Among the many civil wars that shook the African continent, the war in Angola was one of the most bloody and longest in time. The military-political confrontation in this African country, rich in natural resources and inhabited by conflicting ethnic groups, involved not only neighboring states, but also the largest powers of the world. The civil war in Angola was not spared by the Soviet Union either. Perhaps it was in Angola that the most numerous contingent of Soviet military advisers and specialists was involved. In fact, the next front line of the Soviet-American confrontation took place in the jungles of Angola. The reasons that prompted the world's largest powers to show such a keen interest in the distant African country were the strategic position of Angola, one of the largest African states south of the equator, in the rich natural resources that abound in the bowels of Angola.
African outpost of Portugal
The civil war in Angola began almost immediately after the proclamation of the country's political independence. For several centuries Angola was the pearl of the Portuguese colonial empire. The coast of Angola was discovered in 1482 by the Portuguese navigator Diogo Can, and in 1576 the Portuguese laid the fort of São Paulo de Luanda, which later became the capital of Angola, Luanda. Thus, the history of the Portuguese colonial rule in Angola goes back almost four centuries. It was Angola that became the main source of sending slaves to Brazil. During the history of the Portuguese slave trade, at least five million Angolans were exported to the New World. The main Portuguese trading posts were located on the coast, and that part of the Angolan population lived here, which for the longest time was in close contact with the Portuguese colonialists and over the centuries adopted the Catholic religion, the Portuguese language and many elements of the Portuguese way of life. Until the 19th century, the Portuguese controlled only coastal areas, and expeditions periodically moved into the interior of Angola to capture slaves. Moreover, the Portuguese themselves preferred not to participate in these expeditions, but sent their henchmen from among the representatives of the coastal tribes to capture the slaves, who received the necessary weapons and equipment from the Portuguese. In the 19th century, the development of the interior territories of Angola began, and in the 20th century, Angola turned into one of the most exploited Portuguese colonies in terms of the extraction and export of natural resources.
In the Portuguese colonies in Africa, there was a specific form of dividing the local population into two categories. The first included the so-called. "Assimilados" - mulattoes and Africans who spoke Portuguese, who could read and write, professed Catholicism and adhered to the European way of life. Of course, only a very small category of the population of the colonies corresponded to the listed criteria, and it was this category that became the basis for the formation of the colonial bureaucracy, the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie. Most of the Africans belonged to a different category - the "industrial". It was the "indigenush" who were subjected to the greatest discrimination in the colonies, bore the main burden of labor duties, and from them were recruited "contracts" - workers on plantations and mines who signed a contract, but in fact were in a slave state. Among the native population, uprisings often broke out against the Portuguese colonialists, which were brutally suppressed by the colonial troops. On the other hand, dissatisfaction with the prevailing order in the colony also grew among the educated part of the native population. It was the "assimilados", due to their access to European education, who had the opportunity to form their own ideas about the future of Angola. Moreover, they were not deprived of ambition and the role of colonial officials suited them less and less - after all, the level of education allowed them to claim leadership positions in autonomous or even independent Angola. In the 1920s - 1930s. among the "assimilados" in Luanda, the first anti-colonial circles appeared. The first political organization of the colony was the Angolan League, which advocated better working conditions for representatives of the indigenous population. In 1922 it was banned by the colonial administration. However, protest moods among part of the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia and even the military personnel of the colonial troops of African descent were growing.
Bakongo Traditionalists and Mbundu Marxists
A new stage in the anti-colonial struggle in Angola began in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The results of the Second World War gave hope for the liberation of many Asian and African peoples, among whom were the Angolans. The first serious political organizations appeared in Angola, advocating the proclamation of the country's independence. The first of them - the Union of the Peoples of Northern Angola (UPNA) - was created in 1954, and in 1958 it was renamed the UPA - the Union of the Peoples of Angola. Its leader was Holden Roberto (1923-2007), aka José Gilmore, a descendant of the royal Congolese clan of the Bakongo tribe.
Childhood and adolescence of Jose Gilmore passed in the Belgian Congo, where his parents moved from Angola. There, young Jose graduated from a Protestant school and worked in financial institutions of the Belgian colonial administration. The leader of the Union of the Peoples of Angola adhered to traditionalist views on the future of his homeland - he wanted to free it from Portuguese rule and restore the Bakongo kingdom. Since Holden Roberto was a Bakongo tribal nationalist, his only goal was to establish a kingdom in northern Angola. The rest of the country was of little interest to him. He considered the enemies of the future kingdom not only the white Portuguese colonists, but also representatives of other African tribes that did not belong to the Bakongo. Thus, the Union of the Peoples of Angola under the leadership of Holden Roberto adhered to a right-wing radical and monarchical ideology and sought to revive African traditions, right down to ancient cruel rituals.
