Angola: Ruined Tanks on the Roadsides
Remnants of two decades of civil war are everywhere in rural Angola. I didn’t know many details of Angola’s history except that it was a big and dear African friend of the Soviet Union and the long time president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos used to socialize with Leonid Brezhnev. But if you read more about it, it’s a stunning and horrifying story that is basically being now repeated almost exactly in Syria. In 1974, Portugal decided to divest of its African colonies and Angola was the last to go. Two major local parties – UNITA and MPLA – formed a unity government and it looked like a success story. But major world superpowers and smaller wannabe military neighbors lined up to intervene and support covertly and overtly the two sides. USSR stood with MPLA and together with Cuba sent thousands of troops and tanks to their new communist hammer’n’sickle (or more like AK47’n’machete) friends. USA via CIA naturally funded and supplied the opposite side of UNITA rebels without much thinking what the rebels were or what they wanted. Congo invaded in the north not to allow the communist expansion and also because the UNITA rebel leader was a relative of Congo’s dictator. South Africa invaded in the south under pretense of crushing terrorist secessionists’ Namibian rebel camps. (Just change names for Russia, USA, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and you got a very accurate description of the Syrian situation). The war lasted 30 years, killed and displaced millions, completely annihilated the infrastructure and left minefields all over. Several tank battles were the fiercest and largest since WWII. Many tank ruins still stand along the countryside roads. Like this one!
