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| Kissinger Watch #16 - 3 | |
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| Henry Kissinger and the Angola Saga, by Sietse Bosgra, special to Kissinger Watch | |
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| One of the biggest crimes of Henry Kissinger was the U.S. intervention in Angola in 1975. However, in the present campaign to bring Kissinger to court little attention has been paid to his role in Angola. In 1975 Portugal decided to wash its hands of its rebellious colonies. It agreed to negotiate a handover of Angola to three rival independence movements, which had consented to abide by the results of elections. If democracy had been allowed to prevail then, more than a million lives might have been saved. Instead, Henry Kissinger talked President Ford into a clandestine adventure that was to lead Angola away from the ballot to the bullet. Only days after the January 15, 1975 signing of a peace agreement establishing a transitional power-sharing government and October elections, the CIA intervened. It sent $300.000 in cash to one faction, the CIA’s long term client the FNLA., which most likely interpreted it as an indication of unconditional US support. This payment was made without the knowledge of the US Congress or the public. The FNLA used the money to finance an all-out military attack on the MPLA in February. In March, Zaire’s Mobutu, a child of the CIA, sent his army troops into Angola. The war had started. In July 1975, President Ford gave Kissinger approval for a covert military operation designed to install a pro-US government in Angola. On July 18, President Ford authorized a first disbursement of $6 million, followed by another $ 8 million on July 27 and $10.7 million more on August 20. The CIA covert operation in Angola dubbed IAFEATURE had begun. The United States was in the lead, flanked by Zaire and South Africa. England and France took up the rear by starting their own clandestine assistance programs. This coalition backed UNITA and FNLA. “They are the same, those who yesterday supported [the Portuguese dictators] Salazer and Caetano”, MPLA-leader Neto remarked. At the same time the Chinese and North Koreans supported the FNLA with arms and training in order to strengthen the anti-Soviet forces. GLEIJESES The full truth about the American operation in Angola was not known until the extensive documentary record assembled by John Hopkins University professor Piero Gleijeses. Gleijeses was the first non-Cuban scholar to gain access to the closed archives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba. He obtained extensive U.S. documentation through the Freedom of Information Act, and worked in the government archives of Belgium, Great Britain, and West and East Germany. His book “Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa 1959-1976” constitutes an indictment against Henry Kissinger. More detailed information on the role of the Soviet Union in Angola has since become available. Norwegian scholar Odd Arne Westad is the only researcher who has had access to the relevant Soviet archives. And the head of the Soviet Solidarity Committee, Shubin , has added additional information by publishing his experiences. MOTIVES FOR U.S. INTERVENTION The motives for the active US intervention against the MPLA were not based on Angolan or African realities, Gleijeses writes. The suffering of the Angolans did not matter. In fact, in the minds of U.S. strategists as far back as Kissinger, that suffering barely appeared to exist. To Kissinger, the situation in Angola was simply a clash between American and Soviet power. Kissinger was wholly obsessed with countering Soviet influence anywhere on the planet, real or imagined. “My assessment was if the Soviet Union can interfere 8.000 miles from home in an undisputed way and control Zaire’s and Zambia’s access to the sea, then the Southern countries must conclude that the US has abdicated in Southern Africa”, Kissinger wrote in his memoirs. However, according to Gleijeses, American prestige was the point. The ghost of Vietnam would be exorcised by a display of American power in Africa. ”For Kissinger the final debacle in Vietnam was both a national and a personal humiliation.... It is unclear whether Kissinger truly believed that a Soviet power grab was occurring in this remote African country. What is clear that he chose Angola as the place to show America’s resolve in the wake of Vietnam. In Angola, he would take the offensive, he would send a signal.” In the words of Kissinger: “Playing an active role [in Angola] would demonstrate that events in Southeast Asia have not lessened our “determination to protect our interests.” Both U.S. intelligence and policy makers concluded in 1975 that an MPLA regime in Angola did not threaten significant U.S. interests. “But for Henry Kissinger this was irrelevant: U.S. policy towards Angola would be determined not by what happened there, but by his conception of the U.S. position in the world at the time,” Gleijses wrote. SOVIET AGGRESSION U.S. policy was based on the false assumption that it was fighting ‘Soviet