control of Luanda; "neither the United States nor South Africa were willing to accept that."Smith, p. 72 The SADF set up a training camp near Silva Porto and prepared the defences of Nova Lisboa (Huambo). They assembled the mobile attack unit "Foxbat" to stop approaching FAPLA-units with which it clashed on 5 October, thus saving Nova Lisboa for UNITA.

On 14 October, the South Africans secretly launched Operation Savannah when Task Force Zulu, the first of several South African columns, crossed from Namibia into Cuando Cubango. Southern Angola was in chaos with the three independence movements fighting each other for dominance. It took FAPLA some time, before it noticed who else it was up against and the SADF advanced very quickly. Task force Foxbat joined the intervention in mid-October.Smith, p. 62 The operation provided for elimination of the MPLA from the southern border area, then from south western Angola, from the central region, and finally for the capture of Luanda.

According author to Edward George, the South African government "believed that by invading Angola it could install its proxies and shore up apartheid for the foreseeable future". The United States had known of South Africa's military plans in advance. They encouraged the South Africans and co-operated with them, contrary to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's testimony to Congress at the time, and in contrast to what President Ford told the Chinese, who supported the FNLA but were worried about South African engagement in Angola.
According to John Stockwell, a former CIA officer, "there was close liaison between the CIA and the South Africans" and "'high officials' in Pretoria claimed that their intervention in Angola had been based on an 'understanding' with the United States".

Cuban military mission

On 3 August, a Cuban delegation traveled a second time to Angola to assess the situation, to draw up plans for the training programme as requested by Neto, and to hand over US$100,000.George, p. 66 Neto had complained "of the little amount of aid from socialist countries and "that the USSR detained aid to the MPLA in 1972, even though they told us that they are now helping with arms, but it's very little compared with their vast needs". Arguelles agreed with Neto as he saw the sides in Angola "clearly defined, that the FNLA and UNITA represented the international imperialist forces and the Portuguese reaction, and the MPLA represented the progressive and nationalist forces."

After the return of the delegation on 8 August, the Cubans considered the options of their instructors in Angola in case of an intervention by South Africa or Zaire which would be either "guerrilla war" or withdrawal to Zambia, where Cuba proceeded to open an embassy. In a memorandum of 11 August 1975, Major Raúl Diaz Argüelles to Major Raúl Castro explained the reasons for the visit and briefed on the contents of the talks. He underlined that the attacks on the part of the FNLA and of Mobutu to the MPLA and the possible development of future actions until independence in the month of November was taken into account and the awareness that "the reactionaries and the imperialists would try all possible methods to avoid having the forces of the MPLA take power". The same day Argüelles proposed a 94-man mission to Castro.George, p. 64 On 15 August, Castro urged the USSR to increase support for the MPLA, offered to send special troops and asked for assistance. The Russians declined.Gleijeses quoting: Westad, Odd Arne in: Moscow and the Angolan Crisis 1974-76: A New Pattern of Intervention, ''Cold War International Project Bulletin'', n.8-9, p. 25

In view of the Zairian intervention in the north and the South African occupation of Ruacana-Calueque hydro-electric complex in the south, it was decided to staff the CIRs with almost 500 Cubans instead of the requested 100, which were to form about 4,800 FAPLA recruits into 16 infantry battalions, 25 mortar batteries and various anti-aircraft units in three to six months. These 500 men included 17 in a medical brigade and 284 officers. "The decision to expand the operation reflected a feeling in Havana that … there had to be enough of them to fulfil their mission as well as defend themselves in the event the operation went awry. It was nevertheless clear that …they expected it (the mission) to be short term and to last around 6 months".

The dispatch of the Cuban volunteers started 21 August and an advance party with the most urgently needed specialists used international commercial flights. Small groups continued to trickle into Luanda on such flights as well as on Cuba's aging Britannia planes and the bulk arrived after a two-week trip aboard three Cuban cargo vessels; the first one, the "Vietnam Heroico" docked at Porto Amboim on 5 October. The arrival of two Cuban ships in Angola with instructors on board was reported by the CIA and raised no alarm in Washington.

