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Attachment
Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence
Agency4
Washington, June 22, 1977
SUBJECT
-
Savimbi’s Guerrilla
Activities in Angola
Summary
1. Jonas Savimbi’s effective
leadership of UNITA has kept in
the field a force of about 7,000 regular and 8,000 irregular
fighters; this force now moves freely within and is supported by the
inhabitants of an area of southern Angola that is roughly between a
third and a half of the country’s territory. In this area, UNITA does not occupy the major
towns, which remain in Cuban and MPLA hands, and its administrative organization is
probably rudimentary in part because5 operations in ethnically friendly territory do not
really require much elaboration at this stage. Given this base area,
and UNITA’s demonstrated ability
to survive major offensives against it, it has good longer-term
prospects for maintaining forces in being and in effect denying
southern Angola to the MPLA/Cuban regime in Luanda. At the same
time, an effort by Savimbi to
expand much beyond his present limits would encounter some of the
same difficulties now faced by the MPLA and its Cuban supporters. Under these
circumstances, Savimbi’s
movement is not likely to “take over” in Luanda in the foreseeable
future. Its long term prospect for achieving, or more likely
sharing, national power in Angola will depend on the intensity of
Neto’s problems within
the MPLA; the duration of the
Cuban commitment to Neto; and
the MPLA’s eventual willingness to
abandon its claim to exclusive jurisdiction.6
UNITA’s Assets
2. The major single asset of Savimbi’s movement is Savimbi himself. He has impressed Americans and
other foreigners as serious, hard working, realistic, intelligent,
and easy to deal with. Within his movement, he insists on discipline
and allows virtually no autonomy to his subordinates. This
organizational principle and the force of his [Page 9] personality have kept UNITA free of the factionalism and feuding that have
characterized the other Angolan nationalist movements.
3. Among Savimbi’s strengths
is his attention to the welfare of his troops in the field. He
commands loyalty because he appoints effective subordinates and
takes pains to organize supply. UNITA’s central base of operations is a site near Bela
Vista, northeast of Huambe, from which Savimbi maintains radio—not always reliable—and
courier contact with four regional fronts. So-called “first line”
guerrilla forces, which [less than 1 line not
declassified] numbers about 7,000, are organized into
companies of 100–120 men.
4. These units conduct reconnaissance and patrols, man road blocks,
and are the basic elements for offensive operations; larger
concentrations probably conduct the “sieges” that UNITA maintains to isolate the
MPLA and Cuban forces
occupying towns within the UNITA
area of control. A specially trained unit operates against the
Benguela Railway and other rail lines and bridges. These UNITA units are armed with a variety
of light infantry weapons left over from the civil war or captured
from the Cuban/FAPLA forces. UNITA reportedly has 8–9 months supply of small arms
ammunition. There are relatively few weapons of large calibre,
although UNITA does have various
sizes of mortars, bazookas, and rockets, for example. Motor
transport is scarce, largely for want of fuel, and captured armored
vehicles are used for static defense. In the area of their
operations, UNITA forces have a
logistical advantage over their opponents, as well as the advantage
of operating in a familiar geographic and a friendly ethnic
environment, and when used in combination with guerrilla tactics
these more than balance the technical superiority of Cuban/MPLA
forces operating far from base.
5. Other, so-called irregular UNITA forces, claimed to number 8,000, guard stores,
participate in political indoctrination, and generally conduct
themselves along what UNITA
believes to be Maoist lines. Military duties for this group
evidently shade off into political and social action; UNITA officials assert that, as they
have gained the military initiative in southeastern Angola from the
Cubans and FAPLA, greater
emphasis is being placed on political action programs.
6. [less than 1 line not declassified] there
is a well elaborated structure of UNITA political organization and administration down to
the village level, it seems doubtful that much of this exists on a
wide scale except as necessary to procure food supplies and for
local recruiting. Since the population of UNITA’s area is friendly, the members of the village
UNITA “cell” and the more
traditional indigenous leadership very likely overlap.
7. The geographic limits of Savimbi’s territory—his “zone of influence”—include
most of southern and southeastern Angola, but not the [Page 10] southern coast nor,
apparently, the far southern border with Namibia. The provinces of
Cuando-Cubango, Cunene, Moxico, Mocamedes, Huila, Bie, Huambe,
Benguela and parts of Cuanza Sul, Malanje, and Luanda would be
included. Within this area, UNITA
“controls” the countryside along and south of
the Benguela railroad in that it has the allegiance of the local
population, sharply limits the movement of FAPLA/Cuban forces, and
is subject to only sporadic opposition from them. Notable exceptions
to UNITA’s control within its own
zone are the towns of Cangamba, Serpa Pinto, Huambo and Bie—all
still occupied by FAPLA/Cuban garrisons.