aggression” in Angola. The same simplistic thinking that was the cause of the war in Vietnam received its follow-up in Africa. But like the Vietnamese resistance movement, the MPLA was not a willing tool of Moscow. The Soviet Union had not trusted the MPLA-leaders during the war of independence against Portugal, and they still didn’t trust them in 1975. In the 1960s the MPLA had received some Soviet and Soviet-bloc aid, but Angola was a low priority for Moscow. The paucity of this aid was consistent with Soviet policy toward sub-Saharan Africa. The Soviets were neither impressed with the MPLA’s military performance nor with its leaders, particularly Neto. They suspected that Neto and his organisation were pro-Chinese. Through the years relations between the USSR and the MPLA were strained. The former head of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee of the Soviet Union, Shubin, has published some examples, In December 1962, after Neto had escaped from custody in Portugal, he first went to Washington to put his case before the American government and press. Coming up empty he continued his trip to Moscow. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, was on holiday in the Crimea when he heard the news of the launch of an Angolan government-in-exile. He was angry that the Soviet Union had not yet recognized the new government and decided this should urgently be done. When Neto was informed of the decision, the message “sounded like a death sentence”, as this government-in-exile was part of the CIA-backed FNLA. Before the recognition was published in the Pravda, the decision was at the last moment rescinded.” In 1967, Neto travelled to Beijing, Moscow and Belgrade. In Beijing, the Chinese pressured Neto to condemn Soviet revisionism. Neto refused and the Chinese refused to provide any aid. In Moscow, the Russians pressed him to condemn the Chinese. A request and Neto also refused. He decided to forgo the plane ticket to Belgrade the Soviets had offered him, and bought with his own money a ticket for an exhausting trip by train. “This incident illuminates both Neto’s personality and the travails of a small, proud, and unsuccessful guerilla movement”, Gleijeses comments. In 1972, the aid to MPLA from Moscow and the other countries of the Soviet bloc was stopped. Chronic Soviet suspicions that the MPLA was pro-Chinese had probably been fanned by the limited aid given by China in 1971 to the MPLA. Moreover there was an internal split in the MPLA in 1972, and the Soviets favored the anti-Neto faction that had decided to leave the organisation. When in 1975 Kissinger decided to fight “Soviet aggression” in Angola, Moscow’s relations with the MPLA were at its lowest ebb. This was known in Washington. In March 1973 Assistant Secretary of State Newsom told British officials that “we [the United States] were surprised by the low level of Soviet support to the liberation movements in the Portuguese territories”. The MPLA was clearly not a tool of Moscow, but a non-aligned organisation. The MPLA’s closest friends were Yugoslavia and Algeria. Most of its non-military support came from the governments of Scandinavia and the Netherlands. In reaction to the CIA donations and Chinese weapons deliveries to FNLA and to the invasion by the Zairan army into Angola early 1975 the MPLA asked for urgent support from the Soviet Union and Cuba. “The available evidence indicates that the Soviets intervened in Angola slowly and reluctantly . Their aid to the MPLA began in early 1975, well after Beijing had sent instructors and weapons to the FNLA”, Gleijeses concludes. The Soviet leaders were worried that such a move would damage their policy of detente with regard to the US. In August 1975 Brezhnev suggested to president Ford a visit to Washington. In August 1975 the MPLA complained to a Cuban delegation about the paucity of the aid from the Socialist camp. “Neto complained that the Soviet Union stopped aiding them in 1972 and that although it is now sending them weapons, the amount of assistance is paltry.” The most important Soviet contribution to MPLA during this period was the specialized military training of approximately 100 Angolans in the Soviet Union. The Soviets refused however to send military personnel to Angola before November 11, with the sole exception of one military adviser, called Yuri. The reaction of most African countries to the South African invasion in October 1975 led the Soviets to believe that it would be less dangerous than before to intervene in the Angolan conflict. The documents show that the Soviet Union only reluctantly backed Havana’s intervention in Angola and tried to put strict limits on it. Moscow decided moreover that it would assist the Cuban operation in Angola only after its declaration of independence on November 11 1975. Before that date no Soviet transport planes were used to support the Cuban with their transport problems. No meaningful effort was made by the United States to discuss Angola directly with the Soviet Union in an attempt to avoid escalation Kissinger: “If we appeal to the Soviets not to be active, it will be a sign of weakness”. KISSINGER’S LIES