The Angolan War of Independence (Portuguese: Guerra de Independência de Angola; 1961–1974), known as the Armed Struggle of National Liberation (Portuguese: Luta Armada de Libertação Nacional) in Angola, was a war of independence fought by the Angolan nationalist forces of the MPLA, UNITA and FNLA against Portugal. It began as an uprising by Angolans against the Portuguese imposition of forced cultivation of only cotton as a commodity crop. As the resistance spread against colonial authorities, multiple factions developed that struggled for control of Portugal's overseas province of Angola. There were three nationalist movements and also a separatist movement.
When a peaceful coup in Lisbon in April 1974 overthrew Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship, the new regime immediately stopped all military action in the African colonies, declaring its intention to grant them independence without delay.
The conflict is usually approached as a branch or a theater of the wider Portuguese Colonial War. This included the independence wars of Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.
The Angolans waged a guerrilla war, to which the Portuguese army and security forces conducted a counter-insurgency campaign against armed groups, who were mostly dispersed across sparsely populated areas of the vast Angolan countryside. Many atrocities were committed by all forces involved in the conflict.
After the Portuguese withdrew, an armed conflict broke out in Angola among the nationalist movements. The war formally came to an end in January 1975 when the Portuguese government, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) signed the Alvor Agreement. Informally, the civil war resumed by May 1975, including street fighting in Luanda and the surrounding countryside.
Background of the territory
In 1482, the Kingdom of Portugal's caravels, commanded by navigator Diogo Cão, arrived in the Kingdom of Kongo. Other expeditions followed, and close relations were soon established between the two kingdoms. The Portuguese brought many technological advances including firearms, and a new religion, Christianity. In return, the King of Kongo offered slaves, ivory and minerals.
Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1575 as São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda. Novais occupied a strip of land with a hundred families of colonists and four hundred soldiers, and established a fortified settlement. The Portuguese crown granted Luanda the status of city in 1605. The Portuguese founded and maintained several other settlements, forts and ports, such as Benguela, a Portuguese fort from 1587, and a town from 1617.
The early period of Portuguese incursion was punctuated by a series of wars, treaties and disputes with local African rulers, particularly Nzinga Mbandi, who resisted Portugal with great determination. The conquest of the territory of present-day Angola started only in the 19th century and was not concluded before the 1920s.
In 1834, Angola and the rest of the Portuguese overseas dominions received the status of overseas provinces of Portugal. From then on, the official position of the Portuguese authorities was always that Angola was an integral part of Portugal in the same way as were the provinces of the Metropole (European Portugal). Angola’s status as a province was briefly interrupted between 1926 and 1951, when it was governed as a "colony" (itself administratively divided into several provinces). The provincial status was restored on 11 June 1951. The Portuguese constitutional revision of 1971 enacted progressive autonomy.
Angola has always had very low population density. Despite having a territory larger than France and Germany combined, Angola's population was only 5 million in 1960, of which around 180,000 were whites, 55,000 were mixed race and the rest were blacks. In the 1970s, the population had increased to 5.65 million, of which 450,000 were whites, 65,000 were mixed race and the rest were blacks. Political scientist Gerald Bender wrote "... by the end of 1974 the white population of Angola would be approximately 335,000, or slightly more than half the number which has commonly been reported."
The provincial government of Angola was headed by the Governor-General, who had both executive and legislative powers, reporting to the Portuguese Government, through the Minister of the Overseas. He was assisted by a cabinet made up of a Secretary-General (who also served as his deputy) and several provincial secretaries, each managing a given portfolio. There was a Legislative Council – including both appointed and elected members – with legislative responsibilities that were gradually increased in the 1960s and the 1970s. In 1972, it was transformed in the Legislative Assembly of Angola. There was also a Council of Government, responsible for advising the Governor-General in his legislative and executive responsibilities, which included the senior public officials of the province.
Despite being responsible for the police and other civil internal security forces, the Governor-General did not have military responsibilities, which were vested in the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Angola. The Commander-in-Chief reported directly to the Minister of National Defense and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. On some occasions however, the same person was appointed to fulfil both the roles of Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, thus assuming both civil and military responsibilities.
In 1961, the local administration of Angola included the following districts: Cabinda, Congo, Luanda, Cuanza Norte, Cuanza Sul, Malanje, Lunda, Benguela, Huambo, Bié-Cuando-Cubango, Moxico, Moçâmedes and Huíla. In 1962, the Congo District was divided in the Zaire and Uige districts and that of Bié-Cuando-Cubango in the Bié and Cuando-Cubango districts. In 1970, the Cunene District was also created from the southern part of the Huíla District. Each was headed by a district governor, assisted by a district board. Following the Portuguese model of local government, the districts were made of municipalities (concelhos) and these were subdivided in civil parishes (freguesias), each administered by local council (respectively câmara municipal and junta de freguesia). In the regions where the necessary social and economic development had not yet been achieved the municipalities and civil parishes were transitorily replaced, respectively, by administrative circles (circunscrições) and posts (postos). Each of these governed by an official appointed by the government who had wide administrative powers, performing local government, police, sanitary, economical, tributary and even judicial roles. The circle administrators and the chiefs of administrative posts directed the local native auxiliary police officers known as cipaios. In these regions, the traditional authorities – including native kings, rulers and tribal chiefs – were kept and integrated in the administrative system, serving as intermediaries between the provincial authorities and the local native populations.
