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Angola The Namibia Issue and Security Threats in the 1980s
In the early 1980s, the status of Namibia evolved into
a
complex international issue involving principally the
governments
of the United States, Angola, South Africa, and Cuba. The
United
States, troubled by the growing Soviet and Cuban presence
in
Angola, sought to reduce this influence by becoming
directly
involved in negotiations for a withdrawal of Cuban troops
from
Angola and for Namibian independence. For its part, Angola
claimed
that if the SADF threat were removed from its southern
border, it
could safely reduce the number of Cuban troops and Soviet
advisers.
The most obvious way this could be done was if South
Africa granted
independence to Namibia. South Africa, already preoccupied
with the
leftist regime in Angola, was reluctant to relinquish
control of
Namibia and allow free elections because of the
possibility that
these elections would bring its traditional nemesis,
SWAPO, to
power.
In 1977 Britain, Canada, France, the Federal Republic
of
Germany (West Germany), and the United States formed an
informal
negotiating team, called the Contact Group, to work with
South
Africa to implement a UN plan for free elections in
Namibia. The
South African government, however, was fundamentally
opposed to the
UN plan, which it claimed was biased in favor of the
installation
of a SWAPO government in Namibia. Pretoria continued to
attend
negotiating sessions throughout the early 1980s, always
prepared to
bargain but never ready to settle.
By the beginning of 1981, South Africa's undeclared war
with
Angola and its support for an increasingly effective UNITA
had
become the focus of the dos Santos regime. After the
failure in
January 1981 of the UN-sponsored talks on the future of
Namibia,
South African military aggression escalated and became
directed as
much against Angolan targets as against SWAPO guerrillas.
In August
1981, the SADF launched Operation Protea, in which several
thousand
troops and accompanying equipment penetrated 120
kilometers into
southwestern Angola. This invasion marked the beginning of
a
different kind of war, one in which South Africa no longer
pretended to restrict its incursions to the pursuit of
SWAPO units
but openly intensified its assaults on Angolan economic
targets and
began to occupy Angolan territory, particularly in Cunene
Province.
Furthermore, SADF support for UNITA in 1982 and 1983
increased to
the extent that the South African Air Force (SAAF)
participated in
UNITA operations against FAPLA.
The rapid escalation of South African military
aggression in
Angola was matched by the massive infiltration of the
countryside
by UNITA forces. This activity far exceeded UNITA's
previous hitand -run operations aimed primarily at the Benguela
Railway. But
perhaps the most detrimental effect of the UNITA
insurgency was the
disruption of the economy, particularly the agricultural
sector. By
the end of 1985, fighting between UNITA and FAPLA had
forced
hundreds of thousands of peasants to flee from the fertile
central
highlands. The result was a precipitous drop in food
production.
UNITA guerrillas also frequently mined roads and
railroads, blew up
electric power transmission lines, and attacked dams,
mining
facilities, and coffee plantations. Moreover, they began
taking
foreign technicians hostage in the hope of gaining
publicity for
the UNITA cause.
Data as of February 1989
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