Gleijeses argues that Kissinger’s account of the US role in Angola was misleading, both in his testimony to Congress in 1976 and a quarter of a century later in the third volume of his memoirs “Years of Renewal”. There was virtually no important aspect of the Angolan intervention which Kissinger and CIA-chief Colby did not misrepresent. One lie is that Washington intervened in Angola in 1975 only after large numbers of Cuban troops had been sent to that country to support the MPLA. Kissinger testified before Congress in January 76 that “ in August (1975) intelligence reports indicated the presence of Soviet and Cuban military advisers, trainers and troops, including the first Cuban combat troops”. This was in flat contradiction to the now declassified CIA and other intelligence reports of the time, Gleijeses notes. Kissinger “was rewriting the history”. “When the United States decided to launch the covert intervention, in June and July, not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the U.S. government and the CIA were not even thinking about any Cuban presence in Angola.” said Piero Gleijeses. “If you look at the CIA reports which were done at the time, the Cubans were totally out of the picture.” Kissinger forced the CIA to rewrite a document on Angola to show an earlier Cuban presence than was accurate. “So the poor CIA ended up lying.” THE DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN On January 1976, William Colby sat before the Senate investigating committee and solemnly assured the Senators: “We have taken particular caution to ensure that our operations are focused abroad and not at the US to influence the opinion of the American people about things from the CIA point of view.” There were well over a hundred CIA officers and American military advisers helping to direct military operations and one third of them were practicing their propaganda skills. Through recruited journalists the CIA was able to generate international coverage for false reports of Soviet and Cuban advisers in Angola. One CIA story in November 1975, announced to the press in the name of UNITA, was that 20 Russians and 35 Cubans had been captured in Angola. The story was widely reported in the American and foreign press. MERCENARIES Kissinger initiated a ambitious, covert program to have American and European mercenaries fight with the FNLA. In November 1975 the CIA began to recruit them. Over a hundred British mercenaries plus a scattering of American, French and Portuguese mercenaries were involved. The CIA was also financing their arming. In total the CIA spent over a million dollars on the programme. Subsequently Henry Kissinger informed the Senate that “the CIA is not involved” in the recruitment of mercenaries in Angola. COLLABORATION WITH SOUTH AFRICA Another lie is the myth that there was no collaboration between the US government and the apartheid regime of SA, which was also engaged in a massive operation to block the victory of MPLA forces. Testifying before Congress in 1976, Kissinger stated: “We had no foreknowledge of SA intentions, and in no way cooperated military.” Twenty years later, in his memoirs, he was even more specific: he learned of the invasion only at the end of October, two weeks after it had begun. Wayne Smith, director of the State Department’s Office of Cuban Affairs from 1977 tot 1979 has written that “in August and October (1975) South African troops invaded Angola with full US knowledge. No Cuban troops were in Angola prior to this intervention.” Gleijeses presents evidence that Henry Kissinger urged the South Africans to assist FNLA and UNITA and that the CIA helped the SA army ferry arms to the key battle fronts in Angola. Moreover the CIA set up a covert mechanism whereby arms were delivered to the South Africans. South African defence minister Botha stated on April 17, 1978 to the SA parliament: “When we crossed the border in Angola we did so with the approval and knowledge of the Americans… They encouraged us to act.” SOVIET MERCENARIES Havana was not acting on behalf of the Soviet Union, even though Kissinger liked to call the Cuban troops “Soviet mercenaries”. The Cubans sent their troops to Angola on their own initiative and without informing or consulting the Soviet Union. MPLA-UNITA The US was unwilling to allow a negotiated settlement. Late August 1975 the MPLA and UNITA had made a serious attempt to come to a peaceful solution through a political accommodation. They met in Lisbon under the auspices of Portuguese president Costa Gomes. This alarmed Washington. UNITA was admonished by the CIA. The response from Washington was: keep fighting. The following month an MPLA delegation went to Washington to once again express their potential friendliness to the US. They received a cool reception, being seen only by a low-level State Department official. HULSTLANDER Gleijeses demonstrates the CIA and State Department officials frequently ignored the accurate facts they had in order to purse their ideological bents. The CIA station chief in Luanda Robert Hulstlander criticized US policy in Angola as “shortsighted and flawed”. “The briefings and orientation I received