The CIRs were placed in Cabinda, Benguela, Saurimo (formerly Henrique de Carvalho) and at N'Dalatando (formerly Salazar). The CIR in Cabinda accounted for almost half of the total, 191 men, while the others had 66 or 67 each. Some were posted in headquarters in Luanda or in other places throughout the country. The reason for the stronger detachment in Cabinda was the perceived threat from Zaire either to Cabinda or to the Congo. By the time the training centres were fully staffed and operational on 18–20 October, unnoticed by the world, Operation Savannah was already in full swing.

In contrast to the successes in the south, where by mid October the MPLA had gained control of 12 of Angola's provinces and most urban centres, they only barely managed to keep the well equipped FNLA and its allies abreast on the northern front just east of Luanda. The FNLA was receiving arms and equipment from the U.S. via Zaire starting in the end of July and had been strengthened in September by the arrival of the Fourth and Seventh Zairian Commando Battalions. From July to November the front moved back and forth between Caxito and Quifangondo (Kifangondo). Neto asked the Soviet Union for more support which had no intention to send any staff before independence and only reluctantly sent more arms. The Cubans were busy dealing with the arrival of the contingents for the CIRs and it was only on 19 October that they paid sufficient attention to Luanda's precarious position. Realizing the threat they shut down the CIR at Salazar only 3 days after it started operating and deployed most of the recruits and Cuban instructors in Luanda. Forty instructors from the CIR Salazar were the first Cubans to become involved in the defence of Quifangondo on 23 October 1975 when they launched an unsuccessful assault one FNLA-Zairian forces at Morro do Cal. A second group supported the MPLA on 28 October along the same defence line to the east of Kifangondo.

Yet unnoticed by the Cubans, the territory the MPLA had just gained in the south was quickly lost to the South African advances. After South African advisors and antitank weapons had helped to stop an MPLA advance on Nova Lisboa (Huambo) in early October, Zulu took Roçadas by 20 October, Sá da Bandeira by 24 October and Moçâmedes by 28 October.
On 2–3 November, Cuban instructors for the third time got involved in the fighting, this time 51 men from the CIR Benguela, when they unsuccessfully tried to help the FAPLA stop the Zulu advance near Catengue. This first encounter between Cubans and South Africans also led to the first officially recognized Cuban fatalities. "Their participation led Zulu-Commander Breytenbach to conclude that his troops were 'facing the best organized and heaviest FAPLA opposition to date'".

Cuba's first intervention

Operation Carlota

It was only after the MPLA debacle at Catengue that the Cubans became fully aware of the South African intervention, that Luanda would be taken and that their training missions were in grave danger unless they took immediate action. Neto had requested immediate and massive reinforcements from Havana at the urging of Argüelles. On 4 November Castro decided to launch an intervention on an unprecedented scale, codenaming the mission '' Operation Carlota'', after ' Black Carlota', the leader of a slave rebellion in 1843. The same day, a first plane with 100 heavy weapon specialists, which the MPLA had requested in September, left for Brazzaville, arriving in Luanda on 7 November. On 9 November the first two Cuban planes arrived in Luanda with the first 100 men of a contingent of a 652-strong battalion of elite Special Forces. The first priority of the Cubans was helping the MPLA to keep hold of Luanda.
Fidel Castro explained the Cuban intervention: "When the invasion of Angola by regular South African troops started 23 October, we could not sit idle. And when the MPLA asked us for help, we offered the necessary aid to prevent Apartheid from making itself comfortable in Angola".

With Operation Carlota, Cuba became a major player in the conflict. Unlike its foreign engagements in the sixties this was no secret operation. Castro decided to support the MPLA in all openness, sending special forces and 35,000 infantry by the end of 1976, deploying them at Cuba's own expense and with its own means from November 1975 to January 1976. As on its previous missions, all personnel were volunteers and the call-up was extremely popular.