Another organization - the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola - the Labor Party (MPLA) - was created in 1956 in Luanda and from the very beginning of its existence belonged to the left flank of Angolan politics, focusing on the socialist path of development. At the origins of the MPLA was Agostinho Neto (1922-1979) - the son of a Protestant pastor, who lived in Portugal from 1947 and studied at the University of Lisbon, and then at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra, which he graduated in 1958. While studying in Portugal Agostinho Neto was fond of poetry, studied the works of the founders of Negritude Leopold Cedar Senghor and Aimé Sezer, and then adopted Marxist ideas. By Angolan standards, Neto was a very educated man. However, in the leadership of the MPLA there were initially many representatives of the capital's intelligentsia, including mulattoes. Since 1958training of the MPLA partisans began with the participation of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, the supply of weapons and equipment.
In 1961, an armed struggle against the Portuguese colonialists began in Angola. However, it was not possible to achieve unity of action of the existing anti-colonial political organizations. Holden Roberto, leader of the FNLA - the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, as the Union of the Peoples of Angola began to be called in 1962, after merging with the Democratic Party of Angola, rejected any possibility of cooperation with the left from the Marxist MPLA and claimed the role of the only legitimate leader of the national liberation movement in the country. However, the armed forces of the FNLA were not distinguished by their numbers and high combat effectiveness, so the front operated on a very limited territory. His forays were brutal against the Portuguese population and non-Bakongo Africans. In Luanda, the FNLA created an underground unit that launched terrorist acts against the colonial administration. External support for the FNLA was provided by neighboring Zaire, whose president, Mobutu Sese Seko, was impressed by the traditionalist ideology of the front.
The MPLA played a much more active role in the anti-colonial war. The Angolan left enjoyed significant financial and material and technical support from the countries of the socialist camp, primarily the USSR, Cuba, the PRC, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic. Cuban and later Soviet military advisers trained MPLA fighters. Arms and ammunition were supplied to Angola. Unlike the FNLA, which relied on the Bakongo, the MPLA had support among the Mbundu people and among the urban population in Luanda and some other large cities of the country.
In 1966, a third player appeared in the anti-colonial war in Angola, whose importance in the history of the country, however, will increase only a decade later. UNITA - National Union for the Complete Independence of Angola. It was the left "split" from the FNLA and, perhaps, the most distinctive and interesting in ideological and political practice, the military organization of Angola. UNITA was composed almost exclusively of the Ovimbundu (Southern Mbundu) people. This people belongs to the Bantu group and inhabits the provinces of Benguela, Huambo, Biye on the Biye plateau. In 2000, the number of Ovimbundu was about 4-5 million people. The representative of the Ovimbundu people was, of course, the UNITA leader Jonas Malleiro Savimbi.
Dr. Savimbi
One of the brightest figures in the modern history of Angola, Jonas Malleiro Savimbi was born in 1934 in the family of a railway employee of the Benguela Railway and a Protestant preacher of the Congregation of Evangelicals concurrently Lot Savimbi. Jonas's grandfather was Sakayta Savimbi, one of the leaders of the Ovimbundu people, who led an uprising against the Portuguese colonialists in 1902 and for this was deprived of the status of a leader and his vast lands by the colonial administration. Perhaps this resentment against the Portuguese played an important role in the formation of anti-colonial views in the Savimbi family. Young Jonas Savimbi showed remarkable academic success, earning the right to a scholarship and being assigned to Portugal - to enter the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon. But already in his youth, Savimbi was distinguished by anti-colonial views. He was expelled from the university after refusing to take a political training course based on the concept of Salazarism and Lusotropicalism (a concept that justified Portugal's colonial mission in tropical countries). Having come to the attention of the Portuguese political police PIDE, Jonas Savimbi was forced to move to Switzerland in 1960, where he continued his studies at the University of Lausanne, this time at the Faculty of Political Science.
