After Angola gained its independence from Portugal in 1975, a civil war started and continued, with some interludes, until 2002- that claimed the lives of over 500,000 civilians and soldiers. Two former liberation movements, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola’s (UNITA) struggle for power led to a civil war that at the same time, acted as a “proxy” for the Cold War. And large-scale direct and indirect international involvement by the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR), Cuba, South Africa, Brazil and the United States which were opposing powers at the time. The Angolan War of Independence (1961-1974), a colonisation conflict, had taken place prior