prior to arriving in Luanda”, Hulstlander recalled, “emphasized the communist orientation of the MPLA and convinced me of the urgent need to stop the MPLA from taking power”. But after three months Hulstlander changed his opinion. He made known to Agency headquarters that he had come to share the view of the US Consul General in Luanda, Killoran, “that the MPLA was best qualified to run the country. They were more effective, better educated, better trained and better motivated. The rank and file also were better motivated, particularly the combatants, who fought harder and with more determination. They were not demonstrably hostile to the United States, and the US should make peace with the MPLA as quickly as possible”. “Kissinger feared that an MPLA victory would have destabilising effects throughout Southern Africa. Of course, the opposite proved true. It was our policies which caused the ‘destabilisation’. Kissinger was determined to challenge the Soviet Union, although no vital US interest were at stake”. Hulstlander came in problems when the chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Dirk Clark, visited Angola at the end of August 1975. Hulstlander defended the CIA covert action Programme. “My heart was not in it, and I finally admitted that I personally thought our support for FNLA and UNITA would prove disastrous. This position, as you can imagine, caused me problems with my superiors, and infuriated Kissinger.” “The State Department was very uncomfortable with the Luanda consulate’s contacts [with the MPLA] and its reporting on the MPLA in early 1975”, Hulstlander writes. Killoran adds:” Everything I sent [to Washington] I never heard anything about. It was like sending all that stuff into a black hole.” But Hulstlander and Consul General Killoran refused to bend their reporting to Kissinger’s policy. Both maintained their assessment at the cost of their foreign service career. Gleijeses concludes that Kissinger’s Angola policy was amoral. “He committed the United States to a policy that was inimical to the interests of the people of Angola. As Killoran and Hulstlander argued, the MPLA was by far the best of the three Angolan movements. As the U.S. State Department noted, it commanded ‘the alliance of most of the best educated and skilled people in Angola.’ The relentless hostility of the United States forced the MPLA into an unhealthy dependence on the Soviet bloc.” STOCKWELL John Stockwell, the task-force commander of the CIA’s secret war in Angola in 1975/6, based in neighbouring Congo/Zaire had a similar experience. In the first briefings we received on the Angola operation, CIA Director William Colby literally said, “Gentleman, this is a map of Africa. Here is Angola. Now, there are three fractions in Angola. The FNLA they are the Good Guys; we have been working with them for fourteen years… The MPLA they are the Bad Guys, led by a drunken psychotic poet called Neto. “I sat on a sub-committee of the National Security Council, so I was like a chief of staff, with Henry Kissinger, Bill Colby, making the important decisions. “I spent six months reviewing all the files and then resigned from the agency. After publishing a letter in the Washington Post, I testified for five days to congressional committees proving specific lies. They were asking if we had to with South Africa, that was fighting in Angola. In fact we were coordinating this operation so closely that our airplanes, full of arms from the States, would meet their airplanes in Kinshasa and they would take our arms in Angola. I gave them chapter and verse of what we had done in the misguided Angola operation. I gave them the numbers, dates and texts of cables and memoranda that proved we had broken laws and then lied about breaking them. I gave them combinations to the safes where the documents were stored, and told them were in the CIA headquarters those safes could be found. I challenged them to investigate thoroughly and do their duty. They did nothing. The hearings were conducted in secret, and after the Watergate scandal, the ouster of President Nixon and the defeat in Vietnam, they were not willing to tackle another big scandal that might oblige them to put Henry Kissinger and the CIA Director in jail.” THE WAR Gleijses concludes that a close look at U.S. government sources indicates that until October the FNLA and UNITA received at least as much military aid as the MPLA. But because it was better organized and better motivated already in July the MPLA had the upper hand. As the MPLA controlled the capital city of Luanda, which housed almost the entire government machinery, it was poised to form the new government. Both Washington and Pretoria launched their covert operations at roughly the same time, in mid-July, and both had a military presence in Angola by early September. Prodded by Mobutu and the U.S., white-ruled South Africa decided to escalate. A South African army column (called Zulu) entered Angola from Namibia on October 14. The aim of both the CIA-funded covert operation from the North and the South African army advance from the South were to take the capital Luanda before 11 November, independence