Belligerents
Portuguese forces
The Portuguese forces engaged in the conflict included mainly the Armed Forces, but also the security and paramilitary forces. Oil deposits found off the coast of Cabinda in 1966 were used to fund the war by the Portuguese, as well as other wars against independence movements in their colonies.
Armed forces
The Portuguese Armed Forces in Angola included land, naval and air forces, which came under the joint command of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Angola. Until 17 June 1961, there was no appointed Commander-in-Chief, with the joint command in the early stages of the conflict exercised by the commanders of the land forces, generals Monteiro Libório (until June 1961) and Silva Freire (from June to September 1961). From then on, the role of Commander-in-Chief was performed successively by the generals Venâncio Deslandes (1961–1962, also serving as Governor-General), Holbeche Fino (1962–1963), Andrade e Silva (1963–1965), Soares Pereira (1965–1970), Costa Gomes (1970–1972), Luz Cunha (1972–1974) and Franco Pinheiro (1974), all of them from the Army, except Libório from the Air Force. The Commander-in-Chief served as the theatre commander and coordinated the forces of the three branches stationed in the province, with the respective branch commanders serving as assistant commanders-in-chief. During the course of the conflict, the operational role of the Commander-in-Chief and of his staff was increasingly reinforced at the expense of branch commanders. In 1968, the Military Area 1 – responsible for the Dembos rebel area – was established under the direct control of the Commander-in-Chief and, from 1970, the military zones were also put under his direct control, with the Eastern Military Zone becoming a joint command. When the conflict erupted, the Portuguese Armed Forces in Angola only included 6500 men, of whom 1500 were metropolitan Europeans (23% of the total force) and the remainder locals. By the end of the conflict, the number had increased to more than 65,000, of whom 57.6% were metropolitans and the remainder locals.
The land forces in Angola constituted the 3rd Military Region of the Portuguese Army (renamed "Military Region of Angola, RMA" in 1962). The Military Region was foreseen to include five subordinate regional territorial commands, but these had not yet been activated. The disposition of the army units in the province at the beginning of the conflict had been established in 1953, at that a time when no internal conflicts were expected in Angola, and the major Portuguese military concern was the expected conventional war in Europe against the Warsaw Pact.
The previous organization of the former Colonial Military Forces, which had been based on company-sized units scattered across Angola and tasked with internal security duties, was restructured along conventional lines.The new structure consisted of three infantry regiments and several battalion-sized units from various military branches, concentrated in major urban centers.This reorganization aimed to enable the rapid formation of an expeditionary field division that could be deployed from Angola to reinforce the Portuguese Army in Europe in the event of a conventional war.
The regiments and other units were mostly maintained at cadre strength, functioning primarily as training centers for conscripts drafted within the province. During the conflict, these units were responsible for forming locally recruited field forces. In addition to these local units, the Army forces in Angola included reinforcement units raised and deployed from mainland Portugal.
These reinforcement units were temporary formations, composed mainly of conscripts—including most junior officers and non-commissioned officers. They existed only for the standard two-year tour of duty and were disbanded once their members completed service.The majority of these units consisted of light infantry battalions and independent companies known as caçadores. These formations were designed to operate autonomously, with minimal support from higher command levels, and were therefore equipped with robust service support components.
They were deployed in a grid system (quadrícula) along the theatre of operations, with each one responsible for a given area of responsibility. Usually, a regiment-sized agrupamento (battlegroup) commanded a sector, divided into several sub-sectors, each constituting the area of responsibility of a caçadores battalion. Each battalion, in turn, had field companies distributed across the sub-sector, with each company responsible for a specific portion of it.From 1962, four intervention zones (Northern, Central, Southern and Eastern) were established – renamed "military zones" in 1967 – each consisting of several sectors. Due to the low scale guerrilla nature of the conflict, the caçadores company became the main tactical unit, with the standard organization in three rifle and one support platoons, being replaced by one based in four identical sub-units known as "combat groups". The Army also fielded regular units of artillery, armored reconnaissance, engineering, communications, signal intelligence, military police and service support. Army also fielded special forces units. Initially, these consisted of companies of special caçadores, trained in guerrilla and counter-insurgency warfare. The Army tried to extend the training of the special caçadores to all the light infantry units, disbanding those companies in 1962. This proved impracticable and soon other special forces were created in the form of the Commandos. The Commandos and a few specially selected caçadores units were not deployed in a grid, but served instead as mobile intervention units under the direct control of the higher echelons of command.
An unconventional force also fielded by the army was the Dragoons of Angola, a special counterinsurgency horse unit created in the mid-1960s.