Two Root Causes Of The Angolan Civil War

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The content of Africa the birth place of modern man and a land rich in natural resources such as diamonds, oil and other high sought after goods in the global market place. The question that is begged to be asked is how a place with so many resources can be poor and under developed in a lot of places. The answer lies on two root causes in Africa violent and turbulent history. The first is as old as Africa itself and that is tribalism in what the populations are divided into separate tribes that are in a similar area. This is a current problem today in a lot of African tribes that its borders include more than one tribe or ethnic group today who are struggling for power. This was a root problem in the Angolan civil war in which to different …show more content…
This curse would lead to more foreign intervention for these resources in the coming civil. When its independence was achieved in 1974 Angola quickly became a failed state as all those resources incurred foreign influence. What was known as the Carnation Revolution caused the Portuguese to leave Angola. The start of the civil war soon followed the revolution and three major groups were fighting for Angolan resources. The country of Angola has vast amounts of resources which would be used to fund the war and the group’s state sponsored terror campaign. Angola is the fourth largest diamond producer in the world an important fact when talking about the civil war. Angola produces around 15% of the world’s diamond market. There are three major factions in the civil war and they are the following UNITA, MAPLA, and FNLA. All three of these groups represents a ethnic group in the country and shows the effect of tribalism …show more content…
MAPLA was a left wing ideology group who attract the support of the Soviet Union. Major Backers of the group MAPLA were the Union of Socialist Satellite Republics (USSR) and Cuba. They were primary funded by legitimate oil sales and legitimate diamond exports. The only turned to smuggling when the UN had sanctions on Angola. MALPA was the legitimate government of Angola. This group would receive the most support from Cuba who eventually sent 40,000 troops to fight. The Seconded group was UNITA a right wing ideology group. UNITA found support from the United States and really any other country who wanted to fight communism. This group also recivied troops as a form of aid from south Africa. South Africa was worried about having a communist neighbor so it sent the army to help Jonas Svambi. The group used organized crime to fund themselves such as diamond smuggling and arms smuggling. The last Group was the FNLA another right wing group, which received help from Zaire. Essentially this civil war was from three separate warlords. Angola like Vietnam would become a Cold War Proxy war between east vs west. Foreign support was much easier to obtain than in the cold war than post-cold war era. In the cold war era there was a drive to win these resource rich countries like Angola. This was a global problem not just in Angola but around the world of this foreign aid being given to less than reputable people. This idea of unchecked

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