While studying in Europe, Savimbi met many of the future political leaders of Portuguese-speaking Africa, including Amilcar Cabral and Agostinho Neto. However, unlike Agostinho Neto, Savimbi did not accept the Marxist ideology. She seemed to him alien to African reality, not reflecting the true needs of the Angolan people. At the same time, Savimbi was critical of the Angolan right, who insisted on the need to revive African tribal monarchies. Savimbi was much more attracted by the left-wing radical phraseology of Maoism, which the future leader of UNITA combined with sympathies for the concept of negritude of the Senegalese philosopher and poet Leopold Sedar Senghor. For a long time Savimbi did not dare to join any of the largest political organizations of the then Angola - neither the UPA (future FNLA), nor the MPLA. The MPLA Marxists annoyed Savimbi with their desire to bring another alien ideology to African soil. In addition, his suspicions were aroused by the origin of many prominent MPLA figures - mulattos, whom Savimbi saw as conductors of colonial influence. Finally, Savimbi was dissatisfied with the overly pro-Soviet orientation of the MPLA and viewed it as a desire to establish in Angola the de facto rule of the "new imperialists" - this time the Soviet ones.
Returning to Angola, Savimbi eventually, shortly before the armed uprising in Luanda on February 4, 1961, joined Holden Roberto's Union of the Peoples of Angola, which was soon transformed into the National Liberation Front of Angola. In the ranks of the FNLA, Savimbi quickly became one of the leading activists. Holden Roberto sought to enlist the support of the Ovimbundu, among whom Savimbi enjoyed universal popularity, so he included him in the Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (GRAE) as foreign minister. Many African leaders who held positions of African nationalism welcomed the entry of the charismatic Savimbi into the top leadership of the FNLA, as they saw in this a significant strengthening of the only organization capable of becoming a worthy competitor to the pro-Soviet MPLA in Angola. But Savimbi himself was unhappy with his involvement in Holden Roberto's organization. Firstly, Holden Roberto was on the right-wing radical and monarchist positions, while Jonas Savimbi was a left-wing radical - a Maoist and a supporter of African socialism. Secondly, Roberto dreamed of reviving the Bakongo tribal kingdom, while Savimbi sought to liberate all of Angola and create an African socialist state on its territory. In the end, Holden Roberto and Jonas Savimbi parted ways. In 1964, while still the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Roberto government, Savimbi made a trip to Beijing. Here he was able to get better acquainted with the ideology of Maoism, as well as receive guarantees of military assistance to the PRC. After that, Savimbi officially announced his withdrawal from GRAE and FNLA. The Ovimbundu leader tried to find common ground with Agostinho Neto, who was familiar to him from his studies in Portugal, but their views on guerrilla resistance and the future of sovereign Angola turned out to be so different that, despite the support of Savimbi as Neto's deputy from the Soviet communists, Jonas refused to cooperate with the MPLA.
Creation of UNITA
On March 13, 1966, in the village of Muangai, in the province of Moxico, a conference of representatives of the radical resistance, mainly from the Ovimbundu, was held, at which, at the suggestion of Jonas Savimbi, the National Union for the Complete Independence of Angola - UNITA was created. Unlike other organizations of partisan resistance - the traditionalist FNLA, which expressed the interests of tribal leaders and elders, and the Marxist MPLA, formally oriented towards the power of the urban proletariat, but in fact expressing the interests of the left intelligentsia, the new UNITA organization demonstratively focused on the most disadvantaged strata of the Angolan population - the poorest peasantry … UNITA's ideology included Angolan nationalism, the socialist doctrine of Maoism, and the narrower Ovimbundu nationalism. In an effort to ensure the realization of the interests of the Hovimbundu peasantry, Savimbi advocated the development of communal self-government based on African traditions. At the same time, like Holden Roberto, Savimbi had great respect for traditional African cults and rituals, although the ideology of UNITA also included a significant Christian component. Jonas Savimbi's Maoist views secured UNITA support from China, which saw the Ovimbund organization as an alternative to the pro-Soviet MPLA and sought to bring Angola under its control through UNITA's support. When Savimbi visited China, he agreed to organize training for his militants at the training centers of the People's Liberation Army of China, where Chinese instructors trained Angolan revolutionaries in guerrilla warfare tactics. Savimbi was also impressed by Mao Zedong's concept of the peasantry as the driving force of the partisan movement, which made it possible to put into practice the famous concept of "the village surrounds the city." In accordance with the Maoist doctrine, the guerrilla centers in the countryside gradually turned into liberated areas, from which followed the offensive on the urban centers, which turned out to be surrounded by guerrillas from all sides.
