ABSTRACT
The granting of independence to Angola in 1975, after 14 years of fighting, led to the withdrawal of 50,000 Portuguese soldiers and the flight of 300,000 Portuguese civilians. Three rival movements were left to fight a new guerrilla war against each other: in the north, the FNLA (Frente Nacional de Liberação de Angola), based on the Bakongo tribes; in the south, UNITA (União Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola), based on the Ovimbundu, who form a third of Angola’s population of 12 million; and the Marxist MPLA (Movimento Popular de Liberação de Angola), which held the capital, Luanda. A fourth group, FLEC (Front pour la Libération de l’Enclave de Cabinda), was trying to establish a separate state in Cabinda, the Angolan enclave north of the Congo river mouth, whose oilfields had begun production in the 1960s.