Air transportation for quick deployments proved to be a major problem. Cuba only had three ageing medium-range Bristol Britannia turboprop planes not fit to make 9,000 km non-stop transatlantic crossings. Nevertheless, between 7 November and 9 December the Cubans managed to run 70 reinforcement flights to Luanda. Initially they were able to make stops in Barbados, the Azores, or Newfoundland, prompting pressure from Washington to deny Cuba landing rights. But moving take-offs to Cuba's easternmost airport, Holguin, taking as little weight as necessary, and adding additional tanks, the planes were used for numerous runs across the ocean until the Soviets pitched in with long-distance jet planes.

For the bulk of the troops and the equipment the Cubans commandeered all available ships in its merchant marine, the first three sailing from Havana on 8 November. They docked in Luanda on 27 and 29 November and 1 December bringing 1,253 troops and equipment.

The deployment of troops was not pre-arranged with the USSR, as often reported and depicted by the US-administration. On the contrary, it also took the USSR by surprise. The Soviets were forced to accept the Cuban troop deployment so as not to endanger relations with their most important ally in close proximity to the United States. But they had in mind to keep a lid on the extent of the Cuban engagement and merely sent arms and a few specialists to Brazzaville and Dar-es-Salaam. It was only two months later after the fighting swung in favour of the Cubans and the U.S. passed the Clark Amendment that Moscow agreed to a degree of support by arranging for a maximum of 10 transport flights from Cuba to Angola.

With the FNLA attacking from the east the situation for the MPLA only a few days before independence looked dim. In addition to this, Cabinda was under threat of takeover by a FLEC-Zairian force. The Cuban troops able to intervene before the declaration of independence on 11 November were basically the ones posted in the three CIRs, the 100 specialists that arrived in Luanda on 7 November and the first 164 special forces of Operation Carlota arriving on two planes on the evening of 8 November. The 100 specialists and 88 men of the special forces were immediately dispatched to the nearby front at Quifangondo where the FNLA-Zairian force had launched an assault that very morning. They supported 850 FAPLA, 200 Katangans and one Soviet advisor. First heavy weapons had already arrived from Cuba by ship on 7 November, among them cannons, mortars and 6 BM-21 (''Katyusha'') multiple rocket launchers. The Cubans received reports that the expected invasion of Cabinda had started on the morning of 8 November.

Northern front and Cabinda

The invasion of Cabinda was conducted by three FLEC and one Zairian infantry battalions under the command of 150 French and American mercenaries. The MPLA's had the 232 Cubans of the CIR, a freshly trained and an untrained FAPLA infantry battalion at its disposal. In the ensuing battle for Cabinda from 8–13 November they managed to repel the invasion without support from Operation Carlota, thus saving the exclave for the MPLA.

Two days before independence the most imminent danger for the MPLA came from the northern front where the FNLA and its allies stood east of Quifangondo. 2,000 FNLA troops were supported by two battalions of Zairian infantry troops (1,200 men), 120 Portuguese mercenaries, a few resident advisors, among them a small CIA contingent, and 52 South Africans led by General Ben de Wet Roos. They were manning the artillery provided by the SADF which had been flown into Ambriz only two days before.

After artillery bombardment on Luanda and Quifangondo through the night and a bombing raid by the South African air force in the early hours the final attack of the FNLA was launched on the morning of 10 November. The attacking force was ambushed and destroyed by the FAPLA-Cuban forces. Cuban forces also bombarded their South African and FNLA enemies with BM-21 Grad rocket launchers which had been put into place only the night before, and were well out of range of the antiquated South African guns. The defeat of the FNLA in the Battle of Quifangondo secured the capital for the MPLA. On the same day the Portuguese handed over power "to the people of Angola" and shortly after midnight Neto proclaimed independence and the formation of the "People's Republic of Angola". Urged by the CIA and other clandestine foreign services, the FNLA and UNITA announced the proclamation of a Democratic People's Republic with the temporary capital at Huambo. Yet, UNITA and FNLA could not agree on a united government and fighting between them already broke out in Huambo on the eve of independence day. On the day of independence the MPLA held little more than the capital and a strip of central Angola inland toward Zaire and the exclave of Cabinda. On 4 December the FAPLA-Cubans launched a counter-offensive against the FNLA. But with Luanda and Cabinda secured and the defeat of the FNLA at Quifangondo they could finally turn more attention to the south.George, p. 101