The rivalry in Angola of three large military-political organizations at once - the MPLA, FNLA and UNITA - led to the fact that Angola achieved political independence thanks to the 1974 Portuguese revolution rather than the combat successes of the partisan armies. After the revolution in Portugal, Jonas Savimbi, in an effort to ensure the growth of his political influence and improve his image in the world, signed a ceasefire agreement with the Portuguese military command. This gave its results - Jonas Savimbi represented Angola in negotiations with Portugal on granting political independence to the former colony. Thus, the UNITA leader became one of the most popular Angolan politicians and could seriously count on victory in the event of a presidential election in sovereign Angola. In January 1975, a meeting of the leaders of the three leading Angolan military-political organizations took place in Kenya, at which they came to an agreement on the formation of a coalition government, whose task was to create the future authorities, armed forces and police of sovereign Angola. However, a peaceful life in sovereign Angola was not destined to begin. Despite the fact that the official proclamation of the independence of Angola was scheduled for November 11, 1975, already in the summer of 1975 relations between the FNLA and UNITA on the one hand, and the MPLA on the other hand, seriously deteriorated. None of the military-political organizations of Angola was going to just give rivals a chance to come to power in the country. First of all, the leadership of the MPLA did not want representatives of UNITA and FNLA to enter the coalition government, since this violated plans to create a state of socialist orientation from Angola and promised big problems with Soviet patrons who sent money to the leaders of the MPLA in the hope that they would be able to take power into their own hands and neutralize the "reactionaries" from the rival organizations.
The beginning of the civil war in Angola
In July 1975, street fighting broke out in Luanda between the armed units of the MPLA, FNLA and UNITA located in the city. Since the main territories of influence of the FNLA and UNITA were in other regions of Angola, and Luanda and its environs were included in the sphere of political influence of the MPLA, the Angolan Marxists managed, without much effort, to defeat Holden's supporters Roberto and Jonas Savimbi and force them to retreat from the Angolan capital. After that, all plans for the construction of a peaceful life in Angola were violated. A civil war broke out. FNLA, under the leadership of Holden Roberto, tried to break into Luanda on the eve of the appointed day of proclamation of independence in order to prevent the transfer of power in the country into the hands of representatives of the MPLA. However, on the night of November 11, 1975, the FNLA units suffered a serious defeat on the approach to Luanda and were forced to retreat. It is noteworthy that the leading role in the defeat of the FNLA forces was played by the Cuban Expeditionary Force, hastily sent to Angola by Fidel Castro, who also supported the MPLA. Despite the fact that on the side of the FNLA were units of the army of neighboring Zaire, where Holden's ally Roberto Marshal Mobutu ruled, as well as detachments of European mercenaries, the MPLA armed forces managed to prevent the breakthrough of Roberto's troops into Luanda, and by January 1976 completely defeat the armed forces FNLA. Jonas Savimbi in this situation decided on a paradoxical step - he asked for help from the Republic of South Africa. Among African states with a black population, South Africa, which was ruled by the apartheid regime, was considered a taboo country for close relationships, but Savimbi risked breaking the taboo and, being an African nationalist, asking for help from white racists. The ruling circles of South Africa, who were extremely afraid of the coming to power in Angola of the communists who could support the African National Congress in South Africa itself, gave the go-ahead for the introduction of the South African contingent into Angola. However, in March 1976 the South Africans also left Angola. Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA were left alone with the pro-Soviet government of the MPLA, which proclaimed the creation of the People's Republic of Angola.
Unlike Holden Roberto's troops, who suffered a crushing defeat from the MPLA and actually left the serious Angolan politics, Jonas Savimbi managed to create an effective and combat-ready structure. UNITA has become one of the best guerrilla armies in the world. UNITA units took control of entire regions in the east and southeast of Angola, which were of strategic importance due to the location of diamond deposits there. Illegal diamond mining and export have become the backbone of UNITA's economic well-being. The political leadership of UNITA was located in the city of Huambo, then in Bailundo, and the military command in the city of Jamba. In fact, UNITA has become the only anti-government military-political organization in Angola capable of adequately resisting the MPLA regime militarily and politically. Jonas Savimbi himself became a symbol of the Angolan rebel movement and gained worldwide fame as one of the most consistent representatives of the world anti-communist movement. Paradoxically, while positioning himself as a staunch anti-communist and working closely with the American intelligence services, Savimbi, nevertheless, by his personal political convictions, remained a radical left, combining Maoism with African socialism. Savimbi treated his partners in the world anti-communist movement - the right-wing Contras from Nicaragua, Lao anti-communist Hmong partisans, Afghan mujahideen, with poorly concealed disdain, considering them reactionaries, but forced tactical companions. However, it was in Jumbo, the military residence of UNITA, that meetings of the International Democratic International, a political organization created by Afghan, Angolan, Lao, Nicaraguan and American anti-communists, took place.