8. Savimbi also has foreign
friends, whose support is useful but not critical at this time. We
believe that UNITA still receives
some specialized items such as radios, and perhaps some funding,
[less than 1 line not declassified] and
it is of course in the South Africans’ interest to keep the Angolan
regime focused on its internal insurgency problems so as to limit
practical support for SWAPO’s
operations against targets in Namibia.7
UNITA has close ties with the
British,8 [2 lines not
declassified]. Zambian President Kaunda, who has had similar
relationships, is an old supporter of Savimbi.9 The “moderate”
West Africans, Senghor and
Houphouet-Boigny, are also favorably inclined, but Zaire under
Mobutu is not trusted by
Savimbi, and the French
fall in this category too. The UNITA leadership, despite its home grown quality, has
considerable experience in exploiting these foreign
relationships.10
UNITA’s Liabilities
9. Many of UNITA’s strengths are
also sources of weakness. Savimbi’s ability to dominate the organization and
enforce discipline means that, despite the existence of a group of
talented subordinates who work well together, none has anything like
his stature or would be able to take his place as a national Angolan
figure if he were to be removed from the scene. There are signs that
Savimbi is aware of and
attempting to remedy this situation, but is still moving slowly in
delegating authority.
10. The ethnic core of UNITA is
among the Ovimbundu people of the central highlands of Angola,
although the movement has been and is supported by other tribes of
the southern and eastern regions and its top leadership includes
Cabindans and others from outside its base [Page 11] area. This degree of ethnic homogeneity, along
with Savimbi’s talent as a
mediator, is the source of much of UNITA’s cohesiveness, but it simultaneously inhibits
UNITA’s acceptance as a
national movement. If and when UNITA mounts substantial military operations outside
the area in which it now moves freely, it will be moving in what is
now still an alien ethnic environment. This again is a disability
that Savimbi is aware of and
one that he is trying to overcome, but if he does so he will
probably owe more to the ineptitude and disarray in the MPLA than to his own efforts.
11. From a military standpoint too, UNITA’s logistical problems would multiply as it sought
to expand and, unless there had been very thorough political
preparation, it probably would have to adopt more conventional
tactics. In these conditions, the lack of armor and heavier
firepower would become more telling as Savimbi’s forces moved out of their accustomed
habitats. Savimbi’s success
in hanging on and in keeping the FAPLA/Cuban units to the towns has
encouraged him to consider a northern offensive, but unless the
MPLA had collapsed internally
or the Cubans had already given up, it is unlikely that he could
carry such an operation through successfully without substantial
foreign support.
UNITA’s Prospects
12. UNITA’s current thinking, [less than 1 line not declassified] indicates
some ambivalence and probably divided counsels on the movement’s
future strategy. Savimbi’s
basic objective is to drive the Cubans and Soviets out of Angola and
replace the Neto regime with
a “government of national unity” led by UNITA. But how? At one point Savimbi thought of declaring a
“liberated republic” in southern Angola, but this idea smacks of
ethnic separatism which he wants ultimately to overcome.
13. A safer, less spectacular, but in some ways more difficult course
would be to develop UNITA’s
political and administrative apparatus in the area it now largely
controls, and to use this as a secure base for politico-military
operations against the MPLA
regime. Such a longer range strategy could make use of the
underground assets UNITA may have
in Luanda and other coastal and northern cities, whose takeover at
some point will be essential to long term success. But this strategy
assumes that Neto and the
Cubans will continue to stumble and that, [less
than 1 line not declassified] after a couple years
Neto will collapse for
primarily internal reasons. Savimbi’s pressures could, of course, contribute to
such a collapse or to a change of leadership in the MPLA; they might in time also force
the MPLA to some kind of
compromise with Savimbi—although there are now no indications that
Neto is considering a
deal. But if Neto does not
cave in one way or another, and [Page 12] the Cubans remain committed to defend him,
UNITA would remain an
essentially regional insurgency which could be contained though not
suppressed.
14. The answer to Savimbi’s
dilemma thus does not lie primarily with his own assets and
liabilities but with those of his opponents in Luanda and Havana—and
Moscow. As long as Castro
continued to receive strong Soviet backing and could see some
military progress against the insurgents, he probably would be
willing to commit additional civilian resources and combat troops to
Angola beyond the 3–4,000 Cubans arriving there now. Savimbi too can survive, but the
key to his doing more than that is in the will of the Cubans to
continue to provide those technical and military services that allow
the Neto regime to survive as
the “government” of Angola.