Cuba operated independently through December and January bringing in their troops in slowly, but steadily. Two months after the start of Operation Carlota the Soviets agreed to ten charter flights on long-range IL-62 jet airliners, starting on 8 January. This was followed one week later by an agreement that "the Soviets would supply all future weaponry … transporting it directly to Angola so that the Cuban airlift could concentrate on personnel."

By early February, with increasing numbers in Cuban troops and sophisticated weaponry, the tide changed in favour of the MPLA. The final offensive in the North started on 1 January 1976. By 3 January FAPLA-Cuban forces took the FNLA air bases of Negage and Camabatela and a day later the FNLA capital of Carmona. A last-ditch attempt by FNLA to use foreign mercenaries enlisted by the CIA (see next chapter: U.S. response) failed; on 11 January FAPLA-Cubans captured Ambriz and Ambrizete (N'zeto) an on 15 February the FNLA's last foothold, São Salvador. By late February one Cuban and 12 FAPLA and battalions had completely annihilated the FNLA, driving what was left of them and the Zairian army across the border. The South African contingent on the northern front had already been evacuated by ship on 28 November. The last mercenaries left northern Angola by 17 January.

U.S. response

It was several days before the U.S. realised the severity of the FNLA defeat at Quifangondo, but even then had little idea of the extent of the Cuban involvement. The news from the southern front was, in their view, still positive. Kissinger, like the South Africans, was shaken by the scale of the Soviet and Cuban response. The CIA's Angolan task force at CIA headquarters at Langley had been so confident of success by the Zairian and South African regulars, that on 11 November the members had celebrated Angolan independence with wine and cheese in their offices. The U.S. had not commented on the South African intervention in Angola but denounced the Cuban intervention when it first acknowledged Cuban troops in Angola in an official statement on 24 November 1975. Kissinger said "that US efforts at rapprochement with Cuba would end should 'Cuban armed intervention in the affairs of other nations struggling to decide their own fate' continue." On 28 February 1976, Ford called Castro "an international outlaw" and the Cuban intervention a "flagrant act of aggression".Smith, p. 73

Due to the hostility between the U.S. and Cuba, the Americans regarded such an air by the Cubans as a defeat which could not be accepted. The U.S. assumed that the USSR was behind the Cuban interference. On 9 December Ford asked the Soviets to suspend the airlift, still assuming it was a Soviet-run operation. The Americans also depicted the motivations and timings of the Cubans differently: They claimed that South Africa had to intervene after Cuba sent troops in support of the MPLA and that the war in Angola was a major new challenge to US power by an expansionist Moscow newly confident following communist victories in the Vietnam War. Only years later did it become clear to them that the Cubans acted on their own behalf.

Castro responded to the U.S. reaction: "Why were they vexed? Why had they planned everything to take possession of Angola before 11 November? Angola is a country rich in resources. In Cabinda there is lots of oil. Some imperialists wonder why we help the Angolans, which interests we have. They are used to thinking that one country helps another one only when it wants its oil, copper, diamonds or other resources. No, we are not after material interests and it is logical that this is not understood by the imperialist. They only know chauvinistic, nationalistic and selfish criteria. By helping the people of Angola we are fulfilling a fundamental duty of Internationalism.

On 3 December 1975, in a meeting with officials from the U.S. and China including Deng Xiaoping (Vice Premier and deputy of Mao Zedong), Qiao Guanhua