Belonging to the world anti-communist movement did not prevent UNITA from proclaiming itself the spokesman for the interests of the poorest segments of the population of Angola - the black peasantry of the inner provinces. According to Savimbi's view of the current political situation in Angola, after the MPLA came to power, the colonial order in the country was never eliminated. The top of the MPLA was made up of wealthy "assimilados" and mulattos, who acted in the interests of transnational corporations plundering the country's national wealth and exploiting its population. Savimbi saw the real Angolans in the black inhabitants of the villages, and not in the Europeanized mulattoes and "assimilados" from large cities, which formed the basis of the political electorate of the MPLA.
The structure and combat successes of UNITA
Sergei Kononov, in a small but very interesting article devoted to the analysis of the internal structure of UNITA based on Cuban sources, reports that the structure of UNITA as a political party included leadership - a central committee of 50 people, a political bureau of the central committee of 13 members and 3 candidates, the secretariat of the central a committee of five senior leaders. In the provinces, the supreme body of UNITA is the provincial assembly, in the districts - the district assembly, in the villages - the village assemblies. The UNITA government includes foreign secretaries, each of whom is responsible for the most important area of international cooperation - the United States, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Gabon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Zaire, Zambia, Morocco. The post of party chairman, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and president of Angola in the UNITA structure was held by Commander Jonas Savimbi. The chief of the general staff was General Deostenos Amos Shilingutila, and the national political commissar was Geraldo Sashipengu Nunda. The armed forces of UNITA were divided into six military-political fronts - Kazombo, the Second Strategic Front, the Central Front, Kwanza and Kubango. In 1977-1979. as part of UNITA there were 4 military-political fronts, in 1980-1982. - 8 fronts, in 1983-1984 - 6 fronts. The fronts included 22 military areas. By 1983, the UNITA troops included 6 infantry brigades and 37 battalions. The total number of the organization's fighters was about 37,000 people. The structure of the UNITA infantry brigade, according to Kononov, looked like this: a command of 7 people - brigade commander, commissar, deputy commander, chief of artillery, chief of air defense, chief of reconnaissance and chief of communications. The brigade consisted of 3-4 infantry battalions, a logistical support platoon, a security platoon, a sabotage squad, an artillery platoon and an air defense platoon. The UNITA infantry battalion, in turn, numbered 450 people and included the command (battalion commander, deputy commander, political worker), three infantry companies of up to 145 people, and a support company. Each company included three platoons of 41-45 people, consisting of three squads of 15 people. Each department was divided into three groups of five people.
For intelligence and counterintelligence operations in UNITA, the National Brigade for the Defense of the State was responsible. The brigade was headed by the commander, his deputies for the administrative and technical part. The brigade consisted of a financial control department, a postal control department, an archive and reconnaissance and sabotage units. Technical squads consisted of 1 sapper group of 4-6 people and 1 sabotage group of the same size. Intelligence squads consisted of 4-6 intelligence officers, each with up to three agents. UNITA scouts were trained in special reconnaissance and sabotage schools. It should be noted that intelligence and counterintelligence activities were delivered to UNITA very well, otherwise the guerrilla organization would not have been able to resist the government forces and the Cuban expeditionary corps and Soviet military advisers that helped them for so long and effectively.
For the period from 1975 to 1991. the leadership of the MPLA did not succeed in suppressing the partisan resistance waged by UNITA. When the Cuban troops were withdrawn from Angola, and the Soviet Union, which began perestroika and was gradually reorienting itself to normalizing relations with Western countries, also began to withdraw military specialists and terminate such a large-scale military assistance, it became increasingly difficult to resist UNITA. In 1989, UNITA achieved maximum success, having managed to break through the outskirts of the capital and even strike at Luanda. But the MPLA regime managed to retain power. In the conditions of the collapse of socialism in the USSR, the Angolan leadership quickly figured out which line of conduct would be most beneficial for it and allow it to retain power. The MPLA abandoned the course of a socialist orientation and began to develop relations with the United States and the countries of Western Europe. The latter, being interested not so much in clarifying the ideological preferences of the Angolan leadership as in concrete economic ties, gradually began to curtail the support they had previously provided to UNITA. At the same time, the MPLA government was forced to negotiate with the UNITA command, which culminated in the signing of the Lisbon peace agreements on March 31, 1991.