deadline. The Cuban presence in Angola was primarily a direct response to South African attacks against the MPLA. The first Cuban combat troops –158 men- arrived in Luanda on November 9, two days before independence. Together with the MPLA-army they were able to stop both invasions on a short distance from the capital. The South Africans, echoed by the entire Western press, absolutely denied that their troops were fighting in Angola. The SA troops disguised themselves as mercenaries. Gleijeses: “Without the Cuban intervention, the South Africans would have seized Angola’s capital before anyone reported that the South Africans had crossed the border. The CIA operation in Angola would have succeeded.” In terms of control of the central regions the Angolan war was over by early March 1976. The MPLA, with indispensable help from Cuban troops and Soviet military equipment, had all but routed their opponents out of the country. The South African and CIA intervention had swung African opinion solidly behind the MPLA. The MPLA-government of Angola achieved widespread diplomatic recognition, amongst them all West European countries, who started programmes of development aid. The MPLA victory did not threaten major U.S. interests in Angola. Luanda’s economic ties continued with the West, the Soviet Union gained no naval bases, and the Angolan government sent soon signals of its willingness to improve relations with the United States. The MPLA government urged Gulf Oil Co to continue its exclusive operation in Cabinda province and guaranteed the safety of the American corporation’s employees while the fighting was still heavy. In 1976, Senator Dick Clark piloted an amendment through Congress outlawing any more clandestine aid to Angola. But the CIA found third countries willing to channel the continuing CIA military support to UNITA. A vengeful Kissinger sought to undermine the MPLA government and pursued his policy that has, at its heart, full disregard for the ordinary people trapped in a conflict from which they have nothing to gain. UNITA in 1976 again considered reaching an understanding with the MPLA. The response from Washington was: keep fighting. Kissinger personally promised UNITA continued support if they maintained their resistance, knowing full well that there was no more support to give. COUP AGAINST NETO The Norwegian researcher Odd Arne Westad has recently described how Moscow wanted to build a new MPLA. Local Soviet observers postulated in 1976 that Soviet assistance to Angola had not only helped to win the war but also laid the foundation for the building of a “vanguard party”. The Angolan movement had earlier been plagued by “careerist and fellow-travellers” but due to Soviet guidance the “internationalist” were in ascendance. These new MPLA leaders understood that the MPLA was part of an international revolutionary movement led by Moscow. Moscow stayed suspicious of the MPLA president Neto. The May 1977 Havana and Moscow supported opposite sides in an attempted coup by Soviet favorite Nito Alves to overthrow the government of Neto. The attempt was blocked by Cuban tanks. Gleijeses: “The Cubans played a decisive role in defeating the revolt.” Shubin described how the conflict ended: “When Neto came to Moscow on an official visit in August 1976, he surprised the Soviet interlocutors with a sudden statement. At the start of his meeting with Leonid Brezhnev he suddenly turned to the theme of the recent military mutiny in Luanda. Ignoring diplomatic nuances, he said : “I want to find out from you personnally, has Moscow taken part in a conspiracy against me or not? I have been informed many of your people have been involved.” Brezhnev, who was already partly incapacitated, did not reject the accusation, but began to read from a prepared text regarding “the expected excellent harvest” in the Soviet Union. Moscow’s relations with Luanda survived this episode but the Soviets suffered some ‘casualties’. As a result the head of the military mission in Angola and others military were recalled.” If the government in Washington had not been blind they would have used this serious conflict between the Angolan government and Moscow to end their conflict and recognise the Angolan government. 27 YEARS OF WAR The war that Kissinger started continued for more than a quarter of a century. The tap that Kissinger had turned on in 1975, and Carted had turned off, was opened again in 1981, when Ronald Reagan approved a covert aid package for UNITA. Beginning in 1986 the US supplied UNITA with US $ 15 tot 20 million annually in “covert” military aid funded out of the budget of the CIA.. Angola became the bloodiest battlefield in Southern Africa In 1992 the US decided it had no longer an interest in supporting UNITA. In May 1993 Washington finally recognized the Angolan government. The appalling suffering continued until the death of UNITA-leader Savimbi in 2002. With a total estimated population of 10,3 million the “World Factbook 2002” of the CIA concludes: “Up to 1.5 million lives may have been lost in fighting over the past quarter century.” | |
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