Unsuccessful attempt at peace and renewal of war
In 1992, Jonas Savimbi ran for the presidential elections in Angola and, according to official data, received 40% of the vote, while the incumbent president and leader of the MPLA, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, received 49.6% of the vote. However, UNITA refused to recognize the results of the presidential elections. The hope for a peaceful settlement of the situation in Angola and the construction of a multi-party democracy with the participation of UNITA again proved elusive. The UNITA leaders who arrived in Luanda expressed strong disagreement with the election results and threatened to start resistance. The response was an unexpectedly harsh reaction from the MPLA, dubbed the "Halloween Massacre." On October 30, 1992, the MPLA party militia attacked UNITA activists, killing several of the party's top leaders. In Luanda, massacres of opposition supporters began, carried out primarily on ethnic grounds - MPLA supporters killed representatives of the Ovimbundu and Bakongo peoples who supported UNITA and the FNLA. The total number of victims of the three-day massacre was at least 10 thousand people, and according to some sources it has reached 30 thousand people.
After the "Halloween Massacre", the UNITA command had no choice but to renew the armed struggle against the regime. Powerful blows were dealt to the government forces. Despite attempts at a peaceful settlement, the parties did not come to a mutual agreement. However, in the second half of the 1990s. UNITA was no longer a success. The US refusal to support UNITA significantly weakened its material, technical and financial capabilities, and most importantly, made it impossible to exert political pressure on Luanda. On top of that, some of the top leaders of UNITA, who were tired of fighting in the jungle for several decades, chose to dissociate themselves from Savimbi and come to a peace agreement with the government. On December 24, 1999, government forces managed to drive UNITA armed units out of the main military residence - the city of Jamba. Jonas Savimbi, commenting on the current situation, stressed that the United States of America needed an ally in the fight against Soviet expansion on the African continent. But when the threat from the Soviet Union faded into the past, UNITA became a threat to American interests.
The death of Savimbi and the fate of UNITA
After the capture of Jamba, Savimbi, with the remnants of his troops, switched to a regime of constant movements in the Angolan jungle. In February 2002, Jonas Savimbi undertook a march through the province of Moxico, but was tracked down by a detachment of government troops of General Carlitos Vala. Together with Savimbi were twenty-two of his closest associates. The 68-year-old Angolan revolutionary himself actively resisted, received fifteen gunshot wounds in a shootout with special forces and died with a weapon in his hands. However, he himself predicted just such an end for himself: “I will not die in a Swiss clinic and not from an illness. I will die a violent death in my own country. The UNITA leader was buried in the city of Luena.
The successor to Savimbi, who headed UNITA in February - March 2002, was General Antonio Sebastian Dembo (1944-2002), who was considered the closest associate of Jonas Savimbi and a supporter of the continuation of the armed resistance of UNITA. Graduated in engineering in Algeria, Antonio Dembo joined UNITA in 1969, and in 1982 became the commander of the Northern Front. In 1992, following the assassination of Jeremias Xitunda during the Halloween Massacre, Dembo became Jonas Savimbi's deputy while at the same time leading the commando unit of the rebel armed forces. Savimbi was very sympathetic to Dembo, although the latter was not an Ovimbund by nationality. It was Dembo Savimbi who named his successor in case of sudden death or death. Dembo, like his senior comrade, was in ultra-radical positions and opposed a compromise with the MPLA, in which he saw an exploitative and hostile force to the Angolan people. On February 22, 2002, Dembo, who was during the battle in Moxico near Savimbi, was wounded, but he managed to escape detention. Two days later, the seriously wounded Dembo issued a statement in which he said that "those who think that the ideals of UNITA died with the leader, are mistaken." However, a few days later, Dembo himself died of his wounds, his death was confirmed by the UNITA leadership on March 5, 2002.
Paulo Lucamba and Isayash Samakuve, who replaced Antoniu Dembo in the leadership of UNITA, accepted the terms of the MPLA and refused to continue the armed struggle. Paulo Lucamba, also known as "General Gatu" ("General Cat"), held talks with the leadership of the MPLA, which resulted in an agreement to end the armed resistance. In exchange for renouncing claims to power in the country, Lucamba and other UNITA leaders received guarantees of inclusion in the political elite of Angola. Lucamba, in particular, became a member of the Angolan parliament. Thus ended the history of the transformation of one of the most combat-ready and radical partisan movements in the world into a systemic political party, whose role in the political life of Angola is not so great. After the end of the civil war, Angola was able to recover its economy and is now one of the most dynamically developing countries on the continent.
